The German Fathers have their monthly "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach," the first number of which appeared in 1865. The defense of the Syllabus called it into being. When the Kulturkampf drove the editors from Maria-Laach, they migrated to Tervuren in Belgium. There they remained until 1880, when they went to Blijenbeck in Holland. In 1910 we find them at Valkenburg, Holland, attached to the Scholasticate. The ability of the staff has placed the "Stimmen" on a very high plane as a periodical.
The monthly "Razón y Fe" was begun by the Spanish Fathers in 1901, and "Studies" by the Irish Jesuits in 1912. This latter, however, admits contributors who are not of the Society. The same may be said of the "Month" (London), the weekly "America" (New York), the "Irish Monthly" (Dublin) and a number of minor periodicals. There are also publications for private circulation, such as the "Woodstock Letters," the "Letters and Notices"; "Lettres Edifiantes" of various provinces of the Society, most of which are printed in the scholasticates, and convey information about the different works of the Society in different parts of the world. They are largely of the character of the ancient "Relations des Jésuites" of the old French Fathers and are of great value as historical material. Finally the American "Messenger of the Sacred Heart" publishes a monthly edition of 350,000, besides millions of leaflets to promote the devotion. There are fifty-one editions of the "Messenger" published in thirty-five different languages.
The reason why the Society has not succeeded in producing since the Restoration any theologians like Suárez, Toletus and others, is the same that prevented Napoleon Bonaparte from winning back his empire when he was a prisoner on St. Helena. Conditions have changed. Suárez, de Lugo, Ripalda and their brilliant associates passed their lives in Catholic Spain which gloried in universities like Salamanca, Valladolid or Alcalá. There those great men wrote and taught; Bellarmine and Toletus labored in Rome and Lessius in Louvain; whereas the Jesuit theologians in our day have been not only debarred from the great universities but robbed of their libraries, sent adrift in the world and compelled to seek not for learned leisure but for a roof to shelter them. They were expelled from France in 1762, and were never allowed to open a school even for small boys until 1850. At present they are permitted to shed their blood on the battle field for their country from which they have been driven into exile. They were banished from Italy repeatedly, and have never secured a foothold in Germany since 1872; they do not exist in Portugal and any moment may see them expelled from Spain. In England and Ireland Catholics were not emancipated until 1829, and it is only grudgingly that the government allows Ireland to have a university which Catholics can safely frequent, and even there no chair of Catholic theology may be maintained with the ordinary revenues. In America everything is in a formative state and what money is available has to be used for elementary instruction, both religious and secular, of the millions whom poverty and persecution have driven out of Europe. It is very doubtful if Suárez and his great associates would have written their splendid works in such surroundings.
As the eye travels over Hurter's carefully prepared chronological chart, it catches only an occasional gleam of the old glory, when the names of the Wiceburgenses, Zaccaria, Mai, Muzzarelli, Arévalo and Morcelli make their appearance in the late sixties of the nineteenth century. But those were the days of the French Revolution and of its subsequent upheavals. The Church itself was in the same straits between 1773 and 1860, and its number of great theologians of any kind is extremely small. Thus, abstracting from the Jesuits, we find in 1773 only Flórez, the Augustinian, who wrote ecclesiastical history; in 1782 the erudite Maronite Assemani, who is classed as a moralist; in 1787 St. Alphonsus Liguori; and in 1793 the Benedictine Gerbert, who is also a moralist. The Barnabite Gerdil appears under date of 1802 as an apologist, and from that year up to 1864 there is no one to whom Hurter accords distinction in any branch of divinity. Perhaps the reason is that the century was in the full triumph of its material civilization and that men derided and despised the dogmatic teachings of religion.
A study of Hurter's "Nomenclator" is instructive. In 1774, the year after the Suppression, there are only four publications by Jesuit authors; in 1775 there are nine; and then the number begins to grow smaller. In 1780 the figure rises to ten, and it is somewhat remarkable that in 1789 and 1790, the first years of the French Revolution, seventeen writers appear. The stream then dribbles along until 1814, the year of the Restoration, when we find only one book with the letters S. J. after the name of its author. The next year there is none.
The Jesuit who illumines the darkness of that period is Thaddeus Nogarola, whom Hurter describes as "a member of the most noble family of Verona." He was born on 24 December, 1729. Consequently he was eighty-five years of age at the time of the Restoration. He wrote on sanctifying grace; and in 1800 he and another Jesuit had a fierce theological battle on the subject of attrition, in which he defended his position with excessive vehemence. In 1806 he had issued his great treatise against Gallicanism. His doughty antagonist re-entered the Society in 1816. He had expressed himself very vigorously on the subject of the Napoleonic oath in France and his books were prohibited in the Cisalpine Republic.
In 1816 four books were published; but the number continues small and 1823 is credited with none. In 1824, there were two publications, one of them by Arévalo, the eminent patrologist, who composed the hymns and lessons of the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians. It is a very sad list from 1826 to 1862, with its succession of ones and zeros. Only three names of any note appear: Kohlmann in 1836, Loriquet in 1845, and de Ravignan in 1858. That period of almost forty years had seen the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and there was no stability for any Jesuit establishment. Finally, however, in 1862 came Pianciani, Taparelli and Bresciani; and in 1865 and 1866 Tongiorgi and Gury, respectively. It was only then that the Society was able to begin its theological work after its redintegration. The space is not great between 1862 and the present time, but since then there have been Perrone and the great Bollandist and theologian, Victor de Buck, who appeared in 1876; Edmund O'Reilly in 1878; Ballerini and Patrizi in 1881; Kleutgen in 1883; and in 1886 Cardinals Franzelin and Mazzella.
During that period there was no end of confiscations and expulsions, even of those who were not engaged in educational work. Thus the German Jesuits acquired the old Benedictine Monastery of Maria-Laach in 1863 on the southwest bank of a fine lake near Andernach in the Rhineland. There they organized a course of studies for the scholastics as well as a college of writers. Among them were the learned Schneeman, Riess and others who began the great work of the church Councils and the "Philosophia Lacensis," besides publishing the Jesuit "Stimmen." How long were they there? Only ten years. The Kulturkampf banished them from their native land and they had to continue their labors in exile. This has been the story of the Society in almost every European country and in the Spanish Republics of South America and Mexico. In spite of all this, however, Hurter's chart shows that from 1773 to 1894 there have been no less than four hundred Jesuit theologians who published works in defense of the doctrines of the Church, and some of them have achieved prominence.
In philosophy, for instance, there was Taparelli who died in 1863. He was the first rector of the Roman College, when it was given back to the Society by Leo XII. He taught philosophy for fifteen years at Palermo, and in 1840 issued his great work which he called "A Theoretical Essay on Natural Rights from an historical standpoint." It reached the seventh edition in 1883 and was translated into French and German. Next in importance is his "Esame critico degli ordini rappresentativi nella società moderna." Besides his striking monographs on "Nationality," "Sovereignty of the People," "The Grounds of War," he wrote a great number of articles in the "Civiltà" on matters of political economy and social rights. His first great work was in a way the beginning of modern sociology. Palmieri issued his "Institutiones Philosophiæ" in 1874, and at the very outset won the reputation of a great thinker, even from those who were at variance with his conclusions and mode of thought.
In the same branch Liberatore was for a long time preëminent, and his "Institutiones" and "Composito humano" went through eleven editions. Cornoldi's "Filosofia scolastica specolativa" was also a notable production. Lehmen's "Lehrbuch" reached the third edition before his death in 1910. Boedder is well-known to English speaking people because of his many works written during his professorship at St. Beuno's in Wales. Cathrein's "Socialism" has been translated into nine different languages, and his "Moral Philosophy" has enjoyed great popularity. Pesch's position is established; his last work, "Christliche Lebens-philosophie," reached its fourth edition within four years. Kleutgen who is perhaps the best known of these German Jesuits, was called by Leo XIII "the prince of philosophers" and is regarded as the restorer of Catholic philosophy throughout Germany. In Spain, Father Cuevas has written a "Cursus completus philosophiæ" and a "History of Philosophy." Mendive's "Text-book of Philosophy" in Spanish is used in several universities, but the writer who dominated all the rest in that country is admittedly Urráburu, who died prematurely in 1904. His "Cursus philosophiæ scholasticæ," brings up the memory of the famous old philosophers of earlier ages.