IN THE GERMANIC LANDS
When we come to record the culmination of the earlier history of the
Jesuits in a solemn and reasoned condemnation of the Society by the
Papacy, we shall note a singular circumstance of the reception of the
news in Europe. The Catholic monarchs of France, Spain, Portugal, and
Naples applaud the act, and there is little serious demur to it among
the millions of southern Catholics under their control. The Catholic
Emperor assents very willingly to the destruction of the Society,
and the Jesuits and their friends cannot succeed in inspiring any
wide revolt in Austria and the neighbouring principalities. But the
Protestant King of Prussia and the Greek Catholic Empress of Russia
open the doors of their dominions to the fugitives from Roman lands,
and protest that the Jesuits have been ill-used. For two hundred years
the Jesuits have strained every nerve, and every canon of controversial
decency, in an attack on heresy and schism, yet they secretly ask
Frederick of Prussia to declare himself the "protector of the Society,"
and they shelter from Catholic hostility in the court of Catherine of
Russia!
On this singular circumstance much explanatory light will be thrown at
the proper moment, but I anticipate the fact itself because it suggests
a general point of view. Clearly, the behaviour of the Jesuits differed
in Catholic and in Protestant countries, and we have seen from the
start that Jesuit conduct in German Protestant lands often contrasted
very favourably with Jesuit conduct in Catholic countries. They do
indeed betray their unedifying jealousy of all other workers in the
papal army, they seek opportunities for intrigue and for acquiring
wealth, but the presence of large bodies of Protestant observers has
its effect on their moral and cultural standard. They adapt themselves
to the environment as we have found them do in China or India. However,
the group of countries which we are compelled to associate in this
chapter are very varied in creed, and we will glance at the outstanding
Jesuit experiences in each down to the time of the suppression of the
Society.
Commencing with Scandinavia, we have first to consider the romantic
episode of the conversion of Queen Christina. The daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus succeeded to the throne in her sixth year, in 1632, and was
carefully trained for the task of ruling. Her native disposition, no
less than the masculine work which lay before her, made her resent
every tendency toward the softness of her sex, and she became a hard
rider, an assiduous student of art and letters, a companion of great
scholars, and a resolute spinster. For many years the Swedes were proud
of their Amazon Queen, as she loved to represent herself, and even
admired her command of southern culture and tongues (Greek, Latin,
French, Italian, Spanish). She slept only five or six hours, discussed
philosophy with scholars like Descartes (who was a month or two in
Sweden) at five in the morning, conversed with the ambassadors in their
own tongues, and might then hunt for ten hours in her amazon costume.
Altogether a romantic person, and the Jesuits approached her.
We remember Professor Nicolai and Ambassador Possevin and other Jesuits
who had tried to convert Sweden. The new missionary, Father Macedo of
Portugal, was disguised as the secretary of the Portuguese ambassador,
Pereira. It may be that Macedo went merely to act as confessor to
Pereira, but he soon took an independent line. He found the way to the
Queen's study, impressed her with his learning, and confided to her
that he was a disguised Jesuit. Christina, in turn, confided that she
had doubts about Lutheranism, and would discuss with learned fathers of
the Society. Macedo discovered that the climate was too rigorous for
him, and, as the ambassador refused to give him leave of absence, fled
to Rome; and two very learned Jesuits, also in disguise, sailed in a
very roundabout way for Stockholm. Christina was soon converted by the
two "merchants," and, after some rather shady manoeuvres to secure her
art-collections and her revenues, she fled in the disguise of a man to
Brussels, where a brilliant gathering of Catholics welcomed her into
the Church (1655).
As Christina had little to do with the Jesuits after her conversion,
and the Swedes promptly closed the gates against further Catholic
invasions, we might leave the story, but it is of some interest to
consider whether the "conversion" was genuine. There is good reason
to believe that Christina was tired of the bleak north, and decided
to secure her revenue, change her creed, and spend the rest of her
years in the sunny and artistic south. The Jesuits were to be the
guarantors of her orthodoxy to the Pope, on whom she must rely if the
angry Swedes cut off supplies (as eventually happened). She had no deep
religious feeling. When a Belgian Jesuit remarked that they might yet
see her among the saints, she answered that she would prefer to be put
among the sages; and it is said--though with less authority--that when
she was told that there was to be a comedy on the day of her public
reception into the Church at Innspruck, she observed that it was very
proper "after this morning's farce." She is, at all events, described
by some who knew her as "almost libertine in speaking of religion and
morals," and the amorous attentions of Roman cardinals did not improve
her piety. After a few years' enjoyment of her liberty, her passionate
nature brought serious difficulties upon her, and her life proved a
lamentable failure and waste of ability.
In the kingdom of Poland the Jesuits found the most congenial home
that they ever discovered apart from the southern Latin countries
to which most of them belonged. Nor is this the only or the most
serious parallel; Poland, like Portugal, Spain, and France (after
1700), decayed rapidly after the Jesuits attained the height of their
power in the country. Catholic writers in the latter part of the
seventeenth century used to contrast the prosperity of the States which
had adhered to the Vatican with the failure or stagnation of States
which accepted the Reformation. France, Spain, Portugal, and Austria
were the great world-Powers, and, under Sobieski, Poland promised to
attain an important position. England, on the other hand, was still
a small empire; Holland was falling from its momentary greatness;
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were regarded as half-barbaric; the Swiss
cantons were a small pastoral folk; the German Protestant States were
exhausted and distracted. The argument has recoiled on the Romanist
with terrible force. The Catholic States have increasingly decayed, or
defied the authority of the Pope; the Protestant States are the great
world-Powers. The Protestant colonies in America have become a great
civilisation; the Catholic colonies rise to prestige only in proportion
as (like Argentina) they abandon their creed.
It has, therefore, been quite natural for writers on the Jesuits to
emphasise the fact that the countries in which they obtained the
greatest control have been the most conspicuous Powers to decay, and
the imagination instinctively recalls the picture of some giant of a
tropical forest gradually embraced and killed by a parasitic growth.
This picture should not be admitted too easily. Art, for instance, has
often prospered most luxuriantly when a civilisation was beginning to
decay, yet it was assuredly not a parasitic growth accelerating the
decay. It is possible that the Jesuits flourished _because_ the nation
was decaying, not that the nation decayed because they prospered.
The problem requires careful analysis and exact proof. We have seen,
however, in the case of Spain and Portugal that, in point of fact,
the prosperity of the Society was both economically and politically
injurious to those States--that the Jesuits really diverted into their
own organisation the wealth and power which should have contributed to
the well-being of the State--and we shall find the same situation in
Poland and Austria.
In Poland, as in Austria, a Jesuit of the time would have contended
that the Society justified its wealth and power by its educational
work. We saw how the Society overran the country and, by intrigue and
violence, captured the function of higher education during the reign
of Batori. From that date Poland decayed, with a partial revival under
Sobieski. In the long and disastrous reign of Sigismund (1590-1632)
the decay was continuous, and the power of the Jesuits sustained.
One point is clear; there was a grave lack of virile and unselfish
patriotism, and Jesuit teachers were certainly not the men to inspire
it. The aim of Jesuit education was to promote the interests of the
Church rather than the State, and to their influence most particularly
were due the religious quarrels and the coercion of Protestant
minorities which distracted the kingdom, brought on it the hostility
of Protestant neighbours, and fostered selfish intrigue for power. The
reign of Wladislas (1632-48) had the same features, and they were more
marked than ever when a Jesuit, the late King's brother, John Casimir,
ascended the throne. There was now hardly a wealthy house, a school,
or a camp that did not contain its Jesuit. The cause of religion was
intensely promoted, but the cause of the country fell lower and lower,
and its disastrous and distracted condition compelled the Jesuit
monarch to abdicate after four years.
The activity of the Jesuits is very well seen in the election of the
next king. The Poles were too democratic to admit the hereditary
principle; they elected their monarch, and each election was now the
occasion for a gathering of candidates from various parts of Europe and
a mass of bribery and intrigue. Reusch has published in his _Beiträge_
(p. 231) a private letter of a Jesuit, Father Bodler, which shows the
Jesuits over half of Europe intriguing to secure at the election of
1669 a man who will suit their interests. Father Bodler, confessor
to one of the candidates, the Duke of Neuburg, writes of the secret
campaign to Father Veihelin of Munich. An English member of the
Society has been confidentially entrusted by the duke with the task of
deciphering a difficult private letter. As this letter (from Prince
Auersperg) caustically observes that the Jesuits divide their forces at
an election, so that some of them are sure to be on the winning side
(as we have seen so often), it is at once communicated by the English
Jesuit to his German colleagues and even translated into Latin for the
general. The general, it seems, has to be kept informed of all these
manoeuvres--while he edifies Europe with decrees against indulgence
in politics or commerce--and Father Bodler feels that he will be
blamed "if the matter turns out less favourably for the Society." Such
documents as this, generally discovered in Jesuit houses after the
suppression of the Society, differ very materially from the published
writings of the Jesuits.
On this occasion neither the Duke of Lorraine nor the Duke of Neuburg,
for whom the Jesuits were working in apparent contradiction to each
other but with secret understanding, was elected. The Pole, Michael
Wisniowiecki, ascended the throne, and the Polish Jesuits held their
power amid the decaying nation. He was followed by the great Sobieski,
under whom the Society had more political influence than ever. Whether
in camp or court Sobieski was surrounded by Jesuits, and some of the
most important and disastrous points of his policy were inspired by
them. It was his confessor, Father Vota, who prompted him to reject
France's offer of alliance and accept that of Austria; and we know the
shameful ingratitude of Austria when Sobieski saved Vienna in 1683, and
how greedily it took its share of Poland when the country became weak
enough to be dismembered. The Poles tired of Sobieski's costly glory
and despotic rule and mischievous orthodoxy, and his later years were
embittered by a feeling of failure.
Frederick Augustus of Saxony succeeded Sobieski. He had qualified for
the throne by corrupting half the Diet and abjuring the Protestant
faith, and, although he was naturally of a tolerant disposition, he
was compelled to allow the Jesuits and other clergy to continue to
weaken the country by religious persecution. Father Vota was entrusted
with the charge of his accommodating conscience, and concluded that
the opportunity was excellent for transplanting Catholic intolerance
into Saxony, to which Frederick Augustus was for a time forced to
retire. The apologist for the Jesuits relates that it was Frederick
Augustus himself who desired to coerce the Protestants, and that Vota
prudently restrained him. That would be a remarkable situation--a
loose and unprincipled monarch, who had embraced the Catholic faith
only as the price of a crown, restrained by the confessor of Sobieski
from persecuting his Protestant subjects--but we know that, in point
of fact, it was the Saxon ministers who had to restrain the Jesuit.
Augustus III., an orthodox voluptuary and worthless monarch, followed
upon the throne of Poland; the Jesuits continued to prosper and the
country to decay. We shall see how, when its helpless frame is torn by
its covetous neighbours, the Jesuits are still in full possession of
their wealth and power, and are the first to bow to and win the favour
of the Russian invader. There is, however, one incident of Polish life
in the eighteenth century on which it is necessary to dwell more fully.
We have an ample account of this repulsive event[32] and it throws an
unpleasant light on the activity of the Jesuits in Poland.
In the summer of 1724 a Protestant of Thorn refused to lift his hat
when a Catholic procession passed, and he was assaulted by a pupil of
the Jesuit college. The Protestant authorities arrested the Catholic
for assault, and a riot occurred, in the course of which the Jesuit
college was stormed and destroyed. The royal authority was now invoked,
and the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, and nine other citizens of Thorn were
arraigned before the High Court at Warsaw for failing to prevent the
destruction of the college. A Jesuit was permitted, in the presence of
the judges, to deliver a violently inflammatory sermon on the outrage,
and the unfortunate men were condemned to death. A singular clause was
added to the sentence: it must not be carried out until a Jesuit and
six members of the Polish nobility swore to the guilt of the accused.
We know from their own words that the judges trusted in this way to
save the accused from the vengeance of the Jesuits. They persuaded
the Papal Nuncio to press the Jesuit superior not to send one of his
subjects to take the oath, and, when a Jesuit appeared nevertheless at
the appointed time, to swear away the lives of the innocent men, they
pointed out that a priest could not canonically take any action which
would lead to an execution. The Jesuits placidly replied that they had
sent a "lay coadjutor," instead of a priest, to take the oath. It is
true that, once they had sealed the fate of the men, they entered a
plea for mercy, but we are familiar with this hypocritical phrase in
the annals of the Inquisition. They tried moreover, at a later date,
to lessen the guilt of their conduct by mendaciously stating that
the Nuncio's letter arrived too late for consideration: an audacious
untruth, since we have the Jesuits' reply to the Nuncio, and we know
that the judges reminded them of the Nuncio's intervention before the
oath was taken.
To the end of this miserable business their conduct was repulsive.
The municipality of Thorn was, of course, condemned to compensate
the Society for the destruction of the college, and they secured a
preposterous award of 36,400 florins. The citizens warmly protested
against this scandalous and onerous award, and it was eventually,
in spite of the protests of the Jesuits, reduced to 22,000 florins.
The Jesuits, we are assured whenever they plead bankruptcy, are too
spiritual to be good men of business, but their attitude in regard to
the loss of their property at Thorn was not weakened by spirituality.
They demanded (and, no doubt, needed) 8000 florins in cash. The
municipal authorities had not so large a sum to pay them, and it was
advanced by a merchant on the security of the plate of the executed
Mayor of the town. For the remainder of the debt the Jesuits took
the municipal estates of Lonzyn and Wengorzyn. They retained these
profitable estates for six years, and only yielded them when the civic
authorities paid them the full capital of the debt with 6 per cent.
interest for the intervening years.
The situation of the Jesuits in Holland was, we saw, in many respects
similar to their situation in England, but the fact that several
provinces remained Roman Catholic gave them an advantage and kept the
country open to them. Utrecht, for instance, had only joined the other
provinces on condition that full liberty was given to Catholics and
Jesuits. From these Catholic districts the fathers advanced with great
zeal upon the neighbouring Protestant population. In spite of Jesuit
hatred of the Dutch, whom they represent throughout the seventeenth
century as the arch-enemy, they were treated with indulgence until
their own actions brought punishment on them. We saw that there was at
least evidence enough to convince the Dutch that the Jesuits had been
implicated in two attempts to assassinate their rulers, and when, in
1638, a Catholic plot to admit the Spaniards was discovered, another
storm against the Jesuits arose. Their apologist admits that there was
a plot, and that they were aware of it; but he finds no evidence that
they were parties to the plot. The evidence on which the Dutch relied
was supplied by a soldier, and is not in itself very impressive; but
several of the fathers were tortured and executed. The feeling seems
to have been that any plot to introduce the Spaniards would very
probably be of Jesuit origin, and the evidence was sufficient in the
circumstances. Few will seriously feel that there was a miscarriage of
justice.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which sent numbers of
persecuted Huguenots to England and Holland, greatly embittered the
Dutch and led to a fresh outburst against the Jesuits. They had at
that time forty-five residences and seventy-four priests in Holland,
but their prosperous mission was almost destroyed by the wave of anger
which rolled over the country. Severe disabilities were laid on them,
the Protestant crowds threatened their property, and it was rumoured
that the States-General was about to banish them. It is interesting
to-day to compare the eloquent pleas for toleration which they laid
before the Dutch with the private letters in which they apprised their
French colleagues that _their_ intolerance had brought the affliction
on them.
The storm passed without very serious consequences, but it was not
long before the conduct of the Jesuits again endangered their mission.
We have already seen that from the time when the Vatican appointed
a bishop to control the missionary priests in Holland the Jesuits
conducted an extremely selfish crusade against him. They maintained
this opposition throughout the period with which we are dealing.
Neercassel, the Archbishop of Utrecht and Vicar Apostolic, complained
to Rome of their behaviour in 1669, and they retorted with the familiar
charge of Jansenism. Neercassel was summoned to Rome, but Innocent XI.
was on the papal throne and the Jesuits lost. They did not relax their
opposition, and when Peter Codde succeeded Neercassel in 1686 (the
Jesuits having failed, after strenuous efforts, to get a friend of the
Society appointed), the feud became more and more unedifying. In 1702
they induced the Vatican to depose him and substitute a more congenial
prelate named Cock. Codde had been friendly with Arnauld, who had taken
refuge in the Netherlands, and an unscrupulous use of their influence
at Rome under Clement XI. secured his deposition. They could not,
however, induce the papal authorities to detain Codde, who belonged to
a good Dutch family, in the prisons of the Inquisition, and, when he
returned to his country, the Government took up his case against the
Jesuits.
The situation they had brought about in the Church in Holland was
deplorable. The chapters of Utrecht and Haarlem refused to recognise
Cock as archbishop, and the faithful were in a state of confusion. For
years the Jesuits had jeered at the divisions amongst the Protestants.
These divisions were at least based on considerations of belief, and
the Protestants could heavily retort that their clergy, of any one
denomination, had never been rent into bitterly hostile factions on a
mere question of corporate interest. Codde resumed his ministry, and
the Jesuits, aided by the friendly Nuncio at Brussels, supported Cock
against him. In similar circumstances Queen Elizabeth had assisted the
English secular clergy against the Jesuits, and the Dutch Government
decided to do the same. Cock was expelled, and four of the leading
Jesuits were summoned before the States-General (1705) and ordered to
use their influence at Rome for the rehabitation of Codde or else leave
the country. The Dutch smiled when the Jesuits protested that their
slender influence would not sway the Vatican, and, when a negative
answer came from Rome, they were proscribed. They evaded the sentence,
but in 1708 they were expelled from the whole of Holland except the
privileged Province of Utrecht. When the resentment of the Dutch
cooled, however, they crept back into the country and ministered
stealthily to their followers. Even after so drastic an experience they
continued to lessen the merit of their strenuous and dangerous labours
by persistent hostility to, and abuse of, the rival clergy.
In Belgium, which was now predominantly Catholic and had only passed
from the control of Catholic Spain to that of Catholic Austria, the
Jesuits prospered down to the time of the suppression of the Society.
The last remnants of Protestantism had been crushed under the heel of
the Spanish soldiers or driven to Holland, and the province was an
excellent field for tranquil work. The only notable episode is that,
in their eagerness to rise above the other clergy, the Jesuits pressed
Rome to apply to Belgium the famous test of belief which had been
devised for the "Jansenists" of France. Arnauld had many admirers in
Belgium, and the University of Louvain, especially, strongly resented
the prospect of being forced to say that there were in the obscure work
of Bishop Jansen five propositions which were not there. The Archbishop
of Malines and the Nuncio were won by the Jesuits, but Innocent XII.
hesitated to extend that miserable struggle to the peaceful Belgian
Church. The Nuncio deliberately withheld the Pope's brief until the
Jesuits made another attempt to win their demand, but in 1694 the Pope
insisted that only priests who were found to hold the five propositions
in question should be molested. As usual, the Jesuits failed to find
any one who held the famous propositions and the matter was abandoned.
The story of the Jesuits in the States which now form the German
Empire and in Austria has not yet been systematically written, and
the material is a large and undigested mass of laudatory episodes and
drastic charges.[33] In Austria, or the Holy Roman Empire, as it was
then called, we might follow the fortunes of the Society with some
continuity, but it would add little, in regard to Jesuit character, to
what we have gathered from the records of France, Spain, and Portugal.
The central and most important fact is the continued influence of the
Jesuit confessors at the court. Amongst the interesting manuscripts
which were seized at the time of the suppression of the Society was
a document, dating from the time of General Acquaviva, giving royal
confessors secret instructions as to their duty;[34] openly, of course,
the Jesuit rule was to refuse such offices as far as possible, and
to confine themselves to purely spiritual matters if the office was
accepted. These instructions make the confessor a spy not only on the
monarch, but upon his ministers and civic officials, and direct that he
shall obtain information even about the private lives of his principal
subjects. We know from other confiscated manuscripts which have been
published (especially by Döllinger and Reusch) that this information
was regularly sent to Rome, and that at every important juncture the
confessor, who used to ask the monarch for time to consult God and
his conscience, sent a secret messenger to Rome (or consulted other
Jesuits) and acted on the policy of the Society.
In this sense the Jesuits controlled the policy of Austria to a great
extent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Father Lamormaini,
confessor to Ferdinand II., inspired the decree for the restoration of
church-property in 1629, as we saw, and afterwards secured the best
portion of it for the Jesuits; to whom nothing could be "restored,"
as they had not owned any of the property. In the following year
Lamormaini practically decided the dismissal of Wallenstein. There was
no question of importance on which the Emperor did not consult him, and
the published documents show that there were times when the Jesuit,
acting on instructions from Rome, advised a policy which would profit
France rather than Austria; in 1635, for instance, he endeavoured (in
vain) to induce the Emperor to cede Alsace to France. We have a large
number of the Emperor's letters to Lamormaini, and they show that the
Jesuit was practically first minister, in secular as well as spiritual
matters. Other Jesuits were attached to the princes and nobles, and
the natural result was a great increase of the power and wealth of the
Society. Once more the suppression of the order and confiscation of its
documents have provided a confirmation of the suspicions of historians.
J. Friedrich (_Beiträge_) has published some of the confiscated
documents, including a statement drawn up in 1729 by the Procurator
of the Province of Upper Germany, Father Bissel. From this it appears
that the German Province of the Society advanced (at a high rate of
interest) 262,208 guldens to the Catholic Power for the purposes
of the Thirty Years' War, and the Jesuit college at Liège 200,000
guldens. The Jesuit treasurer appends the remark that these loans must
be kept strictly secret, as a disclosure "might bring ruin on our
establishments."
The death of Ferdinand II. in 1637 made no difference in the position
of the Jesuits. Ferdinand III. had been carefully trained by them, and
he was ever ready to endanger the welfare of his Empire and disturb
the peace of his subjects by furthering the designs of the Jesuits in
the Protestant Provinces, as we shall see presently. Leopold I., who
succeeded in 1657, was an even more fervent pupil of the Jesuits, and
had been destined for the priesthood. We may say, in a word, that the
Jesuits retained their wealth and power until, to their great anger
and disappointment, the Emperor Joseph II. light-heartedly joined
the other Catholic monarchs in the campaign for the suppression of
the Society, and even Maria Theresa refused to plead for them with
the Papacy. At that time their property alone was worth more than
£2,000,000, but the Government discovered that they had anticipated the
dissolution by investing large sums abroad. It is therefore impossible
to estimate their real wealth, but when we add to the income from their
vast estates the salaries of royal and noble confessors, the fees
of masses and spiritual exercises, the emoluments of university and
other teachers, and the very generous and constant inflow of gifts and
legacies, we realise that the Austrian Jesuits cannot have been much
less wealthy than those of France and Spain.
It may be suggested that we should regard this wealth with indulgence,
in spite of the Jesuit vow of poverty, because of the immense
educational services which the Society rendered to the Empire. Their
school-system has, however, been heavily criticised by Austrian
writers, and even in the height of their power it was boldly and
successfully assailed by Austrian statesmen. A memorial addressed to
the Empress Maria Theresa in 1757 insisted that all the universities
had deteriorated since they had been captured by the Jesuits. Two years
later (September 1759) the Empress compelled them to surrender to other
teachers the chairs of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and history, and
several chairs of theology, which they held at the Vienna University.
The historian of the university, Kink, fully confirms this statement
that it deteriorated under the control of the Jesuits. Indeed, the
learned Oratorian priest Father Theiner, the Prefect of the Vatican
Archives, shows in his _Histoire du Pontificat de Clément XIV._ that
in other ways the Jesuits had done grave harm to culture in Catholic
Germany. Their selfish determination to monopolise teaching and letters
had destroyed the intellectual life of the non-Jesuit clergy, and there
were few to succeed them when the Society was abolished. We shall see
later that when Frederick the Great annexed Silesia, where the German
Jesuits controlled education, he disdainfully advised them to send to
France for some abler teachers.
It is also necessary to observe that a large number of scandals
occurred among the Austrian and German Jesuits, especially the
teachers. The subject is unpleasant, but pro-Jesuit writers are so
insistent on the cleanness of their record that it cannot be entirely
overlooked. A former director of the Bavarian State Archives, Dr.
Karl Heinrich von Lang, examined the Jesuit documents under his care
at Munich, and found, in the letters of the Provincial of the Upper
German Province to the General, an alarming number of charges of
unnatural or other vice. There was clearly an extraordinary amount of
sexual corruption in the province in the period he reviews (1650-1723),
and, if we find this to be the case where it happens that the secret
documents of the Society have come into our hands, we must regard with
grave suspicion the claims of Jesuit writers in regard to provinces of
which we have not similar information.[35]
Dr. von Lang has also written a sketch of the history of the Jesuits
in Bavaria (_Geschichte der Jesuiten in Baiern_, 1819), and we have a
picture of degeneration and prosperity as in so many other countries.
We saw, in an early chapter, the unattractive story of their settlement
in Bavaria and coercion of the Protestants. Before and during the
Thirty Years' War they were the most ardent instigators of Maximilian,
and, when the terror of the Swedes had passed away, they entered
upon a period of great prosperity in the impoverished country. When
Maximilian died, however, in 1651, some attempt was made to check their
progress by the statesmen who knew how deeply they were responsible
for the desolation of Bavaria. Members of a rival religious order,
the Theatines, were patronised by the Duchess Maria, and the Jesuits
conducted an unedifying campaign against the Theatines, who made a
spirited resistance. Each body accused the other of forging miracles in
honour of its saints. Von Lang estimates that a little after the middle
of the seventeenth century the 585 members of the Bavarian branch of
the Society enjoyed a permanent income of 185,950 florins. To this,
however, we must add fees, salaries, gifts, and legacies. Dr. von Lang
shows that between 1620 and 1700 large donations amounting to 800,000
florins were made to the Society, often at the suggestion of its
members.
The later wealth of the Jesuits in Bavaria cannot be estimated as the
larger contributions to their funds were only stated in strictly secret
documents which have never seen the light. We know that the Society
prospered more than ever in the eighteenth century. In 1727 there were
875 Jesuits in Bavaria and the Tyrol, and the papers confiscated at
the suppression proved that their wealth was enormous. Their college
at Ingolstadt alone owned hundreds of farms, or a series of estates
worth about 3,000,000 florins. A dozen other colleges were also richly
endowed with landed property. As the eighteenth century wore on,
however, the hostility to the Jesuits increased. Protestants were
never without some serious ground for complaint of Jesuit controversy,
and in Bavaria we find them accusing the Jesuits (quite justly) of
recommending the sons of Protestant parents to _steal_ the "bad books"
of their fathers and bring them to the college. Catholics, on the
other hand, complained that the Jesuits rendered no material service
in proportion to their great wealth, and, as the successive messages
of suppression came from Portugal, France, and Spain, their opponents
became bolder. The Jesuits so little expected to be disturbed that in
1770 they created a separate Bavarian province, with more than 500
members. Three years later they were secularised and dispersed on
account of the suppression of the Society.
In Protestant Saxony the Jesuits had a different task. We have already
seen how they instigated Frederick Augustus, after he had purchased
the Polish crown by a change of faith, to adopt the principle of
religious intolerance in Saxony. The heir to the throne was, however, a
Protestant, and was under the control of Protestants, and the Jesuits
had to ensure that the dynasty should be Catholic. This was not in the
interest of Saxony, which, as a Protestant State, might have taken a
leading position in Germany, whereas, in becoming Catholic, it would
be overshadowed by Austria and Bavaria. The king put Jesuits about the
person of the prince, and he was, when his conversion proved difficult,
sent to travel in Italy in the company of two Jesuits. He was a mere
boy of sixteen. His father was, however, assured that he might not only
appropriate a large amount of the ecclesiastical property taken by the
Protestants at the Reformation, but papal troops would be put at his
disposal in case of need to silence the protests of his Protestant
subjects. In November 1712 the boy was "converted." Father Salerno,
the most active of the Jesuits engaged in this important business,
was then sent to Vienna to arrange a marriage with an Austrian
Archduchess, and, as all children of the marriage were to be Catholic,
the succession was secured. As the present condition of Saxony shows,
however, the Jesuits did not in this case succeed in imposing their
creed by royal authority. Father Salerno was rewarded with--in Jesuit
language, "forced" to accept, against his inclination--a cardinal's
hat. He was the thirteenth Jesuit whose modesty had been violated by
the papacy in this way since 1593, to say nothing of nuncii, bishops,
and other prelates.
The resistance of Hungary to Jesuit permeation was protracted and
heroic. Protestantism made great progress in Hungary after the
Reformation, and the emperors looked to the Jesuits to extirpate it
in that part of the country which was under their control. Ferdinand
II. trusted especially to their educational influence, but Ferdinand
III. and Leopold supported the Jesuits in active persecution of the
heretics. Dr. Krones[36] has minutely studied from the manuscript
_Annual Letters_ of the Society, the intrigues by which the Jesuits
sought to regain power after the Peace of Westphalia. The population
was half Protestant, and the emperors were unwilling to inflame the
restless Hungarians by too open a use of imperial authority. The most
assiduous and secret manoeuvres were made by the Jesuits to influence
the elections and secure a legal footing in the country. An abortive
conspiracy in 1666 served their purpose better. In the general
vindictiveness of the Austrian triumph the most drastic measures were
taken against the Protestant clergy. A more successful rising in
1675-1679 once more won toleration for the Protestants and checked the
Jesuits, and they seem to have maintained this varying campaign of
intrigue and coercion and failure until the abolition of the Society.
In the Catholic cantons of Switzerland we have, naturally, the
same story as in the Catholic States: a control of education, a
determination to cast into the shade the remainder of the Catholic
clergy, and a scandalous and enervating material prosperity. Here again
we have obtained a very interesting glimpse of the real condition
of the Society by the publication of secret documents which were
confiscated at the suppression. The chronicle of the Jesuit college at
Colmar from 1698 to 1750 was fortunately discovered among their papers
and published in 1872.[37] It is a most remarkable ledger or diary of
business transactions, displaying on every page that keen instinct for
commerce and high profit which the Jesuits are always so anxious to
disavow. Vineyards and estates pass steadily into the possession of
the college, indignant and disinherited relatives are fought in the
law-courts or met by compromise, and the liveliest satisfaction is
expressed when some good bargain has been made with the property or the
vines have proved fertile. A Lutheran in 1727 has been, in the words of
the secret Jesuit chronicler, "simple enough" to pay a substantial rent
for a disused cellar belonging to the college; in the same year a pious
lady's executors are not in a position to pay a legacy to the Jesuits
in cash and they take saleable goods; in 1730 three fields of small
value are let on terms which suggest that some simple Catholic tenant
was duped. The whole story tells of keenness in securing legacies,
astuteness in the profitable handling of the property they inherit or
buy, and a somewhat hypocritical readiness to appeal to public bodies
for the free grants which they make to poor individuals or communities.
The college of Colmar was a business concern of the sharpest character.
These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic
countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates
in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between
the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture
offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of
course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers
carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional
letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or
his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits
would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were
lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age
and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and
unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There
were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the
fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places
enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we
get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and
its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as
in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted
with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power,
commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable
attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much
by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes
and prelates; and, the moment these princes became sensible of their
defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash,
to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to
glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose
select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and
abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 32: Jacobi's _Das Thorner Blutgericht_, and other documents.]
[Footnote 33: The _Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher
zunge_, which the German Jesuits are publishing, has not advanced
beyond the first period.]
[Footnote 34: Published by the Benedictine monk Dudik in the _Archiv
für Oesterreichische Geschichte_, vol. liv. p. 234.]
[Footnote 35: See, especially, the sordid details in Dr. von Lang's
_Jacobi Morelli, S.J., amores_, 1815.]
[Footnote 36: _Archiv für oesterreichische Geschichte_, Bd. 79, pp.
277-354; and Bd. 80, pp. 356-458.]
[Footnote 37: _Mémoires des R.R.P.P. Jésuites du Collège de Colmar._]