The Jesuits, 1534-1921

We are also informed that the authorities in Rome were surprised that Kohlmann was admitted to his last vows before the customary ten years had elapsed, but there are many such instances in the history of the Society, and the General in referring to it may have been merely asking for information. Finally with regard to the alleged worry about Kohlmann's appointment as Vicar General of New York; it suffices to say that the office is of its nature temporary, and cannot well be classified as a prelacy; especially as there was only one permanent church structure in the entire episcopal territory that stretched between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, and the clergy was largely made up of transients.

At the time that Father Kohlmann was mentioned for the See of New York, Father Peter Kenny was proposed for that of Dromore in Ireland. Foley in his "Chronological Catalogue of the Irish Province S. J." gives a brief account of this very distinguished man, who like Kohlmann was for some time identified with the Church in the United States.

He was born in Dublin, July 7, 1779, and entered the Society at Hodder, Stonyhurst, September 20, 1804. He died in the Gesù at Rome, November 19, 1841. When a boy he attracted the notice of Father Thomas Betagh, the last of the Irish Jesuits of the old Society, who was then Vicar General of Dublin, and was sent to Carlow College. Even in early youth he was remarkable for his extraordinary eloquence. When a novice he was told to come down from the pulpit, his fellow-novices being so spell-bound that they refused to eat. At Stonyhurst, he wrote a work on mathematics and physics. In 1811 he was Vice-President of Maynooth College. He purchased Clongowes Wood in 1814, and in 1819 was sent as visitor to the Jesuit houses of Maryland. He was made vice-provincial of Ireland in 1829, and again came to America in 1830, where he remained for three years and then installed Father McSherry as the first provincial of the American province. His retreats in Ireland are still enthusiastically referred to and quoted. In 1809 when he was finishing his theology in Palermo, Father Angiolini wrote to Father Plowden "Father Kenny is head and shoulders over every one. He has genius, health, zeal, energy, success in action and prudence to a remarkable degree. May God keep him for the glory and increase of the Irish Missions!" God did so and the missions of America also profited by his genius and virtue.

Later on, Father Van de Velde was made Bishop of Chicago, but he continually petitioned Rome to be allowed to return to the Society; while Father Miège after twenty-four years of the episcopate and without waiting to celebrate his silver jubilee became a Jesuit again and spent his last days at Woodstock, where he met Father Michael O'Connor, who had resigned the See of Pittsburg in order to assume the habit of St. Ignatius. His brother before being made Bishop of Omaha asked to enter the Society but he was told "Be a bishop first like your brother and afterwards a Jesuit." One of the most distinguished Jesuits of New York, Father Larkin, had to flee the country to avoid being made Bishop of Toronto, and Father William Duncan of Boston would have occupied the See of Savannah had not he entered the Society.

The same thing is true of the cardinalate. An unusually large number of Jesuits have been raised to that dignity in the hundred years of the new Society, in spite of the oath they have taken to do all in their power to prevent it, an oath which they have all most faithfully kept, yielding only because they were bidden to do so under pain of sin.

Camillo Mazzella entered the Society in 1857, and when the scholasticate at Woodstock in Maryland was opened, he was made prefect of studies. He was called to Rome in 1878 to take the place of Franzelin in the Gregorian University. In 1886 he was created Cardinal deacon and ten years later Cardinal priest, while in 1897 he was appointed Cardinal bishop of Palestrina. Camillo Tarquini was made cardinal because of his prominence as a canonist; Andreas Steinhüber's learning and his great labors as Vatican librarian won for him the honor of the purple, while Louis Billot after teaching dogmatic theology at Angers and the Gregorian University was named Cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata on November 27, 1911. But much greater consolation has been afforded to the new Society by the canonization of its saints than by the choice of its members for the cardinalate. One is a recognition of the intellectual ability and personal virtue; the other is an official, though indirect, approval of the Institute.

At the very time that Pombal, Choiseul and Charles III were crushing the Society in their respective countries, Rome as if in condemnation of the act was jubilant with delight over the heroic virtue of the Italian Jesuit, Francis Hieronymo; and people were asking each other how a Society could be bad when it produced such a saint? In an issue of the "Gazette" of distant Quebec at that time we find a bewildered Protestant Englishman who was the journal's correspondent at Rome asking himself that question. The political troubles of the period caused the proceedings of the canonization to be suspended, but Gregory XVI, who succeeded Leo XII, canonized Francis on the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, 1839. Pius IX beatified Canisius, Bobola, Faber, de Britto and Berchmans, with Peter Claver, the apostle of the negroes, and the lay-brother Alphonso Rodríguez, besides placing the crown of martyrdom on the throng of martyrs in Japan, Europeans and natives alike, as well as upon Azevedo and his thirty-nine Portuguese associates who were slaughtered at sea near the Azores.

Leo XIII beatified Antonio Baldinucci and Rudolph Aquaviva with his fellow-Jesuits who were put to death at Salsette in Hindostan, besides raising to the honors of sainthood Peter Claver and Alphonso Rodríguez, and also placing John Berchmans in the same category, thus re-affirming the sanctity of the rules of the Society, for the realization of which the holy youth had already been beatified. The canonization of Alphonso is also notable because it was by Leo XII, whose name Leo XIII had adopted, that the humble porter of Minorca was raised to the first honors of the altar. Finally, Pius X showed his love for the Society and his approval of the rule by beatifying the three martyrs of Hungary whom scarcely anybody had ever heard of before: Mark Crisin, Stephen Pongracz and Melchior Grodecz. There is also under consideration the beatification of the great American apostles Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Daniel, Chabanel, Garnier, Goupil and Lalande, five of whom died for the Faith in Canada, and three in what is now the State of New York.

The new Society has not failed to add new names to this catalogue of honor of prospective saints. They are Joseph Pignatelli, who died in 1811; Father Joseph de Clorivière, 1820; Paul Cappelari, 1857; and Paul Ginhac, 1895. Five Jesuits were put to death at Paris in 1871 by the Communards: namely Pierre Olivaint, Anatole de Bengy, Alexis Clerc, Léon Ducoudray, and Jean Caubert.

Between 1822 and 1902, forty-four others have given glory to the Society either by the heroic sanctity of their lives, or by shedding their blood for the Faith. Besides these, there are thirty-five Jesuits who have been put to death in various parts of the world. They are: four Italians, Ferdinando Bonacini and Luigi Massa in 1860; Genaio Pastore in 1887 and Emilio Moscoso in 1897; four Germans: Anthony Terorde in 1880; Stephen Czimmerman, Joseph Platzer and Clemens Wigger who were killed by the Caffirs in 1895-6. The French can boast of 12 namely: Bishop Planchet in 1859; Edouard Billotet; Elie Jounès, Habib Maksoud, and Alphonse Habeisch who were killed in Syria in 1860; Martin Brutail in 1883; Gaston de Batz in 1883; Modeste Andlauer, Léon Mangin, Remi Isoré, and Paul Denn, who met their death in the Boxer Uprising in 1900; Léon Müller was killed by the Boxers two years later. Sixteen Spaniards were put to death: Casto Hernández, Juan Sauri, Juan Artigas, José Fernández, Juan Elola, José Urrietta, Domingo Barreau, José Garnier, José Sancho, Pedro Demont, Firmin Barba, Martín Buxons, Emanuel Ostolozza, Juan Ruedas, Vincente Gogorza, who were massacred in Madrid in 1834.

CHAPTER XXX

CONCLUSION

Successive Generals in the Restored Society – Present Membership, Missions and Provinces.

As we have seen, the first General of the Society elected after the Restoration was Father Fortis, who died on January 27, 1829. On June 29 of that year Father John Roothaan was chosen as his successor on the fourth ballot. As in the previous election, Father Rozaven was the choice of many of the delegates.

John Philip Roothaan, the twenty-first General of the Society, was born at Amsterdam on November 23, 1785, and finished his classical studies in the Atheneum Illustre under the famous Jakob van Lennep. When he had made up his mind to enter the Society in White Russia in 1804, his distinguished teacher, though a Protestant, gave him the following letter of introduction: "I am fully aware of how in former times the Society distinguished itself in every branch of knowledge. Its splendid services in that respect can never be forgotten, and I am, therefore, especially pleased to recommend this young man whose merit I most highly appreciate. May he be enriched with all your science and your virtues, and I trust to see him again in possession of those treasures which he has gone so far to seek."

The praise was well merited, for, even at that early period of his life, Roothaan had mastered French, Polish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He studied philosophy at Polotsk, and in 1812 was ordained priest. After the expulsion he went to Switzerland in 1820, and taught rhetoric there for three years. As socius to the provincial, he made the tour of all the Jesuit houses in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland three times, and afterwards was appointed rector of the new college in Turin. As General, his chief care was to strengthen the internal life of the Society. His first eleven encyclicals have that object in view. His edition of the "Exercises" is a classic. In 1832 he published the "Revised Order of Studies," adapting the Ratio to the needs of the times; and he increased the activities of the Society in the mission fields. But his long term of office was one uninterrupted series of trials. His enforced visit to the greater number of the houses has already been told in a preceding chapter.

Among the many things for which the Society is profoundly grateful to Father Roothaan is the very remarkable publication of the "Exercises of St. Ignatius." According to Astrain, "the autograph was in rough and labored Castilian," for it must be remembered that the saintly author was a Basque. "The text," he tells us, "arrests the attention," not by its elegance but, "by the energetic precision and brevity with which certain thoughts are expressed. The autograph itself no longer exists. What goes by that name is only a quarto copy made by some secretary, but containing corrections in the author's handwriting. It has been reproduced by photography. Two Latin translations were made of it during the lifetime of St. Ignatius. There remain now, first the versio antiqua or ancient Latin translation, which is a literal version, probably by the saint himself; second, a free translation by Father Frusius, more elegant and more in accordance with the style of the period. It is commonly called the 'Vulgate.' The versio antiqua bears the date, Rome, July 9, 1541. The 'Vulgate' is later than 1541 but earlier than 1548, when the two versions were presented to Paul III for approval. He appointed three examiners, who warmly praised both versions, but the Vulgate was the only one printed. It was published in Rome on September 11, 1548, and was called the editio princeps.

"Besides these two translations, there are two others. One is the still unpublished text left by Blessed Peter Faber to the Carthusians of Cologne before 1546. It holds a middle place between the literal document and the Vulgate. The second was made by Father Roothaan, who, on account of the differences between the Vulgate and the Spanish autograph, wished to translate the Exercises into Latin as accurately as possible, at the same time making use of the versio antiqua. His intention was not to supplant the Vulgate, and on that account he published the work of Frusius and his own in parallel columns (1835)."

Father Roothaan was succeeded as General by Father Beckx, who was born in 1795 at Sichem, near Diest, the town that glories in being the birthplace of St. John Berchmans. He entered the Society at Hildesheim in 1819, after having been a secular priest for eight months. In 1825 he was appointed chaplain of the Duke of Anhalt-Köthen, who had become a Catholic after visiting the home of one of his Catholic friends in France. Anhalt-Köthen is in Prussian Saxony, and there were only twenty Catholics in the entire duchy when Beckx arrived there. Before four years had passed, the number had grown to two hundred. In 1830 he was sent to Vienna and for a time was the only Jesuit in that city. In 1852 he was made provincial of Austria and had the happiness of leading back his brethren to the beloved Innsbruck as well as to Lenz and Lemberg. In the following year he was elected General, and occupied the post for thirty-four years. He used to say that at the time he entered into office the province of Portugal consisted of one Jesuit and a half. The one was in hiding in Lisbon, and the "half" was a novice in Turin. Even now they number only three hundred. All the houses have been seized by the Republican government and the Fathers, scholastics and brothers expelled from their native land in the usual brutal fashion.

During Father Beckx's term of office eighty Jesuits were raised to the honors of the altar. All but three of them were martyrs. In spite of this the Society was expelled from Italy in 1860; from Spain in 1868; and from Germany in 1873, at which time the General and the assistants left Rome, where, after the Piedmontese occupation, it was no longer safe to live. They took up their abode at Fiesole and there the curia, as it is called, remained until after the death of Father Beckx's successor. In 1883 the age and infirmities of the General made the election of a vicar peremptory, and Father Anderledy was chosen. Father Beckx died at the age of ninety-two, and one who saw him in the closing years of his life thus writes of him: "This holy old man who has attained the age of nearly ninety years, so modest, so humble, so prudent, always the same; always amiable, with the glory of thirty years' government and of interior martyrdom inflicted upon him by the mishaps of the Society, was a spectacle to fill one with admiration. His angelic mien delighted me. With how great charity he received me in his room! With what deference! His poor cassock was patched. He is as punctual at the exercises as the most vigorous. In spite of his old age he observes all the laws of fasting and abstinence. At a quarter past five he commences his Mass and spends considerable time kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament. God grant us many imitators of his virtues."

Father Anderledy was a Swiss. He was born in the canton of Valais in 1819, and entered the Society at Brieg in 1838. He was sent to Rome for his theological studies and it is reported that he was such a pertinacious disputant that old Father Perrone said to him one day: "Young man, cease or I shall get angry." In the disturbances of 1847, he was on his way to Switzerland when he was halted by a squad of furious soldiers who asked him "Are you a Jesuit?" "What do you mean by a Jesuit?" he asked. When the conventional answer was given, he angrily demanded "Do you take me for a scoundrel?" and they let him pass. In 1848 he was sent to America and was ordained at St. Louis by Archbishop Kenrick and then put in charge of a German parish at Green Bay, Wisconsin, a place teeming with memories of the old Jesuit missionaries: Marquette, Allouez and others. On his return to Europe, he went through Germany preaching missions and winning a reputation as a great orator, although working in conjunction with the famous Father Roh. He was made rector of the College of Cologne and, subsequently, professor at the scholasticate of Maria-Laach. In 1870 he was called to Rome to be made German assistant, and in 1883 he was elected vicar to Father Beckx with the right of succession. He was particularly zealous as General in promoting the study of theology and philosophy, and in training men in the physical sciences. During his administration, the Society increased from 11,840 members to 13,275, but he was very much adverse to the establishment of new provinces. The creation of Canada as an independent mission was all he would grant in that direction. He died at Fiesole on 18 January, 1892.

Luis Martín García, or, as he is commonly called, Father Martín, who succeeded Father Anderledy, was the fifth Spanish General of the Society. He was born on 19 August, 1846, at Melgar de Fermamental, a small town about twenty-five miles north-west of Burgos, and was already a seminarian in his second year of theology when he began to think of becoming a religious. To be a Jesuit, however, was at first as abhorrent to him as becoming a Saracen. But his ideas on that point began to clarify when he heard his very distinguished professor Don Manuel González Peña, who had been a theologian in the Vatican Council, discourse enthusiastically and on every occasion, about the glories of Suárez, Toletus, Petavius, Bellarmine and the other great lights of the Society. The impression was heightened by some letters from the Philippine Jesuits which had fallen into his hands, and Crétineau-Joly's history also contributed to his change of views. A conversation with the Jesuit superior of the residence at Burgos, and the departure of a brilliant fellow-student for the novitiate, completed the disillusionment and he was admitted at Loyola on 13 October, 1864.

In 1870, when the Society was expelled from Spain, he went with the other scholastics to Vals in France, and later to Poyanne. In the latter place he remained as minister and professor of dogmatic theology until 1880, and when the religious were expelled from France he returned to Spain and was made superior of the scholasticate which had been opened in Salamanca. He was charged also with the duty of teaching theology and Hebrew. In 1886 he opened the house of studies at Bilbao, and in the same year he was made provincial of Castile. Previous to that he had been the editor of "The Messenger of the Sacred Heart" for a year. In 1891 he was summoned to Rome by Father Anderledy, to analyze and summarize the reports sent in by all the provinces on the proposed quinquennium of theology and a new arrangement of studies. On the death of Father Anderledy he was made Vicar General. He was then only forty-five years of age. His appointment coincided with the outbreak of an epidemic of influenza of which he was very near being a victim. Singularly enough, it was this same disease that carried him off thirteen years later, supervening as it did on the terrible sarcoma from which he had long been suffering.

As Vicar he convoked the general congregation, assigning September 23 as the date and choosing Loyola in Spain as the place of meeting. It was the first time in the history of the Society that the convention took place outside of Rome, with the exception of the meetings in Russia during the Suppression. The reason for the decision was that the Pope let it be known that it would not be possible to remain in session in Rome for any considerable period, though he suggested that they might elect the General in Rome and then continue the congregation elsewhere. After long deliberation by the assistants, it was determined not to separate the election from the other proceedings. As for the place of meeting, Loyola was chosen, though Tronchiennes in Belgium had been offered. The choice of Spain was determined by the vote of the assistant who had no Spanish affiliations. Father Martín was elected general on 2 October, and the sessions continued until 5 December.

In this congregation, Father Martín called the attention of the delegates to the fact that no Jesuit had ever addressed himself to the task of writing the complete history of the Order; an abstention, it might be urged, which ought to acquit them of the accusation of unduly praising the Society. Father Aquaviva had indeed commissioned Orlandini to begin the work, but the distinguished writer not only got no further then the Generalate of St. Ignatius but did not even publish his book. Sacchini his continuator had to see to the publication; his own contributions appeared in 1615 and 1621. Jouvancy was then called to Rome to finish the second half of the fifth section which had by that time appeared, but he did not advance beyond the year 1616. He had bad luck with it even in that small space, for certain opinions appeared in it about the rights of sovereigns which were not acceptable to the Bourbon kings, and the book was forbidden in France by decrees of Parliament, dated 25 February and 25 March, 1715. Finally, Cordara, an Italian, assumed the task and wrote two volumes, which though exquisitely done embraced not more than seventeen years of Father Vitelleschi's generalate (1616-33), and only one volume was published then. More than one hundred years elapsed before the second appeared. It was edited by Raggazzini in 1859.

It was high time, Father Martín declared, that something should be done to remedy this condition of affairs and that a history of the Society should be written on a scale commensurate with the greatness of the subject, and in keeping with the methods which modern requirements look for in historical writing. As the undertaking in the way it was conceived would have been too much for any one man, a literary syndicate was established in which Father Hughes was assigned to write the history of the Society's work in English-speaking America, Father Astrain that of the Spanish assistancy, Father Venturi the Italian, Father Fouqueray the French, Father Dühr and Father Kroess the German. This work is now in progress. Those who are engaged on it are men of unimpeachable integrity. Meantime an immense number of hitherto unpublished documents are being put in the hands of the writers. As many as fifty bulky volumes known as the "Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu," consisting of the chronicles of the houses and provinces, the intimate correspondence of many of the great men of the Society, such as Ignatius, Laínez, Borgia etc., have been printed, and sent broadcast through all the provinces. Nor is this mass of material jealously guarded by the Jesuits themselves. It is available to any sincere investigator.

As the Congregation had expressed the desire that the residence of the General and his assistants at Fiesole be closed, and that if the political troubles would permit it he should return to Rome, Father Martín, after consulting with the Pope, who granted the permission with some hesitation, established himself at the Collegium Germanicum on 20 January, 1895. The public excitement that was apprehended did not occur. The papers merely chronicled the fact but made no ado about it whatever. Father Martín had much to console him, during his administration, as, for instance, the beatification of several members of the Society, but he had also many sorrows such as the closing of all the houses in France by the Waldeck-Rousseau government and the deplorable defections of some Jesuits in connection with the Modernist movement.

In 1905 the first symptoms of the disease that was to carry him off in a short time declared themselves. In that year, four cancerous swellings developed in his right arm. He had submitted to the painful cutting of two of them without the aid of anesthetics. The operation lasted two hours and a half, and he maintained his consciousness throughout. A little later, the other swellings showed signs of gangrene and the amputation of the arm was decided upon, but in this instance he submitted to chloroform. He rallied after the operation and in spite of his crippled condition was permitted by the Pope to say Mass. His strength had left him, however, and on 15 February, 1906 he was attacked by influenza and he died on 18 April at the age of sixty. At his death the Society numbered 15,515 members.

Father Martín's successor was Francis Xavier Wernz who was born in Würtemberg in 1842. When the Society was expelled from Germany in 1872, he went to Ditton Hall in England to complete his studies, after having spent the greater part of a year in the army ambulance-corps, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. He taught canon law for several years at Ditton Hall, and in 1882 was a professor at St. Beuno's in Wales. From there he was transferred to the Gregorian University in Rome, where he lectured from 1883 to 1906. In September of the latter year, he was elected General, in which post he lived only eight years. Previous to his election, he had issued four volumes of his great work on canon law. Two others were published later, one of them after his death. The end of his labors came on 19 August, 1914. He was then in his seventy-second year and had passed fifty-seven years in the Society. It was during this generalate that the provinces of Canada, New Orleans, Mexico, California and Hungary were erected.