THE STRUGGLE WITH THE JANSENISTS
The story of the Jesuits in France from the middle of the seventeenth
to the middle of the eighteenth century is rich in material for the
interpretation of their character. We find every conceivable type of
Jesuit rising to prominence at some period in the long chronicle.
While a Father François Régis or a Julien Manvir sustains the finest
traditions of the Society by a splendid expenditure of a noble
character in the service of the squalid peasantry, his colleagues
smile indulgently upon the perfumed vices of nobles and princes,
enter into the most unscrupulous intrigues for the destruction of
their theological opponents, and encourage Louis XIV. in the belief
that he may do penance for his sins on the backs of the Jansenists
and Protestants. While, during a whole generation, they direct the
fingers of the Pope in virtue of their supreme and peculiar zeal for
his authority, they, in the next generation, secure the praise of
the Parlement and the gratitude of the court by a most extraordinary
intrigue against the Papacy. In the new-built palace of Versailles
they obtain a paramount influence over the greatest autocrat of modern
history; they fill the Gallican Church with prelates who will obey
their commands; they crush Protestantism in France; and they seem to
have almost attained the great ideal of their Society--the control of
the courts which control the earth. And within another generation
their varied enemies unite and drive them ignominiously from the
country.
This singular history centres, for the greater part of the time, on
the struggle between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the origin of
which may be briefly recalled. I have in earlier chapters referred to
the theological victory of the Jesuits over Michel de Bay at Louvain,
and to the fierce and protracted struggle they had with the Dominican
theologians in Spain and Italy. It may be remembered that this furious
struggle as to the real relations of divine grace and the human will
had to be suppressed by the Papacy, and all further controversy on
the subject was forbidden. When therefore, in the thirties of the
seventeenth century, the Jesuits heard that a certain brilliant and
virtuous _abbé_ at Paris and a learned theologian of Belgium were
plotting to introduce a new work on the subject, they watched them with
care.
Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, or the _abbé_ de St. Cyran, was an
energetic Basque who had finished his theological studies at Louvain
University. There he had become intimate with a Belgian student named
Jansen, who had views, opposed to those of the Jesuits, on the action
of grace. St. Cyran, returning to France, became a secret apostle
of these views, and hinted that a learned defence of them was being
written. It happened that at that time a Puritan movement was arising
within the French Church, as a protest against the extreme laxity
of the age; and, as the Jesuits were regarded by the Puritans as
encouraging this laxity by their remarkable works on casuistry (as we
shall see later), there was a predisposition to accept anti-Jesuit
views. Further, there was already a tradition of hostility to the
Jesuits among the Puritans. The chief centre of the ascetic movement
was the famous abbey of Port Royal, and the abbess of Port Royal,
Angélique Arnauld, was a daughter of the great lawyer who had more than
once formulated the grievances of the Parlement against the Society.
Several members of his large and brilliant family were drawn into the
movement.
Angélique Arnauld had been committed to the abbey at a very early age
by her parents; and, although it shared the general laxity of convents
at that time, she chafed for years against her fate. The abbey was in
a wild, marshy, unhealthy valley, about eighteen miles from Paris. In
the course of time Angélique was converted, and she became abbess of
the convent, and devoted all her energy and talent to the purification
of its life. It became a famous garden of conventual virtues, and, when
the unhealthiness of the valley compelled the nuns to transfer their
establishment to Paris in 1626, every pietist in the city was attracted
to the abbey of Port Royal de Paris. St. Cyran fell into correspondence
with Angélique, defended a book of hers which the Jesuits denounced,
and in 1633 became the spiritual director of the community. The convent
now had pretensions to be a school of fine taste in letters as well
as of virtue, and numbers of the more sincerely religious writers and
ladies of Paris looked to it as a kind of club. The Jesuits regarded
this independent school of virtue and theology with some apprehension,
and, when Jansen died in 1638, and whispers of a posthumous publication
of his great work were intercepted, St. Cyran was imprisoned in
Vincennes by order of Richelieu. We need not press the suspicion that
the cardinal was instigated by the Jesuits. Jansen had satirically
assailed the policy of Richelieu in a political work, and the cardinal
may have thought it advisable to seize the papers of St. Cyran in order
to find some clue to the mysterious work of Jansen which his admirers
were secretly promising to the world. St. Cyran also had declined to
oblige the cardinal, and he assailed doctrines which Richelieu had
espoused in his early theological works. It is, however, to be noted
that, when St. Cyran was released, at the death of Richelieu (1642),
and his papers restored, it was found that the Jesuits had appropriated
some of his letters.
St. Cyran continued to direct the movement from Vincennes, and it
entered upon a singular and momentous development. Angélique inspired
her nephew, the brilliant young lawyer Le Maistre, her brother Antoine,
and other able and serious young men, with her sentiments, and they
determined to live a communal and ascetic life. In 1637 they took
possession of the deserted buildings of Port Royal aux Champs, and
were soon known to all Paris as the virtuous "Solitaries" of the bleak
and remote valley. The joy of the good clergy and the amusement of
the frivolous were equalled by the exasperation of the Jesuits. The
Solitaries passed stern censure on the leniency of Jesuit confessors;
and their spirit spread like a ferment through the city, and had
the singular effect of inducing penitents to abandon their Jesuit
confessors because they had been converted to virtue. At the same
time the rumour spread that Jansen's great work was about to see the
light. He had died in 1638, leaving his manuscript in the charge of
his friends at Louvain. The local Jesuits watched their movements
with the assiduity of detectives, and discovered that the work was in
the press. It is acknowledged that they bribed the printers, who were
sworn to secrecy, to give them sheets of the book, and they complained
to the Nuncio that the Louvain professors were about to issue a work
on the forbidden topic of grace and free will. Intrigue was met by
counter-intrigue,--a piquant situation in view of the sacred theme of
the book,--and it was published in 1640, and immediately afterwards
published also at Paris.
This small, innocent, and academic treatise, the _Augustinus_ of
Jansen, was destined to set Europe aflame for decades. The historic
controversy of St. Augustine and the Welsh priest Pelagius, which it
recalled, was far surpassed by this modern effort to conciliate the
freedom of the human will with the compelling power of grace. Pulpits
and schools rang with mutual anathemas; pamphlets of ponderous learning
and biting irony mingled with the latest _chronique scandaleuse_ on
the book-stalls. But the Jesuit was never content with that free arena
of controversy in which he claimed to excel. Rome must condemn his
opponents, and the familiar intrigues were set afoot at Rome. The
Inquisition denounced the book on the ground that the subject was
prohibited. That did not suffice for the Jesuits, nor did it check the
flow of argument and invective; and on 6th March 1642, Urban VIII.
solemnly condemned the book. The Jansenists had now, however, friends
among the prelates, and the bull was not published in France with
the customary solemnity. The controversy still raged sullenly, only
restrained by Richelieu's spies; and when he died and St. Cyran was
released (in the same year), it broke out again into flagrant publicity.
Meantime, a new champion had entered the field, and the attack on
the Jesuits assumed a more personal form. Anne de Rohan, Princess of
Guémenée and mistress of Archbishop Paul de Gondi (later Cardinal de
Retz), fell under the influence of Arnauld d'Andilly and St. Cyran, and
their oratory and her advancing years persuaded her that the hour had
come to turn to virtue. She had had a Jesuit confessor, like so many
of the noble dames and bejewelled prelates who did not deign even to
conceal their amours, and he was naturally piqued to find that, as the
princess advanced in virtue, she discarded him in favour of St. Cyran.
There is no doubt whatever of Anne de Rohan's sincerity, and it is
little short of infamous for Crétineau-Joly to say that she "placed her
elegant coquetries under the safeguard of the aged Arnauld d'Andilly,"
and that she was at the same time "the guest of Port Royal and the
mistress of Paul de Gondi." The discarded Jesuit submitted to her a
manuscript attack on the more rigorous principles she had embraced;
Anne de Rohan showed this indignantly to St. Cyran; and the brilliant
young brother of Angélique Arnauld was requested to reply. His book _De
la fréquente Communion_ (1641) led to a controversy as acrid and noisy
as that over the _Augustinus_.
Arnauld had foreseen the attack; he had submitted the manuscript to
theologians, and, when it was denounced by the angry Jesuits, he was
able to secure the support of four archbishops, twelve bishops, and a
number of doctors of divinity. This alliance of a powerful minority
of the higher French clergy with the Jansenists was destined to give
the Jesuits serious trouble. One cannot quite endorse the statement
that all the virtuous men in the French episcopacy were opposed to
the Jesuits, and all the vicious prelates in favour of them. But it
was an age so flagrantly immoral that the greater part of the higher
clergy had their mistresses, their hounds and hawks, and their boxes
at the opera, while on the fringe of the Church were crowds of _abbés_
(often not priests) who led very dissolute lives. The Jesuits had for
some time, in virtue of their influence at court, had a voice in the
appointment of prelates--we shall find them entirely controlling it in
a few years--and there is no doubt that they nominated men of little
character who were willing to support them; just as they accepted
for the English mission priests of little culture or character,
because they could be the more easily dominated. On the other hand,
the Jansenists represented, above all things, a rigorous standard of
Christian character. The name which the Jesuits have fastened on them
implies that they were wedded to certain academic, if not heretical,
theories of Bishop Jansen. This is untrue. They were mostly laymen,
indifferent to speculative theology, pleading only that the Christian
faith demanded a stricter standard of conduct than French Christians
generally exhibited. The correct name for them is the Puritans.
Hence it is largely, not entirely, true that the best of the prelates
were opposed to the Jesuits. It is now known that even Bossuet, who
sternly opposed the Jesuits, had his secret amours, and there were, on
the other hand, men of ascetic life, if not very clear intelligence
(like Vincent de Paul), on the side of the Jesuits. However, the open
declaration of so large and powerful a body of the clergy exasperated
the Jesuits, and the war of sermons and pamphlets reached a stage
of incandescence. Father Nouet denounced Arnauld as "fantastic,
melancholic, lunatic, blind, malicious, furious," and showered upon
him such concrete epithets as serpent, scorpion, wolf, and monster.
Arnauld had ventured to say that sinful ladies must keep away from the
Holy Sacrament. But Father Nouet went on to assail the sixteen prelates
who had approved Arnauld's book, and this led to his undoing. To their
great mortification the Jesuit superiors were forced to disavow and
reprimand their preacher, and the Jansenists triumphed. The Jesuits
retorted, however, by intrigue at the court, and induced Mazarin and
the Queen-Regent to order Arnauld to go and defend his book at Rome.
This was a violation of the rights of the Gallican Church, and the
university, the Parlement, and the clergy protested so violently that
the project had to be abandoned.
St. Cyran had died in the meantime (in 1643) and Arnauld was leader
of the growing and powerful body of Puritans. As the next move of the
Jesuits at court would be to secure a _lettre de cachet_, and lodge
him in the Bastille or Vincennes, he returned to the provinces and
the struggle was transferred to Rome. The prelates who had approved
Arnauld's book appealed to the Pope in its favour, and a learned
theologian was sent to Rome to defeat the manoeuvres of the Jesuits. As
a result, after two years of violent discussion, the book was declared
free of heresy. The Jesuits, who had declared that thirty propositions
in the book were unsound, now concentrated upon an innocent parenthetic
phrase in the preface. Arnauld had referred to Peter and Paul as "two
chiefs who were really one," and it was claimed that this was an
attack on the papacy. After another year of wrangling and intrigue the
innocuous sentence was condemned, and the Jesuits proclaimed throughout
Europe that they had triumphed.
The next step was to enforce in France the bull of Urban VIII.
condemning the _Augustinus_ of Jansen. The Sorbonne (the theological
school of the university) received a papal brief directing them to
accept the bull, and, in spite of court-pressure, the theologians
justly replied that they were not concerned with the opinions of a
Belgian theologian. Again the pulpits of Paris--the artillery of the
spiritual army--opened fire, and the pamphleteers were busy. Then the
syndic of the Sorbonne, Cornet, a friend of the Jesuits, submitted
seven propositions to the judgment of that body. He named no author,
and expressly (and mendaciously) stated that they did not refer to
Jansen, but it was well known that the sentences were supposed to
have been extracted from the work of Jansen, and an intense struggle
followed. The cause was won, as usual, by intrigue. There was some
dispute at the time how far the monastic theologians could vote at the
Sorbonne, but they were brought up in force, against the view of the
lawyers, and five propositions were condemned and reported to Rome.
It was now openly stated that the five propositions were taken from
Jansen's book.
The Papacy still hesitated, in view of the disputable nature of the
Sorbonne vote, and intimated that the French prelates should be induced
to ask for a condemnation. According to M. Crétineau-Joly, the reply
was prompt and spontaneous. "The General Assembly of the clergy opens
at Paris, and eighty-eight bishops denounce the five propositions to
Pope Innocent"; the Jesuits, he says, stood aside and let the prelates
speak. But the French historian must have been aware that the question
was not submitted to the General Assembly at all. The signatures were
obtained privately, and the whole procedure was so insidious that we
are not sure to-day whether seventy, or eighty, or ninety bishops
demanded a condemnation. It is necessary to note these details, if we
are to understand the Catholic sentiment which later swept the Jesuits
out of France. About eighty bishops apparently were induced privately
to request the Pope to condemn the propositions; other prelates wrote
to beg the Pope to abstain. However, the Vatican was now officially
invited to pronounce, and the war of theologians was resumed at Rome.
In the meantime the Jesuits of Paris sustained a painful check in
their attack on the Jansenists. One of their number, Father Brisacier,
published a pamphlet, _Le Jansenisme confondu_ (1651), in which, not
only were the familiar invectives showered upon the Solitaries, but
the moral character of the nuns of Port Royal was attacked. These
were the nuns whom a hostile archbishop afterwards declared to be "as
pure as angels and as proud as devils." The purity of their lives
was notorious, and intense indignation was felt. The Archbishop
of Paris formally condemned the pamphlet as "containing many lies
and impostures," and Father Brisacier was removed--promoted to the
rectorship of the college at Rouen--by his superiors. No Jesuit, of
course, wrote without authorisation, and the many abominable pamphlets
they issued at this time against the Puritans implicate the whole
Parisian Province.
We need not follow the course of the trial at Rome. After a two
years' struggle Innocent X. issued his famous bull in which the five
propositions were declared to be heretical, and to be contained in the
work of Jansen. The Jesuits emitted a pyrotechnic discharge of oratory
and pamphlets--one broadside of the time represented Bishop Jansen as a
devil flying to the Protestants--but they had overreached themselves.
No Jansenist (not even Jansen) had ever taught the five propositions,
and there was not a man in France who wished to defend them. But the
Jesuits had insisted on the pronouncement that the propositions were
contained in Jansen, and this gave rise to a formidable controversy in
which the prelates were at liberty to join. It may seem to the modern
reader an appalling waste of energy and perversion of character that
so powerful a body should spend their resources for twenty years in a
war on such abstruse propositions, but from this point the struggle
becomes frankly ridiculous. For nearly eighty years we shall find
the Jesuits straining every device of craft and learning to ensure
that every man in France shall agree that the Pope (who had never
read Jansen's book) was right in declaring the five propositions to
be contained in the _Augustinus_; and the controversy they sustain
will draw on themselves the appalling scourge of Pascal's _Provincial
Letters_ and on the papacy the defiant declaration of the Gallican
Church. We are compelled to recognise a lamentable corporate ambition
and perversion of character in their conduct.
The Puritans coolly replied that they were not interested in the five
propositions which the Pope had condemned, but that, as a matter of
plain truth, they must protest against the ascription of these views
to Bishop Jansen. So the war proceeded. It was at this time, in 1654,
that the Jesuits made a ludicrous attempt to discredit their opponents
by revealing the famous "Plot of Bourg Fontaine": a plot as rich in
imagination and crude in fictitious detail as the Titus Oates plot.
They had discovered, they gravely reported, that St. Cyran, Arnauld,
and four other Jansenists had, twenty-three years before, met secretly
in an obscure village to concert a plot for the destruction of
Christianity in France. Arnauld was nine years old at the time given as
the year of the conspiracy. Arnauld, from his solitude, issued a letter
against the Jesuits, and (again packing the jury with monk-voters)
they got it condemned by the Sorbonne. When we find the King writing
to press the Sorbonne, we may clearly recognise the hand of the
court-Jesuits. They triumphed, but their triumph now drew on them the
heaviest and most enduring punishment they have ever suffered.
In 1648 the nuns had been compelled to return from Paris to their
inhospitable valley, and the Solitaries had retreated from the abbey
to a manor-house on the hill overlooking the valley. There, without
any special costume or vows, a number of the most brilliant young men
of Paris led a life of great austerity and devotion. Some lived in
Paris, and spent an occasional period at Les Granges, and amongst these
was a young man, with thin, pale face and large brilliant eyes under
his lofty forehead, named Blaise Pascal. He had already won European
fame as a mathematician. When Arnauld, somewhat jaded, produced a weak
reply to his opponents, his friends suggested that Pascal should be
asked to undertake the attack. Arnauld agreed, and on 23rd January
1656, appeared the first _Letter to a Provincial_. It was a subtle and
irresistible satire of the theological shibboleths of the Jesuits. In
order to enable the conflicting schools of monastic theology to agree
in condemning the Jansenists, certain terms (such as "proximate grace"
and "sufficient grace") had been introduced as vague common measures of
orthodoxy, and Pascal expended his immortal wit on the weakness. It is
admitted by all that the earlier _Provincial Letters_ are masterpieces
of satire. The letter was received with delight in Paris, and a week
later, while the debate continued at the Sorbonne, a second letter was
issued. The third appeared ten days later, after the censure of Arnauld.
It is quite needless here to discuss the literary qualities of Pascal's
letters, but in the fourth letter Pascal began his direct and fearful
indictment of the Jesuits. The next six letters contain the exposure of
Jesuitical moral teaching which is the most serious point in his work,
and the remaining letters--from the tenth to the eighteenth, which are
addressed to the Jesuits--are mainly concerned with substantiating his
indictment. Although one may trust that the majority of readers are
familiar with Pascal's famous work, a short analysis of the six letters
(the fifth to the tenth) must be premised.
The chief quarrel between the Solitaries and the Jesuits was, as I
said, a question of moral, not speculative, theology. They accused
the Jesuits of accommodating the principles of Christian morality to
an immoral generation. St. Cyran and Arnauld had already quoted many
passages of Jesuit works in proof of this, and Pascal and his friends
now searched the whole field of Jesuit casuistry for further proofs. In
the fifth letter, for instance, Pascal shows how the Jesuits attenuate
the obligation of fasting. A man may, on a fast-day, drink any quantity
of wine, hippocras, or honey and water. If a man cannot sleep without
supper, he is not bound to fast; in a sense that is a just decision,
but Father Escobar goes on to say that he need not meet his obligation
by deferring to the evening the "collation" which is permitted on
fast-days, as no man is bound to alter the order of his meals. Again, a
man who has exhausted himself by vice is not bound to fast; and Pascal
might have added that the Jesuits excused a wife from fasting if her
husband thought it interfered with her attractiveness (Tamburini), a
husband if it weakened his sexual faculty (Filliutius), and a maiden
if it lessened the charms on which she relied to secure a husband
(Tamburini).
After this satirical essay on fasting made easy, Pascal passes, in the
sixth letter, to the obligation of almsgiving and cognate matters.
Wealthy Christians were bound by the letter of the Gospel to give to
the poor out of their superfluous goods, and Pascal quoted the great
Jesuit theologian Vasquez learnedly proving that "you will scarcely
find such a thing as superfluous goods among seculars, even in the
case of kings." That was a comfortable doctrine for the rich, but the
Jesuits had a word for the poor. Could a valet who considered himself
underpaid help himself to his masters goods to the extent of the
deficiency? Yes, said Father Bauny. And since Jesuit confessors had
many curious cases submitted to them by valets at that time, their
theologians worked out the servant's position with great nicety. If it
were very inconvenient to change his master, the valet might even hold
the ladder by which his master climbed to an illicit adventure; though
in this extreme case, the master must scold much before the valet is
justified.
The seventh letter shows how the Jesuits accommodated the fifth
commandment to an age of brawling and duelling. It is quite lawful to
fight a duel if a man would otherwise incur dishonour (Escobar); it is
lawful to pray to God to kill a menacing enemy (Hurtado); it is lawful
to kill a culumniator and his false witnesses (Molina); it is lawful
to pursue and kill a man who has dealt you a blow--provided you have
merely a technical regard for your honour, and do not feel vindictive
(Escobar); it is lawful to kill a contumelious man, if that is the only
way to arrest the injury (Lessius); it is lawful, if necessary, to kill
an intending thief even if he attempt to take only a single gold coin
(Molina); and--a very significant doctrine--it is lawful for a monk to
kill a man who defames his monastery or his order, if there is no other
way to arrest the defamation (Amico). These were fine doctrines for the
age of Louis XIV.
The eighth letter quotes distinguished theologians who permit a judge
to accept secret and illegal presents, provided they are given out
of gratitude, or merely to encourage him in giving honest verdicts
(Molina); and others who teach that, while usury (which then meant
any interest in money) is forbidden, the lender of money may exact a
certain additional sum in the name of gratitude (Escobar, etc.); that
a bankrupt may keep back sufficient property to enable himself and his
family to live "decently" (Escobar); that money earned by crime or vice
has not to be restored (Lessius, etc.); and that "a prostitute, virgin,
married woman, or nun" is strictly entitled to the money promised her
for vice (Filliutius). The ninth letter shows how gluttony is condoned,
and scourges the familiar casuistic doctrine of mental reservation. In
the tenth letter we learn that a frail woman may receive into her house
her partner in sin if she "cannot decently refuse."
The apologist for the Jesuits attempts to enfeeble this terrible
indictment by saying that the devout Chateaubriand called Pascal's
work "an immortal lie." The French historian does not add, though he
doubtless knew, that Chateaubriand withdrew this expression in more
mature years, saying: "I am now forced to acknowledge that he [Pascal]
has not exaggerated in the least." Voltaire also is quoted, expressing
indignation that Pascal should accuse the Jesuits of setting out to
corrupt morals. Voltaire, living under the shadow of the Bastille in
early years, had his moments of insincerity; in this case it is enough
to say that, in the fifth letter, Pascal expressly says that he does
not accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. The only
serious criticism one finds among the innumerable replies to Pascal is
that his quotations are not always accurate. One must remember that
they are not given as verbal quotations, and that Pascal had to rely
on the aid of his colleagues. That he deliberately misquoted any
theologian can only be suggested by those who are entirely ignorant
of his character. It is, however, quite true that qualifying phrases
have at times been improperly omitted, a few phrases have been wrongly
translated, and the condensing of long passages into short sentences
has in a few instances the effect of an injustice. These cases are
relatively few and unimportant. The indictment of Jesuit casuistry, as
I have summarised it, is perfectly sound, and later research has merely
extended the long list of unedifying passages.[26]
Ste. Beuve observed that, owing to Pascal's indictment, the Jesuits
"lost the helm of the world." They have assuredly never entirely
recovered from the "terrible blow" (as their historian calls it) which
Blaise Pascal dealt them. It is not historically true that they were
"crushed" and silent under the reiterated lashes. In the course of
his letters Pascal refers to their numerous replies, their fierce
invectives, their threats of physical persecution. Unfortunately,
one of their fathers made matters worse by penning a bold defence of
the casuists. His book was condemned by the Sorbonne and the Roman
Inquisition, and had to be disavowed. Large numbers of the clergy and
monks joined with the Jansenists in denouncing their doctrines, and
in the end--if we may anticipate a little, in order to finish this
episode--they were officially condemned by the French Church. For a
time Louis XIV. prevented their opponents from submitting the matter
to the General Assembly of the Clergy, but, when Mme de Montespan
succeeded Mlle de la Vallière in his affections, Bossuet and the
Archbishop of Paris used her influence to secure the king's consent,
and in 1700 their doctrines (and those of other lax theologians) were
severely condemned. The only mitigation which the Jesuits could secure
was that their theologians were not named.
Meantime, the war of the five propositions dragged its interminable
length. The Port Royal nuns, the Solitaries, and many of the clergy
and laity refused to sign what they regarded as a plain untruth--the
statement that the five propositions were found in Jansen's work--and
the Jesuits relentlessly persecuted them. Under court-pressure the
Assembly of the Clergy decreed that all teachers and religious were to
submit to the Pope's bull, and a kind of inquisition was established
for the first time in France. A formulary was devised, and a royal
decree enacted that it must be signed. The "grand Turc très Chrétien"
was at that time easily led by his confessor and other Jesuits in
religious matters, and his light-hearted court, under the presidency
of Mlle de la Vallière, was not at all unwilling to see the dour
Jansenists beaten by their indulgent confessors. The nuns of Port Royal
made an heroic stand against the official untruth. Angélique Arnauld
was now dead, but her sister Agnes induced the nuns to resist alike the
honeyed persuasion of Bossuet and the angry menaces of the Archbishop
of Paris. In 1664 the archbishop returned with the more formidable
argument of a band of two hundred archers, and the nuns were scattered
over France. The Solitaries also were scattered, though a few of the
more distinguished of them found shelter in the hotel of the Duchess
de Longueville. So importunate were the Jesuits that the Pope had to
remind them that his duty was to keep the Puritans in the Church, not
drive them out of it.
Four bishops still favoured the Puritans, and for several years the
futile wrangle went on between the French court, the Vatican, and the
rebels. One of the four was the Archbishop of Sens, a prelate of the
finer type and a stern critic of the Jesuits. In 1653 the Jesuits
went to such extremes in their attack on him that he placed all the
Jesuits in his archdiocese under an interdict for contumacy, and the
sentence was so just that they did not succeed in getting it removed
until the death of the prelate in 1675. The Bishop of Pamiers imposed
the same heavy punishment on the Jesuits of his diocese. Both king
and clergy were now wearying of the endless war, and the accession
of a new Pope, Clement IX., in 1667 seemed to the moderate clergy an
occasion for compromise. The Archbishop of Sens, the Princess de Conti,
the Duchess de Longueville, and other distinguished intermediaries
persuaded the papacy to exclude the Jesuits from the negotiations, and
Arnauld promised to submit if that were done. The correspondence was,
therefore, conducted with great secrecy, and at the beginning of 1669
Louis XIV. struck and issued a gold medal in commemoration of "peace"
and "restored concord." The Jesuits were so angry at the wording, since
it did not express the extinction of a heresy, that, when the medal
became scarce, they denied that it had been issued with the knowledge
of the King.
The nuns were now permitted gradually to return to their valley, and
the Solitaries renewed the attack upon the morality of the Jesuits.
On this side the Jesuits could securely rely upon the sympathy of
Louis XIV., and the second brilliant criticism which the Jansenists
published, the _Practical Morality of the Jesuits_, was condemned by
Parlement, at the intervention of the royal procurator, to be publicly
burned. Jesuit succeeded Jesuit in the care of the King's conscience,
in spite of his notorious and continuous immorality during nearly
twenty years. Their French apologist ventures to tell us that they
"declared war on the King's heart," and quotes Bayle as saying, in
regard to the _liaison_ with Mlle de la Vallière, that "Father Annat
teased the prince daily about it and gave him no rest." It is one of
the most flagrant pieces of "Jesuitry" in M. Crétineau-Joly's work.
Bayle (in a note to the article _Annat_) merely quotes these words
from a pamphleteer whom he describes as utterly unworthy of credence;
and I may add that the purpose of the pamphleteer is merely to prove
that the later confessor, Père la Chaise, was worse than Père Annat.
The truth is that Annat remained in his charge during the whole of the
eight years when Louis clung to Mlle de la Vallière, and, when the
brilliant and unscrupulous Marquise de Montespan succeeded in securing
the position of royal mistress in 1670, and Père Annat retired on the
ground of age, his colleague Père Ferrier took his place. For four
years he remained in charge of the King's remarkable conscience, and it
is not irrelevant to observe that he was rewarded with a power that no
royal confessor had hitherto had in France. He and his colleagues now
had the sole right to nominate bishops, and the character of the French
episcopacy in the later years of Louis XIV. is largely attributable to
them. Ferrier died in 1674, and the famous Père la Chaise, a man of
moderate ability but courtly manners, was appointed royal confessor. He
remained at his post during the remaining five years of the _liaison_
with Mme de Montespan, and it was Mme de Maintenon (and advance in
years), rather than his confessor, who led the royal sinner into the
paths of virtue.
The eventual refusal of the sacraments does not atone for this
prolonged adhesion to Louis XIV., even if we ignore other circumstances
which detract from the merit of this tardy act of sternness. The
Jesuits compromised with the vice, in order that they might share the
power, of the greatest monarch of the age. In the last chapter we
saw how they made use, or trusted to make use, of their influence at
the French court in the conquest of England; for the moment we find
them attaining a position of great power in France by their indulgent
behaviour; and in later chapters we shall find them deriving advantage
from their privileged position for the promotion of their influence in
Spain and Italy. They looked to Louis XIV., as they had once looked to
Philip III. of Spain, as the rising sun of the monarchical world, and
they suppressed their scruples in their determination to use his power
for the furtherance of the aims of their Society. This is singularly
illustrated, in a very different way, by their conduct in the next
phase of French ecclesiastical affairs.
There was in most parts of France an old custom which gave the King the
right to promote to benefices as long as the episcopal see was vacant.
This profitable "Regale," as it was called, had never been recognised
in the southern provinces, but in 1673 Louis XIV. decreed that in
future all dioceses (except a few with special privileges) would have
to recognise the royal right. The King's own words indicate that the
Jesuits had inspired this improper invasion of the spiritual world, and
the fact was not disguised that it was chiefly aimed against Bishop
Pavillon of Aleth and Bishop Caulet of Pamiers, who had withstood
the court and the Jesuits in regard to the papal bull against the
Jansenists. The bishops appealed to Rome, and in 1676 a man ascended
the throne of Peter who was in no mood to bow to earthly monarchs or
permit Jesuit intrigue. Innocent XI. sternly insisted on the rights of
the Church and condemned the action of Louis. The Parlement and the
French hierarchy generally sided with the King, and the papal briefs
remained unpublished. The Jesuits of the southern dioceses affected
to regard the briefs as spurious, and they maintained the campaign of
intrigue and calumny which they had conducted for some time against the
Bishop of Pamiers. Pavilion had died in the course of the struggle.
Pope Innocent then devised a plan by which he expected to defeat the
insincere manoeuvres of the Jesuits. He handed his briefs to the
General of the Society and bade him communicate them to the French
Jesuits, through their Provincials. To their great embarrassment the
Jesuits of Paris and Toulouse now found themselves in the dilemma of
having to disobey the commands either of the Pope or the King, but they
extricated themselves with their usual adroitness.
The Parlements of Paris and Toulouse were secretly informed that
the Jesuit fathers had received copies of the papal briefs and were
instructed to publish them. The secrets of the Society were not
so easily penetrated as to avert the suspicion that the Jesuits
had themselves given this information, and the proceedings of the
Parlements show that they did so. Even their resolute apologist here
confesses that "perhaps" the Jesuits had this information conveyed to
the lawyers in defiance of the Pope's stern command. The scene that
followed is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Society.
The Parlement of Paris, which we have found for more than a century
in bitter opposition to the Society, now (1681) publicly lauded the
patriotism of the Jesuits in frustrating this attempt "to surprise
their wisdom and corrupt their fidelity." The men of the fourth
vow, the men who professed to be the incorruptible champions of the
Papacy, now cast their Ultramontanism to the winds, and gave material
assistance to the Gallicans at a time when a very grave conflict with
the Vatican was in progress. It was, once more, the price of the
favour of Louis XIV. Innocent replied by excommunicating Louis, and he
entrusted the brief to the charge of a French Jesuit who was then in
Rome. It was, of course, never published. The Jesuit authorities at
Paris kept it in their hands until the wrath of the Pope had cooled and
he recognised the impolicy of enforcing it.
From every point of view the conduct of the Jesuits in this crisis is
unattractive. They discovered that in such conflicts it is the duty
of the Society to be neutral, and they retained the favour of the
contestants by making such compromises as the successive phases of
the struggle imposed on them. The clergy of the French Church met in
Assembly in 1681, and, under the leadership of Bossuet, formulated the
famous four articles which define the rights of the Gallican Church and
limit the pretensions of the Vatican. All professors and religious in
France were directed to sign these articles; but the Jesuits, through
their junta at court, obtained exemption, and were able to report to
the Vatican that they alone had not accepted this defiant "Declaration
of the Gallican Clergy": half a century later, however, when France
is more dangerous to them than the Papacy, we shall find them setting
aside their scruples and signing the articles. Even at the time,
the Papacy was not appeased by their sinuous conduct. Innocent XI.
threatened to destroy the Society, and remained bitterly opposed to it
until his death in 1689.
By this time Louis XIV. had entered on his later phase of decaying
power and sincere interest in religious matters. Mme de Maintenon had
consolidated her influence over him by a secret marriage in 1684, and
given a religious direction to his thoughts. One terrible consequence
of this tardy and ill-balanced zeal was, as history tells, the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and a horrible oppression
of the Protestants. It would be a mistake to cast the whole blame of
this lamentable cruelty and its evil effects for the country upon the
Jesuits. The higher French clergy generally still entertained the
persecuting spirit, and had for years pressed for violent measures
against the sectarians, who refused to yield to their arguments. Père
la Chaise was only one of many narrow-minded priests who impelled Louis
XIV. to crown a series of unjust measures against the Protestants with
this cruel and impolitic act. It was, however, the consummation of the
violent policy which the Jesuits had urged from the beginning, and one
may justly doubt whether Louis XIV. would, even in his last phase, have
adopted such a measure if the court-Jesuits had not pressed for it.
In the sobered court the Jesuits continued for some time to enjoy a
great influence, though it was increasingly checked by Mme de Maintenon
and the prelates she favoured. In 1688, Louis determined to make the
French Jesuits independent of the Roman authorities; but they contrived
to dissuade him. They continued to fight the Regalists and the
Jansenists with the poisoned weapons of calumny, abuse, and intrigue.
The most unedifying scenes were witnessed in the southern dioceses,
and Jansenist leaders, like Arnauld, were pursued even beyond the
frontiers. One illustration of this prolonged and misguided campaign
must suffice. In the year 1690 the theologians of Douai received a
number of letters bearing the signature of Arnauld; and, in what they
understood to be a private correspondence with the Jansenist leader,
they committed themselves to phrases which no other occasion would have
extracted from them. This correspondence was then published by the
Jesuits, and the professors of the Douai University were expelled and
replaced by members of the Society. The fraud, however, proved one more
detail in the long account which France would presently settle with the
Jesuits. Arnauld, who was living in the Netherlands, at once denounced
the letters as forgeries, and held up the Jesuits to public contempt as
the direct or indirect authors.
The nuns of Port Royal were the next victims of their relentless
campaign. A more friendly Pope, Clement XI., succeeded Innocent, and
in 1705 he was induced to issue a fresh bull (_Vineam Domini_) for the
suppression of Jansenism. It was pressed for the acceptance of the nuns
by the Archbishop of Paris; but it seemed to them still to consecrate
the familiar untruth, and they declared that they would subscribe to it
only with a qualifying clause. We have no documentary proof that the
Jesuits inspired the events which followed this reserve, but the blame
was openly cast upon them at the time, and the circumstances suggest
it. The King--still under the guidance of Père la Chaise--wrote to
the Vatican for permission to destroy the community, and in the early
spring of 1708 the nuns were definitely scattered. Père la Chaise died
at the beginning of the following year, and Père Letellier, a grim and
resolute supporter of the ambitions of the Society, succeeded to the
office. Under his influence the last insurgent movements of the brave
nuns were rigorously suppressed, and in January 1710 their ancient and
beloved abbey, the strictest centre of conventual virtue in France, was
rased to the ground.
Letellier, a sombre, indefatigable man, whose flashing eyes scorned the
comfort of the court--he was a peasant's son--and sought nothing in
this world but the ascendancy of the Society of Jesus, now found the
influence of the Jesuits threatened by that of Louis's wife and her
favourite prelate Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. In 1711 a letter was
intercepted which revealed the intrigues of Letellier and the Jesuits,
and Noailles angrily suspended all the members of the Society in his
diocese. The chief Jansenist writer was now Quesnel, who had just
published his _Moral Reflections_. The Jesuits detected much heresy
in the innocent work, and at once used their influence to secure a
condemnation. The Archbishop had, however, expressed admiration of it,
and the task of the Jesuits was more than usually difficult. At length,
in July 1711, a letter was intercepted from which it was clear that
Letellier was intriguing against the Archbishop, and there was much
indignation among the new party at court. Noailles not only suspended
the fathers, but condemned about a score of their writers and preachers
for lax principles. The intrigue continued, however, and in the autumn
of 1713, Clement XI. condemned Quesnel's book in the bull _Unigenitus_.
Saint Simon, who was in the French court at the time and on good
terms with the Jesuits, tells us that the bull was due to Letellier
and two other Jesuits "as fine and false as he," and that in the bull
"everything was brilliant except truth." Saint Simon was no theologian.
We may accept his word that the securing of the bull was "a dark
business"; and we know that, in its later stages, it was pressed at
Rome with irregular and improper haste. It is, however, true that many
of Quesnel's phrases were questionable, though they did little more
than repeat and enforce the words of the gospel: "Without me ye can do
nothing" (_John_ vi. 66). But the words of Scripture were condemned as
well as the words of Quesnel, and the Jesuits were able to congratulate
each other that "Jouvency was avenged."[27]
The bull _Unigenitus_ was, says a French bishop of the time, as badly
received at Paris as it would have been at Geneva, and the Jesuits
prepared for the last phase of their long struggle with the Puritans.
Saint Simon has left us a singular and unpleasant picture of Father
Letellier discussing with him their devices for enforcing acceptance
of the bull. The passion displayed by the royal confessor amazed the
duke, and he was not less disgusted at the ruses by which Letellier
proposed to crush his opponents. The Archbishop now condemned Quesnel,
but rejected the bull, and fourteen bishops followed his example. Once
more there was a violent controversy, and a letter of Letellier's was
intercepted from which Noailles learned that the royal confessor was
pressing Louis to send him to Rome, to be degraded by the Papacy. The
ecclesiastical world seethed with passion, while France slowly fell
from the proud position to which its great generals had raised it.
In the midst of this conflict, Louis XIV. died (1715); and for a time
it seemed as if the reign of the Jesuits was ended. The grim Letellier
was exiled from Paris, and Noailles replaced the Jesuits in the control
of ecclesiastical affairs. Their enemies gathered about the Regent
and pressed him to destroy the power of the Society. Philip of Orleans
was, however, not the kind of man to sacrifice liberal casuists to the
Puritans, and graceful preachers to stern parlementarians. A man of
brilliant parts and frivolous tendencies--he had been educated in vice
by the Abbé Dubois--he saw no more than a temporary political expedient
in checking the Jesuits for the satisfaction of his supporters. He soon
relapsed into ways of indolence and vice; and the Jesuits, gaining the
ear of his unscrupulous favourites, crept back to power. Dubois desired
a high ecclesiastical dignity, and the course of events very strongly
confirms the suspicion that the Jesuits put at his disposal their
influence in Rome. He induced Philip to compel Parlement to register
the bull _Unigenitus_; and he shortly afterwards became, in spite of
his notorious character, Archbishop of Cambrai and Cardinal of the
Church. Other unworthy clerics were similarly promoted, and the power
of Cardinal Noailles was checked. Dubois, in 1722, secured the office
of confessor to the young King for a Jesuit. Noailles, who had opposed
the appointment, refused canonical powers to the confessor, and a fresh
intrigue ran on until Noailles died and a pro-Jesuit Archbishop was
elected.
The Jesuits now returned to power, though not to their full power, at
the court, and the remnant of the Jansenists was pitilessly persecuted.
For nearly twenty years the opponents of the Jesuits attempted to
evade the enforcement of the papal decisions, and it is said that more
than a hundred priests were banished and a large number imprisoned.
One of the bishops was deposed and degraded for resistance, and a
fierce struggle shook the peaceful atmosphere of the innumerable
monasteries. Fifty monks of one province of the Cistercian order
were, in 1723, excommunicated and imprisoned by the authorities. The
papal condemnation included propositions which were obviously sound
and others which were no more than quotations of Scripture, so hastily
had the vindictive sentence been promulgated. The Jesuits triumphed,
however, and the reign of Louis XV. saw them fully reinstated at
Versailles.
France was no longer the world-power she had been in the golden age
of Louis XIV., and her selfish and dissipated monarch was blindly
leading her toward revolution. The Jesuits, as before, clung to the
prestige of the position of royal confessor, in spite of the flagrant
immorality of the King, but the forces which would presently dislodge
them were insensibly gathering power. The Puritans were silenced,
rather than annihilated, and the Parlement, imputing to the Society
much of the blame of its exile in 1753, revived its bitter hostility.
The first stroke fell on them in that year. Father Pérusseau, the
King's confessor, died, and a successful intrigue put in his place a
priest who was not a Jesuit. Both Pérusseau and his successor refused
absolution to a King whose libertinism was so cynically exhibited. In
view of the persistent attack on their laxity during a hundred years,
it would have been difficult for a Jesuit to do less. When, however,
the Jesuits lost the principal position, there seemed for a moment
some chance of their returning to favour in an indirect way. Mme de
Pompadour also desired absolution, in order to find a convenient place
in the Queen's suite; and, making a profession of penitence, she put
herself under the spiritual guidance of the Jesuit Father Sacy. For
a time he affected to believe in her sincerity; but the laughter of
Paris disconcerted him, and the stern refusal of the Pope to interfere
forced him to retire. From that time Mme de Pompadour and her courtiers
were opposed to the Jesuits.
A few years later, in 1757, the attempt of Damiens to assassinate
Louis led to another outcry against the Society. It is the general and
probable verdict that the Jesuits had no share in the outrage, though
the fact that Damiens had a Jesuit confessor, and had previously been
in the service of the Jesuits, still seems to many writers to justify
a grave suspicion. The evidence is inconclusive, but the outrage led
to a fresh discussion of the regicidal doctrines of the Society, and
the secrecy and sinuousness of its procedure. By that time, as we
shall see, the Marquis de Pombal was meditating the destruction of
the Jesuits in Portugal, and was in correspondence with their enemies
in France. These enemies were now reinforced by the brilliant and
powerful body of deistic and atheistic writers who were known as "the
philosophers," and a formidable mine was being prepared under the feet
of the arrogant and unsuspecting Jesuits.
The spark that fired this mine was a particularly disreputable action
on the part of the Society. In 1753 the Superior-General of the
Jesuits in the Antilles, Father Lavalette, was summoned to Paris to
answer the charge of having engaged in commerce on a large scale.
Lavalette was one of those men of commercial instinct whom the Society
did not scruple to use in augmenting its wealth as long as they were
successful. Although he had, in the name of the Society, vast estates
in the West Indies and thousands of negro slaves (bought by himself,
in disguise, in the public slave-market), and it was known that he
had agents in Paris for the sale of his sugar and coffee, he came to
Paris with a number of sworn testimonies from local French officers to
the effect that the Jesuits had not engaged in "foreign commerce,"
and was acquitted. He returned to conduct his flourishing business
on a larger scale than ever. He had spacious warehouses, and made a
profit of about 280,000 francs a year; and he now--though acquitted
on the understanding that he was not to engage in commerce--borrowed
large sums of money, and increased the profit by a shrewd, and
somewhat sharp, deal on the money-market. He overreached himself in
these practices, and, as other disasters simultaneously overtook his
business, some of his French creditors pressed for their money.
The French Jesuits were divided in opinion on the issue. The shrewder
fathers at Marseilles were disposed to borrow money and meet the
obligations, but the Parisian authorities believed that they were still
strong enough to win a conflict, and they insisted that Lavalette must
plead bankruptcy. It was the last and most fatal of the long series of
blunders they had perpetrated; to say nothing of the moral aspect of
their procedure. The law was set in motion; in March 1761 the lawyers
of the Paris Parlement were set the task of judging their traditional
enemy, and the long trial, amidst intense excitement, ended in the
Jesuits, as a collective body, being condemned to pay the whole of
Lavalette's debts--about five million francs. In order to determine
the responsibility, the lawyers had compelled the Jesuits to produce
their Constitutions and other documents which they were eager to keep
from the laity, and this exposure led to a broader and more determined
attack on the Society. Their action in refusing to meet the obligations
of the West Indian business, by which they had profited so much, was,
and always will be, regarded as morally dishonourable. It is pleaded
on their behalf that the Jesuits are a "simple-minded" and spiritual
body of men, with no inclination or aptitude for commerce, and that
Lavalette had concealed his operations--as they compelled him to
state--from his superiors. Such statements merely increase the cynicism
of their procedure. We have found them repeatedly engaging in commerce,
and we know that the Jesuit system made it absolutely impossible for
an inferior, even if he wished to do so, to conceal large commercial
operations from his superiors. The Jesuit documents made this plain to
the whole of Paris, and their adversaries advanced to the last attack.
The Parlement declared that the Jesuit Constitutions were unfit for a
body of French priests, and demanded that they should be altered; it
forbade the Society to form congregations among the laity, to teach the
young, or to receive novices. The Jesuits at court induced the King to
summon a meeting of the higher clergy and elicit a counter-declaration
in favour of the Society; but a fearful storm was now raging in
their ears. In their extreme apprehension they disavowed the most
characteristic Jesuit principles. They proclaimed that they accepted
the four articles of the Gallican Declaration of 1682, and that they
would be loyal to the Gallican Church even if their General commanded
them to do something contrary to its principles. They were fighting for
life; but men in France knew from their previous history in the country
that such declarations as this were merely diplomatic, and were set
aside the moment they returned to power.
The struggle continued through the winter, and in the spring (1762) the
King annulled the measures taken against them, but bade them modify
their Constitutions. They were in future to have a Vicar-General in
France, independent of the Roman General, and to be subject to the
bishops. Louis had secretly consulted the Roman authorities, and urged
them that this compromise was absolutely necessary to save the French
Province; and, although General Ricci bitterly replied: "Sint ut sunt,
aut non sint" ("Let them be as they are, or not be at all"), the
proposal was openly made in France. But Parlement refused to register
the King's decree, and went on to close eighty-four Jesuit colleges.
All through the spring and summer the fusillade of pamphlets and the
fiery debates of Parlements were sustained, the Jesuits straining every
resource to avert the blow, and on 6th August 1762 the Paris Parlement
decreed that the Society must cease to exist in France. The Jesuits
were expelled from their residences, and a small pension was allotted
them out of the confiscated property. Their entire property in France
was valued at nearly 60,000,000 francs, and they had, as it proved,
forfeited this rather than pay the just debts of Lavalette. At the same
time the Paris Parlement condemned one hundred and sixty-four works
written by Jesuits between 1600 and 1762.
Louis XV. signed the decree of suppression in December 1764, and
from school and palace, from humble residences among the poor and
the mansions of princes, the Jesuits sadly made their way toward the
frontiers of the land in which they had so long enjoyed and abused a
remarkable power. In vain was the Pope induced to protest against the
action of Louis XV. Some of the chief provincial Parlements condemned
the Pope's bull to be burned in the public square, and the Parlement
of Paris disdainfully rejected it. The vast majority of the nation
applauded the suppression; and, once their power was gone, the Jesuits
were overwhelmed by the flood of hatred that now rose freely against
them. It was useless to plead that a few sceptical lawyers or statesmen
had wrought their ruin. In a few localities they were still protected
by the Provincial authorities; but the country at large, by the mouths
of its officials and the great body of its clergy, rejoiced in their
fall. They sought at first to parry the blow with customary manoeuvres.
Large numbers of them laid aside their dress and name, and remained
to intrigue against their opponents; and in 1767 the Paris Parlement
decreed that they must all leave the country. Except for a few who
still remained as private teachers of the young, having ostensibly
quitted the Society, and a few who were sheltered in ultramontane
localities, the Jesuits were now ignominiously expelled from the land
of St. Louis. And few will read the long story of their work in France
and not acknowledge that it was a just conclusion of their intrigues,
shiftiness, selfishness, thirst for power, unscrupulous persecution of
rivals or opponents, and condescension to vice and crime.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 26: I have consulted Molinier's admirable edition of the
_Letters_ (1891). The editor gives the original Latin passages from the
Jesuit theologians, and it is after comparison of these with Pascal's
quotations or paraphrases that I reach the conclusion given in the
text. It is necessary to add that some of these doctrines were not
confined to the Jesuits. The point is that the Jesuits, as a body,
were characteristically lax. Probabilism, for instance (the pernicious
doctrine that a man may commit an action which is probably lawful,
though more probably sinful) was not invented by the Jesuits, but
they made it a basic element of their casuistry. They taught that a
man was free to follow one single lax theologian, if he were a "grave
authority," against the adverse opinion of all the others.]
[Footnote 27: I have in earlier chapters quoted Father Jouvency's
volume of the _Historia Societatis_. This volume, recalling and
praising the action of the French Jesuits in the time of Henry III.
and Henry IV., was published in 1713, and gave such offence that the
Parlement suppressed it.]