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34 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
I trust that in the following pages I have succeeded in the task I proposed to myself, of conveying to my readers a just and correct idea of the character and aims of the brotherhood of Loyola. At least I have spared no pains to accomplish this end. I honestly believe that the book was wanted; for liberal institutions and civil and religious freedom have no greater enemies than that cunning fraternity; while it is equally true, that although the Jesuits are dreaded and detested on all sides as t
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INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
When I first intimated to some of my friends my intention of writing the History of the Jesuits, most of them dissuaded me from the enterprise, as from a task too difficult. I am fully aware of all the difficulties I have to encounter in my undertaking. I am sensible that to write a complete and detailed history of the Jesuits would require more time and learning than I have to bestow: neither could such a history be brought within the compass of six or seven hundred pages. It will be my endeavo
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CHAPTER I. 1500-40. ORIGIN OF THE ORDER.
CHAPTER I. 1500-40. ORIGIN OF THE ORDER.
The sixteenth century presents itself pregnant with grave and all-important events. The old world disappears—a new order of things commences. The royal power, adorned with the seignorial prerogatives snatched from the subjugated barons, establishes itself amidst their ruined castles, beneath which lies buried the feudal system. Mercenary armies, now constantly maintained by the sovereign, render him independent of the military services of his subjects, and formidable alike to foreign foes and to
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CHAPTER II. 1540-52. CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SOCIETY.[17]
CHAPTER II. 1540-52. CONSTITUTIONS OF THE SOCIETY.[17]
The times in which Ignatius wrote the Constitutions were, for the Court of Rome and the Catholic religion, times of anxiety and danger. The Reformation was making rapid progress, and all Christendom, Catholic [18] as well as Protestant, resounded with the “Hundred Complaints” ( Centum gravamina ) brought forward at the Diet of Nuremberg against the Roman court—complaints and accusations which the wonderfully candid Adrian VI. acknowledged to be too well founded. This pontiff, by his nuncio, fran
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I. THE NOVICES.
I. THE NOVICES.
We have already seen the process a candidate must go through before being admitted into the House of First Probation. After undergoing a still more searching scrutiny there, he passes to the House of Noviciate. The noviciate lasts two years, and may be shortened or prolonged at the General’s pleasure. There are six principal exercises by which the Novice is tried; they are as follows:— “1. The Novices are to devote a month to the spiritual exercises, self-examination, confession of sins, and med
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II. THE SCHOLARS.
II. THE SCHOLARS.
To promote the objects of their Society, the Jesuits rely in a great measure upon the talent and learning of its members. Hence their decided preference for candidates with superior mental endowments, and their assiduous attention to the prosperity and good management of their colleges and universities, which were at one time the best regulated and most efficient in Europe. Their judicious arrangement of the studies, their admirable superintendence, their exemplary discipline, their many inducem
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III. COADJUTORS.
III. COADJUTORS.
The third class of Jesuits consists of Temporal and Spiritual Coadjutors. The Temporal Coadjutors, however learned they may be, are never admitted to holy orders. They are the porters, cooks, stewards, and agents of the Society. The Spiritual Coadjutors are priests, and must be men of considerable learning, in order that they may be qualified to hear confessions, to teach, preach, &c. The rectors of the colleges, and the superiors of the religious houses, are appointed from this class. T
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IV. THE PROFESSED.
IV. THE PROFESSED.
This fourth class, the first in order of power and dignity, may be said to constitute, alone, the Society. The probation required for it is longer and more rigorous than that of any of the other classes. Two additional years of trial must be endured, in order to gain admission into it. This is partly to prevent the class becoming too numerous. The Professed must, in terms of the Constitutions, be priests, above twenty-five years of age, eminent in learning and virtue. In addition to their acquir
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V. THE PROVINCIALS.
V. THE PROVINCIALS.
The Provincials are elected by the General from the class of the Professed. They are appointed for three years, but may be confirmed or dismissed at the General’s will. The importance of the province over which he is set depends upon the number of houses or colleges established within its bounds. The Rectors, Administrators, or local Superiors, write to the Provincials monthly a full and correct account of the inclinations, opinions, defects, propensities, and characters of every individual unde
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VI. RECTORS, SUPERIORS, AND ADMINISTRATORS.
VI. RECTORS, SUPERIORS, AND ADMINISTRATORS.
The Rectors are intrusted with the superintendence of the colleges. The General chooses them from the class of the Spiritual Coadjutors, but appoints them for no determinate period, which leaves him at liberty to dismiss them whenever he pleases. The Superiors, elected from the same class and by the same authority, have the oversight of the Houses of the First and Second Probation. Each of these officials, Superior, Rector, and Provincial, has in his respective sphere as absolute a power over hi
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CHAPTER IV. 1541-48. THE PROGRESS OF THE ORDER, AND ITS FIRST GENERAL.
CHAPTER IV. 1541-48. THE PROGRESS OF THE ORDER, AND ITS FIRST GENERAL.
Ignatius had no sooner obtained a bull from the Pope approving of the Society, than he thought it expedient to give it a chief, or, to speak more correctly, to be himself formally elected as such, being de facto its master already. In order, therefore, to proceed to the election of the General, he summoned to Rome his companions, who were scattered through different parts of Europe. Six came. Bobadilla, Xavier, and Rodriguez sent their votes written. Both absent and present were unanimous in the
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CHAPTER V. 1547-1631. THE FEMALE JESUITS.
CHAPTER V. 1547-1631. THE FEMALE JESUITS.
Before proceeding further, we think it proper to make a few observations on the Female Jesuitical Institution which was established at this period, especially as the order still exists, though under a different name. When Ignatius was living at Barcelona, he received many kindnesses and favours at the hand of a lady called Rosello. But after he had left this place, his mind was so absorbed in devising so many and lofty projects, that he entirely forgot her. She did not, however, forget Ignatius.
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CHAPTER VI. 1548-56. THE FIRST OPPOSITION TO THE ORDER, AND DEATH OF LOYOLA.
CHAPTER VI. 1548-56. THE FIRST OPPOSITION TO THE ORDER, AND DEATH OF LOYOLA.
The order of Jesuits, which had hitherto progressed so favourably, was now surrounded with difficulties and enemies. While the rapid increase of the Society, the influence it had acquired, and the wealth which it had already accumulated, combined to render the Jesuits less cautious and more authoritative, they caused also a great deal of envy, especially among those classes menaced by the company in some of their privileges. At the first opportunity an attempt was made to crush the order in the
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CHAPTER VII. 1541-1774. MISSIONS.
CHAPTER VII. 1541-1774. MISSIONS.
Before we proceed any further, we feel obliged to say a few words regarding the missions which were undertaken by the Jesuits soon after the establishment of their order. To write a complete history would be almost interminable. To analyse Orlandini, Sacchini, Bartoli, Jouvency, the Litteræ Annuæ , and Les Lettres Edifiantes , not to speak of a hundred others, would take up a great many volumes. [85] We think we may fill our pages with more instructive matter. We shall now confine ourselves to a
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CHAPTER VIII. 1556-1581. THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH GENERALS OF THE ORDER.
CHAPTER VIII. 1556-1581. THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH GENERALS OF THE ORDER.
Many were the trials the Jesuits had to encounter after the death of Loyola. The moment he expired, the professed members who were at Rome appointed Lainez Vicar-General, although he was at the time dangerously ill, fixing, at the same time, the month of November for the election of the new General. No objection could be raised against the nomination of Lainez, he being without contradiction the most prominent living member of the Society. The difficulties only began when the Vicar-General adjou
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ENGLAND.
ENGLAND.
Many have pronounced it impossible to write an adequate history of the Jesuits, because, being more or less connected with the history of the world, it is no easy matter to pass from one event, and from one country, to another, and yet follow the chronological order, that the reader may have a clear and consecutive narrative. To obviate this difficulty as far as possible, we have, in the preceding chapter, which embraces a period of twenty-five years, related only the facts connected with the in
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PORTUGAL.
PORTUGAL.
If the conduct of the Jesuits in Portugal was not of so criminal a nature as in England, it was certainly far more bold, and productive of more disastrous consequences to the Portuguese nation. We have already seen that the Jesuits had, from the very first, acquired great influence in that country, an influence which, after the death of John III., became paramount. During and after the minority of Don Sebastian, the Jesuits were the confessors of all the royal family. Consalves de Camera was fir
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FRANCE.
FRANCE.
We have seen the Jesuits executed in England as traitors. We beheld them in Portugal, as successful conspirators, dispose of a sceptre wrested from the hands of their benefactors. We shall now see them in France acting the part of traitors, conspirators, and regicides, and the principal cause of an indescribable evil. We have already mentioned the famous arrêt (decision) of 1554, by which the parliament of Paris refused to admit the Jesuits into the kingdom. From this time, down to the year 1562
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GERMANY.
GERMANY.
While the Jesuits in France and in England, where the monarch was adverse to them, not only propounded the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, but taught that every individual had a right to murder the king if he were disliked by the nation or accursed by the Pope—in Poland, Sweden, and Germany, where the population was adverse and the sovereign friendly to them, they inculcated the contrary doctrine, and did not scruple to enforce it by the most cruel and violent proceedings. In France a
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POLAND.
POLAND.
If from Germany we pass to Poland, there also we meet the ominous influence of the disciples of Loyola. “The Protestant cause,” says Count Krasinski, in the fourth of his admirable Lectures on Slavonia , “was endangered by the lamentable partiality which Stephen Batory had shewn to the Jesuits; and the Romanist reaction, beginning under his reign, had been chiefly promoted by the schools, which that order was everywhere establishing.” Stephen, however, either too prudent to attack openly the rel
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SWEDEN.
SWEDEN.
In Sweden, the efforts of the Jesuits against Protestantism, although no less active and vigorous, were less successful. John III., son of the heroic Gustavus Vasa, on ascending the throne, published a ritual, in which, to the great amazement and dismay of the Protestants, were to be found not only ceremonies, but even doctrines of the Church of Rome. [198] The Pope, apprised of this prince’s good disposition towards his Church, despatched to Stockholm in all haste and secrecy, as his legate, th
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SWITZERLAND AND PIEDMONT.
SWITZERLAND AND PIEDMONT.
The Jesuits experienced some difficulty in entering Switzerland, and in some parts of it they could not get footing; but towards the year 1574, they established themselves in Friburg and Lucerne. They succeeded in keeping back these two towns from the Alliance of Berne, and scattered the flames of that religious discord between these cantons which was not extinguished even by the blood that was shed at the instigation of the Jesuits in 1845-47. The famous Canisius was the principal promoter and
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CHAPTER X. 1581-1608. COMMOTION AMONG THE JESUITS.
CHAPTER X. 1581-1608. COMMOTION AMONG THE JESUITS.
In relating the proceedings of the Jesuits in divers countries of Europe, we have not mentioned Spain; first, because, though firmly established in that country, they, under the absolute Philip II., exercised no influence whatever over its general policy; and, secondly, because we had it in reserve to speak of their proceedings in that country in the present chapter. In Spain the Jesuits had no heretics to contend with—no zeal or fanaticism to excite. If now and then some Christianised Jew or Mo
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CHAPTER XI. 1600-1700. DOCTRINES AND MORAL CODE OF THE JESUITS.
CHAPTER XI. 1600-1700. DOCTRINES AND MORAL CODE OF THE JESUITS.
Let not our readers imagine that we shall enter into a profound theological discussion about the doctrines of the Jesuits. The thing has been repeatedly done, and we confess ourselves too deficient scholars in divinity, to throw any new light upon it. We shall briefly touch the theological question, and shall rather enlarge on those principles and maxims by which the Jesuits perverted the morals of their votaries, the better to domineer over them. Acquaviva, in the Ratio Studiorum , had introduc
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CHAPTER XII. 1608-1700. OVERGROWING INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY.
CHAPTER XII. 1608-1700. OVERGROWING INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY.
We now enter on a new phase of our history. Up to the period at which we are arrived (the beginning of the seventeenth century), the Jesuits have been obliged more or less to struggle for existence. Now they contend for supremacy and a domineering power in those same countries into which they had been at first refused admittance. Vagrant monks, who had but an hospital for a place of refuge, they now possess all over the surface of the earth hundreds of magnificent establishments, endowed with pr
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CHAPTER XIII. 1600-1753. AMERICAN MISSIONS.
CHAPTER XIII. 1600-1753. AMERICAN MISSIONS.
When we reflect that the Jesuits are our fellow-men, that their crimes and iniquities which we are compelled to stigmatise, are in some measure a stain upon the human species, we sincerely rejoice when we find some noble action to record, and when we may write a page of praise and eulogium. We think we have shewn this impartiality in our account of the Indian missions, when, while condemning with all our might the idolatrous practice of later times, we awarded to the first missionaries the prais
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CHAPTER XIV. 1617-1700. INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECLINE.
CHAPTER XIV. 1617-1700. INTERNAL CAUSES OF DECLINE.
We have seen in one of our former chapters, that during Acquaviva’s generalate , there broke out several partial insurrections against the exorbitant power of the General, and that, although they were quelled, they had left in the community seeds of disobedience and a spirit of independence, which it was to be feared would manifest itself again at the first favourable moment. In fact, the instant it was no more restrained by the iron hand of the inflexible Acquaviva, it pervaded all the classes
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CHAPTER XV. 1700-1772. DOWNFALL OF THE JESUITS.
CHAPTER XV. 1700-1772. DOWNFALL OF THE JESUITS.
We have brought down our history to the beginning of the eighteenth century, an epoch in which the power and greatness of the Society of Jesus had, by a gradual march, ascended to a point from which, following the law inherent in all human things, it could not but decline; for institutions, empires, and nations, have, as well as man himself, their successive periods of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and decrepitude; and if institutions, doctrines, or nations, revive after their moral death, t
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CHAPTER XVI. 1773. ABOLITION OF THE ORDER.
CHAPTER XVI. 1773. ABOLITION OF THE ORDER.
After the death of Clement XIII., all the influence of the house of Bourbon was employed to secure that the choice of the College of Cardinals should fall on a man adverse to the Company of Jesus, as all the efforts of the members of that body were directed to bring about the contrary result. While D’Aubeterre, the French ambassador, speaking also in the name of Spain and Naples, was reiterating that an election contrary to the wishes of the house of Bourbon would lead to the ruin of the Roman S
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CHAPTER XVII. 1774. DEATH OF CLEMENT XIV.
CHAPTER XVII. 1774. DEATH OF CLEMENT XIV.
During the struggle which Clement had to undergo before the suppression of the order, his health, as we have seen, had been injured, and his gay, placid humour much altered. But the moment he had affixed his signature to the document, after pronouncing those foreboding prophetic words, “This suppression will cause our death”—wrung from his heart by the knowledge he had of the enemies he was going to offend, as if those words were the last doleful thought he was going to give to the subject—he be
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CHAPTER XVIII. 1773-1814. THE JESUITS DURING THEIR SUPPRESSION.
CHAPTER XVIII. 1773-1814. THE JESUITS DURING THEIR SUPPRESSION.
The Brief of Suppression, as our readers may have seen, made a provision by which the Jesuits might, as secular priests and individuals, exercise sacerdotal functions, subject, of course, to the episcopal authority. In consequence, some few of them had settled themselves quietly in different capacities. Others thought to conceal the Ignatian device under the new title of Fathers of the Faith, Fathers of the Cross, &c. But the greater part, the most daring and restless, would not submit t
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CHAPTER XIX. 1814. RE-ESTABLISHMENT.
CHAPTER XIX. 1814. RE-ESTABLISHMENT.
The events which took place in Europe in 1814 are known to every one. Napoleon, who represented abroad that same French Revolution which his military despotism had smothered at home, fell under the united efforts of Europe, favoured by the elements and by the treachery of his former companions in arms, to whom he had given either the staff of the field-marshal or the sceptre of the king. The restoration of all the dethroned sovereigns followed, and on re-entering their dominions, these monarchs
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CHAPTER XX. 1848-1852. THE JESUITS IN AND AFTER 1848.
CHAPTER XX. 1848-1852. THE JESUITS IN AND AFTER 1848.
Before the Suppression, the Jesuits, with alternate vicissitudes, possessed less or more influence in all Roman Catholic countries, in some of which, at different epochs, they were all-powerful and domineering. But since their re-establishment, their real effective power, it may be said, is confined to the Italian peninsula. It was my unfortunate country that, from the beginning of their restoration, more than any other part of Europe, experienced the pernicious effects of their revival. As from
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CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION.
We are now at the end of our labours; but, before parting with our readers, we would briefly call their attention to some of the chief points in our History. If we mistake not, the perusal of our narrative, imperfect as it may be, will convince even an indifferently attentive reader that Loyola had but one end in view—one fixed idea—namely, to establish an order which should domineer over society; and that his successors have been arrested by no scruples as to the means to be employed for obtain
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