A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

This situation is interesting, because it exhibits the Jesuits shrinking nervously from the greatest social issue of their time. They retort that it was a political issue, and their traditions forbade them to discuss politics. It is in a sense true that the Jesuits had always abstained from political theorising, and bowed to the actual ruling power; except in cases where the ruling power incommoded them, when they might become the most violent of revolutionaries. But, apart from the question whether the issue was not moral in the finest sense of the word, it is ludicrous to affirm that the "political" nature of Lamennais's gospel prevented them from considering it when, in every country where a reactionary monarch called them to his aid, they were violent partisans of the aristocratic gospel. For twenty years they had maintained that the political storms which swept the old monarchs from their thrones at the end of the eighteenth century were directly due to the removal of their control of the schools and universities. They had been restored to life for the express purpose of reconciling Europe to the old order, and destroying the aspiration for democratic reform, and it was only in the cantons of Switzerland that they were found to hold a different theory of the social order; though, as we shall see, the Swiss cantons were then rather aristocratic than democratic. It is plain that in France they hesitated only because the future was uncertain. Their real aim was to restore the age of Louis XIV., but this new democratic movement looked formidable. They would wait and be guided by the issue.

The Catholic democrats turned angrily on the Jesuits for their attitude on this great issue, and accused them of gross ignorance of, and indifference to, social conditions: an entirely just censure. But their power was growing in every decade. New Congregations appeared,—societies for persuading lovers to marry in church, for preserving students from liberalism, and so on,—and the Congregation of our Lady now included half the nobility and higher clergy, and numbers of writers, lawyers, politicians, and officials. Their French apologist, who was himself a member of the Congregation and lived in Paris at this time, admits that the secret influence of the Congregation was such that many made a profession of religion and joined it in order to promote their material interests. Charles X., who succeeded Louis in 1824, renewed their confidence. He opened his career with Liberal measures; but he was more reactionary at heart than Louis XVIII., and less prudent, and the Jesuits silently organised their forces for a restoration of the Society.

The educated Frenchman now commonly united the scepticism of Voltaire with the moderate democracy of Lafayette, and an angry storm broke out in the Liberal press. The open activity of the "Paccanarists" was an affront to the Constitution, and the secret manœuvres of the Congregation, notoriously led by Father Ronsin, alarmed them. The authorities discreetly removed Father Ronsin from Paris, but the work of the Congregation proceeded. Charles X. was suspected of favouring the Jesuits. In 1828 the Nuncio openly proposed that the Society should be restored. We may take the word of Crétineau-Joly that the ground had been so well prepared that a measure could have been passed safely through the two Houses. But Villèle, the French historian says, was so misguided as to appeal to the country first, and he lost. The question of the Jesuits was not the least of the issues at stake. Showers of pamphlets fell upon the public, and the popular feeling was such that when the King was one day reviewing the National Guard, the cry, "Down with the Jesuits," rang out from the ranks, and the review was abandoned.

The more moderate ministry of Martignac had now to be formed, and, as it needed the co-operation of the Liberals, the plan to restore the Jesuits was abandoned. The Liberals were now encouraged, and they made a fiery assault. The "little seminaries," as the French called the preparatory colleges for the clergy, had been left under the control of the bishops, and several of them were notoriously controlled by the thinly disguised Jesuits. A commission of bishops, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head, was appointed to examine the charge, and it was determined that eight of the seminaries were really Jesuit colleges, and must be closed; it was further enacted that the seminaries were to be taken from the bishops and put under the control of the universities, that the number of pupils was to be restricted, and that no priest should henceforth be allowed to teach in them who did not take oath that he did not belong to a non-authorised Congregation. The bishops, many of whom had won their seats by Jesuit influence, protested in vain against this violation of their rights. Their protest made matters worse, since they stipulated that it should remain secret; but the Liberal press secured the text and published it.

This was a very severe blow to the French Jesuits, who had used the seminaries for training lay pupils in their spirit as well as teaching the secular priests to rely on them. While the French press was discussing the question whether they existed in the country, they had grown to the number of 436, and had two novitiates and several residences, besides the seminaries. They now determined to take bolder measures against the enemy. As I said, the question of the Jesuits was by no means the only serious issue under discussion; Martignac received only a moderate and uncertain support from his Liberal allies because his measures were not sufficiently advanced. It is, however, clear that the Jesuits, through the Nuncio, had their share in inducing the King to replace the moderate Martignac with the thoroughly conservative Polignac. This was in July 1829. The reply of the people, when the ministry returned to the old coercive measures, was the July Revolution of 1830. The chief Jesuit houses, at Montrouge and St. Acheul, were sacked by the mob, and the fathers scattered in every direction. Once more they had suffered a heavy defeat on what they believed to be the eve of victory.

The revolutionary wave spread, with devastating force, to Italy, as we saw; and there also the fathers were for a time driven contemptuously from their colleges. Their recovery in France was naturally slower than in Italy. They moved in fear of their lives for the first year or two of the reign of Louis Philippe, and generally concealed themselves in devoted Catholic houses. In 1832 the cholera swept France, and they recollected how frequently heroic conduct in such epidemics had disarmed their critics. But France was not so easily reconciled in the nineteenth century, and the few who ventured to appear during the following years were arrested. In the course of time, however, the resentment was confined to the more ardent Liberals, and they resumed the semi-public existence of the previous decade. Catholicism made great progress in the thirties, chiefly through the agency of a brilliant group of laymen, and some of the Jesuits took an open part in the revival. Father de Ravignan, their finest orator, occupied the pulpit of Nôtre Dame for several seasons, and they were assiduous in giving retreats to the clergy.

As they no longer ventured to teach,—though it was known that they had opened a college for French pupils just over the Belgian frontier,—and betrayed their character in no external action, they were legally unassailable; but it was not long before they again drew on themselves the ire of the Liberals. From 1840 onwards the clergy made a vehement attack on the professors of the university. Since these included philosophers like Cousin and Jouffroy, historians like Michelet, and men of letters like Jules Simon, we can easily believe that their lectures were at times inconsistent with orthodox ideas; but the attack was gross and exaggerated, and the professors felt that the Jesuits secretly guided it; Father de Ravignan, in fact, joined in the spirited conflict of pens. The chief result was to draw on the Jesuits the sardonic humour of Michelet, the weighty censures of Cousin, the poisonous raillery of Simon, and the unrestrained diatribes of the popular Liberal press. It was during this agitation that Eugène Sue lashed them with his Juif Errant, and George Sand wrote Consuelo. Against this fierce and brilliant onslaught the publication of Crétineau-Joly's Histoire was a feeble defence; it could carry no conviction except to the already convinced and uncritical Catholic. Indeed, its treatment of Clement XIV. scandalised many Catholics, and, as we saw, Pius IX. directed the Vatican Archivist to refute it.[41]

Louis Philippe was at length compelled to take action. Catholic writers treated it as an amusing scare that there were Jesuits in France, and were not a little mortified when the fathers betrayed their existence in a way which entertained the Liberal pamphleteers. In 1845 one of their treasurers embezzled the funds entrusted to him, and they imprudently prosecuted. In the controversy which followed it was made plain that there were two hundred members of the forbidden Society in France, and their expulsion was stormily demanded. The King knew that if he suppressed the "Fathers of the Faith" they would do no more than change their name, and he adopted a shrewder policy. He sent Rossi to Rome to submit to the Pope that the relations of France and the Vatican would be much improved if the Jesuits were removed by ecclesiastical authority. The dignity of the Holy See was saved by a pleasant little comedy. The Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs reported that the request could not be granted, and the Pope firmly replied to the French envoy in that sense. But a private intimation was made to General Roothaan that it was desirable to meet the wishes of the King, and Rossi was instructed to see him. Whatever the precise nature of the intimation was, Roothaan submitted to his French subjects that it was expedient to dissolve their chief communities,—at Paris, St. Acheul, Lyons, and Avignon,—and they once more retreated sullenly from the field. We shall see later how they found a fitting patron in Napoleon III., and how the third Republic put a definitive close to their activity in France.

Their fortunes in Spain during the nineteenth century have been more chequered than their present prosperity would suggest. On 15th May 1815, Ferdinand VII. repealed the drastic sentence of his great predecessor, and ordered that their former property should be restored to the Jesuits. A hundred and fifty of the old members of the Society returned to their native land; colleges and novitiates were opened by means of the restored property and the royal bounty; and, we are told, town after town demanded, and enthusiastically welcomed, its former teachers. We can well believe that the mobs which saluted the perjured Ferdinand with the cry, "Down with Liberty," would welcome the Jesuits. In the recoil due to their hatred of the French, and of the new ideas which the French had brought into Spain, the densely ignorant mass of the people fell at the feet of a brutal monarch and a corrupt clergy. The educated middle class, however, remained substantially Liberal. They had admitted Ferdinand only on condition that he promised to maintain their Liberal Constitution, and, as soon as he had attained the crown, he tore his promise and the Constitution to shreds and fell with terrible cruelty on the Liberals. Known Liberals were at once executed, imprisoned for life, or banished; the Inquisition was restored; and a network of spies spread over the kingdom. Men, women, and children were savagely punished, and a "Society of the Exterminating Angel" arose to strengthen and direct the bloody hands of the King and the Inquisitors.

Those five years of Spanish history constitute one of the most repulsive chapters in the chronicle of modern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine what part the restored Jesuits had in this reign of terror. All the clergy and monks of Spain were allied with their monarch in prosecuting what they regarded as a holy war. It is enough that the Jesuits did not dissent from the barbaric proceedings of Ferdinand, and that they flourished and were more than doubled in number within five years. The year 1820 found them increased to 397, with several novitiates and a large number of colleges.