THE SOCIETY ENTERS GERMANY.
The Jesuits encountered less difficulty in establishing themselves in Germany than in either Spain, Portugal, or France. Race differences may have occasioned this. The populations resting upon the shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic descended from the early Celts, and became readily Latinized. They accepted the traditionary religion of Rome; knew comparatively little of the Bible, which was a sealed book to them; and received their Christian faith only from the Roman clergy. There was no word in any of their languages which signified liberty in the sense of a right derived from the law of nature. With them, liberty conveyed the idea of a franchise, granted by authority, and subject to be withdrawn at pleasure. Hence they yielded implicit obedience to Rome, and accepted it as consistent with the Divine will that no other than the Romish religion should be recognized or tolerated, and that force might be justifiably employed to suppress all others when it was deemed necessary to do so. Consequently they were inclined at first to resist—or, at least, to look suspiciously upon—the Jesuits, inasmuch as Loyola had declared it to be the controlling reason for the creation of the society that the ancient monastic orders and the clergy had by their vices endangered the Church. This seemed heretical, and therefore they practiced towards him and his followers at first their accustomed intolerance. They preferred the old system, to which they had become accustomed, to anything new, with regard either to the Church or the faith. Accordingly we find that among the Latin populations the influence of the pope became necessary to the admission and establishment of the Jesuit society. They yielded only to his authority, because they regarded disobedience of him as heresy.
It was otherwise with the Germans. As the descendants of the old Teutons, they had some conceptions of natural liberty, and had indicated a desire for popular government by the election of their kings. The Scriptures had been placed in their hands as early as the fourth century, when Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels and part of the Old Testament into the Gothic language, thereby making them accessible to the people, and stimulating the desire to read and understand them. This created a sense of individuality, which soon became more diffused than elsewhere in Europe, thus making the Germans an intelligent and tolerant race. Their tolerance, therefore, when the Jesuits appeared, prevented any popular commotion. By that time the influences of the Reformation had become greatly extended, and had impressed the minds of a large number of the German people. Protestantism had become established, and the population was divided into two religious parties—Roman Catholic and Protestant. But these parties, influenced towards each other by the old Teutonic liberality and tolerance, lived together in perfect peace and harmony, each maintaining its own religious faith and worship without interference by the other. There were also divisions among the Protestants—some being the followers of Luther, and others of Calvin. But there was no religious strife between Roman Catholics and Protestants. According to the German custom of that period, there were earnest disputations about doctrines, but no tumult—nothing to disturb the quiet of society. Persecution on account of religious differences was entirely unknown; a persecutor would have been considered a public enemy. The true spirit of Christianity prevailed—the natural consequence of the same form of religious liberty provided for by the institutions of the United States, and which might now exist throughout the Christian world, but for the baneful influences of Jesuitism. The Venetian ambassador, then in Germany, thus describes the peaceful condition of the German Christians:
"One party has accustomed itself to put up with the other so well, that, in any place where there happens to be a mixed population, little or no notice is taken as to whether a person is a Catholic or Protestant. Not only villages, but even families, are in this manner mixed up together, and there even exist houses where the children belong to one persuasion while the parents belong to the other, and where brothers adhere to opposite creeds. Catholics and Protestants, indeed, intermarry with each other, and no one takes any notice of the circumstance, or offers any opposition thereto."[67]
The German author to whom we are indebted for the above extract says, in addition, "Even many princes of the Catholic Church in Germany went even a step further, and appointed men who were thorough Protestants to situations at their courts as counselors, judges, magistrates, or whatever other office it might be, without any opposition or objection being offered thereto." And these, he adds in a note, "were not at all exceptional cases."[68]
Notwithstanding Germany was enjoying this state of calm and repose, under the influence of that religious toleration which is the natural outgrowth of all the teachings of Christ, and has the full sanction of his example, it afforded neither pleasure nor satisfaction to the ecclesiastical supporters of the papacy at Rome. They saw in it the threatened destruction of the papal system, and the ruin of their ambitious hopes, unless, by some means, this spirit of religious toleration and liberalism could be entirely extirpated. They regarded Protestantism and the liberty which gave birth to it as heretical, as the worst and most flagrant violations of God's law. How to put an end to this liberty, and destroy all its fruits, was the practical question which agitated the mind of the pope. He was willing enough to imitate the example of Innocent III in his treatment of the Albigenses, by beginning the work of persecution in Germany, and turning over the Protestants to the Inquisition, for that would have conformed to the Canon law. But there were difficulties in the way not easily overcome. The Inquisition was not likely to carry on its murderous work as successfully in Germany as among the Latin races trained to obedience. The Germans were not so docile and submissive. And, besides, the influences of the Reformation, under the impulse given them by the courageous example of Luther, had reached some of the most powerful princes in Germany, who would have stood as a strong wall of protection against all such assaults. They were not willing to obey the pontifical command when it required that papal emissaries should be allowed at pleasure to burn their own subjects at the stake, and desolate their homes. Excommunication had nearly run its course. It had been so frequently employed to promote the personal ambition of popes, and for trifling and temporal purposes, that it was fast coming into disrepute. Its influence was so impaired that it had, in a large degree, lost its effectiveness. Protestant Churches could not be closed by edicts of interdict. The attempt to release the German people from allegiance to their princes, would have been as ineffectual as the command of King Canute when he ordered the waves of the ocean to retire. Any form of papal malediction and anathema would have been unavailing.
Howsoever sick at heart the pope may have been at this prospect so fatal to his ambition, he was not reduced to entire despair. He did not abandon the hope of bringing back the German princes to the old religion, and employing them as secular aids in such measures of coercion as should be found necessary to reduce the people into obedience. He found the old ecclesiastical weapons somewhat blunted, and looked around for others. Fortune seemed, at last, to smile upon the pope when, casting his eyes around, they rested upon the Jesuits—the freshly enlisted "militia of the Church"—who, without any sense of either pride or shame, were trained to implicit obedience, without stopping to inquire whether the work required of them was good or bad, noble or ignoble. Called upon by the pope, probably at the suggestion of Loyola himself, the Jesuits were as ready to obey as the latter was to command, even to the extent of conspiring against the peace of Germany, or any other country where barriers had been constructed to protect society against aggression. But the method of procedure was by no means clear. Courageous as Loyola was, he could not venture to send his small army into Germany with an open display of the instruments of persecution in their hands. They could not go as the open defenders of the papal dogmas, for they were unable to speak or understand the German language. If they had even been able to make known their opinions and purposes, they could not have withstood the intense indignation and fiery eloquence of the disciples of Luther and Calvin. The occasion, therefore, demanded of Loyola the exercise of his keen penetration—of that wonderful sagacity which never deserted him, and which, at his death, he succeeded in imparting to his successor. The manner of procedure he finally adopted is suggestive of serious reflection, especially to the people of the United States.
If it be true that "history repeats itself," and that nations, moving in fixed cycles, follow each other in their courses, the remembrance of the fact that many of them, once prosperous, have passed out of existence, admonishes us to inquire with exceeding caution into the relations which these same Jesuits have created between themselves and our institutions. They have not changed, but are still the infatuated and vindictive followers of Loyola, and it is well for us to know whether there are not evidences that, if permitted, they may repeat here what their society, at the command of its founder, attempted in Germany, under the pretense that God had appointed them to conspire against any free and independent nation they could not otherwise subjugate. The people of the United States spend their time in the pursuit of a thousand objects, and in the investigation of a thousand questions, not the thousandth part as important to them as this.