The Jesuits, 1534-1921

Far from being in control of the schools of France, the whole history of the French Jesuits is that of one uninterrupted struggle to get schools at all. Against them, from the very beginning, were the University of Paris and the various parliaments of France, which represented the highest culture of the nation and bitterly resented the intrusion of the Society into the domain of education.

Not only is this true of the period that preceded but also of the one that followed the French Revolution. It was only in 1850, namely seventy-seven years after the Suppression of the Society, that the Jesuits, in virtue of the Loi Falloux, were permitted to open a single school in France. The wonder is that the incessant confiscations and suppressions which followed would permit of any educational success whatever. Nevertheless, in the short respites that were allowed them they filled the army and navy with officers who were not only conspicuous in their profession but, at the same time, thoroughgoing Catholics. Marshal Foch is one of their triumphs. Indeed it was the superiority of their education that provoked the latest suppression of the Jesuit schools in France.

It is this government monopoly of education in all the Continental countries that constitutes the present difficulty both for the Society of Jesus and for all the other teaching orders. Thus after 1872, the German province had not a single college in the whole extent of the German Empire. It could only attempt to do something beyond the frontiers. It has one in Austria, a second in Holland, and a third in Denmark. Austria has only one to its credit; Hungary one and Bohemia another. The province of Rome has one; Sicily two, one of which is in Malta, and Malta is English territory; Naples had three and Turin four, but some of these have already disappeared. All the splendid colleges of France were closed by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1890. Spain has five excellent establishments, but they have no guarantee of permanency. Belgium has thirteen colleges, packed with students, but the terrible World War has at least for a time depleted them. Holland has three colleges of its own. England four, and Ireland three.

The expulsions, however, have their compensations. Thus when the Jesuits were expelled from Germany by Bismarck, the English government welcomed them to India, and the splendid college of Bombay was the result. Italy also benefited by the disaster. Not to mention other distinguished men, Father Ehrle became Vatican librarian, and Father Wernz, rector of the Gregorian University and subsequently General of the Society. In South America, the exiles did excellent work in Argentina and Ecuador. The Jesuits of New York gave them an entrance into Buffalo, and from that starting-point they established a chain of colleges in the West, and later, when conditions called for it, they were assimilated to the provinces of Maryland, New York and Missouri, thus greatly increasing the efficiency of those sections of the Society.

When driven out of their country, the Portuguese Jesuits betook themselves to Brazil, where their help was greatly needed; the Italians went to New Mexico and California; and the French missions of China and Syria benefited by the anti-clericalism of the home government; for Zikawei became an important scientific world-centre and Beirut obtained a university. The latter was, until the war broke out, a great seat of Oriental studies.

The most imposing institutions in Beirut, a city with a population of over 150,000, made up of Mussulmans, Greeks, Latins, Americans and Jews, are those of the Jesuits. They maintain and direct outside of Beirut 192 schools for boys and girls with 294 teachers and 12,000 pupils. There is, in the city, a university with a faculty of medicine (120 students) founded in 1881 with the help of the French government; its examinations are conducted before French and Ottoman physicians and its diplomas are recognized by both France and Turkey. The university has also a seminary (60 students) for all the native Rites. Up to 1902 it had sent out 228 students including three patriarchs, fifteen bishops, one hundred and fifteen priests and eighty-three friars. Its faculty of philosophy and theology grants the same degrees as the Gregorian University in Rome. Its faculty of Oriental languages and sciences, founded in 1902, teaches literary and conversational Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic; the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages; the history and geography of the Orient; Oriental archæology; Græco-Roman epigraphy and antiquities. Its classical college has 400 pupils and its three primaries 600. A printing-house, inaugurated in 1853, is now considered to be the foremost for its output in that part of the world. Since 1871 it has published a weekly Arabic paper, and since 1898 a fortnightly review in the same language, the editors of which took rank at once among the best Orientalists. Besides continually adding to their collection of philological papers, they contribute to many scientific European reviews. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, II, 393.)

There are Jesuit colleges, also, throughout India, such as the great institutions of Bombay and Calcutta with their subsidiary colleges, and further down the Peninsula are Trichinopoly, all winning distinction by their successful courses of study. Indeed the first effort the Society makes in establishing itself in any part of the world, where conditions allow it, is to organize a college. If they would relinquish that one work they would be left in peace.

An interesting personage appears in connection with the University of Beirut: William Gifford Palgrave. It is true that one period of his amazing career humiliated his former associates, but as it is a matter of history it must needs be told.

He was the son of an eminent English Protestant lawyer, Sir Francis Palgrave, and had Jewish blood in his veins. He was born in 1826, and after a brilliant course of studies at Oxford began his romantic career as a traveller. He went first to India and was an officer of Sepoys in the British army. While there, he became a Catholic, and afterwards presented himself at the novitiate of Negapatam as an applicant for admission. Unfortunately his request was granted, and forthwith he changed his name to Michael Cohen, as he said to conceal his identity. This was a most amazing mask; for Palgrave would have escaped notice, whereas everyone would immediately ask, who is this Jesuit Jew? How he was admitted is a mystery, especially as he proclaimed his race so openly.

After his novitiate he was sent to Rome to begin his theology – another mystery. Why was he not compelled to study philosophy first like everyone else? Then he insisted that Rome did not agree with his health, and he was transferred to Beirut to which he betook himself, not in the ordinary steamer, but in a sailing vessel filled with Mussulmans. On the way, he picked up Arabic. Inside of a year, namely in 1854, he was made a priest and given charge of the men's sodality which he charmed by his facility in the use of the native tongue; in the meantime he made many adventurous journeys to the interior to convert the natives, but failed every time. In 1860 he was sent to France for his third year of probation under the famous Father Fouillot, whom he fascinated by his scheme of entering Arabia Petrea as its apostle. He succeeded in getting Louis Napoleon to give him 10,000 francs on the plea that he would thus carry out the scheme of the Chevalier Lascaris whom Napoleon Bonaparte had sent to the East.

At Rome, he found the Father General quite cold to the proposition, and when he had the audacity to ask Propaganda for permission to say Mass in Arabic, he was told: "Convert your Arabs first and then we shall see about the Mass." The brother who was to go with him fell ill, and the General then insisted that he should not attempt the journey without a priest as companion; whereupon Palgrave persuaded the Greek Bishop of Zahlé to ordain one of the lay professors of the college, after a few days' instruction in moral theology. Fortunately this improvised priest turned out well, and he became His Beatitude Mgr. Geraigri, patriarch of the Greek Melchites.

In 1862 the travellers set out by way of Gaza in Palestine, Palgrave as a physician, the other as his assistant. They covered the entire Arabian peninsula and were back again in Beirut at the end of fourteen months. Palgrave had made no converts, and was himself a changed man. Even his sodalists remarked it. What had happened no one ever knew. In 1864 he was sent to Maria-Laach in Germany, where the saintly Father Behrens wrestled with him in vain for a while, but he left the Society and passed over to Protestantism, securing meanwhile an appointment as Prussian consul at Mossul. In the following year he published an account of his travels and the book was a European sensation. In it he made no secret of his having been a member of the Society, which he says was "so celebrated in the annals of courageous and devoted philanthropy. The many years I spent in the East were the happiest of my life." In 1884 he was British consul at Montevideo and remained there till 1888 when he died.

For twenty years he seemed never to have been ashamed of his apostasy, but three or four years before his death the grace of God found him. The change was noticed on his return from a trip to England. He had become a Catholic again. He went to Mass and received Holy Communion. Although a government official, he refused to go to the Protestant Church even for the queen's jubilee, in spite of the excitement caused by his absence. He died of leprosy. A Jesuit attended him in his last sickness, and he was buried with all the rites of the Church. These details are taken from a recent publication by Father Jullien, S. J., entitled "Nouvelle mission de la Compagnie de Jésus en Syrie" (II, iii.)

The great difficulty that confronts educators of youth in our times, is state control. In the United States it has not yet gone to extremes, but every now and then one can detect tendencies in that direction. Meantime the Society has developed satisfactorily along educational lines. According to the report of October 10, 1916 (Woodstock Letters, V 45), there were 16,438 students in its American colleges and universities. Of these 13,301 were day scholars and 3,137 boarders. There were 3,943 in the college departments, 10,502 in the high schools and 1,416 in the preparatory. Besides all this, there were commercial and special sections numbering 737. The total increase over the preceding year was 523.

The Maryland-New York provinces had 1,848 students of law, 341 of medicine, 127 of dentistry, 122 of pharmacy. Missouri had 786 students of law, 643 of medicine, 776 of dentistry, 245 of pharmacy, 126 of engineering, 530 of finance, 240 of sociology, 425 of music, 43 of journalism, and 61 in the nurse's training school. New Orleans had a law school of 81 and California one of 232 students.

It is sometimes urged as an objection to Catholic colleges that they give only a Classical education, and are thus not keeping pace with the world outside. To show that the objection has no foundation in fact, it would be sufficient to enter any Jesuit college which is at all on its feet, and see the extensive and fully equipped chemical and physical laboratories, the seismic plants and in some cases the valuable museums of natural history which they possess. If it were otherwise, they would be false to all their traditions; for the Society has always been conspicuous for its achievements in the natural sciences. It has produced not only great mathematicians and astronomers, but explorers, cosmographers, ethnologists, and archæologists. Thus, for instance, there would have been absolutely no knowledge of the aborigines of North America, their customs, their manner of life, their food, their dress, their superstitions, their dances, their games, their language had it not been for the minute details sent by the missionaries of the old and new Society to their superiors. In every country where they have been, they have charted the territories over which they journeyed or in which they have labored, described their natural features, catalogued their fauna and flora, enriched the pharmacopeia of the world with drugs, foodstuffs and plants, and have located the salts and minerals and mines.

That this is not idle boasting may be seen at a glance in Sommervogel's "Bibliothèque des écrivains." Thus the names of publications on mathematics fill twenty-eight columns of the huge folio pages. Then follow other long lists on hydrostatics and hydraulics, navigation, military science; surveying; hydrography and gnomics; physics, chemistry and seismology call for thirty columns; medical sciences; zoology, botany, geology, mineralogy, paleontology, rural economy and agriculture require eight. Then there are two columns on the black art. The fine arts including painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, music, equitation, printing and mnemonics take from column 927 to 940.

According to this catalogue, the new Society has already on its lists one hundred and sixty-four writers on subjects pertaining to the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, mineralogy, zoology, botany, paleontology, geography, meteorology, astronomy, etc. The names of living writers are not recorded. Nor does this number include the writers who published their works during the Suppression, as de Mailla, who in 1785 issued in thirteen volumes a history of China with plans and maps, the outcome of an official survey of the country – a work entrusted by the emperor to the Jesuits. Father de Mailla was made a mandarin for his share of the work.

The extraordinary work on the zoology of China by the French Jesuit, Pierre Heude, might be adduced as an illustration of similar work in later times. He began his studies in boyhood as a botanist, but abandoned that branch of science when he went to the East. While laboring as a missionary there for thirty years he devoted every moment of his spare time to zoology.

He first travelled along all the rivers of Middle and Eastern China to classify the fresh-water molluscs of those regions. On this subject alone he published ten illustrated volumes between 1876 and 1885. His treatise "Les Mollusques terrestres de la vallée du Fleuve Bleu" is today the authority on that subject. He then directed his attention particularly to the systematic and geographical propagation of Eastern Asiatic species of mammals, as well as to a comparative morphology of classes and family groups, according to tooth and skeleton formations. His fitness for the work was furthered by his extremely keen eye, his accurate memory, and the enormous wealth of material which he had accumulated, partly in the course of his early travels and partly in later expeditions, which carried him in all directions. These expeditions covered chiefly the eight years from 1892 to 1900. They took him to the Philippines which he visited three times; to Singapore, Batavia, the Celebes, the Moluccas, New Guinea, Japan, Vladivostock, Cochin-China, Cambodia, Siam, and Tongking. He carried on his work with absolute independence of method. He contented himself with the facts before him and sought little assistance from authorities; nor did he fear to deduce theoretical conclusions from his own observations which flatly contradicted other authorities. He continued his scientific work until shortly before his death which occurred at Zikawei on January 3, 1902. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, VII, 308.)

Albers in his "Liber Sæcularis" maintains that "in the cultivation of the natural sciences, the restored Society won greater fame than the old," and that "a glance at the men whom the Italian provinces alone have produced would be sufficient to convince the doubter." Angelo Secchi, of course, stands out most prominently, and a little later Father Barello, who with the Barnabite Denza established the Meteorological Observatory of Malta. Giambattista Pianciani was regarded with the greatest veneration in Rome because of his vast erudition as a scientist, as were Caraffa, Mancini and Foligni for their knowledge of mathematics. Marchi was the man who trained the illustrious de Rossi, as an archæologist, and also the Jesuit Raffaele Garrucci whose "Monumenta delle arte cristiane primitive nella metropoli del Cristianesimo" laid the foundations of the new study of archæology. The writings of Father Gondi and Francis Tongiorgi have also contributed much to advancement in those fields of knowledge.

Faustino Arévalo was one of the exiles from Spain at the time of the Suppression. He was born at Campanario in Estremadura in 1747, and entered the Society in 1761. Six years afterwards he was deported to Italy by Charles III. In Rome he won the esteem and confidence of Cardinal Lorenzano, who proved to be his Mæcenas by bearing the expense of Arévalo's learned publications. He was held in high honor in Rome, and was appointed to various offices of trust, among them that of pontifical hymnographer and theologian of the penitenziaria, thus succeeding the illustrious Muzzarelli. When the Society was restored, he returned to Spain and was made provincial of Castile. One of his works was the "Hymnodia hispanica," a restoration of ancient Spanish hymns to their original metrical, musical and grammatical perfection. This publication was much esteemed by Cardinal Mai and Dom Guéranger. It was accompanied by a curious dissertation on the Breviary of Cardinal Quignonez. He also edited the poems of Prudentius and Dracontius and those of a fifth century Christian of Roman Africa. Besides this, he has to his credit four volumes of Jouvancy's "Gospel History," the works of Sedulius and St. Isidore and a Gothic Missal. He stands in the forefront of Spanish patristic scholars, and has shed great lustre on the Church of Spain by his vast learning, fine literary taste and patriotic devotion to the Christian writers of his fatherland.

The founder of the science of archæology, according to Hurter, was Stefano Antonio Morcelli. He was a member of the old Society and re-entered it when it was restored. Even before the Suppression, which occurred twenty years after his entrance, he had established an archæological section in the Kircher Museum of Rome. When he found himself homeless, in consequence of the publication of the Brief of Clement XIV, he was made the librarian of Cardinal Albani. He refused the Archbishopric of Ragusa and continued his literary labors in Rome. His first publication was "The Style of Inscriptions." In the town of Chiari, his birthplace, to which he afterwards withdrew, he founded an institution for the education of girls, reformed the entire school system, devoted his splendid library to public use, and restored many buildings and churches. Meantime his reputation as master of epigraphic style increased and he was placed in a class of his own above all competitors. Besides his many works on his special subject, he gave to the world five volumes of sermons and ascetic treatises. When the Society was re-established he again took his place in its ranks, and died in Brescia in 1822 at the age of eighty-four. Hurter classifies him as also a historian and geographer.

Nor was Morcelli an exception. Fathers Arthur Martin and Charles Cahier are still of great authority as archæologists, chiefly for their monograph in which, as government officials, they described the Cathedral of Bourges; and likewise for their "Mélanges archéologiques," in which the sacred vessels, enamels and other treasures of Aix-la-Chapelle and of Cologne are discussed. They also wrote on the antique ivories of Bamberg, Ratisbon, Munich and London; on the Byzantine and Arabian weavings; and on the paintings and the mysterious bas-reliefs of the Roman and Carlovingian periods. Their works appeared between 1841 and 1848.

A very famous Jesuit archæologist died only a few years ago, and the French government which had just expelled the Jesuits erected a monument at Poitiers to perpetuate his memory. He was Father Camille de la Croix. He was a scion of the old Flemish nobility and was born in the Château Saint-Aubert, near Tournai in Belgium, but he passed nearly all his life in France, and hence Frenchmen considered him as one of their own. He got his first schooling in Brugelette, and, when that college was given up, went with his old masters to France. In 1877 we find him mentioned in the catalogue as a teacher and writer of music. Three years later, the French provinces had been dispersed by the government, and he was then docketed as an archæologist at the former Jesuit college of Poitiers.

De la Croix's success as a discoverer was marvellous. Near Poitiers he found vast Roman baths, five acres in extent, whose existence had never even been suspected. There were tombs of Christian martyrs; a wonderful crypt dating from the beginning of the Christian era; a temple dedicated to Mercury, with its sacred wells, votive vases etc. At Sauxay, nineteen miles from Poitiers, he unearthed the ruins of an entire Roman colony; a veritable Pompeii with its temple of Apollo, its theatres, its palaces, its baths etc. He had the same success at Nantes, Saint-Philibert, and Berthouville; – the French government supplying him with the necessary funds. The "Gaulois" said of him that "in his first ten years he discovered more monuments than would have made twenty archæologists famous." Meantime he lived in a wooden cabin, on the banks of the Clain, and there he died at the age of eighty, on April 14, 1900; and there also the French government built his monument. At the dedication, all the scientific men of the country were present, and the King of Belgium sent a representative.

Although the well-known François Moigno severed his connection with the Society, it was only after he had achieved greatness while yet in its ranks. He entered the novitiate on September 2, 1822, when he was eighteen years of age. He made his theological studies at Montrouge, and in his spare moments devoted himself to the study of the natural sciences. At the outbreak of the Revolution of 1830, he went with his brethren to Brieg in Switzerland, where he took up the study of languages, chiefly Hebrew and Arabic. When the troubles subsided in France he was appointed professor of mathematics in Paris at the Rue des Postes, and became widely known as a man of unusual attainments. He was on intimate terms with Cauchy, Arago, Ampère and others. He was engaged on one of his best known works: "Leçons de calcul différentiel et de calcul intégral" and had already published the first volume when he left the Society. He had been a Jesuit for twenty-one years. He was then made chaplain of Louis-le-Grand, one of the famous colleges owned by the Jesuits before the Suppression, and became the scientific editor of "La Presse" in 1850; of "Le Pays" in 1851, and in the following year, founded the well-known scientific journal "Cosmos," followed by "Les Mondes" in 1862, editing meanwhile "Les Actualités scientifiques." As a matter of fact, it was the Society that had formed him and enabled him to publish his greatest works.

The German, Father Ludwig Dressel, who was for many years the director of the Polytechnic in Quito, is well-known for his treatises on geology, chemistry and physics. Kramers, in Holland, is the author of three volumes on chemistry. In entomology, Father Erich Wasmann is among the masters of today, and has written a series of works which have elicited the applause of the scientific world, especially his "Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklungstheorie." (Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution.) The writings of Bolsius on biology won for him a membership in the scientific societies of Russia, Belgium, Italy and Holland.

The first meteorological society, the "Palatina," was founded by Father Johann Hemmer in 1780, and it is noteworthy that nearly all its contributors were members of the various religious orders of Austria-Hungary, Italy and France. Its scope was not restricted to the study of meteors, for it accepted papers on ethnology, linguistics, etc. Hence we find Father Dobrizhoffer writing to it from Paraguay, Joseph Lafitaux from Canada, Johann Hanxleden, the Sanscrit scholar from Hindostan, and Lorenzo Hervás. Hanxleden and his colleague Roth were the pioneers in Sanscrit. The former was the first European to write a Sanscrit grammar and to compile a Malabar-Sanscrit-Portuguese dictionary. Hervás was one of the Jesuits expelled from Mexico, and after the Suppression was made prefect of the Quirinal Library by Pius VII. While there, he worked in conjunction with several of his former brethren in the compilation and composition of scientific works, mostly of an ethnological character. He also wrote a number of educational works for deaf mutes.