1608-1700.
OVERGROWING INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY.
We now enter on a new phase of our history. Up to the period at which
we are arrived (the beginning of the seventeenth century), the Jesuits
have been obliged more or less to struggle for existence. Now they
contend for supremacy and a domineering power in those same countries
into which they had been at first refused admittance. Vagrant monks, who
had but an hospital for a place of refuge, they now possess all over the
surface of the earth hundreds of magnificent establishments, endowed with
princely revenues, and in the West Indies are laying the foundations of
a kingdom of their own. Cherished by the populace, in league with the
nobility, they are become so powerful, that great monarchs themselves
are obliged to put the fate of the Jesuits in the same balance in which
are weighed the destinies of nations. Two of Ignatius’ disciples have a
seat in the College of Cardinals, and the order, by the many exorbitant
privileges it has obtained, forms a sort of separate church within the
Church—the envy of other religious orders, the rival of bishops, and
the dread of the Court of Rome itself. They possess the supreme sway in
Portugal, Poland, Bavaria, have the utmost influence in Spain, Austria,
Italy, and are rapidly advancing towards that power which they at last
obtained in France, and which was productive of so many miseries to the
French nation. In fact, the principal seat of the Jesuits’ power will
henceforth be in France, as, of the many sovereigns whom the Jesuits
more or less govern, the French monarch is the most powerful of them
all. Henry IV., as a measure of precaution, in the letters-patent by
which he re-established the Jesuits, had enacted that a man of authority
in the order should always be near the king’s person, as preacher, and
as a warranty for the conduct of his brethren; and the Jesuits made of
this offensive clause the very pivot of their fortunes. The preacher
became the confessor of the kings, and France will but too soon feel the
persecuting power of Fathers Lachaise and Letellier. Before, however,
they had attained the height of their power, they had to endure a
passing storm. In 1610, Henry IV., while proceeding in his coach to
visit his faithful Sully, who was dangerously ill, was stabbed to the
heart. The Jesuits were accused by the parliament and the university,
and even by some curates from the pulpit, of being the accomplices and
the instigators of Ravaillac the assassin; but no proof whatever was
adduced in support of this accusation. Public opinion absolved them
from any participation in the crime, and to that judgment we ourselves
subscribe; unless, indeed, we charge them with being morally accessory
to the murder by their doctrines, and the abominable writings commending
the murder of Sovening, with which they had covered France at the time of
the League. The Jesuits had too great ascendancy over Henry’s mind, they
derived from him too many benefits, to render credible the supposition
of their connivance in the parricide. Some authors, too eager to find
the Jesuits guilty of every crime, and not reflecting that by asserting
controvertible facts they diminish the credit of their other assertions,
have suggested that, as Henry was preparing to send an army to succour
the German Protestants, the Jesuits contrived to have him murdered. But
those authors are quite ignorant of the true spirit of Jesuitism. The
great end which the Jesuits have ever in their view, the criterion by
which alone we are able to judge of the probability of their acting in
any particular way, is their own interest, and in no way the advantage of
religion or the glory of God; and, as in this instance the interest of
the Jesuits, and especially of those of France, was to preserve rather
than destroy Henry’s life, we repeat our assertion—we do not believe
them guilty. We do not think it necessary to fill our pages even with
an analysis of the writings poured forth by both parties on this tragic
event. The _Anti-Cotton_, a virulent pamphlet against the Jesuits, and,
above all, against some assertions of Father Cotton, the late king’s
confessor, who had addressed some apologetic letters to the queen on
the subject, and who had now gone, according to Henry’s testamentary
disposition, to deposit that prince’s heart in the Jesuits’ college of
La Flèche, was and has continued to be famous in France, more for the
sarcastic wit with which it is written than because it gives any proofs
of the Jesuits’ guilt; and, therefore, we need not give any account of it.
The Jesuits, protected by the Court and the Archbishop of Paris, after
the first commotion had passed away, reassumed their former position; and
Father Cotton was appointed to hear the juvenile sins of Louis XIII., as
he had formerly heard those of his gallant and profligate father.
But a real though inevitable calamity awaited the Society some few
years after. On the 31st January 1615, expired one of their greatest
men, Claude Acquaviva, the fifth General of the order. He had been in
office thirty-four years, and may be accounted the second founder of
the Society, as he has been, undoubtedly, its ablest legislator. During
his government, external tempests and internal discord had menaced the
very existence of the Society, but he had dissipated and appeased them
all with admirable courage and prudence. His death was to the Company
an irreparable loss. With him ended the _prestige_ through which the
Generals exercised such extraordinary authority over its members. For
the future they will still be entitled by the Constitutions to the same
blind obedience as before; but their mandates will be implicitly obeyed
by none but some simple-hearted Jesuits, or by those far away in distant
lands, who venerate their superior in proportion to the distance that
separates them from him. And this it may be said is the case with all
earthly powers. But the members who have some authority in the order, the
provincials, the confessors or favourites of princes, will, generally
speaking, act independently and according to their own views, without,
however, losing sight of the Society, whose aggrandisement and glory is
always the ultimate end which they all keep in view. The consequence
will be that their conduct will in many respects be less uniform, and
even their solemn assemblies will be wanting in that unanimity of
purpose which had marked their former operations. A striking proof of
this appeared in the election of Acquaviva’s successor itself. The old
Spanish party revived after the General’s death, and hoping to regain
the influence and power it had exercised under the first three Generals
of the order, made a great stir; and, foreseeing that Vitelleschi, a
Roman Jesuit, would be elected, they first intrigued with the French and
Spanish ambassadors, and afterwards accused Vitelleschi to the Pope of
being guilty of many vices and crimes, which was far from being true,
he being, on the contrary, a simple, inoffensive, unpretending man. The
contest for the election was very keen, and of seventy-five members
who composed the congregation, Vitelleschi obtained only thirty-nine
suffrages, being only one more than was necessary for the validity of
his election. He assumed the office, but exercised very little influence
in the affairs of the Company. It was, however, in the beginning
of Vitelleschi’s generalate that measures were taken to get Loyola
and Xavier enrolled in the Calendar of Saints. It is true that, even
under Acquaviva’s lifetime, Henry IV., to please his father confessor,
and render him still more indulgent to his immoralities, had, by an
autograph letter, asked the reigning Pope to find a place in heaven for
the two founders of the order; but Paul V., thinking, perhaps, that the
recommendation of the ex-Huguenot Henry would be rather a suspicious
passport for opening the gates of heaven, did not feel inclined to
comply. There were, however, other sovereigns, as those of Bavaria,
Poland, Spain, &c., who had Jesuits for their confessors; and now that
those monarchs united in begging from the Holy See the canonisation of
the two Jesuits, Gregory XV., who had been educated in the fathers’
schools, could no longer refuse to comply with their wishes. He
accordingly solemnly pronounced them to be saints, but being surprised by
death, the glory of having issued the bull for their apotheosis belongs
to his successor, Urban VIII.[245]
As the Jesuits, in the short space of less than a century, have furnished
eight or ten saints to the calendar, perhaps it will not be extraneous
to our work to devote a few pages to shew in what manner, mortals such
as we are, and who but yesterday were mere loathsome corpses, are, by
the pretended power of another mortal man, transformed into privileged
and divine beings, to whom is attributed a power almost equal to that of
the Almighty. A word of any Pope, even of an Alexander VI., will change
every fragment of those corrupted remains into sacred relics, possessing
such miraculous powers, that the worship of them is deemed sufficient to
insure eternal salvation.
The practice of investing certain persons with the honours of saintship
originated with the people. In the early ages of Christianity, when an
individual, whether a truly holy Christian or a consummate hypocrite,
had struck the impressible imaginations of the multitude by a pious and
extraordinary course of life, he was regarded by them as a supernatural
being, and was addressed and worshipped as such. A little later, persons
of this description began, with the help of the priests, to work
miracles; and when the renown of their holiness and of the prodigies they
had performed had spread far and wide, the Court of Rome interfered and
gave them a regular patent for saintship.
If they had been extraordinary persons of their own class, their
canonisation took place almost immediately on their decease, as was the
case with St Francis, the founder of the ragged and beggarly order of
monks which bears his name, and St Antony, the great miracle worker,[246]
both of whom were ranked among the saints only a year after their death.
The trade of saint-making proving very lucrative, from the many offerings
presented at their shrines, the priests encouraged the multitude, always
ready to believe in the marvellous, to credit extraordinary legends and
to find saints everywhere. Above all, as we have said elsewhere, after
the Reformation, the priests were creating saints in such alarming
numbers, that Urban VIII. fearing, it would seem, that heaven would not
be large enough to admit the whole of them, by two bulls, of 1625 and
1634, put a check upon the mania of saint-making, and swept away from
churches, convents, and public places, the images of those poor blessed
ones who had been patiently waiting in their niches for the supreme
oracle of the Vatican to send them up to heaven; and who, doubtless,
were now much annoyed at being removed from their places of adoration
and worship. The bull ordained that no offering, no burning lamp, nor
any sort of worship whatever, should be rendered to any one, no matter
how great might have been the fame of his saintship, if he had not been
recognised as a saint, either from immemorial time, _immemorabilem
temporis cursum_, or by the unanimous consent of the Church, _per
communem Ecclesiæ consensum_, or by a sort of tolerance of the apostolic
see, _tolerantiâ sedis apostolicæ_. By immemorial time, the Pope says in
his bull of 1634 that he means more than a hundred years. In consequence,
all those persons who had been called saints, and worshipped as such for
only ninety-nine years and some months, were to be discarded, and their
images or statues removed from the place of worship;[247] unless, indeed,
some money were spent, and a privilege or dispensation obtained from the
all-powerful Pope. Alas! how many sinners, who had perhaps chosen those
very saints as mediators between them and an offended God, must have been
driven to despair by the unmerciful bull!
However, a regular canonisation may be obtained from Rome, and in two
different ways. The first is the more simple:—Whosoever is interested
in obtaining a canonisation must prove before the Congregation of the
Rites,[248] that, for more than a hundred years, the man who is proposed
as a candidate for saintship had been worshipped either by a burning
lamp before his image or his sepulchre, or by a person praying before
it, &c.; and that these signs of veneration had been repeated before
they had been prohibited at no greater distance of time than ten years.
If the congregation deliver their opinion in a dubious form, that the
immemorial worship seems to them to be proved, _videtur constare de
cultu immemorabili_; and, if the omniscient and infallible Pope affirm,
_constare_, “it has been proved,” then the man becomes a _beatifice_, and
mass, prayers, and offerings may be addressed to him with a perfectly
safe conscience. This was the mode of canonisation resorted to after the
famous bull of 1634.
More difficult is the other way, now generally followed, to obtain a
canonisation. The man must pass through many stages—as it were, serve an
apprenticeship before he become a saint; first, the name of _Servus Dei_,
servant of God, must be obtained for the candidate; and that is neither
difficult nor expensive. Then, if the Congregation of Rites find, on
examining his printed life, that his virtues seem to be proved, _videtur
constare de virtutibus_, and the Pope says, _constare_, the _Servus Dei_
is to be called _venerabilis Servus Dei_, venerable servant of God.
Again, if the authenticity of the life, and of the virtues and miracles,
is proved in another congregation, in the same way, then the _venerabilis
servus Dei_ assumes the title of blessed, _beatus_; a feast, mass,
prayers, &c., are voted to him, and the Pope goes to St Peter’s Church,
to be the first of all to worship that same man who, had he pronounced
only those two words, _non constare_, would have been a Pagan, or little
better. That the blessed (_beato_) should become a saint, nothing more is
necessary than that he should have worked three first-class miracles[249]
(such as those performed by St Anthony, I suppose), and that there should
be paid (not by the blessed—_beato_—for the offerings are only shewn to
him, but by whosoever would make a saint of him) twenty thousand pounds
sterling for the diploma. As may be perceived, the degree is somewhat
dearer than in any other university; but only consider the difference
betwixt a doctor and a saint![250] However, as the expenses are too
great, families or religious communities who wish for a saint, now
unite together, each proposing a candidate for saintship, and a single
proceeding serves to decide the fate of five or six saints, and the
expenses are paid in common. Under the last Pope, Rome witnessed two or
three of those wholesale canonisations.
We Italians call the proceeding, _fare una infornata di Santi_, making
an ovenful of saints. But under the reign of Leo XII., in 1826, a much
more scandalous profanation took place. Saints being wanted by some
town or other (almost every Italian borough has got one), and the
Congregation of Relics, who dispense those Beati, having none at hand,
one of the counsellors, we suppose, thought of a very expeditious way
of making saints, and supply what was wanted. A sort of catacomb having
been discovered at the church _S. Lorenzo fuor delle mura_, in which
some skulls were found, five of them were extracted, and declared to be
the skulls of martyrs. The Pope, with the advice of the Congregation of
Rites, by his apostolic authority and certain knowledge, _Apostolicâ
auctoritate ac certâ scientiâ_, declared that they were martyrs; and,
two or three months after, they were exposed to the public worship in
the _Apollinare_, the ancient Collegio Germanico, which had belonged to
the Jesuits, and where now met the Congregation of the Relics. I have
myself seen them thus exposed. Those having been disposed of, other
skulls were dug up, and other martyrs made; till, at last, a learned
antiquarian (I do not remember whether French or German) proved almost to
a certainty that the place where these skulls were found had been a Pagan
burial-place. The noise was great, and so great the scandal, that the
Pope ordered the catacomb to be shut, and no more martyrs to be made. One
may still see the excavation, and some bones may be seen through an iron
grating, but they are called martyrs no more. If these were not facts
which happened in our own days, and of which all Rome is witness, I would
hardly have dared to mention them, so incredible do they appear.
We hope we shall be excused for this digression. The canonisation of
Loyola and Xavier took place in 1623. We shall spare the recital of
all the feasts, all the gorgeous ceremonies, all the pagan pageantry
exhibited on the occasion. At Douay, above all, the whole of this
theatrical representation was on a great and magnificent scale. Two
galleries, supported by a hundred columns adorned with tapestry, and
with no less than four hundred and forty-five paintings, were erected in
the two streets leading to their college. The panegyrics in honour of
the saints were not only ridiculous, but impious in the highest degree.
In one of them it was said that “Ignatius,” by his name written upon
paper, “performed more miracles than Moses, and as many as the apostles!”
And again, “The life of Ignatius was so holy and exalted, even in the
opinion of heaven, that only Popes like St Peter, empresses like the
Mother of God, some other sovereign monarchs, as God the Father and his
holy Son, enjoyed the bliss of seeing him.” We do not comment on these
words; even the Sorbonne, now in league with the Jesuits, condemned them.
Some years after, another extraordinary and fantastic solemnity came to
rejoice the Jesuitic world. From the year 1636, Vitelleschi had ordered
that preparations should be made to solemnise, in 1640, the secular year
of the establishment of the Society. We shall not give any description
of it, but must mention a strange publication, which has given to
this feast an historical celebrity; we mean the _Imago Primi Sæculi
Societatis Jesu_. It is a huge folio of 952 pages, richly and superbly
printed, embellished by hundreds of fantastic and extravagant emblems,
and filled with absurd and ridiculous praises of the Society. Many were
the contributors to this work, which was printed at Antwerp. “Many young
Jesuits,” says Crétineau,[251] “found in the aspirations of their hearts
poetical inspiration, accents of love, and words of enthusiasm!” The
book is modestly dedicated to—God the Father; and among the poetical
inspirations, we read as follows:—“The Society of Jesus is not of man’s
invention, but it proceeded _from Him whose name it bears_, for Jesus
himself described that rule of life which the Society follows, first
by his example, and afterwards by his Word.”[252] And further on,—“The
Company is Israel’s chariot of fire, whose loss Elisha mourned, and
which now, by a special grace of God, both worlds rejoice to see brought
back from heaven to earth, in the desperate condition of the Church. In
this chariot, if you seek the armies and soldiers by which she daily
multiplies her triumphs with new victories, you will find—(and I hope you
will take it in good part)—you will find a chosen troop of angels who
exhibit under the form of animals all that the Supreme Ruler desires in
this chivalry.”[253]
“As the angels, enlightened by the splendours of God, purge our minds
of ignorance, suffuse them with light, and give them perfection,—thus
the companions of Jesus, copying the purity of angels, and all attached
to their origin which is God, from whom they derive those fiery and
flaming movements of virtue, with rays the most refulgent, putting off
the impurities of lust in that furnace of supreme and chastest love in
which they are cooked (_excoquuntur_), until being illuminated and made
perfect, they can impart to others their light mingled with ardour—being
not less illustrious for the splendour of their virtue than the fervour
of charity with which they are divinely inflamed.
“They are angels like Michael in their most eloquent battles with
heretics—like Gabriel in the conversion of the infidels in India,
Ethiopia, Japan, and the Chinese hedged in by terrible ramparts,—they
are like Raphael in the consolation of souls, and the conversion of
sinners by sermons and the confessional. _All_ rush with promptitude
and ardour to hear confessions, to catechise the poor and children, as
well as to govern the consciences of the great and princes; all are not
less illustrious for their doctrine and wisdom: so that we may say of
the Company what Seneca observes in his 33d epistle, namely, that there
is an inequality in which eminent things become remarkable, but that we
do not admire a tree when all the others of the same forest are equally
high. Truly, in whatever direction you cast your eyes, you will discover
some object that would be supereminent if the same were not surrounded by
equals in eminence.”[254]
These quotations may suffice to give the reader an idea of the book. It
will, however, be instructive to give the opinion of Crétineau upon
it. He calls the work, indeed, a dithyrambic, and admits that there
are some exaggerations in those academical exercises (he might as well
have said that even the Court of Rome condemned the book); “but,” adds
he, “the critics would not recollect the extravagances, the impieties
even, of the book entitled _Conformity of the Life of St Francis with
that of Christ_, by brother Bartholomew of Pisa, nor the _Origo Seraficæ
Familiæ Franciscanæ_ by the Capuchin Gonzalez;” and so on. Indeed we
know that other monks are as boastful, as impudent, as impious as the
Jesuits; yet it seems a very poor apology to exculpate one’s own faults
by proving that our neighbour has committed similar ones. But so it is,
we repeat it again, the Jesuits would inculpate God himself to justify
their order. All we can say of the book is, that it is a most ingenuous
and sincere exposition of the feelings of the Jesuits at such epochs,
and of the opinion they had of themselves. They were at the height of
their prosperity. The difficulties they had encountered—the battles they
had fought—the victories they had obtained—the consciousness of their
own strength and power, all combined to make them believe that their
ambition had to recognise no limits short of the absolute dominion of
the world. This idea is clearly expressed in every page of the _Imago_;
and they struggled hard to realise it. Had the Jesuits united to this
consciousness, and to the superlative force of will and perseverance
which is characteristic of their order, the conception of some great and
magnanimous object, which drew upon itself the interest and admiration
of the multitude; and had they by bold and unequivocal conduct contrived
to carry into execution the lofty design,—who knows what might have not
been accomplished by a society so strongly and so admirably constituted?
Such as they were, however, their influence became greater and greater
every day. As when of two royal pretenders to a noble kingdom, the
conqueror sees the crowd of his courtiers increased, not only by all
those prudent persons who had waited for the result of the contest, but
by a part of his former adversaries, now the most submissive and humble
of all his flatterers; so the Jesuits, after they had mastered all
opposition, and were in possession of power, saw themselves surrounded
by a multitude of adherents and courtiers, eager to obtain their
all-powerful influence. When to be a Jesuit became an honour, and the
shortest way to ecclesiastical and secular dignities, persons of every
sort, and especially such as were ambitious, resorted to the Society,
to find the means of satisfying their several aspirations. Before
Vitelleschi, the nobility had protected the Jesuits, but few of them had
embraced the institute; but afterwards, the highest families in Europe,
princely houses not excepted, had a representative in the Company,
who gave to the order a new prestige, and imparted to it the love and
veneration with which his name was regarded by the people. The houses of
Lorraine, Montmorency, those of Gonzaga and Orsini, Medina-Sidonia and
Abouquerque, Limberg, and Cassimir of Poland, and a thousand other great
and illustrious families, respectively contributed members to the order
of the Jesuits.
Our space will not allow us to enter into details, and to follow the
Jesuits step by step in their prosperous course. Let it suffice that we
have shewn how the Society developed itself by degrees, and by what means
it arrived at the pinnacle of power and greatness. We shall now proceed
to shew, in its principal facts, what use the Jesuits made of their
ill-gotten influence.
As we have already said, France was now the chief seat of their power,
and the field where they reaped their laurels. Under Louis XIII., or,
to speak more correctly, under Richelieu, they could not pretend to a
great share of authority. The despotic cardinal will only have them
as his tools. He will protect them; he will go with his royal slave
to lay the first stone of a Jesuit edifice in a faubourg of Paris (St
Antoine), but he will cause to be condemned and burnt by the hands of
the hangman, the books of Keller and Santarelli, that exalt the papal
above the royal authority, which Richelieu considered his own. Cardinal
Mazzarini was as little disposed as his predecessor to tolerate any rival
domineering influence; and during his administration, the Jesuits had no
considerable part in the public affairs. If Mazzarini shewed them some
kindness, and afforded them his protection, it was because he wanted
their support in opposition to the Jansenists, the partisans of the
Cardinal of Metz, Archbishop of Paris, and Mazzarini’s rival in power
and in gallant intrigues. But when Louis XIV., on reaching his twentieth
year, assumed the government of his kingdom, then really began the reign
of the Jesuits. Not that the man who entered the Parliament in his
hunting apparel, with his whip in his hand, and was accustomed to say,
_L’état c’est moi_, was much disposed to act by the advice and under the
influence of other persons; yet the Jesuits had a great share in all the
great events of his reign.
Louis had a Jesuit confessor from his childhood,[255] who, by insidious
and daily-repeated insinuations, had rendered him a fanatical bigot,
and made him believe that the greatest glory he could achieve would be
the upholding of the Popish religion. In this point, as indeed in many
others, Louis bears a resemblance to Philip II. of Spain. Both gloried
in the appellation of champions of Popery, both had its persecuting
spirit, both sacrificed the love of their people to the wish to appear
most zealous Romanists; yet both, despotic and jealous of their royal
prerogative, waged war against their god on earth when he attempted to
impugn it. Philip sent Alva, who, having conquered the Papal troops,
entered Rome, and obliged the Pope to subscribe his master’s conditions;
while Louis took possession of Avignon, threw the Papal nuncio into
prison, and obliged every member of the French clergy to subscribe the
four articles of the Gallican Church, expressly got up against the
pretensions of Rome. With such a man as Louis, the Jesuits could not
succeed in gaining their ends but by the most complete subjection to
his orders or caprices. So, accommodating themselves at once to the
prince’s character, there was no mark of devotion and servility which
they did not shew to him. They supported him in his schism against the
Pope, subscribed the articles of the Gallican Church, and refused to
publish the bull of excommunication the former had fulminated against
_the first-born of the Church of Rome_,[256] persuading him, however,
that he would always remain a good Roman Catholic while they confessed
and absolved him. They praised him for his military achievements, and
encouraged him in his profligacy, taking great care to abandon the former
mistress the moment they saw the inclination of the prince directed
towards a new one. For these criminal compliances, they obtained, in
exchange, full liberty to persecute the Jansenists and Protestants to
their hearts’ content.
The Jansenists were the first who experienced the vindictive hatred of
the progeny of Loyola; not because they were considered more dangerous
heretics than the Huguenots, but because they had dared to attack the
Order openly; because the _Provincial Letters_ had covered it with
shame and confusion, and because the most considerable among them were
related to that Arnauld who first opposed its establishment in France,
and declared its members to be the accomplices of the crime of Jacques
Clement. We insist upon that point, because it shews one of the most
prominent characteristics of Jesuitism, never to forgive an injury, and
to persecute the remotest descendants for the offences they may have
received from their ancestors.
It would require volumes to relate all the persecutions to which the
inhabitants of Port-Royal were subjected. Hardly had Louis assumed the
reins of government than, at the instigation of the Jesuits, he convened
an assembly of bishops, and declared his intention to extirpate the
Jansenists. The crafty and unscrupulous De Marca, Archbishop of Toulouse,
prepared a formula to the following effect:—
“I sincerely submit to the Constitution of Pope Innocent X., of May 31,
1653, according to its true sense, as defined by the Constitution of our
holy Father, Pope Alexander VII., of October 16, 1656.[257] I acknowledge
myself bound in conscience to obey this Constitution, and I condemn, from
my heart and with my mouth, the doctrine of the five propositions of
Cornelius Jansenius, which are contained in the book of Augustinus, which
both the popes and the bishops have condemned; and the doctrine of St
Augustine is not that which Jansenius has falsely set forth, and contrary
to the true sense of the holy doctor.” All the clergy, and all persons
who were in any way engaged in the tuition of youth, were required to
subscribe this formula, and the most severe persecution awaited those
who refused to do so. Neither the pure and uncontaminated life of those
nuns of whom Bossuet himself said that they were “as pure as angels,”
nor the learning, the piety, the austere and exemplary conduct of De
Lacy, Arnauld, Nicole, and a hundred others, were a sufficient protection
against the persecuting spirit of the Jesuits. Those noble and
magnanimous men were dragged from their peaceable retreat, and sent to
pine away their lives either in foreign lands or in the dungeons of the
Bastille, of which the very passages were crowded with prisoners. Yet the
noble resistance of the nuns could not be overcome, and the persecutors
could only have amends of Port-Royal by levelling it to the ground.
[Illustration: _Père La Chaise._
_Hinchliff._]
Fiercer and more sanguinary was the persecution exercised upon the
Huguenots, who were very numerous in France at this epoch. Henry IV.,
after his cowardly apostasy, in order to pacify and calm his Calvinist
subjects, had, in 1598, by an edict dated from Nantes, the principal
town of Brittany, insured to them the free exercise of their religion;
leaving in their hands some strong places as a warranty. This edict had
afterwards been disregarded by the French Government on many occasions,
and Richelieu almost hazarded the throne in reducing Rochelle, the
stronghold of the Calvinists; yet no sanguinary measures were resorted
to, from purely religious motives, and the Huguenots lived, we may
say, almost unmolested. But after 1660, numberless and incessant petty
persecutions, or _tracasseries_, must have made those Protestants aware
of their impending ruin. The Jesuit Lachaise was the principal instrument
of all the cruelties exercised afterwards upon them. This Lachaise was
a relation of the famous Father Cotton, and confessor to the king. He
was the very personification of Jesuitism—handsome, polite, courteous,
pleasing in his manners, it seemed as if his whole care were directed to
captivate the love of all sorts of persons; he was never heard to utter
a word of dissatisfaction against any one. S. Simon says of him, “Il
était _fort Jesuite_—but polite, and without rage;” and Duclos affirms
that “he knew how to irritate or calm the conscience of his penitents
always with a view to his own interests;” and that, “though he had been
a fierce persecutor of every party opposed to his own, he always spoke
of them with great moderation.” He became the king’s confessor in 1675,
and, by the most skilful and adroit flattery, acquired a great ascendancy
over him. But do not imagine that he forgot his Jesuitical cunning. The
profligacy and the continual state of adultery in which Louis lived was
too great a scandal to be overlooked by such a pious man as Lachaise
pretended to be. Sometimes he got angry with his royal penitent, and
denied him absolution. “The solemnity of Easter” (the time in which the
confession is obligatory), says S. Simon, “gave him the _political_ colic
during the king’s passion for Madame de Montespan;” and Crétineau says
that “he would not absolve the king, but sent him another Jesuit, who
bravely absolved him.” Such was the man who undertook to extirpate the
Huguenots.
In 1685 appeared the proclamation which recalled the Edict of Nantes, _La
révocation de l’édit de Nantes_, and from that moment the poor Calvinists
were consigned to the tender mercies of the ferocious Jesuits, who, with
the help of the dragoons and the lowest of the populace, renewed the
horrible scenes of St Bartholomew, carrying the rage of fanaticism and
revenge so far as to exhume the buried bodies of the murdered victims,
and throw them into the common sewers. How many thousand industrious
families were driven naked and penniless into foreign lands! how many
children were made orphans! how many decrepid old men were left without
a child or descendant to close their eyes! Alas! let us draw a veil over
the infernal saturnalia.
Lachaise became now a most important personage of the court of Louis. The
king had built for this monk—who, though he made a vow of poverty, never
travelled but in a coach and six—a magnificent house surrounded by a
garden,[258] where the humble disciple of Loyola received his courtiers
and flatterers, and where he freely distributed _lettres de cachet_.[259]
He was the arbiter between Fenelon and Bossuet, between Montespan and
Maintenon, between the sovereign and his clergy. It was Lachaise who
united by a secret marriage the _great_ king and the governess of his
illegitimate children; but Madame de Maintenon never forgave him that he
had not obliged his royal penitent to acknowledge her publicly as his
wedded queen. But all the influence he exercised was nothing compared
to the exorbitant and almost royal power which he possessed as king’s
confessor. _La feuille des bénéfices_, that is, the right of disposing of
all the livings of all the bishoprics in the kingdom, was attached to the
office.[260] One may well imagine that Lachaise, who, as St Simon says,
was _fort Jesuite_, was not very sparing in conferring rich benefices
upon his own order. But a still greater advantage resulted to the Society
from the subjection in which they held the French clergy, who, depending
exclusively on a Jesuit for favours and advancement, renounced the
opposition they had formerly shewn to the Company, and became the most
humble and flattering adherents of the fathers. Even the Sorbonne, that
fiery opponent, became the supporter of the Society.
To the pleasing and polite Lachaise, in 1709, succeeded as confessor the
gloomy Letellier. He was cruel, ardent, and inflexible in his enmities,
reserved, mysterious, and cunning in his dark projects,[261] concealing
always the violence of his passions under a cold and impassive exterior.
His predecessor had left him little to do in the way of wholesale
persecution and massacre. The Huguenots had been murdered by thousands,
and three hundred thousand Calvinist families had fled from their
unrelenting enemies. The Jansenists had been in part disbanded, and death
had removed from the contest the Pascals, the Nicoles, the De Lacys,
and the whole of the Arnauld family. Only a few nuns, who could no more
receive novices or pupils, and with whom, therefore, their order must
necessarily be extinguished, remained in the monastery of Port-Royal for
the ferocious Letellier. He sent thither a troop of rough and licentious
soldiers, who dragged those delicate and feeble women from their abode,
and conducted them prisoners as obstinate heretics, to be confined in
different monasteries. Yet the dwelling which those sainted nuns had
occupied, the church where they had worshipped the Lord, the tombs where
many of them lay, and which they had sought in the hope to be delivered
from their persecutors, and there to rest their wearied bodies in peace,
still remained untouched. Letellier, to glut his revenge, turned his
rage against their glorious monuments, had the monastery and church
pulled down; and, violating with Vandalic ferocity the asylum of the
dead, he caused the bodies to be exhumed and thrown together in a heap,
to be devoured by the dogs, and had the plough driven over the sacred
edifice.[262]
After such examples as these, it is unnecessary to add more to shew
the influence the Jesuits possessed in France, and the abominable use
they made of it. We have gone beyond the epoch we have prefixed to this
chapter, the facts we have last reported having occurred in 1709, 1711,
and 1713. And we have done so, because these events mark the time from
which the power of the Jesuits began in France to decline from its
ascendancy.
Let us now see what was the conduct and the influence of the Jesuits in
other countries.
In Spain, the affairs of the Order were in the most flourishing
condition. Their revenues amounted to a very considerable sum. The
authority they possessed was almost unlimited. Philip III., who had
loaded them with benefices, expired on the arm of a Jesuit; and hardly
had Philip IV. taken the government into his own hands than he showered
down upon the Society still greater favours than his predecessor.[263] He
encouraged his subjects to build colleges for them; and many bishops and
noblemen, to please the sovereign, vied with each other in endowing the
Society with richly provided establishments, and in investing them with
all power and influence. But it seems that when the haughty and imperious
Olivarez possessed himself of the supreme power, he ruled with such a
despotic hand both king and kingdom, that very little share of authority
or influence was left to the reverend fathers. _Inde iræ._ The affront
must be resented, and, although it was rather difficult to attack openly
in Spain either the premier or the monarch, surrounded as he was by the
devotion and the love of his subjects, yet the Jesuits were not the men
to suffer patiently what they considered an injury. They then thought
of snatching from the hands of Philip that same sceptre of Portugal
which they had placed in the hands of his grandfather. They accordingly
set themselves to work, and formed a conspiracy to transfer the crown
to the head of the Duke of Braganza. The pulpit, the confessional, the
congregations, were all made to subserve their designs; and the minds
of the people being sufficiently prepared, they caused the duke to
repair to Evora. He took up his abode in the Jesuit college; and when he
descended into the church, thronged with people, Corea, a Jesuit father,
addressing the duke from the pulpit, exclaimed, “I shall yet see upon
your head the crown——of glory, to which may the Lord call us all!”[264]
The church rung with plaudits at this well-managed _réticence_; and the
mysterious prediction passed from the church to the street, and from
thence throughout Portugal, to strengthen the hopes and inflame the
courage of the Portuguese, already impatient to shake off the Spanish
yoke. From that moment the conspiracy made rapid progress. The fathers
publicly preached the revolt, without, however, altogether forgetting
their Jesuitical duplicity. The provincial forbade all his subordinates
to mix in political matters, and even imprisoned one of them for having
from the pulpit too openly exhorted the citizens to rebel. But the
greatest part of the fathers disregarded the order of their superior,
who, nevertheless, except in the instance just mentioned, left them
unpunished, and in the evening sat down with them at the same table as
friendly as ever—a policy which, we must observe, was adopted by the
fathers in all doubtful emergencies, in order that, on whichever side
the scales declined, there might be a portion of the Jesuits claiming
the merit of fidelity, and screening the others from the conqueror’s
resentment.
Crétineau confesses frankly that the Jesuits had been the soul of the
revolution, and says, “The Duchess of Braganza hoped to make her duke
king, even against his own will; but it was necessary to obtain the
co-operation, or at least the neutrality, of the Jesuits.”[265] The
efforts of the Jesuits were crowned with success. In 1640 a revolution
broke out at Lisbon, and was successful. “The house of Braganza did not
forget what it owed to the Jesuits for the past and the present; and
wishing, through them, to make sure of the future, it awarded to them
unlimited influence. The Jesuits were the first ambassadors of John
IV.”[266] After those very explicit words, let the Jesuits assert that
they are a religious community, detached entirely from worldly interest,
and merely occupied in the salvation of souls. It has been asserted that
the Jesuits, besides being animated by hatred to Olivarez, were induced
to co-operate in the revolution by the instigation and perhaps by the
liberal promises of Richelieu, who, as everybody knows, was anxious by
every possible means to harass and enfeeble the rival house of Austria.
However this was, the Jesuits became the almost absolute masters of
Portugal. Nothing was done without their consent. No minister would take
any important step without first consulting the Jesuits and obtaining
their permission. Lisbon became the seat of their extensive commercial
operations, and the centre of their trade between Europe and the Indies;
and Ranke says that the Portuguese ambassadors were empowered to draw
upon the Jesuits of Portugal for considerable sums. And, strange to say,
they at the same time enjoyed some influence in Spain under Philip IV.;
and this appears to have increased to such an extent under Charles II.,
that the testament by which this monarch named a grandson of Louis XIV.
to the throne of Spain, was dictated, it is asserted, by the Jesuits.
Here we are led to make a remark which will serve to illustrate the
true spirit of Jesuitism. In the fifth general congregation was passed
a decree forbidding all Jesuits to mix in any way in political or
secular matters; and by the eighty-fourth decree of the sixth general
congregation, all operations which have any appearance of being
commercial are strictly forbidden to the members of the Society.
Notwithstanding these decrees, the Jesuits dispose of the destinies
of kingdoms almost at their pleasure, and are the earliest bankers
in Europe. The General, who is armed by the Constitution with almost
unlimited powers to punish the infraction of his orders, and who can
dismiss the delinquent at any time he chooses, not only remains silent
when such transgressions are committed, but connives at, and even
encourages them, by raising those members who are the most skilful in
political affairs to the most important offices in the Society, and by
himself using and disposing of that money which has been acquired by a
manifest breach of the Constitution.
For what purpose, then, those decrees, if they are not to be observed?
What was the purpose contemplated by their framers, we cannot say, but
the use the Society makes of them is a very simple one. When they are
accused of mixing in political matters or commercial speculations, they
answer: “This cannot be; the Constitutions or the decrees expressly
forbid such things.” Thus, for example, Crétineau, after mentioning the
decree which forbids any sort of operation of a commercial nature, adds,
“This is the answer to the partial criticisms and interested injustice of
those who will endeavour to attribute to the great work of the missions
a sordid cupidity of lucre.”[267] We admire the boldness, not to say the
impudence, of this panegyrist of the Order.
All throughout Germany the Jesuits spread desolation and misery whenever
the cause of truth and freedom was overcome by the superior material
force of despotism and bigotry. “They were the most able auxiliaries
of Ferdinand in destroying the Protestants; they were in the imperial
cabinet, in his armies, among the defeated sectarians, and they even
dared to penetrate into the camp of the Lutherans”[268] (as spies, no
doubt). The Jesuits had formed Tilly, Wallenstein, and Piccolomini, the
three champions of the Catholic cause in the Thirty Years’ War.
“They (the Jesuits) accompanied the armies in their march, they followed
them to the battle-field; and after the victory, they disputed with the
Croats the fate of the prisoners of the day.”[269] Such is the version
of their historian. How far from the truth! It is unquestionable that
they had formed the three champions, and worthy of their masters did they
prove by their spirit of revenge and persecution. But it is an impudent
falsehood that the Jesuits interposed (as their calling made it their
duty) betwixt the executioner and the victim, betwixt the sacred laws
of humanity and the barbarous laws of war. No. On the contrary, they
preached the extermination of the Protestants, and gave out that no work
was so meritorious in the eyes of God as to kill those accursed heretics.
They did not calm, but rather excited, the ferocious passions of their
pupils the generals, and, above all, of Tilly, over whom they possessed
a very great influence. Once, after the battle of Strato, in Munster, I
believe the voice of the Jesuits was added to that of the citizens in
imploring mercy for some hundreds of unfortunate prisoners on the point
of being mercilessly put to the sword; and this single and exceptional
instance, whether the act of some human and compassionate persons, or of
cunning rogues eager to win for the Order an unmerited reputation for
clemency, is reported by the Jesuits as a general practice: while the
many acts of brutal Vandalism and revenge perpetrated under their very
eyes, and at their instigation, when they cannot be denied, are laid to
the account of others. This is a historical truth.
Nor were they disinterested persecutors. They fought here, as elsewhere,
not for their faith or their Church, but for their idol—the Order. Let
them speak for themselves:—“Corvin Gosiewsky, Palatine of Smolensk,
met Gustavus Adolphus near the Dunamunde, defeated him, and, to
consecrate the remembrance of this day, he founded a Jesuit house in
the town he had delivered. Every victory of that Palatine was for the
Jesuits a new mission,”[270] which means the erection of a new house or
college. The greatest part of the properties of which the Protestants
were iniquitously divested went to enrich the covetous and insatiable
disciples of Loyola. The Pope, usurping the right of disposing of those
properties, only because they had once belonged to the clergy, by a
decree, ordered “that a part of the property which had been recovered
be employed in erecting seminaries, boarding-schools, and colleges, as
well for the Jesuits who have been the principal authors of the imperial
proclamation,[271] as for other religious orders;”[272] which last clause
was of course rendered illusory, the Jesuits possessing themselves of
whatever portion of those properties was set apart for the aforesaid
purpose of building houses and colleges.
We have already seen what influence the Jesuits had acquired in Poland,
under Sigismund III., in whose reign “a systematic war of popular
riots, excited by the Jesuits or their tools, was begun against the
Protestants.”[273] In fact, their temples were overthrown, their
burial-grounds profaned, their properties destroyed, their persons
injured, and no redress whatever was given or could be expected from
judges and magistrates appointed at the recommendation of the Jesuits.
Their pupils not unfrequently celebrated Ascension-day by assaulting
those of the evangelical persuasion, breaking into their houses,
plundering and destroying their property. Woe to the Protestant whom they
could seize in his house, or whom they even met on the streets on these
occasions!
The evangelical church of Cracow was attacked in the year 1606, and in
the following year the church was furiously stormed, the dead being torn
from their graves; in 1611, the church of the Protestants in Wilna shared
the same fate, and its ministers were maltreated or murdered. In 1615,
a book appeared in Posen, which maintained that the Protestants had no
right to dwell in that city. In the following year, the pupils of the
Jesuits destroyed the Bohemian church so completely, that they left no
stone remaining upon another, and the Lutheran church was burnt. The same
things occurred in other places; and in some instances the Protestants
were compelled by continual attacks to give up their churches. Nor
did they long confine their assaults to the towns; the students of
Cracow proceeded to burn the churches of the neighbouring districts. In
Podlachia, an aged evangelical minister named Barkow was walking before
his carriage, leaning on his staff, when a Polish nobleman approaching
from the opposite direction, commanded his coachman to drive directly
over him; before the old man could move out of the way, he was struck
down, and died from the injuries he received.[274]
The University of Cracow, writing to that of Louvain, and referring to
one of those expeditions against the Protestants, headed by Jesuits, in
1621, expresses itself as follows: “The Jesuits are very cunning, expert
in a thousand artifices, and clever at feigning simplicity; but they
were the cause of much innocent blood being shed. The town (Cracow) was
deluged with it. The fathers were never satiated with murders, only the
arms of those ruffians whom they employed for their crimes were tired;
they were moved with compassion, and refused at last to proceed in the
massacre.”[275] Indeed, the fiery spirit of intolerance and bigotry
which the Jesuits had diffused was so strong and universal, that even
Wladislau, Sigismund’s successor, notwithstanding all his efforts, could
not arrest the religious persecution and protect his Protestant subjects
from the sanguinary fury of the Papists. It is true that Sigismund, in
following the Jesuits’ directions, and in attempting to re-introduce
Romanism into all his dominions, had lost his hereditary kingdom of
Sweden and the magnificent province of Livonia; but that was nothing
to the fathers. Protestantism was broken, their opponents were despised
or sacrificed, their houses and colleges had received great additional
revenues—what did they care for the losses of others?
On the premature death of Wladislau, his brother Cassimir ascended the
throne of Poland. He had been a Jesuit, and had sat in the College of
Cardinals. The Pope, that he might assume the sceptre, had granted him a
dispensation from all his vows. This Jesuit king, by his bad conduct and
cowardice, very nigh lost his kingdom; and when his subjects recovered
it from the hand of the imperious Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, he,
in gratitude for that fidelity and gallantry, “committed himself and
the kingdom to the care of the Virgin Mary, and vowed to convert the
heretics;” which meant, says Krasinski, to disperse and extirpate them.
The Jesuits triumphed. We shall not follow those pitiless and relentless
monks in all the iniquities they committed, in all the miseries they
inflicted on poor Poland, which owes in great part to them the loss of
her literature, of her glory, and, in part, of her national existence.
Much has been said and written about the conversion to Romanism, by the
Jesuits, of Christina, the daughter of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus,
king of Sweden. But as this event did not produce any material change
on that country, we shall be very brief in our account of it. No doubt,
the Jesuits had a great share in bringing that capricious and haughty
woman into the pale of the Roman Church. The sad glory belongs to Macedo,
confessor to the Portuguese ambassador at the court of Sweden. He
persuaded her to seek rest to her disquieted mind in the unchanged and
unchangeable doctrines of Rome. By her order, Macedo went to Rome to ask
the General of the Jesuits to send her some of the most trusted members
of the order.[276] Some time after, two very handsome and young Italian
noblemen, travelling, as they gave out, for their improvement, arrived
at the Swedish court, and were introduced to the queen, and admitted
to the royal table. In these two very pleasing young men were to be
recognised two Jesuits, sent by the General; and these, being admitted to
secret interviews with the princess, achieved the work begun by Macedo.
Christina, on her conversion, renounced the crown, and went to Rome to
worship on his own pedestal of pride the idol which the bigoted Papists
adore in the place of God the Lord.
We must now return to examine the conduct of the Jesuits in England, and
we could wish that we were spared the task; for, in connexion with their
plots and crimes, we shall have to speak of the shameful and unchristian
proceedings of their opponents, which were such as we cannot think of
without sadness, and which convey but a poor idea of the goodness of
human nature when acting under the influence of exciting passions. By
the one party, the conception of a most abominable and infernal crime is
extolled as a meritorious and heroic action; while the other, to punish
the intended crime, violates the most sacred laws of justice and humanity.
There is no event in the annals of any nation, the memory of which has
been so carefully perpetuated as has been in England the gunpowder plot.
It is the first page of the national history which is taught to children
by its annual commemoration every fifth of November. We therefore shall
relate of it only so much as is necessary to demonstrate the part in
it that may be attributed to the Jesuits. Here, as in the affair of
Campion, it is rather difficult, amidst the many contradictory versions
and documents, to arrive at a clear and satisfactory conclusion regarding
the degree of culpability of the accused. We shall neither credit the
apologists of the Jesuits, Eudemon and Bellarmine,[277] nor Abbott’s
_Antologia_, and the assertions of James VI. himself, who, forgetting
the dignity of a king, entered the lists to shew his pedantic learning
and love of controversy. Instead of filling hundreds of pages with
contradictory quotations, we shall frankly state the conclusions to which
we have come after a careful examination of what has been written on the
subject.[278]
That the Jesuits were from first to last the contrivers of all the
machinations against Elizabeth and James, is an incontestable fact, and
we have in part proved it. The notorious and unrelenting Parson, who,
after he fled from England, became rector of the English college in
Rome, and possessed very great influence at the Papal court, was the
chief instigator of these plots. During Elizabeth’s lifetime, he had had
the idea of unceremoniously disposing of the English crown in favour of
the Duke of Parma, or of Cardinal Farnese, his brother; a ridiculous
and absurd project of a fanatic conspirator, which was ridiculed at the
time, by Pasquino,[279] in these words: “If any man will buy the kingdom
of England, let him repair to a merchant with a black square cap, in
the city, and he shall have a very good pennyworth of it.”[280] It was
Parson, and his brethren the Jesuits, who obtained from Paul V., against
the representation of Henry IV. of France, the bull which forbade all
the Roman Catholics to take the oath of allegiance, and which produced
so many miseries. It was he, too, who constrained the Pope to disgrace
the arch-priest Blackwell for having taken it, and who compelled the
secular priests to become rebels and victims against their own will;
which circumstance elicited from them the memorial to the Pope which we
have reported at p. 163. But, that no doubt may remain about it, listen
to the ingenuous Crétineau, who, enumerating the benefits rendered by the
Jesuits to Romanism, says, “Have they not preserved in England the germ
(of Popery) which is now _developing itself with such vigour_, and which
in Ireland, after three hundred years of martyrdom, BECAME A LEGITIMATE
REVOLUTION?”[281] No words can prove better than these that the Jesuits
were constantly and actively employed in Great Britain in propagating
Romanism, a doctrine which, according to them, confers upon the Pope the
right of supremacy, of disposing of the crown at his pleasure, and of
releasing the subjects from their allegiance to a heretic sovereign, and
which, consequently, amounts to high treason. In this aspect alone can be
in part excused those sanguinary laws of persecution and tyranny enacted
in the reigns of Elizabeth and James against the Roman Catholics. We
insist upon this consideration.
Now, in the particular case which we are examining—the gunpowder plot—we
believe that Catesby and Percy, _at first_, contrived the plot without
the knowledge or participation of the Jesuits, as it is not denied
that afterwards Gerard, Tezmund _alias_ Greenwall, and Garnet, were
made acquainted with it in all its horrid details. The whole question
regarding Garnet, who alone suffered for the conspiracy, has hitherto
amounted to this—whether he knew of it in any other way than as it was
revealed to him by Father Gerard, under the seal of confession. And
the Jesuits and Papists insist upon this point, pretending that, in
such a case, Garnet could not reveal the conspiracy without committing
sacrilege. To speak the truth, we are inclined to believe that he,
literally speaking, did not know of it otherwise; and these are the
reasons why we believe so. Garnet was not, like Parson, a bold and daring
partisan, capable of braving any danger, of attempting any enterprise.
He was a very poor conspirator, in no way disposed to earn the palm of
martyrdom. Catesby, who had been his associate in the plots during the
reign of Elizabeth, must have known him well, so that he and the other
conspirators did not trust him at first even with their confession. It
was Greenway who, in our opinion, violated the seal of confession by
apprising his superior of what was going on. It is not improbable, then,
that when afterwards Catesby proposed to disclose to him the whole plan
of the plot, Garnet, who had nothing to learn, refused to listen to him,
in order that, in case of ill-success, he might not be accused of being
an accomplice. That all the Jesuits approved of the plot and wished it
success, there is very little doubt, and we even believe that, without
speaking openly to the point, Garnet must have indirectly, by cunning,
adroit insinuations, encouraged the conspirators to consummate the
horrible crime. It is a fact deponed by Bates, and indubitably proved,
that Garnet and the other two Jesuits had frequent interviews with
Catesby and the other conspirators some few days before that which had
been fixed upon for the execution of the plot; and we do not hesitate to
say, that had Garnet wished to deter the conspirators from their infernal
projects, he might have found a thousand ways of doing so without at all
betraying the secrets of the confessional. But suppose that, as we have
said, Garnet and Greenway did not know of the conspiracy except under
the seal of confession, and that they in no way encouraged and abetted
it, yet we cannot acquit them of the charge of being accomplices in the
crime.
We have related at p. 140 that at Grenada the Jesuits had propounded a
doctrine that there are circumstances in which the confessor may oblige
his penitent to discover his accomplices or permit him to inform the
competent authorities of the crime. It is true that the crime specified
was heresy, but we think that the same may be said of murder or any other
crime, and that that doctrine which is good at Grenada must be equally
good in England. But let that pass, and let us proceed. The conspirators,
at least five of them, declared to the confessor, that they were
meditating a horrible crime, that they were taking measures to accomplish
it, and that they were sure of success. The confessor granted them
absolution, and another Jesuit administered to them the communion. Now,
the indispensable condition of the validity of absolution from a sin,
is, that the penitent feel repentance or contrition for having committed
it. How then could Father Greenway absolve the conspirators from a crime
of which they not only did not repent, but which they were proceeding at
all hazards to perpetrate? The evil spirit himself expounds this doctrine
to the unfortunate Guido, to whom he proves that the absolution he had
received from the Pope from a sin he had not yet committed was null.
“No power can the impenitent absolve,
Nor to repent and will at once consist,
By contradiction absolute forbid.”[282]
We conclude from this, that either your confession is merely a snare to
entrap fools, or that Greenway considered the conspiracy not a hellish
crime, but a meritorious deed!
But we have a still more stringent argument. Suppose that, following
some of their _probable opinions_, the Jesuits thought that they were
obliged to absolve the miscreants, and that their ministry obliged them
faithfully to keep the secret, had they not the Pope, the omnipotent
Pope to apply to, to absolve them from that obligation? Is there any
precept, any sacrament, any law human or divine, from the fulfilment of
which, according to their doctrine, the Pope cannot grant a dispensation?
If there is any, let it be pointed out, and we shall absolve them. But
if they cannot deny that the Pope could have released them from the
secrecy of confession, and if they cannot prove that they asked such
dispensation, it is evident that they did not wish to prevent the crime.
And if this was connivance, and if this connivance was a capital crime,
then their condemnation was undoubtedly a legal and just sentence, and
they met with nothing but deserved punishment. We wonder that James, who
was so well versed in theological controversies, did not find out any
of these arguments, which would certainly have furnished more plausible
grounds for a condemnation than the equivocal confession wrung from the
Jesuits by the contrivance of ignoble and disgraceful snares. For if we
unreservedly condemn the Jesuits, we exclaim with equal energy against
the proceedings of their adversaries. All the forms of justice, all
the laws of humanity, were scandalously violated. Garnet is confined
in a prison, repeatedly interrogated, and, in order that he may betray
himself, assured that his accomplice Father Greenway has been arrested,
and that he has confessed everything. Then, after he has been long in
a dungeon alone, a jailor, pretending to be touched with compassion,
tells the desolate man, that another Jesuit is close by, and that he
can converse with, and even see him; and opens a door through which
the two friends can see each other. The manner in which his secrets
were surprised; the misconstruction of his words; the interception of
letters, which he was assured he might in safety write to his bosom
friends; the strange imputation of roguery, because he did not consent to
accuse himself, in clear and precise words; the promises which were held
out to him and never kept; and, above all, the protracted, cruel, and
inhuman moral torture which was inflicted upon him on the scaffold;[283]
all deserve our severe and unconditional censure. Thank God! in England
at least we are now far from those cruel times of injustice and
fanaticism, and we sincerely hope we shall never see them back again.
The Jesuits were not appalled nor discouraged by the execution of
Garnet, nor by that of Oldcorne, who had suffered at Worcester some days
before.[284] We find them in almost all the conspiracies which were got
up to impede the regular march of the government, and we find from time
to time severe and inquisitorial laws enacted against them, some of which
forbade them to set foot in England, under penalty of death. It is an
incontestable fact, that the Jesuits, by their turbulent and treacherous
conduct, were the cause of most of the rigorous measures taken by the
government against the Roman Catholics, who ought therefore to consider
those crafty monks as their most bitter enemies. Another inference may
be drawn from what we have related, namely—that no danger, not even that
of death, can deter a Jesuit from following out his projects, when once
they are considered to be profitable to the Order, or necessary to avenge
it of its enemies. The moment they could return from exile, the instant
they were set free from dangers or untied from the rack, they returned
to their plots and intrigues with unabated ardour and most wonderful
obstinacy. A striking instance of this was furnished by the Jesuit
Fischer, who, the moment he was liberated from the tower, undertook to
convert to Catholicism the mother of the brilliant Buckingham, who did in
fact abjure Protestantism, and, in union with France and Spain, contrived
to render less cruel the laws of proscription against the Catholics.[285]
During the fatal struggle which Charles I. maintained against the
Parliament, the Jesuits publicly and openly took part with the cavaliers,
because Charles was evidently much better disposed towards them than
were the Puritans. It is evident that, by shewing their devotedness
to the king, if the contest had ended in his favour, they might not
only have hoped for the free exercise of their religion, but for a
considerable share of influence over him. But a very grave accusation
was brought against them, which, if true, would shew them guilty of the
most diabolical iniquity. We have no proofs to establish this accusation,
which was produced some years after the event; but, if we are to declare
our own conviction, we firmly believe them guilty; not because we credit
in all its parts the narrative of Jurieu, but for the reasons we are
about to give. Jurieu relates that the Jesuits, to re-establish the Roman
Catholic religion, thought that it would be necessary that Charles, then
prisoner, should fall, and the monarchy along with him. In consequence,
eighteen of them, headed by a lord of the realm, went to Rome to consult
the Pope. The matter was discussed in secret assemblies, and it was
decided _that it was lawful that Charles should die_. The deputies, on
their return from Rome, shewed to the Sorbonne the response of the
Pope, _of which many copies were distributed_. The Sorbonne approved. On
their return to England, the Jesuits set themselves to work, and sent
many of the most ardent Catholics among the Independents, dissembling
their religion, to inflame still more their passions, and push things to
extremities. Their scheme having failed, they wished to _have back the
copies of the consultation of the Pope and the Sorbonne_; but the priest
who before abjuring Protestantism had been Charles’s confessor, and who
was intimate with the Jesuits, would not give up his copy, and, after the
return of the Stuarts, shewed it to many persons who were still living,
and could afford actual evidence of the reality of what he narrated.[286]
This statement, literally taken, does not stand examination, and
Crétineau, who reports it, triumphantly exclaims, that this manner of
writing history renders all discussion impossible.[287] No, certainly
not; such infernal projects as to drive the king to extremities, and
make the king’s head fall for the fulfilment of their designs, if
formed, were neither publicly nor secretly discussed at the Court of
Rome in the presence of eighteen Jesuits and a lord, and much less was
the conclusion they came to, and their approval of the project, put in
writing and _freely distributed_: we readily acquit them of such foolish
contrivances. But, knowing as we do the arts of the Loyolan brotherhood,
we repeat that we firmly believe that it is more than probable that the
Jesuits did mix among the Roundheads and excite their fanaticism to
frenzy. I have recorded (page 171) an almost similar fact which appeared
under our own eyes in Rome. And I must further add, that all the more
virulent men who, in the beginning of Pius IX.’s reign, were proposing
the most daring and extravagant measures, were afterwards discovered to
be either in the pay of the fathers, or to be the unconscious tools of
their secret agency.
Discouraged a little under Cromwell, the Jesuits took heart again after
the restoration of Charles II., and resorted to their usual arts and
machinations. If we are to believe what they boast of, it seems that
they had plunged into a more dangerous and extensive conspiracy against
the Protestant religion and the English liberties than we are aware of.
“A secret treaty,” says Crétineau, “had been signed between Louis XIV.
and Charles II., to re-establish the Catholic religion in Great Britain.
Fathers Annat and Ferrier, successively confessors to the French king,
and the English Jesuits, had not been strangers to this negotiation;
Colman did not ignore those details, and he spoke of them in his letters
to Father Lachaise.”[288] We do not know how far we may credit this
assertion; we know that Charles debased himself by asking and receiving
money from the French monarch, to whom he betrayed the interests of his
allies and of his own kingdom; but, as to having stipulated for the
re-establishment of the Romish religion, we would not be bold enough to
assert that it was so. However it be, this statement is connected with
the famous Popish plot which, in 1678, threw Great Britain into such a
state of alarm and excitement, and which, although it was at first the
cause of many innocent victims beings sacrificed, ultimately produced an
immense and glorious result—the Habeas Corpus Act.
Oates and Bedloe are two names which have come down to posterity abhorred
and execrated by every honest man. These infamous and abandoned men
accused the Jesuits, the Pope, the Kings of France and Spain, many
English noblemen, and some scores of thousands of the English citizens,
of a plot so absurd, as to make, in our days, every one ashamed of
repeating it. And yet the generality of the common people, and the
greater part of the higher classes, at the time believed in its reality.
Nothing else was talked of, and all the cares of the government, the
activity of the parliament, and the energy of the citizens, were exerted
to protect the nation from an imaginary impending ruin. This ought to
teach us how the passions and spirit of party deprive us of our right
feeling and judgment, and how dangerous it is to give way to the impulse
of the moment in times of great commotion. Many noblemen and citizens
were arrested upon the deposition of these scoundrels. Many suffered the
extreme penalty of the law. Father Ireland, on the deposition of Oates,
for which the latter was afterwards condemned for perjury, was sentenced
to death and executed; and soon after, the provincial and four other
Jesuits met with the same fate upon the same absurd and unjust accusation.
We do not pretend to say, however, that the Jesuits at such an epoch had
quite renounced their intrigues and treacherous projects, and were not to
be looked after. No; their restless and enterprising spirit rendered, and
does still render, them very dangerous, and their conduct in Protestant
countries may be said, with justice, to be a permanent conspiracy
against the welfare and the interests of all other communities; and they
themselves, as we said, confess as much. But they were guiltless of the
crime of which they were accused, and for which they suffered. How much
more mischief they were the cause of in the reign of the despotic and
bigoted James II.! It was at their instigation that this bigoted monarch
annulled the test act, imprisoned many Protestant bishops, had as many as
four Roman Catholic priests consecrated bishops at a time, and had formed
a plan for converting England to the Popish idolatry. Yet all these
arbitrary and foolish acts resulted also at last in the great advantage
of the English nation. The Jesuits’ influence had grown so powerful under
James’s reign, that Father Peter was admitted into the privy council, and
we do not hesitate to say, that the favour James shewed to the members
of the Company and to the Catholics in general, and the authority they
exercised over him, was one of the most efficient causes of raising up
the people of England’s feelings of indignation, and to bring them to
resolve upon and achieve the glorious Revolution of 1688.