Renaissance in Italy Volume VI Part 11

To take firm hold on Germany had been the cherished wish of Ignatius; 'for there,' to use his own words, 'the pest of heresy exposed men to graver dangers than elsewhere.' The Society had scarcely been founded when Faber, Le Jay, and Bobadilla were sent north. Faber made small progress, and was removed to Spain. But Bobadilla secured the confidence of William, Duke of Bavaria; while Le Jay won that of Ferdinand of Austria. In both provinces they avowed their intention of working at the reformation of the clergy and the improvement of popular education--ends, which in the disorganized condition of Germany, seemed of highest importance to those princes. Through the influence of Bavaria, Bobadilla succeeded in rendering the Interim proclaimed by Charles V. nugatory; while Le Jay founded the college of the Order at Vienna. In this important post he was soon succeeded by Canisius, Ferdinand's confessor, through whose co-operation Cardinal Morone afterwards brought this Emperor into harmony with the Papal plan for winding up the Council of Trent. It should be added that Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, became the second headquarters of the Jesuit propaganda in Germany.

The methods adopted by Ignatius in dealing with his three lieutenants, Bobadilla, Le Jay, and Canisius, are so characteristic of Jesuit policy that they demand particular attention. Checkmated by Bobadilla in the matter of the Interim, Charles V. manifested his resentment. He was already ill-affected toward the Society, and its founder felt the need of humoring him. The highest grade of the Order was therefore ostentatiously refused to Bobadilla, until such time as the Emperor's attention was distracted from the cause of his disappointment. With Le Jay and Canisius the case stood differently. Ferdinand wished to make the former Bishop of Triest and the latter Archbishop of Vienna.

Ignatius opposed both projects, alleging that the Company of Jesus could not afford to part with its best servants, and that their vows of obedience and poverty were inconsistent with high office in the Church.

He discerned the necessity of reducing each member of the Society to absolute dependence on the General, which would have been impracticable if any one of them attained to the position of a prelate. A law was therefore pa.s.sed declaring it mortal sin for Jesuits to accept bishoprics or other posts of honor in the Church. Instead of a.s.suming the miter, Canisius was permitted to administer the See of Vienna without usufruct of its revenues. To the world this manifested the disinterested zeal of the Jesuits in a seductive light; while the integrity of the Society, as an independent self-sufficing body, exacting the servitude of absolute devotion from its members, was secured. Another instance of the same adroitness may be mentioned. The Emperor in 1552 offered a Cardinal's hat to Francis Borgia, who was by birth the most ill.u.s.trious of living Jesuits. Ignatius refrained from rebuffing the Emperor and insulting the Duke of Gandia by an open prohibition; but he told the former to expect the Duke's refusal, while he wrote to the latter expressing his own earnest hope that he would renounce an honor injurious to the Society. This diplomacy elicited a grateful but firm answer of _Nolo Episcopari_ from the Duke, who thus took the responsibility of offending Charles V. upon himself. Meanwhile the missionary objects of the Company were not neglected. Xavier left Portugal in 1541 for that famous journey through India and China, the facts of which may be compared for their romantic interest with Cortes'

or Pizarro's exploits. Brazil, the transatlantic Portugal, was abandoned to the Jesuits, and they began to feel their way in Mexico. In the year of Loyola's death, 1561, thirty-two members of the Society were resident in South America; one hundred in India, China, and j.a.pan; and a mission was established in Ethiopia. Even Ireland had been explored by a couple of fathers, who returned without success, after undergoing terrible hardships. At this epoch the Society counted in round numbers one thousand men. It was divided in Europe into thirteen provinces: seven of these were Portuguese and Spanish; three were Italian, namely, Rome, Upper Italy, and Sicily; one was French; two were German. Castile contained ten colleges of the Order; Aragon, five; Andalusia, five.

Portugal was penetrated through and through with Jesuits. Rome displayed the central Roman and Teutonic colleges. Upper Italy had ten colleges.

France could show only one college. In Upper Germany the Company held firm hold on Vienna, Prag, Munich, and Ingolstadt. The province of Lower Germany, including the Netherlands, was still undetermined. This expansion of the Order during the first sixteen years of its existence, enables us to form some conception of the intellectual vigor and commanding will of Ignatius. He lived, as no founder of an order, as few founders of religions, ever lived, to see his work accomplished, and the impress of his genius stereotyped exactly in the forms he had designed, upon the most formidable social and political organization of modern Europe.

In his administration of the Order, Ignatius was absolute and autocratic. We have seen how he dealt with aspirants after ecclesiastical honors, and how he shifted his subordinates, as he thought best, from point to point upon the surface of the globe. The least attempt at independence on the part of his most trusted lieutenants was summarily checked by him. Simon Rodriguez, one of the earliest disciples of the College of S. Barbe at Paris, ruled the kingdom of Portugal through the ascendency which he had gained over John III. Elated by the vastness of his victory, Rodriguez arrogated to himself the right of private judgment, and introduced that ascetic discipline into the houses of his province which Ignatius had forbidden as inexpedient. Without loss of time, the General superseded him in his command; and, after a sharp struggle, Rodriguez was compelled to spend the rest of his days under strict surveillance at Rome. Lainez, in like manner, while acting as Provincial of Upper Italy, thought fit to complain that his best coadjutors were drawn from the colleges under his control, to Rome. Ignatius wrote to this old friend, the man who best understood the spirit of its inst.i.tution, and who was destined to succeed him in his headship, a cold and terrible epistle. 'Reflect upon your conduct. Let me know whether you acknowledge your sin, and tell me at the same time what punishment you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.' Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain from preaching, confine his studies to the Breviary, walk as a beggar to Rome, and there teach grammar to children, or perform menial offices. This was all Ignatius wanted. If he were the Christ of the Society, he well knew that Lainez was its S. Paul. He could not prevent him from being his successor, and he probably was well aware that Lainez would complete and supplement what he must leave unfinished in his life-work. The groveling apology of such an eminent apostle, dictated as it was by hypocrisy and cunning, sufficed to procure his pardon, and remained among the archives of the Jesuits as a model for the spirit in which obedience should be manifested by them.

Obedience was, in fact, the cardinal and dominant quality of the Jesuit Order. To call it a virtue, in the sense in which Ignatius understood it, is impossible. The _Exercitia_, the Const.i.tutions, and the Letter to the Portuguese Jesuits, all of which undoubtedly explain Loyola's views, reveal to us the essence of historical Jesuitry, the _fons et origo_ of that long-continued evil which impested modern society. Let us examine some of his precepts on this topic. 'I ought to desire to be ruled by a superior who endeavors to subjugate my judgment and subdue my understanding.'--'When it seems to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which my conscience revolts as sinful, and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty to yield my doubts to him, unless I am constrained by evident reasons.'--'I ought not to be my own, but His who created me, and his too through whom G.o.d governs me.'--'I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither will nor understanding; like a crucifix, that is turned about by him that holds it; like a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it at will for his a.s.sistance or pleasure.'--'In our Company the person who commands must never be regarded in his own capacity, but as Jesus Christ in him.'--'I desire that you strive and exercise yourselves to recognize Christ our Lord in every Superior.'--'He who wishes to offer himself wholly up to G.o.d, must make the sacrifice not only of his will but of his intelligence.'--'In order to secure the faithful and successful execution of a Superior's orders, all private judgment must be yielded up.'--'A sin, whether venial or mortal, must be committed, if it is commanded by the Superior in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of obedience.' Of such nature was the virtue of obedience within the Order.[163] It rendered every member a tool in the hands of his immediate Superior, and the whole body one instrument in the hand of the General. The General's responsibility for the oblique acts and evasions of moral law, committed in the name of this virtue, was covered by the sounding phrase, 'Unto the greater glory of G.o.d.'

[Footnote 163: The letter addressed by Ignatius to the Portuguese Jesuits, March 22, 1553, on the virtue of obedience, the Const.i.tutions and the glosses on them called Declarations, and the last chapter of the _Exercitia_, furnish the above sentences. _See_, too, Philippson, _op.

cit._ pp. 60, 120-124.]

He had also his own duty of obedience, which was to Holy Church. 'In making the sacrifice of our own judgment, the mind must keep itself ever whole and ready for obedience to the spouse of Christ, our Holy Mother, the Church orthodox, apostolical and hierarchical.'[164] Not a portion of the Catholic creed, of Catholic habits, of Catholic inst.i.tutions, of Catholic superst.i.tions, but must be valiantly defended.--'It is our duty loudly to uphold reliques, the cult of saints, stations, pilgrimages indulgences, jubilees, the candles which are lighted before altars.' To criticise the clergy, even though notoriously corrupt, is a sin. The philosophy of the Church, as expressed by S. Thomas Aquinas, S.

Bonaventura, and others, must be recognized as equal in authority with Holy Writ. It follows that just as a subordinate was enjoined to sin, if sin were ordered by his Superior, so the whole Company were bound to lie, and do the things they disapproved, and preach the mummeries in which they disbelieved, in virtue of obedience to the Church. They may not even trust their senses; for 'If the Church p.r.o.nounces a thing which seems to us white to be black, we must immediately say that it is black.'[165]

[Footnote 164: Read in the _Exercitia_ (_Inst. Jesu_, vol. iv. p.

167-173) the Rules for right accord with the Orthodox Church. What follows above is taken from that chapter.]

[Footnote 165: _Exercitia_, ibid. p. 171. In this spirit a Jesuit of the present century writing on astronomy develops the heliocentric theory while he professes his submission to the geocentric theory as maintained by the Church.]

The Jesuits were enrolled as an army, in an hour of grave peril for the Church, to undertake her defense. They pledged themselves, by this vow of obedience, to perform that duty with their eyes shut. It was not their mission to reform or purify or revivify Catholicism, but to maintain it intact with all its intellectual anachronisms. How well they succeeded may be judged from the issue of the Council of Trent, in which Lainez and Salmeron played so prominent a part. That rigid enforcement of every jot and t.i.ttle in the Catholic hierarchical organization, in Catholic ritual, in the Catholic cult of saints and images, in the Catholic interpretation of Sacraments, in Catholic tradition as of equal value with the Bible, and lastly in the theory of Papal Supremacy, which was the astounding result of a Council convened to alter and reform the Church, can be attributed in no small measure to Jesuit persistency.

Ignatius attained his object. Obedience, blind, servile, unquestioning, unscrupulous, became the distinguishing feature of the Jesuits. But he condemned his Order to mediocrity. No really great man in any department of human knowledge or activity has arisen in the Company of Jesus. In course of time it became obvious to any one of independent character and original intellect that their ranks were not the place for him. And if youths of real eminence entered it before they perceived this truth, their spirit was crushed. The machine was powerful enough for good and evil; but it remained an aggregate of individual inferiorities. Its merit and its perfection lay in this, that so complex an instrument could be moved by a single finger of the General in Rome. He consistently employed its delicate system of wheels and pulleys for the aggrandizement of the Order in the first place, in the second place for the control of the Catholic Church, and always for the subjugation and cretinization of the mind of Europe.

The training of a Jesuit began with study of the _Exercitia Spiritualia_.[166] This manual had been composed by Loyola himself at intervals between 1522 and 1548, when it received the imprimatur of Pope Paul III. He based it on his own experiences at Manresa, and meant it to serve as a perpetual introduction to the mysteries of the religious life. It was used under the direction of a father, who prescribed a portion of its text for each day's meditation, employing various means to concentrate attention and enforce effect. The whole course of this spiritual drill extended over four weeks, during which the pupil remained in solitude. Light and sound and all distractions of the outer world were carefully excluded from his chamber. He was bidden to direct his soul inward upon itself and G.o.d, and was led by graduated stages to realize in the most vivid way the torments of the d.a.m.ned and the scheme of man's, salvation. The first week was occupied in an examination of the conscience; the second in contemplation of Christ's Kingdom upon earth; the third in meditation on the Pa.s.sion; the fourth in an ascent to the glory of the risen Lord. Materialism of the crudest type mingled with the indulgence of a reverie in this long spiritual journey. At every step the neophyte employed his five senses in the effort of intellectual realization. Prostrate upon the ground, gazing with closed eyelids in the twilight of his cell upon the mirror of imagination, he had to _see_ the boundless flames of h.e.l.l and souls encased in burning bodies, to _hear_ the shrieks and blasphemies, to _smell_ their sulphur and intolerable stench, to _taste_ the bitterness of tears and _feel_ the stings of ineffectual remorse.

[Footnote 166: _Inst. Soc. Jesu_, vol. iv. The same volume contains the Directorium, or rules for the use of the _Exercitia_.]

He had to localize each object in the camera obscura of the brain. If the Garden of Gethsemane, for instance, were the subject of his meditation, he was bound to place Christ here and the sleeping apostles there, and to form an accurate image of the angel and the cup. He gazed and gazed, until he was able to handle the raiment of the Saviour, to watch the drops of b.l.o.o.d.y sweat beading his forehead and trickling down his cheeks, to grasp the chalice with the fingers of the soul. As each carefully chosen and sagaciously suggested scene was presented, he had to identify his very being, soul, will, intellect, and senses, with the mental vision. He lived again, so far as this was possible through fancy, the facts of sacred history. If the director judged it advisable, symbolic objects were placed before him in the cell; at one time skulls and bones, at another fresh sweetsmelling flowers. Fasting and flagellation, peculiar postures of the body, groanings and weepings, were prescribed as mechanical aids in cases where the soul seemed sluggish. The sphere traversed in these exercises was a narrow one. The drill aimed at intensity of discipline, at a concentrated and concrete impression, not at width of education or at intellectual enlightenment.

Speculation upon the fundamental principles of religion was excluded.

G.o.d's dealings with mankind revealed in the Old Testament found no place in this theory of salvation. Attention was riveted upon a very few points in the life of Christ and Mary, such as every Catholic child might be supposed to be familiar with. But it was fixed in such a way as to bring the terrors and raptures of the mystics, of a S. Catharine or a S. Teresa, within the reach of all; to place spiritual experience _a la portee de tout le monde_. The vulgarity is only equaled by the ingenuity and psychological adroitness of the method. The soul inspired with carnal dread of the doom impending over it, pa.s.sed into almost physical contact with the incarnate Saviour. The designed effect was to induce a vivid and varied hypnotic dream of thirty days, from the influence of which a man should never wholly free himself. The end at which he arrived upon this path of self-scrutiny and materialistic realization, was the conclusion that his highest hope, his most imperative duty, lay in the resignation of his intellect and will to spiritual guidance, and in blind obedience to the Church. Thousands and thousands of souls in the modern world have pa.s.sed through this discipline; and those who responded to it best, have ever been selected, when this was possible, as novices of the Order. The director had ample opportunity of observing at each turn in the process whether his neophyte displayed a likely disposition.

When the _Exercitia_ had been performed, there was an end of asceticism.

Ignatius, as we have seen, dreaded nothing more than the intrusion of that dark spirit into his Company; he aimed at nothing more earnestly than at securing agreeable manners, a cheerful temper, and ability for worldly business in its members.

The novice, when first received into one of the Jesuit houses, was separated, so far as possible, for two years from his family, and placed under the control of a master, who inspected his correspondence and undertook the full surveillance of his life. He received cautiously restricted information on the const.i.tutions of the Society, and was recommended, instead of renouncing his worldly possessions, to reserve his legal rights and make oblation of them when he took the vows. It was not then made clear to him that what he gave would never under any circ.u.mstances be restored, although the Society might send him forth at will a penniless wanderer into the world. Yet this was the hard condition of a Jesuit's existence. After entering the order, he owned nothing, and he had no power to depart if he repented. But the General could cashier him by a stroke of the pen, condemning him to dest.i.tution in every land where Jesuits held sway, and to suspicion in every land where Jesuits were loathed. Before the end of two years, the novice generally signed an obligation to a.s.sume the vows. He was then drafted into the secular or spiritual service. Some novices became what is called Temporal Coadjutors; their duty was to administer the property of the Society, to superintend its houses, to distribute alms, to work in hospitals, to cook, garden, wash, and act as porters. They took the three vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience. Those, on the other hand, who showed some apt.i.tude for learning, were cla.s.sified as Scholastics, and were distributed among the colleges of the order. They studied languages, sciences, and theology, for a period of five years; after which they taught in schools for another period of five or six years; and when they reached the age of about thirty, they might be ordained priests with the t.i.tle of Spiritual Coadjutors. From this body the Society drew the rectors and professors of its colleges, its preachers, confessors, and teachers in schools for the laity. They were not yet full members, though they had taken the three vows, and were irrevocably devoted to the service of the order. The final stage of initiation was reached toward the age of forty-five, after long and various trials. Then the Jesuit received the t.i.tle of Professed. He was either a professed of the three vows, or a professed of the four vows; having in the latter case dedicated his life to the special service of the Papacy, in missions or in any other cause. The professed of four vows const.i.tuted the veritable Company of Jesus, the kernel of the organization. They were never numerous. At Loyola's death they numbered thirty-five out of a thousand; and it has been calculated that their average proportion to the whole body is as two to a hundred.[167] Even these had no indefeasible tenure of their place in the Society. They might be dismissed by the General without indemnification.

[Footnote 167: Philippson, _op. cit._ p. 142.]

The General was chosen for life from the professed of four vows by the General Congregation, which consisted of the provincials and two members of each province. He held the whole Society at his discretion; for he could deal at pleasure with each part of its machinery. The const.i.tutions, strict as they appeared, imposed no barriers upon his will; for almost unlimited power was surrendered to him of dispensing with formalities, freeing from obligations, shortening or lengthening the periods of initiation, r.e.t.a.r.ding or advancing a member in his career. Ideal fixity of type, qualified by the utmost elasticity in practice, formed the essence of the system. And we shall see that this principle pervaded the Jesuit treatment of morality. The General resided at Rome, consecrated solely to the government of the Society, holding the threads of all its complicated affairs in his hands, studying the personal history of each of its members in the minute reports which he constantly received from every province, and acting precisely as he chose with the highest as well as the lowest of his subordinates.

Contrary to all precedents of previous religious orders, Ignatius framed the Company of Jesus upon the lines of a close aristocracy with autocratic authority confided to an elected chief. Yet the General of the Jesuits, like the Doge of Venice, had his hands tied by subtly powerful though almost invisible fetters. He was subjected at every hour of the day and night to the surveillance of five sworn spies, especially appointed to prevent him from altering the type or neglecting the concerns of the Order. The first of these functionaries, named the Administrator, who was frequently also the confessor of the General, exhorted him to obedience, and reminded him that he must do all things for the glory of G.o.d. Obedience and the glory of G.o.d, in Jesuit phraseology, meant the maintenance of the Company. The other four were styled a.s.sistants. They had under their charge the affairs of the chief provinces; one overseeing the Indies, another Portugal and Spain, a third France and Germany, a fourth Italy and Sicily. Together with the Administrator, the a.s.sistants were nominated by the General Congregation and could not be removed or replaced without its sanction. It was their duty to regulate the daily life of the General, to control his private expenditure on the scale which they determined, to prescribe what he should eat and drink, and to appoint his hours for sleep, and religious exercises, and the transaction of public business. If they saw grave reasons for his deposition, they were bound to convene the General Congregation for that purpose. And since the Founder knew that guardians need to be guarded, he provided that the Provincials might convene this a.s.sembly to call in question the acts of the a.s.sistants. The General himself had no power to oppose its convocation.

The Company of Jesus was thus based upon a system of mutual and pervasive espionage. The novice on first entering had all his acts, habits, and personal qualities registered. As he advanced in his career, he was surrounded by jealous brethren, who felt it their duty to report his slightest weakness to a superior. The superiors were watched by one another and by their inferiors. Ma.s.ses of secret intelligence poured into the central cabinet of the General; and the General himself ate, slept, prayed, worked, and moved about the world beneath the fixed gaze of ten vigilant eyes. Men accustomed to domesticity and freedom may wonder that life should have been tolerable upon these terms. Yet we must remember that from the moment when a youth had undergone the _Exercitia_ and taken the vows, he became no less in fact than in spirit _perinde ac cadaver_ in the hands of his superior. The Company replaced for him both family and state; and in spite of the fourth vow, it is very evident that the Black Pope, as the General came to be nicknamed, owned more of his allegiance than the White Pope, who filled the chair of S. Peter. He could, indeed, at any moment be expelled and ruined. But if he served the Order well, he belonged to a vast incalculably-potent organism, of which he might naturally, after such training as he had received, be proud. The sacrifice of his personal volition and intelligence made him part of an indestructible corporation, which seemed capable of breaking all resistance by its continuity of will and effecting all purposes by its condensed sagacity. Nor was he in the hands of rigid disciplinarians. His peccadilloes were condoned, unless the credit of the order came in question. His natural abilities obtained free scope for their employment; for it suited the interest of the Company to make the most of each member's special gifts. He had no tedious duties of the regular monastic routine to follow. He was encouraged to become a man of the world, and to mix freely with society.

And thus, while he resigned himself, he lived the large life of a complex microcosm. Nor were men of resolute ambition without the prospect of eventually swaying an authority beyond that possessed by princes; for any one of the professed might rise to the supreme power in the order.

Something must be said about Loyola's interpretation of the vow of poverty. During his lifetime the Company acquired considerable wealth; and after his death it became a large owner of estates in Europe. How was this consistent with the observance of that vow, so strictly inculcated by the founder on his first disciples, and so pompously proclaimed in their const.i.tutions? The professed and all their houses, as well as their churches, were bound to subsist on alms; they preached, administered the sacraments of the Church, and educated gratis. They could inherit nothing, and were not allowed to receive money for their journeys. But here appeared the wisdom of restricting the numbers of the professed to a small percentage of the whole Society. The same rigid prohibition with regard to property was not imposed upon the houses of novices, colleges, and other educational establishments of the Jesuits; while the secular coadjutors were specially appointed for the administration of wealth which the professed might use but could not own.[168] In like manner, as they lived on alms, there was no objection to a priest of the order receiving valuable gifts in cash or kind from grateful recipients of his spiritual bounty. A separate article of the const.i.tutions furthermore reserved for the General the right of accepting any donation whatsoever, made in favor of the whole Company, and of a.s.signing capital or revenue as he judged wisest.

[Footnote 168: Quinet calculates that at the close of the sixteenth century there were twenty-one houses of the professed (incapable of owning property) to 293 colleges (free from this inability).]

Scholastics, even after they had taken the vow of poverty, were not obliged to relinquish their private possessions. Sooner or later, it was hoped that these would become the property of the order. In a word, the principle of this solemn obligation was so manipulated as to facilitate the acquisition and acc.u.mulation of wealth by the Jesuit like any other corporation. Only no individual Jesuit owned anything. He was rich or poor, he wore the clothes of princes or the rags of a mendicant, he lived sumptuously or begged in the street, he traveled with a following of servants or he walked on foot, according as it seemed good to his superiors. The vow of poverty, thus interpreted in practice, meant a total disengagement from temporalities on the part of every member, an absolute dependence of each subordinate upon his superior in the hierarchy.

Having thus far treated the organization of the Jesuits as implicit in Loyola's own conception and administration, I ought to add that it received definite form from his successor, Lainez. The founder p.r.o.nounced the Const.i.tutions in 1553. But they were thoroughly revised after his death in 1558, at which date they first issued from the press.

Lainez, again, supplemented these laws with a perpetual commentary, which is styled the Declarations. These contain the bulk of those eas.e.m.e.nts and indulgent interpretations, whereby the strictness of the original rules was explained away, and an almost unbounded elasticity was communicated to the system.

It would be rash to p.r.o.nounce a decided opinion upon the much disputed question, whether, in addition to their Const.i.tutions and Declarations, the Jesuits were provided with an esoteric code of rules known as _Monita Secreta_.[169] The existence of such a manual, which was supposed to contain the very pith of Jesuitical policy, has been confidently a.s.serted and no less confidently denied. In the absence of direct evidence, it may be worth quoting two pa.s.sages from Sarpi's Letters, which prove that this keen-sighted observer believed the Society to be governed in its practice by statutes inaccessible to all but its most trusted members. 'I have always admired the policy of the Jesuits,' he writes in 1608, 'and their method of maintaining secrecy.

Their Const.i.tutions are in print, and yet one cannot set eyes upon a copy. I do not mean their Rules, which are published at Lyons, for those are mere puerilities; but the digest of laws which guide their conduct of the order, and which they keep concealed. Every day many members leave, or are expelled from the Company; and yet their artifices are not exposed to view.'[170] In another letter, of the date 1610, Sarpi returns to the same point. 'The Jesuits before this Aquaviva was elected General were saints in comparison with what they afterwards became.

Formerly they had not mixed in affairs of state or thought of governing cities. Since then, they have indulged a hope of controlling the whole world.

[Footnote 169: A book with this t.i.tle was published in 1612 at Cracow.

It was declared a forgery at Rome by a congregation of Cardinals.]

[Footnote 170: _Lettere_, vol. i. p. 100.]

And I am sure that the least part of their Cabala is in the Ordinances and Const.i.tutions of 1570. All the same, I am very glad to possess even these. Their true Cabala they never communicate to any but men who have been well tested, and proved by every species of trial; nor is it possible for those who have been initiated into it, to think of retiring from the order, since the congregation, through their excellent management of its machinery, know how to procure the immediate death of any such initiated member who may wish to leave their ranks.'[171]

Probably the mistake which Sarpi and the world made, was in supposing that the Jesuits needed a written code for their most vital action.

Being a potent and life-penetrated organism, the secret of their policy was not such as could be reduced to rule. It was not such as, if reduced to rule, could have been plastic in the affairs of public importance which the Company sought to control. Better than rule or statute, it was biological function. The supreme deliberative bodies of the order created, transmitted, and continuously modified its tradition of policy.

This tradition some member, partially initiated into their counsels, may have reduced to precepts in the published _Monita Secreta_ of 1612. But the quintessential flame which breathed a breath of life into the fabric of the Jesuits through two centuries of organic activity, was far too vivid and too spiritual to be condensed in any charter. A friar and a jurist, like Sarpi, expected to discover some controlling code. The public, grossly ignorant of evolutionary laws in the formation of social organisms, could not comprehend the non-existence of this code.

Adventurers supplied the demand from their knowledge of the ruling policy. But like the _Liber Trium Impostorum_ we may regard the _Monita Secreta_ of the Jesuits as an _ex post facto_ fabrication.

[Footnote 171: _Lettere_, vol. ii. p. 174.]

There is no need to trace the further history of the Jesuits. Their part in the Counter-Reformation has rather been exaggerated than insufficiently recognized. Though it was incontestably considerable, we cannot now concede, as Macaulay in his random way conceded to this Company, the _spolia opima_ of down-beaten Protestantism. Without the ecclesiastical reform which originated in the Tridentine Council; without the gold and sword of Spain; without the stakes and prisons of the Inquisition; without the warfare against thought conducted by the Congregation of the Index; the Jesuits alone could not have masterfully governed the Catholic revival. That revival was a movement of world-historical importance, in which they partic.i.p.ated. It was their fortune to find forces in the world which they partially understood; it was their merit to know how to manipulate those forces; it was their misfortune and their demerit that they proved themselves incapable of diverting those forces to any wholesome end. In Italy a succession of worldly Popes, Paul III., Julius III., Pius IV., and Gregory XIII., heaped favors and showered wealth upon the order. The Jesuits incarnated the political spirit of the Papacy at this epoch; they lent it a potency for good and evil which the decrepit but still vigorous inst.i.tution arrogated to itself. They adapted its anachronisms with singular adroitness to the needs of modern society. They transfused their throbbing blood into its flaccid veins, until it became doubtful whether the Papacy had been absorbed into the Jesuits, or whether the Jesuits had remodeled the Papacy for contemporary uses. But this tendency in the aspiring order to identify itself with Rome, this ambition to command the prestige of Rome as leverage for carrying out its own designs, stirred the resentment of haughty and _intransigeant_ Pontiffs. The Jesuits were not beloved by Paul IV., Pius V., and Sixtus V.

It remains, however, to inquire in what the originality, the effective operation, and the modifying influence of the Jesuit Society consisted during the period with which we are concerned. It was their object to gain control over Europe by preaching, education, the direction of souls, and the management of public affairs. In each of these departments their immediate success was startling; for they labored with zeal, and they adapted their methods to the requirements of the age.

Yet, in the long run, art, science, literature, religion, morality and politics, all suffered from their interference. By preferring artifice to reality, affectation to sincerity, shams and subterfuges to plain principle and candor, they confused the conscience and enfeebled the intellect of Catholic Europe. When we speak of the Jesuit style in architecture, rhetoric and poetry, of Jesuit learning and scholarship, of Jesuit casuistry and of Jesuit diplomacy, it is either with languid contempt for bad taste and insipidity, or with the burning indignation which systematic falsehood and corruption inspire in honorable minds.

In education, the Jesuits, if they did not precisely innovate, improved upon the methods of the grammarians which had persisted from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. They spared no pains in training a large and competent body of professors, men of extensive culture, formed upon one uniform pattern, and exercised in the art of popularizing knowledge.

These teachers were distributed over the Jesuit colleges; and in every country their system was the same. New catechisms, grammars, primers, manuals of history, enabled their pupils to learn with facility in a few months what it had cost years of painful labor to acquire under pompous pedants of the old _regime_. The mental and physical apt.i.tudes of youths committed to their charge were carefully observed; and cla.s.ses were adapted to various ages and degrees of capacity. Hours of recreation alternated with hours of study, so that the effort of learning should be neither irksome nor injurious to health. Nor was religious education neglected. Attendance upon daily Ma.s.s, monthly confession, and instruction in the articles of the faith, formed an indispensable part of the system. When we remember that these advantages were offered gratuitously to the public, it is not surprising that people of all ranks and conditions should have sent their boys to the Jesuit colleges.

Even Protestants availed themselves of what appeared so excellent a method; and the Jesuits obtained the reputation of being the best instructors of youth.[172] It soon became the mark of a good Catholic to have frequented Jesuit schools; and in after life a pupil who had studied creditably in their colleges, found himself everywhere at home.

Yet the Society took but little interest in elementary or popular education. Their object was to gain possession of the n.o.bility, gentry, and upper middle cla.s.s. The proletariat might remain ignorant; it was the destiny of such folk to be pa.s.sive instruments in the hands of spiritual and temporal rulers. Nor were they always scrupulous in the means employed for taking hold on young men of distinction. One instance of the animosity they aroused, even in Italy, at an early period of their activity, will suffice. Tuscany was thrown into commotion by the discovery of their designs upon the boys they undertook to teach.

[Footnote 172: See Sarpi's _Letters_, vol. i. p. 352, for Protestant pupils of Jesuits. Sarpi's _Memorial to the Signory of Venice on the Collegio de'Greci in Rome_ exposes the fallacy of their being reputed the best teachers of youth, by pointing out how their aim is to withdraw their pupils' allegiance from the nation, the government, and the family, to themselves.]

'They were so madly bent,' says Galluzzi, 'upon filling the ranks of their Company with individuals of wealth and birth, that in 1584, in the single city of Siena, under the pretense of devotion, they seduced thirty youths of the n.o.blest and richest houses, not without great injury to their families and grief to their parents. The most notorious of these cases Was that of two sons of Pandolfo Petrucci, whose name indicates his high position in the aristocracy of Siena. These young men they got into their power by inducing them to commit a theft, and then compelled them to pledge fealty to the Society. Escaping by night in the direction of Rome, the lads were arrested by the city guards, and confessed that they had agreed to meet two Jesuits, who were waiting to conduct them on their journey.'[173]

[Footnote 173: _Storia del Granducato di Toscana_, vol. iv. p. 275.]

It was, indeed, not the propagation of sound principles or liberal learning, but the aggrandizement of the order and the enforcement of Catholic usages, at which the Jesuits aimed in their scheme of education. This was noticeable in their att.i.tude toward literature and science. Michelet has described their method in a brilliant and exact metaphor, as the attempt to counteract the poison of free thought and stimulative studies by means of vaccination. They taught the cla.s.sics in expurgated editions, history in drugged epitomes, science in popular lectures. Instead of banning what M. Renan is wont to style _etudes fortes_, they undertook to emasculate these and render them innocuous.

While Bruno was burned by the Inquisition for proclaiming what the Copernican discovery involved for faith and metaphysics, Father Koster at Cologne vulgarized it into something pretty and agreeable. While Scaliger and Casaubon used the humanities as a propaedeutic of the virile reason, the Jesuits contrived to sterilize and mechanize their influences by insipid rhetoric. Everywhere through Europe, by the side of stalwart thinkers, crept plausible Jesuit professors, following the light of learning like its shadow, mimicking the accent of the G.o.ds like parrots, and mocking their gestures like apes. Their adroit admixture of falsehood with truth in all departments of knowledge, their subst.i.tution of veneer for solid timber, and of pinchbeck for sterling metal, was more profitable to the end they had in view than the torture-chamber of the Inquisition or the quarantine of the Index. Mediocrities and respectabilities of every description--that is to say, the majority of the influential cla.s.ses--were delighted with their method. What could be better than to see sons growing up, good Catholics in all external observances, devoted to the order of society and Mother Church, and at the same time showy Latinists, furnished with a cyclopaedia of current knowledge, glib at speechifying, ingenious in the construction of an epigram or compliment? If some of the more sensible sort grumbled that Jesuit learning was shallow, and Jesuit morality of base alloy, the reply, like that of an Italian draper selling palpable shoddy for broadcloth, came easily and cynically to the surface: _Imita bene_! The stuff is a good match enough! What more do you want? To produce plausible imitations, to save appearances, to amuse the mind with tricks, was the last resort of Catholicism in its warfare against rationalism. And such is the ba.n.a.lity of human nature as a whole, that the Jesuits, those monopolists of Brummagem manufactures, achieved eminent success. Their hideous churches, daubed with plaster painted to resemble costly marbles, encrusted with stucco polished to deceive the eye, loaded with gewgaws and tinsel and superfluous ornament and frescoes, turning flat surfaces into cupolas and arcades, pa.s.sed for masterpieces of architectonic beauty. The conceits of their pulpit oratory, its artificial cadences and flowery verbiage, its theatrical appeals to gross sensations, wrought miracles and converted thousands.

Their sickly Ciceronian style, their sentimental books of piety, 'the worse for being warm,' the execrable taste of their poetry, their flimsy philosophy and disingenuous history, infected the taste of Catholic Europe like a slow seductive poison, flattering and accelerating the diseases of mental decadence. Sound learning died down beneath the tyranny of the Inquisition, the Index, the Council of Trent, Spain and the Papacy. A rank growth of unwholesome culture arose and flourished on its tomb under the forcing-frames of Jesuitry. But if we peruse the records of literature and science during the last three centuries, few indeed are the eminences even of a second order which can be claimed by the Company of Jesus.

The same critique applies to Jesuit morality. It was the Company's aim to control the conscience by direction and confession, and especially the conscience of princes, women, youths in high position. To do so by plain speaking and honest dealing was clearly dangerous. The world had had enough of Dominican austerity and dogmatism. To do so by open toleration and avowed cynicism did not suit the temper of the time. A reform of the monastic orders and the regular clergy had been undertaken by the Church. Pardoners, palmers, indulgence-mongers, jolly Franciscan confessors, and such-like folk were out of date. But the Jesuits were equal to the exigencies of the moment. We have seen how Ignatius recommended fishers of souls to humor queasy consciences. His successors expanded and applied the hint.--You must not begin by talking about spiritual things to people immersed in worldly interests. That is as simple as trying to fish without bait. On the contrary, you must insinuate yourself into their confidence by studying their habits, and spying out their propensities. You must appear to notice little at the first, and show yourself a good companion. When you become acquainted with the bosom sins and pleasant vices of folk in high position, you can lead them on the path of virtue at your pleasure. You must certainly tell them then that indulgence in sensuality, falsehood, fraud, violence, covetousness, and tyrannical oppression, is unconditionally wrong. Make no show of compromise with evil in the gross; but refine away the evil by distinctions, reservations, hypothetical conditions, until it disappears. Explain how hard it is to know whether a sin be venial or mortal, and how many chances there are against its being in any strict sense a sin at all. Do not leave folk to their own blunt sense of right and wrong, but let them admire the finer edge of your scalpel, while you shred up evil into morsels they can hardly see. A ready way may thus be opened for the satisfaction of every human desire without falling into theological faults. The advantages are manifest.

You will be able to absolve with a clear conscience. Your penitent will abound in grat.i.tude and open out his heart to you. You will fulfill your function as confessor and counselor. He will be secured for the sacred ends of our Society, and will contribute to the greater glory of G.o.d.--It was thus that the Jesuit labyrinth of casuistry, with its windings, turnings, secret chambers, whispering galleries, blind alleys, issues of evasion, came into existence; the whole vicious and monstrous edifice being crowned with the saving virtue of obedience, and the theory of ends justifying means. After the irony of Pascal, the condensed rage of La Chalotais, and the grave verdict of the Parlement of Paris (1762), it is not necessary now to refute the errors or to expose the abominations of this casuistry in detail.[174] Yet it cannot be wholly pa.s.sed in silence here; for its application materially favored the influence of Jesuits in modern Europe.

[Footnote 174: Having mentioned the names of these ill.u.s.trious Frenchmen, I feel bound to point out how accurately their criticism of the Jesuits was antic.i.p.ated by Paolo Sarpi. His correspondence between the years 1608 and 1622 demonstrates that this body of social corrupters had been early recognized by him in their true light. Sarpi calls them 'sottilissimi maestri in mal fare,' 'donde esce ogni falsita et bestemmia,' 'il vero morbo Gallico,' 'peste pubblica,' 'peste del mondo'

(_Letters_, vol. i. pp. 142, 183, 245, ii. 82, 109). He says that they 'hanno messo l'ultima mano a stabilire una corruzione universale' (_ib._ vol. i. p. 304). By their equivocations and mental reservations 'fanno essi prova di gabbare Iddio' (_ib._ vol. ii. p. 82). 'La menzogna non iscusano soltanto ma lodano' (_ib._ vol. ii. p. 106). So far, the utterances which I have quoted might pa.s.s for the rhetoric of mere spite. But the portrait gradually becomes more definite in details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (_ib._ vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, of this life's indulgences' (_ib._ vol. i. p. 313). 'The Jesuit fathers used to confer Paradise; they now have become dispensers of fame in this world' (_ibid._ p. 363). 'When they seek entrance into any place, they do not hesitate to make what promises may be demanded of them, possessing as they do the art of escape by lying with equivocations and mental reservations' (_ib._ vol. ii. p. 147). 'The Jesuit is a man of every color; he repeats the marvel of the chameleon'