FOOTNOTES:[28]Coxe puts the expulsion on the morning of 1st April, and the signing of the decree on 2nd April. This seems to be an error.
[28]Coxe puts the expulsion on the morning of 1st April, and the signing of the decree on 2nd April. This seems to be an error.
[28]Coxe puts the expulsion on the morning of 1st April, and the signing of the decree on 2nd April. This seems to be an error.
CHAPTER XI
THE FOREIGN MISSIONS
Nowhere, perhaps, is the conflict of evidence so sharp in regard to the Jesuits as when we turn to consider their activity outside of Europe. On the one hand we have theEdifying Letterswhich the missionaries themselves sent to their Roman authorities for publication in Europe. From these letters the apologetic writers construct a picture of the most charming devotion and spiritual success; we are invited to see thousands of Jesuits breaking every home-tie in order to carry the gospel of Christ across seas infested with Dutch and English enemies, to lands whence only one in a hundred will return, and where the tooth of the serpent, the poison of the tropics, or the knife of the savage awaits them; we are told how they advance unarmed into the forests, and fierce tribes surrender to the feeble symbol of the crucifix, how they charm the jealous monarchs of the east with their vast learning and open to other missionaries doors which had been closed against them for centuries, how from the rawest savage material they make ideal republics such as Plato had despaired of making out of the enlightened Athenians.
From the other side we learn that theseEdifying Letters, which so plainly announce their purpose, are "pious lies"; that they wilfully exaggerate conversions and martyrdoms, and convey a wholly false picture ofJesuit activity; that the Jesuits are engaged in a vast commercial activity all over the globe, are utterly unscrupulous in protecting their monopolies and in accumulating wealth, and make the most scandalous concessions to paganism in order to obtain numbers and influence. These things, moreover, are said by Catholic priests and prelates, not by jealous merchants and free-thinking politicians. Prelates of indisputable sanctity send to Europe the sternest and gravest charges against the Jesuits, and declare that they have been subjected by the Society to the most virulent and unprincipled persecution. We have therefore to make our way here with extreme prudence. Fortunately, many of the charges against the Jesuits receive serious consideration at Rome, and from the evidence which is submitted to, and generally endorsed by, the Roman tribunals, the historian is at times enabled to reach a confident verdict. Let us begin our survey with the action of the Jesuits in the far east.
At the beginning of the period we are considering Japan is closed against the Christian missionaries, and all the blood that has been shed on its soil proves sterile. We saw that the emperors had at length determined to extirpate the new religion, and a final revolt of the surviving Christians in 1638 led to the completing of the work of destruction. One or two Jesuits afterwards penetrated the country, in the disguise of merchants, but they were arrested or forced to leave. The artful Japanese devised a test of faith which should have defeated the zeal of the missionary; every European immigrant had to spit or trample on the crucifix before landing. It is said by a serious authority, one of the General Commandants of the French East India Company (Martin, of Pondicherry), that the Jesuits found a casuistic way out of this difficulty and insultedthe crucifix; they were, they said, merely regarding it as a piece of wood and metal. However that may be, the last Jesuit—an apostate who repented—was executed there in 1652, and the fathers of the "Japanese Province" were scattered over the other eastern missions.
China had, in the meantime, become a most attractive field of labour. It will be remembered that the Jesuit Ricci had at last found a way to penetrate the Chinese defences; he had concealed his religion, dressed as a Chinese scholar, and won great prestige as a mathematician and astronomer. He had obtained great influence at the court, and other Jesuits had followed his example. Their services to the court were rewarded with permission to preach their doctrines in the provinces, but this work was often checked by local persecution, and the Jesuits directed their chief efforts to the court and the educated class. The tradition started by Ricci was maintained and developed, and a very strange group of missionaries gathered about the emperor. Chief amongst them was Father Adam Schall, a very able mathematician and intimate friend of the emperor. He could cast horoscopes, found cannon, admire the works of Kung-fu-tse, and behave in every way as a Chinese gentleman. He found a substantial agreement between educated Chinese religion and Christianity—especially by keeping the crucifix out of sight—and genially sanctioned the worship of "Heaven," the veneration of Kung-fu-tse, and the cult of ancestors. The educated Chinaman is, as we know to-day, an Agnostic, and he concluded that the Jesuit was an almost equally liberal interpreter of popular superstitions. He therefore welcomed these western gentlemen who could read the stars, make fancy clocks, found cannon, direct armies, and paint pictures better than the native scholar.
The Jesuits had previously helped the Chinese to repel the Tartars, but a more formidable invasion occurred in 1636, and, to be quite safe, they divided their forces. Schall joined the Tartars at Peking and read in the stars that they would conquer; some of his colleagues remained with the threatened dynasty, declared that the stars were intheirfavour, and induced some members of the royal family to accept baptism. The Tartars won, the opposing Jesuits were recalled, and Schall passed into the confidence of the new emperor. He became a mandarin of the first class and president of the tribunal of imperial mathematics. He dressed in gorgeous silks, and his palanquin, borne by twelve servants, was attended by a strong body-guard with the usual Chinese symbols; also—if we believe the missionary Sala, as seems reasonable—his beautiful palace contained two charming Chinese ladies and, in the course of time, two children. But the emperor died ten years later, a persecution was initiated, and Father Schall died lamentably in prison in 1666. All the Jesuits—nineteen in number—were imprisoned, and their 151 churches were closed or destroyed.
In 1669 the young Emperor Kang Hi, son of the Tartar conqueror, attained his majority and released the Jesuits. Father Verbiest took the place of Father Schall, and as his military services enabled the emperor to quell an insurrection, he obtained permission to summon fresh "mathematicians" from the west. France was now the great expanding Power in Europe, and the new field, with its prospect of a monopoly of commerce, was secured for LouisXIV.Six learned French Jesuits arrived in 1688, and from that time until the end of the century they grew in power and wealth. As artists, astrologers, or mechanicians the priests made themselves indispensableat court, and the lay-brothers brought western skill in medicine and surgery. One of them received 200,000 francs' worth of gold for curing the emperor. They also imported clocks, wine, and other western products, and, from merely approving, they passed on to an active share in the great Chinese industry of lending money at a profit, which was then sternly condemned by their Church. The rival Catholic missionaries reported that the three Jesuit houses at Peking made 80,000 francs a year by usury; though the Jesuits protested that they did not charge more than twenty-four per cent. Father Gerbillon was now head of the mathematical tribunal and diplomatic agent on Russian affairs. Father Martini was the military expert, and, as a mandarin of the first order, exhibited a dragon on his fine silk robe.
There was one very serious thorn in the side of these prosperous Jesuits. Dominican, Franciscan, and other missionaries had followed them into the country, and were expressing the most cordial abhorrence of their procedure. Their arrogance, their unpriestly occupations, and their commerce and usury were bad enough, but they were not even preaching the Gospel. They suppressed the doctrine of the Redemption, did not anoint dying women (out of concession to Chinese delicacy), and permitted their converts to join in the rites of the old Chinese religion. The Dominicans and Franciscans disturbed their profitable policy by thrusting the crucifix before the eyes of the amazed Chinese, and there were fierce wrangles. The friars appealed to Rome, and in 1645 the Propaganda condemned the Jesuit concessions. The Jesuits ignored the condemnation, on the ground that it was issued on false information, and sent Mandarin Martini to Rome. Martini unblushingly asserted that the rites they permitted werepurely civil in character, and he was able to return with an authorisation of their practices. But the Dominicans sent a fresh envoy to Rome, and, in the meantime, the terrible Jansenist Arnauld had learned the facts and was holding up the Jesuits to the ridicule of Europe.
All the machinery of intrigue at Rome was now in motion, and in 1684 three bishops who belonged to the rival French Congregation of Foreign Missions were sent out to make an investigation. When the Jesuits found it impossible to persuade these commissioners that the early Chinese had received a knowledge of the true God from the children of Noah, that the cult of ancestors was equivalent to the services in honour of the souls in purgatory, and so on, they used their court-influence ruthlessly against them and the missionaries. In the course of time, however, an adverse report reached Rome, and a serious inquiry opened. The ten Jesuits at the Chinese court wrote to say that the emperor himself endorsed their interpretation of the Chinese doctrines and rites, but, although the new Pope, ClementXI., was favourable to the Society, and Père la Chaise threw the influence of France into the scale, the testimony of the other missionaries was too plain to be ignored. An experienced missionary and able young prelate, Mgr. (later Cardinal) de Tournon, was sent out in 1703 to examine the Jesuit practices in India and China.
The adventurous voyage of Mgr. de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, would fill an interesting volume. We shall see presently what the practices of the Jesuits were in India, and will not be surprised that he promptly condemned them. From that moment until he died heart-broken, six years afterwards, in a Christian jail, he was thwarted and tormented by the intrigues of the Jesuits. He reached Canton in the spring of 1705, andwas informed that the emperor refused to see him. The position of the Jesuits at court was such that not even a child could fail to recognise their direction in this decision, and a great scandal was caused. It was twelve months before the legate was permitted to pay the Pope's respects to the emperor, and, as he politely insisted that the Jesuits were falsely representing the Church, he was driven from the country and committed to the care of the Portuguese authorities, who were controlled by the Jesuits. When he reached Macao, this papal legate found that the Viceroy of India, the Archbishop of Goa, and the Bishop of Macao forbade him to exercise his powers in any country under the Portuguese flag. When he justly replied by excommunicating the Bishop and Captain-General of Macao—and the Pope recognised the integrity of his conduct by making him cardinal in that year (1707)—the Portuguese authorities imprisoned him. He died in prison three years afterwards, at the early age of forty-two. The only priests in the east whom he had felt compelled to censure were the Jesuits, and the letters of de Tournon himself and of the priests of his suite (one of whom was imprisoned in a Jesuit house) emphatically attribute all the outrages they suffered to the Jesuits, who intercepted their correspondence in order to conceal the facts from the Papacy. It is even stated by some of these priests that the stubborn cardinal was eventually removed by poison.
Since we know that the Jesuits had paramount influence at Peking, Macao, and Goa, and could easily have secured a proper treatment of the Pope's representative, we are compelled to believe these witnesses. Crétineau-Joly's statement, that "they did not dare to intervene between the emperor and the legate," is little less than frivolous. They directed the wholeproceedings—as usual, through others. De Tournon's assurance that, when a priest was tortured to give evidence against him at Peking, there were two Jesuits listening behind a curtain, is quite in harmony with their ways; about the same time in Paraguay, when a bishop was violently assaulted by the armed pupils of the Society, there were two Jesuits concealed in the trees directing them. We shall see that every prelate, in any part of the world, who sets out to expose the misdeeds of the Jesuits, experiences the same outrages as did the unfortunate Cardinal de Tournon.
The Jesuits both of India and China ignored the commands of the Pope's solemn representative, and clung to their lucrative missions. In 1706 they persuaded the emperor to forbid any missionary to attack Chinese rites, and, as the fierce controversy continued and the banishment of the more active prelates proved fruitless, they obtained an edict expelling all missionaries who followed the instructions of the late legate. The scandal was, however, now known throughout Christendom, and on 25th September 1710 ClementXI.solemnly condemned their practices. Again they quibbled, observing that some of their practices were not specifically condemned, and a new papal bull (Ex illa die) was issued on 19th March 1715, enacting that all missionaries must take oath to abandon the forbidden practices. The emperor denounced the bull, and imprisoned the prelate who communicated it to the Jesuits, and a third representative was sent to China by the Vatican. In spite of certain concessions (afterwards condemned by the Papacy), Mgr. Mezzabarba had little more success than his predecessors, and the Jesuits continued to maintain their compromises and tempt the Papacy with glowing promises of success. There were, they said, nine members of the royal familyand hundreds of influential Chinamen ready to embrace Christianity as they expounded it. InnocentXIII., now fully informed by Mezzabarba, severely condemned them (1723), and we know from a private letter of the Jesuit historian Cordara that he was preparing an "atrocious decree" against the Society when he died in 1724.
As the immediate successors of InnocentXIII.were open to Jesuit influence, they were enabled to maintain their position and practices on the Asiatic missions until the middle of the eighteenth century. In other words, these religious who were especially bound to obey the Pope, defied the Papacy for nearly one hundred years (since the first condemnation), and committed every outrage against its representatives. In the meantime their great patron Kang Hi died (1722), and the exasperated Chinese began to destroy the conflicting missions. There were then, it is said, several hundred thousand Christians in China, though the sequel will show that these were almost entirely of the poorer classes, won by material services and ready to return to Taoism at the slightest pressure. The new emperor proscribed Christianity, and banished all the missionaries except the more learned of the Jesuits. A letter written by one of these Jesuits gives an account of their situation. As engineers, astronomers, and diplomatists they were still sheltered and rewarded by the Chinese court—he adds that they remained partly in the interest of French (and their own) commerce—but the educated Chinese disdained their religion, and they were reduced to a furtive ministration to the rapidly shrinking body of poor converts.
This situation lasted until 1743, when BenedictXIV.at last vindicated the dignity of the Papacy and issued his famous bullEx quo singulari. A second and moredrastic bull, sternly condemning their contumacy, appeared in 1744, and they were now forced to submit without reserve. From that time the Chinese mission melted away. As far as the Jesuits were concerned, it had never had any religious solidity. A few Jesuits who attempted to sustain the converts in the provinces were put to death, and the court Jesuits were restricted to their hydraulic engineering, surgery, philology, and astrology. They lingered for a generation at Peking, the strangest figures in the whole clerical universe, but the Chinese showed no sign of relenting, and they died, one by one, in their singular employments. Their death closed the stirring but sterile episode of the first attempt to Christianise China.
Before we turn to India, the next important centre of Christianity in the far east, we must glance at their fortunes in subsidiary missions. Their letters tell how they entered the Philippine Islands in 1665, and had a miraculous success among the very lowly, but generally peaceful, natives; one Jesuit is said to have baptized 50,000 of them (mostly children, apparently) in four years, and founded eight churches and three colleges. One priest to eight churches, and eight churches to 50,000 converts, give us the true measure of their success. They were generally content to pour the baptismal water over the heads of all who could be induced to accept it, by material benefits or a confused belief in its magical properties, and send the inflated statistics to Europe. In spite, however, of wars amongst the natives and occasional persecution they built up a prosperous mission. Its story is tainted by commercial activity and unprincipled behaviour towards the rest of the clergy. We shall see later that they had vast estates in California and Mexico, and from these they conducted a large and regular traffic, in theirown ships, with Manila. Archbishop Pardo, of Manila, condemned this traffic, and ordered them to distribute the value of their property among the poor. He suffered the customary fate of prelates who interfered with the operations of the Society. Whether the governor of the Philippines was bribed, or merely persuaded by the fathers, we need not attempt to determine; but his officers seized the Archbishop during the night and deported him to a neighbouring island. Thirty years previously Pardo's predecessor, Archbishop Guerrero, had been treated with the same outrages.
In Cochin China, Tong King, and Siam the story of the Jesuits is much the same as in China, and need not be told in detail. A Father de Rhodes, a missionary of the early and ardent type, penetrates Cochin China in 1640, and in spite of resistance and persecution, makes 40,000 "converts" and builds seventy "churches" in a few years. Modern missionary experience in Asia enables us to test these absurd claims. Father de Rhodes was caught and expelled, and the next group of missionaries adopted the Chinese policy. They induced the King to regard them as great mathematicians and skilful engineers, and propagated a mild form of Christianity, as in China. This led to a similar, but even more virulent, conflict with the non-Jesuit missionaries. When the papal bullEx illa die, condemning their practices, arrived, they airily remarked that it came from Amsterdam, not Rome, and ignored it. Very violent quarrels occurred with the French non-Jesuit priests, whom they denounced as "Jansenists"; and these priests accused them of the most sordid vice and outrage. We shall see that the charge of loose living must be admitted; but whether they poisoned hostile priests, and had refractory native women stripped to the waist and flogged, are questions which must remainopen. The profane historian is naturally embarrassed when two groups of priests flatly accuse each other of lying, and one group certainlyislying.
At length the Vatican sent a bishop to investigate the situation in Cochin China, and we are, perhaps, justified in following the report of this impartial Papal Legate. He found great moral as well as theological laxity among the Jesuits. One father, in high authority, had had a concubine for twenty years, and took her with him when he visited the sick; and there was much drunkenness and violence against their opponents. The papal agents were bribed to support them, and the pagan officials were easily induced to admire and sustain the more genial ways of the Jesuits. The Legate officially forbade them to practise usury, to sell worthless drugs at exorbitant prices to the natives, to dress in gay purple and bind their flowing locks with coloured ribands, and so on. His decree is a flash of light on Jesuit practices among natives. One curious incident in his reports is worth noting. A Franciscan monk, a feeble old man of sixty, had, to please the Jesuits, established a church in face of that of the French missionaries. The Legate ordered him to remove, and the monk presently came to say that he was unable to remove as the Captain of the Guardians of the Royal Dogs (a young Jesuit "mathematician") had appointed him a Guardian and sent him several dogs, because the air of his district was good for dogs. In a word, the Jesuits used their full influence at court to thwart and persecute the Legate, and he died in distress shortly afterwards.
Siam had received two Jesuits in 1630. They came as envoys of the governor of the Philippines, and so charmed the King that they were invited to stay. When Spanish vessels followed them, the Siamese were indignant; but the quarrel was adjusted, and in 1685 six learned"mathematicians" of the great King LouisXIV. came, with gorgeous parade and an imposing military escort, to the Siamese court. The Jesuits were now everywhere diplomatic agents for the expansion of French commerce, if not French territory, and the work in Siam was facilitated by a French adventurer, named Phaulcon, who had won the King's confidence. The King asked for more "mathematicians," and fourteen Jesuits eagerly responded. But with them (in 1687) came a French squadron and several regiments, who proceeded to occupy and fortify positions in Bangkok and Merguy. The King soon detected that the learned mathematicians and the minister Phaulcon and the French regiments had a close and secret understanding, and this remarkable attempt to spread the gospel came to a premature close. Phaulcon lost his head, and the mathematicians were banished.
We have seen in a previous chapter how the Jesuits had applied their elastic principles to the conversion of India, the original and central field of the Asiatic missions. After sending most imposing figures of baptisms to Europe during a century, they announced, we saw, that the work had been profoundly unsatisfactory, and some new plan of reaching the educated Hindus must be adopted. So Father de Nobili had dressed as a Hindu priest of the most sacred caste, had adopted all the emblems and practices of the caste, and had behaved throughout life in such a way that the other members of the Saniassi sect were unable to discover that he was a Christian. Father Britto, Father Beschi, and other Jesuits succeeded him in this fantastic rôle. Rome was solemnly assured, as it was from China, that the rites and emblems of the Saniassi (which are saturated with Hindu mythology) were "purely civil" in their nature;local prelates (who were frequently ex-Jesuits) and Vatican officials were bribed or persuaded to sanction this fiction; and for more than a century the Jesuits permitted a number of members of the Society to don the sacred clothes and practise the rites of the Saniassi.
The melodramatic temper which the Jesuit spirit fostered in members of the Society counted for a good deal in this singular development of their missionary enterprise. Regarded from the point of view of the purpose which they held to justify it, one must pronounce it a failure. Very few high-caste Hindus were converted, and even these few only accepted a quite emasculated version of Christianity, as a rule. Some of the Jesuit-Saniassi did succeed in obtaining considerable prestige. They rode about on fine horses, and were borne in palanquins while natives cooled them with peacock-feather fans, and greatly impressed the ignorant natives. One of them, Beschi, so captivated a local prince that he became his first minister, and rode about with an escort of thirty horsemen and a native band. These successes among the educated Hindus were, however, only won by a concealment of the distinctive elements of the Christian faith and an insinuation that the enlightened priests at Rome itself (as distinct from the common missionaries) held the same liberal view of the creed.
It was still mainly among the poorer classes and the pariahs, whose poverty made them more susceptible to missionary influence, that the converts were found. We may regard with suspicion the enormous figures of conversions effected by them which individual Jesuits sent to Europe,—one of the Apostolic Vicars for India bluntly describes them as "lies,"—but hundreds of thousands of the natives were in some measure gathered into the Christian fold. We are sometimes asked to admire the levelling of caste-barriers which this inclusion ina common fold would entail, but the Jesuits fully respected the caste-barriers. Some of their number are entitled to high praise for becoming pariahs among the pariahs,—dressing in their ragged clothes and eating their vile food,—but the high-caste Jesuit would not glance even at his pariah-colleague if he met him on the road. He would not enter a pariah's hut; the dying pariah had to be carried out under a tree to receive his ministration, and, if he were too ill to be removed, he died without the sacraments. The pariahs were not allowed in the church; they were herded in an enclosure by the side of it to hear the Mass, and the sacraments were often administered to them through a window.
These were not the only grievances which the other missionaries, who could not report their tens of thousands of conversions, had against the Jesuits. It was equally proved that they laid little stress on the doctrine of redemption, as in China, and made very material concessions to paganism. They omitted parts of the ceremony of baptism which the Hindus disliked (the use of saliva and the breathing on the convert): they did not give saint-names to the converts, and advised them not to call themselves Christians, but (in a familiar Hindu phrase) "followers of the true God": they married mere children, long before the time of puberty, and they allowed the married girl to wear thetalyaccording to the pagan custom:[29]they blessed and distributed the ashes of cow-dung which the natives esteemed: they permitted their converts to wear, andsometimes wore themselves, emblems of Vishnu. It seems that in some places they placed no cross over the altar.
These extraordinary concessions—they are commonly known as "the Malabar rites," as the Jesuits were chiefly established in Malabar—were fiercely assailed by the other missionaries and reported to Rome. In 1703, as we saw, Mgr. de Tournon was sent to inquire into the quarrel, and he condemned the more flagrant of the Jesuit practices. When the Legate passed on to China, the Jesuits and the local prelates (either Jesuits or friends of the Jesuits) entirely ignored his commands, and the feud continued. It must be borne in mind that the Jesuits had now supreme influence at the Portuguese as well as the French court, and officials naturally bowed to their wealth and power. For a considerable time they had received from the Kings of Portugal immense subsidies for their missionary work, and their commerce and intentness on gifts and legacies had added to this wealth. The manager of the French East India Company at Pondicherry tells us that the Jesuits in India surpassed the English and Portuguese merchants, and only fell short of the Dutch, in trading activity. In his time there was a debt of 450,000livreson the books of his company in the name of a Jesuit (Father Tachard). Their wealth was very great, and they did not scruple to use it in the maintenance of their position as well as in attracting converts.
But the Malabar rites, and Chinese rites, and Jesuit-Brahmans were now, as we saw, a scourge in the hands of the Society's critics in Europe, and the Papacy was forced to suppress them. As we have so often realised, the Jesuit repute for broad sagacity and statesmanship, as distinct from astuteness and capacity for intrigue, is without foundation. The Roman Jesuit authoritiescould have destroyed the system in a year, yet they sustained it for a hundred years, and, with blind stubbornness, allowed an indelible stain to be fixed on the Society, and were responsible for the sudden collapse of their missions. When BenedictXIV.fearlessly and peremptorily condemned them, there was a formidable reaction among their converts, and the hundreds of congregations rapidly disappeared. Their apologist would have us believe that they submitted in 1741 (the year before Benedict's first bull), but that "distance and the difficulty of communication retarded the arrival of their letters at Rome." Ignoring the foolish remark about the difficulty of communication, we may observe that the year 1741 was seventeen years after their official condemnation by the Pope's representative; that ClementXII. had condemned them in 1734 and 1739, and they had ignored his decrees; and that, so far from having submitted in 1741, BenedictXIV. found them contumacious to his bull of 1742, and had to issue another in 1744. They submitted in 1745, and the structure they had raised by two hundred years of devotion and dissimulation rapidly decayed.
The missions in other parts of Asia had little success. Ceylon was invaded by two fathers in 1616, but when these were executed in 1627 and 1628 the mission seems to have been abandoned. It is interesting to find that they even entered the almost impregnable capital of Thibet. Two of their more devoted and austere missionaries crossed the vale of Cachmire and the bleak mountains on foot, and reached Lhasa. The expedition had no result, and was not repeated. In nearer Asia also the work was only moderately successful. Armed with diplomatic papers from the French court, instead of the crucifix of which they sometimes boast as their only weapon, they enteredthe dominion of the Turk, and wrangled with Greeks, Nestorians, Armenians, and other Christians over the infallibility of the Pope. They founded residences at Thessalonica, Smyrna, Trebezon, Damascus, etc., and pushed on to the banks of the Euphrates. In 1682, two Jesuits, magnificently equipped and loaded with presents, approached the Shah of Persia as envoys of LouisXIV., and received permission to preach the Christian gospel. Within a quarter of a century they had, they said, baptized 200,000 of the natives. Then the Persian ruler turned a hostile eye on the growing body, and it melted more rapidly than it had grown. The age of LouisXIV.was over, the French dream of expansion laid aside, and the flow of French money interrupted.
A fresh attempt was made in 1677 to induce the Copts of Egypt to recognise the authority of the Pope. The now familiar device was adopted of impressing the monarch with a show of learning and art, and trusting to sow the Christian seed insidiously in his dominions. In twenty years of assiduous labour the scholar-missionaries added much to the slender geographical and archæological lore of Europe, but their secret religious mission failed. Abyssinia also still resisted their efforts. They converted an Emperor, and he was slain in civil war for endeavouring to force the new creed on his people; they secured the favour of his successor, and a Jesuit at last obtained the real dignity of Patriarch of Abyssinia. A threat of civil war moved the Emperor to restrict them, and, when they were found to be inspiring their converts with seditious sentiments, they were once more expelled and—save for an occasional invasion in disguise—their work was wholly destroyed. It may be added that some of the more heroic of the Jesuits penetrated the Congo, and endeavoured to reach the blacks at Tetuan, Angola, and the Guinea coast. Others followedthe negro to America; and the noble and self-sacrificing labours of a Father Peter Claver for forty years (1615-1654) must be put in the scale against their general demoralisation.
We turn now to the famous missions of South America, and must endeavour to attain an impartial estimate of their work, especially among the natives of Paraguay. I have previously described the model villages, or "reductions," which form the central interest of the Jesuit missions in America. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the fathers decided that they would not co-operate with the Spaniards of the South American towns. For this there was an admirable motive, and we saw that the spirit which animated the early missionaries in that region was excellent. They went out in couples or singly, unarmed, into the vast forests and along the great rivers in search of converts. The natives at first fled before them. A Spaniard was, to them, a man with superior weapons who sought only to enslave the natives and make wealth by their toil. It was at first for the purpose of removing this natural prejudice that the Jesuits dissevered themselves from the colonists and obtained from the King a declaration that the natives who had been baptized should never be enslaved. Later they obtained for them exemption from military or other service, and from any kind of local taxation. These things at once angered the great body of the Spanish colonists, and attracted the less savage natives to the missions. They therefore next secured permission to colonise independently of the laity, and, in 1610, founded the first reduction. They sent trained natives back into the forests, with axes, knives, mirrors, and other enticing presents, and the fathers themselves boldly penetrated time after time, so that by 1630 theyhad about 100,000 natives in their reductions. For some years their colonies were then devastated by a hostile tribe; but the Jesuits obtained from the Spanish King permission to arm their pupils, formed an army of several thousand drilled and well-equipped troops, and more than recovered their ground. In the course of time they came to have 300,000 natives in their reductions.
No payment was made to the workers in these reductions. After labouring to show that they were not very productive, the apologist for the Jesuits is driven to plead that the fathers "did not think it proper to give ideas of cupidity to Christians": an admirable sentiment, if the Society had not itself appropriated the superfluous wealth of the communities. Nor is it more convincing to be reminded of the natural indolence of the natives. They were not indolent in the reductions. Public and harsh penances were inflicted for laziness, and the hours of work, sleep, play, and prayer were rigorously fixed. Rough huts, light clothing, and sufficient cheap food were distributed weekly; festivals were frequent, and were enlivened by the flute, the song, or the dance; morality was so strictly controlled that the natives were watched even during the night. It does not seem just to compare them with slaves, or suggest that, as long as they behaved well, they were hardly treated. That they were not nearly so civilised as the roseate letters of the Jesuits describe will appear presently, but it was much that 300,000 natives were induced to lead regular and disciplined lives. It is absurd to speak of "ideal republics" when the workers dwelt in wretched huts, had no corporate property or power, worked all day for masters who rendered no account to them or any other, and could, when they were on the march, at once revert to savagery. Butthey were in a far superior position to that of the enslaved, brutalised, wine-sodden natives who fell into the hands of the lay colonists.
The antagonism to the reductions was in principle economic. The Spanish traders felt that they were prevented from exploiting the natives, a grievance with which we may or may not sympathise, and bitterly reproached the Jesuits with indulging in commerce. When "Edifying Letters" were published which described the Jesuits marching out once more from their pleasant reductions, facing the untamed savages or the beasts and serpents of new regions with the crucifix in their hands, people scoffingly observed that new reductions would increase the income of the Society. The Jesuits retorted that contact with Spaniards would mean disease and vice among their pupils, and they would rather manage the villages—they did not, of course, admit that they indulged in commerce—than admit European laymen. That they made a large profit out of 300,000 meagrely rewarded workers it is impossible to doubt, but how are we to judge the sincerity of their statement that they retained control solely from religious and moral motives?
Possibly the facts of their relations with the bishops of Paraguay will enable us to decide, if their action on other foreign missions be not regarded as sufficient. These facts are, of course, challenged by Jesuit writers, but the authority is too serious for us to set them aside on that account. Dom Bernardine de Cardenas, a Franciscan monk who became Bishop of Paraguay, sent Friar Villalon to the Spanish court and the Vatican to complain of the Jesuits. I state the facts as they are given in Villalon's memorial to Philip of Spain; and those who think that they are discredited because the Jesuits denied the more flagrant charges and theSpanish court, ruled by Jesuits, rejected them, are free to impute the mendacity to the bishop rather than to the Jesuits.
The two predecessors of Cardenas had had much trouble with the Jesuits, but for a year or two after his consecration he was on very friendly terms with them. They did not from the first affect to regard his consecration as invalid, as their apologist says; that idea (afterwards refuted by the Papacy) occurred to them in the course of the quarrel. In 1644, Cardenas announced that he was about to visit the reductions, which formed part of his diocese, and the Jesuits offered him 20,000 crowns to omit that part of his visitation. He refused, and they discovered a scruple about the validity of his consecration. As Cardenas insisted, they spread the report in the reductions that Spanish priests were coming who would interfere with the women, raised a troop of eight hundred Indians, and advanced toward the episcopal town of Assumption. The governor, a brutal man, had previously quarrelled with the bishop, and one would imagine that it hardly needed a bribe of 30,000 crowns to secure his co-operation. It is at least quite certain that, as he travelled, the bishop was seized by the governor at the head of the Jesuit soldiers, brutally treated, and sent into exile 200 miles away.
Cardenas made his way with great difficulty to La Plata, placed his case before the higher tribunal of the Royal Audience, and was awarded his see. Near the city he was, however, again arrested by the Jesuit troops, and sent back to his wretched exile. In 1647 there was a change of governor, and he returned, to the great joy of the town. The Jesuits, however, intrigued with his clergy, allowed two of his canons to set up a rival chapter in their residence, and turned thenew governor against him. He was besieged in his cathedral for fourteen days; but a compromise was accepted, and, when the governor died two years afterwards, the citizens nominated Cardenas himself governor, in accordance with their legal right. The Jesuits then set up a rival for the governorship, secured, by intrigue and bribery, his recognition by the authorities at La Plata, and put 4000 of their armed Indians, under Jesuit leaders, at his disposal. Leaving behind them a trail of outrage which does not harmonise with the Jesuit description of their pupils, these troops flung themselves upon the armed and angry citizens. In the battle that followed 385 Indians and a Jesuit were slain, but the citizens were overpowered.
Meantime the Jesuits made use of an extraordinary privilege which they professed to have received from PiusV.and GregoryXIII.They said that, in case of a dispute between themselves and the bishop, they had the right to nominate a judge (orconservator), chosen by themselves, to arbitrate. We have seen them use this privilege in the remote Philippines, and shall meet it again. It was a gross and ludicrous claim, as the Jesuits always took care to choose a judge who would declare in their favour; indeed, Pope InnocentX.afterwards declared (as we shall see) that they had no such right. They chose a friend, a corrupt member of one of the laxer religious congregations, and he excommunicated the bishop. The Jesuit troops then seized the prelate and transported him some 200 leagues from the city. From his exile he sent Father Villanon to Spain, and, though the friar was waylaid and rifled by the Jesuit troops, he succeeded in reaching Madrid and informing the King. It happened that the King had only a few years before received authentic information of a similar outrage in Mexico, and had sent a sternreprimand to the Jesuits, in spite of the group of court-fathers. There seemed, however, no prospect of peace, and Cardenas was transferred to another diocese.
From 1650 to 1750 the province of Paraguay enjoyed its prosperity with little interruption. The troops, which were trained and equipped at the various reductions, amounted in time to an army of 15,000 finely armed men, with the fighting instincts of the savage and the best weapons that Europe could supply, so that neither the unconverted tribes nor the Spaniards could assail them. Heroic efforts were made, though with very moderate success, to extend the area of the missions. The Society never lacked men of the most intrepid and self-sacrificing character, and numbers of them left their bones to bleach in the infested forests or on the scorching plains. One must be lamentably prejudiced to refuse to see the heroism of these brave apostles; but it would be an equal evidence of prejudice to fail to recognise that, whether they realised it or no, they were the apostles or pioneers of the vast and profitable industrial system in which the Jesuits were improperly engaged. Time after time royal or ecclesiastical inquisitors were sent—no voluntary and serious inquisitor was ever admitted—to examine the reductions and draw up a flattering report for the Spanish or the Roman court. I have said that the reductions were admirable in comparison with the miserable condition of the other natives who fell into the hands of the Spaniards and Portuguese; but that the Jesuits were engaged in commerce, that they exploited their natives for the benefit of the Society, and that they were prepared to adopt the most unprincipled measures to protect their monopoly, is an historical platitude.
In 1750, FerdinandVI., as a reward for the military services which their troops (always led by Jesuits)rendered so frequently to his officers, exempted them from the little taxation—a fee to the crown—to which they were subject, and an era of greater prosperity than ever seemed to open. In that very year, however, as we saw, Spain and Portugal came to an agreement which was fateful for the Society. Portugal ceded Sacramento, a place of great strategical importance, to Spain in exchange for a part of Paraguay which contained seven of the reductions. The court-Jesuits tried in vain to defeat this arrangement, and troops were sent to take over the territory ceded to Portugal. They were confronted by a force of 15,000 troops, gathered from the whole of the Jesuit reductions, and a bloody battle ensued. It was, in fact, only after a prolonged struggle, and by bringing superior troops, that the joint Spanish and Portuguese army conquered the insurrection. From sheer cupidity the Jesuits had dealt a fatal blow at their own prosperity.
Their apologist would have us believe that the fathers used all the influence they possessed to restrain the natives and secure their submission. On the face of it, such an assertion is a piece of mere effrontery. The natives, especially the native troops, never moved without Jesuit directions, and these troops were evidently drafted by the controllers of the province from all the various reductions. The correspondence of the Spanish and Portuguese commanders fully inculpates the Jesuits; and, as we saw, the Portuguese authorities intercepted letters in which Father Rabago directed the local Jesuits to organise a resistance. Even the pious Spanish King was convinced that they were responsible for the insurrection. They could combat King or Pope when the fortune or power of the Society was threatened. And for their reluctance to sacrifice seven out of their fifty reductions their fate was sealed. Withinten years the order came from Spain to remove all the Jesuits from their homes and ship them to Europe. The government acted on this occasion with craft and secrecy, and left no room for insurrection; the dejected missionaries arrived at the mother-country only to learn that the Society was ignominiously proscribed throughout the King's dominions, and that half of Catholic Europe was clamouring for their annihilation.[30]
The Portuguese fathers in Brazil were less enterprising than their Spanish colleagues. In the course of the sixteenth century they spread along the banks of the Amazon and converted a large number of the natives. When the Dutch took the town of Maragnon in 1641, and threatened their work, the Jesuits were very active in inspiring the successful rising against them, and they were rewarded by the King with privileges for their protégées. In 1653, Father Vieira, whom we have met in the chapter on Portugal, came out to Brazil, and the work proceeded more rapidly. The apologetic writers ask us to admire the noble conduct of this gifted father in abandoning the comfort of the court for the steaming forests and rough natives of Brazil; but we have seen that Father Vieira's countrymen had more to do with his departure than any lofty sentiment he may have possessed. He applied his impetuous temper and great ability to the work of the mission, and it rapidly advanced in organisation and profitableness, until the American-Portuguese in turn sent Vieira upon another stage of his stormy career. The reductions or colonies of Brazil were not organised and controlled as firmly as those of Paraguay. The luxuriance of thesoil dispensed the natives from assiduous labour, but the colonies were not without profit, and, when the Jesuits obtained from the King a declaration that all the natives in his American dominion must pass under their control, the planters and merchants entered into bitter hostility. Twice they expelled the Jesuits, and twice the priest-ridden court secured their return. At last Pombal came to power in Portugal, and, as we saw, the Jesuits were withdrawn and cast upon the shores of the Papal States.
Instead of minutely examining the slender colonies which had meantime been founded in Chile, Peru, and other parts of South America, we will pass at once to the north and conclude with a short account of the missions in Mexico, California, and Canada. Here the famous case of Bishop Palafox at once claims our attention, and I feel justified in relying implicitly on the two letters in which this saintly and learned prelate stated his grievances to Pope InnocentX.When these letters were published, ten years after they were written, the Jesuits exclaimed that they were forged, and Crétineau-Joly very dishonestly insinuates that there is ground to suspect this. Not only are these letters expressly mentioned in a decree of the Congregation of Rites (16th December 1660), and not only did Pope Innocent issue three briefs against the Jesuits in virtue of them, but Arnauld showed, at the time of the original controversy, that Palafox himself, foreseeing the manœuvres of the Jesuits, had left with the general of the Carmelite monks a written attestation of his authorship of the second (and more deadly) letter. We have, further, a reference to this letter, prohibiting its circulation for peace' sake, in a decree of the Spanish Inquisition of 5th February 1661. To doubt the genuineness of the letters is frivolous,and the character of the writer is above dispute. His virtues won for him the official title of "Venerable" from the Vatican, and might have won a higher title but for the intrigues of the Jesuits.
Palafox was Bishop of Angelopolis, and in that capacity he attempted to make the Jesuits pay his see the just tithes on the property they inherited. They replied with abuse, and he then inquired by what authority they preached and heard confessions in his diocese. They arrogantly boasted of their special privileges, and refused to show the documents, as they had a further privilege excusing them from doing so; a claim which the Pope afterwards declared to be false. Palafox informed the faithful that they had no powers for the ministry. At this the Jesuits produced another of their remarkable privileges—the power to appoint judges of the difference—and paid 4000 crowns each to two Dominican monks of Mexico city to come and arbitrate. The viceroy also was bribed, and the two monks were led into Angelopolis with a great parade of trumpeters and guards. A notice was soon posted at the street corners to the effect that the Bishop of Angelopolis was deposed and excommunicated for his improper conduct, and, in June 1647, Palafox fled to the hills from the growing violence. On 31st July, the feast of St. Ignatius, a carnival-procession, starting from the Jesuit house, bore round the town the most ribald, and even obscene, caricatures of the bishop's office. Numbers of his supporters were banished, and bands of soldiers and Jesuit spies wandered about the hills in search of the wretched hut where Palafox was hidden.
All these details are submitted to the Pope in the bishop's letters, and, in order to make them intelligible, a remarkable account is given of the worldly prosperity of the fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part ofthe wealth of Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep,[31]besides cattle and other property. They own six large sugar-refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own only three small refineries. They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops and butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually intrigue for legacies—a woman has recently left them 70,000 crowns—and they refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this authoritative description that the Jesuit congregations at Rome were still periodically forbidding the fathers to indulge in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely maintain that the Society never engaged in commerce. It should also be added that the missionaries were still heavily subsidised by the King of Spain, that there were (the bishop says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their establishments, and that they conducted only ten colleges.
From his refuge Palafox had sent messengers both to Rome and Madrid, and replies severely condemning the Jesuits were at once sent both by the Pope and the King. Pope Innocent appointed a commission of cardinals and bishops to examine the appeal of Palafox and counter-appeal of the Roman Jesuits. They declared in favour of the bishop on almost every point, and the Pope issued his first brief in that sense (14th May 1648). On 25th June the King severely condemned them for appointing a judge and defying the bishop. The Jesuits affected to regard the papal brief as not binding because it had not been endorsed by the Royal Council; a strange departure from ultramontaneprinciples. In a word, the King had to repeat his warning, and the Pope had twice to repeat his orders, before they abandoned their intrigues in Mexico, Madrid, and Rome. Palafox was, however, invited to Spain—the King's letters treat him always with the greatest respect—and it was concluded that, in the interest of peace, he should remain in the motherland. Even in the grave the Jesuits persecuted the saintly bishop, bitterly opposing his canonisation, but his letters remain a terrible indictment of their behaviour on the missions.
There were other Jesuit estates and villages in California (or the eastern part of North America), from which a profitable trade was conducted with Manila by means of a fine frigate belonging to the Society. In the Antilles they boasted an official monopoly of the "spiritual administration" of the French islands. It is true that this gave them a new opportunity for commerce, and that they did much political service for the French government in return for the privilege; but it is proper to add that many of the fathers distinguished themselves by self-sacrificing labour among the negro slaves. Their mission in Maryland was destroyed by the growth of Protestantism, and it remains only to say a word about their fortunes in Canada.
The nomadic habits of the Indians and the ever-recurring warfare prevented them from achieving a great success in Canada. In the softer districts by the St. Lawrence and the lakes they succeeded in establishing a few of their agricultural colonies, but their work was arduous, dangerous, and not generally profitable, and even the prestige of the French government, for which they acted as political agents, did not enable them to convert a very large proportion of the Indians. Moreover, much as we may admire the devotion andendurance many of them displayed in seeking to win the fierce and roving tribes, commercial eagerness taints their work indelibly. When they first received permission to enter Canada from HenryIV., they were long detained in France because they refused to come to an agreement about trade with the lay colonists, and their first missionaries were captured by the English in an endeavour to cross the seas without this understanding. Eighty years later, when peace was made with the formidable Iroquois, who had so often blighted their work, the Indian spokesman insisted that they would not admit the Jesuits, as the fathers sought only their beavers and their women. On the other hand, no one questions the great political service they rendered to their government in disposing the Indians to receive French authority and embittering them against the English. Their story, until England took Canada in 1759, and France itself disowned them a few years later, was one of individual devotion overshadowed by a corporate occupation with commerce and politics.
We have now surveyed the vast field of Jesuit missionary activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and can appreciate the effect when, in a few years time, the voice of the Pope will summon them to lay aside for ever their black robes and their proud name. It would be hypocritical to say that we cannot sum up in few words the impressions gathered from this survey. Let us recognise in the first place that thousands of the fathers displayed heroic zeal in discharging the work which the Society laid on them. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, often of noble birth and brilliant parts, faced the perils of a mediæval voyage, wandered afoot over leagues of desolate mountain or deadly forest, and laid down their lives courageously under the plague or the sword. Yet there is anotheraspect which we perceive just as clearly: another quality which we find in the silken courts of China or Siam or Persia, the blaze of Indian or Brazilian villages, on the plains of Paraguay or Mexico, and amid the snows of Canada. It is everywhere, it is identical, and it is palpable. These men have fallen from their ideals. In virtue of a vast and hypocritical system of commerce they amass wealth and power, defend it with mean intrigue and violent assault, blunt their moral sense in pursuit of more, relax into sensuality and are lifted to arrogance. It is time that they have a severe lesson.