[1] Patriarch of Jerusalem (1669-1707), who presided over the synod.
JESI (anc. _Aesis_), a town and episcopal see of the Marches, Italy, in
the province of Ancona, from which it is 17 m. W. by S. by rail, 318 ft.
above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 23,285. The place took its ancient name
from the river Aesis (mod. Esino), upon the left bank of which it lies.
It still retains its picturesque medieval town walls. The Palazzo del
Comune is a fine, simple, early Renaissance building (1487-1503) by
Francesco di Giorgio Martini; the walls are of brick and the window and
door-frames of stone, with severely restrained ornamentation. The
courtyard with its loggie was built by Andrea Sansovino in 1519. The
library contains some good pictures by Lorenzo Lotto. The castle was
built by Baccio Pontelli (1488), designer of the castle at Ostia
(1483-1486). Jesi was the birthplace of the emperor Frederic II. (1194),
and also of the musical composer, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
(1710-1736). The river Aesis formed the boundary of Italy proper from
about 250 B.C. to the time of Sulla (c. 82 B.C.); and, in Augustus'
division of Italy, that between Umbria (the 6th region) and Picenum (the
5th). The town itself was a colony, of little importance, except,
apparently, as a recruiting ground for the Roman army.
JESSE, in the Bible, the father of David (q.v.), and as such often
regarded as the first in the genealogy of Jesus Christ (cf. Isa. xi. 1,
10). Hence the phrase "tree of Jesse" is applied to a design
representing the descent of Jesus from the royal line of David, formerly
a favourite ecclesiastical ornament. From a recumbent figure of Jesse
springs a tree bearing in its branches the chief figures in the line of
descent, and terminating in the figure of Jesus, or of the Virgin and
Child. There are remains of such a tree in the church of St Mary at
Abergavenny, carved in wood, and supposed to have once stood behind the
high altar. Jesse candelabra were also made. At Laon and Amiens there
are sculptured Jesses over the central west doorways of the cathedrals.
The design was chiefly used in windows. The great east window at Wells
and the window at the west end of the nave at Chartres are fine
examples. There is a 16th-century Jesse window from Mechlin in St
George's, Hanover Square, London. The Jesse window in the choir of
Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire, is remarkable in that the tree forms the
central mullion, and many of the figures are represented as statuettes
on the branches of the upper tracery; other figures are in the stained
glass; the whole gives a beautiful example of the combination of glass
and carved stonework in one design.
JESSE, EDWARD (1780-1868), English writer on natural history, was born
on the 14th of January 1780, at Hutton Cranswick, Yorkshire, where his
father was vicar of the parish. He became clerk in a government office
in 1798, and for a time was secretary to Lord Dartmouth, when president
of the Board of Control. In 1812 he was appointed commissioner of
hackney coaches, and later he became deputy surveyor-general of the
royal parks and palaces. On the abolition of this office he retired on a
pension, and he died at Brighton on the 28th of March 1868.
The result of his interest in the habits and characteristics of
animals was a series of pleasant and popular books on natural history,
the principal of which are _Gleanings in Natural History_ (1832-1835);
_An Angler's Rambles_ (1836); _Anecdotes of Dogs_ (1846); and
_Lectures on Natural History_ (1863). He also edited Izaak Walton's
_Compleat Angler_, Gilbert White's _Selborne_, and L. Ritchie's
_Windsor Castle_, and wrote a number of handbooks to places of
interest, including Windsor and Hampton Court.
JESSE, JOHN HENEAGE (1815-1874), English historian, son of Edward Jesse,
was educated at Eton, and afterwards became a clerk in the secretary's
department of the admiralty. He died in London on the 7th of July 1874.
His poem on Mary Queen of Scots was published about 1831, and was
followed by a collection of poems entitled _Tales of the Dead_. He also
wrote a drama, _Richard III._, and a fragmentary poem entitled _London_.
None of these ventures achieved any success, but his numerous historical
works are written with vivacity and interest, and, in their own style,
are an important contribution to the history of England. They include
_Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts_
(1840), _Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution of 1688 to
the Death of George II._ (1843), _George Selwyn and his Contemporaries_
(1843, new ed. 1882), _Memoirs of the Pretenders and their Adherents_
(1845), _Memoirs of Richard the Third and his Contemporaries_ (1861),
and _Memoirs of the Life and Reign of King George the Third_ (1867). The
titles of these works are sufficiently indicative of their character.
They are sketches of the principal personages and of the social details
of various periods in the history of England rather than complete and
comprehensive historical narratives. In addition to these works Jesse
wrote _Literary and Historical Memorials of London_ (1847), _London and
its Celebrities_ (1850), and a new edition of this work as _London: its
Celebrated Characters and Remarkable Places_ (1871). His _Memoirs of
Celebrated Etonians_ appeared in 1875.
A collected edition containing most of his works in thirty volumes was
published in London in 1901.
JESSEL, SIR GEORGE (1824-1883), English judge, was born in London on the
13th of February 1824. He was the son of Zadok Aaron Jessel, a Jewish
coral merchant. George Jessel was educated at a school for Jews at Kew,
and being prevented by then existing religious disabilities from
proceeding to Oxford or Cambridge, went to University College, London.
He entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1842, and a year later took
his B.A. degree at the university of London, becoming M.A. and gold
medallist in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1844. In 1846 he
became a fellow of University College, and in 1847 he was called to the
bar at Lincoln's Inn. His earnings during his first three years at the
bar were 52, 346, and 795 guineas, from which it will be seen that his
rise to a tolerably large practice was rapid. His work, however, was
mainly conveyancing, and for long his income remained almost stationary.
By degrees, however, he got more work, and was called within the bar in
1865, becoming a bencher of his Inn in the same year and practising in
the Rolls Court. Jessel entered parliament as Liberal member for Dover
in 1868, and although neither his intellect nor his oratory was of a
class likely to commend itself to his fellow-members, he attracted
Gladstone's attention by two learned speeches on the Bankruptcy Bill
which was before the house in 1869, with the result that in 1871 he was
appointed solicitor-general. His reputation at this time stood high in
the chancery courts; on the common law side he was unknown, and on the
first occasion upon which he came into the court of Queen's bench to
move on behalf of the Crown, there was very nearly a collision between
him and the bench. His forceful and direct method of bringing his
arguments home to the bench was not modified in his subsequent practice
before it. His great powers were fully recognized; his business in
addition to that on behalf of the Crown became very large, and his
income for three years before he was raised to the bench amounted to
nearly £25,000 per annum. In 1873 Jessel succeeded Lord Romilly as
master of the rolls. From 1873 to 1881 Jessel sat as a judge of first
instance in the rolls court, being also a member of the court of appeal.
In November 1874 the first Judicature Act came into effect, and in 1881
the Judicature Act of that year made the master of the rolls the
ordinary president of the first court of appeal, relieving him of his
duties as a judge of first instance. In the court of appeal Jessel
presided almost to the day of his death. For some time before 1883 he
suffered from diabetes with chronic disorder of the heart and liver, but
struggled against it; on the 16th of March 1883 he sat in court for the
last time, and on the 21st of March he died at his residence in London,
the immediate cause of death being cardiac syncope.
As a judge of first instance Jessel was a revelation to those accustomed
to the proverbial slowness of the chancery courts and of the master of
the rolls who preceded him. He disposed of the business before him with
rapidity combined with correctness of judgment, and he not only had no
arrears himself, but was frequently able to help other judges to clear
their lists. His knowledge of law and equity was wide and accurate, and
his memory for cases and command of the principles laid down in them
extraordinary. In the rolls court he never reserved a judgment, not even
in the Epping Forest case (_Commissioners of Sewers_ v. _Glasse_, L.R.
19 Eq.; _The Times_, 11th November 1874), in which the evidence and
arguments lasted twenty-two days (150 witnesses being examined in court,
while the documents went back to the days of King John), and in the
court of appeal he did so only twice, and then in deference to the
wishes of his colleagues. The second of these two occasions was the case
of _Robarts_ v. _The Corporation of London_ (49 _Law Times_ 455; _The
Times_, 10th March 1883), and those who may read Jessel's judgment
should remember that, reviewing as it does the law and custom on the
subject, and the records of the city with regard to the appointment of a
remembrancer from the 16th century, together with the facts of the case
before the court, it occupied nearly an hour to deliver, but was
nevertheless delivered without notes--this, too, on the 9th of March
1883, when the judge who uttered it was within a fortnight of his death.
Never during the 19th century was the business of any court performed so
rapidly, punctually, and satisfactorily as it was when Jessel presided.
He was master of the rolls at a momentous period of legal history. The
Judicature Acts, completing the fusion of law and equity, were passed
while he was judge of first instance, and were still new to the courts
when he died. His knowledge and power of assimilating knowledge of all
subjects, his mastery of every branch of law with which he had to
concern himself, as well as of equity, together with his willingness to
give effect to the new system, caused it to be said when he died that
the success of the Judicature Acts would have been impossible without
him. His faults as a judge lay in his disposition to be intolerant of
those who, not able to follow the rapidity of his judgment, endeavoured
to persist in argument after he had made up his mind; but though he was
peremptory with the most eminent counsel, young men had no cause to
complain of his treatment of them.
Jessel sat on the royal commission for the amendment of the Medical
Acts, taking an active part in the preparation of its report. He
actively interested himself in the management of London University, of
which he was a fellow from 1861, and of which he was elected
vice-chancellor in 1880. He was one of the commissioners of patents, and
trustee of the British Museum. He was also chairman of the committee of
judges which drafted the new rules rendered necessary by the Judicature
Acts. He was treasurer of Lincoln's Inn in 1883, and vice-president of
the council of legal education. He was also a fellow of the Royal
Society. Jessel's career marks an epoch on the bench, owing to the
active part taken by him in rendering the Judicature Acts effective, and
also because he was the last judge capable of sitting in the House of
Commons, a privilege of which he did not avail himself. He was the first
Jew who, as solicitor-general, took a share in the executive government
of his country, the first Jew who was sworn a regular member of the
privy council, and the first Jew who took a seat on the judicial bench
of Great Britain; he was also, for many years after being called to the
bar, so situated that any one might have driven him from it, because,
being a Jew, he was not qualified to be a member of the bar. In person
Jessel was a stoutish, square-built man of middle height, with dark
hair, somewhat heavy features, a fresh ruddy complexion, and a large
mouth. He married in 1856 Amelia, daughter of Joseph Moses, who survived
him together with three daughters and two sons, the elder of whom,
Charles James (b. 1860), was made a baronet shortly after the death of
his distinguished father and in recognition of his services.
See _The Times_, March 23, 1883; E. Manson, _Builders of our Law_
(1904).
JESSORE, a town and district of British India, in the Presidency
division of Bengal. The town is on the Bhairab river, with a railway
station 75 m. N.E. of Calcutta. Pop. (1901), 8054.
The DISTRICT OF JESSORE has an area of 2925 sq. m. Pop. (1901),
1,813,155, showing a decrease of 4% in the decade. The district forms
the central portion of the delta between the Hugli and the united Ganges
and Brahmaputra. It is a vast alluvial plain intersected by rivers and
watercourses, which in the southern portion spread out into large
marshes. The northern part is verdant, with extensive groves of
date-palms; villages are numerous and large; and the people are
prosperous. In the central portion the population is sparse, the only
part suitable for dwellings being the high land on the banks of rivers.
The principal rivers are the Madhumati or Haringhata (which forms the
eastern boundary of the district), with its tributaries the Nabaganga,
Chitra, and Bhairab; the Kumar, Kabadak, Katki, Harihar, Bhadra and
Atharabanka. Within the last century the rivers in the interior of
Jessore have ceased to be true deltaic rivers; and, whereas the northern
portion of the district formerly lay under water for several months
every year, it is now reached only by unusual inundations. The tide
reaches as far north as the latitude of Jessore town. Jessore is the
centre of sugar manufacture from date palms. The exports are sugar,
rice, pulse, timber, honey, shells, &c.; the imports are salt, English
goods, and cloth. The district is crossed by the Eastern Bengal railway,
but the chief means of communication are waterways.
British administration was completely established in the district in
1781, when the governor-general ordered the opening of a court at Murali
near Jessore. Before that, however, the fiscal administration had been
in the hands of the English, having been transferred to the East India
company with that of the rest of Bengal in 1765. The changes in
jurisdiction in Jessore have been very numerous. After many transfers
and rectifications, the district was in 1863 finally constituted as it
at present stands. The rajas of Jessore or Chanchra trace their origin
to Bhabeswar Rai, a soldier in the army of Khan-i-Azam, an imperial
general, who deprived Raja Pratapaditya, the popular hero of the
Sundarbans, of several fiscal divisions, and conferred them on
Bhabeswar. But Manohar Rai (1649-1705) is regarded as the principal
founder of the family. The estate when he inherited it was of moderate
size, but he acquired one _pargana_ after another, until, at his death,
the property was by far the largest in the neighbourhood.
JESTER, a provider of "jests" or amusements, a buffoon, especially a
professional fool at a royal court or in a nobleman's household (see
FOOL). The word "jest," from which "jester" is formed, is used from the
16th century for the earlier "gest," Lat. _gesta_, or _res gestae_,
things done, from _gerere_, to do, hence deeds, exploits, especially as
told in history, and so used of the metrical and prose romances and
chronicles of the middle ages. The word became applied to satirical
writings and to any long-winded empty tale, and thence to a joke or
piece of fun, the current meaning of the word.
JESUATI, a religious order founded by Giovanni Colombini of Siena in
1360. Colombini had been a prosperous merchant and a senator in his
native city, but, coming under ecstatic religious influences, abandoned
secular affairs and his wife and daughter (after making provision for
them), and with a friend of like temperament, Francesco Miani, gave
himself to a life of apostolic poverty, penitential discipline, hospital
service and public preaching. The name Jesuati was given to Colombini
and his disciples from the habit of calling loudly on the name of Jesus
at the beginning and end of their ecstatic sermons. The senate banished
Colombini from Siena for imparting foolish ideas to the young men of the
city, and he continued his mission in Arezzo and other places, only to
be honourably recalled home on the outbreak of a devastating pestilence.
He went out to meet Urban V. on his return from Avignon to Rome in 1367,
and craved his sanction for the new order and a distinctive habit.
Before this was granted Colombini had to clear the movement of a
suspicion that it was connected with the heretical sect of Fraticelli,
and he died on the 31st of July 1367, soon after the papal approval had
been given. The guidance of the new order, whose members (all lay
brothers) gave themselves entirely to works of mercy, devolved upon
Miani. Their rule of life, originally a compound of Benedictine and
Franciscan elements, was later modified on Augustinian lines, but traces
of the early penitential idea persisted, e.g. the wearing of sandals and
a daily flagellation. Paul V. in 1606 arranged for a small proportion of
clerical members, and later in the 17th century the Jesuati became so
secularized that the members were known as the Aquavitae Fathers, and
the order was dissolved by Clement IX. in 1668. The female branch of the
order, the Jesuati sisters, founded by Caterina Colombini (d. 1387) in
Siena, and thence widely dispersed, more consistently maintained the
primitive strictness of the society and survived the male branch by 200
years, existing until 1872 in small communities in Italy.
JESUITS, the name generally given to the members of the Society of
Jesus, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1539.
This Society may be defined, in its original conception and well-avowed
object, as a body of highly trained religious men of various degrees,
bound by the three personal vows of poverty, chastity and obedience,
together with, in some cases, a special vow to the pope's service, with
the object of labouring for the spiritual good of themselves and their
neighbours. They are declared to be mendicants and enjoy all the
privileges of the other mendicant orders. They are governed and live by
constitutions and rules, mostly drawn up by their founder, St Ignatius
of Loyola, and approved by the popes. Their proper title is "Clerks
Regulars of the Society of Jesus," the word _Societas_ being taken as
synonymous with the original Spanish term, _Compañia_; perhaps the
military term _Cohors_ might more fully have expressed the original idea
of a band of spiritual soldiers living under martial law and discipline.
The ordinary term "Jesuit" was given to the Society by its avowed
opponents; it is first found in the writings of Calvin and in the
registers of the Parlement of Paris as early as 1552.
_Constitution and Character._--The formation of the Society was a
masterpiece of genius on the part of a man (see LOYOLA) who was quick to
realize the necessity of the moment. Just before Ignatius was
experiencing the call to conversion, Luther had begun his revolt against
the Roman Church by burning the papal bull of excommunication on the
10th of December 1520. But while Luther's most formidable opponent was
thus being prepared in Spain, the actual formation of the Society was
not to take place for eighteen years. Its conception seems to have
developed very slowly in the mind of Ignatius. It introduced a new idea
into the Church. Hitherto all regulars made a point of the choral office
in choir. But as Ignatius conceived the Church to be in a state of war,
what was desirable in days of peace ceased when the life of the cloister
had to be exchanged for the discipline of the camp; so in the sketch of
the new society which he laid before Paul III., Ignatius laid down the
principle that the obligation of the breviary should be fulfilled
privately and separately and not in choir. The other orders, too, were
bound by the idea of a constitutional monarchy based on the democratic
spirit. Not so with the Society. The founder placed the general for life
in an almost uncontrolled position of authority, giving him the faculty
of dispensing individuals from the decrees of the highest legislative
body, the general congregations. Thus the principle of military
obedience was exalted to a degree higher than that existing in the older
orders, which preserved to their members certain constitutional rights.
The soldier-mind of Ignatius can be seen throughout the constitutions.
Even in the spiritual labours which the Society shares with the other
orders, its own ways of dealing with persons and things result from
the system of training which succeeds in forming men to a type that is
considered desirable. But it must not be thought that in practice the
rule of the Society and the high degree of obedience demanded result
in mere mechanism. By a system of check and counter check devised in
the constitutions the power of local superiors is modified, so that in
practice the working is smooth. Ignatius knew that while a high ideal
was necessary for every society, his followers were flesh and blood,
not machines. He made it clear from the first that the Society was
everything and the individual nothing, except so far as he might prove
a useful instrument for carrying out the Society's objects. Ignatius
said to his secretary Polanco that "in those who offered themselves
he looked less to purely natural goodness than to firmness of
character and ability for business, for he was of opinion that those
who were not fit for public business were not adapted for filling
offices in the Society." He further declared that even exceptional
qualities and endowments in a candidate were valuable in his eyes only
on the condition of their being brought into play, or held in
abeyance, strictly at the command of a superior. Hence his teaching on
obedience. His letter on this subject, addressed to the Jesuits of
Coimbra in 1553, is still one of the standard formularies of the
Society, ranking with those other products of his pen, the _Spiritual
Exercises_ and the _Constitutions_. In this letter Ignatius clothes
the general with the powers of a commander-in-chief in time of war,
giving him the absolute disposal of all members of the Society in
every place and for every purpose. He pushes the claim even further,
requiring, besides entire outward submission to command, also the
complete identification of the inferior's will with that of the
superior. He lays down that the superior is to be obeyed simply as
such and as standing in the place of God, without reference to his
personal wisdom, piety or discretion; that any obedience which falls
short of making the superior's will one's own, in inward affection as
well as in outward effect, is lax and imperfect; that going beyond the
letter of command, even in things abstractly good and praiseworthy, is
disobedience, and that the "sacrifice of the intellect" is the third
and highest grade of obedience, well pleasing to God, when the
inferior not only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what he
thinks, submitting his judgment, so far as it is possible for the will
to influence and lead the judgment. This _Letter on Obedience_ was
written for the guidance and formation of Ignatius's own followers; it
was an entirely domestic affair. But when it became known beyond the
Society the teaching met with great opposition, especially from
members of other orders whose institutes represented the normal days
of peace rather than those of war. The letter was condemned by the
Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal; and it tasked all the skill and
learning of Bellarmine as its apologist, together with the whole
influence of the Society, to avert what seemed to be a probable
condemnation at Rome.
The teaching of the _Letter_ must be understood in the living spirit
of the Society. Ignatius himself lays down the rule that an inferior
is bound to make all necessary representations to his superior so as
to guide him in imposing a precept of obedience. When a superior knows
the views of his inferior and still commands, it is because he is
aware of other sides of the question which appear of greater
importance than those that the inferior has brought forward. Ignatius
distinctly excepts the case where obedience in itself would be sinful:
"In all things _except sin_ I ought to do the will of my superior and
not my own." There may be cases where an inferior judges that what is
commanded is sinful. What is to be done? Ignatius says: "When it seems
to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which
my conscience revolts as sinful and my superior judges otherwise, it
is my duty to yield my doubts to him unless I am otherwise constrained
by evident reasons. ... If submissions do not appease my conscience I
must impart my doubts to two or three persons of discretion and abide
by their decision." From this it is clear that only in _doubtful_
cases concerning sin should an inferior try to submit his judgment to
that of his superior, who _ex officio_ is held to be not only one who
would not order what is clearly sinful, but also a competent judge who
knows and understands, better than the inferior, the nature and aspect
of the command. As the Jesuit obedience is based on the law of God, it
is clearly impossible that he should be bound to obey in what is
directly opposed to the divine service. A Jesuit lives in obedience
all his life, though the yoke is not galling nor always felt. He can
accept no dignity or office which will make him independent of the
Society; and even if ordered by the pope to accept the cardinalate or
the episcopate, he is still bound, if not to obey, yet to listen to
the advice of those whom the general deputes to counsel him in
important matters.
The Jesuits had to find their principal work in the world and in
direct and immediate contact with mankind. To seek spiritual
perfection in a retired life of contemplation and prayer did not seem
to Ignatius to be the best way of reforming the evils which had
brought about the revolt from Rome. He withdrew his followers from
this sort of retirement, except as a mere temporary preparation for
later activity; he made habitual intercourse with the world a prime
duty; and to this end he rigidly suppressed all such external
peculiarities of dress or rule as tended to put obstacles in the way
of his followers acting freely as emissaries, agents or missionaries
in the most various places and circumstances. Another change he
introduced even more completely than did the founders of the Friars.
The Jesuit has no home: the whole world is his parish. Mobility and
cosmopolitanism are of the very essence of the Society. As Ignatius
said, the ancient monastic communities were the infantry of the
Church, whose duty was to stand firmly in one place on the
battlefield; the Jesuits were to be her light horse, capable of going
anywhere at a moment's notice, but especially apt and designed for
scouting and skirmishing. To carry out this view, it was one of his
plans to send foreigners as superiors or officers to the Jesuit houses
in each country, requiring of these envoys, however, invariably to use
the language of their new place of residence and to study it both in
speaking and writing till entire mastery of it had been acquired--thus
by degrees making all the parts of his system mutually
interchangeable, and so largely increasing the number of persons
eligible to fill any given post without reference to locality. But
subsequent experience has, in practice, modified this interchange, as
far as local government goes, though the central government of the
Society is always cosmopolitan.
Next we must consider the machinery by which the Society is constituted
and governed so as to make its spirit a living energy and not a mere
abstract theory. The Society is distributed into six grades: novices,
scholastics, temporal coadjutors (lay brothers), spiritual coadjutors,
professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows. No one can
become a postulant for admission to the Society until fourteen years
old, unless by special dispensation. The novice is classified according
as his destination is the priesthood or lay brotherhood, while a third
class of "indifferents" receives such as are reserved for further
inquiry before a decision of this kind is made. The novice has first to
undergo a strict retreat, practically in solitary confinement, during
which he receives from a director the _Spiritual Exercises_ and makes a
general confession of his whole life; after which the first novitiate of
two years' duration begins. In this period of trial the real character
of the man is discerned, his weak points are noted and his will is
tested. Prayer and the practices of asceticism, as means to an end, are
the chief occupations of the novice. He may leave or be dismissed at any
time during the two years; but at the end of the period if he is
approved and destined for the priesthood, he is advanced to the grade of
scholastic and takes the following simple vows in the presence of
certain witnesses, but not to any person:--
"Almighty Everlasting God, albeit everyway most unworthy in Thy holy
sight, yet relying on Thine infinite kindness and mercy and impelled
by the desire of serving Thee, before the Most Holy Virgin Mary and
all Thy heavenly host, I, N., vow to Thy divine Majesty Poverty,
Chastity and Perpetual Obedience to the Society of Jesus, and promise
that I will enter the same Society to live in it perpetually,
understanding all things according to the Constitutions of the
Society. I humbly pray from Thine immense goodness and clemency,
through the Blood of Jesus Christ, that Thou wilt deign to accept this
sacrifice in the odour of sweetness; and as Thou hast granted me to
desire and to offer this, so wilt Thou bestow abundant grace to fulfil
it."
The scholastic then follows the ordinary course of an undergraduate at a
university. After passing five years in arts he has, while still keeping
up his own studies, to devote five or six years more to teaching the
junior classes in various Jesuit schools or colleges. About this period
he takes his simple vows in the following terms:--
"I, _N._, promise to Almighty God, before His Virgin Mother and the
whole heavenly host, and to thee, Reverend Father General of the
Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and to thy successors (or
to thee, Reverend Father _M._ in place of the General of the Society
of Jesus and his successors holding the place of God), Perpetual
Poverty, Chastity and Obedience; and according to it a peculiar care
in the education of boys, according to the manner expressed in the
Apostolic Letter and Constitutions of the said Society."
The lay brothers leave out the clause concerning education. The
scholastic does not begin the study of theology until he is twenty-eight
or thirty, and then passes through a four or six years' course. Only
when he is thirty-four or thirty-six can he be ordained a priest and
enter on the grade of a spiritual coadjutor. A lay brother, before he
can become a temporal coadjutor for the discharge of domestic duties,
must pass ten years before he is admitted to vows. Sometimes after
ordination the priest, in the midst of his work, is again called away to
a third year's novitiate, called the tertianship, as a preparation for
his solemn profession of the three vows. His former vows were simple and
the Society was at liberty to dismiss him for any canonical reason. The
formula of the famous Jesuit vow is as follows:--
"I, _N._, promise to Almighty God, before His Virgin Mother and the
whole heavenly host, and to all standing by; and to thee, Reverend
Father General of the Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and
to thy successors (or to thee, Reverend Father _M._ in place of the
General of the Society of Jesus and his successors holding the place
of God), Perpetual Poverty, Chastity and Obedience; and according to
it a peculiar care in the education of boys according to the form of
life contained in the Apostolic Letters of the Society of Jesus and in
its Constitutions."
Immediately after the vows the Jesuit adds the following simple vows:
(1) that he will never act nor consent that the provisions in the
constitutions concerning poverty should be changed; (2) that he will not
directly nor indirectly procure election or promotion for himself to any
prelacy or dignity in the Society; (3) that he will not accept or
consent to his election to any dignity or prelacy outside the Society
unless forced thereunto by obedience; (4) that if he knows of others
doing these things he will denounce them to the superiors; (5) that if
elected to a bishopric he will never refuse to hear such advice as the
general may deign to send him and will follow it if he judges it is
better than his own opinion. The professed is now eligible to certain
offices in the Society, and he may remain as a professed father of the
three vows for the rest of his life. The highest class, who constitute
the real core of the Society, whence all its chief officers are taken,
are the professed of the four vows. This grade can seldom be reached
until the candidate is in his forty-fifth year, which involves a
probation of thirty-one years in the case of those who have entered on
the novitiate at the earliest legal age. The number of these select
members is small in comparison with the whole Society; the exact
proportion varies from time to time, the present tendency being to
increase the number. The vows of this grade are the same as the last
formula, with the addition of the following important clause:--
"Moreover I promise the special obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff
concerning missions, as is contained in the same Apostolic Letter and
Constitutions."
These various members of the Society are distributed in its novitiate
houses, its colleges, its professed houses and its mission residences.
The question has been hotly debated whether, in addition to these six
grades, there be not a seventh answering in some degree to the
tertiaries of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, but secretly
affiliated to the Society and acting as its emissaries in various lay
positions. This class was styled in France "Jesuits of the short robe,"
and there is some evidence in support of its actual existence under
Louis XV. The Jesuits themselves deny the existence of any such body,
and are able to adduce the negative disproof that no provision for it is
to be found in their constitutions. On the other hand there are clauses
therein which make the creation of such a class perfectly feasible if
thought expedient. An admitted instance is the case of Francisco Borgia,
who in 1548, while still duke of Gandia, was received into the Society.
What has given colour to the idea is that certain persons have made vows
of obedience to individual Jesuits; as Thomas Worthington, rector of the
Douai seminary, to Father Robert Parsons; Ann Vaux to Fr. Henry Garnet,
who told her that he was not indeed allowed to receive her vows, but
that she might make them if she wished and then receive his direction.
The archaeologist George Oliver of Exeter was, according to Foley's
_Records of the English Province_, the last of the secular priests of
England who vowed obedience to the Society before its suppression.
The general lives permanently at Rome and holds in his hands the right
to appoint, not only to the office of provincial over each of the head
districts into which the Society is mapped, but to the offices of each
house in particular. There is no standard of electoral right in the
Society except in the election of the general himself. By a minute and
frequent system of official and private reports he is informed of the
doings and progress of every member of the Society and of everything
that concerns it throughout the world. Every Jesuit has not only the
right but the duty in certain cases of communicating, directly and
privately, with his general. While the general thus controls everything,
he himself is not exempt from supervision on the part of the Society. A
consultative council is imposed upon him by the general congregation,
consisting of the assistants of the various nations, a _socius_, or
adviser, to warn him of mistakes, and a confessor. These he cannot
remove nor select; and he is bound, in certain circumstances, to listen
to their advice, although he is not obliged to follow it. Once elected
the general may not refuse the office, nor abdicate, nor accept any
dignity or office outside of the Society; on the other hand, for certain
definite reasons, he may be suspended or even deposed by the authority
of the Society, which can thus preserve itself from destruction. No such
instance has occurred, although steps were once taken in this direction
in the case of a general who had set himself against the current
feeling.
It is said that the general of the Jesuits is independent of the pope;
and his popular name, "the black pope," has gone to confirm this idea.
But it is based on an entirely wrong conception of the two offices.
The suppression of the Society by Clement XIV. in 1773 was an
object-lesson in the supremacy of the pope. The Society became very
numerous and, from time to time, received extraordinary privileges
from popes, who were warranted by the necessities of the times in
granting them. A great number of influential friends, also, gathered
round the fathers who, naturally, sought in every way to retain what
had been granted. Popes who thought it well to bring about certain
changes, or to withdraw privileges that were found to have passed
their intentions or to interfere unduly with the rights of other
bodies, often met with loyal resistances against their proposed
measures. Resistance up to a certain point is lawful and is not
disobedience, for every society has the right of self-preservation. In
cases where the popes insisted, in spite of the representations of the
Jesuits, their commands were obeyed. Many of the popes were distinctly
unfavourable to the Society, while others were as friendly, and often
what one pope did against them the next pope withdrew. Whatever was
done in times when strong divergence of opinion existed, and whatever
may have been the actions of individuals who, even in so highly
organized a body as the Society of Jesus, cannot always be
successfully controlled by their superiors, yet the ultimate result on
the part of the Society has always been obedience to the pope, who
authorized, protected and privileged them, and on whom they ultimately
depend for their very existence.
Thus constituted, with a skilful union of strictness and freedom, of
complex organization with a minimum of friction in working, the Society
was admirably devised for its purpose of introducing a new power into
the Church and the world. Its immediate services to the Church were
great. The Society did much, single-handed, to roll back the tide of
Protestant advance when half of Europe, which had not already shaken off
its allegiance to the papacy, was threatening to do so. The honours of
the reaction belong to the Jesuits, and the reactionary spirit has
become their tradition. They had the wisdom to see and to admit, in
their correspondence with their superiors, that the real cause of the
Reformation was the ignorance, neglect and vicious lives of so many
priests. They recognized, as most earnest men did, that the difficulty
was in the higher places, and that these could best be touched by
indirect methods. At a time when primary or even secondary education had
in most places become a mere effete and pedantic adherence to obsolete
methods, they were bold enough to innovate, both in system and material.
Putting fresh spirit and devotion into the work, they not merely taught
and catechized in a new, fresh and attractive manner, besides
establishing free schools of good quality, but provided new school books
for their pupils which were an enormous advance on those they found in
use; so that for nearly three centuries the Jesuits were accounted the
best schoolmasters in Europe, as they were, till their forcible
suppression in 1901, confessedly the best in France. The Jesuit teachers
conciliated the goodwill of their pupils by mingled firmness and
gentleness. Although the method of the _Ratio Studiorum_ has ceased to
be acceptable, yet it played in its time as serious a part in the
intellectual development of Europe as did the method of Frederick the
Great in modern warfare. Bacon succinctly gives his opinion of the
Jesuit teaching in these words: "As for the pedagogical part, the
shortest rule would be, Consult the schools of the Jesuits; for nothing
better has been put in practice" (_De Augmentis_, vi. 4). In instruction
they were excellent; but in education, or formation of character,
deficient. Again, when most of the continental clergy had sunk, more or
less, into the moral and intellectual slough which is pictured for us in
the writings of Erasmus and the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_ (see
HUTTEN, ULRICH VON), the Jesuits won back respect for the clerical
calling by their personal culture and the unimpeachable purity of their
lives. These qualities they have carefully maintained; and probably no
large body of men in the world has been so free from the reproach of
discreditable members or has kept up, on the whole, an equally high
average of intelligence and conduct. As preachers, too, they delivered
the pulpit from the bondage of an effete scholasticism and reached at
once a clearness and simplicity of treatment such as the English pulpit
scarcely begins to exhibit till after the days of Tillotson; while in
literature and theology they count a far larger number of respectable
writers than any other religious society can boast. It is in the mission
field, however, that their achievements have been most remarkable.
Whether toiling among the teeming millions in Hindustan and China,
labouring amongst the Hurons and Iroquois of North America, governing
and civilizing the natives of Brazil and Paraguay in the missions and
"reductions," or ministering, at the hourly risk of his life to his
fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, the Jesuit
appears alike devoted, indefatigable, cheerful and worthy of hearty
admiration and respect.
Nevertheless, two startling and indisputable facts meet the student who
pursues the history of the Society. The first is the universal suspicion
and hostility it has incurred--not merely from the Protestants whose
avowed foe it has been, not yet from the enemies of all clericalism and
dogma, but from every Catholic state and nation in the world. Its chief
enemies have been those of the household of the Roman Catholic faith.
The second fact is the ultimate failure which seems to dog all its most
promising schemes and efforts. These two results are to be observed
alike in the provinces of morals and politics. The first cause of the
opposition indeed redounds to the Jesuits' credit, for it was largely
due to their success. Their pulpits rang with a studied eloquence; their
churches, sumptuous and attractive, were crowded; and in the
confessional their advice was eagerly sought in all kinds of
difficulties, for they were the fashionable professors of the art of
direction. Full of enthusiasm and zeal, devoted wholly to their Society,
they were able to bring in numbers of rich and influential persons to
their ranks; for, with a clear understanding of the power of wealth,
they became, of set purpose, the apostles of the rich and influential.
The Jesuits felt that they were the new men, the men of the time; so
with a perfect confidence in themselves they went out to set the Church
to rights. It was no wonder that success, so well worked for and so well
deserved, failed to win the approval or sympathy of those who found
themselves supplanted. Old-fashioned men, to whom the apostles' advice
to "do all to the glory of God" seemed sufficient, mistrusted those who
professed to go beyond all others and adopted as their motto the famous
_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_, "To the greater glory of God." But, besides
this, the _esprit de corps_ which is necessary for every body of men
was, it was held, carried to an excess and made the Jesuits intolerant
of any one or anything if not of "ours." The novelties too which they
introduced into the conception of the religious life, naturally, were
displeasing to the older orders, who felt like old aristocratic families
towards a newly rich or purse-proud upstart. The Society, or rather its
members, were too aggressive and self-assertive to be welcomed; and a
certain characteristic, which soon began to manifest itself in an
impatience of episcopal control, showed that the quality of "Jesuitry,"
usually associated with the Society, was singularly lacking in their
dealings with opponents. Their political attitude also alienated many.
Many of the Jesuits could not separate religion from politics. To say
this is only to assert that they were not clearer-minded than most men
of their age. But unfortunately they invariably took the wrong side and
allowed themselves to be made the tools of men who saw farther and more
clearly than they did. They had their share, direct or indirect, in the
embroiling of states, in concocting conspiracies and in kindling wars.
They were also responsible by their theoretical teachings in theological
schools, where cases were considered and treated in the abstract, for
not a few assassinations of the enemies of the cause. Weak minds heard
tyrannicide discussed and defended in the abstract; and it was no
wonder that, when opportunity served, the train that had been heedlessly
laid by speculative professors was fired by rash hands. What professors
like Suarez taught in the calm atmosphere of the lecture hall, what
writers like Mariana upheld and praised, practical men took as
justification for deeds of blood. There is no evidence that any Jesuit
took a direct part in political assassinations; however, indirectly,
they may have been morally responsible. They were playing with edged
tools and often got wounded through their own carelessness. Other
grievances were raised by their perpetual meddling in politics, e.g.
their large share in fanning the flames of political hatred against the
Huguenots under the last two Valois kings; their perpetual plotting
against England in the reign of Elizabeth; their share in the Thirty
Years' War and in the religious miseries of Bohemia; their decisive
influence in causing the revocation of the edict of Nantes and the
expulsion of the Protestants from France; the ruin of the Stuart cause
under James II., and the establishment of the Protestant succession. In
a number of cases where the evidence against them is defective, it is at
least an unfortunate coincidence that there is always direct proof of
some Jesuit having been in communication with the actual agents engaged.
They were the stormy petrels of politics. Yet the Jesuits, as a body,
should not be made responsible for the doings of men who, in their
political intrigues, were going directly against the distinct law of the
Society, which in strict terms, and under heavy penalties, forbade them
to have anything to do with such matters. The politicians were
comparatively few in number, though unfortunately they held high rank;
and their disobedience to the rule besmirched the name of the society
and destroyed the good work of the other Jesuits who were faithfully
carrying out their own proper duties.
A far graver cause for uneasiness was given by the Jesuits' activity in
the region of doctrine and morals. Here the charges against them are
precise, early, numerous and weighty. Their founder himself was
arrested, more than once, by the Inquisition and required to give
account of his belief and conduct. But St Ignatius, with all his
powerful gifts of intellect, was entirely practical and ethical in his
range, and had no turn whatever for speculation, nor desire to discuss,
much less to question, any of the received dogmas of the Church. He
gives it as a rule of orthodoxy to be ready to say that black is white
if the Church says so. He was therefore acquitted on every occasion, and
applied each time for a formally attested certificate of his orthodoxy,
knowing well that, in default of such documents, the fact of his arrest
as a suspected heretic would be more distinctly recollected by opponents
than that of his honourable dismissal from custody. His followers,
however, have not been so fortunate. On doctrinal questions indeed,
though their teaching on grace, especially in the form given to it by
Molina (q.v.), ran contrary to the accepted teaching on the subject by
the Augustinians, Dominicans and other representative schools; yet by
their pertinacity they gained for their views a recognized and
established position. A special congregation of cardinals and
theologians known as _de auxiliis_ was summoned by the pope to settle
the dispute, for the _odium theologicum_ had risen to a desperate height
between the representatives of the old and the new theology; but after
many years they failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, and the
pope, instead of settling the dispute, was only able to impose mutual
silence on all opponents. Among those who held out stiffly against the
Jesuits on the subject of grace were the Jansenists, who held that they
were following the special teaching of St Augustine, known _par
excellence_ as the doctor of grace. The Jesuits and the Jansenists soon
became deadly enemies; and in the ensuing conflict both parties accused
each other of flinging scruples to the wind. (See JANSENISM.)
But the accusations against the Jesuit system of moral theology and
their action as guides of conduct have had a more serious effect on
their reputation. It is undeniable that some of their moral writers were
lax in their teaching; and conscience was strained to the snapping
point. The Society was trying to make itself all things to all men.
Propositions extracted from Jesuit moral theologians have again and
again been condemned by the pope and declared untenable. Many of these
can be found in Viva's _Condemned Propositions_. As early as 1554 the
Jesuits were censured by the Sorbonne, chiefly at the instance of
Eustache de Bellay, bishop of Paris, as being dangerous in matters of
faith. Melchor Cano, a Dominican, one of the ablest divines of the 16th
century, never ceased to lift up his testimony against them, from their
first beginnings till his own death in 1560; and, unmollified by the
bribe of the bishopric of the Canaries, which their interest procured
for him, he succeeded in banishing them from the university of
Salamanca. Carlo Borromeo, to whose original advocacy they owed much,
especially in the council of Trent, found himself attacked in his own
cathedral pulpit and interfered with in his jurisdiction. He withdrew
his protection and expelled them from his colleges and churches; and he
was followed in 1604 in this policy by his cousin and successor Cardinal
Federigo Borromeo. St Theresa learnt, in after years, to mistrust their
methods, although she was grateful to them for much assistance in the
first years of her work. The credit of the Society was seriously damaged
by the publication, at Cracow, in 1612, of the _Monita Secreta_. This
book, which is undoubtedly a forgery, professes to contain the
authoritative secret instructions drawn up by the general Acquaviva and
given by the superiors of the Society to its various officers and
members. A bold caricature of Jesuit methods, the book has been ascribed
to John Zaorowsky or to Cambilone and Schloss, all ex-Jesuits, and it is
stated to have been discovered in manuscript by Christian of Brunswick
in the Jesuit college at Prague. It consists of suggestions and methods
for extending the influence of the Jesuits in various ways, for securing
a footing in fresh places, for acquiring wealth, for creeping into
households and leading silly rich widows captive and so forth, all
marked with ambition, craft and unscrupulousness. It had a wide success
and popularity, passing through several editions, and even to this day
it is used by controversialists as unscrupulous as the original writers.
It may, perhaps, represent the actions of some individuals who allowed
their zeal to outrun their discretion, but surely no society which
exists for good and is marked by so many worthy men could systematically
have conducted its operations in such a manner. Later on a formidable
assault was made on Jesuit moral theology in the famous _Provincial
Letters_ of Blaise Pascal (q.v.), eighteen in number, issued under the
pen-name of Louis de Montalte, from January 1656 to March 1657. Their
wit, irony, eloquence and finished style have kept them alive as one of
the great French classics--a destiny more fortunate than that of the
kindred works by Antoine Arnauld, _Théologie morale des Jésuites_,
consisting of extracts from writings of members of the Society, and
_Morale pratique des Jésuites_, made up of narratives professing to set
forth the manner in which they carried out their own maxims. But, like
most controversial writers, the authors were not scrupulous in their
quotations, and by giving passages divorced from their contexts often
entirely misrepresented their opponents. The immediate reply on the part
of the Jesuits, _The Discourses of Cleander and Eudoxus_ by Père Daniel,
could not compete with Pascal's work in brilliancy, wit or style;
moreover, it was unfortunate enough to be put upon the Index of
prohibited books in 1701. The reply on behalf of the Society to Pascal's
charges of lax morality, apart from mere general denials, is broadly as
follows:--
(1) St Ignatius himself, the founder of the Society, had a special
aversion from untruthfulness in all its forms, from quibbling,
equivocation or even studied obscurity of language, and it would be
contrary to the spirit of conformity with his example and institutions
for his followers to think and act otherwise. Hence, any who practised
equivocation were, so far, unfaithful to the Society. (2) Several of
the cases cited by Pascal are mere abstract hypotheses, many of them
now obsolete, argued simply as intellectual exercises, but having no
practical bearing whatever. (3) Even such as do belong to the sphere
of actual life are of the nature of counsel to spiritual physicians,
how to deal with exceptional maladies; and were never intended to fix
the standard of moral obligation for the general public. (4) The
theory that they were intended for this latter purpose and do
represent the normal teaching of the Society becomes more untenable in
exact proportion as this immorality is insisted on, because it is a
matter of notoriety that the Jesuits themselves have been singularly
free from personal, as distinguished from corporate, evil repute; and
no one pretends that the large number of lay-folk whom they have
educated or influenced exhibit greater moral inferiority than others.
The third of these replies is the most cogent as regards Pascal, but the
real weakness of his attack lies in that nervous dread of appeal to
first principles and their logical result which has been the besetting
snare of Gallicanism. Pascal, at his best, has mistaken the part for the
whole; he charges to the Society what, at the most, are the doings of
individuals; and from these he asserts the degeneration of the body from
its original standard; whereas the stronger the life and the more
extensive the natural development, side by side will exist marks of
degeneration; and a society like the Jesuits has no difficulty in
asserting its life independently of such excrescences or, in time, in
freeing itself from them.
A charge persistently made against the Society is that it teaches that
the end justifies the means. And the words of Busembaum, whose
_Medulla theologiae_ has gone through more than fifty editions, are
quoted in proof. True it is that Busembaum uses these words: _Cui
licitus est finis etiam licent media_. But on turning to his work (ed.
Paris 1729, p. 584, or Lib. vi. Tract vi. cap. ii., _De sacramentis_,
dubium ii.) it will be found that the author is making no universal
application of an old legal maxim; but is treating of a particular
subject (concerning certain lawful liberties in the marital relation)
beyond which his words cannot be forced. The sense in which other
Jesuit theologians--e.g. Paul Laymann (1575-1635), in his _Theologia
moralis_ (Munich, 1625), and Ludwig Wagemann (1713-1792), in his
_Synopsis theologiae moralis_ (Innsbruck, 1762)--quote the axiom is an
equally harmless piece of common sense. For instance, if it is lawful
to go on a journey by railway it is lawful to take a ticket. No one
who put forth that proposition would be thought to mean that it is
lawful to defraud the company by stealing a ticket; for the _proviso_
is always to be understood, that the means employed should, in
themselves, not be bad but good or at least indifferent. So when
Wagemann says tersely _Finis determinat probitatem actus_ he is
clearly referring to acts which in themselves are indifferent, i.e.
indeterminate. For instance: shooting is an indifferent act, neither
good nor bad in itself. The morality of any specified shooting depends
upon what is shot, and the circumstances attending that act: shooting
a man in self-defence is, as a moral act, on an entirely different
plane to shooting a man in murder. It has never been proved, and never
can be proved, although the attempt has frequently been made, that the
Jesuits ever taught the nefarious proposition ascribed to them, which
would be entirely subversive of all morality. Again, the doctrine of
probabilism is utterly misunderstood. It is based on an accurate
conception of law. Law to bind must be clear and definite; if it be
not so, its obligation ceases and liberty of action remains. No
probable opinion can stand against a clear and definite law; but when
a law is doubtful in its application, in certain circumstances, so is
the obligation of obedience: and as a doubtful law is, for practical
purposes, no law at all, so it superinduces no obligation. Hence a
probable opinion is one, founded on reason and held on serious
grounds, that the law does not apply to certain specified cases; and
that the law-giver therefore did not intend to bind. It is the
principle of equity applied to law. In moral matters a probable
opinion, that is one held on no trivial grounds but by unprejudiced
and solid thinkers, has no place where the voice of conscience is
clear, distinct and formed.
Two causes have been at work to produce the universal failure of the
great Society in all its plans and efforts. First stands its lack of
really great intellects. It has had its golden age. No society can keep
up to its highest level. Nothing can be wider of the truth than the
popular conception of the ordinary Jesuit as a being of almost
superhuman abilities and universal knowledge. The Society, numbering as
it does so many thousands, and with abundant means of devoting men to
special branches of study, has, without doubt, produced men of great
intelligence and solid learning. The average member, too, on account of
his long and systematic training, is always equal and often superior to
the average member of any other equally large body, besides being
disciplined by a far more perfect drill. But it takes great men to carry
out great plans; and of really great men, as the outside world knows and
judges, the Society has been markedly barren from almost the first.
Apart from its founder and his early companion, St Francis Xavier, there
is none who stands in the very first rank. Laynez and Acquaviva were
able administrators and politicians; the Bollandists (q.v.) were
industrious workers and have developed a critical spirit from which much
good can be expected; Francisco Suarez, Leonhard Lessius and Cardinal
Franzelin were some of the leading Jesuit theologians; Cornelius a
Lapide (1567-1637) represents their old school of scriptural studies,
while their new German writers are the most advanced of all orthodox
higher critics; the French Louis Bourdaloue (q.v.), the Italian Paolo
Segneri (1624-1694), and the Portuguese Antonio Vieyra (1608-1697)
represent their best pulpit orators; while of the many mathematicians
and astronomers produced by the Society Angelo Secchi, Ruggiero Giuseppe
Boscovich and G. B. Beccaria are conspicuous, and in modern times
Stephen Joseph Perry (1833-1889), director of the Stonyhurst College
observatory, took a high rank among men of science. Their boldest and
most original thinker, Denis Petau, so many years neglected, is now, by
inspiring Cardinal Newman's _Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine_, producing a permanent influence over the current of human
thought. The Jesuits have produced no Aquinas, no Anselm, no Bacon, no
Richelieu. Men whom they trained, and who broke loose from their
teaching, Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, have powerfully affected the
philosophical and religious beliefs of great masses of mankind; but
respectable mediocrity is the brand on the long list of Jesuit names in
the catalogues of Alegambe and De Backer. This is doubtless due in great
measure to the destructive process of scooping out the will of the
Jesuit novice, to replace it with that of his superior (as a watchmaker
might fit a new movement into a case), and thereby tending, in most
cases, to annihilate those subtle qualities of individuality and
originality which are essential to genius. Men of the higher stamp will
either refuse to submit to the process and leave the Society, or run the
danger of coming forth from the mill with their finest qualities
pulverized and useless. In accordance with the spirit of its founder,
who wished to secure uniformity in the judgment of his followers even in
points left open by the Church ("Let us all think the same way, let us
all speak in the same manner if possible"), the Society has shown itself
to be impatient of those who think or write in a way different from what
is current in its ranks.
Nor is this all. The _Ratio Studiorum_, devised by Acquaviva and still
obligatory in the colleges of the Society, lays down rules which are
incompatible with all breadth and progress in the higher forms of
education. True to the anti-speculative and traditional side of the
founder's mind, it prescribes that, even where religious topics are
not in question, the teacher is not to permit any novel opinions or
discussions to be mooted; nor to cite or allow others to cite the
opinions of an author not of known repute; nor to teach or suffer to
be taught anything contrary to the prevalent opinions of acknowledged
doctors current in the schools. Obsolete and false opinions are not to
be mentioned at all, even for refutation, nor are objections to
received teaching to be dwelt on at any length. The result is that the
Jesuit emerges from his schools without any real knowledge of any
other method of thought than that which his professors have instilled
into him. The professor of Biblical Literature is always to support
and defend the Vulgate and can never prefer the marginal readings from
the Hebrew and Greek. The Septuagint, as far as it is incorrupt, is to
be held not less authentic than the Vulgate. In philosophy Aristotle
is always to be followed, and St Thomas Aquinas generally, care being
taken to speak respectfully of him even when abandoning his opinions,
though now it is customary for the Jesuit teachers to explain him in
their own sense. _De vera mente D. Thomas_ is no unfamiliar expression
in their books. It is not wonderful, under such a method of training,
fixed as it has been in minute detail for more than three hundred
years, that highly cultivated commonplaces should be the inevitable
average result; and that in proportion as Jesuit power has become
dominant in Christendom, especially in ecclesiastical circles, the
same doom of intellectual sterility and consequent loss of influence
with the higher and thoughtful classes, has separated the part from
the whole. The initial mistake in the formation of character is that
the Jesuits have aimed at educating lay boys in the same manner as
they consider advisable for their own novices, for whom obedience and
direction is the one thing necessary; whereas for lay people the right
use of liberty and initiative are to be desired.
The second cause which has blighted the efforts of the Society is the
lesson, too faithfully learnt and practised, of making its corporate
interests the first object at all times and in all places. Men were
quick to see that Jesuits did not aim at co-operation with the other
members of the Church but directly or indirectly at mastery. The most
brilliant exception to this rule is found in some of the missions of the
Society and notably in that of St Francis Xavier (q.v.). But he quitted
Europe in 1541 before the new society, especially under Laynez, had
hardened into its final mould; and he never returned. His work, so far
as can be gathered from contemporary accounts, was not done on true
Jesuit lines as they afterwards developed, though the Society has reaped
all the credit; and it is even possible that, had he succeeded the
founder as general, the institute might not have received that political
and self-seeking turn which Laynez, as second general, gave at the
critical moment.
It would almost seem that careful selection was made of the men of the
greatest piety and enthusiasm, whose unworldliness made them less apt
for diplomatic intrigues, to break new ground in the various missions
where their success would throw lustre on the Society and their
scruples need never come into play. But such men are not to be found
easily; and, as they died off, the tendency was to fill their places
with more ordinary characters, whose aim was to increase the power and
resources of the body. Hence the condescension to heathen rites in
Hindustan and China, and the attempted subjugation of the English
Catholic clergy. The first successes of the Indian mission were
entirely among the lower classes; but when in Madura, in 1606, Robert
de Nobili, a nephew of Bellarmine, to win the Brahmins, adopted their
dress and mode of life--a step sanctioned by Gregory XV. in 1623 and
by Clement XI. in 1707--the fathers who followed his example pushed
the new caste-feeling so far as absolutely to refuse the ministrations
and sacraments to the pariahs, lest the Brahmin converts should take
offence--an attempt which was reported to Rome and was vainly censured
by the breves of Innocent X. in 1645, Clement IX. in 1669, Clement
XII. in 1734 and 1739, and Benedict XIV. in 1745. The Chinese rites,
assailed with equal unsuccess by one pope after another, were not
finally put down until 1744 by a bull of Benedict XIV. For Japan,
where their side of the story is that best known, we have a remarkable
letter, printed by Lucas Wadding in the _Annales minorum_, addressed
to Paul V. by Soleto, a Franciscan missionary, who was martyred in
1624, in which he complains to the pope that the Jesuits
systematically postponed the spiritual welfare of the native
Christians to their own convenience and advantage; while as regards
the test of martyrdom, no such result had followed on their teaching,
but only on that of the other orders who had undertaken missionary
work in Japan. Yet soon many Jesuit martyrs in Japan were to shed a
new glory on the Society (see JAPAN: _Foreign Intercourse_). Again,
even in Paraguay, the most promising of all Jesuit undertakings, the
evidence shows that the fathers, though civilizing the Guarani
population just sufficiently to make them useful and docile servants,
happier no doubt than they were before or after, stopped there. While
the mission was begun on the rational principle of governing races
still in their childhood by methods adapted to that stage in their
mental development, yet for one hundred and fifty years the
"reductions" were conducted in the same manner, and when the hour of
trial came the Jesuit civilization fell like a house of cards.
These examples are sufficient to explain the final collapse of so many
promising efforts. The individual Jesuit might be, and often was, a
hero, saint and martyr, but the system which he was obliged to
administer was foredoomed to failure; and the suppression which came in
1773 was the natural result of forces and elements they had set in
antagonism without the power of controlling.
The influence of the Society since its restoration in 1814 has not been
marked with greater success than in its previous history. It was natural
after the restoration that an attempt should be made to pick up again
the threads that were dropped; but soon they came to realize the truth
of the saying of St Ignatius: "The Society shall adapt itself to the
times and not the times to the Society." The political conditions of
Europe have completely changed, and constitutionalism is unfavourable to
that personal influence which, in former times, the Jesuits were able to
bring to bear upon the heads of states. In Europe they confine
themselves mainly to educational and ecclesiastical politics, although
both Germany and France have followed the example of Portugal and
refuse, on political grounds, to allow them to be in these countries. It
would appear as though some of the Jesuits had not, even yet, learnt the
lesson that meddling with politics has always been their ruin. The main
cause of any difficulty that may exist to-day with the Society is that
the Jesuits are true to the teaching of that remarkable panegyric, the
_Imago primi saeculi Societatis_ (probably written by John Tollenarius
in 1640), by identifying the Church with their own body, and being
intolerant of all who will not share this view. Their power is still
large in certain sections of the ecclesiastical world, but in secular
affairs it is small. Moreover within the church itself there is a strong
and growing feeling that the interests of Catholicism may necessitate a
second and final suppression of the Society. Cardinal Manning, a keen
observer of times and influences, was wont to say:--"The work of 1773
was the work of God: and there is another 1773 coming." But, if this
come, it will be due not to the pressure of secular governments, as in
the 18th century, but to the action of the Church itself. The very
nations which have cast out the Society have shown no disposition to
accept its own estimate and identify it with the Church; while the
Church itself is not conscious of depending upon the Society. To the
Church the Jesuits have been what the Janissaries were to the Ottoman
Empire, at first its defenders and its champions, but in the end its
taskmasters.
_History._--The separate article on Loyola tells of his early years, his
conversion, and his first gathering of companions. It was not until
November 1537, when all hope of going to the Holy Land was given up,
that any outward steps were taken to form these companions into an
organized body. It was on the eve of their going to Rome, for the second
time, that the fathers met Ignatius at Vicenza and it was determined to
adopt a common rule and, at the suggestion of Ignatius, the name of the
Company of Jesus. Whatever may have been his private hopes and
intentions, it was not until he, Laynez and Faber (Pierre Lefevre), in
the name of their companions, were sent to lay their services at the
feet of the pope that the history of the Society really begins.
On their arrival at Rome the three Jesuits were favourably received by
Paul III., who at once appointed Faber to the chair of scripture and
Laynez to that of scholastic theology in the university of the
Sapienza. But they encountered much opposition and were even charged
with heresy; when this accusation had been disposed of, there were
still difficulties in the way of starting any new order. Despite the
approval of Cardinal Contarini and the goodwill of the pope (who is
said to have exclaimed on perusing the scheme of Ignatius, "The finger
of God is here"), there was a strong and general feeling that the
regular system had broken down and could not be wisely developed
farther. Cardinal Guidiccioni, one of the commission of three
appointed to examine the draft constitution, was known to advocate the
abolition of all existing orders, save four which were to be
remodelled and put under strict control. That very year, 1538, a
commission of cardinals, including Reginald Pole, Contarini, Sadolet,
Caraffa (afterwards Paul IV.), Fregoso and others, had reported that
the conventual orders, which they had to deal with, had drifted into
such a state that they should all be abolished. Not only so, but, when
greater strictness of rule and of enclosure seemed the most needful
reforms in communities that had become too secular in tone, the
proposal of Ignatius, to make it a first principle that the members of
his institute should mix freely in the world and be as little marked
off as possible externally from secular clerical life and usages, ran
counter to all tradition and prejudice, save that Caraffa's then
recent order of Theatines, which had some analogy with the proposed
Society, had taken some steps in the same direction.
Ignatius and his companions, however, had but little doubt of ultimate
success, and so bound themselves, on the 15th of April 1539, to obey
any superior chosen from amongst their body, and added on the 4th of
May certain other rules, the most important of which was a vow of
special allegiance to the pope for mission purposes to be taken by all
the members of the society. But Guidiccioni, on a careful study of the
papers, changed his mind; it is supposed that the cause of this change
was in large measure the strong interest in the new scheme exhibited
by John III., king of Portugal, who instructed his ambassador to press
it on the pope and to ask Ignatius to send some priests of his Society
for mission work in Portugal and its Indian possessions. Francis
Xavier and Simon Rodriguez were sent to the king in March 1540.
Obstacles being cleared away, Paul III., on the 27th of September
1540, issued his bull _Regimini militantis ecclesiae_, by which he
confirmed the new Society (the term "order" does not belong to it),
but limited the members to sixty, a restriction which was removed by
the same pope in the bull _Injunctum nobis_ of the 14th of March 1543.
In the former bull, the pope gives the text of the formula submitted
by Ignatius as the scheme of the proposed society, and in it we get
the founder's own ideas: "... This Society, instituted to this special
end, namely, to offer spiritual consolation for the advancement of
souls in life and Christian doctrine, for the propagation of the faith
by public preaching and the ministry of the word of God, spiritual
exercises and works of charity and, especially, by the instruction of
children and ignorant people in Christianity, and by the spiritual
consolation of the faithful in Christ in hearing confessions...." In
this original scheme it is clearly marked out "that this entire
Society and all its members fight for God under the faithful
obedience of the most sacred lord, the pope, and the other Roman
pontiffs his successors"; and Ignatius makes particular mention that
each member should "be bound by a special vow," beyond that formal
obligation under which all Christians are of obeying the pope, "so
that whatsoever the present and other Roman pontiffs for the time
being shall ordain, pertaining to the advancement of souls and the
propagation of the faith, to whatever provinces he shall resolve to
send us, we are straightway bound to obey, as far as in us lies,
without any tergiversation or excuse, whether he send us among the
Turks or to any other unbelievers in being, even to those parts called
India, or to any heretics or schismatics or likewise to any
believers." Obedience to the general is enjoined "in all things
pertaining to the institute of the Society ... and in him they shall
acknowledge Christ as though present, and as far as is becoming shall
venerate him"; poverty is enjoined, and this rule affects not only the
individual but the common sustentation or care of the Society, except
that in the case of colleges revenues are allowed "to be applied to
the wants and necessities of the students"; and the private recitation
of the Office is distinctly mentioned. On the other hand, the
perpetuity of the general's office during his life was no part of the
original scheme.
On the 7th of April 1541, Ignatius was unanimously chosen general. His
refusal of this post was overruled, so he entered on his office on the
13th of April; and two days after, the newly constituted Society took
its formal corporate vows in the basilica of San Paolo _fuori le mura_.
Scarcely was the Society launched when its members dispersed in various
directions to their new tasks. Alfonso Salmeron and Pasquier-Brouet, as
papal delegates, were sent on a secret mission to Ireland to encourage
the native clergy and people to resist the religious changes introduced
by Henry VIII.; Nicholas Bobadilla went to Naples; Faber, first to the
diet of Worms and then to Spain; Laynez and Claude le Jay to Germany,
while Ignatius busied himself at Rome in good works and in drawing up
the constitutions and completing the _Spiritual Exercises_. Success
crowned these first efforts; and the Society began to win golden
opinions. The first college was founded at Coimbra in 1542 by John III.
of Portugal and put under the rectorship of Rodriguez. It was designed
as a training school to feed the Indian mission of which Francis Xavier
had already taken the oversight, while a seminary at Goa was the second
institution founded outside Rome in connexion with the Society. Both
from the original scheme and from the foundation at Coimbra it is clear
that the original idea of the colleges was to provide for the education
of future Jesuits. In Spain, national pride in the founder aided the
Society's cause almost as much as royal patronage did in Portugal; and
the third house was opened in Gandia under the protection of its duke,
Francisco Borgia, a grandson of Alexander VI. In Germany, the Jesuits
were eagerly welcomed as the only persons able to meet the Lutherans on
equal terms. Only in France, among the countries which still were united
with the Roman Church, was their advance checked, owing to political
distrust of their Spanish origin, together with the hostility of the
Sorbonne and the bishop of Paris. However, after many difficulties, they
succeeded in getting a footing through the help of Guillaume du Prat,
bishop of Clermont (d. 1560), who founded a college for them in 1545 in
the town of Billom, besides making over to them his house at Paris, the
hôtel de Clermont, which became the nucleus of the afterwards famous
college of Louis-le-Grand, while a formal legalization was granted to
them by the states-general at Poissy in 1561. In Rome, Paul III.'s
favour did not lessen. He bestowed on them the church of St Andrea and
conferred at the same time the valuable privilege of making and altering
their own statutes; besides the other points, in 1546, which Ignatius
had still more at heart, as touching the very essence of his institute,
namely, exemption from ecclesiastical offices and dignities and from the
task of acting as directors and confessors to convents of women. The
former of these measures effectually stopped any drain of the best
members away from the society and limited their hopes within its bounds,
by putting them more freely at the general's disposal, especially as it
was provided that the final vows could not be annulled, nor could a
professed member be dismissed, save by the joint action of the general
and the pope. The regulation as to convents seems partly due to a desire
to avoid the worry and expenditure of time involved in the discharge of
such offices and partly to a conviction that penitents living in
enclosure, as all religious persons then were, would be of no effective
use to the Society; whereas the founder, against the wishes of several
of his companions, laid much stress on the duty of accepting the post of
confessor to kings, queens and women of high rank when opportunity
presented itself. And the year 1546 is notable in the annals of the
Society as that in which it embarked on its great educational career,
especially by the annexation of free day-schools to all its colleges.
The council of Trent, in its first period, seemed to increase the
reputation of the Society; for the pope chose Laynez, Faber and
Salmeron to act as his theologians in that assembly, and in this
capacity they had no little influence in framing its decrees. When the
council reassembled under Pius IV., Laynez and Salmeron again attended
in the same capacity. It is sometimes said that the council formally
approved of the Society. This is impossible; for as the Society had
received the papal approval, that of the council would have been
impertinent as well as unnecessary. St Charles Borromeo wrote to the
presiding cardinals, on the 11th of May 1562, saying that, as France
was disaffected to the Jesuits whom the pope wished to see established
in every country, Pius IV. desired, when the council was occupying
itself about regulars, that it should make some honourable mention of
the Society in order to recommend it. This was done in the
twenty-fifth session (cap. XVI., d.r.) when the decree was passed that
at the end of the time of probation novices should either be professed
or dismissed; and the words of the council are: "By these things,
however, the Synod does not intend to make any innovation or
prohibition, so as to hinder the religious order of Clerks of the
Society of Jesus from being able to serve God and His Church, in
accordance with their pious institute approved of by the Holy
Apostolic See."
In 1548 the Society received a valuable recruit in the person of
Francisco Borgia, duke of Gandia, afterwards thrice general, while two
important events marked 1550--the foundation of the Collegio Romano and
a fresh confirmation of the Society by Julius III. The German college,
for the children of poor nobles, was founded in 1552; and in the same
year Ignatius firmly settled the discipline of the Society by putting
down, with promptness and severity, some attempts at independent action
on the part of Rodriguez at Coimbra--this being the occasion of the
famous letter on obedience; while 1553 saw the despatch of a mission to
Abyssinia with one of the fathers as patriarch, and the first rift
within the lute when the pope thought that the Spanish Jesuits were
taking part with the emperor against the Holy See. Paul IV. (whose
election alarmed the Jesuits, for they had not found him very friendly
as cardinal) was for a time managed with supreme tact by Ignatius, whom
he respected personally. In 1556, the founder died and left the Society
consisting of forty-five professed fathers and two thousand ordinary
members, distributed over twelve provinces, with more than a hundred
colleges and houses.
After the death of the first general there was an interregnum of two
years, with Laynez as vicar. During this long period he occupied
himself with completing the constitutions by incorporating certain
declarations, said to be Ignatian, which explained and sometimes
completely altered the meaning of the original text. Laynez was an
astute politician and saw the vast capabilities of the Society over a
far wider field than the founder contemplated; and he prepared to give
it the direction that it has since followed. In some senses, this
learned and consummately clever man may be looked upon as the real
founder of the Society as history knows it. Having carefully prepared
the way, he summoned the general congregation from which he emerged as
second general in 1556. As soon as Ignatius had died Paul IV.
announced his intention of instituting reforms in the Society,
especially in two points: the public recitation of the office in choir
and the limitation of the general's office to a term of three years.
Despite all the protests and negotiations of Laynez, the pope remained
obstinate; and there was nothing but to submit. On the 8th of
September 1558, two points were added to the constitutions: that the
generalship should be triennial and not perpetual, although after the
three years the general might be confirmed; and that the canonical
hours should be observed in choir after the manner of the other
orders, but with that moderation which should seem expedient to the
general. Taking advantage of this last clause, Laynez applied the new
law to two houses only, namely, Rome and Lisbon, the other houses
contenting themselves with singing vespers on feast days; and as soon
as Paul IV. died, Laynez, acting on advice, quietly ignored for the
future the orders of the late pope. He also succeeded in increasing
further the already enormous powers of the general. Laynez took a
leading part in the colloquy of Poissy in 1561 between the Catholics
and Huguenots; and obtained a legal footing from the states-general
for colleges of the Society in France. He died in 1564, leaving the
Society increased to eighteen provinces with a hundred and thirty
colleges, and was succeeded by Francisco Borgia. During the third
generalate, Pius V. confirmed all the former privileges, and in the
amplest form extended to the Society, as being a mendicant institute,
all favours that had been or might afterwards be granted to such
mendicant bodies. It was a trifling set-off that in 1567 the pope
again enjoined the fathers to keep choir and to admit only the
professed to priests' orders, especially as Gregory XIII. rescinded
both these injunctions in 1573; and indeed, as regards the hours, all
that Pius V. was able to obtain was the nominal concession that the
breviary should be recited in choir in the professed houses only, and
that not of necessity by more than two persons at a time. Everard
Mercurian, a Fleming, and a subject of Spain, succeeded Borgia in
1573, being forced on the Society by the pope, in preference to
Polanco, Ignatius's secretary and the vicar-general, who was rejected
partly as a Spaniard and still more because he was a "New Christian"
of Jewish origin and therefore objected to in Spain itself. During his
term of office there took place the troubles in Rome concerning the
English college and the subsequent Jesuit rule over that institution;
and in 1580 the first Jesuit mission, headed by the redoubtable Robert
Parsons and the saintly Edmund Campion, set out for England. This
mission, on one side, carried on an active propaganda against
Elizabeth in favour of Spain; and on the other, among the true
missionaries, was marked with devoted zeal and heroism even to the
ghastly death of traitors. Claude Acquaviva, the fifth general, held
office from 1581 to 1615, a time almost coinciding with the high tide
of the successful reaction, chiefly due to the Jesuits. He was an
able, strong-willed man, and crushed what was tantamount to a
rebellion in Spain. It was during this struggle that Mariana, the
historian and the author of the famous _De rege_ in which he defends
tyrannicide, wrote his treatise _On the Defects in the Government of
the Society_. He confessed freely that the Society had faults and that
there was a great deal of unrest among the members; and he mentioned
among the various points calling for reform the education of the
novices and students; the state of the lay brother and the possessions
of the Society; the spying system, which he declared to be carried so
far that, if the general's archives at Rome should be searched, not
one Jesuit's character would be found to escape; the monopoly of the
higher offices by a small clique; and the absence of all encouragement
and recompense for the best men of the Society.
It was chiefly during the generalship of Acquaviva that the Society
began to gain an evil reputation which eclipsed its good report. In
France the Jesuits joined, if they did not originate, the league against
Henry of Navarre. Absolution was refused by them to those who would not
join in the Guise rebellion, and Acquaviva is said to have tried to stop
them, but in vain. The assassination of Henry III. in the interests of
the league and the wounding of Henry IV. in 1594 by Chastel, a pupil of
theirs, revealed the danger that the whole Society was running by the
intrigues of a few men. The Jesuits were banished from France in 1594,
but were allowed to return by Henry IV. under conditions; as Sully has
recorded, the king declared his only motive to be the expediency of not
driving them into a corner with possible disastrous results to his life,
and because his only hope of tranquillity lay in appeasing them and
their powerful friends. In England the political schemings of Parsons
were no small factors in the odium which fell on the Society at large;
and his determination to capture the English Catholics as an apanage of
the Society, to the exclusion of all else, was an object lesson to the
rest of Europe of a restless ambition and lust of domination which were
to find many imitators. The political turn which was being given by some
to the Society, to the detriment of its real spiritual work, evoked the
fears of the wiser heads of the body; and in the fifth general
congregation held in 1593-1594 it was decreed: "Whereas in these times
of difficulty and danger it has happened through the fault of certain
individuals, through ambition and intemperate zeal, that our institute
has been ill spoken of in divers places and before divers sovereigns ...
it is severely and strictly forbidden to all members of the Society to
interfere in any manner whatever in public affairs even though they be
thereto invited; or to deviate from the institute through entreaty,
persuasion or any other motive whatever." It would have been well had
Acquaviva enforced this decree; but Parsons was allowed to keep on with
his work, and other Jesuits in France for many years after directed, to
the loss of religion, affairs of state. In 1605 took place in England
the Gunpowder Plot, in which Henry Garnet, the superior of the Society
in England, was implicated. That the Jesuits were the instigators of
the plot there is no evidence, but they were in close touch with the
conspirators, of whose designs Garnet had a general knowledge. There is
now no reasonable doubt that he and other Jesuits were legally
accessories, and that the condemnation of Garnet as a traitor was
substantially just (see GARNET, HENRY).
It was during Acquaviva's generalship that Philip II. of Spain
complained bitterly of the Society to Sixtus V., and encouraged him in
those plans of reform (even to changing the name) which were only cut
short by the pope's death in 1590, and also that the long protracted
discussions on grace, wherein the Dominicans contended against the
Jesuits, were carried on at Rome with little practical result, by the
Congregation _de auxiliis_, which sat from 1598 till 1607. The _Ratio
Studiorum_ took its shape during this time. The Jesuit influence at
Rome was supported by the Spanish ambassador; but when Henry IV. "went
to Mass," the balance inclined to the side of France, and the Spanish
monopoly became a thing of the past. Acquaviva saw the expulsion of
the Jesuits from Venice in 1606 for siding with Paul V. when he placed
the republic under interdict, but did not live to see their recall,
which took place at the intercession of Louis XIV. in 1657. He also
had to banish Parsons from Rome, by order of Clement VIII., who was
wearied with the perpetual complaints made against that intriguer.
Gregory XIV., by the bull _Ecclesiae Christi_ (July 28, 1591), again
confirmed the Society, and granted that Jesuits might, for true cause,
be expelled from the body without any form of trial or even
documentary procedure, besides denouncing excommunications against
every one, save the pope or his legates, who directly or indirectly
infringed the constitutions of the Society or attempted to bring about
any change therein.
Under Vitelleschi, the next general, the Society celebrated its first
centenary on the 25th of September 1639, the hundredth anniversary of
the verbal approbation given to the scheme by Paul III. During this
hundred years the Society had grown to thirty-six provinces, with
eight hundred houses containing some fifteen thousand members. In 1640
broke out the great Jansenist controversy, in which the Society took
the leading part on one side and finally secured the victory. In this
same year, considering themselves ill-used by Olivarez, prime minister
of Philip IV. of Spain, the Jesuits powerfully aided the revolution
which placed the duke of Braganza on the throne of Portugal; and their
services were rewarded for nearly one hundred years with the practical
control of ecclesiastical and almost of civil affairs in that kingdom.
The Society also gained ground steadily in France; for, though held in
check by Richelieu and little more favoured by Mazarin, yet from the
moment that Louis XIV. took the reins, their star was in the
ascendant, and Jesuit confessors, the most celebrated of whom were
François de La Chaise (q.v.) and Michel Le Tellier (1643-1719), guided
the policy of the king, not hesitating to take his side in his quarrel
with the Holy See, which nearly resulted in a schism, nor to sign the
Gallican articles. Their hostility to the Huguenots forced on the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and their war against their
Jansenist opponents did not cease till the very walls of Port Royal
were demolished in 1710, even to the very abbey church itself, and the
bodies of the dead taken with every mark of insult from their graves
and literally flung to the dogs to devour. But while thus gaining
power in one direction, the Society was losing it in another. The
Japanese mission had vanished in blood in 1651; and though many
Jesuits died with their converts bravely as martyrs for the faith, yet
it is impossible to acquit them of a large share in the causes of that
overthrow. It was also about this same period that the grave scandal
of the Chinese and Malabar rites began to attract attention in Europe,
and to make thinking men ask seriously whether the Jesuit missionaries
in those parts taught anything which could fairly be called
Christianity at all. When it was remembered, too, that they had
decided, at a council held at Lima, that it was inexpedient to impose
any act of Christian devotion except baptism, on the South American
converts, without the greatest precautions, on the ground of
intellectual difficulties, it is not wonderful that this doubt was not
satisfactorily cleared up, notably in face of the charges brought
against the Society by Bernardin de Cardonas, bishop of Paraguay, and
the saintly Juan de Palafox (q.v.), bishop of Angelopolis in Mexico.
But "the terrible power in the universal church, the great riches and
the extraordinary prestige" of the Society, which Palafox complained
had raised it "above all dignities, laws, councils and apostolic
constitutions," carried with them the seeds of rapid and inevitable
decay. A succession of devout but incapable generals, after the death
of Acquaviva, saw the gradual secularization of tone by the flocking
in of recruits of rank and wealth desirous to share in the glories and
influence of the Society, but not well adapted to increase them. The
general's supremacy received a shock when the eleventh general
congregation appointed Oliva as vicar, with the right of succession
and powers that practically superseded those of the general Goswin
Nickel, whose infirmities, it is said, did not permit him to govern
with the necessary application and vigour; and an attempt was made to
depose Tirso Gonzalez, the thirteenth general, whose views on
probabilism diverged from those favoured by the rest of the Jesuits.
Though the political weight of the Society continued to increase in
the cabinets of Europe, it was being steadily weakened internally. The
Jesuits abandoned the system of free education which had won them so
much influence and honour; by attaching themselves exclusively to the
interests of courts, they lost favour with the middle and lower
classes; and above all, their monopoly of power and patronage in
France, with the fatal use they had made of it, drew down the
bitterest hostility upon them. It was to their credit, indeed, that
the encyclopaedists attacked them as the foremost representatives of
Christianity, but they are accountable in no small degree in France,
as in England, for alienating the minds of men from the religion for
which they professed to work.
But the most fatal part of the policy of the Society was its activity,
wealth and importance as a great trading firm with branch houses
scattered over the richest countries of the world. Its founder, with a
wise instinct, had forbidden the accumulation of wealth; its own
constitutions, as revised in the 84th decree of the sixth general
congregation, had forbidden all pursuits of a commercial nature, as also
had various popes; but nevertheless the trade went on unceasingly,
necessarily with the full knowledge of the general, unless it be pleaded
that the system of obligatory espionage had completely broken down. The
first muttering of the storm which was soon to break was heard in a
breve issued in 1741 by Benedict XIV., wherein he denounced the Jesuit
offenders as "disobedient, contumacious, captious and reprobate
persons," and enacted many stringent regulations for their better
government. The first serious attack came from a country where they had
been long dominant. In 1753 Spain and Portugal exchanged certain
American provinces with each other, which involved a transfer of
sovereign rights over Paraguay; but it was also provided that the
populations should severally migrate also, that the subjects of each
crown might remain the same as before. The inhabitants of the
"reductions," whom the Jesuits had trained in the use of European arms
and discipline, naturally rose in defence of their homes, and attacked
the troops and authorities. Their previous docility and their entire
submission to the Jesuits left no possible doubt as to the source of the
rebellion, and gave the enemies of the Jesuits a handle against them
that was not forgotten. In 1757 Carvalho, marquis of Pombal, prime
minister of Joseph I. of Portugal, and an old pupil of the Jesuits at
Coimbra, dismissed the three Jesuit chaplains of the king and named
three secular priests in their stead. He next complained to Benedict
XIV. that the trading operations of the Society hampered the commercial
prosperity of the nation, and asked for remedial measures. The pope, who
knew the situation, committed a visitation of the Society to Cardinal
Saldanha, an intimate friend of Pombal, who issued a severe decree
against the Jesuits and ordered the confiscation of all their
merchandise. But at this juncture Benedict XIV., the most learned and
able pope of the period, was succeeded by a pope strongly in favour of
the Jesuits, Clement XIII. Pombal, finding no help from Rome, adopted
other means. The king was fired at and wounded on returning from a visit
to his mistress on the 3rd of September 1758. The duke of Aveiro and
other high personages were tried and executed for conspiracy; while some
of the Jesuits, who had undoubtedly been in communication with them,
were charged, on doubtful evidence, with complicity in the attempted
assassination. Pombal charged the whole Society with the possible guilt
of a few, and, unwilling to wait the dubious issue of an application to
the pope for licence to try them in the civil courts, whence they were
exempt, issued on the 1st of September 1759 a decree ordering the
immediate deportation of every Jesuit from Portugal and all its
dependencies and their suppression by the bishops in the schools and
universities. Those in Portugal were at once shipped, in great misery,
to the papal states, and were soon followed by those in the colonies. In
France, Madame de Pompadour was their enemy because they had refused her
absolution while she remained the king's mistress; but the immediate
cause of their ruin was the bankruptcy of Father Lavalette, the Jesuit
superior in Martinique, a daring speculator, who failed, after trading
for some years, for 2,400,000 francs and brought ruin upon some French
commercial houses of note. Lorenzo Ricci, then general of the Society,
repudiated the debt, alleging lack of authority on Lavalette's part to
pledge the credit of the Society, and he was sued by the creditors.
Losing his cause, he appealed to the parlement of Paris, and it, to
decide the issue raised by Ricci, required the constitutions of the
Jesuits to be produced in evidence, and affirmed the judgment of the
courts below. But the publicity given to a document scarcely known till
then raised the utmost indignation against the Society. A royal
commission, appointed by the duc de Choiseul to examine the
constitutions, convoked a private assembly of fifty-one archbishops and
bishops under the presidency of Cardinal de Luynes, all of whom except
six voted that the unlimited authority of the general was incompatible
with the laws of France, and that the appointment of a resident vicar,
subject to those laws, was the only solution of the question fair on all
sides. Ricci replied with the historical answer, _Sint ut sunt, aut non
sint_; and after some further delay, during which much interest was
exerted in their favour, the Jesuits were suppressed by an edict in
November 1764, but suffered to remain on the footing of secular priests,
a grace withdrawn in 1767, when they were expelled from the kingdom. In
the very same year, Charles III. of Spain, a monarch known for personal
devoutness, convinced, on evidence not now forthcoming, that the Jesuits
were plotting against his authority, prepared, through his minister
D'Aranda, a decree suppressing the Society in every part of his
dominions. Sealed despatches were sent to every Spanish colony, to be
opened on the same day, the 2nd of April 1767, when the measure was to
take effect in Spain itself, and the expulsion was relentlessly carried
out, nearly six thousand priests being deported from Spain alone, and
sent to the Italian coast, whence, however, they were repelled by the
orders of the pope and Ricci himself, finding a refuge at Corte in
Corsica, after some months' suffering in overcrowded vessels at sea. The
general's object may probably have been to accentuate the harshness with
which the fathers had been treated, and so to increase public sympathy,
but the actual result of his policy was blame for the cruelty with which
he enhanced their misfortunes, for the poverty of Corsica made even a
bare subsistence scarcely procurable for them there. The Bourbon courts
of Naples and Parma followed the example of France and Spain; Clement
XIII. retorted with a bull launched at the weakest adversary, and
declaring the rank and title of the duke of Parma forfeit. The Bourbon
sovereigns threatened to make war on the pope in return (France, indeed,
seizing on the county of Avignon), and a joint note demanding a
retractation, and the abolition of the Jesuits, was presented by the
French ambassador at Rome on the 10th of December 1768 in the name of
France, Spain and the two Sicilies. The pope, a man of eighty-two, died
of apoplexy, brought on by the shock, early in 1769. Cardinal Lorenzo
Ganganelli, a conventual Franciscan, was chosen to succeed him, and took
the name of Clement XIV. He endeavoured to avert the decision forced
upon him, but, as Portugal joined the Bourbon league, and Maria Theresa
with her son the emperor Joseph II. ceased to protect the Jesuits, there
remained only the petty kingdom of Sardinia in their favour, though the
fall of Choiseul in France raised the hopes of the Society for a time.
The pope began with some preliminary measures, permitting first the
renewal of lawsuits against the Society, which had been suspended by
papal authority, and which, indeed, had in no case been ever successful
at Rome. He then closed the Collegio Romano, on the plea of its
insolvency, seized the houses at Frascati and Tivoli, and broke up the
establishments in Bologna and the Legations. Finally on the 21st of July
1773 the famous breve _Dominus ac Redemptor_ appeared, suppressing the
Society of Jesus. This remarkable document opens by citing a long series
of precedents for the suppression of religious orders by the Holy See,
amongst which occurs the ill-omened instance of the Templars. It then
briefly sketches the objects and history of the Jesuits themselves. It
speaks of their defiance of their own constitution, expressly revived by
Paul V., forbidding them to meddle in politics; of the great ruin to
souls caused by their quarrels with local ordinaries and the other
religious orders, their condescension to heathen usages in the East, and
the disturbances, resulting in persecutions of the Church, which they
had stirred up even in Catholic countries, so that several popes had
been obliged to punish them. Seeing then that the Catholic sovereigns
had been forced to expel them, that many bishops and other eminent
persons demanded their extinction, and that the Society had ceased to
fulfil the intention of its institute, the pope declares it necessary
for the peace of the Church that it should be suppressed, extinguished,
abolished and abrogated for ever, with all its houses, colleges, schools
and hospitals; transfers all the authority of its general or officers to
the local ordinaries; forbids the reception of any more novices,
directing that such as were actually in probation should be dismissed,
and declaring that profession in the Society should not serve as a title
to holy orders. Priests of the Society are given the option of either
joining other orders or remaining as secular clergy, under obedience to
the ordinaries, who are empowered to grant or withhold from them
licences to hear confessions. Such of the fathers as are engaged in the
work of education are permitted to continue, on condition of abstaining
from lax and questionable doctrines apt to cause strife and trouble. The
question of missions is reserved, and the relaxations granted to the
Society in such matters as fasting, reciting the hours and reading
heretical books, are withdrawn; while the breve ends with clauses
carefully drawn to bar any legal exceptions that might be taken against
its full validity and obligation. It has been necessary to cite these
heads of the breve because the apologists of the Society allege that no
motive influenced the pope save the desire of peace at any price, and
that he did not believe in the culpability of the fathers. The
categorical charges made in the document rebut this plea. The pope
followed up this breve by appointing a congregation of cardinals to take
possession of the temporalities of the Society, and armed it with
summary powers against all who should attempt to retain or conceal any
of the property. He also threw Lorenzo Ricci, the general, into prison,
first in the English college and then in the castle of St Angelo, where
he died in 1775, under the pontificate of Pius VI., who, though not
unfavourable to the Society, and owing his own advancement to it, dared
not release him, probably because his continued imprisonment was made a
condition by the powers who enjoyed a right of veto in papal elections.
In September 1774 Clement XIV. died after much suffering, and the
question has been hotly debated ever since whether poison was the cause
of his death. But the latest researches have shown that there is no
evidence to support the theory of poison. Salicetti, the pope's
physician, denied that the body showed signs of poisoning, and Tanucci,
Neapolitan ambassador at Rome, who had a large share in procuring the
breve of suppression, entirely acquits the Jesuits, while F. Theiner, no
friend to the Society, does the like.
At the date of this suppression, the Society had 41 provinces and 22,589
members, of whom 11,295 were priests. Far from submitting to the papal
breve, the ex-Jesuits, after some ineffectual attempts at direct
resistance, withdrew into the territories of the free-thinking
sovereigns of Russia and Prussia, Frederick II. and Catherine II., who
became their active friends and protectors; and the fathers alleged as a
principle, in so far as their theology is concerned, that no papal bull
is binding in a state whose sovereign has not approved and authorized
its publication and execution. Russia formed the headquarters of the
Society, and two forged breves were speedily circulated, being dated
June 9 and June 29, 1774, approving their establishment in Russia, and
implying the repeal of the breve of suppression. But these are
contradicted by the tenor of five genuine breves issued in September
1774 to the archbishop of Gnesen, and making certain assurances to the
ex-Jesuits, on condition of their complete obedience to the injunctions
already laid on them. The Jesuits also pleaded a verbal approbation by
Pius VI., technically known as an _Oraculum vivae vocis_, but this is
invalid for purposes of law unless reduced to writing and duly
authenticated.
They elected three Poles successively as generals, taking, however, only
the title of vicars, till on the 7th of March 1801 Pius VII. granted
them liberty to reconstitute themselves in north Russia, and permitted
Kareu, then vicar, to exercise full authority as general. On the 30th of
July 1804 a similar breve restored the Jesuits in the Two Sicilies, at
the express desire of Ferdinand IV., the pope thus anticipating the
further action of 1814, when, by the constitution _Sollicitudo omnium
Ecclesiarum_, he revoked the action of Clement XIV., and formally
restored the Society to corporate legal existence, yet not only omitted
any censure of his predecessor's conduct, but all vindication of the
Jesuits from the heavy charges in the breve _Dominus ac Redemptor_. In
France, even after their expulsion in 1765, they had maintained a
precarious footing in the country under the partial disguise and names
of "Fathers of the Faith" or "Clerks of the Sacred Heart," but were
obliged by Napoleon I. to retire in 1804. They reappeared under their
true name in 1814, and obtained formal licence in 1822, but became the
objects of so much hostility that Charles X. deprived them by ordinance
of the right of instruction, and obliged all applicants for licences as
teachers to make oath that they did not belong to any community
unrecognized by the laws. They were dispersed again by the revolution of
July 1830, but soon reappeared and, though put to much inconvenience
during the latter years of Louis Philippe's reign, notably in 1845,
maintained their footing, recovered the right to teach freely after the
revolution of 1848, and gradually became the leading educational and
ecclesiastical power in France, notably under the Second Empire, till
they were once more expelled by the Ferry laws of 1880, though they
quietly returned since the execution of those measures. They were again
expelled by the Law of Associations of 1901. In Spain they came back
with Ferdinand VII., but were expelled at the constitutional rising in
1820, returning in 1823, when the duke of Angoulême's army replaced
Ferdinand on his throne; they were driven out once more by Espartero in
1835, and have had no legal position since, though their presence is
openly tolerated. In Portugal, ranging themselves on the side of Dom
Miguel, they fell with his cause, and were exiled in 1834. There are
some to this day in Lisbon under the name of "Fathers of the Faith."
Russia, which had been their warmest patron, drove them from St
Petersburg and Moscow in 1813, and from the whole empire in 1820, mainly
on the plea of attempted proselytizing in the imperial army. Holland
drove them out in 1816, and, by giving them thus a valid excuse for
aiding the Belgian revolution of 1830, secured them the strong position
they have ever since held in Belgium; but they have succeeded in
returning to Holland. They were expelled from Switzerland in 1847-1848
for the part they were charged with in exciting the war of the
Sonderbund. In south Germany, inclusive of Austria and Bavaria, their
annals since their restoration have been uneventful; but in north
Germany, owing to the footing Frederick II. had given them in Prussia,
they became very powerful, especially in the Rhine provinces, and,
gradually moulding the younger generation of clergy after the close of
the War of Liberation, succeeded in spreading Ultramontane views amongst
them, and so leading up to the difficulties with the civil government
which issued in the Falk laws, and their own expulsion by decree of the
German parliament (June 19, 1872). Since then many attempts have been
made to procure the recall of the Society to the German Empire, but
without success, although as individuals they are now allowed in the
country. In Great Britain, whither they began to straggle over during
the revolutionary troubles at the close of the 18th century, and where,
practically unaffected by the clause directed against them in the
Emancipation Act of 1829, their chief settlement has been at Stonyhurst
in Lancashire, an estate conferred on them by Thomas Weld in 1795, they
have been unmolested; but there has been little affinity to the order in
the British temperament, and the English province has consequently never
risen to numerical or intellectual importance in the Society. In Rome
itself, its progress after the restoration was at first slow, and it was
not till the reign of Leo XII. (1823-1829) that it recovered its place
as the chief educational body there. It advanced steadily under Gregory
XVI., and, though it was at first shunned by Pius IX., it secured his
entire confidence after his return from Gaeta in 1849, and obtained from
him a special breve erecting the staff of its literary journal, the
_Civiltà Cattolica_, into a perpetual college under the general of the
Jesuits, for the purpose of teaching and propagating the faith in its
pages. How, with this pope's support throughout his long reign, the
gradual filling of nearly all the sees of Latin Christendom with bishops
of their own selection, and their practical capture, directly or
indirectly, of the education of the clergy in seminaries, they contrived
to stamp out the last remains of independence everywhere, and to crown
the Ultramontane triumph with the Vatican Decrees, is matter of familiar
knowledge. Leo XIII., while favouring them somewhat, never gave them his
full confidence; and by his adhesion to the Thomist philosophy and
theology, and his active work for the regeneration and progress of the
older orders, he made another suppression possible by destroying much of
their prestige. But the usual sequence has been observed under Pius X.,
who appeared to be greatly in favour of the Society and to rely upon
them for many of the measures of his pontificate.
The Society has been ruled by twenty-five generals and four vicars from
its foundation to the present day (1910). Of all the various
nationalities represented in the Society, neither France, its original
cradle, nor England, has ever given it a head, while Spain, Italy,
Holland, Belgium, Germany and Poland, were all represented. The numbers
of the Society are not accurately known, but are estimated at about
20,000, in all parts of the world; and of these the English, Irish and
American Jesuits are under 3000.