every aspect of life. Himself without home or country, and not
holding the doctrines of any political party, the disciple of
Jesus renounced everything which might alienate him among
varying nationalities, pursuing various political aims. Then
he did not confine his labours to the pulpit and the
confessional; he gained an influence over the rising
generation by a systematic attention to education, which had
been shamefully neglected by the other orders. He devoted
himself to education from the national schools up to the
academic chair, and by no means confined himself to the sphere
of theology. This was a principle of immense importance. …
It is a true saying, that 'he who gains the youth possesses
the future'; and by devoting themselves to the education of
youth, the Jesuits secured a future to the Church more surely
than by any other scheme that could have been devised. What
the schoolmasters were for the youth, the confessors were for
those of riper years; what the clerical teachers were for the
common people, the spiritual directors and confidants were for
great lords and rulers—for the Jesuits aspired to a place at
the side of the great, and at gaining the confidence of kings.
It was not long before they could boast of astonishing
success."
L. Häusser,
The Period of the Reformation,
chapter 20.
"The Society, in 1556, only 16 years after its commencement,
counted as many as twelve provinces, 100 houses, and upwards
of 1,000 members, dispersed over the whole known world. Their
two most conspicuous and important establishments were the
Collegio Romano and the German College. They already were in
possession of many chairs, and soon monopolised the right of
teaching, which gave them a most overwhelming influence."
G. B. Nicolini,
History of the Jesuits,
page 90.
ALSO IN:
I. Taylor,
Loyola and Jesuitism in its Rudiments.
S. Rose,
Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits.
T. Hughes,
Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits.
See, also, EDUCATION, RENAISSANCE.
JESUITS: A. D. 1542-1649.
The early Jesuit Missionaries and their labors.
"In 1542, Xavier landed at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese
colony, on the western coast of Hindostan. He took lodgings at
the hospital, and mingled with the poor. He associated also
with the rich, and even played with them at cards, acting
piously upon the motto of the order, 'Ad majorem Dei gloriam.'
Having thus won good-will to himself, he went into the
streets, with his hand-bell and crucifix, and, having rung the
one, he held up the other, exhorting the multitudes to accept
that religion of which it was the emblem. His great facility
in acquiring foreign languages helped him much. He visited
several times the pearl-fisheries on the Malabar coast,
remaining at one time thirteen months, and planting forty-five
churches. Cape Comorin, Travancore, Meliapore, the Moluccas,
Malacca, and other ports of India, and finally the distant
island of Japan—where Christianity was [accepted—see JAPAN:
A. D. 1540-1686] … —received his successive visits. Leaving
two Jesuits on the island, he returned to settle some matters
at Goa, which done, he sailed for China, but died at the
island of Sancian, a few leagues from the city of Canton, in
1552—ten years only after his arrival in India. He had in
this time established an inquisition and a college at Goa.
Numbers of the society, whom he had wisely distributed, had
been sent to his aid; and the Christians in India were
numbered by hundreds of thousands before the death of this
'Apostle of the Indies.' It has even been said, that he was
the means of converting more persons in Asia than the church
had lost by the Reformation in Europe.
{1889}
The empire of China, which Xavier was not allowed to enter,
was visited, half a century later, by the Jesuit Matthew
Ricci, who introduced his religion by means of his great skill
in science and art, especially mathematics and drawing [see
CHINA: A. D. 1294-1882]. He assumed the garb of a mandarin
—associated with the higher classes—dined with the
Emperor—allowed those who received Christianity to retain any
rites of their own religion to which they were attached—and
died in 1610, bequeathing and recommending his policy to
others. This plan of accommodation was far more elaborately
carried out by Robert Nobili, who went to Madura, in southern
Hindostan, as a missionary of the order in 1606. He had
observed the obstacle which caste threw in the way of
missionary labor, and resolved to remove it. He presented
himself as a foreign Brahmin, and attached himself to that
class. They had a tradition, that there once had been four
roads to truth in India, one of which they had lost. This he
professed to restore. He did no violence to their existing
ideas or institutions, but simply gave them other
interpretations, and in three years he had seventy converted
Brahmins about him. From this time he went on gathering crowds
of converts, soon numbering 150,000. This facile policy,
however, attracted the notice of the other religious orders,
was loudly complained of at Rome, and, after almost an entire
century of agitation, was condemned in 1704 by a special
legation, appointed by Clement XI. to inquire into the matter
of complaint. … The attention of the society was early
directed to our own continent, and its missions everywhere
anticipated the settlements. The most remarkable missions were
in South America. Missionaries had been scattered over the
whole continent, everywhere making converts, but doing nothing
for the progress of the order. Aquaviva was general. This
shrewd man saw the disadvantage of the policy, and at once
applied the remedy. He directed, that, leaving only so many
missionaries scattered over the continent as should be
absolutely necessary, the main force should be concentrated
upon a point. Paraguay was chosen. The missionaries formed
what were called reductions—that is, villages into which the
Indians were collected from their roving life, taught the
ruder arts of civilization, and some of the rites and duties
of the Christian religion. These villages were regularly laid
out with streets, running each way from a public square,
having a Church, work-shops and dwellings. Each family had a
small piece of land assigned for cultivation, and all were
reduced to the most systematic habits of industry and good
order. … The men were trained to arms, and all the elements
of an independent empire were fast coming into being. In 1632,
thirty years after the starting of this system, Paraguay had
twenty reductions, averaging 1,000 families each, which at a
moderate estimate, would give a population of 100,000, and
they still went on prospering until three times this number
are, by some, said to have been reached. The Jesuits started,
in California, in 1642, the same system, which they fully
entered upon in 1679. This, next to Paraguay, became their
most successful mission."
A Historical Sketch of the Jesuits
(Putnam's Magazine, September, 1856).
In 1632 the Jesuits entered on their mission work in Canada,
or New France, where they supplanted the Récollet friars. "In
1640 Montreal, the site of which had been already indicated by
Champlain in 1611, was founded, that there might be a nearer
rendezvous than Quebec for the converted Indians. At its
occupation a solemn mass was celebrated under a tent, and in
France itself the following February a general supplication
was offered up that the Queen of Angels would take the Island
of Montreal under her protection. In the August of this year a
general meeting of French settlers and Indians took place at
Montreal, and the festival of the Assumption was solemnised at
the island. The new crusading spirit took full possession of
the enthusiastic French people, and the niece of Cardinal
Richelieu founded a hospital for the natives between the
Kennebec and Lake Superior, to which young and nobly-born
hospital nuns from Dieppe offered their services. Plans were
made for establishing mission posts, not only on the north
amongst the Algonkins, but to the south of Luke Huron, in
Michigan and at Green Bay, and so on as far as the regions to
the west. The maps of the Jesuits prove that before 1660 they
had traced the waters of Lake Erie and Lake Superior and had
seen Lake Michigan. The Huron mission embraced principally the
country lying between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, building
its stations on the rivers and shores. But the French
missionaries, however much they might desire it, could not
keep outside the intertribal strifes of the natives around
them. Succeeding to Champlain's policy, they continued to aid
the Algonkins and Hurons against their inveterate enemies the
Iroquois. The Iroquois retaliated by the most horrible cruelty
and revenge. There was no peace along the borders of this wild
country, and missionaries and colonists carried their lives in
their hands. In 1648 St. Joseph, a Huron mission town on the
shores of Lake Simcoe, was burned down and destroyed by the
Iroquois, and Père Daniel, the Jesuit leader, killed under
circumstances of great atrocity. In 1649 St. Ignace, a station
at the corner of Georgian Bay, was sacked, and there the pious
Brebeuf met his end, after having suffered the most horrible
tortures the Indians could invent. Brebeuf, after being hacked
in the face and burnt all over the body with torches and
red-hot iron, was scalped alive, and died after three hours'
suffering. His companion, the gentle Gabriel Lallemand,
endured terrible tortures for seventeen hours."
W. P. Greswell,
History of the Dominion of Canada,
chapter 6.
The Hurons were dispersed and their nation destroyed by these
attacks of the Iroquois. "With the fall of the Hurons fell the
best hope of the Canadian mission. They, and the stable and
populous communities around them, had been the rude material
from which the Jesuit would have formed his Christian empire
in the wilderness; but, one by one, these kindred peoples were
uprooted and swept away, while the neighboring Algonquins, to
whom they had been a bulwark, were involved with them in a
common ruin. The land of promise was turned to a solitude and
a desolation. There was still work in hand, it is true,—vast
regions to explore, and countless heathens to snatch from
perdition; but these, for the most part, were remote and
scattered hordes, from whose conversion it was vain to look
for the same solid and decisive results. In a measure, the
occupation of the Jesuits was gone.
{1890}
Some of them went home, 'well resolved,' writes the Father
Superior, 'to return to the combat at the first sound of the
trumpet'; while of those who remained, about twenty in number,
several soon fell victims to famine, hardship, and the
Iroquois. A few years more, and Canada ceased to be a mission;
political and commercial interests gradually became ascendant,
and the story of Jesuit propagandism was interwoven with her
civil and military annals."
F. Parkman,
The Jesuits in North America,
chapter 34.
See, also,
CANADA: A. D. 1634-1652.
JESUITS: A. D. 1558.
Mission founded in Abyssinia.
See ABYSSINIA: A. D. 15TH-19TH CENTURIES.
JESUITS: A. D. 1572-1603.
Persecution in England under Elizabeth.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1603.
JESUITS: A. D. 1573-1592.
Change in the statutes of the Order on demands from Spain.
"At the first establishment of the Order, the elder and
already educated men, who had just entered it, were for the
most part Spaniards; the members joining it from other nations
were chiefly young men, whose characters had yet to be formed.
It followed naturally that the government of the society was,
for the first ten years, almost entirely in Spanish hands. The
first general congregation was composed of twenty-five
members, eighteen of whom were Spaniards. The first three
generals belonged to the same nation. After the death of the
third, Borgia, in the year 1573, it was once more a Spaniard,
Polanco, who had the best prospect of election. It was however
manifest that his elevation would not have been regarded
favourably, even in Spain itself. There were many new converts
in the society who were Christianized Jews. Polanco also
belonged to this class, and it was not thought desirable that
the supreme authority in a body so powerful, and so
monarchically constituted, should be confided to such hands.
Pope Gregory XIV., who had received certain intimations on
this subject, considered a change to be expedient on other
grounds also. When a deputation presented itself before him
from the congregation assembled to elect their general,
Gregory inquired how many votes were possessed by each nation;
the reply showed that Spain held more than all the others put
together. He then asked from which nation the generals of the
order had hitherto been taken. He was told that there had been
three, all Spaniards. 'It will be just, then,' replied
Gregory, 'that for once you should choose one from among the
other nations.' He even proposed a candidate for their
election. The Jesuits opposed themselves for a moment to this
suggestion, as a violation of their privileges; but concluded
by electing the very man proposed by the pontiff. This was
Eberhard Mercurianus. A material change was at once perceived,
as the consequence of this choice. Mercurianus, a weak and
irresolute man, resigned the government of affairs, first
indeed to a Spaniard again, but afterwards to a Frenchman, his
official admonitor; factions were formed, one expelling the
other from the offices of importance, and the ruling powers of
the Order now began to meet occasional resistance from its
subordinate members. But a circumstance of much higher moment
was, that on the next vacancy—in the year 1581—this office
was conferred on Claudius Acquaviva, a Neapolitan, belonging
to a house previously attached to the French party, a man of
great energy, and only thirty-eight years old. The Spaniards
then thought they perceived that their nation, by which the
society had been founded and guided on its early path, was now
to be forever excluded from the generalship. Thereupon they
became discontented and refractory, and conceived the design
of making themselves less dependent on Rome. … They first
had recourse to the national spiritual authority of their own
country—the Inquisition. … One of the discontented Jesuits,
impelled, as he affirmed, by a scruple of conscience, accused
his order of concealing, and even remitting, transgressions of
the kind so reserved, when the criminal was one of their
society. The Inquisition immediately caused the Provincial
implicated, together with his most active associates, to be
arrested. Other accusations being made in consequence of these
arrests, the Inquisition commanded that the statutes of the
order should be placed before it, and proceeded to make
further seizures of parties accused. … The Inquisition was,
however, competent to inflict a punishment on the criminal
only: it could not prescribe changes in the regulations of the
society. When the affair, therefore, had proceeded thus far,
the discontented members applied to the king also, assailing
him with long memorials, wherein they complained of the
defects in their constitution. The character of this
constitution had never been agreeable to Philip II.; he used
to say that he could see through all the other orders, but
that the order of Jesuits he could not understand. … He at
once commanded Manrique, bishop of Carthagena, to subject the
Order to a visitation, with particular reference to these
points. … The character of Sixtus V. made it particularly
easy for Acquaviva to excite the antipathies of that pontiff
against the proceedings of the Spaniards. Pope Sixtus had
formed the hope, as we know, of rendering Rome, more decidedly
than it ever yet was, the metropolis of Christendom. Acquaviva
assured him, that the object really laboured for in Spain was
no other than increased independence of Rome. Pope Sixtus
hated nothing so much as illegitimate birth; and Acquaviva
caused him to be informed that Manrique, the bishop selected
as 'Visitator' of the Jesuits, was illegitimate. These were
reasons sufficient to make Sixtus recall the assent he had
already given to the visitation. He even summoned the case of
the provincial before the tribunals of Rome. From his
successor, Gregory XIV., the general succeeded in obtaining a
formal confirmation of the rule of the order. But his
antagonists also were unyielding and crafty. They perceived
that the general must be attacked in the court of Rome itself.
They availed themselves of his momentary absence. … In the
summer of 1592, at the request of the Spanish Jesuits and
Philip II., but without the knowledge of Acquaviva, the
pontiff commanded that a general congregation should be held.
Astonished and alarmed, Acquaviva hastened back. To the
generals of the Jesuits these 'Congregations' were no less
inconvenient than were the Convocations of the Church to the
popes; and if his predecessors were anxious to avoid them, how
much more cause had Acquaviva, against whom there prevailed so
active an enmity! But he was soon convinced that the
arrangement was irrevocable; he therefore resumed his
composure and said, 'We are obedient sons; let the will of the
holy father be done.' …
{1891}
Philip of Spain had demanded some changes, and had
recommended others for consideration. On two things he'
insisted: the resignation of certain papal privileges; those
of reading forbidden books, for example, and of granting
absolution for the crime of heresy; and a law, by virtue of
which every novice who entered the order should surrender
whatever patrimonial rights he might possess, and should even
resign all his benefices. These were matters in regard to
which the order came into collision with the Inquisition and
the civil government. After some hesitation, the demands of
the king were complied with, and principally through the
influence of Acquaviva himself. But the points recommended by
Philip for consideration were of much higher moment. First of
all came the questions, whether the authority of the superiors
should not be limited to a certain period; and whether a
general congregation should not be held at certain fixed
intervals? The very essence and being of the institute, the
rights of absolute sovereignty, were here brought into
question. Acquaviva was not on this occasion disposed to
comply. After an animated discussion, the congregation
rejected these propositions of Philip; but the pope, also, was
convinced of their necessity. What had been refused to the
king was now commanded by the pope. By the plenitude of his
apostolic power, he determined and ordained that the superiors
and rectors should be changed every third year; and that, at
the expiration of every sixth year, a general congregation
should be assembled. It is, indeed, true that the execution of
these ordinances did not effect so much as had been hoped from
them. … It was, nevertheless, a very serious blow to the
society, that it had been compelled, by internal revolt and
interference from without, to a change in its statutes."
L. Ranke,
History of the Popes,
book 6, section 9 (volume 2).
JESUITS: A. D. 1581-1641.
Hostility of the Paulistas of Brazil.
Opposition to enslavement of the Indians.
See BRAZIL: A. D. 1531-1641.
JESUITS: A. D. 1595.
Expulsion from Paris.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.
JESUITS: A. D. 1606.
Exclusion from Venice for half a century.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1605-1700.
JESUITS: A. D. 1653-1660.
First controversy and conflict with the Jansenists.
See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1602-1660.
JESUITS: A. D. 1702-1715.
The renewed conflict with Jansenism in France.
The Bull Unigenitus.
See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715.
JESUITS: A. D. 1757-1773.
Suppression of the Society in Portugal and the Portuguese
dominions.
In 1757, a series of measures intended to break the power, if
not to end the existence, of the Society of Jesus, in Portugal
and the Portuguese dominions, was undertaken by the great
Portuguese minister, Carvalho, better known by his later title
as the Marquis of Pombal. "It is not necessary to speculate on
the various motives which induced Carvalho to attack the
Jesuits, but the principal cause lay in the fact that they
were wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous force in
an absolutist monarchy. It must be remembered that the Jesuits
of the 18th century formed a very different class of men to
their predecessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary
pioneers, but a corporation of wealthy traders, who made use
of their spiritual position to further the cause of their
commerce. They had done a great work in America by opening up
the interior of Brazil and converting the natives, and their
administration of Paraguay, one of the most interesting
achievements in the whole history of Christianity, was without
doubt a blessing to the people. But by the middle of the 18th
century they had gone too far. It was one thing to convert the
natives of Brazil, and another to absorb much of the wealth of
that country, in doing which they prejudiced not only the
Crown but the Portuguese people, whom they kept from settling
in the territory under their rule. Whether it was a sufficient
reason for Carvalho to attack the order, because it was
wealthy and powerful, and had departed from its primitive
simplicity, is a question for everyone to decide for
themselves, but that this was the reason, and that the various
excuses alleged by the admirers of the great minister are
without foundation, is an undoubted fact. On September 19,
1757, the first important blow was struck, when the king's
Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits were forbidden
to come to Court. Carvalho, in the name of the King of
Portugal, also formally denounced the order at Rome, and
Benedict XIV., the then Pope, appointed the Cardinal de
Saldanha, a friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer of
the Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in making
up his mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade the Jesuits to
engage in trade. An attempt upon the king's life, which
shortly followed this measure, gave the minister the
opportunity he wanted for urging the suppression of the famous
society. The history of the Tavora plot, which culminated in
this attempt, is one of the most mysterious affairs in the
whole history of Portugal. … The three leaders of the plot
were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of John II., and one of
the greatest noblemen in Portugal, the Marquis of Tavora, who
had filled with credit the post of Governor-general of India,
and the Count of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom
Luis de Athaide, the defender of Goa; but the heart and soul
of the conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a beautiful
and ambitious woman, who was bitterly offended because her
husband had not been made a duke. The confessor of this lady
was a Jesuit named Gabriel Malagrida. … The evidence on all
sides is most contradictory, and all that is certain is that
the king was fired at and wounded on the night of September 3,
1758; and that in the following January, the three noblemen
who have been mentioned, the Marchioness of Tavora, Malagrida
with seven other Jesuits, and many other individuals of all
ranks of life, were arrested as implicated in the attempt to
murder. The laymen had but a short trial and, together with
the marchioness, were publicly executed ten days after their
arrest. King Joseph certainly believed that the real culprits
had been seized, and in his gratitude he created Carvalho
Count of Oeyras, and encouraged him to pursue his campaign
against the Jesuits. On January 19, 1759, the estates
belonging to the society were sequestrated; and on September
3rd, all its members were expelled from Portugal, and
directions were sent to the viceroys of India and Brazil to
expel them likewise. The news of this bold stroke was received
with admiration everywhere, except at Rome, and it became noised
abroad that a great minister was ruling in Portugal. …
{1892}
In 1764 the Jesuit priest Malagrida was burnt alive, not as a
traitor but as a heretic and imposter, on account of some
crazy tractates he had written. The man was regarded as a
martyr, and all communication between Portugal and the Holy
See was broken off for two years, while the Portuguese
minister exerted all his influence with the Courts of France
and Spain to procure the entire suppression of the society
which he hated. The king supported him consistently, and after
another attempt upon his life in 1769, which the minister as
usual attributed to the Jesuits, King Joseph created his
faithful servant Marquis of Pombal, by which title he is best
known to fame. The prime ministers of France and Spain
cordially acquiesced in the hatred of the Jesuits, for both
the Duc de Choiseul and the Count d'Aranda had something of
Pombal's spirit in them, and imitated his policy; in both
countries the society, which on its foundation had done so
much for Catholicism and Christianity, was proscribed, and the
worthy members treated with as much rigour as the unworthy;
and finally in 1773 Pope Clement XIV. solemnly abolished the
Society of Jesus. King Joseph did not long survive this
triumph of his minister, for he died on February 24, 1777, and
the Marquis of Pombal, then an old man of 77, was at once
dismissed from office."
H. M. Stephens,
The Story of Portugal,
chapter 16.
ALSO IN:
G. B. Nicolini,
History of the Jesuits,
chapter 15.
T. Griesinger,
The Jesuits,
book 6, chapter 4 (volume 2).
JESUITS: A. D. 1761-1769.
Proceedings against the Order in the Parliament of Paris.
Suppression in France, Spain, Bavaria, Parma, Modena, Venice.
Demands on the Pope for the abolition of the Society.
"Father Antoine Lavalette, 'procureur' of the Jesuit Missions
in the Antilles, resided in that capacity at St. Pierre in the
island of Martinique. He was a man of talent, energy, and
enterprise; and, following an example by no means uncommon in
the Society, he had been for many years engaged in mercantile
transactions on an extensive scale, and with eminent success.
It was an occupation expressly prohibited to missionaries; but
the Jesuits were in the habit of evading the difficulty by
means of an ingenious fiction. Lavalette was in correspondence
with the principal commercial firms in France, and
particularly with that of Lioncy Brothers and Gouffre, of
Marseilles. He made frequent consignments of merchandise to
their house, which were covered by bills of exchange, drawn in
Martinique and accepted by them. For a time the traffic
proceeded prosperously; but it so happened that upon the
breaking out of the Seven Years' War, several ships belonging
to Lavalette, richly freighted with West Indian produce, were
captured by the English cruisers, and their cargoes
confiscated. The immediate loss fell upon Lioncy and Gouffre,
to whom these vessels were consigned," and they were driven to
bankruptcy, the General of the Society of Jesus refusing to be
responsible for the obligations of his subordinate, Father
Lavalette. "Under these circumstances the creditors determined
to attack the Jesuit community as a corporate body," and the
latter were so singularly unwary, for once, as not only to
contest the claim before the Parliament of Paris, but to
appeal to the constitutions of their Society in support of
their contention, that each college was independent in the
matter of temporal property, and that no corporate
responsibility could exist. "The Parliament at once demanded
that the constitutions thus referred to should he examined.
The Jesuits were ordered to furnish a copy of them; they
obeyed. … The compulsory production of these mysterious
records, which had never before been inspected by any but
Jesuit eyes, was an event of crucial significance. It was the
turning-point of the whole affair; and its consequences were
disastrous." As a first consequence, "the court condemned the
General of the Jesuits, and in his person the whole Society
which he governed, to acquit the bills of exchange still
outstanding, together with interest and damages, within the
space of a year from the date of the 'arrêt.' In default of
payment the debt was made recoverable upon the common property
of the Order, excepting only the endowments specially
restricted to particular colleges. The delight of the public,
who were present on the occasion in great numbers, 'was
excessive,' says Barbier, 'and even indecent.'" As a second
consequence, the Parliament, on the 6th of August, 1761,
"condemned a quantity of publications by the Jesuits, dating
from the year 1590 downwards, to be torn and burnt by the
executioner and the next day this was duly carried out in the
court of the Palais de Justice. Further, the 'arrêt'
prohibited the king's subjects from entering the said Society;
forbade the fathers to give instruction, private or public, in
theology, philosophy, or humanity; and ordered their schools
and colleges to be closed. The accusation brought against
their books was … that of teaching 'abominable and murderous
doctrine,' of justifying sedition, rebellion, and regicide.
… The Government replied to these bold measures by ordering
the Parliament to suspend the execution of its 'arrêts' for
the space of a year. The Parliament affected to obey, but
stipulated, in registering the letters-patent, that the delay
should not extend beyond the 1st of April, 1762, and made
other provisions which left them virtually at liberty to
proceed as they might think proper. The Jesuits … relied too
confidently on the protection of the Crown. … But the
prestige of the monarchy was now seriously impaired, and it
was no longer wise or safe for a King of France to undertake
openly the defence of any institution which had incurred a
deliberate sentence of condemnation from the mass of his
people." In November, 1761, a meeting of French prelates was
summoned by the Royal Council to consider and report upon
several questions relative to the utility of the Society of
Jesus, the character of its teaching and conduct, and the
modifications, if any, which should be proposed as to the
extent of authority exercised by the General of the Society.
The bishops, by a large majority, made a report favorable to
the Jesuits, but recommended, "as reasonable concessions to
public opinion, certain alterations in its statutes and
practical administration. … This project of compromise was
forwarded to Rome for the consideration of the Pope and the
General; and Louis gave them to understand, through his
ambassador, that upon no other conditions would it be possible
to stem the tide of opposition, and to maintain the Jesuits as
a body corporate in France.
{1893}
It was now that the memorable reply was made, either by the
General Ricci, or, according to other accounts, by Pope
Clement XIII. himself—Sint ut sunt, aut non sint'; 'Let them
remain as they are, or let them exist no longer.'" Even had
the proposed reform been accepted, "its success was
problematical; but its rejection sealed the fate of the Order.
Louis, notwithstanding the ungracious response from Rome,
proposed his scheme of conciliation to the Parliament in
March, 1762, and annulled at the same time all measures
adverse to the Jesuits taken since the 1st of August
preceding. The Parliament, secretly encouraged by the Duc de
Choiseul, refused to register this edict; the king, after some
hesitation, withdrew it; and no available resource remained to
shield the Order against its impending destiny. The
Parliaments, both of Paris and the Provinces, laid the axe to
the root without further delay. By an 'arrêt' of the 1st of
April, 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from their 84 colleges
in the ressort of the Parliament of Paris, and the example was
followed by the provincial tribunals of Rouen, Rennes, Metz,
Bordeaux, and Aix. The Society was now assailed by a general
chorus of invective and execration. … The final blow was
struck by the Parliament of Paris on the 6th of August, 1762.
… The sentence then passed condemned the Society as
'inadmissible, by its nature, in any civilized State, inasmuch
as it was contrary to the law of nature, subversive of
authority spiritual and temporal, and introduced, under the
veil of religion, not an Order sincerely aspiring to
evangelical perfection, but rather a political body, of which
the essence consists in perpetual attempts to attain, first,
absolute independence, and in the end, supreme authority.' …
The decree concludes by declaring the vows of the Jesuits
illegal and void, forbidding them to observe the rules of the
Order, to wear its dress, or to correspond with its members.
They were to quit their houses within one week, and were to
renounce, upon oath, all connection with the Society, upon
pain of being disqualified for any ecclesiastical charge or
public employment. The provincial Parliaments followed the
lead of the capital, though in some few instances the decree
of suppression was opposed, and carried only by a small
majority; while at Besançon and Douai the decision was in
favour of the Society. In Lorraine, too, under the peaceful
government of Stanislas Leczinski, and in Alsace, where they
were powerfully protected by Cardinal de Rohan, Bishop of
Strasburg, the Jesuits were left unmolested. … The
suppression of the Jesuits—the most important act of the
administration of the Duc de Choiseul—was consummated by a
royal ordonnance of November, 1764, to which Louis did not
give his consent without mistrust and regret. It decreed that
the Society should cease to exist throughout his Majesty's
dominions; but it permitted the ex-Jesuits to reside in France
as private citizens, and to exercise their ecclesiastical
functions under the jurisdiction of the diocesans. … Almost
immediately afterwards, on the 7th of January, 1765. appeared
the bull 'Apostolicum,' by which Clement XIII. condemned, with
all the weight of supreme and infallible authority, the
measure which had deprived the Holy See of its most valiant
defenders. … The only effect of the intervention of the
Roman Curia was to excite further ebullitions of hostility
against the prostrate Order. Charles III. of Spain, yielding,
as it is alleged, to the exhortations of the Duc de Choiseul,
abolished it throughout his dominions by a sudden mandate of
April 2, 1767. … The Pope precipitated the final catastrophe
by a further act of imprudence. The young Duke of Parma, a
prince of the house of Bourbon, had excluded the Jesuits from
his duchy, and had published certain ecclesiastical
regulations detrimental to the ancient pretensions of the
Roman See. Clement XIII., reviving an antiquated title in
virtue of which Parma was claimed as a dependent fief of the
Papacy, was rash enough to launch a bull of excommunication
against the Duke, and deprived him of his dominions as a
rebellious vassal. All the Bourbon sovereigns promptly
combined to resent this insult to their family. The Papal Bull
was suppressed at Paris, at Madrid, at Lisbon, at Parma, at
Naples. The Jesuits were expelled from Venice, from Modena,
from Bavaria. The Pontiff was summoned to revoke his
'monitorium'; and on his refusal French troops took possession
of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, while the King of Naples
seized Benevento and Pontecorvo. On the 16th of January, 1769,
the ambassadors of Spain, France, and Naples presented a joint
note to the Holy Father, demanding that the Order of Jesus
should be secularised and abolished for ever. Clement, who had
suffered severely from the manifold humiliations and reverses
of his Pontificate, was overwhelmed by this last blow, from
the effects of which he never rallied. He expired almost
suddenly on the 2nd of February, 1769."
W. H. Jervis,
History of the Church of France,
volume 2, chapter 10.
ALSO IN:
T. Griesinger,
The Jesuits,
book 6, chapter 6,
and book 7, chapter 1.
JESUITS: A. D. 1769-1871
Papal suppression and restoration of the Order.
"The attitude of the Roman Catholic Courts was so threatening,
and their influence with the Conclave so powerful, that
Lorenzo Ganganelli was selected [1769] for the triple crown,
as the man best suited for their purposes. Belonging to the
Franciscans, who had ever been antagonistic to the Jesuits, he
had been a follower of the Augustinian theology, and was not
altogether free from Jansenism. The Jesuits even went so far
as to pray publicly in their churches for the conversion of
the Pope. The pontificate of Clement XIV. has been rendered
memorable in history by the Papal decree of July 21, 1773,
which in its policy adopted the maxim of Lorenzo Ricci, the
inflexible General of the Jesuits, 'Sint ut sunt, aut non
sunt'—Let us be as we are, or let us not be! That decree
declared that, from the very origin of the Order, sorrow,
jealousies, and dissensions arose, not only among its own
members but between them and the other religious orders and
their colleges. After further declaring that, urged as its
head by a sense of duty to restore the harmony of the Church,
and feeling convinced that the Society could no longer
subserve the uses for which it was created, and on other
grounds of prudence and governmental wisdom, he by his decree
abolished the Order of Jesuits, its offices, houses, and
institutes. … The other religious orders at Rome were
jealous that Jesuits should have been the confessors of
Sovereigns at Westminster, Madrid, Vienna, Versailles, Lisbon,
and Naples. The influences of the Dominicans, the
Benedictines, and the Oratorians were accordingly exercised
for their suppression. … The Papal Bull 'Dominus Redemptor
noster' was at first resisted by the Jesuits, and their
General, Lorenzo Ricci, was sent to the Castle of St. Angelo.
{1894}
Bernardine Renzi, a female Pythoness, having predicted the
death of the Pope, two Jesuits, Coltrano and Venissa, who were
suspected of having instigated her prophecies, were consigned
to the same prison. All that follows relating to the fate of
Ganganelli is of mere historic interest; his end is shrouded
in mystery, which has been as yet, and is likely to continue,
impenetrable. According to the revelations of Cardinal de
Bernis, Ganganelli was himself apprehensive of dying by
poison, and a sinister rumour respecting a cup of chocolate
with an infusion of 'Aqua de Tofana,' administered by a pious
attendant, was generally prevalent throughout Europe; but the
time has long since passed for an inquest over the deathbed of
Clement XIV."
The Jesuits and their Expulsion from Germany
(Fraser's' Magazine, May, 1873).
"All that follows the publication of the brief—the death of
Ganganelli, the fierce and yet unexhausted disputes about the
last year of his life, and the manner of his death—are to us
indescribably melancholy and repulsive. … We have
conflicting statements, both of which cannot be
true—churchman against churchman—cardinal against
cardinal—even, it should seem, pope against pope. On the one
side there is a triumph, hardly disguised, in the terrors, in
the sufferings, in the madness, which afflicted the later days
of Clement; on the other, the profoundest honour, the deepest
commiseration, for a wise and holy Pontiff, who, but for the
crime of his enemies, might have enjoyed a long reign of peace
and respect and inward satisfaction. There a protracted agony
of remorse in life and anticipated damnation—that damnation,
if not distinctly declared, made dubious or averted only by a
special miracle:—here an apotheosis—a claim, at least, to
canonization. There the judgment of God pronounced in language
which hardly affects regret; here more than insinuations, dark
charges of poison against persons not named, but therefore
involving in the ignominy of possible guilt a large and
powerful party. Throughout the history of the Jesuits it is
this which strikes, perplexes, and appals the dispassionate
student. The intensity with which they were hated surpasses
even the intensity with which they hated. Nor is this depth of
mutual animosity among those or towards those to whom the
Jesuits were most widely opposed, the Protestants, and the
adversaries of all religion; but among Roman Catholics—and
those not always Jansenists or even Gallicans—among the most
ardent assertors of the papal supremacy, monastics of other
orders, parliaments, statesmen, kings, bishops, cardinals.
Admiration and detestation of the Jesuits divide, as far as
feeling is concerned, the Roman Catholic world, with a schism
deeper and more implacable than any which arrays Protestant
against Protestant, Episcopacy and Independency, Calvinism and
Arminianism, Puseyism and Evangelicism. The two parties
counterwork each other, write against each other in terms of
equal acrimony, misunderstand each other, misrepresent each
other, accuse and recriminate upon each other, with the same
reckless zeal, in the same unmeasured language—each
inflexibly, exclusively identifying his own cause with that of
true religion, and involving its adversaries in one sweeping
and remorseless condemnation. To us the question of the death
of Clement XIV. is purely of historical interest. It is
singular enough that Protestant writers are cited as alone
doing impartial justice to the Jesuits and their enemies: the
Compurgators of the 'Company of Jesus' are Frederick II. and
the Encyclopedists. Outcast from Roman Catholic Europe, they
found refuge in Prussia, and in the domains of Catherine II.,
from whence they disputed the validity and disobeyed the
decrees of the Pope."
Clement XIV. and the Jesuits
(Quarterly Review, September, 1848.)
"The Jesuit Order remained in abeyance for a period of
forty-two years, until Pius VII. on his return to Rome, after
his liberation from the captivity he endured under Napoleon I.
at Fontainebleau, issued his brief of August 7, 1814,
'solicitudo omnium,' by which he authorised the surviving
members of the Order again to live according to the rules of
their founder, to admit novices, and to found colleges. With
singular fatuity the Papal Edict for the restoration of the
Jesuits, contradicting its own title, assigns on the face of
the document as the principal reason for its being issued the
recommendation contained in the gracious despatch of August
11, 1800, received from Paul, the then reigning Emperor of the
Russias. We have the histories of all nations concurring that
Paul was notoriously mad, and within six months from the date
of that gracious despatch he was strangled in his palace by
the members of his own Court, as the only possible means, as
they conceived, of rescuing the Empire from his insane and
vicious despotism. In return probably for the successful
intercession of Paul, Thadeus Brzozowski, a Pole by birth but
a Russian subject, was elected the first General of the
restored order. We find a striking comment on his
recommendation in the Imperial Ukase of his successor, the
Emperor Alexander, by which, in June 1817, he banished the
Jesuits from all his dominions. Spain, the scene of their
former ignominious treatment, was, under the degraded rule of
the Ferdinandian dynasty, the first country to which they were
recalled; but they were soon again expelled by the National
Cortes. Our limits here confine us to a simple category of
their subsequent expulsions from Roman Catholic States: from
France in 1831, from Saxony in the same year, from Portugal
again in 1834, from Spain again in 1835, from France again in
1845, from the whole of Switzerland, including the Roman
Catholic Cantons, in 1847, and in 1848 from Bavaria and other
German States. In the Revolution of 1848, they were expelled
from every Italian State, even from the territories of the
Pope; but on the counter Revolution they returned, to be again
expelled in 1859 from Lombardy, Parma, Modena and the
Legations. They have had to endure even a more recent
vicissitude, for, in December 1871, a measure relating to the
vexed question, the Union of Church and State, received the
sanction of the National Council (Bundesrath) of Switzerland,
by which the Jesuits were prohibited from settling in the
country, from interfering even in education, or from founding
or re-establishing colleges throughout the Federal
territories. They have thus within a recent period received
sentence of banishment from almost every Roman Catholic
Government, but they still remain in Rome."
The Jesuits and their Expulsion from Germany
(Fraser's Magazine, May, 1873).
{1895}
JESUITS: A. D. 1847.
The question of Expulsion in Switzerland.
The Sonderbund and the war of religions.
See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1803-1848.
JESUITS: A. D. 1880.
The law against Jesuit schools in the French Republic.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1875-1889.
----------JESUITS: End--------
JESUS, Uncertainty of, the date of the birth of.
See JEWS: B. C. 8-A. D. 1.
JEU-DE-PAUME, The Oath at the.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (JUNE).
JEUNESSE DOREE, of the Anti-Jacobin reaction in France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (JULY-APRIL).
----------JEWS: Start--------
JEWS.
The National Names.
There have been two principal conjectures as to the origin of
the name Hebrews, by which the descendants of Abraham were
originally known. One derives the name from a progenitor,
Eber; the other finds its origin in a Semitic word signifying
"over," or "crossed over." In the latter view, the name was
applied by the Canaanites to people who came into their
country from beyond the Euphrates. Ewald, who rejects this
latter hypothesis, says: "While there is nothing to show that
the name emanated from strangers, nothing is more manifest
than that the nation called themselves by it and had done so
as long as memory could reach; indeed this is the only one of
their names that appears to have been current in the earliest
times. The history of this name shows that it must have been
most frequently used in the ancient times, before that branch
of the Hebrews which took the name of Israel became dominant,
but that after the time of the Kings it entirely disappeared
from ordinary speech, and was only revived in the period
immediately before Christ, like many other names of the
primeval times, through the prevalence of a learned mode of
regarding antiquity, when it came afresh into esteem through
the reverence then felt for Abraham."
H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
volume 1, page 284.
After the return of the Israelites from the Babylonian
captivity—the returned exiles being mostly of the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin—"the name of Judah took the predominant
place in the national titles. As the primitive name of
'Hebrew' had given way to the historical name of Israel, so
that of Israel now gave way to the name of 'Judæan' or 'Jew,'
so full of praise and pride, of reproach and scorn. 'It was
born,' as their later historian [Josephus] truly observes, 'on
the day when they came out from Babylon.'"
A. P. Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
volume 3, page 101.
JEWS:
The early Hebrew history.
"Of course, in the abstract, it is possible that such persons
as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob should have existed. One can
imagine that such and such incidents in the accounts regarding
them really took place, and were handed down by tradition. …
But our present investigation does not concern the question
whether there existed men of those names, but whether the
progenitors of Israel and of the neighbouring nations who are
represented in Genesis are historical personages. It is this
question which we answer in the negative. Must we then deny
all historical value to the narratives of the patriarchs? By
no means. What we have to do is to make proper use of them.
They teach us what the Israelites thought as to their
affinities with the tribes around them, and as to the manner
of their own settlement in the land of their abode. If we
strip them of their genealogical form, and at the same time
take into consideration the influence which Israel's self-love
must have exercised over the representation of relationships
and facts, we have an historical kernel left. … The
narratives in Genesis, viewed and used in this way, lead us to
the following conception of Israel's early history. Canaan was
originally inhabited by a number of tribes—of Semitic origin,
as we shall perceive presently—who applied themselves to the
rearing of cattle, to agriculture, or to commerce, according
to the nature of the districts in which they were established.
The countries which were subsequently named after Edom, Ammon,
and Moab, also had their aboriginal inhabitants, the Horites,
the Zamzummites, and the Emites. Whilst all these tribes
retained possession of their dwelling-places, and the
inhabitants of Canaan especially had reached a tolerably high
stage of civilization and development, there occurred a
Semitic migration, which issued from Arrapachitis (Arphacsad,
Ur Casdim), and moved on in a south-westerly direction. The
countries to the east and the south of Canaan were gradually
occupied by these intruders, the former inhabitants being
either expelled or subjugated; Ammon, Moab, Ishmael, and Edom
became the ruling nations in those districts. In Canaan the
situation was different. The tribes which—at first closely
connected with the Edomites, but afterwards separated from
them—had turned their steps towards Canaan, did not find
themselves strong enough either to drive out, or to exact
tribute from, the original inhabitants; they continued their
wandering life among them, and lived upon the whole at peace
with them. But a real settlement was still their aim. When,
therefore, they had become more numerous and powerful, through
the arrival of a number of kindred settlers from
Mesopotamia—represented in tradition by the army with which
Jacob returns to Canaan—they resumed their march in the same
south-westerly direction, until at length they took possession
of fixed habitations in the land of Goshen, on the borders of
Egypt."
A. Kuenen,
The Religion of Israel,
chapter 2 (volume 1).
"In the oldest extant record respecting Abraham, Genesis xiv.,
… we see him acting as a powerful domestic prince, among
many similar princes, who like him held Canaan in possession;
not calling himself King, like Melchizedek, the priest-king of
Salem, because he was the father and protector of his house,
living with his family and bondmen in the open country, yet
equal in power to the petty Canaanite kings. …
{1896}
Detached as this account may be, it is at least evident from
it that the Canaanites were at that time highly civilised,
since they had a priest-king like Melchizedek, whom Abraham
held in honour, but that they were even then so weakened by
endless divisions and by the emasculating influence of that
culture itself, as either to pay tribute to the warlike
nations of the northeast (as the five kings of the cities of
the Dead Sea had done for twelve years before they rebelled,
ver. 4), or to seek for some valiant descendants of the
northern lands living in their midst, who in return for
certain concessions and services promised them protection and
defence. … This idea furnishes the only tenable historical
view of the migration of Abraham and his kindred. They did not
conquer the land, nor at first hold it by mere force of arms,
like the four north-eastern kings from whose hand Abraham
delivered Lot, Genesis xiv. They advanced as leaders of small
bands, with their fencible servants and the herds, at first
rather sought or even invited by the old inhabitants of the
land, as good warriors and serviceable allies, than forcing
themselves upon them. Thus they took up their abode and
obtained possessions among them, but were always wishing to
migrate farther, even into Egypt. … Little as we are able to
prove all the details of that migration from the north towards
Egypt, which probably continued for centuries, it may with
great certainty be conceived as on the whole similar to the
gradual advance of many other northern nations; as of the
Germans towards Rome, and of the Turks in these same regions
in the Middle Ages. … We now understand that Abraham's name
can designate only one of the most important and oldest of the
Hebrew immigrations. But since Abraham had so early attained a
name glorious among the Hebrews advancing towards the south,
and since he was everything especially to the nation of Israel
which arose out of this immigration, and to their nearest
kindred, his name came to be the grand centre and
rallying-point of all the memory of those times."
H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 1, section 1, C, part 3.
JEWS:
The Children of Israel in Egypt.
"It has been very generally supposed that Abraham's visit to
Egypt took place under the reign of one of the kings of the
twelfth dynasty [placed by Brugsch B. C. 2466-2266], but which
king has not yet been satisfactorily made out. … Some
Biblical critics have considered that Amenemha III. was king
of Egypt when Abraham came there, and others that Usertsen I.
was king, and that Amenemha was the Pharaoh of the time of
Joseph. … It is generally accepted now that Joseph was sold
into Egypt at the time when the Hyksos were in power [and
about 1750 B. C.]; and it is also generally accepted that the
Exodus took place after the death of Rameses II. and under the
reign of Merenptah, or Meneptah. Now the children of Israel
were in captivity in Egypt for 400 or 430 years; and as they
went out of Egypt after the death of Rameses II., it was
probably some time about the year 1350 B. C. There is little
doubt that the Pharaoh who persecuted the Israelites so
shamefully was Rameses II."
E. A. W. Budge,
The Dwellers on the Nile,
chapter 4.
"It is stated by George the Syncellus, a writer whose
extensive learning and entire honesty are unquestionable, that
the synchronism of Joseph with Apepi, the last king of the
only known Hyksos dynasty, was 'acknowledged by all.' The best
modern authorities accept this view, if not as clearly