The Jesuits, 1534-1921

Another ex-Jesuit named Jarrige perpetrated the libel known as "The Jesuits on the Scaffold, for their Crimes in the Province of Guyenne." He, too, like Zahorowski, when he came to his senses, repented and tried ineffectually to make amends. The "Teatro jesuítico" was also a source from which the assailants of the Society drew their ammunition. It was condemned by the Inquisition on January 28, 1655, and the Archbishop of Seville burned it publicly. Arnauld borrowed from it most of his material for the "Morale pratique des Jésuites," and to give it importance, he ascribed its authorship to the Bishop of Malaga, Ildephonse of St. Thomas. Whereupon the bishop Wrote to the Pope complaining that "an infamous libel, unworthy of the light of day, and composed in the midst of the darkness of hell and bearing the title: 'Morale pratique des Jésuites' has fallen into my hands, and I am said to be the author of it, – a feat which would have been impossible, for it was published in 1654, when I was yet a student, and in ill-health." Although this solemn denial was published all through Europe, Pascal and his friends continued to impute it to the bishop, according to Crétineau-Joly; but Brou says that the mistake or the deceit was admitted. The book, however, was not withdrawn, and continued to do its evil work.

It was the Gunpowder Plot that inflicted on the English language a great number of absurdities about Jesuits. King James I of England led the way by writing a book with the curious title: "Conjuratio sulphurea, quibus ea rationibus et authoribus cœperit, maturuerit, apparuerit; una cum reorum examine," that is "The sulphureous or hellish conjuration, for what reasons and by what authors it was begun, matured and brought to light; together with the examination of the culprits." He also published a "Defence of the Oath of Allegiance" which he had exacted of Catholics. This elucubration was called: "Triplici nodo triplex cuneus," which probably means "A triple pry for the triple knot." In it he charges the Pope with sending aid to the conspirators "his henchmen the Jesuits who confessed that they were its authors and designers. Their leader died confessing the crime, and his accomplices admitted their guilt by taking flight."

Such a charge formulated by a king against the Sovereign Pontiff aroused all Europe, and Bellarmine under the name of "Matthæus Tortus" descended into the arena. Dr. Andrews replied with clumsy humor by another book entitled, "Tortura Torti;" that is "The Tortures of Tortus," for which he was made a bishop. Then Bellarmine retorted in turn and revealed the fact that his majesty had written a personal letter to two cardinals, himself and Aldobrandini, asking them to forward a request to the Pope to have a certain Scotchman, who was Bishop of Vaison in France, made a cardinal, "so as to expedite the transaction of business with the Holy See." The letter was signed: "Beatitudinis vestræ obsequentissimus filius J. R." (Your Holiness' most obsequious son, James the King.) This sent James to cover and now quite out of humor with himself, because of the storm aroused in England by the disclosure of his duplicity, he handed over new victims to the pursuivants, "so that," as he said, "his subjects might make profit of them," that is by the confiscation of estates. He then got one of his secretaries to take upon himself the odium of the letter to Bellarmine, by saying that he had signed the king's name to it. Every one, of course, saw through the falsehood.

A most unexpected and interesting defender of Father Garnet, who had been put to death by James, appeared at this juncture. He was no less a personage than Antoine Arnauld, the famous Jansenist, who was at that very moment tearing Garnet's brethren to pieces in France. "No Catholic," he said, "no matter how antagonistic he might be to Jesuits in general, would ever accuse Garnet of such a crime, and no Protestant would do so unless blinded by religious hate" (Crétineau-Joly, III, 98). James I and Bellarmine came into collision again on another point not, however, in such a personal fashion.

A Scotch lawyer named Barclay had written a book on the authority of kings, in which he claimed that their power had no limitations whatever; at least, he went to the very limit of absolutism. Strange to say, Barclay, who was a Catholic, had Jesuit affiliations. He was professor of law in the Jesuit college of Pont-à-Mousson, in France, where his uncle, Father Hay, was rector. For some reason or another he went over to England shortly after the accession of James I, whom he greatly admired, possibly because he was a Scot. There is no other reason visible to the naked eye. He was received with extraordinary honor at court and offered very lucrative offices if he would declare himself an Anglican. He spurned the bribe and returned to France where he resumed his office of teaching. Cardinal Bellarmine then appeared, refuting Barclay's ideas of kingship. The peculiarity of Bellarmine's work was that it had nothing new in it. It was merely a collation of old authorities, chiefly French jurists who cut down the royal power considerably. This threw the Paris parliament into a frenzy, for they had all along been persuading their fellow countrymen that the autocracy they claimed for their monarchs was the immemorial tradition of France. To hide their confusion, they ascribed to the illustrious cardinal all sorts of doctrines, such as regicide and the right of seizure of private property by the Pope, and they demanded not only the condemnation but the public burning of the book.

The matter now assumed an international importance. Bellarmine was a conspicuous figure in the Church, and his work had been approved by the Pope, whose intimate friend he was. To condemn him meant to condemn the Sovereign Pontiff, and would thus necessarily be a declaration of a schism from Rome. Probably that is what these premature Gallicans were aiming at. Ubaldini, the papal nuncio, immediately warned the queen regent, Mary de'Medici, that if such an outrage were committed, he would hand in his papers and leave Paris. Parliament fought fiercely to have its way, and the battle raged with fury for a long time until, finally, Mary saw the peril of the situation and quashed the parliamentary decree which had already been printed and was being circulated.

In the midst of it all, the theory of Suárez on the "Origin of Power" came into the hands of the parliamentarians, and that added fuel to the flame; Ubaldini wrote to Rome on June 17, 1614, that "the lawyer Servin, who was like a demon in his hatred of Rome, made a motion in parliament, first, that the work of Suárez should be burned before the door of the three Jesuit houses in Paris, in presence of two fathers of each house; secondly, that an official condemnation of it should be entered on the records; thirdly, that the provincial, the superior of the Paris residence and four other fathers should be cited before the parliament and made to anathematize the doctrine of Suárez, and fourthly, if they refused, that all the members of the Society should be expelled from France." The measure was not passed.

The book which did most harm to the Society in the public mind was the "Lettres provinciales" by Pascal, though the "Lettres" were not intended primarily or exclusively as an attack on the Jesuits. Their purpose was to make the people forget or condone the dishonesty of the Jansenists in denying that the five propositions, censured by the Holy See, were really contained in the "Augustinus" of Jansenius. At the suggestion of Arnauld, Pascal undertook to show that other supposedly orthodox writers, including the Jesuits, had advanced doctrines which merited but had escaped censure. The letters appeared serially and were entitled: "Les Provinciales, ou Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un Provincial de ses amis, et aux RR. PP. Jésuites, sur la morale et la politique de ces Pères." They took the world by storm, first because they revealed a literary genius of the first order in the youthful Pascal, who until then had been engrossed in the study of mathematics, and who was also, at the time of writing, in a shattered state of health. Secondly, because they blasted the reputation of a great religious order, and reproduced in exquisite language the atrocious calumnies that had been poured out on the world by the "Monita secreta," the "Historia jesuitici ordinis," Pasquier's "Catechism" and the rest. The doctrinal portion of the letters was evidently not Pascal's; that was supplied to him by Arnauld and Quinet, for Pascal had neither the time nor the training necessary even to read the deep theological treatises which he quotes and professes to have read.

To be accused of teaching lax morality by those who were intimately associated with and supported by such an indescribable prelate as the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Gondi, was particularly galling to the French Jesuits, and unfortunately it had the effect of provoking them to answer the charges. "In doing so," says Crétineau-Joly, "the Jesuits killed themselves;" and Brou, in "Les Jésuites et la légende," is of the opinion that "more harm was done to the Society by these injudicious and incompetent defenders than by Pascal himself. It would have been better to have said nothing." On the other hand, Petit de Julleville, in his "Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française," tells us that one of these Jesuit champions induced Pascal to discontinue his attacks, just at the moment that the world was rubbing its hands with glee and expecting the fiercest kind of an onslaught. "I wish," said Morel, addressing himself to Pascal, "that after a sincere reconciliation with the Jesuits, you would turn your pen against the heretics, the unbelievers, the libertines, and the corruptors of morals." The fact is that although Pascal did not seek a reconciliation with the Jesuits, he suddenly and unaccountably stopped writing against them; and in 1657 he actually turned his pen against the libertines of France, as he had been asked (IV, 604). Mère Angélique, Arnauld's sister, is also credited with having had something to do with this cessation of hostilities, when she wrote: "Silence would be better and more agreeable to God who would be more quickly appeased by tears and by penance than by eloquence which amuses more people than it converts."

Perhaps the entrance of the great Bourdaloue on the scene contributed something to this change of attitude on the part of the Jansenist. As court preacher, he had it in his power to refute the calumnies of Arnauld and Pascal, and he availed himself of the opportunity with marvellous power and effect. In the "Causeries du Lundi" Sainte-Beuve, who favored the Jansenists, writes: "In saying that the Jesuits made no direct and categorical denial to the Provinciales, until forty years later, when Daniel took up his pen, we forget that long and continual refutation by Bourdaloue in his public sermons in which there is nothing lacking except the proper names; but his hearers and his contemporaries in general, who were familiar with the controversies and were partisans of either side, easily supplied these. Thus in his Sermon on 'Lying' he paints that vice with most exquisite skill, adding touch after touch, till it stands out in all its hideousness. As he speaks, you see it before you with its subtle sinuosities from the moment it begins the attack, under the pretence of an amicable censorship, up to the moment when the complete calumny is reiterated under the guise of friendship and religion." The following extract is an example of this method.

"One of the abuses of the age," says Bourdaloue, "is the consecration of falsehood and its transformation into virtue; yea, even into one of the greatest of virtues: zeal for the glory of God. 'We must humiliate those people;' they say, 'it will be helpful to the Church to blast their reputation and diminish their credit.' On this principle they form their conscience, and there is nothing they will not allow themselves when actuated by such a charming motive. So, they exaggerate; they poison; they distort; they relate things by halves; they utter a thousand untruths; they confound the general with the particular; what one has said badly, they ascribe to all; and what all have said well they attribute to none. And they do all this – for the glory of God. This forming of their intention justifies everything; and though it would not suffice to excuse an equivocation, it is more than sufficient in their eyes to justify a calumny when they are persuaded that it is all for the service of God."

"If Bourdaloue," continues Sainte-Beuve, "while detailing, in this exquisite fashion, the vice of lying, had not before his mind Pascal and his Provinciales, and if he was not painting, feature by feature, certain personalities whom his hearers recognized; and if while he was doing it, they were not shocked, even though they could not help admiring the artist, then there are no portraits in Saint-Simon and La Bruyère… It would not be hard to prove that the preaching of Bourdaloue for thirty years was a long and powerful refutation of the Provinciales, an eloquent and daily drive at Pascal."

It must have been an immense consolation for the Jesuits of those days, wounded as they were to the quick by the misrepresentation and calumnies of writers like Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole and others, to have the saintly Bourdaloue, the ideal Jesuit, occupying the first place in the public eye, thus defending them. Bourdaloue had entered the Society at fifteen, and hence was absolutely its product. He was a man of prayer and study, and when not in the pulpit he was in the confessional or at the bedside of the sick and dying poor. He was naturally quick and impulsive, but he had been trained to absolute self-control; he was even gay and merry in conversation, and his eyes sparkled with pleasure as he spoke. The story that he closed them while preaching is, of course, nonsense, and the picture that represents him thus was taken from a death masque. He labored uninterruptedly till he was seventy-two and died on May 13, 1704. Very fittingly his last Mass was on Pentecost Sunday.

An excellent modern discussion of the Letters appeared in the Irish quarterly "Studies" of September, 1920. The writer, the noted author Hilaire Belloc, reminds his readers of certain important facts. First, casuistry is not chicanery nor is it restricted to ecclesiastics; it is employed by lawyers, physicians, scientific, and even business men, in considering conditions which are without a precedent and have not yet reached the ultimate tribunal which is to settle the matter. Secondly, as in the discussion of ecclesiastical "cases," the terms employed are technical, just as are those of law, medicine, science; and as the language is Latin, no one is competent to interpret the verdict arrived at, unless he is conversant both with theology and the Latin language. "I doubt," he says, "if there is any man living in England to-day – of all those glibly quoting the name of Pascal against the Church – who could tell you what the Mohatra Contract was" – one of the subjects dragged into these "Lettres." Thirdly, the "Lettres" are not so much an assault on the Society of Jesus, as on the whole system of moral theology of the Catholic Church. There are eighteen letters in all, and it is not until the fifth that the Jesuits are assailed. The attack is kept up until the tenth and then dropped. From the thousands of decisions advanced by a vast number of professors 'regular and secular' Pascal brings forward only those of the Jesuits; and of the many thousands of "cases" discussed he selects only one hundred and thirty-two, which, if the repetitions be eliminated, must be reduced to eighty-nine.

Of these eighty-nine cases three are clearly misquotations – for Pascal was badly briefed. Many others are put so as to suggest what the casuist never said, that is a special case is made a general rule of morals. Many more are frivolous, and others are purely domestic controversy upon points of Catholic practice which cannot concern the opponents of the Jesuits, and in which they cannot pretend an active interest on Pascal's or the Society's side. When the whole list has been gone through there remain fourteen cases of importance. In eight of these, relating to duelling and the risk of homicide, the opinions of some casuists were subsequently, at one time or another, condemned by the Church (seven of the decisions had declared the liceity of duelling under very exceptional circumstances, when no other means were available to protect one's honor or fortune). Pascal was right in condemning the opinions, but was quite wrong in presenting them as normal decisions, given under ordinary circumstances by Jesuits generally. Three of the remaining six decisions have never been censured; but Pascal by his tricky method of presenting them out of their context has caused the solutions to be confused with certain condemned propositions.

A just analysis leaves of the one hundred and thirty-two decisions exactly three – one on simony, one on the action of a judge in receiving presents, and the third on usury – all three of which are doubtful and matters for discussion. There is besides these, the doctrine of equivocation, which is a favorite shaft against the Society. Of this Belloc says: "This specifically condemned form of equivocation (that is, equivocation involving a private reservation of meaning), moreover, was not particularly Jesuit. It had been debated at length, and favorably, long before the Jesuit Order came into existence, and within the great casuist authorities of that Order there were wide differences of opinion upon it. Azor, for instance, condemns instances which Sánchez allows. Of all this conflict Pascal allows you to hear nothing." Finally, it may be noted that the "Provincial Letters" were not a plea for truth, but a device to distract the public mind from the chicanery of the Jansenists, who, when the famous "five propositions" were condemned, pretended that they were not in the "Augustinus" written by Jansenius.

Perhaps the commonest libel formulated against the Society is the accusation that it is the teacher, if not the author, of the immoral maxim: "the end justifies the means", which signifies that an action, bad in itself, becomes good if performed for a good purpose. If the Society ever taught this doctrine, at least it cannot be charged with having the monopoly of it. Thus, for instance, the great Protestant empire which is the legitimate progeny of Martin Luther's teaching, proclaimed to the world that the diabolical "frightfulness" which it employed in the late war was prompted solely by its desire for peace. On the other side of the Channel, an Anglican prelate informed his contemporaries that "the British Empire could not be carried on for a week, on the principles of the 'Sermon on the Mount'" (The Month, Vol. 106, p. 255). The same might be predicated of numberless other powers and principalities past and present. The ruthless measures resorted to in business and politics for the suppression of rivalry are a matter of common knowledge. Finally, every unbiased mind will concede that the persistent use of poisonous gas by the foes of the Society is nothing else than a carrying out of the maxim of "the end justifies the means."

It has been proved times innumerable that this odious doctrine was never taught by the Society, and the average Jesuit regards each recrudescence of the charge as an insufferable annoyance, and usually takes no notice of it; but, in our own times, the bogey has presented itself in such an unusual guise, that the event has to be set down as one more item of domestic history. It obtruded itself on the public in Germany in 1903, when a secular priest, Canon Dasbach, an ardent friend of the Society, offered a prize of 2000 florins to any one who would find a defense of the doctrine in any Jesuit publication. The challenge was accepted by Count von Hoensbroech, who after failing in his controversy with the canon, availed himself of a side issue to bring the question before the civil courts of Trèves and Cologne.

Apparently von Hoensbroech was well qualified for his task. He was an ex-Jesuit and had lived for years in closest intimacy with some of the most distinguished moralists and theologians of the Order: Lehmkuhl, Cathrein, Pesch and others, in the house of studies, at Exaeten in Holland; so that the world rubbed its hands in glee, and waited for revelations. He was, however, seriously hampered by some of his own earlier utterances. Thus, when he left the Society in 1893, he wrote in "Mein Austritt aus dem Jesuitenorden," as follows: "The moral teachings, under which members of the Society are trained, are beyond reproach, and the charges so constantly brought against Jesuit moralists are devoid of any foundation." Over and above this, he was somewhat disqualified as a witness, inasmuch as he not only had left the Society but had apostatized from the Faith, and, though a priest, had married a wife; he was, moreover, notorious as a rancorous Lutheran (Civiltà Cattolica, an. 56, p. 8.) But the lure of the florins led him on, only to have the case thrown out by one court, as beyond its jurisdiction, and decided against him in the other; the verdict was also heartily endorsed by conspicuous Protestants and Freethinkers. Hoensbroech is dead, but the spectre of "the end justifying the means" still stalks the earth, and may be heard from at any moment.

Pascal's "Provincial Letters" were not the only source of worry for the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many other calumnious publications appeared, such as "La morale des jésuites," "Disquisitions," "Nullités" etc., all of which had the single purpose of poisoning the public mind. The battle continued until an enforced peace was obtained by a joint order of the Pope and king prohibiting any further issues of that character from the press. That, however, did not check the determination of the Jansenists to crush the Society in other ways. Thus, as early as 1650, the Archbishop of Sens, who was strongly Jansenistic, forbade the Jesuits to hear confessions in his diocese at Easter-time, and three years later, he declared from the pulpit that the theology of the Jesuits was taken from the Koran rather than from the Gospels, and that their philosophy was more pagan than Christian. He called for their expulsion as schismatics, heretics and worse, and declared that all confessions made to them were invalid and sacrilegious. Finally, he proceeded to excommunicate them with bell, book and candle. They withdrew from his diocese but were brought back by the next bishop a quarter of a century later.

Another enemy of the Society was Cardinal Le Camus of Grenoble, who forbade them to teach or preach; and when Saint-Just, who had been fifteen years rector of the college, complained of it to some friends, he was suspended and accused of a grievous crime of which he was absolutely innocent. When he brought the matter to court, Father General Oliva censured him for doing so and removed him from office. Santarelli, an Italian Jesuit, launched a book on the public which produced a great excitement. He proposed to prove that the Pope had the power of deposing kings who were guilty of certain crimes, and of absolving subjects from their allegiance. In Paris it was interpreted as advocating regicide, and was immediately ascribed to the whole Society; and it was condemned by the Sorbonne. Richelieu was especially wrought up about it. Poor Father Coton, the king's confessor, who was grievously ill at the time, almost collapsed at the news of its publication. The author had not perceived that the politics of the world were no longer those of the Middle Ages.

The "Manual of Cases of Conscience" of Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, the Spanish theologian, furnished infinite material for the Jansenists of France to blacken the name of the Society. Necessarily, every enormity that human nature can be guilty of is discussed in such treatises, but it would be just as absurd to charge their authors with writing them for the purpose of inculcating vice, as it would be to accuse medical practitioners of propagating disease by their clinics and dissecting rooms. The purpose of both is to heal and prevent, not to communicate disease, whether it be of the soul or body. In both cases, the books that treat of such matters are absolutely restricted to the use of the profession, and as an additional precaution, in the matter of moral theology, the treatises are written in Latin, so that they cannot be understood by people who have nothing to do with such disagreeable and sometimes disgusting topics. To accuse the men who condemned themselves to the study of such subjects solely that they might lift depraved humanity out of the depths into which it descends, is an outrage.