PROGRESS AND DECAY UNDER ACQUAVIVA
The older of the fathers who obeyed the summons to a new election, and
converged upon the Eternal City, must have wondered whether it would
pass without a fresh exhibition of the very human passions which the
occasion so frequently revealed amongst them. Father Oliver Manares
had been appointed Vicar-General, and had announced the election for
the spring of 1581. We remember Manares as the fortunate discoverer
of Huguenot plots at Paris, and then as successfully ousting Father
Palmio from the position of chief assistant to Mercurian. He had made
his way to the steps of the throne, and the more religious brethren
were now startled to find him shamelessly canvassing for votes, in
spite of the stern prohibition in their Constitutions. Four of the
older fathers were at once appointed to investigate the charge against
him. Bobadilla, impetuous and masterful still in his old age, was one
of the four, but he expressed his resentment of the charge against
his friend so strongly before the inquiry opened that they had, with
great difficulty, to remove him from the commission; and, when the
commissioners found Manares guilty, he made very sore trouble in
the house. In the end Manares was persuaded to forego his right of
nomination, and Father Acquaviva was elected.
Claude Acquaviva was one of the youngest of the electors. Though
strenuous work had already begun to whiten his dark southern hair,
he was only thirty-seven years old; but he was distinguished for his
high birth, his great ability, his integrity, and a happy combination
of resolution and cold equanimity that recalled Lainez. He was a son
of the Neapolitan Duke of Atri, and was destined to rule the Society
during thirty-four years of that dangerous period when its desire for
wealth and power, in the service of God, led it into the dark ways of
political intrigue and the accumulation of earthly treasure. We shall
now find the seeds of decay spreading over larger areas and germinating
rapidly. We shall witness a singular eruption of the worldly spirit in
the Spanish peninsula, and the development of the political Jesuit as
he is known in the history of England, which I reserve for a special
chapter, and of France.
The first few years of the generalship of Acquaviva were peaceful. A
friendly Pope, Gregory XIII., occupied the Roman see, and the Society
increased in numbers and prestige. The Gesù, the famous metropolitan
church of the Jesuits, was opened by the Pope in 1583; the Gregorian
calendar was very largely framed by one of their members, the learned
Clavius of Bavaria. But Gregory died in 1585, and Acquaviva prepared
for a struggle with the papacy. The stern, despotic Sixtus V. had now
received the tiara, and all Rome expected him to clip the wings of the
soaring Society. Acquaviva thought it would be prudent to disarm the
Pope and disavow the thirst for power. He offered to resign control
of the Roman seminary. Sixtus refused the offer, and awaited his
opportunity; and in the following year, 1586, the flash and roar of the
gathering clouds in Spain led him to intervene.
The Spanish fathers had, as I said, looked upon the generalship almost
as an hereditary right, and had resented the election of Mercurian and
Acquaviva. But this feeling is so wholly opposed to the religious
ideal of the Society that we at once suspect a serious decay of the
character of the Spanish Jesuits, and we find some remarkable evidence
of it. The official history of the Society in Spain does not attempt
to conceal that under Borgia and Mercurian there had been widespread
decadence,[9] and I have shown how this was due to material prosperity
and the lack of serious work and heretical neighbours. We have,
however, a more singular and ample account of this decadence. One of
the most brilliant of the Spanish Jesuits, Mariana, the famous advocate
of regicide, was moved to discredit the Roman authorities by showing
the corruption into which they had allowed his own province to fall,
and his _Tratado del Govierno de la Compañia de Jesus_ gives us a
very candid picture of the Spanish houses. The work was, naturally,
not published by Mariana. Like so many documents in the Society, it
was intended for private circulation in manuscript, but it was found
amongst his papers by a bishop whom the king appointed to examine them,
and the only ground for the claim of certain Jesuits that it is partly
spurious is that they dislike its revelations. The decrees of the
Society itself confirm the substance of its charges, and the temper and
spirit of the book are quite in keeping with its Jesuit authorship.
It complains, chiefly, of the low state of culture and the great
comfort of life among the Spanish fathers. Of the 540 Jesuits in
Spain 230 are lay-brothers: a circumstance that must be borne in mind
when we read that there are so many thousand members of the Society.
The lay-brother is merely a servant of the priests, and the enormous
proportion of these lay-brothers in Spain means that the fathers own
large farms and vineyards, sell the produce in the markets (as we learn
from the decrees of the Society), and live cheerfully on the income.
Mariana does not speak openly of vice--a sufficient proof that the book
was not written, even in part, by an anti-Jesuit--but he says that the
"enjoyments" of his colleagues are "excessive and scandalous." They
further add materially to their incomes by managing the affairs of
their penitents; in Valladolid alone there are twelve of these steward
chaplains. They dress in expensive cloth, travel in carriages or on
mules, and overrun their ample incomes. The whole province is loaded
with debt, yet at Mariana's own house at Toledo the expenditure per
head is about £50 a year: a very comfortable sum for the time and
place, for a community pledged to poverty. Discipline is thwarted by
favouritism and flattery, and the constant spying and reporting cause
bitter quarrels in the houses.
This grave account of the Spanish province--sober and convincing, yet
grave in contrast with the primitive life and the high profession--is
written solely for the purpose of showing that a distant authority
cannot maintain discipline, and the Spanish Jesuits must have local
autonomy and less despotic rulers--home-rule and democracy, in a word.
This is the note of the remarkable struggle which now opens between
the Spaniards and the Italians. Acquaviva wanted to maintain the stern
Ignatian ideal of destroying nationality, and to keep Jesuits as much
as possible away from their native countries; but he made the mistake
of removing old and long-settled fathers and substituting for them
young men who shared his own ideas, and, in spite of his ideal, he
favoured the Italians.
In 1586 one of the chief Spanish malcontents, Father Hernandez, applied
to Acquaviva for permission to quit the Society. When Acquaviva
refused, Hernandez gave notice to the Inquisition that the General
would not let him leave the Society lest he should betray a certain
secret which the Jesuits were hiding from the Inquisitors. We have
seen how little the Inquisitors and leading prelates of Spain loved
the Jesuits. They at once forced Hernandez to tell the secret. One of
the Jesuits, it seems, had seduced a lady-penitent--a crime from which
only the Inquisition could absolve--yet the Provincial Marcenius had
absolved him and transferred him to another town. A great sensation was
caused when the Inquisitors at once put the Provincial, the Rector of
Salamanca, and two other Jesuits, in their prison, and demanded copies
of the Constitutions, Privileges, and other documents of the Society.
To the delight of Spain and the dismay of Acquaviva, they were going to
make a general inquiry into the character and life of this semi-secret
Society.
Acquaviva adroitly suggested to the Pope that this was one of those
occasions, which he loved, of asserting his supreme authority, and set
Sixtus and the Spaniards at loggerheads. The Pope instructed his Nuncio
at Madrid to intervene, and Acquaviva sent a Jesuit to win Philip II.
Philip, however, was quite willing to see the Society reformed, and
the Inquisitors went on to arrest other Jesuits and demand further
documents. The insurgent Spaniards were now openly demanding that they
should have a local commissary, independent of Acquaviva, and the
General was, as quickly as possible, removing fathers from Spain and
filling their places with foreigners. The Inquisition decreed that no
Jesuit was to leave Spain. Nothing so fiercely awakened the energy
of Sixtus V. as a quarrel with local prelates, and he now angrily
threatened to depose the cardinal at the head of the Inquisition if
the whole case were not at once remitted to him. So the Jesuits were
released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear
no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not
counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen
eye of Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!"
Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard;
"Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?"[10]
He at once issued two preliminary decrees. The first forbade the
Jesuits to receive illegitimate sons; their own rule forbade this, and
the decree only confirms the charge that the Jesuits looked mainly to
wealth or ability in admitting novices. The second decree reserved to
the general or to a provincial congregation the right to admit novices.
Acquaviva opposed this, and it was modified--and would die at the death
of Sixtus V.
Meanwhile the struggle was renewed in Spain. One of the French
Jesuits whom Acquaviva had put in place of a rebel proved worse
than his predecessor. He asked the opinion of the Inquisition on a
letter written by Ignatius himself on obedience, and it was promptly
condemned. Acquaviva again had the case transferred and re-tried at
Rome, and, although Sixtus spoke some plain unofficial language about
the letter, the Roman Inquisition absolved it, and the audacious
Father Vincent ended in a papal prison for going on to question the
Pope's authority. At the same time an imprudent step on the part of
the Society's critics united the Spanish Jesuits with their General
and put an end for a time to the struggle. The King appointed a bishop
to inquire into the state of all the religious orders in Spain and
deal with their irregularities. Neither the local Jesuits nor the
General wanted a "royal visitator" peeping into their wine-cellars,
and Acquaviva again appealed to the Pope: not forgetting to remind
Sixtus, who supremely abhorred clerical "bastards," that this Bishop of
Carthagena fell into that category. At the same time he sent to Madrid
the English Jesuit, Father Parsons, who was then, as we shall see,
helping Philip to annex England to the Spanish crown. He was allowed to
choose his own "visitator," and the Spanish fathers were sufficiently
absorbed in this new infliction for the next year or two.
Sixtus had meantime brooded over the singular mass of Jesuit documents
submitted to him, and in 1590 he intimated that he was going to make
a drastic and comprehensive reform. The name of the Society must be
changed; the date of taking the vows and the classification of the
members of the Society must be altered; the regulations in regard to
"fraternal correction" (the euphemism in the Jesuit rules for spying
and tale-bearing) and obedience must be modified; and the directions
which virtually compelled novices to leave their property to the
Society, while nominally advising them to leave it to the poor, must
be abolished. Acquaviva entered upon this desperate struggle--there
never was the slightest question of Jesuits yielding to Popes on any
point--with that cold and dogged resolution which alone could thwart
the fiery energy of Sixtus V. At first he tried long and respectful
argument with the Pope, and induced the Emperor, the King of Poland,
and the Duke of Bavaria to pray that there should be no alteration
in the character of the Society. Sixtus smiled grimly, and ordered
Cardinal Caraffa to proceed with the revision of their Constitutions.
They then fastened on the cardinal, and Sixtus was infuriated to find
that Caraffa made no progress. He knew that they were hoping to see
him die before he could formulate his reforms, and he entrusted the
work to four theologians, whose sentiments he knew. They drew up a
formidable indictment of the Constitutions, but it had to pass the
Sacred College--and Acquaviva took care that it did not pass.
We need not enter into all the details of this fourth attempt in half
a century to evade the most positive and sincere commands of the Pope.
It was a race with death, and the most determined and unscrupulous
efforts were made by the Jesuits to prevent the Pope from reaching his
goal before death overtook him. Sixtus had to punish one Jesuit for
making a very pointed eulogy of Cardinal Cajetan, his rival and enemy,
and to arrest another for regretting in public that they had not a
Gregory on the throne in such troubled times. The dying despot fiercely
concentrated his sinking energy on his last task. When Bellarmine's new
book _De Summi Pontificis Potestate_ appeared, he put it on the Index,
although he liked Bellarmine, and the book really magnified the papal
power so much that it was afterwards condemned as seditious at Paris.
As the cardinals still thwarted him, he sent a stern personal order to
Acquaviva to change the name of his Society. He was not far from death,
but the General was told that there could be no more shiftiness; he
might, however, ask for the change instead of having it imposed on him.
He signed the petition and the Pope drew up his decree. He died before
he could publish it.
There is no serious ground for the faint rumour that the Jesuits
poisoned Sixtus V. His death was foreseen by everybody, and the Jesuits
knew from experience that his decree would die with him. But Roman
gossip found the coincidence too romantic to let it pass. Acquaviva
had ordered a _novena_ (nine days of prayer) to be said for Sixtus in
the Jesuit houses when his illness was announced. The bell was ringing
for Vespers on the ninth day when the aged Pope passed away; and for
many a year afterwards it was a grim, half-serious joke of the Romans
to wonder, when they heard the Jesuit Vesper-bell, whether it rang out
the life of another Pope.
After the two-week rule of Urban VII., Gregory XIV. came to the throne
and restored the tranquillity of Acquaviva and his colleagues. The
title of their Society was solemnly confirmed, and the subsidies of
their colleges were again granted. But Gregory had a brief reign,
his successor passed even more quickly from the papal throne, and at
the beginning of 1592 Clement VIII. succeeded to the tiara. It was
generally believed that Clement disliked Acquaviva, and the rebels
in Spain returned to the attack upon him. Spain and Portugal, which
were still united under the Spanish crown, were equally united in the
opposition to the Roman authorities. During the years of friction with
Sixtus V. the Spanish fathers Acosta and Carillo and the Portuguese
fathers Goelho and Carvalho had maintained and led the agitation
against Acquaviva, and it was known that they had the support of
abler men like Mariana and the sympathy of the most distinguished and
powerful Jesuit at Rome, Toledo, who was made a cardinal by Clement.
Acquaviva had not relaxed in his measures against this powerful
coalition. He won at least the silence of Toledo; he flattered and
tried to disarm Acosta, who was too great a favourite of Philip to
be punished; he expelled some of the less influential leaders from
the Society, and brought others to Rome. Now, at the last moment, the
accession of Clement seemed to have wrested the victory from his
hands, and the Spaniards took courage.
Acosta rejected the General's blandishments and persuaded Philip to
send him to Rome with a request that the new Pope would summon a
General Congregation of the Society and remove Acquaviva from Rome
during its sittings. There was at the time a quarrel between the Dukes
of Parma and Mantua, and Clement gracefully deputed Acquaviva to go
to the north and reconcile them. He dare not refuse the insidious
appointment, but he left behind him a trusted secretary, and it was
not long before he learned that Clement was about to summon a General
Congregation, to which Acquaviva was strongly opposed. He reported
that his mission was futile and hopeless; Clement, still gracefully,
advised him to be patient, and the strong man had to remain inactive
in the north while the Spaniards carried their point. He returned
to find Acosta at Rome and a General Congregation--"for the purpose
of strengthening the Society and reducing certain provinces to
tranquillity"--announced for November. In other words, it was to be
a trial of strength between Acosta and Acquaviva, between Spain and
Italy, and each party prepared strenuously for the tug of war; while
Rome frivolously applauded the rival children of Ignatius and the Pope
smilingly blessed the arena.
Just at that time Toledo received the red hat, and the Spaniards
begged the Pope to name "a cardinal" (Toledo) to preside at the
Congregation. He refused; but Acquaviva was defeated in turn when he
tried to expel Acosta from the professed house and have him excluded
from the forthcoming Congregation. Not only Rome, but the Jesuits
scattered over Europe, now joined in the feverish struggle. Memorials
praying for the reform of the Society and the restriction of the
General's power began to reach the Pope from provincial Jesuits;
counter-memorials followed from the partisans of Acquaviva. In fine,
Acquaviva triumphed, with certain concessions. The privileges of the
Society which offended the Spanish Inquisition were to be abandoned in
the Peninsula; and Acquaviva was to change his Assistants, and hold a
Congregation, every six years (a command which, of course, "died with
the Pope"). There was the customary review of the state of the Society
and passing of admirable decrees, and the fathers returned to their
provinces. Acquaviva then made a final and drastic clearance of the
rebels, and many were expelled. They were still powerful enough to
induce the Pope to nominate Acquaviva archbishop of his native city,
but he eluded even this plot. They then persuaded the Pope that it was
expedient for Acquaviva to visit Spain and see the province with his
own eyes. The General clearly believed, and it is probable enough,
that something like incarceration awaited him in Spain, and he made a
desperate struggle to evade the Pope's order. He was saved by the death
of the Pope, in 1605, and for several years afterwards we still find
him struggling with the rebellious Spaniards.
This remarkable conflict, within the Society and with the Pope, which
I take chiefly from the Jesuit Jouvency, the continuer of the official
"Historia Societatis," well illustrates how dim the apostolic fire had
become in one of the largest provinces of the Society; how its flame
was choked and corrupted by material prosperity. When we turn to France
and to England we have an equally valuable illustration of the way in
which the command to seek power, for the glory of God, evolves what
is known as the political Jesuit. There is no intrinsic reason that
I can see why a priest should not seek political influence on behalf
of religious interests. Assuredly in the sixteenth century there was
no clean division of the religious and political spheres. But the
complaint against the Jesuits is that their authorities ostentatiously
forbid political action, yet permit and encourage their subjects
secretly to pursue it, and even in ways that are unworthy of religious
ideals; that, in short, the Jesuit approaches the field under the white
flag of political neutrality, employs weapons which are condemned in
civilised warfare, and then denies that he interfered. In reviewing
forty years of their life in France we have an excellent opportunity of
examining this charge.
When we last turned away from France, the Catholic League was just
beginning to arouse passion in the country and the Jesuits were taking
an active part in its work. The historical situation may be recalled
in a few words. The children of that abominable type of feminine
politician, Catherine de Medici, were perishing ingloriously. Henry
III. still feebly occupied the throne, but it was a question how long
he would, under the guidance of his Jesuit confessor Auger, continue to
entertain Paris with his alternating fits of debauch and melodramatic
penitence; and the legitimate heir to the throne was Henry of Navarre,
a Protestant. The Catholics were naturally alarmed and formed the
League to "protect their interests"; its specific aim was, as every man
in France knew, to secure the throne for the Catholic Henry of Guise.
Here was a situation entirely to the taste of the more ardent and
adventurous of the Jesuits, and (apart from the inevitable few who
favoured Philip of Spain) they marched valiantly under the banners of
the League, and fluttered about the Catholic courts of Europe in the
interest of Guise. The Provincial, Claude Matthieu, earned the name
of the "Courier of the League" from his many journeys in support of
it. Father Henri Sammier traversed Italy and Spain, and penetrated
Germany and England, to further its aim. He had a large wardrobe of
disguises, which he wore with the grace of an actor, and he is said by
the contemporary lawyer Pasquier to have been as familiar with dice and
cards as with his breviary. Edmund Hay, the Scottish Jesuit and tender
champion of Mary Stuart, lent his fervent aid to the cause. Father
Auger, however, was not an ardent Leaguer, and he made an effort to
silence his younger colleagues. He had persuaded Henry III. to join the
League, lest the League should not be inclined to wait for the young
king's natural death, but he rightly distrusted Guise. It must not be
supposed that he cherished a more austere standard of Jesuit duty than
the others, since his royal penitent was notorious for his licentious
conduct, his morbid love of jewels and of feminine clothes, and the
utter degradation of his real gifts. The fact is that he saw political
rivals in Matthieu and Sammier, with their zeal for Guise, and Parsons
and others, with their attachment to Philip of Spain. He complained to
Acquaviva, and the General, feeling that such political work should not
be done openly but through laymen controlled by the Jesuits, supported
him. After a prolonged struggle Acquaviva deposed Matthieu and
removed him to Italy, transferred the gifted Sammier and his wardrobe
to Belgium, and then turned on Auger himself. After another severe
struggle he dislodged Auger from the court. Jesuits are sometimes very
lively "corpses" when their superiors wish to move them.
This, however, was in the main a personal quarrel. Odon Pigenat, the
new Provincial, and a score of other fathers were ardent Leaguers. The
Jesuit house at Paris was still used for the secret meetings of the
League, and the "Committee of Catholic Safety" was inspired by Pigenat.
The French apologist does not question their enthusiastic share in the
League's work, and no one questions that the aim of the League was to
prevent the accession of the legitimate heir to the throne. Indeed, at
the next dramatic turn of French affairs all this was made plain to
everybody.
In 1588 Guise was invited to Paris and acclaimed there with such wild
rejoicing that Henry III. fled to Blois, and shortly afterwards Guise
and his cardinal-brother were invited to Blois and foully murdered
there by Henry. The League now shook its banners in the breeze, and
Henry was execrated from a hundred pulpits. When he went on to defy the
Pope and form an alliance with Henry of Navarre, who advanced rapidly
on Paris, Catholic feeling rose to a fanatical pitch, and Henry III.
in turn was assassinated by the Dominican monk Jacques Clément. The
Jesuits were assuredly not the only preachers to applaud this murder,
but they were amongst the first to perceive, and the loudest to
declare, that if a king may be dispatched by private hand for a crime,
he may certainly be removed when he meditates the far graver misdeed
of plunging a nation into heresy. Father Commolet, the superior of
the Jesuit house at Paris and a distinguished preacher, called from
his pulpit for "a second Ehud" to remove Henry of Navarre. Father
Mariana, who shortly afterwards wrote his famous _De Rege_, hailed the
assassin as "the eternal glory of France" and spoke of this "memorable
spectacle, calculated to teach princes that godless enterprises do not
go unpunished."
It has been said on behalf of the Jesuits that even their old enemy
the Sorbonne joined in the general rejoicing over the assassination
of Henry III., but those who make the point forget or ignore that
for several years past the Jesuits had been sending pupils to the
university in order gradually to permeate its faculties. It was no
longer the distinct anti-Jesuit body which we have met in earlier
years. Nor is there any need to discuss the abstract question whether
the Jesuits taught tyrannicide. Crétineau-Joly himself quotes fourteen
Jesuit theologians of the time who permitted the assassination of
kings, to say nothing of more or less obscure writers, and we may be
sure that the politicians of the Society were not more scrupulous than
their theologians on the point. The well-known work of Mariana to which
I have referred, _De Rege et Regis Institutione_ (1599), was authorised
for publication by the Jesuit authorities, and it was not until the
assassination of Henry IV. in 1610 that Acquaviva, anxious to save
the French Jesuits from expulsion, forbade his subjects to teach the
dangerous doctrine. Even then he wrote at first to the French Jesuits
alone, and it was only when the cry of indignation was echoed in other
countries that he made the order general. In fine, his general order
was so ambiguous that even a less supple politician than a Jesuit could
find his way through it. It condemned the doctrine that "any person,
on any pretext whatever, may kill kings and princes"; which leaves it
open to the casuist to conclude that _certain_ persons may do it for
_certain_ reasons.[11]
Henry of Navarre invested Paris, and it is not questioned that the
Jesuits were amongst the most ardent advocates of resistance to him.
In the later trial before Parlement, which we shall consider, they
admitted that the crown-jewels were deposited in their house during the
siege, and that the chiefs of the League met there. A curious incident
of the siege is worth quoting. Food became painfully scarce, and
half-famished citizens struggled over the possession of cats and rats,
but the inmates of the religious houses remained sleek and comfortable.
The civic authorities ordered an inspection of their houses, and
it is admitted by their apologist that the Jesuits tried to obtain
exemption from this search. When the authorities insisted, a rich
store of food was found in their house. Their fervour in the popular
cause, however, was enough to outweigh this unpleasant discovery, and
they continued to thunder against the heretic. The Duke of Mayenne
was now the Catholic candidate for the throne, though a considerable
number of the Jesuits now looked to Philip of Spain. He was to be, as
in England, the "protector of the faith"--until it was safe for him to
annex the country to his swollen dominions. Sixtus V., however, by no
means shared this Jesuit and Spanish ideal of making Philip the head
of a vast world-power, and he began to negotiate with Henry, whose
forces were gaining ground. Then Sixtus died, and the accession of a
pro-Spanish Pope gave fresh energy to the League. But Paris was weary
of the siege, and, when Henry prudently announced that he was about
to make a serious study of the evidences for the Catholic faith, the
opposition collapsed. The Jesuits were amongst the last in Paris to
fan the dying embers of the League, and when at length, in March 1594,
Henry entered Paris and received the crown, they (with the Capuchins
and Carthusians) refused to submit until the Pope had absolved him.
But they very soon parted company with the less nimble-witted Capuchins
and the cloistered Carthusians, and the next page of their story in
France is not without humour. Henry's politic scrutiny of the Catholic
creed had, of course, led to his "conversion," but the Pope had a
sufficient decency of feeling to distrust so opportune and profitable
a change of creed, and he coldly rebuffed the genial monarch. When
Henry sent the Duke de Nevers to Rome to plead his cause with the Pope,
Clement ordered the Jesuit Possevin to intercept him in Italy and say
that the Pope refused to see him. We remember Possevin as the ingenious
and accommodating Legate to the Swedes, and we shall see other proofs
of his diplomatic ability. With an audacity which must almost be
without parallel in the chronicle of papal diplomacy he did the exact
opposite of what the Pope had commanded; he encouraged de Nevers to
see the Pope, and then fled before the stormy anger of Clement and the
Spaniards. It was the first service rendered to Henry by a Jesuit,
and was quickly followed by other useful services. They had perceived
the strength of Henry and reversed their policy. The Jesuit-Cardinal
Toledo, although a Spaniard, intervened in Henry's favour, and the head
of the Jesuit house at Paris, Commolet--the preacher who had urged the
assassination of Henry--came to Rome to say that he and his colleagues
were now convinced of the King's sincerity and begged the Pope to yield.
This change of front was opportune. Although the hostility of the
university to the Jesuits had been enfeebled by the penetration of
Jesuit pupils into the theological faculty, it still, as a body,
hated the Society, and its leaders felt that they might take some
advantage of the stubborn resistance to Henry. In April the university
begged the Parlement to expel the Jesuits from the kingdom. Another
great debate, in which the anti-Jesuit lawyers of Paris battered the
Society and flung at it all the charges that could be found in Europe,
entertained the sympathetic citizens. Arnauld, who was now in the
field, estimated the total yearly income of the Jesuits at more than
two million _livres_; he said that in France alone they had, in a few
years, secured an income of two hundred thousand _livres_ a year, and
he eloquently denounced their interference in politics. The Jesuits
made the remarkable defence that they had only mingled in the League in
order to moderate its ardour, that they had no unpatriotic attachment
to Spain, and that they would scrupulously avoid politics for the
future. Henry permitted them to remain. A short time before (August
1593) Barrière had attempted to assassinate him, and, as Barrière had
had a Jesuit confessor, it was suggested that the Jesuits had inspired
him. Henry said that, on the contrary, it was the Jesuits who had
warned him of the plot. A fuller knowledge of this warning would be
extremely interesting, but we have no evidence of it beyond Henry's
blunt declaration at a later date. The Jesuits were to remain, to
avoid politics, and, as Henry had previously decreed, to destroy all
literature concerning the League and the past turbulence.
On 27th December of that year, 1594, Jean Chastel attempted to
assassinate Henry, and a furious storm burst upon the Jesuits. Two
undisputed facts stand out clearly from the prolonged controversy that
followed this attempt; Chastel had been educated at the Jesuit college
before going to the university (he was nineteen years old), and he
had conferred with his former professor, Father Guéret, a few days
before the attempt. This is by no means satisfactory evidence of the
complicity of the Jesuits, but another piece of evidence, of a very
inflammatory nature, was put before the court. The authorities had
raided the Jesuit college and found in the rector's room a quantity
of the League literature which Henry had rigorously commanded to be
destroyed. In particular, there were papers in the writing of the
rector, Father Guignard, which cast the most violent abuse on Henry
and demanded his death. They had been written five years before, but
the retention of them was considered a very serious sign of the hidden
feeling of the Jesuits. We may admit that the court still went beyond
the evidence in condemning the Jesuits. Guignard was executed, Guéret
tortured, and all members of the Society were ordered to quit France
within three days. On 8th January thirty-seven Jesuits set out sadly
for Lorraine, and from the proceeds of their confiscated property a
large stone pyramid, bearing the sentence against the "pernicious
sect," was erected at Paris.
This sudden fall from their proud position was the price of political
action, but Henry was not in a position, and indeed not of a character,
to sustain the sentence, and the Jesuits at once began to struggle for
recall. Within ten years the hated pyramid was demolished, and the
Jesuits had regained their prestige. They had never entirely quitted
France. Some put off their cassocks and became, in appearance, "lay"
teachers of the young; some were sheltered by the local Parlements.
The formal reconciliation of Henry with the Papacy followed, and the
Pope urged him to recall the Jesuits. He pleaded again when he had
negotiated for Henry a peace with Philip of Spain, but the Parlement
stoutly maintained its decree, and Henry advised them to wait. Then
the Pope obliged Henry by annulling his marriage, and the watchful
Acquaviva stood again in the shadow of the papal throne. Father Maggio
was sent, in the suite of the Archbishop of Arles, to win the King.
They knew Henry, and shrewdly chose an envoy who could adopt the broad
wit which Henry loved as easily as Possevin or Parsons could wear a
sword, or Ricci a pigtail. "Sire," said Maggio to the bluff King, when
the affair dragged, "you are slower than women, for they bear their
fruit only nine months." "Quite true, Father Maggio," said Henry, "but
kings are not delivered as easily as women." It was the way to win
Henry IV., and he was won, but public feeling was still too hostile to
the Jesuits. In 1603 their opportunity came. The Huguenots had been so
imprudent as to abuse the Pope, and the Jesuits must be restored for
the Pope's consolation; also, there was a new queen, Marie de Medici,
and an amiable Father Coton winning influence over her. And at the
beginning of 1604 the Parlement sullenly registered the decree for the
readmission of the Jesuits, and the fathers all swore a sonorous oath
of loyalty to the King "without mental reservation," as the decree ran;
no other body of men ever needed to be insulted with such a clause.
The remaining years, down to the assassination of Henry in 1610, mark
the rapid recovery of the Society. Father Coton was royal preacher and
confessor, and obtained such influence that, when the King was deaf
to their prayers or protests, men said that Henry "had cotton in his
ears"; and the fusillade of pamphlets and counter-pamphlets--witty,
fierce, and gross on both sides--again enlivened Paris. They raised
more houses than they had ever had before, and got admission into
Protestant Béarn and the Canadian mission. There was hardly a more
generous benefactor to the Society in Europe than Henry, though we may
take the word of Richelieu that he distrusted them, as a body, and
acted from policy. At length Henry betrayed the real shallowness of
their influence on him, and began to prepare for war with Spain; and on
14th May 1610 he fell by the hand of a Catholic fanatic.
The question whether the Jesuits were implicated in the crime of
Ravaillac is one of the hundred almost insoluble problems of their
history. On this occasion, indeed, it is exceptionally difficult
to reach a confident verdict, because an entirely pro-Spanish
and pro-Jesuit régime was set up by the death of Henry, and
inconvenient testimony could easily be suppressed. It seems to me
that a consideration of great importance is generally overlooked in
the discussion of these problems. When the evidence is scanty or
obscure, we give the Jesuits "the benefit of the doubt," as if we were
arraigning them for something they regarded as a crime. This is a false
attitude, of which they take full advantage. Crétineau-Joly quotes a
dozen distinguished theologians of the time who taught that it was just
and proper to remove a monarch whose rule was gravely injurious, and
hardly a single eminent theologian who taught the contrary. We have
merely to suppose that the Jesuit fathers were divided in anything like
the same proportion, and we see at once that there must have been--and
we know that there were--numbers of Jesuits in every province who would
regard the assassination of a king who threatened the faith in his
country as a quite moral and meritorious deed. Mariana's claim that
Jacques Clément, the murderer of Henry III., was "the eternal glory of
France" was echoed by thousands of his colleagues. It seems to me very
material to bear this in mind in all these cases of assassination. The
attitude of their apologists is singular: they admit that the Jesuits
as a body regarded the assassination of kings who menaced the faith as
a just and proper action, yet are remarkably eager to prove that the
Jesuits never acted on their belief. On Jesuit principles the murder of
Henry IV. was not a crime.
We must, on the other hand, say that the evidence of Jesuit complicity
with Ravaillac is unsatisfactory, in spite of Michelet's spirited
reliance on it. A certain Mme d'Escoman asserted that she overheard the
Duke d'Épernon telling the plot to Henry's former lover, the Marquise
de Verneuil, and that she revealed it to the Jesuit superior in good
time to warn Henry; a soldier named Dujardin then told that he had seen
Ravaillac in the service of Épernon at Naples, and that the Jesuits
of that city had urged him (Dujardin) to enter the plot. Both these
witnesses were of low moral character, and had a prospect of gaining
by their revelations; we must therefore refrain from basing a verdict
on their evidence. A recent French student of the subject[12] has
concluded that Épernon and others were really plotting to take the life
of Henry, but that Ravaillac committed the crime on his own initiative,
and that the Jesuits were not in either plot, though it may be true
that Mme d'Escoman warned them of Épernon's plot. This ingenious, but
not wholly convincing, suggestion explains how Ravaillac could, with
his dying breath and under threat of damnation, swear that he had no
accomplices, but it really leaves open the question of the guilt of
the Jesuits. The witnesses are of too low a character for us to decide
whether they tell the truth or no. It is suspicious that Father Coton
visited Ravaillac in jail and warned him "not to bring trouble on
good people" by his statements, as we know on the high authority of
d'Estoile.
These witnesses only came forward with their stories at a later date,
but Paris had already turned with fierce indignation upon the Society.
Although the doctrine of tyrannicide may have been taught before the
Society was established, it was chiefly through the more explicit and
general teaching of the Jesuits that it became a popular conviction
among the general body of the faithful and began to inflame the brains
of fanatics. Mariana's book was burned by order of the Parlement, in
spite of the effort of the Jesuits to save it; they did succeed in
getting a reference to the Jesuit character of the author suppressed
in the indictment, and in preventing the works of Bellarmine, Becanus,
and others of their theologians from being condemned. They had the
zealous protection of Marie de Medici, and the hostility to them had
to expend itself in a shower of witty and virulent pamphlets. Father
Coton, especially, was violently assailed. The indulgence with which
he had regarded the notorious amours of his royal penitent was said
to be quite natural in a man who had tender relations of his own. The
Jesuits continued to advance in spite of this hostility. Father de
Suffren guided the conscience of Mary herself; Father Coton and Father
Marguestana directed her son (Louis XIII.) and her daughter in the ways
of virtue and political ignorance. There we may leave the Jesuits of
France until Richelieu comes to disturb their mischievous pro-Spanish
policy.
When we pass to the Netherlands we have again to consider a grave
accusation of complicity in a design to assassinate. The Netherlands
were now formally divided into Catholic Belgium and Protestant Holland,
and the Dutch were eager to prevent the hated Jesuits from entering
the country. A few succeeded in crossing the frontier and ministering,
in disguise, to the remaining Catholics. The kind of activity they
pursued will be understood when we have followed the similar labours
of the Jesuits in England. In 1598, however, a Belgian was arrested at
Leyden for a design on the life of Maurice of Nassau, and there is the
customary controversy in regard to the complicity of the Jesuits.
Peter Panne was a cooper of Ypres, a restless and, apparently, a
rather disreputable character. His method of seeking the life of
the Dutch prince was singularly futile, and he made a lengthy and
circumstantial "confession," in which he accused the Jesuits of Douai
of egging him to commit the murder. The assassin of William of Orange
in 1568 had accused a Jesuit confessor, and it was natural that the
Dutch should again expect to hear of Jesuit complicity. His story was
therefore implicitly believed in Holland, and wherever the Jesuits
were detested; and the laws against them were made more stringent. In
the following year, however, Father Coster undertook the defence of
his colleagues, and their apologists maintain that he has completely
demolished the charge.[13] To the impartial student the case is one of
mere affirmation and denial, without very safe ground for judgment.
Coster relies upon a number of reports issued by small legal and
civic authorities in Belgium, who, at the request of the Jesuits,
examined many witnesses, including Panne's wife and others named by
him. These witnesses flatly denied the story told by Panne of his and
their movements, and the unofficial judges then drew up statements to
the effect that the Jesuits were innocent. At first sight it would
seem that we ought at once to prefer the testimony of these numerous
witnesses to that of Panne; but when we reflect on the Jesuit doctrine
of mental reservation, we must admit that the word of these witnesses,
provided by the Jesuits, is not to be taken at its superficial value.
According to the Jesuit theologians, witnesses might give absolutely
false answers, and confirm them by the most sacred oaths, to judges
or others, if they felt that the inquirer had no right to learn the
truth from them. In the case of Panne's wife, for instance, the Jesuit
would most certainly decide that she would be justified in denying,
on oath, that she had ever spoken to her husband about the projected
murder, even if it were true that, as Panne said, she urged him to do
it. In the next chapter we shall find the English Father Gerard acting
on this well-known Jesuit principle. We cannot, therefore, attach any
importance to these denials. And when Father Coster goes on to prove,
or assert, that Panne was a doubtful Catholic and an unscrupulous
fellow, he seems to overreach himself. Why should such a man seek to
do the work of a Catholic fanatic at the risk of his life? Clearly,
only because some one offered him payment. Either the gravest legal
tribunal in Holland paid him to lie, or else his story gives the only
plausible explanation of his conduct. It is more natural to suppose
that the Jesuits acted on their known principles of regicide and mental
reservation than that the Dutch acted in the most flagrant violation of
their principles; and the mere fact of an indifferent Catholic risking
his life to kill an heretical prince suggests this view.
In Belgium the Jesuits recovered all the ground they had lost in the
religious wars, and at length secured an unassailable legal existence.
At this period we are at every step observing the collusion of the
Jesuits with Philip II. of Spain, and we have still to see how they
helped him in his effort to annex England. He was not ungrateful,
and he definitely overrode the prejudice of the Flemings and legally
established the Jesuits in Belgium (1584). They at once became so
bold that we find the Governor of Luxemburg levying taxes on the
citizens for the erection of Jesuit houses: a project which caused
such an outbreak of anger that they had to retreat from the province.
The University of Louvain continued to disdain and assail them, but
their great victory in securing the condemnation of the Chancellor of
the University, Michel de Bay, had given them much prestige. Baius
endeavoured to recover by denouncing to Rome their theologian Lessius;
but his attempt failed, and the Jesuits renewed their effort to capture
or displace the university.[14]
The record of the Germanic provinces is chiefly remarkable for the
extension into Poland and an attempt to penetrate Russia. The Jesuits
had entered Poland under Stephen Bathori, and made such progress in
twenty years that men spoke bitterly of their "fortified palaces," and
saw with regret that nearly the whole education of the nobility was
in their hands. In one college (Pultusk) they boasted that they had
four hundred youths of noble birth. In 1581 the Poles were bringing to
a victorious close their long war with Russia, and the Tsar appealed
for the mediation of the Pope. It was an auspicious opportunity for
re-opening the question of the union of the Latin and Greek Churches,
and the adventurous Father Possevin (the former Legate to Sweden) was
sent as Legate. He learned on the way from Bathori that the Poles would
drive a hard bargain, and felt that this strengthened his position
with regard to Russia. He was received with great honour in Russia,
and the Tsar gave many privileges to Catholics, but the war concluded
at length without a word of union. It is clear that he then used his
influence to induce the Russians to yield, so that his Society might
at least have the gratitude of the Poles. He remained for a long time
at Moscow, but made no progress, and the Pope recalled him to crush
heresy in Transylvania. He was afterwards mediator between Germany and
Poland. Possevin had considerable diplomatic ability, though he was
apt to love melodramatic situations, like so many of the political
Jesuits. Acquaviva at last resented his flagrant political activity,
and compelled him to settle as a teacher at Padua.
Stephen Bathori was succeeded in 1586 by a pupil of the Jesuits,
Sigismund III., and their power became greater than ever, and provoked
a strong reaction. Their conduct in Transylvania, where most of the
nobles were still Protestant, caused them to be expelled from that
province by the Diet, and many nobles of the Polish Diet endeavoured to
have them expelled from the whole kingdom. They were bitterly accused
of intriguing to get possession of the property of Protestants, and
even of rival religious orders. At Dantzic they were compelled to
return the property of a community of nuns. The nobles chiefly resented
their interference in politics and control of education, and penned
some fiery indictments of what they called their "machinations." An
edict of the Diet for the year 1607 is not flattering to them.
In the same period they overran the Catholic cantons of Switzerland,
Bohemia, Baden, and most of the south-German States. Throughout the
whole Germanic world their procedure was of much the same character.
A few worthy and powerful men like Canisius would secure the opening
of the doors to the Society, and a host of less religious fathers
would then intrigue for funds to build colleges and educate the young,
and organise the Catholic laity in enthusiastic confraternities
or sodalities. Partly by these methods, but very largely by their
great skill in securing the ear of princes, they not only greatly
strengthened the surviving Catholic populations, but they undoubtedly
regained much territory from the Reformers. They opposed a positive and
unvarying creed to the conflicting doctrines of the Protestants, and
the religious life they themselves exhibited had none of the grossness
which had done so much to provoke the Reformation. Here and there,
however, they clearly resorted to unworthy means to secure property
or influence, and were heatedly assailed. A very curious series of
outbreaks against them occurred in 1584. They boasted of the share
their Father Clavius had had in the reform of the calendar; but, when
it came to the time of Carnival and Lent, and later of Christmas, the
distracted citizens were sometimes defrauded of their traditional
pleasures by the alteration of the calendar, and took their revenge on
the windows of the Jesuits.
The only notable experience of the Society in Italy was the expulsion
of the fathers from Venice. A feeling of irritation against them had
lingered in the Republic since their inauspicious entry under Ignatius,
and of late years the French and Spanish strictures on them had found
very ominous echoes in Venice. In the early years of the seventeenth
century this feeling was inflamed by the attitude of the Jesuits
in siding with the Pope against the civic authorities. The secular
authorities had been so indignant at the discovery of certain brutal
crimes committed by some of the clergy that, in spite of ecclesiastical
privileges, they proceeded against the criminals. The quarrel with Rome
which followed ended in the Pope placing Venice under an interdict,
and the great body of the clergy of Venice patriotically ignored the
interdict and continued to minister to the citizens. The Jesuits were
in a painful dilemma. They made a futile attempt to evade it by closing
their public churches, but keeping their houses open, and the Council
banished them from the city. A crowd of citizens assembled on the banks
of the canal when the gondolas, bearing the condemned fathers, left
the city, and they do not attempt to represent it as a crowd weeping
for their departure. "Ande in mal' hora" was the scornful reply made
to one of their number who appealed to the people. Their very valuable
property was confiscated, and they would not re-enter Venice for half a
century.
We might admire the Jesuits at least for their courageous adherence
to their own principles in these experiences of the year 1606, and
we cannot regard it as other than natural that they should attempt
to drag the rest of the clergy into sharing their attitude. But the
indictment of them which the Venetian Senate made after their departure
goes further than this. They were accused of grave intrigue in the
quarrel between Rome and the Republic, and it was said that they abused
their position as confessors to the noble ladies of Venice to learn
the secrets of the Senate and frustrate its aims. Venice, it will be
remembered, took a particular pride in the secrecy of its political
life, and it especially distrusted so notoriously pro-Spanish a body
as the Jesuits. These charges we cannot, of course, control, but they
are consonant with the ordinary action of the Society. It was decreed
that they be banished for ever; that if ever the question of recalling
them were raised, this indictment must be read again in the Council
of Ten, and that any citizen who held communication with the Jesuits
should be sent to the galleys. The question of recalling them was, of
course, raised at once. Henry IV. was induced to plead their cause at
Venice, while Spain used all its power to prevent a reconciliation of
the Papacy and the Republic except on condition that the Society be
restored. So convinced were the Venetians of the anti-patriotic action
of the Jesuits that they peremptorily refused to yield, and Acquaviva
had to resign himself to defeat.
At Rome a more prolonged and more academic quarrel had nourished the
feeling against the Society. The subject-matter of this controversy
is of interest only to theologians, and the whole struggle must be
dismissed in a few words. In brief, a Jesuit theologian of Portugal,
named Molina, had in 1588 published a work (_Liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ
donis concordia_), in which he had made novel efforts to illumine the
mystery of the consistency of human freedom with the action of grace,
and the way in which God may have a foreknowledge of events which
may or may not take place. When Crétineau-Joly observes that Molina
"talked as if he had been admitted to the counsels of the Most High,"
we can understand the indignation of rival theologians of the time.
A Dominican theologian, named Bañez, had a different theory of these
abstruse matters, and there was soon a fierce quarrel between the
two orders. When the Spanish Inquisition refused to condemn Molina,
the Dominicans carried the quarrel to Rome, where it enlivened and
heated the chambers of the Vatican and the religious houses for more
than twenty years. A commission appointed by the Pope condemned the
teaching of Molina as "a dangerous novelty," the Jesuits induced the
Pope to suspend sentence, and even profane ambassadors were drawn
into the sacred arena. Spain threw its influence against Molina:
France, naturally, supported him. It was not until 1607 that Paul V.
judiciously decided that either opinion might be held with a safe
conscience; and when it proved profoundly unsatisfactory to both
parties to find that their rivals were permitted to live, the Pope
had, in 1611, to impose silence on the disputants. The struggle still
lingers in the remote and innocuous volumes of dogmatic theology which
the rival orders occasionally publish.
In fine, we must glance at the progress of the foreign missions under
Acquaviva. The Japanese mission now reached its highest prosperity
and entered upon the days of persecution. In 1565 there were ten
Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these
in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money
from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from
Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and
somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures
of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received
into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then
directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade
in Japan, until a few years before his death, in the interest of the
Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official
historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the
Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the
country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing
the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives.
Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without
realising that the success of this early Christian mission was
singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and
inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year
1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by
the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume
that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to
round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native
Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and
death for their faith must convince every candid student that the
early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion
of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that
the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an
"apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society
making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send
out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every
year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage.
Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to
decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter
Japan.
Two years later the clouds began, as if in punishment, to overcast
their prosperity. Taicosama had usurped the chief throne of Japan in
1583, and, as the Catholic generals in the army had made no defence
of their legitimate monarch, he continued for some years to favour
the Church. The displacement of the native faith, however, led him to
reflect that it might entail political displacements, and he is said
to have seized the opportunity, when certain Christian girls refused
the honour of being added to the lengthy list of his concubines, to
suppress the mission. The Jesuits were to leave his kingdom within
twenty days, or die; and he burned nearly a third of their 240 chapels.
The Provincial Valignani returned from Italy to find his mission on
the brink of destruction. He had taken a few noble Japanese youths
to Europe, and was bringing them back to tell their fellows of the
grandeur of Rome and Spain. As a Jesuit he was forbidden to enter the
kingdom. With remarkable ease he transformed himself into an ambassador
of the Viceroy of India, and was borne in a superb litter to the
presence of Taicosama, on whom he showered presents and compliments.
The Jesuits were allowed to remain in the country, though still
forbidden to practise their religion, and the hundred priests had for
some time to be content with stealthy and nocturnal ministration to
their converts.
At length Taicosama turned upon them with fury, and the great
persecution began. Kaempfer says that the Jesuits excited the anger of
the nobles by an insolent refusal to pay them the customary respect;
but a more substantial grievance came to the ears of the monarch. In
1596 a Japanese was examining a map of the earth on which the vast
possessions of Spain were shown. He asked a Spanish pilot how his
master had obtained this enormous territory, and the man imprudently
replied that Philip first sent missionaries into a country to prepare
it for subjection, then armies. The remark was reported to the Emperor,
and he fell upon the missionaries with a just charge that they had
violated his prohibition of the practice of the Christian cult. A
number of Jesuits and Franciscans were crucified, and thousands--the
Jesuits say 20,000--of the native Christians testified to the sincerity
of their belief by embracing martyrdom. The death of Taicosama in the
following year, 1598, put a stop to the persecution, and it is claimed
that 70,000 converts were made in the next two or three years. The
Protestant Dutch traders were, however, now displacing the Portuguese
and Spanish, and repeating to the Japanese those dark opinions of the
political intrigues of the Jesuits which were current in their own
land. Once more the decree of extermination went forth, and by the year
of the death of Acquaviva the mission was nearly extinct. Its second
recovery and final destruction will occupy us later.
The rule of Acquaviva was also memorable for the beginning of the
Chinese mission. The repeated failures to gain admission drove the
Jesuits to fresh expedients, and a few of their more learned members
applied themselves to a thorough study of Chinese culture and religion.
The first and most distinguished of these was Father Ricci, whom we
find living in Chao Hing, and astonishing the local mandarins with his
learning, in 1583. We are not accurately informed how Ricci obtained
admission, but we have seen, and shall see, that a Jesuit was prepared
to make any profession whatever in order to enter a forbidden land. He
seems to have concealed his religion, and posed as a lay scholar, until
he was sufficiently advanced in the confidence of a few to entrust his
ideas to them. He dressed as a Chinese scholar, and had (after 1587)
two disguised lay-brothers in his house, which was transferred to Chao
Chu. The mob, discovering his aims, attacked the house; but Ricci's
able command of Western learning and appliances had greatly impressed
Chinese scholars, and he made steady, if slow, progress. In the year
1600 he was invited to visit the Emperor at Peking, and shrewdly took
with him a collection of telescopes, clocks, and other wonders of the
West. He was allowed to live at Peking and enjoy the favour of the
Emperor, and other priests quietly entered China and helped to found
the mission. At one time its promise was nearly destroyed by a quarrel
of the rival missionaries,--Jesuit, Franciscan, and secular,--but Ricci
tactfully averted the persecution which their mutual charges brought on
them. He died in 1610, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral at
Peking. Numerically, there were as yet few converts. Ricci was not the
kind of man to rush into the street with a crucifix and proclaim that
the deities of China were false gods. It is only at a later date that
we shall find a large and important mission in China.
The rest of the missionary field reported almost uniform progress under
the vigorous rule of Acquaviva. Canada was opened by the French troops,
and several Jesuits began to work among the Indians. Mexico proved,
they reported, an easy ground; they claimed that half the population
was Christian by 1608. The Brazilian mission now had a hundred and
fifty priests extending its flourishing work, and the first excursions
were made into Paraguay (1586) and Chili (1593). In 1604, fifty-six
fathers were sent into Peru. In the East, the Hindu mission continued
to spread on the lines we have already described, and Abyssinia at last
consented to admit the Jesuits. It will be convenient to defer until
the next chapter a closer consideration of these missions.
This survey of the fortunes of the Society under the thirty-five years'
rule of Acquaviva is a sufficient testimony to the ability of that
gifted leader. When he died, on 31st January 1615, the 5000 members of
the Society who had greeted his election had become 13,000, and 550
Jesuit establishments were scattered over the globe, from Peking to
the slopes of the Andes. In view of the methods of the Society--the
direct and at times indelicate seeking of money and the favour of the
powerful--this growth cannot be regarded as singular. The Society had
adopted new and very effective devices to increase their influence
and membership; it is not as if other religious bodies had used the
same means, and been less successful. And it is now clear that the
distinctive general principles of the Society were rapidly assuming a
complexion which the impatient feeling of its critics has expressed in
the maxim that "the end justifies the means." This will be even more
apparent when we consider, in more detail, the activity of the Jesuits
in England.
I have as yet made no mention of the "Regulation of Studies" (_Ratio
Studiorum_), which some regard as one of Acquaviva's most significant
services to the Society. I am unable to see this significance in the
treatise which (with later modifications) Acquaviva presented for
the acceptance of the General Congregation in 1599. It is rather a
disciplinary measure than an educational code, and no improvement
of Jesuit culture followed its promulgation. It attempted to impose
a uniform course of two years in rhetoric and humanities (with
fragmentary or expurgated editions of the classics), three years in
philosophy (including mathematics), and four years in theology, on
all the students of the Society. It also imposed the use of Latin in
conversation except during the hour of recreation and on holidays. This
scheme never was, and is not now, rigidly followed, and where it is
followed the gain is disciplinary rather than cultural. We shall see
better, when we come to examine Jesuit scholarship, the grave defects
of the Jesuit education from a general pedagogical point of view. Its
aim was narrow and specific,--the production of sound theologians,--and
it would be a mistake to judge it at all from the wider educational
point of view, were it not for the light and superficial praise it
sometimes receives.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: See Father Astrain's _Historia de la Compañia de Jesus en
España_, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.]
[Footnote 10: It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to
incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.]
[Footnote 11: See Count Hoensbroech's _Fourteen Years a Jesuit_ (1911),
ii. 334.]
[Footnote 12: Jules Loiseleur, _Ravaillac et ses complices_, 1873.]
[Footnote 13: I have consulted the Latin translation, by another
Jesuit, of Coster's work, _Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ...
intentata_ (1599).]
[Footnote 14: When I studied at Louvain University in 1893, I found the
struggle just as it had been three hundred years before. The Jesuits
still sought in vain to capture the university, and were detested as
cordially as ever.]