BATTLE OF THE BOOKS
Aquaviva and the Spanish Opposition--Vitelleschi--The "Monita
Secreta"; Morlin--Roding--"Historia Jesuitici Ordinis"--
"Jesuiticum Jejunium"--"Speculum Jesuiticum"--Pasquier--Mariana
--"Mysteries of the Jesuits"--"The Jesuit Cabinet"--"Jesuit
Wolves"--"Teatro Jesuítico"--"Morale Pratique des Jésuites"--
"Conjuratio Sulphurea"--"Lettres Provinciales"--"Causeries du
Lundi" and Bourdaloue--Prohibition of publication by Louis XIV--
Pastoral of the Bishops of Sens--Santarelli--Escobar--Anti-Coton
--"Les Descouvertes"--Norbert.
Father Claudius Aquaviva died on January 31, 1615, after a generalship
of thirty-four years. To him are to be ascribed not only all of the
great enterprises inaugurated since 1580, but, to a very considerable
extent, the spirit by which the Society has been actuated up to the
present time and which, it is to be hoped, it will always retain. The
marvellous skill and the serene equanimity with which he guided the
Society through the perils which it encountered from kings and princes,
from heretics and heathens, from great ecclesiastical tribunals and
powerful religious organizations, and most of all from the machinations
of disloyal members of the Institute, entitle him to the enthusiastic
love and admiration of every Jesuit and the unchallenged right to the
title which he bears of the "Saviour of the Society." Far from being
rigid and severe, as he is sometimes accused of being, he was amazingly
meek and magnanimously merciful. The story about forty professed fathers
having been dismissed in consequence of their connection with the
sedition of Vásquez is a myth. The entire number of plotters on this
occasion did not exceed twenty-eight, and only a few of those were
expelled. In any case, whatever penalty was meted out to them was the
act of the congregation and not of Aquaviva. Indeed, Aquaviva's methods
are in violent contrast with those of Francis Xavier, who gave the power
of expulsion to even local Superiors, and we almost regret that Xavier
had not to deal with his fellow-countrymen at this juncture. It must
also be borne in mind that the great exodus from the Society which
occurred in Portugal antedated Aquaviva's time, and was due to the
mistaken methods of government by Simon, Rodriguez.
The congregation convened after his death met on November 5, 1615, and
the majority of its members must have been astounded to find the Spanish
claim to the generalship still advocated. Mutio Vitelleschi an Italian,
however, was most in evidence at that time; he was forty-five years old,
and had been already rector of the English College, provincial both of
Naples and Rome, and later assistant for Italy. As in all of those
positions of trust he had displayed a marvellous combination of
sweetness and strength which had endeared him to his subjects, the
possibility of his election, at this juncture, afforded a well-grounded
hope of a glorious future for the Society. Nevertheless some of the
Spanish delegates determined to defeat him, and with that in view they
addressed themselves to the ambassadors of France and Spain, to enlist
their aid; but the shrewd politicians took the measure of the plotters,
and, while piously commending them for their religious zeal and
patriotism, politely refused their co-operation. That should have
sufficed as a rebuke, but prompted by their unwise zeal they approached
the Pope himself and assured him that Vitelleschi was altogether unfit
for the position. The Pontiff listened to them graciously and bade them
be of good heart, for, if Vitelleschi were half what they said he was,
there could be no possibility of his election. The balloting took place
on November 15, and Mutio was chosen by thirty-nine out of seventy-five
votes. The margin was not a large one, and shows how nearly the
conspirators had succeeded. To-day an appeal to laymen in such a matter
would entail immediate expulsion.
Vitelleschi's vocation to the Society was a marked one. When only a boy
of eleven, he was dreaming of being associated with it, and before he
had finished his studies he bound himself by a vow to ask for
admittance, and, if accepted, to distribute his inheritance to the poor.
But as the Vitelleschi formed an important section of the Roman
nobility, such aspirations did not fit in with the father's ambition for
his son, and the boy was bidden to dismiss all thought of it. He was a
gentle and docile lad, but he possessed also a decided strength of
character, and like the Little Flower of Jesus in our own times, he
betook himself to the Pope to lay the matter before him. The father
finally yielded, and on August 15, 1583, young Mutio, after going to
Communion with his mother at the Gesù, hurried off to lay his request
before Father Aquaviva. His great desire was to go to England, which was
just then waging its bloody war against the Faith, but, as with Aquaviva
himself, his ignorance of the English language deprived him of the crown
of martyrdom.
Crétineau-Joly is of the opinion that the generalate of Vitelleschi was
_monotone de bonheur_. Whether that be so or not, it certainly had its
share in the monotony of calumny which has been meted out to the Society
from its birth. Thus, the beginning of Vitelleschi's term of office
coincided with the publication of the famous "Monita secreta" which,
with the exception of the "Lettres provinciales" is perhaps the
cleverest piece of literary work ever levelled against the Society. The
compliment is not a very great one, for nearly all the other books
obtained their vogue by being extravagant distortions of the truth. But
good or bad they never failed to appear.
The first in order was the diatribe of Morlin in 1568. This was a little
before Vitelleschi's time. It was directed against the schools, and
denounces the professors for having intercourse with the devil,
practising sorcery, initiating their pupils in the black art, anointing
them with some mysterious and diabolical compound which gave the masters
control of their scholars after long years of separation. "God's
gospel," they said, "was powerless before those creatures of the devil
whom hell had vomited forth to poison the whole German empire and
especially to do away with the Evangelicals who were the especial object
of Jesuitical hatred." The immediate expulsion of the "sorcerers" was
demanded, and even their burning at the stake, for "they not only deal
in witchcraft themselves, but teach it to others, and impart to their
pupils the methods of getting rid of their foes by poisons, incantations
and the like." It was asserted that "those who send their boys to be
educated by them are throwing their offspring into the jaws of wolves;
or like the Hebrews of old immolating them to Moloch."
In 1575 Roding, a professor of Heidelberg dedicated a book to the
elector, in which he denounces the Jesuit schools as impious and
abominable, and warns parents "not to give aid to the Kingdom of Satan
by trusting those who were enemies of Christianity and of God." "They
are wild beasts," he said, "who ought to be chased out of our cities.
Though outwardly modest, simple, mortified and urbane, they are in
reality furies and atheists--far worse indeed than atheists and
idolaters. The children confided to them are constrained to join with
their swinish instructors in grunting at the Divine Majesty" (Janssen,
VIII, 339). "They are not only poisoners but conspirators and assassins.
Their purpose is to slay all those who have accepted the Confession of
Augsburg. They have been seen in processions of armed men, disguised as
courtiers, dressed in silks, with gold chains around their necks, going
from one end of Germany to the other. They caused the St. Bartholomew
massacre; they killed King Sebastian; in Peru, they plunged red hot
irons into the bodies of the Indians to make them reveal where they hid
their treasures. In thirty years the Popes killed 900,000 people, the
Jesuits 2,000,000; the cellars of all the colleges in Germany are packed
with soldiers; and Canisius married an abbess." This latter story went
around Germany a hundred times and was widely believed.
The chief storehouse of all these inventions in Germany was the
"Historia jesuitici ordinis," which was published in 1593, and was
attributed by the editor, Polycarp Leiser, to an ex-novice, named Elias
Hasenmüller, who was then six years dead--a circumstance which ought to
have invalidated the testimony for ordinary people, but which did not
prevent the "Historia" from being an immense success. Its publication
was said to be miraculous, for it was given out as certain that any
member of the Order who would reveal its secrets was to be tortured,
poisoned or roasted alive. It was only by a special intervention of the
Lord that Hasenmüller escaped. The readers of the "Historia" were
informed that the Order was founded by the devil, who was the spiritual
father of St. Ignatius. Omitting the immoralities detailed in the
volume, "the Jesuits were professional assassins, wild boars, robbers,
traitors, snakes, vipers, etc. In their private lives they were
lecherous goats, filthy pigs." Even Carlyle says this of St.
Ignatius--"The Pope had given them full power to commit every excess. If
we knew them better we would spit in their faces, instead of sending
them boys to be educated. Indeed it would not be well to trust them with
hogs." There were other productions of the same nature, such as the
"Jesuiticum jejunium" and "Speculum jesuiticum." Some of these
"histories" denounced Father Gretser as "a vile scribbler, an open
heretic and an adulterer who carried the devil around in a bottle."
Bellarmine was "an Epicurean of the worst type, who had already killed
1642 victims; 562 of whom were married women. He used magic and poison,
and pitched the corpses of his victims into the Tiber. He died the death
of the damned, and his ghost was seen in the air in broad daylight
flying away on a winged horse," and so on.
Etienne Pasquier was the leader of the French pamphleteers. It was he
who had acted as advocate against the Jesuits of the College of
Clermont. The _plaidoyer_ presented to the court on that occasion was
embodied in his "Recherches," and, in 1602, when he was seventy-three
years of age, he published "Le Catéchisme des jésuites, ou examen de
leur doctrine." He finds that the Order, besides being Calvinistic, is
also spotted with Judaism. Ignatius was worse than Luther or Julian the
Apostate; he was a sort of Don Quixote, who laughed at the vows he made
at Montmartre; he was a trickster, a glutton, a demon incarnate, an ass.
The first chapter in book II is entitled "Anabaptism of the Jesuits in
their vow of blind obedience." Chapter 2 is on the execution of the
Jesuit, Crichton, for attempting to kill the Scotch chancellor, of which
he had been accused by "Robert de Bruce." In chapter 3, a Mr. Parry is
sent by the Jesuits to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. In chapter 4,
another attempt is made by the same person, in 1597, etc. Father Garasse
wrote an answer to the book, and though he found no difficulty in
showing its absurdities, yet his language was rough and abusive and
quite out of keeping with the dignity of his state; besides, it centred
public attention on him to such extent that later when, three pamphlets
with which he had had nothing to do were written against Cardinal
Richelieu, he was accused of being the author of them and had to swear
in the most solemn manner that he knew nothing whatever about them. This
charge against Garasse came near alienating Louis XIII from the Society.
Much harm had also been done by Mariana's alleged doctrine on regicide.
On the face of it, the book could not have been seditious, for it was
written as an instruction for the heir of Philip II, and it is
inconceivable that an autocrat, such as he was, should not only have put
a book teaching regicide in the hands of his son, but should have paid
for its publication. As a matter of fact, the king conjured up by
Mariana as a possible victim of assassination is a monster who could
have scarcely existed. In other circumstances the book would have passed
unnoticed, but it served as a pretext to attack the Society by ascribing
Mariana's doctrine to the whole Society.
Now, Mariana never was and never could be a representative of the
Society, for: first sixteen years before the objectionable book
attracted notice in France, namely in 1584, Mariana had been solemnly
condemned by the greatest assembly of the Society, the general
congregation, as an unworthy son; a pestilential member who should be
cut off from the body, and his expulsion was ordered. He was one of the
leaders of the band of Spanish conspirators who did all in their power
to destroy the Society. Secondly, his expulsion did not take place,
possibly because of outside political influence like that of Philip II
and the Inquisition. Nevertheless in 1605, that is five years before the
French flurry, he wrote another book entitled, "De defectibus
Societatis" (i. e. the Weak Points of the Society), which was condemned
as involving the censure of the papal bull "Ascendente Domino." Instead
of destroying the MS., as he should have done, if he had a spark of
loyalty in him, he kept it, and when in 1609, he was arrested and
imprisoned by the Spanish authorities for his book on Finance which
seemed to reflect on the government, that MS. was seized, and
subsequently served as a strong weapon against the Society. Why should
such a man be cited as the representative of a body from which he was
ordered to be expelled and which he had attempted to destroy?
Another harmful publication was the "Monita secreta," which represented
the Jesuit as a sweet-voiced intriguer; a pious grabber of inheritances
for the greater glory of God; enjoying a vast influence with conspicuous
personages; working underhand in politics, and revealing himself in
every clime, invariably the same, and always monstrously rich. The
"Monita" appeared in Poland in the year 1612. It was printed in a place
not to be found on any map: namely Notobirga, which suggests
"Notaburgh," or "Not a City." It purported to be based on a Spanish
manuscript, discovered in the secret archives of the Society at Padua.
It was translated into Latin, and was then sent to Vienna, and
afterwards to Cracow, where it was given to the public. It consists of
sixteen short chapters, of which we give a few sample titles: "I. How
the Society should act to get a new foundation. II. How to win and keep
the friendship of princes and important personages. III. How to act
with people who wield political influence or those who, even if not
rich, may be serviceable. VI. How to win over wealthy widows. VII. How
to induce them to dispose of their property. VIII. How to induce them to
enter religious communities, or at least to make them devout."
To achieve all this the Jesuits were to wear outwardly an appearance of
poverty in their houses; the sources of revenue were to be concealed;
purchases of property were always to be made by dummies; rich widows
were to be provided with adroit confessors; their family physicians were
to be the friends of the Fathers; their daughters were to be sent to
convents, their sons to the Society, etc. The vices of prominent
personages were to be indulged; quarrels were to be entered into, so as
to get the credit of reconciliation; the servants of the rich were to be
bribed; confessors were to be very sweet; distinguished personages were
never to be publicly reprehended, etc., etc. As the phraseology of these
"Monita secreta" was a clever imitation of the official document of the
Society known as the "Monita generalia," the forgery scored a perfect
success in being accepted as genuine. It was such a cleverly devised
instrument of warfare in a country like Poland, for instance, with its
mixed Protestant and Catholic population, that it would be sure to
strengthen the Protestants, and, at the same time, shame the Catholics,
by discrediting the Jesuits, who were then in great favor. It was
anonymous, but was finally traced to Jerome Zahorowski, who had been
dismissed from the Society. When charged by the Inquisition with being
the author, he denied it, and said he had no complaint against his
former associates. The book was put on the Index, and Zahorowski's
declaration that he was not the author was believed. Later, however, it
was publicly declared by those who had the means of knowing the facts
that he was really the guilty man. Indeed, just before he died, he
confessed the authorship and bitterly regretted the crime he had
committed. He recanted all that he had said in the book, but it was too
late; the mischief had been done and the evil work has continued. There
were twenty-two editions of it, issued during the seventeenth century,
and it was translated into many languages. Its title was changed from
time to time and it was called: "The Mysteries of the Jesuits;" "Arcana
of the Society;" "Jesuit Machiavelism;" "The Jesuit Cabinet;" "Jesuit
Wolves;" "Jesuit Intrigues," and so on. There appeared also a huge
publication of six or seven bulky volumes entitled "Annales des
soi-disants Jésuites," which is an encyclopedia of all the accusations
ever made against the Society.
Another ex-Jesuit named Jarrige perpetrated the libel known as "The
Jesuits on the Scaffold, for their Crimes in the Province of Guyenne."
He, too, like Zahorowski, when he came to his senses, repented and tried
ineffectually to make amends. The "Teatro jesuítico" was also a source
from which the assailants of the Society drew their ammunition. It was
condemned by the Inquisition on January 28, 1655, and the Archbishop of
Seville burned it publicly. Arnauld borrowed from it most of his
material for the "Morale pratique des Jésuites," and to give it
importance, he ascribed its authorship to the Bishop of Malaga,
Ildephonse of St. Thomas. Whereupon the bishop Wrote to the Pope
complaining that "an infamous libel, unworthy of the light of day, and
composed in the midst of the darkness of hell and bearing the title:
'Morale pratique des Jésuites' has fallen into my hands, and I am said
to be the author of it,--a feat which would have been impossible, for it
was published in 1654, when I was yet a student, and in ill-health."
Although this solemn denial was published all through Europe, Pascal and
his friends continued to impute it to the bishop, according to
Crétineau-Joly; but Brou says that the mistake or the deceit was
admitted. The book, however, was not withdrawn, and continued to do its
evil work.
It was the Gunpowder Plot that inflicted on the English language a great
number of absurdities about Jesuits. King James I of England led the way
by writing a book with the curious title: "Conjuratio sulphurea, quibus
ea rationibus et authoribus coeperit, maturuerit, apparuerit; una cum
reorum examine," that is "The sulphureous or hellish conjuration, for
what reasons and by what authors it was begun, matured and brought to
light; together with the examination of the culprits." He also published
a "Defence of the Oath of Allegiance" which he had exacted of Catholics.
This elucubration was called: "Triplici nodo triplex cuneus," which
probably means "A triple pry for the triple knot." In it he charges the
Pope with sending aid to the conspirators "his henchmen the Jesuits who
confessed that they were its authors and designers. Their leader died
confessing the crime, and his accomplices admitted their guilt by taking
flight."
Such a charge formulated by a king against the Sovereign Pontiff aroused
all Europe, and Bellarmine under the name of "Matthæus Tortus" descended
into the arena. Dr. Andrews replied with clumsy humor by another book
entitled, "Tortura Torti;" that is "The Tortures of Tortus," for which
he was made a bishop. Then Bellarmine retorted in turn and revealed the
fact that his majesty had written a personal letter to two cardinals,
himself and Aldobrandini, asking them to forward a request to the Pope
to have a certain Scotchman, who was Bishop of Vaison in France, made a
cardinal, "so as to expedite the transaction of business with the Holy
See." The letter was signed: "Beatitudinis vestræ obsequentissimus
filius J. R." (Your Holiness' most obsequious son, James the King.) This
sent James to cover and now quite out of humor with himself, because of
the storm aroused in England by the disclosure of his duplicity, he
handed over new victims to the pursuivants, "so that," as he said, "his
subjects might make profit of them," that is by the confiscation of
estates. He then got one of his secretaries to take upon himself the
odium of the letter to Bellarmine, by saying that he had signed the
king's name to it. Every one, of course, saw through the falsehood.
A most unexpected and interesting defender of Father Garnet, who had
been put to death by James, appeared at this juncture. He was no less a
personage than Antoine Arnauld, the famous Jansenist, who was at that
very moment tearing Garnet's brethren to pieces in France. "No
Catholic," he said, "no matter how antagonistic he might be to Jesuits
in general, would ever accuse Garnet of such a crime, and no Protestant
would do so unless blinded by religious hate" (Crétineau-Joly, III, 98).
James I and Bellarmine came into collision again on another point not,
however, in such a personal fashion.
A Scotch lawyer named Barclay had written a book on the authority of
kings, in which he claimed that their power had no limitations whatever;
at least, he went to the very limit of absolutism. Strange to say,
Barclay, who was a Catholic, had Jesuit affiliations. He was professor
of law in the Jesuit college of Pont-à-Mousson, in France, where his
uncle, Father Hay, was rector. For some reason or another he went over
to England shortly after the accession of James I, whom he greatly
admired, possibly because he was a Scot. There is no other reason
visible to the naked eye. He was received with extraordinary honor at
court and offered very lucrative offices if he would declare himself an
Anglican. He spurned the bribe and returned to France where he resumed
his office of teaching. Cardinal Bellarmine then appeared, refuting
Barclay's ideas of kingship. The peculiarity of Bellarmine's work was
that it had nothing new in it. It was merely a collation of old
authorities, chiefly French jurists who cut down the royal power
considerably. This threw the Paris parliament into a frenzy, for they
had all along been persuading their fellow countrymen that the autocracy
they claimed for their monarchs was the immemorial tradition of France.
To hide their confusion, they ascribed to the illustrious cardinal all
sorts of doctrines, such as regicide and the right of seizure of private
property by the Pope, and they demanded not only the condemnation but
the public burning of the book.
The matter now assumed an international importance. Bellarmine was a
conspicuous figure in the Church, and his work had been approved by the
Pope, whose intimate friend he was. To condemn him meant to condemn the
Sovereign Pontiff, and would thus necessarily be a declaration of a
schism from Rome. Probably that is what these premature Gallicans were
aiming at. Ubaldini, the papal nuncio, immediately warned the queen
regent, Mary de'Medici, that if such an outrage were committed, he would
hand in his papers and leave Paris. Parliament fought fiercely to have
its way, and the battle raged with fury for a long time until, finally,
Mary saw the peril of the situation and quashed the parliamentary decree
which had already been printed and was being circulated.
In the midst of it all, the theory of Suárez on the "Origin of Power"
came into the hands of the parliamentarians, and that added fuel to the
flame; Ubaldini wrote to Rome on June 17, 1614, that "the lawyer Servin,
who was like a demon in his hatred of Rome, made a motion in parliament,
first, that the work of Suárez should be burned before the door of the
three Jesuit houses in Paris, in presence of two fathers of each house;
secondly, that an official condemnation of it should be entered on the
records; thirdly, that the provincial, the superior of the Paris
residence and four other fathers should be cited before the parliament
and made to anathematize the doctrine of Suárez, and fourthly, if they
refused, that all the members of the Society should be expelled from
France." The measure was not passed.
The book which did most harm to the Society in the public mind was the
"Lettres provinciales" by Pascal, though the "Lettres" were not intended
primarily or exclusively as an attack on the Jesuits. Their purpose was
to make the people forget or condone the dishonesty of the Jansenists in
denying that the five propositions, censured by the Holy See, were
really contained in the "Augustinus" of Jansenius. At the suggestion of
Arnauld, Pascal undertook to show that other supposedly orthodox
writers, including the Jesuits, had advanced doctrines which merited but
had escaped censure. The letters appeared serially and were entitled:
"Les Provinciales, ou Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un
Provincial de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jésuites, sur la morale et la
politique de ces Pères." They took the world by storm, first because
they revealed a literary genius of the first order in the youthful
Pascal, who until then had been engrossed in the study of mathematics,
and who was also, at the time of writing, in a shattered state of
health. Secondly, because they blasted the reputation of a great
religious order, and reproduced in exquisite language the atrocious
calumnies that had been poured out on the world by the "Monita secreta,"
the "Historia jesuitici ordinis," Pasquier's "Catechism" and the rest.
The doctrinal portion of the letters was evidently not Pascal's; that
was supplied to him by Arnauld and Quinet, for Pascal had neither the
time nor the training necessary even to read the deep theological
treatises which he quotes and professes to have read.
To be accused of teaching lax morality by those who were intimately
associated with and supported by such an indescribable prelate as the
Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Gondi, was particularly galling to the
French Jesuits, and unfortunately it had the effect of provoking them to
answer the charges. "In doing so," says Crétineau-Joly, "the Jesuits
killed themselves;" and Brou, in "Les Jésuites et la légende," is of the
opinion that "more harm was done to the Society by these injudicious and
incompetent defenders than by Pascal himself. It would have been better
to have said nothing." On the other hand, Petit de Julleville, in his
"Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française," tells us that
one of these Jesuit champions induced Pascal to discontinue his attacks,
just at the moment that the world was rubbing its hands with glee and
expecting the fiercest kind of an onslaught. "I wish," said Morel,
addressing himself to Pascal, "that after a sincere reconciliation with
the Jesuits, you would turn your pen against the heretics, the
unbelievers, the libertines, and the corruptors of morals." The fact is
that although Pascal did not seek a reconciliation with the Jesuits, he
suddenly and unaccountably stopped writing against them; and in 1657 he
actually turned his pen against the libertines of France, as he had
been asked (IV, 604). Mère Angélique, Arnauld's sister, is also credited
with having had something to do with this cessation of hostilities, when
she wrote: "Silence would be better and more agreeable to God who would
be more quickly appeased by tears and by penance than by eloquence which
amuses more people than it converts."
Perhaps the entrance of the great Bourdaloue on the scene contributed
something to this change of attitude on the part of the Jansenist. As
court preacher, he had it in his power to refute the calumnies of
Arnauld and Pascal, and he availed himself of the opportunity with
marvellous power and effect. In the "Causeries du Lundi" Sainte-Beuve,
who favored the Jansenists, writes: "In saying that the Jesuits made no
direct and categorical denial to the _Provinciales_, until forty years
later, when Daniel took up his pen, we forget that long and continual
refutation by Bourdaloue in his public sermons in which there is nothing
lacking except the proper names; but his hearers and his contemporaries
in general, who were familiar with the controversies and were partisans
of either side, easily supplied these. Thus in his Sermon on 'Lying' he
paints that vice with most exquisite skill, adding touch after touch,
till it stands out in all its hideousness. As he speaks, you see it
before you with its subtle sinuosities from the moment it begins the
attack, under the pretence of an amicable censorship, up to the moment
when the complete calumny is reiterated under the guise of friendship
and religion." The following extract is an example of this method.
"One of the abuses of the age," says Bourdaloue, "is the consecration of
falsehood and its transformation into virtue; yea, even into one of the
greatest of virtues: zeal for the glory of God. 'We must humiliate those
people;' they say, 'it will be helpful to the Church to blast their
reputation and diminish their credit.' On this principle they form their
conscience, and there is nothing they will not allow themselves when
actuated by such a charming motive. So, they exaggerate; they poison;
they distort; they relate things by halves; they utter a thousand
untruths; they confound the general with the particular; what one has
said badly, they ascribe to all; and what all have said well they
attribute to none. And they do all this--for the glory of God. This
forming of their intention justifies everything; and though it would not
suffice to excuse an equivocation, it is more than sufficient in their
eyes to justify a calumny when they are persuaded that it is all for the
service of God."
"If Bourdaloue," continues Sainte-Beuve, "while detailing, in this
exquisite fashion, the vice of lying, had not before his mind Pascal and
his _Provinciales_, and if he was not painting, feature by feature,
certain personalities whom his hearers recognized; and if while he was
doing it, they were not shocked, even though they could not help
admiring the artist, then there are no portraits in Saint-Simon and La
Bruyère.... It would not be hard to prove that the preaching of
Bourdaloue for thirty years was a long and powerful refutation of the
_Provinciales_, an eloquent and daily drive at Pascal."
It must have been an immense consolation for the Jesuits of those days,
wounded as they were to the quick by the misrepresentation and calumnies
of writers like Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole and others, to have the saintly
Bourdaloue, the ideal Jesuit, occupying the first place in the
public eye, thus defending them. Bourdaloue had entered the Society at
fifteen, and hence was absolutely its product. He was a man of prayer
and study, and when not in the pulpit he was in the confessional or at
the bedside of the sick and dying poor. He was naturally quick and
impulsive, but he had been trained to absolute self-control; he was even
gay and merry in conversation, and his eyes sparkled with pleasure as he
spoke. The story that he closed them while preaching is, of course,
nonsense, and the picture that represents him thus was taken from a
death masque. He labored uninterruptedly till he was seventy-two and
died on May 13, 1704. Very fittingly his last Mass was on Pentecost
Sunday.
An excellent modern discussion of the Letters appeared in the Irish
quarterly "Studies" of September, 1920. The writer, the noted author
Hilaire Belloc, reminds his readers of certain important facts. First,
casuistry is not chicanery nor is it restricted to ecclesiastics; it is
employed by lawyers, physicians, scientific, and even business men, in
considering conditions which are without a precedent and have not yet
reached the ultimate tribunal which is to settle the matter. Secondly,
as in the discussion of ecclesiastical "cases," the terms employed are
technical, just as are those of law, medicine, science; and as the
language is Latin, no one is competent to interpret the verdict arrived
at, unless he is conversant both with theology and the Latin language.
"I doubt," he says, "if there is any man living in England to-day--of
all those glibly quoting the name of Pascal against the Church--who
could tell you what the _Mohatra_ Contract was"--one of the subjects
dragged into these "Lettres." Thirdly, the "Lettres" are not so much an
assault on the Society of Jesus, as on the whole system of moral
theology of the Catholic Church. There are eighteen letters in all, and
it is not until the fifth that the Jesuits are assailed. The attack is
kept up until the tenth and then dropped. From the thousands of
decisions advanced by a vast number of professors 'regular and secular'
Pascal brings forward only those of the Jesuits; and of the many
thousands of "cases" discussed he selects only one hundred and
thirty-two, which, if the repetitions be eliminated, must be reduced to
eighty-nine.
Of these eighty-nine cases three are clearly misquotations--for Pascal
was badly briefed. Many others are put so as to suggest what the casuist
never said, that is a special case is made a general rule of morals.
Many more are frivolous, and others are purely domestic controversy upon
points of Catholic practice which cannot concern the opponents of the
Jesuits, and in which they cannot pretend an active interest on Pascal's
or the Society's side. When the whole list has been gone through there
remain fourteen cases of importance. In eight of these, relating to
duelling and the risk of homicide, the opinions of some casuists were
subsequently, at one time or another, condemned by the Church (seven of
the decisions had declared the liceity of duelling under very
exceptional circumstances, when no other means were available to protect
one's honor or fortune). Pascal was right in condemning the opinions,
but was quite wrong in presenting them as normal decisions, given under
ordinary circumstances by Jesuits generally. Three of the remaining six
decisions have never been censured; but Pascal by his tricky method of
presenting them out of their context has caused the solutions to be
confused with certain condemned propositions.
A just analysis leaves of the one hundred and thirty-two decisions
exactly three--one on simony, one on the action of a judge in receiving
presents, and the third on usury--all three of which are doubtful and
matters for discussion. There is besides these, the doctrine of
equivocation, which is a favorite shaft against the Society. Of this
Belloc says: "This specifically condemned form of equivocation (that
is, equivocation involving a private reservation of meaning), moreover,
was not particularly Jesuit. It had been debated at length, and
favorably, long before the Jesuit Order came into existence, and within
the great casuist authorities of that Order there were wide differences
of opinion upon it. Azor, for instance, condemns instances which Sánchez
allows. Of all this conflict Pascal allows you to hear nothing."
Finally, it may be noted that the "Provincial Letters" were not a plea
for truth, but a device to distract the public mind from the chicanery
of the Jansenists, who, when the famous "five propositions" were
condemned, pretended that they were not in the "Augustinus" written by
Jansenius.
Perhaps the commonest libel formulated against the Society is the
accusation that it is the teacher, if not the author, of the immoral
maxim: "the end justifies the means", which signifies that an action,
bad in itself, becomes good if performed for a good purpose. If the
Society ever taught this doctrine, at least it cannot be charged with
having the monopoly of it. Thus, for instance, the great Protestant
empire which is the legitimate progeny of Martin Luther's teaching,
proclaimed to the world that the diabolical "frightfulness" which it
employed in the late war was prompted solely by its desire for peace. On
the other side of the Channel, an Anglican prelate informed his
contemporaries that "the British Empire could not be carried on for a
week, on the principles of the 'Sermon on the Mount'" (The Month, Vol.
106, p. 255). The same might be predicated of numberless other powers
and principalities past and present. The ruthless measures resorted to
in business and politics for the suppression of rivalry are a matter of
common knowledge. Finally, every unbiased mind will concede that the
persistent use of poisonous gas by the foes of the Society is nothing
else than a carrying out of the maxim of "the end justifies the means."
It has been proved times innumerable that this odious doctrine was never
taught by the Society, and the average Jesuit regards each recrudescence
of the charge as an insufferable annoyance, and usually takes no notice
of it; but, in our own times, the bogey has presented itself in such an
unusual guise, that the event has to be set down as one more item of
domestic history. It obtruded itself on the public in Germany in 1903,
when a secular priest, Canon Dasbach, an ardent friend of the Society,
offered a prize of 2000 florins to any one who would find a defense of
the doctrine in any Jesuit publication. The challenge was accepted by
Count von Hoensbroech, who after failing in his controversy with the
canon, availed himself of a side issue to bring the question before the
civil courts of Trèves and Cologne.
Apparently von Hoensbroech was well qualified for his task. He was an
ex-Jesuit and had lived for years in closest intimacy with some of the
most distinguished moralists and theologians of the Order: Lehmkuhl,
Cathrein, Pesch and others, in the house of studies, at Exaeten in
Holland; so that the world rubbed its hands in glee, and waited for
revelations. He was, however, seriously hampered by some of his own
earlier utterances. Thus, when he left the Society in 1893, he wrote in
"Mein Austritt aus dem Jesuitenorden," as follows: "The moral teachings,
under which members of the Society are trained, are beyond reproach, and
the charges so constantly brought against Jesuit moralists are devoid of
any foundation." Over and above this, he was somewhat disqualified as a
witness, inasmuch as he not only had left the Society but had
apostatized from the Faith, and, though a priest, had married a wife; he
was, moreover, notorious as a rancorous Lutheran (Civiltà Cattolica,
an. 56, p. 8.) But the lure of the florins led him on, only to have the
case thrown out by one court, as beyond its jurisdiction, and decided
against him in the other; the verdict was also heartily endorsed by
conspicuous Protestants and Freethinkers. Hoensbroech is dead, but the
spectre of "the end justifying the means" still stalks the earth, and
may be heard from at any moment.
Pascal's "Provincial Letters" were not the only source of worry for the
Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many other
calumnious publications appeared, such as "La morale des jésuites,"
"Disquisitions," "Nullités" etc., all of which had the single purpose of
poisoning the public mind. The battle continued until an enforced peace
was obtained by a joint order of the Pope and king prohibiting any
further issues of that character from the press. That, however, did not
check the determination of the Jansenists to crush the Society in other
ways. Thus, as early as 1650, the Archbishop of Sens, who was strongly
Jansenistic, forbade the Jesuits to hear confessions in his diocese at
Easter-time, and three years later, he declared from the pulpit that the
theology of the Jesuits was taken from the Koran rather than from the
Gospels, and that their philosophy was more pagan than Christian. He
called for their expulsion as schismatics, heretics and worse, and
declared that all confessions made to them were invalid and
sacrilegious. Finally, he proceeded to excommunicate them with bell,
book and candle. They withdrew from his diocese but were brought back by
the next bishop a quarter of a century later.
Another enemy of the Society was Cardinal Le Camus of Grenoble, who
forbade them to teach or preach; and when Saint-Just, who had been
fifteen years rector of the college, complained of it to some friends,
he was suspended and accused of a grievous crime of which he was
absolutely innocent. When he brought the matter to court, Father General
Oliva censured him for doing so and removed him from office. Santarelli,
an Italian Jesuit, launched a book on the public which produced a great
excitement. He proposed to prove that the Pope had the power of deposing
kings who were guilty of certain crimes, and of absolving subjects from
their allegiance. In Paris it was interpreted as advocating regicide,
and was immediately ascribed to the whole Society; and it was condemned
by the Sorbonne. Richelieu was especially wrought up about it. Poor
Father Coton, the king's confessor, who was grievously ill at the time,
almost collapsed at the news of its publication. The author had not
perceived that the politics of the world were no longer those of the
Middle Ages.
The "Manual of Cases of Conscience" of Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, the
Spanish theologian, furnished infinite material for the Jansenists of
France to blacken the name of the Society. Necessarily, every enormity
that human nature can be guilty of is discussed in such treatises, but
it would be just as absurd to charge their authors with writing them for
the purpose of inculcating vice, as it would be to accuse medical
practitioners of propagating disease by their clinics and dissecting
rooms. The purpose of both is to heal and prevent, not to communicate
disease, whether it be of the soul or body. In both cases, the books
that treat of such matters are absolutely restricted to the use of the
profession, and as an additional precaution, in the matter of moral
theology, the treatises are written in Latin, so that they cannot be
understood by people who have nothing to do with such disagreeable and
sometimes disgusting topics. To accuse the men who condemned themselves
to the study of such subjects solely that they might lift depraved
humanity out of the depths into which it descends, is an outrage.
This literary war crossed the ocean to the French possessions of Canada,
and much of the religious trouble that disturbed the colony from the
beginning may be traced to the editorial activity of the Jansenists of
France. Thus, when Brébeuf, Charles Lalemant and Massé came up the St.
Lawrence, after a terrible voyage across the Atlantic, they were
actually forbidden to land. The pamphlet known as "Anti-Coton" had been
distributed and read by the few colonists who were then on the Rock of
Quebec, and they would have nothing to do with the associates of a man
who like Coton, was represented as rejoicing in the assassination of
Henry IV. It did not matter that Father Coton and the king were not only
intimate but most affectionate friends, and that assassination in such
circumstances would be inconceivable; that it was asserted in print was
enough to cause these three glorious men, who were coming to die for the
Catholic Faith and for France, to be forbidden to land at Quebec. This
anti-Coton manifestation in the early days of the colony was only a
prelude to the antagonism that runs all through early Canadian history.
It was kept up by a clique of writers in France, chief of whom were the
Jansenist Abbés Bernou and Renaudot. Their contributions may be found in
the voluminous collection known as Margry's "Découvertes," which Parkman
induced the United States government to print in the language in which
they were written. They teem with the worst kind of libels against the
Society. Some of them pretend to have been written in America, but are
so grotesque that the forgery is palpable. Indeed, among them is a
letter from Bernou to Renaudot which says: "Get La Salle to give me
some points and I will write the Relation."
The missionary labors of de Nobili, de Britto, Beschi and others in
Madura, a dependency of the ecclesiastical province of Malabar, had been
so successful that they evoked considerable literary fury, both inside
and outside the Church, chiefly with regard to the liceity of certain
rites or customs which the natives had been allowed to retain after
baptism. In 1623 Gregory XV had decided that they could be permitted
provisionally, and the practice was, therefore, continued by Beschi,
Bouchet and others who had extended their apostolic work into
Pondicherry and the Carnatic. But about the year 1700 the question was
again mooted, in consequence of the transfer of the Pondicherry
territory to the exclusive care of the Jesuits. The Capuchins who were
affected by the arrangement appealed to Rome, adding also a protest
against the Rites. The first part of the charge was not admitted, but
the latter was handed over for examination to de Tournon, who was
titular Patriarch of Antioch.
As soon as he arrived at Pondicherry, without going into the interior of
the country, he took the testimony of the Capuchins, questioned the
Jesuits only cursorily, and also a few natives through interpreters. He
then condemned the Rites and forbade the missionaries under heavy
penalties to allow them. His decree was made known to the Jesuit
superior only three days before he left the place, and hence there was
no possibility of enlightening him. The Pope then ordered de Tournon's
verdict to be carried out, qualifying it, however, by adding "in so far
as the Divine glory and the salvation of souls would permit." The
missionaries protested without avail, and the question was discussed by
two successive pontiffs. Finally, Innocent XIII insisted on de Tournon's
decree being obeyed in all its details, but it is doubtful if the
document ever reached the missions. Benedict XIII reopened the question
later, and ruled upon each article of de Tournon's decision, and a Brief
was issued to that effect in 1734.
Into this question the Jansenists of France injected themselves so
vigorously that even the bibliography for and against the Rites is
bewildering in its extent. One contribution consists of eight volumes in
French and seven in Italian. In his history of Jansenism in "The
Catholic Encyclopedia" Dr. Forget of the University of Louvain says:
"The sectaries [in the middle of the eighteenth century] began to detach
themselves from the primitive heresy, but they retained unabated the
spirit of insubordination and schism, the spirit of opposition to Rome,
and above all a mortal hatred of the Jesuits. They had vowed the ruin of
that order, which they always found blocking their way, and in order to
attain their end they successively induced Catholic princes and
ministers in Portugal, France, Spain, Naples, the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, the Duchy of Parma, and elsewhere to join hands with the worst
leaders of impiety and philosophism." Besides the Jansenists, "every
Protestant writer of distinction with two or three exceptions," says
Marshall (Christian Missions, I, 226), "has ascribed the success of the
mission of Madura and its wonderful results to a guilty connivance with
pagan superstition. La Croze, Geddes, Hough and other writers of their
class in a long succession luxuriate in language of which we need not
offer a specimen, and direct against de Nobili and his successors
charges of forgery, imposture, superstition, idolatry, and various other
crimes."
"There is one name," continues the same writer, "which invariably occurs
in the writings referred to; one witness whom they all quote and to whom
the whole history is to be traced. That witness is Father Norbert,
ex-Capuchin and ex-missionary of India." In a work published by this
person in 1744, all the fables which have since been repeated as grave
historical facts are found. He is quoted, apparently without suspicion,
by Dr. Grant in his "Bampton Lectures," yet a very little inquiry and
even a reference to so common a book, as the "Biographie universelle"
would have revealed to him the real character of the witness by whose
help he has not feared to defame some of the most heroic and evangelical
men who ever devoted their lives to the service of God, and the
salvation of their fellow creatures.
"Norbert," says Marshall, "was one of those ordinary missionaries who
had utterly failed to convert the Hindoo by the usual methods, and who
was as incapable of imitating the terrible austerities by which the
Jesuits prepared their success, as he was of rejoicing in triumphs of
which he had no share. Stung with mortal jealousy and yielding to the
suggestions of a malice which amounted almost to frenzy, he attacked the
Jesuits with fury even from the pulpit. The civil power was forced to
interfere, and Dupleix, the Governor of Pondicherry, though he had been
his friend, put him on board ship and sent him to America. There he
spent two years less occupied in the work of the missions than in
planning schemes to revenge himself on the Jesuits. The publication of
the mendacious work in which he treated the Society of Jesus as a band
of malefactors was prohibited by the authorities; but he quitted Rome
and printed it secretly.
"Condemned by his Order, though he affected to vindicate it from the
injuries of the Jesuits, he fled to Holland and thence to England, in
both of which countries he found congenial spirits. In the latter, he
established first a candle and afterwards a carpet factory, under the
patronage of the Duke of Cumberland. Thence he wandered into Germany,
and subsequently, having obtained his secularization and put off the
religious habit which he had defiled, he went to Portugal. Here remorse
seems to have overtaken him and he was permitted by an excess of charity
to assume once more the habit of a Capuchin, which he a second time laid
aside. Finally, after having attempted to deceive the Sovereign Pontiff,
he died in a wretched condition in an obscure village of France." The
"Biographie universelle" gives some more details which are useful as a
matter of history. After Benedict XIV had forbidden Norbert to print his
book, he brought it out either at Lucca or Avignon; in England he
assumed his old name of Peter Parisot; when he landed in Germany he was
known as Curel, and when in France his pen-name was Abbé Platel.
According to the "Biographie," "Norbert was dull and heavy, without
talent or style and would have been incapable of writing a single page
if he were not actuated by hate. All of his works have passed into
oblivion."
Americans have not been troubled to any extent by such publications,
except, perhaps in one instance, when a certain R. W. Thompson, who had
been Secretary of the Navy, though he lived 1000 miles from the sea,
warned his fellow-countrymen in 1894 that the one danger for the
Constitution of the United States was the teaching of the Jesuits. Even
the Church is in peril, because "their system of moral theology is
irreconcilable with the Roman Catholic religion." "I refrain from
discussing it," he says, "because that has been sufficiently done by
Pascal and Paul Bert." No one was excessively alarmed by the "Footprints
of the Jesuits."