THE FOREIGN MISSIONS
Nowhere, perhaps, is the conflict of evidence so sharp in regard to the
Jesuits as when we turn to consider their activity outside of Europe.
On the one hand we have the _Edifying Letters_ which the missionaries
themselves sent to their Roman authorities for publication in Europe.
From these letters the apologetic writers construct a picture of the
most charming devotion and spiritual success; we are invited to see
thousands of Jesuits breaking every home-tie in order to carry the
gospel of Christ across seas infested with Dutch and English enemies,
to lands whence only one in a hundred will return, and where the tooth
of the serpent, the poison of the tropics, or the knife of the savage
awaits them; we are told how they advance unarmed into the forests,
and fierce tribes surrender to the feeble symbol of the crucifix, how
they charm the jealous monarchs of the east with their vast learning
and open to other missionaries doors which had been closed against them
for centuries, how from the rawest savage material they make ideal
republics such as Plato had despaired of making out of the enlightened
Athenians.
From the other side we learn that these _Edifying Letters_, which so
plainly announce their purpose, are "pious lies"; that they wilfully
exaggerate conversions and martyrdoms, and convey a wholly false
picture of Jesuit activity; that the Jesuits are engaged in a vast
commercial activity all over the globe, are utterly unscrupulous in
protecting their monopolies and in accumulating wealth, and make the
most scandalous concessions to paganism in order to obtain numbers
and influence. These things, moreover, are said by Catholic priests
and prelates, not by jealous merchants and free-thinking politicians.
Prelates of indisputable sanctity send to Europe the sternest and
gravest charges against the Jesuits, and declare that they have
been subjected by the Society to the most virulent and unprincipled
persecution. We have therefore to make our way here with extreme
prudence. Fortunately, many of the charges against the Jesuits receive
serious consideration at Rome, and from the evidence which is submitted
to, and generally endorsed by, the Roman tribunals, the historian is
at times enabled to reach a confident verdict. Let us begin our survey
with the action of the Jesuits in the far east.
At the beginning of the period we are considering Japan is closed
against the Christian missionaries, and all the blood that has been
shed on its soil proves sterile. We saw that the emperors had at
length determined to extirpate the new religion, and a final revolt
of the surviving Christians in 1638 led to the completing of the work
of destruction. One or two Jesuits afterwards penetrated the country,
in the disguise of merchants, but they were arrested or forced to
leave. The artful Japanese devised a test of faith which should have
defeated the zeal of the missionary; every European immigrant had to
spit or trample on the crucifix before landing. It is said by a serious
authority, one of the General Commandants of the French East India
Company (Martin, of Pondicherry), that the Jesuits found a casuistic
way out of this difficulty and insulted the crucifix; they were, they
said, merely regarding it as a piece of wood and metal. However that
may be, the last Jesuit--an apostate who repented--was executed there
in 1652, and the fathers of the "Japanese Province" were scattered over
the other eastern missions.
China had, in the meantime, become a most attractive field of labour.
It will be remembered that the Jesuit Ricci had at last found a way to
penetrate the Chinese defences; he had concealed his religion, dressed
as a Chinese scholar, and won great prestige as a mathematician and
astronomer. He had obtained great influence at the court, and other
Jesuits had followed his example. Their services to the court were
rewarded with permission to preach their doctrines in the provinces,
but this work was often checked by local persecution, and the Jesuits
directed their chief efforts to the court and the educated class.
The tradition started by Ricci was maintained and developed, and a
very strange group of missionaries gathered about the emperor. Chief
amongst them was Father Adam Schall, a very able mathematician and
intimate friend of the emperor. He could cast horoscopes, found cannon,
admire the works of Kung-fu-tse, and behave in every way as a Chinese
gentleman. He found a substantial agreement between educated Chinese
religion and Christianity--especially by keeping the crucifix out of
sight--and genially sanctioned the worship of "Heaven," the veneration
of Kung-fu-tse, and the cult of ancestors. The educated Chinaman is,
as we know to-day, an Agnostic, and he concluded that the Jesuit was
an almost equally liberal interpreter of popular superstitions. He
therefore welcomed these western gentlemen who could read the stars,
make fancy clocks, found cannon, direct armies, and paint pictures
better than the native scholar.
The Jesuits had previously helped the Chinese to repel the Tartars, but
a more formidable invasion occurred in 1636, and, to be quite safe,
they divided their forces. Schall joined the Tartars at Peking and read
in the stars that they would conquer; some of his colleagues remained
with the threatened dynasty, declared that the stars were in _their_
favour, and induced some members of the royal family to accept baptism.
The Tartars won, the opposing Jesuits were recalled, and Schall passed
into the confidence of the new emperor. He became a mandarin of the
first class and president of the tribunal of imperial mathematics. He
dressed in gorgeous silks, and his palanquin, borne by twelve servants,
was attended by a strong body-guard with the usual Chinese symbols;
also--if we believe the missionary Sala, as seems reasonable--his
beautiful palace contained two charming Chinese ladies and, in the
course of time, two children. But the emperor died ten years later, a
persecution was initiated, and Father Schall died lamentably in prison
in 1666. All the Jesuits--nineteen in number--were imprisoned, and
their 151 churches were closed or destroyed.
In 1669 the young Emperor Kang Hi, son of the Tartar conqueror,
attained his majority and released the Jesuits. Father Verbiest took
the place of Father Schall, and as his military services enabled the
emperor to quell an insurrection, he obtained permission to summon
fresh "mathematicians" from the west. France was now the great
expanding Power in Europe, and the new field, with its prospect of a
monopoly of commerce, was secured for Louis XIV. Six learned French
Jesuits arrived in 1688, and from that time until the end of the
century they grew in power and wealth. As artists, astrologers, or
mechanicians the priests made themselves indispensable at court, and
the lay-brothers brought western skill in medicine and surgery. One of
them received 200,000 francs' worth of gold for curing the emperor.
They also imported clocks, wine, and other western products, and,
from merely approving, they passed on to an active share in the great
Chinese industry of lending money at a profit, which was then sternly
condemned by their Church. The rival Catholic missionaries reported
that the three Jesuit houses at Peking made 80,000 francs a year by
usury; though the Jesuits protested that they did not charge more than
twenty-four per cent. Father Gerbillon was now head of the mathematical
tribunal and diplomatic agent on Russian affairs. Father Martini was
the military expert, and, as a mandarin of the first order, exhibited a
dragon on his fine silk robe.
There was one very serious thorn in the side of these prosperous
Jesuits. Dominican, Franciscan, and other missionaries had followed
them into the country, and were expressing the most cordial abhorrence
of their procedure. Their arrogance, their unpriestly occupations,
and their commerce and usury were bad enough, but they were not even
preaching the Gospel. They suppressed the doctrine of the Redemption,
did not anoint dying women (out of concession to Chinese delicacy),
and permitted their converts to join in the rites of the old Chinese
religion. The Dominicans and Franciscans disturbed their profitable
policy by thrusting the crucifix before the eyes of the amazed Chinese,
and there were fierce wrangles. The friars appealed to Rome, and in
1645 the Propaganda condemned the Jesuit concessions. The Jesuits
ignored the condemnation, on the ground that it was issued on false
information, and sent Mandarin Martini to Rome. Martini unblushingly
asserted that the rites they permitted were purely civil in character,
and he was able to return with an authorisation of their practices. But
the Dominicans sent a fresh envoy to Rome, and, in the meantime, the
terrible Jansenist Arnauld had learned the facts and was holding up the
Jesuits to the ridicule of Europe.
All the machinery of intrigue at Rome was now in motion, and in 1684
three bishops who belonged to the rival French Congregation of Foreign
Missions were sent out to make an investigation. When the Jesuits found
it impossible to persuade these commissioners that the early Chinese
had received a knowledge of the true God from the children of Noah,
that the cult of ancestors was equivalent to the services in honour
of the souls in purgatory, and so on, they used their court-influence
ruthlessly against them and the missionaries. In the course of time,
however, an adverse report reached Rome, and a serious inquiry opened.
The ten Jesuits at the Chinese court wrote to say that the emperor
himself endorsed their interpretation of the Chinese doctrines and
rites, but, although the new Pope, Clement XI., was favourable to
the Society, and Père la Chaise threw the influence of France into
the scale, the testimony of the other missionaries was too plain to
be ignored. An experienced missionary and able young prelate, Mgr.
(later Cardinal) de Tournon, was sent out in 1703 to examine the Jesuit
practices in India and China.
The adventurous voyage of Mgr. de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, would
fill an interesting volume. We shall see presently what the practices
of the Jesuits were in India, and will not be surprised that he
promptly condemned them. From that moment until he died heart-broken,
six years afterwards, in a Christian jail, he was thwarted and
tormented by the intrigues of the Jesuits. He reached Canton in the
spring of 1705, and was informed that the emperor refused to see
him. The position of the Jesuits at court was such that not even a
child could fail to recognise their direction in this decision, and
a great scandal was caused. It was twelve months before the legate
was permitted to pay the Pope's respects to the emperor, and, as he
politely insisted that the Jesuits were falsely representing the
Church, he was driven from the country and committed to the care of
the Portuguese authorities, who were controlled by the Jesuits. When
he reached Macao, this papal legate found that the Viceroy of India,
the Archbishop of Goa, and the Bishop of Macao forbade him to exercise
his powers in any country under the Portuguese flag. When he justly
replied by excommunicating the Bishop and Captain-General of Macao--and
the Pope recognised the integrity of his conduct by making him cardinal
in that year (1707)--the Portuguese authorities imprisoned him. He
died in prison three years afterwards, at the early age of forty-two.
The only priests in the east whom he had felt compelled to censure
were the Jesuits, and the letters of de Tournon himself and of the
priests of his suite (one of whom was imprisoned in a Jesuit house)
emphatically attribute all the outrages they suffered to the Jesuits,
who intercepted their correspondence in order to conceal the facts
from the Papacy. It is even stated by some of these priests that the
stubborn cardinal was eventually removed by poison.
Since we know that the Jesuits had paramount influence at Peking,
Macao, and Goa, and could easily have secured a proper treatment of the
Pope's representative, we are compelled to believe these witnesses.
Crétineau-Joly's statement, that "they did not dare to intervene
between the emperor and the legate," is little less than frivolous.
They directed the whole proceedings--as usual, through others. De
Tournon's assurance that, when a priest was tortured to give evidence
against him at Peking, there were two Jesuits listening behind a
curtain, is quite in harmony with their ways; about the same time in
Paraguay, when a bishop was violently assaulted by the armed pupils of
the Society, there were two Jesuits concealed in the trees directing
them. We shall see that every prelate, in any part of the world, who
sets out to expose the misdeeds of the Jesuits, experiences the same
outrages as did the unfortunate Cardinal de Tournon.
The Jesuits both of India and China ignored the commands of the Pope's
solemn representative, and clung to their lucrative missions. In 1706
they persuaded the emperor to forbid any missionary to attack Chinese
rites, and, as the fierce controversy continued and the banishment
of the more active prelates proved fruitless, they obtained an edict
expelling all missionaries who followed the instructions of the late
legate. The scandal was, however, now known throughout Christendom, and
on 25th September 1710 Clement XI. solemnly condemned their practices.
Again they quibbled, observing that some of their practices were not
specifically condemned, and a new papal bull (_Ex illa die_) was issued
on 19th March 1715, enacting that all missionaries must take oath to
abandon the forbidden practices. The emperor denounced the bull, and
imprisoned the prelate who communicated it to the Jesuits, and a third
representative was sent to China by the Vatican. In spite of certain
concessions (afterwards condemned by the Papacy), Mgr. Mezzabarba had
little more success than his predecessors, and the Jesuits continued to
maintain their compromises and tempt the Papacy with glowing promises
of success. There were, they said, nine members of the royal family
and hundreds of influential Chinamen ready to embrace Christianity as
they expounded it. Innocent XIII., now fully informed by Mezzabarba,
severely condemned them (1723), and we know from a private letter
of the Jesuit historian Cordara that he was preparing an "atrocious
decree" against the Society when he died in 1724.
As the immediate successors of Innocent XIII. were open to Jesuit
influence, they were enabled to maintain their position and practices
on the Asiatic missions until the middle of the eighteenth century.
In other words, these religious who were especially bound to obey the
Pope, defied the Papacy for nearly one hundred years (since the first
condemnation), and committed every outrage against its representatives.
In the meantime their great patron Kang Hi died (1722), and the
exasperated Chinese began to destroy the conflicting missions. There
were then, it is said, several hundred thousand Christians in China,
though the sequel will show that these were almost entirely of the
poorer classes, won by material services and ready to return to Taoism
at the slightest pressure. The new emperor proscribed Christianity, and
banished all the missionaries except the more learned of the Jesuits.
A letter written by one of these Jesuits gives an account of their
situation. As engineers, astronomers, and diplomatists they were still
sheltered and rewarded by the Chinese court--he adds that they remained
partly in the interest of French (and their own) commerce--but the
educated Chinese disdained their religion, and they were reduced to a
furtive ministration to the rapidly shrinking body of poor converts.
This situation lasted until 1743, when Benedict XIV. at last vindicated
the dignity of the Papacy and issued his famous bull _Ex quo
singulari_. A second and more drastic bull, sternly condemning their
contumacy, appeared in 1744, and they were now forced to submit without
reserve. From that time the Chinese mission melted away. As far as the
Jesuits were concerned, it had never had any religious solidity. A few
Jesuits who attempted to sustain the converts in the provinces were
put to death, and the court Jesuits were restricted to their hydraulic
engineering, surgery, philology, and astrology. They lingered for a
generation at Peking, the strangest figures in the whole clerical
universe, but the Chinese showed no sign of relenting, and they died,
one by one, in their singular employments. Their death closed the
stirring but sterile episode of the first attempt to Christianise China.
Before we turn to India, the next important centre of Christianity in
the far east, we must glance at their fortunes in subsidiary missions.
Their letters tell how they entered the Philippine Islands in 1665, and
had a miraculous success among the very lowly, but generally peaceful,
natives; one Jesuit is said to have baptized 50,000 of them (mostly
children, apparently) in four years, and founded eight churches and
three colleges. One priest to eight churches, and eight churches to
50,000 converts, give us the true measure of their success. They were
generally content to pour the baptismal water over the heads of all
who could be induced to accept it, by material benefits or a confused
belief in its magical properties, and send the inflated statistics to
Europe. In spite, however, of wars amongst the natives and occasional
persecution they built up a prosperous mission. Its story is tainted by
commercial activity and unprincipled behaviour towards the rest of the
clergy. We shall see later that they had vast estates in California and
Mexico, and from these they conducted a large and regular traffic, in
their own ships, with Manila. Archbishop Pardo, of Manila, condemned
this traffic, and ordered them to distribute the value of their
property among the poor. He suffered the customary fate of prelates who
interfered with the operations of the Society. Whether the governor of
the Philippines was bribed, or merely persuaded by the fathers, we need
not attempt to determine; but his officers seized the Archbishop during
the night and deported him to a neighbouring island. Thirty years
previously Pardo's predecessor, Archbishop Guerrero, had been treated
with the same outrages.
In Cochin China, Tong King, and Siam the story of the Jesuits is
much the same as in China, and need not be told in detail. A Father
de Rhodes, a missionary of the early and ardent type, penetrates
Cochin China in 1640, and in spite of resistance and persecution,
makes 40,000 "converts" and builds seventy "churches" in a few years.
Modern missionary experience in Asia enables us to test these absurd
claims. Father de Rhodes was caught and expelled, and the next
group of missionaries adopted the Chinese policy. They induced the
King to regard them as great mathematicians and skilful engineers,
and propagated a mild form of Christianity, as in China. This led
to a similar, but even more virulent, conflict with the non-Jesuit
missionaries. When the papal bull _Ex illa die_, condemning their
practices, arrived, they airily remarked that it came from Amsterdam,
not Rome, and ignored it. Very violent quarrels occurred with the
French non-Jesuit priests, whom they denounced as "Jansenists"; and
these priests accused them of the most sordid vice and outrage. We
shall see that the charge of loose living must be admitted; but whether
they poisoned hostile priests, and had refractory native women stripped
to the waist and flogged, are questions which must remain open. The
profane historian is naturally embarrassed when two groups of priests
flatly accuse each other of lying, and one group certainly _is_ lying.
At length the Vatican sent a bishop to investigate the situation in
Cochin China, and we are, perhaps, justified in following the report
of this impartial Papal Legate. He found great moral as well as
theological laxity among the Jesuits. One father, in high authority,
had had a concubine for twenty years, and took her with him when he
visited the sick; and there was much drunkenness and violence against
their opponents. The papal agents were bribed to support them, and
the pagan officials were easily induced to admire and sustain the
more genial ways of the Jesuits. The Legate officially forbade them
to practise usury, to sell worthless drugs at exorbitant prices to
the natives, to dress in gay purple and bind their flowing locks
with coloured ribands, and so on. His decree is a flash of light on
Jesuit practices among natives. One curious incident in his reports
is worth noting. A Franciscan monk, a feeble old man of sixty, had,
to please the Jesuits, established a church in face of that of the
French missionaries. The Legate ordered him to remove, and the monk
presently came to say that he was unable to remove as the Captain of
the Guardians of the Royal Dogs (a young Jesuit "mathematician") had
appointed him a Guardian and sent him several dogs, because the air of
his district was good for dogs. In a word, the Jesuits used their full
influence at court to thwart and persecute the Legate, and he died in
distress shortly afterwards.
Siam had received two Jesuits in 1630. They came as envoys of the
governor of the Philippines, and so charmed the King that they were
invited to stay. When Spanish vessels followed them, the Siamese were
indignant; but the quarrel was adjusted, and in 1685 six learned
"mathematicians" of the great King Louis XIV. came, with gorgeous
parade and an imposing military escort, to the Siamese court. The
Jesuits were now everywhere diplomatic agents for the expansion of
French commerce, if not French territory, and the work in Siam was
facilitated by a French adventurer, named Phaulcon, who had won the
King's confidence. The King asked for more "mathematicians," and
fourteen Jesuits eagerly responded. But with them (in 1687) came a
French squadron and several regiments, who proceeded to occupy and
fortify positions in Bangkok and Merguy. The King soon detected that
the learned mathematicians and the minister Phaulcon and the French
regiments had a close and secret understanding, and this remarkable
attempt to spread the gospel came to a premature close. Phaulcon lost
his head, and the mathematicians were banished.
We have seen in a previous chapter how the Jesuits had applied their
elastic principles to the conversion of India, the original and central
field of the Asiatic missions. After sending most imposing figures
of baptisms to Europe during a century, they announced, we saw, that
the work had been profoundly unsatisfactory, and some new plan of
reaching the educated Hindus must be adopted. So Father de Nobili had
dressed as a Hindu priest of the most sacred caste, had adopted all the
emblems and practices of the caste, and had behaved throughout life in
such a way that the other members of the Saniassi sect were unable to
discover that he was a Christian. Father Britto, Father Beschi, and
other Jesuits succeeded him in this fantastic rôle. Rome was solemnly
assured, as it was from China, that the rites and emblems of the
Saniassi (which are saturated with Hindu mythology) were "purely civil"
in their nature; local prelates (who were frequently ex-Jesuits) and
Vatican officials were bribed or persuaded to sanction this fiction;
and for more than a century the Jesuits permitted a number of members
of the Society to don the sacred clothes and practise the rites of the
Saniassi.
The melodramatic temper which the Jesuit spirit fostered in members of
the Society counted for a good deal in this singular development of
their missionary enterprise. Regarded from the point of view of the
purpose which they held to justify it, one must pronounce it a failure.
Very few high-caste Hindus were converted, and even these few only
accepted a quite emasculated version of Christianity, as a rule. Some
of the Jesuit-Saniassi did succeed in obtaining considerable prestige.
They rode about on fine horses, and were borne in palanquins while
natives cooled them with peacock-feather fans, and greatly impressed
the ignorant natives. One of them, Beschi, so captivated a local prince
that he became his first minister, and rode about with an escort of
thirty horsemen and a native band. These successes among the educated
Hindus were, however, only won by a concealment of the distinctive
elements of the Christian faith and an insinuation that the enlightened
priests at Rome itself (as distinct from the common missionaries) held
the same liberal view of the creed.
It was still mainly among the poorer classes and the pariahs, whose
poverty made them more susceptible to missionary influence, that
the converts were found. We may regard with suspicion the enormous
figures of conversions effected by them which individual Jesuits sent
to Europe,--one of the Apostolic Vicars for India bluntly describes
them as "lies,"--but hundreds of thousands of the natives were in
some measure gathered into the Christian fold. We are sometimes asked
to admire the levelling of caste-barriers which this inclusion in
a common fold would entail, but the Jesuits fully respected the
caste-barriers. Some of their number are entitled to high praise for
becoming pariahs among the pariahs,--dressing in their ragged clothes
and eating their vile food,--but the high-caste Jesuit would not glance
even at his pariah-colleague if he met him on the road. He would not
enter a pariah's hut; the dying pariah had to be carried out under
a tree to receive his ministration, and, if he were too ill to be
removed, he died without the sacraments. The pariahs were not allowed
in the church; they were herded in an enclosure by the side of it to
hear the Mass, and the sacraments were often administered to them
through a window.
These were not the only grievances which the other missionaries, who
could not report their tens of thousands of conversions, had against
the Jesuits. It was equally proved that they laid little stress on the
doctrine of redemption, as in China, and made very material concessions
to paganism. They omitted parts of the ceremony of baptism which the
Hindus disliked (the use of saliva and the breathing on the convert):
they did not give saint-names to the converts, and advised them not to
call themselves Christians, but (in a familiar Hindu phrase) "followers
of the true God": they married mere children, long before the time of
puberty, and they allowed the married girl to wear the _taly_ according
to the pagan custom:[29] they blessed and distributed the ashes of
cow-dung which the natives esteemed: they permitted their converts to
wear, and sometimes wore themselves, emblems of Vishnu. It seems that
in some places they placed no cross over the altar.
These extraordinary concessions--they are commonly known as
"the Malabar rites," as the Jesuits were chiefly established in
Malabar--were fiercely assailed by the other missionaries and reported
to Rome. In 1703, as we saw, Mgr. de Tournon was sent to inquire
into the quarrel, and he condemned the more flagrant of the Jesuit
practices. When the Legate passed on to China, the Jesuits and the
local prelates (either Jesuits or friends of the Jesuits) entirely
ignored his commands, and the feud continued. It must be borne in
mind that the Jesuits had now supreme influence at the Portuguese
as well as the French court, and officials naturally bowed to their
wealth and power. For a considerable time they had received from the
Kings of Portugal immense subsidies for their missionary work, and
their commerce and intentness on gifts and legacies had added to this
wealth. The manager of the French East India Company at Pondicherry
tells us that the Jesuits in India surpassed the English and Portuguese
merchants, and only fell short of the Dutch, in trading activity. In
his time there was a debt of 450,000 _livres_ on the books of his
company in the name of a Jesuit (Father Tachard). Their wealth was very
great, and they did not scruple to use it in the maintenance of their
position as well as in attracting converts.
But the Malabar rites, and Chinese rites, and Jesuit-Brahmans were
now, as we saw, a scourge in the hands of the Society's critics in
Europe, and the Papacy was forced to suppress them. As we have so often
realised, the Jesuit repute for broad sagacity and statesmanship,
as distinct from astuteness and capacity for intrigue, is without
foundation. The Roman Jesuit authorities could have destroyed the
system in a year, yet they sustained it for a hundred years, and,
with blind stubbornness, allowed an indelible stain to be fixed on
the Society, and were responsible for the sudden collapse of their
missions. When Benedict XIV. fearlessly and peremptorily condemned
them, there was a formidable reaction among their converts, and the
hundreds of congregations rapidly disappeared. Their apologist would
have us believe that they submitted in 1741 (the year before Benedict's
first bull), but that "distance and the difficulty of communication
retarded the arrival of their letters at Rome." Ignoring the foolish
remark about the difficulty of communication, we may observe that the
year 1741 was seventeen years after their official condemnation by the
Pope's representative; that Clement XII. had condemned them in 1734 and
1739, and they had ignored his decrees; and that, so far from having
submitted in 1741, Benedict XIV. found them contumacious to his bull
of 1742, and had to issue another in 1744. They submitted in 1745, and
the structure they had raised by two hundred years of devotion and
dissimulation rapidly decayed.
The missions in other parts of Asia had little success. Ceylon was
invaded by two fathers in 1616, but when these were executed in 1627
and 1628 the mission seems to have been abandoned. It is interesting to
find that they even entered the almost impregnable capital of Thibet.
Two of their more devoted and austere missionaries crossed the vale
of Cachmire and the bleak mountains on foot, and reached Lhasa. The
expedition had no result, and was not repeated. In nearer Asia also
the work was only moderately successful. Armed with diplomatic papers
from the French court, instead of the crucifix of which they sometimes
boast as their only weapon, they entered the dominion of the Turk, and
wrangled with Greeks, Nestorians, Armenians, and other Christians over
the infallibility of the Pope. They founded residences at Thessalonica,
Smyrna, Trebezon, Damascus, etc., and pushed on to the banks of the
Euphrates. In 1682, two Jesuits, magnificently equipped and loaded with
presents, approached the Shah of Persia as envoys of Louis XIV., and
received permission to preach the Christian gospel. Within a quarter of
a century they had, they said, baptized 200,000 of the natives. Then
the Persian ruler turned a hostile eye on the growing body, and it
melted more rapidly than it had grown. The age of Louis XIV. was over,
the French dream of expansion laid aside, and the flow of French money
interrupted.
A fresh attempt was made in 1677 to induce the Copts of Egypt to
recognise the authority of the Pope. The now familiar device was
adopted of impressing the monarch with a show of learning and art,
and trusting to sow the Christian seed insidiously in his dominions.
In twenty years of assiduous labour the scholar-missionaries added
much to the slender geographical and archæological lore of Europe, but
their secret religious mission failed. Abyssinia also still resisted
their efforts. They converted an Emperor, and he was slain in civil war
for endeavouring to force the new creed on his people; they secured
the favour of his successor, and a Jesuit at last obtained the real
dignity of Patriarch of Abyssinia. A threat of civil war moved the
Emperor to restrict them, and, when they were found to be inspiring
their converts with seditious sentiments, they were once more expelled
and--save for an occasional invasion in disguise--their work was wholly
destroyed. It may be added that some of the more heroic of the Jesuits
penetrated the Congo, and endeavoured to reach the blacks at Tetuan,
Angola, and the Guinea coast. Others followed the negro to America;
and the noble and self-sacrificing labours of a Father Peter Claver for
forty years (1615-1654) must be put in the scale against their general
demoralisation.
We turn now to the famous missions of South America, and must endeavour
to attain an impartial estimate of their work, especially among the
natives of Paraguay. I have previously described the model villages, or
"reductions," which form the central interest of the Jesuit missions
in America. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the fathers
decided that they would not co-operate with the Spaniards of the South
American towns. For this there was an admirable motive, and we saw that
the spirit which animated the early missionaries in that region was
excellent. They went out in couples or singly, unarmed, into the vast
forests and along the great rivers in search of converts. The natives
at first fled before them. A Spaniard was, to them, a man with superior
weapons who sought only to enslave the natives and make wealth by
their toil. It was at first for the purpose of removing this natural
prejudice that the Jesuits dissevered themselves from the colonists
and obtained from the King a declaration that the natives who had
been baptized should never be enslaved. Later they obtained for them
exemption from military or other service, and from any kind of local
taxation. These things at once angered the great body of the Spanish
colonists, and attracted the less savage natives to the missions. They
therefore next secured permission to colonise independently of the
laity, and, in 1610, founded the first reduction. They sent trained
natives back into the forests, with axes, knives, mirrors, and other
enticing presents, and the fathers themselves boldly penetrated
time after time, so that by 1630 they had about 100,000 natives in
their reductions. For some years their colonies were then devastated
by a hostile tribe; but the Jesuits obtained from the Spanish King
permission to arm their pupils, formed an army of several thousand
drilled and well-equipped troops, and more than recovered their ground.
In the course of time they came to have 300,000 natives in their
reductions.
No payment was made to the workers in these reductions. After labouring
to show that they were not very productive, the apologist for the
Jesuits is driven to plead that the fathers "did not think it proper
to give ideas of cupidity to Christians": an admirable sentiment, if
the Society had not itself appropriated the superfluous wealth of the
communities. Nor is it more convincing to be reminded of the natural
indolence of the natives. They were not indolent in the reductions.
Public and harsh penances were inflicted for laziness, and the hours of
work, sleep, play, and prayer were rigorously fixed. Rough huts, light
clothing, and sufficient cheap food were distributed weekly; festivals
were frequent, and were enlivened by the flute, the song, or the dance;
morality was so strictly controlled that the natives were watched even
during the night. It does not seem just to compare them with slaves, or
suggest that, as long as they behaved well, they were hardly treated.
That they were not nearly so civilised as the roseate letters of the
Jesuits describe will appear presently, but it was much that 300,000
natives were induced to lead regular and disciplined lives. It is
absurd to speak of "ideal republics" when the workers dwelt in wretched
huts, had no corporate property or power, worked all day for masters
who rendered no account to them or any other, and could, when they
were on the march, at once revert to savagery. But they were in a far
superior position to that of the enslaved, brutalised, wine-sodden
natives who fell into the hands of the lay colonists.
The antagonism to the reductions was in principle economic. The Spanish
traders felt that they were prevented from exploiting the natives,
a grievance with which we may or may not sympathise, and bitterly
reproached the Jesuits with indulging in commerce. When "Edifying
Letters" were published which described the Jesuits marching out once
more from their pleasant reductions, facing the untamed savages or the
beasts and serpents of new regions with the crucifix in their hands,
people scoffingly observed that new reductions would increase the
income of the Society. The Jesuits retorted that contact with Spaniards
would mean disease and vice among their pupils, and they would rather
manage the villages--they did not, of course, admit that they indulged
in commerce--than admit European laymen. That they made a large profit
out of 300,000 meagrely rewarded workers it is impossible to doubt, but
how are we to judge the sincerity of their statement that they retained
control solely from religious and moral motives?
Possibly the facts of their relations with the bishops of Paraguay
will enable us to decide, if their action on other foreign missions be
not regarded as sufficient. These facts are, of course, challenged by
Jesuit writers, but the authority is too serious for us to set them
aside on that account. Dom Bernardine de Cardenas, a Franciscan monk
who became Bishop of Paraguay, sent Friar Villalon to the Spanish court
and the Vatican to complain of the Jesuits. I state the facts as they
are given in Villalon's memorial to Philip of Spain; and those who
think that they are discredited because the Jesuits denied the more
flagrant charges and the Spanish court, ruled by Jesuits, rejected
them, are free to impute the mendacity to the bishop rather than to the
Jesuits.
The two predecessors of Cardenas had had much trouble with the
Jesuits, but for a year or two after his consecration he was on very
friendly terms with them. They did not from the first affect to regard
his consecration as invalid, as their apologist says; that idea
(afterwards refuted by the Papacy) occurred to them in the course of
the quarrel. In 1644, Cardenas announced that he was about to visit the
reductions, which formed part of his diocese, and the Jesuits offered
him 20,000 crowns to omit that part of his visitation. He refused,
and they discovered a scruple about the validity of his consecration.
As Cardenas insisted, they spread the report in the reductions that
Spanish priests were coming who would interfere with the women, raised
a troop of eight hundred Indians, and advanced toward the episcopal
town of Assumption. The governor, a brutal man, had previously
quarrelled with the bishop, and one would imagine that it hardly needed
a bribe of 30,000 crowns to secure his co-operation. It is at least
quite certain that, as he travelled, the bishop was seized by the
governor at the head of the Jesuit soldiers, brutally treated, and sent
into exile 200 miles away.
Cardenas made his way with great difficulty to La Plata, placed his
case before the higher tribunal of the Royal Audience, and was awarded
his see. Near the city he was, however, again arrested by the Jesuit
troops, and sent back to his wretched exile. In 1647 there was a
change of governor, and he returned, to the great joy of the town.
The Jesuits, however, intrigued with his clergy, allowed two of his
canons to set up a rival chapter in their residence, and turned the
new governor against him. He was besieged in his cathedral for fourteen
days; but a compromise was accepted, and, when the governor died two
years afterwards, the citizens nominated Cardenas himself governor, in
accordance with their legal right. The Jesuits then set up a rival for
the governorship, secured, by intrigue and bribery, his recognition by
the authorities at La Plata, and put 4000 of their armed Indians, under
Jesuit leaders, at his disposal. Leaving behind them a trail of outrage
which does not harmonise with the Jesuit description of their pupils,
these troops flung themselves upon the armed and angry citizens. In
the battle that followed 385 Indians and a Jesuit were slain, but the
citizens were overpowered.
Meantime the Jesuits made use of an extraordinary privilege which they
professed to have received from Pius V. and Gregory XIII. They said
that, in case of a dispute between themselves and the bishop, they had
the right to nominate a judge (or _conservator_), chosen by themselves,
to arbitrate. We have seen them use this privilege in the remote
Philippines, and shall meet it again. It was a gross and ludicrous
claim, as the Jesuits always took care to choose a judge who would
declare in their favour; indeed, Pope Innocent X. afterwards declared
(as we shall see) that they had no such right. They chose a friend,
a corrupt member of one of the laxer religious congregations, and he
excommunicated the bishop. The Jesuit troops then seized the prelate
and transported him some 200 leagues from the city. From his exile
he sent Father Villanon to Spain, and, though the friar was waylaid
and rifled by the Jesuit troops, he succeeded in reaching Madrid and
informing the King. It happened that the King had only a few years
before received authentic information of a similar outrage in Mexico,
and had sent a stern reprimand to the Jesuits, in spite of the group
of court-fathers. There seemed, however, no prospect of peace, and
Cardenas was transferred to another diocese.
From 1650 to 1750 the province of Paraguay enjoyed its prosperity with
little interruption. The troops, which were trained and equipped at the
various reductions, amounted in time to an army of 15,000 finely armed
men, with the fighting instincts of the savage and the best weapons
that Europe could supply, so that neither the unconverted tribes nor
the Spaniards could assail them. Heroic efforts were made, though with
very moderate success, to extend the area of the missions. The Society
never lacked men of the most intrepid and self-sacrificing character,
and numbers of them left their bones to bleach in the infested forests
or on the scorching plains. One must be lamentably prejudiced to refuse
to see the heroism of these brave apostles; but it would be an equal
evidence of prejudice to fail to recognise that, whether they realised
it or no, they were the apostles or pioneers of the vast and profitable
industrial system in which the Jesuits were improperly engaged. Time
after time royal or ecclesiastical inquisitors were sent--no voluntary
and serious inquisitor was ever admitted--to examine the reductions
and draw up a flattering report for the Spanish or the Roman court. I
have said that the reductions were admirable in comparison with the
miserable condition of the other natives who fell into the hands of
the Spaniards and Portuguese; but that the Jesuits were engaged in
commerce, that they exploited their natives for the benefit of the
Society, and that they were prepared to adopt the most unprincipled
measures to protect their monopoly, is an historical platitude.
In 1750, Ferdinand VI., as a reward for the military services which
their troops (always led by Jesuits) rendered so frequently to
his officers, exempted them from the little taxation--a fee to the
crown--to which they were subject, and an era of greater prosperity
than ever seemed to open. In that very year, however, as we saw, Spain
and Portugal came to an agreement which was fateful for the Society.
Portugal ceded Sacramento, a place of great strategical importance, to
Spain in exchange for a part of Paraguay which contained seven of the
reductions. The court-Jesuits tried in vain to defeat this arrangement,
and troops were sent to take over the territory ceded to Portugal.
They were confronted by a force of 15,000 troops, gathered from the
whole of the Jesuit reductions, and a bloody battle ensued. It was, in
fact, only after a prolonged struggle, and by bringing superior troops,
that the joint Spanish and Portuguese army conquered the insurrection.
From sheer cupidity the Jesuits had dealt a fatal blow at their own
prosperity.
Their apologist would have us believe that the fathers used all the
influence they possessed to restrain the natives and secure their
submission. On the face of it, such an assertion is a piece of mere
effrontery. The natives, especially the native troops, never moved
without Jesuit directions, and these troops were evidently drafted
by the controllers of the province from all the various reductions.
The correspondence of the Spanish and Portuguese commanders fully
inculpates the Jesuits; and, as we saw, the Portuguese authorities
intercepted letters in which Father Rabago directed the local Jesuits
to organise a resistance. Even the pious Spanish King was convinced
that they were responsible for the insurrection. They could combat King
or Pope when the fortune or power of the Society was threatened. And
for their reluctance to sacrifice seven out of their fifty reductions
their fate was sealed. Within ten years the order came from Spain
to remove all the Jesuits from their homes and ship them to Europe.
The government acted on this occasion with craft and secrecy, and
left no room for insurrection; the dejected missionaries arrived at
the mother-country only to learn that the Society was ignominiously
proscribed throughout the King's dominions, and that half of Catholic
Europe was clamouring for their annihilation.[30]
The Portuguese fathers in Brazil were less enterprising than their
Spanish colleagues. In the course of the sixteenth century they
spread along the banks of the Amazon and converted a large number of
the natives. When the Dutch took the town of Maragnon in 1641, and
threatened their work, the Jesuits were very active in inspiring the
successful rising against them, and they were rewarded by the King
with privileges for their protégées. In 1653, Father Vieira, whom
we have met in the chapter on Portugal, came out to Brazil, and the
work proceeded more rapidly. The apologetic writers ask us to admire
the noble conduct of this gifted father in abandoning the comfort of
the court for the steaming forests and rough natives of Brazil; but
we have seen that Father Vieira's countrymen had more to do with his
departure than any lofty sentiment he may have possessed. He applied
his impetuous temper and great ability to the work of the mission,
and it rapidly advanced in organisation and profitableness, until the
American-Portuguese in turn sent Vieira upon another stage of his
stormy career. The reductions or colonies of Brazil were not organised
and controlled as firmly as those of Paraguay. The luxuriance of the
soil dispensed the natives from assiduous labour, but the colonies
were not without profit, and, when the Jesuits obtained from the King
a declaration that all the natives in his American dominion must pass
under their control, the planters and merchants entered into bitter
hostility. Twice they expelled the Jesuits, and twice the priest-ridden
court secured their return. At last Pombal came to power in Portugal,
and, as we saw, the Jesuits were withdrawn and cast upon the shores of
the Papal States.
Instead of minutely examining the slender colonies which had meantime
been founded in Chile, Peru, and other parts of South America, we
will pass at once to the north and conclude with a short account of
the missions in Mexico, California, and Canada. Here the famous case
of Bishop Palafox at once claims our attention, and I feel justified
in relying implicitly on the two letters in which this saintly and
learned prelate stated his grievances to Pope Innocent X. When these
letters were published, ten years after they were written, the Jesuits
exclaimed that they were forged, and Crétineau-Joly very dishonestly
insinuates that there is ground to suspect this. Not only are these
letters expressly mentioned in a decree of the Congregation of Rites
(16th December 1660), and not only did Pope Innocent issue three briefs
against the Jesuits in virtue of them, but Arnauld showed, at the time
of the original controversy, that Palafox himself, foreseeing the
manoeuvres of the Jesuits, had left with the general of the Carmelite
monks a written attestation of his authorship of the second (and
more deadly) letter. We have, further, a reference to this letter,
prohibiting its circulation for peace' sake, in a decree of the
Spanish Inquisition of 5th February 1661. To doubt the genuineness of
the letters is frivolous, and the character of the writer is above
dispute. His virtues won for him the official title of "Venerable" from
the Vatican, and might have won a higher title but for the intrigues of
the Jesuits.
Palafox was Bishop of Angelopolis, and in that capacity he attempted
to make the Jesuits pay his see the just tithes on the property they
inherited. They replied with abuse, and he then inquired by what
authority they preached and heard confessions in his diocese. They
arrogantly boasted of their special privileges, and refused to show the
documents, as they had a further privilege excusing them from doing
so; a claim which the Pope afterwards declared to be false. Palafox
informed the faithful that they had no powers for the ministry. At this
the Jesuits produced another of their remarkable privileges--the power
to appoint judges of the difference--and paid 4000 crowns each to two
Dominican monks of Mexico city to come and arbitrate. The viceroy also
was bribed, and the two monks were led into Angelopolis with a great
parade of trumpeters and guards. A notice was soon posted at the street
corners to the effect that the Bishop of Angelopolis was deposed and
excommunicated for his improper conduct, and, in June 1647, Palafox
fled to the hills from the growing violence. On 31st July, the feast of
St. Ignatius, a carnival-procession, starting from the Jesuit house,
bore round the town the most ribald, and even obscene, caricatures of
the bishop's office. Numbers of his supporters were banished, and bands
of soldiers and Jesuit spies wandered about the hills in search of the
wretched hut where Palafox was hidden.
All these details are submitted to the Pope in the bishop's letters,
and, in order to make them intelligible, a remarkable account is
given of the worldly prosperity of the fathers. They hold, it seems,
the greater part of the wealth of Mexico. Two of their colleges own
300,000 sheep,[31] besides cattle and other property. They own six
large sugar-refineries, worth from half a million to a million crowns
each, and making an annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all
the other monks and clergy of Mexico together own only three small
refineries. They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops
and butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually intrigue
for legacies--a woman has recently left them 70,000 crowns--and they
refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to add to this
authoritative description that the Jesuit congregations at Rome were
still periodically forbidding the fathers to indulge in commerce, and
Jesuit writers still gravely maintain that the Society never engaged
in commerce. It should also be added that the missionaries were still
heavily subsidised by the King of Spain, that there were (the bishop
says) only five or six Jesuits to each of their establishments, and
that they conducted only ten colleges.
From his refuge Palafox had sent messengers both to Rome and Madrid,
and replies severely condemning the Jesuits were at once sent both
by the Pope and the King. Pope Innocent appointed a commission
of cardinals and bishops to examine the appeal of Palafox and
counter-appeal of the Roman Jesuits. They declared in favour of
the bishop on almost every point, and the Pope issued his first
brief in that sense (14th May 1648). On 25th June the King severely
condemned them for appointing a judge and defying the bishop. The
Jesuits affected to regard the papal brief as not binding because
it had not been endorsed by the Royal Council; a strange departure
from ultramontane principles. In a word, the King had to repeat his
warning, and the Pope had twice to repeat his orders, before they
abandoned their intrigues in Mexico, Madrid, and Rome. Palafox was,
however, invited to Spain--the King's letters treat him always with the
greatest respect--and it was concluded that, in the interest of peace,
he should remain in the motherland. Even in the grave the Jesuits
persecuted the saintly bishop, bitterly opposing his canonisation, but
his letters remain a terrible indictment of their behaviour on the
missions.
There were other Jesuit estates and villages in California (or the
eastern part of North America), from which a profitable trade was
conducted with Manila by means of a fine frigate belonging to the
Society. In the Antilles they boasted an official monopoly of the
"spiritual administration" of the French islands. It is true that
this gave them a new opportunity for commerce, and that they did
much political service for the French government in return for
the privilege; but it is proper to add that many of the fathers
distinguished themselves by self-sacrificing labour among the negro
slaves. Their mission in Maryland was destroyed by the growth of
Protestantism, and it remains only to say a word about their fortunes
in Canada.
The nomadic habits of the Indians and the ever-recurring warfare
prevented them from achieving a great success in Canada. In the
softer districts by the St. Lawrence and the lakes they succeeded in
establishing a few of their agricultural colonies, but their work
was arduous, dangerous, and not generally profitable, and even the
prestige of the French government, for which they acted as political
agents, did not enable them to convert a very large proportion of the
Indians. Moreover, much as we may admire the devotion and endurance
many of them displayed in seeking to win the fierce and roving
tribes, commercial eagerness taints their work indelibly. When they
first received permission to enter Canada from Henry IV., they were
long detained in France because they refused to come to an agreement
about trade with the lay colonists, and their first missionaries were
captured by the English in an endeavour to cross the seas without
this understanding. Eighty years later, when peace was made with the
formidable Iroquois, who had so often blighted their work, the Indian
spokesman insisted that they would not admit the Jesuits, as the
fathers sought only their beavers and their women. On the other hand,
no one questions the great political service they rendered to their
government in disposing the Indians to receive French authority and
embittering them against the English. Their story, until England took
Canada in 1759, and France itself disowned them a few years later, was
one of individual devotion overshadowed by a corporate occupation with
commerce and politics.
We have now surveyed the vast field of Jesuit missionary activity in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and can appreciate the effect
when, in a few years time, the voice of the Pope will summon them to
lay aside for ever their black robes and their proud name. It would be
hypocritical to say that we cannot sum up in few words the impressions
gathered from this survey. Let us recognise in the first place that
thousands of the fathers displayed heroic zeal in discharging the work
which the Society laid on them. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, and
Italians, often of noble birth and brilliant parts, faced the perils
of a mediæval voyage, wandered afoot over leagues of desolate mountain
or deadly forest, and laid down their lives courageously under the
plague or the sword. Yet there is another aspect which we perceive
just as clearly: another quality which we find in the silken courts of
China or Siam or Persia, the blaze of Indian or Brazilian villages,
on the plains of Paraguay or Mexico, and amid the snows of Canada. It
is everywhere, it is identical, and it is palpable. These men have
fallen from their ideals. In virtue of a vast and hypocritical system
of commerce they amass wealth and power, defend it with mean intrigue
and violent assault, blunt their moral sense in pursuit of more, relax
into sensuality and are lifted to arrogance. It is time that they have
a severe lesson.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 29: This _taly_ is described by the other missionaries as
a gross image representing a Hindu divinity equivalent to the Latin
Priapus. It was certainly mythological, and was suspended on a cord of
very clear mythological import. The Jesuits first declared that it was
a "civil custom," and then said that a "direction of intention" on the
part of the convert made it harmless. When Rome brought pressure to
bear on them, they invented a _taly_ with the cross on one side and the
emblem of Pillear on the other.]
[Footnote 30: It is difficult to estimate the value of the Paraguay
reductions. Robertson, in his _Letters on Paraguay_, calculates that
the average Indian earned at least a hundred dollars yearly, and that
his food, hut, and clothing did not cost fifty. He estimates the total
value of a hundred thousand such workers and the property as about
£5,641,200.]
[Footnote 31: In the English translation of Hoensbroech's _Fourteen
Years a Jesuit_ the figure is wrongly given as 30,000.]