A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In the year 1805 Gruber lost his life in a fire, and the Russian Society fell under a less astute leader. Father Bzrozowski was elected General, and for a few years he was content with a quiet development of the policy of his predecessor. In 1811, however, he requested the Tsar to raise their chief college at Polotzk to the rank of a university, and allow it to control all the schools maintained by the Society. This would remove them from the control of the Minister of Cults, and make them an integral part of the system of education under the Minister of Public Instruction; it would also emancipate their schools from the control of the St. Petersburg or the Vilna University. Alexander seemed to be impressed by their specious argument that a healthy rivalry would raise the standard of education, and their promise that their education would be both cheaper and sounder (less liberal and cosmopolitan) than the purely Russian. But the proposal raised the first great storm against the Jesuits in Russia. For some time there had been a growing resentment against them. Russian nobles and officials and priests angrily recalled the power which a Jesuit priest had had at the court, and lamented the growth of Roman Catholicism. The Jesuits retorted that they had not received a single one of their pupils into the Roman Church; it will appear that they had discreetly sent to other priests the pupils in whose minds they had sown the seeds of conversion.

Then Joseph de Maistre took up his eloquent pen in their behalf and the battle was won. In 1812 the Polotzk college was raised to the rank of a university, and began to educate the sons of noble or wealthy Russians. In the course of time there were as many as two hundred noble youths, of the Greek faith, sitting on its benches, and, as usual, the interest of the fathers in their pupils led to a respectful concern about their mothers and sisters. It was noticed that many were received into the Roman Church: though never by Jesuits. European politics had for some years distracted the attention of the Tsar, but the critics of the Society had in 1812 received a powerful reinforcement in the shape of agents of the English Bible Society. Alexander was at war with Napoleon and in close alliance with England, and the Bible Society took advantage of the political situation to enter St. Petersburg. They brought a rich supply of information about the Jesuits and stimulated the vigilance of the Russians. The mysterious growth of secessions to Rome since the opening of the Jesuit college for nobles in the capital led to fiery discussions.

At last, in 1814, the young Prince Galitzin, nephew of the Minister of Instruction of that name, joined the Church of Rome. He was in his sixteenth year, and had been attending the Jesuit classes for two years. His uncle, a stern critic of the Jesuits, now entered upon a violent campaign against the Society, and the city rang with denunciation of their secret machinations. It was discovered that the real number of conversions to Rome had been concealed, as the converts had been instructed to practise their new religion only in secret. There was an intense agitation, and the Jesuits thought it prudent to close their schools to all but the sons of Roman Catholics. It was too late. Priests and professors maintained the stormy agitation and nervously endeavoured to unveil the secret Catholics.

In the midst of this agitation Alexander returned from France, after the final defeat of Napoleon, and both parties appealed to him. His answer was a ukase, issued in December, sternly ordering the Jesuits to close their schools and quit St. Petersburg. In cold and measured language he recalled that they had been admitted on the strict understanding that they were not to proselytise, and he denounced their "breach of confidence." They were expelled for ever from St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in the Catholic Provinces they were to return to the subject condition they had had up to the year 1800. On the night of 20th-21st December the police entered their colleges and read the Tsar's order. On the following day they were compelled to abandon the noble ladies of St. Petersburg, and, in the depth of winter, set out on the long sledge-ride to Polotzk. Alexander kindly provided them with furs and directed that they should be treated with consideration, but he was convinced of their guilt. In a later letter, indeed, the General admits that some of the fathers had been making converts among the ladies of the capital; and the Jesuit maxims in regard to truthfulness are such that we may question whether this was done without his knowledge, as he says, and may be pardoned if we entirely ignore the assurance of the Jesuits that they had nothing to do with the numerous conversions of their pupils. Not only the general law of Russia, but a special imperial decree of the year 1803 forbade proselytism, and this decree had been forced on the attention of the Jesuits. "For the greater glory of God" they had once more trampled upon a strict and honourable human engagement.

Bzrozowski died five years afterwards, and they appealed for permission to elect another General. By this time, as we shall see, the Society had been restored, and the Italians were impatiently awaiting the death of the Russian General, but Alexander spared them the evil of a schism in the Society. It was reported to him that the Jesuits continued to break their engagement. Prince Galitzin drew up a long memoir in which he showed that they had been busy proselytising, sometimes with violence, since 1801; the local authorities had had to restrain them in some of the outlying provinces. They had, he alleged, told their converts in the capital to continue externally to observe the Greek religion, as the Pope had given permission for them to do so. They had continued to proselytise among their pupils and among the soldiers in Lithuania and in the other provinces, and they managed their estates so unskilfully or so unjustly that swarms of their peasants wandered as mendicants over the roads of Russia. We cannot control these statements. The memoir was printed and published by the imperial authorities, and the Jesuits were ordered to evacuate Russian territory. From their estates and princely colleges in Lithuania and Livonia, as well as from the poor colonies in the Caucusus and Siberia, where many of them had worked in the finer spirit of the Society, they sadly turned their faces toward the west from which they had been driven.

The third element in the restoration of the Society takes us back to the year 1794, when a few young priests, refugees from revolutionary France, attempt in Belgium to set up a purified Jesuitism under another name. The most prominent was the Abbé Count de Broglie (son of the famous marshal). He and a few others discussed a plan of covertly embodying the principles of Ignatius in a new society, and consulted some of the ex-Jesuits. Father Pey, of Louvain, became their director, and in February 1794 they took possession of a country house given them by a Louvain banker and entitled themselves the "Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus." Two nobles from the "emigrant" regiment joined them, but the six recluses were presently swept out of Belgium by the army of the French Republic, and they made their way on foot—the Society was to be restored on its purest models—to Augsburg. A few more were added to their number, and simple vows were taken. Ex-Jesuits watched them with interest, and they sought to be admitted to the Russian Society. Then they were minded to go to Rome, as Ignatius and his companions had done, and offer their services to the Pope, but the French blocked the way and soon forced them to fly to Vienna.

They were now seventeen in number, and they induced a score of refugee bishops to appeal to the Pope for his approval of the Congregation. Meantime they founded a novitiate at Prague and a house at Hagenbrunn, near Vienna. The whole structure of the late Society of Jesus was copied, and the studies were re-established. At last, in 1798, the Vienna Nuncio brought them to the notice of the Pope. They had not forgotten the counsel of Ignatius to cultivate wealthy ladies, and the Emperor's sister, the Archduchess Marianne, was an ardent supporter. Pius VI. was, however, as we saw, not bold enough to restore the Society, or the times were not yet ripe. He expressed a warm interest in the community and suggested that they should enter into relations with a similar body, the "Society of the Faith," which had been founded in Italy.

The ex-Jesuit Caravita at Rome had amongst his followers an enterprising young man named Paccanari, the ambitious son of a Tyrolese tailor. Paccanari was the leader of a group of young men who, under the inspiration of Caravita, went out to visit the sick and instruct the ignorant, as the early Jesuits had done. They presently formed a "Society of the Faith of Jesus," and, to make their meaning plainer, adopted the costume and constitutions of the ex-Jesuits. The Roman authorities demanded a slight change in their costume, but otherwise connived at their growth. It was 1798: Louis and Charles III. were dead, and the aristocratic world was sighing for a Jesuit bridle on revolution. At the end of that year they opened a novitiate at Spoleto, took the three vows, and added a fourth vow to obey the Pope. The Pope needed a special regiment just as much as he had done in the days of Luther. The new pestilence from the north had descended upon Italy, and Pius VI. was in exile at Florence. Paccanari visited him, with the connivance of the Pope's ex-Jesuit secretary, and told him of the "Fathers of the Faith" who had enlisted in his special service. Pius approved, and told Paccanari that a similar body already existed in Austria.

In the early months of 1799 Paccanari set out for Vienna, to explore the rival community and see if it could be brought under his authority. His voyage through the Austrian dominions taught him how ripe the time was for such an enterprise, as prelates and ex-Jesuits received him with gladness. At Padua the Count San Bonifacio (an ex-Jesuit) provided a house for ten of his companions; at Venice the higher clergy caressed him. The only feature that restrained the enthusiasm of the old Jesuits was that Paccanari hinted that the Society had become corrupt and it was necessary to build again on the primitive foundation. In their view Europe was again prepared for political Jesuitry, and there was no need to go through the laborious preliminary stages of nursing the sick and travelling afoot. At Vienna the new Emperor, Francis II., received him graciously, and the Archduchess Marianne contracted a lasting regard for him.

The energy and ability of Paccanari soon removed the hesitations of the Sacred Heartists; they abandoned their name, fused with the Society of the Faith, and repeated their vows to Paccanari as their superior. A regular Province was now constituted, with Father Sineo as Provincial, and Paccanari went on to visit Prague, where the Archduchess and the novitiate were. Here the ambitious youth made the first mistake of his singular career. Ignatius had strictly enjoined that the Jesuit order should never have a feminine branch, as so many of the religious orders had, but the Archduchess and other noble dames were so devoted to the new enterprise that Paccanari permitted or persuaded them to take vows and promise obedience to the General of the Society of the Faith. Many of the ex-Jesuits now regarded him as an innovator and began to watch his career with distrust. He found many wealthy patrons, however, and little colonies were sent to England (to which I will refer later), France, and Holland. There were in a few years several hundred members of the new Society, and, as the Russian Jesuits had now been recognised by Pius VII., Paccanari was urged to combine with them.