GENERAL FRANCIS BORGIA
The election which followed the death of Lainez was not marred
by any of the painful incidents which we frequently find on such
occasions in the Jesuit chronicles. When the leading fathers of the
Society reached Rome in the early summer, to compare their stories
of warfare in every clime of Europe and consult about the future
of their great organisation, there was one amongst them who had
so natural a pre-eminence that his election was assured. This was
Francis Borgia, ex-Duke of Gandia and Viceroy of Catalonia. There
were in the distinguished gathering many of far greater ability
and service--indeed, there was probably none of less ability than
Borgia--but his high birth, his friendship with half the kings of
Europe, his venerable person and austere life marked him clearly for
the supreme command. Philip of Spain had outgrown his hostility, and,
at the death of Lainez, Borgia was appointed Vicar-General. So plain
was the intention of the electors that he sincerely begged them not to
impose on him so heavy a responsibility. They disregarded his protest,
and on 2nd July he became General of the Society.
He was then a feeble and venerable man of sixty-five, worn with
austerity, profoundly sincere and religious. In his person he
singularly illustrated the change that had come over Catholicism. The
name of Borgia at once suggests the groves of pleasure or the chambers
of crime out of which the Papacy had been startled by the voice of
Luther: his father had been a son of Pope Alexander VI., his mother
an illegitimate daughter of the Archbishop of Saragossa, who in turn
had been a natural son of Ferdinand V. But with his hair-shirts, his
bloody scourges, and his long fasts, Francis belonged to the new age,
and seemed to have taken on himself the expiation of the scarlet sins
of the Borgias. He had been Viceroy of Catalonia from 1539 to 1543, and
had then suffered for some years a mild and obscure disgrace. During
this enforced retirement to his duchy he had met, and fallen under
the charm of, Peter Favre, and he was, as we saw, secretly admitted
to the Society. Although he had been driven from Spain only a few
years before, the Pope had restored his prestige, and his election was
acclaimed throughout the Society and the Church.
We may, perhaps, see a reflection of his religious spirit, as well as
an indication that grave abuses had crept into the Society, in the long
series of decrees which the Congregation proceeded to pass. No Jesuit
was henceforward to live at a royal court--at least, "not for more than
two or three months": Jesuit communities were not to own and manage
large farms, and sell their produce in the public markets; lawsuits on
behalf of legacies were to be avoided; salaries for teaching were to be
abandoned when a teacher joined the Society. These and other commands
give us an authoritative assurance that there was much disorder. Even
in the Congregation the liberals or casuists were represented. When, in
the discussion of the impropriety of going to law to secure legacies,
one of the sterner brethren quoted the Sermon on the Mount, another
plausibly argued that it was wrong to yield to worldlings funds which
might be used in the service of God. The Puritans won, and their
decrees went forth; but the farms were not abandoned, as we shall see,
nor the lawyers impoverished.
In view of the despotic power which a General had, it may seem strange
that the electors should venture to entrust the office to a man of such
mediocre ability as Borgia. We must remember that the General had a
council of four able assistants, and it could safely be trusted that
the humility of Borgia would leave the power in their hands. Nor was
it long before their statesmanship was put to a severe test. Their
princely benefactor, Pius IV., died before the end of 1565, and a
Dominican monk, Pius V., occupied the chair. He was a personal friend
of Borgia, but he belonged to a rival order, and Rome was greatly
agitated by the hope that he would strip the Society of its excessive
privileges. To the relief and delight of the Jesuits, Pius V. took the
earliest opportunity to show his friendliness. As he drove in solemn
procession past their church, he summoned the General to his carriage,
and talked affectionately with him for a quarter of an hour under the
eyes of his officers. When he went on to nominate Jesuits for certain
important offices, it seemed that they had found another protector.
In 1567, however, they were dismayed to receive an amiable, but firm,
suggestion from Pius to chant in choir, as other religious bodies did,
and abandon the "simple" or temporary vows which enabled them to keep
priests in the Society for years without being solemnly pledged to
it.[4] A commission of cardinals was at the time engaged in discussing
the reform of the monastic world, and the Jesuits submitted to it a
lengthy and skilful memoir in defence of their institutions. Ought
not a regiment of light horse, ready to fly at a moment's notice to
any part of the Pope's dominions, to have special characters? Would
those hundreds of men who had joined the Society in its actual form
not have ground to complain if it were made more onerous? Would the
benefactors who had built their homes and chapels be indifferent to
the changes? Nay, what would the heretics say when the decisions of
a whole series of Popes, to say nothing of the revelations made to
Ignatius, were ruled improper? These ingenious considerations were then
orally impressed on the Pope by Borgia and Polanco, and they flattered
themselves that they had once more evaded the commands which it was
their chief business to see respected by the rest of Christendom. The
Pope had agreed to postpone the question of choir until his new edition
of the Breviary was published, and he did not seem to insist on the
reform of the vows. A few months later, however, they heard that the
Pope was about to decree that in future no member of a religious body
should be admitted to the priesthood until he had taken his final vows.
The details of the struggle need not be repeated here, but we must
assuredly see a significance in these repeated conflicts with the
Pope. In the whole history of the monastic orders of the Catholic
Church there is no example of persistent opposition to, or determined
evasion of, the commands of the Pope to compare for a moment with this
behaviour of the men who took a special vow to obey him. Moreover,
the Jesuit writers of the time frankly confess that they resisted the
Pope's wish in their own interest. If the solemn vows were to be taken
in a youth's early twenties, they would have to examine much more
closely the characters of aspirants to the Society, and their numbers
would shrink. It was one of the most constant charges against them
in every country, that in the admission of novices they sacrificed
spiritual quality to quantity or social distinction; and certainly the
number of priests who abandoned, or were expelled from, the Society was
large. Pius V. knew this, and, to their great mortification, insisted
on the reform of their system. They sullenly abandoned one of the most
characteristic of their institutions--until Pius V. should go the way
of his predecessors. There was much rejoicing in Rome, and it was
rumoured that this was only the beginning of reform; but Pius hastened
to reassure Borgia and his colleagues.
In 1571, Borgia was requested by the Pope to undertake an important
mission. The steady advance of the Turks upon a divided Christendom
alarmed the Pope, and he wished to unite the Catholic monarchs for the
purpose of defence. His nephew, Cardinal Alessandrini, was to visit
the courts of Spain, Portugal, and France, and Borgia was invited
to accompany him. He was now advanced in years and tormented with
gout, but he accepted the mission, and we may make our survey of the
provinces of the Society by following his travels.
Spain endeavoured by an honourable reception to atone for the disgrace
it had formerly put upon him. The King promised his aid against the
Turk: the Inquisition permitted the publication of Borgia's books: the
Jesuits everywhere took courage at sight of their venerable leader and
the honour paid him. The Spanish province had continued, since the
death of Lainez, to have a very chequered record. The father of the
province, Araoz, had resisted every effort of the Roman authorities to
dislodge him from his comfortable nest at the court, and his conduct
had alienated many from the Society. On the other hand, the devoted
exertions of the Jesuits during the epidemics of 1565, 1568, and
1571, had won back much of the early respect for them, and many new
missions had been established. Most of the countries of Europe were
repeatedly ravaged by pestilence during that decade, and the Jesuits
distinguished themselves everywhere by the bravery with which they
exposed, and frequently lost, their lives in the service of the sick.
Yet there was a persistent feeling in Spain that they were over-eager
to secure legacies, and nearly every year witnessed a violent outbreak
of hostility to them.
A typical instance is found in the Jesuit chronicles in the earlier
part of the year of Borgia's visit. The Jesuits of Alcalà had received
into their ranks a youth named Francesco d'España, the son of a wealthy
and distinguished lady of Madrid, who strongly opposed his entrance
into the Society. He had the disposal of a large fortune, of which he
was heir. The mother appealed to the Royal Council, at the head of
which was Cardinal Spinosa, and the Jesuits were ordered to restore
the youth. In the meantime, they had secretly sent the youth to their
house at Madrid,--to be prepared to give evidence, Crétineau-Joly
audaciously says,--and when the Vicar of the Archbishop of Toledo
came to their house at Alcalà to enforce the order, they would tell
him only that d'España was not there. A very lively dispute followed.
The angry prelate roundly abused the Jesuits, who flourished their
privileges in his face; and some zealous brother rang the bell of the
college to summon the students to the defence of their rector. When
at length the Vicar threatened to have the Jesuit Provincial dragged
to prison, and the students drew their knives to protect him, the
rector promised to produce d'España within twenty-four hours. He was
summoned, and his mother tried to persuade him to return, or at least
to leave his fortune to his family instead of leaving it to the
Jesuits. He refused, until the Provincial, foreseeing a great outburst
of indignation, advised him to relinquish his fortune. The feeling
engendered by such incidents was not removed by the visit of Borgia. In
the following year, 1572, the civic authorities of Madrid appealed to
the Royal Council to close the Jesuit school, on the ground that the
lessons were merely "bait" for young men of wealthy families.
In Portugal, Borgia found the remarkable spectacle of one of
his subjects virtually ruling the kingdom. Portugal had fallen
lamentably from its earlier greatness. The vast frame of its Empire
was undiminished, but the spirit necessary to sustain it had died,
and it was doomed to decay. No serious historian questions that the
Jesuits had, at least by setting up the Inquisition and pursuing the
Jews and Moors, greatly accelerated its fall, and under the rule of
Father Gonzales da Camara and his brother, in the name of the young
King, the temporal interests of Portugal steadily declined. A stern
French critic of the Jesuits, Pasquier, says that he was told by the
Marquis de Pisani, the French ambassador at the Spanish court, that
the Jesuits were bent on obtaining control of the kingdom of Portugal.
Their apologists invite us to be amused at this incredible fiction of
the anti-Jesuit, yet it is hardly more than a strong expression of the
historical facts. Pasquier expressly says that the Jesuits meant to
rule, not without a king, but through a king of their own choice, and
they had done this for ten years when Borgia came to visit them. They
had, as we saw, helped to replace Catherine by Cardinal Henry, and they
had in 1568 displaced the Cardinal by declaring Sebastian of age (in
his sixteenth year).
That they promoted the interests of the Society in Portugal and its
colonies need hardly be said, but there is ample evidence that they had
a larger influence. The King's mother wished him to marry the daughter
of the Emperor Maximilian, but papal policy preferred a marriage with
the sister of the French King; and we have a letter from Borgia to
Gonzales, as confessor of Sebastian, enjoining him to promote the
French marriage. Even Borgia could overlook the decrees of his Society
at times, or convert temporal matters into spiritual. We may, however,
regard it as a strained and fanciful conjecture of certain critics that
the Portuguese fathers tried to deter Sebastian from marriage, and
pressed him to undertake his fatal mission to Africa, in order that the
crown might fall into their hands. But this belongs to a later date.
Father Gonzales was still the virtual head of the State when Borgia
visited Portugal, and the Society flourished there and in the Indies.
Although Borgia had lately received an angry protest from Catherine
against the interference of the fathers in political matters, he left
Gonzales at the court.
Alessandrini and Borgia next went to France; and when we reflect
that the historic massacre of the Huguenots occurred a few months
afterwards, we feel that it is important to study the visit and the
position of the Jesuits with some care. Let us first see how the
Society had fared in its ceaseless struggle with its opponents at Paris.
In 1565 a fresh attack had been made on the Jesuit college, and a
fruitless appeal against it was made to the Royal Senate. The Jesuits
then arraigned the University, which refused to recognise their
college, before the Parliament, and a fresh opportunity was offered
to the Parisian lawyers to draw up their scathing indictments of the
Society. In the meantime, Father Possevin, rector of the college
they had recently opened at Lyons, was sent to see the young King
and Catherine de Medici at Bayonne, and induce them to throw their
power and command into the legal scale. The conference at Bayonne,
at which Possevin assisted in some measure, is of grave importance in
the history of Europe. On the pretext of making Charles acquainted
with his kingdom, Catherine was bringing him into the neighbourhood of
other Catholic princes and conferring with them. At Bayonne she met the
wife of Philip of Spain, and in the Queen's suite was the grim Duke of
Alva. We can only conjecture what was discussed at this conference, but
no one doubts that the chief subject was the growth of Protestantism
in Catholic lands. Protestant historians frequently suggest that the
St. Bartholomew massacre was actually projected at Bayonne, but we
are hardly justified in thinking that there was anything more than a
general discussion of the brutal policy which was afterwards adopted
by Alva in the Netherlands and Catherine in France. In any case, it is
most unlikely that Possevin had any share in these secret counsels.
He was a new man, hardly known to the court in 1565. He discussed the
affairs of his Society with the Spanish Queen, and revealed to her
the smuggling of Protestant books into her country; and he returned
to Paris with letters, commending the suit of the Paris college, from
Catherine, Charles, and the Cardinal de Bourbon.
When the President of the Parlement found these weighty and irregular
documents thrown into the scale, he temporised. The suit was suspended;
the Jesuits were provisionally allowed to teach. In the following
year, however, the University appealed to the Constable of France,
complaining that the professors were unable to keep discipline, as
a pupil went to the Jesuits the moment he was reprimanded. Then two
singular discoveries were made by the Jesuits, and they had the effect
of disarming many of their patriotic opponents. In 1567, Father Oliver
Manares, the Provincial, informed the court and the civic authorities
of Paris that the Huguenots had concerted a plot to sack and burn the
city; he had learned it from a Polish noble, who was visiting Paris and
had been warned to leave in time.[5] Paris flew to arms and scared the
supposed plotters; it was also grateful to Father Manares, and incensed
against the Huguenots. In the same year, Father Auger was fortunate
enough to discover a similar plot at Lyons. There is evidence of a
conspiracy at Lyons, but the historian must regard the "discovery"
of Manares with grave suspicion. The effect of the discoveries was
that the grateful King at once ordered that all opposition to the
Jesuits must cease, and all legacies to the Society must be valid in
law; and that the Catholics were soon ranged against the Huguenots in
open field. The ablest of the Jesuits, Auger and Possevin, ardently
stimulated the Catholics, accompanied the troops, and were even seen in
the thick of the battles.
A peace was arranged in 1570, to the disappointment of the Jesuits;
and the country still enjoyed this precarious peace when Alessandrini
and Borgia reached the court, at Blois, in the first month of 1572. In
regard to the discussions which took place we know only that France
declared itself unable to join in the crusade against the Turk, and
Charles's sister, Mary of Valois, was promised to Henri de Béarn
instead of to Sebastian of Spain, as the Pope wished. Alessandrini and
Borgia went back to Rome, to announce their failure to the dying Pope.
And on 24th August of that year took place the horrible massacre which
lays an eternal stain on the memory of Catherine de Medici. We have,
fortunately, neither to linger over the revolting details of that
outrage, nor to enter the larger controversy as to the responsibility
for it.[6] The general feeling of historians is that the massacre was
deliberately planned by Catherine; and, since the Jesuits had influence
with Catherine, we have to consider whether they may have been
implicated in the barbaric slaughter.
Since General Borgia conferred with her at Blois some months before
the massacre, it has been thought by many that he was initiated. A
careful consideration of the character of Borgia disposes one to acquit
him confidently of this suspicion; it seems incredible that he should
approve, or that Catherine should expect him to approve, so inhuman a
measure. It is a common mistake to suppose that there was a fixed type
of Jesuit, and that almost any member of the Society may be regarded
as a man who would sanction criminal means for the attainment of a
good end. Our narrative has already shown us that Jesuits differed
considerably in character, and that individual features were not, as is
sometimes thought, obliterated by the impression of a corporate stamp.
Borgia was cruel only to himself, and he does not seem to have been
much of a casuist.
The real question is how far such men as Auger, Possevin, and Manares
were responsible for that general mood and temper of Catherine which
culminated in the Bartholomew massacre. It does not seem probable that
any of them were actually initiated to the plot. They were not the
keepers of the royal conscience in France at that time, and were not
at all constantly consulted by Catherine. But since the days when, at
and after the colloquy at Poissy, Lainez had sternly forbidden her
to grant an elementary freedom of worship to the Huguenots, they had
impelled her toward that harsh and intolerant policy which at length
took this criminal form in her diseased mind. Their intellectual
campaign against the Huguenots was a failure. They made few converts
from it, and they urged coercion to prevent it from spreading. Then,
when the Huguenots stirred under this unjust treatment, they were
very zealous in warning the court of "plots." It seems to me a grave
circumstance that in 1567, Father Manares "discovered" on the part of
the Huguenots of Paris a design not unlike that which the Catholics
afterwards perpetrated against them; it is probable that this was the
germ of Catherine's bloody enterprise. Whether she ever discussed her
plan with any of the leading Jesuits we have no evidence whatever
to determine. At a later date, when their house is raided and their
preachers are bolder, we shall find the Jesuits of Paris expressly
advocating crime in the interest of religion. At this stage we can
only say that they pressed a policy of violence and injustice, and
Catherine's crime, in which they acquiesced, was an extreme deduction
from it.
Simultaneously with the trouble in France, Alva was engaged in
"pacifying" the Netherlands. Here the Jesuits had miscalculated the
strength of the Catholics, and, in encouraging the policy of violent
repression, led to their own undoing. Only the favour of princes
had secured some shelter for them in Belgium, and their houses now
disappeared in the flames of the civil war. Their college at Douai had
been interdicted by the university authorities in 1567, but relieved by
papal authority. As the Spaniards proceeded, however, in the drastic
and bloody policy which the Jesuits were known to favour, the crowds
stormed their residences, and by 1570 they were almost driven from
the country. They returned in the wake of Alva, but there was bitter
hostility to them, and they were generally accused of rebuilding their
house at Antwerp out of the loot of Flemish towns. Father Sacchini
is moved to lament the perversity of men who could entertain such a
suspicion, though, as their sardonic critic Steinmetz observes, "it
would have been better to supply the place of this moral maxim by
stating whence the funds were obtained for building or beautifying the
house at Antwerp."
When we pass to Germany we naturally find that the Jesuits are apostles
of toleration, charity, and calm intellectual discussion of differences
of creed in the north, fanatical intolerantists in the south, and
advocates of every conceivable compromise between the two extremes in
the intervening or mixed States. Canisius still maintained his great
work and his austere standard. Appointed Legate of the Pope in 1565 he
traversed the whole of Germany on foot, and strengthened the loyalty
of the Catholic rulers to the Council of Trent. In the following year
we find him, at the Diet of Augsburg, helping to unite Protestants and
Catholics against the Turk. Many new colleges were founded by him,
including three in Poland, before the death of Borgia. On the other
hand, grave reports had to be sent to Rome from the more Catholic and
prosperous centres. The University of Dillingen, which the Jesuits
controlled, was found in 1567 to be permeated with heresy, and a
rigorous scrutiny ended in some of the Jesuits (including an English
refugee, Edward Thorn) going over to the Protestants. In 1570 the
Jesuit rector of Prague College became a Protestant and married. In
Bavaria the cry was raised that they mutilated boys in their colleges.
A most extraordinary trial resulted in their acquittal, but there
was a deep and widespread prejudice against them. In the same year,
1565, they were fiercely assailed in Austria. Their college at Vienna
was raided by an angry mob; and the nobles, who had been convoked by
Maximilian, refused to give their aid in the campaign against the Turk
unless the Emperor expelled the Jesuits.
In Italy the chronicles of the Society tell of slow advance chequered
by fits of hostility. By the year 1567 the Roman college had more than
a thousand pupils, but the provinces were beginning to murmur at the
burden of supporting this establishment, and the next congregation
would restrict its growth. In Genoa, Siena, and other cities, the
fathers struggled with poverty; in one place a college had to abandon
the struggle and die. In most parts, however, the Society flourished
and adapted its work to the circumstances. At Palermo we hear, in 1567,
of a weird pageant, known as "The Triumph of Death," arranged by the
Jesuits. Sack-clothed men bearing candles, a huge figure of Christ in
a coffin, and two hundred flagellants, stimulated to their ghastly
exercise by a troop of choristers dressed as hermits, went before a car
containing a monstrous skeleton, higher than the roofs of the houses,
with a mighty scythe in its hand. In the north the appeal was to
princes. Borromeo still favoured the Society at Milan, while at Ferrara
and Florence the Jesuits directed the consciences of princesses. The
daughters of the Emperor who had married the Duke of Ferrara and
Francis de Medici insisted on retaining their Jesuit confessors;
and, when Borgia would refuse permission, the confessors themselves
pleaded that the fair ladies could not possibly be abandoned to strange
influences. Borgia reluctantly consented. He saw, and regretted, that
one of the sternest rules of the Society was being sacrificed to
expediency, but his counsellors seemed to have overruled him. Ignatius
had sanctioned the first royal confessor: now there were four.
From his survey of the provinces, in which he saw much to distress his
austere feelings, Borgia returned, exhausted, to Rome. He died a few
weeks afterwards (1st October 1572), and Polanco, one of the ablest
administrators at the Roman centre, was appointed Vicar-General. He
fixed the election for April, and in the early spring the most famous
officers of the army began to come in from their remote battlefields.
Auger was occupied in so congenial a task in France that he would not
come to Rome; he was with the Catholic troops besieging the Huguenots
in La Rochelle. But there was an impressive gathering of the veterans
of the Society. Salmeron and Bobadilla were still there to tell the
story of their humble beginning on the flanks of Montmartre thirty
years before; Ribadeneira, Miguel de Torres, Canisius, Possevin,
Manares, Leo Henriquez, Miron, Polanco, and other fathers, before whom
kings would bow, came in from the frontiers to the eternal city, as the
commanders of legions had done before them. And of this brilliant group
one of the lowest in ability and distinction, Father Everard Mercurian,
was chosen to be General.
The new Pope, Gregory XIII., had intervened. "How many Spanish Generals
have you had?" he asked, when the older Jesuits came to greet him.
All three had been Spaniards. "How many votes have the Spaniards
amongst you?" he then asked. Quite enough to elect a Spaniard once
more, as they were bent on doing; and the man on whom they had fixed
their thoughts was the gifted and energetic Polanco. But Polanco
was descended from converted Jews, a class disliked by high-born
Spaniards, and Kings Philip and Sebastian had written to ask the Pope
to prevent him from being elected. The fathers respectfully protested
that the Pope, who was Protector of their Society, ought not to coerce
their decisions. "Are there no able men amongst you except Spaniards?"
he went on; and he suggested Everard Mercurian. Gregory knew that the
blind obedience of the Jesuits to the Pope was not of the kind which
hastens to carry out the slightest wish of the ruler, and on the
morning of the election he sent a cardinal to tell them that they must
not elect a Spaniard. They still expostulated; but Gregory insisted,
and Mercurian, a mild and mediocre old man, was made General. Being a
Belgian, he was at least a subject of Spain; and he was sixty-eight
years old.
Then the conscript fathers assembled, day after day, to discuss the
mass of secret reports from every centre, and pass those instructive
decrees--forty-eight were issued on this occasion--which tell us so
plainly the decay of the original spirit. Ignatius had taught them to
seek power and wealth for God: it had proved a dangerous lesson. The
Congregation dispersed in June, and Mercurian entered upon his seven
years' generalship. The real control was openly entrusted to Father
Palmio, the Italian assistant, until Father Manares ousted him, and
secured the chief place and the hope of succession. There was, at this,
some unedifying language; we shall see presently that Manares, at
least, undoubtedly sought the generalship. But the various provinces
were now under the command of such able men that the progress of
the Society was not retarded. Let us glance at the more significant
happenings in the provinces, and then sum up the work of the Society in
its first four decades.
In the case of Spain we need note only that the Pope's interference
in the election was bitterly resented, and a feeling spread among the
fathers which we shall find breaking into the most singular expression
under the rule of Acquaviva. In spite of the stern design of Ignatius
and the emphatic rule of the Society that the Jesuit was to benumb
every patriotic fibre in his heart, and know himself only as a citizen
of the city of God, the Spaniards cherished their national pride in
an alarming degree. Under the ambitious and masterful Philip II., who
dreamed of world-empire and was willing to include the Jesuits in his
diplomatic corps, they prospered and were the most important body in
the Society. They were annoyed that the generalship passed out of their
hands, and they began to meditate secession from the Roman authorities.
When the papal Nuncio died at Madrid in 1577 a memoir written in this
sense was found amongst his papers. We shall see later how the feeling
developed, and how the war with Rome brought into notice the degenerate
character of the Spanish province.
Italian affairs in that decade are chiefly remarkable for a violent
quarrel with St. Charles Borromeo at Milan. He had continued for
some years to patronise and employ them. Father Adorno remained his
confessor; and in 1572 he gave them the Abbey of Braida for a college,
and in 1573 entrusted to them the College of Nobles at Milan. They
were already in charge of the seminary of the diocese, and the trouble
seems to have begun with the transfer of this institution to the
Oblates (a religious body founded by Charles) in 1577. Crétineau-Joly
explains that the Jesuits were now controlling so many institutions in
Milan that they were overworked, and they begged to be relieved of the
seminary. He appeals to Giussano, the saint's biographer; but Giussano
merely says that Charles "gave the seminary to the Oblates, with the
consent of the Jesuits," which is a polite way of saying that they were
dismissed. We shall see, in fact, that Charles was convinced that the
Jesuits were in a lax and degenerate condition.
In the following year, 1578, the cardinal quarrelled with the Governor
of Milan, and the Jesuits divided in allegiance. Adorno and a few
others were faithful to Charles, but a courtly and fashionable Jesuit
preacher, who was appointed to preach the Lent, attacked and ridiculed
the cardinal-archbishop from one of the chief pulpits of his own
city, before a crowded audience of wealthy Milanese. This preacher,
Mazzarino, uncle of the famous minister, was the confessor and friend
of the governor. Charles protested against the unseemly attack, but the
Jesuit provincial appointed Mazzarino again to preach the Lent in 1579,
and he attacked Charles more virulently than ever. All the less austere
ladies of Milan, for whom he made smooth the paths of rectitude,
flocked to his chapel, and listened with pleasure to his ridicule of
the ascetic prescriptions of their saintly archbishop. Charles drew the
attention of the Provincial to the fact that Mazzarino was preaching
moral principles of scandalous laxity, and his attacks on the chief
clerical authority were very injurious. The Provincial would not
chide Mazzarino, and Charles appealed to the General. The only reply
of the General was, at the request of a certain countess, to direct
Mazzarino to preach all the year round. Charles threatened to suspend
the preacher, and he was defied from the pulpit; he threatened to bring
his principles to the notice of the Inquisition, and the Jesuits sent a
courier to Rome to defend their preacher. Then Charles instructed his
Roman agent, Spetiano, to lay the case before the papal court, and
Mazzarino was recalled by his General and suspended from preaching for
two years by an ecclesiastical tribunal.
This quarrel is of interest for two reasons. In the first place, it
illustrates the value of Crétineau-Joly's history of the Jesuits.
The French writer ignores the attack in 1577, and says that, as soon
as Mazzarino began to misbehave, "the Milan fathers hastened to
disapprove of the imprudent orator," and the General recalled him. It
is, of course, true that Charles's confessor, Adorno, "disapproved"
of his brother Jesuit, but the Mazzarino faction retorted that he
was jealous, because Mazzarino had larger audiences for his sermons;
and Crétineau-Joly suppresses the fact that the Provincial, and for
a time the General, defiantly supported Mazzarino. We know this from
Borromeo's letters to his agent.[7] The further interest of the
quarrel, which is entirely suppressed by the French historian, is that
in these letters Charles passes very severe strictures on the Jesuits
as a body. Instead of finding fault with one man only, Mazzarino, he
found fault with all except one, his confessor, to whom he remained
attached. "I confess," he writes to Spetiano, "that for some time I
have felt the Society to be in grave danger of decadence unless a
prompt remedy be applied." The Jesuits, he explains, admit clever
youths without regard to their character, and they grant extravagant
liberties to their literary colleagues. They are inflated by the favour
of the nobility and the crowds of wealthy women who flock to lax
moralists like Mazzarino. We may also recall here the grave statement
of Charles's nephew and successor, Archbishop Frederic Borromeo, who
was educated by the Jesuits: a statement repeated, in the most solemn
terms, by a writer to whom he made it.
I have enlarged on this quarrel because we have here the rare advantage
of an impartial and unimpeachable witness, and we see how serious a
ground there is at times, when independent evidence can be found,
for reading Jesuit and pro-Jesuit writers with caution. We must not,
however, pass to the opposite extreme and conclude that the Italian
Jesuits generally were the favourites of ladies who appreciated
indulgence in their confessors and preachers. This is the only serious
scandal of the Italian province under Mercurian.
In France, as in Spain, the story is one of preparation for the
stirring events of the next chapter. The hostile Archbishop of Paris
died, and Pierre de Gondi, who succeeded him, was an Italian of the
Medici suite, and favourable to the Jesuits. Charles IX. gave place to
Henry II., and the new king chose Auger for his confessor, and gave
the Jesuits everything they cared to ask. There was now no question
of suppressing their name and privileges in France. A third powerful
patron was the Cardinal de Bourbon, who obtained for them a "house
of the professed" at Paris, and tried to force the university to
incorporate their college. The Parlement and University still made
every effort to check their triumphant advance, but they now began to
send pupils of their own to graduate in the university and weaken its
opposition. Their college in Lorraine was erected into a university,
and royal pupils sat at their feet. When the famous Catholic League was
formed they flung themselves into its work with great ardour, and we
shall see the terrible issue in the next chapter.
Two incidents in the permanent quarrel with the Paris University should
be noticed. One of the Jesuits, Maldonat, shocked the professors of
the Sorbonne by teaching that the immaculate conception of Mary was a
matter of free opinion,[8] and Rome upheld the Jesuit. More interesting
is a memoir which the doctors of the Sorbonne submitted to the papal
court when, in 1575, Cardinal de Bourbon was trying to secure the
incorporation of the Jesuit college. Amongst heavy charges of avarice
and of seizing the property of other religious bodies, we find the
quaint accusation that the Jesuits taught that souls were delivered
from purgatory after ten years of suffering. The point seems academic
to the layman, and very consoling to the faithful. What it really
meant, in practice, was that the Jesuits claimed that they might, after
ten years, divert to other purposes the large funds bequeathed to them
to say masses for the dead.
In Belgium the record was still one of trouble and vicissitude. They
had, when Alva had "pacified" the province, opened a number of houses,
which the townsfolk (as at Antwerp and Liège) threatened to burn.
Then, when Don John, Philip's half-brother, was defeated in 1578,
the Jesuits refused to take the oath imposed by the States and were
expelled from Antwerp and other centres. They began to recover to some
extent under the Duke of Parma, but had to witness the secession of
the northern provinces and the formation of a new Protestant power,
Holland, which was destined to give them trouble. At Louvain they
maintained a struggle with the university similar to that at Paris.
They at last tripped up the celebrated Michel de Bay (Baius), rector of
the university, and sent their brilliant young theologian, Bellarmine,
who was then only thirty years old, to enter into a prolonged duel with
him. When, at last, they induced Rome to take a serious view of the
errors of Baius, and Father Toledo was sent by the Pope to secure his
submission, they began to rise from the lowly position in which the
university had kept them.
The Catholics of Austria and Southern Germany continued to oppose and
intimidate them in spite of the devoted exertions of Canisius. They
were fiercely assailed at Gratz, Prague, Innsprück, and Vienna. The
Emperor Maximilian was even induced to forbid their Vienna college
to grant degrees or compete in lectures with the university, though
the Jesuits soon got the restriction removed. It appears that they
announced lectures on the same subjects and at the same hours as those
of the university, and, as always, charged no fees. This was one of
the chief grievances of the universities, especially as the Jesuits
palpably trusted to obtain control of the universities themselves.
Another grievance, which we have noticed in the Parisian indictment,
is that they somehow acquired the property of older religious orders.
One of many instances of this occurs in the present period. They opened
a college at Freiburg, and were invited to work in the Swiss cantons.
For the beginning of their mission the Pope assigned them the revenues
of the abbey of Marsens, and Canisius soon had a centre for attacking
Calvinism in Switzerland. The Polish colleges continued to flourish, as
we shall presently realise, under King Stephen Bathori.
The most interesting adventure under the rule of Mercurian is the
attempt to penetrate Sweden. The principles of the Reformation had
been cordially received in Sweden, and it seemed to King John III.
that peace could be secured only by some kind of compromise between
the old faith and the new. John was, however, married to the sister
of the Queen of Poland, and the Jesuits, who were sternly forbidden
to enter the kingdom, saw in this a means of outwitting the vigilant
Protestants. The combination of women and Jesuits was the supreme
agency in checking the progress of the Reformation in Europe.
In 1574 an envoy came to Stockholm to convey the compliments of Anne of
Poland to her sister Catherine. One could not close the gates against
an envoy, though it was known that the fine clothes of the ambassador
were a thin disguise of the Polish Jesuit Father Warsevicz, and the
secret instructions of the envoy were to correct the liberalism of John
and offer him an alliance with Spain. John knew theology and wrangled
with the envoy for a week in the palace. The mission was fruitless,
and in 1576 John was persuaded to countenance an even more romantic
adventure. A young Norwegian presented himself to the Protestant clergy
of Stockholm, and said that, having spent some years at southern
universities, he would like a place as professor in the new college
they were forming. He begged that they would recommend him to the
king, and they did, so that he secured the appointment. It was the
Jesuit Father Nicolai, who had, as John knew, been sent from Rome with
instructions to perpetrate this amazing fraud. Nicolai must certainly
have lied to the Protestant authorities about his beliefs, in order to
obtain a place as teacher of theology in a Protestant college. When we
reflect that he acted on instructions from Rome, and that no Jesuit or
pro-Jesuit writer seems to see anything reprehensible in his conduct,
we feel that Jesuit diplomacy had already reached a stage which it
would be impolite to characterise in plain English.
Nicolai seems to have held his chair of Lutheran theology for a
considerable time. There were those who scented heresy in his lectures,
but they were promptly expelled, and Nicolai even became rector
of the college. One would give much to have to-day a copy of the
Lutheran-Jesuit's lectures. The masterful Possevin was next dispatched,
in the quality of Legate, with the Irish Jesuit, William Good, for
companion. He was to prevent a union of Sweden and Holland, and to
correct the king's errors. Possevin went first to Prague, where he
induced the widow of Maximilian to name him her ambassador to Sweden,
and then, dressed for the part, with a sword dangling at his side, he
boldly entered Stockholm, where Professor Nicolai was still teaching
Lutheran theology in his subtle way. The counter-Reformation had
different methods from those of Luther. John was willing to return
to the faith and enter the Spanish alliance, if Rome would grant
the marriage of priests, the mass in Swedish, and other claims of
the Reformers. Possevin hastened to Rome, leaving his sword by the
way, and stormily pressed the commission of cardinals to grant these
concessions. It is (apart from certain remarkable indulgences later
on the foreign missions) the only occasion on which a Jesuit pleaded
for compromise, but Possevin was ambitious. Failing to obtain the
concessions, Possevin hurried to the Duke of Bavaria, the Emperor, and
the King of Poland, in order that he might at least be able to offer to
John the material alliances he had promised him, if he would break with
England and Holland. But he had little to offer, and the Protestants
were now alarmed; and Possevin, Good, Warsevicz, and Professor Nicolai
were politely ushered from the country.
Of the foreign missions which will enrage us more fully when the
Jesuits are firmly established, a few words must suffice. In India the
use of the civil power to support their preaching continued to augment
the number, and restrain the quality, of the converts. The Japanese
mission made slow progress, and was extinguished in some of the large
towns. The gates of China were politely opened to admit a Portuguese
legation (containing disguised Jesuits), but, after an interview at
Canton, politely closed again by the wary mandarins. The settlement in
Brazil was deeply injured by the diseases which European Christians
brought to South America, terrifying the natives; and a serious loss
was sustained in 1570, when a ship conveying forty Jesuits to Brazil
was captured by "Huguenot pirates." They were all slain. Florida,
Mexico, and Peru were visited for the first time in this decade, and
a few fathers laid the foundations of new missions. On the whole,
the missionary record under Borgia and Mercurian does not fulfil the
earlier promise.
Mercurian died in the summer of 1580, just forty years after the
establishment of the Society. Assuredly a remarkable advance had been
made in those four decades. The ten Jesuits had become a formidable
army of 5000 _socii_ (including novices and lay-brothers), fighting
heresy in the boudoirs of queens and the market-places of Germany,
educating hundreds of thousands of youths, all over Europe, in a
fanatical zeal for the papacy, extending its influence through the
laity by means of sodalities and confraternities, pouring out a vast
literature, from the blistering pamphlet to the ponderous folio volume,
relating to the great religious controversy, wearing the garb of the
beggar or the silk of the noble as occasion needed, speaking a hundred
tongues, and sending scores of men yearly to lands whence they would
never return and where fever or the axe awaited them. They were the
backbone of the counter-Reformation, formidable alike by the simple
and austere devotion of some, the brilliance and learning of others,
and the unscrupulousness of yet others in the service of the Church.
And every man, and every movement of every man, was registered in
that central bureau at Rome, where four sagacious heads directed the
strategy and tactics of this planet-scattered regiment.
Our survey of the growth and evolutions of this spiritual army warns
us to avoid generalisations. It is not true that from the start the
Jesuits were avaricious, ambitious, and unscrupulous: it is not true
that they maintained their spirit untainted for half a century, and
then degenerated. No epithet will apply to them as a body, except that
they differed, corporately, from all other religious bodies in the
diplomatic nature of their action. Every variety of man was found in
their ranks: the austere flagellant and the genial courtier, the man
who served the poor because they were poor, and the man who served them
in order to edify the rich; the man who flung himself with a smile into
the arms of death, and the man who loved disguises and the adventurous
evasion of death, the saint and the sinner, the peasant, the noble,
and the scholar. No uniform stamp effaced their individual characters.
The weak or sensual or casuistic degenerated in the first decade:
the strong maintained their idealism to the last. But that original
tendency to consecrate worldly devices to a high end, to regard the
effectiveness rather than the intrinsic propriety of means, to seek
wealth and power because they procured speedier success, was running
its inevitable course, and from the recommendation of lying in the
cause of Christ we shall soon see some of them go on to the condonation
of vice and the counsel of crime.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: I have previously explained the distinction between simple
and solemn vows, and the advantage which the Jesuits had in confining
the latter to a chosen few of their body. See p. 30. These "simple"
vows are now admitted in other orders, but they were for centuries
peculiar to the Jesuits, and were very distasteful to the older orders.]
[Footnote 5: It will appear later that Manares was a man of robust
conscience, and later incurred the censure of his brethren for improper
conduct.]
[Footnote 6: I may draw attention to a curious illustration of the
difficulty of reaching a verdict on the St. Bartholomew massacre. In
the same volume of the _Cambridge Modern History_ we are told (p. 20)
that "Gregory XIII. is said to have expressed dismay," and (p. 285)
that he heard the news with "triumphant acclamation." There is surely
no serious doubt that the second statement is correct.]
[Footnote 7: See a selection in the _Annales de la Société des
soi-disans Jésuites_ (1764), vol. i. pp. 132-159.]
[Footnote 8: It did not become a dogma of the Church until 1854.]