A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In the Papal States they entered upon their golden age with the accession of Gregory XVI., in 1831. Both Leo XII. and General Fortis died in 1829. A young Dutch Jesuit, Father Roothaan (aged forty-four), succeeded Fortis, and Pius VIII. ascended the papal throne. He died in November 1830, and Gregory XVI. assumed the tiara in the very heat of the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1831. The "White Terror" had failed to conquer what it called the revolutionary element; its thousands of executions and its appalling jails and repulsive spies had merely fed the flame of insurrection, and the international movement for reform gathered strength. The middle class in every country—in Italy, especially, the revolutionary movements were essentially middle class—suffered with burning indignation the brutalities of Austria, the Papacy, Naples, Spain, and France, and young men of the type of Mazzini devoted their lives to reform. In 1831 the Italian rebels, fired by the success of the July Revolution in France, raised their tricolour standard and soon saw it floating over Modena, Parma, and a number of the Papal States. One of the first movements of the insurgents in every place was to assail the Jesuit residences. At Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forli, and Ferrara, the Jesuits were driven from their homes and colleges and hunted over the frontiers of the revolutionary provinces. But Naples and Piedmont were unshaken by the disturbance, and the Austrian troops from Venice quickly trampled out the revolutionary spirit. It was on the eve of this insurrection—a work almost entirely of the educated class—that Gregory became Pope, and his policy after the pacification was one of savage repression.

It is needless here to recall the brutal régime which the Austrians in Venice (to which the Jesuits were formally admitted in 1836), the Pope in central Italy, and the Neapolitan ruler in the south, spread over the land. It is enough for us that in the three States, as in Spain and Portugal, the Jesuits were the most ardent auxiliaries of the reactionary and sanguinary monarchs. Gregory XVI., the most repulsive Pope of modern times, was the most generous patron that the Jesuits had had for more than a hundred years. He went so far as to entrust to them the Urban College, the institution in which the Propaganda itself trained its missionaries. Education was the root of the revolutionary evil, and it was the place of the Jesuits to see that such education as was imparted in Italy—which sank to an appalling degree of illiteracy, and is still illiterate to the extent of 70 per cent. in the southern provinces, where the Jesuits ruled longest—was not tainted with modern culture. It is true that after 1830 the General appointed five learned fathers to revise the Ratio Studiorum of the Society; but one cannot regard it as other than a somewhat humorous comment on the Jesuit system that the teachers were no longer to be bound to teach the physics of Aristotle or to slight, in favour of Latin and Greek, the tongue of the pupils whom they trained. We have, in fact, a very curious illustration of the level of culture of Gregory and his teaching Jesuits. In the year 1837 the cholera threatened Rome. The science of meeting such epidemics was, of course, still in its infancy, but the conduct of Rome was exactly what it would have been five hundred years earlier. A solemn procession was enjoined, and, amidst the masses of terrified people, a statue of the Virgin was borne across Rome to the Church of the Jesuits. Gregory and his cardinals were in the procession, and for a time the Gesù was the centre or fount of the hope of Rome. Within a few months 5419 Romans succumbed to the cholera.

Gregory died in the year 1846, and Italy sighed with relief. The misery of the working classes, the brutal treatment to which the educated classes had been exposed, and the control of education and of a very large proportion of appointments in the Papal States by the Jesuits, had engendered a hatred of him in every part of his dominion. When Mastai Ferretti ascended the throne, and took the name of Pius IX., he was greeted with wild enthusiasm. He was sufficiently known to inspire a hope that the reign of terror and the reign of the Jesuits were over, and his first acts confirmed this hope. An amnesty was granted, and the more brutal of his predecessor's coercive measures were repealed. Rossi, who, as we shall see presently, had been sent to Rome a few years before to negotiate the banishment of the Jesuits from France, was recalled and made leading minister to the Vatican; and Father Theiner was directed to vindicate the memory of Clement XIV. against the Jesuits and Crétineau-Joly, who had just published his history. The Jesuits were so notoriously discontented with the change, and with the young Pope's concessions to liberalism, that, as he passed through the streets he heard the warning cry from his people: "Beware of the Jesuits."

What part the Jesuits had in the termination of the new Pope's pose as a Liberal it would be difficult to say. The usual statement, that he was shaken by the assassination of Count Rossi and the revolution of 1848, is superficial and misleading. He had incurred the resentment of the Liberals because he had rapidly fallen from his first ideal. Some of the chief grievances of his educated subjects, such as the monopoly of all remunerative offices in the State by clerics, remained untouched, and it was soon perceived that he was drifting backward toward reaction. His confessor was replaced by a friend of the Jesuits, and, when the popular and somewhat insurgent priest Gioberti published a fiery and just attack on the Jesuits, Pius IX. harshly condemned him. At the same time the returned exiles and the refugees who flocked to Rome from the countries which clung to oppression assuredly had ideals which it was quite impossible for any Pope to realise in that age. Pius was alienated more and more, and a violent conflict approached. How the third revolutionary wave in 1848 spread to Rome, and the Pope fled to Gaeta, and the Jesuits returned to power in the inevitable reaction, must be reserved for the next chapter.

When we turn to consider the fortunes of the Jesuits in France during the first half of the nineteenth century, we find a very different and more interesting chronicle. They had been banished from France, it will be recalled, in 1761, and the great majority of them had actually quitted the kingdom. Many had been secularised, and remained as teachers, tutors, confessors, or curés. During the period of suppression a large number of them found employment in France; the learned Father Boscovitch, for instance, was made director of the optical department of the Navy under Louis XVI. As in Italy and Austria, some of them sought to incorporate the spirit of their condemned Society in Congregations with other names, and a curious assortment of fraternities appeared. The "Fathers of the Faith," or Paccanarists, whose origin we have seen, found a genial atmosphere in France, and the little colony they sent from Austria was soon swelled with ex-Jesuits. Another body was significantly known as the "Victims of the Love of God." The feminine branch of the "Sacred Heart" Society also spread to France, and grew into a formidable body of nuns (under the direction of ex-Jesuits) with the particular function of giving a "sound" education to the daughters of wealthy people; it remains to this day, in effect, the feminine branch of the Society, though the connection is not official. There was a "Congregation of the Holy Family" for training teachers of the poor, and a "Congregation of Our Lady" for banding together members of the middle class.

But of all these associations which sprang up mysteriously in the soil of revolutionary France, and throve under the shelter of Napoleon, the most important was a certain "Congregation of the Holy Virgin," founded in the year 1801. It was controlled by an ex-Jesuit, and had at first some resemblance to the association of young men organised at Rome by the ex-Jesuit Caravita. The young men, very largely university students, were to visit the sick and poor—to be practical Christians, in a word. But, whereas the Italian young men had become priests and Paccanarists, the members of the Congregation of the Virgin generally remained in the world, retaining throughout life their membership of the Society and their link with its directors. A register of their names and occupations was kept, and it meant, in effect, that the Jesuits had friends and ardent secret workers in every school and profession, in the army and navy, in journalism and politics.

Louis XVIII. came to the throne and was urged by Talleyrand to restore the Society. He refused, and the Jesuits were forced to rely still on their secret organisation. Already, in 1814, the Fathers of the Faith had a house in Paris, and six other houses in the country. Their title was now a deliberate deception, as they had in 1804 secretly renounced Paccanarism, in the hands of the Papal Nuncio, and entered the Society of Jesus, as authorised in Russia. They dressed and acted externally as secular priests, and were much employed by bishops in teaching and preaching. From the Congregation of the Virgin they not only had accurate information of what was being said and done in every department of French life, but they obtained many novices; other youths joined the secular clergy, and would in time watch the interests of the Society within that body. Orders were now given that the Jesuits must work in perfect harmony with the secular clergy and in most respectful submission to the bishops.

They grew rapidly in the course of the next few years, and about 1818 they began to stand out prominently in the religious life of France. They were especially employed in what are known in English church-life as "revival services." Eloquent preachers, particularly when they were denouncing liberalism and the "bad" tendencies of the times, they passed from town to town lashing up the fervour of the Catholics. Large crucifixes were planted on the wayside as memorials of their oratory; enthusiastic processions marched through the streets; in places the churches were so crowded that one had to spend the night at the door to secure a place near the pulpit. They were the Pères de la Foi, Catholics said (with a smile); but critics maintained that they were Jesuits, and there were towns where the missionaries were assaulted and expelled. A very serious controversy raged in the French press as to whether there were really any Jesuits in France; even when, in 1822, a Liberal journal obtained and published a letter of General Fortis to one of his French subjects, it was difficult to convict them.

At this period, in the early twenties, the famous Abbé de Lamennais was seeking to form a democratic Christian body, and he made an effort to secure the support of the Jesuits. Louis XVIII. was one of the more moderate of the restored monarchs; but the democratic feeling was still strong in France and, as the clergy were generally reactionary, democracy, of which Lamennais foresaw the triumph, was allied with Voltaireanism. Lamennais was convinced that the hour of feudal monarchs was over, and the Church could be saved only by allying itself with the people. The development of French history has shown the truth of his view. Democracy has triumphed, and the Church has shrunk to—M. Sabatier tells me—less than one-sixth of the population. Seeing the apparent power of the Jesuit missionaries, Lamennais, who was very friendly with them, earnestly begged them to incorporate his policy in their preaching.

The attitude of the Jesuits toward Lamennais is interesting. They hesitated for years, broke into sections, and eventually had to forbid all public discussion of the issue. In 1821 some of their members were censured for attacking Lamennais, in the next year others were censured for supporting him; and Rozaven, the French Assistant at Rome, directed that "prudence" forbade them to take either side in public. Later, as they still wavered and contradicted each other, General Fortis sternly prohibited public expression on the subject. Fortis died in 1829, and Lamennais made a fresh appeal to the Jesuits to "turn from monarchs to the people"; but Roothaan maintained the attitude of his predecessor. When Lamennais was eventually condemned, the Jesuits eagerly pointed out that they had declined to support him.