A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

At last, it seemed, the spectre of revolution was definitively laid, and a prospect of real restoration lay before the Society. At Rome the Jesuits had enormous power. Their influence is seen in the declaration of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the appalling Encyclical against modern culture and aspirations of 1864. To them in 1866 the Pope entrusted his chief organ, the Civiltà Cattolica, and they had a large part in agitating for, and ultimately passing, the declaration that the Pope is infallible in 1870. During all this period they controlled Catholic culture, if not the Papacy. Their power was at the same time restored in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, so that Italy (except Piedmont) was covered with their colleges and residences. In Austria the Emperor, embittered by his hour of humiliation, now opened the whole of his dominions to them, and they collected fathers from all parts of the world to come and restore the prosperity of the Austrian Province. In Belgium they prospered luxuriantly; and they made quiet and stealthy progress in Holland, Bavaria, Switzerland, Saxony, and Prussia, where they were not authorised. In France Napoleon III. cancelled the decrees against them, and cherished them as one of the supports of his throne. In England they found a friend in Wiseman and made rapid progress; in the United States they were growing with the phenomenal growth of the population. The age of trouble was over. The sage old fathers at the Gesù and the Roman College saw chaos returning to order.

In 1853, at the beginning of this happier turn of their fortunes, Roothaan died, and Beckx, the son of a Belgian shoemaker, was elected General. The one cloud on the horizon was Piedmont, where the earlier affection for the Jesuits had died, but it had been proved, apparently, that France and Austria would check the ambition of that State. But France was drawn to Sardinia, and in 1859 Victor Emmanuel began to extend his rule over Italy. From that time until 1870 the Society heard of nothing but disaster. In 1860 Victor Emmanuel annexed Tuscany, Emilia, and Romagna, and the Jesuits were driven from their homes into the Papal States. In the same year Garibaldi landed in Sicily, put an end to the brutal rule of the Catholic King, and ejected the 300 Jesuits from their palatial college at Palermo and other residences. In the autumn he entered Naples, and swept further hundreds of the Jesuits before him. We learn from a letter of protest which Father Beckx addressed to Victor Emmanuel, that in the two years the Society had lost 3 institutions in Lombardy, 6 in Modena, 11 in the Papal States, 19 in Naples, and 15 in Sicily. Of 308 Jesuits in their most prosperous Province of Sicily only 8 aged and ailing fathers were allowed to remain on the island. Of 5500 members of the Society no less than 1500 were homeless, and were not even allowed to find shelter in Catholic houses in their native Provinces. In 1866 the Austrians were ejected from Venice, and further scores of Jesuits were driven from their homes. In 1868, it may be added, the Jesuits were again banished from Spain, to which they had returned under Isabella II.

There was a great concentration of Jesuits in Rome and the remaining Papal States, and desperate efforts were made to secure that at least this remnant of earthly principality should remain loyal to the Pope. To the great joy of the Jesuits an Œcumenical Council gathered at the Vatican, and the design of declaring the Pope personally infallible in matters of faith or morals was eagerly pressed. In the long and heated conflict of affirming bishops and denying bishops, and bishops who thought a declaration inexpedient, the Jesuits were very active, scorning the idea that it could be imprudent to enhance the power of the Pope. Then came the Franco-German War, the withdrawal of the one Catholic force which could save Rome from Victor Emmanuel, and the clouds gathered more thickly than ever. The Jesuits had declared their opinion of the "usurper" too freely to have any illusion as to the issue.

When the Piedmontese troops entered by the breach at the Porta Pia on 20th September, the Jesuits knew that they were doomed. A detachment of soldiers at once proceeded to the house attached to the Gesù and took up quarters there. Whatever the reason was, the new Italian Government proceeded very slowly in the work of expelling the Jesuits. For some weeks soldiers and fathers lived together at the Gesù—the fathers afterwards said that the soldiers chose the General's room for practising the drum and trumpet—and the various residences were confiscated "in the public interest" at wide intervals. In October the novitiate at St. Andreas, with its large estates, was taken and the novices forced to enlist. In January 1772 one of their smaller churches was handed over to the secular clergy; in January 1873 a second church and the Roman College (which was used by the Ministry of War) were annexed.

At last, in June 1873, a law was published enacting that the monks and religious of all orders must quit Italy. One house was to be reserved at Rome for each order, so that they might communicate with the Vatican, but this privilege was refused to the Jesuits. They were hated by the great majority of the educated Italians, who recalled with anger their support of the bloody reigns of Ferdinand of Naples, Ferdinand VII. of Spain, Miguel of Portugal, and Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. They had sided with reaction and lost. There was no general sympathy when, in October, Father Beckx, now a feeble old man of seventy-eight, went sorrowfully to his exile in Florence, and the remaining Italian Jesuits were pensioned and scattered. The novitiate at Sant Andreas was rented by the American Seminary (and Father Beckx was allowed to die there some years later). The Gesù was entrusted to other priests, and the sacred rooms of Ignatius and the other saints of the Society were respectfully preserved. The Roman College became a State school: I remember seeing a vast Congress of Freethinkers hold their fiery meetings in its dark chambers and airy quadrangle thirty years afterwards, at the invitation of the civic authorities of Rome.

It was just one hundred years since the Roman Jesuits had been scattered by Clement XIV. But the catastrophe in Italy was not the only affliction to mark that dark centenary. They had in the previous year, when they were awaiting the sentence of Victor Emmanuel, heard that their fathers were expelled from the new German Empire. For some years they had made quiet, but considerable, progress in Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, as well as Austria. They had opened a number of colleges at Cologne and in the Rhine Province, always a rich field for their work, and had institutions at Posen, Münster, Metz, Mayence, Bonn, Strassburg, Essen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Marienthal, Ratisbon, and many other places. From the Rhine Province and Bavaria and Baden they sent so many recruits to the German College at Rome, who would return to work in Germany and further the influence of the Jesuits in seminaries and bishoprics and universities, that Frederick William III. was compelled to forbid any of his subjects to go to the German College or any other Jesuit institution. Frederick William IV. genially overlooked their progress, and they spread over the States which were presently to form the German Empire.

But the birth of the German Empire coincided with the declaration of papal infallibility, and a strong agitation for the expulsion of the Jesuits arose. The prolonged check on Jesuit activity in Germany had permitted the growth of a more virile and honest culture among the secular clergy, and many of the best Catholic scholars were amazed at the papal claim. Politicians and Protestants generally were concerned about this victory of ultramontanism, and attributed it largely to the intrigues of the Jesuits. Even before 1870 the Catholic statesmen of Bavaria were in conflict with the Church over its extreme pretensions. When, in 1870, two more Catholic Provinces were added to Germany, bringing its Catholic population up to fifteen millions, Bismarck watched attentively every step in the growth of ultramontanism. The dissenters at the Vatican Council had very serious ground indeed for their plea of inexpediency, as far as Germany was concerned. Even Austria threatened to break its Concordat with the Papacy when the news of the declaration of infallibility arrived. Over Protestant Germany a feeling of intense hostility spread, and the Old Catholics joined in the outcry.

Petitions for the expulsion of the Jesuits began to reach the Reichstag, and the Government proceeded to act. A measure was debated in the Reichstag in June 1872, and on the 4th of July it was signed and promulgated. Six months were allowed for the settlement of their affairs, and in the course of that time the whole of their communities were dissolved. As communities they retired upon Switzerland, Austria, Holland, and Belgium, but the law permitted them to enter the Empire as individual citizens, and Bismarck knew that it availed little to expel Jesuits with a fork. Dr. Falk, a strenuous Liberal, was made Minister of Public Instruction, and he framed a series of measures (the "May Laws") for the complete control of education by the State and for determining the qualifications of teachers in such a way that no disguised Jesuit could return to his desk. The control of schools had hitherto been left generally to the bishops, on whose indulgence or zeal, as far as the Catholic schools were concerned, the Jesuits could generally rely.

A stormy controversy ended in the passing of the Laws, and Germany entered upon that long and bitter struggle of the Catholics against the Government which is known as the Kulturkampf. To this day the Jesuits have been unable, in spite of the most industrious intrigue, to secure readmission into the German Empire. They still hover about the frontiers, in Holland, Austria, and Belgium, and maintain large colleges in which hundreds of the sons of the wealthier Catholics are educated in orthodox principles. Individually, they live frequently in Berlin and control the incessant demand of the Centre Party for their rehabilitation. "Exile" has no effect on their growth and prosperity, for the 755 expelled Jesuits of 1872 now number 1186. It is not impossible that they will secure return by some such bargain as that which contributed to the ending of the Kulturkampf. Bismarck saw a "red terror" growing more rapidly and threateningly than the "black terror," and he made peace with the Catholic clergy and Rome on the understanding that they would combat Socialism in Germany. Socialism continues to grow, and it would not be surprising if the Emperor at length enlists the sons of Ignatius in his desperate struggle against it. If he does, the Society will find a luxuriant field for growth among the 22,000,000 Catholics of the Empire, until the last deadly struggle with Social Democracy sets in.

For the inner spirit and character of the modern German Jesuits I must refer the reader to Count von Hoensbroech's invaluable Fourteen Years a Jesuit (2 vols., Engl. transl., 1911). The whole story from beginning to end is a sober but pitiful indictment of the Jesuits, and shows how little change there is below their accommodating expressions. We find the Jesuits hovering about the houses of the wealthy, using their influence with the women, extorting money by the most questionable means, practising and teaching mental reservation at every turn, and intriguing for political power through the Catholic laity, as they had done through three centuries. When Father Anderledy (a future General of the Society) was convicted, in the 'forties, of maintaining studies in the Cologne residence, contrary to Prussian law, he flatly denied the charge, making the mental reservation that from that moment the school should cease to exist. The Jesuit historian who records the fact says: "What presence of mind!" When Hoensbroech, intending to enter the German service, asked the learned Jesuit Franzelin whether he might take an oath to observe the laws (which then included the May Laws), he was told that he might, with the mental reserve that he did not respect any laws denounced by the Church. Numbers of instances of deliberate lying (with mental reserve) are given, and the work exhibits the character, the training, and the educational activity of the Jesuits in an extremely unattractive light. It is an indispensable document for the study of modern Jesuit character.