Then the conscript fathers assembled, day after day, to discuss the mass of secret reports from every centre, and pass those instructive decrees—forty-eight were issued on this occasion—which tell us so plainly the decay of the original spirit. Ignatius had taught them to seek power and wealth for God: it had proved a dangerous lesson. The Congregation dispersed in June, and Mercurian entered upon his seven years' generalship. The real control was openly entrusted to Father Palmio, the Italian assistant, until Father Manares ousted him, and secured the chief place and the hope of succession. There was, at this, some unedifying language; we shall see presently that Manares, at least, undoubtedly sought the generalship. But the various provinces were now under the command of such able men that the progress of the Society was not retarded. Let us glance at the more significant happenings in the provinces, and then sum up the work of the Society in its first four decades.
In the case of Spain we need note only that the Pope's interference in the election was bitterly resented, and a feeling spread among the fathers which we shall find breaking into the most singular expression under the rule of Acquaviva. In spite of the stern design of Ignatius and the emphatic rule of the Society that the Jesuit was to benumb every patriotic fibre in his heart, and know himself only as a citizen of the city of God, the Spaniards cherished their national pride in an alarming degree. Under the ambitious and masterful PhilipII., who dreamed of world-empire and was willing to include the Jesuits in his diplomatic corps, they prospered and were the most important body in the Society. They were annoyed that the generalship passed out of their hands, and they began to meditate secession from the Roman authorities. When the papal Nuncio died at Madrid in 1577 a memoir written in this sense was found amongst his papers. We shall see later how the feeling developed, and how the war with Rome brought into notice the degenerate character of the Spanish province.
Italian affairs in that decade are chiefly remarkable for a violent quarrel with St. Charles Borromeo at Milan. He had continued for some years to patronise and employ them. Father Adorno remained his confessor; and in 1572 he gave them the Abbey of Braida for a college, and in 1573 entrusted to them the College of Nobles at Milan. They were already in charge of the seminary of the diocese, and the trouble seems to have begun with the transfer of this institution to the Oblates (a religious body founded by Charles) in 1577. Crétineau-Joly explains that the Jesuits were now controlling so many institutions in Milan that they were overworked, and they begged to be relieved of the seminary. He appeals to Giussano, the saint's biographer; but Giussano merely says that Charles "gave the seminary to the Oblates, with the consent of the Jesuits," which is a polite way of saying that they were dismissed. We shall see, in fact, that Charles was convinced that the Jesuits were in a lax and degenerate condition.
In the following year, 1578, the cardinal quarrelled with the Governor of Milan, and the Jesuits divided in allegiance. Adorno and a few others were faithful to Charles, but a courtly and fashionable Jesuit preacher, who was appointed to preach the Lent, attacked and ridiculed the cardinal-archbishop from one of the chief pulpits of his own city, before a crowded audience of wealthy Milanese. This preacher, Mazzarino, uncle of the famous minister, was the confessor and friend of the governor. Charles protested against the unseemly attack, but the Jesuit provincial appointed Mazzarino again to preach the Lent in 1579, and he attacked Charles more virulently than ever. All the less austere ladies of Milan, for whom he made smooth the paths of rectitude, flocked to his chapel, and listened with pleasure to his ridicule of the ascetic prescriptions of their saintly archbishop. Charles drew the attention of the Provincial to the fact that Mazzarino was preaching moral principles of scandalous laxity, and his attacks on the chief clerical authority were very injurious. The Provincial would not chide Mazzarino, and Charles appealed to the General. The only reply of the General was, at the request of a certain countess, to direct Mazzarino to preach all the year round. Charles threatened to suspend the preacher, and he was defied from the pulpit; he threatened to bring his principles to the notice of the Inquisition, and the Jesuits sent a courier to Rome to defend their preacher. Then Charles instructed his Roman agent, Spetiano, to laythe case before the papal court, and Mazzarino was recalled by his General and suspended from preaching for two years by an ecclesiastical tribunal.
This quarrel is of interest for two reasons. In the first place, it illustrates the value of Crétineau-Joly's history of the Jesuits. The French writer ignores the attack in 1577, and says that, as soon as Mazzarino began to misbehave, "the Milan fathers hastened to disapprove of the imprudent orator," and the General recalled him. It is, of course, true that Charles's confessor, Adorno, "disapproved" of his brother Jesuit, but the Mazzarino faction retorted that he was jealous, because Mazzarino had larger audiences for his sermons; and Crétineau-Joly suppresses the fact that the Provincial, and for a time the General, defiantly supported Mazzarino. We know this from Borromeo's letters to his agent.[7]The further interest of the quarrel, which is entirely suppressed by the French historian, is that in these letters Charles passes very severe strictures on the Jesuits as a body. Instead of finding fault with one man only, Mazzarino, he found fault with all except one, his confessor, to whom he remained attached. "I confess," he writes to Spetiano, "that for some time I have felt the Society to be in grave danger of decadence unless a prompt remedy be applied." The Jesuits, he explains, admit clever youths without regard to their character, and they grant extravagant liberties to their literary colleagues. They are inflated by the favour of the nobility and the crowds of wealthy women who flock to lax moralists like Mazzarino. We may also recall here the grave statement of Charles's nephew and successor, Archbishop Frederic Borromeo, who was educated by the Jesuits: a statement repeated,in the most solemn terms, by a writer to whom he made it.
I have enlarged on this quarrel because we have here the rare advantage of an impartial and unimpeachable witness, and we see how serious a ground there is at times, when independent evidence can be found, for reading Jesuit and pro-Jesuit writers with caution. We must not, however, pass to the opposite extreme and conclude that the Italian Jesuits generally were the favourites of ladies who appreciated indulgence in their confessors and preachers. This is the only serious scandal of the Italian province under Mercurian.
In France, as in Spain, the story is one of preparation for the stirring events of the next chapter. The hostile Archbishop of Paris died, and Pierre de Gondi, who succeeded him, was an Italian of the Medici suite, and favourable to the Jesuits. CharlesIX. gave place to HenryII., and the new king chose Auger for his confessor, and gave the Jesuits everything they cared to ask. There was now no question of suppressing their name and privileges in France. A third powerful patron was the Cardinal de Bourbon, who obtained for them a "house of the professed" at Paris, and tried to force the university to incorporate their college. The Parlement and University still made every effort to check their triumphant advance, but they now began to send pupils of their own to graduate in the university and weaken its opposition. Their college in Lorraine was erected into a university, and royal pupils sat at their feet. When the famous Catholic League was formed they flung themselves into its work with great ardour, and we shall see the terrible issue in the next chapter.
Two incidents in the permanent quarrel with the Paris University should be noticed. One of the Jesuits,Maldonat, shocked the professors of the Sorbonne by teaching that the immaculate conception of Mary was a matter of free opinion,[8]and Rome upheld the Jesuit. More interesting is a memoir which the doctors of the Sorbonne submitted to the papal court when, in 1575, Cardinal de Bourbon was trying to secure the incorporation of the Jesuit college. Amongst heavy charges of avarice and of seizing the property of other religious bodies, we find the quaint accusation that the Jesuits taught that souls were delivered from purgatory after ten years of suffering. The point seems academic to the layman, and very consoling to the faithful. What it really meant, in practice, was that the Jesuits claimed that they might, after ten years, divert to other purposes the large funds bequeathed to them to say masses for the dead.
In Belgium the record was still one of trouble and vicissitude. They had, when Alva had "pacified" the province, opened a number of houses, which the townsfolk (as at Antwerp and Liège) threatened to burn. Then, when Don John, Philip's half-brother, was defeated in 1578, the Jesuits refused to take the oath imposed by the States and were expelled from Antwerp and other centres. They began to recover to some extent under the Duke of Parma, but had to witness the secession of the northern provinces and the formation of a new Protestant power, Holland, which was destined to give them trouble. At Louvain they maintained a struggle with the university similar to that at Paris. They at last tripped up the celebrated Michel de Bay (Baius), rector of the university, and sent their brilliant young theologian, Bellarmine, who was then only thirty years old, to enter into a prolonged duel with him. When, at last, they induced Rome to take a seriousview of the errors of Baius, and Father Toledo was sent by the Pope to secure his submission, they began to rise from the lowly position in which the university had kept them.
The Catholics of Austria and Southern Germany continued to oppose and intimidate them in spite of the devoted exertions of Canisius. They were fiercely assailed at Gratz, Prague, Innsprück, and Vienna. The Emperor Maximilian was even induced to forbid their Vienna college to grant degrees or compete in lectures with the university, though the Jesuits soon got the restriction removed. It appears that they announced lectures on the same subjects and at the same hours as those of the university, and, as always, charged no fees. This was one of the chief grievances of the universities, especially as the Jesuits palpably trusted to obtain control of the universities themselves. Another grievance, which we have noticed in the Parisian indictment, is that they somehow acquired the property of older religious orders. One of many instances of this occurs in the present period. They opened a college at Freiburg, and were invited to work in the Swiss cantons. For the beginning of their mission the Pope assigned them the revenues of the abbey of Marsens, and Canisius soon had a centre for attacking Calvinism in Switzerland. The Polish colleges continued to flourish, as we shall presently realise, under King Stephen Bathori.
The most interesting adventure under the rule of Mercurian is the attempt to penetrate Sweden. The principles of the Reformation had been cordially received in Sweden, and it seemed to King JohnIII.that peace could be secured only by some kind of compromise between the old faith and the new. John was, however, married to the sister of the Queen of Poland, and theJesuits, who were sternly forbidden to enter the kingdom, saw in this a means of outwitting the vigilant Protestants. The combination of women and Jesuits was the supreme agency in checking the progress of the Reformation in Europe.
In 1574 an envoy came to Stockholm to convey the compliments of Anne of Poland to her sister Catherine. One could not close the gates against an envoy, though it was known that the fine clothes of the ambassador were a thin disguise of the Polish Jesuit Father Warsevicz, and the secret instructions of the envoy were to correct the liberalism of John and offer him an alliance with Spain. John knew theology and wrangled with the envoy for a week in the palace. The mission was fruitless, and in 1576 John was persuaded to countenance an even more romantic adventure. A young Norwegian presented himself to the Protestant clergy of Stockholm, and said that, having spent some years at southern universities, he would like a place as professor in the new college they were forming. He begged that they would recommend him to the king, and they did, so that he secured the appointment. It was the Jesuit Father Nicolai, who had, as John knew, been sent from Rome with instructions to perpetrate this amazing fraud. Nicolai must certainly have lied to the Protestant authorities about his beliefs, in order to obtain a place as teacher of theology in a Protestant college. When we reflect that he acted on instructions from Rome, and that no Jesuit or pro-Jesuit writer seems to see anything reprehensible in his conduct, we feel that Jesuit diplomacy had already reached a stage which it would be impolite to characterise in plain English.
Nicolai seems to have held his chair of Lutheran theology for a considerable time. There were those who scented heresy in his lectures, but they werepromptly expelled, and Nicolai even became rector of the college. One would give much to have to-day a copy of the Lutheran-Jesuit's lectures. The masterful Possevin was next dispatched, in the quality of Legate, with the Irish Jesuit, William Good, for companion. He was to prevent a union of Sweden and Holland, and to correct the king's errors. Possevin went first to Prague, where he induced the widow of Maximilian to name him her ambassador to Sweden, and then, dressed for the part, with a sword dangling at his side, he boldly entered Stockholm, where Professor Nicolai was still teaching Lutheran theology in his subtle way. The counter-Reformation had different methods from those of Luther. John was willing to return to the faith and enter the Spanish alliance, if Rome would grant the marriage of priests, the mass in Swedish, and other claims of the Reformers. Possevin hastened to Rome, leaving his sword by the way, and stormily pressed the commission of cardinals to grant these concessions. It is (apart from certain remarkable indulgences later on the foreign missions) the only occasion on which a Jesuit pleaded for compromise, but Possevin was ambitious. Failing to obtain the concessions, Possevin hurried to the Duke of Bavaria, the Emperor, and the King of Poland, in order that he might at least be able to offer to John the material alliances he had promised him, if he would break with England and Holland. But he had little to offer, and the Protestants were now alarmed; and Possevin, Good, Warsevicz, and Professor Nicolai were politely ushered from the country.
Of the foreign missions which will enrage us more fully when the Jesuits are firmly established, a few words must suffice. In India the use of the civil power to support their preaching continued to augment the number, and restrain the quality, of the converts. TheJapanese mission made slow progress, and was extinguished in some of the large towns. The gates of China were politely opened to admit a Portuguese legation (containing disguised Jesuits), but, after an interview at Canton, politely closed again by the wary mandarins. The settlement in Brazil was deeply injured by the diseases which European Christians brought to South America, terrifying the natives; and a serious loss was sustained in 1570, when a ship conveying forty Jesuits to Brazil was captured by "Huguenot pirates." They were all slain. Florida, Mexico, and Peru were visited for the first time in this decade, and a few fathers laid the foundations of new missions. On the whole, the missionary record under Borgia and Mercurian does not fulfil the earlier promise.
Mercurian died in the summer of 1580, just forty years after the establishment of the Society. Assuredly a remarkable advance had been made in those four decades. The ten Jesuits had become a formidable army of 5000socii(including novices and lay-brothers), fighting heresy in the boudoirs of queens and the market-places of Germany, educating hundreds of thousands of youths, all over Europe, in a fanatical zeal for the papacy, extending its influence through the laity by means of sodalities and confraternities, pouring out a vast literature, from the blistering pamphlet to the ponderous folio volume, relating to the great religious controversy, wearing the garb of the beggar or the silk of the noble as occasion needed, speaking a hundred tongues, and sending scores of men yearly to lands whence they would never return and where fever or the axe awaited them. They were the backbone of the counter-Reformation, formidable alike by the simple and austere devotion of some, the brilliance and learning of others, and the unscrupulousness of yet others in the service of the Church.And every man, and every movement of every man, was registered in that central bureau at Rome, where four sagacious heads directed the strategy and tactics of this planet-scattered regiment.
Our survey of the growth and evolutions of this spiritual army warns us to avoid generalisations. It is not true that from the start the Jesuits were avaricious, ambitious, and unscrupulous: it is not true that they maintained their spirit untainted for half a century, and then degenerated. No epithet will apply to them as a body, except that they differed, corporately, from all other religious bodies in the diplomatic nature of their action. Every variety of man was found in their ranks: the austere flagellant and the genial courtier, the man who served the poor because they were poor, and the man who served them in order to edify the rich; the man who flung himself with a smile into the arms of death, and the man who loved disguises and the adventurous evasion of death, the saint and the sinner, the peasant, the noble, and the scholar. No uniform stamp effaced their individual characters. The weak or sensual or casuistic degenerated in the first decade: the strong maintained their idealism to the last. But that original tendency to consecrate worldly devices to a high end, to regard the effectiveness rather than the intrinsic propriety of means, to seek wealth and power because they procured speedier success, was running its inevitable course, and from the recommendation of lying in the cause of Christ we shall soon see some of them go on to the condonation of vice and the counsel of crime.
FOOTNOTES:[4]I have previously explained the distinction between simple and solemn vows, and the advantage which the Jesuits had in confining the latter to a chosen few of their body. See p. 30. These "simple" vows are now admitted in other orders, but they were for centuries peculiar to the Jesuits, and were very distasteful to the older orders.[5]It will appear later that Manares was a man of robust conscience, and later incurred the censure of his brethren for improper conduct.[6]I may draw attention to a curious illustration of the difficulty of reaching a verdict on the St. Bartholomew massacre. In the same volume of theCambridge Modern Historywe are told (p. 20) that "GregoryXIII.is said to have expressed dismay," and (p. 285) that he heard the news with "triumphant acclamation." There is surely no serious doubt that the second statement is correct.[7]See a selection in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites(1764), vol. i. pp. 132-159.[8]It did not become a dogma of the Church until 1854.
[4]I have previously explained the distinction between simple and solemn vows, and the advantage which the Jesuits had in confining the latter to a chosen few of their body. See p. 30. These "simple" vows are now admitted in other orders, but they were for centuries peculiar to the Jesuits, and were very distasteful to the older orders.
[4]I have previously explained the distinction between simple and solemn vows, and the advantage which the Jesuits had in confining the latter to a chosen few of their body. See p. 30. These "simple" vows are now admitted in other orders, but they were for centuries peculiar to the Jesuits, and were very distasteful to the older orders.
[5]It will appear later that Manares was a man of robust conscience, and later incurred the censure of his brethren for improper conduct.
[5]It will appear later that Manares was a man of robust conscience, and later incurred the censure of his brethren for improper conduct.
[6]I may draw attention to a curious illustration of the difficulty of reaching a verdict on the St. Bartholomew massacre. In the same volume of theCambridge Modern Historywe are told (p. 20) that "GregoryXIII.is said to have expressed dismay," and (p. 285) that he heard the news with "triumphant acclamation." There is surely no serious doubt that the second statement is correct.
[6]I may draw attention to a curious illustration of the difficulty of reaching a verdict on the St. Bartholomew massacre. In the same volume of theCambridge Modern Historywe are told (p. 20) that "GregoryXIII.is said to have expressed dismay," and (p. 285) that he heard the news with "triumphant acclamation." There is surely no serious doubt that the second statement is correct.
[7]See a selection in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites(1764), vol. i. pp. 132-159.
[7]See a selection in theAnnales de la Société des soi-disans Jésuites(1764), vol. i. pp. 132-159.
[8]It did not become a dogma of the Church until 1854.
[8]It did not become a dogma of the Church until 1854.
CHAPTER V
PROGRESS AND DECAY UNDER ACQUAVIVA
Theolder of the fathers who obeyed the summons to a new election, and converged upon the Eternal City, must have wondered whether it would pass without a fresh exhibition of the very human passions which the occasion so frequently revealed amongst them. Father Oliver Manares had been appointed Vicar-General, and had announced the election for the spring of 1581. We remember Manares as the fortunate discoverer of Huguenot plots at Paris, and then as successfully ousting Father Palmio from the position of chief assistant to Mercurian. He had made his way to the steps of the throne, and the more religious brethren were now startled to find him shamelessly canvassing for votes, in spite of the stern prohibition in their Constitutions. Four of the older fathers were at once appointed to investigate the charge against him. Bobadilla, impetuous and masterful still in his old age, was one of the four, but he expressed his resentment of the charge against his friend so strongly before the inquiry opened that they had, with great difficulty, to remove him from the commission; and, when the commissioners found Manares guilty, he made very sore trouble in the house. In the end Manares was persuaded to forego his right of nomination, and Father Acquaviva was elected.
Claude Acquaviva was one of the youngest of the electors. Though strenuous work had already begunto whiten his dark southern hair, he was only thirty-seven years old; but he was distinguished for his high birth, his great ability, his integrity, and a happy combination of resolution and cold equanimity that recalled Lainez. He was a son of the Neapolitan Duke of Atri, and was destined to rule the Society during thirty-four years of that dangerous period when its desire for wealth and power, in the service of God, led it into the dark ways of political intrigue and the accumulation of earthly treasure. We shall now find the seeds of decay spreading over larger areas and germinating rapidly. We shall witness a singular eruption of the worldly spirit in the Spanish peninsula, and the development of the political Jesuit as he is known in the history of England, which I reserve for a special chapter, and of France.
The first few years of the generalship of Acquaviva were peaceful. A friendly Pope, GregoryXIII., occupied the Roman see, and the Society increased in numbers and prestige. The Gesù, the famous metropolitan church of the Jesuits, was opened by the Pope in 1583; the Gregorian calendar was very largely framed by one of their members, the learned Clavius of Bavaria. But Gregory died in 1585, and Acquaviva prepared for a struggle with the papacy. The stern, despotic SixtusV.had now received the tiara, and all Rome expected him to clip the wings of the soaring Society. Acquaviva thought it would be prudent to disarm the Pope and disavow the thirst for power. He offered to resign control of the Roman seminary. Sixtus refused the offer, and awaited his opportunity; and in the following year, 1586, the flash and roar of the gathering clouds in Spain led him to intervene.
The Spanish fathers had, as I said, looked upon the generalship almost as an hereditary right, and had resented the election of Mercurian and Acquaviva. Butthis feeling is so wholly opposed to the religious ideal of the Society that we at once suspect a serious decay of the character of the Spanish Jesuits, and we find some remarkable evidence of it. The official history of the Society in Spain does not attempt to conceal that under Borgia and Mercurian there had been widespread decadence,[9]and I have shown how this was due to material prosperity and the lack of serious work and heretical neighbours. We have, however, a more singular and ample account of this decadence. One of the most brilliant of the Spanish Jesuits, Mariana, the famous advocate of regicide, was moved to discredit the Roman authorities by showing the corruption into which they had allowed his own province to fall, and hisTratado del Govierno de la Compañia de Jesusgives us a very candid picture of the Spanish houses. The work was, naturally, not published by Mariana. Like so many documents in the Society, it was intended for private circulation in manuscript, but it was found amongst his papers by a bishop whom the king appointed to examine them, and the only ground for the claim of certain Jesuits that it is partly spurious is that they dislike its revelations. The decrees of the Society itself confirm the substance of its charges, and the temper and spirit of the book are quite in keeping with its Jesuit authorship.
It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. Of the 540 Jesuits in Spain 230 are lay-brothers: a circumstance that must be borne in mind when we read that there are so many thousand members of the Society. The lay-brother is merely a servant of the priests, and the enormous proportion of these lay-brothers in Spainmeans that the fathers own large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets (as we learn from the decrees of the Society), and live cheerfully on the income. Mariana does not speak openly of vice—a sufficient proof that the book was not written, even in part, by an anti-Jesuit—but he says that the "enjoyments" of his colleagues are "excessive and scandalous." They further add materially to their incomes by managing the affairs of their penitents; in Valladolid alone there are twelve of these steward chaplains. They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded with debt, yet at Mariana's own house at Toledo the expenditure per head is about £50 a year: a very comfortable sum for the time and place, for a community pledged to poverty. Discipline is thwarted by favouritism and flattery, and the constant spying and reporting cause bitter quarrels in the houses.
This grave account of the Spanish province—sober and convincing, yet grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession—is written solely for the purpose of showing that a distant authority cannot maintain discipline, and the Spanish Jesuits must have local autonomy and less despotic rulers—home-rule and democracy, in a word. This is the note of the remarkable struggle which now opens between the Spaniards and the Italians. Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much as possible away from their native countries; but he made the mistake of removing old and long-settled fathers and substituting for them young men who shared his own ideas, and, in spite of his ideal, he favoured the Italians.
In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied to Acquaviva for permission to quitthe Society. When Acquaviva refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent—a crime from which only the Inquisition could absolve—yet the Provincial Marcenius had absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society. To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret Society.
Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio at Madrid to intervene, and Acquaviva sent a Jesuit to win PhilipII. Philip, however, was quite willing to see the Society reformed, and the Inquisitors went on to arrest other Jesuits and demand further documents. The insurgent Spaniards were now openly demanding that they should have a local commissary, independent of Acquaviva, and the General was, as quickly as possible, removing fathers from Spain and filling their places with foreigners. The Inquisition decreed that no Jesuit was to leave Spain. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy of SixtusV. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if the whole casewere not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of SixtusV., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!" Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard; "Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?"[10]He at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices. Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified—and would die at the death of SixtusV.
Meanwhile the struggle was renewed in Spain. One of the French Jesuits whom Acquaviva had put in place of a rebel proved worse than his predecessor. He asked the opinion of the Inquisition on a letter written by Ignatius himself on obedience, and it was promptly condemned. Acquaviva again had the case transferred and re-tried at Rome, and, although Sixtus spoke some plain unofficial language about the letter, the Roman Inquisition absolved it, and the audacious Father Vincent ended in a papal prison for going on to question the Pope's authority. At the same time an imprudent step on the part of the Society's critics united the Spanish Jesuits with their General and put an end for a time to the struggle. The King appointed a bishop to inquire into the state of all the religiousorders in Spain and deal with their irregularities. Neither the local Jesuits nor the General wanted a "royal visitator" peeping into their wine-cellars, and Acquaviva again appealed to the Pope: not forgetting to remind Sixtus, who supremely abhorred clerical "bastards," that this Bishop of Carthagena fell into that category. At the same time he sent to Madrid the English Jesuit, Father Parsons, who was then, as we shall see, helping Philip to annex England to the Spanish crown. He was allowed to choose his own "visitator," and the Spanish fathers were sufficiently absorbed in this new infliction for the next year or two.
Sixtus had meantime brooded over the singular mass of Jesuit documents submitted to him, and in 1590 he intimated that he was going to make a drastic and comprehensive reform. The name of the Society must be changed; the date of taking the vows and the classification of the members of the Society must be altered; the regulations in regard to "fraternal correction" (the euphemism in the Jesuit rules for spying and tale-bearing) and obedience must be modified; and the directions which virtually compelled novices to leave their property to the Society, while nominally advising them to leave it to the poor, must be abolished. Acquaviva entered upon this desperate struggle—there never was the slightest question of Jesuits yielding to Popes on any point—with that cold and dogged resolution which alone could thwart the fiery energy of SixtusV.At first he tried long and respectful argument with the Pope, and induced the Emperor, the King of Poland, and the Duke of Bavaria to pray that there should be no alteration in the character of the Society. Sixtus smiled grimly, and ordered Cardinal Caraffa to proceed with the revision of their Constitutions. They then fastened on the cardinal, and Sixtus was infuriated to find that Caraffa made no progress. He knew that they were hoping to see him die before he could formulate his reforms, and he entrusted the work to four theologians, whose sentiments he knew. They drew up a formidable indictment of the Constitutions, but it had to pass the Sacred College—and Acquaviva took care that it did not pass.
We need not enter into all the details of this fourth attempt in half a century to evade the most positive and sincere commands of the Pope. It was a race with death, and the most determined and unscrupulous efforts were made by the Jesuits to prevent the Pope from reaching his goal before death overtook him. Sixtus had to punish one Jesuit for making a very pointed eulogy of Cardinal Cajetan, his rival and enemy, and to arrest another for regretting in public that they had not a Gregory on the throne in such troubled times. The dying despot fiercely concentrated his sinking energy on his last task. When Bellarmine's new bookDe Summi Pontificis Potestateappeared, he put it on the Index, although he liked Bellarmine, and the book really magnified the papal power so much that it was afterwards condemned as seditious at Paris. As the cardinals still thwarted him, he sent a stern personal order to Acquaviva to change the name of his Society. He was not far from death, but the General was told that there could be no more shiftiness; he might, however, ask for the change instead of having it imposed on him. He signed the petition and the Pope drew up his decree. He died before he could publish it.
There is no serious ground for the faint rumour that the Jesuits poisoned SixtusV.His death was foreseen by everybody, and the Jesuits knew from experience that his decree would die with him. But Roman gossipfound the coincidence too romantic to let it pass. Acquaviva had ordered anovena(nine days of prayer) to be said for Sixtus in the Jesuit houses when his illness was announced. The bell was ringing for Vespers on the ninth day when the aged Pope passed away; and for many a year afterwards it was a grim, half-serious joke of the Romans to wonder, when they heard the Jesuit Vesper-bell, whether it rang out the life of another Pope.
After the two-week rule of UrbanVII., GregoryXIV.came to the throne and restored the tranquillity of Acquaviva and his colleagues. The title of their Society was solemnly confirmed, and the subsidies of their colleges were again granted. But Gregory had a brief reign, his successor passed even more quickly from the papal throne, and at the beginning of 1592 ClementVIII.succeeded to the tiara. It was generally believed that Clement disliked Acquaviva, and the rebels in Spain returned to the attack upon him. Spain and Portugal, which were still united under the Spanish crown, were equally united in the opposition to the Roman authorities. During the years of friction with SixtusV.the Spanish fathers Acosta and Carillo and the Portuguese fathers Goelho and Carvalho had maintained and led the agitation against Acquaviva, and it was known that they had the support of abler men like Mariana and the sympathy of the most distinguished and powerful Jesuit at Rome, Toledo, who was made a cardinal by Clement. Acquaviva had not relaxed in his measures against this powerful coalition. He won at least the silence of Toledo; he flattered and tried to disarm Acosta, who was too great a favourite of Philip to be punished; he expelled some of the less influential leaders from the Society, and brought others to Rome. Now, at the last moment, the accession of Clement seemed to havewrested the victory from his hands, and the Spaniards took courage.
Acosta rejected the General's blandishments and persuaded Philip to send him to Rome with a request that the new Pope would summon a General Congregation of the Society and remove Acquaviva from Rome during its sittings. There was at the time a quarrel between the Dukes of Parma and Mantua, and Clement gracefully deputed Acquaviva to go to the north and reconcile them. He dare not refuse the insidious appointment, but he left behind him a trusted secretary, and it was not long before he learned that Clement was about to summon a General Congregation, to which Acquaviva was strongly opposed. He reported that his mission was futile and hopeless; Clement, still gracefully, advised him to be patient, and the strong man had to remain inactive in the north while the Spaniards carried their point. He returned to find Acosta at Rome and a General Congregation—"for the purpose of strengthening the Society and reducing certain provinces to tranquillity"—announced for November. In other words, it was to be a trial of strength between Acosta and Acquaviva, between Spain and Italy, and each party prepared strenuously for the tug of war; while Rome frivolously applauded the rival children of Ignatius and the Pope smilingly blessed the arena.
Just at that time Toledo received the red hat, and the Spaniards begged the Pope to name "a cardinal" (Toledo) to preside at the Congregation. He refused; but Acquaviva was defeated in turn when he tried to expel Acosta from the professed house and have him excluded from the forthcoming Congregation. Not only Rome, but the Jesuits scattered over Europe, now joined in the feverish struggle. Memorials praying for the reform of the Society and the restriction of theGeneral's power began to reach the Pope from provincial Jesuits; counter-memorials followed from the partisans of Acquaviva. In fine, Acquaviva triumphed, with certain concessions. The privileges of the Society which offended the Spanish Inquisition were to be abandoned in the Peninsula; and Acquaviva was to change his Assistants, and hold a Congregation, every six years (a command which, of course, "died with the Pope"). There was the customary review of the state of the Society and passing of admirable decrees, and the fathers returned to their provinces. Acquaviva then made a final and drastic clearance of the rebels, and many were expelled. They were still powerful enough to induce the Pope to nominate Acquaviva archbishop of his native city, but he eluded even this plot. They then persuaded the Pope that it was expedient for Acquaviva to visit Spain and see the province with his own eyes. The General clearly believed, and it is probable enough, that something like incarceration awaited him in Spain, and he made a desperate struggle to evade the Pope's order. He was saved by the death of the Pope, in 1605, and for several years afterwards we still find him struggling with the rebellious Spaniards.
This remarkable conflict, within the Society and with the Pope, which I take chiefly from the Jesuit Jouvency, the continuer of the official "Historia Societatis," well illustrates how dim the apostolic fire had become in one of the largest provinces of the Society; how its flame was choked and corrupted by material prosperity. When we turn to France and to England we have an equally valuable illustration of the way in which the command to seek power, for the glory of God, evolves what is known as the political Jesuit. There is no intrinsic reason that I can see why a priest should not seek political influence on behalf of religious interests.Assuredly in the sixteenth century there was no clean division of the religious and political spheres. But the complaint against the Jesuits is that their authorities ostentatiously forbid political action, yet permit and encourage their subjects secretly to pursue it, and even in ways that are unworthy of religious ideals; that, in short, the Jesuit approaches the field under the white flag of political neutrality, employs weapons which are condemned in civilised warfare, and then denies that he interfered. In reviewing forty years of their life in France we have an excellent opportunity of examining this charge.
When we last turned away from France, the Catholic League was just beginning to arouse passion in the country and the Jesuits were taking an active part in its work. The historical situation may be recalled in a few words. The children of that abominable type of feminine politician, Catherine de Medici, were perishing ingloriously. HenryIII.still feebly occupied the throne, but it was a question how long he would, under the guidance of his Jesuit confessor Auger, continue to entertain Paris with his alternating fits of debauch and melodramatic penitence; and the legitimate heir to the throne was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholics were naturally alarmed and formed the League to "protect their interests"; its specific aim was, as every man in France knew, to secure the throne for the Catholic Henry of Guise.
Here was a situation entirely to the taste of the more ardent and adventurous of the Jesuits, and (apart from the inevitable few who favoured Philip of Spain) they marched valiantly under the banners of the League, and fluttered about the Catholic courts of Europe in the interest of Guise. The Provincial, Claude Matthieu, earned the name of the "Courier of the League" fromhis many journeys in support of it. Father Henri Sammier traversed Italy and Spain, and penetrated Germany and England, to further its aim. He had a large wardrobe of disguises, which he wore with the grace of an actor, and he is said by the contemporary lawyer Pasquier to have been as familiar with dice and cards as with his breviary. Edmund Hay, the Scottish Jesuit and tender champion of Mary Stuart, lent his fervent aid to the cause. Father Auger, however, was not an ardent Leaguer, and he made an effort to silence his younger colleagues. He had persuaded HenryIII.to join the League, lest the League should not be inclined to wait for the young king's natural death, but he rightly distrusted Guise. It must not be supposed that he cherished a more austere standard of Jesuit duty than the others, since his royal penitent was notorious for his licentious conduct, his morbid love of jewels and of feminine clothes, and the utter degradation of his real gifts. The fact is that he saw political rivals in Matthieu and Sammier, with their zeal for Guise, and Parsons and others, with their attachment to Philip of Spain. He complained to Acquaviva, and the General, feeling that such political work should not be done openly but through laymen controlled by the Jesuits, supported him. After a prolonged struggle Acquaviva deposed Matthieu and removed him to Italy, transferred the gifted Sammier and his wardrobe to Belgium, and then turned on Auger himself. After another severe struggle he dislodged Auger from the court. Jesuits are sometimes very lively "corpses" when their superiors wish to move them.
This, however, was in the main a personal quarrel. Odon Pigenat, the new Provincial, and a score of other fathers were ardent Leaguers. The Jesuit house at Paris was still used for the secret meetings of theLeague, and the "Committee of Catholic Safety" was inspired by Pigenat. The French apologist does not question their enthusiastic share in the League's work, and no one questions that the aim of the League was to prevent the accession of the legitimate heir to the throne. Indeed, at the next dramatic turn of French affairs all this was made plain to everybody.
In 1588 Guise was invited to Paris and acclaimed there with such wild rejoicing that HenryIII.fled to Blois, and shortly afterwards Guise and his cardinal-brother were invited to Blois and foully murdered there by Henry. The League now shook its banners in the breeze, and Henry was execrated from a hundred pulpits. When he went on to defy the Pope and form an alliance with Henry of Navarre, who advanced rapidly on Paris, Catholic feeling rose to a fanatical pitch, and HenryIII.in turn was assassinated by the Dominican monk Jacques Clément. The Jesuits were assuredly not the only preachers to applaud this murder, but they were amongst the first to perceive, and the loudest to declare, that if a king may be dispatched by private hand for a crime, he may certainly be removed when he meditates the far graver misdeed of plunging a nation into heresy. Father Commolet, the superior of the Jesuit house at Paris and a distinguished preacher, called from his pulpit for "a second Ehud" to remove Henry of Navarre. Father Mariana, who shortly afterwards wrote his famousDe Rege, hailed the assassin as "the eternal glory of France" and spoke of this "memorable spectacle, calculated to teach princes that godless enterprises do not go unpunished."
It has been said on behalf of the Jesuits that even their old enemy the Sorbonne joined in the general rejoicing over the assassination of HenryIII., but those who make the point forget or ignore that for severalyears past the Jesuits had been sending pupils to the university in order gradually to permeate its faculties. It was no longer the distinct anti-Jesuit body which we have met in earlier years. Nor is there any need to discuss the abstract question whether the Jesuits taught tyrannicide. Crétineau-Joly himself quotes fourteen Jesuit theologians of the time who permitted the assassination of kings, to say nothing of more or less obscure writers, and we may be sure that the politicians of the Society were not more scrupulous than their theologians on the point. The well-known work of Mariana to which I have referred,De Rege et Regis Institutione(1599), was authorised for publication by the Jesuit authorities, and it was not until the assassination of HenryIV.in 1610 that Acquaviva, anxious to save the French Jesuits from expulsion, forbade his subjects to teach the dangerous doctrine. Even then he wrote at first to the French Jesuits alone, and it was only when the cry of indignation was echoed in other countries that he made the order general. In fine, his general order was so ambiguous that even a less supple politician than a Jesuit could find his way through it. It condemned the doctrine that "any person, on any pretext whatever, may kill kings and princes"; which leaves it open to the casuist to conclude thatcertainpersons may do it forcertainreasons.[11]
Henry of Navarre invested Paris, and it is not questioned that the Jesuits were amongst the most ardent advocates of resistance to him. In the later trial before Parlement, which we shall consider, they admitted that the crown-jewels were deposited in their house during the siege, and that the chiefs of the League met there. A curious incident of the siege is worth quoting. Food became painfully scarce, and half-famished citizensstruggled over the possession of cats and rats, but the inmates of the religious houses remained sleek and comfortable. The civic authorities ordered an inspection of their houses, and it is admitted by their apologist that the Jesuits tried to obtain exemption from this search. When the authorities insisted, a rich store of food was found in their house. Their fervour in the popular cause, however, was enough to outweigh this unpleasant discovery, and they continued to thunder against the heretic. The Duke of Mayenne was now the Catholic candidate for the throne, though a considerable number of the Jesuits now looked to Philip of Spain. He was to be, as in England, the "protector of the faith"—until it was safe for him to annex the country to his swollen dominions. SixtusV., however, by no means shared this Jesuit and Spanish ideal of making Philip the head of a vast world-power, and he began to negotiate with Henry, whose forces were gaining ground. Then Sixtus died, and the accession of a pro-Spanish Pope gave fresh energy to the League. But Paris was weary of the siege, and, when Henry prudently announced that he was about to make a serious study of the evidences for the Catholic faith, the opposition collapsed. The Jesuits were amongst the last in Paris to fan the dying embers of the League, and when at length, in March 1594, Henry entered Paris and received the crown, they (with the Capuchins and Carthusians) refused to submit until the Pope had absolved him.
But they very soon parted company with the less nimble-witted Capuchins and the cloistered Carthusians, and the next page of their story in France is not without humour. Henry's politic scrutiny of the Catholic creed had, of course, led to his "conversion," but the Pope had a sufficient decency of feeling to distrust soopportune and profitable a change of creed, and he coldly rebuffed the genial monarch. When Henry sent the Duke de Nevers to Rome to plead his cause with the Pope, Clement ordered the Jesuit Possevin to intercept him in Italy and say that the Pope refused to see him. We remember Possevin as the ingenious and accommodating Legate to the Swedes, and we shall see other proofs of his diplomatic ability. With an audacity which must almost be without parallel in the chronicle of papal diplomacy he did the exact opposite of what the Pope had commanded; he encouraged de Nevers to see the Pope, and then fled before the stormy anger of Clement and the Spaniards. It was the first service rendered to Henry by a Jesuit, and was quickly followed by other useful services. They had perceived the strength of Henry and reversed their policy. The Jesuit-Cardinal Toledo, although a Spaniard, intervened in Henry's favour, and the head of the Jesuit house at Paris, Commolet—the preacher who had urged the assassination of Henry—came to Rome to say that he and his colleagues were now convinced of the King's sincerity and begged the Pope to yield.
This change of front was opportune. Although the hostility of the university to the Jesuits had been enfeebled by the penetration of Jesuit pupils into the theological faculty, it still, as a body, hated the Society, and its leaders felt that they might take some advantage of the stubborn resistance to Henry. In April the university begged the Parlement to expel the Jesuits from the kingdom. Another great debate, in which the anti-Jesuit lawyers of Paris battered the Society and flung at it all the charges that could be found in Europe, entertained the sympathetic citizens. Arnauld, who was now in the field, estimated the total yearly income of the Jesuits at more than two millionlivres; he saidthat in France alone they had, in a few years, secured an income of two hundred thousandlivresa year, and he eloquently denounced their interference in politics. The Jesuits made the remarkable defence that they had only mingled in the League in order to moderate its ardour, that they had no unpatriotic attachment to Spain, and that they would scrupulously avoid politics for the future. Henry permitted them to remain. A short time before (August 1593) Barrière had attempted to assassinate him, and, as Barrière had had a Jesuit confessor, it was suggested that the Jesuits had inspired him. Henry said that, on the contrary, it was the Jesuits who had warned him of the plot. A fuller knowledge of this warning would be extremely interesting, but we have no evidence of it beyond Henry's blunt declaration at a later date. The Jesuits were to remain, to avoid politics, and, as Henry had previously decreed, to destroy all literature concerning the League and the past turbulence.
On 27th December of that year, 1594, Jean Chastel attempted to assassinate Henry, and a furious storm burst upon the Jesuits. Two undisputed facts stand out clearly from the prolonged controversy that followed this attempt; Chastel had been educated at the Jesuit college before going to the university (he was nineteen years old), and he had conferred with his former professor, Father Guéret, a few days before the attempt. This is by no means satisfactory evidence of the complicity of the Jesuits, but another piece of evidence, of a very inflammatory nature, was put before the court. The authorities had raided the Jesuit college and found in the rector's room a quantity of the League literature which Henry had rigorously commanded to be destroyed. In particular, there were papers in the writing of the rector, Father Guignard, which cast the most violent abuse on Henry and demanded his death. They hadbeen written five years before, but the retention of them was considered a very serious sign of the hidden feeling of the Jesuits. We may admit that the court still went beyond the evidence in condemning the Jesuits. Guignard was executed, Guéret tortured, and all members of the Society were ordered to quit France within three days. On 8th January thirty-seven Jesuits set out sadly for Lorraine, and from the proceeds of their confiscated property a large stone pyramid, bearing the sentence against the "pernicious sect," was erected at Paris.
This sudden fall from their proud position was the price of political action, but Henry was not in a position, and indeed not of a character, to sustain the sentence, and the Jesuits at once began to struggle for recall. Within ten years the hated pyramid was demolished, and the Jesuits had regained their prestige. They had never entirely quitted France. Some put off their cassocks and became, in appearance, "lay" teachers of the young; some were sheltered by the local Parlements. The formal reconciliation of Henry with the Papacy followed, and the Pope urged him to recall the Jesuits. He pleaded again when he had negotiated for Henry a peace with Philip of Spain, but the Parlement stoutly maintained its decree, and Henry advised them to wait. Then the Pope obliged Henry by annulling his marriage, and the watchful Acquaviva stood again in the shadow of the papal throne. Father Maggio was sent, in the suite of the Archbishop of Arles, to win the King. They knew Henry, and shrewdly chose an envoy who could adopt the broad wit which Henry loved as easily as Possevin or Parsons could wear a sword, or Ricci a pigtail. "Sire," said Maggio to the bluff King, when the affair dragged, "you are slower than women, for they bear their fruit only nine months." "Quite true,Father Maggio," said Henry, "but kings are not delivered as easily as women." It was the way to win HenryIV., and he was won, but public feeling was still too hostile to the Jesuits. In 1603 their opportunity came. The Huguenots had been so imprudent as to abuse the Pope, and the Jesuits must be restored for the Pope's consolation; also, there was a new queen, Marie de Medici, and an amiable Father Coton winning influence over her. And at the beginning of 1604 the Parlement sullenly registered the decree for the readmission of the Jesuits, and the fathers all swore a sonorous oath of loyalty to the King "without mental reservation," as the decree ran; no other body of men ever needed to be insulted with such a clause.
The remaining years, down to the assassination of Henry in 1610, mark the rapid recovery of the Society. Father Coton was royal preacher and confessor, and obtained such influence that, when the King was deaf to their prayers or protests, men said that Henry "had cotton in his ears"; and the fusillade of pamphlets and counter-pamphlets—witty, fierce, and gross on both sides—again enlivened Paris. They raised more houses than they had ever had before, and got admission into Protestant Béarn and the Canadian mission. There was hardly a more generous benefactor to the Society in Europe than Henry, though we may take the word of Richelieu that he distrusted them, as a body, and acted from policy. At length Henry betrayed the real shallowness of their influence on him, and began to prepare for war with Spain; and on 14th May 1610 he fell by the hand of a Catholic fanatic.
The question whether the Jesuits were implicated in the crime of Ravaillac is one of the hundred almost insoluble problems of their history. On this occasion, indeed, it is exceptionally difficult to reach a confidentverdict, because an entirely pro-Spanish and pro-Jesuit régime was set up by the death of Henry, and inconvenient testimony could easily be suppressed. It seems to me that a consideration of great importance is generally overlooked in the discussion of these problems. When the evidence is scanty or obscure, we give the Jesuits "the benefit of the doubt," as if we were arraigning them for something they regarded as a crime. This is a false attitude, of which they take full advantage. Crétineau-Joly quotes a dozen distinguished theologians of the time who taught that it was just and proper to remove a monarch whose rule was gravely injurious, and hardly a single eminent theologian who taught the contrary. We have merely to suppose that the Jesuit fathers were divided in anything like the same proportion, and we see at once that there must have been—and we know that there were—numbers of Jesuits in every province who would regard the assassination of a king who threatened the faith in his country as a quite moral and meritorious deed. Mariana's claim that Jacques Clément, the murderer of HenryIII., was "the eternal glory of France" was echoed by thousands of his colleagues. It seems to me very material to bear this in mind in all these cases of assassination. The attitude of their apologists is singular: they admit that the Jesuits as a body regarded the assassination of kings who menaced the faith as a just and proper action, yet are remarkably eager to prove that the Jesuits never acted on their belief. On Jesuit principles the murder of HenryIV.was not a crime.
We must, on the other hand, say that the evidence of Jesuit complicity with Ravaillac is unsatisfactory, in spite of Michelet's spirited reliance on it. A certain Mme d'Escoman asserted that she overheard the Duke d'Épernon telling the plot to Henry's former lover, theMarquise de Verneuil, and that she revealed it to the Jesuit superior in good time to warn Henry; a soldier named Dujardin then told that he had seen Ravaillac in the service of Épernon at Naples, and that the Jesuits of that city had urged him (Dujardin) to enter the plot. Both these witnesses were of low moral character, and had a prospect of gaining by their revelations; we must therefore refrain from basing a verdict on their evidence. A recent French student of the subject[12]has concluded that Épernon and others were really plotting to take the life of Henry, but that Ravaillac committed the crime on his own initiative, and that the Jesuits were not in either plot, though it may be true that Mme d'Escoman warned them of Épernon's plot. This ingenious, but not wholly convincing, suggestion explains how Ravaillac could, with his dying breath and under threat of damnation, swear that he had no accomplices, but it really leaves open the question of the guilt of the Jesuits. The witnesses are of too low a character for us to decide whether they tell the truth or no. It is suspicious that Father Coton visited Ravaillac in jail and warned him "not to bring trouble on good people" by his statements, as we know on the high authority of d'Estoile.
These witnesses only came forward with their stories at a later date, but Paris had already turned with fierce indignation upon the Society. Although the doctrine of tyrannicide may have been taught before the Society was established, it was chiefly through the more explicit and general teaching of the Jesuits that it became a popular conviction among the general body of the faithful and began to inflame the brains of fanatics. Mariana's book was burned by order of the Parlement, in spite of the effort of the Jesuits to save it; they did succeed in getting a reference to the Jesuit character of the authorsuppressed in the indictment, and in preventing the works of Bellarmine, Becanus, and others of their theologians from being condemned. They had the zealous protection of Marie de Medici, and the hostility to them had to expend itself in a shower of witty and virulent pamphlets. Father Coton, especially, was violently assailed. The indulgence with which he had regarded the notorious amours of his royal penitent was said to be quite natural in a man who had tender relations of his own. The Jesuits continued to advance in spite of this hostility. Father de Suffren guided the conscience of Mary herself; Father Coton and Father Marguestana directed her son (LouisXIII.) and her daughter in the ways of virtue and political ignorance. There we may leave the Jesuits of France until Richelieu comes to disturb their mischievous pro-Spanish policy.
When we pass to the Netherlands we have again to consider a grave accusation of complicity in a design to assassinate. The Netherlands were now formally divided into Catholic Belgium and Protestant Holland, and the Dutch were eager to prevent the hated Jesuits from entering the country. A few succeeded in crossing the frontier and ministering, in disguise, to the remaining Catholics. The kind of activity they pursued will be understood when we have followed the similar labours of the Jesuits in England. In 1598, however, a Belgian was arrested at Leyden for a design on the life of Maurice of Nassau, and there is the customary controversy in regard to the complicity of the Jesuits.
Peter Panne was a cooper of Ypres, a restless and, apparently, a rather disreputable character. His method of seeking the life of the Dutch prince was singularly futile, and he made a lengthy and circumstantial "confession," inwhich he accused the Jesuits of Douai of egging him to commit the murder. The assassin of William of Orange in 1568 had accused a Jesuit confessor, and it was natural that the Dutch should again expect to hear of Jesuit complicity. His story was therefore implicitly believed in Holland, and wherever the Jesuits were detested; and the laws against them were made more stringent. In the following year, however, Father Coster undertook the defence of his colleagues, and their apologists maintain that he has completely demolished the charge.[13]To the impartial student the case is one of mere affirmation and denial, without very safe ground for judgment. Coster relies upon a number of reports issued by small legal and civic authorities in Belgium, who, at the request of the Jesuits, examined many witnesses, including Panne's wife and others named by him. These witnesses flatly denied the story told by Panne of his and their movements, and the unofficial judges then drew up statements to the effect that the Jesuits were innocent. At first sight it would seem that we ought at once to prefer the testimony of these numerous witnesses to that of Panne; but when we reflect on the Jesuit doctrine of mental reservation, we must admit that the word of these witnesses, provided by the Jesuits, is not to be taken at its superficial value. According to the Jesuit theologians, witnesses might give absolutely false answers, and confirm them by the most sacred oaths, to judges or others, if they felt that the inquirer had no right to learn the truth from them. In the case of Panne's wife, for instance, the Jesuit would most certainly decide that she would be justified in denying, on oath, that she had ever spoken to her husband about the projected murder, even if itwere true that, as Panne said, she urged him to do it. In the next chapter we shall find the English Father Gerard acting on this well-known Jesuit principle. We cannot, therefore, attach any importance to these denials. And when Father Coster goes on to prove, or assert, that Panne was a doubtful Catholic and an unscrupulous fellow, he seems to overreach himself. Why should such a man seek to do the work of a Catholic fanatic at the risk of his life? Clearly, only because some one offered him payment. Either the gravest legal tribunal in Holland paid him to lie, or else his story gives the only plausible explanation of his conduct. It is more natural to suppose that the Jesuits acted on their known principles of regicide and mental reservation than that the Dutch acted in the most flagrant violation of their principles; and the mere fact of an indifferent Catholic risking his life to kill an heretical prince suggests this view.
In Belgium the Jesuits recovered all the ground they had lost in the religious wars, and at length secured an unassailable legal existence. At this period we are at every step observing the collusion of the Jesuits with PhilipII.of Spain, and we have still to see how they helped him in his effort to annex England. He was not ungrateful, and he definitely overrode the prejudice of the Flemings and legally established the Jesuits in Belgium (1584). They at once became so bold that we find the Governor of Luxemburg levying taxes on the citizens for the erection of Jesuit houses: a project which caused such an outbreak of anger that they had to retreat from the province. The University of Louvain continued to disdain and assail them, but their great victory in securing the condemnation of the Chancellor of the University, Michel de Bay, had given them much prestige. Baius endeavoured to recover bydenouncing to Rome their theologian Lessius; but his attempt failed, and the Jesuits renewed their effort to capture or displace the university.[14]
The record of the Germanic provinces is chiefly remarkable for the extension into Poland and an attempt to penetrate Russia. The Jesuits had entered Poland under Stephen Bathori, and made such progress in twenty years that men spoke bitterly of their "fortified palaces," and saw with regret that nearly the whole education of the nobility was in their hands. In one college (Pultusk) they boasted that they had four hundred youths of noble birth. In 1581 the Poles were bringing to a victorious close their long war with Russia, and the Tsar appealed for the mediation of the Pope. It was an auspicious opportunity for re-opening the question of the union of the Latin and Greek Churches, and the adventurous Father Possevin (the former Legate to Sweden) was sent as Legate. He learned on the way from Bathori that the Poles would drive a hard bargain, and felt that this strengthened his position with regard to Russia. He was received with great honour in Russia, and the Tsar gave many privileges to Catholics, but the war concluded at length without a word of union. It is clear that he then used his influence to induce the Russians to yield, so that his Society might at least have the gratitude of the Poles. He remained for a long time at Moscow, but made no progress, and the Pope recalled him to crush heresy in Transylvania. He was afterwards mediator between Germany and Poland. Possevin had considerable diplomatic ability, though he was apt to love melodramatic situations, like so many of the political Jesuits. Acquaviva at last resented hisflagrant political activity, and compelled him to settle as a teacher at Padua.
Stephen Bathori was succeeded in 1586 by a pupil of the Jesuits, SigismundIII., and their power became greater than ever, and provoked a strong reaction. Their conduct in Transylvania, where most of the nobles were still Protestant, caused them to be expelled from that province by the Diet, and many nobles of the Polish Diet endeavoured to have them expelled from the whole kingdom. They were bitterly accused of intriguing to get possession of the property of Protestants, and even of rival religious orders. At Dantzic they were compelled to return the property of a community of nuns. The nobles chiefly resented their interference in politics and control of education, and penned some fiery indictments of what they called their "machinations." An edict of the Diet for the year 1607 is not flattering to them.
In the same period they overran the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, Bohemia, Baden, and most of the south-German States. Throughout the whole Germanic world their procedure was of much the same character. A few worthy and powerful men like Canisius would secure the opening of the doors to the Society, and a host of less religious fathers would then intrigue for funds to build colleges and educate the young, and organise the Catholic laity in enthusiastic confraternities or sodalities. Partly by these methods, but very largely by their great skill in securing the ear of princes, they not only greatly strengthened the surviving Catholic populations, but they undoubtedly regained much territory from the Reformers. They opposed a positive and unvarying creed to the conflicting doctrines of the Protestants, and the religious life they themselves exhibited had none of the grossness which had done so much to provoke theReformation. Here and there, however, they clearly resorted to unworthy means to secure property or influence, and were heatedly assailed. A very curious series of outbreaks against them occurred in 1584. They boasted of the share their Father Clavius had had in the reform of the calendar; but, when it came to the time of Carnival and Lent, and later of Christmas, the distracted citizens were sometimes defrauded of their traditional pleasures by the alteration of the calendar, and took their revenge on the windows of the Jesuits.
The only notable experience of the Society in Italy was the expulsion of the fathers from Venice. A feeling of irritation against them had lingered in the Republic since their inauspicious entry under Ignatius, and of late years the French and Spanish strictures on them had found very ominous echoes in Venice. In the early years of the seventeenth century this feeling was inflamed by the attitude of the Jesuits in siding with the Pope against the civic authorities. The secular authorities had been so indignant at the discovery of certain brutal crimes committed by some of the clergy that, in spite of ecclesiastical privileges, they proceeded against the criminals. The quarrel with Rome which followed ended in the Pope placing Venice under an interdict, and the great body of the clergy of Venice patriotically ignored the interdict and continued to minister to the citizens. The Jesuits were in a painful dilemma. They made a futile attempt to evade it by closing their public churches, but keeping their houses open, and the Council banished them from the city. A crowd of citizens assembled on the banks of the canal when the gondolas, bearing the condemned fathers, left the city, and they do not attempt to represent it as a crowd weeping for their departure. "Andein mal' hora" was the scornful reply made to one of their number who appealed to the people. Their very valuable property was confiscated, and they would not re-enter Venice for half a century.
We might admire the Jesuits at least for their courageous adherence to their own principles in these experiences of the year 1606, and we cannot regard it as other than natural that they should attempt to drag the rest of the clergy into sharing their attitude. But the indictment of them which the Venetian Senate made after their departure goes further than this. They were accused of grave intrigue in the quarrel between Rome and the Republic, and it was said that they abused their position as confessors to the noble ladies of Venice to learn the secrets of the Senate and frustrate its aims. Venice, it will be remembered, took a particular pride in the secrecy of its political life, and it especially distrusted so notoriously pro-Spanish a body as the Jesuits. These charges we cannot, of course, control, but they are consonant with the ordinary action of the Society. It was decreed that they be banished for ever; that if ever the question of recalling them were raised, this indictment must be read again in the Council of Ten, and that any citizen who held communication with the Jesuits should be sent to the galleys. The question of recalling them was, of course, raised at once. HenryIV.was induced to plead their cause at Venice, while Spain used all its power to prevent a reconciliation of the Papacy and the Republic except on condition that the Society be restored. So convinced were the Venetians of the anti-patriotic action of the Jesuits that they peremptorily refused to yield, and Acquaviva had to resign himself to defeat.