A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

But all these pages of the written biography of Ignatius are of less interest than the unwritten. To understand his real life during those fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays you have to study the adventures of his colleagues far away: to mark how the hostility of bishops and doctors and princes is disarmed by a papal privilege or a papal recommendation, how the Protestant plague cannot break out anywhere but a Jesuit appears, how the most nicely fitted man is sent for each special mission, how the man disappears when there is, rightly or wrongly, a cry of scandal, how the long white arms of Ignatius Loyola seem to stretch over the planet from Sta Maria della Strada, near the Pope's palace. This vast and obscure activity of the General will be best gathered from a short survey of the fortunes of the Jesuits during his reign.

The first mission of interest to us, though not quite the first in point of time, was the sending of two Jesuits to the British Isles. It seemed that England was lost, and all that could be done was to resist Henry's attempt to stamp out the old faith in Ireland and persuade James V. to follow his profitable example in Scotland. The mission was perilous, for, on the word of these Jesuits of the time, nearly every chief in Ireland had gone over to Protestantism, and in Scotland the nobles and officials were looking with moist lips at the fat revenues of the monasteries. The Archbishop of Armagh, who had fled to Rome, asked the Pope to send two Jesuits to his country, and Codure and Salmeron were appointed. Codure died, however, during the negotiations, and Paschase Brouet was named in his place. As usual, Ignatius chose his men with shrewdness. Brouet, the "angel of the Society," was the counterpart of Salmeron's vigour and learning. They were granted the privileges of Nuncii by the Pope, though Ignatius directed them to mention these privileges only when the success of the mission required. In fact, he gave them a written paper of instructions as to their personal behaviour when, on 10th September 1541, they left for Paris and Edinburgh. They were to travel as poor Jesuits—but the wealthy young noble Zapata was permitted to accompany and care for them.

What the precise aim of this mission was we do not know, but it was from every point of view a complete failure. It is, of course, represented as a success, and its purpose is said to have been merely to hearten the suffering Irish people in their resistance and convey to them indulgences and absolutions. But from the circumstances of the time and the duration of the mission we may be sure that the two Jesuits learned very little English, and less or no Gaelic, so that the idea seems absurd. In Scotland, certainly, their mission was political. They saw James at Stirling Castle, and easily got from him an assurance that he would resist the allurements of Henry VIII. What they trusted to do in Ireland we are not informed, and it seems most reasonable to suppose that they were to see the chiefs and stiffen them in their opposition to England. This they wholly failed to do, for the leading men would have nothing to do with them. The customary Catholic version of the enterprise is that they happily accomplished their mission, traversed "the whole of Ireland" (as even Francis Thompson says), consoling and absolving, and went home to report success. One fears that this account may be typical of these early Jesuit reports of missions. To learn Gaelic and traverse the whole of Ireland, or any large part of it, in thirty-four days (Orlandini), in the sixteenth century, and in circumstances which compelled them to travel with the greatest prudence, would assuredly be a miracle, especially when we are told that for some time even the common folk shrank from them, and it is hinted that the scattered Irish priests were unfriendly.

Apparently they travelled a little in disguise, or hid in the farms here and there, for a few weeks, granting indulgences and dispensations, probably through some Gaelic interpreter, until the English officials heard of their presence and put a price on their heads. The Jesuit narrative credits them with the bold idea of going to London and bearding the wicked Henry in his palace. Their behaviour was singularly prudent for men with such exalted ideas. Leaving Ireland, possibly at the entreaty of the Irish, as soon as the search for them grew hot, they returned to Scotland, and finding that country also aflame, they went on at once to Paris. There they received orders to return to Scotland and discharge a secret mission similar to that they had had in Ireland. They "hesitated and informed the Pope of the state of things in Scotland," says the Jesuit historian; in fact, they remained in Paris until the Pope allowed them to return to Rome. If any be disposed to criticise their conduct, he may be reminded that Brouet and Salmeron had spent several weeks in Ireland at the risk of their lives. However, it is plain that we have to look closely into these early Jesuit accounts of missions which covered the infant Society with glory. A prudent examination of them discovers features which have been carefully eliminated from later Jesuit, or pro-Jesuit, works on the subject.

As Henry VIII. died in 1547, and Edward VI. in 1553, it may seem singular that Ignatius did not, when the Catholic Mary acceded to the throne, at once dispatch a band of his priests to help in restoring the old faith. Neither Orlandini nor his discreet follower, Crétineau-Joly, throws any light on the mystery, but a few important hints may be gathered from the more candid early Jesuit historian Polanco, a close associate of Ignatius, and the full solution is indicated in Burnet's History of the Reformation (ii. 526, in the Oxford edition). This rare discovery of an independent document suggests that the early story might read somewhat differently in many particulars if we were not forced to rely almost entirely on Jesuit authorities.

From the brief statements scattered over the various volumes of Polanco's Historia Societatis it appears that from 1553 until his death Ignatius made the most strenuous efforts to secure admission into England. Cardinal Pole, it seems, asked the prayers of Ignatius for his success when he was summoned to England, and, when Ignatius died and Lainez again approached Pole, the cardinal pointedly replied that the only way in which the Jesuits could aid him was by their prayers. In the meantime (1554) Ignatius pressed Father Araoz, who was in great favour at the Spanish court, to urge Philip, and induce ladies of the court to urge him, to take Jesuits to England. In 1556 he sent Father Ribadeneira, a courtly priest, to join Philip in Belgium and press the request, but the reply was always that Pole was opposed to admitting the Jesuits. Polanco makes it quite clear that Pole resisted all the efforts of Ignatius from 1554 to 1556.

Burnet supplies the solution of the mystery. A friend of his discovered a manuscript at Venice, from which it appears that Ignatius had overreached himself and aroused the hostility of the cardinal. He had written to Pole that, as Queen Mary was restoring such monastic property as had fallen to the throne, it would be advisable to entrust this to the Jesuits, since the monks were in such bad odour in England; and he added that the Jesuits would soon find a way to make other possessors of monastic property disgorge. Pole refused their co-operation and left the Jesuits angry and disappointed. The historian cannot regard an anonymous manuscript as in itself deserving of credence, but the statement very plausibly illumines the situation. I may add that in 1558 Father Ribadeneira was actually smuggled into England in the suite of Count Gomez de Figueroa, who had gone to console the ailing Queen.[2] The count was a warm patron of the Jesuits, but Queen Mary died soon after his arrival, and the last hope of the Jesuits was extinguished.

We cannot examine with equal freedom all the chronicles of early Jesuit activity, and must be content to cull from the pages of the Historia Societatis Jesu, the first section of which is written by Father Orlandini, such facts as may enable us to form a balanced judgment of the Society under Ignatius. Italy was, naturally, the first and chief theatre of their labours, and in the course of a few years they spread from the turbulent cities of Sicily to the foot of the Alps. I have already described the work of Ignatius at Rome, and need add only that, as Orlandini tells us, he was one of the most urgent in pressing the reluctant Pope to "reform" the Roman Inquisition, or to equip it with the dread powers of the Spanish tribunal. At the very time when he was devising pleas for toleration in Protestant and pagan lands, he was urging that in Italy and Portugal there should be set up the most inhuman instrument of intolerance that civilisation has ever known. The psychology of his attitude is simple; he was convinced that he was asking tolerance for truth and intolerance for untruth. The liberal-minded Romans were not persuaded of the justice of his distinction, and the opposition to the Society increased. The hostility, which at times went the length of breaking Jesuit windows, is ascribed by his biographers chiefly to his zeal for the conversion of prostitutes. He founded a large home for these women, and would often follow them to their haunts in the piazze and lead them himself to St. Martha's House. On the whole, his great philanthropic services and personal austerity secured respect for his Society at Rome, and it prospered there until his later years.

In the south of Italy the Society met little opposition in the early years. Bobadilla had done some good work in troubled Calabria before the Society was founded, and within the next ten years colleges were opened at Messina (1548), Palermo (1549), and Naples (1551). The poet Tasso was one of the first students of the Naples college. It was in the north that the more arduous work had to be done. The seeds of the Reformation were wafted over the Alps and found a fertile soil in the cities of the Renaissance. Hardly anywhere else were monks and clergy so corrupt and ignorant, and nowhere was there so much familiarity with the immorality of the Vatican system. Rome itself lived on this corruption and regarded it with indulgence, but in the university towns of the north educated men, and even women, who almost remembered the lives of Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X., were but provoked to smile when they were exhorted to cling to the "Vicar of Christ."

To tear these prosperous seedlings of heresy out of the soil of northern Italy was the congenial task of the early Jesuits, and Lainez, Brouet, and Salmeron, with some of the new recruits, went from city to city, challenging the Protestants to debate, strengthening the Catholics to resist, and founding colleges for the sound education of youth. Their procedure, and the resentment it constantly excited, may be illustrated by their experience at Venice. Lainez was sent by the Pope to Venice in 1542, at the request of the Doge. An honourable apartment awaited him in the Doge's Palace, but he humbly declined and went to live among the sick at the squalid hospital, varying his learned campaign against the Lutherans with the lowliest services to the poor and ailing. Many were edified, especially one Andrea Lippomani, an elderly and wealthy noble. Presently there came an instruction from Ignatius that Lainez must accept the hospitality offered him by Lippomani; and a little later the noble's heirs were infuriated to learn that he had assigned a rich benefice of his at Padua to the Jesuits. They appealed to the Venetian Council, and lost, for Lainez and Salmeron were ordered by the General to defend the donation. So the first college of the Society was founded, at Padua, and Lippomani afterwards enabled them to found one at Venice. Whatever view one takes of it, this was the normal procedure: tend the sick and beg your bread until "men of wealth and position" open their purses, then throw all your energy into the founding of colleges and the securing of novices. It was unquestionably a most effective method of serving the Church; it also had an aspect which attracted critics.