The use of the name "friar" publicly pilloried the apostate. He writhed under it, but he could not escape. It recurred again and again as the tactics of Beza and his associates were laid bare. Then, turning to the queen, Laínez said: "The first means to be taken to avoid the deceits of the enemy is for your Majesty to remember that it is not within the competency either of your Majesty or any other temporal prince to discuss and decide matters pertaining to the Faith. This belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff and the Councils of the Church. Much more so is this the case when, as at present, the General Council of Trent is in session. If these teachers of the new religion are sincerely seeking the truth, let them go there to find it." After adding his authority to the splendid reply already uttered by the Cardinal of Lorraine, Laínez said: "As Friar Peter has asked us for a confession of faith, I confess the Catholic Faith, for which I am ready to die; and I implore Your Majesties, both you, Madame, and your son, the Most Christian King, to safeguard your temporal kingdom if you wish to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. If on the contrary you care less for the fear and love of God than the fear and love of man, are you not running the risk of losing your earthly as well as your heavenly kingdom? I trust that this calamity will not fall upon you. I expect, on the contrary, that God in his goodness will grant you and your son the grace of perseverance in your faith, and will not permit this illustrious nobility now before me, and this most Christian kingdom, which has been such an example to the world, ever to abandon the Catholic Faith or be defiled by the pestilential touch of these new sects and new religions."
This discourse was a particularly daring act, on the part of Laínez. According to a recent authority (Martin, Gallicanisme et la Réforme, 28, note 4), Du Ferrier, the government delegate at Trent, circulated a note which said among other things: "As for Pius IV we withdraw from his rule; whatever decisions he may have made we reject, spit back at him (respuimus) and despise. We scorn and renounce him as Vicar of Christ, Head of the Church and successor of Peter." Far from reprehending his ambassador for these furious words, Charles IX and, of course, Catherine praised the ambassador unreservedly. Catherine had busied herself previous to this in trying to persuade the different governments to have a council in which the Pope should have nothing to say, one whose object would be, not to define dogma or enforce discipline, but, to draw up a formula of reconciliation which would satisfy Protestants. Even the French bishops, though admitting that the Pope was a supreme power in the Church, denied that he had supreme power over it, and refused to acknowledge "his plenitude of power to feed, rule and govern the Universal Church." The separation of France from the Church was at that time openly advocated. Since such were the conditions in France at that time, it is clear that Catherine never expected an attack of the kind that Laínez treated her to. She burst into tears and withdrew from the Colloquy. There was never another public session. Crétineau-Joly says that Laínez told Condé: "The queen's tears are a bit of comedy;" but such an utterance from a man of the character of Laínez and in such surroundings, where the insult would have been immediately reported to the queen, is simply inconceivable. He could never have been guilty of such an unpardonable indiscretion.
Meantime, the bishops and archbishops of France had been meeting during the recesses of the Colloquy to consider the question of legislation for the Jesuit colleges. With the exception of Cardinal de Châtillon and the Archbishop of Paris, they were all anxious to put an end to the proscription to which the Society had been so long and so unjustly subjected. As it happened that Cardinal de Châtillon, the brother of the famous Admiral Coligny, the patron saint of the French Calvinists, was just then on the point of apostatizing and taking a wife and as the scandal was of common knowledge it evidently would not do for the Archbishop of Paris to be ranged on his side. That and, probably, the fact of his being tired out by the long fight which had been protracted only because of his natural stubbornness, made him give way, and the Society was legalized in France. No doubt the presence of Laínez and his closing up of the Colloquy by his audacious discourse had helped largely to bring about that result. Some disagreeable restrictions were appended to the grant, it is true, but they were cancelled a few years later by a royal decree. Parliament finally yielded and signed the charter of the College on January 14, 1562. Laínez saw the queen frequently after the Colloquy, and remained in France for some time, striving unweariedly to win back to the Faith such men as Condé, the King of Navarre and others, and continuing to warn the queen that her unwise toleration would result in disaster to the realm. Unfortunately he was not heeded.
While all this was going on, another college had been established at Pamiers, which was in the heretical territory of Navarre. Its founders were none others than the rector of the Roman College, Jean Pelletier, and Edmond Auger. But in the beginning the inhabitants were suspicious and refused the commonest hospitality to the new comers, so that their first dwelling had the advantage of being like the Stable of Bethlehem — a hut with no doors and no windows. Finally, however, their sermons in the churches captivated the people and the "Jezoists," as they were called, succeeded in getting a respectable house and beginning their classes. This was in 1559, but before the end of 1561 the "Jezoists" were expelled by the excited Huguenots, and were compelled to take refuge in Toulouse.
The Edmond Auger just mentioned was perhaps the most eloquent man of that period in France. He was called the Chrysostom of his country. Wherever he went, crowds flocked to hear him, fanatical Calvinists as well as devoted Catholics. His first sermon was in Valence, where the bishop had just apostatized and the Huguenots were in complete possession. A furious outbreak resulted, and he was seized and sentenced to be burned to death. While standing at the stake, he harangued the people before the torch was applied, and so captivated the mob that they clamored for his release. His devotedness to the sick in a pestilence at Lyons won the popular heart and a college was asked for. At various times he was chaplain of the troops, confessor of Henry IV, rector and provincial; but unfortunately he was so outspoken in his denunciation of the League that the people of Lyons, who once admired him, were wrought up to fury by his utterances on the political situation, and were on the point of throwing him into the Rhône. His unwise zeal had thus seriously injured the Society.
When the council of Trent had concluded its sessions, Canisius was sent back to Germany by the Pope to see that the decrees were promulgated and enforced. He labored for five years to accomplish this task, but failed completely. With the exception of some bishops like Truchsess of Augsburg, very few paid any attention to the Pope's wish, the reason being that they were mostly scions of the nobility, who were accustomed to live in luxury and had adopted the ecclesiastical profession solely because of the rich revenues of the sees to which their relatives had had them appointed. At that very time fourteen of them, it is said on the best authority, were wearing their mitres without even having notified the Pope of their election or asking his approbation. They, more than Martin Luther, were responsible for the loss of Germany. Their lives were such that Canisius forbade his priests to accept the position of confessor to any of them. Of course, such men turned a deaf ear to the papal decree about establishing diocesan seminaries; and those who desired them were prevented by their canons, some of whom were not even priests. It was for this reason that Canisius begged the Pope to establish burses in foreign seminaries, where worthy ecclesiastics might be trained whose lives would be in such contrast with the general depravity and ignorance of the clergy that the bishops would perhaps be shamed out of their apathy.
The establishment of burses, however, was only a temporary expedient; for the few secular priests they might furnish could scarcely support the strain to which they would be subjected in the terrible isolation which their small number would entail. They would not have the compact organization of a religious order to keep them steady, and yet they would be the victims of the same kind of persecution as Canisius and his associates had to undergo. From this difficulty arose the idea of the Collegium Germanicum already referred to, an establishment in Rome under the direction of the Jesuits, to which young Germans distinguished for their intellectual ability and virtue could be sent and trained to be apostles in their native land. It was the Collegium Germanicum that saved to the Faith what was left of Germany and won back much that was lost.
"The German College at Rome," said a Protestant preacher in 1594 (Nothgedrungene Erinnerungen, Bl. 8), "is a hotbed singularly favorable for developing the worst kind of Jesuitry. Our young Germans are educated there gratuitously; and at the end of their studies they are sent home to restore papistry to its former place and to fight for it with all their might. You find them exercising the ministry in a great number of collegiate churches and parishes. They become the advisers of bishops and even archbishops; and we see these Jesuits under our very eyes defending the Catholic cause with such zeal that we Evangelicals may well ask ourselves in what lands and in what towns such fervent zeal for the beloved Gospel is found among our own party. They seduce so many souls from us that it is too distressing even to enumerate them." Martin Chemnitz, the Protestant theologian, said that if the Jesuits had done nothing but found the German College, they would deserve to be regarded for that one achievement as the most dangerous enemy of Lutheranism. "These young men," said another Protestant controversialist in 1593, "are like their teachers in diabolical cunning, in hypocritical piety, and in the idolatrous practices which they propagate among the people. They preach frequently, pretending to be good Christians, they frequent hospitals and visit the sick at home, all out of a pure hypocrisy saturating the very hides of these wretches. They are again persuading the simple and credulous people to return to their damnable papistry" (Janssen, op. cit., IX, 323, sqq.).
Echsfeld, Erfurt, Aschaffenburg, Mayence, Coblentz, Trèves, Würzburg, Spires and other places soon felt the effects of the zeal of these students of the Collegium Germanicum. Their manner of life meant hardship and danger of every kind; assaults by degenerate Catholics and infuriated heretics; vigils in miserable huts and pest-laden hospitals, resulting sometimes in sickness and violent death; but "these messengers of the devil," as the preachers called them, kept at their work and soon won back countless numbers of their countrymen to the Faith. Similar establishments also grew up at Braunsberg, Dillingen, Fulda, Munich and Vienna. Representatives of other religious orders entered into the movement and gave it new life and vigor. Janssen (IX, 313) informs us that the foundation of seminaries for poor students also was due to Canisius and his fellow-workers. At their suggestion Albert V founded the Gregorianum at Munich in 1574; and Ingolstadt, Würzburg, Innsbruck, Halle, Gratz and Prague soon had similar establishments. As early as 1559 Canisius assumed the responsibility for two hundred poor students, and by having them live in common was able to supply all their needs. After each of his sermons in the cathedral, he went around among the great personages assembled to hear him, to ask for alms to keep up his establishments. Father Voth, following his example forty years later, collected 1400 florins in a single year for the same purpose.
The work of regeneration was not restricted to the foundation of ecclesiastical seminaries. Janssen (l.c.) gives us an entire page of the names of colleges taken from the "Litteræ annuæ," in some of which there were nine hundred, one thousand, and even thirteen hundred scholars. Between 1612 and 1625 Germany had one hundred Jesuit colleges. In all of them were established sodalities the members of which besides performing their own religious exercises in the chapel, visited the hospitals, prisons and camps and performed other works of charity and zeal. On their rosters are seen the names of men who attained eminence in Church and State — kings, princes, cardinals, soldiers, scholars, etc. These sodalities had also established intimate relations with similar organizations all over Europe. Naturally, this intense activity aroused the fury of the heretics. Calumnies of every kind were invented; and in 1603 a preacher in Styria announced that the most execrable and sanguinary plots were being formed to drown the whole Empire in blood in order to nullify the teaching of the Evangel. "O poor Roman Empire!" he exclaimed, "your only enemies, the only enemies of the Emperor, of the nation, of religion are the Jesuits." Janssen adds: "The facts told a different story."