A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

These Jesuit outrages, however, seem to have stimulated the Pope, and on 25th September (1769) he gave Bernis a written assurance for Louis XV. that he intended to suppress the Society. A little later Charles III. of Spain received the same secret assurance. Thirty-four of the bishops of Spain, led by their cardinals and the Archbishop of Seville, had written to demand the suppression, and prove that it was not merely liberal politicians who opposed the Society. In the following February the seminary at Frascati was taken from the Jesuits and put under the control of secular priests. The spring and summer passed without giving fresh hope to the Jesuits. They reported Clement gloomy and inaccessible, and it is not impossible that they learned that a search was now being made in the Vatican Archives, and a report being drawn up on the history of the Society since its establishment. From that time, in fact, Clement secretly gathered the historical material with which he was to frame his crushing indictment of the Society. In June, it is true, Count Kaunitz visited Rome; but, as we know the attitude of both Maria Theresa and Joseph II., we must accept Theiner's statement that he urged the Pope to suppress the Society, rather than the French historian's light assertion that he pleaded for the Jesuits. The Society seemed to be doomed.

Then, in the month of December, Choiseul fell from power in France, and the news fired a train of rejoicing throughout the Provinces of the Society. D'Aiguillon, believed to be a friend of the Society, had (with the aid of Mme. du Barry) displaced their great opponent, and the policy of France would, no doubt, now be reversed. The Jesuits, and the noble ladies who worked for them at Paris, affected at least to believe that they would be recalled to France, and that the Pope would no longer be exposed to the unanimous pressure of the Catholic Powers. But in his first dispatch to Cardinal Bernis, D'Aiguillon maintained the policy of his predecessor in regard to the Society. Spain also replaced its ambassador with a more vigorous representative, Count Florida Blanca, and the Pope was assailed more vehemently than ever. A piquant picture is offered to us of the robust Spanish count bullying the aged Pontiff, who plaintively bares his skin to show Florida Blanca the eruption which proves that he is ill and cannot be pressed. Bernis's letters are more reliable; the French ambassador candidly admires the noble resistance of the Pope to the intriguers on both sides, and his determination to have his inquiry justly and patiently completed before he condemns the Society.

In the course of 1771 and 1772 the Jesuits were convicted of further indiscretions which strengthened the case against them. In June 1771 the secretary of the Portuguese embassy was convicted of collusion with the Jesuits, and banished from Rome; he had communicated to the Jesuits the dispatches which were received from his government, even letters to the Vatican, concerning the Society. In 1772 the cause of the canonisation of Bishop Palafox was before the Congregation, and, in spite of their extreme peril, the Jesuits made a violent and unscrupulous opposition. The scurrilous pamphlets in which the character of the saintly bishop was maligned, and the person of the Spanish monarch represented as abandoned to the devils, were, of course, anonymous; but the Jesuits alone had an interest, or thought they had an interest, in preventing the canonisation of Palafox. Charles III. redoubled his pressure on the Vatican, and in September the Roman seminary was taken from them on the just ground of improper administration. In the same month, Catherine the Great invaded Poland, and Rome and the other Catholic countries learned with indignation that the Jesuits had taken the lead in greeting and demanding submission to the schismatical usurper. They were, as we shall see, currying favour with Catherine and preparing a retreat from Catholic Europe. Rome had hardly ceased to discuss this remarkable news when an even more remarkable incident was reported from Paris. Frederick the Great cynically informed D'Alembert (in December) that General Ricci had sent a secret representative to ask him to declare himself "Protector of the Society of Jesus." A little later, again, Maria Theresa discovered that her Jesuit confessor Campmüller had, as such confessors were secretly bound to do, betrayed her confidence to the authorities of the Society at Rome.

It is hardly probable that these incidents affected the main policy of Clement XIV., whose summary of the historical irregularities of the Society was being slowly compiled, but they enabled him to make a beginning of open action against the Jesuits. Their administration of other seminaries and colleges was questioned, and several (including the Irish College at Rome) were taken from them. In February (1773) it was announced that the bishops were to receive the powers of "apostolic visitators," to inspect all the Jesuit residences in their dioceses, and suppress them where they deemed it necessary. It is suggested that Clement thought he had discovered a way of demolishing the Society without issuing a formal decree of abolition, but it is more likely that he was merely preparing the Catholic mind for a drastic measure. He appointed only one of these "visitators," Cardinal Malvezzi, Archbishop of Bologna, and the brief of suppression must have been drafted before Malvezzi had concluded his work. In point of fact, Malvezzi had reported to the Vatican that the Jesuits of Bologna were already disposing of their property, and it was at once necessary to prevent them from carrying out so irregular a scheme as this. Malvezzi himself, in his letters to Clement, speaks of the measure as a preliminary to carrying out the "long-prepared sentence" against the Society. The Jesuits met the cardinal, who was notoriously hostile to them, with great insolence, and only added to the feeling against themselves.

As the spring of 1773 advanced the conflicting elements at Rome were thrown into a state of intense excitement. The Pope was proceeding with the greatest secrecy, but the secrecy itself plainly shrouded a sentence of death. On 28th May the Pope went into retreat for a fortnight, and thus escaped the importunities of both parties. In the few weeks following the retreat he still gave no indication of his intention, and on 27th June he again went into retreat, [40] and refused to admit visitors.

The air of Rome was now tense with expectation, but the secrecy was maintained with singular success. We now know that the famous brief (Dominus ac Redemptor Noster) for the abolition of the Society was signed by Clement on 21st July, and that the papal press printed sufficient copies of it for transmission to each country without a single breach of confidence. The representatives of the Powers were privately informed in August that the work was done, but the Jesuits could not obtain the least information. Clement XIV. accomplished his task with consummate ability. The Jesuit legends which depict him signing the fatal decree at a window of the palace by night, swooning, lying unconscious during the night, and awakening only to enter into a delirious fit of terror and remorse, are not worth consideration. They are fables retailed years afterwards by Jesuit writers (especially Bolgeni), and have not even the artistic merit of consistency. Crétineau-Joly seems to give them weighty confirmation by asserting that he had heard his version from the lips of Gregory XVI. But he singularly fails to tell us what was the precise story he heard from the later Pope, and Father Theiner bluntly questions if he knew sufficient Italian to understand Gregory (who never spoke French on such occasions). In any case, this reproduction, at a remote date, of pro-Jesuit gossip of which we find no trace at the time, is historically worthless. According to all the contemporary witnesses Clement was in excellent spirits after the suppression, and carried out the difficult work with entire prudence, tranquillity, and good feeling.

But the best defence of Clement and the decisive answer to his detractors is the brief itself which he signed on 21st July, and at the composition of which he had worked assiduously during his two "retreats." It is an exceedingly able and convincing document. Jesuit writers constantly say that Clement XIV. abolished the Society only on the ground that the peace of Christendom demanded that step, and that he passed no judgment on the Society itself. Even the recent American Catholic Encyclopædia, which affects candour and accuracy, states, in the article on Clement XIV. that "no blame is laid by the Pope on the rules of the Order, or the present condition of its members, or the orthodoxy of their teaching." This is a disingenuous and most misleading description of the brief. Clement gives a masterly summary of the irregularities which had been charged against the Society during the two hundred years of its activity. While, however, he is frequently content to speak of these past matters as "charges," he is careful to add that, time after time, they were endorsed by his predecessors, who were condemned to take drastic action against the Society; and, when he comes to deal with the existing Society, which properly concerns him, he plainly observes that it "can no longer produce the abundant fruits and the considerable advantages for which it was created," and he therefore abolishes it for ever.

It is impossible to insert here the whole text of the lengthy brief, but an analysis and some extracts will suffice to show this. The brief opens, after a few introductory remarks of a general nature, with a long list of religious congregations which had been dissolved by the papacy. These bodies had been suppressed for their deterioration or irregularities, and the list is therefore a fitting introduction to the main work of the brief. The Pope then tells that he has made a thorough study of the foundation of the Society and the early papal documents issued in regard to it. He adds: "The very tenor and terms of these apostolic constitutions [the letters of his predecessors] teach us that the Society, almost from the beginning, produced within it the germs of discord and jealousy, and that these not only rent the Society itself, but impelled its members to rise against the other religious orders, the secular clergy, the academies, the universities, the colleges, the public schools, and even against the monarchs who had received them into their States." Here we have, in categorical form, an endorsement of all the charges that were made against the Jesuits in the first century of their existence.

On account of these disorders, he says, "a thousand complaints against these religious were made," and the papacy was entreated to reform them. He recalls the efforts of earlier Popes to reform the Society, and adds that, as we have seen, they were defeated. "The most lively controversy arises everywhere about the doctrine of this Order, which many charged with being wholly opposed to sound faith and good morals. The bosom of the Society is torn by internal and external dissensions; amongst other things it is reproached with seeking worldly goods too eagerly." Here again the categorical note of censure is found, and, after telling the next efforts of Popes to reform the Society, he says:

"We have observed with the bitterest grief that these remedies, and others applied afterwards, had neither efficacy nor strength enough to put an end to the troubles, the charges, and the complaints formed against the Society, and that our predecessors, Urban VII., Clement IX. X. XI. and XII., Alexander VII. and VIII., Innocent X. XI. XII. and XIII., and Benedict XIV. vainly endeavoured to restore to the Church the desired tranquillity by means of various enactments, either relating to secular affairs with which the Society ought not to concern itself, on missions or elsewhere: or relating to grave dissensions and quarrels harshly provoked by its members, not without a risk of the loss of souls, and to the great scandal of the nations, against the bishops, the religious orders, places consecrated to piety, and all kinds of communities in Europe, Asia, and America: or relating to the interpretation and practice of certain pagan ceremonies tolerated and admitted in various places, apart from those which are approved by the universal Church: or relating to the use and interpretation of those maxims which the Holy See has justly proscribed as scandalous and evidently injurious to good morals: or relating to other matters of great importance and absolutely necessary to preserve the purity and integrity of the dogmas of the Christian religion."