The Jesuits, 1534-1921

In Mexico the storm evoked by Palafox did not, it is true, result in expulsions, confiscations and executions as elsewhere, nevertheless it was deadly in its effects; and a century later it furnished the Jansenists of Europe with an exhaustless supply of calumnies against the Society. Its arraignment by Palafox was particularly efficacious because it expressed the mind of a distinguished functionary of the Church who was held by some to be a saint and whose canonization was insisted on by the politicians and nobility of Spain.

The character of this extraordinary personage has always been a mystery, and perhaps it would have been better or, at least, more comfortable to have left it in its shroud instead of revealing the truth about his life. He tells us himself in his "Vida interior" that his university days were wild; but though the text is explicit enough, it may be a pious exaggeration. In 1628 occurred what he calls his conversion. He made a general confession and determined to embrace an ecclesiastical career. His preparation for it was amazingly brief, and we find him soon occupying the post of grand almoner of the Princess Mary, whom he accompanied to Germany. On his return to Spain, he resumed his occupation as fiscal, and in 1639 was consecrated Bishop of Puebla in Mexico and, in the following year, was sent to America with the most extravagant plenipotentiary powers. Besides being Bishop of Puebla, he was simultaneously administrator of the vacant see of the city of Mexico and visitor of the audiencia of the colony, with the absolute right to depose any civil official whom he judged unsuitable.

He did not wait long to exercise his power, and in 1641, to the consternation of everyone, he flung out of office no less a personage than the viceroy himself who was universally esteemed for his upright and virtuous life. By this extraordinary act, Palafox became practically viceroy and captain general, while retaining his ecclesiastical dignities. In a few months, however, the new viceroy, Salvatierra, arrived. Palafox was soon to clash with him also, by blocking all the official work of the audiencia; holding up despatches, delaying decisions, absenting himself from the city, etc. For five years complaints against him poured into Spain but without effecting any change. Salvatierra even accused him of malversation in office, particularly in its finances and added that his whole occupation seemed to consist in writing the Life of St. Peter. His ecclesiastical government was no less disorderly. To gain the favor of those around him he transformed the Indian missions into parishes and put them in charge of priests who were absolutely ignorant both of the habits and language of the natives. The motive back of this change was that as mere mission posts the Indian settlements paid no tithes.

During all this time he continued to proclaim himself a friend of the Jesuits, but in 1641 when a canon of the cathedral wanted to make over a farm to the College of Vera Cruz, he was forbidden to do so under pain of excommunication unless the property was made subject to tithes. When the canon submitted the case to the audiencia he of course, lost it, because Palafox was the visitor of that tribunal. A further appeal was then made to the council of the Indies, but after two years of litigation the case was dropped without a decision. In the course of this contest, Palafox wrote in his plea that the Jesuits were enormously wealthy, while the cathedral of Puebla was destitute of resources. When Father Calderón refuted these assertions, the bishop was wrought up to fury and laid down as a diocesan rule that, under pain of excommunication, no property transfers could be made to religious orders unless this tithe clause was inserted, and he enjoined that the sick and dying should be admonished of that censure. He followed this up by sending an order to all the Jesuits to deliver up their faculties for inspection within twenty-four hours, under penalty of excommunication. Their reply was that they would have to refer the matter to the provincial. This was, according to Astrain, a grave act of imprudence on the part of the Fathers, and such, later on, was the ruling of the Roman Congregation and of the Pope himself.

Of course, in the rigor of the law the bishop had an absolute right to demand the faculties of all the priests of his diocese, but in the concrete it is hard to blame the action of the Fathers in this instance. They did not refuse, but merely wanted time to lay the case before their superior. Moreover, the action of the bishop was altogether out of the ordinary. Up to that time, his own confessor was a Jesuit, and faculties had been issued by the bishop to several others of the Society; during his incumbency he had employed them in various missions of the diocese, he had invited them to preach in his cathedral; and, indeed, they had been using their faculties to confess and preach ever since 1572. It is true that some of their original privileges had been modified or curtailed, but in these two principal functions no radical change had been made. Might they not then have thought that, in view of what the bishop had already done both in civil and ecclesiastical matters, he was mentally deranged? The average man of the world would have arrived at that conclusion.

At all events, the faculties were not forthcoming within the twenty-four hours, and all the Jesuit priests of Puebla not only found themselves dishonored and disgraced by being held up to the people as excommunicated, but by this act of the bishop doubt was thrown upon the validity of all the absolutions they had given in the administration of the sacrament of Penance. Astrain tells us that Father Legaspi attempted to preach in the Jesuit church, and when forbidden to do so by a messenger from the bishop's palace, refused to obey, but apart from the fact that this would be in absolute contradiction with the traditional instincts and training of any Jesuit, Astrain himself relates in the following chapter that the Roman Congregation which examined the whole miserable quarrel decided that Legaspi's sermon was delivered before and not after the prohibition. Recourse was then had to a privilege accorded to the Spanish colonies of constituting a commission of judges to consider and decide the case. This also was subsequently condemned by the Roman Congregation and by Innocent X, but on the other hand, communication with Rome was difficult in those days, and the course entered upon was taken with the approval of the heads of other religious orders, of the viceroy and of the cabildo or mayor. It is true that efforts should have been made to placate the angry prelate, but the documents show that the most humble supplications had been made to him only to be repulsed with abuse.

It would have been futile to refer the case to the audiencia, for Palafox controlled it absolutely. Moreover, it was urged that the plea presented to the commission did not regard merely the wholesale suspension and excommunication, but other grievances as well. There were twenty-nine in all. The commission brought in a verdict against the bishop, but he refused to recognize the authority and even excommunicated the members of the court who, with what Father General Caraffa described as an "exorbitancia grande," had excommunicated the prelate. Then the whole city was in an uproar and Palafox rode through the throngs of the excited populace conjuring them to keep the peace, but at the same time preventing it by proceeding to the cathedral, and, amid the most lugubrious ceremonies and in full pontificals, excommunicating all his opponents. The Mexican Inquisition now intervened and enjoined silence on all parties. Salvatierra, the viceroy, also helped to quell the disturbance. Nevertheless, on June 6, Palafox issued another proclamation declaring that his enemies had been assembling arms in their houses, and were bent on getting control of the country. He again made a public appearance in the streets of Mexico, but two days afterwards he submitted the whole matter to the viceroy.

Salvatierra then implored him with the greatest respect and kindness to restore tranquillity and peace to the distracted colony, but on June 15, Palafox disappeared from the city; and no one knew whither he had gone. It was officially reported later on, that he had betaken himself first to the hacienda of Juan de Vergus, but after two days had disappeared again. For two months his whereabouts could not be ascertained, but in a letter to the Pope, he described himself as wandering for ten days in the forest and mountains without shelter or food, and exposed to death from serpents and wild beasts. He called himself another Athanasius. Finally he returned to the original hacienda and remained there until November. Before his departure, he had empowered the cabildo to have the diocese administered by three ecclesiastics whom he designated; but one of them was imprisoned by the viceroy, and the two others refused to serve. Whereupon, the cabildo called a meeting at the city hall. Alonzo Salazar de Baraona presided and the Jesuits were ordered to display their faculties, which they did; they were then declared rightful ministers of the sacraments.

During his retirement Palafox had received two letters from Spain, one deposing him from his office of visitor, and another announcing the transfer of Salvatierra to Peru. The first was the reverse of pleasant, but the second was a source of great satisfaction for, if we are to believe Salvatierra, Palafox had aspirations for the viceregal office. Possibly with that in view, he willingly assented to the conditions on which he was to be allowed to re-enter his diocese, namely to regard as binding all that had been done in his absence. It was fully nine months before Salvatierra left Mexico, and during all that time there was peace in Puebla; but hostilities were resumed immediately afterwards. Palafox refused to be bound by his contract with Salvatierra; he declared the acts of the commission to be null and void, reasserted the invalidity of the Jesuit faculties, and put three of his own canons in jail. In September, he received a brief from the Pope which he regarded as a justification of all that had been done. In the main, the document asserted the fundamental right of the bishop to examine the faculties of the priests and condemned the proceedings of the commission. Whereupon twelve of the Fathers submitted their faculties to the bishop. But that did not satisfy him. He insisted on the Jesuits appearing in public in a penitential garb, as at an auto-da-fé, and receiving from him a solemn absolution from their excommunication. He also made it a matter of confession for the faithful to have been absolved by Jesuits or to have listened to their sermons.

From this odious ruling an appeal was taken to the royal council; whereupon Palafox despatched three letters to the Pope. The first was about the parochial rights of the other religious orders; the second complaining of the silver mines, vast haciendas and wealth of the Jesuits, and the third consisting of fifty-eight pages of the most atrocious calumnies ever written by a Catholic, and asking finally that they should be made like other religious orders with choir, cloister, etc. Ten years later, the General of the Discalced Carmelites inquired of Palafox why he wrote these letters. "I did so," he says, "because I was incensed against the Jesuits for not treating me with proper respect, but I am surprised that I have lost their affection and was not aware of it till now." At last, wearied of it all, Philip IV ordered him to return to Spain immediately, but he obeyed in a very leisurely fashion. In Rome, the case dragged on for four more years and finally a verdict was rendered affirming among other things that the Fathers had been properly provided with faculties, and had ceased to preach and hear confessions when ordered to do so. The only censure they received was for having convoked the commission to judge the case in the absence of the bishop. The trouble had lasted for sixteen years, but it created a deep prejudice against the Society a century later.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ASIATIC CONTINENT

The Great Mogul – Rudolph Aquaviva – Jerome Xavier – de Nobili – de Britto – Beschi – The Pariahs – Entering Thibet – From Peking to Europe – Mingrelia, Paphlagonia and Chaldea – The Maronites – Alexander de Rhodes – Ricci enters China – From Agra to Peking – Adam Schall – Arrival of the Tatars – Persecutions – Schall condemned to Death – Verbiest – de Tournon's Visit – The French Royal Mathematicians – Avril's Journey.

At the very time that Queen Elizabeth was putting Jesuits to death in England, there was a remarkable pagan monarch reigning in what is now part of English India, who was inviting Jesuits to his court and making them his friends. His name was Akbar, and he is known in history as the Great Mogul. He was born in 1542, and ruled four years longer than the forceful Eliza. She was queen from 1558 to 1603; he was king from 1556 to 1605. Akbar appears first as the ruler of the Punjab and the country around Delhi and Agra; but in 1572 he drove the Afghans out of Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to Hindostan. Later, he annexed Cabul, Kashmir, Sind and Kandahar. He was a mighty warrior, but remarkable likewise as a civil ruler, the proof in this case being that he levied more money in taxes than England extracts at the present day from the same territory. He was very much interested in religious matters, and Christianity appealed to him, because one of his numerous wives had been a Christian; but he fancied that it was part of a general system which could be incorporated in a new cult which he had devised to conciliate the conflicting creeds of his realm. His own personal devotion was sun-worship, and he appeared every morning in public, devoutly offering up his orisons to the god of day. He fancied it was the world-soul that animates all things, a concrete form of one of the illusions of the present time.

At the invitation of Akbar, Rudolph Aquaviva, accompanied by Anthony Montserrat and Francisco Henriques, left Goa in 1579, to present himself at his court for the purpose of explaining to him the doctrines of the Christian Faith. He listened with pleasure and intelligence, but his interest was purely academic. As with other Oriental despots, nothing practical could be hoped for, on account of the harem. Seeing that it was lost time to remain there, Aquaviva returned to Goa, and was then sent down to the peninsula of Salsette, as superior of the mission established at that place. His stay there was not a long one, for on July 15, 1583, he and Alfonso Pacheco were attacked by the natives and cut to pieces. Fathers Pietro Berno, Antonio Francisco and Francisco Aranha, a lay-brother, together with twenty of their neophytes were included in the massacre.

Hearing of the tragedy, the Great Mogul despatched an embassy to the viceroy and to the superior of the Jesuits to express his sympathy, and also to urge that other missionaries might be sent to instruct his people. In compliance with the request, Jerónimo Xavier, a nephew of St. Francis Xavier, was sent there in 1595 and succeeded in winning the favor of Akbar. The "Encyclopedia Britannica" informs us that Jerónimo, at the suggestion of the monarch, translated the four Gospels into Persian. Ranke adds in his "History of the Popes" that "while the Jesuit was there the insurrections of the Mahometans contributed to dispose the emperor towards the Christians, for in the year 1599 Christmas was celebrated at Lahore with the utmost solemnity. The manger and the leading facts of the Nativity were represented for twenty days consecutively, and numerous catechumens proceeded to the Church with palms in their hands to receive baptism. The emperor read, with great pleasure, a 'Life of Christ' composed in Persian, and a picture of the Virgin, copied from the Madonna del Popolo in Rome, was by his orders taken to the palace that he might show it to the women of his household. It is true that the Christians drew more favourable conclusions from these things than the facts justified; still, great progress was really made. Indeed, after the death of Akbar, three princes of the blood royal were solemnly baptized. They rode to the church on white elephants, and were received with the sound of trumpets, kettle-drums and martial music. This took place in 1610, so that Christianity seemed gradually to acquire a position of a fixed character, although suffering from certain vicissitudes and the prevalence of fickleness in the matter of religious opinion. Political considerations, also, largely affected the public mind. In 1621 a college was founded in Agra, and a station established at Patna. In 1624 hopes were entertained that the Emperor Jehanguire would himself become a Christian."

Shortly after Jerónimo Xavier had settled down in the court of the Great Mogul, Father Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine, broke through the caste barrier in India in a way that, for a time, gave considerable scandal. He had gone to the mission of Madura, a territory somewhat in the interior towards the northeast of the Fisheries, and found there that Father Fernandes, a very pious and energetic missioner who had been living for fourteen years among his pagans, had never made a convert, as he could not get in touch with the influential people of the country. Two difficulties stood in the way: first, he was a Portuguese or a Prangui, and the Prangui were held in abhorrence, because they ate meat and drank wine; secondly, he mingled with the most degraded castes of India.

De Nobili determined to get rid of these obstacles. First, he insisted, that he was not a Prangui but a Roman nobleman in name and in fact; secondly, with regard to wine and meat, he would abstain from them and live on rice; thirdly, he would become a Brahmin, as far as their manner of life and dress was concerned, and, moreover, he would outdo them in the knowledge of their own language, literature and religion. Indeed, within a year, he was master of Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. He was now equipped for his work, and in 1606 he bade good-bye to Fernandes, and shut himself up in a hut which, for a long time, no one was allowed to enter. He wanted the news to spread among the natives that a great European Brahmin had made his appearance. Curiosity, he said, would do the rest, for his rigid seclusion would make them all the more intent on seeing him. The scheme succeeded, and when, at last, visitors were admitted to speak to him, they found him to be even holier in appearance than they had imagined him to be, and were amazed to hear him converse in Tamil, and show a perfect acquaintance with the literature of the language. He made it a point, also, to recite and even to sing the songs of their poets, for he was an able musician and had a good voice.

When his reputation was established he began to discuss some of the truths of fundamental theology, not as coming from himself, but which, as he showed them, were actually set down in their own Vedas. His knowledge of Sanskrit – perhaps he was the first European to venture into that field – had given him a more thorough knowledge of the sacred books than was possessed by any of the Brahmins themselves, and hence it happened that, before a year had passed, he had baptized several persons who were conspicuous both for their nobility and learning. He permitted his converts to continue to besmear their foreheads with sandal-wood paste, to cultivate the tuft of hair on the top of their heads, and to wear a string on the left shoulder. He did this after he had thoroughly convinced himself that there was no superstition in such practices. Meantime he was living on milk, rice, herbs and water, which were handed to him once a day by the servant of a Brahmin. It was a precaution to forestall any suspicion that other food was supplied surreptitiously.

In the second year, his flock was so numerous that the hut he lived in was insufficient to contain them all, and he had to build a church. That, of course, caused some alarm among the Brahmins, but it was nothing in comparison to the storm that de Nobili's life excited in Europe. Cardinal Bellarmine, his uncle, thought he had apostatized, and wrote him an indignant letter, and the General of the Society added to it a very severe reprehension. His brother Jesuit, Fernandes, had denounced him as a traitor, because of his rejection of the name "Prangui," or Portuguese, and also of his connivance at idolatry in allowing his neophytes to retain their heathenish customs. This was the origin of the famous question of the "Malabar Rites" which created such a stir in the Church, one hundred years later. These charges gave de Nobili a great deal of trouble for some time, but at last everything was satisfactorily explained, and the cardinal, the General and the Pope told the innovating missionary to continue as he had begun. Hence in order to obviate the apparent neglect and even contempt of the lower castes, other priests were assigned to that work, and de Nobili restricted himself to his peculiar vocation for forty-two years. He then lost his sight and was sent to Jafanapatam in Ceylon, and afterwards to Mylapore, where he died on January 16, 1656.

The mission had prospered. About the time de Nobili ended his labours, it had an average of 5000 converts a year, and it never dropped below 3000, even in the times of persecution. At the end of the seventeenth century its territory had extended beyond Madura to Mysore, Marava, Tanjore and Gingi, and the Christians of the entire Madura Mission, as it was called, amounted to 150,000 souls. Besides being a field for apostolic zeal, the mission also produced eminent scholars in Tamil and Sanskrit, like Beschi, Cœurdoux, and others. In 1700 it reached into the Carnatic and probably took in what Christians had been left there by the missionaries among the Moguls. This mission glories in its great martyr, John de Britto, who arrived there twelve years after the death of de Nobili. He, too, adopted the manners of a Saniassi, and labored as such for twenty-one years. It was a life of continual and horrible martyrdom. He was finally put to death as a magician, because of the multitudes of people attracted to the Faith by his holiness and teaching. Like his predecessor de Nobili, he did not worry his converts about their tufts of hair or the cotton cords on their shoulders, and it is noteworthy that long after his death, and just while the process of his beatification was going on, the theologians were hotly discussing the liceity of the Malabar Rites. If they were condemned, how would the decision affect de Britto's canonization? Pope Benedict XIV decided that it would not stand in the way, and so de Britto was placed among the Blessed.

The companions of de Nobili and de Britto went everywhere in Hindostan, they even reconciled to the Church the community of natives who called themselves the Christians of St. Thomas the Apostle, but who were in reality commonplace Nestorians. They built the first Church of Bengal, and penetrated into the kingdoms of Arracan, Pegu, Cambogia, and Siam, all the time busy avoiding the Dutch pirates who were prowling along the coast.

The most dazzling of these picturesque missionaries was undoubtedly the Italian, Constant Beschi, who arrived in Madura in 1700, one hundred years after de Nobili, and twenty-eight after de Britto. He determined to surpass all the other Saniassis or Brahmins in the austerity of his life. He remained in his house most of the time, and would never touch anything that had life in it. On his forehead was the pottu of Sandanam, and on his head the coulla, a sort of cylindrical head dress made of velvet. He was girt with the somen, was shod with the ceremonious wooden footgear, and pearls hung from his ears. He never went out except in a palanquin, in which tiger skins had to be placed for him to sit on, while a servant stood on either side, fanning him with peacock feathers, and a third held above his head a silken parasol surmounted by a globe of gold. He was called "the Great Viramamvuni", and like Bonaparte, he sat "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality." Not even a Jesuit could come near him or speak to him. A word of Italian never crossed his lips, but he plunged into Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil, studied the poets of Hindostan, and wrote poems that conveyed to the Hindoos a knowledge of Christianity. For forty years he was publicly honored as the Ismat Saniassi, that is, the penitent without stain. The Nabob of Trichinopoli was so enthusiastic about him that Beschi had to accept the post of prime minister, and thenceforth he never went abroad unless accompanied by thirty horsemen, twelve banner-bearers, and a band of military music, while a long train of camels followed in the rear. If, on his way, any Jesuit who was looking after the Pariahs came across his path, there was no recognition on either side, but both must have been amused as the Jesuit in rags prostrated himself in the dust before the silk-robed Jesuit in the cavalcade, the outcast not daring even to look at the great official, though, perhaps, they were intimate friends.