He refused, or procrastinated, and from that time the members of his Society began to abandon their obedience to him and seek incorporation in the genuine order. The Archduchess clung to Paccanari for many years, and the prestige of her association won respect for him. At Rome, where she and her companions had turned her palace into a convent, she bought a house and church for her esteemed director, and he set up a community of thirty fathers under the eyes of the papal authorities. He was now at open war with the ex-Jesuits, who swarmed at Rome, and, when they slighted his title of General, he retorted that the brief approving the Society in Russia had been extorted from Pius VII. He might now have accepted the idea of fusion, but the Russian General, to secure his authority, insisted that he would only admit the Paccanarists—as they were popularly called—singly, and would not entertain the idea of a corporate union. Paccanari fought resolutely for his fading authority. In 1803 the London Fathers of the Faith deserted him and transferred their obedience to Gruber. In 1804 the more numerous French fathers renounced his authority and joined the Russians; in the same year the Society was restored at Naples, and many of the Paccanarists joined it. The Pope remained indulgent to the falling "General," in consideration of his archiducal friend, and his Society lingered in Italy, Austria, and, especially, Holland. At last definite charges were formulated against Paccanari, probably by the older Jesuits, and the would-be reformer was committed to the papal prison for a luxury of manners that was inconsistent with his professions. He was released by the French troops when they invaded Rome, but his prestige had gone, and, flying to the hills from his Jesuit persecutors, the second Ignatius perished ignobly at the hands of brigands. The Society of Jesus was formally restored soon afterwards, and the Paccanarists threw off their thin disguise and joined it.
We have already seen the various steps by which the restoration of the Society was prepared in Italy. In 1793, Ferdinand of Parma had boldly invited the Russians to send him some Jesuits for the education of youth in the Duchy, and Pius VI. had genially closed his eyes when they set up five colleges and began to attract old members of the Society. Then came the French campaign in Italy and a more bitter resentment than ever of the new spirit which was invading Europe and shaking the legitimate thrones. In 1804, when it was realised that Napoleon had destroyed the pestilential Republic only to set up an even more dangerous power, Ferdinand of Sicily applied to General Gruber for a band of Jesuits to instil "sound" ideas into the minds of his subjects. Then came Austerlitz, and a French army was set free to put Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of the Two Sicilies. Once more the Jesuits had to fly from Naples with their protecting King (and, especially, their protecting Queen), but the presence of the English fleet confined the French to the mainland and the Jesuits of Sicily were unassailable. In a few years they attained enormous wealth and power, and it would not be unjust to connect the long somnolence of that beautiful island with the profound influence the Jesuits had on it in the first half of the nineteenth century.
In 1809 it was the Pope's turn to quail before this terrible incarnation of the new spirit. The Papal States were annexed, and Pius VII. set out for four years of bitter exile. He returned in 1813, and saw the allies closing round the falling monarch. In the spring of the following year Napoleon abdicated, and the restored monarchs set about the task of deleting the past twenty years from the history of Europe, and stamping out the last sparks of the liberalism which was understood to have led to the French Revolution. It was the moment for restoring the Society of Jesus. The monarchs who had pressed for its abolition were dead, the new generation had never realised its power and irregularities, and the Jesuits themselves had for twenty years confidently proclaimed that the terrors Europe had experienced were the direct result of taking from them the education of the young and the spiritual guidance of the adult. This fallacy was promptly answered, and need not detain us. The Revolution was due to the maintenance of mediæval injustices in a more enlightened age, and the Jesuits, with all their power over kings, had never uttered a syllable of condemnation of those old abuses. We shall see that they lent all their recovered influence to the task of maintaining them even in the nineteenth century.
The truth is that the restoration of the Jesuits was an act of the Papacy for which there was no justification in Catholic opinion. In the bull Sollicitudo, which contrasts so poorly with the reasoned and virile brief of Clement XIV., Pius VII. ventured to say that he was complying with "the unanimous demand of the Catholic world." This was, as the Pope knew, wholly untrue. Spain alone, of the great Powers—if we might still call her great—was interested in the restoration. Austria and France had no wish to see the Jesuits restored, and would not suffer them to return to power when the Pope willed it; Portugal protested vehemently against the restoration. Pius VII. acted on his own feeling and that of petty monarchs like the Kings of Sardinia and Naples. He believed that the Jesuits would be the most effective agency for rooting out what remained of liberalism and revolution. He initiated that close alliance between the Society and reaction which has been the disastrous blunder of the Jesuits for the last hundred years. But it was the price of their restoration.
The bull was issued on 7th August 1714, and read in the Gesù the same day. In presence of a distinguished gathering of ecclesiastics and nobles, the Pope said mass and then had the bull read. Some fifty members of the suppressed Society had been convoked for the occasion, and we can imagine that it was a touching spectacle to see these aged survivors of the mighty catastrophe—one was in his hundred and twenty-seventh year—return in honour to their metropolitan house. The Gesù and the house attached to it had been maintained in proper condition. The solid silver statue and the more costly ornaments of the church had been sold, to meet the demands of France on the papal exchequer, and the library of the house had disappeared. But the community of secular priests who had been in charge during the years of suppression were mostly ex-Jesuits, and they had reverently maintained the home until their scattered brothers could return. The novitiate also was restored; the old fathers were summoned from their vicarages and colleges and myriad professions; a Provincial and Vicar-General were elected; and the Jesuits spread rapidly over the Papal States. The cloud of Napoleon's return chilled their enthusiasm for a month or two, but they presently heard of Waterloo and settled down to the task for which they had been restored to life.
The response of the Catholic world was, as I said, a painful commentary on the Pope's words. The flamboyant bull, permitting and urging Catholic monarchs to re-establish the Society of Jesus, made its way over Europe in the course of the next few weeks. Parma and Naples already had their Jesuits. The Duke of Modena at once admitted the Society, and Victor Emmanuel, whose brother had surrendered the crown to him in order to enter the Society, naturally opened his kingdom to them. Ferdinand VII. of Spain, the most brutal and unscrupulous of the restored monarchs, abrogated the decree of expulsion, and warmly welcomed the Jesuits to co-operate with him in the sanguinary work which we will consider in the next chapter. John VI. of Portugal refused to admit "the pernicious sect" into his kingdom. Louis XVIII., even when urged by Talleyrand, refused to sanction the presence of the Jesuits in France. Austria refused to recognise them in its Empire, which still included Venice. Bavaria excluded them. And it took the Jesuits years of intrigue to penetrate the Catholic cantons of Switzerland.
This was the reply of Catholic Europe to Pius VII. In spite of the strident offer to combat liberalism which they made in tracing the Revolution to their absence, they were still excluded from three-fourths of the Catholic world. The indictment of them by Clement XIV. had not been answered by Pius VII., nor had their conduct in Russia and Prussia won esteem for them. They offered no serious guarantee of better behaviour. How they overcame this resistance and, in the course of a century, almost returned to their earlier number, and whether adversity had purified their character, are the two questions that remain for consideration.