The Footprints of the Jesuits

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Footprints of the Jesuits, by Richard W. (Richard Wigginton) Thompson

R. W. Thompson.

THE

Footprints of the Jesuits.

BY

R. W. THOMPSON,

Ex-Secretary of the Navy, and Author of "The Papacy and the Civil Power."

"It was very difficult, not to say impossible, that the Church could recover a firm or durable peace so long as the said society existed."—Pope Clement XIV.

"The Jesuits, by their very calling, by the very essence of their institution, are bound to seek, by every means, right or wrong, the destruction of Protestantism. This is the condition of their existence, the duty they must fulfill, or cease to be Jesuits."—Nicolini, of Rome.

CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & CURTS.

NEW YORK: HUNT & EATON.

1894.

COPYRIGHT

BY CRANSTON & CURTS,

1894.

PREFACE.

The civil institutions of the United States could not have been formed without the separation of Church and State, and could not continue to exist if they were again united. Christianity could not maintain its primitive purity if politics and religious faith were mingled together; nor could the State preserve its capacity to provide for the general welfare if subjected to the dominion of ecclesiastical authority. Our success as a nation is mainly attributable to the fact that these sentiments are deeply imbedded in the American mind.

A party pledged to restore to the pope the temporal power which the Italian people have taken away, must necessarily be politico-religious in character, because it proposes to interfere with the temporal affairs of one of the European nations. And if the attempt to do this is justified upon the ground that such restoration involves religious duty, any one can see that the obligation is the same in the United States as in Italy, for the laws of God do not shift to suit the exigencies of human affairs.

In the times before the Reformation the temporal affairs of Governments were required to conform to the commands of the ecclesiastical authority—that is, the pope—and it was held to be a necessary and essential part of religion that this union should be continued, no matter what might be the degree of popular ignorance and humiliation. The founders of our Government started out upon a different theory, believing it to be their duty to separate "the things of God" from "the things of Cæsar," so that each could reach perfection in its own distinct sphere. Therefore, it is clear that a politico-religious party in this country, pledged to unite Church and State in Italy, against the expressed will of the Italian people, not only must oppose one of the fundamental principles of our Government, but disturb the public peace.

To my mind it is also clear that a nation acts politically, and not religiously, when it decides upon the structure of its temporal Government—that is, whether its affairs shall be managed by an absolute or elective monarch, or by machinery provided by a written constitution. I have, therefore, refrained from the discussion or criticism of religious belief—as it is understood in the American sense—any further than it is made the pretext for the reversal of this opinion, so generally prevalent in this country. It would be an evil day for the people of the United States if they should be persuaded to permit any power whatsoever, whether temporal or spiritual, at home or abroad, to share with them any portion of their political authority, or to dictate, in any degree, the measures of their civil polity.

In reminding those into whose hands this volume may chance to fall, of their obligations of citizenship under our popular form of government, I have found it absolutely necessary to portray the character of the Jesuits, but for whom, in my opinion, there would be but little to disturb us. This society has nothing in common with American ideas or principles. It represents monarchism in its most despotic and obnoxious form, by requiring each of its members to impersonate the most abject servility, and to accept this humiliation as an absolutely necessary part of religious faith. It has had a history unlike that of any other society in the world. In pointing out its origin and tracing its footprints among the nations, I have relied upon the most undoubted authority, much of which is furnished by Jesuit authors. A careful examination of the evidence will leave the mind of the reader in no doubt as to the odium which rested upon the society from the beginning, as well as the manner in which it has disturbed the quiet of the nations, defied the popes themselves when adverse to them, and disregarded the interest, welfare, and harmony of the Church it professed to serve, when required by its general.

I have deemed it important to trace out some of the leading events which have transpired under the pontificates of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII, up to the present time. In this way only is it possible to understand the full meaning of the revolution which led to Italian unity and the overthrow of the temporal power of the pope by Roman Catholic populations, and what is involved in the demand for its restoration. In doing this I have considered only such matters as are politico-religious, in the sense common among the people of the United States, and which can not be made a part of religious faith without doing violence to the recognized spirit of our civil institutions. Thus I have avoided any conflict with those who prefer the Roman Catholic to the Protestant form of religious belief, for the express reason that I have neither the purpose nor desire to question their right to do so. It seems to me that the constitutional guarantee which protects this right ought to be satisfactory to all, and can not be disturbed without imperiling our Government. Therefore, all I desire will be accomplished if I shall succeed in convincing thoughtful Roman Catholics that it will be far better for all of us if they shall decline to accept the politico-religious teachings of the Jesuits as a part of their religious faith, and content themselves without interference with the political affairs of their Christian brethren in Italy. They may maintain fidelity to the Government as patriotically as professed Protestants, without abating their devotion to the spiritual doctrines which prevailed in their Church before the fall of the Roman Empire enabled the popes to place the crown of temporal royalty upon their heads. To this end I would, if permitted, appeal to that portion of our population in all sincerity, and invoke the exercise of their intelligence no less than their patriotism. And if any of them shall peruse this volume, and carefully consider its contents, they will see that what I have written centers in the hope that the Protestants and Roman Catholics of the United States shall live together in the concord of Christian fellowship, emulating each other in those things that shall tend most to promote their mutual happiness, and preserve for their common posterity the civil and religious liberty guaranteed by our Constitution and laws.

There are abundant evidences to show that the Jesuits have adopted a loose code of morality, upon which they have built up a system of "moral theology" as irreconcilable with the true teachings of the Roman Catholic religion as they are with the well-established doctrines of all Protestant Christians. But I have refrained from any discussion of these, not only because this is sufficiently done by Pascal and Bert, in France, and by numerous American authors, but because my main object is to show that the triumph of the Jesuits in this country would bring about such a condition of things as would imperil our civil institutions. They teach as religious doctrines necessary to salvation the following: That the State must be reunited with the Church, and be required to obey its spiritual commands in the enactment of laws; that the Roman Catholic religion shall be established by law as the only true religion, and every other form of religious belief treated and punished as heresy; that, along with this destruction of the freedom of religious belief, there must be corresponding restrictions placed upon the liberty of speech and of the press; that the Roman Catholic Church shall be recognized as an organization exempt from obedience to all our laws relating to the ownership and management of real property; that the clergy of that Church shall be also exempt from obedience to the laws as other citizens, and shall obey only such as the pope may prescribe; and that our common-school system of education must be absolutely and entirely destroyed. If, in these things, the Jesuits should obtain success, our Government would necessarily come to an end; and what this volume contains has been written alone with the view of making this question plain and palpable to the ordinary reader. I have written from the standpoint of an American citizen, thoroughly impressed with the belief that this is the most prosperous country in the world, and not from that of a theologian. About the duties and obligations of the former to the Government, I assume to have learned something from both instinct and education; but about the metaphysical subtleties of the theologians, I do not trouble myself.

I know how difficult it is to escape the accusation of a persecuting spirit from those who, like the Jesuits, allow nothing for honest differences of opinion. This, however, ought not to be permitted to interfere with the plain and obvious duty of defending our civil institutions from any assault made upon them, no matter by whom, or in whose name, the assailing forces shall be marshaled. With the consciousness, therefore, that this volume may subject me to the imputation of uncharitableness from some upon whom I would inflict no injury in return, I have expressed myself with candor and fairness, and have written nothing in malice.

R.W.T.

Terre Haute, 1894.

CONTENTS.

Footprints of the Jesuits.

[CHAPTER I.]

INTRODUCTORY.

The American people have imbibed, from association, the spirit of their civil institutions, and are ready at all times to repel any direct assault upon them. They are, however, so actively engaged in their various pursuits, that multitudes of them fail to realize the necessity of inquiring whether the conflict between opposing principles of government which resulted in our national independence, has or has not ended—whether, in other words, the victory the founders of the Republic won over monarchism, is or is not final.

Those who won this victory intended to provide against this seeming want of vigilance by means of some system of education, which should assimilate the principles and opinions of the people, as a perpetual bulwark against aggression. This would have been accomplished long ago if the paternal counsels of Presidents Washington and Madison had been heeded as they deserved to be,—that we should educate "our youth in the science of government,"[1] under the auspices and protection of national authority. Instead of this, we have considered ourselves sufficiently shielded by our system of public-school education, under State control, and have mainly relied upon this to fit our children for citizenship and self-government. Hitherto, we have not been seriously disturbed by the apprehension that it would result in failure, and for that reason it has been maintained with great popular unanimity. It is now, however, assailed with violence, and, manifestly, with the purpose of destroying it entirely. Hence, we are all required, by obligations we can not rightfully evade, to rest long enough from our active avocations to discover, if possible, why this is—what motives impel the assailants—and whether or no they desire to substitute other principles of government for ours, by turning us back upon a course we have solemnly repudiated.

In addition to other works of like character but less ability, there is one, extensively circulated in this country, from the pen of a writer conspicuous for his learning and ability. The author asserts without disguise that what he calls "Catholicity"—that is, what the Roman popes taught when they were temporal monarchs—has been more beneficial to the world and more civilizing in its influences upon mankind than Protestantism, not alone in a social, but in a political, religious, and literary point of view. His argument proceeds from the Jesuit standpoint, and may be summed up in a single sentence,—that Protestantism has placed mankind in a far worse condition than they were when dominated over by papal kings.[2]

This work was intended to counteract the effect produced by the writings of Guizot, the great French historian, who maintained, by eloquent and matchless reasoning, that mankind had been improved, in every point of view, by the influences of Protestantism. Accordingly, it was translated from Spanish, in which language it was originally written, into French and German, and extensively circulated in France and Germany. It soon acquired the reputation among the Jesuits of being unanswerable, and on that account was regarded, in the conflict between progress and retrogression, like heavy ordnance in battle—a suitable weapon with which to attack Protestantism and its institutions in the seat of its greatest strength. Therefore it was translated into the English language, and printed by two publishing-houses in the United States, for circulation among the American people. An American preface is attached, wherein these propositions are affirmed: First, that Protestantism compels its votaries to infidelity, by its variations of belief; second, that civilization was not only commenced but was prospering under "Catholicity," when it was retarded by Protestantism, which is unfavorable and injurious to it; and, third, that the principles of Protestantism are incompatible with the happiness of mankind and "unfavorable to civil liberty."

This preface—which manifestly bears the Jesuit impress—was intended to notify American readers, beforehand, that the three foregoing propositions are maintained in the body of the work, and to prepare their minds for the acceptance of them. Its reprint and circulation in the United States could have had no other object than to inculcate the belief that what the people of this country have supposed to be the advantages they have derived from Protestant institutions are, in fact, absolutely injurious to them, and that their condition would be improved by the revival of such as existed during the Middle Ages, before the Reformation.

By giving prominence to political matters, and discussing them from the Jesuit point of view, this author presents a plain, distinct, and practical issue between progress and retrogression. He intends to make it as plain to the minds of his readers as it seems to be to his own, that Governments constructed upon the monarchical plan confer more happiness and prosperity upon society than those upon the Protestant plan of self-government. Evidently it was with the hope of disseminating this belief that this work has been reprinted and circulated in the United States so extensively that it is believed to have become a standard authority among the Jesuit enemies of Protestantism. If it does nothing else, however, it apprises our Protestant population that a powerful influence exists among them which is uncompromisingly hostile to the principles which underlie the whole structure of their Government. And, being thus apprised, their indifference would be little less than criminal; because their adroit aggressors would construe it into fear of possible consequences, or assign it to their inability to combat successfully the arguments supplied by this work, whose author is an acknowledged monarchist.

The differences between popular and monarchical governments are well known, and appear at every point of comparison which has arisen during the course of events since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The former have achieved their completest triumphs where Protestantism prevails, and in its presence the latter have been compelled either entirely to surrender their pretensions, or to abate their demands for absolutism. Until the Reformation became an accomplished fact, monarchism was maintained by uniting Church and State, and employing their joint authority to coerce obedience from the multitude. The dominion thus acquired condemned self-government by the people as both heresy and treason, punishable at the pleasure of those who held the reins of authority in their hands. It took many years of conflict to change this condition of affairs; and when the people of the United States were, in the course of events, placed in a condition to choose between this coercive system and that which was the natural outgrowth of Protestantism, and to construct a Government for themselves, their wisdom was sufficient to assure them that any plan of government they adopted would result in failure, unless they distinguished between their politics and their religion by separating the Church from the State, and by so framing their civil institutions as to reserve to themselves alone the entire sovereignty over them. If either of these essential prerequisites had been omitted, all exertions to better and improve their condition would have resulted in failure, as all readers of history know. Instead of failure, however, they created a Government which has survived the vicissitudes of more than a hundred years, is now supplying protection to more than sixty millions of people, and has reached a most commanding position among the leading nations; if, indeed, its influence over the happiness and prosperity of mankind does not surpass that of any of them. Of this we may be assured, that the measure of its success has been such as to incite among other peoples the desire to imitate its example; and that the conflicts of opinion which now agitate the world give reasonable promise that the popular right of self-government may, in less than another century of time, be universally recognized. To this end the American people are obliged to contribute by warding off every blow aimed at their institutions by either domestic or alien adversaries, especially when these blows are aimed, as some of them are, at the fundamental principles of their government.

The influence of our example finds a striking illustration in the revolution in Italy in 1870, which abolished the temporal power, or kingship, of the pope, separated the State from the Church, and established a constitutional form of government in place of the absolute monarchism which had prevailed, almost uninterruptedly, for many centuries. The fires of this revolution had been burning for a long time, kindled originally by oppressions, which had been so magnified that the people could endure them no longer. Their culminating point was the passage of the Conciliar Decree, called a "Dogmatic Constitution," whereby it was declared that the pope was infallible, and could not err in matters pertaining to faith or morals; that is, within such spheres of governmental, social, and individual duties and obligations as the pope alone, for the time being, should decide to be included in his spiritual and pontifical jurisdiction. This act was considered the consummation of the "Jesuit plan," at which the Italian people had been so incensed but a short time before, that Pope Pius IX had been compelled to expel the members of that odious society from Rome. The consequence was that the fires which popular indignation had kindled grew hotter, and it became impossible to extinguish them except by assuring complete success to the revolution. Therefore, the ink with which this decree of papal infallibility was written was scarcely dry before the Italian people, with extraordinary unanimity, determined to reject it, not merely because it was the introduction of a new principle of faith hitherto unrecognized, but because they could easily see that it would place them, and their children after them, under Jesuit dominion and dictation. They realized that its acceptance would involve them in the obligation to submit to the absolute temporal rule of the pope, in whose selection they had no voice, and to those whom he should think proper to put over them, whether fit or unfit, and thus put an end to all popular demands for the right of political self-government. It involved no question of religious faith, as the faith had been handed down to them by their fathers; nothing whatsoever which involved their duty to God, otherwise than as presumptuous men, to answer their own selfish ends, were striving to convert the pope into a God upon earth, and themselves into his plenipotentiaries. Influenced solely by this conviction, and stimulated by the success the people of the United States had won, they merely abolished the temporal power of the pope, and created a constitutional form of civil government, which places satisfactory limitations upon the authority of their king, and establishes representative political institutions, which provide that their voice shall be heard in the enactment of public laws. In this they have taken a long stride in the direction of government "of the people, for the people, and by the people." They have cast off political absolutism—which the Jesuits commend to us as "Catholicity"—and have assumed the station and dignity of an independent people. They have converted a priest-ridden oligarchy into a nation. On this account, and this alone, they have made themselves the special objects of Jesuit malevolence, for the simple reason that the monarchical society of Jesuits has never, since its beginning, relented in its vindictive opposition to every form of civil government which recognizes the people as the source of political power. By the most fundamental principles of its organization it is forbidden to sympathize with the sentiment of personal independence, or to allow its members to acquire the dignity of manhood necessary for participation in the affairs of government.

In the face of the fact that the Italian people have not changed the religious convictions they have maintained for hundreds of years with steadfast fidelity, and in the face also of the successes of Protestantism as universally recognized, the Jesuits employ the extorted decree of papal infallibility as the basis of an argument to prove that the pope is divinely endowed with such spiritual sovereignty over nations and peoples as entitles him to prescribe, at his own personal will and pleasure, such laws and regulations, concerning both faith and morals, as are necessary for the government of society and the conduct of individuals throughout the world. Within the circle of this extraordinary and unlimited jurisdiction, they make no distinction between spirituals and temporals,—never failing to make the power over the former sufficiently comprehensive to embrace the latter, accordingly as the pope himself shall decide. Hence they infer that this papal jurisdiction is not subject to any other limitation than such as he shall establish, and that it may, consequently, be rightfully enlarged so as to exact submission from all, and set aside all requirements in conflict with it. And the result they reach—as logically following this premise—is, that the refusal of obedience to the pope, within this comprehensive jurisdiction, violates the law of God, and is heresy. Therefore, as the Jesuits believe that the separation of Church and State by the Italian people is heresy, so they are required also to believe that all civil institutions which have grown out of that separation—like those of the United States—not only have the curse of God resting upon them, but that they are the divinely chosen messengers of heaven to bring them within this enormous circle of papal dominion.

In assigning these powers to the pope alone, they entirely ignore everything associated with the original and primitive organization of the Christian Church, and especially the important fact that it was not until the beginning of the sixth century that the bishop of Rome succeeded in acquiring the distinctive title of pope.[3] Before that time they had exercised at Rome only such powers as metropolitan bishops elsewhere—each of them having been called papa or pope. When the Roman bishop acquired by usurpation the exclusive title of the pope, the other metropolitan bishops were reduced to a condition of inferiority and subordination, and he then required only the temporal power to assure to him the power and jurisdiction the Jesuits now claim for him. It took several hundred years of conflict within the Churches and with the civil powers to accomplish this, and was only accomplished at last by subduing impotent kings, and so uniting the power of the Church with that of the State as to hold ignorant populations in subjugation. And now that the Italians, after submitting to this humiliation for more than a thousand years, and finding all the sources of their prosperity withered up, have abolished and destroyed this illicit and usurped temporal power, and taken into their own hands the administration of their own temporal affairs—obeying the example set them by the people of the United States—the Jesuits employ all their energies to reverse this popular verdict, and plunge them again into the dreary chasm from which they have escaped.

The Jesuits are subtle disputants. When they talk about the papacy reconciling itself to any form of government, they reserve to themselves the meaning that it does not interfere—either in monarchies or republics—with such local and limited affairs as pertain to the common and ordinary interests of society in the management of counties, townships, cities, and municipalities. These may be conducted without complaint, under one form of government as well as another, and are held to be such temporal affairs as the pope may exclude from his spiritual jurisdiction without any violation of the divine law. But when measures of public policy pass beyond these local and limited spheres, and involve matters which the pope shall decide to have relation to the Church, to the papacy, to faith, or to morals, his jurisdiction attaches, and, according to the Jesuits, he possesses the divine right to regulate and direct them. So that, when civil institutions are constructed—no matter in what form—by which Church and State are separated and the freedom of religious belief is guaranteed, as they are by the Constitution of the United States, they are brought within this unlimited jurisdiction of the pope, and he may pass such sentence of condemnation upon them as he shall deem necessary to maintain his own infallibility, as well as his spiritual and temporal power. If, in the execution of this extraordinary spiritual power, the pope and the Jesuit general at Rome shall unite in a decree that all such institutions shall be opposed, resisted, and overthrown, the Jesuit militia are always ready to pay obedience, because it is one of the fundamental maxims of their society, that when thus commanded, with reference to anything concerning the Church, the papacy, faith, or morals, disobedience is visited with divine displeasure.

Before he entered Rome with his victorious troops, and with the hope of pacifying the pope, Victor Emmanuel, the liberator of the Italian people, addressed an affectionate letter to Pope Pius IX, calling him "the chief of Catholicity," and expressing the hope and intention that nothing should be done inconsistent "with the inviolability of the sovereign pontiff and of his spiritual authority, and with the independence of the Holy See." But this kindly spirit was not reciprocated by the irascible pope, who excitedly rejected the overture of pacification. Thereupon the victorious troops entered the city of Rome, and terminated the temporal dominion of the pope, which had rested upon the Italian people with crushing weight for nearly fourteen hundred years. Then the pope, having lost his royal diadem—nothing more—and with the view of prescribing it as an article of faith that it should be recovered again, caused his Cardinal Secretary of State to notify Victor Emmanuel to that effect. This he did as follows:

"I have the command from his holiness to declare, and the undersigned does hereby declare in the august name of his holiness, that such usurpation is devoid of all effect, is null and invalid, and that it can never convey any prejudice to the indisputable and lawful rights of dominion and of possession, whether of the holy father himself, or of his successors in perpetuity; and, although the exercise of these rights may be forcibly prevented and hindered, yet his holiness both knows his rights, intends to conserve them intact, and re-enter at the proper time into their actual possession."

These are expressive words, and every Jesuit interprets them to mean that, having the direct approval of an infallible pope, they impose the religious obligation of obedience upon all the members of their society, and that it will be offensive to God if they shall cease their struggle for the restoration of the temporal power before it is accomplished. Therefore they so enlarge the spiritual jurisdiction and authority of the pope as to make the question of the restoration of his temporal power an international one, so that he shall have the divine right to require all professing Christians to obey him in all matters relating to that question, no matter under what Government, or in what part of the world they may live. The refusal of this obedience is held by them to be heresy. Consequently, when the Roman Catholic people of Italy abolished the temporal power of the pope, remaining in all other respects faithful to the historic and traditional teachings of the Church, the Jesuits made an organized appeal to all the Roman Catholics throughout the world, to unite themselves into a politico-religious party, in order to restore the temporal power, and thereby to teach their Christian brethren in Italy that they have no right to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and that by irreligiously asserting that right, in imitation of the heretical people of the United States, they have themselves become heretics. In point of fact, the Jesuit appeal is made to populations entirely foreign to the people of Italy, inviting these foreign populations to subvert the civil institutions the latter have established for themselves, by forcibly substituting the pope as an arbitrary and irresponsible monarch, without any constitutional check, for a constitutional king whose powers have been placed under satisfactory restraint. The pope himself, when he realized that he was about to lose his crown, talked about the two hundred millions of Roman Catholics scattered throughout the world, who were to be excited to this conflict with the Italian people; and the Jesuits consider themselves specially assigned to the duty of massing the forces of this great papal army, and directing its movements. In that capacity, and with that secret purpose, they have distributed themselves throughout the populous parts of the United States, crowding into our cities, and employing their tireless energies in the work of educating a considerable portion of our people, both old and young, in the religious belief that it is their Christian duty to snatch the crown from the head of the constitutional king of Italy, where those of their own religious faith have placed it, and restore it to the pope, from whose head they removed it by employing the same sovereign power which the people of the United States invoked when they laid the foundations of their own institutions.

It is a serious thing, too serious to be disregarded, to know that, under protection of the liberalism of our laws, there are scattered among our people those who are striving to entangle us in alliances which can have no other end than to disturb the quiet of the nation, and endanger the public welfare. The sacrifices made by the American people in behalf of the right of self-government entitle them to be left to themselves in the undisturbed enjoyment of that right. They have shown themselves wise enough to understand the causes which led to the decay of former nations, and discreet enough to avoid them. Among these causes the union of Church and State has always been conspicuously prominent; wherefore they found it necessary to put an end to this union, by leaving the Church independent in the spiritual, and the State equally so in the temporal sphere. This separation constitutes a great and important political fact, wholly distinct from any of the forms or principles of religious belief, and practically embodies the American idea—perpetuated in Protestantism—that the right to perfect and untrammeled freedom of conscience is not derived by concession from either spiritual or temporal monarchs, but from the inalienable laws of nature. In view of the past experience of mankind, it seemed clear to them that the best form of government is that which guarantees this natural right to each individual, to be enjoyed as a political right, without any restraint whatsoever. In no other way can free popular government ever become possible. They believed also that mankind had been held long enough in inferiority and bondage by the combined influence of Church and State despotism, and that inasmuch as they had been providentially placed in possession of a new and undeveloped continent, it was not only wise but best for them and their posterity that, in establishing their Government, they should make the further union of Church and State impossible, unless some alien power should be strong enough to overthrow their institutions, or they should fall into decay by means of the corruptions engendered by this fatal union, as other Governments had fallen. It was an experiment, hitherto unsuccessful, and was consequently observed by multitudes throughout the world with intense solicitude. If there were any who considered the experiment injudicious, and likely to prove a failure, but little time elapsed before their doubts were dissipated by the results accomplished—results which all who are rightfully entitled to American citizenship, now accept as a precious inheritance from the founders of the Republic. Our institutions are no longer an experiment; they have become actual and accomplished reality. And it is not now the time for us to think of turning back to the bondage of monarchism, as we should indicate the desire to do by denying to the people of Italy the right to imitate our example by separating Church and State, and governing themselves by laws of their own making. They who invite us to this are counselors of evil.

That the Jesuits are not content with the separation of Church and State is a fact too palpable for contradiction. Hence the readiness with which they engage in the organization, in this country, of a politico-religious party pledged to restore the pope's temporal power, notwithstanding such a party is condemned by the spirit of our institutions, and is regarded by the general public as impolitic, inexpedient, and hazardous; and inasmuch as they have chosen to thrust this issue upon us, we are not permitted to become indifferent to it, or shrink from our responsibility of citizenship under a Government entitled to our patriotic allegiance. Such an issue can not be evaded, and must be met with fearlessness and becoming candor. If one is informed that a poisonous viper is coiled up under a pillow upon which he is about to lay his head, he will instinctively strive after the means necessary to escape its fangs. So, when apprised that cunning and adroit adversaries, like the Jesuits, are plotting against cherished and vital principles of our institutions, the obligation to make ourselves familiar with their principles, policy, and history becomes imperative. Being forewarned, we shall have no excuse for not being forearmed.

We must do nothing, either now or hereafter, forbidden by our national character, or by the liberalism we prize so highly. Our Constitution amply protects the rights of free speech, free thought, and a free press, all of which must be held inviolable; but violence is manifestly done to the spirit of patriotism which guarantees this protection when it is demanded of any portion of our population that they shall participate in the work of undoing, in any degree whatsoever, what the founders of the Government considered fundamental. We are prohibited from submitting to anything that shall tend, even by possibility, to subject the people to any sovereignty, either spiritual or temporal, higher than themselves, in such matters as involve their own happiness and welfare. It would be well, consequently, for those who are seeking to accomplish this, to learn that the world is large enough for them and us; that there are other fields wherein better grounds of hope are furnished for re-welding the fragments of shattered monarchies; and that, when they avail themselves of the tolerance of our institutions to assail their foundations, they become intruders into a peaceful and harmonious circle, where, but for them, universal peace and quiet would prevail.

In his conflict with the Italian people for the re-possession of the temporal power, by overthrowing the Constitutional Government they have established, the pope could not find another ally so formidable as the Jesuits, nor one with such implacable hatred of liberalism and popular government. Their society is so united and compact that its ranks can not be broken. They are everywhere the same, moved by a common impulse, under the dictation of their general in Rome. They are the deadly enemies of civil and religious liberty. Nothing that stands in their way can become so sacred as to escape their vengeance. Protestantism has borne no fruits to which they have ever been reconciled. They consider the Reformation which gave birth to it to have been criminal resistance to the only rightful authority upon earth—that which proceeds from Church and State combined. They believe that the condition of mankind during the Middle Ages, staggering under the weight of feudal oppression, was preferable to modern progress and enlightenment; that human happiness would be promoted by the return to that period; that the political right of self-government by the people can not be set up against the higher right of papal and monarchical power; that the progress of the advancing nations is delusive and unsubstantial; and that institutions which guarantee civil and religious freedom, if not arrested by some coercive power strong enough to put an end to them, will lead, through heresy, to social ruin and desolation. If, at the period of the Reformation, this society had not been established for the express purpose of counteracting its influence, a knowledge of the difference between primitive Christianity and the prevailing dogmas might have led to such reforms as would have reconciled Christians to dwell together in peace and concord. But when a dove should have been sent forth bearing the olive-branch of Christian charity, this society sprang from the brain of a disappointed military adventurer, and began at once to scatter the seeds of strife and discord. Almost from the beginning it has been a disturber of the peace of nations, suffering only such as have bestowed patronage upon it to escape its maledictions and its plottings.

The members of this society are numerous and powerful in the United States. They are constantly increasing, mainly by accessions from their drilled and disciplined companions in Europe, but also by conversions of unsuspecting young men, who are seduced by their vain and supercilious pretensions as educators. They are, as they have always been, selfish and vindictive—restless under opposition, and compromising in nothing. They have neither country, nor homes, nor families, nor friendships beyond the limits of their order—none of the affections of the heart which give charm to life and social intercourse—being required to abandon all these and fit themselves for uninquiring obedience to their general, whose commands, whether right or wrong, good or bad, they have solemnly vowed to execute, without the least regard for consequences. Having persistently refused to become reconciled to the forms and methods of Christian civilization which prevail among our Protestant population, they employ all the resources they can command in endeavoring to arrest them. They insist that Church and State shall be united wheresoever they are separate, and that the basis of such union shall be the subordination of the State to the Church. Self-government by the people is held by them to be violative of the divine law, and on that account may rightfully be resisted as heretical, when its overthrow can be assured. They will allow no rights to exist in either States, peoples, or individuals, against what they consider the prerogatives of their society as defined by their general, who, in their estimation, possesses the divine right to enlarge or contract them at his own pleasure. There must be no limitation to the power and independence of the pope, either in the spiritual or temporal domain, except where the interests of their society command otherwise; they must be full, absolute, unquestioned, to the extent defined by himself. His liberty must be such that he may, at his own discretion, curtail the liberties of all others. His spiritual sovereignty must include whatsoever he shall embrace within it. Neither the existence nor the extent of this sovereignty must be brought in question before any human tribunal; but he alone shall define it, together with the character of the obedience he shall exact. And if, in the course of the papal economy, he should ever find it necessary to hold in one hand emblems of harmony and peace, this restless and uncompromising society stands always ready to place the rod of chastisement in the other.

The conflict of opinions, therefore, in which the Protestant people of the United States find themselves engaged is not of their own inviting. They are unwilling parties to it. It had its origin in the spirit of aggression which prevails among those who have stronger sympathy for an alien power than for the right of self-government, and, on account of their peculiar fitness for the work, it will engage every Jesuit tongue and pen in the land. Because of this, a sense of both duty and security demands that the history and character of this skilled and powerful adversary—alien in birth, growth, and sentiment—should be understood; as also the causes which have led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from every country in Europe, the public odium which has rested upon them for many years, their long-continued disturbance of the peace of nations, and the final suppression and abolition of their society by one of the best and most enlightened of the popes. In view of the obligation to preserve our civil institutions as they are, not only for ourselves and our children, but for the multitudes who shall seek shelter under them, we have no right to become either indifferent or inactive in the presence of such assailants, who complacently fling defiance in our faces, and seek to impregnate the free and pure atmosphere of our schools and seminaries of learning with the poison of monarchism. "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence," said Washington, "the jealousy of a free people ought ever to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Washington's Eighth and Madison's Second Message.

[2] Protestantism and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of Europe, By the Rev. I. Balmes.

[3] Universal Church History. By Alzog. Vol. I, p. 674. This recognized papal authority, in order to be as nearly exact as possible, fixes it in the year 510.

[CHAPTER II.]

IGNATIUS LOYOLA, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER.

It is of little consequence to the general reader what place in history is assigned to Ignatius Loyola, apart from the fact that he was the founder and originator of the society of Jesuits, and lived long enough to stamp upon it the impress of his own personality. He availed himself of that organization to maintain among its members the vain and impious assumption of his equality with God, and in that way obtained such complete mastery over them that, in explanation and justification of their slavish obedience, they represent him as having possessed miraculous powers. They assign to him the performance of more miracles than Christ, and do not hesitate to record that he not only restored the dead to life, but, in one conspicuous case, gave life to a child born dead! The silly stories of this character, told of him in apparent seriousness, can have no other effect than to impose upon and encourage ignorant and superstitious people, and are undoubtedly repeated by his Jesuit biographers for this purpose. They seem never to have realized that the world has grown wiser, and that the period has passed when fictions and myths can be proclaimed as realities.

The life of Loyola was written, soon after his death, by Rabadenira, one of his Jesuit followers, who had known him intimately. Of course, under such circumstances, his statement of personal characteristics was presumably reliable. What he stated in the first edition was professedly based upon his own knowledge and what he had learned from Loyola's "intimate friends" and "inseparable companions." And with these facts before him and fully considered, he declared that his "sanctity was not justified by miracles." Some years after, however, it was deemed expedient that this concession should be withdrawn entirely, and another more favorable to the Jesuits be substituted for it. Accordingly, in another edition of the same work, it is stated that Loyola's performance of miracles was "confirmed by the most authentic proofs and careful examination."[4] These statements are in direct conflict, and can not both be true. The first bears the impress of veracity because it is consistent with human experience, while the latter shows the tracings of Jesuit fingers too clearly to mislead any thoughtful and intelligent mind.

It is singularly strange that, in the present reading and enlightened age, these pretended miracles are cited by Jesuits to prove that divine power and authority were conferred upon Loyola, because God chose him to accomplish special objects in his name; when the very things which, as they allege, he was providentially appointed to defeat, have transpired in spite of him, his successors, and all their followers. The suppression of the Reformation and the extirpation of Protestantism—its legitimate fruit—were the avowed purposes of himself and his society, because, according to them, the curse of God rested upon these as the excess of unpardonable heresy. For the accomplishments of these objects he converted the members of his society into a compact body of militia, and placed in their hands weapons chosen by himself, instructing them that they were specially selected as the executioners of the Divine vengeance. Yet the Reformation progressed until it marked out new paths of advancement for the nations; and Protestantism has extended its beneficent influences until it is to-day the controlling power in human affairs, and has even taken possession of places where the papacy once ruled with sovereign and unchallenged authority. And the great work thus begun, in the face of Jesuit maledictions and curses, has not yet ended; for Protestantism still continues to build up new nations, elevate and improve peoples, and make mankind freer, happier, and more prosperous; whilst there has not been a time since the Jesuits existed as a society when they have not been odious in all parts of the world, and have not been regarded as the plotters of mischief and disturbers of the public peace. How can a thoughtful mind account for these results by any known process of human reasoning, if it were true that Loyola had divine power conferred upon him expressly for the purpose of exterminating Protestantism as heresy? And how, if his society of Jesuits has been providentially endowed with faculties to consummate his ends, could it have happened that one of the wisest and best of the popes—for whom infallibility is now claimed—was constrained to condemn it by positive suppression, and to declare, under the solemn responsibilities of his sacred office, that it was not worthy of longer existence? But leaving these questions unanswered for the present, it is sufficient to say here that no qualities possessed by Loyola, whatsoever they were, can oblige the present age to recognize his society as entitled to any such prerogatives and immunities as exempt it from having its real worth tested by the rules universally accepted as applicable to human conduct and affairs. It must now be tried by these rules; and if it shall be found that its conduct has been marked by wrong and injustice, its boastful claim of superiority will appear to every investigator as merely vain and presumptuous.

That Loyola was shrewd and sagacious, and laid his plans with a full and intelligent comprehension of the ends he had in view, ought not to be denied. When engaged in framing the constitution of the Jesuits, he was familiar with the troubles existing in the Church, and with the prevailing public sentiment with reference to their causes; that is, the unfitness for the proper discharge of spiritual functions of those charged with their exercise. The Jesuits themselves assert this, in explanation of the necessity for the establishment of theirs as a new society, declaring that the numerous orders then existing—such as the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Minorites, and others—were incompetent to arrest the decline of the Church, on account of their own need of reform. This point in their history should invite the closest attention and scrutiny, because it shows, in a conspicuous degree, the basis of their assumed superiority over all other societies and orders which, in the course of time, have had the sanction of the Church. And this scrutiny is desirable, moreover, inasmuch as it will be seen that the pictures of demoralization prevailing among the clergy, as they were drawn by the reformers in their most vivid coloring, had their accuracy vouched for by Loyola himself, to justify the establishment of his society of Jesuits, not merely because it would constitute a distinct, independent, and superior organization, but would bring back all dissenters to obedience, which he made its main and fundamental principle.

One of the leading Jesuit authorities—an author upon whom the society relies to make known that part of its history considered favorable—endeavors to maintain the proposition that it was absolutely obligatory for Loyola to have been intrusted with the duty "of reforming the morals of the people of Rome," immediately within the shadow of the Vatican. He represents the task as "most difficult and important, as at that time the people were much demoralized, and indulged in the most frightful excesses," notwithstanding the papal Government, with plenary and absolute powers, had existed there during all the period of the Middle Ages—nearly a thousand years. Not content alone with asserting that the people were demoralized, this same author affirms, in addition, that Loyola "sought to reform the monastic orders, and reanimate the priesthood with a holy fervor,"[5] thus alleging that the monastic orders and the priesthood were demoralized like the people, and needed that a new guardian of their morals, other and better than any the Church had ever furnished, should be empowered to regulate their conduct. In further explanation of the reasons why Loyola desired to establish the society of Jesuits, he represents him as having addressed directly to the pope, Paul III, this argument: "It appears that this society is absolutely necessary for the eradication of those abuses with which the Church is afflicted."[6] And at another place, referring to the condition of the Church in Germany, he says it was "mainly attributable to the ignorance of the people, and, more dangerous still, to the shortcomings of the priesthood, abandoned to the gratification of their own passions. In the entire city of Worms there was but one priest worthy of respect."[7] Neither Luther nor the reformers could have employed apter words to justify themselves; nor can those of the present time, who comment upon the vices which then prevailed among the clergy, express themselves in stronger language. The well-established historical fact is, that the same condition of things existed throughout the leading nations of Europe, beginning at Rome and reaching out in every direction, having the papacy as its common center. When the Jesuits, therefore, bestow their curses upon Luther and other reformers for having proclaimed the necessity for reform in the Church because of the demoralization of the clergy, they show their memories to be short in forgetting that their society was justified by its founder upon the plea of the same necessity.

Loyola was fully advised, also, of the progress made by the Reformation, and doubtless persuaded himself to believe that the necessity for reform would be made available by others of less ambition than himself, who would be likely to seek for it elsewhere than through the papacy, under whose auspices so many evils had grown up, unless he could check the progress of the Reformation by the creation of some new and opposing influences which he could himself control. There were no fundamental points of Christian doctrine involved; and, if there had been, the whole life of Loyola proves that he would have regarded them of inferior importance, compared with his main purpose of preventing the enlightenment of society by free religious thought, and holding it in obedience to authority superior to itself. The friendly author already quoted declares his object to have been "to re-establish those principles of submission and discipline which alone can insure obedience to legitimate authority;"[8] that is, to the combined authority of Church and State, as no other was at that time considered legitimate by him, or has ever been by his society since then.

The acute and penetrating intellect of Loyola enabled him to foresee that, unless some new method of counteracting the effects of the Reformation should be discovered, the disintegration of the Church, already begun, could not be arrested. The difficulties surrounding this problem were increased by the fact that the papacy had been unable to put a stop to its own decline; and accordingly he taxed his inventive faculties, not to reform doctrine—for that was not needed beyond the points interpolated upon the primitive faith by the ambitious popes—but to prevent the decay of papal and ecclesiastical power. Undoubtedly it was his purpose that whatsoever plan he might adopt should supersede the old methods to which the Church had been long accustomed, and which had the sanction of numerous popes and many centuries of time. He intended to enter upon an experiment, the chief recommendation of which was, that it required new paths to be marked out in preference to those which had acquired the approval of antiquity. But he was careful to see, at every step he took, that whatsoever was done should inure to his own credit in the accomplishment of such ends as were suggested by the burning ardor and ambition of a soldier; in other words, that if good results ensued, they should be attributed to himself, and neither to the pope, nor to the Church, nor to the ancient monastic orders. Assuming, as he manifestly did, that all these combined had failed to check the advancing corruptions of the clergy, which had grown up under their protracted auspices, his inventive and ambitious mind was animated by the hope of bringing the world to realize that he alone could give to the organized authority of Church and State the vigor and efficiency necessary to keep society in obedience. Having a mind thoroughly indoctrinated with the principle of absolute monarchism, he did not regard it as possible or desirable to accomplish this in any other mode than by making that the central and controlling feature of whatsoever plan should be adopted. Accordingly, in the constitution of the society of Jesuits, which was the product of his reflections, he provided for consolidating in his own hands, as superior or general, such absolute authority as would subject all its members to his individual will, so as to hold them, at all times and under all possible circumstances, in perfect and uninquiring obedience, surrendering their right to think as completely as if they had never possessed it. By this method he designed to annihilate all personal independence, so that freedom of thought should not, by any possibility, exist in the society. He meant to convert all who were brought within the circle of his influence, from thoughtful and reflecting men into mere human automatons, and so to mold and fashion them that each one should be reduced to a universal and common level of humiliating submission and obedience. Thus he hoped to arrest the further development of popular intelligence, so that those who had been lifted out of the old grooves of despotism might be plunged into them again, and such as had not should be held there in ignorance and superstition. This he supposed would defeat the Reformation, in which event he and his society, as the originator and executors of the plan, would enjoy the glory of the achievement. If he had ever exhibited any evidences of great sanctity of life, this presumption of selfish ambition might have been rebutted; but he was known only as an aspiring soldier, whose early life had been characterized by such follies and irregularities as prevailed about the courts of royalty at that time. He had done nothing to raise him above the character of an adventurer.

There was nothing in the original Jesuit constitution necessary to Christian faith or to the established doctrines of the Roman Church. It provided for the organization of a select body of men, united together professedly to maintain what Loyola chose to call the greater glory of God—"ad majorem Dei gloriam"—by such undefined methods as might be, from time to time, made known to them by their general, and without fixing any limitation or restraint upon either his discretion or authority. There was no pretense of adding to or taking from the settled doctrines or dogmas of the Church; for that could have been done only by the pope, or by a General Council, or by the two powers acting conjointly—in unity. It would have been a direct censure of the Church to have assumed the necessity of this, or to have solicited authority to undertake it—equivalent to saying that it had failed to provide the necessary means of maintaining the true faith after many centuries of unlimited power. It was the duty of Loyola, as a faithful son of the Church, no less than it was the duty of those who were less pretentious, to have regarded its faith and doctrines as already perfect. To have done otherwise would have given aid and comfort to Luther and the Reformation. Hence his pretense of the necessity for the organization of a new society or order, with special methods of its own hitherto unknown, clearly indicated a desire to act apart from and independently of the existing methods and authorities of the Church.

No matter, however, what pretenses were made by Loyola, or what his secretly cherished designs were, there is not the least ground for doubt that his method of establishing and organizing a new society had no relations whatsoever to the principles of Christian faith—in other words, that the existing methods were competent for all practicable and necessary purposes without it. It was, consequently, temporal merely; that is, it had reference exclusively to the management of men, so as to reduce them to uninquiring obedience to such authority as was set over them. There was nothing besides this which the Church and the ancient monastic orders did not already possess the power to accomplish. The "exercises" he prescribed were, it is true, spiritual in character—such as penance and mortification of the flesh—but the Church had already provided these, and they were rigidly observed by the monastic orders. The pledge to employ them, made by the members of the Jesuit society so as to promote their own spiritual welfare, was merely incidental to the duty they already owed to the Church. Consequently, while these "exercises" conformed to the existing obligations imposed by the Church, the new society projected by Loyola was intended to furnish the machinery necessary for exacting obedience—for training and disciplining all who could be influenced by it for that single purpose. And in order to accomplish effectually this obedience to himself and his new society, leaving out entirely both the Church and the pope, he originally designed that the members of the society should be responsible alone to their general, from whom all the laws and regulations for their government should emanate. The pope, as the head of the Church, had not the least authority over these members conferred upon him by the original constitution; nor was it intended that they should obey any other authority than that of their general, because he, and he alone, was recognized as the sole representative of God upon earth. There was nothing spiritual in all this, in the sense in which the Church had defined spiritual things and the Christian world understood them; but it made the society, as Loyola planned it, temporal merely—a mere police corps, drilled and disciplined to obedience alone, without the right either to inquire or decide whether the commands of their superior were right or wrong. It should surprise no intelligent man, therefore, at learning the fact that the pope hesitated about giving the society his approval, when Loyola first requested his pontifical ratification of its constitution.

That Loyola's original intention was that his new society should exact from its members a pledge of fidelity alone to himself and those who should succeed him in its government, and not to the Church or to the pope, is plainly to be seen in the fact that when he found a few sympathizing friends to unite with him, he did not submit the plan of organization to the pope for approval, so as to make it a religious order like the Dominican, Franciscan, and other ancient orders, but sought only from him permission for himself and friends to go as missionaries to the Holy Land, to labor for the conversion of the infidel Turks to Christianity. That he then contemplated acting, in so far as the movements and operations of his society were concerned, independently of the Church and the pope, is evidenced by the most undoubted authority. The author of the "Lives of the Saints," a work which has the highest indorsement, says: "In 1534, on the Feast of the Assumption of our Lady, St. Ignatius and his six companions, of whom Francis [Xavier] was one, made a vow at Montmartre to visit the Holy Land, and unite their labors for the conversion of the infidels; or, if this should be found not practicable, to cast themselves at the feet of the pope, and offer their services wherever he thought fit to employ them."[9]

It will be seen, therefore, that it was entirely conditional whether or no Loyola would make known to the pope his new society and the plan of its organization, and ask his pontifical approval. He had already formed the primary organization, and obtained from Xavier and his five other associates the necessary vow of obedience, by which they had placed themselves entirely under his dominion and control. If it should prove "practicable" for him to plant his new and independent society in the Holy Land, which presented a large and tempting field of operations, it was undoubtedly his secretly-cherished purpose to do so, without making his constitution known to the pope, and thus to establish in Asia an organization independent of the pope, and submissive only to himself. But if found to be "not practicable," then, and only then, he and his companions would "cast themselves at the feet of the pope, and offer their services" to him and to the Church. His military ambition, not yet extinguished, was manifestly kindled afresh by the hope that a whole continent would be opened before him, where he would find the Oriental methods of obedience strictly consistent with those he desired to introduce, and where he could create, unmolested, such influences as, being introduced into Europe, might counteract those already produced by the Reformation. But not until he found that he was balked in this, did he intend to devote himself and his companions to the immediate work of attempting to arrest the progress of the Reformation in Europe, where the existing methods of resisting it were not under his control. It was worthy of the founder of the Jesuits to solicit the pope's approval of this great missionary scheme, and to conceal from him, at the same time, his secret purpose to act in the name of a new society, adverse to the ancient monastic orders and submissive to himself alone. That this concealment was studied and premeditated, there can be no reasonable doubt; and as it was the first step taken by Loyola in the execution of his plan, he thereby practiced such duplicity and deceit toward the Church and the pope, that these qualities may well be considered as fundamental in the society of Jesuits. And there is ample proof in the strange and eventful history of this society that it has been, from that time till the present, consistently faithful to this example of its founder.

His first successes were, doubtless, flattering to the pride, as well as encouraging to the hopes, of Loyola. Having succeeded in obtaining the consent of the pope that he and his companions should become missionaries to the Holy Land, without having revealed the existence or character of his society, they were all ordained as priests for that purpose, as none of them had been previously admitted to the priesthood. Thus equipped, they took their departure for Palestine, with the plan and principles of their organization locked up in their own minds, and the ultimate design of their ambitious leader known, probably, to himself alone. They must have commenced their journey with joyful hearts and rapturous hopes, which soon, however, became chilled by what Loyola must have considered a sad misfortune, probably the first he had encountered since he had received the wound at the battle of Pampeluna, which disfigured his person so that he could share no longer in the gay festivities of the royal court. They were prevented from reaching Palestine by the war then in progress between the Emperor Charles V and the Turks, and, after an absence of about a year, were compelled to return to Europe disheartened, as may well be supposed, by their failure. This put a new aspect upon the fortunes of Loyola. His first advance towards independence and the acquisition of power had accomplished nothing favorable to his ambition, and, consequently, it became necessary for him to discover some more promising field of operations, where no such mishap as he had encountered would be likely to occur again. There was abundant room in Europe for missionary labor; but he was now, for the first time, confronted by the fact that his society could not engage in this work, in the presence of numerous religious orders already in existence, without obtaining for it the express approval of the pope, so that, by this means, it might be also stamped with a religious character, in so far as that approval would confer it. He, manifestly, had not calculated upon a crisis which would make it necessary to submit the provisions of his constitution to the pope, or to make them known to any others besides those who were to become members of his society, and were willing to yield up their manhood so completely as to vow uninquiring obedience and submission to him and his successors as the only representatives and vicegerents of God upon earth. It can not be supposed that a man of so much sagacity as he undoubtedly possessed, would not have foreseen the difficulty in obtaining the approval of the pope to a constitution which humiliated him by assigning higher authority to the general of a new society than the Church had confided to him. But he had gone too far to retreat, and had too much courage to attempt it; for his courage was never doubted, either upon the battle-field or elsewhere; and when he found it absolutely necessary to visit Rome in order to obtain the pope's sanction, he did so, accompanied by Lefevre and Laynez, two of his companions. Before their departure, however, from Vicenza in Austrian Italy, where they were assembled, Loyola deemed it important to announce to his followers, probably for the first time, the name he had decided to give his society. He thus instructed them: "To those who ask what we are, we will reply, we are the Soldiers of the Holy Church, and we form 'The Society of Jesus.'"[10] This was evidently suggested by the necessities which then confronted him. He had not found it expedient to adopt such a designation, or to announce that they were "Soldiers of the Holy Church," until their attempt to obtain an independent position in Palestine had failed. Therefore, these avowals, made before going to Rome, are justly to be considered as mere expedients, suggested by the necessity of obtaining the pope's approval. The existing religious orders had taken their names from their founders; but Loyola's profane use of the sacred name of the Son of God, clearly indicated that he intended to set up for his society a claim for holiness superior to all others. Or it was assumed as a cover for practices, contemplated by him, that would not bear inspection in the light. That it was intended as a reflection upon the ancient monastic orders then existing, and to express superiority over them, can not be doubted. In any view, to say the least, it was impudent and presumptuous, and was generally offensive to the Christian world.

At the time of Loyola's visit to Rome, Paul III was pope. When his approval of the new society was solicited, he deemed it indispensable, as a measure of precaution, that the question should be investigated with the greatest care; for until then no opportunity had been afforded him of knowing the ultimate purposes of Loyola, or the machinery he had constructed for executing them. Whether the pope suspected him of concealment or not, it is impossible now to tell; but that he had reason to do so is evident from the most favorable accounts given of the original official interview between them. Then it was that the pope was apprised, for the first time, that the constitution under which the society of Jesuits had been organized, required a solemn vow, by which all the members were pledged to "implicit and unquestioning obedience to their superior,"[11] without the possibility of equivocation or mental reservation; that is, to Loyola himself as the first general, and to his successors from time to time thereafter. It required but little deliberation upon the part of the pope to realize that neither the Church nor the papacy could derive any advantage from this, but rather injury; for the reason that it would create a society under the protection of both, and, at the same time, absolutely independent of both. He therefore hesitated, evidently supposing that his approval under those circumstances would drag him into deep waters from which it would not be easy to escape, and referred the question to a committee of cardinals for thorough and scrutinizing investigation, so that his final action should be based upon full information.

Loyola was too sagacious not to have anticipated this difficulty; but he manifestly hoped to escape it in some way, either by evading or bridging it over, or he would not have asked the pope to approve the original constitution which contained it. He certainly did not desire or contemplate any change in his original constitution or plan; and therefore, when Paul III hesitated and appointed a committee of cardinals to scrutinize them, he must have felt a degree of perplexity to which his proud and ambitious military spirit had not been hitherto accustomed to submit unresistingly. He could not avoid seeing, however, that if the pope's final decision should be adverse to him, it would necessarily be the death of his society, upon which he had, with inordinate ambition, fixed his hopes. The occasion constituted the most serious crisis in his personal fortunes he had ever encountered. Success promised him a long list of triumphs; defeat, nothing but obscurity. He had no such intellectual resources as fitted him for rencounter with those who had, not having attended school until after he had reached the years of manhood, and not having then shown any special aptness for learning. Whatsoever capacity he possessed, tended in the direction of governing men, his faculty for which was developed during his service in the army; and he must therefore have experienced the consciousness that if he failed to obtain the sanction of the pope, his career would be seriously, if not entirely, checked. The future of the papacy depended upon the successful training of men to obedience; and Loyola, understanding this, could have had no difficulty in persuading the pope that a society like his, contrived especially to suspend the power of human reasoning and reduce its members to mere unthinking machines, would more assuredly produce that result than had been done by the very worst forms of absolute despotism which had, for so many centuries, held the Oriental world in subjugation.

But Loyola's embarrassment did not amount to discomfiture. He may never have held personal intercourse with Paul III before; but he understood the papacy, its wants and necessities, and had ample opportunity to study the character and penetrate the motives of the pope. For this he was specially fitted—few men have lived who excelled him in this respect—and, having constructed his society upon the theory that men were of no value unless persuaded to surrender up their personality to superiors, the occasion served him to address such arguments to the pope as would convince him that the obedience to authority he had introduced in his society was just what the existing exigencies of the papacy required to save it from overthrow. It may easily be seen now—although the pope may not have then employed penetration enough to discover it—that he did not intend to deal unequivocally and in entire frankness with the pope, so long as there remained a prospect of obtaining his end otherwise. He evidently had an accurate conception of what is meant by the terms confession and avoidance, in the sense of seeming to consent while not consenting. Thus, in order to remove the objection of the pope and secure his approval, he suggested another and new obligation to be inserted in the constitution of his society, providing that the members should also take a vow "of obedience to the Holy See and to the pope pro tempore, with the express obligation of going, without remuneration, to whatsoever part of the world it shall please the pope to send them."[12] These words must be read critically in order that their meaning as intended by Loyola, and always since interpreted by the Jesuits, may not be misconceived. Their true import is, that whilst the members of the society were to pay obedience to the pope as well as to their general, it was qualified as to the former, and absolute as to the latter; that is, that as they were nominally to have two heads, the authority of both should, for all practical purposes, center in one. In point of fact, as amply demonstrated by subsequent experience, this new provision did not change the nature or limit the extent of the obligation of unquestioning obedience to the Jesuit general. Its most essential feature was that which required the members to go wheresoever ordered by the pope, without compensation; but with regard to this and all other duties, and the manner of discharging them, they were required to obey their general. They could receive no instructions except those which came from him, all of which they were required to obey as coming directly from God. This amendment created no special relations—or, indeed, any whatsoever—between the pope and the society; for he held no direct intercourse with it. And it only created such relations between the pope and the general as obliged the latter to send the members wheresoever the former desired, without remuneration. They remained the slaves of the general, and not the slaves of the pope. They obeyed the general, and not the pope, unless ordered to do so by the general, in which case they paid obedience only to the latter. But Paul III did not detect the well-concealed purposes of Loyola, and may not even have suspected them, in view of his anxiety to arrest the disintegration of the Church and the threatened decay of the papacy. Howsoever this may have been, the cunningly-contrived concession made to him by Loyola was satisfactory to him, notwithstanding the opposition of one of the committee of cardinals, and he issued his pontifical bull approving the society of Jesuits as a religious order. This pledge of fidelity to the pope, however, has been kept or evaded accordingly as the interests of the society have from time to time demanded. Its history shows prominent instances when the decisions of the popes have been denounced and resisted, and when the popes themselves have been treated with contempt and defiance. When the Jesuits have found shelter and protection under the authority of the popes, they have exalted them to absolute equality with God; when otherwise, they have disobeyed and traduced them.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Crit. and Phi. Dictionary. By Bayle. Article "Loyola," Vol. III, p. 889, note.

[5] History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol. I, p. 14. This work was translated by Clements, and published in Cincinnati by Walsh, in 1865.

[6] History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol I, p. 22.

[7] Ibid., p. 40.

[8] History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol. I, p. 40.

[9] Lives of the Saints. By the Rev. Alban Butler. Vol. XII, article "St. Francis Xavier," December 3, p. 603.

[10] Daurignac. Vol. I, pp. 11-12.

[11] History of the Jesuits. By Nicolini. Page 27.

[12] History of the Jesuits. By Nicolini. Page 27.

[CHAPTER III.]

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIETY.

All the circumstances which attended the origin and establishment of the society of Jesuits combine to explain, with unmistakable clearness, the motives which must have influenced the mind and incited the action of Loyola in every step he took. They plainly show that his leading and controlling purpose was to organize a body of men, each one of whom should be brought into implicit and unquestioning obedience to the authority of their general, and hold themselves in readiness so long as the society existed, to do, without the least inquiry into results, whatsoever he should command to be done, so that they should have no wills or opinions of their own upon any subject over which he should assert jurisdiction. By making this the central and most fundamental principle of the constitution, he placed his society in direct antagonism to all intellectual progress and enlightenment—to everything that tended to dignify and elevate mankind. No one, therefore, ought to wonder that it has produced more disturbance in the world than any other organization that has ever existed; or, if it were out of the way, could ever exist again.

The constitution was locked up in the secret archives of the society for more than two hundred years, many of its details having been unknown, it is said, even by a considerable portion of the members, whose submissive obedience must have reduced them to the condition of trained animals. This concealment by a society professedly religious could not have been favorable to Christianity, and must have been the consequence of some sinister motive, as subsequent developments have shown. This is a fair inference from the reluctance with which the constitution was surrendered when the French Government demanded its exposure. The facts connected with the proceedings of the French Parliament, when they compelled the society to make it known, justify the belief that there must have been some special reason for its long concealment, and that the public odium, so long resting upon it in France, was attributable, among other things, to the secrecy of its proceedings. And when it is considered that the strong and vigorous measures adopted by the Parliament to extort the constitution by dragging it from its hiding-place, transpired at a time when Protestantism had no control whatsoever over the public affairs of France, it conclusively proves that the integrity of the society was suspected by the French people whilst they were faithful adherents of the Roman Church. Such a fact as this indicates—what every Jesuit stands ready to deny if necessary—that where the society was best known, it was most suspected and disliked.

The whole machinery of this society was admirably designed to accomplish its complete consolidation. Although Loyola was neither a theologian nor a learned man, having obtained almost his entire education after he was thirty years of age, yet he understood, far better than many who had acquired higher intellectual culture, the springs and motives of human conduct; and this, supplemented by cunning, which never deserted him, constituted his leading characteristic. As his sole object was to dominate over others by promising them a place in paradise as a reward for unmanning themselves, he studiously excluded all who could not be reduced to this low condition by training, discipline, and education. Accordingly, before an applicant could be admitted to probation, his whole life and character were closely scrutinized by the general, if it were in his power to do so; but if not, by persons selected as spies, who were "to live with him and examine him," so as to be able to penetrate his most secret thoughts.[13] Upon admission, he was required to confess to a rector, who was to be recognized by him as holding "the place of Christ our Lord," and from whom nothing should be concealed—"not opposing, not contradicting, nor showing an opinion in any case opposed to his opinion."[14] When the probationer was found by these tests qualified for membership—that is, when it was ascertained that he had no will of his own, but was fitted by nature and inclination for a state of complete bondage—he was required to recognize the general of the society as occupying the place of God, and as possessing absolute authority over him, with the right to exact absolute obedience from him. He was reduced to the condition of a mere inanimate machine, with no discretionary power whatsoever over his own emotions, opinions, or actions. This obligation is thus expressed in the constitution: "He must regard the superior as Christ the Lord, and must strive to acquire perfect resignation and denial of his own will and judgment, in all things conforming his will and judgment to that which the superior wills and judges."[15] And, in order to assure, beyond the possibility of mistake, the complete surrender of all individuality, and to bring the probationer down to the lowest possible degradation, his uninquiring obedience is defined and exacted in these words: "As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every point—in execution, in will, in intellect—doing what is enjoined with all celerity, spiritual joy, and perseverance; persuading ourselves that everything is just; suppressing every repugnant thought and judgment of one's own, in a certain obedience; ... and let every one persuade himself that he who lives under obedience should be moved and directed, under Divine Providence, by his superior, just as if he were a corpse (perinde ac si cadaver esset), which allows itself to be moved and led in any direction."[16]

It would be hard to find, in any written or spoken language, words more expressive than these of the complete eradication of all sense of personality, unless it be some elsewhere employed in the same society to express the same or equivalent ideas. In the Prague edition of the "Institutes," the following is given as the language of one of its decrees: "It behooves our brethren to be pre-eminent in true and absolute obedience, in abnegation of all individual will and judgment."[17] The Jesuit Bartoli, in his history of Loyola, expresses the meaning of the constitution in substantially the same words, thus: "An entire abnegation of their own will, of their own judgment."[18] Elsewhere he says the members must act "according to the pleasure of the superior."[19] Again: "What can be more complete than our submission to the orders of our superiors in everything that concerns our state of life, the places we are to dwell in, the employments, the offices we are to be engaged in."[20] And again, this submission to the will and judgment of the superior, or general, is called "renouncing our own judgment," "the annihilation of self," "complete obedience, entire dependence upon the will of others, perfect abandonment of personal reputation."[21]

This self-abnegation, this slavery of the mind, is a worse form of servitude than the slavery of the body. The latter places fetters upon the limbs, the former rivets shackles upon the mind. A brief comparison will illustrate this. The methods of punishing slaves for disobedience have varied accordingly as masters have been humane or otherwise. Some have been compelled to endure the torture of solitary imprisonment and starvation; others to wear iron fetters until they have eaten, by slow degrees, into their flesh; and multitudes have escaped only with the lash. In all this, merely the animal capacity for enduring physical suffering has been put to the test,—the minds of the victims having been left free to implore the mercy and protection of Providence, according to their own wills and consciences. But this Jesuit method of training probationers and novices to secure their implicit obedience to their superiors, transcends anything pertaining, especially in modern times, to the relation of master and slaves. It trifles with the interests and destiny of the soul, its relations to God and to eternity, by substituting a mere man, with the passions and impulses of other men, as the final arbiter of human conduct, and with the power to open and close the doors of heaven at his own personal pleasure. It is for fitting him to assent implicitly to this that the Jesuit is required to abnegate his individual self, dismiss from his mind the idea that God gave him the priceless faculty of thought and reflection, and abase himself to such a degree that he has no will or judgment of his own concerning the future condition of his soul. By considering himself a mere corpse—dead to everything in life but humiliating obedience to the general—he consents to accept his commands as equal to those of God, and to recognize the sentence he might see fit to pass upon him in this life, in lieu of the judgment of God in the life to come.

There is a vast deal of cumulative evidence upon these points, which have evidently been considered fundamental and indispensable. Besides the foregoing humiliating vows, strict rules and regulations are established for the government of the novices. Number 34 is as follows: "At the voice of the superior, just as if it came from Christ the Lord, we must be most ready, leaving everything whatsoever, even a letter of the alphabet, unfinished, though begun." Rule 35 defines "holy obedience" to be "abnegating all opinion and judgment of our own contrary thereto [that is, to what they are commanded to do], with a certain blind obedience." Rule 36 is in these words: "Let every member persuade himself that those who wish to live under obedience, ought to suffer themselves to be borne along and governed through Divine Providence through the superiors, just as if they were a corpse, which may be borne as we please, and permits itself to be handled anyhow; or like an old man's stick, which everywhere serves any purpose that he who holds it chooses to employ it in."[22] The same ideas exactly are expressed in one of the vows which Loyola made conspicuous, and which is given by Bartoli in his biography, as follows: "I should regard myself as a dead body, without will or intelligence, as a little crucifix which is turned about unresistingly at the will of him who holds it, as a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it as he requires it, and as it suits him best."[23]

The human mind is not fertile enough in invention to discover a lower depth of humiliation than this—a more complete surrender of all the ennobling qualities and instincts of manhood. If these have ever been possessed, the remembrance of them is required to be obliterated, so that there may be no room in the mind for a single generous emotion. When Shakespeare conceived the idea of a "mindless slave," he must have had before his mind the portrait of a Jesuit, after he had been disciplined and fashioned under the master-hand of Loyola, who left his followers no personal sense of truth or right or justice, having made their abnegation so thorough that, even with the knowledge of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, they were trained to incline indifferently to either as commanded by their superiors. He allowed no hesitation, heard no reasons, accepted neither apology nor excuse. Their whole duty consisted in blind and uninquiring obedience to him in thought, word, and deed, no matter what consequences might follow, or what harm be inflicted. What of consciences they had left, were required to become so callous as to be insensible to either honor or shame, all conscientious sense being extinguished as if it had never existed—like the light of a candle blown out. Nowhere else in the world, within the confines of civilization, has such a point of the absolute annihilation of individuality been reached. Nowhere else is a man required to acknowledge himself a "corpse," a "dead body," a "little crucifix," a "staff" in the hands of another, with no will, or thought, or sensibility, or emotion, except such as shall be dictated by those to whose mastery he has ignominiously submitted. It is the very perfection of tyranny, such as the most heartless despots known to history would have rejoiced to discover.

Far too little consideration is generally given, even by careful students of history, to this assumption of equality with Christ—this vain pretense of a state of divine perfection which recognizes a single human being as possessing upon earth the authority of God. Undoubtedly it is true that multitudes of individuals, of good intentions, have been misled by it into the false belief that the most prominent feature in the plan of Christ's atonement was the substitution for himself of a mere man, to whom alone, of all mankind, he assigned his own divine attributes. The original suggestion of such a proposition must have startled the Christian mind; and its establishment as an article of faith may be intelligently accounted for by the fact that the superstition and ignorance of the Middle Ages enabled monarchism in Church and State to perpetuate itself by requiring this dogma to be accepted as revealed by Christ himself. In evidence of its repugnance to the common sense of mankind, it is proper to observe that the Christian world has ever since labored hard to get rid of the delusion, and would in all probability long since have done so, but for the society of Jesuits, which has ceaselessly maintained it as an essential part of its machinery. That it is condemned and repudiated by reason, it requires no argument to prove in this enlightened age. If the Creator had designed that he should have such a representative upon earth after the ascension of Christ, he would have imparted his divine attributes to him by such manifestations of his own power as the world could not misunderstand—either by such simple and peaceful incidents as attested the birth and divinity of the Savior, or by such convulsions of nature as accompanied the delivery of the tables of the law to Moses. In the entire absence of any visible and intelligent evidences whatsoever of this divine purpose, the pretension of it, as the mere means of acquiring authority over others and exacting obedience from them, is nothing less than presumptuous and vainglorious impiety. It seeks to dethrone God by abolishing the bar of judgment, where he has announced that all mankind shall appear; for what is it less than this to say that conformity to the commands of the Jesuit general assures, beyond any peradventure, admission to the kingdom of heaven? God manifestly reserved to himself this great prerogative; and he who claims it as pertaining to an earthly office of man's creation, arraigns the divine authority, and insults the Majesty of heaven by requiring that the Creator shall abdicate his throne. If, moreover, God had intended to confer divine attributes upon any individual man, it is contrary to a just estimate of his character, as well as to all human experience, to suppose he would have chosen the general of a society which has from its origin been a byword of reproach among the nations, upon which such a heavy weight of odium has rested that it has been ignominiously driven out of every nation in Europe; whose enormities compelled a good and virtuous pope to suppress and abolish it in order to assure the peace and welfare of the Church; and whose members are still skulking through these same nations, silently and secretly, as ghostly apparitions are supposed to move about in the night-time under the cover of darkness.

But the Jesuit constitution goes to even a greater extent of impiety. After a novitiate has, by the foregoing methods, been converted into an unthinking and unresisting piece of machinery, like a block of wood or marble carved by the hand of an artist, his course of future servility is so opened before him that he may fully understand how he shall give proof of fidelity to his vows, by doing whatsoever the general shall command, or by omitting to do whatsoever he shall forbid. Here the thoughtful reader to whom these revelations are new, no matter what form of religious faith he may profess, will be likely to pause in astonishment at the deliberately-avowed purpose to disregard the laws of States, of social morality, and even of God, when the general shall command either of these things to be done. The following are the words of the constitution, as given by Nicolini:

"No constitution, declaration, or any order of living, can involve an obligation to commit sin, mortal or venial, unless the superior command it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of holy obedience, which shall be done in those cases or persons wherein it shall be judged that it will greatly conduce to the particular good of each, or to the general advantage; and, instead of the fear of offense, let the love and desire of all perfection proceed, that the greater glory and praise of Christ, our Creator and Lord, may follow."[24]

This language should be re-read and carefully scanned; for, at a single glance, it seems to have been written so as to furnish ground for equivocation, a practice in which the Jesuits, by long use, have acquired consummate skill. It may be easily interpreted, however, in the light of what Bartoli says. According to him, the novice is required to place himself "entirely in the hands of God, and of him who holds the place of God by his authority," which, of course, is the general or superior. After setting forth that the novitiate is required to take this vow, "In everything which is not sinful, I must do the will of my superior and not my own," he enlarges upon the obligations of the same vow with the following particularity: "If it seems to me that the superior has ordered me to do something against my conscience, or in which there appears to be something sinful, if he is of a contrary opinion, and I have no certainty, I should rely upon him. If my trouble continues, I should lay aside my own judgment, and confide my doubts to one, two, or three persons, and rely upon their decision. If all this shall not satisfy me, I am far from the perfection which my religious state requires. I must no longer belong to myself, but to my Creator, and to those who govern in his name, and in whose hands I should be as soft wax, whatsoever he chooses to require of me."[25] Another vow, also given by Bartoli, shows that this same obedience is due as well to a vicious and immoral as to a virtuous superior; that is, that by the religion which the Jesuits profess, it makes no difference, in so far as the obligation of obedience to his interpretation of the laws of God and morality is concerned, whether he be wise or unwise, saint or sinner. It says: "To believe that a thing ought to be because the superior orders it, is the last and most perfect degree. We can not arrive at this degree without recognizing in the person of our superior, be he wise or imprudent, holy or imperfect, the authority of Jesus Christ himself, whom he represents."[26] And another vow, illustrating the character of this obedience, is thus given: "With regard to property, I must depend upon the superior alone, consider nothing as my personal property, and myself, in all that I am, as a statue, which allows itself to be stripped, no matter what the occasion may be, and offers no resistance."[27]

It requires but ordinary sagacity to interpret all this; its meaning is too plain to mislead. The constitution, according to Nicolini, prohibits the commission of sin—not absolutely, but conditionally; that is, "unless the superior command it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;" which imports, as even an uninstructed mind may see, that there are occasions when the sanction of Christ may be invoked to justify the commission of sin; or, in other words, when the general of the Jesuits, by virtue of his representing God upon earth, may, at his own personal will, convert vice into virtue! The Jesuit is not permitted to do anything on his own account, or upon his own judgment, that would amount to sin; but must do, upon the command of the general, what he, in his own conscience, believes to be sin; because, as the general stands in the place of God, he is bound to accept it as not sin. The word "unless," as employed in the constitution, is a simple negation, which makes the plain meaning of the sentence this, that if the general does not command the members of the society to commit sin, they are not permitted to do of themselves what he considers to be sin; but if he does so command, in the name of Christ, then they may sin without fear of consequences, either in this world or in the world to come. Every instructed Christian mind, no matter what its form of faith, must consider this blasphemous, because it assumes that the general may successfully exercise the divine authority of Christ to authorize sin to be committed, or to condone and pardon it after commission. This assumption goes to the full extent of deciding what is and what is not sin, by considering it alone with reference "to the particular good of each" member of the society, or to its "general advantage," and not to the law of God. Whatsoever either of these shall require, if commanded by the general, "shall be done," if the command shall be given "in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!" Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of this. "No constitution, declaration, or any order of living"—not even the law of God—can be set up against the general! He occupies the place of God, and must be obeyed, howsoever the peace and welfare of the multitude may be imperiled, or the nations be convulsed from center to circumference. The society of Jesuits must obtain the mastery, even if general anarchy shall prevail, or all the world besides be covered with the fragments of a universal wreck!

There should be no mistake at this point, for the doctrine involved is vital to the Jesuits. Their society could no more exist without it than could a watch keep time after the removal of its mainspring. Although, unlike Nicolini, Bartoli does not give the precise words of the constitution, this important vow, as set forth by him in his life of Loyola, has substantially the same meaning. According to him, its import is plainly this, that the general, whether "wise or imprudent, holy or imperfect," stands in "the place of God;" that, whilst in the abstract it is sinful to commit sin, when the act is performed upon individual judgment, yet, if the general shall order it, and the conscience of the Jesuit rebel against it because he considers it sin, he shall "rely" upon the general, and not upon himself; that is, he shall so close his mind that no conscientious convictions shall penetrate it. And until he has reached this condition of stupid and servile obedience, he is "far from the perfection which his religious state requires." And, to reduce the matter to the plainest and simplest proposition, the Jesuit is bound "to believe that a thing ought to be, because the superior orders it;" so that, if he shall order sin to be committed, the Jesuit is required not to consider it as sin because God, through the general, commands it! This is precisely as if it were said that sin may be justifiably committed in God's name, whensoever it shall be required by "the particular good of each," or by the "general advantage" of the society. It requires, of course, no argument to show that this authority of the general is considered comprehensive enough to justify resistance or covert opposition to the constitution and laws of any State, or the violation of any treaty, contract, or oath, which shall stand in the way of the society in its struggle after universal dominion.

Here we have information from two sources with reference to Jesuit doctrine upon a point of the very chiefest importance. Nicolini was a native Italian, and resided at Rome, where he undoubtedly had access to the best and most reliable sources of information. Bartoli was a Jesuit, and must have been familiar with the principles and teachings of the society, or he would not have been trusted and patronized by it as the biographer of Loyola. They do not disagree materially with regard to the general principle which forbids sin in an abstract form and upon individual responsibility, but justifies its commission when ordered by the general of the Jesuits. It is, therefore, obviously deducible from this general principle, as stated by both of them, that when the general shall require the perpetration of any crime, or the violation of any obligation, or oath, or constitution, or law, or the performance of any act howsoever perfidious or shameless,—in all, or any of these cases, the Jesuit shall execute his commands without "fear of offense." The general is thus placed above all governments, constitutions, and laws, and even above God himself! There are no laws of a State, no rules of morality established by society, no principles of religious faith established by any Church—including even the Roman Church itself—that the Jesuit is not bound to resist, when commanded by his general to do so, no matter if it shall lead to war, revolution, or bloodshed, or to the upheaval of society from its very foundations. Everything is centered in the good of the society, and to that all else must defer. No wonder that the Jesuit casuists have found in this provision of their constitution the source of that odious and demoralizing maxim that "the means are justified by the end;" in other words, if, in the judgment of the general, the end is considered right, howsoever criminal or sinful, it becomes sanctified, and may be accomplished without "the fear of offense."

Nor is this all. After, as Nicolini says, "having thus transferred the allegiance of the Jesuit from his God to his general, the constitution proceeds to secure that allegiance from all conflict with the natural affections or worldly interests."[28] It does not allow anything—any affections of the heart or earthly interests of any kind or nature whatsoever—to intervene between the Jesuit and his superior. If he has family ties, he must break them; if friends, he must discard them; if property, he must surrender it to the superior, and take the vow of absolute and extreme poverty; he must, in fact, render himself insensible to every sentiment, or emotion, or feeling that could, by possibility, exist from instinct or habits of thought in his own mind. As it regards property, the constitution provides that "he will accomplish a work of great perfection if he dispose of it in benefit of the society." And continuing this subject, with reference to paternal affections, it continues: "And that his better example may shine before men, he must put away all strong affection for his parents, and refrain from the unsuitable desire of a bountiful distribution arising from such disadvantageous affection."[29] He shall not communicate with any person by letter without its inspection by the superior, who shall read all letters addressed to him before their delivery; of course, permitting only such to be sent by or to reach him as shall be approved. "He shall not leave the house except at such times and with such companions as the superior shall allow; nor within the house shall he converse, without restraint, with any one at his own pleasure, but with such only as shall be appointed by the superior."[30] He shall not be allowed to go out of the house unless accompanied by two of the brethren as spies upon his conduct, and the neglect of either to report faithfully what the others have done and said is held to be sinful. And to make sure that all the members reflect only the opinions dictated by him, they are bound to absolute uniformity, as follows: "Let all think, let all speak, as far as possible, the same thing, according to the apostle. Let no contradictory doctrines, therefore, be allowed, either by word of mouth, or public sermons, or in written books, which last shall not be published without the approbation and consent of the general; and, indeed, all differences of opinion regarding practical matters shall be avoided."[31] Commenting upon these things, Nicolini most appropriately says: "Thus no one but the general can exercise the right of uttering a single original thought or opinion. It is almost impossible to conceive the power, especially in former times, of a general having at his absolute disposal such an amount of intelligences, wills, and energies."[32]

If there were any evidences to prove that the Jesuits, as a society, have abandoned any of the principles or policy which bear the stamp of Loyola's approval, there would be no necessity, other than that which incites to historic investigation, for a careful and critical investigation of them. But there are none. On the contrary, it will be seen that, from their very nature, they are not susceptible of change so long as the society shall exist. The memory of Loyola is still preserved with intense devotion. He is worshiped as a saint, and the words uttered by him are as much reverenced as those spoken by the Savior. It seems impossible, therefore, to escape the conviction that this extraordinary society is unlike any other now existing, or which has heretofore existed, in the world. That it was conceived by the active brain of an ambitious and worldly-minded enthusiast, who had been disappointed at not winning the military distinction he had expected, is an irresistible inference from facts well established in his personal history. His vanity and imperiousness suggested the starting-point of his organization, whereby man was treated as incapable of intelligent reflection—fit only to become the unresisting tool of those who venture profanely to affirm, contrary to any divine revelation, that God has endowed them alone with authority to subject the world to obedience. His plan of operations was, from the beginning, a direct censure of all the ancient religious orders, as it was also of the methods the Church had adopted after the experience of many centuries. When he conceived it, his chief purpose undoubtedly was, as heretofore explained,[33] to make himself and his successors independent of and superior to the pope and the Church. His contemplated antagonism to both was sufficiently indicated by the fact that his original constitution centered absolute and irresponsible power in the hands of the general of his society; and the subsequent introduction of the simulated vow of qualified fidelity to the pope—which was brought about by a degree of necessity amounting almost to duress—has had no other effect than to tax the strategic ingenuity of more than one general by the invention of subterfuges to evade it. In furtherance of this idea, the society holds no intercourse with the pope, nor he with it. Its members are all independent of him. They are the creatures and instruments of the general alone. They obey him, and no other. If he, as the head of the society, does not think proper to execute the orders of the pope—as has often occurred—the question is alone between the pope and him, not with the society. The only point of unity is between the general and the members; and of this the society boasts with its habitual vanity. In enumerating the methods by which its duration is considered assured, Bartoli says: "The chief is a strict union between the members and the head, consequent upon entire dependence, which results from perfect obedience. Ignatius established a monarchical form of government in the society, and placed the whole administration of the order in the hands of the general, with an authority absolute and independent of all men, with the sole exception of the sovereign pontiff. The general then decided absolutely, both in the choice of the superiors, as well as in everything which concerns the members of the company."[34] This sufficiently shows that the pope deals alone with the general, and he alone with the society; except through the latter, the former can not reach the members, or communicate his will to them; and even when the pope communicates with the general, the whole obligation of the latter's obedience consists in sending the members of the society to whatsoever part of the world the pope shall direct without remuneration. And it is by these means that the society constitutes what Bartoli calls "one solid and durable whole," nominally with two heads, but practically paying obedience to but one.

It was scarcely necessary to say that the society existed under "a monarchical form of government," for it is impossible for such an organization to exist in any other form. In fact, it surpasses in that respect any institution ever known, not excepting the most tyrannical despotisms by which the Oriental peoples were held in bondage for centuries. Until the time of Loyola no man ever conceived—or if he did, the avowal of it is unknown to history—the idea that the plain and simple teachings of Christ, which are easily interpreted, could be distorted into an apology for reducing mankind to a multitude of unthinking corpses or dead bodies, without thoughts, opinions, or motives of their own, so that they should submit implicitly to the dictation of a single man, who, to prepare them for perfect obedience, required that the best affections of their hearts should be extinguished, and nothing generous or kindly or noble be permitted to exist in them. Absolutism could not possibly be carried further, for there is no degree of humiliation lower than that the Jesuit is required to reach. Howsoever cultivated in art, or learned in letters, or courtly in manners, or fascinating in oratory he may become, his conscience is dwarfed into cowardice, and he has parted with his manhood as if it were an old garment to be cast aside at pleasure. No picture of him could be more true than that drawn by the friendly pen of Bartoli, who tells us, boastingly, that "the society requires no members who are governed by human respect."[35] It requires, according to this biographer of Loyola, only those who hold in utter contempt the opinions of the world, those who extinguish in their minds all sense of either praise or shame, and who close all avenues by which men's hearts are reached by noble or generous or patriotic impulses. They seem to think that God, after making man "in his own image" and with capacity for inspiring thoughts, paralyzed his best affections in mere sport, and left him only fitted for blind obedience to an imperious master, who requires him to sunder all the tenderest domestic relations as if they invited to impiety, and who treats all the highest social virtues as vices when they do not advance his ambitious ends, and any form of vice as virtue when it does.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Constitution. Part I, chap, i, § 3. Apud Nicolini: History of the Jesuits, p. 32.

[14] Constitution. Part IV, chap. x, § 5. Apud Nicolini: History of the Jesuits, p. 33.

[15] Const. Part III, chap. i, § 23. Ibid.

[16] Const. Part VI, chap. i, § 1. Ibid.

[17] The Jesuits, their Constitution and Teaching. By Cartwright. Page 15, note.

[18] History of St. Ignatius Loyola. By Bartoli. Vol. II, p. 46.

[19] Ibid., p. 47.

[20] Ibid., p. 49.

[21] Ibid., p. 51.

[22] History of the Jesuits. By Steinmetz. Vol. I, p. 251, N. 1.

[23] Bartoli. Vol. II, p. 93.

[24] Constitution. Part VI, chap. v, § 31. Apud Nicolini, p. 34.

[25] Bartoli, Vol. II, pp. 92, 93.

[26] Ibid., p. 95.

[27] Ibid., p. 94.

[28] Nicolini, p. 34.

[29] Constitution. Part III, chap. i, § 7-9. Apud Nicolini, pp. 34, 35.

[30] Const. Part III, chap. i, § 2, 3. Apud Nicolini, p. 36.

[31] Const. Part III, chap. i, § 18. Apud Nicolini, p. 36. These general matters are also treated of by Bartoli, Vol. II, chaps. iv and v, pp. from 33-78.

[32] Nicolini, p. 36.

[33] Ante, chap. ii, p. 41.

[34] Bartoli, Vol. II, p. 88.

[35] Bartoli, Vol. II, p. 85.

[CHAPTER IV.]

GOVERNMENT OF THE SOCIETY.

Any reader of the last two chapters can see—without the admission of Bartoli to that effect—that the government of the society of Jesuits is entirely monarchical, and founded upon the paternalism set up by imperial rulers in proof of their divine right to govern. Like these rulers, Loyola maintained that mankind were not competent to govern themselves, and therefore that Providence has ordained that they can be rightfully and wisely governed only by their superiors, no matter whether they acquire and maintain their superiority by fraud, intrigue, or violence. He had observed society when it was accustomed to pay but little attention, if any, to the structure and details of government, and left all matters of public concern to drift into channels created by those who ruled them with the view of preserving their own power. And hence he imitated their imperial example by making this principle of paternalism the fundamental basis of his society; but transcended the despotism of antiquity by enslaving both the minds and bodies of its members, and annihilating all sense of personality among them. This society, consequently, has never been reconciled to any other form of government than absolute monarchy, nor can it ever be, so long as it shall exist. Without absolutism in its most extreme form it would lose its power of cohesion and fall to pieces, as inevitably as a ship drifts away from its course when the rudder is broken.

Having become thus familiar with the constitution and organization of this society, and the principles which underlie them, it is equally important to discover how these were administered by Loyola himself, and his immediate successors; for otherwise its real character can not be known. It has a history of its own—created by itself, and, in a great measure, when not subject to the inspection of others—and unless we shall become also familiar with this it will be hard, if not impossible, to understand the fierce and tireless animosity with which it has resisted all who have endeavored to block its way to universal dominion, including even popes and the Church. If any other society ever had such a history, it has not been written.

When Loyola obtained the approval of his society from Paul III, he undoubtedly accomplished a great triumph—greater than any he had previously known. It gave him the opportunity of foreseeing that, whensoever thereafter it should be demanded by his own or the interests of the society, he would have it in his power, with a servile host at his command, to create a factious rivalry to the papacy itself. It may be supposed that the pope acted with reference to what he regarded as the welfare of the Church, and under a due sense of his own responsibility; but Loyola experienced no such feeling. Backed by a mere handful of zealots, who were unable to withstand his importunities, and from whom he probably concealed his ulterior designs, he concentrated all his energies upon the single object of obtaining the centralization of power in his own hands, without troubling himself to inquire at whose expense it might be accomplished, or the means to be employed. The pope had his own character as the head of the Church to maintain, while Loyola was a mere "soldier of fortune," seeking adventure, and stimulated by personal ambition to acquire both power and fame by means of an organization with which the pope was not familiar, but which he had constructed in secret, so as to make possible any form of disguise or dissimulation necessary to accomplish his desired ends. It would be unfair to assert, in the absence of explicit proof, that the pope acted otherwise than with reference primarily to the interests of the Church, whilst at the same time he manifestly did not desire to weaken the papal—that is, his own—power. Although he ordered the assembling of what afterwards became the Council of Trent, he was not distinguished as a reforming pope, inasmuch as he was understood to have been constrained to this act to counteract the imperial policy of Charles V, who had threatened a National Council in his own dominions. Yet it is possible that some reforms might have been introduced to which he would have given his assent, provided they had not lessened the authority of the papacy. Loyola was not influenced by any of these motives. He attributed the corruptions of the clergy and the disturbed condition of the Church to the imbecility of the popes, and their inability to contend successfully against the impending evils. And thus influenced, he evidently hoped to put in operation, through the agency of his new society, such instrumentalities as would counteract the existing evils in a manner that would assure the glory of the achievement to himself and his society. He doubtless desired in this way to obtain such fame as would overshadow the papacy itself. Of the contemptuous disregard and defiance of popes who have opposed Jesuit pretensions, we shall hereafter see many and convincing proofs.

It should not be forgotten, in this connection, that the infallibility of the pope was not, at that time, an accepted part of the faith of the Church. The effort to make it so would, if then made, have been fruitless, in view of the recent pontificates of John XXIII, and Julius II, and Alexander VI, and the decrees of the Councils of Constance and Basel, as well as the general sentiment of the Christian world. Although there were some in the Church who maintained this doctrine, yet it was far from being approved by the multitude, and never actually became part of the faith until within our own time, when it was dictated to the Council of the Vatican at Rome by Pius IX, and forced to a final decree without free discussion. Mr. Gladstone has given a list of heretical popes before the time of Loyola, none of whom could have been infallible, unless infallibility and heresy may mingle harmoniously together in the same mind at the same time. Gregory I regarded the claim of universality—a necessary incident to infallibility—as "blasphemous, anti-Christian, and devilish." Even Innocent III admitted that a pope could "sin against the faith, and thus become subject to the judgment of the Church." Hadrian VI declared that a pope could err in matters of faith. Zephyrinus and Callistus both taught heresy in maintaining "that God the Father became incarnate, and suffered with the Son." Liberius subscribed an Arian creed, the most noted of all heresies, and condemned the orthodox Athanasius. Felix II was an Arian, and yet has been placed upon the calendar of saints. Zosimus indorsed the heresy of Pelagianism. Vigilius was upon both sides of the controversy about the Three Chapters. John XXII condemned Nicholas III and Clement V as heretics. Honorius was condemned and excommunicated for heresy by a General Council at Constantinople. Consequently, Mr. Gladstone, whose great learning and wisdom is recognized by all, felt himself warranted in affirming that "the popes themselves, therefore, for more than three centuries, publicly recognized, first, that an Ecumenical Council may condemn a pope for open heresy; and, secondly, that Pope Honorius was justly condemned for heresy."[36]

The contest in England about "Catholic Emancipation," covered a period of more than a quarter of a century after the ill-fated union by which Ireland gave up her independence. It terminated so near the present time that there are some yet living who may remember the rejoicing it occasioned among the friends of Ireland. It involved a practical political question, although it had a semi-religious aspect. Upon the part of Ireland it was insisted that, as the Irish were recognized by the British Constitution as subjects of the United Kingdom, they were entitled to hold civil office and participate in the legislation of Parliament. This was for a long time successfully resisted by the English Government and people upon the ground that, by the religion which the Irish professed, the pope was held to be infallible, and, consequently, as possessing the spiritual power to interfere with the temporal affairs and policy of Great Britain. As it had been always understood among European peoples that this was the legitimate consequence of that doctrine, it became absolutely necessary to the Irish cause to show that the religion which prevailed in Ireland did not include it; in other words, that the Irish people did not believe the pope to be infallible. In proof of this, it was insisted by the Irish hierarchy, with unusual earnestness, that the three leading universities in France, and three not less distinguished in Spain, had condemned and repudiated that doctrine, and that the Irish people accepted their opinions. In addition, several Irish bishops were examined before a committee of the House of Commons, and testified to the same effect. This turned the scale in favor of "Irish Emancipation," and the controversy ended by the passage of that measure by both Houses of Parliament.

There is nothing, therefore, to show, or tending to show, that Loyola considered Paul III, or any other pope, to be infallible. On the contrary, inasmuch as that doctrine was not a part of the faith of the Church, and he was not required to believe it, it is a fair inference, from all we can now learn of their intercourse, that he regarded the pope as fallible, and, consequently, wedded to a false and erroneous system of Church government, which had been attended with mischievous results, and for which he desired to substitute a better and more efficient system of his own, under his own direction. And all the contemporary facts combine to show that he intended, by the original Jesuit Constitution, to bring the pope, and through him the Church, to the point of recognizing him and his successors as infallible, because they were declared to stand in the place of Christ, and were to be obeyed accordingly. Whatsoever benefits he proposed to confer upon the Church, were intended by him to be consequential alone upon those he designed for himself and his society.

The amendment of the original constitution, so as to require fidelity to the pope, was simply a measure of policy and expediency on the part of Loyola, having been suggested to him, as we have seen, after he reached Rome and discovered that it was the only method of removing the scruples of the pope, and obtaining the approval of his new society. Interpreted, therefore, in the light of all the facts, this amendment amounts only and simply to a recognition of the pope as the head of the Church, but not infallible, because that was not then part of the faith of the Church. At the same time, however, Loyola was sagacious enough to provide in the body of the constitution for the infallibility of the general of his society by declaring him as equal to God, and as occupying the place and exercising the authority of Christ. He expected the pope to recognize this by his act of approving the original constitution and establishing the society as a religious order, in imitation of the ancient monastic orders. Whether the pope so understood the constitution or not, can not now be decided; but it is perfectly apparent that Loyola did, as is evidenced by the fact that the vow of each member pledged him to this belief as one of the absolutely controlling principles of the organization. But Loyola made a more conspicuous exhibition of his sagacity by providing, in the secret but practical working of the society, a loophole of escape from the pledge of obedience to the pope whensoever the general deemed this expedient, as, in the sequel, it will appear he frequently did. It is well to repeat here, for illustration, that the pope was not permitted to hold immediate or direct intercourse with the individual members of the society. He was required to regard them only as a company whose members had no power over themselves, and were expressly prohibited from setting up any individual claim to independent thought or action. The pope could consequently convey his desires, or opinions, or commands to the society only through their general; that is, in Loyola's view, as well as in that of the society, the fallible head of the Church could make known his wishes to the infallible head of the society! If the latter occupied the place of God and pronounced his judgments—as the members declared by their vows, and the constitution asserts—then any violation of his commands upon their part was not only heresy within the society, but punishable by the general, no matter what the pope might do or say. The infallible head of the Jesuits became, consequently, in the estimation of the society, superior to the fallible head of the Church in everything that concerned the opinions, sentiments, or action of the members. A man would almost stultify himself who should argue that, in case of conflict between the pope and the general—which has frequently occurred—the society would hesitate about obeying the general and disobeying the pope.

This point requires deliberate consideration, for it is that at which the commanding ability and shrewdness of Loyola were exhibited most conspicuously. The society is allowed to know its general only upon all matters involving either duty or conduct. He, and not the pope, or any other authority upon earth, determines what the members shall or shall not do within the whole domain of individual or company action. The members are required and pledged by their solemn vows to think his thoughts, to utter his words, to execute his commands, and to suppress every emotion not in sympathy with his. And hence it has sometimes happened, in precise consistence with the plan of Loyola, that the Jesuits have obeyed the pope when commanded to do so by their general; whilst, at other times, his wishes have been disregarded and opposed by them because their general has so commanded. He alone is the god of the society, and nothing but his electric touch can galvanize their dead corpses into life and action. Until he speaks, they are like serpents coiled up in their wintry graves, lifeless and inactive; but the moment he gives the word of command, each member springs instantaneously to his feet, leaving unfinished whatsoever may have engaged him, ready to assail whomsoever he may require to be assailed, and to strike wheresoever he shall direct a blow to be stricken. Summed up, it amounts to this, that if the pope decides according to the will of the general, he is obeyed, because in that case the members show obedience to the general, according to their vow, and not to the pope, whose wishes they know only through the general; whereas, whensoever the pope decides contrary to the will of the general, he is disobeyed if the general shall so require, because the members have religiously vowed to accept his commands as expressing the will of God infallibly. With them the highest tribunal in the world is that presided over by him. He alone is equal to God. From all other judgments there may be appeal; but his are irreversible.

The people of Europe were beginning to feel the influence of the Reformation—at the period here referred to—so extensively, especially in Germany, as to comprehend the fact that the evils which had afflicted them, as well as the decaying condition of the Church, were attributable to the long-continued union of Church and State. And their increasing intelligence caused them at least to suspect, if not absolutely to foresee, that a secret and mysterious society like that of the Jesuits would tend to increase rather than diminish these evils. That the Jesuits encountered this suspicion from the beginning, is as plainly proven in history as any other fact. Patient investigation will show how they were resisted in France, England, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, as plainly as the rivulet may be traced from its mountain sources to the sea. And he who does not take the pains to make himself familiar with the current of events to which this resistance gave rise, will fall far short of accurate knowledge of the philosophy of history. Nor, when he has acquired this information, will it surprise him in the least to know that, after Loyola had succeeded in providing for himself and his successors the means of possibly becoming superior to the pope and the Church, he encountered also the formidable opposition of the existing religious orders, as well as almost the entire body of the Christian people, when he undertook to introduce his new and strangely-constituted society into the various States of Europe. Even then, before the Jesuits had practically exhibited their capacity for intrigue, the public mind became convinced that the organization contained elements of mischief, if not of positive danger, which it was the duty of society to suppress rather than allow to be developed. From that time up till the present, nothing has occurred to remove this general impression, but much to strengthen and confirm it. So steadfastly imbedded has it become in the minds of the English-speaking race that they have invented and added to their language the new word, "Jesuitism," to signify the extremest degree of "cunning, deceit, hypocrisy, prevarication, deceptive practices to effect a purpose." There was nothing in the life and character of Loyola to remove this impression; but, on the contrary, as all his movements were shrouded in mystery, and the public had no sympathy for him, nor he any for the public, his whole conduct tended to excite suspicion against him and his society. Accordingly, even with the aid he may be supposed to have derived from the indorsement of the pope, he had to fight his way inch by inch among the Christian peoples of Europe—a fact of commanding significance.

The order of Dominicans had existed, under the patronage of the Church, for over three hundred years, and had made itself conspicuous for the part it took in the war of extermination prosecuted by Innocent III against the Albigenses, for having asserted the right to free religious thought and worship. The Dominicans were not restrained, therefore, by sympathy with any of the heresies which Loyola expressed the desire to suppress; so far from this, they sought after the most active and certain methods of putting an end to all heresy. Hence, it may be accepted as certain that they would willingly have accepted the Jesuits as coadjutors in the work of checking the progress of the Reformation if they had not seen in Loyola something to excite their indignation rather than their friendship. The conduct of the Jesuits at Salamanca, in Spain, had this effect in a high degree. Melchior Cano, one of the most distinguished and orthodox of the Dominican monks, having seen and conversed with Loyola at Rome, under circumstances which enabled him to form an estimate of his character, did not hesitate to denounce the Jesuits as impostors. What he said of Loyola personally deserves special notice, and was in these emphatic words:

"When I was in Rome I took it into my head to see this Ignatius. He began at once, without preliminary, to talk of his virtue, and the persecution he had experienced in Spain without deserving it in the least. And a vast deal of mighty things he poured forth concerning the revelations which he had from on high, though there was no need of the disclosure. This induced me to look upon him as a vain man, and not to have the least faith in his revelations." Referring also to the Jesuits, as a society molded and governed by Loyola, he said "he apprehended the coming of Antichrist, and believed the Jesuits to be his forerunners," and charged them with "licentiousness," and the practice of "abominable mysteries."[37]

This was the first experience that Loyola had in dealing with so conspicuous an adversary as Melchior Cano, and he realized the necessity of having him silenced in some way, so as to preserve his own personal influence. It furnished him, therefore, an opportunity—perhaps the first—to display his fitness for leadership, as well as to instruct his society in the indirect and artful methods by which he expected it, when necessary, to accomplish its objects. By means of the pope's bull approving the society, and the authority he claimed to have been conferred upon him by it, he succeeded in inducing the general of the Dominicans to cause Melchior to be made a bishop and sent to the Canaries, which removed him from Spain, and was equivalent to exile. The success he won in this way was, however, of short duration; for Melchior accepted his banishment for a brief period only, and, upon returning to Spain, he renewed his attack upon the Jesuits, which then became more violent and undisguised than before. He continued it as long as he lived, and at his death left this prophetic warning: "If the members of the society continue as they have begun, God grant that the time may not come when kings will wish to resist them, and will find no means of doing so!"[38]

Events, which deserve somewhat more particularity of detail, occurred also in Spain, at Saragossa, because they explain how the society was trained and disciplined from the beginning, under the inspiration of Loyola's immediate command. "As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined," is an adage no less applicable to a compact body like the Jesuits than to individuals. Loyola understood this, and lost no time, after he put his society in working order, to teach the members the art of circumventing their adversaries—an art which their successors, so far from forgetting, have improved upon. In this primary lesson he also taught them that they were justified in disregarding any human law that stood in the way of their success; that public opinion in conflict with their interests was entitled to no respect whatsoever; and that by steadfastly adhering to the principle of monarchism, upon which their society rested, they might confidently invoke the aid of monarchs to assure them success in any conflict with the people. And he taught them, moreover, that they were entitled to resist the authorities of the Church when the latter attempted to check their progress. And thus, almost in the infancy of the society, its founder fixed indelibly in the mind of every member the idea of their superiority over every department of society, over all the ancient monastic orders, and over even the Church itself, when its authority was employed to check their progress. All this will appear in the conflict about to be detailed.

The city of Saragossa was the capital of Aragon, where the law prohibited, by strict and explicit provisions, "the erection of a chapel or monastery within a certain distance of an established parish church or religious community." The Jesuits found a place they desired to occupy, but were forbidden to do so by this law, which all others had obeyed, and which the public desired to maintain for satisfactory reasons. The law, however, did not restrain them in the least; and in utter disregard of it, and in open defiance of the public authorities, they asserted the right to take possession of and erect a building upon it for their own uses. They proposed to encroach upon the rights of the Augustinians, when the Franciscans—both being ancient religious orders of monks—united with the former in resisting this threatened violation of public law, which had been, up to that time, universally acquiesced in by both these orders, and by the public as a prudential measure of public policy. But the Jesuits did not consider any law as of the least consequence when it placed obstructions in their path, and, consequently, persisted in their purpose despite the protests of the Augustinians and the Franciscans, all of whom were esteemed by the citizens of Saragossa for their sanctity. The controversy soon assumed such importance that the vicar-general of the Church issued a formal order, in the name and by the authority of the Church, whereby he prohibited the Jesuits from erecting their new building within the forbidden limits. Any other body of men, professing the least respect for the Church and its official representatives, would at least have hesitated after this. But the Jesuits paid no more respect to the ecclesiastical dignity and authority of the vicar-general than they had proposed to show to the existing public law, or to the two protesting monastic orders. The consequence was, that the vicar-general was constrained, in vindication of his authority as the representative of the Church, to denounce the Jesuits as heretics for their flagrant disobedience, and to threaten them with excommunication if they did not desist. He declared them accursed, and hurled the thunders of anathema against them. But the Jesuits, realizing how much strength lay in Loyola's single arm, remained unterrified. These thunders, which had caused even monarchs to quake, were powerless against his commands, which were communicated to his followers by the superior who watched over the interests of the society at Saragossa. The latter ordered the ceremony of consecrating the forbidden ground to proceed, in the face of both the law and the commands of the vicar-general; and the infatuated and disloyal Jesuits obeyed him. This was a new experience to the citizens of the capital of Aragon, who had witnessed nothing like it before, and they became incensed and thoroughly aroused. They took the side of the Augustinians and the Franciscans, and the "priests and religious" who defended them, and proceeded to display their indignation in such public and emphatic manner that it could not be mistaken. The historic statement is that "effigies of the Jesuits being precipitated into hell by legions of devils, were exhibited in the streets, and it was even inculcated among the people that the town was profaned by the presence of the Jesuits, who, it was declared, had brought heresy into it, and that the whole of Saragossa was under excommunication, and would so remain until they left it." This account is substantially given by all who have undertaken to write the history of the Jesuits, but it is taken from Daurignac, one of their ablest defenders, whose language is here quoted. He further explains the estimate in which the Jesuits were held by the people of Saragossa, while obedient to the faith of the Roman Church, in these words: "At length the populace, whose feelings had been thus worked upon, became more violent; and, proceeding to the house of the Jesuits, they threw stones, breaking the panes of glass, and threatening the inmates with their vengeance, while a procession, similar to the one already described, paraded around the ill-fated house, uttering cries of disapprobation, reproach, and condemnation."[39]

In a matter which involved, as this did, the mere enforcement of a public law universally approved, the duty of the Jesuits was plain and simple, not admitting of any equivocation. Like all others who enjoyed the protection of law, they were bound to obey the public authorities, to which was superadded their obligation to obey also the vicar-general as the official organ of the Church. But the reader should not be so far misled as to suppose that they were influenced by any such idea, or that they were in the least discouraged by the severe ecclesiastical and popular rebuke they received at Saragossa. No man understood better than Loyola what complete control can be obtained over the sentiments, opinions, and conduct of individuals by educational training; and he had taken the precaution so to discipline the novices of his society, from the moment of their initiation, as to make their blind and passive obedience the effectual method of consolidating his influence and authority over them. It is perfectly apparent, from the occurrences at Saragossa, that one of the first lessons they had learned was that form of obedience which required them to disregard and defy any law whatsoever, when commanded by their superiors to do so, without inquiring or caring what consequences might follow, either to the public or to individuals. Consequently, when compelled by the combined influence of the public authorities, those of the Church, and the indignant population of Saragossa, to abandon the erection of their new building upon the forbidden ground, they treated it as mere suspension, and not abandonment, still intending, by some means or other, to overcome this array of adversaries and defeat the execution of the law. With this view they ceased operations, seemingly yielding to the existing necessity. At this point in their history, however, they learned their first lesson in duplicity and deceit—and the sequel proves how well they learned it—by showing that, although apparently discomfited, they did not consider themselves as defeated. Loyola himself was not familiar with defeat, when success depended in any measure upon strategic intrigues with imperial rulers, all of whom fully understood that his society represented the most absolute monarchism then existing in Europe, and on that account, if no other, required them to extend to it every possible degree of protection, especially where, as at Saragossa, the people had taken active steps to require the enforcement of law. He had also prepared for escaping defeat in any matter concerning the Jesuits by fixing in their minds the conviction, as a religious sentiment, that there was no degree of courage so high and commendable as that exhibited by them when their obedience was carried to the extent of resisting whatsoever and whosoever stood in their way when commanded to do so for the interests of the society, which he required them to believe was for "the greater glory of God!" He had taught them to consider this as courage, but it was a misuse of terms so to call it; for, in its rightful sense, courage invokes the best and most ennobling faculties of the mind. Instead of this, the sentiment he inculcated proceeded from that indifference to public opinion and insensibility to shame which, as Bartoli concedes, is a necessary feature of Jesuit education. It is rather to be compared to the animal instinct of the tiger, which, after his coveted victim has once escaped, prompts him to approach it thereafter by stealthy steps, crouching in concealment until the time shall come when the final plunge may be successfully made.

The superior of the Jesuits at Saragossa was too well instructed in the policy dictated by Loyola not to understand wherein the main and real strength of the society consisted. Having, undoubtedly, full knowledge of the designs of Loyola, and molded to all his purposes, as the human form is chiseled from the lifeless block of marble, he proceeded at once to invoke the aid of the monarchical power of the Government of Spain, in order to bring the vicar-general of the Church, the Augustinian and the Franciscan monks, together with the priests and religious who adhered to them, and the people and local authorities of Saragossa, into absolute humiliation at his feet. For the first time, therefore, there was then opened to the Jesuits a new and broad field, wherein they were incited to display their wonderful capacity for intrigue. They were to be practically taught with what facility they could obtain the intervention of monarchical power to trample upon the rights of the ancient religious and monastic orders, violate the public laws, defy the ecclesiastical representatives of the Church, and make the people realize how powerless they were to influence the policy of the society, to modify its principles, or to impede its progress to the ultimate dominion it had started out to obtain.

Charles V was then emperor; but, as he was absent from Spain, his daughter, the Princess Jane, was the acting regent, with the full possession of imperial power. The superior of the Jesuits at Saragossa appealed to her by arguments which, although not preserved, may be fairly presumed to have centered in the necessity for establishing and preserving the society as the best and most certain method of perpetuating the monarchical principle, so absolutely essential to kings that, if it were destroyed, they could not exist; or, if they did exist, it would be with greatly diminished powers, and subject, in some degree, to the control of popular opinion. The regent was fully informed of the determination of her imperial father to maintain this principle at every hazard, and was aware of the fact that he was not at all choice about the methods of doing so. She understood how well fitted he was, by his vacillating course, for any emergency he might encounter; and that she was not mistaken in his character, history attests by the facts that, although a native of the Netherlands, he persecuted his own countrymen for daring to assert freedom of conscience for themselves; and at one time plotted with the king of France against the pope, at another with the pope against the king of France, and at still another succeeded in enticing the Protestants of Germany into an offensive alliance against both. As the representative of such a monarch—so unscrupulous about the means employed, either by himself or by others, in his behalf—the regent became a willing and easy convert to the appeal of the Jesuit superior. Holding both the law and public opinion in contempt, and looking upon the people as having no rights which kings were bound to recognize, she took the side of the Jesuits at Saragossa, and at once inaugurated the measures necessary to secure their triumph over all their adversaries. The pope's nuncio in Spain was easily brought to the same side, because it was the royal side; and, thus supported, the Jesuits soon reached the end they had sought after so anxiously by their triumphal re-entry into Saragossa, and the compulsory submission of the vicar-general, the Augustinians, the Franciscans, the priests, and the people! No combination which all these could then form could any longer resist the power and insolence of the Jesuits, when backed by the enormous monarchical power which Charles V had placed in the regent's hands. Daurignac, the Jesuit historian, tells all this in praise of his society, boastingly informing his readers how the vicar-general was "compelled to remove the ban of excommunication," and how the Jesuits were thereby enabled peacefully "to take possession of their house," and occupy it without further resistance. Of course, their adversaries were all subdued, not because of any change of opinion with regard to the Jesuits, but because they feared to disobey the regent, who held in her hands the power of the merciless Charles V. And the Jesuits, with the vanity inspired by success, marched the streets of Saragossa, through the subdued and humiliated crowd, in such conspicuous exultation as told emphatically with what indifference and contempt they looked upon human institutions and laws, or the rights of the monastic orders, or the sanction of local ecclesiastical authority, or municipal regulations, or the interests and sentiments of the people, or all these combined, when they undertook to place a check upon their ambition, or subject them to any other obedience than that they had vowed to their superior.[40]

These details, under ordinary circumstances, might seem tedious to the general reader, but they are justified by their necessity in showing how the Jesuits obtained their first signal triumph. There has been a long list of similar triumphs since then to which this contributed. The events themselves, in so far as they involve merely the occupation and use of a piece of ground, are comparatively insignificant; but they serve, far better than many of greater magnitude, to display the prominent and most dangerous characteristics of the Jesuits. They show their absolute disregard of all rights and interests in conflict with their own, and how thoroughly Loyola succeeded in making this the governing and cardinal principle of the society; and their significance is increased by the fact that the affair at Saragossa inaugurated a policy which the Jesuits have steadily pursued throughout their history, varying their methods according to the character of the objects they have endeavored to attain. In this sense, they are introductory to a proper estimate of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion. By Gladstone. Pages 94 to 102. It is here stated that the "Jesuit General Linez [Laynez], strongly advocated papal infallibility in the Council of Trent, ... but the Council left the question undecided."

[37] History of the Jesuits. By Steinmetz. Vol. I, p. 378.

[38] History of the Jesuits. By Steinmetz. Vol. I, pp. 380-381.

[39] History of the Society of Jesus. By Daurignac. Vol. I, pp. 82-83.

[40] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 84, 85.

[CHAPTER V.]

STRUGGLES AND OPPOSITION.

The assistance rendered to the Jesuits at Saragossa by the regent, in the name of the Emperor Charles V, very greatly encouraged them. It gave them assurance of royal sympathy with the monarchical principles of their constitution, and taught them how to invoke that sympathy successfully in future controversies with their adversaries, although the latter might be ecclesiastics in the active service of the Church.

At Toledo, in Spain, they also encountered formidable opposition. On account of divers abuses and "many superstitious practices" which prevailed among them, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo was constrained to condemn and reprove them in a public ordinance, whereby he prohibited the Christian people from confessing to them "under pain of excommunication," and required "all curates to exclude them from the administration of the sacraments." It should be understood from this, of course, that they must have been guilty of some extraordinary and flagrant conduct, or they would not have been so harshly dealt with by so distinguished a functionary of the Church as a cardinal-archbishop, to whom the management of the affairs of the Church at Toledo was confided. No other supposition can be indulged, especially in view of the fact that, besides this emphatic denunciation, he placed their college at Alcala under interdict. It is impossible, therefore, to escape the conclusion that their conduct had brought reproach upon the society and inflicted injury upon the Church. But again, as at Saragossa, the Jesuits were not discomfited by being placed under the ban of ecclesiastical censure, and organized resistance against the cardinal-archbishop, as they had done against the vicar-general at Saragossa. Their first effort was to seek the intervention of the pope—whom they supposed to be under the influence of Loyola—that of his nuncio in Spain, and that of the Archbishop of Burgos. They hoped in this way to overcome all opposition. But the effort was unavailing, for the reason that the cardinal-archbishop was so thoroughly convinced of their unworthiness that he could not be moved from his purpose, and sternly persisted in condemning them. Thus failing to obtain the desired assistance from the authorities of the Church, they invoked aid from the temporal and monarchical power of the Government, as they had done at Saragossa. They had become well assured, by their success with the regent, that all who served Charles V were in constant readiness to do whatsoever was necessary to protect their society, even against the highest officials of the Church, because of its tendency to preserve and perpetuate the principle of monarchism. They felt entirely secure under royal and imperial protection, understanding perfectly well the powers wielded by the monarchs of that period, especially that of Charles V in Spain. Accordingly they succeeded in having proceedings instituted against the cardinal-archbishop, who was summoned before the royal court of Spain to show cause why he had placed any impediments in the way of the Jesuits—why, in other words, he had dared to deny their absolute dominion over the regularly-constituted ecclesiastical tribunal at Toledo. Loyola understood how to influence the court of Spain, and felt entirely convinced, doubtless, that, with Charles V upon his side, he could easily bring all his enemies at his feet; and, in this instance, he was not disappointed. The royal court decided in favor of the Jesuits, and the cardinal-archbishop was condemned and silenced. In order to escape the prison of the Inquisition, he yielded obedience at last, and the Jesuits achieved another triumph over a distinguished ecclesiastic of the Church.[41]

The patronage of the king of Portugal enabled them to enter Portugal without difficulty. This so excited their anticipations of a brilliant and successful future, that they devoted themselves to the acquisition of riches, and fell into such vices as, in that day, almost invariably accompanied success among both clergy and laity. Nicolini says that, after having obtained "immense wealth" in Portugal, they "relaxed in the strictness of their conduct, pursued a life of pleasure and debauchery," until the king "began to frown upon them," and the people to withdraw their respect. They had a college at Coimbra which, according to him, bore very little resemblance to a cloister. Being no longer able, as in Spain, to appeal with confidence to the royal power for protection—as the confidence of the king of Portugal in their Christian integrity had become shaken—Loyola, yet alive, was forced to remove the provincial and rector of the college, out of seeming deference to public opinion. The new rector, by running and screaming through the streets like a madman, and flagellating his naked shoulders until they were covered with blood and dust, so succeeded in arousing the fears and superstition of the Jesuits that they were induced to introduce such reforms in the college as enabled them, in some degree, but not entirely, to regain their influence.[42]

It is not a little puzzling to those who have not investigated the history and character of the Jesuits, to understand how the immense wealth they acquired in Portugal and elsewhere was obtained, when each member was required to take a vow of "extreme poverty." There is, however, nothing easier for a Jesuit than to satisfy his own mind upon this subject, by aid of the casuistical method of reasoning which enables him to escape this, or any other difficulty. Bartoli, the biographer of Loyola, explains it in a few words. "The vow of poverty," says he, "does not deprive the person who is under trial of the ownership of the property which he previously possessed, nor of the possibility of acquiring more, until he has obtained a fixed and determined position, although he is indeed deprived of the use of his property, and can not, any more than a professed religious, dispose of a single farthing without the consent of his superior."[43] And he repeats the same idea at another place, by saying, "The vow of poverty does not preclude the possession of property."[44] Uninitiated minds may be embarrassed by this, but it is plain and simple to a Jesuit. He understands that his vow of "extreme poverty" does not require him to part with the property he has, or prohibit him from obtaining more if he can. There is but a single condition attached—that it shall be at the disposal of the superior. And thus, by the help of the casuists, this wonderful society, composed only of those who have solemnly vowed their absolute disdain of wealth, has, at several periods of its history, become the richest in the world, and would be so again if allowed to have its own way. The vow of "extreme poverty" means, therefore, in the minds of Jesuits, splendid palaces, marble churches, magnificent universities, and, in fact, the absorption of as much wealth as can be acquired through every variety of intrigue, by a body of men who boast that they have plucked every human sympathy from their hearts, and look upon all the tenderest relations of society with contempt. No written language furnishes words to convey fully to ordinary minds the Jesuit idea of "extreme poverty." One of the Jesuit fathers, quoted by Bartoli, calls it "a rich poverty," as he also does the bondage of the society "a free slavery."[45] By familiarizing ourselves with this wonderfully dexterous use of words, we may soon learn to understand what is meant by white darkness and the blackness of sunlight.

In all the countries of Europe the first impressions with reference to the Jesuits were extremely unfavorable to them, and the most decided among those most conspicuous for devotion to the Church. There was nothing in the life of Loyola to inspire confidence, either in him or in his plan of operations. He was looked upon as an adventurer, who had abandoned a military life only because his person was disfigured by a wound, in order to acquire distinction in some other pursuit. Some of the ecclesiastics—as in the case of Melchior the Dominican—were disposed to rebuke his presumptuousness in assuming sanctity and superiority; while others of them, like the vicar-general at Saragossa and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, considered his teachings as tending to encourage heresy, not only because of their novelty, but because they blasphemously recognized him and all subsequent superiors of the Jesuits as equal to God in both attributes and power. They could not persuade themselves to believe that Christianity required them to recognize Loyola as infallible, whilst the pope, by the existing faith of the Church, remained fallible. Loyola was thus surrounded with embarrassments which would have subdued the courage of almost any other man. He, however, was rather strengthened than weakened by opposition; for he belonged to that class of men who need the excitement of conflict and the spur of necessity to develop their commanding qualities. He had laid his plans well and skillfully, and, with a perfect knowledge of the condition of society, had prepared to derive power from the only sources recognized as possessing it; that is, from the pope as head of the Church, and monarchs as the possessors of absolute dominion. So long as he could avail himself of their united support, he had little or no fear of the people, whom he could readily resist and humiliate as he had done at Saragossa. He soon realized that he could easily brush opposing ecclesiastics out of his way, so long as he could retain monarchism as the leading and central principle of his society; and hence he directed all his efforts to the suppression of the Reformation, and to the continued union of Church and State, so as to give additional strength to monarchism, upon which, as a reserved force, he could fall back whensoever the interests of his society and the exigencies of his affairs required it. Whilst the bulk of society were unable to penetrate his secret purposes and motives, enough transpired, even during the life of Loyola, to excite general suspicion against his own and the integrity of his society, on which account it was that he encountered such formidable opposition to the introduction of his society into Spain, and its loss of influence and reputation in Portugal, both of which States were eminently devoted to the Roman Catholic religion. In obedience to the general rule, that "the same causes produce the same results," the opposition to Loyola and his society became more violent and protracted in France than in either Spain or Portugal. The reason for this may be found in the peculiarity of the Church organization existing there; but from whatsoever cause it may have arisen, the long and tedious controversy which at last secured the admission of the Jesuits into France, is not merely historically instructive, but throws a flood of light upon Jesuit policy and character.

The French Christians had for a long period refused to concede to the pope the right to interfere with the temporal affairs of that kingdom. This attitude was so persistently maintained by them that what they considered their "liberties" came to be generally recognized as the foundation of the French or Gallican Church, as distinguished from the Papal Church at Rome. They regarded themselves under the jurisdiction of the pope in spiritual matters—that is, in so far as religious faith was concerned—but maintained that the domestic policy of France, in the management of her own temporal and internal affairs, could not be so mingled with Christian faith as to confer upon the pope any right to dictate or interfere with that policy. Upon these points there was entire unanimity among them before the time of Loyola, or if any opposing sentiment existed it was too inconsiderable to influence the public judgment.

When the attempt was first made to introduce the Jesuits into France the knowledge of their operations elsewhere led to the belief—at all events, the fear—that the society could not exist there without conflicting with the Gallican liberties, and subjecting the French Christians to foreign authority more odious than that of the pope, to whom they had steadily refused the concession of any temporal power over them. They were willing then, as they had always been, to look to the pope for the regulation of all affairs of the Church that concerned religious faith; but it was impossible for them to admit the superior jurisdiction claimed by Loyola without conferring upon him authority and distinction they had denied to the pope, and creating a threatening antagonism to the liberties they had long enjoyed, and which distinguished them from other Roman Catholic populations of Europe. They could readily see that if the Jesuits, under the guidance of an ambitious adventurer like Loyola, were permitted to establish this jurisdiction, it would surely lead to interference by his society with the temporal affairs and interests of the kingdom. Consequently the Gallican Christians, backed by their highest ecclesiastical authorities, sternly resisted the introduction of the Jesuits into France. They could not have done otherwise without a tame and absolute forfeiture of their boasted liberties. As neither Loyola nor his followers had any respect whatsoever for this Christian sentiment, notwithstanding it was maintained with extraordinary unanimity in France, and persisted in the effort to plant the Jesuit society in the midst of it with the view of its extermination, an exciting and angry struggle ensued, in which the Jesuits displayed their habitual disregard of public opinion, and whatsoever else stood in the way of their success. Neither the interests of the French Church, nor the sentiments and wishes of the French people, nor the possibility of imperiling the cause of Christianity, nor any other consideration beside that of their own triumph, weighed the weight of a feather with them when in conflict with their secret plans and purposes.

The Jesuits sought the aid of the pope, and through him that of the king of France, so that by the combined influence of the spiritual and the temporal powers, they might bring to bear upon the French Church and people such pressure as would render them powerless to resist encroachment upon liberties long held in religious veneration. Their manifest object was to center this union of Church and State upon what they considered the only "legitimate authority," with the special view of engrafting upon the faith of the Gallican Christians the principle of "uninquiring obedience" to whatsoever policy should be dictated by the interests of that combination, whether relating to spiritual or temporal affairs. Realizing how readily the pope yielded to the entreaties and influence of Loyola in approving his society, it was doubtless supposed that he would as readily be persuaded to secure the co-operation of the king, whose temporal power would thus be invoked to bring the French Church and people to obey whatsoever the Jesuits should dictate. The scheme was adroitly planned, and displayed, not only the despotic policy of the Jesuits, but their unsurpassed capacity for cunning and intrigue.

During the reign of Henry II, France had become, in a large degree, relieved from the complications in which she had been involved in the lifetime of Francis I, his father, growing out of the protracted controversy in which the Emperor Charles V and the pope both bore conspicuous parts. He was enabled therefore to turn his attention to internal and domestic affairs, which placed him in a condition favorable to the adoption of any methods of procedure that promised to bring society into perfect obedience to monarchical dominion; or, as he, along with Loyola and the Jesuits, regarded it, to "legitimate authority." Loyola could not fail to realize that the occasion was most opportune for him, and therefore availed himself of it with the utmost promptitude, taking advantage of everything seemingly favorable to the ends he desired to accomplish. The Reformation had progressed with astonishing rapidity, and nothing aroused his ambition so much as the hope of arresting its progress; for without the stimulating influence of that object his occupation would have been threatened with a speedy ending, and his society would have expired almost at its birth. This would have caused him to sink down into an inconspicuous position, condemned alike by ecclesiastics and people as a disturber of the public peace.

In addition to what the Reformation had accomplished in Germany—where its defenders had been inspirited by the presence, intrepidity, and eloquence of Luther—its influences had become so extended in France as to alarm all who saw in it the probable loss of power, and the end of those oppressions by which they had so long and successfully maintained their authority. Protestant churches were erected, not only in Paris, but in all the principal cities and in every province of France. Henry II saw all this with intense dissatisfaction, and was therefore in a condition to look favorably upon suggestions from any quarter that would give promise of forcing back the advancing tide of popular enlightenment and Protestant progress. He inherited from his father the most intense malignity toward what he called the "new religion," mainly on account, unquestionably, of its tendency to endanger the absolutism of monarchy. And he also inherited a persecuting spirit, which, by indulgence, had outgrown that of his father. All students of French history are familiar with the chief events of his reign, which caused Henry of Navarre—afterwards Henry IV—Anthony de Bourbon, Louis de Condé, Admiral de Coligny, Francis d'Andelot, and other lords, to unite with the reformers, and place themselves in the lead of the Huguenots. With such accessions as these, the persecuted Protestants of France became formidable in all parts of the country, and Henry II found employment for all his royal resources in contriving methods for their suppression, an object of which he seldom lost sight. Wheresoever Protestantism appeared, the spirit of persecution rose up to extinguish it. An eminent French historian says: "During the reign of Francis I, within the space of twenty-three years, there had been eighty-one executions for heresy. During that of Henry II, twelve years, there were ninety-seven for the same cause; and at one of these executions Henry II was present in person on the space in front of Notre Dame, a spectacle which Francis I had always refused to see." He states also that during the reign of Henry II, and the year before his death, "fifteen capital sentences had been executed in Dauphiny, in Normandy, in Poitou, and at Paris," and that, within that period, the penal legislation against heretics had been greatly increased in severity.[46]

Francis II was distinguished for nothing so much as for his uncompromising animosity to the Reformation, to all its legitimate fruits, and to those who professed Protestantism. He was entirely under the dominion of the Guises, who were the bloodiest and most unrelenting persecutors in France. To signalize his submission to them, he issued a royal proclamation, which they dictated, for razing to the ground and demolishing the houses in which the Protestants met for religious worship. Protestant assemblages were declared unlawful, and those who attended them were punishable with death, as were also those who sheltered and protected them. In about five months of this merciless reign, "eighteen persons were burned alive for heresy"—that is, for having professed the Protestant religion.[47]

In this condition France opened a broad and attractive field of operations for the Jesuits. Keeping steadily in view the principal and primary purpose of their organization—the suppression of the Reformation—they must have thirsted for an opportunity to bring their peculiar tactics into practice, not only for the accomplishment of this cherished object, but to reduce the Gallican Christians into such obedience to the papacy as would subject the temporal affairs of France to the dominion of Rome, when they expected to become, through the influence of Loyola over the pope, the chief agents in executing the papal mandates. The Cardinal of Lorraine—one of the Guises—was in full sympathy with them; and as he had been instrumental in dictating the persecuting policy of Henry II and Francis I, he must have rejoiced at the opportunity of obtaining Jesuit assistance in a work so congenial to himself and them. He was "inordinately vain; intensely selfish; an adept in the art of dissimulation, which he used without scruple,"—and these qualities must have commended him to the Jesuits, as they, on account of possessing the same, were doubtless commended to him. That he was ambitious and a special favorite of the pope is indicated by the multiplicity of offices he filled at the same time. Besides being cardinal, he held two archbishoprics, six bishoprics, and was abbot for each of four monasteries.[48]

Such a man as the Cardinal of Lorraine could, of course, render most essential aid to the Jesuits, as the Jesuits could to him. He and Loyola were "par nobile fratrum," each possessing such qualities as fitted him to become a proficient auxiliary of the other in the pursuit of a common object. After he had succeeded in combining against the French Protestants all who were under royal influence, he hastened to Rome, where, under the immediate auspices of the pope, he desired to arrange with Loyola personally for the introduction of the Jesuits into France. To facilitate the measure, he proposed the establishment of the Inquisition in France, with the purpose of disposing of heretics according to the method employed against the Albigenses by Innocent III, and which had been, after many years of disuse, successfully revived in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, under papal patronage and protection. He was received with marked distinction at Rome by both the pope and Loyola; and, having experienced no difficulty in obtaining their approval of his proposed plan of operations, he returned to France to carry it into execution by exterminating Protestantism, destroying the liberties of the Gallican Christians, and re-establishing the unity of religious faith by inquisitorial compulsion. He found the king still in full sympathy with him, and consequently had no difficulty in procuring from him royal letters-patent, by which he gave his consent to the Jesuits to enter France as an organized religious society, to build a house and college in Paris, and to "live therein according to their rules and statutes."[49]

These facts—narrated with all possible brevity—show the extraordinary means of which Loyola availed himself, in his lifetime, to force his society into France in opposition to the Gallican Church, the almost entire body of the Gallican Christians, and the people. Relying upon the aid of the pope, the king, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and such courtiers as crowded about the royal palace and echoed the royal will, he expected to overcome all opposition, and, by employing the terrible machinery of the Inquisition, to make himself master of France, or prepare the way for his successors to do so. And thus the founder and builder of the Jesuit society himself stamped upon it one of its leading and most distinguishing characteristics—the utter disregard of everything that does not contribute to its own ends and objects.

But the enemies of the Jesuits in France were not so easily reduced to submission as the Cardinal of Lorraine, the pope, and Loyola had supposed. The powerful combination they had formed, with the assistance of the king and his courtiers, was not sufficient to remove or counteract the deep-seated antipathy existing in France against the Jesuits. The orders of the king were not mandatory without the approval of Parliament, which was the highest public representative body in France. When the letters-patent of the king, admitting the Jesuits, came before Parliament, they were rejected with great unanimity, for the avowed reason that their introduction into France would be prejudicial to the public welfare and the Gallican Christians.[50] The bulk of the French clergy, and the entire faculty of the University of Paris, also took strong and decided grounds against the Jesuits. The king, offended by this opposition to his royal will, and assuming an air of monarchical supremacy, commanded Parliament to register his letters-patent. But Parliament again refused, and appealed for advice to the Archbishop of Paris—the chief ecclesiastical functionary of the Church. The archbishop also decided against the Jesuits. The Faculty of Theology in the university unanimously charged them, among other things, with arrogant presumption in assuming "the unusual title of the name of Jesus," and with admitting into their society "all sorts of persons, however criminal, lawless, and infamous they may be." They further declared the society to be "dangerous as to matters of faith, capable of disturbing the peace of the Church, overturning the monastic orders, and were more adapted to break down than to build up." This severe indictment is made more important and conspicuous by the fact that it was not preferred by Protestants, but by Roman Catholics, who had for many centuries faithfully adhered to such teachings of the Church as had universally prevailed, before the popes, in imitation of temporal monarchs, had built up the papal system. In addition to all this, the Archbishop of Paris issued an interdict against them, forbidding their exercise of any of the sacred functions.[51] The Bishop of Paris followed with other interdictions, and the entire clergy denounced the Jesuits in the pulpits. Placards in censure of them were hawked about the streets. At last the public indignation against them became so intense and violent that they were driven out of Paris, and compelled to seek shelter elsewhere. They did this, however, as they had done when forced by the popular tumult to leave Saragossa; that is, with the seeming appearance of submission, but with the real purpose of renewing their efforts when some occasion attended by more favorable circumstances should arise—when the royal authority could be more successfully employed to defy the Gallican Church and the popular sentiment. This was at that time, has been ever since, and is to-day, an essential part of Jesuit tactics, in the pursuit of which they are persistent and tireless. And where they have had the united aid of popes and monarchs, of Church and State, they have generally succeeded among populations not awakened by Protestant influences to a just appreciation of their own rights and dignity. In the case we have been considering they did not have very long to wait before the king, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and their allies, patronized by the pope, secured for them a conspicuous triumph over public opinion in France. The combination formed for that purpose needed their assistance in the bloody and congenial work of persecution, and this furnished a pretext for their introduction into France, notwithstanding the odium in which they were almost universally held. Nicolini says: "Soon they were called into France to help and cheer that atrocious and cruel hecatomb, that bloody debauch of priests and kings—the Saint Bartholomew."[52]

Thus far a clear and distinct view is furnished of the estimate in which the Jesuits were held during the lifetime of their founder by those who were steadfastly obedient to the Christian teachings of the Roman Church. None of the opposition here noted came from Protestants, but alone from those attached to the Church which the Jesuits professed to be serving. It originated with those who had a most favorable opportunity of becoming familiar with the general character and purposes of Loyola, many of whom, in all probability, had opportunities of seeing and conversing with him, as Melchior, the Dominican monk, had done. His boasts of extraordinary sanctity, of his frequent interviews with Christ and the Virgin Mary, and his impious pretense that he occupied the place of God in the world, and, like him, possessed miraculous powers, misled very few besides those who became his minions, or those who expected to profit by alliance with him. We shall see all this still more fully in the subsequent events which attended the final introduction of the society into France, all of which combine to show the methods by which, in the course of time, it became odious to the Christian populations of Europe, was expelled ignominiously from all the Christian nations, and was, at last, when its iniquities could be patiently borne no longer, suppressed and abolished by a pope distinguished for his Christian virtue and purity of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] History of the Jesuits. By Nicolini. Page 80. History of the Jesuits. By Steinmetz. Vol. I, pp. 382-83.

[42] Nicolini, pp. 82-83.

[43] History of St. Ignatius Loyola. By Bartoli. Vol. II, p. 57.

[44] Ibid., p. 58.

[45] Ibid., p. 234.

[46] Outlines of the History of France. Abridged from Guizot, by Gustave Masson. Pages 283-285.

[47] Ibid., p. 287.

[48] Church of France. By Jervis. Vol. I, p. 129. History of the Jesuits. By Steinmetz. Vol. I, p. 390, and note 1.

[49] Steinmetz, Vol. I, pp. 391-92.

[50] Ibid., p. 392.

[51] Steinmetz, Vol. I, p. 395; Nicolini, p. 86; Apud Cretineau, Vol. I, p. 320; Coudrette, Vol. I, p. 42.

[52] Nicolini, p. 88.

[CHAPTER VI.]

THE STRUGGLE FOR FRANCE.

The facts stated in the last chapter prove incontestably that the persistent efforts of the Jesuits to procure the establishment of their society in France as a recognized religious order were insidious and stealthy, if not incendiary, from the beginning. The Bishop of Clermont—influenced, probably, by the Cardinal of Lorraine—was favorable to them; and being the owner of a house in Paris, he offered it to them, that they might inaugurate the Jesuit method of education. But neither the French Parliament, nor the universities, nor the Gallican Church could be prevailed upon to withdraw their opposition. Consequently, in order to accomplish by indirection what was forbidden by law and the public sentiment, the Jesuits opened a college at Clermont, within the diocese and under the patronage of the bishop, and beyond the limits of the city of Paris.[53]

By the time of the death of Henry II the growth of Protestantism in France had become conspicuously marked. The Jesuit historian, Daurignac, represents this as a "calamity"—as a "deplorable state of things"—which it became necessary to counteract by the most active and efficient means. But as nothing could shake the stability of the people of Paris, it was deemed necessary to reach the population of that city by gradual approaches, after the manner of military commanders. Accordingly the Bishop of Pamiers was induced to solicit the assistance of the Jesuits in his diocese, and had no difficulty in finding enough of them to engage in that mission, for they were held in constant readiness to obey the orders of their superior. These Jesuit missionaries are represented as having caused many who had professed Protestantism to renounce their "heretical errors," and as having commenced their educational plan of operations by establishing a college at Pamiers. Whatsoever else they did, they obeyed implicitly the teachings of their society, for it is boastingly said that they caused the Protestants to be treated as possessing no rights of citizenship worthy of regard; for "their books were destroyed and their preachers compelled to flee."[54] But the Jesuits were still unable, by these violent means, to obtain entrance into Paris, the combined opposition of the Gallican Christians and the Protestants—who had, by this time, become sufficiently numerous to take part in the controversy—being sufficiently formidable to keep them out.

While there is no evidence of a direct and positive alliance between the Gallican Christians and the Protestants, yet it is apparent that their united opposition to the Jesuits had created between them such common sentiments as materially softened the asperities which had previously separated them. This is seen in the fact that large and influential numbers of the former—notably many in Parliament and attached to the universities—became disposed to grant to the latter "entire freedom in the propagation of their doctrines and control of their clergy."[55] Even the king, bigot as he was, was constrained, in consequence of their rapidly increasing influence, to grant some concessions to the Protestants which it would have been far more agreeable to him to have withheld. They had rendered such essential service to the State as soldiers in the army of Francis I—who rewarded their patriotism by persecution—and had shown such marked courage in battle, that he was obliged, manifestly against his will, to recognize them as a power neither to be despised nor trifled with, unless a force could be employed to crush them out entirely. This was especially the case after the Prince of Condé became the acknowledged leader of the Huguenots. Fear, therefore, far more than the spirit of toleration, influenced the king in conceding to the Protestants the rights of citizenship, which he so grudgingly granted that his concession was almost a denial. That which was considered the most valuable was the allowance to the Protestants of the right to assemble in open conference at Poissy, and to consider and discuss such matters as pertained to their own interests and religious opinions. The sincerity and honesty of their religious convictions inspired them with the belief that if they could ever be submitted to the arbitrament of reason, they would, if not fully justified, be found entitled to legal protection in the open profession of them. On this account they considered the conference at Poissy as a favorable omen, and hailed its assembling with satisfaction. Their flattering anticipations, however, were not realized. It was not intended that reason and argument should avail anything in the presence of the only "legitimate authority"—that of Church and State; and the Jesuits were standing ready and filled with the most anxious solicitude to demonstrate that the highest duty of life consisted of "uninquiring obedience"—the closing of every avenue through which the light could reach the minds and consciences of the multitude. Evidences of this are found in what transpired at Poissy, where, for the first time in the history of France, the general of the Jesuits was allowed to appear in a public assemblage as the representative of the order, and to suppress any inquiry whatsoever into the matters which the conference was especially appointed to consider, except by ecclesiastics. From that time forward the Protestants were reminded at every step they took that the sleepless eyes of the Jesuits were constantly upon them, ready to drive them to their hiding-places, turn them over to the Inquisition, or hunt them, with tireless vigilance, to the point of entire extermination.

Referring to the conference at Poissy, and the liberality indicated toward the Protestants by the king when he consented that they should attend it, Daurignac instructs his readers that the pope "beheld with pain and regret" this tendency toward liberalism and free religious thought; and that, in order to check the progress of events in that direction, he commanded Laynez—the immediate successor of Loyola as general of the Jesuits—to attend the conference at Poissy, with the view of preventing any adjustment of the existing religious differences, and deferring the final determination of them until they could be decided by the Council of Trent. Nobody can doubt that the object of the pope was to bring matters into such a condition as should require universal obedience to the decrees of that Council, by persuasion if possible, but by coercion if necessary. With the same end in view, the court of France continued its efforts to establish the Jesuits in Paris, well understanding what efficient aid they would willingly render in the work of suppressing every tendency toward liberalism and freedom of religious belief. The hostility of the Parliament toward the Jesuits, however, was so decided and violent that it still refused to yield obedience to the royal command; and affairs remained in this condition until the death of Henry II led to the introduction of other influences. It was then deemed necessary to invoke the aid of Catharine de Medicis, mother of the new king, Francis II, "to show a bold front against the incursions of heresy by at once compelling the Parliament to acknowledge and receive the Jesuits."[56] It was not difficult to enlist the aid of Catharine, who was always ready to promise anything either to mislead or destroy the Protestants, greatly preferring the latter. By her influence and authority royal orders were issued commanding the Parliament to ratify and register the letters-patent to the Jesuits which had been prepared by Henry II before his death. It should not be overlooked that this was an effort to force the Jesuits into Paris against the repeated remonstrances of Parliament, the universities, the leading ecclesiastical authorities of the Gallican Church, the whole body of the Gallican and Protestant Christians; and, in fact, against the existing laws and the public sentiment of the people. A fact like this not only tends to show, but is convincing proof, that the Jesuits were ready to defy all these influences, and to disregard every existing law or custom that imposed the least restraint upon them, their controlling object being not only to aid the king and the pope in destroying the "liberties" of the Gallican Church and Christians, and thus subjecting France to the temporal domination of the papacy, but to destroy forever the free religious thought which Protestantism had introduced. "But," says the Jesuit Daurignac, evidently with regret, "the Parliament was as intractable as ever," still refusing to obey the mandate of the king, or to allow the Jesuits to enter Paris. If all this opposition to the wishes of the Parisian people had been the result of impulse, arising suddenly out of rapidly passing events, it might be passed over as a sudden outbreak and forgotten. But it was the result of a fixed, settled, and determinate papal policy, which had already had several centuries of growth, and which it was deliberately resolved to persist in until the heresy of Protestantism should be exterminated, and free religious thought made impossible. Such a contest as that was most congenial to the Jesuits, because they saw, in the achievement of these results, the fulfillment of the highest objects of their society. With a stake like that in view, backed by the king and the pope, they persisted in their course with untiring vigilance, considering the most serious difficulties they encountered as mere trifles compared with the end they hoped to reach. That they might be assured of the royal sympathy, the king, Francis II, was easily induced by Catharine de Medicis to issue "new letters-patent, with orders for their immediate enrollment by Parliament, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the assembly and of the Bishop of Paris."[57] But Parliament, still unyielding, submitted them to the four Faculties of the university, "thus indicating," says Daurignac, "a disposition 'not to submit even to the authority of royalty,'" a most grievous offense, which, in those days, was considered a flagrant sin. The conclusion of the four Faculties was that the Jesuits were "inadmissible," based upon satisfactory reasons which were fully assigned. This obstinacy was unpardonable, and, inasmuch as it could not be overcome by direct means, the Jesuits, at last, were driven to the necessity of resorting to indirection, manifestly intending, if thereby successful, to regain whatsoever ground they might be compelled to lose. Accordingly they changed their tactics, and in order to remove the existing obstacles, declared, in a petition to the king, that if admitted into Paris they would conform to the laws of the country, and "to the Church of France," a purpose they had never avowed before, and which subsequent events proved they did not then intend to fulfill. But the Parliament was not entrapped by this Jesuitical device, and, in response, proposed to the king that they would withdraw their objection to the Jesuits upon the condition that they should cease "to apply to the society the name of Jesus; and that, moreover, they should not be considered as a religious order in the diocese of Paris, but be designated simply as members of a society,"[58] with civil rights exclusively. This probably was a mere subterfuge, inasmuch as the Jesuits could not have consented to the proposition without self-destruction. It shows, however, how intense was the opposition to the society.

The whole Christian population of Paris, including both the Gallicans and Protestants, were thrown into a condition of intense excitement when Charles IX ascended the throne as the successor of Francis II. The Protestants were in fear of total extermination; and the Gallican Christians were convinced that the main object of the Jesuits, the pope, and the monarchical rulers of the country, was to change the destiny of France by bringing the country into humiliating obedience to Rome, both in religious and temporal affairs, without any regard whatsoever to their system of Church government, or to the integrity of their ancient Christian faith. Charles IX was a mere child, only nine years of age, and was, consequently, the mere creature of his mother, Catharine de Medicis, whose familiarity with court intrigues enabled her, as guardian of the king, to grasp all the powers of queen regent, without reference to the sentiments or will of the French people. She relied solely upon the possession of the powers and prerogatives of royalty to maintain her authority; and, being an Italian, her character resembled as nearly that of the prince portrayed by Machiavelli, her countryman, as that of any other ruler who ever governed. She was always profuse in her promises when she considered them necessary to gain her objects; but never regarded herself bound by them beyond her own pleasure. She violated them at will, whensoever her royal or personal interests required it. In her dealings with the French Huguenots she practiced treachery and perfidy to an extent which would have brought a blush to the cheek of a Turkish sultan. She was, therefore, a fit instrument in the hands of the papal authorities and the Jesuits to bring France and the French Christians in subjugation to Rome—an object which, as an Italian and foreigner, was especially attractive to her. She caused the king to yield, or readily yielded herself, as the king had no will of his own, to the entreaties of the Jesuits by again requiring of Parliament that it should consent to their establishment in Paris without further delay. But the Jesuits were still so obnoxious that Parliament continued to hesitate, and demanded an explanation of the reasons for a step of such doubtful propriety, and so in conflict with public opinion. In explanation, one of the leading Jesuits, with "much eloquence," it is said by Daurignac, "clearly and energetically exposed the plans and projects of the Calvinists," or Protestants, and "the machinations and collusions existing between them and the university for the purpose of obtaining their ends;" that is, their united efforts to establish in France the freedom of religious belief—a form of heresy which the disciples of Loyola had solemnly sworn to eradicate. This open avowal of the only motive which influenced the Jesuits surrounded the controversy with so much delicacy and importance, that it was referred by the Parliament to the States General, as the representative of the whole nation, or to the next National Council of the Church. Thus we find constantly accumulating the most conclusive evidence to show the persistence of the Jesuits, and how steadily and earnestly they were resisted by the best and most enlightened part of the French people.

The Jesuits were unquestionably much discomfited and chagrined at this continued resistance, and were constrained to seek assistance from every available quarter. The nobility of Auvergne were consequently persuaded to interpose in their behalf by soliciting the admission of the society into all the towns of that province, evidently supposing if that were done that the Jesuits would soon diffuse themselves throughout the whole country. That the entire destruction of Protestantism was the only and ultimate end they contemplated is sufficiently proven by the fact that in their petition to the king, wherein they asked for the introduction of the Jesuits, they said: "Unless the king wishes the whole of Auvergne to fall into heresy, it is necessary that the Society of Jesus should be admitted into France."[59]

These proceedings were soon followed by the National Council of the French Church at Poissy, to which, as we have seen, the Protestants had looked forward with so much anxiety, anticipating it as an occasion when they would be permitted to make known the reasons of their religious belief. It was attended by the queen regent, the king, and the entire royal court, representing monarchical power; by five cardinals, forty archbishops and bishops, and numerous doctors, in behalf of the Church; by several Calvinist ministers, representing that form of faith; and by Henry, King of Navarre, and the Prince of Condé, representing the Huguenots and the general Protestant sentiment in favor of religious liberty. Such a body, under ordinary circumstances, might have enabled the Protestants to realize their hopes, at least to the extent of convincing the authorities of the Government that they were loyal to it, and obedient to all its commands, except in the single particular of desiring to be left free to follow their own consciences in the worship of God. But Laynez, the Jesuit general, was also there, to demand conformity to the requirements of the papacy and of his society, that no discussion should be tolerated, and that "uninquiring obedience" to authority should be exacted from all. To him and to his society it was impossible to preserve the union of Church and State without this; and if this were not done, its joint monarchism would be endangered. Accordingly he took especial pains to point out to the king and queen-mother "the indecency and danger" of the free discussion of questions of religious faith, by those who were disposed to defend Protestantism, in such an assembly. Daurignac says that Laynez was "shocked and grieved by the fearful blasphemies which had fallen from the lips of one Peter Martyr, an apostate monk," who had ventured to express his opinions freely. He considered it improper for any but theologians—that is, those whose minds had been already molded and fashioned to obedience—to be present upon such occasions. This rebuke offended the queen-mother, who withdrew from the Council. But this did not disconcert the Jesuit general, who was not so easily turned from his purpose. He knew the character of her majesty thoroughly, and said to the Prince of Condé, "She is a great dissembler," believing, as he undoubtedly did, that whatsoever she might then do or say, he would, in the end, bring her into obedience to the Jesuit purposes. He soon had convincing proof of his power; for the queen, the king, and the nobles never afterwards appeared in the Council, and the Jesuit general had the matter in his own hands.[60] Instead of bringing the conference to any practical results, favorable in the least degree to freedom of conscience, Laynez succeeded in causing it to contribute to measures having reference to the admission of the Jesuits into all parts of France.[61] The Protestants were dismayed, and the Jesuits were triumphant. Laynez then became the leader of the orthodox party, and from that time commanded an influence which Loyola himself did not acquire. We shall see hereafter how far-reaching and controlling this influence was.

After Laynez left the Council at Poissy, flushed with triumph, he repaired at once to the General Council of Trent, which was then in session, as a special legate of the pope—Pius IV—who had discovered in him such qualities as he supposed might become available in helping the sinking fortunes of the papacy. This was the first appearance of a Jesuit general in such a body, or in other general ecclesiastical assemblages, and consequently dates the beginning of a new era in the history of the Roman Church. Christianity had prevailed for more than fifteen hundred years without the aid of such a society as the Jesuits; but as that wonderful organization had been conceived by the restless brain of Loyola for the sole purpose of suppressing the Reformation and all its enlightening influences, it was readily accepted by the papal authorities as a valuable help, after the pope had given it his indorsement. Hence, Laynez was received by the Council of Trent with unusual manifestations of joy and enthusiasm. The prelates of the Council had undoubtedly been notified of his success at Poissy in obtaining the mastery over Catharine de Medicis, and, through her, over the king and court of France, as well as over the Protestants. Preference was shown him over all the representatives of the ancient religious orders of the Church, and when the latter complained of this, upon the ground that the Jesuit society was only of recent origin, the Council decided against them on account of the important services which the Jesuits, by means of their compact organization, would be able to render the cause of the papacy. And to manifest this preference of the Jesuits over the other orders, so that it could not be mistaken, a pulpit was prepared for Laynez in a conspicuous place in the Council chamber, so that whatsoever he said should be distinctly heard.[62] The monastic orders were not satisfied with the inferior position thus assigned to them, and murmured, but could not help it.

Such a reception as this by so distinguished a body of prelates as the Council of Trent, was well calculated to incite the pride and ambition of the Jesuits—especially of Laynez—and to create in their minds the belief that if they continued to pursue the cautious but aggressive policy of Loyola, they would bring the pope and all the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church into obedience to them. Manifestly, the society considered this the ultimate end contemplated by Loyola; and Laynez was sufficiently skilled in the methods of government to understand the necessity of obtaining from the Council of Trent the recognition of the superiority of the Jesuits over the monastic orders. He had not yet succeeded in accomplishing the admission of the society into France, and this he evidently regarded as an important step in that direction. Flattering as was his reception by the Council, it was not all he desired. He considered an additional step necessary to obtain from the Council a full approval of the reasons assigned by Loyola to justify the establishment of his society. Accordingly, after the Council had passed upon the questions of faith and dogma, it proceeded to investigate "the causes of the evils which afflicted the Church." This opened an exceedingly broad field of inquiry, and resulted, doubtless as Laynez desired, in the conclusion stated by Daurignac, "that these causes were, principally, the ignorance and immorality of a great portion of the clergy and the monastic orders," and that "the best remedy for this great evil was to prepare Christian generations by a good system of education;"[63] that is to say, that any effort to reform the existing clergy and ancient orders would be unavailing, but that the remedy lay in educating other and future generations. It is easy to see that this conclusion was unavoidable under the doctrine established by the same Council, and affirmed also by the Jesuits, that the clergy who lead virtuous and those who lead vicious lives, possess the same power and authority in the Church.

This was a great triumph for Laynez and his society, inasmuch as it was a specific approval by the Council of Trent of the grounds upon which Loyola had justified the creation of the Jesuit society; that is, the incompetency of the Church to reform itself without extraneous aid, apart from the existing clergy and the monastic orders, and the necessity for an educational organization, like that of the Jesuits, to be maintained by authority and discipline for that purpose.[64] And thus equipped by so important an indorsement, the Jesuits at once assumed to have been constituted, with Divine approval, the exclusive educators of the world, and to be endowed with authority to enter every nation at will, and so to train and discipline the "Christian generations" as to bring them down to a common level of obedience to the united authority of Church and State.

Without the indorsement obtained by the Jesuits from the Council of Trent, they might have been kept out of Paris entirely, or, at all events, their entry into that city would have been greatly delayed. As it was, the antipathy against them remained so great and universal among the Gallican Christians, that their admission at last was obtained only upon the condition that they should take a solemn oath to do nothing to impair the liberties of the Gallican Church; that they would submit to the laws of the nation, which recognized the pope as the head of the Church, but denied to him the power to excommunicate the king; or to lay an interdict upon the kingdom; or to exercise any jurisdiction over temporal matters; or to dismiss bishops from their office; or to exercise any authority by a legate, unless empowered by the king; and that they would, moreover, maintain those provisions of law which assigned to a General Council of the Church power superior to that of a pope—in other words, that papal infallibility was not a part of Christian faith.[65] There is abundant reason for believing, in view of both preceding and subsequent events, that when the Jesuits took this oath, they had not the least idea of being bound by it. No Jesuit's conscience was ever bound by such an oath.

The authority of Laynez, under the circumstances related, became potential enough to enable him to influence the decisions of the queen-mother and the court of France, and finding himself thus sustained, it was not long before the Jesuit policy began to bear its legitimate fruits. Of course, his most heavily charged batteries were immediately opened upon the Protestants, to whose heresies he traced all the existing evils of the times. An occasion for this soon occurred. The Protestants petitioned for "places of worship;" that is, merely to be allowed to worship at designated places according to their consciences. Laynez fully understood the meaning of this, and the ends it would ultimately accomplish if the Protestant petition were allowed. His keen sagacity enabled him to know that if the differences between Protestantism and the papacy became the subject of intellectual discussion, upon a forum where human reason had the right to assert itself, the triumph of the former over the latter would be assured. Therefore, true to his own instincts and the teachings of his society, he remonstrated with Catharine de Medicis against granting the prayer of the Protestants, and in his memorial upon the subject "pointed out to her so forcibly the danger to the Church and State that such a concession would entail, that, appreciating his arguments, she refused to sanction the erection of Protestant places of worship."[66]

These facts—related upon Jesuit authority, and boasted of by their historians—furnish the most palpable and incontestable proof of the conspiracy of Catharine de Medicis and the Jesuits, after the latter obtained admission into France, to suppress the freedom of religious worship, and so to mold the policy of Church and State as to render its existence impossible. It was an odious and revolting conspiracy; but the objects to be accomplished justified it in the eyes of the queen, of Laynez, and of all his followers. It was the cardinal point of the professed Jesuit policy—the most prominent feature of their organization. No imagination is fertile enough to picture the condition into which the civilized world would have been plunged if this conspiracy, besides its temporary and bloody triumph in France, had become sufficiently powerful to dictate the Governments of modern States. The Gallican Christians had for centuries successfully resisted all attempts of the papacy to interfere with the temporal affairs of France; and whilst they disagreed with Protestants upon questions of religious faith, the two forces were united in opposition to the Jesuits, because of the direct hostility of the latter to both. Each could see that the entrance of the society into France, under the control and dominion of an alien power, would be the introduction of a disturbing and hostile element, which would put an end to the concord and harmony then rapidly springing up between the two Christian bodies. This the Jesuits intended to prevent by whatsoever means they could manage to employ; for, from the beginning of their existence, they have opposed everything they could not subjugate. Therefore they realized the importance of having the monarchical power upon their side—especially when they saw it wielded by such a queen as Catharine de Medicis—so that by conspiracy with it against the Gallican Christians and the Protestants, they could destroy the liberties of the former, and entirely suppress the spirit of free inquiry asserted by the latter. Keeping these objects always before them, the Jesuits considered them of sufficient magnitude to justify any form of intrigue; and they were sufficiently familiar with the qualities of the queen to know that she possessed such love of power and capacity for conspiracy that they could successfully play upon her ambition and prejudices to accomplish their purposes.

There is no intelligent reader of French history who is not familiar with the steps taken by this perfidious queen regent, after the admission of the Jesuits into Paris, to bring about the terrible Massacre of St. Bartholomew—an event so closely allied with others, of which they were the undoubted authors, that one must close his eyes not to see the evidences which point to their agency in that infamous transaction. They needed such bloody work to give them the mastery over France; and although they have since then been more than once expelled in disgrace from French soil, they have returned again and again to torment her people, who still continue to realize, under their Republic, how unceasingly they labor for the entire overthrow of every form of popular government.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 36.

[54] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 103-104.

[55] Ibid., p. 104.

[56] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 105.

[57] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 105.

[58] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 106.

[59] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 107.

[60] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 108-109.

[61] Church in France. By Jervis. Vol. I, p. 146.

[62] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 111-112.

[63] Ibid., p. 114.

[64] Daurignac, Vol. I, pp. 177-178.

[65] Nicolini, pp. 177-178.

[66] Daurignac, Vol. I, p. 110.

[CHAPTER VII.]

THE SOCIETY ENTERS GERMANY.

The Jesuits encountered less difficulty in establishing themselves in Germany than in either Spain, Portugal, or France. Race differences may have occasioned this. The populations resting upon the shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic descended from the early Celts, and became readily Latinized. They accepted the traditionary religion of Rome; knew comparatively little of the Bible, which was a sealed book to them; and received their Christian faith only from the Roman clergy. There was no word in any of their languages which signified liberty in the sense of a right derived from the law of nature. With them, liberty conveyed the idea of a franchise, granted by authority, and subject to be withdrawn at pleasure. Hence they yielded implicit obedience to Rome, and accepted it as consistent with the Divine will that no other than the Romish religion should be recognized or tolerated, and that force might be justifiably employed to suppress all others when it was deemed necessary to do so. Consequently they were inclined at first to resist—or, at least, to look suspiciously upon—the Jesuits, inasmuch as Loyola had declared it to be the controlling reason for the creation of the society that the ancient monastic orders and the clergy had by their vices endangered the Church. This seemed heretical, and therefore they practiced towards him and his followers at first their accustomed intolerance. They preferred the old system, to which they had become accustomed, to anything new, with regard either to the Church or the faith. Accordingly we find that among the Latin populations the influence of the pope became necessary to the admission and establishment of the Jesuit society. They yielded only to his authority, because they regarded disobedience of him as heresy.

It was otherwise with the Germans. As the descendants of the old Teutons, they had some conceptions of natural liberty, and had indicated a desire for popular government by the election of their kings. The Scriptures had been placed in their hands as early as the fourth century, when Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels and part of the Old Testament into the Gothic language, thereby making them accessible to the people, and stimulating the desire to read and understand them. This created a sense of individuality, which soon became more diffused than elsewhere in Europe, thus making the Germans an intelligent and tolerant race. Their tolerance, therefore, when the Jesuits appeared, prevented any popular commotion. By that time the influences of the Reformation had become greatly extended, and had impressed the minds of a large number of the German people. Protestantism had become established, and the population was divided into two religious parties—Roman Catholic and Protestant. But these parties, influenced towards each other by the old Teutonic liberality and tolerance, lived together in perfect peace and harmony, each maintaining its own religious faith and worship without interference by the other. There were also divisions among the Protestants—some being the followers of Luther, and others of Calvin. But there was no religious strife between Roman Catholics and Protestants. According to the German custom of that period, there were earnest disputations about doctrines, but no tumult—nothing to disturb the quiet of society. Persecution on account of religious differences was entirely unknown; a persecutor would have been considered a public enemy. The true spirit of Christianity prevailed—the natural consequence of the same form of religious liberty provided for by the institutions of the United States, and which might now exist throughout the Christian world, but for the baneful influences of Jesuitism. The Venetian ambassador, then in Germany, thus describes the peaceful condition of the German Christians:

"One party has accustomed itself to put up with the other so well, that, in any place where there happens to be a mixed population, little or no notice is taken as to whether a person is a Catholic or Protestant. Not only villages, but even families, are in this manner mixed up together, and there even exist houses where the children belong to one persuasion while the parents belong to the other, and where brothers adhere to opposite creeds. Catholics and Protestants, indeed, intermarry with each other, and no one takes any notice of the circumstance, or offers any opposition thereto."[67]

The German author to whom we are indebted for the above extract says, in addition, "Even many princes of the Catholic Church in Germany went even a step further, and appointed men who were thorough Protestants to situations at their courts as counselors, judges, magistrates, or whatever other office it might be, without any opposition or objection being offered thereto." And these, he adds in a note, "were not at all exceptional cases."[68]

Notwithstanding Germany was enjoying this state of calm and repose, under the influence of that religious toleration which is the natural outgrowth of all the teachings of Christ, and has the full sanction of his example, it afforded neither pleasure nor satisfaction to the ecclesiastical supporters of the papacy at Rome. They saw in it the threatened destruction of the papal system, and the ruin of their ambitious hopes, unless, by some means, this spirit of religious toleration and liberalism could be entirely extirpated. They regarded Protestantism and the liberty which gave birth to it as heretical, as the worst and most flagrant violations of God's law. How to put an end to this liberty, and destroy all its fruits, was the practical question which agitated the mind of the pope. He was willing enough to imitate the example of Innocent III in his treatment of the Albigenses, by beginning the work of persecution in Germany, and turning over the Protestants to the Inquisition, for that would have conformed to the Canon law. But there were difficulties in the way not easily overcome. The Inquisition was not likely to carry on its murderous work as successfully in Germany as among the Latin races trained to obedience. The Germans were not so docile and submissive. And, besides, the influences of the Reformation, under the impulse given them by the courageous example of Luther, had reached some of the most powerful princes in Germany, who would have stood as a strong wall of protection against all such assaults. They were not willing to obey the pontifical command when it required that papal emissaries should be allowed at pleasure to burn their own subjects at the stake, and desolate their homes. Excommunication had nearly run its course. It had been so frequently employed to promote the personal ambition of popes, and for trifling and temporal purposes, that it was fast coming into disrepute. Its influence was so impaired that it had, in a large degree, lost its effectiveness. Protestant Churches could not be closed by edicts of interdict. The attempt to release the German people from allegiance to their princes, would have been as ineffectual as the command of King Canute when he ordered the waves of the ocean to retire. Any form of papal malediction and anathema would have been unavailing.

Howsoever sick at heart the pope may have been at this prospect so fatal to his ambition, he was not reduced to entire despair. He did not abandon the hope of bringing back the German princes to the old religion, and employing them as secular aids in such measures of coercion as should be found necessary to reduce the people into obedience. He found the old ecclesiastical weapons somewhat blunted, and looked around for others. Fortune seemed, at last, to smile upon the pope when, casting his eyes around, they rested upon the Jesuits—the freshly enlisted "militia of the Church"—who, without any sense of either pride or shame, were trained to implicit obedience, without stopping to inquire whether the work required of them was good or bad, noble or ignoble. Called upon by the pope, probably at the suggestion of Loyola himself, the Jesuits were as ready to obey as the latter was to command, even to the extent of conspiring against the peace of Germany, or any other country where barriers had been constructed to protect society against aggression. But the method of procedure was by no means clear. Courageous as Loyola was, he could not venture to send his small army into Germany with an open display of the instruments of persecution in their hands. They could not go as the open defenders of the papal dogmas, for they were unable to speak or understand the German language. If they had even been able to make known their opinions and purposes, they could not have withstood the intense indignation and fiery eloquence of the disciples of Luther and Calvin. The occasion, therefore, demanded of Loyola the exercise of his keen penetration—of that wonderful sagacity which never deserted him, and which, at his death, he succeeded in imparting to his successor. The manner of procedure he finally adopted is suggestive of serious reflection, especially to the people of the United States.

If it be true that "history repeats itself," and that nations, moving in fixed cycles, follow each other in their courses, the remembrance of the fact that many of them, once prosperous, have passed out of existence, admonishes us to inquire with exceeding caution into the relations which these same Jesuits have created between themselves and our institutions. They have not changed, but are still the infatuated and vindictive followers of Loyola, and it is well for us to know whether there are not evidences that, if permitted, they may repeat here what their society, at the command of its founder, attempted in Germany, under the pretense that God had appointed them to conspire against any free and independent nation they could not otherwise subjugate. The people of the United States spend their time in the pursuit of a thousand objects, and in the investigation of a thousand questions, not the thousandth part as important to them as this.

Military men have long been accustomed to reserve sappers and miners as helps in the emergencies of war. These always attack under cover, approaching by slow and stealthy degrees, like the tiger or the cat. They do not take the chances of actual conflict, and never expose themselves to the leaden hail of battle. When the walls of a fortress can not be battered down by direct assault, they secretly undermine them; and when the fuse is lighted, the magazine exploded, and the dead scattered in all directions, they return to their hiding-places unharmed, to share in the rewards of victory.

Loyola was a skillful and courageous soldier, perfectly familiar with all the plans and strategies of war. In the organization of his society, he had availed himself of his knowledge both of the motives of men and of the movements of armies. Hence, when he submitted to the pope his proposed methods of operation, he took the precaution to impress him with its importance and necessity, by declaring that, as its head, he should consider himself "as the representative of Christ, the commander-in-chief of the heavenly hosts," and as engaged in "the war service of Christ," with an army bound by solemn oaths to obey him implicitly "in every particular, and on all occasions."[69] Hence, also, speaking of his society, he said: "We must be always ready to advance against the enemy, and be always prepared to harass him or to fall upon him, and on that account we must not venture to tie ourselves to any particular place;"[70] that is, that Jesuits must secretly skulk about over the world, without habitations or homes, and, paying no allegiance to any opposing authority, to "harass" Protestants wheresoever they are found—like freebooters upon the sea—leaving no tracks behind them.

The "chief thing" with the Jesuits, says Greisinger, was to obtain the sole direction of education, so that by getting the young into their hands, they could fashion them after their own pattern, and, by holding them down to the low standard of passive and "uninquiring obedience," fit them to become subservient slaves of monarchical and papal power. Nobody need be told the impressible character of the youthful mind, or how the stamp made upon it becomes indelible. Loyola understood this, and, realizing the impossibility of arresting the progressive advancement of Germany under Protestant influences, or to uproot the tolerant spirit that prevailed there among both Protestants and Roman Catholics, by any of the usual methods of papal coercion, he insidiously planned the scheme of bringing Germany back to papal obedience by Jesuitical training in the German schools. The process was slow, it is true, but the stake was great; and no man could have known better than he how surely it would be won, if the minds of the young could be cramped and dwarfed by Jesuit teaching.

In the Jesuit seminaries and schools, at the period here referred to, the Latin language—being the language of the Church—grammar, and rhetoric were taught, preparatory to a college course, which last was confined to philosophy and theology. The latter was regarded as the most important, because it culminated in obedience to papal authority, and was centered in the idea that it was impossible to reach heaven by any other methods than those prescribed by the Roman Church. Of course, no education could be perfected, in the estimation of the Jesuits, that did not conform to their own standard by requiring the pupils to surrender their manhood into the keeping of their superiors, as they had done themselves, and thereby become pieces of human machinery, to be moved about at the will and pleasure of those whom they were taught to regard as God's vicegerents upon earth. No matter where Jesuit colleges or schools have existed, or yet exist, this has always been the primary and chief object and end of the education furnished by them. When it stops short of this, it is a failure; but when this object is accomplished, the society exultingly adds its fresh recruits to the papal militia, to be marshaled against Protestantism, enlightenment, and popular government, under commanders who never tolerate disobedience.

Pope Julius III—successor of Paul III—in aid of the conspiracy against Germany, granted an extension of the privileges originally conferred upon the Jesuits, and, at the suggestion of Loyola, authorized him to establish a German college (Collegium Germanicum) in Rome. The object of this was, not to teach the German language to the Spanish, French, and Italian pupils then being educated in Rome in the Collegium Romanum, but to procure German youths to be taught there under Jesuit auspices and the patronage of the pope, so that upon their return home they would disseminate Jesuit opinions and influences among the people, and thus arrest the progress of Protestantism, and put an end to the religious toleration prevailing among the Protestant and Roman Catholic Germans. In execution of this purpose, steps were at once taken to procure from Germany some young men, to be brought to Rome and put in training for the ecclesiastical subjugation of their countrymen. That such was the sole object will not be doubted by any intelligent investigator of the facts. Germany was well supplied with colleges and schools, where the standard of education was higher than at Rome; but they were under Protestant management and control, and therefore considered heretical. It was the odious form of heresy embodied in Protestantism that Loyola and his followers were sworn to exterminate, and these young Germans were carried to Rome that they might be disciplined and educated for that purpose—to undermine the institutions of their own country! Have the Jesuits ever changed their purpose to make the extermination of Protestantism a leading and central feature of their educational system? Have they abandoned any of the methods employed by Loyola himself for that purpose? We shall see as our investigations proceed.

But the institution of a Jesuit college at Rome was not the only means employed, inasmuch as more immediate and active measures were considered necessary. Therefore, whilst that was left to bear its fruits at a later period, the Jesuits sent into Germany some of their prudent and sagacious members, such as they supposed would be likely to exercise influence over the princes, so that through them the whole German population might be reached. These princes were the acknowledged representatives of monarchism, and it was believed that if they could be persuaded to accept the Jesuit emissaries as their allies, the usual methods of papal compulsion could be employed with impunity. In this the Jesuits calculated sagaciously, and were enabled to establish several colleges in Germany, and ultimately to begin an open and direct war upon Protestantism. They did not invoke the aid of reason. They neither invited nor allowed calm discussion with learned Protestant theologians, but relied entirely upon the united authority of the pope and the princes—that is, upon monarchical power. Finding the Lutherans and the Calvinists divided upon theological questions, they availed themselves of every opportunity to incite them to mutual strife, insisting, as they have ever since continued to do, that there can be but one true form of Christian faith, which every human being is obliged to accept, or to offend God. Seemingly insensible to the fact that the Creator has made the minds of men to differ as their faces and features, they were sagacious enough to know that differences of opinion upon religious as upon all other subjects could be prevented only by force and coercion. Therefore, to compel uniformity of faith and to uproot Protestantism, they persuaded some of the princes, especially those of Bavaria, to believe that the principle of monarchy was endangered, and would be entirely destroyed, if the influences of the Reformation were not obliterated. That such was, and yet is, the natural effect of these influences is true; and therefore, as these princes could easily see that, if popular institutions were established in Germany, their princely occupations would be threatened, they became the willing tools of the Jesuits. The Duke of Bavaria was one of the most submissive, as he was the most willing to become a persecutor. He had been educated by the Jesuits, and consequently was soon induced to exhibit "the utmost earnestness" in adopting measures for destroying all the influences of the Reformation, and putting an end to Protestantism.[71] He was resolved, says Nicolini, "not to leave a vestige of those new doctrines which, for the last forty years, had been spreading so fast in his kingdom." Neither he nor the Jesuits made the least disguise of the fact that all their efforts were directed to the single object of preventing the freedom of religious belief. His first step to this end was to require that the Profession of Faith prescribed by the Council of Trent should be subscribed and adhered to; that is, that Protestants should renounce the religion which their consciences approved, and accept that which their consciences did not approve. That the people might be brought into obedience and forced to this, "he sent through all the provinces swarms of Jesuits, accompanied by bands of troopers, whose bayonets came to the aid of the preachers when their eloquence was unsuccessful in converting the heretics"—that is, the Protestants. Those who remained unsubdued were expelled from their estates. Prohibited books were seized and burned. All the ancient practices were revived. And, "above all," says Ranke, "the Jesuit institutions were promoted; for by their agency it was, that the youth of Bavaria were to be educated in a spirit of strict orthodoxy"—which meant then, what with the Jesuits it still means, opposition to religious freedom.

For a time the Jesuits were restrained in Austria by Ferdinand I and Maximilian; but during the reign of Rudolph II they became bolder and more exacting. The provincial of the society obtained great influence over Rudolph, and was urgent in his demands that he should extirpate heresy from his dominions. At last he succeeded in inducing Rudolph to inaugurate a general persecution of the Lutherans, and "the greatest atrocity and the utmost rigor were displayed in destroying every trace of Protestantism." The work of extirpation began in the cities. "The Reformed clergy were removed, and their places filled by Catholic priests." A religious formula was prescribed, which required universal assent to the doctrine "that everything is true which the Church of Rome has laid down as the rule of life and doctrine," and that "the pope is the head of one Apostolic Church." The Protestants were expelled from all offices of State. Papists alone could become burghers. Doctors' degrees in the universities were conferred only upon those who subscribed to the Roman Confession of Faith. The Jesuit schools were governed by regulations "which prescribed Catholic formularies, fasts, worship, according to the Catholic Ritual," and all the pupils were taught the Jesuit Catechism. All Protestant books were seized and taken away from booksellers' shops, and all that were found in the custom-houses were confiscated. And the historian, summing it all up, says: "All through Germany the same proceedings were resorted to, and everywhere we find the Jesuits foremost in the reaction. There was no bishop, no prince, who went to visit a province upon religious concerns, who did not bring with him a troop of Jesuits, who, on his departure, were often left there with almost unlimited powers."[72]

The task of becoming familiar with the history of those times is formidable; but its performance will amply repay the careful and thoughtful student, inasmuch as the events which then transpired materially influenced the subsequent condition of the world. Especially did they influence that current of affairs which caused the most enlightened nations to drift towards religious freedom and popular government, the two great and inseparable factors in modern progress. At the period here referred to, true Christian civilization, as inspired by the charity and gentleness exhibited in the life of Christ, seemed to hang, for a time, at equipoise in the balance. The struggle for mastery between the light of the Reformation and the darkness of the Middle Ages was long and fierce, and occasionally doubtful. One can not fail to see that the spirit of liberty had been so nearly crushed out by the monarchism of Church and State, that it required the finger of Providence to point out the way to the revival of primitive Christianity, and the restoration of its beneficial influences upon the consciences and lives of the vast multitudes who had been long held in inferiority. The student will find the conflict instructive at every point. It will bring into view perfidy and treachery where there ought to have been confidence and fair dealing, shameful betrayals of the cause of truth and justice, and the heartless sacrifice of many thousands of inoffensive people. It will show popes and kings uniting their power in the cause of oppression and wrong, and shamelessly practicing vices condemned equally by the laws of God and man. Many figures conspicuous in history will appear, among them that of the great Emperor Charles V. He will be seen procuring imperial dominion over a people he did not know, and whose language he could neither speak nor understand; quarreling with the pope one day and threatening to subvert his throne, and becoming reconciled the next, in order that monarchism should be strengthened; sending savage hordes of armed men to crush out the spirit of religious liberty in his native Netherlands by blood and murder; promising protection to the German Protestants in order to obtain their assistance in his war against the Turks, and afterwards betraying and persecuting them for heresy; uniting for a time with the pope against the king of France, and then with the king of France against the pope; forcing the pope to convene a General Council, and pretending to grant by his famous "Interim" some shadowy rights to Protestants, in order that they might ultimately be compelled to accept the faith as the Council should decree; and at last, when his successes were turned into adversities and his tortuous policy involved him in disappointment, abdicating his royal authority, retiring to a monastery, and confiding the infamous work of persecuting Protestants and desolating his native land to his cold-blooded and murderous son. Then, as the scene shifts, Philip II will appear, with his vicegerent, the Duke of Alva, and his bloodthirsty crew, the sounds of whose warlike bugles were drowned by the piercing cries of their Protestant victims. Then may also be seen, passing in panoramic view, the whole land of the Netherlands drenched in the blood of innocent and persecuted Protestants; the Spanish and Italian Inquisitions carrying on their horrible work with so much activity that its machinery was never still; France trembling upon the threshold of ruin, and her kings and queens forming leagues with the Huguenots, to be immediately and perfidiously violated; and Germany, torn into factions by the discord between princes and people which was born of Jesuit intrigue, offering a tempting field to the emissaries of the papacy, wherein usurped and illegitimate authority might revel whilst the "sacred militia" of Loyola rejoiced at the triumph they had won over Protestantism and free religious thought.

Through all these courses of events the Jesuits steadily appeared—alike indifferent to the wounds they inflicted upon the Church and the agonies of their unnumbered victims. As confessors and confidants of kings, their exertions to enshroud the world in the pall of monarchism were ceaseless and untiring. They climbed into offices of state, and molded the temporal policy of popes and kings. They moved sovereigns from right to left, forward or backward, as children amuse themselves with toys. They exchanged the humble worship of the altar for the glitter of courts, as if Christ in his life had set the example of ambitious display. They enrolled sovereigns and princes in the ranks of their defenders, and by their help drove Protestant preachers from their pulpits, Protestant professors and teachers from their colleges and schools, and Protestant people into the deepest depths of humiliation, by such measures of compulsion and repression as it must have required the inventive faculties of fiends to discover. All these things transpired in Europe during the terrible conflict between Protestantism and reaction. But in no other portion of the Continental States was the difference between the opposing forces more distinctly marked than in Germany, after the Jesuits, by means of their control of education, became enabled to check the progress of popular enlightenment, and force the nation back again into the old grooves of ignorance and superstition.

From the first entry of the Jesuits into Germany the peace of the country was seriously disturbed. We have seen how thoroughly reconciled to each other were those of all the shades of religious faith. Members of the Church of Rome and Protestants were in perfect accord upon all matters involving the welfare of Germany, neither concerning themselves about the religious opinions of the other. In this respect it was as it should have been, and ought yet to be throughout the Christian world. And the happiness and progressive prosperity of Germany was assured by it, until the spoiler came in the form of Jesuitism, not as the bearer of messages of peace and good-will from Rome, but the vast progeny of evils which, in the age of fable, were supposed to have escaped when Pandora's jar was broken. They let these loose upon the land without shame or remorse, until society was convulsed from center to circumference, peaceful homes were desolated, hearts that had rejoiced were broken,—all under the irreverent pretense that it was for "the greater glory of God!"

Let it not be forgotten that Germany was indebted to Protestantism for her condition of peace and prosperity. We have seen that the demoralized condition of the clergy was employed by Loyola to justify the papal approval of his society, and the learned Jesuit historian, the Abbé Maynard, is forced to admit that when Luther gave the first impulse to the Reformation, "the clergy of Germany offered a sad example of corrupted faith and relaxed morals." He calls it a "mournful period,"[73] notwithstanding for a thousand years these and other evils had been growing and spreading under the patronage of Rome. The papacy then dictated the Christianity of Germany. Mark the difference when Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and Carlstadt announced the necessity for reform, and put the ball of the Reformation in motion. The great Ranke, whose impartiality has extorted even Jesuit praise, when referring to the effect produced by the Reformation in Germany, says:

"In short, from west to east and from north to south, throughout all Germany, Protestantism had unquestionably the preponderance. The nobility were attached to it from the very first; the body of public functionaries, already in those days numerous and important, was trained up in the new doctrine; the common people would hear no more of certain articles—such, for instance, as purgatory—or of certain ceremonies, such as the pilgrimages; not a man durst come forward with holy relics. A Venetian ambassador calculates, in the year 1558, that but a tenth part of the inhabitants of Germany still clung to the ancient faith."[74]

Maynard also refers to this approvingly, and the Jesuits make it a matter of boasting, in order to support their claim to superior merit for having extirpated so much Protestant heresy, and for bringing back such multitudes of people to papal obedience. Nine Protestants to one papist! Germany, then, was a Protestant nation, governed by Protestant authorities, under Protestant laws, tolerant towards all who adhered to the ancient faith, allowing no interference with the freedom of religious opinions, happy, prosperous, and free, under her own institutions. In these respects she was in the same condition as the United States is to-day, so far as she could be in the absence of written constitutional guarantees.

What people upon earth, other than the Germans themselves, had the just right, under the law of nations or any other human law, to interfere with their condition, or to plot, openly or secretly, against their independence? What was all this, however, to the pope or to the Jesuits? From whence did they derive the authority to form a conspiracy at Rome to invade Germany, overthrow her existing institutions, bind the limbs of her people with fetters they had already broken, to gather up the rusty iron they had cast away, and reforge it into manacles to hold them in obedience to an alien and foreign power? Was this conspiracy commanded by the law of God? If it was, wherein is that law changed? If not changed, and God's laws are all immutable, may not the Jesuits of to-day enter into fresh conspiracies to subvert the present institutions of Germany, or of Great Britain, or of the United States, or of any other nation that maintains the principles of Protestantism and the freedom of conscience?

These questions command the most serious thought, and are pregnant with considerations we are not allowed to put aside. Before this volume closes, answers to all of them may be so plainly discovered as to enable the friends of free thought and popular government to see wherein their greatest danger lies. "The Jesuits," says Ranke, "conquered the Germans on their own soil, in their very home, and wrested from them a part of their native land." Will there not be other conquests to be achieved by them so long as the freedom of conscience is sheltered and guaranteed by Protestant institutions?

FOOTNOTES:

[67] History of the Jesuits. By Greisinger. Page 212.

[68] Ibid., p. 213, note.

[69] Greisinger, p. 48, etc.

[70] Ibid., p. 63.

[71] History of the Popes. By Ranke. Book V, p. 172, etc. Lea and Blanchard's edition. Nicolini, p. 199. Greisinger, p. 211, etc. History of Germany. By Lewis. Chap, xvii, p. 398, etc.

[72] Nicolini, pp. 201-202. For these particulars see also Ranke, Griesinger, Steinmetz, and Lewis.

[73] The Studies and Teachings of the Jesuits. By M. L'Abbé Maynard. Page 89.

[74] Ranke, Book V, p. 165.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

THE JESUITS IN ENGLAND.

The conspiracy to overthrow the Protestant institutions of Germany furnished a precedent in dealing with other Governments. That against England was characterized by some peculiarities, owing to its having been subject to the spiritual dominion of the pope until the reign of Henry VIII, and afterwards under that of Mary. As there are no instances in history where a people have surrendered the control over their institutions without a struggle, unless previously reduced to absolute imbecility, the inauguration and progress of this conspiracy furnish a great many "object-lessons" of special interest to all in the United States who hold in kindly remembrance the struggles of our English ancestry for liberty.

When Henry VIII quarreled with the pope, it was only about his divorce. Religion was not involved. He maintained the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church until his death. But in order to give license to his passions, he caused himself to be recognized by a submissive Parliament as taking the place of the pope in the religious affairs of England—not, however, as the head of the National Church, which did not distinctively exist as such until the subsequent reign of Edward VI. As between him and the pope, the dispute was about authority, not doctrine. It excited intense anger in the minds of both, and this was soon imparted to their respective adherents. Each was familiar with the methods of persecution and the implements of coercion, long in use to produce uniformity of faith, and they were equally ready to employ them. There were, however, differences between them worthy of being noted. The highest aspiration of Henry was to govern England; the pope reached out after the spiritual government of the world. The pope, without the sanction and authority of the Church, claimed personal infallibility; Henry did not. They were consequently formidable antagonists. Trained within the same circle of events, with minds disciplined by the same doctrinal teachings, and entirely agreed about the employment of compulsion in matters of faith, each dealt with the other as a mere competitor for power.

The pope—Paul III—endeavored to bring his royal antagonist to terms by excommunication; but Henry defied it and its accompanying anathemas. In proportion as the passions of the pope became intensified by resistance to his spiritual authority, the measures designed to reduce England to obedience became more violent. Henry was denounced as a traitor to heaven and the Church, and threatened with all the consequences implied by that denunciation. The pope endeavored to induce the Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France to invade England, make conquest of the country, and bring it again into obedience to him; but these monarchs feared the consequences, and prudently declined the undertaking. Disappointed in this, the pope hastened to solicit the aid of Loyola, who without delay provided Jesuits to be sent to England as spies, and to plot secretly against Henry. These emissaries were privately instructed by Loyola himself; and inasmuch as these instructions have been made known, and are admitted by the Jesuits, they serve to show the uses to which Loyola intended to put his society. The philosophy of history is often left unperceived by omitting to observe the force of such evidence as this.

After counseling them to practice great prudence and circumspection in conversing with others, so as to unveil "the depth of their sentiments"—that is, to draw out their secret thoughts—Loyola proceeded to instruct them that, "in order to conciliate to yourselves the good-will of men in the desire of extending the kingdom of God, you will make yourselves all things to all men, after the example of the apostle in order to gain them to Jesus Christ." And he tells them further that "when the devil attacks a just man, he does not let him see his snares"—therefore they must imitate him, in order to entice men into Jesuit snares![75] Taken as a whole, these instructions were manifestly designed so to train all Jesuits as to make them, according to Nicolini, "crafty, insinuating, deceitful." Cretineau, a Jesuit, attempts to argue, continues Nicolini, that they had reference to religious and not to political matters, and this is the only defense he offers for them. But this is itself Jesuitical, inasmuch as these emissaries were sent to England upon a mission involving politico-religious affairs—that is, the policy established by the Government of England in regard to the relations between it and the pope. Whether right or wrong, the English people established these relations for themselves, as they had the undoubted right to do, and no alien or foreign power, whether employed by the pope or any other monarch, could rightfully interfere with them.

These emissaries of Loyola and the pope visited Ireland and Scotland; but with the exception of intriguing with James V of Scotland, their mission was ineffectual, and they returned to Rome. Henry was not seriously disturbed by them. Nor was there any other attempt to introduce the Jesuits into England until after the death of Queen Mary, whose persecution of the Protestants was sufficiently satisfactory to the papacy without their aid. Their introduction during her reign had been opposed and defeated by Cardinal Pole, an Englishman; but whether he was hostile to them, or considered the existing system of persecution perfect enough without them, is not clearly shown.

We are thus brought to a portion of English history specially interesting and instructive to all who hold in admiration the civil institutions of the United States; for they have read history to but little purpose who do not know how the events of that period gave stability to principles which now constitute fundamental parts of our national polity. In tracing our pedigree back to its English source, it is as easy to see our intimate relations with the Elizabethan era as it is to follow the little rivulets in the valleys or upon the mountains in their courses to the sea. On this account some particularity of detail is rendered necessary, or else some matters of historic interest, not generally observed, may be omitted.

During the reign of Elizabeth the papal authorities renewed their exertions to put a stop to Protestantism in England, and sent more Jesuits there for that purpose. "These satellites of the pope," says the historian, "entered the country under fictitious names, and as stealthily as nocturnal robbers, mendacious in every word they uttered, and exciting the people to rebellion against the 'impious' queen."[76] The vigilance of Elizabeth, however, was of such a character that she was not easily taken by surprise, and their plottings against her became less effective than they and the pope had anticipated. Accordingly other Jesuits were sent to Scotland to encourage Queen Mary, and hold her steadfast in the faith; but they were unsuccessful in the attempt to stir up rebellion there, and being fearful of detection and arrest, escaped out of the country as fugitives from justice. Nevertheless they accomplished one thing, which was to carry away with them several young English noblemen, to be educated by the Jesuits in Flanders, so as to fit them for treason against their own country—repeating in this the experiment Loyola had made in Germany. All these movements, although not immediately followed by any direct consequences, tend to show how ready the Jesuits were to make secret and incendiary war upon anything or any country upon which the pontifical curse was resting. And they show, moreover, their subtle methods of procedure—how they were trained and educated in adroitness and cunning, the more easily to mislead others; how they raised hypocrisy and deceit up to the side of virtue; how they endeavored to attach to falsehood the merit which belongs alone to truth; and how, in order to be "all things to all men," they were required to be what they were not, or not to be what they were, in order by deception to accomplish the subjugation of England to the authority of the pope.

The Jesuits endeavored to become the educators of English youths as they had those of Germany. They understood, and have not yet forgotten, the value of this. The pope therefore established an English college at Rome, to educate young Englishmen for the traitorous purpose of destroying English institutions. Loyola conceived this idea as a covert and strategic method of uprooting obnoxious Governments, and the pope accepted it as an effective plan of conspiracy. This college became a hotbed of treason. The young men were doubtless instructed that the gates of heaven would be opened to them in no other way, and that country and patriotism were unmeaning phrases, of no significance when weighed in the scale against the interests of the papacy and the Jesuits. None have better understood than they "that he who guides the youth, directs the destinies of man."

The young Englishmen, educated at this college in Rome to hate their country and its sovereign, reached the highest round in the ladder of collegiate culture when they were brought to realize this as the central feature of religious faith. It takes a peculiar training to pluck out entirely from the mind all the tender and holy memories of home and country, of family and friends; and no others in the world except the Jesuits have ever undertaken it. They boast of this as one of the prominent principles of their system, and the distinguishing merit of their society. By means of it they succeeded well at Rome, and sent back to England a swarm of conspirators, charged with the special duty of winning a conquest over the Government, plucking Protestantism up by the roots, and re-establishing the papal scepter, which Henry VIII, in the pursuit of his illicit amours, had broken.

Elizabeth, as queen, was the great obstacle to papal success. Her position was a peculiar one. At the beginning of her reign she had been tolerant towards her Roman Catholic subjects, and they were permitted to enjoy their religion and mode of worship without interference, notwithstanding the severities practiced towards the Protestants during the preceding reign of Mary. All historians agree, and the Roman Catholic Lingard is candid enough to admit, that she retained in her royal council eleven of those who had served under Mary, and appointed only eight of her own selection—an extraordinary instance of impartiality and conservatism. She preferred the reformed religion, but "contrived," says Lingard, "to balance the hopes and fears of the two parties,"[77] which she must have done from an honest purpose to see that justice should be shown to both, and that religious strife and discord should cease. Her want of success in this most desirable object can be attributed to no other cause than the machinations of the Jesuits; for, whatsoever may be thought of the fierce and angry controversy which followed, the evidence is conclusive that they were the main reliance of the pope in the subsequent inauguration and prosecution of civil war in England. If it had not been their special avocation to enter into plots and conspiracies against all governments and peoples who rejected the absolute rule of the pope in doctrine and morals, and if they had not actively engaged in that work during the reign of Elizabeth, the memory of Mary's bloody and persecuting reign might, in a large degree, have been blotted out, and this impartial policy of Elizabeth might have induced the Christians of different religious faiths to live in peace and mutual toleration, as they did in Germany before that country was blighted by the curse of Jesuitism. But taught by the Jesuits not to submit to equality merely, but to demand absolute and unqualified superiority and dominion by the entire suppression of Protestantism, the English Roman Catholics were encouraged to form leagues and combinations and conspiracies against the queen, Protestantism, and the Government.

Under these circumstances, Elizabeth could not have remained unresisting if she had desired. To have done so would have been a treasonable abandonment of the country of which she was the legitimate sovereign. Not only was she assailed in all her rights as queen, but the pope, adopting the views and opinions of the Jesuits, impudently attempted to justify resistance to her authority upon the ground that she was an illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn, and therefore had no just right to exact obedience to her authority. He went further than this, and claimed jurisdiction over her conscience by commanding her to accept "the communion of the Roman Church," which, with queenly dignity, she refused. He required her to send ambassadors to the Council of Trent, and this she also declined to do. When she imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, he usurped jurisdiction over the case, although Mary was an English subject, and undertook to procure her release, for the reason only that she preferred Romanism to Protestantism. He sought the aid of the kings of France and Spain to make war upon England in the name of religion, to release Mary, dethrone Elizabeth, and seize upon her crown. Failing in all these things, and being baffled by Elizabeth, he caused a prosecution to be instituted at Rome to try "in the papal court" her title to the crown—a sham and farce as ineffective as it was ridiculous and discreditable. It is difficult to imagine a more presumptuous and impotent proceeding; but it is instructive as showing the pretensions of the popes of that period.

In the papal indictment Elizabeth was accused, among other things, of rejecting the ancient and supporting the new worship; of having "received the sacrament after the manner of heretics;" of having "chosen known heretics for the lords of her council;" and of having "imposed an oath derogating from the rights of the Holy See." The queen, of course, did not appear; but, nevertheless, she was held to be in default, and the trial was conducted in the papal form. Twelve English Roman Catholics, who are represented as "exiles for their religion," were examined as witnesses, and, after their evidence was heard and considered, "the judges pronounced their opinion that she had incurred the canonical penalties of heresy." The major one of these, which included all the minors, was the forfeiture of her crown; that is, her actual dethronement. It is to be supposed that, in the decree of the Roman Curia, all this was recorded in solemn form. But this decree, like those of other courts, did not execute itself. Therefore, the pope provided for its execution by issuing his pontifical bull, with all necessary gravity and composure, whereby he pronounced Elizabeth guilty of heresy, deprived of her "pretended" right to the crown of England, and absolved her subjects from all allegiance to her.[78]

Notwithstanding the long period intervening between those and the present times, we are not relieved from the obligation and necessity of understanding fully upon what pretense of authority Pius V assumed the prerogative right to pluck from the head of the English queen a crown placed there with practical, if not absolute, unanimity by the English people. It is not enough to say that these things occurred in another age and under circumstances peculiar to that age. This may sufficiently explain the conduct of individuals, and the character and structure of governments, all of which have ever been, and will continue to be, liable to change. But the laws of God, founded in divine wisdom, are not subject to these changes. The creative power of the Deity alone can change them. It is the special boast of the papists and the Jesuits that the system of laws which governs the papacy has the stamp of Divine approval upon it, and that, therefore, it has always been, and still remains, the same—"Semper eadem," is their motto. Hence it is important to us to know the nature and extent of the spiritual powers asserted by Pius V over the English Government and people, in order to ascertain whether, if a parallel case existed to-day, or may exist hereafter, the same papal powers may not be again invoked. The question which most concerns us is not whether they may or may not be asserted, but whether or no they have been embodied in the Canon law of the Roman Church, and have been thereby stamped with the character of perpetuity. No special pleading, however adroit, can make the issue otherwise.

The question tried and decided at Rome by the Papal Curia, in so far as it involved the right to the English crown, was exclusively political, and the pope could not rightfully change its character by assuming that it was brought within his spiritual jurisdiction by virtue of the universality of his spiritual powers. It was an English and not a Roman question. By the existing laws of England, Elizabeth was the rightful and hereditary heir to the throne, and had possession of the crown. It had been so decided by the Parliament, and ratified by the people with a unanimity almost unknown in those times. She was queen, not only de facto, but de jure. By what mode of reasoning or by what perversion of language could the pope take to himself jurisdiction over such a question? England was governed by laws, and whether they appear to us now to have been right or wrong, they were her own laws, enacted by her rightful authorities. They were exclusively political laws, provided for her own Government and people. The pope was the spiritual head of the Church at Rome, with a recognized jurisdiction over the spiritual welfare of those who regarded themselves as within that jurisdiction. By the methods of reasoning then adopted by the English nation, and now familiar to all intelligent American minds, all who chose to remain within that spiritual jurisdiction had the perfect right to do so; all who did not, had an equal right to withdraw from it. Rights of this character concern individuals, not nations, except as their populations shall decide, in which case they may submit or not to this jurisdiction at their pleasure. The English nation, by its domestic laws, had established a system of government suitable for itself, and had placed its crown upon Elizabeth's head. To say that the pope had the divine right, as the spiritual head of the Church at Rome, to set this National Government aside, and substitute for it another dictated by himself, and after the papal model, means this, and only this: that his spiritual power includes political and temporal power over all nations, to the extent of requiring them to adopt whatsoever form of religious faith the popes shall prescribe, to the absolute exclusion of all other forms. And it allows him, moreover, to employ for that purpose, against every domestic law to the contrary, all the papal machinery of coercion. The decree pronounced at Rome against Elizabeth affirms, in effect, that such is the Canon law; that is, the law of the Church. Have the provisions of that law been authoritatively changed or abrogated since the time of Pius V and Elizabeth? It may be necessary to find an answer to this question when we come to see, as we shall, that, at Jesuit dictation, it has been authoritatively announced that the time has come, or is rapidly approaching, when the Canon law of the Roman Church shall be introduced into the United States, to supersede such of our laws, National and State, as are in conflict with it. For the present, we must not pass by too rapidly the conflict between the pope and Elizabeth—to the principles involved in which enough consideration is not generally given—in order that we may comprehend fully what it meant, and how, in the end, it turned the nations upon their progressive courses, and brought them where they now are. In all history there are few more instructive lessons.

In carrying on the war against Elizabeth, the Jesuits did not forget the work of educating young Englishmen so as to make them believe that treason was one of the highest virtues when dictated by what they chose to consider the interests of religion; that is, of the papacy or of their society, just as we have seen they did in Germany. Among other seminaries of learning, they had one at Rheims, in France, established by the Cardinal of Lorraine, one of the most vindictive persecutors of the Huguenots. They had another at Douay, also in France. From these, colonies of Jesuits were sent to England every year, instructed and trained to subvert the English Government, and particularly to vilify and calumniate Elizabeth by accusing her of leading a "licentious and voluptuous private life." It is not easy to understand what force was intended to be given to this accusation, as an argument against her right to the crown, in view of the fact that a life tenfold more licentious and voluptuous than that falsely charged against Elizabeth did not invalidate the right of Pope Alexander VI to the papal crown and the headship of the Church at Rome. Nevertheless, the Jesuits availed themselves of it, without regard either to its truthfulness or their own consistency. They were educated to this peculiar kind of work, and it was considered their duty to educate others in the same way, leaving the consequences to take care of themselves. Hume gives this account of these Jesuit emissaries to England: "They infused into all their votaries an extreme hatred against the queen, whom they treated as a usurper, a schismatic, a heretic, a persecutor of the orthodox, and one solemnly and publicly anathematized by the holy father. Sedition, rebellion, sometimes assassination, were the expedients by which they intended to effect their purposes against her,"[79] pretending to find in the existing state of things in England justification for all this, even for the assassination of the queen.

Two Jesuit leaders—Campion and Parson—were sent from Rome to give direction to the movements of the conspirators already there. In order more effectually to encourage treason and sedition, they "pretended to be Protestants," not being ashamed of this false profession, because the obligation to practice deception when necessary was instilled into their minds by Jesuit training, and, on that account, created no compunctions of conscience. When Parson reached Dover, the better to practice his disguise, he wore the uniform of an English army officer, and pretended to be such. In this way he deceived the inspecting officer, and arranged with him for the safe passage of Campion, whom he represented as a fellow officer, who would follow in a few days. It may thus be seen how easy it is to be "all things to all men," when those who desire to become so have quieted their consciences with the belief that falsehood and deception may be rightfully employed in promoting "the greater glory of God." Howsoever incomprehensible may be the casuistry by which the mind can be brought to this belief, it is perfectly plain to a Jesuit, and is doubtless explained in their schools.

It is exceedingly difficult to separate the true from the false in the history of the times here referred to. The passions of the rival parties became so intense as seemingly to render agreement between them impossible, either with regard to facts or conclusions. It may not even be safe to assume that the truth lies midway between the extremes. But there is always, in the influences and effects produced by any given period of time, that which explains the motives and purposes of the chief actors. By careful investigation of these, we acquire a knowledge of the philosophy of history. Conducting our investigations in this spirit, we can not fail to conclude that the interference with the domestic and internal affairs of England by an alien and foreign power, was a flagrant act of usurpation, unless the spiritual authority of the pope gave him rightful jurisdiction over temporal and political questions in that country. And if he did rightfully possess this jurisdiction in 1570, when Pius V fulminated his pontifical bull against Elizabeth, and derived it from the divine law, we, of the present age, and especially in the United States, can not refrain from inquiring whether, from the Jesuit standpoint, Leo XIII does not possess the same jurisdiction derived from the same law? Without pressing this inquiry here, however, it is deemed more essential to ascertain still more minutely how far the Jesuits were responsible for sowing the seeds of discord and civil war in England, when otherwise Protestants and Roman Catholics might, at the Elizabethan period, have lived and associated harmoniously together, as they did in Germany before the Jesuits appeared there. Many intelligent readers of history fail to give due consideration to the events of this important period.

We have seen—upon the authority of Lingard, a papal historian—that Elizabeth was, at the beginning of her reign, desirous of holding an equal balance between the rival bodies of Christians. Her mind was not fully made up with regard to her own faith, although it is probable she was inclined to Protestantism. There were reasons for this, some of which may have been controlling with a masculine mind like hers. The relations between her father, Henry VIII, and the papacy must have created impressions not favorable to the pope as a sharer in her governing power over the English people. And the reign of her sister Mary must have tended to strengthen, rather than remove, these impressions. She could not have failed to know that Mary's marriage to Philip II of Spain had brought with it to England a series of calamities, the remembrance of which must have made her not only sorrowful, but indignant. If Mary's natural inclination had been kindly and her heart benevolent, it must have been apparent to Elizabeth that these good qualities had been exchanged for others of the very opposite character, which had incited her to prosecute her Protestant subjects in the spirit of intense religious bigotry, and as if God were acceptably served by shedding blood. And when, upon coming to the throne as the immediate successor of Mary, she found herself confronted by the terrible condition into which England had been thrown—with every evil passion aroused, and little ground for hope of the future—nothing was more natural than the belief that this state of things had been produced, mainly if not entirely, by the unfortunate marriage of Mary with Philip II, who possessed such a combination of bad qualities as left room for scarcely a single good one. Sullen, morose, and selfish, Philip separated himself from everything in life calculated to encourage good or benevolent emotions, and gave free play to that bad ambition which led him to desolate the Netherlands by cruelties as unparalleled as they were atrocious. He had no affection for Mary, being incapable of any such emotion. His marriage with her was a matter of policy alone—one of those political unions which, in the course of time, have produced evils to all the Governments of Europe. He had inherited religious fanaticism from his father, Charles V, but without any of the better qualities of the latter; and gave such excessive indulgence to his hatred of Protestants that nothing rejoiced him so much as to know that the dungeons of the Inquisition were crowded with them, and that none of them escaped the rack, the thumb-screw, and the flames. The best people in England—Roman Catholics as well as Protestants—had feared, when this ill-fated marriage was proposed, that the bloody scenes so often witnessed on the Continent would be repeated there, and for that reason opposed it. But State policy prevailed, and the popular will was of no avail. England, thus united with Spain, became subject to the influence of Philip, who employed it over Mary, to make her, like himself, the obedient instrument of papal outrages. English persecution hitherto had one distinguishing characteristic, in this, that Henry VIII had visited his vengeance upon both Protestants and Roman Catholics, who were bound alike to the stake and burned to death because of resistance to his royal power and assumed right, in imitation of the pope, to hold the consciences of individuals in subjugation. Elizabeth knew all this. Her strong and sagacious mind was penetrating enough to foresee that, unless this disheartening course of events could be in some way changed, England would remain where Mary had left her—a mere appendage to the papacy—and thereby reduced to a condition of inferiority among the nations from which she might never recover.

When Philip proposed to marry Elizabeth—for whom he had no more affection than he had for her sister—she was brought to realize, if she had not already done so, that the future destiny of England was mainly in her hands. From motives of policy she took time to deliberate before accepting or rejecting this proposition of marriage by Philip. Whilst holding it under advisement, she suggested that it would violate the law of the Church, inasmuch as their relationship brought them within the prohibited degrees. But when Philip proposed that he would obtain a dispensation from the pope, she saw at once that it was a well-matured scheme to bring her to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the pope over English affairs of State, and consequently declined Philip's proposal. And thus was broken the alliance between the two crowns of England and Spain, and Elizabeth was left to protect herself against foreign interference in taking care of the internal affairs of her own country. The occasion demanded that she should assert herself by taking the affairs of the nation in her own hands, and the result has long since proved how well and conspicuously she did so.

Elizabeth was wise. Her bitterest enemies concede this. Whilst she may have inclined to Protestantism, she had not, at the beginning of her reign, acquired any positive dislike to the Roman Catholic religion. On the contrary, the Roman Catholic bishops and lords were disposed to regard her exhibition of tolerance as indicating that she would, at least, act with justice and impartiality towards them. Camden, the historian, says that, during Mary's reign, Elizabeth had intimated to Cardinal Pole that she had a disposition to prefer Roman Catholicism. Howsoever this may have been, she not only sometimes attended confession, but assisted at divine service after the manner of the Roman Church. Lingard says: "She continued to assist, and occasionally to communicate, at mass; she buried her sister with all the solemnities of the Catholic ritual; and she ordered a solemn dirge and a mass of requiem for the soul of the Emperor Charles V."[80] Influenced by these considerations, and probably by others of the same character, the House of Lords—composed entirely of Roman Catholics—declared in her favor, and the Commons having readily and unanimously approved their decision, she was proclaimed queen "with the acclamations of the people." Thus her right to the crown was settled by the highest authority in the kingdom. There was not a murmur of discontent. Some regretted the death of Mary, but there was a general desire that the barbarities practiced during her reign should cease. In that desire Elizabeth manifestly shared, as is well established by the fact, already stated, that she retained thirteen of Mary's counselors, and appointed only eight Protestants. She could have meant nothing else by this than to express the desire that religious persecution should cease, and that the two religious parties should in the future live in peace with each other, and thus enable the country to develop into greatness.

The first attack upon her right to the crown was made by Henry II of France, and not by her Roman Catholic subjects. Henry was thoroughly indoctrinated with the persecuting spirit which prevailed in France among the defenders of the papacy, and was dominated over by the Guises, one of whom was the Cardinal of Lorraine, and patron of the Jesuits. His persecution of the Reformers has been previously mentioned. In assailing the title of Elizabeth, Henry II had undoubtedly several objects in view, the chief of which were to humiliate England and probably establish French sovereignty over it, to continue the policy of Mary in persecuting the Protestants, and to place the crown of Elizabeth upon the head of Mary Queen of Scots. Whether one or all these motives influenced him, he solicited the aid of the pope, and made himself a party to the conspiracy against the peace of England by endeavoring to obtain a papal decree that Elizabeth was a bastard, and therefore not lawfully queen. Consequently, when, after her rejection of Philip's proposal of marriage, she saw the Roman Catholic powers, with the pope at their head, conspiring against her, she resolved that her own safety and that of England required her to dismiss the Roman Catholic members of her council, declare her purpose to protect and encourage the Reformed religion, and submit the matter to the people by means of a Parliament to be assembled for that purpose. This precautionary measure was most commendable, inasmuch as it proposed to submit to Parliament the question whether or no the two religions were equally entitled to legal protection. In order that her purposes might be fully understood, she issued a proclamation allowing divine service to be performed in the English tongue, and the Scriptures to be read by the laity—a privilege hitherto denied them. In order to allay all undue excitement, she expressly prohibited religious "controversy by preaching," until the meeting of Parliament. When the new Parliament did assemble, it was addressed in her behalf by the Keeper of the Great Seal, who announced to the representatives of the people that the queen had commanded him to exhort them "to take a mean between the two extremes of superstition and irreligion, which might reunite the partisans of both the one and the other religion in the same public worship."[81]

The conciliatory course of Elizabeth, as indicated by her proclamation and this address to Parliament, exhibited a degree of liberality to which the English people had been unaccustomed during the reign of Mary. It is a reasonable supposition that, if her suggestions had been accepted in the spirit in which they were offered, England would have bounded forward far more rapidly than she did to the condition she subsequently reached through severe and protracted trials. The times were suited to the introduction of compromising measures of peaceful policy. The people were tired of commotion, persecution, and bloodshed on account of religious differences, and would readily have acquiesced in any amicable plan of adjustment. But, unfortunately for England, and the world as well, neither the interests nor the wishes of the people were of sufficient avail to bring quiet to the country. The course of subsequent events may be easily traced. The papal machinery of Church government had been so constructed at Rome that, in order to keep the people in subjection, it had deposited unlimited powers in the hands of the prelates. The Roman Catholic bishops of England, as well as elsewhere, had been accustomed to rule with a rod of iron, and the time had not arrived when they could be reconciled to any diminution of their ecclesiastical authority. They became "alarmed," says Lingard, at the position taken by Elizabeth. They undoubtedly viewed it only in its relation to themselves and the interests of the Church at Rome—or, rather, of the papacy—without bestowing a moment's thought upon the general welfare of England. They regarded conciliation as a form of heresy not to be tolerated. What they desired was the extirpation of Protestantism and the unity of the Roman Church, assured by the establishment of its religion to the exclusion of any dissenting faith. Accordingly, they assembled themselves together to consult "whether they could in conscience officiate at the coronation" of a queen who proposed so to adjust religious differences as to put an end to all interference with the right of individuals to freedom of conscience. Upon various pretexts they decided not to attend, or to take part in, the ceremony of coronation. Consequently, the ceremony was performed with the attendance of only a single bishop, and was made "to conform to all the rites of the Catholic pontifical." This decision and conduct of the bishops "created considerable embarrassment," and might have produced serious consequences but for the withdrawal of this single bishop from his associates.[82]

The non-attendance of the Roman Catholic bishops upon the coronation of Elizabeth was a signal for opening the old strife. It was unquestionably intended upon their part to array their followers in opposition to the conciliatory measures of the queen; and it did not take long, in those days, to be so understood upon both sides. The consequence was that the public excitement was imparted to Parliament, and led to the repeal of several of the statutes of Mary, and the substitution for them of others whereby the Reformed religion was made national, and penalties prescribed for refusing so to recognize it. This, of course, led to severe measures and to persecution, in imitation of the example set during the reign of Mary, and produced the unfortunate condition of affairs with which all readers of English history are familiar. Upon which side, during the long controversy that followed, the responsibility rested most heavily, is not easily decided. Wrongs were undoubtedly inflicted by both sides. But whatsoever these were, they grew out of the spirit of that age, and had their origin, as we have seen, in the influences created by the papacy, aided by Jesuit intrigues. The fact, however, which most nearly concerns our present inquiries is what has just been stated, that the first step taken in the direction towards the renewal of religious agitation was the organized opposition of the bishops to Elizabeth, formed for the purpose of defeating the measures of pacification she had proposed to Parliament. It is impossible not to have known that the defeat of those measures by the combined opposition of the bishops would lead to a revival of the hatreds which had been encouraged under Mary, and, therefore, to oppose them was to invite that revival for which, consequently, these bishops were responsible.

Whether the Protestants would have accepted or rejected the proposition of Elizabeth can not now be decided with positive certainty; all the probabilities indicate that they would have accepted them. One thing, however, is certain, they were rejected by the Roman Catholics under the lead of their bishops. This, of course, revived the old animosities, but with increased violence. Throughout all the departments of society passion became greatly intensified. Nevertheless, the questions involved were English questions alone. They were primarily and chiefly political, although having politico-religious aspects. But they involved only the internal and domestic condition of England. No alien or foreign power had the right, by international or other law, or consistently with what is now universal usage among civilized nations, to interfere with them. But we have seen that they were interfered with, not only by a direct attempt to make the policy of the country conform to that dictated by a foreign power, but in the threatening form of a conspiracy between the king of France and the pope, to impeach the title of Elizabeth upon the ground that she was a bastard, to which she could not have submitted without disgrace. We have also seen how this conspiracy moved stealthily forward, step by step, until she was tried at Rome by an alien tribunal, pronounced a usurper by a decree which declared her crown to have been forfeited and her subjects released from their natural and lawful allegiance. And in order that her escape from the wrath and vengeance of the pope should become impossible, swarms of incendiary Jesuits were turned loose upon the country, to fan the flames of discord, stir up rebellion and civil war, and carry into execution the judgment and sentence of the papal court at Rome. If Elizabeth erred in defending herself and her kingdom against this formidable and dangerous combination, her error was upon the side of patriotism; and she is scarcely censurable for it, inasmuch as the life of the nation, and probably her own life, were the stake for which her enemies were playing. And whether it be true or not, that the Jesuits attempted her assassination—as some historians allege—it must be accepted in her praise that, although a woman, she taught her assailants that she was "every inch a queen," and that England under her reign became enabled to convince all these rival powers that she was competent to conduct her own affairs and take care of herself—facts sufficiently demonstrated by her advanced position among the modern progressive nations.

Every American mind should be duly impressed by this portion of English history, showing, as it does, how fierce and protracted was the struggle which led, in the end, to popular government, and the civil and religious freedom which it alone has guaranteed. Elizabeth was undoubtedly a great queen—great in the qualities of her intellect, in the steadfastness of her purposes, in that manly courage which "mounteth with occasion." When she became queen, the people of England, both Protestants and Roman Catholics, were tired of religious persecution, and anxious to put an end to it. She favored and recommended to Parliament measures of pacification, in the spirit of liberality and toleration. If, obeying the dictates of her own conscience, she preferred Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, she had such respect for the conscientious convictions of others as to desire that all her subjects should be secured in the right to accept either the one or the other at their own discretion. By the avowal of these and other kindred purposes, she incurred the opposition of the Roman Catholic bishops, who, in concert with foreign powers, and backed by the pope and his Jesuit militia, brought on a civil war which afflicted England with a long train of evils and calamities. Under the influence of her liberalism, the bulk of the population became tolerant of each other, and, by the great unanimity with which they accepted her as queen, indicated the desire that the protection of the Government should be given to both forms of worship. And it may be accepted as a fair inference from what then transpired, that she was defeated in her plan of conciliation only by the animosities engendered by the English bishops, the pope, and the Jesuits. Her defeat, however, was not final; and having survived the machinations of all her enemies, even the excommunication and anathemas of the pope, together with the stealthy plottings of the Jesuits, the pages which record the events of her reign constitute some of the brightest in English history. They teach a philosophy that will not be forgotten so long as free popular institutions shall continue to exist.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Nicolini, p. 65. Steinmetz, Vol. I, p. 302.

[76] Nicolini, pp. 151, 152, note.

[77] History of England. By Lingard. Vol. VI, p. 4. See, also, Hume, Vol. IV, p. 4.

[78] Lingard, Vol. VI, p. 110. Nicolini, p. 153.

[79] History of England. By Hume. Vol. IV, p. 182.

[80] Lingard, Vol. VI, p. 4.