THE NEW JESUITS
For a few years after the restoration the Italian Jesuits were fully
occupied with the reorganisation of their body, the recovery of
their property, and the absorption of the lingering Paccanarists and
survivors of the older Society. It is clear that, had it not been for
the partial restoration in Parma and Naples, the Society would long
have remained feeble. How many still lived of the 22,589 followers of
Ignatius who had been expelled from their homes forty years before we
do not know, but there was by no means a rush to the colours when the
regiment was reformed. It was difficult also to recover their property.
In spite of the generosity of the rulers of Piedmont, Naples, and the
Papal States the work proceeded slowly. It is in the year 1820 that we
catch a first interesting glimpse of the reconstituted body.
At the beginning of that year General Bzrozowski died at Polotzk, a few
months before the Jesuits were expelled from Russia, and the Italians
hastened to hold an election. Before he died the General had appointed
Father Petrucci Vicar-General, and this official came to Rome and,
in conjunction with his fellow-Italians, fixed the election for 4th
September. We are not, of course, permitted to know the whole truth in
regard to this election, but such facts as we know clearly show that
the Italians were determined to regain control of the Society. There
seems, however, to have been a deeper quarrel. Some of the younger men
and the ex-Paccanarists wished to reform the constitutions, and they
had the support of Cardinal della Ganga, the Pope's Vicar (and later
Leo XII.); the older men opposed reform. But what the precise position
of Petrucci was it is impossible to decide. Crétineau-Joly, who alone
has had access to the archives and has used his privilege in such a way
as to make the quarrel unintelligible, offers the ridiculous suggestion
that Petrucci and the cardinal wished to destroy the Society.
However that may be, Petrucci tried to have the election held before
the Poles arrived, but there was a spirited Breton member of the
Russian Province, Father Rozaven, in Rome at the time, and he appealed
to the cardinal. Petrucci then wrote to the Poles to say that they must
postpone their voyage to Rome, but Rozaven exposed the trick to them
and they reached Rome early in September. There must have been a most
unedifying turmoil in the Jesuit house, as, instead of an election on
4th September, we find Cardinal della Ganga intervening on the 6th
to say that a commission, with him and Cardinal Galeffi at its head,
had been appointed by the Pope to adjudicate on their quarrels. A
week later the commission found that Petrucci was to have the powers
of a general, but the two cardinals were to preside at the election.
The account given us by the French historian is bewildering in its
confusion, and is evidently intended to screen an angry conflict of
personal and national ambitions and of reformers and anti-reformers.
The party opposed to Petrucci (and, presumably, to reform) now appealed
to Cardinal Consalvi and denounced their Vicar-General. Consalvi
had little interest in the Jesuits, but, as they knew, he was not
disinclined to thwart della Ganga. He secured the calling of the
Congregation in October. It seems to have been the most lively and
impassioned election that the old house had ever witnessed. Petrucci
ruled that the voters from England and France and part of Italy had
no canonical right to vote; the Congregation overruled him, and, when
he protested, deposed him and excluded him and his chief supporter,
Pietroboni, from the Congregation. Della Ganga appealed to the Pope,
Consalvi defeated his appeal, and on 18th October Father Fortis was
elected. The triumphant section then held a trial of the conduct of the
minority. Petrucci and Pietroboni were pardoned on account of their
age, but a number of younger men were expelled from the Society.
It must be admitted that this Congregation shows a decided continuity
of the irregular features of the Society. Fortis, Rozaven, Petrucci,
and the leaders of the conflicting parties were old members; Fortis,
at least, an elderly Italian in his eighth decade of life, had
belonged to the suppressed Society, and the conduct of him and his
followers suggests that forty years of life without the restraint of
discipline had not tended to improve their character. In the pacified
Europe of 1820 they saw an easy field for the triumph of their order,
and the Italians were ambitious to control it. The struggle against
the proposal to reform the Society is equally unattractive; and the
facility with which both parties appealed to rival cardinals, when
the Jesuit tradition was fiercely to resent any outside interference
with their Congregations, completes an unpleasant picture. The
anti-reformers won, and the voters scattered to their respective
provinces and missions.
Three years later Pius VII. died, and the triumphant clique at the Gesù
had a momentary anxiety when Cardinal della Ganga mounted the papal
throne under the name of Leo XII. Rozaven expresses their concern in a
letter to a colleague, and predicts that he at least will be compelled
to leave Rome. But Leo XII. was convinced that the Society had become
one of the most useful auxiliaries of the Papacy, and he hastened to
assure them that their intrigue against his authority was forgotten.
He had, in fact, hardly been a year at the Vatican when he gratified
them by restoring the Roman College to their charge, and they gathered
their best teachers from all parts of the world to win back its earlier
prestige. Other of their old colleges in the Papal States were secured
for them by Leo XII. and the Italian Provinces quickly recovered their
power.
It was known to all that the liberal feeling engendered by the
revolutionary movement was still intensely alive. The secret Society
of the Carbonari spread its net over Italy, and the cultivated middle
class was very largely liberal and anti-clerical. At Naples, in
1820, the Carbonari had seemed for a moment about to triumph; but
the rebellion was defeated, and the Jesuits returned to the task of
educating the middle class in pro-papal sentiments. They had a college
for the sons of nobles at Naples, and four other colleges in the
Neapolitan district; while they had no less than fifteen colleges and
residences in the island of Sicily. In northern Piedmont, from which
few at that time expected the greatest menace to the Papacy to come,
they retained great power for decades. Victor Emmanuel gave place to
Charles Felix, and the Liberals took the occasion to make a violent
assault on the fathers. Charles Felix replied by choosing a Jesuit
confessor, Father Grassi. Charles Albert patronised them even more
generously than his predecessors. He secured the return of their old
house at Turin, and, when he found it impossible to get for them their
old house at Genoa, which had been converted into a university, he
granted them one of his palaces for a residence.
In the Papal States they entered upon their golden age with the
accession of Gregory XVI., in 1831. Both Leo XII. and General Fortis
died in 1829. A young Dutch Jesuit, Father Roothaan (aged forty-four),
succeeded Fortis, and Pius VIII. ascended the papal throne. He died
in November 1830, and Gregory XVI. assumed the tiara in the very heat
of the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1831. The "White Terror"
had failed to conquer what it called the revolutionary element; its
thousands of executions and its appalling jails and repulsive spies had
merely fed the flame of insurrection, and the international movement
for reform gathered strength. The middle class in every country--in
Italy, especially, the revolutionary movements were essentially middle
class--suffered with burning indignation the brutalities of Austria,
the Papacy, Naples, Spain, and France, and young men of the type of
Mazzini devoted their lives to reform. In 1831 the Italian rebels,
fired by the success of the July Revolution in France, raised their
tricolour standard and soon saw it floating over Modena, Parma, and
a number of the Papal States. One of the first movements of the
insurgents in every place was to assail the Jesuit residences. At
Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forli, and Ferrara, the Jesuits were
driven from their homes and colleges and hunted over the frontiers of
the revolutionary provinces. But Naples and Piedmont were unshaken by
the disturbance, and the Austrian troops from Venice quickly trampled
out the revolutionary spirit. It was on the eve of this insurrection--a
work almost entirely of the educated class--that Gregory became Pope,
and his policy after the pacification was one of savage repression.
It is needless here to recall the brutal régime which the Austrians
in Venice (to which the Jesuits were formally admitted in 1836), the
Pope in central Italy, and the Neapolitan ruler in the south, spread
over the land. It is enough for us that in the three States, as in
Spain and Portugal, the Jesuits were the most ardent auxiliaries of the
reactionary and sanguinary monarchs. Gregory XVI., the most repulsive
Pope of modern times, was the most generous patron that the Jesuits
had had for more than a hundred years. He went so far as to entrust to
them the Urban College, the institution in which the Propaganda itself
trained its missionaries. Education was the root of the revolutionary
evil, and it was the place of the Jesuits to see that such education as
was imparted in Italy--which sank to an appalling degree of illiteracy,
and is still illiterate to the extent of 70 per cent. in the southern
provinces, where the Jesuits ruled longest--was not tainted with
modern culture. It is true that after 1830 the General appointed five
learned fathers to revise the _Ratio Studiorum_ of the Society; but
one cannot regard it as other than a somewhat humorous comment on
the Jesuit system that the teachers were no longer to be bound to
teach the physics of Aristotle or to slight, in favour of Latin and
Greek, the tongue of the pupils whom they trained. We have, in fact, a
very curious illustration of the level of culture of Gregory and his
teaching Jesuits. In the year 1837 the cholera threatened Rome. The
science of meeting such epidemics was, of course, still in its infancy,
but the conduct of Rome was exactly what it would have been five
hundred years earlier. A solemn procession was enjoined, and, amidst
the masses of terrified people, a statue of the Virgin was borne across
Rome to the Church of the Jesuits. Gregory and his cardinals were in
the procession, and for a time the Gesù was the centre or fount of the
hope of Rome. Within a few months 5419 Romans succumbed to the cholera.
Gregory died in the year 1846, and Italy sighed with relief. The misery
of the working classes, the brutal treatment to which the educated
classes had been exposed, and the control of education and of a very
large proportion of appointments in the Papal States by the Jesuits,
had engendered a hatred of him in every part of his dominion. When
Mastai Ferretti ascended the throne, and took the name of Pius IX., he
was greeted with wild enthusiasm. He was sufficiently known to inspire
a hope that the reign of terror and the reign of the Jesuits were over,
and his first acts confirmed this hope. An amnesty was granted, and
the more brutal of his predecessor's coercive measures were repealed.
Rossi, who, as we shall see presently, had been sent to Rome a few
years before to negotiate the banishment of the Jesuits from France,
was recalled and made leading minister to the Vatican; and Father
Theiner was directed to vindicate the memory of Clement XIV. against
the Jesuits and Crétineau-Joly, who had just published his history.
The Jesuits were so notoriously discontented with the change, and with
the young Pope's concessions to liberalism, that, as he passed through
the streets he heard the warning cry from his people: "Beware of the
Jesuits."
What part the Jesuits had in the termination of the new Pope's pose as
a Liberal it would be difficult to say. The usual statement, that he
was shaken by the assassination of Count Rossi and the revolution of
1848, is superficial and misleading. He had incurred the resentment
of the Liberals because he had rapidly fallen from his first ideal.
Some of the chief grievances of his educated subjects, such as the
monopoly of all remunerative offices in the State by clerics, remained
untouched, and it was soon perceived that he was drifting backward
toward reaction. His confessor was replaced by a friend of the Jesuits,
and, when the popular and somewhat insurgent priest Gioberti published
a fiery and just attack on the Jesuits, Pius IX. harshly condemned him.
At the same time the returned exiles and the refugees who flocked to
Rome from the countries which clung to oppression assuredly had ideals
which it was quite impossible for any Pope to realise in that age. Pius
was alienated more and more, and a violent conflict approached. How the
third revolutionary wave in 1848 spread to Rome, and the Pope fled to
Gaeta, and the Jesuits returned to power in the inevitable reaction,
must be reserved for the next chapter.
When we turn to consider the fortunes of the Jesuits in France during
the first half of the nineteenth century, we find a very different
and more interesting chronicle. They had been banished from France,
it will be recalled, in 1761, and the great majority of them had
actually quitted the kingdom. Many had been secularised, and remained
as teachers, tutors, confessors, or _curés_. During the period of
suppression a large number of them found employment in France; the
learned Father Boscovitch, for instance, was made director of the
optical department of the Navy under Louis XVI. As in Italy and
Austria, some of them sought to incorporate the spirit of their
condemned Society in Congregations with other names, and a curious
assortment of fraternities appeared. The "Fathers of the Faith," or
Paccanarists, whose origin we have seen, found a genial atmosphere in
France, and the little colony they sent from Austria was soon swelled
with ex-Jesuits. Another body was significantly known as the "Victims
of the Love of God." The feminine branch of the "Sacred Heart" Society
also spread to France, and grew into a formidable body of nuns (under
the direction of ex-Jesuits) with the particular function of giving
a "sound" education to the daughters of wealthy people; it remains
to this day, in effect, the feminine branch of the Society, though
the connection is not official. There was a "Congregation of the Holy
Family" for training teachers of the poor, and a "Congregation of Our
Lady" for banding together members of the middle class.
But of all these associations which sprang up mysteriously in the soil
of revolutionary France, and throve under the shelter of Napoleon,
the most important was a certain "Congregation of the Holy Virgin,"
founded in the year 1801. It was controlled by an ex-Jesuit, and had
at first some resemblance to the association of young men organised at
Rome by the ex-Jesuit Caravita. The young men, very largely university
students, were to visit the sick and poor--to be practical Christians,
in a word. But, whereas the Italian young men had become priests and
Paccanarists, the members of the Congregation of the Virgin generally
remained in the world, retaining throughout life their membership of
the Society and their link with its directors. A register of their
names and occupations was kept, and it meant, in effect, that the
Jesuits had friends and ardent secret workers in every school and
profession, in the army and navy, in journalism and politics.
Louis XVIII. came to the throne and was urged by Talleyrand to restore
the Society. He refused, and the Jesuits were forced to rely still
on their secret organisation. Already, in 1814, the Fathers of the
Faith had a house in Paris, and six other houses in the country. Their
title was now a deliberate deception, as they had in 1804 secretly
renounced Paccanarism, in the hands of the Papal Nuncio, and entered
the Society of Jesus, as authorised in Russia. They dressed and acted
externally as secular priests, and were much employed by bishops in
teaching and preaching. From the Congregation of the Virgin they not
only had accurate information of what was being said and done in every
department of French life, but they obtained many novices; other youths
joined the secular clergy, and would in time watch the interests of the
Society within that body. Orders were now given that the Jesuits must
work in perfect harmony with the secular clergy and in most respectful
submission to the bishops.
They grew rapidly in the course of the next few years, and about 1818
they began to stand out prominently in the religious life of France.
They were especially employed in what are known in English church-life
as "revival services." Eloquent preachers, particularly when they were
denouncing liberalism and the "bad" tendencies of the times, they
passed from town to town lashing up the fervour of the Catholics. Large
crucifixes were planted on the wayside as memorials of their oratory;
enthusiastic processions marched through the streets; in places the
churches were so crowded that one had to spend the night at the door
to secure a place near the pulpit. They were the Pères de la Foi,
Catholics said (with a smile); but critics maintained that they were
Jesuits, and there were towns where the missionaries were assaulted and
expelled. A very serious controversy raged in the French press as to
whether there were really any Jesuits in France; even when, in 1822, a
Liberal journal obtained and published a letter of General Fortis to
one of his French subjects, it was difficult to convict them.
At this period, in the early twenties, the famous Abbé de Lamennais
was seeking to form a democratic Christian body, and he made an effort
to secure the support of the Jesuits. Louis XVIII. was one of the more
moderate of the restored monarchs; but the democratic feeling was
still strong in France and, as the clergy were generally reactionary,
democracy, of which Lamennais foresaw the triumph, was allied with
Voltaireanism. Lamennais was convinced that the hour of feudal monarchs
was over, and the Church could be saved only by allying itself with
the people. The development of French history has shown the truth of
his view. Democracy has triumphed, and the Church has shrunk to--M.
Sabatier tells me--less than one-sixth of the population. Seeing the
apparent power of the Jesuit missionaries, Lamennais, who was very
friendly with them, earnestly begged them to incorporate his policy in
their preaching.
The attitude of the Jesuits toward Lamennais is interesting. They
hesitated for years, broke into sections, and eventually had to forbid
all public discussion of the issue. In 1821 some of their members were
censured for attacking Lamennais, in the next year others were censured
for supporting him; and Rozaven, the French Assistant at Rome, directed
that "prudence" forbade them to take either side in public. Later, as
they still wavered and contradicted each other, General Fortis sternly
prohibited public expression on the subject. Fortis died in 1829, and
Lamennais made a fresh appeal to the Jesuits to "turn from monarchs to
the people"; but Roothaan maintained the attitude of his predecessor.
When Lamennais was eventually condemned, the Jesuits eagerly pointed
out that they had declined to support him.
This situation is interesting, because it exhibits the Jesuits
shrinking nervously from the greatest social issue of their time. They
retort that it was a political issue, and their traditions forbade
them to discuss politics. It is in a sense true that the Jesuits had
always abstained from political theorising, and bowed to the actual
ruling power; except in cases where the ruling power incommoded them,
when they might become the most violent of revolutionaries. But, apart
from the question whether the issue was not moral in the finest sense
of the word, it is ludicrous to affirm that the "political" nature of
Lamennais's gospel prevented them from considering it when, in every
country where a reactionary monarch called them to his aid, they were
violent partisans of the aristocratic gospel. For twenty years they had
maintained that the political storms which swept the old monarchs from
their thrones at the end of the eighteenth century were directly due
to the removal of their control of the schools and universities. They
had been restored to life for the express purpose of reconciling Europe
to the old order, and destroying the aspiration for democratic reform,
and it was only in the cantons of Switzerland that they were found to
hold a different theory of the social order; though, as we shall see,
the Swiss cantons were then rather aristocratic than democratic. It
is plain that in France they hesitated only because the future was
uncertain. Their real aim was to restore the age of Louis XIV., but
this new democratic movement looked formidable. They would wait and be
guided by the issue.
The Catholic democrats turned angrily on the Jesuits for their
attitude on this great issue, and accused them of gross ignorance of,
and indifference to, social conditions: an entirely just censure.
But their power was growing in every decade. New Congregations
appeared,--societies for persuading lovers to marry in church, for
preserving students from liberalism, and so on,--and the Congregation
of our Lady now included half the nobility and higher clergy, and
numbers of writers, lawyers, politicians, and officials. Their
French apologist, who was himself a member of the Congregation and
lived in Paris at this time, admits that the secret influence of the
Congregation was such that many made a profession of religion and
joined it in order to promote their material interests. Charles X., who
succeeded Louis in 1824, renewed their confidence. He opened his career
with Liberal measures; but he was more reactionary at heart than Louis
XVIII., and less prudent, and the Jesuits silently organised their
forces for a restoration of the Society.
The educated Frenchman now commonly united the scepticism of Voltaire
with the moderate democracy of Lafayette, and an angry storm broke
out in the Liberal press. The open activity of the "Paccanarists"
was an affront to the Constitution, and the secret manoeuvres of the
Congregation, notoriously led by Father Ronsin, alarmed them. The
authorities discreetly removed Father Ronsin from Paris, but the work
of the Congregation proceeded. Charles X. was suspected of favouring
the Jesuits. In 1828 the Nuncio openly proposed that the Society should
be restored. We may take the word of Crétineau-Joly that the ground
had been so well prepared that a measure could have been passed safely
through the two Houses. But Villèle, the French historian says, was so
misguided as to appeal to the country first, and he lost. The question
of the Jesuits was not the least of the issues at stake. Showers of
pamphlets fell upon the public, and the popular feeling was such that
when the King was one day reviewing the National Guard, the cry,
"Down with the Jesuits," rang out from the ranks, and the review was
abandoned.
The more moderate ministry of Martignac had now to be formed, and, as
it needed the co-operation of the Liberals, the plan to restore the
Jesuits was abandoned. The Liberals were now encouraged, and they made
a fiery assault. The "little seminaries," as the French called the
preparatory colleges for the clergy, had been left under the control
of the bishops, and several of them were notoriously controlled by the
thinly disguised Jesuits. A commission of bishops, with the Archbishop
of Paris at their head, was appointed to examine the charge, and it was
determined that eight of the seminaries were really Jesuit colleges,
and must be closed; it was further enacted that the seminaries
were to be taken from the bishops and put under the control of the
universities, that the number of pupils was to be restricted, and that
no priest should henceforth be allowed to teach in them who did not
take oath that he did not belong to a non-authorised Congregation.
The bishops, many of whom had won their seats by Jesuit influence,
protested in vain against this violation of their rights. Their protest
made matters worse, since they stipulated that it should remain secret;
but the Liberal press secured the text and published it.
This was a very severe blow to the French Jesuits, who had used
the seminaries for training lay pupils in their spirit as well as
teaching the secular priests to rely on them. While the French press
was discussing the question whether they existed in the country, they
had grown to the number of 436, and had two novitiates and several
residences, besides the seminaries. They now determined to take bolder
measures against the enemy. As I said, the question of the Jesuits was
by no means the only serious issue under discussion; Martignac received
only a moderate and uncertain support from his Liberal allies because
his measures were not sufficiently advanced. It is, however, clear that
the Jesuits, through the Nuncio, had their share in inducing the King
to replace the moderate Martignac with the thoroughly conservative
Polignac. This was in July 1829. The reply of the people, when the
ministry returned to the old coercive measures, was the July Revolution
of 1830. The chief Jesuit houses, at Montrouge and St. Acheul, were
sacked by the mob, and the fathers scattered in every direction. Once
more they had suffered a heavy defeat on what they believed to be the
eve of victory.
The revolutionary wave spread, with devastating force, to Italy, as we
saw; and there also the fathers were for a time driven contemptuously
from their colleges. Their recovery in France was naturally slower
than in Italy. They moved in fear of their lives for the first year or
two of the reign of Louis Philippe, and generally concealed themselves
in devoted Catholic houses. In 1832 the cholera swept France, and
they recollected how frequently heroic conduct in such epidemics had
disarmed their critics. But France was not so easily reconciled in
the nineteenth century, and the few who ventured to appear during
the following years were arrested. In the course of time, however,
the resentment was confined to the more ardent Liberals, and they
resumed the semi-public existence of the previous decade. Catholicism
made great progress in the thirties, chiefly through the agency of a
brilliant group of laymen, and some of the Jesuits took an open part
in the revival. Father de Ravignan, their finest orator, occupied the
pulpit of Nôtre Dame for several seasons, and they were assiduous in
giving retreats to the clergy.
As they no longer ventured to teach,--though it was known that
they had opened a college for French pupils just over the Belgian
frontier,--and betrayed their character in no external action, they
were legally unassailable; but it was not long before they again drew
on themselves the ire of the Liberals. From 1840 onwards the clergy
made a vehement attack on the professors of the university. Since
these included philosophers like Cousin and Jouffroy, historians like
Michelet, and men of letters like Jules Simon, we can easily believe
that their lectures were at times inconsistent with orthodox ideas;
but the attack was gross and exaggerated, and the professors felt that
the Jesuits secretly guided it; Father de Ravignan, in fact, joined
in the spirited conflict of pens. The chief result was to draw on
the Jesuits the sardonic humour of Michelet, the weighty censures of
Cousin, the poisonous raillery of Simon, and the unrestrained diatribes
of the popular Liberal press. It was during this agitation that
Eugène Sue lashed them with his _Juif Errant_, and George Sand wrote
_Consuelo_. Against this fierce and brilliant onslaught the publication
of Crétineau-Joly's _Histoire_ was a feeble defence; it could carry no
conviction except to the already convinced and uncritical Catholic.
Indeed, its treatment of Clement XIV. scandalised many Catholics, and,
as we saw, Pius IX. directed the Vatican Archivist to refute it.[41]
Louis Philippe was at length compelled to take action. Catholic writers
treated it as an amusing scare that there were Jesuits in France, and
were not a little mortified when the fathers betrayed their existence
in a way which entertained the Liberal pamphleteers. In 1845 one
of their treasurers embezzled the funds entrusted to him, and they
imprudently prosecuted. In the controversy which followed it was made
plain that there were two hundred members of the forbidden Society in
France, and their expulsion was stormily demanded. The King knew that
if he suppressed the "Fathers of the Faith" they would do no more than
change their name, and he adopted a shrewder policy. He sent Rossi to
Rome to submit to the Pope that the relations of France and the Vatican
would be much improved if the Jesuits were removed by ecclesiastical
authority. The dignity of the Holy See was saved by a pleasant little
comedy. The Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs
reported that the request could not be granted, and the Pope firmly
replied to the French envoy in that sense. But a private intimation
was made to General Roothaan that it was desirable to meet the wishes
of the King, and Rossi was instructed to see him. Whatever the precise
nature of the intimation was, Roothaan submitted to his French subjects
that it was expedient to dissolve their chief communities,--at Paris,
St. Acheul, Lyons, and Avignon,--and they once more retreated sullenly
from the field. We shall see later how they found a fitting patron in
Napoleon III., and how the third Republic put a definitive close to
their activity in France.
Their fortunes in Spain during the nineteenth century have been
more chequered than their present prosperity would suggest. On 15th
May 1815, Ferdinand VII. repealed the drastic sentence of his great
predecessor, and ordered that their former property should be restored
to the Jesuits. A hundred and fifty of the old members of the Society
returned to their native land; colleges and novitiates were opened by
means of the restored property and the royal bounty; and, we are told,
town after town demanded, and enthusiastically welcomed, its former
teachers. We can well believe that the mobs which saluted the perjured
Ferdinand with the cry, "Down with Liberty," would welcome the Jesuits.
In the recoil due to their hatred of the French, and of the new ideas
which the French had brought into Spain, the densely ignorant mass of
the people fell at the feet of a brutal monarch and a corrupt clergy.
The educated middle class, however, remained substantially Liberal.
They had admitted Ferdinand only on condition that he promised to
maintain their Liberal Constitution, and, as soon as he had attained
the crown, he tore his promise and the Constitution to shreds and
fell with terrible cruelty on the Liberals. Known Liberals were at
once executed, imprisoned for life, or banished; the Inquisition
was restored; and a network of spies spread over the kingdom. Men,
women, and children were savagely punished, and a "Society of the
Exterminating Angel" arose to strengthen and direct the bloody hands of
the King and the Inquisitors.
Those five years of Spanish history constitute one of the most
repulsive chapters in the chronicle of modern Europe. Unfortunately, it
is not possible to determine what part the restored Jesuits had in this
reign of terror. All the clergy and monks of Spain were allied with
their monarch in prosecuting what they regarded as a holy war. It is
enough that the Jesuits did not dissent from the barbaric proceedings
of Ferdinand, and that they flourished and were more than doubled in
number within five years. The year 1820 found them increased to 397,
with several novitiates and a large number of colleges.
And the year 1820 gives us some measure of their guilt in connection
with the preceding years. The middle class was still strong enough,
or humane enough, to put an end to the disgraceful horrors, and
reaffirm the liberal constitution of 1810. The Cortes was summoned,
and, although its members were still predominantly Catholic, it was
determined, with only one dissentient, to expel the Jesuits. The
terrified King yielded to the deputies, and in August the four hundred
Jesuits were pensioned and ordered to quit the country. Unfortunately,
the French King espoused the cause of his "cousin," and his troops
restored the savage autocracy of Ferdinand and the power of the
Jesuits. The reign of terror returned, and even the other Catholic
monarchs of Europe were shocked by the outrages committed and permitted
by Ferdinand. Again it is impossible to disentangle the share of the
Jesuits in this comprehensive guilt. Their chief task was to educate
the young in "better" sentiments. The College of Nobles and a large
military college at Segura were entrusted to them, and they reoccupied
their former colleges. But neither priests nor ruler put confidence in
educational methods. It is enough to note that a conservative authority
on Spain, Major Hume, says of the renewed reign of terror: "Modern
civilisation has seen no such instance of brutal, blind ferocity."
This appalling condition lasted, almost continuously, until the death
of Ferdinand in 1833. Then the country entered upon the long Carlist
war, and the Jesuits were soon expelled for the third time. While Queen
Christina allied herself with the Liberals, Don Carlos rallied to his
standard the absolutists and Ultramontanes, and the great majority of
the clergy supported him. It is usually and confidently said that the
Jesuits, like the rest of the clergy, supported Don Carlos; but when
we recollect their maxim of not taking sides openly in an ambiguous
conflict, or taking both sides, we shall not expect to find any proof
of this in the early stages. Not only the Liberals but the mass of
the people in Madrid were persuaded that they were on the side of Don
Carlos, and they saw hatred gathering on every side of them. In 1834
the cholera descended on the capital. Such occasions had generally
served the Jesuits, but this fresh affliction only further irritated
the people against them. The cry was raised that the Jesuits and the
Carlists had poisoned the water-supply, and it seems that, by some
strange accident or plot, children were found on the street with small
quantities of arsenic. In the afternoon of 17th July the citizens flung
themselves upon the houses of the Jesuits and other religious, and
a fierce riot ensued. Fourteen Jesuits, forty-four Franciscans, and
fifteen Dominicans and others were slain in the struggle. Some of their
provincial houses also were sacked or closed, and the inmates had to
fly for their lives.
In the following year, 1835, the Society was again proscribed, by
the Regent Christina, and the Jesuits were scattered. They now sided
openly with Don Carlos. Alleging, as usual, that they were indifferent
to politics and must discharge the spiritual services demanded of
them under any banner, they followed in the rear of the advancing
Carlists and opened colleges in the districts conquered by them. One
Jesuit guarded the conscience of Don Carlos, another was tutor to
his children, and others ministered in his camps. At length an abler
Christinist General, Espartero, cleared the Carlists from the Basque
Provinces and closed the Jesuit houses. By the time of the revolution
of 1848 there were none but a few disguised and timid survivors of the
Society in Spain.
From Portugal the Jesuits were rigorously excluded during fifteen years
after the restoration of the Society. John VI., a constitutional and
sober monarch, refused to irritate his subjects by admitting them,
and had no need of their stifling influence on education in Portugal.
He resisted all the pressure of Rome in their interest, and observed
the Liberal Constitution which he had accepted. His granddaughter
Maria succeeded to his throne and policy in 1826, under the regency of
her uncle, Dom Miguel. Here again the Jesuits were admitted in virtue
of an act of treachery and throve in an atmosphere of savagery. Dom
Miguel intrigued for the throne, and, when he took an oath to respect
the Liberal Constitution, was permitted to occupy it. "His Jesuit
training," says the _Cambridge Modern History_ (x. 321), "would make
it easy for him to rest content with the absolution of the Church for
a breach of faith committed on behalf of the good cause." He at once
violated his oath and turned with ferocity upon the Liberals. It is
estimated by some of the Portuguese writers that more than 60,000 were
executed, deported, or imprisoned in the next four years.
Such was the second of the leading Catholic monarchs to seek the aid
of the Jesuits. None of the members of the old Portuguese Province
could be discovered, or induced to resume work in a bitterly hostile
world, and eight Jesuits had to be sent from France, in 1829, to begin
the work of restoration. They make little pretence of an enthusiastic
reception in this case. None of their former property was restored,
and for a time they had to take refuge in the houses of rival orders.
They had, however, their usual good fortune to attract the sympathy of
noble ladies, and were enabled to secure their old house at Lisbon in
the following year. When the King saw that no violent upheaval followed
their arrival, he began to patronise them, and secured for them their
famous college at Coimbra. In the same year they had the satisfaction
of establishing a house at Pombal, where their old antagonist had
died, and their superior describes, in an edifying letter, how he at
once "ran to say a prayer over the tomb of the Marquis"; he was deeply
pained, it seems, to find that the remains of Pombal had not even yet
been interred, while the children of Ignatius were received with honour
in his name-place.
But the ferocity of Miguel had already deeply stirred the population,
and in the following year the defrauded young Queen's father, Don
Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, crossed the ocean to secure her rights and
the Constitution. The Jesuits were painfully perplexed. Don Pedro seems
to have felt that he could not hope for a lasting triumph without the
aid of the Jesuits, and he made a secret offer to them, in an autograph
letter (in March), of his protection and favour if they would desert
Miguel. The issue was uncertain, and, when Don Pedro entered Lisbon in
July, the Jesuits assured him that his letter had reached their hands
too late for them to consider his offer. They had remained ideally
neutral in the war, and had nursed the cholera victims in both camps
with religious impartiality.
The people of Lisbon saved Don Pedro from the dilemma which this
excellent or prudent conduct imposed on him. On 29th July a mixed
throng of soldiers and citizens assaulted and sacked the Jesuit
residence. It would have gone very hard with the fathers themselves
had not certain English naval officers chivalrously saved them. In the
following May (1834) Don Pedro renewed the sentence of suppression.
From their handsome college at Coimbra they were conveyed to Lisbon, to
face the hoots and taunts of a rejoicing mob, and then to be deposited
in prison. The French afterwards secured their release from prison, but
they have never since had a legal existence in the land of Pombal.
We turn next to England, to study the fortunes of the followers of
Ignatius up to the middle of the nineteenth century. In the latter part
of the eighteenth century the Jesuits had availed themselves of the
more tolerant spirit of the age of the Georges, and again increased
to a considerable body. Their colleges in Spain, France, and Belgium
received numbers of young Catholic aspirants, and we find that at the
time of the suppression of the Society the English Province boasted
274 members, of whom 143 were actually in England. The suppression in
Spain and France reduced their colleges; the two colleges at Bruges
were violently closed by the authorities in 1773; there remained only a
house at Liège and the English missions at Liverpool, Preston, Bristol,
and a few other towns.
They continued to live in community in these residences after the
abolition of the Society, and minister as secular priests. In 1794
their situation was again altered by the French invasion of Belgium,
when the English fathers were expelled from their last continental
seat, at Liège. The disaster proved, however, to be the starting-point
of their more prosperous modern development in England. One of their
old pupils, Thomas Weld, offered them a house and estate at Stonyhurst,
near Preston, and on 29th August the refugees reached what was destined
to be one of their most important centres. They opened a school--to be
directed by certain "gentlemen from Liège"--and quietly awaited the
future.
In the meantime the ex-Jesuits who had remained in England bore their
disgrace very impatiently. One of their number, Father Thorpe, wrote
in 1785 so scurrilous a _Sketch of the Life and Government of Pope
Clement XIV._ that his colleagues had to withdraw it from publication
at the demand of their own admirers. In the following year the English
ex-Jesuits opened a correspondence with their rebellious colleagues
in Russia, and, although they could devise no pretext whatever for
disobeying the Pope in England, they offered to unite with the
Russians. Their proposal was declined or postponed, and they waited
until the Pope officially recognised the Russian Society in 1801. By
that time the Abbé de Broglie had led his little colony of Fathers of
the Faith from Austria to London and opened a college at Kensington.
Some of the ex-Jesuits and many emigrant French priests were attracted
to this authorised Congregation, but Paccanari was now an object of
suspicion to most of them, and, on the other hand, there was increasing
hope of a restoration of the Society.
The proposal to enlist under the Russian General was now revived, and
both ex-Jesuits and Fathers of the Faith made their way, secretly and
individually, to Russia and renewed their vows. By the year 1804 there
were between eighty and ninety Jesuits in England. The general and
violent hatred of the French had led to much sympathy with the clerical
victims of the Revolution, but England was not yet prepared for this
substantial resurrection of the Jesuits. Stonyhurst was growing into a
large and busy colony, owing to the continued bounty of Weld and the
return of surviving members of the old province, and in 1804, and more
peremptorily in 1807, the Government ordered the dissolution of their
communities.
Such an order was a feeble check on their growth, and they took
advantage of the successive movements which aided the restoration of
Catholicism. The stream of French emigrants, the Act of Toleration of
1791, the beginning of Irish immigration, and the advocacy of Catholic
Emancipation by Pitt enabled the Catholics to enter the nineteenth
century in increased numbers. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 so
inflated them that they then estimated their numbers in London alone
as 146,000, or nearly a tenth of the population; to-day they number
about one-fiftieth of the population of London. The Jesuits shared the
growth with the rest of the clergy. Between 1826 and 1835 they built
eleven new churches, and in 1830 the Roman authorities made a formal
province of the English group. The Irish fathers had been detached from
the English in 1829, and formed a vice-province. Ten years later began
the Catholic movement within the Church of England, to the considerable
profit of Rome.
The early history of the Jesuits in the United States is one of the
most interesting chapters in their modern story. When the Society was
abolished and its members momentarily discouraged, John Carroll, a
member of the suppressed English Province, led a small group of fathers
to the North American Colony. He became friendly with Washington
and other leaders of the insurrection, and is said to have had some
influence in shaping the Liberal clauses of the new Constitution. In
1789 he became Bishop of Baltimore, and another ex-Jesuit, Father
Neale, was afterwards made his coadjutor. This transferred the
American mission from the control of the English Vicar Apostolic,
and made Carroll head of the Church in the United States. In 1803 we
find Carroll writing to General Gruber that there are a dozen aged
ex-Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with sufficient property
(of the older Maryland mission) to support thirty; they wish to join
Gruber's authorised Society and receive an accession of strength. The
Russian Jesuits had justified their rebellion on the ground that the
secular monarch had forbidden them to lay aside their habits; the
Americans said it was enough that there was in America no secular
monarch to forbid them to wear it. The Papacy counted for little with
any of them.
Gruber complied, and the foundations were laid of the prosperity of
the Jesuits in the United States. In the early years little progress
was made. The newcomers were young foreigners, and the population was
scattered and generally hostile. One of the German fathers was actually
arrested and tried for not betraying the confession of a thief, but
the controversy which followed rather promoted their interest. They
shrewdly established their chief college and centre at Georgetown, near
Washington, and gradually won the regard of American statesmen, who
visited and granted privileges to the college. By the year 1818 there
were 86 Jesuits in the United States, and recruits were arriving from
Europe. A novitiate had been opened at White Marsh in 1815, but few
novices could be secured in America. In fact, as they followed their
usual custom of making no charge for education, they had a severe
struggle with poverty everywhere. In 1822 the authorities at Rome
ordered them to close the school at Washington, as it could no longer
maintain itself without charging. The rector, Father Kelly, defied his
superiors for a time, and maintained the school on the fees of pupils;
but Americanism was not yet sufficiently developed to sustain this, and
Father Kelly was expelled from the Society.
Memories of the "black robes" lingered among the Indians, and it
was suggested, time after time, that the fathers should return to
their work among them, and amongst the blacks of the south and the
islands. Their historian makes a lengthy and very earnest apology
for their refusal, during ten or twenty years, to listen to this
suggestion. They remembered how their work amongst the Indians had
been "misinterpreted"; they were too few in number to spare men for
distant fields; in time, they foresaw the greatness of the United
States and "preferred the certain to the uncertain." The truth seems to
be that commerce in blankets and beaver-skins was not possible in the
nineteenth century. After 1840, however, they sent missionaries among
the Indians, and won a great affection among them. By that time the
Missouri Province alone had 148 Jesuits, and the Maryland Province 103.
It is clear that the early Jesuits laboured devotedly to arrest the
enormous lapse from the Church of Rome in the United States in the
first half of the nineteenth century. We need pay little attention to
their boasts of conversions. Catholic immigrants were now arriving in
millions, and were passing out into the lonely districts and small
towns, where their faith was quickly forgotten. In 1636 the Bishop of
Charlestown estimated the loss at nearly four millions in his diocese
alone. Many of the Jesuits went out among the struggling pioneers and
led lives of great self-sacrifice. Their energies were, however, mainly
concentrated on the aggrandisement of their schools and conciliation
of politicians in cities like Washington. They made sure of power in
the great Republic they foresaw. It may be added that the Society was
at the same time spreading in Mexico. Restored under Ferdinand, they
undertook, as in Spain, to check or destroy the Liberal principles
which had taken root in Mexico. For this they were banished in 1821,
when the news came of the Liberal triumph in Spain, and did not return
to open activity until 1843.
In the Germanic lands, except Belgium, the restored Jesuits had a
severe struggle throughout the nineteenth century. Austria and Bavaria
refused to publish the bull of restoration or comply with it, to the
great mortification of the Jesuits. Metternich, at least, retained
the spirit of Joseph II., and Ferdinand II. was not yet disposed to
tempt his subjects by readmitting them. Prussia was, of course, still
closed against the Jesuits as Jesuits. The first serious attempt to
gain a footing in Germany was made in 1820, when the fathers who had
been driven from Russia appeared on the Austrian frontier and humbly
asked permission to cross the Emperor's territory. They might "cross,"
he drily answered; and when they secured the customary intervention of
noble dames, he permitted them to go and teach loyalty among his poor
subjects in Galicia and his restless subjects in Hungary. He granted
funds for this purpose, and they soon had a flourishing Province in
Galicia, and a general control of education. Even here they were
subject to the bishops, and the imperial decrees intimate that there
was much suspicion and hostility. In 1829, Styria and other provinces
were opened to them, though the opposition was so violent that at Gratz
we find them complaining of having to lodge in some kind of inn, with
an actress for neighbour.
Ferdinand II. died in 1836, but his successor could do little for
them in face of the prevailing hostility. Father Beckx, the future
General, was in Vienna at the time. A Jesuit had at last brought a
ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess
of Anhalt-Köthen, and Father Beckx was confessor to the Duchess at
Vienna--and secret agent of the Society. He writes in 1837 that their
enemies are very powerful, and Josephite principles triumphant; the
Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden
to teach. Ferdinand, however, was not indisposed to enlist their
aid in fighting Liberalism, and they quietly spread in the outlying
provinces. The Tyrol was opened to them in 1838, and from their old
college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools. We shall
see presently how the revolutionary storm of 1848 drove them from their
new acquisitions.
In Switzerland the fortunes of the Jesuits were more romantic. During
the suppression they continued to live in communities, and carefully
concealed the offensive title from the eyes of Protestant citizens.
After 1814 they began to induce their lay followers to petition the
authorities to sanction their return to life, and the long and bitter
struggle over the Society began. The canton of Solothurn was then more
than eighty per cent. Catholic, and in 1816 the Grand Council was urged
to restore the Society. It refused, and they then made cautious efforts
in Valais and Freiburg. I am aware that in all these cases the Jesuits
do not appear in connection with the petition; a few influential
Catholics appeal for the return, and the Jesuits are depicted as
serenely aloof from the negotiations. We are accustomed to pretences
of this character. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also
was nearly ninety per cent. Catholic) decided by sixty-nine votes to
forty-two to readmit the Jesuits and entrust its schools to them. At
the same time they recovered their old house at Brigue, and began to
spread in Catholic Valais.
From the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century the
Radicals began their attacks on the growing Jesuits. In 1823 the
fathers secured their old college at Freiburg, which they had long
coveted. Since their settlement in Freiburg this college had been
in the hands of the Franciscan monks, who had adopted the ideas of
Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educationist, and were doing admirable
work. The bishop complained to the authorities of the friars'
innovations, and they were replaced by the Jesuits. The Radicals
of the town were malicious enough to suggest that the Jesuits had
intrigued to bring about this result,--of which, of course, there is
no proof,--and on the night of 9-10th March they attacked the college,
and were with difficulty prevented from burning it. In the following
year the Jesuits were expelled from the Netherlands (which formed one
Province with Switzerland and Saxony) and came to swell the number of
their colleagues in Valais and Freiburg.
In 1836, however, when the second revolutionary wave was passing
over Europe, the Radicals won power in the majority of the cantons
(including Lucerne, Freiburg, and Solothurn). They were not yet in a
position to dislodge the Jesuits, but there was constant friction, and
a serious struggle for the federal authority began. The aim of the
Radicals was to capture and strengthen the federal government, and
expel the Jesuits (and other religions) from the whole of Switzerland.
They and the "young Swiss" were part of the international Liberal
movement, which was everywhere anti-clerical.[42] In 1844 the struggle
became more violent. The Jesuits of Valais refusing to admit government
control of their schools, a band of armed Radicals marched upon Sion
and had to be defeated by the armed inhabitants. In the same year the
Jesuits entered Lucerne for the first time. A wealthy Catholic farmer
named Leu threw all his energy into their cause, and the Jesuits aided
by sending a preacher occasionally to show, by suave and conciliatory
sermons, that the suspicion of them was wholly unfounded. In face of a
storm of Protestant and Radical threats the Council decided to admit
the Jesuits.
There now spread through the country a struggle of passion which
was soon to culminate in a deadly civil war. Leu was murdered, and
Catholics and Radicals faced each other with intense hatred. Opinions
may differ as to the conduct of the Jesuits in pressing their ministry,
since it is clear that the purely political differences would not have
stained the hills and valleys of Switzerland with blood. The war that
followed was a religious war, and mainly a war over the Jesuits. In
the spring of 1845 it was announced that an army of 11,000 Radicals
was marching on Lucerne. The Catholic Confederation sent round the
fiery cross, and gathered an army sufficiently strong to defeat and
scatter the Radicals. It was over the corpses of these opponents that
the Jesuits entered Lucerne and began to teach, with passion still
seething on every side. A graver struggle impended, and both sides
hastily organised. The seven Catholic cantons (to whose enterprise the
French Jesuits contributed 98,000 francs) formed a Sonderbund [Separate
Alliance], and aimed at setting up a Catholic Republic. The Federal
Diet at Berne ordered them to dissolve, and when they refused, pitted
the federal army against the Catholic troops. A bloody and disastrous
war ended in a victory for the federal troops in 1847, the Sonderbund
was destroyed, and the Jesuits (with the other religious orders) were
excluded from Switzerland by the Constitution of 1848. The Jesuits had
not waited for the troops to enter Freiburg and Lucerne; they had fled
to the Tyrol and Austria.
In the Netherlands the story of the Jesuits during the nineteenth
century has been one of great prosperity, checked only by a few early
reverses. No sooner had the Pope issued the bull of restoration, and
the French rule been destroyed, than the ex-Jesuits who lingered in the
country as secular priests and the Fathers of the Faith (who had at
last entered the Society) proceeded to organise their body. A novitiate
was opened at Rumbeke and another at Destelbergen, in Belgium. The
Congress of Vienna, however, placed the united Netherlands under the
control of William of Nassau, and he watched the progress of the
Jesuits with uneasiness. The former father of the Faith, the Count de
Broglie, was now bishop of Ghent, and he and other prelates and nobles
sedulously assisted the Jesuits. The controversies which were bound to
arise after the union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium under
one crown soon raged furiously, and William, in the summer of 1816,
ordered the Jesuits to close their novitiate at Destelbergen. They were
forced to retire, but de Broglie encouraged them to resist the King,
and lent them his palace for the maintenance of their community. De
Broglie himself was afterwards banished for assailing the Constitution,
and the fathers were put out of the palace at the point of the bayonet
in 1818. As William threatened to expel them from the country, they
removed the novitiate to Switzerland, and assumed an appearance of
submission. As, however, they continued to stir the Catholics, William
ordered the bishops in 1824 to forbid them to give retreats to the
clergy, and in the following year he closed two of their residences.
This succinct account will suffice to introduce the Catholic revolution
of 1830, in which Belgium won its independence. We are again asked to
regard the Jesuits as idle spectators of the fierce Catholic agitation
which ended in the rebellion; but, in view of their experience under
William, it seems wiser to accept the Dutch assurance that they played
a large, if secret, part in it. The revolution was just, however, and
there were other grounds than religion in the dissatisfaction of the
Belgians.[43] From that date Belgium has been a golden land for the
Jesuits, and Protestant Holland has suffered them to prosper in peace.
After 1830 they literally overran Belgium; they numbered 117 in 1834,
and 454 in 1845. After that date came the great revolutionary storm of
1848, and Belgium was almost the one land in which the hunted Jesuits
could find refuge. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was too prudent a Protestant
to interfere with them, and from the Belgian frontier they maintained
the strength of their struggling colleagues in France. In Holland they
were treated with leniency by the successor of William; and, when
the storm broke upon their German colleagues in 1872, they were able
to receive the refugees and maintain houses on the frontier for the
invasion of Germany, as they do to-day.
It is needless to show, in fine, how the restored Jesuits spread again
over the foreign missions. After 1830 especially, when their number
had increased, they began to regain their lost Provinces. In 1834
six fathers landed at Calcutta to restore the Indian Province, and
when the Portuguese missionaries and authorities tried to expel them,
they succeeded in getting the protection of the English authorities.
Madaura, the richest of their old fields, was restored to them in 1837.
Here again the existing missionaries protested so violently that for
many years the few Jesuits led a hard and almost fruitless existence.
In 1842 some of the Jesuit missionaries secured the charge of a native
college in Bengal, but the prince was compelled to evict them after a
few years. There was an angry feeling and great outcry against them in
India well into the middle of the century. In 1854 they received charge
of the vicariate of Bombay, in 1858 of Poonah, and in 1859 of Bengal.
China was re-entered, very modestly, in 1841, and the various Republics
of South America admitted them whenever the Catholics alternated in
power with the Liberals. They entered Argentina in 1836, but were
banished again in 1843; they were permitted to settle in Guatemala
in 1853, and expelled when the Liberals came to power in 1871. But
it would be little more than a calendar of dates to record their
appearances and disappearances in the South American States, and on
the foreign missions generally. In 1845, of 5000 Jesuits, 518 were
missionaries: in 1855 there were 1110 on the missions: in 1884 they
counted 2575 on the missions. They no longer presented to the historian
the interesting features of their early years; Jesuits no longer
flaunted the silk robes of a mandarin or the mythological vesture of
a Saniassi, no vast estates or commerce sent gold to their European
brethren, no troops of soldiers marched at their command, no quaint
rites or rebellions against bishops engaged the Roman Congregations.
They had entered the age of prose.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 41: It seems to have been on account of this slanderous
attack on the Pope, as well as to give it an air of impartiality,
that General Roothaan publicly denied that the Jesuits had assisted
the author. The learned Abbé Guettée, in the _Histoire des Jésuites_,
which he published soon afterwards, tells us that, not yet knowing his
hostility to them, some of the Jesuits of Paris freely acknowledged to
him their share in the work. In any case, the Jesuits were obviously
in close co-operation with the writer, since he speaks constantly of
having before his eyes unpublished documents which belonged to the
Society.]
[Footnote 42: There were, of course, more important issues at stake
in the Swiss struggle. The franchise was narrow, and the government
aristocratic in the cantons, and the central or federal power was weak.
The Radicals mainly aimed at reforming these features, but they were
hardly less inflamed at the privileges given to the Jesuits. In Valais
the fathers travelled free on the public services.]
[Footnote 43: Historians usually include among the causes the
enforcement of a system of secular education only in the schools.
But--as Sir Robert Stout kindly pointed out to me--the Catholic
prelates in their letter to the French Minister of the Interior, dated
30th May 1806, had previously "willingly" accepted this arrangement.
They agreed that it was enough to teach religion in the churches.]