Without the indorsement obtained by the Jesuits from the Council of Trent, they might have been kept out of Paris entirely, or, at all events, their entry into that city would have been greatly delayed. As it was, the antipathy against them remained so great and universal among the Gallican Christians, that their admission at last was obtained only upon the condition that they should take a solemn oath to do nothing to impair the liberties of the Gallican Church; that they would submit to the laws of the nation, which recognized the pope as the head of the Church, but denied to him the power to excommunicate the king; or to lay an interdict upon the kingdom; or to exercise any jurisdiction over temporal matters; or to dismiss bishops from their office; or to exercise any authority by a legate, unless empowered by the king; and that they would, moreover, maintain those provisions of law which assigned to a General Council of the Church power superior to that of a pope—in other words, that papal infallibility was not a part of Christian faith.[65] There is abundant reason for believing, in view of both preceding and subsequent events, that when the Jesuits took this oath, they had not the least idea of being bound by it. No Jesuit's conscience was ever bound by such an oath.
The authority of Laynez, under the circumstances related, became potential enough to enable him to influence the decisions of the queen-mother and the court of France, and finding himself thus sustained, it was not long before the Jesuit policy began to bear its legitimate fruits. Of course, his most heavily charged batteries were immediately opened upon the Protestants, to whose heresies he traced all the existing evils of the times. An occasion for this soon occurred. The Protestants petitioned for "places of worship;" that is, merely to be allowed to worship at designated places according to their consciences. Laynez fully understood the meaning of this, and the ends it would ultimately accomplish if the Protestant petition were allowed. His keen sagacity enabled him to know that if the differences between Protestantism and the papacy became the subject of intellectual discussion, upon a forum where human reason had the right to assert itself, the triumph of the former over the latter would be assured. Therefore, true to his own instincts and the teachings of his society, he remonstrated with Catharine de Medicis against granting the prayer of the Protestants, and in his memorial upon the subject "pointed out to her so forcibly the danger to the Church and State that such a concession would entail, that, appreciating his arguments, she refused to sanction the erection of Protestant places of worship."[66]
These facts—related upon Jesuit authority, and boasted of by their historians—furnish the most palpable and incontestable proof of the conspiracy of Catharine de Medicis and the Jesuits, after the latter obtained admission into France, to suppress the freedom of religious worship, and so to mold the policy of Church and State as to render its existence impossible. It was an odious and revolting conspiracy; but the objects to be accomplished justified it in the eyes of the queen, of Laynez, and of all his followers. It was the cardinal point of the professed Jesuit policy—the most prominent feature of their organization. No imagination is fertile enough to picture the condition into which the civilized world would have been plunged if this conspiracy, besides its temporary and bloody triumph in France, had become sufficiently powerful to dictate the Governments of modern States. The Gallican Christians had for centuries successfully resisted all attempts of the papacy to interfere with the temporal affairs of France; and whilst they disagreed with Protestants upon questions of religious faith, the two forces were united in opposition to the Jesuits, because of the direct hostility of the latter to both. Each could see that the entrance of the society into France, under the control and dominion of an alien power, would be the introduction of a disturbing and hostile element, which would put an end to the concord and harmony then rapidly springing up between the two Christian bodies. This the Jesuits intended to prevent by whatsoever means they could manage to employ; for, from the beginning of their existence, they have opposed everything they could not subjugate. Therefore they realized the importance of having the monarchical power upon their side—especially when they saw it wielded by such a queen as Catharine de Medicis—so that by conspiracy with it against the Gallican Christians and the Protestants, they could destroy the liberties of the former, and entirely suppress the spirit of free inquiry asserted by the latter. Keeping these objects always before them, the Jesuits considered them of sufficient magnitude to justify any form of intrigue; and they were sufficiently familiar with the qualities of the queen to know that she possessed such love of power and capacity for conspiracy that they could successfully play upon her ambition and prejudices to accomplish their purposes.
There is no intelligent reader of French history who is not familiar with the steps taken by this perfidious queen regent, after the admission of the Jesuits into Paris, to bring about the terrible Massacre of St. Bartholomew—an event so closely allied with others, of which they were the undoubted authors, that one must close his eyes not to see the evidences which point to their agency in that infamous transaction. They needed such bloody work to give them the mastery over France; and although they have since then been more than once expelled in disgrace from French soil, they have returned again and again to torment her people, who still continue to realize, under their Republic, how unceasingly they labor for the entire overthrow of every form of popular government.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 36.
[54] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 103-104.
[55] Ibid., p. 104.
[56] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 105.
[57] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 105.