FOOTNOTES:[22]It may be well to state that no theologian ever said, in so many words: "The end justifies the means." The nearest approach is, perhaps, the saying of the Jesuit Busenbaum—"To him to whom the end is lawful, the means also is lawful."[23]He joined the Society afterwards, in 1624, and was arrested (on a Catholic denunciation) and executed in 1628. This section of the French historian's work is particularly inaccurate and fantastic. See Father Foley'sRecords, ii. p. 32, for Arrowsmith.[24]J. Pollock,The Popish Plot, 1903. For a desperate defence of the Catholic position, in opposition to Mr. Pollock, see A. Marks,Who Killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey?1905.[25]As the letter is inconvenient, Crétineau-Joly suggests that it was forged. But it is admitted by the Jesuit Father Foley, without demur, in hisRecords.
[22]It may be well to state that no theologian ever said, in so many words: "The end justifies the means." The nearest approach is, perhaps, the saying of the Jesuit Busenbaum—"To him to whom the end is lawful, the means also is lawful."
[22]It may be well to state that no theologian ever said, in so many words: "The end justifies the means." The nearest approach is, perhaps, the saying of the Jesuit Busenbaum—
"To him to whom the end is lawful, the means also is lawful."
[23]He joined the Society afterwards, in 1624, and was arrested (on a Catholic denunciation) and executed in 1628. This section of the French historian's work is particularly inaccurate and fantastic. See Father Foley'sRecords, ii. p. 32, for Arrowsmith.
[23]He joined the Society afterwards, in 1624, and was arrested (on a Catholic denunciation) and executed in 1628. This section of the French historian's work is particularly inaccurate and fantastic. See Father Foley'sRecords, ii. p. 32, for Arrowsmith.
[24]J. Pollock,The Popish Plot, 1903. For a desperate defence of the Catholic position, in opposition to Mr. Pollock, see A. Marks,Who Killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey?1905.
[24]J. Pollock,The Popish Plot, 1903. For a desperate defence of the Catholic position, in opposition to Mr. Pollock, see A. Marks,Who Killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey?1905.
[25]As the letter is inconvenient, Crétineau-Joly suggests that it was forged. But it is admitted by the Jesuit Father Foley, without demur, in hisRecords.
[25]As the letter is inconvenient, Crétineau-Joly suggests that it was forged. But it is admitted by the Jesuit Father Foley, without demur, in hisRecords.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRUGGLE WITH THE JANSENISTS
Thestory of the Jesuits in France from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century is rich in material for the interpretation of their character. We find every conceivable type of Jesuit rising to prominence at some period in the long chronicle. While a Father François Régis or a Julien Manvir sustains the finest traditions of the Society by a splendid expenditure of a noble character in the service of the squalid peasantry, his colleagues smile indulgently upon the perfumed vices of nobles and princes, enter into the most unscrupulous intrigues for the destruction of their theological opponents, and encourage LouisXIV.in the belief that he may do penance for his sins on the backs of the Jansenists and Protestants. While, during a whole generation, they direct the fingers of the Pope in virtue of their supreme and peculiar zeal for his authority, they, in the next generation, secure the praise of the Parlement and the gratitude of the court by a most extraordinary intrigue against the Papacy. In the new-built palace of Versailles they obtain a paramount influence over the greatest autocrat of modern history; they fill the Gallican Church with prelates who will obey their commands; they crush Protestantism in France; and they seem to have almost attained the great ideal of their Society—the control of the courtswhich control the earth. And within another generation their varied enemies unite and drive them ignominiously from the country.
This singular history centres, for the greater part of the time, on the struggle between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the origin of which may be briefly recalled. I have in earlier chapters referred to the theological victory of the Jesuits over Michel de Bay at Louvain, and to the fierce and protracted struggle they had with the Dominican theologians in Spain and Italy. It may be remembered that this furious struggle as to the real relations of divine grace and the human will had to be suppressed by the Papacy, and all further controversy on the subject was forbidden. When therefore, in the thirties of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits heard that a certain brilliant and virtuousabbéat Paris and a learned theologian of Belgium were plotting to introduce a new work on the subject, they watched them with care.
Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, or theabbéde St. Cyran, was an energetic Basque who had finished his theological studies at Louvain University. There he had become intimate with a Belgian student named Jansen, who had views, opposed to those of the Jesuits, on the action of grace. St. Cyran, returning to France, became a secret apostle of these views, and hinted that a learned defence of them was being written. It happened that at that time a Puritan movement was arising within the French Church, as a protest against the extreme laxity of the age; and, as the Jesuits were regarded by the Puritans as encouraging this laxity by their remarkable works on casuistry (as we shall see later), there was a predisposition to accept anti-Jesuit views. Further, there was already a tradition of hostility to the Jesuitsamong the Puritans. The chief centre of the ascetic movement was the famous abbey of Port Royal, and the abbess of Port Royal, Angélique Arnauld, was a daughter of the great lawyer who had more than once formulated the grievances of the Parlement against the Society. Several members of his large and brilliant family were drawn into the movement.
Angélique Arnauld had been committed to the abbey at a very early age by her parents; and, although it shared the general laxity of convents at that time, she chafed for years against her fate. The abbey was in a wild, marshy, unhealthy valley, about eighteen miles from Paris. In the course of time Angélique was converted, and she became abbess of the convent, and devoted all her energy and talent to the purification of its life. It became a famous garden of conventual virtues, and, when the unhealthiness of the valley compelled the nuns to transfer their establishment to Paris in 1626, every pietist in the city was attracted to the abbey of Port Royal de Paris. St. Cyran fell into correspondence with Angélique, defended a book of hers which the Jesuits denounced, and in 1633 became the spiritual director of the community. The convent now had pretensions to be a school of fine taste in letters as well as of virtue, and numbers of the more sincerely religious writers and ladies of Paris looked to it as a kind of club. The Jesuits regarded this independent school of virtue and theology with some apprehension, and, when Jansen died in 1638, and whispers of a posthumous publication of his great work were intercepted, St. Cyran was imprisoned in Vincennes by order of Richelieu. We need not press the suspicion that the cardinal was instigated by the Jesuits. Jansen had satirically assailed the policy of Richelieu in a politicalwork, and the cardinal may have thought it advisable to seize the papers of St. Cyran in order to find some clue to the mysterious work of Jansen which his admirers were secretly promising to the world. St. Cyran also had declined to oblige the cardinal, and he assailed doctrines which Richelieu had espoused in his early theological works. It is, however, to be noted that, when St. Cyran was released, at the death of Richelieu (1642), and his papers restored, it was found that the Jesuits had appropriated some of his letters.
St. Cyran continued to direct the movement from Vincennes, and it entered upon a singular and momentous development. Angélique inspired her nephew, the brilliant young lawyer Le Maistre, her brother Antoine, and other able and serious young men, with her sentiments, and they determined to live a communal and ascetic life. In 1637 they took possession of the deserted buildings of Port Royal aux Champs, and were soon known to all Paris as the virtuous "Solitaries" of the bleak and remote valley. The joy of the good clergy and the amusement of the frivolous were equalled by the exasperation of the Jesuits. The Solitaries passed stern censure on the leniency of Jesuit confessors; and their spirit spread like a ferment through the city, and had the singular effect of inducing penitents to abandon their Jesuit confessors because they had been converted to virtue. At the same time the rumour spread that Jansen's great work was about to see the light. He had died in 1638, leaving his manuscript in the charge of his friends at Louvain. The local Jesuits watched their movements with the assiduity of detectives, and discovered that the work was in the press. It is acknowledged that they bribed the printers, who were swornto secrecy, to give them sheets of the book, and they complained to the Nuncio that the Louvain professors were about to issue a work on the forbidden topic of grace and free will. Intrigue was met by counter-intrigue,—a piquant situation in view of the sacred theme of the book,—and it was published in 1640, and immediately afterwards published also at Paris.
This small, innocent, and academic treatise, theAugustinusof Jansen, was destined to set Europe aflame for decades. The historic controversy of St. Augustine and the Welsh priest Pelagius, which it recalled, was far surpassed by this modern effort to conciliate the freedom of the human will with the compelling power of grace. Pulpits and schools rang with mutual anathemas; pamphlets of ponderous learning and biting irony mingled with the latestchronique scandaleuseon the book-stalls. But the Jesuit was never content with that free arena of controversy in which he claimed to excel. Rome must condemn his opponents, and the familiar intrigues were set afoot at Rome. The Inquisition denounced the book on the ground that the subject was prohibited. That did not suffice for the Jesuits, nor did it check the flow of argument and invective; and on 6th March 1642, UrbanVIII.solemnly condemned the book. The Jansenists had now, however, friends among the prelates, and the bull was not published in France with the customary solemnity. The controversy still raged sullenly, only restrained by Richelieu's spies; and when he died and St. Cyran was released (in the same year), it broke out again into flagrant publicity.
Meantime, a new champion had entered the field, and the attack on the Jesuits assumed a more personal form. Anne de Rohan, Princess of Guémenée and mistress of Archbishop Paul de Gondi (later Cardinalde Retz), fell under the influence of Arnauld d'Andilly and St. Cyran, and their oratory and her advancing years persuaded her that the hour had come to turn to virtue. She had had a Jesuit confessor, like so many of the noble dames and bejewelled prelates who did not deign even to conceal their amours, and he was naturally piqued to find that, as the princess advanced in virtue, she discarded him in favour of St. Cyran. There is no doubt whatever of Anne de Rohan's sincerity, and it is little short of infamous for Crétineau-Joly to say that she "placed her elegant coquetries under the safeguard of the aged Arnauld d'Andilly," and that she was at the same time "the guest of Port Royal and the mistress of Paul de Gondi." The discarded Jesuit submitted to her a manuscript attack on the more rigorous principles she had embraced; Anne de Rohan showed this indignantly to St. Cyran; and the brilliant young brother of Angélique Arnauld was requested to reply. His bookDe la fréquente Communion(1641) led to a controversy as acrid and noisy as that over theAugustinus.
Arnauld had foreseen the attack; he had submitted the manuscript to theologians, and, when it was denounced by the angry Jesuits, he was able to secure the support of four archbishops, twelve bishops, and a number of doctors of divinity. This alliance of a powerful minority of the higher French clergy with the Jansenists was destined to give the Jesuits serious trouble. One cannot quite endorse the statement that all the virtuous men in the French episcopacy were opposed to the Jesuits, and all the vicious prelates in favour of them. But it was an age so flagrantly immoral that the greater part of the higher clergy had their mistresses, their hounds and hawks, and their boxes at the opera, while on the fringe of the Church were crowds ofabbés(often not priests) who led very dissolute lives. The Jesuitshad for some time, in virtue of their influence at court, had a voice in the appointment of prelates—we shall find them entirely controlling it in a few years—and there is no doubt that they nominated men of little character who were willing to support them; just as they accepted for the English mission priests of little culture or character, because they could be the more easily dominated. On the other hand, the Jansenists represented, above all things, a rigorous standard of Christian character. The name which the Jesuits have fastened on them implies that they were wedded to certain academic, if not heretical, theories of Bishop Jansen. This is untrue. They were mostly laymen, indifferent to speculative theology, pleading only that the Christian faith demanded a stricter standard of conduct than French Christians generally exhibited. The correct name for them is the Puritans.
Hence it is largely, not entirely, true that the best of the prelates were opposed to the Jesuits. It is now known that even Bossuet, who sternly opposed the Jesuits, had his secret amours, and there were, on the other hand, men of ascetic life, if not very clear intelligence (like Vincent de Paul), on the side of the Jesuits. However, the open declaration of so large and powerful a body of the clergy exasperated the Jesuits, and the war of sermons and pamphlets reached a stage of incandescence. Father Nouet denounced Arnauld as "fantastic, melancholic, lunatic, blind, malicious, furious," and showered upon him such concrete epithets as serpent, scorpion, wolf, and monster. Arnauld had ventured to say that sinful ladies must keep away from the Holy Sacrament. But Father Nouet went on to assail the sixteen prelates who had approved Arnauld's book, and this led to his undoing. To their great mortification the Jesuit superiors were forced to disavowand reprimand their preacher, and the Jansenists triumphed. The Jesuits retorted, however, by intrigue at the court, and induced Mazarin and the Queen-Regent to order Arnauld to go and defend his book at Rome. This was a violation of the rights of the Gallican Church, and the university, the Parlement, and the clergy protested so violently that the project had to be abandoned.
St. Cyran had died in the meantime (in 1643) and Arnauld was leader of the growing and powerful body of Puritans. As the next move of the Jesuits at court would be to secure alettre de cachet, and lodge him in the Bastille or Vincennes, he returned to the provinces and the struggle was transferred to Rome. The prelates who had approved Arnauld's book appealed to the Pope in its favour, and a learned theologian was sent to Rome to defeat the manœuvres of the Jesuits. As a result, after two years of violent discussion, the book was declared free of heresy. The Jesuits, who had declared that thirty propositions in the book were unsound, now concentrated upon an innocent parenthetic phrase in the preface. Arnauld had referred to Peter and Paul as "two chiefs who were really one," and it was claimed that this was an attack on the papacy. After another year of wrangling and intrigue the innocuous sentence was condemned, and the Jesuits proclaimed throughout Europe that they had triumphed.
The next step was to enforce in France the bull of UrbanVIII. condemning theAugustinusof Jansen. The Sorbonne (the theological school of the university) received a papal brief directing them to accept the bull, and, in spite of court-pressure, the theologians justly replied that they were not concerned with the opinions of a Belgian theologian. Again the pulpits of Paris—the artillery of the spiritual army—opened fire, and thepamphleteers were busy. Then the syndic of the Sorbonne, Cornet, a friend of the Jesuits, submitted seven propositions to the judgment of that body. He named no author, and expressly (and mendaciously) stated that they did not refer to Jansen, but it was well known that the sentences were supposed to have been extracted from the work of Jansen, and an intense struggle followed. The cause was won, as usual, by intrigue. There was some dispute at the time how far the monastic theologians could vote at the Sorbonne, but they were brought up in force, against the view of the lawyers, and five propositions were condemned and reported to Rome. It was now openly stated that the five propositions were taken from Jansen's book.
The Papacy still hesitated, in view of the disputable nature of the Sorbonne vote, and intimated that the French prelates should be induced to ask for a condemnation. According to M. Crétineau-Joly, the reply was prompt and spontaneous. "The General Assembly of the clergy opens at Paris, and eighty-eight bishops denounce the five propositions to Pope Innocent"; the Jesuits, he says, stood aside and let the prelates speak. But the French historian must have been aware that the question was not submitted to the General Assembly at all. The signatures were obtained privately, and the whole procedure was so insidious that we are not sure to-day whether seventy, or eighty, or ninety bishops demanded a condemnation. It is necessary to note these details, if we are to understand the Catholic sentiment which later swept the Jesuits out of France. About eighty bishops apparently were induced privately to request the Pope to condemn the propositions; other prelates wrote to beg the Pope to abstain. However, the Vatican was now officially invited to pronounce, and the war of theologians was resumed at Rome.
In the meantime the Jesuits of Paris sustained a painful check in their attack on the Jansenists. One of their number, Father Brisacier, published a pamphlet,Le Jansenisme confondu(1651), in which, not only were the familiar invectives showered upon the Solitaries, but the moral character of the nuns of Port Royal was attacked. These were the nuns whom a hostile archbishop afterwards declared to be "as pure as angels and as proud as devils." The purity of their lives was notorious, and intense indignation was felt. The Archbishop of Paris formally condemned the pamphlet as "containing many lies and impostures," and Father Brisacier was removed—promoted to the rectorship of the college at Rouen—by his superiors. No Jesuit, of course, wrote without authorisation, and the many abominable pamphlets they issued at this time against the Puritans implicate the whole Parisian Province.
We need not follow the course of the trial at Rome. After a two years' struggle InnocentX.issued his famous bull in which the five propositions were declared to be heretical, and to be contained in the work of Jansen. The Jesuits emitted a pyrotechnic discharge of oratory and pamphlets—one broadside of the time represented Bishop Jansen as a devil flying to the Protestants—but they had overreached themselves. No Jansenist (not even Jansen) had ever taught the five propositions, and there was not a man in France who wished to defend them. But the Jesuits had insisted on the pronouncement that the propositions were contained in Jansen, and this gave rise to a formidable controversy in which the prelates were at liberty to join. It may seem to the modern reader an appalling waste of energy and perversion of character that so powerful a body should spend their resources for twenty years in a war on such abstruse propositions,but from this point the struggle becomes frankly ridiculous. For nearly eighty years we shall find the Jesuits straining every device of craft and learning to ensure that every man in France shall agree that the Pope (who had never read Jansen's book) was right in declaring the five propositions to be contained in theAugustinus; and the controversy they sustain will draw on themselves the appalling scourge of Pascal'sProvincial Lettersand on the papacy the defiant declaration of the Gallican Church. We are compelled to recognise a lamentable corporate ambition and perversion of character in their conduct.
The Puritans coolly replied that they were not interested in the five propositions which the Pope had condemned, but that, as a matter of plain truth, they must protest against the ascription of these views to Bishop Jansen. So the war proceeded. It was at this time, in 1654, that the Jesuits made a ludicrous attempt to discredit their opponents by revealing the famous "Plot of Bourg Fontaine": a plot as rich in imagination and crude in fictitious detail as the Titus Oates plot. They had discovered, they gravely reported, that St. Cyran, Arnauld, and four other Jansenists had, twenty-three years before, met secretly in an obscure village to concert a plot for the destruction of Christianity in France. Arnauld was nine years old at the time given as the year of the conspiracy. Arnauld, from his solitude, issued a letter against the Jesuits, and (again packing the jury with monk-voters) they got it condemned by the Sorbonne. When we find the King writing to press the Sorbonne, we may clearly recognise the hand of the court-Jesuits. They triumphed, but their triumph now drew on them the heaviest and most enduring punishment they have ever suffered.
In 1648 the nuns had been compelled to return from Paris to their inhospitable valley, and the Solitaries had retreated from the abbey to a manor-house on the hill overlooking the valley. There, without any special costume or vows, a number of the most brilliant young men of Paris led a life of great austerity and devotion. Some lived in Paris, and spent an occasional period at Les Granges, and amongst these was a young man, with thin, pale face and large brilliant eyes under his lofty forehead, named Blaise Pascal. He had already won European fame as a mathematician. When Arnauld, somewhat jaded, produced a weak reply to his opponents, his friends suggested that Pascal should be asked to undertake the attack. Arnauld agreed, and on 23rd January 1656, appeared the firstLetter to a Provincial. It was a subtle and irresistible satire of the theological shibboleths of the Jesuits. In order to enable the conflicting schools of monastic theology to agree in condemning the Jansenists, certain terms (such as "proximate grace" and "sufficient grace") had been introduced as vague common measures of orthodoxy, and Pascal expended his immortal wit on the weakness. It is admitted by all that the earlierProvincial Lettersare masterpieces of satire. The letter was received with delight in Paris, and a week later, while the debate continued at the Sorbonne, a second letter was issued. The third appeared ten days later, after the censure of Arnauld.
It is quite needless here to discuss the literary qualities of Pascal's letters, but in the fourth letter Pascal began his direct and fearful indictment of the Jesuits. The next six letters contain the exposure of Jesuitical moral teaching which is the most serious point in his work, and the remaining letters—from thetenth to the eighteenth, which are addressed to the Jesuits—are mainly concerned with substantiating his indictment. Although one may trust that the majority of readers are familiar with Pascal's famous work, a short analysis of the six letters (the fifth to the tenth) must be premised.
The chief quarrel between the Solitaries and the Jesuits was, as I said, a question of moral, not speculative, theology. They accused the Jesuits of accommodating the principles of Christian morality to an immoral generation. St. Cyran and Arnauld had already quoted many passages of Jesuit works in proof of this, and Pascal and his friends now searched the whole field of Jesuit casuistry for further proofs. In the fifth letter, for instance, Pascal shows how the Jesuits attenuate the obligation of fasting. A man may, on a fast-day, drink any quantity of wine, hippocras, or honey and water. If a man cannot sleep without supper, he is not bound to fast; in a sense that is a just decision, but Father Escobar goes on to say that he need not meet his obligation by deferring to the evening the "collation" which is permitted on fast-days, as no man is bound to alter the order of his meals. Again, a man who has exhausted himself by vice is not bound to fast; and Pascal might have added that the Jesuits excused a wife from fasting if her husband thought it interfered with her attractiveness (Tamburini), a husband if it weakened his sexual faculty (Filliutius), and a maiden if it lessened the charms on which she relied to secure a husband (Tamburini).
After this satirical essay on fasting made easy, Pascal passes, in the sixth letter, to the obligation of almsgiving and cognate matters. Wealthy Christians were bound by the letter of the Gospel to give to the poor out of their superfluous goods, and Pascal quotedthe great Jesuit theologian Vasquez learnedly proving that "you will scarcely find such a thing as superfluous goods among seculars, even in the case of kings." That was a comfortable doctrine for the rich, but the Jesuits had a word for the poor. Could a valet who considered himself underpaid help himself to his masters goods to the extent of the deficiency? Yes, said Father Bauny. And since Jesuit confessors had many curious cases submitted to them by valets at that time, their theologians worked out the servant's position with great nicety. If it were very inconvenient to change his master, the valet might even hold the ladder by which his master climbed to an illicit adventure; though in this extreme case, the master must scold much before the valet is justified.
The seventh letter shows how the Jesuits accommodated the fifth commandment to an age of brawling and duelling. It is quite lawful to fight a duel if a man would otherwise incur dishonour (Escobar); it is lawful to pray to God to kill a menacing enemy (Hurtado); it is lawful to kill a culumniator and his false witnesses (Molina); it is lawful to pursue and kill a man who has dealt you a blow—provided you have merely a technical regard for your honour, and do not feel vindictive (Escobar); it is lawful to kill a contumelious man, if that is the only way to arrest the injury (Lessius); it is lawful, if necessary, to kill an intending thief even if he attempt to take only a single gold coin (Molina); and—a very significant doctrine—it is lawful for a monk to kill a man who defames his monastery or his order, if there is no other way to arrest the defamation (Amico). These were fine doctrines for the age of LouisXIV.
The eighth letter quotes distinguished theologians who permit a judge to accept secret and illegal presents,provided they are given out of gratitude, or merely to encourage him in giving honest verdicts (Molina); and others who teach that, while usury (which then meant any interest in money) is forbidden, the lender of money may exact a certain additional sum in the name of gratitude (Escobar, etc.); that a bankrupt may keep back sufficient property to enable himself and his family to live "decently" (Escobar); that money earned by crime or vice has not to be restored (Lessius, etc.); and that "a prostitute, virgin, married woman, or nun" is strictly entitled to the money promised her for vice (Filliutius). The ninth letter shows how gluttony is condoned, and scourges the familiar casuistic doctrine of mental reservation. In the tenth letter we learn that a frail woman may receive into her house her partner in sin if she "cannot decently refuse."
The apologist for the Jesuits attempts to enfeeble this terrible indictment by saying that the devout Chateaubriand called Pascal's work "an immortal lie." The French historian does not add, though he doubtless knew, that Chateaubriand withdrew this expression in more mature years, saying: "I am now forced to acknowledge that he [Pascal] has not exaggerated in the least." Voltaire also is quoted, expressing indignation that Pascal should accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. Voltaire, living under the shadow of the Bastille in early years, had his moments of insincerity; in this case it is enough to say that, in the fifth letter, Pascal expressly says that he does not accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. The only serious criticism one finds among the innumerable replies to Pascal is that his quotations are not always accurate. One must remember that they are not given as verbal quotations, and that Pascal had to rely on the aid of his colleagues. That hedeliberately misquoted any theologian can only be suggested by those who are entirely ignorant of his character. It is, however, quite true that qualifying phrases have at times been improperly omitted, a few phrases have been wrongly translated, and the condensing of long passages into short sentences has in a few instances the effect of an injustice. These cases are relatively few and unimportant. The indictment of Jesuit casuistry, as I have summarised it, is perfectly sound, and later research has merely extended the long list of unedifying passages.[26]
Ste. Beuve observed that, owing to Pascal's indictment, the Jesuits "lost the helm of the world." They have assuredly never entirely recovered from the "terrible blow" (as their historian calls it) which Blaise Pascal dealt them. It is not historically true that they were "crushed" and silent under the reiterated lashes. In the course of his letters Pascal refers to their numerous replies, their fierce invectives, their threats of physical persecution. Unfortunately, one of their fathers made matters worse by penning a bold defence of the casuists. His book was condemned by the Sorbonne and the Roman Inquisition, and had to be disavowed. Large numbers of the clergy and monks joined with the Jansenists in denouncing their doctrines, and in the end—if we may anticipate a little, in order to finish thisepisode—they were officially condemned by the French Church. For a time LouisXIV.prevented their opponents from submitting the matter to the General Assembly of the Clergy, but, when Mme de Montespan succeeded Mlle de la Vallière in his affections, Bossuet and the Archbishop of Paris used her influence to secure the king's consent, and in 1700 their doctrines (and those of other lax theologians) were severely condemned. The only mitigation which the Jesuits could secure was that their theologians were not named.
Meantime, the war of the five propositions dragged its interminable length. The Port Royal nuns, the Solitaries, and many of the clergy and laity refused to sign what they regarded as a plain untruth—the statement that the five propositions were found in Jansen's work—and the Jesuits relentlessly persecuted them. Under court-pressure the Assembly of the Clergy decreed that all teachers and religious were to submit to the Pope's bull, and a kind of inquisition was established for the first time in France. A formulary was devised, and a royal decree enacted that it must be signed. The "grand Turc très Chrétien" was at that time easily led by his confessor and other Jesuits in religious matters, and his light-hearted court, under the presidency of Mlle de la Vallière, was not at all unwilling to see the dour Jansenists beaten by their indulgent confessors. The nuns of Port Royal made an heroic stand against the official untruth. Angélique Arnauld was now dead, but her sister Agnes induced the nuns to resist alike the honeyed persuasion of Bossuet and the angry menaces of the Archbishop of Paris. In 1664 the archbishop returned with the more formidable argument of a band of two hundred archers, and the nuns were scattered over France. The Solitaries also were scattered, though a few of the more distinguished of them found shelter inthe hotel of the Duchess de Longueville. So importunate were the Jesuits that the Pope had to remind them that his duty was to keep the Puritans in the Church, not drive them out of it.
Four bishops still favoured the Puritans, and for several years the futile wrangle went on between the French court, the Vatican, and the rebels. One of the four was the Archbishop of Sens, a prelate of the finer type and a stern critic of the Jesuits. In 1653 the Jesuits went to such extremes in their attack on him that he placed all the Jesuits in his archdiocese under an interdict for contumacy, and the sentence was so just that they did not succeed in getting it removed until the death of the prelate in 1675. The Bishop of Pamiers imposed the same heavy punishment on the Jesuits of his diocese. Both king and clergy were now wearying of the endless war, and the accession of a new Pope, ClementIX., in 1667 seemed to the moderate clergy an occasion for compromise. The Archbishop of Sens, the Princess de Conti, the Duchess de Longueville, and other distinguished intermediaries persuaded the papacy to exclude the Jesuits from the negotiations, and Arnauld promised to submit if that were done. The correspondence was, therefore, conducted with great secrecy, and at the beginning of 1669 LouisXIV.struck and issued a gold medal in commemoration of "peace" and "restored concord." The Jesuits were so angry at the wording, since it did not express the extinction of a heresy, that, when the medal became scarce, they denied that it had been issued with the knowledge of the King.
The nuns were now permitted gradually to return to their valley, and the Solitaries renewed the attack upon the morality of the Jesuits. On this side the Jesuits could securely rely upon the sympathy of LouisXIV., and the second brilliant criticism which the Jansenistspublished, thePractical Morality of the Jesuits, was condemned by Parlement, at the intervention of the royal procurator, to be publicly burned. Jesuit succeeded Jesuit in the care of the King's conscience, in spite of his notorious and continuous immorality during nearly twenty years. Their French apologist ventures to tell us that they "declared war on the King's heart," and quotes Bayle as saying, in regard to theliaisonwith Mlle de la Vallière, that "Father Annat teased the prince daily about it and gave him no rest." It is one of the most flagrant pieces of "Jesuitry" in M. Crétineau-Joly's work. Bayle (in a note to the articleAnnat) merely quotes these words from a pamphleteer whom he describes as utterly unworthy of credence; and I may add that the purpose of the pamphleteer is merely to prove that the later confessor, Père la Chaise, was worse than Père Annat. The truth is that Annat remained in his charge during the whole of the eight years when Louis clung to Mlle de la Vallière, and, when the brilliant and unscrupulous Marquise de Montespan succeeded in securing the position of royal mistress in 1670, and Père Annat retired on the ground of age, his colleague Père Ferrier took his place. For four years he remained in charge of the King's remarkable conscience, and it is not irrelevant to observe that he was rewarded with a power that no royal confessor had hitherto had in France. He and his colleagues now had the sole right to nominate bishops, and the character of the French episcopacy in the later years of LouisXIV.is largely attributable to them. Ferrier died in 1674, and the famous Père la Chaise, a man of moderate ability but courtly manners, was appointed royal confessor. He remained at his post during the remaining five years of theliaisonwith Mme de Montespan, and it was Mme de Maintenon (and advance in years), rather than hisconfessor, who led the royal sinner into the paths of virtue.
The eventual refusal of the sacraments does not atone for this prolonged adhesion to LouisXIV., even if we ignore other circumstances which detract from the merit of this tardy act of sternness. The Jesuits compromised with the vice, in order that they might share the power, of the greatest monarch of the age. In the last chapter we saw how they made use, or trusted to make use, of their influence at the French court in the conquest of England; for the moment we find them attaining a position of great power in France by their indulgent behaviour; and in later chapters we shall find them deriving advantage from their privileged position for the promotion of their influence in Spain and Italy. They looked to LouisXIV., as they had once looked to PhilipIII.of Spain, as the rising sun of the monarchical world, and they suppressed their scruples in their determination to use his power for the furtherance of the aims of their Society. This is singularly illustrated, in a very different way, by their conduct in the next phase of French ecclesiastical affairs.
There was in most parts of France an old custom which gave the King the right to promote to benefices as long as the episcopal see was vacant. This profitable "Regale," as it was called, had never been recognised in the southern provinces, but in 1673 LouisXIV.decreed that in future all dioceses (except a few with special privileges) would have to recognise the royal right. The King's own words indicate that the Jesuits had inspired this improper invasion of the spiritual world, and the fact was not disguised that it was chiefly aimed against Bishop Pavillon of Aleth and Bishop Caulet of Pamiers, who had withstood the court and theJesuits in regard to the papal bull against the Jansenists. The bishops appealed to Rome, and in 1676 a man ascended the throne of Peter who was in no mood to bow to earthly monarchs or permit Jesuit intrigue. InnocentXI.sternly insisted on the rights of the Church and condemned the action of Louis. The Parlement and the French hierarchy generally sided with the King, and the papal briefs remained unpublished. The Jesuits of the southern dioceses affected to regard the briefs as spurious, and they maintained the campaign of intrigue and calumny which they had conducted for some time against the Bishop of Pamiers. Pavilion had died in the course of the struggle. Pope Innocent then devised a plan by which he expected to defeat the insincere manœuvres of the Jesuits. He handed his briefs to the General of the Society and bade him communicate them to the French Jesuits, through their Provincials. To their great embarrassment the Jesuits of Paris and Toulouse now found themselves in the dilemma of having to disobey the commands either of the Pope or the King, but they extricated themselves with their usual adroitness.
The Parlements of Paris and Toulouse were secretly informed that the Jesuit fathers had received copies of the papal briefs and were instructed to publish them. The secrets of the Society were not so easily penetrated as to avert the suspicion that the Jesuits had themselves given this information, and the proceedings of the Parlements show that they did so. Even their resolute apologist here confesses that "perhaps" the Jesuits had this information conveyed to the lawyers in defiance of the Pope's stern command. The scene that followed is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Society. The Parlement of Paris, which we have found for more than a century in bitter opposition to the Society, now(1681) publicly lauded the patriotism of the Jesuits in frustrating this attempt "to surprise their wisdom and corrupt their fidelity." The men of the fourth vow, the men who professed to be the incorruptible champions of the Papacy, now cast their Ultramontanism to the winds, and gave material assistance to the Gallicans at a time when a very grave conflict with the Vatican was in progress. It was, once more, the price of the favour of LouisXIV.Innocent replied by excommunicating Louis, and he entrusted the brief to the charge of a French Jesuit who was then in Rome. It was, of course, never published. The Jesuit authorities at Paris kept it in their hands until the wrath of the Pope had cooled and he recognised the impolicy of enforcing it.
From every point of view the conduct of the Jesuits in this crisis is unattractive. They discovered that in such conflicts it is the duty of the Society to be neutral, and they retained the favour of the contestants by making such compromises as the successive phases of the struggle imposed on them. The clergy of the French Church met in Assembly in 1681, and, under the leadership of Bossuet, formulated the famous four articles which define the rights of the Gallican Church and limit the pretensions of the Vatican. All professors and religious in France were directed to sign these articles; but the Jesuits, through their junta at court, obtained exemption, and were able to report to the Vatican that they alone had not accepted this defiant "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy": half a century later, however, when France is more dangerous to them than the Papacy, we shall find them setting aside their scruples and signing the articles. Even at the time, the Papacy was not appeased by their sinuous conduct. InnocentXI.threatened to destroy the Society, andremained bitterly opposed to it until his death in 1689.
By this time LouisXIV.had entered on his later phase of decaying power and sincere interest in religious matters. Mme de Maintenon had consolidated her influence over him by a secret marriage in 1684, and given a religious direction to his thoughts. One terrible consequence of this tardy and ill-balanced zeal was, as history tells, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and a horrible oppression of the Protestants. It would be a mistake to cast the whole blame of this lamentable cruelty and its evil effects for the country upon the Jesuits. The higher French clergy generally still entertained the persecuting spirit, and had for years pressed for violent measures against the sectarians, who refused to yield to their arguments. Père la Chaise was only one of many narrow-minded priests who impelled LouisXIV.to crown a series of unjust measures against the Protestants with this cruel and impolitic act. It was, however, the consummation of the violent policy which the Jesuits had urged from the beginning, and one may justly doubt whether LouisXIV.would, even in his last phase, have adopted such a measure if the court-Jesuits had not pressed for it.
In the sobered court the Jesuits continued for some time to enjoy a great influence, though it was increasingly checked by Mme de Maintenon and the prelates she favoured. In 1688, Louis determined to make the French Jesuits independent of the Roman authorities; but they contrived to dissuade him. They continued to fight the Regalists and the Jansenists with the poisoned weapons of calumny, abuse, and intrigue. The most unedifying scenes were witnessed in the southern dioceses, and Jansenist leaders, like Arnauld, werepursued even beyond the frontiers. One illustration of this prolonged and misguided campaign must suffice. In the year 1690 the theologians of Douai received a number of letters bearing the signature of Arnauld; and, in what they understood to be a private correspondence with the Jansenist leader, they committed themselves to phrases which no other occasion would have extracted from them. This correspondence was then published by the Jesuits, and the professors of the Douai University were expelled and replaced by members of the Society. The fraud, however, proved one more detail in the long account which France would presently settle with the Jesuits. Arnauld, who was living in the Netherlands, at once denounced the letters as forgeries, and held up the Jesuits to public contempt as the direct or indirect authors.
The nuns of Port Royal were the next victims of their relentless campaign. A more friendly Pope, ClementXI., succeeded Innocent, and in 1705 he was induced to issue a fresh bull (Vineam Domini) for the suppression of Jansenism. It was pressed for the acceptance of the nuns by the Archbishop of Paris; but it seemed to them still to consecrate the familiar untruth, and they declared that they would subscribe to it only with a qualifying clause. We have no documentary proof that the Jesuits inspired the events which followed this reserve, but the blame was openly cast upon them at the time, and the circumstances suggest it. The King—still under the guidance of Père la Chaise—wrote to the Vatican for permission to destroy the community, and in the early spring of 1708 the nuns were definitely scattered. Père la Chaise died at the beginning of the following year, and Père Letellier, a grim and resolute supporter of the ambitions of the Society, succeeded to the office.Under his influence the last insurgent movements of the brave nuns were rigorously suppressed, and in January 1710 their ancient and beloved abbey, the strictest centre of conventual virtue in France, was rased to the ground.
Letellier, a sombre, indefatigable man, whose flashing eyes scorned the comfort of the court—he was a peasant's son—and sought nothing in this world but the ascendancy of the Society of Jesus, now found the influence of the Jesuits threatened by that of Louis's wife and her favourite prelate Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. In 1711 a letter was intercepted which revealed the intrigues of Letellier and the Jesuits, and Noailles angrily suspended all the members of the Society in his diocese. The chief Jansenist writer was now Quesnel, who had just published hisMoral Reflections. The Jesuits detected much heresy in the innocent work, and at once used their influence to secure a condemnation. The Archbishop had, however, expressed admiration of it, and the task of the Jesuits was more than usually difficult. At length, in July 1711, a letter was intercepted from which it was clear that Letellier was intriguing against the Archbishop, and there was much indignation among the new party at court. Noailles not only suspended the fathers, but condemned about a score of their writers and preachers for lax principles. The intrigue continued, however, and in the autumn of 1713, ClementXI.condemned Quesnel's book in the bullUnigenitus. Saint Simon, who was in the French court at the time and on good terms with the Jesuits, tells us that the bull was due to Letellier and two other Jesuits "as fine and false as he," and that in the bull "everything was brilliant except truth." Saint Simon was no theologian. We may accept his word that the securing of the bull was "a dark business"; and we knowthat, in its later stages, it was pressed at Rome with irregular and improper haste. It is, however, true that many of Quesnel's phrases were questionable, though they did little more than repeat and enforce the words of the gospel: "Without me ye can do nothing" (Johnvi. 66). But the words of Scripture were condemned as well as the words of Quesnel, and the Jesuits were able to congratulate each other that "Jouvency was avenged."[27]
The bullUnigenituswas, says a French bishop of the time, as badly received at Paris as it would have been at Geneva, and the Jesuits prepared for the last phase of their long struggle with the Puritans. Saint Simon has left us a singular and unpleasant picture of Father Letellier discussing with him their devices for enforcing acceptance of the bull. The passion displayed by the royal confessor amazed the duke, and he was not less disgusted at the ruses by which Letellier proposed to crush his opponents. The Archbishop now condemned Quesnel, but rejected the bull, and fourteen bishops followed his example. Once more there was a violent controversy, and a letter of Letellier's was intercepted from which Noailles learned that the royal confessor was pressing Louis to send him to Rome, to be degraded by the Papacy. The ecclesiastical world seethed with passion, while France slowly fell from the proud position to which its great generals had raised it.
In the midst of this conflict, LouisXIV.died (1715); and for a time it seemed as if the reign of the Jesuits was ended. The grim Letellier was exiled from Paris, and Noailles replaced the Jesuits in the control ofecclesiastical affairs. Their enemies gathered about the Regent and pressed him to destroy the power of the Society. Philip of Orleans was, however, not the kind of man to sacrifice liberal casuists to the Puritans, and graceful preachers to stern parlementarians. A man of brilliant parts and frivolous tendencies—he had been educated in vice by the Abbé Dubois—he saw no more than a temporary political expedient in checking the Jesuits for the satisfaction of his supporters. He soon relapsed into ways of indolence and vice; and the Jesuits, gaining the ear of his unscrupulous favourites, crept back to power. Dubois desired a high ecclesiastical dignity, and the course of events very strongly confirms the suspicion that the Jesuits put at his disposal their influence in Rome. He induced Philip to compel Parlement to register the bullUnigenitus; and he shortly afterwards became, in spite of his notorious character, Archbishop of Cambrai and Cardinal of the Church. Other unworthy clerics were similarly promoted, and the power of Cardinal Noailles was checked. Dubois, in 1722, secured the office of confessor to the young King for a Jesuit. Noailles, who had opposed the appointment, refused canonical powers to the confessor, and a fresh intrigue ran on until Noailles died and a pro-Jesuit Archbishop was elected.
The Jesuits now returned to power, though not to their full power, at the court, and the remnant of the Jansenists was pitilessly persecuted. For nearly twenty years the opponents of the Jesuits attempted to evade the enforcement of the papal decisions, and it is said that more than a hundred priests were banished and a large number imprisoned. One of the bishops was deposed and degraded for resistance, and a fierce struggle shook the peaceful atmosphere of the innumerable monasteries. Fifty monks of one provinceof the Cistercian order were, in 1723, excommunicated and imprisoned by the authorities. The papal condemnation included propositions which were obviously sound and others which were no more than quotations of Scripture, so hastily had the vindictive sentence been promulgated. The Jesuits triumphed, however, and the reign of LouisXV.saw them fully reinstated at Versailles.
France was no longer the world-power she had been in the golden age of LouisXIV., and her selfish and dissipated monarch was blindly leading her toward revolution. The Jesuits, as before, clung to the prestige of the position of royal confessor, in spite of the flagrant immorality of the King, but the forces which would presently dislodge them were insensibly gathering power. The Puritans were silenced, rather than annihilated, and the Parlement, imputing to the Society much of the blame of its exile in 1753, revived its bitter hostility. The first stroke fell on them in that year. Father Pérusseau, the King's confessor, died, and a successful intrigue put in his place a priest who was not a Jesuit. Both Pérusseau and his successor refused absolution to a King whose libertinism was so cynically exhibited. In view of the persistent attack on their laxity during a hundred years, it would have been difficult for a Jesuit to do less. When, however, the Jesuits lost the principal position, there seemed for a moment some chance of their returning to favour in an indirect way. Mme de Pompadour also desired absolution, in order to find a convenient place in the Queen's suite; and, making a profession of penitence, she put herself under the spiritual guidance of the Jesuit Father Sacy. For a time he affected to believe in her sincerity; but the laughter of Paris disconcerted him, and the stern refusal of the Pope to interfereforced him to retire. From that time Mme de Pompadour and her courtiers were opposed to the Jesuits.
A few years later, in 1757, the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis led to another outcry against the Society. It is the general and probable verdict that the Jesuits had no share in the outrage, though the fact that Damiens had a Jesuit confessor, and had previously been in the service of the Jesuits, still seems to many writers to justify a grave suspicion. The evidence is inconclusive, but the outrage led to a fresh discussion of the regicidal doctrines of the Society, and the secrecy and sinuousness of its procedure. By that time, as we shall see, the Marquis de Pombal was meditating the destruction of the Jesuits in Portugal, and was in correspondence with their enemies in France. These enemies were now reinforced by the brilliant and powerful body of deistic and atheistic writers who were known as "the philosophers," and a formidable mine was being prepared under the feet of the arrogant and unsuspecting Jesuits.
The spark that fired this mine was a particularly disreputable action on the part of the Society. In 1753 the Superior-General of the Jesuits in the Antilles, Father Lavalette, was summoned to Paris to answer the charge of having engaged in commerce on a large scale. Lavalette was one of those men of commercial instinct whom the Society did not scruple to use in augmenting its wealth as long as they were successful. Although he had, in the name of the Society, vast estates in the West Indies and thousands of negro slaves (bought by himself, in disguise, in the public slave-market), and it was known that he had agents in Paris for the sale of his sugar and coffee, he came to Paris with a number of sworn testimonies from local French officers to the effect that the Jesuits had notengaged in "foreign commerce," and was acquitted. He returned to conduct his flourishing business on a larger scale than ever. He had spacious warehouses, and made a profit of about 280,000 francs a year; and he now—though acquitted on the understanding that he was not to engage in commerce—borrowed large sums of money, and increased the profit by a shrewd, and somewhat sharp, deal on the money-market. He overreached himself in these practices, and, as other disasters simultaneously overtook his business, some of his French creditors pressed for their money.
The French Jesuits were divided in opinion on the issue. The shrewder fathers at Marseilles were disposed to borrow money and meet the obligations, but the Parisian authorities believed that they were still strong enough to win a conflict, and they insisted that Lavalette must plead bankruptcy. It was the last and most fatal of the long series of blunders they had perpetrated; to say nothing of the moral aspect of their procedure. The law was set in motion; in March 1761 the lawyers of the Paris Parlement were set the task of judging their traditional enemy, and the long trial, amidst intense excitement, ended in the Jesuits, as a collective body, being condemned to pay the whole of Lavalette's debts—about five million francs. In order to determine the responsibility, the lawyers had compelled the Jesuits to produce their Constitutions and other documents which they were eager to keep from the laity, and this exposure led to a broader and more determined attack on the Society. Their action in refusing to meet the obligations of the West Indian business, by which they had profited so much, was, and always will be, regarded as morally dishonourable. It is pleaded on their behalf that the Jesuits are a "simple-minded" and spiritual body of men, with no inclinationor aptitude for commerce, and that Lavalette had concealed his operations—as they compelled him to state—from his superiors. Such statements merely increase the cynicism of their procedure. We have found them repeatedly engaging in commerce, and we know that the Jesuit system made it absolutely impossible for an inferior, even if he wished to do so, to conceal large commercial operations from his superiors. The Jesuit documents made this plain to the whole of Paris, and their adversaries advanced to the last attack.
The Parlement declared that the Jesuit Constitutions were unfit for a body of French priests, and demanded that they should be altered; it forbade the Society to form congregations among the laity, to teach the young, or to receive novices. The Jesuits at court induced the King to summon a meeting of the higher clergy and elicit a counter-declaration in favour of the Society; but a fearful storm was now raging in their ears. In their extreme apprehension they disavowed the most characteristic Jesuit principles. They proclaimed that they accepted the four articles of the Gallican Declaration of 1682, and that they would be loyal to the Gallican Church even if their General commanded them to do something contrary to its principles. They were fighting for life; but men in France knew from their previous history in the country that such declarations as this were merely diplomatic, and were set aside the moment they returned to power.
The struggle continued through the winter, and in the spring (1762) the King annulled the measures taken against them, but bade them modify their Constitutions. They were in future to have a Vicar-General in France, independent of the Roman General, and to be subject to the bishops. Louis had secretly consulted the Roman authorities, and urged them that this compromise wasabsolutely necessary to save the French Province; and, although General Ricci bitterly replied: "Sint ut sunt, aut non sint" ("Let them be as they are, or not be at all"), the proposal was openly made in France. But Parlement refused to register the King's decree, and went on to close eighty-four Jesuit colleges. All through the spring and summer the fusillade of pamphlets and the fiery debates of Parlements were sustained, the Jesuits straining every resource to avert the blow, and on 6th August 1762 the Paris Parlement decreed that the Society must cease to exist in France. The Jesuits were expelled from their residences, and a small pension was allotted them out of the confiscated property. Their entire property in France was valued at nearly 60,000,000 francs, and they had, as it proved, forfeited this rather than pay the just debts of Lavalette. At the same time the Paris Parlement condemned one hundred and sixty-four works written by Jesuits between 1600 and 1762.
LouisXV.signed the decree of suppression in December 1764, and from school and palace, from humble residences among the poor and the mansions of princes, the Jesuits sadly made their way toward the frontiers of the land in which they had so long enjoyed and abused a remarkable power. In vain was the Pope induced to protest against the action of LouisXV.Some of the chief provincial Parlements condemned the Pope's bull to be burned in the public square, and the Parlement of Paris disdainfully rejected it. The vast majority of the nation applauded the suppression; and, once their power was gone, the Jesuits were overwhelmed by the flood of hatred that now rose freely against them. It was useless to plead that a few sceptical lawyers or statesmen had wrought their ruin. In a few localities they were still protected by the Provincial authorities; but the country at large, by themouths of its officials and the great body of its clergy, rejoiced in their fall. They sought at first to parry the blow with customary manœuvres. Large numbers of them laid aside their dress and name, and remained to intrigue against their opponents; and in 1767 the Paris Parlement decreed that they must all leave the country. Except for a few who still remained as private teachers of the young, having ostensibly quitted the Society, and a few who were sheltered in ultramontane localities, the Jesuits were now ignominiously expelled from the land of St. Louis. And few will read the long story of their work in France and not acknowledge that it was a just conclusion of their intrigues, shiftiness, selfishness, thirst for power, unscrupulous persecution of rivals or opponents, and condescension to vice and crime.