A much more curious exercise of diplomacy came in Possevin's way in the quarrel between the King of Poland and the ruler of Muscovy. The latter had made vast conquests in the East, and then turned his attention to Livonia, which was Polish territory. Bathori, who was ruler of Poland, met and conquered the invader in a series of successful battles. Whereupon the Czar, knowing Bathori's devotion to the Holy See, asked the Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory XIII, to intervene. Possevin was again called upon, and set out as plenipotentiary to arrange peace between the two nations. Incidentally, the intention of the Pope was to obtain the toleration of Catholics in the Russian dominions, to secure a safe passage for missionaries to China through Russia, to induce the Czar to unite with the Christian princes against the Turks, and even to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches.
Possevin arrived at Vilna in 1581. He found Bathori elated by his victories, but in no humor to entertain proposals of peace, which he wisely judged to be merely a device of his opponent to gain time. However, he yielded to persuasion, and Possevin set out to find the Russian sovereign at Staritza. He was received with all the honors due to an ambassador, and succeeded in gaining a suspension of hostilities, the surrender of Livonia to Poland, as well as the agreement to the demands of the Pope for religious toleration, and the passage across Russia to China for Catholic missionaries. Even the proposal to join the crusade against the Turks was accepted, in the hope that it would put Constantinople in the hands of Russia. But when the question of the union of Churches was mooted, which, of course, implied the recognition of the Pope as Supreme Pastor, the savage awoke in the Czar, and, for a moment, it seemed as if the life of the ambassador was at stake. The treaty of peace was finally signed on January 15, 1582, the delegates meeting in the chapel, where the ambassador celebrated Mass; all the representatives of Poland and Russia kissing the cross as a declaration of their fidelity to their oath. Possevin and his associates then started for Rome towards the end of April. They were loaded with presents from the Czar; but to the amazement of the barbarians, they distributed them among the poor of the city.
There was, however, an appendix to this mission. Though the Polish king did all in his power to preserve the Faith in Livonia, the German Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, and other heretics had already invaded the country, and were inflaming the population with hatred of the Pope and the Church. Added to this was the alarm awakened in the mind of the Emperor of Germany at the growing power of the Poles. Again Possevin had to return to the scenes of his labors, but this time it was more as a priest than a diplomat. Indeed, much of his energy was expended in proving that he was neither German nor Pole, but an ambassador of Christ sent to build up the Faith of both nations against heresy. We hear of him once more in the matter of the reconciliation of Henry IV of France to the Holy See. To him and Toletus was due the credit of inducing the Pope to absolve the king, and by so doing, save France from schism. When this was done, Possevin became an ordinary Jesuit, laboring here and there, exclusively for the salvation of souls. It is a curious story, and it would be hard to find anything like it in the chronicles of the Church, except, perhaps the career of the famous Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio Vieira, surnamed by his fellow-countrymen, "the Great."
Vieira was born in Lisbon, on February 5, 1608, and died at Bahia, in Brazil, on July 18, 1697. He was virtually a Brazilian, for he went out to the colony when still a child, and after finishing his studies in the Jesuit college there, entered the Society in 1623, when he was only fifteen years of age. At eighteen, he was teaching rhetoric and writing commentaries on the Canticle of Canticles, the tragedies of Seneca, and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, but it was twelve years before he was raised to the priesthood. The eloquence of his first sermon astounded everyone.
In 1640 Portugal declared its independence from Spain, to which it had been subject for sixty years. As the union had been effected by fraud and force, and as all the former Portuguese possessions in the East and a part of Brazil had been wrested from Spain by the Dutch and English; and as the taxes imposed on Portugal were excessively onerous, there was a strong feeling of hatred for the Spaniards. This hostility broke out finally in a revolution, and John IV ascended the throne of Portugal, but the change of government involved the country in a disastrous war of twenty years' duration.
Before the outbreak, the Jesuits were solemnly warned by their Superiors to observe a rigid neutrality. But in the excited state of the public mind, Father Freire forgot the injunction, and, in an Advent sermon in the year 1637, let words escape him that set the country ablaze. Crétineau-Joly says "the provincial promptly imprisoned him," which probably meant that he was kept in his room, for there are no prisons in Jesuit houses. But even that seclusion produced a popular tumult. The provincial was besieged by protests, and a delegation was even sent to Madrid to protest that the words of the preacher had been misinterpreted. The Spanish king accepted the explanation, and when the envoys returned to Lisbon, Freire had been already liberated.
Ranke asserts in his "History of the Popes" that as there was question of establishing a republic in Portugal at that time, it is possible that Spain preferred to see the innocuous John of Braganza, whose son was a dissolute wretch, made king, than to run the risk of a republic like those projected at that time by the Calvinists in France and by the Lutherans in Sweden. Later, however, an investigation was ordered, and a Jesuit named Correa was incarcerated for having predicted at a college reception given to John of Braganza some years earlier that he would one day wear the crown. Meantime the explosion took place, and in 1640 John of Braganza was proclaimed king of an independent Portugal.
In the following year Vieira arrived from Brazil and was not only made tutor to the Infante, Don Pedro, as well as court preacher, but was appointed member of the royal council. In the last-named office he reorganized the departments of the army and navy, gave a new impetus to commerce, urged the foundation of a national bank, and the organization of the Brazilian Trading Company, readjusted the taxation, curbed the Portuguese Inquisition, and was mainly instrumental in gaining the national victories of Elvas, Almeixal, Castello Rodrigo, and Montes Claros.
Between 1646 and 1650 he went on diplomatic missions to Paris, the Hague, London, and Rome, but refused the title of ambassador and also the offer of a bishopric. He wanted something else, namely, to work among his Indians, and he returned to Brazil in 1652. There he provoked the wrath of the slave-owners by his denunciation of their ill-treatment of the negroes and Indians, and was soon back in Lisbon pleading the cause of the victims. He won his case, and, in 1655, we find him once more at his missionary labors in Brazil, evangelizing the cannibals, translating the catechism into their idioms, travelling over steep mountain ranges and paddling hundreds of miles on the Amazon and its numberless tributaries. Eleven times he visited every mission post on the Maranhon, which meant twenty journeys along the interminable South American rivers, on some of which he had to keep at the oar for a month at a time. It is estimated that he made 15,000 leagues on foot, and advanced 600 leagues farther into the interior of the continent than any of his predecessors. He continued this work till 1661, and then the slave-owners rose against him with greater fury than ever, and sent him a prisoner to Lisbon. He was no longer as welcome at court as previously, for the degenerate Alfonso, who had to be subsequently deposed, was on the throne. In 1665 the Inquisition forbade him to preach, and flung him into a dungeon, where he lay till 1667, when he was released by the new king Pedro II. He then went to Rome, and was welcomed by the Pope, the cardinals, and the General of the Order, Father Oliva.
While at Rome he met Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated her throne in order to become a Catholic. Ranke, in his "History of the Popes," devotes a whole chapter to this extraordinary woman, and she is referred to here merely because of her admiration for Vieira, and also to call attention to the fact that the first priest she spoke to about her conversion was the Jesuit, Antonio Macedo, who was the confessor of Pinto Pereira, the Portuguese ambassador to Sweden. The "Menology" tells us that Macedo did not wear his priestly dress in that country. He was the ambassador's secretary and interpreter, but he attracted the attention of the queen, who remembered no doubt that the Jesuit, Possevin, had appeared in the same court, in the time of John III, disguised as an officer. She finally asked Macedo about it, and he admitted that he was a Jesuit. Then began a series of conversations in Latin, which Christina spoke perfectly, as she did several other languages. She finally told him that she had resolved to become a Catholic, even if she forfeited her crown, and she commissioned him to inform the Sovereign Pontiff of her purpose. To reward Macedo she asked the Pope to make him a bishop, but as he had been a missionary in Africa, the mitre did not appeal to him, and he went back to Lisbon, where he died after sixty-seven years passed in the Society.