K" . 
 
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 Lon don :-tli chard Bertley, 1648.
 
 ^HISTORY 
 
 THE JESUITS: 
 
 FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR SOCIETY TO ITS SUPPRESSION 
 BY POPE CLEMENT XIV.; 
 
 THEIR MISSIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD; 
 
 THEIR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AND LITERATURE; WITH THEIR REVIVAL 
 AND PRESENT STATE. 
 
 ANDREW STEINMETZ, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE NOVITIATE," "THE JESUIT IN THE FAMILY.' 
 
 WOOD KNGKAVINGS BY GEORGE MEASOM. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 
 
 PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY. 
 
 1848.
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND KVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFR1AR8.
 
 CONTENTS TO VOL. II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Book VI. or RODERICUS 1 
 
 Book VII. or BOBADILLA . . 320
 
 BOOK VI. OR, RODERICUS. 
 
 THE Jesuits have reason to lament, and Catholics in 
 general, have cause to feel surprise at, the uncanonical 
 death-bed of " Saint Ignatius." The disin- Ignatiu8 an<1 
 terested reader may lament the circumstance : Luther - 
 but, having attentively observed the career of the 
 founder, he will perhaps consider its termination as 
 perfectly consistent as it was natural. His ambition 
 had made his religion a lever ; and when in that mortal 
 cold bleak agony, ambition was palsied and dead within 
 him, its lever became an object of disgust as invari- 
 ably to human nature become all the objects and 
 instruments of passion in satiety, or in the moments 
 when the icy hand of Death grips the heart that can 
 struggle no more. It is indeed probable that the last 
 moments of Ignatius were frightful to behold frightful 
 from his self-generated terrors for, be it observed, 
 I impute no atrocious crimes to the man, although 
 I do believe that the results of his spiritual ambition 
 entailed incalculable disasters on the human race and 
 Christianity, as will be evident in the sequel. To me 
 it would have been a matter of surprise, had Ignatius 
 
 VOL. II. B 
 
 i
 
 2 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 died like a simple child of the Church. Fortunately for 
 the cause of truth and the upright judgment of history, 
 circumstances hindered the invention of an edifying 
 death-bed, by his disciples. Strangers knew all a 
 physician was present. But here I am wrong : one of 
 them, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, has 
 contradicted all previous biographers, and actually asserts 
 that Ignatius died " with the sacraments " ! 1 Had his 
 disciples been permitted to think of the thing, no doubt 
 we should have had a glorious scene on paper, painted 
 by the first biographer for all succeeding generations of 
 the tribe. But this has been providentially forbidden, 
 and we are permitted to know that Ignatius died in such 
 a manner, that, had he lived in the sacramental era of 
 Jesuit-domination in France, the founder would have 
 been by the law denied Christian burial. Comparing 
 the accounts given by their respective disciples, Luther's 
 death is far more respectable than that of " Saint Igna- 
 tius," and so consonant with the man's character through 
 life, that we think it as truly described as that of Igna- 
 tius, for the same reason precisely. The dominant 
 thought of the Reformer accompanied him to the end 
 the thought of his mighty enterprise animated the last 
 word he uttered. 2 His death was consistent with his 
 cause : that of Ignatius was not ; and there is the 
 mighty difference. No unqualified admirer of Luther 
 am I nor unqualified disparager of Loyola ; but the 
 
 1 Francisco Garcia, Vida de San Ignacio de Loyola. He says : " And finally, 
 full of merits, having received the blessing of the sovereign pontiff and the 
 sacraments, invoking the name of Jesus, he gave up his blessed spirit with great 
 peace and tranquillity to him who created him for so much good to the world 
 y finalmente, lleno de merecimientos, aviendo recibido la benedicion del Sumo 
 Pontifice, y los Sacramentos, invocando el nombre de Jesus, dio su bendito 
 espiritu con gran paz y sosiego al que para tanto bien del mundo le crio." 
 Flo Sanct. tcrfera parte, p. 518, edit. Madrid, 1675. 
 
 1 See Hazlitt's " Life of Luther," p. 350, et teq.
 
 IGNATIUS AND LUTHER COMPARED. 
 
 latter is forced upon us as a saint, whilst all admit the 
 former to have been only a man ; and I confess that I 
 like the man better than the saint. Both achieved 
 " great things " by very natural means, as we have 
 seen ; but the latter pretended to an equality with 
 Jesus Christ Quando el eterno Padre me pusd con su 
 Hijo " When the eternal Father put me beside his 
 Son " and, therefore, I consider him an ambitious im- 
 postor like Mohammed and every other, past, present, 
 and to come, for we may be sure that the race is not 
 exhausted utterly. In Luther's writings and actions 
 there is much to disgust us : in Loyola's impostures 
 there is much likewise to disgust us : the errors of both 
 emanated directly from that " religious " system of 
 Rome, whence they emerged to their respective achieve- 
 ments. 1 Antipodes in mind antagonists in natural 
 
 1 For instance, both of them talked of incarnate devils incessantly tormenting 
 them. In Hazlitt's " Life of Luther " there are very copious extracts from 
 Luther's Tischredenor Table-talk on the subject all highly characteristic of the 
 age, as well as the superstitious cast of mind which the reformer never threw 
 off so difficult it is to get rid of early associations. The reader remembers that 
 the Catholics represented Luther as the son of an incubus or devil. The 
 reformer himself believed the thing possible, nay even states a case which he 
 vouches for ! It is one of the least immodest and disgusting among Hazlitt's 
 extracts : " I myself," says Luther, " saw and touched at Dessau a child of this 
 sort, which had no human parents, but had proceeded from the devil. He was 
 twelve years old, and, in outward form, exactly resembled ordinary children. 
 He did nothing but eat, consuming as much every day as four hearty labourers 
 
 or threshers could if any one touched him, he yelled out like a mad 
 
 creature " It is positively horrifying to hear the reformer say : " I 
 
 said to the princes of Anhalt, with whom I was at the time, ' If I had the order- 
 ing of things here I would have that child thrown into the Moldau at the risk 
 of being held its murderer.' But the Elector of Saxony and the princes were not 
 
 of my opinion in the matter Children like that are, in my opinion, a 
 
 mere mass of flesh and bone, without any soul. The devil is quite capable of 
 producing such things," &c. P. 318. The whole chapter is dreadfully disgusting 
 and humiliating : but Mr. Hazlitt deserves praise for the honourable integrity 
 with which he has perfected Michelet's garbled performance. Still some of the 
 devil-matter should have been left out as too disgusting and immodest. A sentence 
 to that effect would have answered all the purpose of conscientious fidelity. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 character diametrically opposed in natural disposition 
 or organisation, both lived according to the internal or 
 external impulses to which they were subjected ; and 
 frankly, the free-living of Luther, as represented by his 
 associates, and by no means criminal or excessive, was 
 as consistent and necessary in Luther, as were the 
 " mortification " and " self-abnegation " and " chastity " 
 of Loyola, as represented by his disciples. 1 Ignatius 
 could not certainly have succeeded by any other plan in 
 the given circumstances; and habit made the thing 
 very easy, as any one may find on trial with such 
 views as imperatively required that the founder should 
 not be as " other men." Protestants have amused or 
 deceived themselves and their readers, by comparing 
 the " regenerated " spirits of Luther and Loyola. In so 
 doing, they debase Luther, and pay a compliment to the 
 clever inventions of the Jesuits. To my mind, at least, 
 
 1 According to the Jesuit Bouhours, writing in the age of Louis XIV., the 
 physicians who dissected Ignatius thought him of a " phlegmatic temperament," 
 although naturally of the most ardent complexion : t. ii. p. 228. This he attri- 
 butes to the efforts which Ignatius made to restrain his passions : but such a 
 result would appear in conduct, not in the organs laid open by dissection, which 
 are modified by disease, and not by rational, virtuous restraint. In fact, it is 
 excessive indulgence or excitement which totally alters their natural condition. 
 Were it not so, morality would be man's exterminating angeL Thank God we 
 are now-a-days being enlightened on these subjects of such vital importance to 
 society and religion. But Bouhours garbles the fact to which he alludes. Maf- 
 feus, an earlier Jesuit, gives a diagnosis of the saint's disease, showing it to have 
 been simply an induration of the liver, with " three stones found in the vena 
 Porta, according to Realdus Columbus in his book of Anatomy." Ign. Vita. 
 p. 158. He meant either gall-stones in the gall-bladder, or solid masses in the 
 ducts of the liver, both morbid concretions from the ingredients of the bile. The 
 vena Porta enters the liver at a furrow of its inferior surface, just where the bile- 
 duct issues, and it ramifies with the duct throughout the substance of the organ. 
 Hence originated the old anatomist's mistake : but the diseased liver is manifest ; 
 and when we consider how many desperate afflictions result from disease in this 
 organ, we should excuse many of the saint's extravagancies. Anxious, racking 
 thoughts will derange the liver ; and this derangement once begun, entails 
 derangement in every other organ, blood and brain evince the disaster, and 
 constant misery is the result gloom and fanaticism.
 
 IGNATIUS AND LUTHER COMPARED. 5 
 
 Loyola was perfectly innocent of all the distinctive 
 spirituality ascribed to him in his " Spiritual Exercises " 
 and Constitutions ; or, at the most, that spirituality has 
 come down to us, filtered and clarified by his clever 
 followers, who extracted from Loyola's crude notions of 
 spirituality a curious essence, just as modern chymists 
 have extracted quinine from the bark cinchona, which 
 they introduced into Europe, and made so lucrative at 
 first. 1 The determined will of the Jesuits was the true 
 legacy of Ignatius like that of the Saracens bequeathed 
 by Mohammed, On the contrary, Luther was essen- 
 tially a theorist : his German mind and feelings made 
 him such ; and the essential characteristics of that 
 theory prevail to the present hour most prominently 
 vigorous where men enjoy the greatest freedom, press 
 forward most intently in the march of human destiny, 
 ever mindful of God and their fellow-men whilst duty 
 is the watchword of the great and the little. We have 
 not derived all the advantages which Providence offered 
 to mankind at the dawn of the Protestant movement. 
 We have not been blessed as we might have been, 
 because since then we have modified everything : instead 
 of pressing forward, we have been urged back to the 
 things of Rome every step in which direction is an 
 approach to mental darkness and sentimental blindness. 
 When there shall be absolutely nothing in our religious 
 and moral institutions to suggest its Roman origin, then 
 shall the hand of Providence be no longer shortened, 
 and its blessings will be commensurate with our corpo- 
 real health and vigour, mental refinement, and moral 
 
 1 The introduction of this medicinal bark to Europe took place in 1640, 
 Under the name of Pulvis Jesuiticus the Jesuits vended it, and derived a large 
 revenue from the trade. It is said that the Jesuits were the first to discover its 
 efficacy in fevers. Quinine is a purified form of the drug.
 
 6 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 rectitude the three perfections destined for man. But 
 this must be the result of enlightenment. By persecution, 
 by intolerance, you cannot effect it. If a poor hypo- 
 chondriac will have it that his head is made of lead, 
 would you persecute and kill him for his idea 1 Perse- 
 cution on account of religion is pretty much as reason- 
 able and as Christian-like. Enlighten public opinion, 
 nourish the love of country, and human nature, with the 
 power of God, will do the rest. 
 
 Their founder died thus uncanonically without conso- 
 lation without absolution it is even doubtful whether 
 the messenger was in time to get the pope's 
 
 Howlgna- 
 
 tius was indulgence or passport, by proxy : for we are 
 expressly told that the Son of Obedience had 
 " put off the matter to the following day ; " l and as 
 Ignatius expired one hour after sunrise, according to 
 Maffeus, or two hours after, according to Bartoli, the 
 time, even with Bartoli's provident enlargement, was 
 doubtless much too early for a papal interview : the very 
 old pope, who was, from his usual regimen, probably a 
 heavy sleeper, was not likely to be stirring at that early 
 hour of the drowsy morn. But the Jesuits were resolved 
 to make up for the disaster. Rome, we are told, rang 
 with the rumour " The Saint is dead." The body was 
 exposed devotees rushed in crowds, kissing his feet and 
 hands ; applying their rosaries to his body, so as to make 
 them miraculous and begging for locks of his hair or 
 shreds of his garments imbued with the same quintes- 
 sence. 2 They gave out that "when he expired, his 
 glorious soul appeared to a holy lady called Margarita 
 Gillo, in Bologna, who was a great benefactress of the 
 Company, and that he said to her : ' Margarita, I am 
 
 1 "Re in proximam luccm dilata." Maff. p. 158. 
 Ibid. Bouhours wisely garbles the event.
 
 APOTHEOSIS OF IGNATIUS. 7 
 
 going to Heaven, behold I commend the Company to 
 your care ; ' and he appeared to another devotee who 
 wished to approach the saint, but the saint would not 
 let him ; " and to many other persons he appeared with 
 his breast open, and displaying " his heart, whereon were 
 engraved, in letters of gold, the sweet name of JESUS " ! l 
 By all these proceedings the Jesuits motived or encou- 
 raged a cruel, reckless mockery of the most sacred event 
 venerated by Christians. They overshot the mark, 
 however. The apotheosis of Ignatius was overdone. 
 The pope resolved to put an extinguisher on the confla- 
 gration and there was enough to provoke any man 
 who felt the least solicitude for the honour of religion. 
 They gave out that Bobadilla, who was ill, no sooner 
 entered the room where the corpse lay, than he was 
 cured which turns out to be contradicted by the fact 
 that he was for some time after an invalid at Tivoli, as 
 the thoughtless biographers and historians depose ! 
 They said that a girl diseased with " King's Evil " was 
 cured by being touched with a shred of the saint's 
 garments though other biographers tell us that the 
 Brothers would not permit any to be taken ! " The 
 flowers and roses which were on his body gave health to 
 many diseased ; and when his body was translated, 
 there was heard in his sepulchre, for the space of two 
 days, celestial music a harmony of sweet voices ; and 
 within were seen lights, as it were resplendent stars. 
 The devils published his death and great glory God 
 
 1 "Luego que espiro San Ignacio se apericio su alma gloriosa a una santa 
 senora llamada Margarita Gillo, que estava en Bolonia, y eva muy benefactora 
 de la Compania, a la qual dixo : Margarita yo me voy al Cielo, mirad que os 
 encomcndo la Compania. Tambien se apericio a Juan Pascual su devoto, y que- 
 
 riendose llegar al Santo, se lo estorbo Hase aparecido muchas uezes, 
 
 trayendo el pecho abierto, y en el corazon esculpido con letras de oro el dulce 
 norabre de Jesus," &c. Garcia, ubi supra, f. 518.
 
 8 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 thus forcing them to magnify him whom they abhorred!" 
 Nor was this all. "A demoniac woman being exorcised 
 at Trepana, in Sicily, God forced the devil to say that 
 Ins enemy Ignatius was dead, and was in Heaven 
 between the other founders of religious Orders, St. 
 Dominic and St. Francis." 1 This was the grand point 
 
 1 Garcia, ubi supra. He also tells us that Ignatius raised at least a dozen dead 
 men to life -por lo menos doze one in Manreza, two at Munich, another at Bar- 
 celona, &c. ; some after death, and others during his lifetime. See the disgusting 
 narratives in this Jesuit's " Life of the Founder." Even Bouhours gives some 
 vile instances. And yet Ribadeneyra, in lus first edition of the " Life of Igna- 
 tius," gave no miracles nay, the last chapter enters into a long, windy, and 
 most absurd disquisition, on the subject of miracles in general, tending to their 
 decided disparagement finishing off as it does with these words : " But miracles 
 may be performed by saints, by guilty men, by wicked sinners ma i miracoli 
 possono ben esser fatti cosi da Santi, come da rei, e da malvagi peccatori." 
 P. 589. His introduction to the subject at once conveys the certainty that no 
 mention was as yet made of the invented miracles let alone the fact that there 
 were none performed, which is, of course, the fact. He says : " But who doubts 
 that there will be some men who will wonder, will be astounded, and will ask 
 why, these things being true (as they are without doubt), still Ignatius performed 
 no miracles, nor has God wished to display and exhibit the holiness of this His 
 servant, with signs and supernatural attestations, as He has done usually with 
 many other saints ! To such men I answer with the apostle : ' Who knows the 
 secrets of God ? or who is made his adviser I" 1 P. 565. Thereupon he launches 
 into a boisterous ocean of frothy boasting about the Company and its achieve- 
 ments and the mendacious miracles of Ignatius's sons all over the world, con- 
 cluding thus : " These things I hold for the greatest and most stupendous 
 miracles." P. 582. Now this same Ribadeneyra was an inseparable companion 
 of Ignatius, an eye-witness of all his actions : his first edition was published in 
 1572, fifteen years elapsed no miracles appeared in the edition of 1587 nor in 
 the Italian edition of 1586, which I quote, although the chapter is impudently 
 entitled " Of the miracles which God operated by his means," referring the title to 
 the Institute, &c. But when the Jesuits began to think it necessary to have a 
 saint to compete with Benedict, Dominic, Francis, &c., then they induced this 
 unscrupulous Jesuit to publish miracles in 1612, which he did in what he 
 titled, " Another shorter life, with many and new miracles ; " and he got 
 rid of the incongruity by saying that the miracles had not been examined and 
 approved when he previously wrote ! Truly, he would have at least mentioned 
 this fact, en passant, in his elaborate disparagement of miracles in general. After 
 this, miracles fell thick as hops, as you will find in all Jesuit-histories. The 
 credulous Alban Butler gives a note on this Jesuitical " transaction," and his 
 remarks are all that the most gullable devotee can desire on the subject. 
 " Saints' Lives," July 31. Sec Rasiel de Selva, Hist, de 1'admirable Dom Inigo, 
 for some sensible remarks on the subject, ii. p. 200.
 
 EXPANSION OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 at which the Jesuits were aiming the exaltation of 
 their founder to an equality with the other grand 
 founders after death ; which was, after all, somewhat 
 less than the founder's own ambition for we remember 
 that he declared how the Eternal Father had placed 
 him beside His Son ! And now let us listen to Pope Paul 
 IV., reading these unreasonable Jesuits a lesson. 
 
 It does not appear that the brethren made great 
 lamentation for their holy Father Ignatius. They 
 rather complied with the founder's advice Ex an8ion 
 
 on all occasions when a Jesuit migrated, of the So- 
 ciety at the 
 " For what can be more glorious, or more death of 
 
 profitable," would he say, "than to have in 
 the blessed Jerusalem many freemen endowed with the 
 right of corporation, and there to retain the greater part 
 of our body \ " l This authenticated sentiment is exactly 
 what the witty Father Andrew Boulanger expressed so 
 pleasantly in an allegory of Ignatius applying for a pro- 
 vince in Heaven. 2 "You should rather rejoice," said 
 Ignatius, " to find that the colleges and houses which 
 are being built in Heaven, are filling with a multitude of 
 veterans gauderent potius collegia atque domos, quce 
 cedificabantur in ccelo, emeritorum multitudine ffe~ 
 quentari." 3 There was no time for the Company to 
 think of lamentation amidst the strife and confusion of 
 her ambitious members, struggling to decide who should 
 seize the helm of the gallant bark of the Company, which, 
 like the Flying Dutchman, was almost on every ocean, 
 and almost in every port and all " at the same time," 
 like the Apostle of the Indies, according to the Jesuits, 
 
 1 " Quid enim sive ad decusj give ad fructum optabilius quam in beata Jeru- 
 salem municipes plurimos, et quam maximam sui partem habere ? " Sacch, 
 lib. i. 34. 2 Ante, p. 176. s Sacchiu. lib. i. 34.
 
 10 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 and decidedly so in point of fact. It was something 
 great and prospective that monarchy left behind by 
 Ignatius, with all its provinces, and wealth, and colleges, 
 which, however, as he said, left him in the lurch at last 
 cold, desolate, despairing. No monarch ever left an 
 achieved kingdom in so flourishing a condition as Igna- 
 tius Loyola, the Emperor of the Jesuits. There were 
 twelve provinces, with at least one hundred colleges. 
 There were nine provinces in Europe, Italy, Sicily, 
 Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal ; and three in 
 Asia, Africa, and America, or in Brazil, India, and 
 Ethiopia. Thus, in less than sixteen years every part 
 of the world was penetrated by the Jesuits. The his- 
 torian tells us that their number did not much exceed 
 one thousand ; l but allowing the most moderate average 
 of fifteen Jesuits to each college, we shall have 1500 
 Jesuits engaged in tuition, and the training of youth. 
 Then allowing an average of 400 pupils to each college 
 there were more than 2000 in one of them subse- 
 quently we shall have 40,000 youths under the care 
 of the Jesuits. 2 The scheme was new tuition was 
 "gratuitous," or parents thought it cost them nothing 
 because they were not "obliged" to pay all were 
 readily admitted and the colleges of the Jesuits were 
 filled for the Jesuits were " in fashion." To the num- 
 ber of Jesuits engaged in tuition we must add the 
 important item of the missioners dispersed all over the 
 world, running from city to city in Europe, or wander- 
 ing in the wilds of Africa, Asia, and America. At the 
 death of Loyola, in 1556, there could not be less than 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. i. ; Bartoli, Dell' Ital. lib. iii. 
 
 2 Saccbinus says there were more than a thousand pupils instructed at the 
 College of Coimbra, in 1560. Lib. iv. 65.
 
 THE POPE DENOUNCES LOYOLA'S SYSTEM. 11 
 
 two thousand Jesuits in the Company, with novices, 
 scholastics, and lay-brothers of all trades and avoca- 
 tions, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, 
 cooks, and printers. Who was to govern this motley 
 tribe of humanity 1 That was the question. Only five 
 of the original Ten companions were alive. There were 
 under forty professed members in the Society, according 
 to the historians : but there scarcely could have been so 
 many, seeing that there were only nine two years before 
 the founder's death, according to the Ethiopian letter 
 which I have given. We are expressly told that Ignatius 
 had the strongest objections to permit many to be raised 
 to that dignity which constituted the Power of the Com- 
 pany 1 having the privilege of voting in the congrega- 
 tion and the election of a general. Whatever might 
 be their number, it appears that the five veterans of the 
 foundation at once made it evident that only one of their 
 chosen band should fill the vacant throne. Bobadilla 
 aspired to the dignity, but he was ill at Tivoli, 2 and in the 
 absence of the redoubtable firebrand, Lainez was chosen 
 vicar-general. We shall soon see the consequences. 
 
 Paul IV., the Pope of Rome, had treated Ignatius 
 very kindly ; he had even expressed a wish to unite 
 his Society with that of the Theatines, which The pope 
 Paul had founded. This was no small com- J^ 8 
 pliment for a pope to pay Ignatius ; but the s y stem - 
 deep old general declined the honour, he could never 
 think of such a thing it would have been throwing all 
 the products of a life's labour into the Gulph of Genoa, 
 where an ancient pope had drowned some cardinals tied 
 up in a sack. Ignatius had no notion of being " tied 
 
 1 Sacchinus calls them " the bones and sinews of the Company ossa ac nervi 
 ha/jus Ordiuis." Lib. i. 20. 2 Bartoli, 1. iii. ; Sacchin. 1. i.
 
 12 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 up ; " he had hold of a helm, and he had sturdy rowers, 
 and an universe of oceans was before him for circum- 
 navigation. And he was right in his calculation. Had 
 he not prophesied eternity to the Company of Jesus, 
 and is not that most strikingly boasted of in the glorious 
 image of the first century of the Company of Jesus ? 
 It is, decidedly. 1 And who ever hears a word about 
 the Theatines or their founder Caraffa ? Echo says, 
 Who ? and no more. But who has not heard of the 
 Jesuits and Loyola ? And the universe sends a history 
 from every point of the compass. Ignatius knew what he 
 was about, and declined the honour most handsomely ; 
 nor was " the greater glory of God " forgotten. Whether 
 the general's refusal was ascribed to the right motive 
 by the pope, or that he was simply annoyed by it, as 
 the Jesuits believed, whatever was the cause, one fact 
 is certain, that the pope was heard to say, at the death 
 of Ignatius, that the general had ruled the Society too 
 despotically nimio imperio Societatem retfisset? We 
 remember the proceedings of the Jesuits at the death of 
 Ignatius ; unquestionably they were not likely to make 
 the pope more favourable to the members than he was, 
 to judge from that expression, to the head of the Com- 
 pany. Lainez, the vicar-general, thought proper to go 
 and pay his respects to the holy father, in that capacity. 
 According to the Jesuits, Paul, as I have stated, had 
 wished to make a cardinal of Lainez. We remember 
 what happened on that occasion. The Jesuit stuck to 
 his Company, which, to him, with all the prospects 
 before him, was worth in honour, power, and estimation 
 all the cardinal-hats in existence. As matters now 
 turned out, Lainez being at the head of affairs, with the 
 
 1 See Imago, p. 52. ? Sacchin. lib. i. 31.
 
 THE POPE'S ADDRESS TO LAINEZ. 13 
 
 contingent gcneralate at his fingers' ends, the deep old 
 pope saw the thing clearly, and was resolved to strike 
 home at once. He began with a few common-places 
 and the proofs of his regard for the Company. Then 
 suddenly changing his tone and attitude, he exclaimed : 
 " But know that you must adopt no form of life, you 
 must take no steps but those prescribed to you by this 
 Holy See ; otherwise, you will suffer for it, and a stop 
 will be put to the thing at once ; nor will the edicts 
 [Bulls, &c.] of our predecessors be of the least avail to 
 you. Because, whenever we issue any, our intention is 
 not thereby to hamper our successors, by depriving 
 them of the right to examine, to confirm, or destroy 
 what preceding pontiffs have established. This being 
 the case, you must adopt, from this Holy See, your 
 manner of life, and must not be governed by the dictates 
 of the person whom God has called away, and who has 
 governed you till now ; nor must you depend on any 
 support but God alone. Thus working, you will build 
 super firmam petram on a firm rock, and not on sand ; 
 and, if you have commenced well, you must, in like 
 manner, go on well, lest it be also said of you : "Hie 
 homo ccepit cedificare, et non potuit consummare., this 
 man began to build and he could not finish." Beware 
 of doing otherwise in the least point, and you will find 
 in us a good father. Tell my children, your subjects, 
 to console themselves." " And with these last words," 
 says Lainez, giving the account, " with these last words 
 he gave me the blessing," which was tantamount to 
 showing him the door. 1 We can easily imagine the 
 
 1 Bartoli gives the affair as he says from a document left by Lainez. Sacchinus 
 leaves out the disparagement of Saint Ignatius, and adds a qualification not in 
 the document. He says : " After other things of the sort, at length, shaking off
 
 14 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 scope of this thunderbolt. It must have been long pre- 
 paring. Its effects will be soon visible. But what a 
 disenchantment for Saint Ignatius to be called the 
 person la persona che Dio ha chiamato a se ; and the 
 decided disapprobation of Loyola's principles, and the 
 allusion to sand! We have here much light thrown 
 upon the Jesuit-method at that early period, and it 
 should not leave us in the dark. A pope finds fault 
 with Loyola's principles or dictates ; then, surely, the 
 University of France, the Archbishop Silicio, the monks 
 of Salamanca, old Melchior Cano, were not altogether 
 without justification in denouncing Ignatius and his 
 system. Justice requires this fact to be remembered. 
 Sacchinus acted consistently in garbling the pope's 
 address, even as Lainez reported it ; Bartoli imprudently 
 let out the thing, and Pallavicino, his brother-Jesuit, 
 would have blamed him as he blamed good Pope 
 Adrian VI., for admitting all that the heretics denounced 
 in the Church. On the other hand, observe the threat 
 of suppression, and see how the final suppression of the 
 Society is justified in advance, by explaining the true 
 nature of papal Bulls and apostolic Breves. Bartoli 
 enters into a long discussion against these papal senti- 
 ments ; but he leaves the matter just where he found it, 
 actually twisting the pope's menace into an exhortation, 
 "for Lainez and the whole Company to keep in the 
 same path, and never to leave it, or to regain it, should 
 they ever wander " ! x This conclusion he founds on 
 the words " if you have well begun " ; but he forgets 
 that the dictates dettati of the person Ignatius were 
 
 his frown fronte explicatd he bade them to be of good cheer." This is an 
 invention : at all events, the pope had not done with them yet. 
 1 DelP Ital. 1. iii. f 356.
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY. 15 
 
 no longer to govern them, and, consequently, the " good 
 beginning," if uttered at all, had reference to a period 
 preceding the " despotic government " and present 
 "dictates" of Loyola. 
 
 The Jesuits were not the only nettle in the side of 
 Paul IV. It is possible that the fierce old pope hated 
 them for their Spanish origin ; and that cir- contempora- 
 cumstances conspired to make him suspicious neoushastor y. 
 of the essentially Spanish Company. Nothing could 
 exceed the pope's abhorrence of the Spaniards : he 
 hated them from his inmost soul, says Panvinius, the 
 papal historian ; according to others, heaping upon 
 them the bitterest invectives, calling them schismatics, 
 heretics, accursed of God, seed of Jews and Moors, dregs 
 of the world nothing was too vile to represent his 
 enemies, whether in his sober moments, or when charged 
 with the thick black volcanic wine of Naples, which he 
 swallowed largely. He even hated and disgraced all 
 who did not hate them enough, Cardinal Commendone 
 among the rest ; and now he had resolved on war, 
 determined to avenge himself and all belonging to him, 
 on the execrable Spaniards without the least chance 
 of succeeding. 1 Charles V. had just abdicated in favour 
 of Philip II. A comet had frightened him ; precisely 
 the same comet which is now flaming athwart the 
 firmament. It blazed over the death of Ignatius Loyola 
 the abdication of Charles V. and has now come to 
 summon Louis Philippe to drop the diadem from his 
 wrinkled brow. Curious coincidence : but ten thousand 
 comets would not have frightened the intriguer into 
 abdication without the yells of exasperated Frenchmen, 
 
 1 Panv. Paul IV. ; Gratiani, Vie de Commend, p. 1 05 ; Navagero ; Ranke, 
 p. 74.
 
 16 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 who eat fire and drink blood in their fury. 1 And the 
 same comet waved its torch over Smithfield, whose fires 
 were burning Protestantism out of England. Spain and 
 England were now united. Mary had married Philip II. 
 bigotry united to bigotry, begetting the monster 
 " religious " Persecution. In vain a Spanish Friar, 
 Alphonso di Castro, denounced the thing as contrary to 
 the spirit and letter of the Gospel : his words had no 
 blessing from Heaven : for he was Philip's confessor, 
 and his words were only a decoy to conciliate the people 
 to the Spaniard whom they hated intensely. Hooper, 
 Saunders, Taylor, Rogers, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer 
 the heads of Protestantism, fed with their bodies the 
 flames of the holocaust which Catholicism, once more 
 restored, offered to the God of Christians ! A few 
 
 1 At its appearance in 1556 this comet is said to have seemed half the size of 
 the moon. Its beams were short and flickering, with a motion like that of the 
 flame of a conflagration, or of a torch waved by the wind. It was then that 
 Charles is said to have exclaimed : "His ergo indiciis me mea fata vocant Then 
 by this sign Fate summons me away." Several comets appeared during this 
 century in 1506 in 1531 the present in 1556 and another in 1558, which 
 last was, of course, to predict the death of Charles V. Besides the catastrophes 
 of kings, comets are supposed to influence the seasons. Historians tell us that 
 for three years before the appearance of the one in 1531, there was a perpetual 
 derangement hi the seasons, or rather, that summer almost lasted throughout the 
 whole year ; so that in five years there were not two successive days of frost. 
 The trees put forth flowers immediately after their fruits were gathered corn 
 would not yield increase and from the absence of winter, there was such a quan- 
 tity of vermin preying on the germ, that the harvest did not give a return suffi- 
 cient for the sowing of the following year. An universal famine was the 
 consequence ; next came a disease called trousse-galant then a furious pestilence. 
 The three calamities swept off a fourth of the French population. A bright 
 comet, called the star of Bethlehem, appeared in 1573, and menaced Charles IX. 
 for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as Beza and other Reformers publicly 
 declared. Charles, who had languished dreadfully since the wholesale murder, 
 died in effect a few months after, in 1574. Another comet appeared in 1577 
 the largest ever seen and it seemed to predict the murder of Henry III., which 
 happened so long after, in 1589. Whatever may be the physical effects and moral 
 influences of comets, the present one, in the absence of all other explanations,
 
 THE BULL IN CJ!NA DOMINI. 17 
 
 short years, in this century of mutation, had sufficed to 
 make and unmake three different forms of Christianity 
 in England to "establish" three universal churches. 
 An embassy had been sent to Rome : the pope's supre- 
 macy in England was acknowledged : absolution was 
 duly pronounced ; and an English ambassador there- 
 upon took up his abode in the papal city. Persecution 
 followed and ratified Catholic ascendancy in England. 1 
 Glorious prospects were these such a fool is humanity 
 when drunk with selfishness. But Spanish power in 
 Italy was not adequately compensated by papal power 
 of England : pope Paul IV. began the war with Philip 
 in Spain and England, by publishing the famous Bull 
 In ccend Domini, which swallows down all kings and 
 countries as though they were a mess of pottage. It 
 excommunicates all the occupiers of the pope's posses- 
 sions on land and sea it excommunicates all of them, 
 however eminent by dignity, even imperial ; and all 
 their advisers, abettors, and adherents. Vigorously the 
 old pope buckled to the contest. He would crush his 
 enemies. All men, without exception, were invited, urged 
 to hold up his arms whilst Amalek was shivered into 
 nought. The King of France, the ambitious lords of the 
 land, his accommodating wife and unscrupulous mistress 
 all with different motives were solicited by Paul's 
 messenger, his nephew Carlo Caraffa. Even the Protes- 
 tant leader, Margrave Albert of Brandenburg even the 
 Grand Turk Solyman I. the hopeless infidels who had 
 so long battered the Christians even these were solicited 
 to fight the battle of the pope, Father of the Faithful, 
 
 must account for the thunderbolt-like shattering of the Orleans dynasty and 
 this excessively mild and flowery winter. Heaven grant that nothing more is 
 in reserve ! 
 
 1 See Lingard, vi. ; Burnet, ii. ; Hallam, i. ; Dodd (Tierney's), ii. 
 VOL. II.
 
 18 TIISTOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 St. Peter's successor, and Christ's Vicar on earth. 1 How 
 did it end ? All his undertakings completely failed ; 
 and left him the will for the deed. His allies were 
 beaten : the Spaniards ravaged his domains marched 
 against Rome, once more menaced with destruction 
 and then the old man consented to peace. 
 
 It was during the consternation produced by this 
 imminent siege, that the Jesuits showed the pope what 
 they could do in a time of trouble. The priesthood 
 and monkhood of Rome were summoned to throw up 
 defences. Sixty Jesuits sallied forth with mattocks, 
 pitchforks and spades, marching in a triple column led 
 by Salmeron, whilst the affrighted Romans groaned and 
 wailed around them, fancying that the day of judg- 
 ment was come ; and that this triple troop of Jesuits, with 
 mattocks, spades, and pitchforks, was going to dig them 
 an universal grave or pitfall ad quandam quasi Supremi 
 Judidi instantes speciem cohorrescentibus. Vicar-General 
 Lainez graced the works with his presence. 2 
 
 To the Jesuits, by profession " indifferent to all 
 things," the crash of arms the hubbub of human 
 passions were an angel's whisper to be stirring and 
 they bestirred themselves accordingly. The year 1556 
 closed with a magnificent display at the Roman College. 
 It opened with theological, proceeded with philosophical 
 disputations, and concluded with three orations in 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, interspersed with poems in 
 the same. Theses on ethics and the usual subtleties 
 of theology were proposed and defended, and printed at 
 the press of the Roman College. " Sweet to the men 
 of Rome, amidst the din of arms, were these voices of 
 wisdom," exclaims the historian : " whilst confusion 
 
 1 Botta, iii. ; Rabutin, Mem. ; Broraato, Vita di Paolo, iv. ; Ranke ; Panvinius. 
 
 2 Sacchin. lib. i. 37.
 
 THE SCHOLARS OF THE ROMAN COLLEGE. 19 
 
 filled the city with uproar, there was a quiet little nook 
 for the Muses among the Jesuits. 1 " A tragedy was 
 performed by the scholars, with all the concomitants 
 of former exhibitions ; for " though Ignatius was dead, 
 his spirit animated all spirits ; and the master con- 
 sidered those amusements of the stage useful to form 
 the body and to develop the mind. Amongst the scho- 
 lars were Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Frenchmen, 
 Greeks, Illyrians, Belgians, Scotchmen, and Hungarians. 
 United from so many different quarters, these youths 
 followed the same rule of life and routine of training. 
 Sometimes they spoke the language of their country, 
 sometimes Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. On Sundays 
 and festivals, they visited the hospitals, the prisons, and 
 the sick of Rome. They begged alms for the House of 
 the Professed. During the holidays at Easter and in 
 autumn', their zeal spread over a larger field. They 
 made excursions into the Terra Sabina and the ancient 
 Latium, evangelising, hearing confessions, and catechis- 
 ing 2 thus fructifying their pleasures as well as their 
 studies, and practising for a more glorious manifestation. 
 As yet, we are told, there were no public funds, no 
 endowments for the support of these establishments. 
 All was maintained by CHARITY : but she would have 
 been blind indeed if she had not seen where to fling 
 her superfluities, whilst the Jesuits were offering such 
 enormous interest, such splendid equivalents for her 
 " paltry gold." Benedict Palmio, the ardent and elo- 
 quent Jesuit, was winning immense applause and 
 creating vast sensation : in Latin or Italian, a renowned 
 orator, equally fluent in both, he preached in the 
 
 1 " Haud injucundae vulgo accidebant inter arma sapientise voces : nee pauci 
 mirabantur, cum turbse ubique Urbem miscerent, apud Patres quieti Musarum 
 locum esse." Id. lib. i. 39. 2 Cretiueau, i. 341. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 pontifical chapel and " wonderfully held captive the 
 ears of the most distinguished princes." 1 Emmanuel 
 Sa, Polancus, Avillaneda and Tolleto, the renowned of 
 old, were at that time the Company's teachers : Posse- 
 vinus, Bellarmine, and Aquaviva, future luminaries, were 
 amongst her scholars on the benches. 
 
 Then, despite her troubles, in the face of her enemies, 
 the Society was advancing. She had fought her way 
 Summary of cleverly and valiantly to renown. What she 
 achievements. p OSSesse( j sne had earned i it is impossible 
 to deny her exertions. Think of the items. Sworn 
 champions of the Catholic faith, the Jesuits were its 
 determined supporters the terror of Protestantism : 
 their very life they exposed in opposition to " heresy." 
 Controver- Wherever a " heretic " lurked, some " nimble- 
 
 witted Jesuit " was ready and eager " to be- 
 stow a few words on him." There was something 
 inspiriting in the very thing itself. Excitement begat 
 effort, and effort begat success. Another item : The 
 
 schools of the Jesuits were bidding defiance 
 
 Educators. . . 
 
 to all competitors, without exception. Fran- 
 ciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines were freezing in dim 
 eclipse, whilst the orb of Jesuitism rose to its me- 
 ridian, or approached its perihelion, intercepting every 
 ray of favour and renown. A third item : The 
 Xavier'a fame of its " apostle " Xavier, the Jesuit- 
 
 Thaumaturg of India, was a vast deposit in 
 the bank of the Company's "merits:" he died in the 
 midst of his glory, but he left Jesuits behind, to transmit 
 to Europe " Curious and Edifying Letters " concerning 
 
 1 " Cujus et ardor animi et eloquentia magnos et plausus et motus excitabat 
 
 in sacello pontificio clarissimorum principum aures mirifice 
 
 tenuit : baud minus in ea lingua quam in vernaculft oratoris adeptus nomen." 
 Sacchin. lib. i. 39.
 
 ENJOYMENTS OF THE MISSIONERS. 21 
 
 the wonderful missions. Was that nothing to the 
 purpose 1 And, lastly : Already the Company had 
 " martyrs of the Faith." Antonio Criminal 
 
 / Martyrs. 
 
 in India, Correa and De Souza amongst the 
 savages of Brazil. Hundreds were eager to brave the 
 same fate generous, noble hearts, self-devoted children 
 of Obedience, to which they refused neither soul nor 
 body. They died in striving to humanise the savage. 
 You will say, perhaps, they misled them. But that was 
 not always the fault of these valiant men, and true 
 heroes. Their hearts impelled them to the work, which 
 they did as was prescribed to them responsible to 
 Obedience, as their superiors were responsible to the 
 all-seeing God of Truth and Righteousness. You 
 must, for a moment at least, forget the creed of 
 these men in the unequalled heroism they displayed. 
 Not that they were cast into an uncongenial element. 
 Far from it. The missioners dearly loved life 
 
 Enjoyments 
 
 in the wilderness ; preferred, in a very short of the 
 
 . i i p TI r\ missioners. 
 
 time, the savage to the man ot Europe. One 
 of these Jesuit-missioners had lived thirty years in the 
 midst of the forests. He returned, and soon fell into a 
 profound melancholy, for ever regretting his beloved 
 savages. " My friend," said he to Raynal, " you know 
 not what it is to be the king almost even the God of 
 a number of men, who owe you the small portion of 
 happiness they enjoy ; and who are ever assiduous in 
 assuring you of their gratitude. After they have been 
 ranging through immense forests, they return overcome 
 with fatigue, and fainting. If they have only killed 
 one piece of game, for whom do you suppose it to be 
 intended ? It is for the FATHER ; for it is thus they 
 call us ; and indeed they are really our children. Their
 
 22 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 dissensions are suspended at our appearance. A sove- 
 reign does not rest in greater safety in the midst of his 
 guards, than we do, surrounded by our savages. It is 
 amongst them that I will go and end my days." l Not 
 that it cost these men no effort : far from it : but what 
 has ever been achieved without effort ? Yet there was 
 joy in their sorrow ease in their hardships pride in 
 their minds and a most pardonable vanity in their 
 hearts. These adventurous spirits themselves selected 
 the field of their exploits : all who were sent had 
 expressed the wish to the general. 2 Meanwhile the men 
 at home the writing, the stirring Jesuits made the 
 most of the distant missioner for the entertainment of 
 the curious and the edifiable. If the blood of the 
 missioners did not fertilise distant lands into Christian 
 fruit, their fame swept over land and sea, to fan, as a 
 mighty breeze, their Company's renown. 3 
 
 1 Hist. &c. of the East and West Indies, iv. 418. 
 
 2 " Qui missionem Indicam cupiunt, debent generalem admonere." 
 Sacckin. lib. ii. 92. 
 
 3 " By the true and painfull endeavours of Thomas Gage, now Preacher of the 
 Word of God at Acres in the County of Kent, Anno Dom. 1648," we have pre- 
 sented before us another view which may be taken of the missioners in general, 
 though not of the Jesuits in particular. This most amusing old traveller thus 
 unfolds his experience : " True it is, I have knowne some that have written their 
 names [he had resided among the monks,] hi the list of Indian Missionaries, 
 men of sober life and Conversation, moved only with a blind zeale of encreasing 
 the Popish Religion : yet I dare say and confidently print this truth without 
 wronging the Church of Rome, that of thirty or forty which hi such occasions 
 are commonly transported to the India's, the three parts of them are Fryers of 
 leud lives, weary of their retired Cloister h'ves, who have beene punished often 
 by their Superiours for their wilfull backsliding from that obedience which they 
 formerly vowed ; or for the breach of their poverty in closely retaining money 
 by them to Card and Dice, of which sort I could here namely insert a long and 
 tedious catalogue ; or lastly such, who have been imprisoned for violating their vow 
 of chastity with &c., &c., either by secret flight from their Cloisters, or by publike 
 Apostatizing from their Order, and cloathing themselves hi Laymens Apparel 1, 
 to run about the safer with their wicked, &c. Of which sort it was my chance 
 to bee acquainted with one Fryer John Navarro a Franciscan in the city of
 
 THE COMPANY IN ITS SEVENTEENTH YEAR. 23 
 
 And now she stands forth, a fascinating maiden to 
 the world presented, with her retinue of a thousand 
 warriors men of intellect, polished manners, 
 grace, and comeliness each eager, at her 
 bidding, to achieve some high feat of arms, as her 8uitora - 
 gallant knight, to win his lady's special praise and 
 favour. Such was the Company in her seventeenth 
 year her marriageable age. Two suitors appeared, 
 both with high pretensions to her favour the Pope of 
 Rome, and the King of Spain. There was a difference 
 between them, however. The former was tottering on 
 his throne, but pretending quite the contrary, and had 
 menaced the Company : the latter was certainly the 
 richest king in Europe, and was therefore the most 
 powerful ; and he was full of big, Spanish designs 
 the conquest of England will succeed to many and 
 he was just on the point of figuring in revolutions which 
 would shake the thrones of Europe. 
 
 A general was to be elected a successor to Loyola. 
 
 Guatemala, who after he had in secular apparell enjoyed &c. &c. for the space 
 of a year, fearing at last he might be discovered, listed himselfe in a Mission to 
 Guatemala, the year 1632, there hoping to enjoy with more liberty and lesse 
 feare of punishment &c., &c. Liberty, in a word, under the cloak of Piety and 
 Conversion of Soules, it is, that drawes so many Fryers (and commonly the 
 younger sort) to those remote American parts ; where after they have learned 
 some Indian language, they are licenced with a Popish Charge to live alone out 
 of the sight of a watching Prior or Superior, out of the bounds and compasse of 
 Cloister walls, and authorized to keep house by themselves, and to finger as 
 many Spanish Patacones, as their wits device shall teach them to squeeze out of 
 the newly-converted Indians wealth. This liberty they could never enjoy in 
 Spain, and this liberty is the Midwife of so many foul falls of wicked Fryers in 
 those parts." Then follows an account of the adventures of the aforesaid Fryer 
 John Navarro, strikingly illustrative of the Quo scmel est imbuta recens servdbit 
 odorem testa diu, or that though a northern winter might untinge an Ethiop's 
 skin a shade or two, the tropical suns have just the contrary effect on a monk's 
 " old Adam." See The English- American, his Travail by Sea and Land ; or A 
 New Survey of the West Indies, chap. iii. Lond. 1648. I omitted to state, 
 after Gage, that John Navarro was a Doctor of Divinity and celebrated preacher 
 in his " mission." The <fcc.'s in Gage's text above are unfit for transcription.
 
 24 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Lainez, the vicar-general, had, for reasons not stated, 
 put off, from the very first, the assembly of the general 
 The Com congregation which was to elect a general. 
 pan y betwixt it seems that he wished to pave the way to 
 
 the pope and 
 
 the King of his own permanent exaltation. The war 
 between the pope and the King of Spain inter- 
 vened. The King of Spain forbade the Jesuits in his 
 dominions, even the Jesuit-duke Borgia, to proceed to 
 Home for the election. Philip would have the general 
 congregation take place in Spain, hoping to transfer 
 permanently the centre of the Order from Rome to one 
 of his own cities. 1 Brilliant idea, and teeming with 
 prophecy a forward glance into the coming history of 
 the Jesuits. To whatever extent the Jesuits might 
 contemplate this Spanish scheme, circumstances inter- 
 vened to render it abortive in form, although, virtually, 
 they would never belie the origin of their Company 
 ever eager to advance the interests of Spain, to serve 
 her king among the many who fee'd their services. But 
 a most extraordinary intestine commotion supervened, 
 menacing the very life of the Company. 
 
 Hitherto the Company has appeared strong by union. 
 It was a bundle of sticks, not to be broken, undivided ; 
 and to those who give the Jesuits credit for nothing but 
 spiritual and divine motives in all that they perform or 
 undertake, it will be somewhat startling to hear that, 
 according to their own statement, the worst passions of 
 human nature raised a tempest in the Company herself, 
 such as was not surpassed in rancour by any storm 
 roused by her most implacable enemies. Bobadilla 
 the man of the Interim who had braved Charles V. to 
 the face, sounded the trumpet of revolt. Lainez and 
 
 1 Cretiueau, i. 363.
 
 REVOLT OF BOBADILLA. 25 
 
 the generalate were the bones of contention. Ignatius 
 had left his kingdom, like Alexander, " to the worthiest." 
 That was a matter of opinion, and Bobadilla thought 
 himself worthiest of all. As a preliminary to what is 
 to follow, we must remember that in the curious Ethio- 
 pian letter, before quoted, Ignatius certainly dismissed 
 both Lainez and Bobadilla without laudation. Pasquier 
 Brouet he praised most highly ; and if the Saint's 
 opinion had been at all cared for, in reality, the 
 " angel of the Society " was, perhaps, the heaven- 
 destined general of the Jesuits. The inference is that 
 Lainez had a " party " in the Company had been 
 " stirring " in spite of his " illness," and vast " humility," 
 commonly called " solid," and pointedly ascribed by the 
 historians to their second general in his triumph over 
 revolt. The Jesuits have never spared their enemies, pub- 
 licly or privately ; and they lash Bobadilla as one of their 
 greatest antagonists. Bartoli dissects this member most 
 unmercifully. Had Bobadilla triumphed in the contest 
 and he was foiled by superior management only 
 Lainez would have been " picked to pieces," and the 
 successful rebel would have merited the awarded 
 amount of his rival's laudation. It is evident that 
 Bobadilla had large claims on the Company's gratitude 
 and respect. He felt that he had won her applause and 
 renown ; he had carried out to the fullest extent 
 her measures and her schemes. Bishoprics he had 
 visited ; monasteries he had reformed ; in the court of 
 Ferdinand, in that of Charles V., he had figured as con- 
 fessor ; all Germany, Inspruck, Vienna, Spires, Cologne, 
 Worms, Nuremberg, had heard him preaching, had 
 seen him working in the cause of Catholicism ; and he 
 had scars to attest his prowess in the strife, having been
 
 26 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 mobbed by the " heretics." Was it not quite natural 
 for this Jesuit to think himself superior to Lainez, who, 
 after all, had been only a skilful speechifier, and rum- 
 mager of old tomes at the Council of Trent. At least, 
 there is no doubt that Bobadilla took this view of his 
 rival's merits, which, by the way, he had slurred on a 
 former occasion in a manner most striking and charac- 
 teristic. Ignatius had assembled the fathers to consult 
 on a case of some importance. The secretary made a 
 sign to Lainez to begin the proceedings ; but Bobadilla 
 stopped him at once, saying that his years and his works 
 entitled him to the lead. All was silence, whilst the 
 veteran went through his achievements, summing up as 
 follows. " In fine, excepting St. Paul's catend hdc cir- 
 cumdaius sum excepting imprisonment only, I can 
 show that I have endured every kind of suffering for 
 the aggrandisement of the Company, and in the service 
 of the Church." 1 It is thus evident that Bobadilla per- 
 fectly understood the duties of a Jesuit ; and it must 
 be admitted that he deserved his " reward " for having 
 performed them so gallantly. Action was this Jesuit's 
 " one thing needful." According to Bartoli, he termed 
 all religious rules and observances mere childish super- 
 stitions, bonds and fetters, which did nothing but restrain 
 and check the spirit. His constant cry was charity, 
 which he said was the form and measure of holiness in 
 every state : in possession of charity, no other law was 
 necessary ; charity alone was all the law in perfection. 
 You will scarcely believe that Bobadilla was a man of 
 the " Spiritual Exercises " and the Constitutions. In 
 
 1 " Che trattone il Catend hdc circumdatus sum di S. Paulo, potea mostrare 
 ogni altro genere di patimenti sofferti in accrescimento della Compagnia, e in 
 servigio della Chiesa." Bartoli, Dell' Ital. lib. iii. f. 365.
 
 REVOLT OF BOBADILLA. 27 
 
 effect, he had attempted to introduce his law of charity 
 at the college at Naples, where he was superintendant ; 
 but he failed, apparently from the opposite system being 
 enforced at the same time by Oviedo, a hot-headed bigot, 
 whom we shall find anon in Ethiopia. Confusion 
 ensued the young Jesuits were disgusted, and returned 
 to the world. Ignatius, of course, cashiered Bobadilla, 
 and Oviedo remained. These facts seem to prove that 
 Bobadilla had all along thought himself called upon to 
 resist many points of the Institute ; and that, on the 
 present occasion, his ambition, and his objection to 
 Lainez, only gave point and animus to his vigorous 
 resistance. In justice to the rebel, on whom the foulest 
 imputations are heaped by Bartoli and Sacchinus, this 
 foregone conclusion of the Jesuit must be remembered. 
 Moreover, it appears that his object was merely to share 
 in the government of the Company ; he objected to the 
 supreme authority being vested in one only. 1 
 
 He had been ill at Tivoli, the Company's rural 
 retreat. On his return, finding that Lainez had put 
 off the General Congregation " to heaven knows when 
 -fino a Dio sa quando" says Bartoli, he felt excess- 
 ively indignant at not having been invited to share the 
 dignity and administration of affairs : he maintained 
 that the Company should be governed by the survivors 
 of the ten founders named in the papal Bull. Four of 
 the professed immediately joined Bobadilla among the 
 rest, no other than the " angel of the Society," Pasquier 
 Brouet. Simon Rodriguez also was among them. These 
 striking accessions to the revolt are hard matters for 
 Jesuit explanation. The first they attribute to simplicity, 
 and the latter to rancour from his late condemnation 
 
 1 " Summam potestatem peiies unum hominem esse." Sacchin. lib. i. 74.
 
 28 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 by Ignatius. It is curious how the Jesuits expose 
 themselves by appealing to the paltriest motives in their 
 own great men, when they think it expedient to denounce 
 their proceedings. What value, then, have their vitu- 
 perations and imputations in the case of their enemies ? 
 To the other two rebels similar motives are ascribed. 
 Another member of great standing, Pontius Gogordanus, 
 went further than Bobadilla and his associates. He 
 presented to the pope a memorial, in which he distinctly 
 charged Lainez and other Jesuits with the determina- 
 tion of proceeding to Spain for the election, and with the 
 intention of modelling the Institute as they pleased, after 
 removing it to a distance from papal authority. Great 
 was the pope's indignation at this announcement. Lainez 
 was ordered to deliver up the Constitutions and other 
 documents relating to the Institute, within three days, 
 with the names of all the members, who were forbidden 
 to leave the city. Bobadilla followed up the stroke vigor- 
 ously. The vicar-general was soon the general object 
 of suspicion and blame, and the Institute itself was 
 roughly handled by the sons of Obedience. Lainez 
 met the storm with the last resource of the Jesuit. 
 This " most humble " man called a council of his party : 
 frequent meetings took place ; he made it clear that the 
 thing was not to be neglected, lest the Company should 
 suffer damage ne quid Societas detrimenti capiat 
 says Sacchinus, after the manner of Titus Livius, when 
 he talks of a dictator ; and it was resolved to make an 
 impression, to create a sensation. Public prayers were 
 announced. Public flagellations were self-inflicted three 
 times a-day. Lainez in the House of the Professed, 
 Natalis in the College, presided over the verberation. 1 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. i. 78. " Quomodo turbis occunum how the mob was met," is 
 the marginal title of the section.
 
 VICTORY OF LAINEZ. 29 
 
 But this was not the main method of success. Lainez 
 got possession of all the papers written by the rebels. 
 These men wrote all they thought ; but Lainez held his 
 tongue, and committed nothing to writing. Bobadilla 
 and Pontius were either too honest or too imprudent to 
 cope with the crafty vicar and his spies. Their papers 
 were abstracted even from their rooms, and carried 
 to their enemy. " But it so happened, by the Divine 
 counsel," says Sacchinus, though he relates the disho- 
 nest means by which the end was effected divino 
 tamen consilio fiebat! Bobadilla soon found himself 
 almost deserted. A cardinal was appointed by the pope 
 to decide the question. Both parties were to be heard. 
 Bobadilla set to writing again, and again were his papers 
 abstracted and carried to Lainez. 1 Meanwhile the 
 greatest moderation appeared on the vicar's counte- 
 nance : no man could possibly seem more humble and 
 resigned. He won over the cardinal : nor were 
 rebels, however justified or justifiable, ever counte- 
 nanced at Rome, except they were Catholics resisting 
 their heretic king. Lainez even made the rebels ridi- 
 culous. On one of them he imposed a penance. And 
 what was it \ Why, to say one Our Father and one 
 Hail Mary ! It was Gogordanus, the only one who had 
 stood firm in the enterprise ; for Bobadilla took fright 
 at last, withdrew his case, and was despatched to reform 
 a monastery at Fuligno. 2 Deserted by his Pylades, 
 Gogordanus stood firm to himself, and taxed Lainez 
 with oppression in having penanced him for writing to 
 the pope. " What was the penance "? " asked the cardi- 
 nal. " An Our Father and a Hail Mary " ! He was 
 forbidden to say another word ; and when the cardinal 
 
 1 " Quse item capita ad Vicarium perlata sunt." Id. lib. i. 85. 2 Id. lib. i. 86.
 
 30 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 related the whole affair to the pope, Paul was filled with 
 wonder, and made a sign of the cross, as at something 
 strange and prodigious. 1 He reserved sentence ; but 
 gave permission to the Jesuits to leave the city, and 
 even gave them money to expedite the deliverance. 
 Lainez sent Gogordanus to Assisium ; he reluctantly 
 obeyed, though he would there be near his friend Boba- 
 dilla. We are, however, assured, that both of them set 
 to work right vigorously in reforming or stimulating the 
 monks of St. Francis. 2 Reform was the cry of the 
 Company against " other men ; " but " ut sunt, aut non 
 sint as we are, or not at all" was her motto for herself, 
 and The Greater Glory of God. Thus did the cool 
 dexterity, the keen-eyed tact of Vicar-General Lainez 
 " put down " this remarkable revolt. First, he frightened 
 the masses of his subjects with the terrors of his religion ; 
 secondly, he refrained himself from committing himself 
 by recrimination above all, he avoided " black and 
 white/' penned not a word, lest it should be turned 
 against him ; thirdly, he avoided all violence he per- 
 mitted the rebels to give the only example of that 
 invariable disparagement to every " party ; " fourthly, 
 he made them ridiculous ; fifthly, he won off as many 
 as he could, then he frightened the ringleader, and yet, 
 not without the certainty of impunity nay, with the 
 immediate appointment of him to a congenial " mission." 
 
 1 " Quod vnlgo solcmus in rebus maxime ab opinione abhorrentibus." 
 Sacchin. lib. i. 86. 
 
 2 "Uterque tamen egregie operamposuit."&c. /d.lib.i.88. Assissum orAssisi 
 is the famous city of St. Francis, founder of the Franciscans, whose Sagro Con- 
 vento at this place is the master-piece of the Order. It has three churches built 
 one on the top of the other ; Divine office is performed in the middle one ; St. 
 Francis is buried in the lowest, which is never used ; the highest is seldom fre- 
 quented. These churches and the cloister are decorated with fine paintings by 
 Cimabue, Giotto, Peter Cavallino, Giottino, Barrocci, and others.
 
 CLEVER MANAGEMENT OP LAINEZ. 31 
 
 A better specimen of clever management was never 
 given. Certainly it was suggested by the circumstances 
 in which the vicar-general was placed, his uncertain 
 position with the pope, and his limited authority ; 
 but we must also remember, that it is not always the 
 consciousness of peril and weakness which makes men 
 cautious, collected, and inventive to achieve deliverance. 
 Bobadilla, in his manifesto, had stated that it was diffi- 
 cult to relate how many blunders, absurdities, fooleries, 
 and childish indiscretions Lainez and his assistants had 
 in so short a time exhibited ; l but Lainez seems to 
 have resolved to prove that his first step towards refor- 
 mation in his conduct would be the management and 
 subjugation of the arch-rebel himself and his assistants. 
 Bobadilla ventured to attack the Constitutions of Igna- 
 tius, which, Bartoli sarcastically says, he had never read, 
 nor understood, even had he read them, because he 
 read them only to turn them into ridicule, 2 a strange 
 accusation for a Jesuit to bring against one of his foun- 
 ders ; but Lainez resolved to show the rebel how he 
 could imitate Ignatius in his astuteness, as well as 
 uphold him in his Constitutions. This victory achieved 
 by Lainez exhibits the character of the Jesuit as strik- 
 ingly as any " great " occasion of his life unless it be 
 the moment when he gave out that " God had revealed 
 the " Spiritual Exercises " to our holy father yea, that 
 it was signified to some one by the Virgin Godbearer, 
 through the Archangel Gabriel, that she was the patroness 
 of the " Exercises," their foundress, their assistant, and 
 that she had taught Ignatius thus to conceive them." 3 
 
 1 Bartoli, uU supra, f. 368. 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 " Fida traditione inde usque a P. Jacobo Lainio .... acceptum haberi, 
 Deum haec ' Exercitia' sancto patri nostro revelasse : imo per Gabrielem Arch- 
 angelum non nemini fuisse a Deipara Virgine signification, se patronam eorum,
 
 32 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Thus subsided, for a time, the intestine commotions of 
 the Jesuits. And the hostilities had ceased between the 
 King of Spain and the Pope of Rome. The pope 
 accepted gladly the proffered peace when he found 
 himself at the conqueror's mercy, and dismissed the 
 execrated foe with his pardon and blessing. On the 
 very same night Tiber overflowed his banks, and deluged 
 the holy city. Up to the highest steps of the Jesuits' 
 church the angry waters foamed and floated the College. 
 Immense damage was done to the city by the uxorious 
 river ; but he seems to have only unsettled the Jesuits, 
 as though he came, as in times of old, to pay a visit of 
 inspection, after their late domestic convulsions 
 
 " Audiet cives acuisse ferrum, 
 Quo graves Persae melius perirent, 
 Audiet pugnas, vitio parentum 
 Kara juventus." 
 
 A rare, choice calamity was this to be converted into 
 a Divine judgment by fanatics : and so it was, and ever 
 will be. The " heretics" cried Judgment, and over Ger- 
 many it was told as a fact that many thousand Romans 
 had been engulfed by the exterminating angel of a river 
 among the rest seven cardinals and that the pope 
 himself had escaped with difficulty. 1 Meanwhile, the 
 embargo being taken off the Jesuits of Spain, they come 
 to the General Congregation. Quern vocet divum populus 
 mentis Imperi rebus ? whom of the professed Gods 
 will they invoke to guide the helm in the storm, raging 
 and still impending 1 To the holy conclave twenty 
 electors only twenty electors out of more than a 
 
 fundatricem, atque adjutricem fuisse, docuisseque Ignatium, ut ea sic conciperet ; 
 quo nomine se huic operi dedisse initium." Bibl. Script. Soc. Jemt. f. 1 . 
 1 Sacchin. lib. i. 90. Haereticorum mendacia guttura, &c.
 
 ELECTION OF A GENERAL. 33 
 
 thousand men proceed to elect a general for the Com- 
 pany of Jesus. Holy obedience in the vulgar herd the 
 ignobile imlgus of the Company put their necks into the 
 yoke, why should we complain ? If the Evil One may 
 do as he likes with his own, why should we interfere by 
 force or argument between a Jesuit and his soul ? But 
 see, in the midst of the assembled electors, a cardinal 
 enters, unexpectedly, in the name of the sovereign 
 pontiff ! Not exactly like Cromwell into parliament, he 
 comes : but still in a significant attitude, saying to the 
 startled Jesuits assembled : 
 
 " Paul IV. does not pretend to influence a choice 
 which should be made only according to the Institute. 
 The pope desires to be considered the Protector of the 
 Order not in a general sense, as he is of all the Faith- 
 ful and all religious Orders but in a sense altogether 
 special and particular. ' n 
 
 The pope's jealousy of Philip II. was not dispelled. 
 Borgia had not left Spain : this Jesuit, by reason of ill 
 health, we are told, and from " political motives," could 
 not abandon Spain. 2 He remained with the hated Philip. 
 Reformed or not reformed, the pope would have the 
 Company entirely to himself, admitting least of all, such 
 a rival in his fond possession. Now, what if Borgia be 
 elected general ? In that event the pope would have 
 confirmation strong for his suspicion. Pacheco, the car- 
 dinal, further announced that he was charged by Paul 
 IV. to act as secretary, and teller of the ballot to the 
 electing Congregation. The Jesuits were taken aback : 
 but they soon trimmed sail to the wind ever yielding 
 to the storm when they cannot control it. There was 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 365. 
 
 2 " Pour des raisons de sante, et des motifs politiques." Id. ib. 372. 
 VOL. II. U
 
 34 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 no doubt of the vicar's election to the generalate ; and 
 he had a large majority. Lainez took thirteen votes out 
 of the twenty, Nadal, Loyola's coadjutor and assistant, 
 when lately disabled took four, Lannoy and Brouet, 
 the angel of the Company, had only one each ; and 
 Borgia, the duke-Jesuit, had a single vote. Lainez was 
 proclaimed general with immense applause 
 and gratulation. Te Deum laudamus was 
 sung, three sermons were delivered, one on the Trinity, 
 a second by way of thanksgiving, and a third on the 
 Virgin Mary. So great was the spiritual excitement on 
 the occasion, that many said they had never been before 
 so abundantly and solidly enlivened by celestial delights. 1 
 The ghost of Reform came suddenly upon them in the 
 midst of their celestial banquet. Paul IV. insisted that 
 the choral offices of the monks should be performed in 
 the Society of Jesus. This is one of the most important 
 exemptions of the Jesuits. It gave them seven or eight 
 hours daily for work. To have boxed them up in 
 cloisters, and to have made them sing " the praises of 
 God," whilst they might promote the glory of the 
 Society, by their numerous avocations the composition 
 of books in particular in a word, to have made monks 
 of them, was neither the notion of Loyola, nor contem- 
 plated by the Constitutions, nor in the least relished by 
 the Jesuits in general. But this was not all. General 
 Lainez received the next blow from St. Peter's Vicar. 
 The pope required that the generalate should be only 
 for a determinate period, as for example, the space of 
 three years. This would at once make the Order a 
 democracy aristocratical more or less but still its 
 high monarchical elements would evaporate fear and 
 
 1 " Cselesti dulcedine usque eo affluenter ac solicle recreates." Sacch. L ii. 3] .
 
 THE POPE'S ATTEMPTED INNOVATIONS. 35 
 
 anxiety would hamper the triennial monarch, and open 
 the way for further democratical influence. It would 
 be impossible for the general to adopt schemes of any 
 magnitude, requiring time for maturity and complete 
 achievement : the work of the Jesuits was by its very 
 nature progressive a sort of new creation, in veritable 
 geological days, unto the glory and rest of the Sabbath. 
 
 The Jesuits, in a respectful memorial, protested against 
 these innovations. Lainez and Salmeron went to pre- 
 sent it to the pope. Paul IV. received them freezingly. 
 In the presence of the Cardinal of Naples, his nephew, 
 the pope let fall upon them the weight of his displeasure. 
 The two Jesuits attempted to explain the motives of 
 their persistence " You are rebels ! " exclaimed his 
 enraged Holiness ; " opiniators verging on heresy and 
 I very much fear to see some sectarian issuing from your 
 Society. For the rest, we are well resolved no longer 
 to tolerate such a disorder." 
 
 Lainez replied : 
 
 " I have never sought nor desired to be general ; and 
 as for what concerns myself personally, I am not only 
 not repugnant to resign at the end of three years, even 
 this very day would I esteem it a favour if your Holiness 
 would free me from this burthen, for which I have 
 neither inclination nor fitness. Nevertheless, you know 
 that the fathers, in proceeding to the election, have 
 intended to elect a general in perpetuity, according to 
 the Constitutions. Cardinal Pacheco announced to us 
 that your Holiness desired two things : 1. That the 
 general should fix his residence at Rome ; 2. That he be 
 appointed for life. The fathers were of the same opi- 
 nion. The election being made in that manner, we are 
 come to your Holiness, who has approved and confirmed 
 
 D 2
 
 36 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 it. But I shall not hesitate an instant I shall obey 
 willingly, as I have said." 
 
 "I do not wish you to resign," rejoined the pope, " it 
 would be to shun labour ; moreover, at the end of three 
 years I shall be able to prolong the term." 
 
 How to deal with a furious old man! Lainez appealed 
 to the bowels of his mercy. 
 
 " We teach," said he, "we preach against the heretics : 
 on that account they hate us, and call us papists. Where- 
 fore your Holiness ought to protect us, to show us the 
 bowels of a father, and believe that God would be to us 
 propitious." 
 
 All in vain ! Paul IV. was inexorable. He ordered 
 the choir to be instantly established, and that this article 
 should be appended to the Constitutions as the expression 
 of his sovereign will. * 
 
 The Jesuits obeyed, for it was absolutely necessary. 
 The pope's death, within the year, freed them from this 
 ostensible obedience ; they threw up the hateful choir ; 
 and tore off the spiteful article superadded to their 
 Constitutions. The pope's successor, the " dexterous, 
 prudent, good-humoured " Pius IV. was not likely to 
 look with more displeasure on this trivial disobedience 
 to a mandate of his enemy Paul IV., than he had pro- 
 bably felt at the display of popular hatred when Paul's 
 statue was torn down from its pedestal, broken in 
 pieces, and the head with the triple crown dragged 
 through the streets. 2 
 
 All circumstances favoured the Jesuits. The pope 
 had died miserably, 3 unpopular, detested by his subjects, 
 
 1 Cretineau, M supra ; Sacchinus, lib. ii. ; Bartoli, lib. iv. 
 
 2 See Ranke, Hist, of the Popes, p. 80. 
 
 3 " At last, when laid low by an illness sufficient to cause the death even of a
 
 THEIR INCREASED STRENGTH AND UNITY. 37 
 
 as evidenced by the violent demonstrations which followed 
 his demise. His Inquisition was pillaged and set on 
 fire : an attempt was made to burn the Domi- 
 
 1 Reaction. 
 
 mean convent Delia Minerva. All his monu- 
 ments were to be destroyed, as the Romans resolved in 
 the capitol : they had suffered so much under him, 
 and his infamous nephews the Caraffas for " he had 
 been an ill-doer to the city and the whole earth/' 1 So 
 did, and so spake the masses, stirred through the length 
 and breadth of their stormy sea as it rolled with the 
 turning tide. From the tempest the Society emerged, 
 as the moon what time her horns are full, rejoicing. 
 " She was restored to her normal state, stronger than 
 before the death of Loyola. She was more united 
 because she had just tested her unity." 2 
 
 And not only that : she triumphantly stood on the 
 pinnacle of a splendid reaction. A year before, she was 
 at the mercy of a capricious old man, wielding the bolts 
 of the Vatican. There had been a dread hour when 
 all seemed lost the gulf yawning beneath her. On 
 
 if 
 
 the brink she stood unterrified. A strong man in her 
 van battled with destruction. He bridged the chasm : 
 she crossed ; and sang the song of thanksgiving to the 
 master-mind which had planned, and effected her 
 deliverance. The reaction was one of the most won- 
 derful recorded in history : in the conclave for the 
 election of a successor to Paul IV., Lainez, the general 
 of the Jesuits, was proposed, and would have been Pope 
 of Rome but for a prescriptive formality ! Custom 
 
 younger man, he called the cardinals once more together, commended his soul to 
 their prayers, and the Holy See and the Inquisition to their care : he strove to 
 collect his energies once more, and to raise himself up : his strength failed him : 
 he fell back, and died." (Aug. 18, 15.59). Ranke, Hist, of the Popes, p. 79. 
 ' Id. p. 80 ; Panviu. Paul IV. 2 Cretineau, i. 371.
 
 38 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 required that the pope should be chosen from the college 
 of cardinals. 1 
 
 Lainez was a Spaniard : the most exalted members 
 of the Society, with the Jesuit-duke Borgia at their 
 head, were Spaniards ; the Society was a Spaniard's 
 in Spain she was best established ; and the interests 
 of Spain were then paramount ; Italy had suffered 
 Rome had been threatened by the indignation of Spain's 
 powerful king : he had designed to take the Society 
 under his special superintendence : he was sure of its 
 devotedness to his interests ; and now, how splendid 
 the prospect if, by one great stroke, both the Society 
 and the tiara should become his vassals ! A mere 
 formality (but in the city of inexorable formalities) 
 defeated the splendid design, and " the partisans of 
 Lainez gave their votes to Cardinal Medici, who took 
 the name of Pius IV." 2 
 
 Simple facts as the Jesuit-historians record them : 
 but how significant when transfixed and ento- 
 
 The Jesuits 
 
 in the field mologically examined, by cool reflection, with 
 
 of blood. K J . ' 
 
 memory at her side opening the archives ot 
 antecedent and contemporaneous events. 
 
 Bloody executions within two years avenged Pius IV. 
 and the Jesuits for what both Medici and the Jesuits 
 had endured from the late pope and his nephews, the 
 Caraffas ; and his relatives, Count Allifani and Cardini. 
 They were condemned to death : it is not necessary 
 to state the crimes of which they were accused, since 
 the next infallible pope, St. Pius V. made restitution to 
 their memory and their family, his appointed judges 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 385 ; Sacchinus and Bartoli. 
 
 2 This Jesuit-fact is, however, somewhat suspicious. It is scarcely probable 
 that the cardinals would elect any one who did not belong to their body. See 
 Quesnel, ii. 10.
 
 THE JESUITS IN THE FIELD OF BLOOD. 39 
 
 declaring " that Pius IV. had been led into error by 
 the Procurator-General," who was duly put to death as 
 a scape-goat. 1 
 
 Jesuit-fathers attended the condemned in their pre- 
 paration for death. Silver crucifixes were kissed, the 
 De profundis was gloomily muttered ; the Te Deum too, 
 at the suggestion of one of the Jesuits, alternated the 
 lament of death. The Cardinal Caraffa was resigned, for 
 he had made his confession, and was absolved, and 
 had recited the office of the Virgin. And the grim 
 tormentors approached ready to strangle the anointed 
 of the Church. The cardinal shrunk in horror from 
 the sight, and turning away he exclaimed with unspeak- 
 able energy : " Pope Pius ! King Philip ! I did 
 not expect this from you !" He rolled on the ground, 
 a strangled corpse. 2 
 
 The bodies were exposed to public view : the effect 
 did not correspond to the expectation. The Romans 
 had detested the late pope's nephews they would them- 
 selves have torn them to pieces without remorse : but 
 the revenge of another hand only found (as usual) 
 indignant pity in their breast : they bewailed the 
 victims the feeling was contagious a tumult was immi- 
 nent. The Jesuits were sent forth to restore tranquillity 
 in Rome ; and they succeeded. 3 
 
 1 His name was Pallentiere, the "Attorney-General" of the prosecution. 
 Pius V. declared the sentence unjust ; and Pallavicini, the Catholic historian, 
 asserts that the cardinal's guilt was not made out, to judge from the documents 
 which he had examined. 
 
 2 Cretineau gives a long description of these executions, actually with the view 
 of " showing off" the Jesuits in the cells of the condemned ! But the fact is that 
 the cardinal was denied his usual confessor. " He was not allowed his usual 
 confessor : he had much to say, as may be imagined, to the confessor sent him, 
 and the shrift was somewhat protracted. ' Finish, will you, Monsignore,' cried the 
 officer of police, ' we have other business in hand.' " Ranke, Hist, of the Popes, 
 p. 83. 3 Cretineau, p. 389 ; Thuan. lib. 23 ; Ciacon. Vita Pontif. Paul IV.
 
 40 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 If the conduct of these Jesuits in the field of blood 
 was edifying, it compensated in some measure for that 
 A disgraceful f another Jesuit, in the confessional, a few 
 transaction, months before these dreadful scenes horrified 
 and disgusted the hearts of Rome. There was at Gre- 
 nada, in Spain, a repentant lady, who went to confess to 
 a Jesuit, whose name is not mentioned by the Company's 
 historian. This lady accused herself, in confession, of a 
 certain sin which requires an accomplice. The Jesuit 
 insisted upon having the name of the party revealed 
 to him : the lady refused : the Jesuit withheld abso- 
 lution, until, overcome by his importunities and menaces, 
 she revealed the name of her accomplice. The Jesuit 
 immediately imparted the crime, and named the criminal 
 to the Archbishop of Grenada, who, according to the 
 Jesuits, had advised his indiscretion. Immense scandal 
 ensued. The whole affair transpired : the Jesuits were 
 denounced by the public voice as not only betrayers of 
 confession, but also as intriguers, making every effort to 
 get at the secrets of those who did not confess to them, 
 through the instrumentality of their penitents. Certainly 
 it was unfair, unjust to denounce the whole body for the 
 fault of one member : but, instead of respecting the 
 sacred principle which aroused popular, nay, even royal, 
 indignation, instead of denouncing the conduct of their 
 member, they permitted, if they did not command, one 
 of their best preachers to defend his conduct. He did so 
 publicly. Sacchinus gives us his argument : it is proper 
 to know the Society's doctrine on the subject. John 
 Raminius, the preacher, admitted that " It is never 
 lawful to break the sacred seal of confession, though the 
 destruction of the universe might ensue : but, there may 
 be occasions when a priest may lawfully insist upon
 
 A DISGRACEFUL TRANSACTION. 41 
 
 being informed by his penitent of a criminal accomplice, 
 or a heretic, or any delinquent tainted with some pestilen- 
 tial vice, if there be no other remedy at hand : that 
 he may in confession exact permission to use that know- 
 ledge in the case of a fraternal admonition, or may 
 exact it out of confession, for the purpose of a judicial 
 accusation. Should the penitent refuse, he ought not to 
 be absolved just as no thief ought to be absolved, if he 
 refuse to make restitution/' 1 It is impossible to point 
 out all the abuses to which this doctrine invites a prying 
 Jesuit. Accordingly, three ecclesiastics denounced it as 
 " new, pernicious, impious, or rather monstrous," whose 
 tendency was to alienate the people from the practice of 
 confession. Nevertheless, the Jesuits found supporters : 
 disputes ran high : the archbishop put a stop to the 
 litigation by undertaking to decide on the matter, 
 enjoining silence to both parties. But so strong was 
 public opinion set against the Jesuits, on account of the 
 transaction, that Borgia declared there had never before 
 been such a storm raised against the Company. Through- 
 out Spain and Belgium even at the court of Philip II. 
 the infamous transaction excited merited indignation. 
 The Jesuit-confessor may have erred through indis- 
 cretion : but Raminius seemed to speak, or did speak, 
 the doctrine, and declared the practice, of the Company. 
 It is thus that the Jesuits have almost invariably, 
 publicly or in secret, accumulated execration on their 
 heads, by never admitting an error, and by defending 
 to the uttermost their sinning brothers. 2 
 
 Fortunate coincidences often give an outlet from 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. ii. 1 30. Hispania Amatoria, ii. lib. vi. p. 79 ; Hist, des Reli- 
 gieux de la Comp. i. 234. 
 
 2 Id. ib. 131. Also Hispania Amatoria, ii. lib. vi. p. 97 ; Hist, des Religieux 
 de la Comp. i. 234.
 
 42 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 difficulties like the sun-lit dawn after a night of tem- 
 pest. Frequently have the Jesuits experienced this alle- 
 A fortunate viation of their toil and trouble. At the height 
 outlet. O f t ke execra tion which has just been traced 
 
 to its origin, Charles V. died, appointing by will one of 
 their body, Francis Borgia, a co-executor of his royal 
 behests. Charles had never liked the Jesuits. Policy 
 rather than esteem, seems to have motived his acqui- 
 escence in their establishment throughout his dominions. 
 Borgia paid him a visit in his retreat at St. Juste's. 
 They spent their time very agreeably together : it was a 
 congenial amalgamation of ascetic feelings, brought 
 more closely in contact from the similitude of their 
 abnegations. There was even, perhaps, some little 
 danger of Borgia's acquiescing in the ex-royal wish, 
 that the Jesuit should leave his Society and take up his 
 abode with penitent royalty. Charles " had his doubts " 
 about the Company : he expressed them to his beloved 
 visitor : but the Jesuit was forewarned of the tempta- 
 tion, 1 and left the royal monk in his solitude, after 
 receiving " a small sum," by way of alms from one 
 poor man to another, as the king expressed the senti- 
 mental charity. 2 This had occurred the year before, 
 whilst Melchior Cano was denouncing the Jesuits, public 
 report declaring Charles to be hostile to the Com- 
 pany. It was on this account that Borgia visited 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 375. 
 
 2 Borgia knew how to win over the royal ascetic. Charles complained to the 
 Jesuit that he could not sleep with his hair-shirt on his back, in order to macerate 
 himself the more. The apostolical Jesuit replied : " Senor, the nights which your 
 majesty passed in arms are the cause that you cannot sleep in hair-cloth but, 
 thanks be to God that you have more merit in having passed them thus in 
 defence of your faith, than many monks have who number theirs wrapped up in 
 hair-cloth." The " small sum " given to the Jesuit was two hundred ducats, and 
 Charles said it was the best favour he had ever granted in his life la mayor 
 merced que avia hecho en su vida. De Vera, Epitome, p. 253, et seq.
 
 CHAKLE8 V. AND THE JESUITS. 43 
 
 Charles ; and the result of his kind reception and the 
 correspondence which ensued, was greatly beneficial to 
 the Company as soon as the interview, friendship or 
 " patronage," was given to the winds of popular rumour 
 by the calculating Jesuits, who always knew the value 
 of " great names " among the vulgar in mind or condi- 
 tion. 1 As a Jesuit, Borgia was unable to undertake the 
 executorship so honourable to the Company : such 
 secular offices were expressly forbidden by the Constitu- 
 tions ; but Lainez and six of the most influential 
 Jesuits decided to supersede the " dictates " of Ignatius 
 for the sake of policy, though they stubbornly refused to 
 do so for the sake of the pope, who so wisely advised 
 them not " to build on sand." And they got the 
 " reward " of expediency. " The Company, mean- 
 while, made no small advancement nee leve interim 
 Societas incrementum accepit" says Sacchinus. Borgia 
 performed his duty as executor with honour and inte- 
 grity. It was, however, an easy matter : for Charles V. 
 had left nothing either to the Jesuits, nor the monks, 
 not even to the Church, nor for Purgatorial prayers to 
 be said for him, which last omission brought his ortho- 
 doxy into doubt among the Inquisitors and the Jesuits, 
 it is said, who quarrelled with the ex-king's memory, 
 since he had not given them a chance for fighting over 
 legacies. 2 
 
 Certainly the Jesuits did not spare a friend of the 
 deceased monarch, Constantino Ponce, a Spanish bishop, 
 and a learned doctor of the Church, but suspected of 
 heresy and Lutheranism. He had been preacher to 
 
 1 " Dictu facile non est quantum hsec Cai-oli humanitas vulgo cognita et ser- 
 monibus celebrata, rebus Societatis attulerit." SaccMn. lib. i. 115. 
 
 2 Hist, de 1'Inquisit. Liv. ii. p. 235, et seq. ; Anecdot. Inquisit. Hispan. p. 503 ; 
 Hist, de la Comp. de Jesus, i. p. 237.
 
 44 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Charles in Germany, and had accompanied Philip II. to 
 England when he married Queen Mary. Constantino 
 The Jesuits Ponce applied for admission into the Com- 
 foTtoIhe* P an y f Jesus. He had been one of her many 
 inquisition, enemies in Spain. The wily Jesuits suspected 
 some design upon their secrets. They deliberated on 
 the application : consulted the Inquisitor Carpius : Ponce 
 was arrested and cast into the prisons of the dread 
 tribunal, where he died, but was subsequently burnt in 
 effigy ; l undoubtedly a severe return for his advance 
 to the Company. True, they might have rancorous 
 recollections of his former hostility, and they might even 
 have grounds for doubting his orthodoxy, but perhaps 
 a milder method should have been adopted by the 
 Companions of Jesus to revenge an injury and to reclaim 
 a heretic. 
 
 Although as yet not officially connected with the 
 
 Inquisition, the Jesuits might be considered its jackalls, 
 
 as is evident from the last fact, and their con- 
 
 The Jesuits 
 
 and the fessional maxims, as recorded by themselves. 
 In 1555, a year before his death, Ignatius, 
 with the opinion of a majority of the Fathers, had 
 accepted the direction of the Inquisition at Lisbon, 
 offered to the Society by King John of Portugal, with 
 the advice of his brother Louis and the Cardinal Henry. 
 The death of Louis, and the illness of the Cardinal, 
 prevented the accomplishment ; but the Jesuits Henri- 
 quez and Serrano filled the appointment of Deputies to 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. ii. 128 ; Thuan. lib. xxiii. Ann. 1559. In the barbarities he 
 suffered in the prison, though he had not yet tasted the tortures, Constantino 
 often exclaimed : " O my God, were there no Scythians in the world, no canni- 
 bals more fierce and cruel than Scythians, into whose hands thou couldst carry 
 me, so that I might but escape the claws of these wretches ! " Chandler, Hist. 
 nf Pcrtecut. p. 186.
 
 THE JESUITS AND THE INQUISITION. 45 
 
 the General Council of the Inquisition in Portugal. 1 
 And it was in consequence of the urgent advice 
 qravibus literis of the Jesuits in India that the Inqui- 
 sition was established at Goa, with all its horrors, against 
 our " false brothers of the Circumcision congregated in 
 India from all parts of the world, pretending to be 
 Christians, but fostering Judaism and other impieties 
 privately, and sowing them by stealth. Therefore, if 
 in any place, these Fathers thought the tribunal of the 
 holy Inquisition most necessary, both on account of the 
 existing license and the multitudes of all nations and 
 superstitions there united." 2 And it was established. 
 The Jesuits did not get the appointment ; for, from 
 time immemorial, it was the almost exclusive patrimony 
 of the Dominicans, whose cruel method of making con- 
 verts to the faith, the Jesuits copied, when their milk of 
 kindness was soured by disappointment in proselytising 
 the heretic and the savage. None surpassed the Jesuits 
 in the arts of persuasion whilst these could prevail ; 
 but, also, none exceeded them in terrible rancour when 
 the destruction was next in expediency to the conversion 
 or conciliation of their victims. And the flaming banner 
 of Goa's Inquisition flapped and expanded to the breeze, 
 wide spreading the motto : " Mercy and Justice ! " and 
 unto a merciful good God it said : "Arise, Lord, 
 and judge thy Cause" a cross in the middle, and a 
 bald-headed monk of St. Dominic, with sword and olive- 
 
 1 Franco (Soc. Jesu) Synops. Ami. Soc. Jesu in Lusit. p. 45. I must here 
 remark that Orlandinus (lib. xv. n. 100) positively says that Ignatius declined 
 the offer, or " received it unwillingly." He does more : he pretends to give all 
 the saint's motives for so doing. In the face of this invention, another Jesuit, 
 Franco, published the founder's letter to Miron, on the subject, in which he 
 shows even anxiety to obtain the appointment for the Company. Synops. ubi supra. 
 This curious fact proves how little faith we can place in the Jesuit-exposition of 
 Jesuit-motives, nay even of Jesuit-" tacts." - Sacchinus, lib. i. 151.
 
 46 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 branch in his hand, and a blood-hound mouthing a 
 fire-brand, inflaming the world at his feet. 1 The views 
 of the Jesuit-fathers were fully carried out ; the Pagans, 
 the Jews, the Christians, whom they could not convert, 
 were handed over to tortures too horrible to detail, and 
 then unto the death by fire, when their souls went up 
 to God, perhaps in their regenerated charity exclaiming : 
 " Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do." 
 The Inquisition was thus one of the blessings given to 
 India by the Jesuits, one of the religious ceremonies 
 of the ancient faith. 2 
 
 The musket had been long the cross of salvation to 
 
 the Gentiles of India. Torrez, the Jesuit, procured 
 
 royal letters enjoining the viceroys and the 
 
 The Indian J J .. i , . 
 
 "mission" governors ot India to lend their powers to 
 the Jesuits for the purpose of converting the 
 infidels, and to punish their opponents. This excellent 
 scheme abridged their labours wonderfully. All they 
 had to do was to ferret out the places where the Indians 
 congregated to sacrifice to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. 
 Then a detachment of soldiers, headed by some Jesuits, 
 completed the success of the apostolate. Sacchinus, the 
 Jesuit-historian, describes one of these evangelising 
 forays. It happened in the island of Cyorano, close 
 by Goa, where, says he, " by a wonderful afflation, an 
 immense number rushed to Christianity miro quodam 
 qfflatu ingens numerus ad Christiana sacra confluxit (!) 
 Not far from the church of the Blessed Virgin about 
 forty heathens were lurking in a grove of palms. They 
 had been informed against as having indulged in certain 
 
 1 See Chandler, p. 276, for an engraving of the banner. 
 
 2 For details see Chandler; Geddes ; Dillon, Relation; Buchanan, Christ. 
 Research, p. 149, et seq. ; Moreri, vi.
 
 THE INDIAN MISSION. 47 
 
 rites publicly, contrary to the royal edicts. To these 
 men Fathers Almeida and Correa were sent, together 
 with a certain Juan Fernandez, a lawyer, and the lord 
 of the grove of palms. This lawyer circumvented the 
 pagans completely, we are told ; consequently, he must 
 have had not a few muskets and men to shoulder them. 
 He ordered some of them to be seized, whilst the rest 
 took refuge in the bush. They were frightened, and 
 one of them, the oldest of the troop, cried out, " What 's 
 the use of binding us ? let us be made Christians." 
 " Nothing more was needed," continues the chuckling 
 Jesuit. " Then a cry arose throughout the village that 
 all wished to be made Christians. Almeida and his com- 
 panion ran up ; and, whereas, previously the conversion 
 of only seven or eight of the guilty men was hoped for, 
 the Divine Spirit in wonderful modes scattering celestial 
 fire, all of them, some rushing from one side, others from 
 another, to the number of three hundred in a short 
 time, shouted and declared that they would be made 
 Christians ! "When Consalvez mentioned the joyful 
 affair to the viceroy, he said " it was the festival of the 
 day when the Precursor of our Lord was beheaded ; " * 
 and, we may add, with less guilt in the king who caused 
 the murder, than in those who advised and practised 
 "religious" murder and violence to please the wrinkled 
 lady of Rome. There were no Brahmins among these 
 captives of the faith ; " but the fathers, suspecting that 
 they would escape beyond the reach of Portuguese 
 power, placed sentinels and guards round about, by 
 whom thirty were intercepted and added to the cate- 
 chumens. In fine, by constant accessions, the number 
 
 1 " Isque diem baptism!, quo sanctus Domini Precursor obtrimcatus est 
 dixit." Sacch. lib. iii. 129.
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 gradually increased so much, that on an appointed 
 day, when the viceroy visited the island, five hundred 
 postulants of baptism presented themselves. They 
 marched in a long train, with the Christian banner, and 
 drums, and various sounding instruments of the nation. 
 When they came to the viceroy, their salute was kindly 
 returned, and all entered the church of the Virgin, the 
 viceroy bringing up the rear. There they were baptised, 
 and then, as the day was far spent, they were treated 
 to a generous repast, and, lastly, with an appropriate 
 exhortation. On the following day, they learnt how to 
 make the sign of the cross." l Such is a specimen of 
 the Indian " mission" in 1559 ; about five hundred and 
 thirty pagans, at one fell swoop, by the terror of the 
 musket and "the Divine Spirit in wonderful modes 
 scattering celestial fire," were flung into the Jordan of 
 Rome, then feasted, and lectured, and taught the sign of 
 the cross, and thereby became sterling Jesuit-Christians 
 of the Indian mission. In fact, it was nothing but a 
 downright fox-hunting, boar-hunting, bear-baiting apos- 
 tolate, when the Jesuits got tired of preaching to no 
 purpose, with no results to boast of in the annual letters 
 which, with other proceeds, were the bills of exchange 
 and assets of the missions for the bank of devoteeism, 
 and passed to the credit of the modern " apostles." 
 In the viceroy Constantine the Jesuits found ready 
 patronage and support in their system of conversion. 
 The Brahmins in India were like the Romish priests of 
 Ireland to the people. By their authority and exhorta- 
 tions the superstitions of the people resisted the arguments 
 of the Jesuits in their public disputation. What did the 
 viceroy to make his Jesuits triumph in spite of their 
 
 1 Sacch. lib. iii. 129.
 
 49 
 
 discomfiture '? Why, he ordered forty of the chief 
 Brahmins to sell all they had and to leave Goa with 
 their families, to make themselves comfortable where 
 they could find a resting-place secure from tyrannical 
 viceroys and apostolical Jesuits. 1 " Deprived of this 
 defence, and terrified by this example," says the un- 
 scrupulous Jesuit Sacchinus, " the pagans of less note 
 gave readier ears and minds to the word of God " ! 
 They actually banished the shepherds so as to rob the 
 flock more easily ! Now, how could these Jesuits com- 
 plain when Elizabeth soon after banished the priests 
 of Rome when she found that they " stirred" her people 
 to rebellion 1 Or, had she been a fanatic, and finding 
 that arguments would not do with the people in the 
 presence of the priests, and proceeded to banish the 
 latter, so as to entrap the former, I ask, what moral 
 difference would there have been in the matter 1 In 
 truth, had England copied this Jesuit and Portuguese 
 example in Ireland, in the time of Elizabeth, had every 
 priest been sent forth, and the coast guarded against 
 their return, we should long ere this have beheld that 
 country as flourishing, as free, as happy, as honest, and 
 honourable as any on the face of the earth. We have 
 to thank the " roaring bellows of sedition and incen- 
 diary Pharisees" for the present degradation of Ireland. 
 The method did not succeed in India except in producing 
 hypocritical pagans, because there was so much in their 
 rites and ceremonies which it was impossible to wear 
 
 1 " Prorex cum videret Brachmanum quorumdam auctoritate et suasionibus 
 superstitionem tenuiorum stare, neque admodum multum disputationibus profici, 
 quas priore anno institutas docui, quadraginta eorum prsecipuos, divenditis 
 rebus una cum familiis alias sibi quaerere sedes jussit. Quo et munimento exuti, 
 et exemplo territi inferioris notae mortales, procliviores aures, animosque Dei 
 verbo dedere." Sacchin. lib. iv. 245. 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 50 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 out without many years of advance to civilisation ; but 
 in Ireland, it was only the false hopes and incendiary 
 harangues of the priesthood that kept the Irishman a 
 savage for the sake of "his" religion the beggarly 
 trade of his Brahmins. 
 
 Following up this advantage gained by the expulsion 
 of their priests, Antonio Quadrio, the Provincial of India, 
 A new inven- sen ^ forth his Jesuits into the villages. Goa 
 IS tL con * s an i s l an d about two leagues in length, and 
 Indians. one in breadth : it contains thirty-one villages, 
 with a population of two thousand souls. There were 
 now but few pagans after this year's conversion as it 
 were the stray bunches after the vintage and it was 
 hoped that in the following year there would be a com- 
 plete gleaning of the grapes, says Sacchinus absolutam 
 racemationem. The method of the vintage was as fol- 
 lows : Quadrio sent out his missioners by twos ; they 
 explained the gospel to the neophytes briefly, and dis- 
 coursed on the sum of the Christian law copiously ; then 
 in the afternoon they perambulated the villages, made a 
 gathering of " the boys " cogerent pueros, with the 
 sound of a bell, and gave them each a green bough to 
 carry in their hands. These were marched to the 
 church singing the rudiments of the faith -fidei con- 
 cinentes initia. Lastly, they inquired into the wants of 
 the pagans, and either gave assistance, or reported the 
 case at head-quarters. The result was that crowds of 
 the pagans assembled, either for the sake of the sight, or 
 enticed (pellecti) by their neophyte friends and ac- 
 quaintances, and easily imbibed a love of baptism from 
 that religious display of prayer and song, and the charity 
 and exhortations of the brethren. It was sweet, con- 
 tinues the historian, to see the congratulations with
 
 NEW PLAN OF CONVERSION. 51 
 
 which the brethren returning home were received ; for 
 all eagerly waited for their return, that they might see 
 how large a troop each would bring to the house of the 
 catechumens to be baptised ; and might hear what par- 
 ticular and special proof of mercy the celestial Father 
 had on that day vouchsafed to the apostles. Each led 
 his troop, and joyfully to joyful listeners his glorious 
 deeds related et prceclara Icetis Iceti narrabant. This 
 method of propagating the faith, says Sacchinus, seemed 
 the most adapted to change the superstition of all India 
 into religion, and was now, for the first time, invented 
 et nunc primum inventa. Six hundred were the first 
 batch of Christians. Five days after, on the birth- 
 festival of John the Baptist, it was impossible to baptise 
 all the converts five hundred and seventy received the 
 rite but more than two hundred had to be postponed ! 
 It is pleasant to behold how many candidates a name of 
 so little importance produced, observes the Jesuit 
 tantumque candidatorum qudm lem momenta nomen 
 dederit. But was it the name of John the Baptist ? 
 Was it not rather the suggestion of poor persecuted 
 humanity, crying out "Quid opus est his mnculis f efficia- 
 mur Christiani ' what need of these bonds 1 let us be 
 made Christians," since nothing but our receiving your 
 rite, which we know nothing of, and care less for, is the 
 only guarantee of rest and peace, and comfort. Besides, 
 you promise to make us comfortable, to attend to our 
 wants. We can understand that, at least : when our 
 Brahmins get the upper hand again, and come back with 
 their families, we '11 shout again for Brahma, Vishnu, and 
 Shiva, and beat our drums and cymbals, and othersounding 
 instruments for them, after the manner of our nation, just 
 as we beat them now for you, great Christian Brahmins ! " 
 
 E 2
 
 52 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 In the face of these facts, in spite of our knowledge 
 of the most peculiarly social paganism of the Hindoos, 
 we are expected to believe that the historian really 
 believed his pen, when it wrote these words : "The 
 eagerness with which the Indians flew to the faith 
 seemed not without a miracle " l verily, the miracle was 
 that Christian men should be so blinded by their rage 
 for exhibiting boastful catalogues of " conversions," as 
 to abuse the sacred rite of Christianity with such 
 unscrupulous recklessness, thus making the poor pagans 
 as despicable hypocrites as they were before miserable 
 victims of Portuguese tyranny and Jesuit persecution. 
 Who can believe that such apostles really carried out 
 the ideas of social organisation for the savage, which, in 
 a former page, I heartily translated ? Beautiful was 
 that theory ; but the men adapted to carry it into 
 practice honestly, and in the Christian spirit of Christ, 
 were not the Jesuits. Anon we shall see more than 
 enough of these "apostles." The arms of Portugal 
 flashed " faith " into the helpless hordes of India. It 
 was the object of her viceroys to make the Hindoos 
 totally dependent on their Portuguese masters. The 
 rite of baptism was the infallible means to that end. It 
 made them Pariahs, outcasts from their respective ranks, 
 and compelled them to crowd the Christian temples, and 
 cry Credo Pater ! I believe, father, so that their hungry 
 stomachs might be filled. Thus were numbers actually 
 demoralised, for they lost self-respect ; and became, in 
 their turn, decoys to others as unfortunate as themselves. 
 Conversion was the expediency of the Portuguese, and 
 the rage of the Jesuits, their faithful humble servants. 
 
 1 " Alacritas quoque qu& Indi advolabant ad fidem, baud videbatur carere 
 miraculo." Sacchin. iv. 259.
 
 EFFICACY OF CEREMONIAL PAGEANTRY. 53 
 
 " Numbers " declared success for both respectively ; and 
 so we read that in the year 1559, by the authority of 
 the viceroy, and his desire for the spread of Christianity, 
 no less than three thousand three hundred and thirty- 
 three pagans were baptised in the church of St. Paul at 
 Goa ! l You perceive that the Jesuit balance-sheet of 
 conversion is as carefully "cast up," as the sum of 
 our national revenue with its imposing pence and 
 farthings. The fact is, that the very gorgeous display 
 of these multitudinous baptisms enough to tire a 
 legion of hundred-handed Titans, and drain a river 
 was just the thing to captivate the Hindoos, so 
 passionately fond of festivities, which their Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Shiva, and other thousand gods most 
 liberally vouchsafe to them, and which they found 
 ready for them in the cities of the Christians, different 
 in very few points from their own outrageous " mys- 
 teries." For the sake of " pomp and feast and revelry " 
 they would submit to have their foreheads washed by a 
 Jesuit, instead of dipping them in " Ganges, or Hydaspes, 
 Indian streams." The fact was proved in the year 1561. 
 " This year, the College at Goa did not receive the 
 increase of Christians it hoped for," says Sacchinus, 
 adding, " and here is the cause : the archbishop who 
 arrived at the end of the preceding year, just came 
 when the produce of that most lucky harvest was unu- 
 sually abundant, when immense troops of Indians were 
 daily added to the congregation of the faithful. Where- 
 upon, being prejudiced by the reports of certain persons 
 
 1 " Secundum Deum Constantini maxime Proregis auctoritate, &c. In Goano 
 S. Pauli templo ter mille et ducenti triginta tres baptizati, preeterque hos in pri- 
 vatis tectis valetudine non permissi exire, circiter centum" making the 3333 a 
 curious and striking lot of triplets for the gaping devotee to convert into a 
 mystery.
 
 54 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 more intent on money than the gain of souls, saying 
 that the Indians were compelled to receive baptism, he 
 ordered that all who were to be baptised should receive 
 the rite in their respective parishes ; and that if the rite 
 was to be celebrated with greater ceremony than usual, 
 he reserved the case to himself. This arrangement, 
 established with a pious design, by the most excellent 
 bishop, did not succeed as was intended," adds the 
 chuckling Jesuit ; " for," he continues, " as the Hindoos 
 were, one by one, or certainly only a few together, 
 almost in darkness, and in corners, sprinkled with the 
 sacred water" to translate the bombastical expression 
 " whilst that splendour of Goan magnificence of the 
 number of the candidates of the new garments and 
 decorations of Portugal's nobility the presence and 
 eyes of the viceroy and other attendant display when 
 all this was no more then the estimation and desire of 
 so great a mystery began to fall off and freeze amongst 
 the uncivilised people who, in every part of the world, 
 but there most especially, are led by the eyes oculis 
 ducitur." l Here is an admission ! Can anything more 
 be required to desolate the heart with the conviction 
 that the Jesuit-christianity of India was altogether but 
 a vile, deceitful, lying phantasm, which it " out-Herods 
 Herod" to think of? Yes, there is one thing more 
 and that is, the awfully debauched life of the Portuguese 
 themselves in India the " true believers " of that Chris- 
 tianity which these sight-loving, miserable pagans were 
 
 1 " Quse res pio consilio ab Antistite optimo institute,, &c. Etenira cum singuli, 
 aut certe pauci, prope in tenebris, et in angulis sacra tingerentur aqua ; ille 
 autcm splendor ex Goana magnificentia, ex numero candidatorum, ex novo ves- 
 titu, cultuque, ex nobilitate Lusitana, ac Proregis ipsius prsesentia et oculis, 
 cseteroque apparatu abesset ; csepit tanti mysterii opinio et cupiditas rudem 
 apud populum, qui ubique terrarum, sed ibi maximc, oculis ducitur, cadere et 
 frigere." Sacchin. lib. v. 246.
 
 OPERATIONS IN ABYSSINIA. 55 
 
 tempted to embrace with their lips and their foreheads, 
 by an appeal to their wretched vanity, in the midst of 
 gorgeous display, rank, and decoration ! The prohibition 
 was taken off, and the Jesuits " went ahead " as usual. 
 
 From India, across that ocean which the Portuguese 
 knew so well, let us advance into Abyssinia, to see how 
 the first bishop of the Jesuits, Andres Oviedo, _. T 
 
 The Jesuits 
 
 has managed his apostolate. Doubtless we mAbys- 
 remember the occasion of this promising 
 mission resulting, if we are to believe the Jesuits, from 
 an express invitation of Asnaf, the Abyssinian king the 
 descendant of the famous Prester John. 1 The king of 
 Portugal and Father Ignatius wrote letters to the king 
 of Abyssinia. These letters went through the hands of 
 the Indian viceroy, who sent them to Asnaf by " three 
 other persons, that they might sound the Emperor's 
 inclinations before the patriarch's arrival," 2 a precaution 
 scarcely necessary if Asnaf was really a party to the 
 visitation. 
 
 Only two of the Jesuits (how cautiously they move) 
 entered the country : but suspicion was there before 
 them : king Asnaf, the descendant of king Solomon (as 
 
 1 This time-honoured name is a curious specimen of learned absurdity, in 
 seeking to explain a difficulty before verifying its existence. " Prester John " is 
 consecrated to the royal skull of Ethiopia : but it was the name of a Nestorian 
 priest, John by name. He was the Mohammed of the twelfth century ; and his 
 kingdom was in Asia, near China. According to Du Cange, William of Tripoli, 
 and other writers, a Nestorian priest, about the middle of the twelfth century, as- 
 sembled troops of his sect, and pretending to be of the race of the Magi, usurped 
 the dominions of his king, Choriem-Ran, after his death. He vanquished seventy- 
 two kings in upper Asia, and extended his empire to the Indies and Tartary- 
 Meanwhile, Scaliger, and other geniuses, have grubbed out the etymology of the 
 name in the Persian and Arabic ; and Cretineau records the intelligence that 
 " Prester John is Ethiopian for great and precious" I Just like Gherkin from 
 Jeremiah King : naturally derived thus Jerry king, Jer king, Gherkin. See 
 for the above explanation of Prester John, Mem. sur I'Ethiop. in Lettres Edif. 
 t. i. p. 630. 2 A brief account .... Hist, of Ethiopia, 1679.
 
 56 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the race royal of Ethiopia claimed to be deemed) sus- 
 pected some sinister design in this expedition ; and even 
 if he had applied for a Roman patriarch, there was 
 surely no need of sending one in the shape of thirteen 
 Jesuits. Asnaf argued very naturally that these Jesuits 
 were but the forerunners of an European invasion. If 
 he had not the head of Solomon, he had the eyes of an 
 observer, and could look around at his neighbours in 
 their exemplary misfortunes. It was, in fact, the com- 
 mon opinion round about that "he would become the 
 tributary of the conquerors, and that the Catholic 
 religion sanctioned all manner of spoliations ; " * so 
 averse were the nobles to their admission that some of 
 them openly affirmed that they would sooner "submit to 
 the Turkish than the Roman yoke." 2 
 
 Asnaf gave them an audience : one of them explained 
 the doctrines of the Roman faith. Asnaf heard the 
 Jesuits patiently, but dismissed them with a letter to the 
 King of Portugal, which was as much as to say that " he 
 had his doubts about the matter, and begged to decline 
 their services." 
 
 The spokesman was Rodriguez : his special mission 
 had been "to study the situation of the country," say 
 the Jesuits themselves. 3 He returned to his eleven com- 
 panions at Goa, for further orders an unfortunate 
 precaution, for the king was given to understand that 
 " a great number more were waiting at Goa to be trans- 
 ported into his kingdom." 4 He was frightened at the 
 idea of this Jesuit invasion, although in sending forth 
 thirteen Jesuits, Father Ignatius, it is said, only intended 
 to represent Christ and the twelve apostles. 5 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 486. 2 Hist, of Ethiop., before quoted. 
 
 3 Cretineau,i.485. 4 Prof. Lee's Brief Ace. in Gobat's Journ. 5 Ibid.
 
 PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN ABYSSINIA. 57 
 
 Rodriguez, the pioneer and explorer, decamped; not 
 so Oviedo the militant bishop. The sturdy Jesuit 
 resolved " not to yield his footing so easily." He chal- 
 lenged discussion with the schismatic monks : the king 
 joined in the controversy, and " very much foiled the 
 bishop," for " he knew more than his doctors." 1 
 
 Then the Jesuit-bishop came down with an excom- 
 munication of the whole church of Abyssinia! 2 Asnaf 
 had threatened to put Oviedo to death, but contented 
 himself with banishing him for ever from his presence. 3 
 An enemy, two months after, appeared on the frontier : 
 Claudius went forth to give him battle : fortune was 
 against him : the Turk prevailed : the king was slain ; 
 and left his throne to Adamas his brother, a sworn foe 
 of the Roman Catholics, " upon whose account," he said, 
 " his brother had not only lost his life, but the whole 
 empire of Ethiopia had been reduced nearly to ruin." 4 
 
 Severe measures against the Roman Catholics ensued. 
 Oviedo stood before the king. Adamas forbade him to 
 preach Catholicism. The Jesuit replied : " 'Tis better 
 to obey God than men." At this bold reply, the king 
 brandished his scimitar to cut off the Jesuit's head : but 
 the Queen threw herself at his feet, the Jesuit stood 
 unterrified, and the king withheld the blow. 5 This is a 
 fine Jesuit-picture ; but another account says that Adamas 
 only tore the gown from the Jesuit's back, which makes 
 no picture at all. 6 
 
 A persecution of the Catholics followed : " divers 
 were imprisoned, tortured, and put to death." Oviedo 
 and his companions were banished to a cold and desolate 
 
 1 Cretineau, Brief Ace., and Lettres Edif. t. i. p. 630. 
 
 2 Brief Ace. in Gobat. * Ibid. 4 Ibid. 
 5 Cretineau, i. 486. 6 Hist of Ethiop., before quoted.
 
 58 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 mountain, for the space of eight months. A miracle set 
 them free. "A princess of the blood royal, whom 
 curiosity, or rather Providence, had led to the cavern of 
 the banished Jesuits, beheld their persons surrounded 
 by a miraculous light, and obtained from Adamas the 
 recal of the holy missionaries." They set to work 
 again ; made new conversions ; and the persecution was 
 redoubled ; and " the miracle of Daniel " in the den of 
 lions, " was renewed," say the Jesuits. " Five Abys- 
 sinians who had abjured error, were exposed to famished 
 lions : the ferocity of the lions was changed into tame- 
 ness." Adamas changed not, however ; and his cruelty 
 eventuated a splendid miracle, unsurpassed either in the 
 Bible or the legends of the saints. "He condemned 
 Oviedo, his companions and disciples, to a more distant 
 and horrible exile than the first. They were on the 
 point of perishing from hunger and thirst, when God, 
 touched by Oviedo's prayer, caused to appear to their 
 eye, a river, which, opening asunder after quenching 
 their thirst, presented to them a multitude of fishes, 
 enough to feed them." 1 
 
 The tyrant's severity was an admirable excuse for 
 rebellion ; and accordingly a leader was soon found, 
 who, with " thirty Portuguese " entered into a conspiracy 
 against the king, " not without the concurrent instigation 
 of the Jesuits who led the Portugal faction." 2 
 
 Adamas tried to temporise with the Portuguese, and 
 even invited the Jesuits into his camp : but the evil was 
 done : battles ensued : Adamas was worsted ; and died 
 soon after. 3 
 
 Respecting his successor the accounts before me are 
 very conflicting : some making him a persecutor, others 
 
 1 Lett. Edif. i. 631. 2 Hist, of Ethiop. 13. 3 Ibid. ; and Lett. Edif. i. 631.
 
 OVIEDO IN DIFFICULTIES. 59 
 
 " eminent in glory and virtue," and a great admirer of 
 " the morals and holy life of the Jesuits." Nevertheless 
 Oviedo was by no means comfortable, nor was his 
 cause triumphant for the pope recalled him from the 
 mission, with orders to proceed to China or Japan, 
 which, however, he did not, or did not live to obey. 
 In great privation at Fremona, a town in the kingdom 
 of Tigra, he had not even paper to write a letter to the 
 pope, or to the King of Portugal (as another account 
 states), and was forced to tear out the fly-leaves of his 
 breviary or an old commentary, 1 sticking them together 
 for the purpose. One account states that he expressed 
 the wish to leave Ethiopia, " charging the miscarriage 
 of his whole enterprise on the want of aids from 
 Portugal :" others assert that he stated the difficulties 
 of his mission, but still affirmed his desire to remain on 
 the ungrateful soil in spite of his tribulations. He was 
 ready for martyrdom. " Yet" (by another account 
 quoting his letter) " he must be permitted to inform his 
 Holiness that, with the assistance of five or six hundred 
 Portuguese soldiers, he could at any time reduce the 
 empire of Abyssinia to the obedience of the pontificate ; 
 and, when he considered that it was a country sur- 
 rounded by territories abounding with the finest gold, 
 and promising a rich harvest of souls to the Church, he 
 trusted his Holiness would give the matter further 
 consideration." 2 In effect what was wanting? Only 
 Portuguese muskets and a viceroy. " All who have any 
 
 1 Acosta says " non plus digital! magnitudine, e vetusto (ut videtur) aliquo 
 commentario excerpta." Her. in Or. 31. 
 
 2 See, for the conflicting accounts of this mission, Cretineau, i. ; Prof. Lee's 
 Brief Ace. in Gobat ; Hist, of Ethiop.,as before ; Lettres Edif. et Cur. ; Ludolf. 
 Hist. Ethiop. ; La Croze ; Geddes ; Tellez ; Acost., Rer. in Orient p. 31 ; Voy- 
 age aux Indes, iii. ; Lobo, Voy. d' Ethiop. ; Sacchin. i. iii. iv.
 
 60 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 experience of Ethiopia/' says the Jesuit Tellez, " know 
 that without arms in hand to defend and authorise the 
 Catholic preachers we shall never have the desired 
 success among those schismatics." 1 With these senti- 
 ments, Oviedo could not bring his mind " to see the 
 Holy Church of Rome lose the most glorious enterprise 
 under heaven and this only for want of 500 or 600 
 Portuguese soldiers." 2 But the fact is, the promises of 
 the Jesuits were mistrusted even in Portugal ; and 
 whether the Court had no reliance on the word of the 
 Jesuits, or was unable to lend them assistance, it was 
 resolved to command a retreat to all the Portuguese in 
 Ethiopia, who were rather numerous there, and as 
 infamously debauched as elsewhere. 3 Some make 
 Oviedo leave the country others settle him for fifteen 
 or sixteen years at Fremona, dying a saint, with miracles 
 after death as numerous as those which he performed 
 in life, according to the Jesuits. Such was the first 
 expedition of the Jesuits into Ethiopia ; and such was 
 its termination after all the efforts of Ignatius, all the 
 expenses of the King of Portugal. It was attended 
 with great suffering and persecution to the people 
 disgrace to religion and good to none not 
 
 A.D. 1577. 
 
 even to the Jesuits, whatever interpretation 
 they might give to the word. 
 
 If the political designs of Portugal on Abyssinia 
 
 1 " Esta sempre foy a pratica dos que tern experiencia de Ethiopia, que semas 
 armas na mam, que defendam et authorizem a os Pregadores Catholicos nam 
 poderam nunqua ter o successo desejado entre aquelles schismaticos." P. 184. 
 
 2 ** Ver perder a Santa Igreia de Roma a mays gloriosa Empreza, que ha 
 dehayxo dos ceos, et isto so por falta de qumhentos, o seycentos Soldados Portu- 
 guezes." Tellez, p. 195. 
 
 3 " Mas como nosso Senhor (a o que parece) queria com elle castigar as 
 liberdades et solturas de que alguns Portuguezes uzavam em Ethiopia, assim 
 tambem quiz, que elle nam passasse sem a9oute." Id. p. 178.
 
 THE JESUITS AMONGST THE CAFFRES. 61 
 
 failed by the precipitation of the Jesuits, and the 
 promptitude of the native sovereigns, the eastern coast 
 of Africa presented fewer obstacles to the 
 
 The Jesuits 
 
 religio-political advance of the Jesuits. Not amongst the 
 
 . . -r, Caffres. 
 
 content with their sovereignty in Arabia, rer- 
 sia, the two Peninsulas of India, the Moluccas, Ceylon, 
 the Isles of Sunda, and a settlement at Macao which 
 last ensured them the commerce of China and Japan 
 the Portuguese invaded the opposite coast of Africa ; 
 and in the beginning of the sixteenth century established 
 an empire extending from Sofala to Melinda, from the 
 Tropic of Capricorn to the Equator. Mosambique was 
 its centre, well fortified and garrisoned, commanding the 
 ocean and the African continent. Gold, ivory, and 
 slaves, were its attractions. 
 
 Under the shelter of this absorbing power three 
 Jesuits were dispatched into the country between Sofala 
 and Mosambique, in the year 1560 ; their leader was 
 Gonsalvo Silveria, a Portuguese. Accordingly, we are 
 assured that in a few days intrapaucos dies, the native 
 king, his wife, sister, children, relatives, nobles in a 
 word, almost the entire population, with great joy and 
 gratulation became Christians, or rather, (to translate 
 the original), the Jesuits " cleansed them in the sacred 
 fount sacro fonte lustrarunt ;" and a church was dedi- 
 cated to the Virgin Mary. 1 
 
 Andrew Fernandez boldly advanced among the horrid 
 savages of Caffre-land. Threats and contumely dis- 
 mayed him not : inflamed with the zeal of a scriptural 
 enthusiast, or strong in the terror by his country's 
 arms inspired, he presented himself in the midst of a 
 festivity celebrated by the savages, demolished with his 
 
 1 Acost. Rer. in Orient, p. 32.
 
 62 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 own hands the whole apparatus of the pagan rites, and 
 trampled them under foot with impunity. The King of 
 the Caffres was present, the Jesuit humbled him, 
 covered him with confusion, in the presence of his sub- 
 jects. 1 Still, the king had been baptised : his presence 
 at these pagan rites explains the depth of his conversion. 
 
 Meanwhile Gonsalvez left Mosambique, with six Por- 
 tuguese for his escort, proceeding to Quiloa on the coast, 
 by sea. A dreadful storm arose : all was over with 
 them, as they thought : but the Jesuit " raised his hands 
 and eyes to heaven in supplication :" the winds ceased, 
 and the waves were still. 2 
 
 Through the lands colonised by the Portuguese, Gon- 
 salvez advanced, reforming and baptising the slaves of 
 the Portuguese, and was received everywhere with great 
 demonstrations of respect by the native kings, who were 
 vastly edified by the Jesuit's disinterestedness. Think- 
 ing all the Portuguese alike, one of these kings offered 
 him " as many women, as much gold, land, and as 
 many cows as he pleased." The Jesuit replied that 
 " he only wanted the king himself." Then the king 
 ejaculated to the interpreter a moral universally useful : 
 " Indeed," said he, " since he will receive none of these 
 things, which are so vastly coveted by others, he must 
 be immensely different from other mortals." The king 
 dismissed him with the kindest expressions of friend- 
 ship, the Jesuit devising a method to convert the sable 
 king, constitutionally fond of the " fair sex," if the term 
 
 1 This is called by Acosta, Andrece ingens f acinus, Andrew's mighty exploit. 
 It seems that the king licet baptizatum, though baptised, was a bit of a rogue ; 
 and the bold Jesuit compelled him to acknowledge that he had no power over the 
 rains ofJieaven (so useful to the crops), as was pretended by the CafFre kings a 
 sort of Vatican prerogative to cajole the people and make them submissive. This 
 humiliating confession of the king would at once cast him far below the wonder- 
 workers of Jesuitism. J Acost ib. 32. 6.
 
 THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN VISITS A PAGAN KING. 63 
 
 may, by courtesy, be applied to the ladies of Africa. 
 It succeeded to admiration. Gonsalvez said mass next 
 morning in an open spot, exposing on the altar a picture 
 of the Virgin Mary, which he had brought from India. 
 Some of the " courtiers " passing by, fancied they saw 
 a real woman of great beauty. They reported accord- 
 ingly to the king, who instantly sent to the Jesuit, 
 telling him he had heard that he had a wife ; that he 
 wished him exceedingly to bring her to him. Gonsalvez 
 covered the picture with a costly robe, and took it to 
 the king. Before he exposed it to view, in order the 
 more to sharpen the king's desire desiderium qud magis 
 ewacttat, Gonsalvez told him that it " was the image of 
 God's mother, in whose power and dominion were all 
 the kings and emperors of the whole world." Then he 
 uncovered the image. It received the king's veneration. 
 He asked the Jesuit again and again to give it him : 
 the Jesuit consented, and placed it in the king's chamber, 
 fitting up the room as an oratory or chapel veluti sacellum 
 quoddam precandi causa peristromatis ewornat. Whilst 
 the king slept that night " the Queen of Heaven appeared 
 standing by his side, exactly as represented in the 
 picture, surrounded with a divine light, shining with a 
 sweet splendour, with a most venerable and joyful 
 aspect." On the following day the king sent for Gon- 
 salvez and told him that he was " wonderfully concerned 
 that he could not understand the words of the Queen 
 of Heaven, which she spoke to him every night/' Gon- 
 salvez was ready with his elucidation : he told the savage 
 "that her language was divine, and not to be understood 
 except by those who submitted to the laws of that 
 Queen's son, who was God and the Redeemer of the 
 whole human race." In conclusion, the king and three 
 hundred of his " nobles" were solemnly baptised with
 
 64 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 great pomp and ceremony, the king being very con- 
 sistently named Sebastian, after the King of Portugal, 
 and his mother received the name of Mary, after the 
 Queen of Heaven. 1 If you remember " the trumpeters 
 in the nave," placed by the preacher of Navarre, you 
 may easily guess the secret of this reflecting and speaking 
 picture, managed by the Jesuits. 
 
 Subsequent success tallied with this splendid begin- 
 ning ; it seemed likely that the whole population would 
 become Christians, when some powerful and clever 
 Mahometans, in high favour with the king, made serious 
 representations to his majesty respecting the Jesuit 
 expedition, assuring him that he was endangering his 
 life and kingdom, that Gonsalvez was an emissary of 
 the viceroy of India and the chiefs of Sofala sent to 
 explore his condition, to excite the minds of his people 
 to rebellion, and ready with an army to follow up the 
 movement with a hostile invasion. We can only record 
 such imputations, having no means of verification ; but 
 it is remarkable that savages, as well as civilised men, 
 came to the same opinion respecting the Jesuits. True 
 or false, the representations were deemed probable by 
 the king ; Gonsalvez was doomed to destruction. He 
 was killed, and his body was thrown into the river, 
 " lest the corpse of such an evil-doer, if left on the 
 ground, should kill them with its poison ; " for he was 
 believed " to have brought with him various poisons 
 and medicaments to work on the minds of the people 
 and kill the king." Fifty Christians whom Gonsalvez 
 had baptised on his last day, shared the same fate. 
 The Portuguese interfered, and threatened the king with 
 the vengeance of war. This threat had due effect. The 
 king expressed regret, threw the blame upon his advisers, 
 
 1 Acosta, ibid. p. 35, et seq.
 
 ANCHIETA, THE ADAM OP THE NEW WORLD. ()5 
 
 whom, with barbaric recklessness, he put to death 
 without delay, to propitiate the Juggernauts of Portugal. 
 When the intelligence of these transactions reached 
 India, more Jesuits were despatched to the country, at 
 the urgent request of the viceroy vehementer optante 
 Proreac, in order "to promote the beginnings which 
 promised altogether happy progress." J 
 
 In Brazil, the Company of Jesus had produced a 
 miracle-worker, such as the world had never seen 
 before whose like we shall never see again. The 
 Jesuit Anchieta far excelled even Xavier in powers 
 miraculous. The Jesuits call him the Apostle of Brazil, 
 and the Thaumaturg of the age. 2 The wonders related 
 of this man, by the Jesuits, surpass in absurdity all that 
 can possibly be imagined. Let the Jesuits describe 
 him : " His praises may be comprised in one word if 
 we call him the Innocent Adam. It was only just for 
 God to create an Adam for the mortals of the New 
 World mortalibus Novi Orbis novum a Deo creari 
 Adamum par erat. I know not which to call his terres- 
 trial Paradise the Canary Islands, where he was born, 
 or the Company which he entered ; for, in the former, 
 he breathed the breath of life ; in the latter, the breath 
 of grace. He shared the four endowments which Adam 
 received in his state of innocence ; namely, dominion 
 over the animal creation, a right will, an enlightened 
 understanding, an immortal body. His dominion over 
 the animal creation was proved six hundred times by 
 fishes, birds, wild beasts, serpents, all which he would 
 call in the Brazilian language : they obeyed and followed 
 him, by the privilege of Adam : ' Have dominion over 
 the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
 
 1 Acost. p. 59. 2 Bib. Script. Soc. Jesu, Joseph Anchieta. 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 66 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 over every living thing that moveth upon the earth/ 
 Wherever he wished, fishes were found, and suffered 
 themselves to be caught ; hence he was called by the 
 ignorant savages the father who gives us the fishes we 
 want. And it sometimes happened that the people of 
 a village being reduced to want by being hindered from 
 fishing in stormy weather, he led them all to the beach 
 and asked them what sort of fish they desired. By 
 way of a joke, they would ask for a sort not found at 
 that season of the year ; and he would produce such a 
 shoal of the fishes, that they caught with their nets, nay 
 even with their hands, as many as they liked. He 
 would call birds to praise Grod, and they flew to him 
 and perched on his finger and chirped. A flock of 
 crows had gathered round about some fishes laid out 
 on the shore by the fishermen ; at his command they 
 moved off and waited for a promised part of the prey. 
 Once on a voyage, when ill, and the sun's meridian rays 
 were too hot to bear, he commanded a bird to go and 
 call her companions to make him a shade a parasol. 
 And she went and gathered a flock and returned, and 
 they shaded the ship with their wings, to the length of 
 three miles, until he dismissed them, and they flew off 
 with a joyful croaking. Often, whilst he was praying 
 or preaching, little birds would perch on his head and 
 his arms ; so great was their beauty, that they seemed 
 things of Heaven rather than of earth." 1 The savage 
 beasts of the forest the ferocious jaguar he tamed ; 
 two of them followed him as guards when he went to 
 the woods at night to say his prayers, and when he 
 returned he rewarded their fidelity with some fruit 
 -fructibus which enhanced the miracle ; seeing that 
 
 1 Bib. Script. Soc. Jesu, Joseph Anchiet.
 
 MIRACLES AMONGST THE MONKEYS. 67 
 
 their carnivorous stomach accommodated itself to an 
 herbivorous digestion, their intestines were elongated, 
 as a matter of course. He even used the beasts of the 
 country to instruct the savages, and impress them with 
 their barbarity : thus, the death of a large monkey, 
 killed by a Brazilian, furnished him with matter for a 
 sermon and occasion for a miracle. " The noise that this 
 animal made in falling," says Jouvenci, " having brought 
 to the spot all the other monkeys of the neighbourhood, 
 Anchieta spoke to them in his language, commanded 
 them to go and invite the little ones, the father, the 
 mother, in fine all the relatives and friends of the 
 defunct, to assist at his funeral and celebrate his obse- 
 quies. All these animals assembled immediately, making 
 great lamentations, some striking their breasts with their 
 paws, others rolling on the ground before the corpse, 
 others tearing their beard and sprawling in the dust, 
 all moaning and pulling frightful faces. After these 
 preludes, many monkeys approached, and lifted the 
 defunct, and carried him on their shoulders, whilst the 
 rest followed the funeral, leaping from tree to tree. 
 There were some," says the historian, " which, imitating 
 the ferocity of the barbarians, seemed to reproach them 
 with it, by glaring on them with furious and threatening 
 looks. Thus the funeral advanced to a village four miles 
 off. Then Anchieta, dreading lest the savages would 
 set upon these charitable animals, commanded them to 
 return into the woods, and they obeyed. Thereupon 
 the Jesuit, turning to the Brazilians who were already 
 running to give chase to the monkeys, exclaimed : ' See 
 how these beasts bewail the death of one of their kind, 
 whilst you rejoice at the death of your fellow-creatures, 
 and sometimes devour them alive/" Whether Father 
 
 F 2
 
 68 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Touvenci perceived the absurdity of this missionary 
 Arabian Entertainment, or really wished to give us an 
 idea of the natural and most excusable incredulity of 
 these savages, he adds that this adventure of the won- 
 derful Anchieta only made them laugh. 1 Nieremberg 
 says that Anchieta stopped a tempest which was im- 
 pending, in order that the Indians might enjoy a comedy 
 which he had composed for them. It lasted three hours 
 in the representation, and the tempest frowned pregnant 
 with its cataract ; " but the prayer of God's servant held 
 them fast " until the people departed, and then the tem- 
 pest burst with whirlwinds, floods, and dreadful thunders. 2 
 Savage bulls he forced to the yoke by the sign of the 
 cross ; and sometimes, merely to amuse the Indians who 
 happened to be with him, he would, for mere sport, 
 ad oblectamentum, command the monkeys of the woods to 
 gambol and to dance, and they did so, until he dismissed 
 them. " Our Adam handled serpents without injury 
 serpentes Adamus noster inoffensus tractabat. So com- 
 pletely did he rule over vipers, that when he trod on 
 one with his naked feet, and tried to make it bite him, 
 it licked his foot respectfully, nor did it dare to lie in 
 ambush for his heel" 3 We almost fancy that these 
 marvels were invented expressly to ridicule all that 
 Christians read with awe and adoration. Nor is the 
 budget exhausted, by very many items. All nature was 
 subject unto him : he spoke, and all obeyed him. 
 Tempests he stilled, desperate diseases he cured, showers 
 he suspended in the air, language he gave to a dumb 
 infant, life and vigour to a dying father, limbs to the 
 maimed. He cured leprosy with water, consumption 
 
 1 Juvenci Hist. lib. xxiii. p. 766, apud Quesnel, i. 160. 
 
 - Varones lllustres, ii. 51.0. 3 Bibl. Script. Soc. Jesu, uhi supra.
 
 NATURE'S SUBSERVIENCY TO ANCHIETA. 69 
 
 with the touch of his sleeve, head-ache with the shreds 
 of his garments, and the sound of his voice dispelled 
 anguish of mind and put to flight temptations. The 
 elements themselves respected him as their master ipsa 
 elcmenta observabant ut dominum. Often when a shower 
 came on during a journey, whilst his companions were 
 wet to the skin permadentibus he appeared quite dry 
 siccus apparuit. The sea respected him as well as the 
 showers. When in prayer kneeling on the beach, the 
 flowing tide would pass beside him, leaving a vacant 
 space where he was enclosed within a double wall of the 
 heaped up billows velut in geminum parietem undis 
 exaggeratis and leaving him a dry path to the shore in 
 the midst of the waters. " But what need of many 
 instances," exclaims the Jesuit, " since he ruled nature 
 not as a master but as a tyrant sed quid multis opus est, 
 cum non tarn dominatu, quam tyrannide naturam tenuit, 
 and sometimes forced her to produce what she did not 
 possess cogeret interdum quod non habebat ewhibere. In 
 a great scarcity of oil he produced some from an empty 
 cask, and though dry within, it afforded for two years 
 as much oil as was wanted for two colleges, for the use 
 of the church, the table, and the poor." He changed 
 water into wine, to revive some one on a journey ; and 
 to humour the longing of a sick man, he changed a fish 
 into an oyster piscem in pernam mutamt. 1 A pagan, 
 who falsely thought himself a Christian, had died. 
 Joseph called back his soul, and led it back to his body, 
 baptised him, and sent him backto Heaven aliusGentilis, 
 qui se Christianum falso crediderat, obierat ; ejus animam 
 Josephus revocavit, reduxitque ad corpus, baptismo tinwit, 
 ac ccelo remisit. He knew what happened in his absence, 
 
 1 Bibl. Script. Soc. Jesu, ubi supra.
 
 70 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 secrets, and things about to happen ; and he foretold them 
 as distinctly as though his mind was the mirror of the 
 Divine Wisdom to which all things are present quam si 
 Divince Sapientice, cui prcesentia sunt omnia, speculum 
 esset ejus intellectus. Inspirations, revelations, the pecu- 
 liar endowments of beatified bodies he enjoyed, " for we 
 know on good authority that whilst in prayer his body 
 was often raised from the ground, surrounded with the 
 most brilliant light, with heavenly music sounding the 
 while." They say he once forgot his breviary, leaving 
 it behind, twenty-four miles off ; an angel brought it to 
 him ! * In the twinkling of an eye he performed long- 
 journeys momenta temporis longa itinera decurrisse; yea, 
 was in two places at one and the same time ; and when 
 you liked he would make himself invisible, sometimes 
 vanishing, then returning to astonish and stupify the 
 spectators. It is scarcely credible that God created a 
 man of such wonders for one world only virum hunc 
 tantcB admirabilitatis mx credibile sit a Deo fuisse uni 
 mundo conditum* Surely there was enough in all these 
 wonders and portents to make a saint for the glory on 
 earth of the Company of Jesus ; but though the Jesuits 
 expected that result, 3 they were disappointed, and 
 Joseph Anchieta remains the silly, stupid thing of their 
 biographies, though he may have been, for all we know 
 to the contrary, a laborious missioner, and author of a 
 few books, rendered curiosities by the " solid falsehoods " 
 of his brethren respecting their author. 4 
 
 1 Tableaux, p. 231. 2 Bibl. Script. Soc. Jesu, ubi supra. 
 
 3 " Et spes est ilium propediem ab sancta Matre Ecclesia utro mundo ad vene- 
 rationem, imtiationemque (!) propositum iri," &c. Ibid. 
 
 4 Amoug the rest, he wrote a Drama for the extirpation of the vices of 
 Brazil Drama ad extirpanda Brasilia villa. Ibid. One would suppose that his 
 miraculous powers ought to have given them " a twist," as St. Patrick served
 
 THE JESUITS IN SWITZERLAND. 71 
 
 These angels of disturbance and inventors of fables 
 with the best possible intentions, if we are to believe 
 themselves were not less active in Europe , 
 
 * The Jesuits 
 
 than in India, Abyssinia, Caffreland, and Brazil, in Switzer- 
 In 1560, the Jesuits penetrated into Switzer- 
 land : the Valteline, in the land of the Orisons, became 
 the scene of contention. The invading force consisted 
 of three priests and three other Jesuits not in orders. 
 They insinuated themselves into the good graces of 
 a certain Antonius Quadrius, a simple old gentleman of 
 the Valteline, belonging to one of the first families of the 
 country. How it happened, who can tell "? but the 
 old gentleman gave the Jesuits all his wealth to build a 
 college re sudfamiliari collegia e.rtruendo donatd. The 
 Jesuits took possession ; but it appears they were too 
 precipitate. A mandate of the Canton fell upon their 
 dreams like a nightmare. They were ordered to leave 
 the country forthwith. The messenger added that " he 
 was a Catholic, and on that account he was unwilling to 
 proceed to force : he rather would give them a friendly 
 hint, to return to their people, and not to wait for com- 
 pulsion." But it would never do to resign so easily a 
 boon so promising : the Jesuits held out, and their 
 patron, the old gentleman, protested against the man- 
 date. There was a gathering of the people men and 
 women : the nobility joined in the fray. The old gen- 
 tleman's relatives were naturally excited. He had no 
 children, and they were his heirs at law. They tried 
 persuasion with the Jesuit-principal, Tarquinius Ray- 
 naldus. They begged that he would not rob them of all 
 
 the frogs and toads of Erin, and " banished them for ever." Besides his life in 
 the Biblioiheca, and Neiremberg's amongst his Varones Illustres, Illustrious Men 
 of the Company, there are two lives of Anchieta by the Jesuits Bevetarius 
 and Roterigius, all horribly ridiculous.
 
 72 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 their inheritance, contrary to the rights and customs of 
 men. The Jesuit's reply was handsome, whether it be 
 the composition of Sacchinus or Raynaldus. " It is only 
 a few days since I have become acquainted with Quadrius 
 [the old gentleman aforesaid] : religious men who have 
 given up their own patrimony do not come into this 
 valley in quest of another. We are here by command 
 of those whom we have taken as the rulers of our life, 
 in the place of Christ the Lord : we are ready, should 
 occasion require, to give our life and blood for the sal- 
 vation of souls, not only to the family of Quadrius, but 
 all the world. But if Quadrius will listen to me, I will 
 see that he bequeaths to you a great part of the inhe- 
 ritance. For, although it were better for him to con- 
 secrate the work to God, as he had resolved, still, 
 in order to preserve peace with all men, I shall suggest 
 what you demand. A few religious men will not be 
 suffered to want sustenance, by the bounty of the other 
 citizens, and the providence of the heavenly Father." 1 
 This fine address was really all they could desire : and 
 so they went their way, rejoicing ; but the Jesuits at 
 once began to teach a multitude of boys, whom they 
 divided into three classes ; and vast was the daily con- 
 flux of accessions to the benches. They had sent Qua- 
 drius to appeal : they were working away joyously, 
 when down came a final decree from the authorities 
 abolishing the college. Resistance was vain : the deter- 
 mination to dislodge them was evident. The Jesuits 
 yielded to the storm for the present, and took their 
 departure, treasuring the remembrance of what they left 
 behind " drawing at each remove a lengthened chain/' 
 In the following year, the agitation was vigorously 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 59.
 
 THEIR MACHINATIONS. 73 
 
 renewed. Sacchinus puts all the motives and expe- 
 dients to the account of the people : but their source is 
 too evident to be thus mistaken : they are as follows : 
 that Quadrius was a man of great authority, and would 
 be respected by the princes of Germany, and the Emperor 
 himself : that recommendations from all the princes of 
 Christendom would prevail : that the consent and agita- 
 tion of all the people of the Valteline would gain the 
 day : that nothing was certainly impregnable to money 
 pecunice certe nihil inexpuynabile esse. The relatives of 
 Quadrius could be won over by the hope of getting a great 
 part of the inheritance the Governor of the Valteline, 
 being a Catholic, would undertake the business, and bring 
 it to a happy issue. 1 Letters of recommendation were 
 forthwith obtained from the King of France, the Emperor 
 of Germany, the King of Bohemia, the Marquis of Pis- 
 caria, the Governor of Milan, the Duke of Bavaria, the 
 Catholic Cantons, and other authorities, addressed to the 
 Grisons in favour of the scheme. Is not this determined 
 manoauvre worthy of admiration 1 Is it easy to get 
 rid of the Jesuits when they have once had a footing ? 
 Nor was this all. They chose two of the citizens 
 sharp and sturdy men acres ac strenuos mros as 
 their commissioners. These went about among the 
 neighbouring people, praying and conjuring the Catho- 
 lics to favour the common cause ; and others they 
 filled with promises cceteros implent promissis. Their 
 old patron was stimulated almost to frenzy : he was 
 ready to resign all he had even the shirt on his 
 back nay, he would even give up himself, with apos- 
 tolical charity apostolicd caritate siiperimpendere seip- 
 sum. Meanwhile, the "heretics" were no less active 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 96.
 
 74 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 on the other side, agitating with equal determination, 
 perfectly convinced that there was not a greater 
 pestilence against the Gospel than the Jesuits nullam 
 esse Evangelio suo capitaliorem pestem quam Jesuitas. 
 In the midst of this fermentation, the cause was tried 
 before the authorities. The Jesuit-commissioners deli- 
 vered a speech, carefully prepared accurate prceparatd 
 oratione which you will find in Sacchinus, much too 
 long and elaborate for translation, but duly eloquent 
 and diffuse on the good qualities and pious intentions 
 of the founder of the college which had been taken 
 from the Jesuits, imputing the worst motives to his 
 heirs at law, ascribing the banishment of the Jesuits 
 to their avarice the whole concluding with the follow- 
 ing glorious peroration : " Therefore, most excellent 
 gentlemen, preserve far and wide the reputation of your 
 firmness and gravity, with our safety and dignity. The 
 most Christian King of France begs this of you," (saying 
 this, they exhibited the letters) : " the Emperor Ferdi- 
 nand begs it : Maximilian, the King of Bohemia, Albert, 
 Duke of Bavaria, the Republic of the Swiss, the Gover- 
 nor of Milan, our whole country, suppliant at your feet, 
 our children, our grandchildren, our whole posterity, all 
 join in the petition. If they could come hither, you 
 might see the boys, the mothers of families, the whole 
 population of the valley and all the vicinity, prostrate at 
 your feet, uplifting their hands in supplication. For, 
 most kind gentlemen, we have experienced the powers of 
 this right Institution : we know the learning and talent 
 of these men. They were only a few months among us, 
 and already our boys are different to what they were : 
 they are much more modest than before, more quiet at 
 home and out of doors, more respectful to their elders.
 
 " A SPEECH CAREFULLY PREPARED." 75 
 
 more obliging to their relatives, and far more desirous 
 of praise and learning. Confiding in the justice of our 
 cause, in the wisdom of Quadrius, in the glory of his 
 deed, and in your justice and kindness, we deem all the 
 annoyances, or expenses which we have incurred in the 
 matter, rightly placed, in order that the memory of so 
 great a benefit, first conferred by Quadrius, and by you, 
 who will restore it, shall live for ever in our mind, and 
 that of our posterity." The address was delivered with 
 vehemence and with tears, says Sacchinus. 1 
 
 This glorious speech might have been a prize-essay 
 of some pupil among the Jesuits. You will find other 
 specimens in Jouvenci's Orations, on a variety of topics 
 or common-places. 2 But the speech shows its origin 
 and what the Jesuits say of themselves and their 
 miraculous transformations amongst " the boys " and 
 the mothers of families. As such it would have been a 
 pity not to give an extract. The address of the Jesuit- 
 commissioners overshot the mark, and was heard with 
 apathy. The relatives of the old gentleman were skilful 
 lawyers and spoke for themselves, and were heard with 
 immense applause and success. They said that their 
 relative was extremely old and without children : they 
 were consequently the lawful heirs to his property : 
 that it was unjust to permit his wealth to pass into 
 the hands of adventurers, who, under the pretence of 
 instructing youth, were only seeking to enrich them- 
 selves with the spoils of individuals, and to alter in 
 their favour the maxims and fundamental laws of 
 nations that the great age of their relative had 
 weakened his mind, and that these Jesuits had taken 
 
 1 Sacchin.-lib. v. 101. 
 
 2 Juvencii Orationes. See also Stradae Eloqmntia Bipartila, which is rather 
 more sensible than the former.
 
 76 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 advantage of his imbecility to induce him to give them 
 his money, thus robbing his relatives and his country, 
 and pampering a set of vagabond and turbulent monks 
 with the wealth of the Valteline. 1 This appears to have 
 been the general opinion of the audience ; for a decree 
 was passed banishing forthwith the Jesuits from the 
 country of the Orisons, as the enemies of the Gospel. 
 The old gentleman's donation was cancelled ; and the 
 adminstration of his affairs was given over to his 
 relatives, though he was undisturbed in the possession 
 and use of his property during life, but all was to descend 
 to his relatives after his death. The Jesuits say there 
 was immense lamentation at this decree, and that the 
 fathers had not got five miles from the city before a 
 severe earthquake shook the country, " so that the vulgar 
 feared lest the earth should open and hell should 
 swallow down all the people on account of the crime of 
 those who had expelled the fathers. 2 I expected to read 
 of some such portent at the end of the affair ; and 
 would have been much surprised had I not found it 
 recorded. In truth, it is hard to maintain the requisite 
 impartiality of the historian when we have to do with 
 such desperate partymen, such unreasonable and reck- 
 less inventors as the Jesuits. There is, however, an 
 unintentional equivocation in the words " scelus ejectorum 
 patrum:" which may be interpreted into "the crime of 
 the ejected fathers " which crime may have had as much 
 to do with the " earthquake " as anything else below. 
 Disturbances and menacings among the Jesuit-party 
 were left in fermentation : but it was thought useless to 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 102. 
 
 : " Vix ab ponte quinque millia passuum recesseraut, cum tarn gravi motu ilia 
 omnis ora concussa est, ut vulgus timerent,ue dchiscente terra ob scelus ejectorum 
 patrum (sic interpretabantur) omnes Tartarus absorberet." Sacchin. lib. v. 106.
 
 THE JESUITS IN TUSCANY. 77 
 
 make any further efforts to regain the college. Still 
 Sacchinus assures us that the old gentleman, Quadrius, 
 again ratified the grant before his death, which followed 
 close upon the edict apparently to justify the stub- 
 born pertinacity of the Jesuits in still clinging to the 
 property : for Raynaldi again went to the city, and 
 managed to make an impression on one of the heirs 
 but all to no further purpose, although the Jesuit tells 
 of various calamities falling upon the "peculators of 
 the sacred money." 1 Whatever view we take of this 
 expedition into the Valteline, it is impossible to make 
 it reflect credit on the Company. An imbecile old 
 man the disturbances that ensued the evident hand 
 or toil of the Jesuits throughout the agitation their 
 subsequent hankering after the money, all must declare 
 that grasping spirit of possession which the Jesuits soon 
 began to display and the sort of victims they selected. 
 Whilst the Jesuits were thus expelled from Switzer- 
 land for the reasons above stated the inhabitants of 
 Monte Pulciano in the Duchy of Tuscany were The Jesuits 
 endeavouring to get rid of them as the cor- in Tu8Can - v - 
 rupters of their wives and daughters. It certainly does 
 appear, from their own version of the affair, that the ac- 
 cusations were not without foundation. Sacchinus treats 
 them as popular rumours : but the very facts which he 
 does admit lead us to infer the contrary : at all events, 
 as in the Swiss affair, the Jesuits invariably appeal to 
 popular demonstrations in their favour : they should, 
 therefore, be the last to shield the guilt of their men by 
 depreciating the credit of the popular voice. The facts 
 
 1 Ib. 106. As an instance of Jesuit-mystery, take the following phrase, whose 
 meaning is, that Father Tarquiuius made a religious impression on one of the 
 
 heirs : " Cum Pater Tarquinius pontem abiisset, unum hcredum religio 
 
 subiit " religion went into the mind of one of the heirs !
 
 78 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 are as follows. One of the Jesuits was accused of 
 having offered violence to a respectable lady, who, 
 trying to escape from his brutal passion, was, by the 
 savage, fiercely pursued. One of their lay-brothers had 
 also committed himself in a manner unbecoming a 
 religious man, or any man, though Sacchinus says he 
 was imprudent and too simple, and only asked a woman 
 whither she was going. In addition to this, a Jesuit 
 had been seen leaving the college, and entering a 
 disreputable house, where he remained all night. The 
 Jesuits mighty men of disguises as they were easily 
 get rid of this, by stating that some rogue had dis- 
 guised himself as a father, in order to increase the bad 
 odour of the Jesuits a method of exculpation, or rather 
 a recrimination, which requires us to believe a double 
 or a triple crime in another man rather than the simple 
 one in a Jesuit. 1 Certain it is, as Sacchinus admits, 
 that the Jesuits were extremely familiar and diffuse 
 with the ladies of Monte Pulciano, and confessed almost 
 all the women and girls of the city. 2 It is even said 
 that the very walls of the Company's church breathed 
 and begat devotion ipsos templi Societatis parietes 
 spirare ct ingenerare in adeuntium animis pietatem. 
 Accordingly the number of the women who frequently 
 went to confession and the sacrament, was immense, 
 and their devotion remarkable. This sacred tribunal 
 was always the shoal of frail ministers ; and must ever 
 be the bitter source of never-ending temptation to the 
 most virtuous. The close contact of beauty, the warm 
 
 1 However he reasserts the fact subsequently, and says that he saw a docu- 
 ment in which the man is stated to have confessed the disguise on his death- 
 bed ! Sacchin. lib. vii. c. 25 
 
 * " Sed fcminarum ad confessionem et sanctam Eucharistiam crebro acceden- 
 tium numerus et pietas erat insignis." Id. lib. v. 107.
 
 SUSPECTED PECCADILLOS OF FATHER GOMBAR. 79 
 
 breathings of the sanguine, the soft accents of blushing 
 modesty, must naturally ruffle, and stir, and agitate the 
 feelings of the confessor ; but when to this gentle 
 attraction of human sympathy is superadded by the 
 fair penitent, the more or less protracted list of her 
 temptations, her troublesome thoughts, her frailties, 
 how horrible must be the intensity of that struggle with 
 the clinging suggestions of nature in the confessor, who 
 finds that his penitent is inclined to be as frail as himself ! 
 Against the Jesuits of Monte Pulciano suspicion suc- 
 ceeded to suspicion : the people shunned them, and one 
 of the principal citizens felt himself called upon to pro- 
 tect the honour of his family. This gentleman had two 
 sisters, very amiable both of them : they were the 
 spiritual daughters of Father Gombar, Jesuit, and rector 
 of the college at Monte Pulciano. They were accustomed 
 to enjoy long conversations, on pious matters, with the 
 Jesuit, apparently contrary to the stringent rules and 
 regulations on the subject of female intercourse, which 
 I have already laid before the reader. Rules and regu- 
 lations are good things, but they are nothing if not 
 observed. Public rumours frightened Gombar, and he 
 bethought him of the rules and regulations, and, of 
 course, offended his spiritual daughters, though very 
 much given to piety -plurimum deditcs pietati. But 
 he had not the strength to do more than half his duty, 
 for he only threw off or cut short one sister, and retained 
 the other, who was a matron, and had a son in the 
 Company. The dismissed lady imparted a bad sus- 
 picion to her brother, actuated by jealousy, according 
 to the insinuation of Sacchinus : but can we be even 
 sure of the alleged cause of jealousy \ It is so easy to 
 invent the obvious crimination, though it is impossible
 
 80 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 to say what a jealous or slighted woman will not do for 
 revenge. Be that as it may ; the result was a fact 
 which spoke at least a strong conviction of the Jesuit's 
 guilt or indiscretions. The brother of the ladies forbade 
 both of them to confess to the fathers, and even to visit 
 the rector. A great sensation ensued : all the noble 
 ladies of Monte Pulciano were scared from the church 
 of the Jesuits. A good-natured Capuchin monk, with 
 brotherly sympathy, lent assistance to the Jesuit's repu- 
 tation, and gave him a stave from the pulpit ; but, what- 
 ever was the intention of the monk, his sermon became 
 a trumpet to the scandal, and everybody " took the thing 
 in hand," determined to " sift it to the bottom." 
 
 A number of love-letters, either written to, or by 
 Gombar, was found. It was also discovered that he had 
 inveigled a large sum of money from a lady, which the 
 grand vicar of the place compelled him to restore. 
 Sacchinus says that the vicar treated him in a most 
 honourable manner when he proved that he had made 
 restitution probatd satisfactione : but it was a very bad 
 case altogether, and Gombar, the Jesuit rector, took to 
 flight, and nobody knew what had become of him, until 
 it was made known to the offended world of Monte 
 Pulciano that General Lainez had expelled him from 
 the Company, saying, " He should have done anything 
 rather than permit himself to appear guilty by such a 
 flight, and cause the name of the Society and of so 
 honest and holy a lady to be contaminated. If he had 
 not the courage to die, he might have avoided the 
 danger of death by hiding himself at home. Why did 
 he not fly to Perusia, or to Rome, if he fled at all \ " 
 The penalty was expulsion ; though Gombar begged 
 to the last to be set to any work, even to the tuition of
 
 THE JESUITS EXPELLED FROM MONTE PULCIANO. 81 
 
 youth all the days of his life ! ac nominatim ad pueros 
 totam vitam docendos paratum 1 hence we may see the 
 estimation in which this department of the Company's 
 functions was held by the members the offer pointing 
 to it either as an humiliation, or a labour of Hercules. But 
 this wise precaution did not serve the purpose of General 
 Lainez. The expulsion of a guilty or imprudent mem- 
 ber was not permitted by Providence to restore the 
 credit of the whole body at Monte Pulciano. The 
 Jesuits who remained, or were sent to retrieve the Com- 
 pany's honour, were visited with the public and private 
 inflictions of general detestation. Their church and 
 their schools were utterly deserted. The city revoked 
 the stipend of the public teacher. The college itself 
 was taken from them by the parties who had originally 
 given them the use of the building. They were reduced 
 to the greatest necessity actually starved out as far 
 as the Monte Pulcians were concerned. They suffered 
 so much that the Jesuit Natalis facetiously said it was 
 not a college but a house of probation. Lainez put a 
 stop to the sufferings, bodily and mental, of his men, by 
 dissolving the college in 1563, after seven years' dura- 
 tion. 2 Thus were the Jesuits quietly expelled from 
 Monte Pulciano by a most effectual method, it must be 
 admitted, since neither great alms nor small alms the 
 tithes of the Jesuits enabled them to proselytise the 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 110. For the Italian reader, Bartoli is unusually concise 
 on this affair at Monte Pulciano. He coolly says, " It would be fastidious to 
 relate the particulars." Actually the name of Gombar is not even mentioned 
 in the whole chapter ; and all that we have just read from the learned and often 
 mysterious Latin of Sacchinus is wisely " left out," like the part of Hamlet, " by 
 particular desire," from the tragi-comedy. And there is reason for the Jesuits 
 to be ashamed of the transaction occurring in their best days, and before the 
 Monita Secreta, or Secret Instructions were given to the public. See Bartoli, 
 DelVItal. lib. iv. c. 12. - Sacch. vii. 20. 
 
 VOL. II. G
 
 ~ HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 heretics, to lead the women captive, to train " the boys," 
 gratis. 
 
 This affair at Monte Pulciano opens an inquiry into 
 the domestic arrangements of the Jesuits, the result of 
 The confra- which was their immense influence with the 
 oXiitte"? P e pl e as exhibited on more than one public 
 the Jesuits, occasion. I allude to their confraternities and 
 sodalities. Sufficiently striking and impressive were 
 their bands of self-scourging laymen, who congregated 
 at their houses every Friday to bare their backs and 
 inflict the propitious castigation ; or who on festivals 
 were led forth through the streets in procession, in the 
 same predicament. It appears that Xavier invented the 
 method among the people of Japan ; and in the historical 
 romances of the Jesuits, we read that besides arresting 
 temptations of the flesh in the ardent islanders, the 
 whips actually cured diseases by contact, and by the 
 same process, alleviated the pains of child-birth. 1 
 
 We remember the efficacy of processional flagellation 
 in Portugal, when the good name of the Company was 
 The efficacy to be restored. The question is, how could 
 of flagellation. ^^ means produce the result which is stated 1 
 Simply by appealing to the superstitious associations of 
 the people, who considered corporeal austerities the 
 guarantees of holiness. Hence the method failed when 
 the Jesuits tried it in Germany for the conversion of the 
 heretics. These public and private " antidotes of chaste 
 religion/' as the Jesuit calls them, availed little or 
 nothing against what he also terms " the venom of the 
 impious." 2 
 
 In other places they established what they called soda- 
 lities clubs or reunions, cliques and conventicles, where 
 
 1 Orland. x. 133, et srq. * Id. iv. 19, 20.
 
 COUNCIL OR OFFICE OF CHARITY. 83 
 
 the secrets of families were collected, and pious frauds 
 concocted. These began in Sicily in 1555, the year before 
 the death of the Founder. The institution 
 
 The Council 
 
 was called the Council or Office of Charity or office of 
 
 C*\ ** 
 
 a captivating name for the multitude. The 
 duties of the members consisted in distributing the 
 collections made for the poor, in espousing the cause of 
 widows and wards engaged in law-suits ; and they had 
 to see to the proper administrations of the churches, 
 convents, chapels and hospitals : the administration of 
 wills and bequests was no less a special duty of the 
 brethren. 1 A more cheering prospectus could never be 
 devised except such a one as would announce an 
 infallible method for preventing the abuses likely to 
 result. These sodalities were generally filled with per- 
 sons devoted to the Jesuits, in whose houses the assem- 
 blies took place. For a time results were satisfactory : 
 but soon it became evident that the guardians 
 against fraud had become victimisers in their 
 turn ; and the sodalities were abolished. 2 The Company 
 always fruitful in inventions adapted to promote their 
 designs, supplied their place with other confraternities 
 which they devised, destined to enjoy a longer duration. 
 These were called the Congregations of the TheCon 
 Holy Virgin. On Sundays and Festivals the gationsofthe 
 
 i i i i i i -r Virgin Marv. 
 
 members assembled with the Jesuits to recite 
 the Office of the Virgin a set form of extravagant 
 adulation in which the Song of Solomon, the Prophets, 
 and other books of the Bible are made to do strange 
 service to Mary. A Jesuit presided, heard their con- 
 fessions, said mass to them, and administered the sacra- 
 ment. These sodalities were very comprehensive. Their 
 
 1 Orland. lib. xv. 17. 2 Hist, des Religieux, &c., i. 144. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 organisation seems to have been modelled on that of 
 Their organ- ^ G castes of India. They were divided into 
 
 classes. The first was the sodality of the 
 nobles and the highest ranks ; the second comprised 
 the merchants and simple citizens ; the third consisted 
 of workmen and servants. To make the castes more 
 distinct and in deference to the gradations of human 
 vanity each class had its particular assembly and 
 
 chapel. 1 The whole sodality was governed 
 
 Government. PIT- fit 
 
 by one of the Jesuits, a prefect elected by the 
 congregation, two assistants and a council. There was 
 a secretary, with twelve consultors, whose office it was 
 to watch over those members who were committed to 
 their care by the Jesuit father-president, or by the 
 prefect, and to report on their conduct accordingly. 2 
 The greatest deference and obedience were inculcated 
 by rule towards the father of the sodality, and other 
 officials. 3 No member was to leave the town of the 
 sodality without apprising the father and prefect of 
 the same ; and letters patent were given to him to 
 insure his admission into another branch of the sodality, 
 wherever he might be travelling. Peace, concord, 
 and brotherly love were to reign throughout the mem- 
 Ways and hers of the association ; and in order to pro- 
 mote their advance in " true and Christian 
 virtues" frequent assemblies of the members were to 
 take place; and there would be frequent intercourse with 
 those who could assist them in their progress. As 
 each member, even in his absence, shared " the merits 
 of the sodality" it would be only fair for him to give 
 information respecting himself and his concerns to the 
 
 1 Hist, des Religieux, &c. i. 145. 
 
 1 Leges et Statute, &c., Congreg. B. V. Mar. part i. viii. 3 Ib. part i. 1 .
 
 GOVERNMENT OP THE SODALITIES. 85 
 
 prefect, commending himself to the prayers of the soda- 
 lity : always striving to show himself a true son of the 
 sodality by his moral integrity, and endeavouring to edify 
 all and entice them to the practice of virtue and piety. 1 
 It was the duty of the prefect to watch carefully over 
 all the members, and their conduct. Any notable fault 
 was to be by him reported to the father of the soda- 
 lity, for admonition and emendation. Penances were 
 enjoined for certain faults, or according to the devotion 
 of postulants ; and an official was appointed by the 
 father to enjoin and direct the inflictions. The rules 
 were plainly written on a board, or printed, and the 
 greatest diligence was enjoined to promote their observ- 
 ance. There was a book in which were inscribed the 
 names of those who frequented or were remiss infrequent- 
 ing the assemblies. 2 When a member became scandalous, 
 he was summoned before the whole congregation, the 
 charges were made against him, and his name was 
 erased from the list of the sodality : but the father 
 always had the power of summary dismissal " in matters 
 of moment in rebus gravibus."* Strict secrecy was 
 enjoined to the secretary of the association : " when it 
 shall be necessary to observe secrecy, he must strive 
 not to divulge nor hint at the resolutions or under- 
 takings of the sodality, and he must not show any papers 
 to any one without the express command of the father 
 and prefect of the sodality. 4 He must have a book in 
 which he will enter the names of the members, their 
 entrance, country, and other particulars, according to 
 
 1 Leges et Stat., &c.,part i. i. 12. 2 Ib. v. 5. 3 Ib. v. 11. 
 
 4 " Ubi autein oportebit servare secretum, studeat ita, ut neque loquatur, 
 neque indicet, quse fuerint constituta, vel agenda siut, neque vero scripta ulla 
 cuiquam, sine expresso patris mandato, ac prsefecti sodalitatis, ostendat." 
 Ib. vii. 1.
 
 86 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the custom of each sodality. He will also make account 
 of those who die, or marry, or be dismissed from the 
 sodality : but he is not to state the cause of dismissal. 1 
 Such are the peculiar rules or statutes of this sub- Jesuit- 
 Order. It must be allowed that it had something like 
 an organisation, and was worthy of the Jesuits. Of 
 course we cannot see what most of these regulations could 
 have to do with piety and the advance in Christian per- 
 fection : but we can see how the sodalities multiplied the 
 Jesuits, ad infinitum, wherever they existed ; and we can 
 An expkna- now account for the demonstrations of their 
 tion. f r i en (j s " whenever they got into difficulties. 
 
 What the " resolutions and undertakings " of the con- 
 gregations might be, it is little to the purpose to inquire ; 
 but the certainty of Jesuit-leverage by means of these 
 sodalities, must be evident at a glance. By these they 
 could always tune the popular voice, command the 
 assistance of the middle ranks, and influence the great, 
 or their wives and children, which, in the long-run, 
 answers the purpose equally as well. To entice devotees 
 _ . to enter these sodalities numerous graces and 
 
 Enticements 
 
 to join the indulgences were proclaimed by the Jesuits. 
 On the day of his entrance the member gained 
 " a plenary indulgence " that is, a total remission of 
 the penalties due to his sins, absolved in confession, 
 according to Catholic doctrine. At the day of his death 
 the same is awarded, besides other days consecrated to 
 the festivals of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Nor was 
 this all. All who " in a state of grace " followed the 
 corpse of a sodalis to the grave, gained an indulgence of 
 a year, that is, they satisfied by that act just as if they 
 underwent the ancient canonical penances for the space 
 
 1 Leges ct Statuta, part i. vii. 2.
 
 PLENARY INDULGENCES. 87 
 
 of a year. Innumerable other indulgences blessed the 
 sodalis, and enticed the devotee to enter the congrega- 
 tion of the blessed. So indulgent were the Jesuits that 
 they procured an indulgence for all the world on con- 
 dition that they should on certain days visit the churches 
 of the Company, on all days when Catholics must go to 
 mass a plenary indulgence in return for a Miserere, a 
 Pater Noster, or an Ave Maria, rehearsed in behalf of 
 the pope ! l Does not all this prove that the Jesuits 
 knew the secret of influence, and set to work accordingly'? 
 Was not this a right good means " to bring water to their 
 mill," as the French would say ? Meanwhile the women 
 were not neglected : there was something 
 
 9 O Houses of 
 
 specially for them, under the name of retreats, retreat for 
 
 ml i . i . the women. 
 
 These were houses contiguous to their own 
 residences, and built expressly for the purpose, to which 
 ladies might retire from the tumult of the world and the 
 dissipations of fashionable life, for a few days, in order 
 to spend the time " with God," and their father-con- 
 fessor, the whole to conclude with communion on some 
 grand festival. In these curious and interesting coteries 
 of devout ladies under Jesuit-influence, the same dis- 
 tinctions were observed as to rank, as in the great 
 sodalities. They classified the ladies ; so that there 
 was no fear of the shop-keeper's wife coming into con- 
 tact with the magistrate's lady, nor of the servant- 
 maid's falling in with her mistress. The object of these 
 pious inventions which they even attempted to intro- 
 duce subsequently into regiments of soldiers is pretty 
 evident. At Louvain, where these congregations began, 
 it was perceived that the object of the Jesuits was 
 thereby to entice the faithful to their churches, from 
 
 1 Leges et Statute, &c., part v. i. el seq.
 
 88 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 their respective parishes. With regard to the retreats 
 for women, we may observe that it was a very bold and 
 presumptuous undertaking. It is written that those 
 who seek the danger shah 1 perish in it ; and we all 
 know that this is one of the greatest dangers to which 
 the sons of Adam can expose their thoughtless frailty. 
 The Jesuits should have been the last men to meddle 
 with the thing. Their rules and regulations were cla- 
 morous against female conversation. They infringed, 
 and scandal ensued. Strange and disgraceful reports got 
 The Jesuits afloat nor was it the least remarkable fact, 
 whip the k a t some o f these pious women were 
 
 women once * 
 
 a-week. whipped once a-week by their father-con- 
 fessors" and the fact is admitted by Orlandinus 
 nee falsa narrabantur. 1 Clamours actually rose against 
 the Jesuits ; but they were strong in their sodalities ; 
 and they went on as usual in conscious triumph ; so 
 glorious indeed was the result of their operations, that 
 on the Christmas following, one single Jesuit gave the 
 sacrament to more than two thousand communicants ! 2 
 Such a thing had never before been heard of, says 
 Orlandinus. 
 
 The women gave them trouble in Venice as well. 
 The Jesuits could not dispense with their influence in 
 The Jesuits soc i e ty '> they strove to insure it, and suffered 
 and the ladies accordingly. There was in the city of the 
 
 of Venice. -^ . 
 
 Doge a convent of female penitents, who 
 passed for saints according to the representations of 
 their father-confessor ; but it subsequently turned out 
 to be quite the contrary. Their priest was convicted of 
 grave misdemeanors, and suffered the penalty of death. 
 It appears, too, that the fair penitents were condemned 
 
 1 Lib. xiii. 29. 2 Ibid.
 
 THE JESUITS AND THE LADIES OF VENICE. 89 
 
 to strict seclusion. There were more than a hundred 
 women thus shut up together, which, it seems, proved a 
 hard matter in the given circumstances. They resolved 
 to starve themselves to death, if not permitted to leave 
 their convent. 
 
 An unfortunate Jesuit, Father Palmio, undertook to 
 reduce the fair rebels. Palmio had the gift of per- 
 suasion, we are expressly told, and succeeded in quelling 
 this female insurrection. 
 
 This success proved a sorry boon to the Jesuits. 
 Their method was incomprehensible, and therefore liable 
 to " misrepresentation." Now the fact was evident, that 
 they were the confessors or directors of most of the women 
 in the republic. It was therefore concluded that by 
 this " subterraneous medium " they got at the secrets of 
 the state. The senate took the matter in hand, and one 
 of the members declared that "the Jesuits Thesenators 
 meddled with an infinity of civil matters, even remonstrate - 
 those of the republic ; that they made use of the most 
 respectable and holy things to seduce women ; that not 
 content with very long conversations with them in the 
 confessional, they enticed them to their residences for 
 the same purpose ; that it was the ladies of the highest 
 rank who were the particular object of the advanced 
 Jesuits. The abuse was to be remedied without delay, 
 either by expelling them from the country, or by 
 appointing some person of authority and merit, such 
 as the Patriarch of Venice, to watch over their 
 conduct." 
 
 . Such were the charges and the remedies proposed. 
 The patriarch was their sworn enemy, and 
 
 i , , IT -I ,i m triarch and 
 
 he had called them (Jhiappim, a very con- the Jesuits. 
 temptuous cognomen in Italy, to be modestly translated
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 into " bird-catchers " periphrastically ; but a word which 
 a patriarch ought to have " ignored." 
 
 The idea of supervision was too galling to be endured. 
 A friend of the Jesuits defended them in the senate, 
 and an appeal was made to the doge Priuli. At the 
 same time the pope, Pius IV., himself wrote to the senate 
 and the doge, guaranteeing the good morals and doc- 
 trines of the Society. This, of course, was conclusive, 
 and the patriarch hid his diminished head. Nevertheless, 
 the doge sent for Palmio, and thus addressed 
 
 The doge e 
 
 gives them the Jesuit : " If you have calumniators, bear 
 them with patience ; it is the property of 
 virtue to have to fight. The Society has amongst us 
 hot defenders ; but I am required to draw your attention 
 to one or two points ; they are the only ones which 
 have been entertained in the heap of fictions debited by 
 your enemies. In the first place, we see with pain that 
 you, who are the best confessor in existence, avoid the 
 duty ; and, to the great regret of the whole city, you 
 impose that function, with regard to several battalions 
 of women, on young men scarcely twenty-five or twenty- 
 six years of age ! " Palmio affirmed the contrary : the 
 confessors were more than thirty-two years of age ; and, 
 Constitutions in hand, he pointed to the precautions, 
 the curious details of watchfulness enforced in the 
 Society to preclude all suspicion in so delicate a func- 
 tion. There the matter rested. 1 
 
 This is a specimen of Jesuit-escapes from trouble, 
 according to the statement of the Jesuits themselves. 
 Their misdemeanors were, of course, still certain in the 
 estimation of many ; but, for this time, they triumphed 
 
 1 The whole is an ex-partt statement of the Jesuit Palmio in a letter, whence 
 Cretineau extracted the facts as above. Tome i. p. 390, et scq.
 
 LAINEZ RESOLVES TO SOUND THE POPE. 91 
 
 and went on confiding, reckless in their machinations. 
 A less fortunate hour will surprise them anon in the 
 same Venice. Still, they were doomed to feel the effects 
 of Gombar's guilt or indiscretions at Monte Pulciano. 
 The Venetian senators being apprised of that affair, 
 forbade their wives to confess to the Jesuits, which was 
 probably as painful a prohibition to the ladies of Venice 
 as it was to the Jesuits. 1 
 
 At Rome, the affairs of the Society had received 
 great development. Freed from the haunting ghost of 
 Paul IV., the Jesuits had breathed freely once Lainez re- 
 more, and at the exaltation of the old man's ^^ * e 
 enemy, Pius IV., to the chair of St. Peter, new pope, 
 they made every effort to win his good graces. It was 
 at first uncertain what they had to expect on their 
 own account, although, inasmuch as the pope's enemy, 
 Paul IV., had treated them with considerable rigour, it 
 was probable enough that they would be befriended, 
 were it only to cast a slur on Caraffa, whom the Romans 
 disgraced so horribly at his death. But the Jesuits had 
 shirked the papal mandate respecting the public choir. 
 This was disobedience to the Holy See. And the third 
 year of the term prescribed to the generalate of Lainez 
 was approaching. The general bethought him of the 
 doom right anxiously ; but there was little reason to fear, 
 as events declared, that success was to attend him, and 
 when all would be certain, he would make a show, like 
 Father Ignatius, of resigning the generalate, a delicate 
 piece of superfluous magnanimity. As a cardinal, 
 Pius IV. had shown no favour to the Company, he had 
 had " nothing to do" with the Jesuits. Lainez began 
 his operations round about the papal throne by inducing 
 
 1 Antiquit. Venet. apud Quesucl, Hist, dcs Rcl. ii. 4.
 
 92 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 four cardinals to recommend to his Holiness the whole 
 Society in general and himself in particular et nomina- 
 tim Lainium. Lainez then presented himself in person, 
 and after the solemn kiss of the holy toe post osculum 
 solenne pedis he proceeded to deposit the Company in 
 the pontifical lap, protesting that all were 
 
 Hisprotesta- r r r ' . 
 
 tions to the ready, without tergiversation, without a word 
 about travelling expenses, at once to be sent 
 by his Holiness to any part of the world, to barbarians 
 or heretics ; in a word, that his Holiness might use 
 them as his own commodity tamque sud re uti posset 
 and he hoped to be useful in very many respects 
 sicubi speraret usui fore quam multis nominibus. 1 It 
 must have been evident to the Jesuit that his point was 
 gained by the matter and manner of this exordium. 
 I say it must have been so evident to him ; for, accord- 
 ing to his historian, he at once proceeded to ask a favour 
 from his lord and master. The words ascribed to him 
 constitute Jesuit-matter, and they are worth recording. 
 Lainez hoped that his Holiness would patronise the 
 Society, and particularly the Roman College. He said 
 Throws in " there was now in that college an immense 
 a hmt. number of young Jesuits, about a hundred 
 and sixty, all of them most select, almost all of them 
 endowed with genius, excellent dispositions, gathered 
 together from all the nations of Christendom ; and now 
 being trained most learnedly and piously, and were 
 ardently progressing, in order to be despatched all over 
 the world to preserve, to restore, to infuse, to propagate 
 the Christian religion ; that the Roman College was the 
 source w.hence the colleges of all Italy and Sicily had 
 arisen and were supplied ; thence had colonies been 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 1, ct scq.
 
 SPEECH OF LAINEZ TO THE POPE. 93 
 
 sent into France, Belgium, and Germany, with constant 
 accessions, to be ramparts against the assaults of the 
 heretics ; thence went forth colonies bearing the light 
 of the faith even into India and the uttermost bounds 
 of the East, to nations unknown from time immemorial ; 
 thence, in fine, had Spain and Portugal received sub- 
 sidies. But the house is too small. We are packed 
 together, dreadfully inconvenienced, in want of every 
 thing. Health suffers, sickness blasts our fairest hopes, 
 our brightest geniuses wither and die. We have neither 
 food nor clothing. May your Holiness cast a kind look 
 on this your progeny, your faithful and ready cohort 
 fidam ac promptam cohortem ; and let us feel a particle 
 of that paternal care which is over all. It is a deed 
 worthy of the piety of the Roman bishop, Glorifie9tl]e 
 the guardian of all nations, presiding over the pope and 
 Queen-city of the earth, the sole oracle of the 
 world, the eternal palace of religion and piety, to preserve 
 and perpetuate this refuge and rampart of all nations 
 [the Roman College], and thus, by one deed, to bestow 
 a meritorious favour on all the nations of the universe/' 1 
 After this speech it will surely be ridiculous to talk 
 of Jesuit-modesty : and we may be permitted to think 
 that men who could thus boast of their "spiritual" deeds 
 were scarcely actuated by spiritual motives. I allude 
 to the leaders, the enterprisers of the Company the 
 "men in authority" the Jesuit-princes : for undoubt- 
 edly there were amongst the body some hearty, honest, 
 truly conscientious men, who laboured as God seemed to 
 direct them, by the lips of their superiors. The latter I 
 shall gladly cheer as I find them ; and the former shall 
 portray themselves as above to my mind they are 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 1, et seq.
 
 94 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 despicable throughout. The drift of the foregoing address, 
 or its equivalent not likely to be less to the purpose 
 from the lips of Lainez was nothing less than the covet- 
 ous usurpation of a building which he thought admirably 
 suited for a " refuge and rampart of all nations," and 
 more calculated to keep his " fairest hopes " from being 
 blasted, and his "brightest geniuses" from withering 
 what hewas an( ^ death. In truth it was a desperately keen 
 driving at. device of this wily Jesuit. There was at 
 Rome a large convent of nuns, which had been founded 
 by the Marchioness de' Ursini, the niece of the late 
 Pope Paul IV. This convent was very extensive, and 
 with its agreeable and commodious situation had for a 
 long time tempted the cupidity of the Jesuits. Now, as 
 they knew that the present pope was the mortal enemy 
 of the Caraffas, whom he then kept in prison, and whose 
 trial was proceeding, the Jesuits took advantage of the 
 pope's temper to solicit the grant of this convent, with 
 the design of making it the Roman College. The pre- 
 ceding interview, address, and its disgusting sentiments, 
 were the beginnings of the perpetration. The skilful 
 mixture of presumption, falsehood, and flattery, produced 
 
 the effect which Lainez had promised himself, 
 on popes, by " Popes," says Quesnel, "like other men, have 
 
 always been open to the most extravagant 
 flattery. It is one effect of the corruption of their 
 nature, and of self-love, which is always alive in them. 
 Pius IV. who soon sent the whole family of his prede- 
 cessor to execution, was so intoxicated with the fulsome 
 laudation Lainez bestowed upon him, that without any 
 formality of justice, he expelled the nuns from the 
 convent, which he gave to the exulting Jesuits. " * Their 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. Sncchin. lib. iv. 5.
 
 SPOLIATIONS OP THE JESUITS. 95 
 
 historian has the heart to be somewhat merry on the 
 pitiful subject : he actually says that the Marchioness 
 de' Orsini, its foundress, was by degrees conciliated to 
 the transfer of the convent, and so far approved the 
 pope's action, that " she confessed herself deeply obliged 
 to the most Holy Father for giving her so many sons in 
 lieu of a few daughters ! " l I am no advocate nor 
 admirer of the system which delivers up a number of 
 women to the horrors of seclusion, or the temptations of 
 luxurious sloth, to become bearded and hideous from 
 physical causes pining, corrupted, withering, raving in 
 a harem infinitely more disgusting to think of than any 
 which Turks can devise : but this is not the question. 
 It is a question of right and possession superseded by 
 covetousness and tyranny. Be it so : let the Jesuits 
 exult : but let them beware : retribution will come 
 betimes : they shall be done to as they have done by 
 others : Providence will chronicle their spoliations, to be 
 accounted for hereafter in this world, be it understood 
 a crushing but merited retribution. Not content 
 with flinging them this stolen property, the 
 pope added a revenue of 600 ducats for the enhances his 
 support of his "faithful and ready cohort/' 
 whose commander he was just declared, thus putting 
 their bandit-possession on a footing for operations. 
 Was there no voice raised against their spoliations, ten 
 times worse than any which Henry VIII. ever per- 
 petrated ? Worse, because perpetrated by The spoiia- 
 the very men who held themselves up as the 
 patterns of morality the guardians of the 
 Christian faith the oracles of religion. .Was there no 
 
 1 " Ut magnam segratiamBeatissimo Patri habere profiteretur,quod paucarum 
 loco filiarum filios sibi tarn multos tradidisset." Sacchin. lib. iv. 5.
 
 96 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 voice raised against these spoliations ? There was and 
 in Rome. Their claim to the college of Coimbra was 
 disputed. One Gomius Abreus showed himself " a very 
 troublesome adversary " to the Jesuit, as they call him 
 adversarius erat permolestus. " It was a law-suit of 
 great moment," says Sacchinus, " and on its issue 
 depended that noble safeguard, not only of Portugal, 
 but especially of the Indies." Abreus advanced against 
 the Jesuits held consultations with the judges, publicly 
 and in private, denouncing the Jesuits as robbers of 
 benefices and spoliators of the clergy, and commenced 
 an action against them, with no small chance of success 
 if the case was to be tried before a just tribunal. And the 
 Jesuits evidently were of the same opinion : for their 
 historian says : " So far had Gomius proceeded, that in 
 so serious a loss which was imminent, the Company was 
 less anxious about their wealth than their reputation ; " * 
 and well they might be for their factitious repu- 
 tation or " credit," would soon be the basis of ulterior 
 speculation. The most unprincipled rogue on 'Change 
 will, in a predicament, postpone his "purse' 9 to his 
 "reputation" the infamous lago tells you this, as well 
 as the " Company of Jesus." What followed I Inter- 
 views, a speech, and a supplication, doubtless from 
 General Lainez to the fatuous pontiff. And the most 
 Holy Father took the thing in hand reserved the 
 case to himself. Abreus insisted. What availed it ? 
 
 Nothing. The pope gave his cohort the ver- 
 decidesin diet. He did more : he remitted them the 
 
 fees of the "Apostolic diploma," or letters 
 patent, which confirmed their " right " to the property. 
 
 1 " Eo rem adduxerat, ut in tarn gravi quee imminebat jactura, minor Societati 
 rei quam famse cura esset." Sacchin. lib. iv. 6.
 
 PAPAL REVENUES BEFORE THE REFORMATION. 97 
 
 " By this benefaction/' says Sacchinus, "he gave us more 
 than a thousand ducats, which we would otherwise have 
 had to pay," 1 A thousand ducats about 500, for a 
 verdict in the papal chancery ! English law must cer- 
 tainly be cheap in our estimation, since at the very 
 oracle of heaven the "costs" are so ruinous. But let 
 that pass, and compute or conceive, if you How the 
 can, the immense revenues that the sovereign J^t'the 1 ' 011 
 pontiff lost by the Reformation when so PP C - 
 many "cases" and "appeals" were decided without 
 "apostolical diplomas" and their thousand ducats. 
 Was it not perfectly natural that the popes should go 
 mad on the subject of abstract orthodoxy all that was 
 requisite to maintain the formalities whence they derived 
 their enormous revenues and was it not also quite 
 natural that the pope should foster the Jesuits who 
 seemed so likely and who certainly flattered themselves 
 with the notion to reduce all the world to papal sub- 
 jection. Accordingly, possessed with this irrational, 
 mad idea, the pope thought he could not do too much 
 for his faithful and ready cohort ; and when Lainez 
 went to thank his holiness for all his benefac- 
 tions, the pontiff exclaimed : " There 's no 
 
 need of thanks 1 11 shed my very blood to 
 
 foster the Company!" 2 What could be more glorious 
 
 for the Jesuits ? And they " prospered" accordingly. 
 
 1 " Quo corollario plus mille aureorum minimum, quod in id impendendum 
 alioqui fuisset, donavit." Sacchin. lib. iv. 6. 
 
 2 " Haud opus gratiis esse : Societati se usque ad sanguinem fautumm." Sac- 
 chin. lib. iv. 7. $sf Early in the next year the pope increased the revenue of 
 the same college of Coimbra, by the donation of six farms and the township of 
 Mont-Agrasso. All these were so many spoliations from the Archbishop of 
 Evora, whose revenues were thus diminished in behalf of the cohort. He 
 also gave them the revenues of another parish, which were abstracted from 
 a dignitary or official of the Cathedral. The Jesuit says that the latter 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 98 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Honours and appointments fell upon them like the 
 debauching shower of gold wherein Jupiter descended 
 to beget Perseus, who with the head of the Gorgon 
 Medusa turned all his enemies into stone, if not other- 
 wise defeated a fit emblem of the Jesuit. Jesuits were 
 appointed to examine the candidates for orders. Jesuits 
 were made inspectors of churches, and directors of nuns. 
 Lainez was in his glory with more work than he could 
 A poor Cai- possibly perform, and yet he undertook to con- 
 laughTin vert a P oor Calvinist whom they had caught 
 Rome. j n Rome and condemned to be burnt. He 
 
 intended to cajole him out of his faith blandd mulcere: 
 but when he went to the prison and saw a multitude of 
 cardinals, bishops, nobles, and the pope's relatives, sitting 
 around to witness the discussion, the vain boaster of 
 Trent thought it a fine occasion for display, and " felt 
 compelled to proceed in a manner more glorious to 
 Catholic truth, though less adapted to the proud mind 
 of the heretic." * From his Collections of the Fathers, 
 the Jesuit of Trent flung a volley at the heretic. All 
 to no purpose. The man told him he did not care a 
 straw for the fathers in which he was quite right 
 and that he " stood by Calvin alone, whom he preferred 
 to all the fathers." 2 
 
 He stood firm in spite of impending fire. A decided 
 failure for the Jesuit. Had he been truly anxious to 
 rid the man of what was thought " heresy/' he would 
 
 " consented " to the transfer : but he does not state the same respecting the Arch- 
 bishop of Evora Hsec omnia Pontifex separavit a reditu Eborensis Archiepiscopi 
 and there he leaves the spoliation. Franc. Synops. ad Ann. 1561, 14. 
 
 1 u Inire coactus est pugnse viam gloriosiorem Catholicse veritati, sed superbo 
 heretici ingenio minus idoneam." Sacchin. lib. iv. 12. 
 
 2 " Exclamat uno se stare Calvino. Quidquid contra objiceres, hoc tenebat 
 saxum, aliter sentire Calvinum .... Calvinum malle : instar omnium habere 
 Calvinum." Ib.
 
 " THE BLIND STUBBORNNESS OF A HERETIC." 99 
 
 not have yielded to the impulse of vanity which sug- 
 gested a grand display a glorious confutation of the 
 Calvinist. Hand nihil tamen profectum "but 
 
 )) . i . Lainez fails 
 
 it was not altogether a failure ; says his his- to convert 
 torian, "for the audience (bishops, cardinals, 
 nobles, and the pope's relatives) admired the wisdom of 
 the Catholic doctor, and detested the blind stubbornness 
 of the heretic." * Verily he had his reward, this " Catholic 
 doctor " and when the soul of this poor heretic took 
 flight, sped to our merciful good God for judgment- 
 whilst the hard hearts, the cruel men of Rome were 
 howling and exulting around their judgment, his body 
 roasting in the flames at that dreadful moment, oh, 
 say, ye men of orthodoxy did his God send his sup- 
 pliant soul to Hell 1 . . . , And yet you call his 
 constancy " the blind stubbornness of a heretic ! " In 
 the midst of these events truly so disgusting, but so 
 glorious for the Jesuits, their historian, with the usual 
 modesty, coolly observes : " I know not how it was, but 
 really, at Rome especially, and far and wide over the 
 north, this opinion increased, namely, that there was no 
 other more available remedy for the reformation of 
 morals and the restoration of religion, than to employ, 
 to the utmost extent, the men of the Company." 2 
 
 Firm, established in papal favour at Rome, the Com- 
 pany of Jesus flapped her spreading wings over all Europe 
 besides. The sons of Calvin in Savoy shuddered as 
 
 1 " Qui disputation! interfuerant, non sapientiam magis Catholic! Doctoris 
 admirati, quam csecara detestati heretici pertinaciam, Iseti, &c., recessere." 
 Vt antea. 
 
 2 " Ac nescio quo pacto Romse hoc potissiminn anno, lateque per Septentrionis 
 oras, haec opinio percrebuit, ad corrigendos mores, restituendamque religionem, 
 haud aliud prsesentius esse remedium quam hominum Societatis quam plurimum 
 opera uti." Sacchin. lib. iv. 7. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the sound boomed athwart their mountains. " Coming ! 
 oming ! " it seemed to mutter, " Coming ! " and 
 she came. A young man a mere novice Antonius 
 Possevinus Possevinus was her angel. He had been a 
 m Savoy. student at Padua, destined for the priesthood, 
 with a benefice in commendam. The Jesuit Palmio, so 
 powerful with the nuns at Venice, mesmerised him into 
 the Company ; for we can apply no other term to the 
 method as described by the Jesuit, Sacchinus. 1 He was 
 admitted by Lainez in 1559, in the month of September. 
 At the end of the month he began his novitiate. In 
 the beginning of November he was sent to resume his 
 studies at the Roman College. 2 Thus the important 
 two years of probation, as appointed by the Constitu- 
 tions, were dispensed with by the general. A single 
 month was sufficient to ensure such an accession to the 
 Company, and he took the vows accordingly. He was 
 in his twenty-seventh year, and not in orders. He had 
 " private business " to transact in Savoy : Lainez invested 
 him with a commission to Emmanuel Philibert, the Duke 
 of Savoy, and Prince of Piedmont. He left Rome with 
 the dress and title of a beneficiary in commendam dis- 
 simttlatd Societate pretending not to be a Jesuit, says 
 Sacchinus, in order the more freely to transact his pri- 
 vate business. On his departure, Lainez summed up all 
 his instructions to the emissary in these words : " In 
 
 1 Sacchinus states that he was meditating to join the company. " With these 
 thoughts in his mind," continues the Jesuit, " with which Palmio was not 
 acquainted, the Father held forth the host to Possevinus, [at the Sacrament], 
 and said, in a whisper, Lord, give to this man thy Spirit !'.... Suddenly 
 Possevinus was excited, and scarcely able to contain himself . . . falling on his 
 knees before the Father, he cried out, ' Father, be my witness in the presence 
 of God I vow and promise to the Divine Majesty, knowingly and willingly, 
 to enter the Company, and never to accept any benefice or dignity.' " Sacchin. 
 lib. iii. 43. - Biblio. Scrip . Soc. Jesu. Ant. Poss.
 
 POS3EVINUS IN SAVOY. 101 
 
 your actions and deliberations think you see me before 
 you." l This was in 1560. It proved an eventful a 
 bitter year for the Calvinists of Savoy. And dread 
 prognostics seemed to predict the monstrous births of 
 the pregnant future. Lights in the skies, troops of 
 horsemen in the clouds, mysterious sounds of invisible 
 chariots, earthquakes, a comet, a conflagration in the 
 firmament, a shower of blood, were among the super- 
 natural terrors which agitated poor humanity in those 
 days of " religious " warfare. 2 Where was the God of 
 Christians ? Where was his Christ ? 
 
 Emmanuel Philibert gave Possevimis an audience. 
 We have the Jesuit's speech in Sacchinus. It is a por- 
 trait. He began with telling the duke that A Jeguit 
 as God had given him the country, so ought model of 
 
 J & craft, effront- 
 
 he to give the souls in the country to God. ery and 
 Eternal happiness in Heaven, and a steady 
 reign on earth, would be the result. Those who had 
 fallen off from the Roman Church, that is from God, 
 hoc est d Deo, were also continually unsteady in their 
 allegiance to human potentates. What was to be done ? 
 eagerly asked Philibert, according to the Jesuits. Look 
 to the monks, replied Possevin see how miserably they 
 have gone astray unworthy of their holy families, 
 unworthy of the holy garb whereby they are concealed 
 and recommended ; hurrying the people down a preci- 
 pice with their corrupt morals and doctrine. Write to 
 the generals of orders, and the cardinals who are their 
 
 1 "Cui discedenti,post alia, hoc instar omnium praecepti dedit. In rebus agendis 
 cousiliisque capiendis, prresentem adesse sibi ipsum existimaret." Sacchin. iv. 61. 
 
 2 " Calamitatcs tarn quse huic Sub-Alpinse region! iucubuerunt, quam qute 
 Galliam nostram postea per tot annos ad religionis causam divexarant, multa 
 tune cceli signa praesagieruut : nam et Clarasci et Travillse ignis in acre," &c. 
 &c. Thuan. xxvii. Ann. 1560.
 
 102 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 patrons, and ask for proper leaders of the multitude unto 
 good action and right feeling. Proper and zealous 
 priests are required. King Philip is convinced of this, 
 and has acted on the conviction. The consequence is, 
 that Spain is in a fine condition, because the clergy are 
 not diseased with ignorance inscitid non laboret, says 
 the classic Sacchinus. " Your advice is good," replied 
 Emmanuel, with a sigh, "but in the midst of such dark- 
 ness, and so barren an age, whence can I get the proper 
 supply of virtuous and learned priests ? " That was the 
 point of the nail which the Jesuit wanted to see, and he 
 clinched it at once. " The Emperor Ferdinand," said 
 Possevin, " has two methods for producing such proper 
 men. First, he sends from Germany youths of good 
 hope to the German college at Rome to be educated, 
 where they have the best masters in morals and learning, 
 from whose training they come forth imbued with hatred 
 against the heretics concepto in hcereses odio and 
 having thoroughly seen the majesty and holiness of the 
 Roman Church, and being, moreover, armed with learning, 
 defended by innocence of life, when they return to their 
 country they are a great safeguard. Secondly, knowing 
 the virtue of the Company of Jesus under whose 
 training the German youths are educated the emperor 
 confesses that he can find no aid more seasonable in 
 these most wretched times, than to get as many men as 
 he can of this family into his dominions. Accordingly 
 he is constantly founding colleges for them. By these 
 colleges the young are religiously educated, and the 
 Catholics are made steadfast in the faith ; nor is the 
 poison of the heretics only prevented from spreading, 
 but many of them are converted from error, so that this 
 result alone, or for the most part, preserves Germany
 
 JESUIT-EFFRONTERY AND ZEAL. 103 
 
 from utter ruin." Then he alluded to King John III., 
 Xavier, Rodriguez, and the mighty results of the Jesuit- 
 proceedings in Portugal, all in the same strain as above. 
 " I think your highness has heard of the college at 
 Coimbra," continued Possevin. " More than a thousand 
 pupils are there educated with equal ardour in learning 
 and piety ; for the seeds of piety are sown together with 
 learning. They have appointed times to confess their 
 sins ; they all attend mass together every day ; they 
 often go to communion. Noble youths frequent the 
 hospitals, and perform with alacrity all the functions and 
 services of the lowest domestics for the sick. Far from 
 those youths are impious and lustful actions and expres- 
 sions. Far from them are disturbance and quarrels. 
 Seeing these things and others of which, next to God, 
 the fathers of the Society are the authors the people 
 of Portugal call them by no other name than that of 
 Apostles/' l It is difficult to say whether falsehood or 
 effrontery most predominates in these assertions. The 
 result, however, was, that Philibert wrote to Lainez for 
 men to take the charge of two colleges. Meanwhile, 
 Possevinus scoured the country, insinuated himself 
 amongst the unsuspecting Calvinists, and when he had 
 satisfied himself on all the points suggested by his 
 villainous zeal, he sent in his report to the Duke of 
 Savoy : the result will soon be apparent. 2 
 
 Calvinism was extensively prevalent in Savoy. Its 
 chief strongholds were the valleys of Mont-Cenis, 
 Luzerne, Angrogne, Perouse, and Fressinieres. The Jesuita 
 As long as this country belonged to France inSav y- 
 after its conquest, the people enjoyed religious tolera- 
 tion ; but after its restoration to the duke, and the 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 62, et seq. * Id. lib. iv. 66.
 
 104 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 visit of the Jesuit Possevinus, the fiend of religious 
 persecution was let loose upon the wretched Calvinists. 
 A great number perished by fire and torture ; many 
 were condemned to the galleys ; and those who were 
 spared seemed to owe their pardon to a dread in the mind 
 of its ruler, lest the country should become a desert. 
 But long before the fangs of persecution were blunted, 
 dreadful deeds were perpetrated by its cruel ministers. 
 Philibert fell ill, and the bloody executions languished ; 
 but no sooner had he recovered, than, urged by the 
 pope, advising the trial of arms, since tortures had failed 
 with the heretics, he promptly raised an army, resolved 
 on war. 1 The Calvinists held a consultation, and it was 
 determined not to take arms against their prince, how- 
 ever unjust the war might be : they would retire to 
 their mountains with all they could transport of their 
 goods and chattels. Some retired to the Grisons, others 
 took refuge among the Swiss, and some clung to their 
 huts, resolving to defend their lives, but not before 
 declaring by manifesto that war was forced upon them 
 by despair, and that they would lay down their arms if 
 the Duke of Savoy wonld permit them to live in peace. 
 But that was not the maxim of kings in those days. It 
 seemed that some infernal Fury had sent them to 
 scourge mankind. The reply to the manifesto was an 
 army of two thousand men, under the Count of the 
 Trinity and the Jesuit Possevin. The fortune of war 
 favoured both sides alternately : then followed negotia- 
 tions towards reconcilement, and demands for indem- 
 nities and war expenses far beyond the means 
 of the miserable children of the mountains. 
 Poor as virtue can possibly be, the mountaineers in 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 14. Sai-pi, v. 51.
 
 THE EXPEDITION IN SAVOY A FAILURE. 105 
 
 their dilemma borrowed money to pay their oppressors, 
 and were forced to sell their flocks to meet their engage- 
 ments, with ruinous interest. They paid, and still were 
 persecuted. They were disarmed : more money was 
 demanded. Their ministers were banished : their houses 
 were searched and pillaged : their wives and daughters 
 were outraged ; and, by way of a bonfire to celebrate 
 the achievements of orthodoxy, their village was set on 
 fire. 1 In the midst of these horrors, the intriguing, 
 crafty, mendacious Posse vinus if Sacchinus The Jesuit 
 has not belied him in the speech was seen '' the midst 
 rushing from place to place, posting preachers of the true 
 faith everywhere, searching for the books of the heretics 
 and handing them to be burnt by the pope's inquisitor, 
 whom he had by his side, scattering pious tracts, and 
 recommending the catechism of the Jesuit Canisius 2 to 
 the persecuted, pillaged, maltreated men of the moun- 
 tains, and their outraged wives and daughters. It is 
 very ridiculous, but, at the same time, bitterly humi- 
 liating. And Sacchinus tells us that, in reward for all 
 the dexterity of Possevin in bringing about these very 
 sad proceedings, which he calls " an immense good of 
 the Catholic religion/' some " principal men principes 
 viri" thought of getting the pope to make Posse vinus 
 a bishop. 3 
 
 But this Jesuit-expedition into Savoy, clever as Sac- 
 chinus represents the scheme, was a total failure ; 
 and after entailing misery on the Calvinists, 
 it was followed by one of those beautiful re- 
 tributions recorded in history, which compels ever - 
 us to believe in a superintending Providence. Beau- 
 tiful in the abstract, however painful in the concrete, 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. p. 15, et ney. - Sacchin. iv. 71. 3 Ibid.
 
 106 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 as all the woes of humanity must be, whether in the 
 calamities of Catholics or Protestants, fellow-citizens or 
 strangers, private foes or public enemies the tyrants 
 of earth. No sooner had the Count of the Trinity 
 retired from the scene of the war, than the people made 
 alliance with the Valdenses or Vaudois, their neigh- 
 bours, who promised them assistance. Emboldened 
 by support, and goaded by the memory of the past, 
 they resolved on revenge. They sacked the 
 
 Retribution. 
 
 churches of the Catholics, overturned their 
 altars, and broke their images. War blazed forth on all 
 sides, and various were its fortunes : but the Valdenses 
 gained a signal victory over the Count of the Trinity, 
 and their victory suggested a better line of policy to 
 Emmanuel Philibert, notwithstanding his " head of iron " 
 Tete de Fer, as was his surname. In spite of the 
 pope's gold and exhortations for the continuance of the 
 war and utter extermination of the poor heretics, Phili- 
 bert, who was not so stupid as the Jesuit represents 
 him, proposed an accommodation when he saw that 
 his troops had been often routed, and, in the last battle, 
 completely defeated by the heretics, who nevertheless, 
 and notwithstanding their vantage-ground, were inclined 
 to peace with their sovereign and of this he was per- 
 Toieration suaded. Complete toleration ensued their 
 forced. pastors returned restorations and restitu- 
 tions were made to the heretics the prisons gave up 
 their confessors of the faith, and the galleys surrendered 
 their martyrs. Was it not glorious ? And why did 
 Christian charity, human kindness, refuse these blessings 
 which the hideous sword of war so lavishly bestowed ? 
 I have answered and shall answer the question in every 
 page of this history : but a reflection of Quesnel is
 
 USUAL ISSUE OF RELIGIOUS WARS. 107 
 
 much to the purpose. " With all deference to the popes 
 of these times, and our Christian princes, but really it 
 was not very necessary to sacrifice to their The usual 
 pious fury, as they did in those days, so many 
 thousands of men, only to be subsequently 
 compelled to accept such accommodations as these sons 
 of the mountains achieved. And such has been invari- 
 ably the issue of ' religious ' wars, which the inordinate 
 zeal of popes, the imbecility of kings, the fanaticism of the 
 people have occasioned, and into which the interests of 
 the true God in no wise entered." 1 In utter contradiction 
 of the numerous conversions so mendaciously boasted of 
 by Sacchinus as resulting from the terrors of warfare 
 and the roguery of the Jesuit Posse vinus 2 in testimony 
 of the futility of persecution, the Cardinal de Lorraine, 
 one of the religious spitfires of those days, found the 
 heretics swarming in Savoy : in the very court of the 
 duke many openly professed their heresy ; and although 
 it was only a month since the duke had published an 
 edict commanding all the sectarians to leave Emmanuel 
 his dominions within eight days, he now pro- Phili i>ert. 
 hibited its execution and even pardoned many who 
 had been condemned by the Inquisition, stopped and 
 rescinded all proceedings in hand, and permitted all 
 who had fled from persecution to return to the arms of 
 toleration. Nor was it difficult for the duke to convince 
 the cardinal that the interest of the Catholics them- 
 selves required him to adopt that line of conduct. 3 This 
 
 1 Hist. ii. 18. 
 
 2 Lib. iv. 71, whose title is, " Multi hereticorum sectam ejiwant," " Many of 
 the heretics abjure their sect." 
 
 3 Sarpi, 1. viii. 6. The events which I have described, and the representa- 
 tions of the Jesuits, are calculated to give an incorrect character to Emmanuel 
 Philibert. The characteristic facts of his career are as follows : In the armies 
 of Charles V. he acquired great military renown ; and he continued to serve his
 
 108 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 treaty so favourable to the Protestants, and honourable 
 to the sensible duke, profiting by experience utterly 
 disappointed the Jesuits, and the pope, who denounced 
 it in full consistory. The disappointment was natural. 
 The Jesuits counted on solid foundations, establishments, 
 colleges, all the peculiar things of the Company res 
 Societatis Jesu, as likely to result from an expedition 
 suggested, promoted, and belaboured by their Father 
 Possevin, whom Pope Pius IV. had sent express to the 
 Court of Savoy. In effect, the duke, as I have stated, 
 had written to the general, begging a large consignment 
 of the apostles according to the samples described by 
 Possevin, as truly miraculous in touching for mental 
 ignorance and moral depravity to say nothing of 
 Aut ca^r orthodox allegiance. Two colleges were ready 
 autnuiius. ^ Q ma ^ e t nem comfortable. You doubtless 
 expect to hear that the Jesuit Lainez gladly seized the 
 opportunity. But then, I must state that the duke, 
 whose head had sense as well as iron in it, wisely 
 
 sou, Philip II., for whom he won the battle of St. Quentiii, so disastrous to the 
 French, in 1557. He had accompanied Philip, in 1553, to England, where he 
 received the Garter. After the declaration of peace, in 1559, he married the 
 daughter of the King of France, by which alliance he recovered all the domi- 
 nions which his father had lost, and subsequently enlarged them by his valour 
 and prudence. He fixed his residence at Turin, and applied himself to restore 
 order in every branch of the administration, and may be considered as the real 
 founder of the House of Savoy. He died in 1580, leaving only one legitimate 
 son, but six natural children ; for his mistresses were numberless, notwith- 
 standing his " piety," which is commended by his biographer. He was surnamed 
 Tete de Per, Ironhead ; and was succeeded by his son, diaries Emmanuel, sur- 
 named tlie Great, of course on account of his military operations, for it is 
 impossible to discover any other claim hi him to the title. All Philibert's 
 natural children had glorious fortunes in church and state, and seem to have 
 deserved the oblivion of their stain if royal blood be not the hyssop to 
 sprinkle and cleanse all such defilement. Pope Clement VII. is said to have 
 appealed to the birth of the Redeemer, when people talked of his illegitimacy ! 
 See Guichenon, Hist, de Siivoye ; and Brusle de Montplaiuchainp, Vie, d'Ema- 
 nuel Pkilibert ; and all the Biographical Dictionaries.
 
 THE JESUITS AND THEIR INDIAN CONVERTS. 109 
 
 resolved to have some control over establishments which, 
 by the late treaty, would be likely to infringe on the 
 rights of his heretic subjects. The colleges were not to 
 be endowed : but the stipends were to be paid to the 
 Jesuits, just as to the other masters of the people. 
 Lainez threw up the thing at once as not adapted to 
 the Company the operations of his men would be 
 hampered by these "half-and-half" colleges -quod in 
 mutilis hisce dimidiatisque collegiis fieri non sit. 1 So, 
 after giving occasion to vast annoyance, great suffering, 
 confusion, bloodshed, torture, rape and rapine among the 
 poor Savoyards, the Jesuits decamped, Possevin was 
 not made a bishop, no colleges were founded, the res 
 Societatis was at a discount and all was quiet as before. 
 Thanks, however, to the Jesuit-expedition for teaching 
 Philibert a lesson, by which he profited for the good of 
 his subjects. Would to Heaven that it were my pen's 
 sweet office to state the same result of all Jesuit- 
 visitations. Nothing is so pleasant as to see good coming 
 out of evil particularly when the parturition promised 
 a monster. 
 
 A more disastrous consequence to themselves attended 
 a scheme of the Jesuits in India, during the same year, 
 1560. The southern coast of India, inhabited 
 
 The Jesuits 
 
 by the Paravas, or the pearl fishermen, had amongst their 
 long been the scene of rapine and extortion verts" in 
 by the Portuguese against the natives. King 
 John of Portugal had received complaints on the 
 subject, during Xavier's apostolate. The Portuguese 
 oppressed the pearl fishers in every possible way. They 
 insisted upon having all the pearls sold to themselves 
 only, and on the most disadvantageous terms for the 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 74. Quesnel, ii. 1 9.
 
 110 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 natives. The "converts" were treated as the very worst 
 of men expelled from their houses by their friends, 
 relatives, and parents, for thus losing caste ; and the 
 Portuguese aggravated their calamities by rapine, cruelty, 
 and extortion. 1 The Jesuits had retained possession of 
 the residences founded by Xavier. The Viceroy Con- 
 stantine planned a scheme to transport the inhabitants 
 of the pearl coast to an island opposite to Jafnapatam, 
 in the island of Ceylon. The alleged motive was to 
 protect them from certain pirates who annoyed and 
 plundered them, at least, so say the Jesuits : but as 
 they add that Xavier himself had suggested the enter- 
 prise, this apparent anxiety to exhibit a motive for the 
 transaction, does not prevent us from believing that it 
 was not the object of the scheme. But Jafnapatam did 
 not belong to Portugal. It was still a free kingdom. It 
 was therefore necessary to invade and conquer the 
 country before the pearl fishers could be transported. 
 The Jesuits lent themselves to the scheme, and its 
 preliminary wickedness. They had at their college a 
 child of eight years, who they say had been a fugitive, 
 expelled from his paternal kingdom by the king of Jaf- 
 napatam. This boy was to be re-established in his 
 kingdom by the expedition with Jesuits for his regents 
 and prime ministers, or the Portuguese for his masters, 
 undoubtedly. " The expedition," says Sacchinus, " was 
 altogether of great importance for the Christian name, 
 of great importance for increasing the wealth of Por- 
 tugal. Therefore Constantino equips a strong fleet for 
 the purpose ; and in the meantime he commands the 
 fathers of the Company, to whose care the neophytes 
 of the Paravas were committed, to prepare them for the 
 
 1 Maff. Jndic. f. 249.
 
 TRANSPORTATION OF PARAVAS TO MANNAR. Ill 
 
 transportation." 1 It seems to me that the true motive 
 is now declared the expedition was of great importance 
 for increasing the wealth of Portugal magni ad Lusi- 
 tanas quoque augendas opes momenti ewpeditio erat. In 
 effect, the kingdom of Jafnapatam, which was the real 
 object of the Portuguese viceroy, is, or was, one of the 
 richest countries in the world, abounding in most 
 delicious fruits and aromatic gums, precious stones of all 
 kinds rubies, hyacinths, sapphires, emeralds, pearls, and 
 the purest gold : in fine, all that the imagination of man 
 pictures for his desires, has there been placed, with a 
 profusion worthy of the Creator alone. Accordingly, it is 
 the Ophir of Solomon, in the interpretations of certain 
 commentators ; 2 nay, men of that class have even 
 affirmed it likely to be the Paradise of Adam which 
 might serve to account for the existence of Jews or some- 
 thing like them, amongst the pagans of India, as was duly 
 discovered by the Jesuits, according to one of their " Cu- 
 rious and Edifying Letters." 3 To the Portuguese viceroy, 
 however, Jafnapatam was Eden, and no flaming angel 
 withheld his entrance : it was Ophir, and he might 
 
 1 " Interim Patres Societatis, quorum Commorinenses neophyti curse commissi 
 erant prseparare eos ad trajectionem jubet." Sacchin. lib. iv. 260, 261. 
 
 2 Bochart, Quesnel, &c. 
 
 3 Ceylon is almost joined to India by the island of Manaar, here destined 
 for the Paravas, and their new fishing operations for their masters, the Por- 
 tuguese. There is a ridge of sandbanks connecting that island to another, and 
 called Adam's bridge, and there is a mountain in the island, called Adam's 
 Peak, where he was said to have been created and under which he is said to be 
 buried. All these absurdities are attributed to the natives ; but it is evident 
 that they originated with their " Christian " invaders. As early as 1520, the 
 Portuguese had gained a footing in the island, and had fortified themselves in 
 Colombo. The Dutch expelled them finally in 1656. The French gained a 
 settlement subsequently ; but it now belongs to Great Britain. It is 270 miles 
 long, by 145 broad, with an area of 24,664 square miles, with a population of 
 only 1,127,000 not fifty inhabitants to the square mile. Talk of a surplus popula- 
 tion in Europe with such a field open for a truly Christian and industrious colony.
 
 112 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 reach it with his ships. First, however, he sent some 
 barques to transport the Paravas. The pirates came 
 down upon them on a sudden, in the midst of the 
 embarkation. They put to sea : the enemy attacked 
 and sunk their barques few escaped by swimming 
 and among them was the Jesuit Henriquez. His brother- 
 Jesuit Mesquita was captured by the barbarians, and 
 retained as a hostage. Meanwhile the viceroy sailed 
 with all his fleet against Jafhapatam, and stormed the 
 royal city. The king had fled to the mountains : the 
 viceroy had it all his own way : the " conquest " was 
 made ; a tribute was imposed, and he returned, with 
 disease in his fleet, to Goa, to attend to other matters of 
 "great importance." 1 The young fugitive king was 
 forgotten, if he was ever thought of ; and a guard was 
 placed over the few pearl fishers who escaped by 
 swimming, in the island of Manaar : but few as they 
 were they were useful to fish the waters of Jafhapatam 
 in order "to increase the wealth of Portugal," which 
 seems to have been the true object of their removal : for 
 is it not absurd to suppose that the Portuguese would 
 transport a tribe in order to enable them to live in 
 peace ? Besides, why not more effectually defend them 
 by a strong garrison ? But, in the face of the alleged 
 motive, we may ask, How these Paravas were really 
 more protected from the pirates at Manaar than on their 
 original coast 1 In truth, their masters wanted their 
 services elsewhere : the season was advancing : that 
 fishery promised to be more lucrative : the resolution 
 was taken ; and the Jesuits lent their assistance, as 
 in duty bound, to their masters. They disgustingly 
 deceived the poor fishermen, with their usual " Ad 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iv. 269.
 
 PANORAMA OF JESUIT OCCUPATIONS. 113 
 
 majorem," but were most sincere in "lending a hand" 
 to increase the wealth of Portugal, and thus promote 
 res Societatis the wealth or thing for the word means 
 anything and everything of the Company. And yet, 
 how quietly the Jesuit narrates the transaction as if no 
 reader would know enough of the Portuguese in India, 
 to see through the thing as if all would bend in 
 admiration of the Company's motto, totally oblivious of 
 their aim. 
 
 The various occupations of the Jesuits in any given 
 year, month, day, at any hour of their career, if repre- 
 sented in miniature by their artist, Tollenarius, 
 
 * Panorama of 
 
 would be the most curious sight imaginable Jesuit occu- 
 a veritable "phantasmagoria of fun" to 
 themselves and the thoughtless or careless : but " no 
 joke " to the victims. A case of spoliation of nuns, 
 cajoling a rich old gentleman, frightening the Venetian 
 senators and husbands, under punishment at Monte 
 Pulciano, stirring up persecution in Savoy, apostles, 
 after the manner of Judas, amongst the wretched 
 Paravas, and a thousand other avocations pursued at the 
 same time in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. And 
 now we must accompany a Jesuit-expedition into Ire- 
 land and Scotland. 
 
 Mary died in 1558, "to the inestimable damage of 
 religion," says Sacchinus, on the same day that Cardinal 
 Pole breathed his last, " which clearly showed 
 that God was angry with Britain," l says the i u e p T nio ^ ary 
 same oracular Jesuit, alluding to the exitialia touching her 
 
 death. 
 
 dogmata, the " pernicious doctrines " which 
 
 were about to reascend after violent depression, like 
 
 a pole hurled into the depths of the sea, to remount with 
 
 1 " Qjuo eodera die, ut plane videretur Britannise Deus iratus," &c. ii. 1 34. 
 VOL. II. I
 
 114 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the force of the reacting waters. Consequently, the 
 death of Mary and the cardinal seemed, to the party 
 depressed, a certain sign that God was becoming pleased 
 with Britain ; and it is curious to note the different 
 opinions on the subject, the various interpretations of 
 an event by which nothing at all was shown, except that 
 they were dead., or, in the beautiful words of the ancient 
 sufferer, " Man that is born of a woman is of few days, 
 and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and 
 is cut down : he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth 
 not." Elizabeth mounted the throne of Bri- 
 
 Elizabeth is 
 
 civil to the tain. To the Protestant sovereigns of Europe 
 she declared her attachment to the reformed 
 faith, and her wish to cement an union amongst all its 
 professors. To the Pope of Rome, by the "ambas- 
 sador " Carne, she protested that she had determined to 
 offer no violence to the consciences of her subjects, 
 whatever might be their religious creed. 1 Paul IV. 
 received the announcement with contempt. 
 
 Paul IV. s * 
 
 brutal reply He raved at the queen as though she had 
 
 to the queen. , , , . , . 
 
 been a Spaniard, or he was m his cups. 
 He said " she was a bastard, and therefore had no right 
 to the crown." He added that he could not revoke the 
 Bulls of his predecessors, who had invalidated Henry's 
 marriage with Anne Boleyn, the queen's mother. This 
 was little to the purpose : for he told the Jesuits what 
 he thought of his predecessors' Bulls and mandates. 
 He said the queen was "very bold and insolent in 
 daring to mount the throne without asking his consent : 
 this audacity alone made her unworthy of favour : 
 but, however, if she would renounce her pretensions, 
 and submit the decision to him and the Holy See, he 
 
 1 Lingard, vi. Camden, i. 28.
 
 THE CHURCH OF ROME AND THE REPUBLICANS. 115 
 
 would try to give her proofs of his affection ; but he 
 could not permit any attack on the authority of Christ's 
 vicar, who alone is authorised to regulate the rights of 
 those who pretend to regal crowns. 1 According to the 
 Jesuit Pallavicino, he also said, that Mary Queen of 
 Scots claimed the crown as the nearest legitimate 
 descendant of Henry VII. 2 There is nothing to wonder 
 at in this insolent resistance to the voice of a nation. 
 The " Church of Rome " had not as yet been 
 
 i How the 
 
 " taught to forget her unreasonable, incon- Roman 
 sistent prerogatives. Three hundred years of i c ^l "to* 
 Protestant inculcation have been required to JjJ^ he 
 teach her the lesson, which she has learnt at 
 last, that all her prerogatives were founded on the 
 superstitions of the people, and that in the present 
 stage of this eventful planet's progress, her very exist- 
 ence depends on her strict neutrality in the politics 
 of men. So delightfully has she imbibed so expedient 
 and necessary a lesson, that she has even enthusiastically 
 fraternised with the Republicans of France, consigning 
 royalty, with its " rights," to the tombs of its ancestors, 
 to which, as far as "the Church" is concerned, it may 
 take its departure as soon as possible, the voice of the 
 people being the voice of God, whose very existence 
 was proved, in the estimation of the famous Parisian 
 preacher, Lacordaire, by the late Revolution ! 3 A more 
 
 1 Quesnel, Leti, i. 315 ; Camden, Rapin, &c. Lingard ascribes these sen- 
 timents to the suggestion of the French ambassador, vi. 253. 2 langard, ib. 
 
 3 " In the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Abbe Lacordaire commenced his 
 series of sermons. An immense crowd was present. The rev. gentleman first 
 read the archbishop's letter. On the demand of the government, the archbishop 
 gave orders to have the * Domine, salvum fac POPULUM ' henceforward sung 
 in all the churches. The abbe, addressing the archbishop, said, ' Monseigneur, 
 the country, by my voice, thanks you for the courageous example which you 
 have given ; it thanks you for having known how to conciliate the immutability 
 
 i 2
 
 116 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 stinging sarcasm could never have been uttered against 
 prostrate royalty : but it rebounds on " the Church : " 
 History snatches and pins it on the back of " the 
 Church," as a moral, an axiom, a principle for universal 
 edification. 
 
 The pope's insulting notification to Elizabeth produced 
 such an effect as would have followed the same conduct 
 Effects of at the present day in the Church of France. 
 fe^Ka'tie Setting aside the queen's natural resentment 
 queen. On the occasion, it became evident at once to 
 the queen's ministers and supporters that it was only 
 by strengthening her "party" that she could hope 
 for security on the throne ; and they resolved, by all 
 means in their power, to promote Protestantism and 
 suppress Catholicism. It was the selfish suggestion 
 h of party a line of policy at all times, and 
 queen should even now as much as possible, prevalent in 
 all " parties," whether " religious," political, 
 social, and literary. The better part to be chosen by 
 
 of the Church and the sanctity of oaths with the changes which God effects in 
 the world by the hands of men.' The preacher, as if to give proofs of this 
 immutability, wished to continue the development of the doctrine which he had 
 set forth so eloquently for several years. He appeared to desire to entrench 
 himself behind divine tradition, and to preserve it from the invasion of history ; 
 but the fire burst out, and the Dominican of the people, arriving at the proofs 
 of the existence of God, cried out, ' Prove to you God ! Were I to attempt to 
 do so, you would have a right to call me parricide and sacrilegious. If I dared 
 to undertake to demonstrate to you God, the gates of this cathedral would open 
 of themselves, and show you this PEOPLE, superb in its anger, carrying God to 
 his altar in the midst of respect and adoration.' The whole auditory were so 
 much moved, that they testified loud applause, which the sanctity of the place 
 could not restrain. The Debats, alluding to the scene, says, ' It is well : let the 
 Church take its place like us all. Let it show itself, the people will recognise 
 it. Let it not have any dread of the Revolution, in order that the Revolution 
 may not be afraid of it. God has delivered the world to discussion : Tradidii 
 mundum disputationi. Let the Church use its arms, the Word and charity, 
 instruction and action. Let it aid itself, God will aid it.' " Daily News, 
 March 1, 1848.
 
 PIUS IV. SENDS A NUNCIO TO ELIZABETH. 117 
 
 Elizabeth and her " party " would have been to conciliate 
 her Catholic people by keeping her original resolution, 
 and following it up with perfect equality to the complete 
 exclusion of " religious " tests and declarations : but, of 
 what avail would so Christian, and, therefore, most 
 expedient, a resolve have been, whilst the pope 
 
 But it would 
 
 had his monks, and his priests, and his Jesuits, have been 
 to " stir " the people to dissatisfaction and 
 rebellion ? What a blessed thing for humanity, had 
 there been either no pope, priests, monks, and Jesuits at 
 all, or that these leaders of the multitude had merged 
 their selfishness in the divine cause of human happi- 
 ness, peace, and prosperity. Elizabeth was angered : 
 her party was anxious : the pope and his party were 
 equally angered and anxious and we shall soon see the 
 consequence. Meanwhile Pius IV. had succeeded to the 
 papal throne, and sent a nuncio to Elizabeth, requesting 
 her to send her bishops to the Council of Trent. Her 
 reply was, that she had been treated just as if 
 
 r J J The queen's 
 
 she was not a Christian : that she did not reply to Pope 
 
 Pius IV. 
 
 think the Council a free and holy assembly, 
 but only a conventicle gathered at the solicitation of 
 certain princes, for their particular interests : and, 
 lastly, she was convinced that the intention of the 
 Court of Rome, in sending the nuncio, was less to 
 invite the English bishops than to inspire the Catholics 
 of her kingdom with still more aversion than they 
 already exhibited towards the Protestants. 1 The whole 
 reign of Elizabeth proved that her sagacity was not at 
 fault in this last surmise. Pius IV., perceiving by this 
 reply the error of his predecessor's conduct towards 
 Elizabeth, did not at once acknowledge the queen, as 
 
 1 Quesncl, Leti, &c.
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 he ought to have done for the welfare and peace and 
 happiness of his Catholic children, but resolved to send 
 into Ireland one of his " roaring bellows of sedition," 
 " incendiary pharisees " to spring a mine, destined ere 
 long to explode, with fearful damage to the wretched 
 people, who, without the priests to blight their generous 
 hearts, would have been the admirers of a queen who 
 knew so well how to reward and promote gallant loy- 
 alty, when once convinced of its existence in her sub- 
 jects. Long had the Jesuits panted for a settlement in 
 Desi s of Britain. Ignatius and his troop had thought 
 Ignatius on much of the matter, and it was even said they 
 
 England. _ 1 i *> i 
 
 made proposals to Cardinal Pole on the sub- 
 ject ; but they were declined. Their proposal was similar 
 to the spoliation of the nuns at Rome ; for they coveted 
 the monasteries of the Benedictines, to convert them into 
 colleges, promising, in return, to promote the restoration 
 of Church property on the principle of setting a thief 
 to catch a thief. 1 Perhaps the cardinal saw through the 
 
 1 " One remarkable thing of him was, his not listening to the proposition the 
 Jesuits made him, of bringing them into England .... They suggested to Pole, 
 that whereas the Queeu [Mary] was restoring the goods of the Church that 
 were in her hands, it was but to little purpose to raise up the old foundations ; 
 for the Benedictine order was become rather a clog than a help to the Church. 
 They therefore desired that those houses might be assigned to them, for main- 
 taining schools and seminaries, which they should set on quickly : and they did 
 not doubt, but, by their dealing with the consciences of those who were dying, 
 they should soon recover the greatest part of the goods of the Church. The 
 Jesuits were out of measure offended with him for not entertaining their propo- 
 sition ; which I gather from an Italian manuscript which my most worthy friend 
 Mr. Crawford found at Venice, when he was chaplain there to Sir Thomas Hig- 
 gins, his majesty's envoy to that republic : but how it came that this motion was 
 laid aside I am not able to judge." Burnet, Reform, ii. 509. Bartoli states the 
 offer by Ignatius to Pole, of the German College for the education of English 
 youth : but says no more respecting the application to the cardinal. By his 
 account Philip II., the husband of Queen Mary, was solicited on the subject by 
 the Jesuit Araos, a particular favourite of the king, by Borgia and Leonora 
 Mascareynos, a " tender mother " of the Company. " But it is true," says
 
 A JESUIT SENT TO IRELAND. 
 
 " cohort," though he is said to have complimented its 
 founder, and answered his letters, as well as those of 
 Lainez. 
 
 Glad of the present opportunity, as on a former occa- 
 sion, the Jesuits at once offered a man for the Irish 
 expedition. He was an Irishman David A Jesuit sent 
 Woulfe by name. The pope, says the Jesuit- to Ireland ' 
 historian, wished to make a bishop of him, arid despatch 
 him with the title and display of an apostolic nuncio : 
 but to credit this proud anecdote, we must give the 
 pope credit for extreme imprudence, or exceeding igno- 
 rance of Ireland's position at that time, respecting the 
 Catholic cause. He would never have been admitted. 
 Lainez thought a more inconspicuous method more 
 applicable to " religious humility," and " the freedom of 
 action ut liberius ipse agere posset" less calculated to 
 offend the heretics, and hinder him from doing his work 
 covertly and quietly quo tectius ac quietius ageret and 
 the pope yielded to the Jesuit, according to Sacchinus. 
 Invested with his powers of apostolic nuncio, without 
 the attendant paraphernalia, this Woulfe departed, carry- 
 ing with him a great quantity of expiatory chaplets 
 and such like Roman amulets for Ireland. 1 
 
 His cargo of 
 
 Passing through France, he was arrested and Roman wares. 
 imprisoned at Nantes, being suspected for a Lutheran. 
 
 Bartoli, " for various reasons, on which it is useless to enlarge at all, the result 
 did not correspond with the desire." This Che non relievo, punto il fermarvi&i 
 intorno is somewhat remarkable in so very diffuse a writer as the Jesuit Bartoli. 
 I should state that Ribadeneyra was sent by Philip II. to console and assist 
 Mary in her dropsy a consolare ed assistere in suo nome alia Reina Maria, 
 inferma dell' idropisia. DeW Inghil. f. 72. But even his presence in England 
 availed nothing, adds Bartoli. After all, it does seem that Cardinal Pole was no 
 patron of the Jesuits. 
 
 1 "Bouoque piacularium sertorum, aliarumcjue his similium rerum numero 
 iustructus." SuccMn. iv. 46.
 
 120 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 He was probably disguised, and went along swaggering : 
 otherwise it is difficult to account for such an error, sup- 
 posing he said and did nothing to excite suspicion. 
 After four days' confinement, he reached St. Malo, 
 embarked his luggage for Bordeaux, but preferred to 
 walk to that place, which, says Sacchinus, was a Divine 
 instinct, divinus instinctus, because the vessel foun- 
 dered on her passage ; but this depends, perhaps, upon 
 what he did in his journey, and, in the uncertainty, the 
 instinct might just as well have been from Beelzebub. 
 But surely the large collection of expiatory chaplets, 
 Agnus Deis, and miraculous medals, ought to have 
 saved the ship from foundering. After spending five 
 months on the journey, he reached Cork ; and his 
 description of the state of Catholic matters, in 1561, 
 is both curious in itself and curiously worded. He 
 states that he was engaged, amidst the snares of the 
 His bad heretics, in consoling and inspiring confidence 
 SJiJjJ* * tne Catholics, and in regulating the affairs 
 Catholics. O f the Irish Church ; that he was received 
 with wonderful joy by the Catholics of Cork, where he 
 spent a few days. With the greatest secrecy he got the 
 Catholics informed of his presence and its object, and 
 describes that he saw, throughout the space of sixty 
 miles from Cork, crowds of men and women, with 
 naked feet, and covered with a shirt only, coming to 
 confess their sins and beg absolution for their incestuous 
 marriages, more than a thousand of which he ratified by 
 apostolic authority, in the space of a few months. He 
 further states, that the Irish were very much entangled 
 in this vice : but free from heresy, which corresponds 
 with another Catholic's remark, that "they sin like 
 devils, but believe like saints," as I have elsewhere
 
 BAD ACCOUNT OF THE IRISH CATHOLICS. 121 
 
 quoted. He goes on to say : " That all the priests and 
 monks everywhere kept mistresses." l " The people," 
 says he, " wonder that I don't charge them Hig good 
 anything, and receive no presents ; " which example, 
 seems a sort of reflection on the old inveterate " begging 
 box " of Ireland, and the wages of the sanctuary. 
 
 " Man's food in Earth's bosom is rotting 
 
 But Charity's dole is allotting 
 To whom 1 At God's door, the pampered once more 
 To plunder the Pauper is plotting." 2 
 
 The Jesuit David, however, would do nothing of the 
 kind, as he assures us, " although," he adds, " I lost all 
 my baggage by the wreck of the French vessel from 
 St. Malo, and I am desperately pinched vehementer 
 inopid conflictarir It was then he probably felt the 
 loss of his chaplets, Agnus Deis and miraculous medals : 
 for he might have sold these for the good of the apos- 
 tolic treasury, and supplied his pinching want without 
 scruple, after posting the amount to the pope's credit 
 with Res Societatis at the top of the folio. David says 
 that "he eschewed all their convivialities declined their 
 invitations, ne locum gratice aperiret, lest he should put 
 himself under any obligation," if that be the meaning 
 of the strange expression. " I find it by no means 
 easy to beg/' he continues, " for here you can scarcely 
 find bread in any house during the day, because the 
 people seldom eat dinner, and at their supper eat new 
 bread, which, for the most part, they do not bake before 
 
 1 " Nudis pedibus, uno tantum indusio tectos, peccata confessuros, et absolu- 
 tionem super incestis matrinioniis rogaturos. Plus mille conjugum paria non 
 multis mensibus ex injustis nuptiis, auctoritate Apostolica legitimis ab se juncta. 
 Hoc maxime implicatum vitio populum : cseterum ab hseresi purum esse : 
 Clericos csenobitasque passim omncs cum mulierculis suis." Sacchin, lib. 
 v. 148. 2 Lay of Lazarus, in " Facts and Figures from Italy," p. 17.
 
 122 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 evening. Some of the priests, taking offence at my 
 abstinence, make a jest of my poverty : but continuing 
 my practice of abstinence, I abound in the fruits of holy 
 He is ndi- poverty, and I joyfully endure their mockery, 
 prittforw! accounting it an increase of my gains." So 
 abstinence. f ar D av id Woulfe, Jesuit, and Apostolic Nuncio 
 in Ireland. His account of himself is very flattering : 
 but by no means so to the priests and monks, and 
 people of Ireland excepting their orthodoxy. Mean- 
 while, however, temptation overpowered him : the man 
 who went to reform, added himself to the number of 
 the fallen. "Happy would he have been," exclaims 
 Sacchinus, at the conclusion of his letter, " Happy, if he 
 had continued such good beginnings ! For, at length, 
 from being left to himself, and without a check, he 
 He fails at became gradually remiss, more useful to others 
 peikd d t"e * nan * mm self, and the man behaved in such 
 Company. a manner that it was necessary to expel him 
 from the Company. 1 Such was the second Irish expe- 
 dition of the Jesuits. It scarcely corresponded with the 
 pope's expectations. About three years after, three more 
 Jesuits were dispatched to Ireland with an archbishop 
 to erect colleges, and academies, having been invested 
 with papal power to transfer ecclesiastical revenues to 
 the purpose. Into England also a Jesuit was sent at 
 
 1 " Felicem si talibus exordiis convenientia attexuisset. Nam demum per 
 solitudinem et impunitatem, remissa paulatim cura sui, utilior multis quam sibi, 
 ita se homo gessit, ut segregandus ab Societate fuerit."- Lib. v. 149. This 
 Jesuit has been confounded by Cretineau with a Father David, mentioned by 
 Sacchinus, lib. viii. 98 ; and Dr. Oliver, in his excessively partial and meagre 
 " Collections," says just nothing of David Woulfe, except that " he had been 
 chaplain to James Maurice Desmond de Geraldinis, as I find from that noble- 
 man's letter, dated, &c. The earl expresses himself most grateful to the Society 
 for having admitted him to a participation of its prayers and good works at the 
 request and recommendation of the Rev. Father William Good" which is a 
 curious application of the Company's merits. Collect, p. 270.
 
 THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND. 123 
 
 the same time an Englishman, Thomas Chinge by name 
 " for the good of his health," says Sacchinus, " and for 
 the consolation and aid of the Catholics. He is said to 
 have made some "conversions" among the A Jesuit in 
 nobility, and the year after "changed his En 8 land - 
 earthly country for the celestial." 1 In 1562, Pius IV. 
 sent the Jesuit Nicholas Gaudan to Mary Queen of Scots 
 to console and exhort to no purpose, as events declared. 
 It is admitted by all parties that excessive abuses 
 prevailed in the Scottish Church before the Reformation 
 was introduced into Scotland ; and Dr. Lingard 
 
 The Refor- 
 
 expressly says that of all European Churches mation in 
 
 -, , , , . , Scotland. 
 
 that of Scotland was amongst those which 
 were best "prepared to receive the seed of the new 
 gospel," as he slyly calls the Reformation. The highest 
 dignities of the Church were, with few exceptions, 
 lavished on the illegitimate or the younger sons of the 
 most powerful families. 2 Merely as such they certainly 
 had as good a right to these dignities as to any other 
 provided they were competent by nature and by grace. 
 But whatever might have been their other qualifica- 
 tions, they failed in the essential characteristics of 
 honest and competent churchmen. Ignorant and im- 
 moral themselves, they cared little for the instruction 
 or moral conduct of their inferiors. 3 As everywhere 
 else the clergy were proud. They consulted their ease. 
 They neglected their duties without scruple : but exacted 
 their " dues " with rigour. And the people lashed them 
 accordingly with their tongues, 4 which they will always 
 do until a rod is put into their hands, and they are 
 taught how to use it. The new preachers appeared. 
 They preached to willing ears respecting those doctrines 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 9P>. 2 Lingard, vi. 269. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.
 
 124 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 which promoted existing abuses ; and if to suit the 
 times, to season their discourses, they bitterly inveighed 
 against the vices of the churchmen, they only took a 
 natural and infallible course to the favour of the 
 neglected, despised, and oppressed people. In order to 
 be felt, things must be made tangible ; and so when 
 Possevinus would recommend his Company to Philibert, 
 he inveighed, as we have read, against the vices of the 
 monks in Savoy. In the matter of the Scottish clergy, 
 as elsewhere, the obvious course to be followed by the 
 churchmen was reform: an awful, day-of-judgment- 
 contemplation, doubtless : but that was the necessity 
 upon them. What was done \ The usual thing. A 
 " convocation" enacted " canons" to regulate the 
 morals of the clergy to enforce the duty of public 
 instruction to repress abuses in the collection of clerical 
 dues. 1 It was too late, as usual: and besides, the enact- 
 ments of " convocations " are not the things to produce 
 the results so desirable. Meanwhile, the preachers 
 were not neglected. Old statutes were revived against 
 them as teachers of heretical doctrines, and new penalties 
 were superadded to show how the churchmen thought 
 they could "put down" the spirit of transition. 2 It 
 was a mistake as well as a crime ; and they suffered 
 the penalty for both. Earls, barons, gentlemen, honest 
 burgesses, and craftsmen, plighted hearts and hands in 
 the congregation and finally John Knox feU as a 
 thunderbolt on "the Church" of Scotland. This 
 
 John Knox. 
 
 terrible reformer was the son of obscure 
 parents : Haddington and Gifford in East Lothian dis- 
 pute the honour of his birth : the University of St. 
 Andrews made him a Master of Arts. In his thirtieth 
 
 1 Lingard, vi. 269. * Ibid.
 
 KNOX CONDEMNED AS A HERETIC. 125 
 
 year he renounced the religion of Rome : and seven 
 years afterwards, in 1542, he declared himself a Pro- 
 testant. The heart of a Scot firm, tenacious, immovable 
 from its purpose qualified him for his appointed work : 
 the enthusiasm of a Scot which is infinitely more 
 thoughtful, more calculating, more to the purpose than 
 that of any other nation made him terrible in his 
 denunciations of what he abominated ; and the philo- 
 sophy of Aristotle, scholastic theology, civil and canon 
 law, built in his mind that rampart of controversy, so 
 indispensable at a time when, to confute a heretic, was 
 only second in glory and merit to roasting him on 
 the spits of the Inquisition. This man was condemned 
 as a heretic for denouncing the prevalent corruptions 
 of the churchmen : he was degraded from the priest- 
 hood for he had been ordained and was compelled 
 to fly from the presence of the fierce, cruel, and venge- 
 ful Cardinal Beaton, who, it is said, employed assassins, 
 thus to " get rid" of a determined opponent. Perse- 
 cution envenomed his heart nerved his enthusiasm 
 and of his mind made a deadly dart to transfix his 
 constituted foes who were the foes of his cause and 
 thus a sacred impulse, " with solemn protestation," urged 
 him " to attempt the extremity." Events checked his 
 efforts for a time. A party of Reformers, led by Norman 
 Leslie, a personal enemy of the Cardinal, murdered 
 Beaton in 1546, to the utter consternation of the catholic 
 cause, which the relentless Cardinal had laboured to 
 promote by imprisoning, banishing, hanging and drown- 
 ing the heretics. Open war followed the murder. The 
 conspirators were besieged in St. Andrew's : French 
 troops aided the besiegers : the place was surrendered, 
 and amongst the prisoners was Knox. Nineteen months'
 
 126 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 close imprisonment was his fate he was then liberated 
 with his health greatly impaired by the rigour he 
 endured biting his lips and biding his time. He came 
 forth to "attempt the extremity." Indefatigably he 
 proclaimed his peculiar doctrines intemperate in words 
 obstinate in mind austere, stern, vehement a hero 
 fashioned by persecution and the requirements of the 
 age, and his country. Against the exaltation of women 
 to the government of men he bitterly inveighed. The 
 key-note of his trumpet was undoubtedly given by the 
 specimens he found in power the Queen-dowager Mary 
 of Guise, in Scotland and Queen Mary in England. 
 All his doctrines were more or less tinged with Calvinism. 
 All sacrifices for sin he deemed blasphemous ; all 
 idolatry, superstition all that was not authorised by 
 Scripture he denounced he was altogether opposed to 
 episcopacy or the government of bishops. If in strictness, 
 in austerity, Scotland's Protestants exceed those of 
 England, John Knox lays claim to the initiative the 
 solid foundation. In 1556 he went to Geneva to minister 
 to the English congregation who appointed him their 
 preacher. 1 In 1559 he returned to Scotland, where he 
 remained to his death in 1572. Intrepidity, independ- 
 ence, elevation of mind, indefatigable activity and con- 
 stancy which no disappointments could shake, eminently 
 qualified him for the post which he occupied : and 
 whilst he was a terror to every opponent an uncom- 
 promising inflicter of castigation on all without exception 
 of rank or sex, when he thought they deserved it still, 
 
 1 Dr. Lingard is somewhat merry on this fact, which he describes as follows : 
 " Preferring the duty of watching over the infant church to the glory of 
 martyrdom, he hastened back to Geneva, whence by letters he supplied the 
 neophytes with ghostly counsel, resolving their doubts, chastising their timidity, 
 and inflaming their zeal," vi. 270.
 
 RELIGION THE PRETEXT OF HUMAN PASSIONS. 127 
 
 in private life, he was loved and revered by his friends 
 and domestics. Persecution and tyranny had roused 
 him to his enterprise : throughout his life he inflicted 
 vengeance on the principles of their supporters and 
 unhesitatingly directed the indignation of his followers 
 against the oppressors of the " brethren," whom they 
 were " bound to defend from persecution and tyranny, 
 be it against princes or emperors, to the uttermost of 
 their power." 1 
 
 At the height of this agitation the Jesuit Nicholas 
 Gaudan wormed his way into Scotland. It was a 
 hazardous undertaking. The Catholic religion The Jesuit 
 was proscribed : its public worship was pro- ^Jjjj^ 11 * 
 hibited. Puritans, Presbyterians, and Epis- Mar >- 
 copalians were beginning those terrible contests amongst 
 each other, whose remembrance gives maxims to the 
 wise and a pang to the Christian. Human passions 
 made religion their pretence or excuse like Rome's 
 infernal Inquisition and men slaughtered each other 
 with swords consecrated by a text perverted. Was it 
 not in prophetic vision that it was said : " Suppose ye 
 that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you nay ; 
 but rather division." Sad and gloomy was that fore- 
 knowledge to Him who piteously said : " Come to me 
 all ye who labour and are heavily burthened." He 
 foresaw how the passions of men would abuse His 
 coming and turn his peace into cruel division, and 
 call it " orthodoxy" with fire burning and sword 
 unsheathed. 
 
 The Jesuit Gaudan entered Scotland disguised as a 
 
 1 See M'Crie'sLife of Knox. Review of the same in British Critic of 1813 ; 
 Edinburgh Review, xx. 1 ; Quarterly Review, ix, 418 ; Robertson, Hist, of 
 Scotland ; Bayle, Diet.; and Penny Cyclopaedia, xiii.; Ling. vi. 270.
 
 128 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 hawker. 1 It was a clever device since it admitted him to 
 the homes of Scotland without reserve into places where 
 Disguised a* ^ e might observe without being noticed sound 
 * pedlar. fae na tion's heart throughout the land of con- 
 tention find numberless opportunities to blow the "fire" 
 and spread the "division" so mournfully predicted these 
 things might he do and yet seem an honest pedlar 
 withal. But how many falsehoods must not that disguise 
 have compelled him to tell, for the sake of his mission ? 
 Access to the Queen of Scots was most difficult to 
 the Jesuit. Who could envy the lot of Mary 1 A 
 widow in her eighteenth year, torn from the gorgeous 
 gaiety of the French court, where she was educated 
 with a dread presentiment on her mind, she had 
 reached the throne of her ancestors, and saw herself sur- 
 rounded by advisers in whom she could not confide, 
 whilst without, throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land, the Scottish Reformer's trumpet roused congenial 
 hearts and minds unto deeds and desires which neither 
 by nature, nor by grace, could she be induced to relish 
 A secret or a PP rov e. The Jesuit managed to notify 
 interview. m ' s arrival and mission. The queen contrived 
 a secret interview. She dismissed her attendants and 
 her guards to the " congregation of their brawler," says 
 Sacchinus, and admitted the Jesuit by a postern. 2 
 Gaudan met the Queen thrice. His steps were traced 
 by the enemies of his cause : he was pursued : a price 
 was set on his head : death impends but his orders 
 were stringent he may not depart until his end is gained. 
 He was to impart to the Queen the pope's advice in her 
 predicament as if her doom was not pronounced by 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. p. 463. 
 
 2 " Per posticum admisso, cum ea suum fratrem reliquosque custodes de 
 judustria summovisset ad concionera rabulse ipsorum dimissos." JAb. vi. 107.
 
 GAUDAN IN SCOTLAND. 129 
 
 the character of Mary Stuart. What was the pope's 
 advice \ We are not told, excepting that she protested 
 to the pope her determination to defend the holy faith 
 to the utmost of her power, and was ready to endure for 
 it every calamity. 1 But this was an act of faith that 
 every Catholic should fervently make, without any 
 advice. Whatever was the pope's advice, however, 
 we are told that "the queen's voluptuous imprudences 
 will not permit her to follow it in the hour of revo- 
 lutions ?* 
 
 The Jesuit left Scotland and her queen to their 
 troubles, bearing away with him several youths of Scot- 
 land's best families to be educated in Flanders " hos- 
 tages whom he delivers to the Church, subsequently to 
 return to their country, as Apostles of the Faith." 3 
 An anecdote curiously illustrative of Jesuitism 
 is told respecting this expedition. Gaudan's 
 disguise as a hawker brought a French pedlar into 
 trouble. They seized him for the disguised nuncio, and 
 gave him a severe whipping, though he protested that he 
 was no nuncio, and they would have dispatched him had 
 he not been recognised by some acquaintance. " And 
 then," observes Sacchinus, " he was dismissed, richer for 
 the strokes he had received, wares indeed not a little 
 more useful than those which he carried si uti novisset, 
 if he had only known how to use them " which is a 
 rare consolation, and applicable to all the calamities 
 which the Jesuits have directly or indirectly brought on 
 humanity, themselves included. 
 
 Proscribed in Scotland, the Jesuits had the misfortune 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi. 108. 
 
 2 " Des conseils que ses voluptueuses imprudences ne lui permettent pas de 
 suivre h Pheure des revolutions." Cretineau, i. 463. 3 Ibid. 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 to be under the displeasure of Philip II. in the Catholic 
 
 dominions of Spain : but here the mandate was that 
 
 they should not leave the country. An 
 
 The Jesuits * . ^ 
 
 disconcerted express order was sent to the Spanish Company 
 enjoining them to keep the laws of the land ; 
 forbidding them to export money to other kingdoms, and 
 prohibiting them from leaving Spain, either for the pur- 
 pose of giving or receiving instruction. It was also 
 intimated to them that they had given offence at court 
 in many ways ; and an official visitation of their houses 
 was ordered by the king. 1 The facts on which this 
 royal displeasure was based, are not stated by Sacchinus. 
 We are therefore left to imagine in what ways the Com- 
 pany of Jesus infringed the laws of Spain, and con- 
 descended to export money from the Spanish dominions. 
 The historian of the Jesuits dismisses the subject with a 
 few words only, and strives to impute motives or suspi- 
 cions as the causes of the calamity among the rest, the 
 sudden and secret departure of Borgia from Spain, the 
 frequent remittances of money to Rome expecuniis scepe 
 Romam translatis, and the king's displeasure with Lainez 
 on account of his intimacy with his majesty's enemy, the 
 Cardinal Ferrara, whom he accompanied into France. 2 
 This peculiar Jesuit-method of dismissing grave charges 
 is by no means satisfactory : particularly when we find 
 that, even in the most frivolous cases, their historians 
 enter into tedious details, when they believe they can 
 confute an accusation, or extenuate the fault of a member. 
 Whilst the court of Madrid was striving to repress the 
 cupidity and pious avarice of the Jesuits, the latter 
 were making determined efforts to achieve an establish- 
 ment in France a legal establishment for there were 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 36. J Ibid. 37.
 
 THEIR TENTH ATTEMPT IN FRANCE. 131 
 
 Jesuits in France at all times. The Province of France 
 existed by fact, if not by legal fiction. We remember 
 the first attempt, and its disgraceful conse- Tenth at _ 
 quences, on both sides of the battle. This was S^T^ 1 " 
 the tenth. Nine times had the indefatigable law -" 
 Jesuits scaled the walls, and were repulsed ; but defeat 
 to the will of Ignatius within them, only redoubled their 
 resolve to achieve victory at last. They had patrons at 
 the court of France ; they were befriended by the 
 Guises that restless family of ambitious leaders, now 
 more powerful and active than ever. Francis II., the 
 husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was sleeping with his 
 fathers, neither too good nor too bad for this world ; 
 and Charles IX., his younger brother, had succeeded, 
 with Catherine de' Medici as queen-regent of the king- 
 dom : both are destined to become famous for the 
 general massacre of the French Protestants a religious 
 ceremonial dedicated to St. Bartholomew. Times of 
 trouble were at hand : the fearful " religious " wars 
 were about to break out ; and the " lights and ramparts 
 of the Gallican Church, the cardinals de Lorraine and 
 Tournon," gladly patronised the foxes to whose tails 
 they could append naming firebrands to "set all on 
 fire," as they listed. And so the Jesuits said that 
 the cardinals thus addressed them when they craved 
 their co-operation, " Oh how fortunate is mankind to 
 whom the Divine Majesty has vouchsafed to give such 
 men in these times ! Would that by His mercy every 
 province in this kingdom might receive so great a good ! 
 Ye who have it, keep it. Embrace this sodality of Jesus 
 Christ walk in their footsteps cling to their advice. 
 In your name, and in duty bound, we will strive so that 
 France may not be deprived, in any way, of so great a 
 
 K 2
 
 132 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 gift of God." 1 This was the opinion which the Jesuits 
 wished mankind to entertain ihefama Societatis the 
 good name of the Company their " credit ; " but, on 
 the present occasion, in spite of all I have said respecting 
 their unflinching pertinacity, perseverance, and resolu- 
 tion to get into France legally in spite of these noble 
 energies, I must unfortunately declare that the res 
 Societatis the purse of the Company, was a stirring 
 motive for the present penetration. William Du Prat, 
 we remember, left them a legacy of 120,000 livres. 2 
 The executors of the bishop's will, seeing that the 
 Jesuits could not make use of the donation, since their 
 Order was not legally acknowledged in France, proposed 
 to rescind the bequest. The grant specified the building 
 and maintenance of a college ; 3 so, as this was impos- 
 sible without legal admission in France, the money, 
 though inactive itself, was actually stirring desires in a 
 variety of hearts. The benevolent bishop had given all 
 his property to the poor, the monks, and the Jesuits : 
 the latter had not forgotten their share, and the former 
 were not, as usual, satisfied with theirs ; and coveted 
 la part du diable the Jesuit-slice as well, the poor, 
 the monks, the mendicant friars, even the directors of 
 the hospitals, begged that the money might be distri- 
 buted to the poor, alleging that it would be much more 
 usefully employed than by the Jesuits ; an opinion 
 which the latter by no means entertained. The chance 
 
 1 " O vos beatos, quos divina Majestas temporibus his horum virorum dono 
 dignata est ! Utinam ejus misericordia fieret ut singulse hujus regni provincise 
 tanto potirentur bono ! Tenete vos, quibus concessum est. Amplexamini So- 
 dalitatem hanc Jesu Christi, et vestigiis ejus ac monitis inhserete. Nos ex 
 vestro nomine, et pro officio nostro dabimus operam, ut Gallia tanto Dei munere 
 nequaquam privetur." Sacchin. lib. v. 195. 
 
 2 * Or 1 50,000, with nine or ten thousand livres revenue besides, an immense 
 sum in those days." Coudretle, i. 156. 3 Coudrette, iv. 91.
 
 THEIR TENTH ATTEMPT IN FRANCE. 133 
 
 or the danger of losing the bequest goaded the fathers 
 to redoubled efforts for legal admission into France. On 
 the occasions of their former disappointment, one of the 
 motives against their admission was their abuse of their 
 excessive " privileges," which trenched on the " liberties 
 of the Gallican Church." The objection still remained. 
 The parliament was inexorable. In vain the Jesuits 
 induced their friends the Cardinals de Bourbon, Lorraine, 
 and Tournon even the queen-regent, to write in their 
 favour : the parliament cared no more for these soft 
 impeachments, than it had cared for those of Francis II. 
 Desolated by the hideous fact, the Jesuits compromised 
 the matter, and consented to sacrifice somewhat of their 
 " privileges," which, as it chanced, happened to be nicely 
 balanced by just 35,000 livres. They kicked the beam, 
 and the money came down ; but it was a hard struggle 
 on both sides, and the presence of General Lainez was 
 required. The fiend of controversy beckoned him to 
 France, as well as Mammon. 
 
 In 1561, when the quarrels of "religion" began to 
 run high, the colloquy or conference of Poissy was 
 opened, like all the other diets on religious Lainez in 
 matters, without offering anything palatable France, 
 or digestible to the barking stomachs, into which they 
 would force hard stones, on both sides. Conciliation was 
 the object of this conference. It met with great opposi- 
 tion from Rome : Pius IV., in his papal pride, thought 
 it an infringement on his authority, and sent Lainez to 
 put a stop to it, 1 or, to make bad worse, as the Jesuit's 
 violent orthodoxy was sure to do. The Cardinal de 
 Ferrara was also sent by his Holiness to watch over the 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 193 ; Quesnel, ii. 33 ; Vie de Coligny, 235 ; Browning, p. 28 ; 
 Maimbourg, Hist, du Calvinisme, livre iii.
 
 134 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 interests of the Holy See ; since Catherine held to the 
 resolution, alleging her desire to show some favour to 
 the Calvinists and to reconcile the " parties," which was 
 simply impossible. Catholic bishops and Protestant 
 ministers were assembled. The king and his 
 
 The confer- 
 
 cnceat court, the princes of the blood, and the great 
 officers of state, were there nor was the 
 queen-regent absent. Five cardinals, forty bishops, a 
 vast number of doctors, were arrayed against a micro- 
 scopical knot of twelve reformers. But Theodore Beza, 
 and Peter Martyr, were each a host, and they failed not 
 on that occasion. Lainez would put in a word a very 
 elaborate speech, the original of which, we are told, is 
 still preserved in the archives of the Gesa at Rome. He 
 began with saying that, " all his constant reading had 
 convinced him how very dangerous it was to treat, or 
 even to listen, to the heretics. For," said he, " as it is 
 written in Ecclesiasticus, ' Who will pity the charmer 
 wounded by his serpent, and all who go nigh unto the 
 beast "? ' Those who desert the Church are called 
 wolves in sheep's clothing and foxes, by Scripture, so 
 that we may know we should be greatly on our guard 
 against them on account of their hypocrisy and deceit, 
 which are the characteristics of the heretics of all ages." 1 
 He boldly turned to the queen, and told her that 
 " she must understand that neither she, nor any human 
 prince, had a right to treat of matters of the faith .... 
 Every man to his trade," said the Jesuit "fabrilia fabri 
 tractent. This is the trade of the priests sacerdotum 
 est hoc negotium." 2 Peter Martyr had said that "the 
 mass being an image and representation of the bloody 
 sacrifice on the cross, Christ himself could not be pre- 
 
 1 Sacclnn. lib. v. 201. ; Id. lib. v. 203.
 
 THE CONFERENCE AT POISSY. 135 
 
 sent, because the image of a thing must cease to be 
 where the thing itself is present :" which is a fair speci- 
 men of the controversial acumen displayed in the dis- 
 cussion. Lainez was a match for him. " Sup- 
 
 1 Controversial 
 
 pose," said he, " a king has won a glorious acumen ot 
 
 Lainez. 
 
 victory over the enemy ; and suppose he 
 wishes to celebrate the event by a yearly commemora- 
 tion. Three methods present themselves for the 
 purpose. He may simply order the narrative of the 
 exploit to be repeated. Secondly, he may have the war 
 represented by actors. Thirdly, he may enact a part 
 himself may perform in person the part he took in the 
 war. This is what takes place in the most divine and 
 unbloody sacrifice of the mass." l " Without examining 
 whether this comparison be apposite," observes Quesnel, 
 " it evidently smells very much of the colleges, on which, 
 it seemed, that the fancy of the general and his brethren 
 was running, full to overflowing." The conference was 
 agitated beyond endurance by an exclamation of Beza. 
 Concerning the Lord's Supper, he cried out : " As far 
 as the highest heaven is distant from the lowest earth, 
 so far is the body of Christ distant from the bread and 
 wine of the Eucharist/' 2 
 
 1 Beza bantered Lainez for this comparison, remarking that the Jesuit had 
 made a comedy of the Sacrament, and a comedian of Jesus Christ. " Que ce Pere 
 avait fait de ce Sacrement une come'die, et Jesus Christ un come'dien." Du 
 Pin, Hist, du Concile, i. 489. 
 
 2 Melchior Adam. Vitee German. Theol. 644 ; Bayle, i. 689 ; De la 
 Place, Comment, lib. vi. Ann. 1561. By this authority, we learn that Beza 
 wrote to the queen next day, assuring her that " by reason of the outcry that 
 arose, his conclusion was not understood as he wished and had proposed." 
 After a long and tedious explanation, he says : " Here are the words which 1 
 pronounced, and which have given offence to the bishops. ' If any one there- 
 upon asks us if we make Jesus Christ absent from the Lord's Supper, we answer 
 no. But if we look at the distance of places (as we must do when there is a 
 question as to his corporeal presence, and his humanity distinctly considered), 
 we say that his body is as far from the bread and wine, as the highest heaven is
 
 136 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 The Parliament had referred the Jesuits to the con- 
 ference, on the subject of their admission. Cardinal de 
 The Jesuits Toumon, their friend, presided at the sittings, 
 admitted on rp Q fa m Lainez, covered with his controversial 
 
 hard con- 
 
 ditions. glory, applied in behalf of his Company pre- 
 senting their bulls, statutes, and privileges and protest- 
 ing that the Jesuits would submit to every restriction and 
 proviso deemed necessary by the Bishop of Paris, in their 
 admission. These conditions were nevertheless very 
 onerous if complied with, which was decidedly not 
 the intention of the Jesuits. They were to take some 
 other name than that of Jesus or Jesuits. The diocesan 
 bishop was to have an entire jurisdiction, superintend- 
 ence, and a right of correction over the said Society 
 and their college all malefactors and bad livers (these 
 are the very terms of the act) he might expel, even 
 from the Company : the Jesuits were to undertake 
 nothing, either in spiritual or temporal matters, to the 
 prejudice of the bishops, cures, chapters, parishes, uni- 
 versities, and other religious orders but all were held 
 to observe the common law, without possessing any 
 jurisdiction whatever and, finally, the Jesuits were to 
 renounce, previously and expressly, all the privileges 
 granted them by their bulls, and must promise for the 
 future neither to solicit nor obtain any others contrary 
 
 from the earth, considering that, as for ourselves, we are on the earth, and the 
 sacraments also ; and as for Him, his flesh is in heaven so glorified, that his 
 glory, as St. Augustine says, has not deprived him of a true body, but only of 
 the infirmities of the latter.' " He then goes on affirming the " spiritual presence" 
 of Christ in la saincte cene. In this old chronicler, La Place, there is a full 
 account of the affair ; as also in the Jesuit Fleury (not the Church-historian), 
 Histoire du Cardinal de Tournon. As Browning observes, this Jesuit appears 
 unable to restrain his indignation in describing this conference. He is lavish 
 with abuse and calumnious insinuation, p. 367. The Jesuit Maimbourg is, as 
 usual with him, more temperate and sensible, Hist, du Calvinisme, livre iii.
 
 THE TERMS ACCEPTED BY THE JESUITS. 137 
 
 to " these presents " in which case the present appro- 
 bation and admission would be null and void. 1 Sac- 
 chinus is struck dumb on this transaction. He ignores 
 the whole of it giving merely the result in these 
 words : " Lainez reached Paris to complete the joy of 
 the brethren and his hosts, being the glad messenger of 
 the Company's admissions at the Conference of Poissy." 2 
 Doubtless their joy was not diminished by the know- 
 ledge of the hard conditions. Lainez would easily 
 grant a dispensation to his " most sweet children " 
 dulcissimos filios as Sacchinus calls them : he who 
 had swallowed the pope's camel of a mandate touching 
 the choir, would certainly not strain at the gnat of a 
 bishop. To the glorious Jesuits who feared no man, 
 the restrictions, supervisions, and jurisdictions, were 
 mere cobwebs which hold together until they are 
 broken, which is an easy matter to anything, flies only 
 excepted. 
 
 Certainly the reader is surprised at this silence of the 
 Jesuit-historian on this transaction so elaborate and 
 diffuse on the most trifling occurrences in the 
 
 TT Till f^ 11^ remark. 
 
 Indies and other lands unknown. One would 
 think that the determination with which the Jesuits 
 urged their admission into France the grand occasion 
 the pregnant hopes of the fact should have merited 
 some little minuteness of detail : but you have read 
 all that Sacchinus says on the subject. The fact is, 
 the circumstances were by no means honourable to the 
 Company ; and secondly, it was impossible to tell Indian 
 or Arabian tales to the French, on that subject. This 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 38 ; Felib. Hist, de Paris, livre xxi. ; Pasquier, Plaid. Mercure 
 Jesuit, p. 321 ; Hist. Partic. des Jesuites ; Coudrette, i. 74, etseq. 
 
 2 Sacchin. lib. v. 198.
 
 138 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 is another warning to put us on our guard against the 
 " facts " of the Jesuit-historians, when they are interested 
 in the circumstances. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the glorification which General 
 
 Lainez received for his achievements at the conference 
 
 of Poissy. The pope was lavish with his 
 
 Triumph \ . x . 
 
 and bon-mot holy laudation : he compared Lamez to the 
 ancient saints, because, said his Holiness, he 
 had maintained the cause of God without caring either 
 for the king or the princes, and had resisted the queen 
 to her face. 1 In effect, he had deeply wounded the 
 lady by his severe animadversion and bitter advice : he 
 had brought tears to the eyes of humiliated royalty. 
 Two days afterwards, the Prince de Conde' observed to 
 Lainez : " Do you know, mon pere, that the queen is 
 very much incensed against you, and that she shed 
 tears V Lainez smiled and replied : " I know Catherine 
 de' Medici of old. She 's a great actress : but, Prince, 
 fear nothing she won't deceive me."* Admirable 
 words brave words for a long-headed Jesuit but 
 scarcely to be called the pious aspirations of an ancient 
 saint, by favour of his Holiness. 
 
 Troubles balanced this apparent glorification of General 
 Lainez. His vicar at Rome, Salmeron, was accused at 
 Cha e Naples, where he had been working the 
 against foulest charges were confidently uttered against 
 
 Salmeron. . ; 
 
 him : priest, nobles, gentry, talked the scandal 
 over, and children sang his infamy in the streets of Naples. 
 Extorting money for absolution from a rich lady was 
 
 1 " Gli piacque molto il zelo del Gesuita ; diceva, potersi comparare a gli 
 antichi Santi, avendo senza rispetto del Re e Prencipi sostenuta la causa di 
 Dio, e rinfacciata la Regina in propria presenza." Sarpi, ii. 1 1 3. 
 
 2 Cretineau, i. 421.
 
 THE JESUITS IN EGYPT. 139 
 
 the least of the charges the greatest being, of course, 
 heresy for they even said that he had turned Lutheran ! 
 Whatever foundation there may have been for these 
 charges and there was probably very little the pope, 
 who seemed inclined to canonise Lainez, defended Sal- 
 meron, and the " infamy " was at rest. 1 The pontifical 
 murder of Pope Paul IV/s nephews followed apace, and 
 in the midst of that " legal " iniquity a Jesuit figured as 
 the minister of consolation to the unfortunate convict. 
 I have described the scene elsewhere, as a tail-piece to 
 the death of Paul IV. 
 
 The inexhaustible activity of the Jesuits had tempted 
 them to try another field for their labours. The pope 
 was anxious to compensate in " other worlds" The j esuits 
 for the kingdoms which he had lost in Europe. m Egypt 
 Egypt took his fancy in 1561. Two Jesuits were 
 despatched to the Cophts, with the view of 
 
 i / i i / f T^ mi The Cophts. 
 
 reducing their church to that of Home. The 
 Cophts are the descendants of the ancient Egyptians ; 
 but the race can boast little of the blood that flowed in 
 the veins of the Pharaohs. Greeks, Abyssinians, and 
 Nubians, in the earliest days of Christianity, grafted 
 their pedigree and their religion on the children of the 
 Nile, the worshippers of dogs, cats, onions, crocodiles, 
 and an extraordinary fine bull, as sacred to the Egyptians 
 as the cow is to the Hindoos. The Christianity of the 
 Cophts is, and was at the time in question, very similar 
 to that of Rome only it did not acknowledge the pope 
 of Rome : it had its own patriarch and hierarchy ; and 
 was very comfortable on all points of faith never 
 giving a thought to Rome nor would Rome have 
 thought of this stray Christianity, had not so many of 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. 156.
 
 140 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 her own Christians strayed from her pale, and diminished 
 the map of her dominions. By a list of the Cophtic 
 peculiarities in the matter of religion, you will perceive 
 that there was very little necessity for a " mission " 
 except the last named consideration. They held the 
 real presence ; only they gave the sacrament, as of old, 
 under both forms but only to the men. Women 
 received only the " body," moistened with the " blood/' 
 and it was carried to them out of the sanctuary, which 
 they were not allowed to enter. They practised confession. 
 They differed respecting the succession of the Holy Ghost, 
 like the Greek Christians ; and admitted but one will, one 
 nature, one operation, in Christ. They baptised by immer- 
 sion, and practised circumcision ; marriage, confirmation, 
 extreme unction, were not recognised as sacraments. They 
 were not forbidden to marry after a divorce and during 
 the life-time of the wife put away. Their patriarchs 
 traced their line of succession up to the apostle St. Mark. 1 
 The pope sent presents with the Jesuits, to the 
 patriarch. They were both very civilly received. The 
 Jesuits set to work with argument ; and after a very 
 The expedi- short discussion coolly required the Cophtic 
 tion faUs. patriarch to write a letter to the pope in testi- 
 mony of his " obedience." This was positively refused, 
 to the horror of the Jesuit, who was thoroughly deceived 
 in all his expectations : in fact, it turned out that both 
 the pope and the Jesuits had been tricked by an 
 impostor, pretending to be an envoy from the patriarch 
 to the pope, offering an union of the churches ! Thus 
 the expedition failed : the Jesuits remained, making 
 fruitless efforts towards the point at issue : but appa- 
 rently to very little purpose ; and they returned 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi. 122, and others.
 
 JESUIT CONVERSIONS IN INDIA. 141 
 
 irigloriously one of them being compelled to disguise 
 himself as a merchant, and to keep his handkerchief to 
 his face, pretending to blow his nose, in order to get safely 
 on board a ship sailing for Europe. A dreadful storm at 
 sea completed his horror and disgust at the expedition ; 
 but Sacchinus consoles his memory by comparing the 
 Jesuit to St. Paul in the same predicament. 1 
 
 A very unpleasant disappointment for the pope and 
 the Jesuits it was : but they could console themselves 
 with publishing to the world their success in 
 
 1 Jesuit-con- 
 
 India. Imagine the sum total of conversions versions in 
 
 /* i T f India. 
 
 for the preceding year : " In the space ot one 
 year/' says Sacchinus, " ten thousand men were baptised 
 anni spatio ad decem kominum millia sacro baptismate 
 expiarunt /" 2 The Jesuits also pretend that the water 
 of baptism, when swallowed with faith, cured various 
 diseases such is the piety of the people, he adds ; and 
 then quietly tells us of a case of fever brought on 
 two neophytes by the craft and envy of the devil, but 
 cured by holy water. "Give holy water," said the 
 missioner, " and when they had done so, in the same 
 moment the fever left both of them." 3 But terror still 
 
 i Mercatoris sumpto habitu, cum insuper ad obtegendam faciem, emungendee 
 naris applicito sudariolo necessitatem simularet, in navim . . . imponitur." 
 Sacchin. lib. vi. 149. 2 Sacchin. lib. vi. 172. 
 
 3 " Aquam inquit sacratani potum dare ; quod cum fecissent eodem memento 
 febris utrumque deseruit." Sacchin. lib. vi. 1 74. I was told by a Jesuit, in the 
 novitiate at Hodder, the following curious fact, illustrative of the superstitions 
 still prevalent in England. One of the fathers, on the mission in Lancashire, was 
 applied to by a peasant for some holy water. The father happened to be out of 
 the usual supply ; so he proceeded to bless some there and then, in the presence 
 of the peasant. During the rehearsal of the prayers appointed in the ritual, the 
 peasant exclaimed, twice or thrice, " Make it strong, Meg is fearful ill make it 
 strong ! " When the holy water was given to the man, the Jesuit asked him 
 what he wanted it for, and he replied, " to give it to the cow / " His cow was 
 " fearful ill." This is no Protestant " concoction," observe, but a veritable fact 
 related to me by a Jesuit in the English novitiate. Truly, this land is still
 
 142 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 continued the grand precursor to the Jesuit-baptism. 
 In the expedition of the Portuguese governor Henriquez 
 against the Celebes, the Jesuit Magallianez baptised one 
 thousand five hundred natives in a fortnight. Thus it 
 was that to quote the words of Sacchinus " the 
 salutary ray of the Christian religion penetrated into 
 the kingdom of the Celebes." 1 The modern missioners 
 A modem cannot propagate the faith by gunpowder ; 
 method. but ne y are no {. } egg inventive in devising the 
 
 expedients of craft, so as to be able to contribute their 
 thousand and ten thousand "converts" to the Annals 
 of the Propagation. To read their trumpery letters, 
 one must believe that all India ought to have been 
 made Christian within the last ten years. But only 
 fancy the cool "religious" roguery of the following- 
 resolution, penned only five years ago by one Dr. Besy, 
 " Vicar- Apostolic of Xan-tong," in China : " We have 
 amongst our resolutions taken that of opening schools in 
 all the villages, and of selecting in each locality a certain 
 number of pious widows, somewhat acquainted with 
 medicine, who, under the pretext of administering reme- 
 dies to the dying infants of the pagans, will be able to 
 confer on them baptism!' 71 What do you think of that 
 for the nineteenth century 1 We denounce the tricks of 
 " trade," but those of " religion " deserve approbation ! 3 
 
 benighted, and a few thousand pounds of Foreign Mission funds might be usefully 
 spent in bettering the minds and bodies of the ignorant poor at home, where we 
 can insure duty without requiring the usual clap-trap of missionary letters, 
 Annals of the Propagation, &c. 1 Sacchin. lib. vii. 122. 
 
 2 Annals of the Propagation, &c., v. 328. Each of these dying infants, so 
 numerous in China, will be one of the thousands " converted." 
 
 3 This bishop shows himself scarcely honest by the following addition to his 
 method borrowed from the Brazilian Jesuits. He says, " As to the expenses 
 occasioned by this good work, I have willingly charged myself with them ; I 
 have engaged to cover all the costs, like those poor people who have not a penny 
 to pay their debts, and who generously offer to their friends lands and money,
 
 THE MISSIONS IN JAPAN AND BRAZIL. 143 
 
 In Japan the success of the Jesuits continued to 
 surpass their expectations, if that was possible. As 
 these new apostles always went in the rear of p rogres8 i n 
 the Portuguese fleets, the kings of the country, Japan- 
 desirous of promoting commerce in their dominions, and 
 therefore anxious to attract the Europeans, vied with 
 each other in receiving baptism, and permitted their 
 subjects to do as they pleased in the matter. The king 
 of Omura not only permitted the Jesuits to preach, but 
 even gave to "the Church," that is, to the Jesuits, a 
 maritime city, by name Vocoxiura ; and to entice the 
 Portuguese into his kingdom, he promised them that not 
 only their merchandise, but even that of the Japanese 
 who should trade with them, would be exempt from all 
 imposts for the space of six years. 1 
 
 It was precisely the same tune, with a few more 
 flourishing variations, in the theme of the Brazilian 
 mission. One Jesuit began his march by bap- 
 
 J r Infinite con- 
 
 tising one hundred and twenty idolaters in a versions in 
 single village ; in another, five hundred and 
 forty-nine ; in a third, four hundred and over ; in a 
 fourth, two hundred and forty all these in a single 
 year " with magnificent pomp and display, as usual, he 
 generated to the Church by the vital waters," says the 
 Jesuit Sacchinus. 2 This professional Baptist's name is 
 Louis Grana : it were a pity to consign it to oblivion. 
 One thousand three hundred and nine Christians made 
 in one year by one Jesuit ! But his companion, Father 
 
 although they are clothed in rags." And then follows the horse behind the cart. 
 " After God my hope is in you, members of the Association. Let not my hope 
 be disappointed ! Be my security, and your alms will people heaven with new 
 legions of angels." I suppress the remark which this word " legions" suggests. 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vii. 133 ; Quesnel, ii. 61. 
 
 2 " Celebritate appai'atuque, ut solebat, magnifico, vitalibus aquis Ecclesioe 
 genuit." Sacchin. lib. vi. 197.
 
 144 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Antonio Rodriguez, utterly left him behind in his 
 evangelical expeditions. On one single occasion und 
 lustratione he baptised eleven hundred and fifty 
 Christians Mille centum quinquaginta duce animce ad 
 ecclesiam appositce ed lustratione sunt. At another place 
 he baptised one hundred and eight Indians ; at a third, 
 eight hundred and seventeen ; in a fourth, one thousand 
 and ninety. On his return, at one time, he baptised 
 one hundred and seventy ; then one hundred and 
 thirty-eight ; then one hundred and fifty-three ; then 
 two hundred and two ; and, finally, three hundred 
 and twelve ; making in all (errors excepted) five 
 thousand five hundred and thirty -nine Christians in one 
 year. 1 The idea is frightful. But the Jesuits must 
 have belied themselves. It is, may I not say, impos- 
 sible for men of common respectful deference to the 
 religious sentiment, thus to trample under foot the 
 sacred rite which they believed to have made them- 
 selves brothers of Christ and heirs of salvation. Hea- 
 vens ! was it but to send glorious accounts of the mis- 
 sions that these Jesuits actually did this wickedness ? 
 Nay, let us rather believe that they were infatuated 
 with the idea of " conversion," and in their blindness of 
 mind and heart, considered mere baptism its exponent 
 and its guarantee. For, alas ! what was the hideous 
 consequence ? the consequence that makes us, even at 
 this distance of time, gnash the teeth in unavailing 
 Christian indignation, or wring the hands in the bitter 
 virtue in memory of the past, asking, Why was light 
 given to the wretched, and life to them who 
 were in bitterness of heart ? Sacchinus tells us that 
 consequence in his infatuation he does tell all- 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi. 197, et seq.
 
 RESULTS OP "CHRISTIANITY" IN BRAZIL. 145 
 
 and here it is in its horrible monstrosity : the title of 
 the section is " The virtue of a Man of Brazil a convert 
 Chieftain." " By this man's persuasion and example, 
 the Christians and Brazilian catechumens dared to join 
 the Europeans, and fought against their own country- 
 men, which, before that day, had scarcely ever occurred. 
 So that not only acquaintances fought against acquaint- 
 ances, friends against friends, but even children against 
 their parents, brothers against brothers all ties were 
 broken. Thus may you recognise the salutary division 
 which the Prince of Peace confessed He was bringing to 
 the earth. A piteous sight, truly, unless the defence of 
 the holy faith made the former as worthy of praise as 
 the barbarous cruelty of the latter was worthy of hatred, 
 rather than commiseration." 1 Need I add a single 
 reflection on these dreadful facts, and as dreadful a sen- 
 timent \ What a disappointment what a falling off, 
 was that ! When the Jesuits arrived in Brazil, they 
 found the savages maltreated, persecuted by the Euro- 
 peans. The " men of God " came with the men of the 
 devil, hand in hand, apparently heart in heart. 
 
 / Reflections. 
 
 They strove to conciliate the savage. He 
 mistrusted them. What good could possibly come with 
 such infernal evil as that of Portugal ? Yet the Jesuits, 
 by dint of perseverance, contrived to fascinate the simple 
 people, lived with them, seemed to take their part, 
 seemed resolved to do so for ever. Thus they befriended 
 
 1 " Hujus et suasu et exemplo ausi sunt Christian! et catechumeni Brasili, 
 quod ant earn diem nunquam fere evenerat, consociati Europseis, ferre contra 
 suos arma. Itaque non solum noti prius amicique inter se, sed etiam filiomm 
 quidam contra parentes, fratresque adversus fratres (ut agnosceres salubre dissi- 
 dium quod Princeps Pacis profitebatur se terris inferre) alii contra alios variis 
 conjunctos necessitudinibus dimicarunt, miserando sane spectaculo, nisi quam 
 hos sanctae fidei propugnatio laude, tarn illos barbara crudelitas odio faceret, 
 quam miseratione digniores." Sacchin. lib. vi. 203. 
 
 VOL. II. L
 
 146 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the savages : thus the Jesuits at first were, in some sort, 
 a blessing to the persecuted, oppressed, deceived Indians. 
 And -what was the result ? The Indians nocked around 
 them, listened to them, submitted to their ceremonial 
 aspersion in a word, joined those who seemed to be 
 their friends. And then, again, what was the result 1 
 They were induced to become the enemies of their 
 country : to take a part in its subjection to the stranger, 
 in its utter ruin. Their Christian teachers sowed divi- 
 sion amongst them, and thus made them an easier con- 
 quest to their enemies. They separated fathers from 
 their children, sons from their parents, friends from 
 friends all who had been united by any tie whatever 
 and they put arms into the hands of those whom they 
 thus depraved, to slaughter their own kindred, and thus 
 to display their " virtue " ! A thing that had never hap- 
 pened before, or scarcely ever, as the Jesuits admit 
 quod ante earn diem nunquam fere evenerat. So the 
 savages were better men, infinitely more moral before 
 they became " Christians," or, rather, before they were 
 fooled, deceived, decoyed by the Jesuits into the service 
 of the Portuguese, under pretence of making them 
 " heirs to salvation." Jesuit-Christians and despicable 
 traitors nay, rather, miserably-fooled children of nature 
 perverted, debased by those who should have enlight- 
 ened them unto righteousness, and cursed with the name 
 of " Christian," which they thought they honoured by 
 the foulest infamy that clings to the name of man. 
 And how they were punished by the very men for 
 whom they turned traitors ! Very soon afterwards, in 
 1564, pestilence and famine reduced the poor Indians 
 to the last extremity. The Portuguese seized the oppor- 
 tunity, took advantage of their wretched condition, laid
 
 LAINEZ AT THE COUNCIL OP TRENT. 147 
 
 hands on some as their own property, bought others 
 from those who had no right to sell them : the rest took 
 flight, in a panic, back to their woods once more, leaving 
 the Jesuits to devise plans for " converting " and " re- 
 ducing " them again. 1 
 
 From the Conference of Poissy Lainez had proceeded 
 to the Council of Trent, which resumed its sittings in 
 1562. Doubtless he was well remembered at 
 
 Lainez at 
 
 his reappearance ; and he was not to be the Council 
 forgotten or be made inconspicuous, after 
 achieving such deeds as imperatively gave renown 
 amongst the men of orthodoxy not without stirring 
 envy, however. Already were the achievements of the 
 Jesuits in all their "missions" blazed to the world by 
 oral tradition, at least ; and if there were afloat on that 
 matter some "solid falsehoods/' as Pallavicino should 
 call them still they made the Company famous and 
 the end justified the means : all would be made to pro- 
 mote the exaltation of the Church and the downfall of 
 the heretics. A dispute arose as to the place that the 
 general should occupy in the Christian council. Lainez 
 evidently thought himself entitled to a place above 
 the generals of the monastic orders for to the master 
 of the ceremonies he announced himself as genera] of a 
 clerical order, well knowing that etiquette placed the 
 clergy above the monks. The result gave mortal offence 
 to the monkish generals, and they protested against 
 his exaltation. Lainez bowed to the pride of the monks 
 with the prouder pride of the Jesuit, and proceeded to 
 the rear. Hcec minima nostra Societas, this our least 
 Company did not insist on the privilege. Esse quam 
 videri to be the first rather than to seem so is all that 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 198. 
 L 2
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 is necessary for the present. Thus, doubtless, argued 
 the Jesuit to himself, biting his nether lip. His friends 
 supported him, the cardinals backed his idea : but the 
 monkish generals were in a ferment declaring that 
 they would instantly vacate their seats altogether should 
 Lainez be placed above them. Lainez was requested to 
 absent himself for a day or two, until the matter could 
 be adjusted ; and then he was assigned an extraordi- 
 nary place among the bishops. 1 Already had the seeds 
 of jealousy or envy been sown in the hearts of the monks 
 against the Jesuits : this flattering gale of favour to the 
 Society did not blight the crop now vigorously rising 
 with the promise of luxuriant poison. A pulpit was 
 assigned the general of the Company of Jesus conspi- 
 cuous to all that the prelates and doctors might lose 
 nothing of his harangues ; for, according to the Jesuits, 
 there was a mira cupido, a devouring desire " to hear 
 the man himself." His high forehead, brilliant eyes, 
 sweet look, and smiling lips, were his captivating exor- 
 dium, if we may believe the Jesuits, though Father 
 Ignatius positively slurred his personal appearance no 
 tenga persona. His placid countenance, they continue, 
 his pale complexion, delicate appearance, and remark- 
 ably aquiline nose, lent to his person an air of suffering 
 which his multitudinous labours of every description, his 
 
 1 Pallav. p. 42, t. iii. ; Sacchin. 1. vi. 77, et seq. See also Sarpi and Courayer's 
 note, p. 269, t. ii. ; Ital. ed. p. 287, t. ii. French trans. Some say that Lainez 
 himself retired indignantly, by way of mortifying the council by his absence for 
 some days. It must be remembered he was the Pope's legate. See Quesnel, ii. 
 69, and his authorities. Of course the Jesuits make Lainez the very pattern of 
 Christian humility on this occasion ; but surely all the altercation would have 
 been obviated by his going at once to the last place, without telling his papal 
 rank, as General of Clercs, had he been an humble man. Not that I blame the 
 Jesuit ; it is only the conduct pursued by a companion of Jesus that seems as 
 extraordinary as the place assigned to the Jesuit.
 
 THE DISCUSSION ON PAPAL POWER. 149 
 
 watchings, his journeys, could attest. 1 On the other hand, 
 the presence of the Jesuit at the Council of Trent was 
 precisely the same as elsewhere the cause of strife or 
 unrest, if we may believe an enemy's account. The 
 Jesuits for Salmeron and others were with Lainez 
 opposed every opinion that seemed likely to gain a ma- 
 jority. They could not be silenced : they encroached on 
 the time allotted for each speaker ; and boldly insisted 
 on their "privilege" as pontifical legates. Nevertheless, 
 the Jesuits call them the oracles of the Council of Trent : 
 " so that this most august assembly of holy dignitaries, 
 which, with the most insatiate ears, drank in the golden 
 stream of eloquence rushing from his eloquent lips like 
 a torrent, could not believe it was a mortal who addressed 
 them from his pulpit, but a Seer descended from heaven, 
 pouring forth oracles from his tripod, speaking mys- 
 teries, pronouncing decrees ... Lainez, how vast and 
 unparalleled was thy reputation throughout the uni- 
 verse ! " Thus boast the Jesuits in their famous Imago." 1 
 Certain it is that Lainez and Salmeron took a con- 
 spicuous part in every discussion not without broaching 
 what were deemed heretical opinions concern- Suspicions 
 ing grace and free will ; and Lainez was of heres >y- 
 accused of Pelagianism one of the bugbears which from 
 time to time, the proud, luxurious, and useless Church 
 singled out to set people by the ears, and uphold autho- 
 rity. It is not worth the while to explain the nature of 
 Pelagianism, or any other ism, excepting Jesuitism 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 269. 
 
 2 Ut augustissima ilia sacrorum Procerum corona, quse aureum eloqueiitise 
 flumen, quod ex facundo ore, velut e torrente, fundebatur, avidissimis auribus 
 imbibebat, putaret non hominem aliquem e pulpito verba proferre, sed Vatem 
 coelo delapsum e tripode oracula fundere, mysteria eloqui, decreta pronuntiare 
 . . . O eximiam illam et inauditam de te, Laini, orbis universi existimationem ! 
 Imago, p. 139, et 438.
 
 150 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 which deserves the deepest inquiry in every depart- 
 ment. It blazed forth intensely on the occasion, that 
 celebrated occasion, when the power of the 
 pope and of the bishops was discussed. Who 
 had been more hampered, harassed, tormented, than the 
 Jesuits by the bishops ? It was therefore a question 
 peculiarly their own. Now we remember on how many 
 occasions the papal Bulls and privileges exhibited by the 
 Jesuits in their own defence, were positively 'slighted 
 and made nothing of, by various bishops in France 
 particularly and even in Spain, where it was certainly 
 a curious demonstration. But it was a vital necessity 
 for the pope to have his unlimited authority declared in 
 a council of all Christendom as represented at a time 
 when so many thousands and millions had utterly cast 
 away the authority of Rome. All doctrine, all discipline, 
 depended upon the decision. The monarchy the abso- 
 lutism of Christendom was to be ratified or annulled. 
 See you not herein that antagonism to the democratic 
 opinions beginning to be prevalent ? A time when, as 
 always, the misdeeds of governors do not escape punish- 
 ment, merely by their shrewdness, and craft, and power : 
 but, on the contrary, only until the governed are enlight- 
 ened to a knowledge of their rights, and the God of 
 justice decrees a stunning retribution. 
 
 At the time in question there were three dominant 
 "religious" sections in the Roman Church the monks 
 the Jesuits the bishops. The monks were essentially 
 democratic in their institutions. Their generals, the 
 rectors of convents, their provincials, were appointed by 
 election. Thus each province, each convent had, so to 
 speak, a set of interests peculiar to itself : in wealth and 
 comfort overflowing where the Lutherans made no
 
 THE DOMINANT SECTIONS OF THE CHURCH. 151 
 
 incursion these monks slept their lives away without 
 caring much for aught but the continuance of their 
 blessings. On the other hand, the Jesuits The three 
 were strictly, essentially, monarchical. The ^omL 
 masses amongst them had no voice whatever the church. 
 except to denounce what they could " spy" amiss in a 
 brother as debased as themselves. Every house, every pro- 
 vince, however distant, was under the eye of the general, 
 elected by an aristocracy, and aided, if necessary, by the 
 same. The general was as absolute in his Company as 
 the pope wished to be in his Church. Now, the men 
 who proposed to practise obedience to such authority 
 among themselves were just the teachers required to 
 enable the pope to enjoy that high eminence, by their 
 inculcations, over the nations : and the Jesuits cer- 
 tainly, on every occasion, strove to propagate the theory 
 of pontifical absoluteness. It is this reasoning which may 
 induce us to think that the wily Paul III. had a larger 
 hand in the Institute of Ignatius than the Jesuits will 
 admit. I suspect that " the finger of God " which they 
 say he discovered in the affair, was only his own, seen 
 through the microscope of conceit. The bishops, lastly, 
 were so many popes in their sees, differing more or 
 less in their powers and " privileges " but, very little 
 obnoxious to papal revision, and not vitally dependent 
 on papal existence. Hence the pope could not depend 
 upon them : they were even anxious to achieve more 
 freedom than they enjoyed, in an age when all were 
 striving to be free to the detriment of the papal auto- 
 crat and of the Jesuits whom he caressed, defended, and 
 supported, in order to be himself supported in return. * 
 
 1 The reader will find some very apposite matter on this subject in Botta, 
 Storia d'ltalia, ii. 25, et aeq.
 
 152 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Lainez dashed into the battle with desperate energy 
 as though his very salvation was at stake. 1 There was 
 a fixed, determined purpose in the opinion which he was 
 resolved to deliver. He spoke last, as usual with the 
 man who is determined to measure his argument with 
 that of every opponent and to triumph in debate by 
 demolishing all that is arrayed against him having 
 dissected all, and vigorously created the new portent of 
 whelming confutation or defence. The question was, 
 whether the power of bishops was immediately from 
 God. The French bishops, as a matter of course, with 
 their high Galilean notions, held the proposition as 
 almost an article of faith : but Lainez knew that he 
 need not try to deprecate their indignation. The Spanish 
 bishops, also, even King Philip II. upheld the inde- 
 pendent doctrine : but the king had averted his royal 
 countenance from the Company, and there seemed no pro- 
 bability of his turning it again. The universal 
 
 LainezfighU *. . . *? _ ._ .. 
 
 for papal monarchy was the J esuit s fortified port, his 
 embattled rampart : there he planted his 
 spear and flung defiance to all the world beside. " I 
 expect neither a red hat from the pope, nor a green one 
 from Philip" was his significant exordium, and then he 
 advanced, affirming boldly the paramount authority of 
 the pope over all bishops deducing the authority of 
 bishops from the pope, and not directly from heaven, as 
 was contended. 2 The effect of these opinions, and many 
 others touching the immunities of the popedom, was 
 a sensation. According to the Jesuit, the Court of 
 Rome had a right to reform all the churches of Chris- 
 
 1 Sarpi, viii. 15. 
 
 2 Cretineau, i. 274. " Lainius inde exorsus : nee a Pontifice se rubrum, nee 
 viridem a Philippe galemin expectare." Sacvkin. lib. vi. 85.
 
 LAINEZ ADVOCATES IT IN ITS PLENITUDE. 153 
 
 tendom but none had a right to reform the pope's 
 particular church at Rome, simply because " the disciple 
 is not above the master, nor the slave above his lord." 
 Hence it was evident that the Court of Rome was not 
 to be obnoxious to the reforming energies of the Chris- 
 tian council. He said that those who pretended that 
 the Church ought to be reduced to the same footing on 
 which she stood at the time of the apostles, did not 
 distinguish the difference of times, and what was befit- 
 ting according to their mutation alluding of course to 
 the wealth of the Church, which he called God's provi- 
 dence and bounty, and termed it impertinent to say that 
 God gave her riches without permitting her to use them 
 as if it is incontestably evident that God did give her 
 the riches she enjoyed. The Jesuit flung Right Divine 
 over every corner of the pope's prerogatives : tithes, 
 annates, from the people similar dues from the clergy, 
 all were appointed by Right Divine which was quite 
 true if he equivocated, meaning the Divine right of 
 Mammon, whose blessings to the popedom turned curses 
 to Christendom. 1 Of this Jesuit's speech on this glorious 
 occasion, the Cardinal de Lorraine said: "It is the finest 
 shot fired in favour of the popes ; " and the legates in 
 full council exclaimed : " The Holy See owes much to 
 one man for all he has done in one day." 2 This was a 
 bold stroke of the Jesuit even if he was only the expo- 
 nent of the pope's party in the council. He exposed 
 himself to the aggravated enmity of the bishops, and 
 consequently endangered the extension of the Society : 
 but the pope was his friend, and indebted to him on that 
 occasion, as well as on many others, and we shall soon 
 
 1 Sarpi, viii. 15. Quesnel enters largely into the whole discussion, ii. 71, 
 ft seq- - Cretineau, i. 274.
 
 154 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 see that the Jesuits were made, by papal privilege, inde- 
 pendent of bishops in their rights and pride. Great was 
 the Jesuit's glory an enviable lot in the midst of the 
 congregation where vanity, pride, selfishness, sycophancy, 
 and bigotry swayed the destinies of faith, raised the 
 phantoms of hope, and always pointed to the 
 
 Honours . * i i T 
 
 awarded to golden objects of their charity. Lainez had all 
 he could desire. No honour was denied him by 
 the pope's party. Others must stand to speak : he, in 
 his conspicuous pulpit, might sit on his tripod, divinoque 
 afflante spiritu 1 and under the inspirations aforesaid, 
 deliver his oracles. He was the arbiter of the council's 
 time spoke as long as he liked was listened to with 
 applause ; whilst his antagonists, however concise, were 
 always too prolix for his " party " the legates. 2 Vain 
 was the indignation of the Spanish and French bishops, 
 who were convinced of the collusion whereof the Jesuit 
 was the mouthpiece. His insolence and presumption cut 
 deep into their pride and vanity. Lainez resolved to 
 keep the wound open, and printed his speech, which he 
 distributed. It was one of the copies, doubtless, which, 
 reaching the Cardinal de Lorraine, suggested his excla- 
 mation so boastfully recorded by the Jesuits, for the 
 cardinal was absent from that session. In a subsequent 
 address, when the episcopal party was strengthened by 
 Doings and the arrival of the cardinal in debate, Lainez 
 the'iioman moderated his opinions on papal authority ; 
 College. k^ m fa e Roman College of the Company, 
 public theses were maintained that year, at the opening 
 of the classes, and papal authority was the all- 
 absorbing proposition : his absolute dominion over all 
 
 1 A phrase applied by Sacchinus to Lainez, vi. 82. 2 Sarpi, ut autea.
 
 THE POPE'S OBJECTION TO REFORM. 155 
 
 councils included his infallibility in matters of faith 
 and morality every prerogative was mooted, and, as a 
 matter of course, triumphantly established on the Scrip- 
 tures, on the fathers, and on reason these being the 
 three everlasting highways of controversial freebooters. l 
 The secret of this papal exaltation was the simple fact 
 that the cry for reform in the Roman Court was 
 universal in Catholic Christendom, and the abuses the 
 pecuniary abuses which the Jesuits defended were 
 amongst the most prominent. Pius IV. was as pius IV and 
 intractable in the matter as any of his prede- reform - 
 cessors. To the reformation of abuses in the universal 
 Church he was happy to consent : but as for those of 
 his Roman department and his Roman Court these 
 were his own affair. Deformities there might be in that 
 queen of all Churches but she pleased him notwith- 
 standing like the mistress of the ancient Roman, with 
 her nose so unsightly, and yet, for some reason or other, 
 most dear to her lord. Pius IV. was of opinion that if 
 they wished so ardently for reform, they had only to 
 begin with the courts of the other Christian princes, 
 which, he thought, required it quite as much as his own, 
 and the opinion is worth knowing to the reader of this 
 history but as for himself, as his authority was supe- 
 rior to that of the council, and as inferiors had no right 
 to reform their superiors, he would, if he thought 
 proper, labour to reform whatever he found amiss in 
 his Church and his court. Thus the successor of a 
 poor fisherman raised himself to an equality with the 
 kings of the earth, in pomp and magnificence, and pre- 
 tended to justify by their example that luxury and 
 extravagance which his title as Peter's successor, and 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 84.
 
 156 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Christ's vicar on earth, should alone have induced him 
 to condemn. 1 
 
 The Jesuits the self-appointed reformers of sinners 
 the evangelising Jesuits the apostles in Portugal 
 The Jesuit the thaumaturgs in the East and in the West 
 t C hT^me n the last hope of the sinking Church the pure, 
 subject. th e honest Jesuits lent their tough consciences 
 to the pope for a consideration. What Pius IV. said 
 at Rome was repeated in Germany, to the Emperor 
 Ferdinand, one of the princes who desired and ardently 
 demanded the reform of the Roman Court. Representa- 
 tions were being expedited, ringing that awful peal to 
 the holy city. The Jesuit Canisius was sent to expostu- 
 late with the Emperor. We have the Jesuit-speech in 
 Sacchinus. After an appropriate exordium he proceeds 
 to observe : 
 
 " It does not become your majesty to deal severely 
 with the vicar of Christ, a pope most devoted to 
 you. You may offend him, and check his inclination 
 to proceed with the reform. As he has promised to 
 apply himself to the business, you must not mistrust the 
 promises of the Supreme Bishop and of such a man : 
 but you ought rather to cheer and assist him in his 
 endeavours. Besides, can there be a doubt that this 
 book [of representations] wiU fall into the hands of 
 learned men, and will create new altercations and 
 disturbances, and will rather aggravate than alleviate 
 the matter in the council, which is, in other respects, 
 sufficiently afflicted satis alioqui qfflictam. According 
 as the dispositions and desires of each party are consti- 
 tuted, these will snatch at motives for new contention. 
 Who will then hinder the minds and tongues of men 
 
 1 Qucsncl, ii. 78.
 
 THE JESUITS UPHOLD THE POPE. 157 
 
 from thinking and saying that the emperor is afflicted 
 with the prevalent epidemic of those who oppose the 
 Church, who continually declaim against the depravity 
 of morals, who prefer to impose laws rather than receive 
 them ; and whilst they pretend not to see their own 
 great vices, speak against ecclesiastical rulers without 
 measure and modesty. Moreover, there is danger lest 
 this anxiety, the result of immoderate zeal, should not 
 only be unsuccessful and useless, but may rather exas- 
 perate to a worse degree the diseased minds in the 
 Roman Court, which you wish to cure as soon as they 
 perceive that they and the morals of their court are so 
 roughly handled, that laws are prescribed to cardinals, 
 that the pope is submitted to the council for correction, 
 the authority of the legates diminished ; demanding 
 the formation of private cliques and the separation of 
 the debates into conventicles of the different nations 
 there represented : l rendering the secretary of the 
 council an object of suspicion in fine, furnishing arms 
 to turbulent men for raising greater outcries and dis- 
 turbance in the council. Therefore, again and again, 
 there is every reason to fear, lest, whilst we wish to 
 heal the diseases of Rome or Trent, we produce worse 
 distempers, especially in this, as it were, rage of the 
 nations rushing into impious schism. You see what 
 
 1 This was what the Court of Rome and the pope's legates dreaded above all, 
 and so we see in the council all the intrigues and cabals set on foot to obviate 
 that result. The reason why they so strongly opposed it was, that almost all the 
 bishops of Christendom, if we except the Italians, loudly called for a reform, 
 with which the pope was unwilling that they should meddle, and which would 
 have been carried in the council if the decisions had been made according to the 
 nations there represented. But the legates refusing their consent to the regula- 
 tion, the Italian bishops whom Pius IV. had sent to Trent in great numbers, 
 prevailed over that "article," as well as some others, by their multitude. 
 Hence the Protestants said that the council was the council of the pope, and not 
 that of the Church. See QuesyeJ, ii. 90, e t seq.
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 times we have fallen on : how low the majesty of the 
 most holy Apostolic See is reduced : how in every direc- 
 tion they rush to secession, to contumacy, to defection, 
 from the obedience due to the supreme pastor and vicar 
 of Christ. If good men do not oppose this disastrous 
 onslaught, as it were, of a hellish torrent tartarei 
 torrentis if those who possess power and supreme 
 authority do not bring their wealth to the rescue, but 
 rather if they seem to incline in the same direction [as 
 the " hellish torrent,"] then it is all over with religion 
 actum de religione all over with probity all over with 
 peace all over with the empire itself. 1 In these cir- 
 cumstances, the easiest and most advantageous measures 
 you can adopt are those which will result from your 
 firm and intimate connection with the pope himself. 
 Such is the present uncertain, doubtful, troubled state of 
 affairs, that we can scarcely hope for the continuance of 
 the council ! When matters are inclined to move in a 
 certain direction I would not drive them headlong. We 
 must, therefore, consider the circumstances of the time. 
 To conclude, if we desire the good of the Church, if we 
 wish the welfare of the empire, most excellent prince, 
 and if to that end it be of use to listen to the opinions 
 of all wise men who are exempt from national prejudices, 
 free from private considerations, not one will be found 
 
 1 Quesnel, a Roman Catholic, appends a note to this passage in his version of 
 the Jesuit's speech to Ferdinand : " One must be as blind and as unreasonable 
 as a Jesuit in his sentiments, to proscribe, as an hostile assault, the right which 
 General Councils have always had to reform abuses, even those of the Roman 
 Church. We cannot say as much of what Canisius here says, that it was all 
 over with faith and religion if men wished to reform the excessive abuses of the 
 Roman Court. On the contrary, every one knows that it was those very abuses 
 which chiefly occasioned the two last heresies, which, says the orthodox Quesnel, 
 have effectually annihilated the faith and the Catholic religion in two thirds of 
 Europe. See Father Faber's Histoire Ecclesiastique, which serves as a con- 
 tinuation to that of M. 1'Abbe" Fleuri." Ib. 93.
 
 A CURIOUS DOCUMENT. 159 
 
 \vho will not exclaim that we are not to care so much 
 for the conduct of strangers at Rome, as for that of 
 our own folks here at Rome whom we behold daily 
 more and more rolling in a headlong course of all 
 impiety." 1 
 
 This wisest of men a Daniel a Solomon-Jesuit, was 
 nothing less than a spy at the German court, to report 
 to his general, Lainez, all the emperor's measures and 
 resolves on the subject of papal reformation. 2 His 
 speech, which is a very curious specimen of Jesuitism, 
 had no effect on the emperor : he continued to press for 
 reform ; whereupon Lainez, in another session, advanced 
 with the pope's legates, as determined as ever in uphold- 
 ing his Holiness in his bad eminence and inveterate 
 perversity. His address gave great offence, and the 
 Spanish and French bishops very naturally, if not truly, 
 pronounced him a sycophant retained by the Lainez as 
 court of Rome, very worthy of the title which bold M ever - 
 was already generally given to the Jesuit, styling him 
 the advocate and apologist of all that is bad. 3 No man 
 can quarrel with the Jesuit, however, for upholding the 
 pope in his prerogatives, however liable to corruption, 
 since the most distinctive operations of the Jesuits 
 depended upon certain " privileges " hereinafter to be 
 given which were the immediate application of these 
 prerogatives. But if we permit Lainez to be thus far 
 consistent, a curious document, inconsiderately A curious 
 given to their historian, by the Jesuits, for JoughTto 
 publication, compels us to think that some- li ht - 
 what less energy in fighting for the pope and his im- 
 munity from reform would have been advisable. The 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vii. 46. 2 Sarpi, vii. 65. 
 
 3 Quesnel, v. Pallavicino also mentions their suspicions, lib. xxi. c. vi. 1 5.
 
 160 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Jesuit Pallavicino admits that Lainez contended for 
 leaving the reformation of the pope to the pope himself 
 that he placed the pope above all councils and that 
 he lashed the opponents of that doctrine without reserve 
 nee sibi temperavit quin illos perstringeret qui earn 
 negotiant. 1 Sarpi further reproduces those remarkable 
 words, which Pallavicino, who strives to demolish all 
 that Sarpi advances, does not deny to have been uttered 
 by Lainez : " Many have attributed matters to abuses : 
 but when these matters are well examined and sifted to 
 the bottom, they will be found either necessary, or at 
 least useful/' 2 The analysis of the whole speech which 
 I have given, leaves no doubt on the mind that Lainez 
 was no advocate for papal reform. Now, in the face of 
 this, we find a letter written by him to the Prince de 
 Cond the leader of the Huguenots only a very few 
 months before, when in France, at the Conference of 
 Poissy. It must be premised, as we are assured by the 
 Jesuits, that Lainez was very intimate with Conde, with 
 whom he frequently corresponded. The letter replies to 
 the difficulties which Conde' had raised against the 
 reunion of the two Churches ; and proceeds to say : 
 
 " The principal cause of this separation is the conduct 
 of the ecclesiastics who, to begin with the supreme head 
 [the pope] and the prelates, down to the inferior mem- 
 bers of the clergy, are in great need of reform as to 
 morals and the exercise of their functions. Their bad 
 example has produced so many scandals that their doc- 
 trine has become an object of contempt as well as their 
 life." 
 
 Nothing can be tnier than this sentiment : but at 
 the same time, nothing can be more opposed to the 
 
 1 Pallav. ib. 2 Ubi supra.
 
 LAINEZ ON CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE. 161 
 
 sentiments of the Jesuit as expressed in the council, in 
 the capacity of papal legate. The letter concludes with 
 another sentiment, and with a curious substitute for the 
 writer's signature : 
 
 " In order to see this union so much desired, I would 
 
 sacrifice a hundred lives, if I had as many to offer. 
 
 Thus, from the misfortune of these divisions, the Divine 
 
 bounty would bring forth, besides union, the blessing of 
 
 the reform of the Church in her Head and her members. 
 
 "Your Excellency's very humble servant, in 
 
 Jesus Christ. The person who spoke to your 
 
 Excellency in the King of Navarre's chamber, 
 
 and whom you commanded to address you 
 
 in writing what he had spoken." l 
 
 This substitute for his name is not so remarkable as 
 
 the opinion that the Divine bounty might bring forth the 
 
 blessing of reform in the Catholic Church, and all the 
 
 hierarchy, by means of the Reformation or the Protestant 
 
 movement which is an opinion I have advanced, 
 
 doubtless not without hurting the pride of Catholics. 
 
 On the other hand, the conclusion to be drawn from 
 
 these contradictory sentiments of Lainez on different 
 
 occasions, is, that policy was the rule of his conduct ; 
 
 and he soon gave another instance of his calculation. 
 
 To serve the pope was a general rule of prudence, but 
 
 policy made exceptions to it in particulars, as appeared 
 
 on the occasion when the topic of Clandestine Marriage 
 
 was discussed in the council. 
 
 By clandestine marriage is meant a secret union con- 
 tracted without any other formality than the mutual 
 consent of the parties. The Court of Rome declared 
 its illegality, insisting on priestly intervention. We 
 
 1 Cretineau-Joly, i. 423. 
 VOL. II. M
 
 162 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 would give that Court full credit for moral motives in 
 this prohibition if we never heard or read of costly 
 " dispensations " and other celestial devices 
 * r rendering the passions lucrative, if they 
 marriage. could not be made moral. If interest and the 
 topic of marriage involved very many profitable invest- 
 ments induced the Court of Rome to cry against 
 clandestine marriage, the Courts of France and Spain 
 supported the pope on this occasion, in order to counter- 
 act the misalliances of their royal families and nobility. 
 Lainez opposed the pope and the bishops ; l and he was 
 perhaps wiser in his generation than either the pope or 
 the bishops in that determination. The love of woman 
 had often made wise men mad, and robbed the Church 
 of an important son or two. The royal, the noble, the 
 rich penitent, might and would again hesitate between 
 priestly power and love's fierce clamour. In fact, there 
 was much to be said on both sides of the question 
 as in all matters where private interests get hold of a 
 religious question. Can we imagine that the Jesuits 
 were ignorant of the tendencies of the age \ The licen- 
 tiousness which characterised the preceding century was 
 not so threatening to " religious " influence as that of 
 the sixteenth, since the latter was accompanied by 
 a powerful reaction against all ecclesiastical authority. 
 Now, when the mountain would not go to Mohammed, 
 he wisely said, " Then let us go to the mountain " so 
 the precarious tenure of priestly power depended on its 
 levelling, and smoothing, and beflowering the path of 
 orthodoxy. Hence this matter of love-marriage was 
 important in a licentious and rebellious generation, and 
 very likely to give some trouble to the confessors of 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 272.
 
 LAINEZ ON CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE. 163 
 
 kings, and nobles, and the great in general, who, it is 
 evident, were the principal objects of the contemplated 
 enactment. The " masses " the poor the " people " 
 could always be managed by a burly priest or Jesuit : 
 but kings, and nobles, the rich and the great, must 
 always be managed by a gentle consideration directed 
 to " the rank of the individual," and so forth which is 
 at least very ridiculous in the ministers of Him who 
 is "no respecter of persons." On the other hand, if 
 " clandestine marriage " were legalised, it was impossible 
 to say how many abuses might not be safely tolerated 
 under the wings of expedience. Nevertheless Lainez 
 espoused the thing, and generated argument accordingly. 
 He alleged the marriages of the patriarchal times. He 
 pointed to the abuses of parental authority in prohibiting 
 marriage, and thus promoting licentiousness in their 
 children, whilst clandestine marriages were declared 
 illegal. He went further : he asserted that the regula- 
 tion would not be adopted by heretics, and might be 
 rejected even in many Catholic countries. Hence, he 
 concluded, rather significantly, that " an infinite number 
 of adulteries, and a deplorable confusion in the order of 
 inheritance, would result." 
 
 " It seems to me very doubtful," he exclaimed, " that 
 the Church can enact such a law, and this for a reason 
 which others have declared, namely, that the Church 
 shall never have the power to alter the Divine right, 
 nor prohibit what the Gospel allows. Marriage is 
 offered as a remedy against incontinence to those who 
 cannot otherwise live chastely : therefore, as all are 
 bound to take the means to insure their salvation, the 
 Church has not the power to hinder marriage, either as far 
 as a certain age, or in fixing certain solemn formalities." 
 
 M 2
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 In conclusion, he admitted the dangers of " clan- 
 destine marriages :" but he thought them more than 
 overbalanced by " the return to the principles of the 
 Gospel, and consequently to social equality"* If these 
 were his real sentiments Lainez would have been a 
 philosopher, had he not been a Jesuit. It was decided 
 against him, though he again printed and dispersed his 
 argument. The " formalities " were enjoined : but the 
 decree began with the following words : " Although it 
 is not to be doubted that clandestine marriages, with 
 the free consent of the contracting parties, are ratified 
 and true marriages as long as the Holy Church has 
 not annulled them/' &c. 2 Thus Lainez lost the point, 
 but gained the handle : clandestine marriages were 
 declared ratified and true marriages. It must however 
 be admitted that his arguments were more specious 
 than valid. Marriage without attested formalities im- 
 plying a bond of union, must presuppose more con- 
 stancy in the human heart than has hitherto become 
 proverbial. 3 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 270, et seq. 
 
 2 " Tametsi dubitandum non est, claiidestiiia mat rimonia, libero contrahentium 
 consensu facta, rata et vera esse matrimonia, quamdiu Ecclesia ea irrita non 
 fecit," &c. Dec. de Ref. Matrim. Sess. xxiv. c. 1. It was in the Council of Trent 
 (Sess. xxiv. c. 1 ) that the publication of banns for three Sundays was first enjoined 
 and it is one of the least objectionable of the many things of Rome which the 
 Church of England has retained to the grief and regret of all who sigh for the 
 purification of Christianity, in doctrine and in discipline. 
 
 3 The proposed intention was good, and similar to that of his brother- Jesuit, 
 Salmeron, who permitted a still more objectionable.abuse : "Queer. 2. An per- 
 mitti possint meretrices 1 Prima sententia probabilis amrmat, eamque tenent 
 Salm. de 6. prsecept. c. 2. punct. 4. n. 84, cum S. Thorn. Cov : Trull. Led., &c. : 
 huicque clare adhseret S. Aug. 1. 2 de ord. c. 4. Ratio, quia demptis meretrici- 
 
 bus, pejora peccata evenirent (!) praeter prsevaricationem mulierum 
 
 honestarum (!) Ideo, S. Aug. loc. c. ait : Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, tur- 
 baveris omnia libidinibus. (!) On the other hand, Liguori quotes a contrary 
 opinion of other divines, but concludes with a favourable opinion, distinguishing 
 as to the locality : " Licet in vastis urbibus meretrices permitti possint, nullo
 
 THE SAGACITY OF LAINEZ. 1G5 
 
 The sagacity of General Lainez was not less conspi- 
 cuous in the last, or twenty-fifth, session of the famous 
 Council. Amongst the various abuses which 
 
 ~, . , . . His sagacity. 
 
 had crept into the Church, was monkish 
 vagrancy, mendicity, or beggary. Under pretence of 
 their pious intentions, the mendicant or vagrant monks 
 were a pest to communities, and a shame to religion, 
 from the practices to which they were compelled, as 
 they argued, to resort for their livelihood. The pope 
 willingly consented to reform every abuse in which he 
 was not himself interested : so a reforming remedy 
 was applied to this monkish ulcer, by permitting most 
 of the Orders to possess funded property. The permis- 
 sion gave general satisfaction to the monks themselves ; 
 for, though they had been always individually poor and 
 collectively rich, it was absolutely necessary to grant the 
 present statute, at a time when the monks were become 
 so despicable, on account of their clamorous poverty, 
 and the practices to which their alleged necessities com- 
 pelled them to resort. Zamora, the General of the 
 Minor Observantines, begged, in the name of St. Francis, 
 whose rule his people followed, to be excluded from the 
 privilege : the General of the Capuchins followed his 
 example : the exemption was duly granted. Why did 
 the General of the Jesuits those men of transcen- 
 dental poverty not put in a claim in the name of 
 Father Ignatius ? He did : nor could he consistently 
 do otherwise on so trying an occasion ; and his demand 
 was granted. But behold, next day, he requested to 
 have his Company excluded from the exemption, saying, 
 
 tamen modo in aliis locis permittendse sink" Ligorio, Theol. Moral, t. iii. lib. 4 ; 
 Tract. 4. 434, p. 165 ; Ed. Mechl. 1845. Such is the Catholic theory, which 
 evidently would suppress the Society for the Suppression of Vice. But such a 
 decision published in the year of our Lord 1845 !
 
 166 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 doubtless, with one of his boldest faces, that " the Com- 
 pany was indeed inclined always to practise mendicity 
 in the houses of the professed : but, she did not care to 
 have that honour in the eyes of men, and that it was 
 enough to have the merit before God a merit which 
 would be greater in proportion to the fact of being able 
 to avail herself of the Council's permission, and yet 
 never proceeding to the practice. 1 His object was to 
 be free to use the permission or not, according to cir- 
 cumstances ; 2 and, like a true Jesuit, he expressed his 
 mind in that neat metaphorical fashion, which never 
 leaves the Almighty or His glory exempt from the 
 assaults of Jesuit-profanation. 
 
 It was in the same session that the Company was 
 called a " pious Institute." That little word " pious " 
 has been amplified into mountains of approbation, turned 
 The "pious and twisted into every possible sort of lauda- 
 tion by the Jesuits. Nobody will gainsay 
 them the fullest use of the word, when it is known that, 
 in the same sentence, the Council of Trent with all its 
 admitted cabals and contentions, not to say browbeating, 
 sycophancy, and corruption is called the holy synod 
 sancta synodus. The simple fact is, that having made 
 some regulations respecting the novices of the monks, 
 the decree proceeds to say, that, " By these regulations, 
 however, the holy Synod does not intend to innovate 
 or prohibit the clerical Order of the Company of 
 Jesus, to serve the Lord and his Church according 
 to their pious Institute, approved by the Holy See." 3 
 
 1 Sarpi, viii. 72. 3 Id. ib. 
 
 3 " Per haec tamen sancta Synodus non intendit aliquid iunovare, aut prohi- 
 bere, quin religio Clericorum Societatis Jesu juxta pium eorum Institutuni, a 
 sancta Scde Apostolica approbatum, Domino ct ejus Ecclesise inscrvire possint." 
 ~>Scss. xxv. c. 16.
 
 TUB END OF THE COUNCIL. 167 
 
 It was only quoting the words of Paul III., when he 
 accepted the Order. 1 Such is the frivolous circumstance 
 on which the Jesuits have rung incessant and intermin- 
 ably varied changes in all their apologies for the Company 
 of Jesus ; but it is excusable in comparison to the fact, 
 that they have not scrupled to appeal to the so-called, 
 self-boasting " enemies of the Christian religion " for what 
 they think an approbation. More anon on the subject. 
 But surely the Jesuits, who boast of this little word pro- 
 nounced in the " holy Synod " of Trent, could never have 
 read or considered the extravagant epithets applied to 
 the members of the Council on the day of its closing 
 the day of " Acclamations." 
 
 It is one of the most ridiculous documents that Rome 
 has bequeathed to a posterity which will at last shake 
 off all the cobwebs she has heaped upon humanity. 
 I will endeavour to give you an idea of that 
 glorious day. Eighteen long years had the 
 
 Babel-Council battled with confusion worse a * *^5 end ., of 
 
 the Council. 
 
 confounded. Infatuated all the world knows 
 how there were calls for mortar, and bricks were pre- 
 sented calls for water, and sand was given calls for a 
 plummet, and a brickbat was brought. And then they 
 " gave it up." As nothing could be done, all was done. 
 Every old dogma remained exactly as it was before 
 only with additional anathemas. Certain reforms respect- 
 ing the discipline of the hierarchy were certainly " de- 
 creed ; " but and the fact must be well impressed on 
 our minds these would never have changed the old 
 order of things, had it not been for the world's enlighten- 
 ment, mainly promoted by the Protestant movement. 
 Similar regulations had been made in other " holy 
 
 1 " In eorum pio vivendi proposito." Confirm. Iiistit* Lit. Apost.
 
 168 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Synods," or Councils, many a time before, and to what 
 purpose, during the undisputed reign of proud Ortho- 
 doxy, bastioned by her bristling prerogative ? * I repeat 
 it if the Roman Catholic be now gratified with the 
 pleasant sight of a more moral clergy, he has to thank 
 Luther's " Heresy " for this most desirable consumma- 
 tion, and he may grant the fact without sacrificing his 
 orthodoxy, though his religious pride may be somewhat 
 humbled. 
 
 And now for the " acclamations of the fathers at the 
 end of the Council acclamationes patrum in fine Con- 
 cilii " such being the title of the chapter. It was the 
 4th of December, 1563. A voice exclaimed, "Most 
 reverend fathers, depart in peace." All cried, " Amen." 
 And then followed the " acclamations/' It was a suc- 
 cession of toasts, without wine to moisten their parched 
 tongues withal. The Cardinal de Lorraine proposed 
 the toasts. I shall give them literally. " To the most 
 blessed Pope Pius our lord, pontiff of the Holy Universal 
 Church, many years and eternal memory." The fathers 
 responded : " Lord God, preserve for many years, 
 and a very long time, the most Holy Father for thy 
 Church." The " Peace of the Lord, eternal glory, and 
 
 1 The general reader will find enough to convince him of this, in a French 
 work entitled, " Dictionnaire portatif dea Conciles," Paris, 1764. The book 
 should be translated into English for the enlightenment of our Catholics, who 
 really know little of these matters. The work was compiled by the catholic 
 A lletz author of many useful and religious publications. By a reference to that 
 work, p. 701, it will be found that one of the commonest infamous crimes -during 
 the time of Popes Julius, Alexander VI., Leo X., and the rest, was declared 
 punishable by total sequestration from the rest of the Christians during the life 
 of the sinner, after receiving one hundred strokes of a whip, being shaved and 
 banished for ever, without receiving the sacrament excepting on his death-bed. 
 See Council of Toledo, in the year of our Lord 693 eight or nine hundred years 
 before. I have before alluded to the decisions of councils in the matter of disci- 
 pline Book I.
 
 ACCLAMATIONS AT THE END OF THE COUNCIL. 169 
 
 felicity in the light of the saints," were cried to Paul III. 
 and Julius III., who began the Council. " To the 
 memory of Charles V., and of the most serene kings who 
 promoted the Council." Benediction was shouted, 
 waking the unnatural echo, " Amen, Amen." " To the 
 most serene Emperor Ferdinand, always august, orthodox 
 and peaceful, and to all our kings, republics, and princes, 
 many years." And the holy synod shouted : " Preserve, 
 
 Lord, the pious and Christian emperor : celestial 
 Emperor Imperator ceelestis guard the kings of the 
 earth, the preservers of the right faith." To the legates 
 of the apostolic see, and the presidents of the Council, 
 " Many thanks with many years," were imprecated : to 
 the cardinals and " illustrious " orators, the same : to 
 the " most holy " bishops, " life and a happy return to 
 their sees " : to the heralds of truth, " perpetual me- 
 mory " : to the orthodox Senate, " Many years." " The 
 most holy Council of Trent, may we confess her faith, 
 may we always observe her decrees." And they lifted 
 up their voices, crying " May we always confess may 
 we always observe." Confess what ? Observe what 1 
 
 1 do not know, for it is not stated, and cannot possibly 
 be imagined semper confiteamur, semper servemus. 
 " Thus we all believe ; all feel alike ; all subscribe, con- 
 senting and embracing. This is the faith of Saint Peter 
 and the Apostles : this is the faith of the fathers : this 
 is the faith of the orthodox." " So we believe, so we 
 feel, so we subscribe," was the roar of the confessors in 
 congregation. " Adhering to these decrees, may we be 
 made worthy of the mercies and grace of the first, great, 
 and supreme priest, Jesus Christ of God, with the inter- 
 cession of our inviolate mistress, the holy God-bearer, 
 and of all the saints." " So be it, so be it ; Amen, Amen,"
 
 170 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 and at last, there was one final toast. And here let 
 me ask, have you not often with horror imagined the 
 dreadful sound of that howl, when the cruel Jews cried, 
 " Crucify him Crucify him ? " Then you may fancy 
 the sound, when the cardinal cried : " Anathema to all 
 Heretics " and their parched tongues gasped the final 
 acclamation : " Anathema, anathema ! " l I trust that 
 we have found more than mere epithets to interest us in 
 this astonishing affair. It is, however, most curious for 
 the Jesuits (with their " pious " picking) to observe, that 
 
 1 At the conclusion of the acclamations, " the legatee and presidents enjoined 
 all the fathers, under penalty of excommunication, to subscribe with their own 
 hands, before they left Trent, the decrees of the Council, or to approve them by 
 a public instrument." There were 255 in all, composed of 4 pontifical legates, 
 2 cardinals, 3 patriarchs, 25 archbishops, 168 bishops, 7 abbots, procurators 
 lawfully absent 39, generals of orders 7. For the whole of the affair, see 11 
 Sacro Concilia di Trento (Latin and Italian), Venezia, 1822, p. 389, et seq., end 
 of 25th Session. The pope made a batch of nineteen cardinals, all selected from 
 his partisans in the Council, and he admitted and confirmed the decrees by a 
 bull dated 26th January, 1564. They were immediately published and received 
 in the churches of Italy as at Rome. Spain and Poland also received them : 
 but the Germans and the Protestant princes would not hear of the Council, and 
 stuck to the Confession of Augsburg. The Emperor Ferdinand, who had such 
 fine epithets in the acclamations, the Duke of Bavaria, and the other Catholic 
 princes demanded communion in both kinds for the laity, and the marriage of 
 priests. In France the doctrine of the Council was received " because it was the 
 ancient doctrine of the Church of Rome," says Dupin, a doctor of the Sorbonne. 
 But the decrees about discipline, which are not according to the common-law, 
 were never received there, either by the king's or the clergy's authority, what- 
 ever efforts were made to get them received and published in that country. 
 Dupin, Hist, of the Church, iv., p. 116. Such was the very doubtful settlement 
 of the faith by the universal Council of the Christian Church the most holy 
 synod of Trent. Its immediate effect was redoubled rancour against the 
 " heretics," giving all the selfish feelings fierce motives for persecution, ending 
 in the horrible " religious " wars of France. One thing may be said in favour of 
 the Council ; it enriched the city of Trent, by the concourse of so many wealthy 
 and sumptuous bishops, ambassadors, and others ; and made it " illustrious " on 
 the map of Northern Italy illustrious to the devotee, the fanatic, and the cal- 
 culating Pharisee ; but to the right-minded, to him who thinks as he reads, to 
 the Christian, that city is a monument of human infatuation, a true comedy of 
 " Much Ado about Nothing."
 
 OPPOSITION TO THE JESUITS AT ROME. 171 
 
 the names least provided with laudatory adjectives, are 
 those of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. 
 
 From Trent to Rome the progress of General Lainez 
 was a triumph, minutely described by his historians, as 
 the result of his exploits in France and in the Laiuez tri . 
 Council, his sustained credit, the celestial 52n t ' m 
 mission for which he was appointed, and the Rome- 
 immense authority of his fewest words dicta ejus vel 
 pauca vim ingentem habebant but, unfortunately, in the 
 midst of his triumph, his mule took fright, dashed him 
 to the ground, and ran over him. He escaped unhurt, 
 which deliverance all confidently ascribed, says Sacchinus, 
 to the special patronage of God and the God-bearer 
 Mary singulari Dei ac Deiparte patrocinio hand dubie 
 factum. One of his first official acts was the appoint- 
 ment of Francis Borgia to the post of assistant, in the 
 place of another, who was discharged ; and one of the 
 first hopes and expectations of the Jesuits was the quiet 
 possession of a seminary in contemplation by the pope ; 
 but the result was not as agreeable as the hours of 
 hope. Admitting the grasping spirit of the Jesuits, we 
 must still take into account the selfish passions of their 
 opponents : immense opposition was made to the pro- 
 posed appointment, by the Roman clergy. 1 giti<ju 
 The Roman professors, like all other profes- the Jesuits 
 
 ... at Rome. 
 
 sors, hated all monopoly, excepting their own ; 
 and they accordingly sent to the pope their protestation, 
 showing " that it was neither for the honour nor the 
 interest of the Church to confide the education of young 
 ecclesiastics to strangers ; mothers who nurse their own 
 children are most esteemed on that account, and the 
 children are better brought up. Rome was not deficient 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 4, 10.
 
 172 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 of men of very great merit, more capable than the 
 Jesuits to fashion young clergymen in science and piety. 
 The instruction which these Jesuits give to their pupils 
 is not solid ; and they will carry off the best pupils of 
 the seminary to turn them into Jesuits ; all they want 
 is to add revenues to their colleges in fine, the rights of 
 the clergy of Rome are threatened." l 
 
 About the same time, Father Ribera and all the 
 Jesuits of the colleges of Milan were attainted of 
 foul crimes and misdemeanours. This Ribera 
 was father-confessor to Charles Borromeo, 
 archbishop of Milan a famous saint in the calendar. 
 His uncle, Pope Pius IV., made him an archbishop in his 
 twenty-second year, which was, perhaps, rather worse 
 than Paul III/s creation of a cardinal out of a boy, not 
 yet out of his teens. However, both were papal relatives, 
 Charles Bor- m tne time of papal abuses ; and Charles was 
 romeo. intended for a saint ; and thus the fact must 
 
 be passed over, if it cannot be excused. 2 The young 
 archbishop suddenly assumed a life of great rigidity, and, 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 470 ; Sacchin. lib. viii. 13. 
 
 2 Charles Borromeo is represented as the model of churchmen in general, 
 and bishops in particular. " All the favour he enjoyed, and all the papal 
 authority he could command, all the enticements of the pleasures which sur- 
 rounded him, and which might have corrupted men of a more advanced age, 
 only served to give this young cardinal the occasion for practising virtue and 
 edifying the Church. In effect, he was so exempt from luxury, avarice, and all 
 kinds of intemperance, that he always passed for a model of innocence, modesty, 
 and religion. As a bishop, he gloriously acquitted himself of all the duties of a 
 holy shepherd. He animated the faithful by the holiness of his life, and the 
 admirable purity with which he daily applied himself to the practices of piety. 
 He restored the ruined churches ; he built new ones. He corrected irregu- 
 larities ; he abolished the profane customs which the corruption of the age had 
 introduced, and which the negligence of the bishops had encouraged. He laboured 
 to reduce the morals of the time to the rules of primitive discipline ; and by his 
 vigilance and example, he reformed the great city of Milan, which was before 
 so debauched, so little used to the practices of religion, and so abandoned to 
 luxury, lust, and all sorts of vices." Gh-atiani, La Vie dc Commendon, t. ii. 9.
 
 CHARGE AGAINST FATHER RIBERA. 173 
 
 with most commendable zeal, looked after the conduct 
 of his clergymen, the monks, and professors of his see. 
 All this was attributed by the Jesuits to the unction of 
 Father Ribera, and the " Spiritual Exercises" of Loyola, 
 and the harassments consequent to the reforms set on 
 foot by the zealous archbishop, suggested, according to 
 the Jesuits, one of the foulest charges imaginable against 
 the confessor Ribera. 1 Frankly, there is some proba- 
 bility that the charge was false. It is easy to concoct 
 charges and to utter imputations against any man, and 
 the world is but too eager to spread and believe them : 
 in the present case, as in many others, relating to other 
 men, the accusation proves nothing excepting the asper- 
 sion on the reputation of the Jesuits. I need not say 
 that the hostile histories of the Jesuits broadly and 
 boldly assert the charges, as though they were facts, 2 
 though Charles Borromeo himself is stated to have 
 recognised Ribera's innocence, and continued to honour 
 him with his confidence. 3 Meanwhile the fate of this 
 Jesuit tended to bewilder the judgment which men might 
 form in his favour. Lainez sent him off to the foreign 
 missions. The proximate occasion was as follows : 
 The excessive fervour of his nephew, Charles Borromeo, 
 induced Pope Pius IV. to believe other rumours, which 
 affirmed that the Jesuits were striving to get him into 
 the Society. The pope had large ecclesiastical views 
 respecting his nephew, and this announcement roused 
 him from the indifference in which the fouler charges 
 against the Jesuits had left his Holiness. He frowned 
 on the aspiring Society. Lainez was ill. The brethren 
 resorted to propitiation. They scourged themselves five 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 13 ; Joly, i. 465. 2 Quesnel, ii. 
 
 3 Guissano, a contemporary ; De Vit S. Car. Borrom., and others.
 
 174 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 times, fasted three times ; the priests offered ten masses, 
 and the laity prayed ten times, whilst all joined together 
 in the evenings to rehearse the litany. 1 Scarcely reco- 
 vered, he proceeded to the Vatican, and protested that 
 he had always advised the archbishop to moderate his 
 fervour. Still the pope feared Ribera's influence on his 
 penitent's mind. Lainez cut the Gordian knot at once, 
 promising to despatch Ribera to the Indies. 2 
 
 Lainez cuts L i 
 
 the Gordian The pope was satisfied, for his Holiness had 
 insisted on that condition enixe contenderat ; 3 
 but it still remains uncertain whether the restoration 
 of papal favour was owing to the proof of innocence on 
 both heads of accusation respecting the Jesuits, or to 
 the ready compromise tendered by Lainez, who sacrificed 
 the Jesuit-confessor. Ribera's reputation was likely 
 to suffer by the sort of banishment, as the world would 
 deem the Jesuit's disappearance ; but the good of the 
 Society was paramount to the interests of the mem- 
 ber : every Jesuit surrenders his reputation, as well as 
 his life, into the hands of his superior. He is " indif- 
 ferent" to his reputation. We might pause here to 
 inquire how such indifference reacts on his conscience 
 making it as soft wax that takes every form, as an old 
 man's stick used at pleasure, as a corpse that has no 
 voluntary motion, according to the letter of the Jesuit- 
 law the dying words of Ignatius. Self-respect is the 
 ministering angel of God vouchsafed to console us for 
 every loss, excepting that of reputation. Succeed in 
 depriving a man of that, and make him feel the fact, 
 and you will have made him desperate in heart, though 
 imperative circumstances may compel him to be and 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 15. 2 Cretineau, ii. 468. 
 
 3 Sacchin. lib. viii. 28.
 
 REFLECTIONS ON RIBERA'S EXILE. 175 
 
 remain in your hands, as plastic wax, an old man's 
 stick, melting carrion. The imputations cast on the 
 Jesuit-colleges and Ribera were not satisfac- 
 
 Reflectionn. 
 
 torily shaken off. They remain positively 
 affirmed, and have an air of probability, enhanced by 
 the consideration forced upon us, as often as we think of 
 Roman celibacy, and test it with the principles of phy- 
 siology. And certain facts, too, which we may have 
 heard positively asserted not by strangers, not by Pro- 
 testants, with names and places well known such facts 
 throw a hideous discredit on Roman celibacy. Vigilum 
 canum tristes excubice the drowsy watch-dogs of the 
 " rules " would nod at last : nee munierant satis they 
 fell asleep. To throw this consideration into the ques- 
 tion bewilders the case still more ; and we would 
 willingly cling to the defence put forth by the Jesuits in 
 the motive they allege for Ribera's exile, namely, to 
 appease the pope in the matter of his nephew ; and we 
 would even believe that the pope honestly and heartily 
 exonerated them from the charges, by his subsequent 
 conduct towards them ; but, to explain this, it were 
 sufficient to consider that he had no reason to believe all 
 the Jesuits guilty ; and, moreover, that a general and 
 thorough reformation in this matter would have been a 
 labour similar to that of Hercules in the stables of 
 Augeas. The Jesuits were useful to him and his cause. 
 With all their faults he loved them still. If it may be 
 said that the charges were not proved, it may also 
 be added that the defence and concomitants were sus- 
 picious. There we wih 1 leave the matter. As a further 
 proof of the pope's good-will and gratitude for finding 
 himself so obsequiously humoured, the Roman Seminary 
 was imperatively put into the hands of the Jesuits, in
 
 176 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 spite of the Roman professors. 1 Thus, by the dexterous 
 management of Lainez in humouring the pope by sacri- 
 HOW the ficing his subject, Ribera, the tables were 
 tables were turned against the enemies of the Company, 
 
 turned. . J 
 
 and the very charge which was thought surest 
 to penetrate the worldly-minded pope, to the injury of 
 the Jesuits, actually opened the speediest outlet to their 
 deliverance, with honour and profit in addition. On 
 the other hand, there can be no doubt nor wonder that 
 the simple, uninitiated ones amongst the Jesuits, trem- 
 bling in the growl of Vatican thunder, ascribed the 
 thing to their scourgings, fastings, masses, prayers, and 
 litanies their " propitiations to God placamina Dei" 
 just as the " cures " by vegetable pill, jalap, rhubarb, 
 and calomel, are the trophies of quacks and the 
 faculty. 
 
 So complete was the return of the pope's fostering 
 angel to the Company, that he announced his intention 
 The pope's to pay the Jesuit-houses a visit on the follow- 
 Roman ** m & ^ av ' m or d er * assure General Lainez 
 College. O f hi s regards in particular, and the whole 
 Company of his esteem in general. Surrounded by six 
 cardinals and a mob of minor dignitaries, the holy 
 father commenced his atoning progress. In the church 
 of the professed he said prayers postfusas preces, then 
 their house he explored, which he praised for its cleanli- 
 ness and appropriate convenience ; and then he went 
 Grand to the college, to be struck with wonder and 
 
 reception. admiration. On entering the great hall of the 
 students he beheld the walls all covered on one side, with 
 written poems. " What means that V asked the pope. 
 
 1 " Deliberation pontifici omnino esse Seminarii procurationem Patribus 
 demandare." Sacchin. lib. viii. 16.
 
 THE POPE VISITS THE ROMAN COLLEGE. 177 
 
 " Extemporaneous poems on the advent of your Holiness, 
 in the sixteen languages spoken by our pupils from as 
 many different nations," said the Jesuits. The pope 
 expressed his gratification, and the Jesuits proceeded 
 with their adulation. A seat call it a throne was 
 placed for his Holiness, and one of their orators addressed 
 him in the name of his " cohort," " in that oration 
 which was published, and gave universal satisfaction/' 
 says Sacchinus. At the conclusion of the oration, there 
 issued forth a procession of select boys, in appropriate 
 costumes emblematical of the various languages, arts, 
 and sciences professed in the college ; and besides their 
 emblems and decorations, each had on his breast a label 
 inscribed with the name of the art or science, and its 
 professor, whose representative he was a considerate 
 precaution in the Jesuits, for the enlightenment of the 
 ignorant in the mystery of the emblems rudioribus 
 loquebatur which was scarcely a compliment to the 
 pope and his company, though probably very necessary 
 for the emblems were devised to typify Latin, Greek, 
 Hebrew, Arabic, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Mathematics, Arith- 
 metic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, Moral Philosophy, 
 Natural Philosophy, and lastly, the king and queen of 
 all, Theology -princeps ac regina omnium, Theologia. 
 Each typical boy advanced to the pope, and dedicated 
 his respective science to the pontiff, in a short and 
 graceful poem. So .pleased was the pope with this last 
 contrivance, that he said he would do much more for 
 the College and for the Company than he had hitherto 
 done dicens multo se plum pro Collegio, proque Societate, 
 quam fecisset adhuc facturum: Thence Pope Pius IV. 
 proceeded round the inclosures of the college, expressing 
 a particular wish to see the house which had belonged 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 178 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 to Paul IV., his implacable foeman : it is to be hoped 
 that he said nothing bitter, after murdering his nephews, 
 and contented himself with a De Profundis, in the 
 bottomless gulf of his vengeance. Thence the pope 
 advanced to the German College of the Jesuits : but as 
 it was getting late, he declined hearing the verses they 
 had manufactured for his reception versus ad exdpien- 
 dum paratos : but he took a glance at the company 
 awaiting his arrival, and the supper-table all laid and 
 ready ; and after the usual questions and answers in 
 similar visitations, respecting the organisation and pro- 
 fessional course of the college, the holy father went 
 home. Sacchinus says the pope's domestics reported 
 that the Company entirely engrossed his attention on 
 that day which we need not be told that he greatly 
 praised her institutions and labours, and severely lashed 
 those who had blamed her so unjustly " and the 
 reader must decide whether -the pope had seen enough 
 on that occasion, to justify his judgment. Sacchinus, 
 wiser than the uninitiated simple ones before 
 alluded to, propounds the true cause of the 
 pope's pacification, as he calls it namely, the banishment 
 of Bibera to the Indian mission the Constitutional sink 
 of offensive Jesuits ; l and the pope was solicitous, or 
 solicited, to make amends for that admitted disgrace of 
 the Jesuit, by the visit of patronage, as Ribera's departure 
 might cast a slur on the innocence of the other fathers. 2 
 
 1 Const, p. ii., c. ii., D. " Quando non tarn propter rationem vel magnitudinem 
 peccati, quam ob removendum offendiculum, quod aliis prsebuit, demitti aliquem 
 esset ; si alioqui aptus esset, expendet prudentia superioris an expediat facul- 
 tatem ei dare, ut ad locum alium Societatis valde remotum, eandem non egre- 
 diendo, proficiscatur." This has been quoted before in its proper place when 
 treating of the Constitutions. 
 
 2 " Hsec igitur profectio pontificem solicitudine liberatura haud mediocriter
 
 THEIR EMBLEMATIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 179 
 
 So that whilst this writer lays it down that God and 
 St. Ignatius were the authors of the pope's pacification 
 he fails not wisely to exhibit the human means em- 
 ployed for the purpose means which he may be per- 
 mitted to couple with the name of Ignatius, but which 
 scarcely comport with that of God though the Jesuit 
 quotes Scripture for the fact, saying : " since the ways 
 of the Lord are ways of pleasantness, I will add the 
 means whereby I think the result was accomplished." 1 
 All things considered, the whole affair of pacification 
 was a sort of " dust in the eyes " of the public in behalf 
 of a set of men whom the public believed somewhat 
 infamous, but who were useful servants to the pope 
 notwithstanding, and therefore to be accredited by a 
 display of pontifical approbation. 
 
 We must not forget the display, however. It is 
 remarkable in many respects. Already it appears that 
 the Jesuits were directing their wits to the 
 
 . . . . Reflections 
 
 contrivance of emblematic illustrations which, on the ais- 
 by the middle of the next century, they ex- 
 hibited in perfection. If Alciati gave them the idea, 
 their own inventive faculties carried it out with admirable 
 spirit and effect. Nothing can exceed the aptness, 
 point, and in many cases, most exquisite delicacy of 
 some of their emblems, in their illustrated works. Their 
 Imago, of which specimens have been given in this 
 history, is not the best of their productions in this 
 department, though decidedly the most extravagant, 
 simply because the vanity of the Company made her 
 
 affecit, ut Patrum cseterorum animadvertere innocentiam posset." Sacchin. 
 lib. viii. 19. 
 
 1 " Equidem placati pontificis, tametsi auctorem Deum, ac B. Ignatium baud 
 pro dubio pono, quia tamen molles vise Domini sunt, quibus id effectum admini- 
 culis putem, adjiciam, &c." Id. ib. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 members mad on the subject of their " exploits." l We 
 must also remark, in this display, the admirable method 
 of their adulation. How difficult but splendid in its 
 power in the art of flattery ! Even to administer merited 
 praise requires some tact to make it pleasant : but to 
 flatter grossly, and yet to seem honest withal, requires 
 some training, considerable taste, great judgment and 
 a deep knowledge of the human heart, resulting from 
 mental dissection, which few have the patience to pursue, 
 either with regard to others or themselves and a 
 knowledge of both is indispensable. On this occasion 
 the modus operandi of the Jesuits is a model of flattery, 
 delicate in its grossness. And in that dedication of all 
 the arts and sciences to the pope, they reached the 
 climax of flattery and perhaps the fact reminds you 
 of that metaphorical description I gave of Loyola's 
 interview with Pope Paul III., about to establish the 
 Company. 2 Lastly, I would draw attention to the 
 rapidity of Jesuit-execution on that occasion : all was 
 planned and achieved in one day and night 3 and yet 
 they could devise and exhibit fourteen emblematic 
 costumes to represent the shape of that which had no 
 shape " distinguishable in member, joint, or limb" in 
 concrete solidifying abstract " vain wisdom all and false 
 philosophy" and lastly composing sixteen poems in 
 sixteen languages, singing flattery to the pope flattery 
 whose greatest fulsomeness was but " a pleasing sorcery " 
 to charm the sense and captivate the soul. 4 
 
 1 The subject will be further developed when the literature of the Jesuits is 
 discussed. 2 See vol. I. p. 139. 
 
 3 " Eo die subortis impedimentis non venit, insequenti autem," &c. Sacchin. 
 ib. 16. 
 
 4 What a contrast is the Jesuit method of complimental exhibitions to our 
 modern affairs of the kind ! In these the dejeuner a la fourchette, or the dinner
 
 A DESPERATE ASSAULT OP FOES. 181 
 
 This " memorable day" of the Company of Jesus 
 might " charm pain for awhile, or anguish, and excite 
 fallacious hope;" its glorious sun was destined how- 
 ever to suffer horrible eclipse. It was by no means 
 clear to the men at Rome that the papal visit to the 
 Jesuits was not a visitation one of those uncomfortable 
 things which ought always to be notified in advance, 
 as is considerately done amongst those who stand on 
 prerogatives. But if the pope really intended a search- 
 ing visitation, the Jesuits took right good care to keep 
 him intent on the most pleasing sounds imaginable, and 
 after tiring him out with their sights and flattery, sent 
 him home with the right impression on his heart. Let 
 it therefore be pro benignitatis argumento, a token of his 
 love and its " considerations." : The pope seemed pacified 
 with the Jesuits : these retained the Roman seminary 
 and yet, after his visit or visitation, the pope did not 
 think proper to justify the Jesuits respecting the late 
 most hideous accusations. Out of the smothered cinders 
 the conflagration burst forth anew and with Another 
 tenfold energy. The foes of the Jesuits ad- enemy, 
 vanced with ruinous assault. A bishop led them on. 
 This looks imposing : but whatever impression that 
 majestic name should make, the Jesuits totally erase it 
 by handing down to posterity, that this Catholic bishop 
 was a bastard, a blinkard one of those who had no 
 See of cracked reputation a disappointed man. 1 Here 
 
 with many " covers," is the only remarkable invention to please the sense and 
 captivate the soul. It is curious here to note three different methods by three 
 different sections of humanity, each " paying respect " by three different sections 
 of the human body, the head, the stomach, and the feet : thus the savage 
 Indians dance honour to the brave ; the Jesuits administer the same in emblems 
 and in verse ; the English eat and drink it amain which smacks somewhat of 
 the savage. 
 
 1 " Ducem se Episcopus praebuit ex iis, quibus nulla diocoesis est, spurius ipse
 
 182 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 you have a specimen of the sort of " characters" the 
 Jesuits give their opponents even in their own church 
 and religion, thus indirectly dishonoured ; but all 
 through a natural instinct, similar to that which would 
 make a drowning man grip and drag down to the depths 
 below, even the mother that bore him. 
 
 This feature is one of the most objectionable in the 
 Jesuits. Their rancorous, crushing, revengeful hatred 
 has been frightful. Whoever once offended them was 
 visited in a thousand ways during life, and their books 
 exhibit the same fury lashing the dead. This is scarcely 
 The hatred of consistent with the conduct expected from 
 the Jesmts. ^ e Companions of Jesus ; but it reconciles 
 us to the disappointing fact, that Jesuitism was only 
 a section of humanity, with all the passions, as usual, 
 directed into different channels, but not a whit the better 
 for that, since, with the best possible intentions pro- 
 posed in theory, they imitated the worst possible men in 
 practice. And they managed this bishop, so unfortunate 
 in his birth, his person, and fortunes. He seems to have 
 set to work in right good earnest notwithstanding. He 
 wrote two small books libcttos, utrumque famosum et 
 impudentium refertum probrorum both of them touching 
 "the immediate jewel of their souls," as lago would say, 
 and full of " uncleanly apprehensions." He distributed 
 copies amongst the cardinals in Rome, and far and wide 
 
 ortu, et luscus, nee optima fama Venetiis diu versatus ; quern proprius etiain 
 urebat dolor, quod cum opera ejus Cardinalis Sabellus ad visendas uteretur 
 Urbis ecclesias jam posthabito illo," &c. Sacchin. ib. 20. As a specimen of 
 Jesuit-variations on the same theme, take Bartoli's account of the bishop. 
 " Per dignita Vescovo, ma in partibus ; per nascimento, basti dime che di nobil 
 famiglia, ma non curato da' suoi piu che se loro non si attenesse, atteso la non 
 legittima conditione del nascere : preso dal Cardinale Savelli in aiuto a riformar 
 le paroche riuscitogli piu bisognoso di reformation nc' costumi egli, che quegli 
 cui riformava." Dell" Hal. f. 489.
 
 THEY GET OUT OF A TERRIBLE SCRAPE. 183 
 
 out of Italy, amongst the noble and the great ; but, 
 according to Sacchinus, he proved too much, and this 
 seems to have ruined his case. " As a certain 
 
 The blind- 
 poet tells," observes Sacchinus, " of a certain ness of their 
 
 , . , enemies. 
 
 woman, who gave a cup ot poison to her 
 hated husband, and, not content with that, mixed up 
 another, but which turned out to be the antidote and 
 cure of the former, so this bishop, carried away by 
 a too great desire to do harm, and heaping up many 
 things so enormous and contrary to fact, the whole mass 
 destroyed itself, and one poison was made harmless 
 by the other," 1 a comparison which shows that the 
 Jesuits consider moderate charges poisons, and immo- 
 derate ones antidotes of the former. The philosophic 
 Bayle said the same thing, and I have had very often to 
 regret, in ploughing through the materials of this history, 
 that neither the Jesuits nor their opponents have profited 
 by the warning. But the bishop, with the utmost con- 
 fidence, said he had written nothing which he was not 
 prepared to prove before a just tribunal, with proper 
 witnesses. A cardinal, the patron of their Seminary, 
 was appointed to investigate the case between the 
 Jesuits and the bishop. The latter brought his wit- 
 nesses : they were ex-students of the German College, 
 and ex-Jesuits. That was enough to damage the case ; 
 their testimony was pronounced defective on that account 
 at once, and their statements were rejected. 2 These are 
 the simple facts of the case and the judgment. The 
 albged proofs of great private disorders were unsatisfac- 
 tory, by an error in form, such as any lawyer would turn 
 to account. The accused were acquitted. The accuser was 
 imprisoned. And he would have been more severely dealt 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 21. Sacchin. lib. viii. 27 ; Bartoli, f. 492.
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 with, had the Jesuits not interceded for him, as they tell 
 us. This is all that history has to do with. To say 
 that it was easy and prudent, by way of precaution, to 
 expel those who might give evidence against them, 
 would, perhaps, be an injustice to the Jesuits, similar to 
 their own usual disparagement of those who have ven- 
 tured to question their method, unfold their real motives, 
 and dissect their exploits. 1 As an additional favour, the 
 pope, who from the first had promised to be their 
 patron and protector, 2 wrote a letter to the Emperor 
 Maximilian, Ferdinand's successor, and other princes, 
 exonerating the Jesuits, as they assure us, from the late 
 aspersions, which, it seems, had penetrated into Ger- 
 many, to the great scandal of the Catholics and contempt 
 of the heretics. 3 It was certainly kind of his Holiness 
 fully to reward so perfect a concurrence as he found in 
 the general of his cohort ; and it would have been 
 scarcely fair to continue to acquiesce in the outrages 
 visited on " those whom, in a moment of weakness" we 
 are actually told by the Jesuit historian, " he abandoned 
 to the studied injustice of the enemies of religion/' 4 
 
 Their public agitations interfered but little with the 
 educational arrangements of the Jesuits. Having men 
 Academic f r all work, their public athletes wrestled 
 with the foe whilst their patient teachers were 
 engaged in a scarcely less arduous undertaking the 
 battle with ignorance in the young and the old. To 
 
 1 Quesnel says : " In tiiie, by dint of falsehood and friends they succeeded so 
 well in imposing on their judges, that they got out of the terrible scrape, which 
 was a source of such grief to St. Charles Borromeo, that he left the court of 
 Rome and retired to his archbishopric of Milan." T. ii. 129, referring to an 
 Italian Life of the Saint. 2 Sacchin. lib. viii. 7. 
 
 s Sacchinus gives two letters as the originals on the subject. 
 
 4 " Ceux que, dans un moment de foiblesse, il a abaudonnes aux injastices 
 calcule'es des ennemis de la Religion." Cretineau, p. 468.
 
 AN ACADEMIC DISPLAY. 185 
 
 stimulate the love of praise or approbation so natural to 
 all, the Jesuits now began to distribute rewards of 
 merit to their pupils. The first distribution, in 1564, 
 was attended with great pomp and circumstance, and 
 graced by a concourse of Rome's nobles and cardinals. 
 A tragedy was performed ; and at its conclusion a 
 table covered with the prizes was deposited : the prizes 
 were select works of the ancients, elegantly and sump- 
 tuously printed and bound. When the judges who had 
 awarded the prizes were seated, a boy, acting as herald, 
 proclaimed quod bonum ac felix eveniret, a good and 
 happy issue to the proceedings. He then announced 
 the names of the successful competitors. As each was 
 called he proceeded to the stage, where he was received 
 by two other boys : one gave him the prize, repeating 
 a distich of congratulation, the other bestowing in like 
 manner upon him a solemn axiom against vain glory. 
 Most of the prizes were won by the students of the 
 German College, which was in a flourishing condition. 
 There were two hundred and fifteen students from 
 various nations many of them nobles, and intimately 
 acquainted with the cardinals and nobility of Rome. 
 Few were Germans, but there were two Turks, and one 
 Armenian, of excellent wit ; all of whom were main- 
 tained by the pope, and civilised by the Jesuits. 1 
 At the same time the Jesuits were engaged on a trans- 
 lation of the Council of Trent into Arabic. 
 
 The Council 
 
 They erected an Arabic press, at the pope s of Trent in 
 expense, and the Jesuit of the unfortunate 
 expedition to Egypt, John Baptist Elian, executed the 
 translation. It is difficult to discover the object of 
 this extraordinary translation, unless the Jesuits were 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 38, et seq.
 
 186 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 preparing for another expedition. The measure proposed 
 and carried by Canisius was more immediately to the pur- 
 pose. To prevent Protestants from furtively 
 sharing the advantages of Catholic education, 
 he proposed a religious test or formula of faith which 
 the candidates for academic honours and professorships 
 should accept and the pope sanctioned and ratified 
 the measure ; l a measure excusable, and consistent with 
 the aims, means, and ends of the "religious" people 
 in those times : but perhaps in the absence of more 
 sensible, religious, consistent and honourable motives 
 the very fact of this test being a Jesuit-invention should 
 induce our modern " religious " people to abolish the 
 oath of mockery devised to defend Protestantism, which 
 needs no human defence but perfect freedom of dis- 
 cussion, and real, determined efforts on the part of 
 God's paid servants, to promote education among the 
 people. In addition to their test we shall constantly 
 find that the Jesuits made every effort to educate the 
 people : if the same could be said of our moderns, who 
 cling most fiercely to their test, they would at least 
 merit some small portion of the praise which is due to 
 the Jesuits for earning their bread in their vocation. 
 
 And now, as the vegetable world, what time the 
 spring sets free the sap, bursts the seeds, puts forth her 
 The Jesuits opening buds, soon with leafy energies to 
 at Paris. usurp the plains, the valleys, and the moun- 
 tain-sides thus the Company of Jesus, under the first 
 suns of apparent favour, rushed into life, and showed 
 how she had been gathering sap, during her seeming 
 winter-sleep in France, the Gallic province of the 
 Company, as yet only in her Catalogue. In the year 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 41.
 
 THE JESUITS AND THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 187 
 
 1564 the Jesuits entered into the lists with the Uni- 
 versity of Paris. Following up the very peculiar 
 " reception " which had been granted them at the 
 Conference of Poissy, provided with the wealth of Clare- 
 mont, the strong veterans of the Company resolved 
 boldly to throw themselves upon Paris and astonish the 
 natives. In the rue St. Jaques they bought a huge 
 mansion called the Cour de Langres, and turned it into 
 a college. Over the portals they clapped an inscription, 
 Collegium Societatis nominis Jesu, the College of the 
 Company of the name of Jesus. They had been expressly 
 forbidden to use their former title ; they had agreed 
 to the terms ; and now " by this subtlety they hoped 
 to neutralise the opposition of the parliament and the 
 university : but they were disappointed." 1 A reflection 
 on this trick is forced from their modern historian. 2 
 He admits that " such an assault of quirks was as little 
 worthy of the great bodies which sustained it, as of the 
 religious Company against which it was directed. It is 
 not with wretched arms that those who govern others 
 should be attacked or defended. The parliament and 
 the university began the war, the Jesuits followed their 
 example. They were placed on the ground of chicanery, 
 they showed themselves as clever as they exhibited 
 themselves eloquent in the church and professorships" 
 an extraordinary combination of qualities, decidedly. 
 As the new teachers of Paris, the Company resolved to 
 be represented by men whose science even 
 
 Maldonat, 
 
 her rivals were the first to admire. Father vanegas, 
 
 Maldonat, the most celebrated interpreter of 
 
 the Scriptures, expounded Aristotle's philosophy ; and 
 
 1 Cretiiieau, i. 437; Goubauld, i. 50; Pasquier, 26; Qucsnel, ii. 129; Cou- 
 drette, i. 100. 2 Cretineau, ib.
 
 188 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Michael Vanegas delivered commentaries on the " Em- 
 blems " of Andrew Alciati, a famous professor of the 
 sixteenth century, and one of the first, after the revival 
 of letters, who embellished the topics which his pre- 
 decessors had sunk in barbarous obscurity. In his 
 " Emblems " he treats of morality : but according to a 
 Jesuit 1 he endeavours to wreathe roses round about the 
 bristling thorns ; a pleasant epicurean treat ; specious 
 fantastic but comfortable as a robe of gauze in the 
 warm days of summer. 2 No better subject could 
 possibly be selected for the times when men, being 
 strong partisans of " religion," honestly desired that 
 their passions should be allowed for, and indulged as 
 much as possible. Orthodox in faith, they wished to 
 be consistent in morals : it was necessary, in order to 
 ensure orthodoxy, that morality should be easy and 
 comfortable. We shall soon see that the Jesuits per- 
 fectly knew the world they had to deal with in this 
 ticklish matter. 
 
 Other Jesuits, equally renowned, taught the Greek 
 and Latin languages. They collected an audience of 
 several thousands at their lectures. 3 
 
 Emboldened by success, the Jesuits resolved " to 
 penetrate into the enemy's camp : " they induced Julien 
 The de Saint-Germain, Rector of the University of 
 
 attempt the Paris, in 1562, to grant them letters of in- 
 
 university. , . -ini -i t i i 
 
 duction, and all the privileges enjoyed by the 
 members of the university. In 1564, diplomas in hand, 
 the Jesuits began their academical course, announcing 
 
 1 Feller, Biog. univ. Alciat. 
 
 2 He died in 1550 (at Pavia) of plethora, says Feller, from excess, like a true 
 philosophist Epicuri de greye pwcw. Miiioe, however, represents him in n 
 somewhat different light. Feller is always a suspicious authority. 
 
 3 Cretineau, i. 439.
 
 A TICKLISH QUESTION ADROITLY ANSWERED. 189 
 
 Dreadful 
 
 themselves as forming an " integral part " of the uni- 
 versity. This manoeuvre gave the crowning stroke. 1 
 
 The new rector, Marchand, convoked the 
 faculties in a fright. Privilege was astounded 
 
 for never since created man 
 Met such embodied force, as, named with these, 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 Warr'd on by cranes. 
 
 A consultation ensued. Were the Jesuits to be ad- 
 mitted into the bosom of the university \ The proposition 
 was scouted indignantly negatived unanimously away 
 with the Jesuits ! 
 
 But the Jesuits would not go. They persisted and 
 were cited to an interrogatory. 
 
 " Who are you 1" they were asked. 
 
 " Tales quales, such as the parliament called us/' they 
 replied. And in vain the rector Prevot put the question 
 in four different forms : 2 the Jesuits were a match for 
 
 1 Cretineau, i. 439. 
 
 2 Hector. Are you Seculars, or Regu- 
 lars, or Monks 1 
 
 Jesuits. We are in France such as 
 the Parliament called us, namely, the 
 Company of the College which is called 
 of Claremont. 
 
 R. Are you in fact Monks or Secu- 
 lars ? 
 
 /. The assembly has no right to ask 
 us that question. 
 
 R. Are you really Regular Monks, 
 or Seculars ? 
 
 /. We have already several times 
 answered. We are such as the Par- 
 liament called us ; we are not bound 
 to answer. 
 
 JR. You give no reply as to your 
 name, and you say you do not choose 
 to answer as to the fact. The decree 
 
 Rector. Estisne Seculares an Regu- 
 lares, an Monachi ? 
 
 JesuitcB. Sumus in Gallia tales quales 
 nos nominavit Suprema Curia, nempe 
 Societas Collegii quod Claramontense 
 appellatur. 
 
 R. An reipsa estis Monachi, an Se- 
 culares ? 
 
 /. Non est prsesentis congregations 
 illud a nobis exposcere. 
 
 R. Estisne revera Monachi, Regu- 
 lares, an Seculares ? 
 
 /. Jam pluries respondimus : Sumus 
 tales quales nos nominat Curia, neque 
 tenemur respondere. 
 
 R. De nomine nullum responsum ; 
 de re dicitis non velle respondere. Se- 
 natus-consultum prohibuit ne utamini
 
 190 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 him : they were not to be caught by the trap. If they 
 acknowledged themselves of the Society of Jesus, they 
 would render themselves obnoxious to the Act of Par- 
 liament forbidding them to use the title. So they 
 abdicated the sacred name for the nonce, and assumed 
 tales quales ridiculous enough but in its most awful 
 moments it is hard to avoid laughing at Jesuitism. 
 
 Then the famous " law-suit " ensued between the 
 Jesuits and the University of Paris, destined to be ren- 
 dered remarkable in the history of human 
 
 Result. " 
 
 nature for every extravagance and malignity 
 on both sides of the disgraceful contest. Stephen Pas- 
 quier with his "Catechism of the Jesuits," and the 
 Jesuits with their " Chace of the fox Pasquin," will soon 
 tear charity to pieces, and make a scare-crow of her 
 remnants, to defend their ripening fruits. We shall see 
 them anon ; the vintage is deferred. 1 
 
 of the Parliament has forbidden you to 
 use the name of Jesuits or Society of 
 
 vocabulo Jesuitarum, aut Societatis 
 nominis Jeu. 
 
 the name of Jesus. 
 
 J. We do not hesitate touching the /. Non immoramur circa questionem 
 question of the name ; you can arraign de nomine ; potestis nos vocare in jus si 
 us in law if we assume any other name ; aluid nomen assumimus contra deter- 
 against the regulation of the decree. minationem arresti. Du Boulay, Hist. 
 
 de FUniversite, t. vi. 
 
 1 All the authorities before referred to, beginning with Cretineau and ending 
 with Coudrette. The Jesuits presented a Memorial to the Parliament, in which 
 there are certain admissions which deserve attention. " As the name of 
 Religious is given only to monks who lead an extremely perfect life, we are not 
 Religious in that sense, for we do not think ourselves worthy to profess so holy 
 and perfect a life ; the occupation of the former being only to apply themselves 
 to works of piety, whereas all ours consists in other things, and chiefly in the 
 study of those arts which may conduce to the spiritual good of the public " 
 a most unlooked-for avowal for if there be a character which they strive most 
 to gain credit for in their histories and biographies, it is that of sanctity and 
 moral perfection which was an easy matter, for they said that God had granted 
 the boon to Ignatius that no Jesuit should commit a mortal sin during the first 
 hundred years of the Company, and that Xavier had got the privilege extended 
 over two hundred years more which unfortunately elapsed before the pope
 
 RIVAL MONOPOLIES. 191 
 
 D'Alembert's reflections on both parties, at the pre- 
 sent scene of the tragi-comedy, are apposite. " Scarcely 
 had the Society of Jesus begun to appear in 
 
 _ . . . i -I T/ Reflections. 
 
 trance, when it met with numberless dim- 
 culties in gaining an establishment. The universities 
 especially made the greatest efforts to expel these new 
 comers. It is difficult to decide whether this opposition 
 does honour or discredit to the Jesuits who experienced 
 it. They gave themselves out for the instructors of 
 youth gratuitously ; they counted already amongst 
 them some learned and famous men, superior, perhaps, 
 to those whom the universities could boast : interest and 
 vanity might therefore be sufficient motives to their 
 adversaries, at least in these first moments, to seek to 
 exclude them. We may recollect the like opposition 
 which the Mendicant Orders underwent from these very 
 universities, when they wanted to introduce themselves : 
 opposition founded on pretty nearly the same motives, 
 and which ceased not but by the state into which these 
 orders are fallen, now become incapable of exciting envy. 1 
 
 suppressed them, otherwise a Company of Saints would have perished. The 
 Memorial further says : " With regard to the questions which you have put to 
 us, we cannot reply to them in a clearer, more precise, or distinct manner than 
 we have done. We therefore beseech you to consider all these things, and to 
 act in this affair with your usual moderation, prudence, and kindness. If you 
 will grant us the honour of admitting us among you, and permission to teach, 
 without obliging us to resort to a law-suit, you will always find us obedient to 
 the laws of your University in all things," &c. Qwsnel, Du Boulay, Mercure 
 Jesuit. 347, et alibi. 
 
 To explain the dexterity of their ambiguous reply, tales quales, we must 
 remember that no other answer could have rid them from the embarrassment. 
 If they had called themselves Secular Priests, all their " Privileges " as regulars 
 would fall, besides, their vows were well known. Secondly, they would have 
 surrendered their claim to the rich legacy of the Bishop of Claremont, given to 
 them as Regulars. Had they called themselves Monks they would have been 
 at once excluded from public tuition a privilege never conceded to Monks by 
 the University. 
 
 1 I have shown uiy concurrence in this opinion respecting the motives of
 
 192 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 " On the other hand, it is very probable that the 
 Society, proud of that support which it found amidst so 
 many storms, furnished arms to its adversaries by 
 braving them. It seemed to exhibit, from this time, that 
 spirit of invasion which it has but too much displayed 
 subsequently, but which it has carefully covered at all 
 times with the mask of religion, and zeal for the salvation 
 of souls." l 
 
 The University xrf Louvain, the most celebrated after 
 that of Paris, made the same opposition to the Jesuits. 
 The Jesuits ^he Jesuits could win over, and won over, 
 verait he f n ' kings and their peeple ; but their rivals in the 
 Louvain. public mind, their rivals in the " interests " of 
 tuition, were inexorable. Antagonism fixed as fate was 
 between them, for it was the battle of two monopolies. 
 There was another reason. The Jesuits were innovators ; 
 their system was considered a novelty ; and they promised 
 to " keep pace with the age," accommodating themselves 
 right cleverly to the wants of the times, like any clever 
 
 opposition ; still, we must listen to the expressed motives of the universitarians. 
 After alluding to the nondescript nature of the Company, and the consequent 
 mystification, they proceed to say fairly enough, that "this body is not 
 receivable, but that the members [a few are named] are receivable ; for the 
 University receives all individuals, and prepares them for places among her 
 members, each according to his state and qualifications, to the Secular in the 
 Faculty of Arts, &c-., to the Regular in Theology, &c. The University does not 
 object to there being a college at Claremont, according to the decree of the court, 
 nor to there being Jesuit-bursers in the University. The University, nay 
 Christendom, cannot and ought not to receive and tolerate a house or college 
 entitling itself the House or College of the Jesuits, nor calling itself the College 
 of the Christians ; for of these two names of our Saviour, Christ is common to him 
 with the patriarchs, prophets, priests, and kings ; and Jesus is his proper name, 
 which was given to him at the Circumcision, according to the custom of his 
 people. And let the Jesuits go and call themselves so, if they like, among the 
 unbelieving infidels, for to preach to whom they were first instituted. The 
 University admits the council above the pope, wherefore it cannot receive any com- 
 pany or college whatever, which places the pope above the council" Du Boulay, 
 t. vi. p. 587 ; Annales de la Society i. '22. 
 
 1 Sur la Destruction des Jesuites, p. 1 9, et seq.
 
 universities. 
 
 THE JESUITS COMPARED TO THEIR OPPONENTS. 193 
 
 artist, trader, bookseller, and author ; whereas the 
 universities librated in their apogee, for ever the same, 
 from the beginning even until now, " quenched Touchin the 
 in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea nor good dry- sum of 
 
 3&J J . . - 
 
 land, inextricably confined in the region ot 
 " sable-vested night, eldest of things." An university 
 can no more change its skin than an Ethiop. But the 
 Jesuits were " legion " ready for everything, provided 
 it could be made useful in their vocation glory to the 
 Company and glory to the Church, with comfortable 
 colleges and endowments, not accepted. No lazy drones 
 were the Jesuits : no bibbers of wine, beyond Jesuits M 
 the stomach's comfort : no runners after compared 
 
 to their 
 
 women unto madness ; but always on the opponents. 
 watch always ready for work, work, work, and no 
 respite. " Legion " they were, and would rather be 
 sent into swine than remain idle. If they could not 
 walk on two legs, four would be their locomotives ; and 
 they had no particular objection to fins. Again I say 
 that, in labouring for their hire, the Jesuits have utterly 
 shamed all their competitors, much as it may please 
 their rivals of the universities, ancient and modern, to 
 see them ravenously " cut up/' and hear them savagely 
 abused. Who would not prefer to join the "party" of 
 the Jesuits, rather than condescend to appear in the 
 ranks of those who fatten on the emoluments of " faith," 
 without a reasonable, honest, or honourable motive for 
 " hope," and confining " charity " within the precincts of 
 their own cuirassed egotism cool, calculating, harsh, 
 and exclusive. 
 
 A stirring time ensued for the Jesuits. Religious 
 war what a mockery ! Religious war was raging in 
 France. Denied the preceptorate, they had still an ample 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 194 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 field in the contusion of heresy. Their superabundant 
 
 energies had a thousand outlets. Scattered over France, 
 
 unrecognised by the law of the land, but 
 
 The religious J 
 
 sanctioned by the law of obedience, and im- 
 
 pelled by the fury of " religion," they danced 
 around the boiling cauldron of discord, each dropping in 
 some infernal ingredient " for a charm of powerful 
 trouble," whilst their Hecate at Rome cried " Well done ! 
 I commend your pains." 1 For, let us look back and 
 scan results. Charles IX. had given the Huguenots a 
 " pacification," an edict which permitted them to serve 
 God as they pleased. This was in 1561, immediately 
 after the conference of Poissy. It was a grant even- 
 tuated by expediency ; but the principle of enlightened 
 toleration was nobly asserted by the old Marshal St. 
 Andre, and his wisdom prevailed over the blindness of 
 the age. In truth, Providence left not the men of those 
 times without counsel ; but the inveterate selfishness of 
 kings, nobles, and priests, and ministers, palsied every 
 effort which God so often directs for the good of 
 humanity. All that France could talk or think of, was the 
 conference of Poissy and its results. The Protestants, 
 proud of their rights, thought that all doubts were ended, 
 and sang victory to their ministers. Edict in hand, 
 they transgressed its boundaries, would share the 
 churches with the priests, who yielded in ignorance or 
 in terror, or with a secret inclination to change their 
 skins by joining the Huguenots. 2 Troubles soon ensued 
 skirmishes, assaults, bloodshed, open hostility. 
 
 1 " And every one shall share i' the gains. 
 And now about the cauldron sing, 
 Like elves and fairies in a ring, 
 Enchanting all that you put in." 
 2 D'Aubigne, Mem. col. clvxxii.
 
 RELIGIOUS WAR IN FRANCE. 1 95 
 
 In the party of Rome there was division estrange- 
 ment hostility amongst each other. Seven French 
 bishops the pope excommunicated for granting 
 
 Proceedings 
 
 toleration, or for adopting some of the new of the two 
 doctrines. The Queen of Navarre had em- 
 braced Calvinism : she announced her convictions by 
 breaking down the Catholic images, seizing the churches, 
 expelling the priests : Pope Pius IV. came down with 
 his prerogatives and excommunicated the Queen of 
 Navarre, if in six months she did not appear before him 
 to give an account of herself under penalty of being 
 deprived of all her dignities and dominions her 
 marriage declared null and void her children bastards 
 menacing the queen with all the penalties awarded to 
 heretics by Christ's vicar upon earth. 1 The King of 
 France interposed in behalf of his relative, and the 
 Vatican bolt was suspended mid-heaven : but the spirit 
 which prompted the measure was encouraged. It was 
 encouraged by the violence of the Calvinists, and by the 
 unequivocal resistance of the French bishops to the 
 exorbitant prerogatives of the popes the ultramontane 
 pretensions decreed by the Council of Trent. Madness 
 then dictated the conduct of the ultramontanes and 
 the people scape-goats for ever were dragged into 
 the remorseless gulf of " civil " warfare the warfare of 
 a country's people fighting for its destruction. The 
 pope's cohort fanned the flame of discord The pope . s 
 spread the conflagration through the length cohort - 
 and breadth of the land. When Lainez was expressly 
 ordered by the pope to leave France for the last 
 Sittings of the Council 2 after the conference of Poissy 
 
 1 Davila, i. 162 ; Sarpi, viii. 61. 
 
 * " Jam dndura Pontifex Maximus Lainio mandarat ut ad concilium se 
 
 o 2
 
 196 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 where he expressed such .uncompromising, insulting 
 sentiments to the Calvinists "he enjoined/' says his 
 own historian, " he enjoined his companions to pursue 
 heresy in every direction. Some battled with it in 
 Paris, others fronted it in the remotest provinces." 1 
 Verily a nation went up upon the land, strong and 
 without number, whose teeth were the teeth of a lion 
 the cheek teeth of a great lion. Was it to do evil that 
 they went 1 Was that their intention "? Fanatics as 
 culpable as themselves may say so : but let justice be 
 done to the infatuated organs of papal ambition, and 
 the dread spirit of sacerdotal influence. They thought 
 they had a good conscience. They felt confident that 
 they were fighting as God willed them to fight : the 
 evil that ensued was sanctioned and sanctified by a text 
 of Scripture. Beware how you lash these Jesuits, 
 forgetting yourselves. Look around read and think 
 of all that humanity has suffered from the 
 
 Look around, . . i /-< i 
 
 religious sentiment perverted. In truth, God 
 was above and earth was beneath, with man i' the midst 
 but who had stuck themselves between man and his 
 God 1 Popes, monks, priests, Jesuits, and all who were 
 like them stuck betwixt God and the souls of men, 
 which must go through them in order to go to God. 
 Therein was the very gulf of human ruin the Babel- 
 mandeb of misery, wails, pangs, gnashing of teeth or 
 the desert whence swarms the multitude of ravening 
 insects to prey on humanity. And in those dreadful 
 
 Tridentinum conferret." Sacchin. lib. vi. 70. The pope's own affairs were to be 
 discussed, as you remember, and Lainez was to uphold the very abuses which 
 he had denounced to the Prince de Conde ! 
 
 1 " Pendant ce temps, Lainez parti pour le Concile de Trente, avait enjoint & 
 ses compagnons de poursuivre partout l'hrsie. Les uns la combattaient 
 & Paris, les autres lui tenaient t6te au fond des provinces." Cretineau, i. 
 442.
 
 MASSACRE OF THE HUGUENOTS. 197 
 
 times of religious barbarism, kingdoms and the poor 
 man's home were made desolate by the spirit it gene- 
 rated and the wretched people rushed beneath the 
 wheels of the crushing Juggernaut, as their "religious" 
 advisers impelled them : what the palmer-worm left, 
 the locust devoured what the locust left, the canker- 
 worm corroded, leaving remnants still for the caterpillar, 
 whose royal wings, so beautifully bedecked, waved as 
 the insect sucked the sap of a nation. You must have 
 specimens of how they managed matters in France, in 
 those religious times. In 1562, the Bishop of 
 
 J Massacre of 
 
 Chalons flattered himself that he could con- Huguenots 
 vert a congregation of Huguenots at Vassi. 
 He tried, was baffled, and retired with shame, confusion, 
 and mockery. Thereupon he inflamed the zeal of the 
 Cardinal de Guise, who summoned two companies of 
 soldiers, sounded a charge the conventicle was furiously 
 entered all who did not escape by the windows were 
 slaughtered, whilst the priests busied themselves with 
 pointing out the wretches who were trying to escape 
 over the roofs of the houses. The princes and ladies 
 who witnessed the foray, are said to have displayed the 
 same edifying zeal. On a subsequent occasion three 
 hundred wretches were shut up in a church and starved 
 for three days. Then they were tied together in couples, 
 and led off to slaughter on the sands of the river 
 they were murdered after a variety of torments. Little 
 children were sold for a crown. A woman of great 
 beauty excited pity in the heart of him who was going 
 to kill her, another undertook the deed, and to show 
 the firmness of his courage, he stripped her naked, and 
 took pleasure, with others around him, " in seeing that 
 beauty perish and fade in death d voir perir et faner
 
 198 HISTOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 ccste beaute par la mart ! During the slaughter of their 
 mothers babes were born, to be thrown into the river by 
 the murderous fiends ; and they say that one poor babe 
 held up its little hand as the piteous waters bore it up 
 and swept it along and they watched it out of sight! 
 la main droicte levee en haut, autant que les veues le 
 peuvent conduire. 1 The Bishop of Orange negotiated a 
 subsidy from Italy : seven thousand men marched under 
 Fabrice Cerbellon to execute a butchery. Babes at the 
 breast were pricked to death with poignards : 
 "Catholic" some were impaled, others were roasted alive; 
 
 barbarities. , , , -, TT 
 
 and some were sawed asunder. Women were 
 hanged at the windows and door-posts ; children were 
 torn from their breasts and dashed against the walls : 
 girls were ravished, and still more hideous and brutal 
 crimes were committed by the Italians. The slaughter 
 was indiscriminate for even some Catholics perished ; 
 and those who had sworn the oath required, by way of 
 capitulation, in the castle, were hurled over the precipice. 
 Then a fire broke out, consumed three hundred houses 
 among which was that of the bishop, the cause of the 
 whole calamity cause de tout le mal* 
 
 Turn to the other side. The brutal Baron des Adrets 
 
 had changed sides. From the Catholics he went over 
 
 to the Huguenots. He took with him his 
 
 "Protcstaut" 
 
 barbarities infernal passions to disgrace the cause which 
 he espoused, from resentment or other base 
 motives. He inflicted a reprisal for the slaughter at 
 Orange. At St. Marcellin he surprised three hundred 
 Catholics, cut them to pieces or made them leap a 
 precipice. Montbrison was besieged, and was capitu- 
 lating. The baron came up, cut all to pieces, except 
 
 1 D'Aubignc, col. clxxxiii. 2 D'Aubignc, Hist. Univ. col. cciii.
 
 PREVALENT PRINCIPLES. 199 
 
 thirty, whom he compelled to leap a precipice by way 
 of amusing himself after dinner. One of them hung 
 back at the brink: "What!" exclaimed the baron; 
 "you require two attempts for the leap'/' "Sir, I'll 
 give you ten to do it in," was the man's reply and the 
 baron pardoned him for his wit. 1 
 
 And now you would like to know the prevalent prin- 
 ciples of human conduct in those times. The Protestant 
 D'Aubigne' will tell us this baron's sentiments 
 
 The "princi- 
 
 on the subject and as he brought them from pies" P re- 
 the side which he left and still imitated or 
 surpassed in cruelty, the avowal is worth a hundred facts, 
 however horrible. " I asked him three questions," says 
 D'Aubigne" " Why he had perpetrated cruelties so ill 
 becoming his great valour ? Why he had left his party 
 by which he was so much accredited ? and, Why he had 
 succeeded in nothing after deserting his party, although 
 he fought against them "? To the first he replied : 
 ' That in retaliating cruelty no cruelty is perpetrated 
 the first is called cruelty, the second injustice." Thereupon 
 he gave me a horrible account of more than four thousand 
 murders in cold blood, and with torments such as I had 
 never heard tell of and particularly of the precipice- 
 leaping at Mascon, where the governor made murder his 
 pastime, to teach the women and children to see the 
 Huguenots die, without showing them pity. 'I have 
 repaid them something of the kind/ said he, 'but in 
 smaller quantity having regard to the past and the 
 future : to the past because I cannot endure, without 
 great cowardice, to witness the slaughter of my faithful 
 companions : but for the future, there are two reasons 
 which no captain can reject : one is, that the only way 
 
 1 D'Aubigne, Hist. Univ. col. ccvi.
 
 200 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 to put a stop to the barbarities of the enemy is to inflict 
 retaliation.' Thereupon he told me of three hundred 
 horsemen whom he had sent back to the enemy on 
 chariots, each man with a foot and a hand cut off : 'In 
 order/ said he, ' to change a warfare without mercy, into 
 one of courtesy, and the thing succeeded your faire, 
 comme cela fit, changer une guerre sans merci, en cour- 
 
 toisie In a word/ he continued, ' you cannot 
 
 teach a soldier to put his hand to his sword and his hat 
 at the same time.' With mighty and unflinching reso- 
 lutions in his heart, the idea of retreat was out of the 
 question ' in depriving my soldiers of all hope of pardon, 
 they were forced to see no refuge but the shadow of their 
 flags ; no life but in victory/ And lastly, touching his 
 ill success personally, he replied with a sigh : ' My son, 
 nothing is too hot for a captain who has no longer more 
 interest than his soldier in victory. When I had 
 Huguenots I had soldiers, since then I have only had 
 traders who think only of money. The former were 
 bound together by dread without fear de crainte sans 
 peur, whose pay was vengeance, rage, and honour. I 
 had not bridles enough for them. But now my spurs 
 are used up ces dernier s ont use mes eperons.'" 1 "The 
 horrors perpetrated by the Baron des Adrets," quotes 
 the Jesuit Feller, with approbation, " the horrors perpe- 
 trated by the Baron des Adrets alone suffice to justify 
 the severest measures which are taken in some countries 
 against the introduction of anti-Catholic sects and dog- 
 matisers. What horrible scenes would France have been 
 spared had she been on the watch like Italy and Spain, 
 to expel, or extinguish in its birth, a scourge which was 
 destined to produce so many others, and which, in 
 
 1 D'Aubigne, col. ccxv. et scq.
 
 THE JESUIT AUGER. 201 
 
 establishing the reign of errors by fire and sword, has 
 placed the monarchy within two inches of its destruc- 
 tion ! " l And who, may we ask, eventuated these 
 calamities \ Who roused destruction to swallow up 
 those whom argument could not poison ? Who drove 
 the heretic to vengeance 1 In whose ranks was Des 
 Adrets trained to slaughter 1 And to talk of Spain and 
 Italy ! It had been indeed a blessing for these countries 
 had " heresy " been vouchsafed to them by heaven for 
 enlightenment. They would not be now amongst the 
 lowest, if not the most degraded of nations. 
 
 In the midst of these dreadful doings the Jesuits 
 tramped over France, ferreting out heresy worming for 
 the pope. Montluc, the bishop of Valence, was no 
 Procrustes of a bishop : he temporised a little with the 
 heretics. This was enough for the Jesuits, who would 
 temporise with none but the orthodox.' 2 Emond Auger 
 rushed to battle. Suddenly he appeared on the banks of 
 the Rhone, like Chateaubriand's "ancient bison The Jesuit 
 amidst the high grass of an isle in the Missis- Au g er - 
 sippi." The Jesuit preached, and he taught, and doubtless 
 he converted : but in the heyday of orthodoxy whilst 
 he hugged that Dalilah the Philistines were upon him ! 
 The Huguenots, under the ferocious Baron des Adrets, 
 took him prisoner. They raised a gibbet to hang the 
 Jesuit. A Jesuit can brave grim death better than 
 most men : because, as he has more motives to live for, 
 so has he more to die for and all are condensed into 
 two words, OUR ORDER. Emond held forth, like the 
 
 1 Biog. Univ. Adrets. 
 
 2 Cretineau calls this bishop "a skilful politician and still more skilful 
 courtier, abandoning his flock to the teeth of the wolves." t. ii. 442. The 
 Jesuits made wolves of the mildest sheep ; but then they were orthodox wolves, 
 and that 's the difference.
 
 202 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 swan, melodious in death : he captivated the coarse- 
 grained Huguenots : the heretics relented : they sent 
 him to prison. One of them actually fancied he could 
 convert the Jesuit ! And they tried and left him in 
 his dungeon thinking " What next?" On the following 
 day he was set free by the interposition of the Catholics. 
 His brother-Jesuit Pelletier underwent the same fate, 
 but was liberated by the Parliament of Toulouse. The 
 Jesuits left the scene of their struggles, "where their 
 presence only exposed the Catholics to more certain 
 perils, not having as yet the energy to repel force by 
 force" says the historian of the Jesuits. 1 Thence to 
 Auvergne Auger departed ; and soon the towns of Cler- 
 mont, Riom, Mont-Ferrand, and Issoire experienced the 
 effects of his zeal : "he preserved them from the invasion 
 of heresy/' 
 
 The civil war raged fiercely on all sides the battle 
 
 of Dreux gave victory to the Catholics the leader of 
 
 the Huguenots, Conde, was a prisoner, and Beza narrowly 
 
 escaped. The Duke de Guise, the royal fire- 
 
 The murder \ J 
 
 of the Duke brand, had won the victory ; about a month 
 
 de Guise. />, 1 111 
 
 atter, he was murdered by an assassin 
 who was arrested, implicating the leaders of the oppo- 
 site party in the cowardly crime but it was by violent 
 torture that they wrung from the wretch what they 
 wanted to hear the names of La Rochefoucault, Soubise, 
 Aubeterre, Beza, and Coligny the great Huguenot 
 leader. 2 A death-bed suggested merciful wisdom to the 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 444. 
 
 2 This charge has become a point of controversy. Certainly all crimes were 
 likely to be committed and countenanced on both sides of that "religious" 
 warfare ; but Browning makes out a good case in favour of Coh'gny. The 
 assassin, when drawn and quartered, a horse pulling at each hand and leg, 
 exonerated those whom he had accused, revoking his first deposition. He
 
 MURDER OF THE DUKE DE GUISE. 203 
 
 dying Guise. The horrible massacre of Vassi at which 
 he presided, he now lamented, and strove to extenuate. 
 He conjured the queen to make peace. Those who 
 advised the contrary, he called the enemies of the State. 1 
 But it was a "religious" question. An angel from 
 heaven would have been unable to check the restless 
 fury much less a dying leader murdered in the cause 
 and proclaimed a French Moses a modern Jehu 
 which, however, was neither comfort nor hope to the 
 man hurrying to judgment. The loss of this great 
 leader was a blow to the cause : spirits drooped : the 
 " men of God " were in requisition ; and the Jesuits 
 were not wanting. Wherever zeal for " the faith " was 
 to be reanimated, the Jesuit Auger bore through every 
 obstacle drove in his spike, which he clenched. Then 
 he published his famous catechism in French, which was 
 subsequently translated into Latin and Greek "for the use 
 of schools." It is said that thirty-eight thousand copies 
 were sold or issued in eight years every copy of which 
 must have converted its man, for we are assured that 
 Auger converted 40,000 heretics to the faith. 2 Together 
 with Possevin he accepted the challenge of the eloquent 
 Calvinist Pierre Viret, formerly a Franciscan. It is 
 well said that "the conference prominently exhibited the 
 extent of their theological acquirements, and ended in 
 nothing." 
 
 To aggravate the sufferings of humanity torn by civil 
 war and social disunion, a pestilence broke out in France, 
 
 excepted the admiral ; but soon after he whispered in the ear of the President 
 De Thou, exonerating Coligny as well ; and he publicly said, despite the horrors 
 of that dreadful death, " that if the blow was again to be struck, he would strike 
 it again;" which seems to show that the wretch needed no abettor. D'Aubigni, 
 t. i. col. 251, See Browning, p. 43, ct seq. for Coliguy's exculpation. 
 1 D'Aubigne, ib. 2 Biblio. Script. S. J.
 
 204 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 and swept off sixty thousand persons in the city of Lyons 
 alone. Auger exerted himself to the utmost for the 
 The Plague relief of the patients, visiting, consoling them, 
 at Lyons. distributing alms which he collected. And 
 then he induced the magistrates to bind themselves by 
 a vow, to propitiate the cessation of the plague : it was 
 made : and when the plague ceased the Jesuit was com- 
 missioned to pay or perform it in the church of Our Lady 
 du Puy. On his return the magistrates rewarded the 
 Jesuit by presenting his Company with a college. It 
 was a municipal building, common to all the inhabitants ; 
 and the Calvinists complained of the transfer. Auger 
 told them, and had it stipulated in the document, that 
 the Calvinists should have an equal right with the 
 Catholics, to the education of the Company 1 a poor 
 consolation for the Calvinists, if the Latin and Greek 
 catechism of the Jesuit was to teach the language of 
 Homer and Virgil to their children with the mythology 
 of the popedom included, conjugated with every verb, and 
 not declined with every noun. It was cleverly managed ; 
 for, of course, there was no chance of any child of Calvin 
 remaining long in their hands without being transformed 
 into a son of Ignatius. Thus the Jesuits had reason to 
 bless the plague, and their veteran's devotedness to the 
 pest-stricken, for a splendid prospect at Lyons. Charity 
 does not always meet its reward here below in the 
 generality of mortals but the Jesuits, somehow or 
 other, seldom, if ever, failed to turn their devotedness 
 to account. Still, what they gained, they worked for 
 earned by some equivalent which cannot always be said 
 of those whose brilliant " rewards " puzzle us when we 
 strive to account for them, or compute their advantages. 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 447.
 
 THE JESUITS IN GERMANY. 205 
 
 It evidences the unscrupulous or unflinching boldness 
 of the Jesuits, that in spite of the opposition made to 
 their admission into France in spite of the BoldnesB of 
 stringent conditions of the decree by which tte Jesuits. 
 they were not tolerated in their true capacity, they 
 pressed forward reckless of consequences. Already they 
 divided France into two provinces of the Order, the 
 Province of France, and the Province of Aquitaine or 
 Guienne. 1 
 
 Over all parts of the country they wandered in pursuit 
 of heresy, winning a few, but exasperating many, and 
 stirring the fermenting mass of discord. 
 
 The active and eventful life of General Lainez was 
 drawing to a close : but he could afford to die, behold- 
 ing the fruit of his labours in the ever enlarging bounds 
 of his Company. In whatever direction he turned his 
 eyes there was ardent hope in his men, if not imme- 
 diate prospect in its objects : there was always some 
 consolation some tangible solace for their pangs. And 
 nowhere were greater efforts made for the Company's 
 supremacy, than in Germany. 
 
 In the year 1551 the Jesuits had no fixed position 
 in Germany. In the year 1556 they had overspread 
 Franconia, Swabia, Khineland, Austria, Hun- The j esu i t s 
 gary, Bohemia and Bavaria. The professors inGerman y- 
 of the University of Dillingen Dominican monks among 
 the rest were dismissed to make room for the Jesuits, 
 who took possession in 1563. It was a sort of compact 
 between the Cardinal Truchsess and the Company of 
 Jesus. In the spreading novelty of their adventures in 
 the fame which their every movement achieved in the 
 minds of the orthodox sticklers for papal prerogatives, 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 447.
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the Jesuits everywhere met with a cheer and a hand 
 and a useful purse. They " were winning many souls 
 and doing great service to the Holy See" where- 
 ever they flung their shadows heresy grew pale and 
 orthodoxy brandished the spear of defiance. They 
 suited their method to the German mind : what failed 
 with the Protestant, was a nostrum, a holy dram to the 
 Catholic ; and they laid it on thickly and broadly and 
 with infinite variety so that every one found his 
 peculiar taste consulted, and opened his heart accord- 
 ingly. The public exhibitions of the Jesuits were the 
 most brilliant ever witnessed, conducted with dignity 
 and decorum, and full of matter " patronised" by 
 royalty and nobility and the usual concomitants. 1 Fol- 
 Touching lowing out a maxim of Lainez, propounded 
 education. wne n he ordered public thanksgiving for the 
 Company's increase, the Company required that all 
 who would undertake the difficult task of tuition should 
 devote their whole lives to the undertaking so that 
 every year's experience might be as many steps to per- 
 fection in that art which may so easily be made subser- 
 vient to any given scheme but which, for complete 
 success, imperatively demands unflinching industry, in- 
 ventive self-possession, simplicity of character, a heart 
 of magnetism to attract, and a thorough perception of 
 human character in all its varieties. First impressions 
 are with difficulty erased : life's beginnings are the 
 prophets of its endings. 2 The Jesuits had a care of the 
 foundations when European heretics were likely to be 
 their hostile sappers. Dust and sand they threw in the 
 
 1 Agricol. Hist. f. 68 ; Ranke, 138. 
 
 2 " Quse prima inciderant animo, difficillime aboleantur, et ut vitse posita 
 initia sunt, ita reliquum eonsequatur." Sacchin. lib. ii. 91.
 
 SUCCESS OF THEIR EDUCATIONAL SCHEMES. 207 
 
 eyes of the savage, because merely " conversion" or 
 rather " baptism" was the object inducing ruinous 
 degradation in the loss of caste, or separation as by a 
 contract, from father, mother, friend, and acquaintance 
 and consequently utter dependence on the conquerors 
 of their country. These served these fought willingly 
 enough by their brutal instincts : but principle is re- 
 quired in the European a principle of some specified 
 kind, whether it centres in gold in partyism political or 
 " religious" or in God, the unerring guide to all who 
 heartily ask, and seek, and knock. And it was necessary 
 for the Jesuits to sow and to water, to trim and keep 
 vigorous the principle of antagonism the Catholic 
 antagonism of the sixteenth and following century. A 
 man's skin may be easily torn and diachylon will heal 
 it : but tear out his heart and you may do as you 
 please with the carcass. A dreadful comparison : but 
 is it not precisely thus with those whom men have won, 
 and bound to themselves by bonds they cannot describe 
 and yet cannot resist nay, rather bless them and 
 would not be free for freedom from such bewitching 
 tyranny would entail death in desolation ? To that result 
 the Jesuits cleverly applied. And they began with 
 childhood, primitive education. 1 The men selected for 
 these commonly despised beginnings were such as would 
 devote their whole existence to the training of this 
 most important stage of human existence. Experiment 
 and experience build up a teacher's art. A given object 
 is to be gained : ten thousand psychological facts 
 must suggest the method. And so the Jesuits wisely 
 
 1 You remember what Virgil says : " Adeo a teneris assuescere multum est." 
 And the dictum of Terence : " Si quis magistrum ad earn rem cceperit improbiim, 
 ipsum animum agrotum facile ad deteriorem partem applicat."
 
 208 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 would have a man devote his whole life to the undertaking. 
 
 They were successful, as a matter of course : for, in spite 
 
 of all that is said of chance, and luck, and good 
 
 Touching ' 
 
 " luck," fortune, rest assured that all success depends 
 and " for- entirely upon the selection of the appropriate 
 means of achievement. If men would but 
 investigate, and test this fact by experience, we should 
 not so often hear God's providence indirectly blamed 
 by pretended submissions to " His wise decrees." God 
 wills the accomplishment of every law He has framed 
 for success or happiness to the intellect, the moral 
 sentiment, and the instincts of man. Each in its depart- 
 ment, has its rights and its laws and in proportion to 
 its endowments and loyalty to God, will be its success 
 which we call " good luck" and " good fortune/' Good 
 luck it may be called but certainly it was found that 
 the pupils of the Jesuits in Germany learnt more under 
 them, in half a year, than with others in two whole 
 years. Even Protestants recalled their children from 
 distant schools and gave them to the Jesuits. Be not 
 surprised : people look to results. Results are pounds 
 shillings and pence in their eloquence to the mass of 
 mankind. Everybody can, or fancies he can count 
 them umnistakeably. Then, Jesuit-results gave " general 
 satisfaction. " * Schools for the poor were opened. 
 Methods of instruction were adapted for the youngest 
 Canisiusand capacities. And then was printed a right 
 his catechism, orthodox Catechism, with its plain questions and 
 unanswerable answers, composed by the " Austrian dog," 
 Canisius, as the Protestants called him the " scourge of 
 the heretics" as the Catholics proclaimed him and units 
 e Societate Jesu one of the Company of Jesuits, as he 
 
 1 Ranke, ut antea.
 
 FIRST BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE COMPANY. 209 
 
 was in reality, neither more nor less and quite sufficient. 
 He was the first provincial of Upper Germany he 
 enlarged the bounds of his province by his eloquence 
 held the heretics in check by his disputations and 
 fortified the orthodox. His protracted residence in 
 Austria, and his incessant clamour for the faith, pro- 
 cured him the title of Austrian dog: "but he was no 
 dumb dog," says Ribadeneira, the glorious Jesuit : " and 
 his bark was no whimper ; his bark and his bite defended 
 the flock in the fold from the wolves on all sides lurking." l 
 Canisius was the first author among the Jesuits, after 
 holy Father Ignatius, if the Spiritual Exercises were 
 really the products of his pen and not a joint- 
 stock concern, with the founder for a stalking-horse. 2 
 Thus the first book published by the Jesuit-Company, 
 was A Sum of Christian Doctrine Summa Doctrince 
 Christiana, by Canisius, but anonymously a curious 
 omen decidedly, for one of the Company of Jesus not 
 to acknowledge a sum of Christian Doctrine. Subse- 
 quently enlarged and translated into Greek and Latin 
 from the original German, it became a classic in the 
 Jesuit-schools, so as to enable " the boys " to " take in" 
 what the Jesuits called " piety," together with their 
 
 1 " Sed baud canem mutum, aut non valentem latrare, sed qui latratu et 
 morsu lupos passim grassantes ab ovili Christ! arceret." $ Among their innu- 
 merable pious inventions, the Jesuits say that before the foundation of the 
 Company, a certain woman, who passed for a saint, admonished the mother of 
 Canisius to "educate him with great care, because a certain order of clerics would 
 soon be founded, which would be of immense utility to the Church, and into 
 which Company her son would be enrolled, and be considered a most remarkable 
 man." " The event," adds the Jesuit, " verified the prophecy or presentiment 
 of the woman." Bib. Script. S. J. The object of these prophecies, and there 
 are many, was probably to counteract the other prophecies, like that of Arch- 
 bishop Brown already given, as a dread forewarning of the awful doings of the 
 Jesuits. It is quite natural. 
 
 2 " Primus omnium Societatis partus, post S. Patriarchse nostri Exercitia 
 Spiritualia." Bibl Script. S. J. 
 
 VOL. II. p
 
 210 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Latin and Greek id adolescentium pietatem .... und 
 cum ipsis literarum dementis .... utiliorem redderc- 
 mus. 1 " Incredible," says Kibadeneira, " were the fruits 
 of this Catechism in the Church of Christ and I 
 mention only one testimony thereof, namely, that by 
 its perusal the most Serene Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm of 
 Neuberg admits that he became a Catholic" 2 as if, to 
 a Christian mind, the conversion of a Duke in his 
 wealth and glory, were really more estimable than that 
 of a peasant in his rags and degradation. And now 
 you shall have a few specimens of the tree whose fruit 
 was so incredible in the Church of Christ piety to the 
 young and conversion to a duke. 
 
 After establishing, in the usual way, all the defensive 
 points of controversy, Canisius dashes headlong into the 
 offensive, snarling to admiration. Catholic unity has 
 been established ; he proceeds to question and answer 
 as follows : 
 
 "Is the same unity found amongst Protestants 
 acatholicos ? " 
 
 " Not the least in the world minimi vero for this 
 is most clearly evident from their continual schisms in 
 the principal points of faith." 
 
 " Have you an example in point \ " 
 
 " Luther himself, for instance, who, whilst in his 
 Catechism, he recognises only one sacrament instituted 
 by Christ, elsewhere propounds two, three, four, yea, and 
 even seven sacraments." 
 
 Imagine the " fruit " of this clinching " argument " 
 
 1 From the Preface to the translations printed in the Jesuit College at Prague, 
 in 1709, "for the use of the Latin and Greek schools of the Company of Jesus 
 throughout the province of Bohemia, a new edition in usum scholarum huma- 
 niorum Societatis Jesu, per provinciam Bohemiae, denuo recusus." 
 
 2 Bib. Script. S. J. Pet. Canis.
 
 STRANGE QUESTIONS AND STRANGE ANSWERS. 211 
 
 boldly repeated by the young propagandist of the 
 Jesuit schools, as a " fact ; " and also imagine the diffi- 
 culty into which he would be thrown by the question, 
 Where? to that elsewhere of the catechist, who pre- 
 tended not to know the " broad ground- work " for which 
 Luther contended. 1 Next as to morals. 
 
 The sanctity of " the Church " has been established in 
 the usual way : Canisius proceeds indoctrinating the 
 young for controversy in the social circle : 
 
 " But are there not many wicked people amongst 
 Catholics ? " 
 
 " Alas ! there are, to our shame ; but only as Judas 
 amongst the apostles, in the sacred college of Christ ; 
 only as the tares among the wheat." 
 
 " How stands the matter amongst Protestants ? " 
 
 " Their doctrine is alienated from all the means of 
 acquiring sanctity so far are they from teaching it." 
 
 " How is this 1 Don't they boast that they are 
 reformed, and evangelical, and think themselves much 
 purer than Catholics "? " 
 
 " The reason is, they teach that good works are of 
 no avail for salvation ; that these are only filth, which 
 render us more and more hateful in the sight of God." 2 
 
 " What 's their ditty on good works 1 " 
 
 1 " The sacrament itself," writes Luther to the Moravian brothers, " is not 
 in itself so necessary as to render superfluous faith and charity. It is mere folly 
 to squabble about such trifles as those which, for the most part, engage our 
 attention, while we neglect things truly precious and salutary ; wherever we 
 find faith and charity, sin cannot be, whether the sin of adoring, or the sin of 
 not adoring. On the other hand, where charity and faith are not, there is sin, 
 sin universal, sin eternal ! If these cavillers will not speak concomitantly 
 [i.e. as we speak], let them speak otherwise, and cease all this disputation, 
 since we are agreed as to the broad ground-work." Hazlitt, Life of Luther, 
 p. 132. 
 
 2 Luth. Resol. Contr. Eck. Assert. Art. xxix. xxxi. xxxii. ; Lib. de Libert. 
 Christ. Serm. in Dom. 4 post Pasch. ; Calv. 1. iii. Inst. c. xii. s. 4 ; c. xiv. s. 9. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 " They daily sing these verses : 
 
 ' AH our works are vain : they bring 
 Nought but bolts from Heaven's King.' " 
 
 " What do they say of the evangelical counsels, per- 
 petual chastity, and the rest ? " 
 
 " They say it is impossible for us to live chastely ; 
 that it is impious to vow chastity ; and tarn cuique neces- 
 sarium esse carnis opus, quam edere, bibere, dormire" 1 
 
 Very strange matter to come out of the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings, decidedly. 
 
 " What do they say of the Ten Commandments 1 " 
 
 " They say that it is not in the power of man to keep 
 them ; that they no more pertain to us than the old 
 ceremonies of the circumcision, and the like." 2 
 
 " Did Luther ever teach that sin is not anything con- 
 trary to the commandments of God 1 " 
 
 " Yes, he did expressly, in his Postilla of Wittemberg, 
 published during his life-time, and in the sermon already 
 quoted, the fourth Sunday after Easter." 
 
 " What follows from that doctrine of Luther ? " 
 
 " That to adore idols, to blaspheme God, to rob, to 
 commit murder, fornication, and other deeds against the 
 Commandments, are not sins." 
 
 " Do you think that this doctrine, so detestable, is 
 taught even by the disciples of Luther ? " 
 
 " The more honest amongst them are ashamed to own 
 it. The rest follow their master boldly cceteri magistrum 
 sequuntur intrepide." 
 
 " How is this reconciled with what they say, namely, 
 that all our works are mere sins ? " 
 
 1 : Luth. de Vita Conjug. 
 
 2 Luth. in c. iv. ad Gal. ; in c. xL Exod. ; Calv. 1. ii. Inst. c. vii. s. 5 ; c. viii. ; 
 1. iii. c. iv. s. 28.
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THEIR FIRST PUBLICATION. 213 
 
 " Let them see to that ; / certainly don't see it hoc 
 ipsi viderint, ego certe non video." 
 
 " What do the Protestants teach respecting the 
 sacraments \ " 
 
 " Nothing for certain : what they assert in one place, 
 they deny in another." 
 
 " How do you know this ? " 
 
 " From their books, as has been already said respecting 
 Luther/' ' 
 
 We will not stop to consider how strange these bold 
 assertions sounded from the lips of children : how they 
 were made to say that what they " knew/' 
 
 * J Reflection. 
 
 they knew " from the books of the Reformers, 
 but we cannot fail to note, as something remarkable, 
 that the very first Jesuit-author gave an example to all 
 the rancorous enemies of the Company, in imputing the 
 foulest inculcations to the body, from isolated passages 
 of their casuists ; which, however objectionable, might 
 be justified by an appeal to the Constitutions of the 
 Company, positively forbidding the publication of any 
 work not approved by appointed examiners. Let the 
 fact be remembered, with every other to which your 
 attention is called ; for the history of the Jesuits is a 
 history of RETRIBUTION in every sense of the awful word. 
 I offer no excuse for Luther. He committed himself by 
 word and deed on many occasions. But this is not the 
 question. The question is, how fearfully those imputa- 
 tions were adapted to embitter the social circle of Ger- 
 many ; to aggravate that rancour which a thousand 
 other causes already lashed far beyond the control of 
 Christian charity, or political wisdom. In effect, the 
 stream was poisoned at its source. The very fountain 
 
 1 Catechismus Catholicus, p. 2833, Leodii, 1682.
 
 214 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 of life, whose gushing sweet waters should remain for 
 ever sweet and clear, were made bitter and foul by the 
 wand of the Jesuit, to spurt and to flow on, bitter and 
 foul for ever. For, this Jesuit-book was intended 
 " briefly, clearly, and accurately to instruct tender youth 
 tenerce juvcntuti, and the whole Christian people 
 universo populo Christiana, in the orthodox doctrine of 
 salvation in doctrind salutis orthodoxd." 1 It may be 
 said that it was only natural for one party to strive to 
 build up itself on the ruin of the other. I subscribe to 
 the explanation : truly, that was one of the most pro- 
 minent methods pursued by the Jesuits, and their 
 opponents, in general. 
 
 The method was successful in Germany. Soon the 
 children who frequented the schools of the Jesuits at 
 Vienna shamed their parents by their resolute orthodoxy 
 and discipline. They refused to partake of forbidden 
 meats on days of abstinence. In Cologne, the rosary 
 (a string of consecrated beads) was worn with honour. 
 At Treves, relics became in fashion where before no one 
 had ventured to show them. At Ingolstadt, 
 
 Result*. 
 
 the pupils went in procession, two and two, 
 from the Jesuit-school to Eichstadt, in order to be 
 strengthened at their confirmation " with the dew that 
 distilled from the tomb of St. Walpurgi." 2 These mani- 
 fest proofs of orthodoxy attested the success of the 
 Jesuit-method with the young : constant preaching and 
 victorious discussions captivated the older portion of the 
 community : Germany was forgetting Luther and his 
 companions, as they listened to the Syrens of Jesuitism, 
 singing melodious measures. The dissensions among 
 the German divines 3 gave additional vigour to the firm 
 
 1 Title-page of the book, Ed. Leodii, 1682. 2 Ranke, p. 139. 3 Ranke, Ibid.
 
 RESULT OP A CONTROVERSIAL CONTEST. 215 
 
 shaft of controversy as it sped and was driven home and 
 clenched. A Lutheran nobleman challenged Bobadilla 
 to a controversial contest. Ferdinand, the Painful 
 patron of the Jesuits, was to appoint the ttn>phe. 
 umpires. The Jesuit accepted the challenge and the 
 terms. The Lutheran added that he would join the 
 Catholics if the umpires pronounced him vanquished 
 which shows how people thought themselves justified in 
 changing sides, during those times of religious madness. 
 Ferdinand and his whole court were present, and the 
 discussion began : " but," says the Jesuit, exulting and 
 classical, " the petulent fencer soon discovered what a 
 powerful net-man he encountered in the arena/' 1 The 
 Jesuit flung his net over his antagonist, " who was so 
 tied and stretched that he could not get out," according 
 to the same authority. " Then all the umpires, all the 
 audience proclaimed Catholic truth triumphant, Boba- 
 dilla the victor, and the meddler defeated." The termi- 
 nation was tragical enough. " Though he bit the dust/' 
 says Agricola, " the foaming heretic stood up alone 
 against the decision, and with the usual obstinacy and 
 impudence, denied that he was vanquished, and pro- 
 tested that his judges were partial and knew nothing of 
 the matter in debate." Ferdinand sent him to prison, 
 
 1 This term, Retiarius, applied by the Jesuit Agricola to the Jesuit Bobadilla, 
 is rather unfortunate. The figure refers to the ancient gladiators at Rome, and 
 the Retiarius, or net-man, bore in his left hand a three-pointed lance, and in his 
 right, a net, whence his name from the Latin rete. With this net he attempted 
 to entangle his adversary by casting it over his head and suddenly drawing it 
 together, and then, with his trident, he usually slew him. But if he missed his 
 aim, by either throwing the net too short, or too far, he instantly betook himself 
 to flight, and endeavoured to prepare his net for a second cast ; while his 
 antagonist as swiftly pursued, to prevent his design, by despatching him." 
 Adam's Antiq. 318. A very apt representation of all controversial encounters ; 
 and the part given to Bobadilla may be deserved, but it is not very honourable 
 notwithstanding.
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 m a monastery, for three days, although " the impudent 
 man merited worse treatment : but the emperor, for 
 other reasons, preferred mildness," adds the Jesuit. The 
 poor fellow went mad ; and wounded himself mortally 
 ibi miser, ird in rabiem versd, lethale seipsi vulnus intulit 
 and died. And to console humanity for the wretched 
 affair, they tell us that he was converted at last ! * Is 
 it not too bad ? But for the Jesuits it was glorious. 
 Children, women, and men surrendered and then a 
 famous leader of Protestantism, the disciple and friend 
 of Melancthon, Stephen Agricola, fell a prey : Canisius 
 was his hunter. 
 
 By their success, by their victories in the battle of 
 orthodoxy, the Jesuits won patronage from all in power 
 who were interested in the suppression of the Protestant 
 movement. Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, availed 
 himself of their services, establishing thirteen Jesuits in 
 Vienna, whom he housed, provided with a chapel, and a 
 pension, in 1551. By the recommendation of the prior 
 of the Carthusian monks and the provincial of the Car- 
 The three m eHtes, an endowed school which had been 
 governed by a Protestant regent, was handed 
 
 J ' 
 
 in Germany. 
 
 over to the Jesuits in 1556. In the same 
 year eighteen Jesuits entered Ingolstadt, invited to 
 counteract the effects of the large concessions which 
 had been forced from the government in favour 
 of the Protestants. Vienna, Cologne, Ingolstadt, these 
 were the three metropolitan centres whence the Jesuits 
 radiated over the length and breadth of Germany. From 
 Vienna they commanded the Austrian dominions ; from 
 Cologne they overran the territory of the Rhine ; from 
 Ingolstadt they overspread Bavaria. 
 
 1 Hist Prov. Germ. Sup. ad Aim. 1544, D. i. n. 60, Aug. 1727.
 
 THEIR EMINENCE IN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. 217 
 
 Befriended by the emperor and the courtiers, and by 
 the bishops, who held to Rome without reserve, they 
 forgot their difficulties and labours : it was a 
 
 The patron- 
 time to swarm and scour the land in quest of age they 
 
 new hives in the midst of honied flowers. 
 Smiles they found where smiles were most desirable ; 
 and whenever or wherever they were vouchsafed them, 
 they took care that the world should know how it fared 
 with the men whom " the king would honour." When 
 Cardinal Truchses returned to Dillengen after giving 
 them the university, they went out to meet their patron. 
 He entered Dillengen in state ; and from amongst the 
 crowds assembled around him, he singled out with 
 marked preference the Jesuits, giving them his hand to 
 kiss, greeting them as his brethren ; visited their house, 
 and dined at their table. These facts alone were equal 
 to ten years' labour for the advancement of the Com- 
 pany ; and the Jesuits invariably dwell upon them with 
 undisguised complacency. 
 
 Nor were they unworthy of reward for their inde- 
 fatigable industry. To science they were devoted as 
 well as to orthodoxy. They were determined Their 
 to rival their Protestant competitors of the 
 universities, if not to surpass them ; and such was their 
 success that they were awarded a place amongst the 
 restorers of classical learning. In those days the ancient 
 languages constituted education as they do in the 
 estimation of many at the present day. The Jesuits 
 cultivated them with vigour : but they did not neglect 
 the sciences. At Cologne the Jesuit Franz 
 Coster, a Belgian, lectured on the book of 
 Genesis and astronomy, to the great delight and ad- 
 miration of his audience. He was despatched to that
 
 218 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 manifestation by Ignatius himself ; and his youthfulness 
 his age was only twenty-five excited wonder, whilst 
 the extent of his learning, the variety of the languages 
 he had mastered, the elegance of his diction showed that 
 Nature had not endowed him in vain, and proved that 
 he laboured to evince his gratitude for her endowments. 
 And yet the man was never ill in his life, until death 
 whispered him away in the eighty-eighth year of his 
 age a life passed in constant labour, but totally free 
 from the usual effects of anxiety and care. 
 
 Theology was, of course, the prominent feature of 
 those times : it consequently was the main concern of 
 the Jesuits. In public lectures they sowed the seeds of 
 theological intelligence ; and in public disputations 
 which they considered indispensable they exhibited the 
 full-grown tree with enticing fruit on its branches. 
 
 Enthusiasm is electric to the German it insures his 
 admiration, and tempts his imitation. The first rector 
 of the Jesuit college at Vienna was Vittoria, a Spaniard, 
 who had rendered his admission into the Society memo- 
 rable by running about the Corso during the Carnival, 
 Their enthu ^^ * n sac ^cloth, and scourging himself till 
 siasm, tact, the blood ran down in streams from his lacer- 
 
 and labours. 1111 -NT i i i 
 
 ated shoulders. No wonder, then, in those 
 fervid pilgrimages of which you have read, or that 
 enthusiastic zeal of their pupils in shaming their un- 
 scrupulous parents, when their masters hid within them 
 the volcanic elements of such flaming devotion. Princes 
 and the great they honoured with poems and emblems 
 in infinite variety, varii generis car minibus et emblematis 
 salutdrunt; and the sons of the most distinguished 
 noblemen, amongst their sodales for their sodalities were 
 not less indispensable than their disputations washed
 
 SUMMARY OF THEIR VIRTUES. 219 
 
 and kissed the feet of poor scholars on Maunday Thurs- 
 day. 1 The Jesuits, by their own account, published 
 books of piety, introduced the sacraments, catechised 
 incessantly, and gave public exhortations. They dived 
 into the dwellings of the people, with every possible 
 effort and assiduity varid industrid et labore battled 
 with the popular superstitions magic amongst the 
 rest checked the quarrels of wives and husbands- 
 reconciled the differences of the citizens from whatever 
 cause resulting. The Spiritual Exercises were taught 
 and practised. Night and day they visited the sick in 
 the hospitals and in their dwellings. They were not 
 deterred by the most disgusting ulcers, the filthiest 
 cabins of the poor, nor contagious pestilence itself. 
 They were the companions of the convicts in And 
 their cells. They consoled and cheered them boastin g- 
 on the scaffold of death. In short, says their histo- 
 rian, " We bestow our care on the sick and the hospitals 
 we give assistance to asylums for orphans, and other 
 public dwellings of the wretched, so that we may be 
 useful to all and every one. On holidays, when others 
 are taking their rest, we labour more assiduously than 
 ever in the holy undertaking." 2 
 
 Thus was the zeal of the Jesuits manifest, their 
 
 1 Agricola, P. i. D. v., n. 314. et seq. 
 
 2 " Operam impendimus valetudinariis et Xenodochiis, operam orphanotro- 
 phiis, aliisque publicis miserorum domiciliis, ut omnibus prosimus et singulis. 
 Quodsi dies festi incideant, turn enimvero, cum aliis quies, nobis prse alio tern- 
 pore sancte laborandi onus advenit." P. i. D. iii. 2. As if conscious of the 
 trumpeting in which he has been indulging in the preceding summary of the 
 method, Agricola pays a vague compliment to the " venerable clergy, &c.," for 
 their labours, and boldly appeals to the example of St. Paul. " Who will ascribe 
 this to ambition," he asks, K rather than to holy emulation and imitation ? 
 Who ever dared accuse Paul of boasting in narrating what he did and endured 
 at Corinth for the Gospel ? He had no slight reasons for making the declaration : 
 the Company also has hers : habuit ille causas cur id exponeret non sane leves, 
 habet et Socictas." Ibid.
 
 220 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 learning evident, their industry beyond question, their 
 devotedness to Catholicism reflected in their pupils and 
 the thousands of citizens whom they garnered 
 in their sodalities all bound heart and soul 
 to the Jesuits, and the Jesuits to their patrons, the 
 pope and the Catholic party in Germany including 
 emperor, dukes, princes, and all the ramifications of 
 Germanic nobility. 1 Ranke shall conclude this sum- 
 mary : he says : " Such a combination of competent 
 knowledge and indefatigable zeal, of study and per- 
 suasiveness, of pomp and asceticism, of world-wide in- 
 fluence, and of unity in the governing principle, was 
 
 1 " Amongst their most influential friends was the family of the Fuggers, a 
 very barbaric patronymic, but all golden to the Jesuits. The family originally 
 followed the trade in flax or linen ; but its descendants cleverly embarked in 
 speculation, opened a trade with America, bartering their haberdashery for the 
 precious metals and Indian merchandise. They became so wealthy, that they 
 purchased a great many German lordships from Charles V., were created barons 
 and counts, invested with very ample privileges, man-led into the noblest families 
 of Germany and Belgium, possessed the highest influence at court, and, finally, 
 rose to the highest rank in church and state. Charles V. did not know the 
 value of his American mines and slaves ; his subjects worked both to immense 
 advantage, if such it was in the end ; but Philip II. soon found out the secret 
 and filled his bags, which he emptied to " stir" all Europe, ruining his kingdom 
 in the bargain, by way of attesting the old neglected proverb about " ill-gotten 
 wealth." For the account of the Fugger-family, we are indebted to the Jesuit 
 Agricola, who says, " that he would be uncivil and ungrateful if his pen did not 
 remember them." P. i. D. iii. 53. A member of this wealthy family, Ulric 
 Fugger, was chamberlain to Paul III., but he subsequently turned Protestant. 
 He was a great collector of manuscripts of ancient authors, and spent so much 
 money hi the mania, that his family thought proper to deprive him of the 
 administration of his property. He retired at Heidelberg, where he died in 
 1 584, leaving his splendid library to the elector. He was the only Protestant 
 of the family ; but, says the Jesuit Feller, " It happened against his intention 
 that he rendered great service to our religion, by bequeathing 1000 florins to 
 be applied to a pious purpose, requesting his relatives to make the application ; 
 for the sum, which was greatly increased, subsequently served for the foundation 
 of the magnificent college at Augsberg, one of those which was most useful to 
 the Catholic Church in Germany. The Jesuits occupied it even after their sup- 
 pression, in 1791." Biog. Univ. In other words, the Jesuits got hold of this 
 Protestant bequest, and their modern member approves of the roguery.
 
 THEIR SKILFUL TACTICS. 221 
 
 never beheld before or since. The Jesuits were assiduous 
 and visionary, worldly-wise and filled with enthusiasm ; 
 well-comported men, whose society was gladly courted ; 
 devoid of personal interests each labouring for the 
 advancement of the rest. No wonder that they were 
 successful. " 
 
 What had the Protestant movement to oppose to the 
 tactics of Jesuitism ? Remember that the latter was 
 based on untiring perseverance, unity of The Jesuits 
 purpose, endless expedients to meet every "SJJJ"*** 
 emergency, strict discipline in personal con- opponents. 
 duct, undeviating method in tuition, and, above all, 
 unity of will to which no achievement seemed impossible 
 the will bequeathed to them by Loyola. Remember 
 all this, and you know the secret of their success, par- 
 ticularly if you believe what Ranke tells you, as if he 
 were speaking of England at the present moment, with 
 respect to the world of religion. He says : " The Jesuits 
 conquered the Germans on their own soil, in their very 
 home, and wrested from them a part of their native 
 land. Undoubtedly the cause of this was that the 
 German theologians were neither agreed among them- 
 selves, nor were magnanimous enough mutually to 
 tolerate minor differences of doctrine. Extreme points 
 of opinion were seized upon ; opponents attacked each 
 other with reckless fierceness, so that those who were 
 not yet fully convinced were perplexed, and a path was 
 opened to those foreigners, who now seized on men's 
 minds with a shrewdly constructed doctrine, finished to 
 its most trivial details, and leaving not a shadow of 
 cause for doubt/' * 
 
 Yet, let the mighty fact of the political utility of the 
 
 1 Ranke, p. 137 ; Agricola, uli svpi-a ; Bibl. Scrip. S. J. ; Sacchin. P. ii. 1. i.
 
 222 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Jesuits be borne in mind incessantly. Their patrons 
 
 speculated on their influence with the masses. And the 
 
 pope, so interested in the return to Catholic 
 
 Their politi- r 
 
 cai utility to unity, held out succour to needy kings and 
 othS ^- princes, provided they promoted his accredited 
 measures tending to that desirable fulfil- 
 ment. Kings and princes talked of the spiritual and 
 intellectual benefits they pretended to derive personally 
 from Jesuit-indoctrination ; but kings and princes care 
 a vast deal more for their authority and exchequer. 
 Albert v Albert V. of Bavaria, for instance, was in a 
 of Bavaria, desperate struggle with his subjects. He was 
 loaded with debt, and continually in want of money. 
 He laid on taxes, but the nobles and the people, who 
 are naturally entitled to some little return for sweat and 
 blood represented by gold, demanded concessions, chiefly 
 religious, as a set-off to the loyal inconvenience of paying 
 royalty, without a royal equivalent in return " graciously 
 conceded." Well, the Jesuits came in : Albert took 
 them by the hand : he declared himself their friend : 
 he seemed to be impressed with their preaching nay, 
 he even declared, that whatever he knew of God's law, 
 he had learnt from Hoffaus and Canisius, two Jesuits. 
 Such being the case, it was a matter of " principle " in 
 Albert to patronise the Jesuits. And a nobler motive than 
 the knowledge of God's law can scarcely be imagined. 
 But, unfortunately for all this very fine talk, there was 
 another case brought in with the Jesuits, sent as a pre- 
 sent by Pope Pius IV., with whom we are so well 
 acquainted ; and this case was nothing less than a tenth 
 of the property of the Bavarian clei'gy. We must add 
 this to his knowledge of God's law, subtract his debts 
 from the sum total, and pass the remainder to the
 
 KING ALBERT AND RELIGIOUS CONCESSION. 223 
 
 credit of his independence, at one holy swoop most 
 gloriously achieved. For he saw the advantages which 
 would result from his intimate connection with Rome ; 
 and now that his coffers were made heavy and his heart 
 was made light, his conscience was prepared to adopt 
 the pope's warning when he sent him the grant, that 
 " the religious concession demanded by the people would 
 diminish the obedience of his subjects ; " it was a sort 
 of motto inscribed on the Simoniacal grant of what he 
 had no right to give, and the king no right to use for 
 paying his debts, and still less for making himself inde- 
 pendent of his subjects. Then the Jesuits set to work, 
 penetrated in every direction, insinuated themselves into 
 every circle, and the result was that demands for reli- 
 gious concessions ceased amain, and the supplies rolled 
 in without stipulations for equivalent privileges, a right 
 royal benevolence of the wretchedly gulled poor people. 
 This Jesuit-achievement totally undermined the nobles. 
 Their mouthpiece (the people) was lockjawed, and they 
 had to bark for themselves. They barked, and they 
 stirred, and they gave signs of biting. This was just 
 the thing wanting : the king, now independent remem- 
 ber, came down upon them, excluded all the individuals 
 compromised from the Bavarian diet, and, without fur- 
 ther opposition, became complete master of his estates, 
 which from that time forth never stirred any question 
 of religion. So absorbing was his power, so complete 
 his domination, so contemptuous his consciousness of 
 independence, that when the pope granted permission 
 for the Bavarian laity to partake of the cup in 1564, 1 
 
 1 In 1561 the French bishops requested the king to demand from the pope 
 permission for priests to marry, and communion under both kinds especially. The 
 boon, they said, would facilitate the return of the heretics to the church. Five
 
 224 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 the king disdained to effectuate the boon, he did not 
 even divulge the fact, though he had formerly, in his 
 difficulties, represented the concession as the very safe- 
 guard and guarantee of his throne. 1 Circumstances 
 had altered this case ; and now " the concession would 
 diminish the obedience of his subjects," his present object 
 was to show himself a, right orthodox Catholic king. 
 
 To the Jesuits, and the tyranny they suggested and 
 enabled him to practise, the king of Bavaria owed this 
 alteration in his royal fortunes. They roused his cupi- 
 HOW it dity, and he became " most anxious to possess 
 came about. \^ s Bavaria entire," by the means of ortho- 
 doxy. 2 Vigilance and exhortation were the contribution 
 of the Jesuits ; if these failed, rigour and severity were 
 forthcoming. He made the Jesuits inspectors and 
 examiners of his books, leaving it to them to decide on 
 their orthodoxy and morality. All the hymns and 
 psalms of the Lutherans which his subjects used to 
 sing in the streets and public places, he proscribed, pro- 
 hibited by an edict. He compelled his bishops to submit 
 their candidates for priest's orders to the Jesuits for 
 
 bishops were of opinion that the king had authority enough to establish the 
 use of the cup without further ceremony. It was proposed and agitated, in 
 the papal consistory, and bitterly opposed by a vast majority. The Cardinal de 
 St. Ange said, " that he would never consent to give so great a poison to the 
 subjects of his most Christian Majesty by way of medicine : better let them die 
 first." See Dupin, Hist, du Concile, 5. 503, et seq. for the whole negotiation : it 
 is worth reading. 
 
 1 Ferdinand of Austria had long solicited the pope to grant this privilege to 
 his subjects, and urged it as his last comfort in the lingering disease of which he 
 died. It was granted at last, and the comfort was universal : " but," adds the 
 Jesuit Agricola, " it was as scratching to the itch, quale fricatio est prurigini," 
 and then proceeds to show how detrimental the concession proved to the cause 
 of orthodoxy. P. i. D. iii. 117. 
 
 2 "Princeps hie avidissimus totam suam Bavariam habendi, videndique 
 Orthodoxam, non vigiliis, non hortatibus parcebat, rigore etiam, si lenia non 
 sufficerent, ac severitate usus." P. i. D. iii. 4.
 
 A WORD TO RULERS. 225 
 
 examination. All public functionaries were required to 
 swear the Catholic oath ; certain senators demurred 
 he sent them to prison. Two members of an illustrious 
 family he drove from their domains and banished them 
 from Munich, for refusing or demurring to take the same 
 oath. A third, who was wealthy, who had enjoyed 
 great favour and authority at court, was suspected of 
 heresy for demanding the use of the cup : Albert 
 degraded and disgraced him. Others, whom he found 
 were meditating resistance, he contented himself with 
 humbling in a more pointed manner, ordering them to 
 appear before him, and causing their gems and ancestral 
 signet to be smashed on an anvil in their presence, to 
 show them how he thought they had disgraced their 
 nobility. " By this act alone," says the Jesuit Agricola, 
 " he obtained the title of Magnanimous, for having, with- 
 out arms, subdued the proud and spared the vanquished 
 absque armis et debellare super bos et par cere subjectis." * 
 In fact, as Ranke observes, the Jesuits could never 
 sufficiently extol the king that second Josias, as they 
 said that Theodosius ! 
 
 Study this sample, and you will understand much of 
 Jesuit-method, royal gratitude, and the people's gulli- 
 bility, till they are enlightened or roused to A word in 
 madness, and become worse than the most scason - 
 ruthless of tyrants. Let the rulers of earth bear the 
 blame. They will not regulate their measures by the 
 strict principles of justice to all, and moral rectitude. 
 They succeed for a while notwithstanding. Then their 
 circumstances change : they get involved somehow : 
 events in neighbouring kingdoms set their subjects in 
 a ferment. Terror then chills their hearts ; they are 
 
 1 P. i. D. iii., 5, et seq. 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 ready to make "concessions'* in other words, they 
 now fear the people. And the people find that out, 
 and the " glorious " fact makes them drunk with vanity 
 and their evil passions. Outbreaks ensue. God only 
 knows where they will end. And then perchance some 
 partisan-historian will say that there was no excuse for 
 the people, because the government were ready to make 
 " concessions ! " 
 
 The Bavarian Protestants in the provinces clamoured 
 
 for the cup, notwithstanding ; and Nostri, Our Men, 
 
 were sent to quell the rebels ad reducendos 
 
 The Jesuits ^ 
 
 hunt down errantes mittuntur nostn. A supply ol Jesuits 
 was demanded from Canisius. He offered to 
 go himself : but the king thought him too necessary to 
 the Church to send him on so perilous a mission, where 
 his life would be endangered. His substitutes were pro- 
 vided with the most ample powers and authority, to 
 inflict a visitation not only on the rustics, but even the 
 churches, and the very monasteries themselves, if neces- 
 sary. They set to work bravely and in earnest, and 
 with greater vigour, when they found how widely and 
 horridly the evils had increased ; * for the rustics consi- 
 dered Luther a saint, pronounced the mass idolatry, and 
 with great abuse and execrations celebrated the pope as 
 Antichrist. 2 Schorich was the name of the Jesuit leader 
 on this occasion. 3 According to the method stated to 
 have been invented by Canisius and Faber, he began 
 
 1 Aggressi sunt opus fortiter simul et gnaviter, idque tantd raagis, quanto 
 latins horridiusque mala invaluerant." Agric. ubi supra, 119. 
 
 2 u Lutherum pro Sancto habere, Sacrificium Missse pro idolatria, Papam pro 
 Antichristo, immania inter convitia et execrationes proclamare edocti erant." 
 
 3 This Jesuit had been originally one of the domestics at the Company's establish- 
 ment in Rome. Ignatius discovered signs of talent in the fellow, set him to study, 
 and he became one of the most efficient members of the Company, to associate 
 with bishops and shake hands with kings, princes, and nobles. Ib. and Sacchinus.
 
 CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT PROSCRIPTIONS. 227 
 
 with the mild measures of " charity and good works." 
 He was particularly modest with the ecclesiastics, very 
 sparingly resorting to threats and authority nisi forte 
 unless, peradventure, severity evidently promised 
 advantage cum severitas evidcntcr speraretur profu- 
 tura. The result was, that, within seven months, 3000 
 rustics submitted to the king and the pope ; and the 
 few, whom neither flattery nor threats could subdue, 
 were banished from their country patrid ejectis. And 
 moreover, lest the gathered harvest should be again 
 scattered, their teachers were also banished, under 
 penalty of death : their " heretical books " were taken 
 from them : " orthodox " works were forced into their 
 houses : and those unfortunates whom they despaired 
 to reclaim were, by the prince and bishops, compelled to 
 leave the country. 1 All this is calmly, complacently 
 related by the Jesuit. He even calls the forcible abstrac- 
 tion of their books a clever provision solerter provisum ; 
 and finishes off with a prayer to God for the continu- 
 ance of the harvest and prospects as they were after 
 those acts of deception and tyranny. And yet, to the 
 present hour, the Jesuits and their party denounce their 
 own proscription by Queen Elizabeth ; although there 
 happened to be one shade of difference in their case, 
 which was, beyond doubt, directly or indirectly its 
 treasonable intentions, whilst these poor Bavarians 
 were remaining quiet in their remote misery, and 
 
 1 " Ut ne porro collecta messis rursum dispergeretur, solerter provisum est, 
 ut pulsis sub pcena capitali, errorum seminatoribus, Parochis quorum sanan- 
 dorum spes erat, subtraherentur libri hseretici, Catholicorum vero librorum 
 suppellex .... cseteri de quorum emendatione desperatum fuerat, ocyus jussu 
 Principis ac Antistitum, totius Bavarise fines deserere coacti sunt. ' Precari 
 numen jwvetf " he has the heart to add " we must pray to God that as he has 
 hitherto given great increase to the plantation and the watering, so he may 
 make the same more and more fruitful and everlasting." Ayinc. 120. 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 requiring to be ferreted out and hunted ere they gave 
 an excuse to Jesuit-proscription and tyranny. Again, 
 therefore, remember that the history of the Jesuits, 
 more strikingly than all others, is a history of Retribu- 
 tion. And we shall find it so in Bavaria, when the 
 whole Catholic cause, in the heyday of its exulting 
 tyranny, shall crumble amain, and be punished, in spite 
 of Jesuit-preaching, Jesuit-charity, Jesuit-sodalities. 1 
 
 The Jesuits had cleverly contrived their means : they 
 
 were therefore successful to the utmost possible extent. 
 
 Numerous establishments arose in all parts of 
 
 Results. 
 
 Germany. Colleges were erected and filled. 
 Houses were founded : residences were plantad : and at 
 length, in 1564, so flourishing were the prospects, that 
 the German legion of Loyola was divided into two 
 provinces, enlarging in length and breadth. 2 
 
 In the same year the Plague, which decimated France, 
 swept over Europe. It reached the Rhine. Scattering 
 
 dismay, despair in every home, the extermi- 
 during the nating angel sped apace wailings in his rear, 
 
 and shivering terror in his van. Men shunned 
 each other : the ties of affection the bonds of love, 
 plighted or sworn, broke asunder : all fled from the bed 
 of pestilence except the Jesuits. At the call of their 
 
 1 In 1576 the Sodality of the Virgin Mary in Upper Germany, and in the 
 houses of the Jesuit-province alone, never numbered less than 30,000 of all 
 ages, without counting the members among the people " all fighting for her 
 who is terrible as an army drawn up in battle array," says Agricola. He dis- 
 tinctly states that these Confraternities, owing to their multitudes, were divided 
 into various classes according to the different ranks of the members ; but that 
 all acknowledged the congregation at Rome, " even as an ocean whence they 
 flowed as rivers " : a most incongruous metaphor, but very expressive notwith- 
 standing. Subsequently Pope Gregory XIII. united all these Sodalities into one 
 body, with the congregation at Rome for its head, and placed its entire govern- 
 ment in the hands of the Jesuits, their General Aquaviva and his successors. 
 Agric. P. i. D. iv. 203, 204. 2 Sacchinus.
 
 THE JESUITS DURING THE PLAGUE. 229 
 
 provincial, they came together ; and at the same bidding 
 they dispersed, and fronted the angel of death. In the 
 pest-house kneeling in the grave-yard digging in the 
 thoroughfares begging the Jesuits consoled the dying, 
 buried the dead, and gathered alms for the living. 
 Blessed be the hearts of these self-devoted men ! They 
 knew no peril but in shunning the awful danger. For 
 humanity and, through humanity, for God be that 
 the stirring trumpet, whose echoes are deeds too great to 
 be estimated, too great to be rewarded by the gold of 
 Mammon or the voice of Fame. And yet Cretineau- 
 Joly, the last Jesuit-historian, professing to copy " unpub- 
 lished and authentic documents," bitterly tells us that 
 " this charity of the Jesuits, by day and by night, gave 
 to their Order a popular sanction, which dispensed with 
 many others," and that " the people, having seen the 
 Jesuits at their work, called for them, to reward them 
 for the present, and solicited their presence, provident of 
 the future." 1 Was it then for the Order's glorification 
 that, in obedience to the superior's command, such self- 
 devotedness was displayed ? Was it only to gain a 
 "popular sanction 1 ?" God only knows! but the doubt 
 once suggested, and that too by a strong partisan, trou- 
 bles the heart. We would not willingly deprive these 
 obedient visitors of the pest-stricken, buriers of the 
 dead, and feeders of the living, of that hearty admira- 
 tion which gushes forth, and scorns to think of motives 
 
 1 Hist. t. i. p. 456. " Cette charite" du jour et de la nuit donnait a leur Ordre 
 une sanction populaire qui dispensait de beaucoup d'autres. Le peuple venait 
 de voir les Jesuites a 1'oeuvre ; il en reclama pour les recompenser du present, il 
 en sollicita dans ses provisions d'avenir." Sacchinus was not quite so explicit 
 as M. Cretineau. " Deus liberalitatem expositorum periculo fratrum ea etiam 
 mercede remuneratus est, quod Trevirenses eximiam caritatem admirati non 
 soliim pluris sestimare Societatem coaperunt, sed multi etiam earn vehementer 
 expetere." Lib. viii. 96.
 
 230 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 when noble deeds are done. At least to the subordinate 
 Children of Obedience be that admiration awarded, if we 
 must doubt the existence of exalted motives in the 
 Jesuit-automaton ; if we must remember that at Lyons 
 the Plague gave them a college, and in Germany "a 
 popular sanction." 
 
 Amidst this mighty promise of permanent restoration 
 to Catholicism in Germany, Lutheranism along the 
 southern shores of the Baltic had achieved 
 complete preponderance, at least amongst 
 the population which spoke the language of Luther. 
 Prussia led the way, and was its bridge into Poland, 
 whose great cities connected with Prussia had the 
 exercise of the Protestant ritual confirmed to them by 
 express charters in 1558. Even in Poland Proper, 
 numbers of the nobility had embraced Protestant 
 opinions, as more in accordance with their love of 
 independence. It was a common saying : " A Polish 
 nobleman is not subject to the king ; is he to be so to 
 the pope 1 " Protestants had penetrated into the episcopal 
 sees, and even constituted the majority of the senate 
 under Sigisniund Augustus, 1 whose passion for women 
 seemed at one time likely to sever Poland, like England, 
 from obedience to the See of Rome. That craftiest of 
 papal emissaries, Cardinal Commendone, exhausted all 
 his wits in forefending the catastrophe. Sigismund's 
 clandestine marriage with the widow Radzivil, strongly 
 opposed by the nobles and his mother, had set the 
 kingdom in commotion : but love or passion triumphed 
 over opposition, and the threats of deposition : Sigismund 
 continued to reign, and death snatched away his beautiful 
 Radzivil (supposed to have been poisoned by his mother), 
 
 1 Ranke, p. 132.
 
 LUTHERANISM IN POLAND. 231 
 
 leaving him in utter anguish and ready for another 
 alliance. His first wife, or queen, was the daughter of 
 the Austrian Ferdinand, who had still eleven daughters 
 disposable. Sigismund sent for another ; and Ferdinand 
 was " too glad " to accommodate his son-in-law with a 
 second helpmate from his stock so numerous. A positive 
 law, civil, religious, and ecclesiastical, prohibited the 
 marriage with a wife's sister : but " it was so important 
 for their interests and the good of the state " that the 
 two kings induced the pope, Julius III., to grant a 
 "dispensation." Both kings were gratified by the 
 fulfilment of their desires and both were bitterly 
 disappointed in the issue. Sigismund was disgusted 
 with his queen very soon after marriage hatred 
 ensued and separation, whilst the king elsewhere 
 indulged his illicit passions which had rioted before. He 
 resolved on a divorce a new Radzivil having engaged 
 his attentions. The pope refused to annul the marriage, 
 whilst his reformed subjects were willing enough to 
 support the king in his desire, which would thus burst 
 asunder the ties that bound the realm to the See of 
 Rome. 1 Then it was that the wily Commendone was 
 sent by Pius IV. to cajole, and to browbeat the King of 
 Poland. 2 Prudence and timidity withheld the king 
 now rendered infirm by his excesses from the decisive 
 plunge : but to reward his Protestant subjects for up- 
 holding their king in his desires, Sigismund showed them 
 more favour than ever ; and in revenge for the pope's 
 inconsistent obstinacy, he opened them the way to the 
 dignities of state to the utter indignation of the Catholic 
 party. He died without issue the last of the Jaggelos. 3 
 
 1 Hist, of Poland (Lard. Cyc.), and the authorities, p. 147. 
 
 2 Gratiani, t. i. c. 17, et seq. a full Catholic account of the agitation. 
 
 3 As a proof that the zeal of the Roman church was inspired unto its boasted
 
 232 HISTOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Long ere that event, however, the Protestant move- 
 ment had been gaining ground in Poland. The cele- 
 brated Bernardin Ochino had lent the cause 
 his eloquence and influential name. This 
 Italian had been Urbino's partner in reforming the 
 Franciscans, and founding the Order of the Capuchins. 
 Ochino's influence and popularity, as Capuchin, are 
 described in most glowing terms by those who only do 
 so to prepare us for their opinion that his disappointed 
 ecclesiastical ambition made him a reformer, in the 
 other sense of the word. 1 Be that as it may, he became 
 heretical, and the pope summoned him to Rome : he 
 set out with the intention of obeying the mandate ; but 
 certain appearances convinced him that he was going 
 into the jaws of the tiger, with evident danger of being 
 made a martyr : he preferred to remain a heretic : so 
 he threw off his cowl, joined the Protestants, and was 
 the first apostate from the Order which he had founded. 
 Commendone found him in Poland doing desperate 
 work at the foundations of Romanism, and resolved to 
 dislodge the sapper. He induced Sigismund's Senate to 
 pass a decree banishing all foreign heretics. Ochino 
 being a foreigner, was thus compelled to decamp by the 
 
 expansion, by the Protestant movement only, we may instance Lithuania, which 
 remained Pagan to the beginning or middle of the fifteenth century. Even to 
 that period did Roman zeal permit the Lithuanians to worship all manner of 
 animals, snakes included. They were so barbarous that they considered it an 
 honour to sacrifice the chastity of their daughters ; held it dishonourable to 
 marry a chaste woman, and respected their women in proportion to the greater 
 number of their gallants. And yet we are assured thut such a strange state of 
 things continued after they were instructed or " converted." Gratiani, t. ii. 1 59. 
 Henry of Valois, brother of Charles IX. of France, was elected to succeed 
 Sigismund ; but a few months after his arrival, Henry suddenly and secretly 
 decamped in order to become the unfortunate Henry III. of France, at the 
 death of Charles IX. See a comical account of his flight in Gratiani, i. 506. 
 The electorate was one of the causes which prepared the final and irrevocable 
 ruin of Poland. 1 Gratiani, i, e. f>.
 
 THE JESUITS ENTER POLAND. 233 
 
 wily Italian cardinal, and he retired to Moravia, where 
 the Plague carried him off at a very advanced year of 
 his age. 1 But this was no eradication of the Protestant 
 plague which infected Poland. The pope sent Canisius 
 to the Diet at Petrikaw, to prevent any decree prejudicial 
 to the Catholic religion. The Jesuit showed himself 
 worthy of the mission, spoke frequently at the meeting, 
 and, according to the Jesuits, made an impression on 
 the Poles and their king ; 2 but this is a mere flourish. 
 If Sigismund had lived long enough it is probable that 
 Protestantism would have become the religion of Poland. 
 His principle or policy was not to interfere with the 
 religion of his subjects, whom he permitted to worship 
 God as they pleased. Protestants were returned to the 
 national Diet ; and it was even proposed to abolish 
 clerical celibacy, to decree the use of the cup for the 
 laity, the celebration of mass in the vulgar tongue, and 
 the abolition of papal annates or first-fruits which last 
 was the probable stimulant to the pope's anxiety. 3 Two 
 years after, however, in 1564, the Jesuits The Jesuits 
 penetrated into Poland, and commenced ope- enterpoland - 
 rations at Pultowa the beginning of some little trouble 
 for Poland ; as if their political feuds, which began with 
 the death of Sigismund, were not enough to agitate that 
 restless nation, without a single element of duration in 
 its social or moral character as bereft of unity of 
 design and conduct as the troops that welcomed Henry 
 of Valois were deficient in unity of fashion as to arms 
 and accoutrement. On that occasion all their horses 
 were of a different colour. Their riders were as motley. 
 Some were dressed after the manner of the Hungarians, 
 or the Turks, others after that of French or Italians. Some 
 
 1 Gratiani, i. c. 9. ' Cretineau, i. 458. 3 Hist, of Poland, p. 145.
 
 234 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 had bows, others lances and shields ; and some mounted 
 the helmet and cuirass. Some wore long hair, others 
 short, and some were shaved to the scalp. There were 
 beards, and there were no beards. There was a blue 
 company, and a red company, and one squadron was 
 green. 1 Since that event and that occasion the councils 
 of the nation have partaken of the same fantastic 
 variety, entailing the usual misery of a kingdom divided 
 against itself. 
 
 The introduction of the Company into Poland was 
 the last expedition set on foot by General Lainez. He 
 expired on the 19th of January 1565, in the fifty- third 
 year of his age. He had ailed ever since the closing of 
 the Council of Trent ; but he continued the business of 
 the Company notwithstanding, and dispensed with a 
 vicar clinging to authority to the last. He received 
 Death of the viaticum, extreme unction, and the pope's 
 Lamez. benediction, which last he sent for, like 
 Ignatius in the same circumstances, and which was 
 granted by the pope with " a plenary indulgence." To 
 the fathers he commended the Company exhorting 
 them to beware of ambition to cherish union to 
 extirpate all national prejudices against each other. 
 They requested him to name a vicar-general : but he 
 refused. Then the heaviness of death apparently 
 apoplectic came upon him and he painfully lingered 
 through an agony of four-and-forty hours, when death 
 put an end to his sufferings seeming in his last moment 
 to glance on Borgia, who was present, as if to designate 
 his successor. 2 
 
 It was a saying of Lainez that it was a sign of a good 
 general if he was like Moses, who brought forth his 
 
 1 Gratiani, ii. 499. 2 Sacchin. 1. viii. 200 ; Cretineau, i. 471.
 
 THE COMPANY AT THE DEATH OF LAINEZ. 235 
 
 Company out of Egypt into the wilderness, through 
 which he led it into the land of promise : l such was 
 his aim, such was his ambition through life ; 
 
 His success. 
 
 and the means he employed eventuated com- 
 plete success. The nine years of his generalate were 
 years of incessant struggle and continual harassments : 
 his Company was constantly attacking or attacked. 
 At the death of Loyola it was in danger of suppression, 
 hampered by a pope most difficult to deal with, agitated 
 by intestine broils and commotion. Lainez managed 
 the pope, emerged with triumph from humiliation 
 after having with considerable tact, craft, and depth 
 of design, completely palsied his spasmodic oppo- 
 nents, who were never heard of afterwards quiet as 
 lambs every man of them, not excepting the volcanic 
 Bobadilla. 
 
 In nine years he nearly quadrupled the number of 
 his men, and the Company's houses, and added six 
 provinces to those he received from Loyola. 
 
 *L J The Com- 
 
 The Company now consisted of 130 houses, panyashe 
 18 provinces, and upwards of 3500 men 2 
 which large figure if we roundly compute the members 
 of their sodalities of all ranks, and their pupils must 
 be raised to some thirty or forty thousand souls at 
 least, under the influence of the Jesuits. Well might 
 Melancthon exclaim on his death-bed in 1560, " Good 
 God ! what is this ? I see that all the world is filled 
 with Jesuits!" 3 
 
 And how was all this effected ? Simply by unity of 
 
 1 Sacchin. ib. 214. 2 Sacchinus and Cretineau. 
 
 3 Florim. de Remond, Hist, de la Naissance, Progres et Decadence de 
 1'He're'sie, t. v. c. 3. This work is supposed to have been written by the fierce 
 Jesuit Richeome, author of La Chasse du Renard Pasquin, a scurrilous libel 
 against Pasquier, the famous advocate of the University of Paris.
 
 236 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 purpose, whatever was the object, strict method, careful 
 selection of instruments, during times when kings and 
 princes were eager to enlist every talent into their 
 service, whilst the " religious" battle raged on all sides, 
 involving every peril or every deliverance, as the issue 
 of defeat or victory. 
 
 Great facility of expression, self-possession, a tena- 
 cious memory, vast boldness, perhaps effrontery, and 
 Hisquaiifi- * ne unscrupulous zeal of a partisan seem to 
 have been the public recommendations of 
 Lainez to those for whom he battled ; and their rewards 
 to his Company amply testified their estimation of his 
 achievements. Vast must have been the self-gratulation 
 of the man, in the possession of such unbounded influence 
 over the destinies, the desires, the deeds of mankind. 
 Meseems, I hear some grovelling spirit ask was he 
 very rich f Was he well paid for his services \ We 
 are taught from our earliest youth upwards, we are so 
 much accustomed to value everything by its production 
 of money, that we cannot understand how infinitely that 
 vile motive is surpassed by the consciousness of swaying 
 man's more exalted nature that soul which God him- 
 self complacently calls from its earthy integuments left 
 behind where they lie, in the cold hard earth, with the 
 gold he despises. On the other hand, the general of 
 the Jesuits was the treasurer of the Company's increas- 
 ing wealth, which he distributed with a sovereign will, 
 unaccountable in his constitutional independence. All 
 that he desired for himself, he possessed but that was 
 infinitely less than what the pettiest of kings or repub- 
 lican presidents require. It is gratifying to many who 
 judge by cost, thus to behold a cheap ruler a cheap 
 government. In the Jesuit-system it was corporate
 
 CHARACTER AND QUALIFICATIONS OF LAINEZ. 237 
 
 avarice, corporate ambition, of which each member, in 
 his ceaseless efforts, was the exponent. Those passions 
 gained in intensity by this expansion ; for they lost all 
 those moral checks those qualms of conscience which 
 individual avarice, individual ambition must ever expe- 
 rience. Our Company and its ends easily satisfied the 
 Jesuit that all the passions he indulged in enriching, in 
 exalting the Company, and promoting those ends which 
 answered both purposes were as many virtues, and his 
 conscience said Amen. 
 
 In private life, Lainez is represented by the Jesuits as 
 being exceedingly fascinating and amiable pouring forth 
 from his treasury of knowledge his axioms of wisdom, 
 original and selected. 1 He was considerate to those 
 whom he expelled from the Company, giving them their 
 dinner and wherewithal to return to their His private 
 homes. 2 He used to say that any one might character - 
 impose upon him 3 but this will scarcely go down after 
 having heard him say that Catherine de Medici could 
 not deceive him, and that he knew her of old. 
 
 His sister's husband fatigued him with solicitations to 
 promote his advancement, since he possessed such 
 influence amongst kings and the great. Lainez Two credit 
 wrote him word that every man must live by able traits - 
 his profession, a soldier by war, a merchant by trade, 
 a monk by religion and declined to step beyond his 
 bounds. Some relatives wished him to procure an 
 " opening " to the holy orders and a living for a boy a 
 species of corruption common in those times ; Lainez 
 sternly refused, saying, " You know not what you ask." 4 
 The man was unquestionably consistent according to cir- 
 cumstances, and his example on this occasion is truly 
 
 1 Sacchinus. '-' Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.
 
 238 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 worthy of imitation by those to whom the highest offices 
 in church and state, particularly the former, are made 
 a stumbling-block by importunate and unscrupulous 
 relatives. 
 
 He left behind numerous unfinished treatises in ma- 
 nuscript. Their titles will throw additional light on the 
 man, his thoughts, and pursuits. Twelve books 
 on Providence; a commentary on the whole 
 Bible, one book ; three books on the Trinity ; a col- 
 lection of sentences selected from the "Fathers;" 
 treatises on exchange, usury, pluralities, the disguises 
 and finery of women, the kingdom of God, the use of 
 the cup, and a tract against the concession of churches 
 to heretics. 1 
 
 Lainez was diminutive in stature, of fair complexion, 
 somewhat pale, with a cheerful expression, but intense 
 wide nostrils, indicating his fiery soul ; nose 
 aquiline, large eyes, exceedingly bright and 
 lively : so far the elements of Sacchini's portrait of the 
 general ; but Father Ignatius, you remember, daguer- 
 reotyped him in three words no tenga persona lie is 
 not good looking or imposing. His hand-writing was 
 execrable. 2 
 
 In accordance with the last glance of the dying 
 Borgia elected Lauiez, or on account of the rank which 
 he had occupied in the world, Borgia was 
 elected general, by a large majority in the congrega- 
 tion. It is said that the seven votes which he did not 
 
 1 Bib. Script. S. J. He also wrote treatises on the Doctrine of the Council 
 of Trent, the Sacraments, Grace and Justification, Instructions for Preachers, 
 an Epistle to the Missionaries in India, which last is all that we have access to, 
 besides his speeches in Sacchinus. A tribute of praise is deserved by this inde- 
 fatigable Jesuit for his industry, his constant labour. 
 
 2 Cretineau gives a fac-simile.
 
 BORGIA THE NEW GENERAL. 239 
 
 receive were given by those Jesuits who knew him most 
 intimately ; and when he took leave of the retiring con- 
 gregation, he requested the fathers, all the professed 
 aristocrats of the Company, to treat him as a beast of 
 burden. " I am your beast of burden," said Borgia : 
 " you have placed the load on my shoulders : treat me 
 as a beast of burden, in order that I may say, with the 
 Psalmist, ' I am as a beast before you, nevertheless, I am 
 continually with you.' " l Under very different auspices, 
 and in very different circumstances, had the bold, astute, 
 determined Lainez seized the sceptre of Loyola. If he 
 quoted Scripture on that occasion, the text must have 
 been, " Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the 
 vines ; " for there was imminent peril from without and 
 within the Company. Times were altered ; and if a 
 vigorous head was still necessary to govern the body, a 
 man of influence was imperatively so at a time when the 
 Company had penetrated into every kingdom of Europe, 
 and only required "patronage" to insure boundless 
 increase and endless duration. Francis Borgia was more 
 or less connected with most of the kings and princes of 
 Europe, then reigning. True, the bar-sinister blushed 
 in his escutcheon : but that was no time for men to care 
 whether a great lord was a descendant of the Vanoccia 
 Julia Farnese on one side of his primitive ancestry, and 
 Pope Alexander VI. on the other. Francis Borgia 
 seemed intended to show that "good fruit" might come 
 from a "bad tree." A lover of contemplation was 
 Borgia. The world disgusted him : he left it with all 
 its honours, pomps, and vanities, and gave himself to the 
 Jesuits, at the very time when they lacked a great name 
 amongst them, to catch the vulgar. 
 
 1 Sacchin. P. iii. 1. i. n. 23 ; Cretineau, ii. 12.
 
 240 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 A man of strange notions and stranger perpetrations 
 was Francis Borgia. He wrote a book entitled The 
 His corporal Spiritual Eye-salve, and another On Self- 
 austerities. Confusion ; l and never was man (not intended 
 for a saint) given to more flagrant atrocities against his 
 own poor body. We are assured that he considered his 
 body his " mortal enemy," with which he should never 
 declare a truce : he never ceased evincing to the same 
 unfortunate body that " holy hatred " which he bore it, 
 tormenting and persecuting it in every way that his 
 " ingenious cruelty " could devise. He used to say that 
 life would have been insupportable to him, if he had 
 passed a single day without inflicting on his body some 
 extraordinary pang. He did not consider fasting a 
 " mortification," but a " delight ; " and, in fact, like all 
 other abused delights, it ruined his constitution and 
 made him a human wreck ; the most hopeless and 
 pitiable of all wrecks imaginable. Savagely he lashed 
 his body. Some one counted 800 strokes on one occa- 
 sion ; and he tore his shoulders to such a degree that 
 there was danger of real mortification or gangrene in the 
 ulcerous impostlmmes which resulted from the wounds. 
 He would lie prostrate with his mouth glued to the 
 ground, until he brought on fluxions in his mouth, and 
 lost several teeth, and was in imminent danger of death 
 from a cancer in the same organ. In a chest he kept 
 hair-shirts, whips, and other instruments of torture, and 
 cloths to wipe away the blood which he drew abundantly 
 from all parts of his body. 2 It is said that these excessive 
 delights produced qualms of conscience, or scruples in the 
 man, before he died : and, doubtless, when "all was over," 
 he must have discovered their futility, nay, their positive 
 
 1 " Collyrium Spirituale," and " De Confusione sui." 2 Verjus, Vie, ii. lib. iv.
 
 DECREES OP THE SECOND CONGREGATION. 241 
 
 guilt in the sight of Him who is offended by the infringe- 
 ment of all His laws : those of health, therefore, are not 
 excepted. One would almost fancy that this Borgia 
 wished to atone, in his own person, for all the atrocities 
 which the other Borgia, Pope Alexander VI., inflicted 
 on mankind. His age, at his election, was sixty-five. 
 
 Important decrees were passed in the congregation, 
 after the election of the general. They throw light on 
 existing abuses in the Company, but show important 
 that these were met at least with legislative deciees - 
 prohibitions. The general was required to look to the 
 colleges of the Company. Some moderation 
 was to be had in taking charge of them ; their 
 multiplicity was to be checked ; and the general was 
 enjoined to strengthen and improve those which existed 
 rather than undertake others. It was expressly stipu- 
 lated that no colleges were to be undertaken unless 
 they were sufficiently endowed and well provided with 
 the means of subsistence a wise precaution, and it had 
 been well if the Jesuit missioners had brought some 
 similar wisdom to bear on their " conversion " and 
 baptism of the savages, when they undertook to make 
 them "temples of the Holy Ghost." It was even resolved 
 in the congregation to consider what colleges, so unfur- 
 nished, should be thrown overboard dissolved by those 
 who began to discover that gratis-mstmction is all very 
 well in a prospectus, but excessively inconvenient in 
 practice and by no means expedient in the present 
 scope of the Company. It appears that there was 
 another enactment on this interesting subject : but it is 
 omitted in the list as "private business privata negotia." 1 
 
 1 Dec. II. Congr. Dec. viii. in MS. Dec. xi. The next decree is MS. Dec. xiii. 
 See the present work, vol. i. p. 277, for remarks on these omissions. 
 VOL. II. R
 
 242 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Complaints were made on another score. The Jesuits 
 
 began to feel the inconvenience of frequent removals 
 
 at the word of command. The aristocratical 
 
 Removals. , 
 
 dignitaries liked permanency as well as their 
 constitutional general : but it was decided against the 
 remonstrants : the mutations were pronounced useful 
 to the removed member and the Company, and even 
 absolutely necessary : but the superiors were en- 
 joined to exercise their prudence in the matter ; and 
 all royal mandates were to be respected, princes were 
 not to be offended ; and in case the removal was abso- 
 lutely necessary the consent and satisfaction of princes 
 must be obtained. 1 We remember the trouble which 
 Philip II. gave the Jesuits for having been accustomed 
 to abstract money from his dominions. Borgia himself 
 proposed the question whether the royal edicts in this 
 matter should be obeyed, for the greater edification of 
 princes ; and the congregation approved his opinion, 
 and declared that such edicts against the exportation of 
 moneys should be obeyed but we may ask why the 
 " edification of princes " was necessary to prevent the 
 men who vowed poverty from meddling with the ex- 
 portation of gold. 2 The difficulties which had arisen as 
 
 to the distribution of the wealth given to the 
 
 The wealth 
 
 of the Company by its members, was a serious ques- 
 
 novices. ' . . _. _, .. 
 
 tion. It appears that the bons ot Obedience 
 sometimes wished to have their peculiar fancies and 
 predilections consulted in its appropriation to this or 
 that locality, notwithstanding the rule of the Constitu- 
 tions and that most glorious " indifference to all things," 
 which prescriptively results from the "Spiritual Exercises." 
 It was now enacted that all must be left to the disposal 
 
 1 Ubi supra, Dec. xii. 2 Dec. xv.
 
 DECREES OF THE SECOND CONGREGATION. 243 
 
 of the general dispositioni prapositi ycneralis retinquunt. 
 Thus the fathers enacted, saying : We venerate the 
 holy memory of our fathers veneramur enim sanctam 
 memoriam patrum nostrorum. 1 
 
 It was positively enacted in this Second Congregation, 
 Anno Domini 1565, that no Jesuit was to be assigned 
 to princes or lords, secular or ecclesiastic, to Roya i 
 follow or to live at their court, as confessor or confessors - 
 theologian, or in any other capacity, " except perhaps 
 for a very short time, such as one or two months nisi 
 forte ad perbreve tempus unius vel duorum mcnsium.'"* 
 
 In the same congregation difficulties were proposed 
 as to the simple vows, particularly as to 
 
 . The vows ; 
 
 chastity -prccsertim castitatis. The question chastity in 
 was referred to previous enactments ; and 
 there occurs a hiatus of two decrees in the document ; 
 but by way of compensation the next that follows 
 is an enactment touching the " renovation of the vows." 3 
 
 And a prohibition was enacted against " all manner 
 of worldly business, such as agriculture, the sale of 
 produce in the markets and the like, carried worldly 
 on by Our men " which we should have 
 scarcely thought necessary so soon. 4 
 
 No poor-boxes were to be seen in the churches of 
 the Jesuits " as it is so necessary for us that they 
 should not be placed, not so much to avoid the thing 
 which is forbidden us, but all appearance of it sed rei 
 iUius omnetn speciem. 5 
 
 All law-suits were prohibited, particularly for temporal 
 matters : if they could not by any means be 
 
 * > J Law-suits. 
 
 avoided, no Jesuit should undertake them 
 
 without special permission from the general or his 
 
 1 Dec. xxiii. Dec. xl. 3 Dec. Ixiii. 4 Dec. Ixi. 5 Dec. Ixxviii. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 delegate. The Jesuits were to yield with loss rather 
 than contend with justice. 1 
 
 The Spanish title, Don, was to be utterly banished 
 from the Company. 2 
 
 Lastly, the Constitutions, as translated from the ori- 
 ginal Spanish into Latin, were to be once more collated 
 The Consti- an( i amended showing that they had not as 
 tutions. y et received the " last hand," though five- 
 and-twenty years had elapsed since the foundation of 
 the Company. 3 
 
 Nor did the aristocrats of the now most respectable 
 Company of Jesus fail to hint that circum- 
 
 Mendicity. . ,.,,.., 
 
 stances permitted some modification in the 
 matter of begging for alms and donations. Alms, they 
 said, were good things in themselves, good for the Com- 
 pany ; and it was a good deed opus bonum to induce 
 all men as much as possible to do good things ; but for 
 greater " edification," for the " sincerity and purity of our 
 poverty, our men must be ordered not to persuade any 
 externe to give alms to us rather than to other poor 
 people ; but let us be content to beg simply and plainly 
 for the love of God when we beg alms. However, for 
 Donations and * ne purpose of getting donations or legacies, 
 legacies. we ma y ex pj am our W ants simply and plainly, 
 
 leaving the manner and matter (definitionem} to the 
 devotion of the person from whom we beg these kinds 
 of alms also a quo petimus has etiam eleemosynas 
 and we can only suggest to him to have recourse to 
 prayer and the other means, whereby he can resolve on 
 the donation or legacy, according to what the Lord shall 
 inspire unto him, and right reason shall suggest." 4 
 Such are the prominent and characteristic enactments 
 
 1 Dec. Iv. - Dec. Ixxxv. 3 Dec. Hi. < Dec. Ivi.
 
 LAW-SUIT WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 245 
 
 of the Second Congregation. The characteristic man- 
 dates of the first, under Lainez, were those relating to 
 the perpetuity of the generalate, 1 and the non-admission 
 of the choir, 2 which last was mysteriously veiled under 
 the name of common prayer, or prayers in common 
 orare simul points which Pope Paul IV. contested ; 
 and the points now mooted happen to be precisely those 
 which form the burthen of the world's accusations in 
 this period of Jesuit-history. 
 
 Scarcely was the decree against law-suits passed in 
 the congregation, when the Jesuits at Paris prepared to 
 contest the right of the University in refusing The Jesuitg 
 to permit their academical pursuits. Nor was at kw> 
 that corporation their only opponent. The bishop, the 
 cure's, the Cardinal-Bishop of Beauvais, the administra- 
 tors of the hospitals, the mendicant friars, in a word, the 
 most respectable and distinguished personages of the 
 French metropolis, united in demanding the expulsion 
 of the Jesuits, not only from Paris, but from France. 
 All had presented petitions to that effect, and had 
 appointed advocates to plead their cause. 3 This deter- 
 mined opposition would have been sufficient to strike 
 others with dismay ; but it only roused the Jesuits to 
 more vigorous efforts than ever. They knew that favour 
 and patronage were their only hope of success. Accord- 
 ingly they dispatched Posse vin to King Charles IX., 
 with an humble petition. This dexterous and 
 
 /.. -r . , . . i . . . Possevinus. 
 
 crafty Jesuit was passing his probation in 
 important expeditions. A clever speaker, and copious 
 linguist, with a prodigious memory, and all the boldness 
 that a Jesuit requires, with just enough modesty to show 
 
 1 Dec. I. Cong, xlvii. 2 Ib. Dec. xcviii. 
 
 3 Du Boulay, Hist. vi. 643 ; Annales, lib. xxviii. et seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 155.
 
 246 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 that there is such a virtue in existence, determined 
 in heart, and proud of his vocation, which raised him 
 from nothing to the companionship of kings, he was just 
 the man for these times, when kings and nobles needed 
 enterprising emissaries just the man for the rising 
 Company of Jesus, preparing to move the universe. 
 Charles IX. was then at Bayonne, with his mother, 
 Catherine de' Medici, where they were having an inter- 
 view with the Queen of Spain, the king's sister, and 
 wife of Philip II. This meeting was a sort of Holy 
 A Holy Alliance, for mutual defence, or, rather, offence, 
 Aihance. a g ams t the heretics driven to rebellion. It 
 was in tin's interview that the famous Massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew, or something similar, was proposed by 
 the Duke of Alva, who represented the cruel Spaniard on 
 that occasion. 1 A fitting occasion it was for Jesuit 
 
 1 Da vila, i. 165. Dr. Lingard, viii. p. 60, gives a mystifying note against 
 this general belief at the time in question ; and the Doctor appeals to Raumer, 
 who, he tells his readers, has published " one hundred pages " on the conference 
 at Bayonne, " and yet there is not a passage in them to countenance the sus- 
 picion that such a league was ever in the contemplation of the parties at that 
 interview." In the first place, we must read ten pages instead of "a hundred," 
 remarking, at the same time, that the " mistake " is one of the most curious ; 
 and how the Doctor could write " one hundred," though he brackets the pages 
 [112 122], is unaccountable. Secondly, there is a passage in Raumer's docu- 
 ments to countenance the assertion, and here it is: among the conditions stipulated 
 as " the main objects," were " the security of Christendom against the infidels, 
 and the maintenance of the Catholic relic/ion, and especially to prevent the daily 
 weakening of the royal power in France ;" and further, though the Doctor says 
 that " Philip acceded to the request with reluctance," yet Raumer's documents 
 state that, though he hesitated at first, from natural indecision or anxiety, lest 
 other states should suspect the objects of the interview, " he was even himself 
 inclined to betake himself to the neighbourhood of Bayonne." Finally, there is 
 another passage still more to the point. Alva " advised and exhorted her 
 [Catherine de' Medici] to insist, in such fashion, upon obedience and strict 
 execution of the law, that none should presume, on any pretext, to transgress it, 
 without being so punished that he should serve as an example of dread to all" 
 P. 120. It seems, therefore, that Raumer's documents tend to strengthen the 
 assertion ; if there was no " league " agreed upon, there was certainly the sen-
 
 LAW-SUIT WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 247 
 
 intervention, and for this same Possevinus to deliver 
 himself of a monster opinion, as he did afterwards, 
 lauding the Spanish bigot for his atrocious cruelties 
 inflicted on Jews and heretics. 1 The Jesuit's mission 
 was to induce the king " to terminate the chicanery of 
 the French Parliament and University," 2 says Creti- 
 neau-Joly, who, we remember, paid the Jesuits them- 
 selves the compliment of possessing craft equal to any. 
 The law-suit came on in 1564. Stephen Pas- 
 
 J . Pasquier. 
 
 quier was the advocate of the University, and 
 
 Peter Versoris, another famous pleader, championed the 
 
 Company, or rather, says Quesnel, he delivered an 
 
 timent of such a league suggested and accepted by Catherine, p. 1 20 ; and the 
 " example of dread to all " does look very much like the Massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew ; however, much was to be done before it could be attempted. See 
 also p. 276 of Raumer, for further attestation of the Spaniard's ferocious policy. 
 This curious topic is a grand controversial affair between parties, and this is 
 the reason why the doctor tries to weaken its outposts before he explains it off 
 at its occurrence. Meanwhile Capefigue, a Catholic writer, but not less con- 
 scientious than the doctor, and quite as laborious, opens a tremendous cavern of 
 " awful disclosures." He shows, that during the progress of the French king 
 before he reached Bayonne, he constantly gave a minute account of his affairs 
 and proceedings to Philip. " Philip II.," says Capefigue, K could not come to 
 Bayonue, but sent the Duke of Alva, the most intimate of his confidants, the 
 man who entered most perfectly into his idea. The queen-mother [Catherine 
 de' Medici] wrote to the King of Spain, thanking him for permitting his wife to 
 visit her and her son the king. ' I cannot fail to tell you the happiness I feel 
 at seeing a thing approach which I have so much desired, and I hope will give 
 not only great satisfaction to the king, my son, and to me ; but good and security 
 to repose, aiid preservation to all Christianity.'' In the midst of festivities, 
 tournaments, feats of arms and balls, they talked of nothing in the conference of 
 Bayoune but the expedients to get rid of the Calvinists, who were accused of 
 being alone the causes of the troubles which tormented France." Alva rejected 
 the idea of a new negotiation transaction. "They discussed the means of 
 destroying Huguenotry for ever, and the Dispatches of the Duke of Alva attest 
 that even at that time the idea of a general massacre of the heretics was not 
 rejected." La Rfforme ct la Ligue, pp. 285 287. From Catherine's letter it is 
 evident the meeting was intended for other purposes besides a friendly meeting, 
 as Liugard asserts. 
 
 1 Sec his Judidum dc 1'olit. et Milit. p. 86, also p. 93, ed. 1592. 
 
 2 C'retincau, i. 448.
 
 248 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 oration whose materials were furnished by the Jesuit 
 Caigord of Auvergne a method not unusual with the 
 apologists of the Company of Jesus. It would tire the 
 most patient of men to enter into the arguments on both 
 sides. Suffice it to say, that no efforts were spared on 
 either side to insure the victory. Elsewhere may be 
 found the long speeches on that occasion : * but not in 
 - Sacchinus, for the Jesuit has invented ha- 
 rangues, with his usual deep-mouthed rhetoric : 
 this trick adds to the discredit which is certainly 
 attached to his History as curious a piece of invention 
 as any that the Jesuits ever produced. Patronage 
 defended the Jesuits where their eloquence was of no 
 avail. Possevin returned from Bayonne with letters from 
 the Chancellor de 1'Hopital, to the Parliament, with 
 recommendations from the queen-mother, and many 
 lords, to the bishop and the governor of Paris. The 
 Jesuits had induced the pope to write to the bishop, 
 The method ^ e Sg m g h* 8 lordship to favour his " cohort." 
 of success. j n a wor^ they stirred all the powers, secular 
 and ecclesiastical, to obtain what they foresaw would be 
 refused on technical, if no other grounds, at the ordi- 
 nary tribunals of justice. Still, with all this machination, 
 with all this credit, and patronage, the result fell short 
 of their desires. All they obtained was the suspension 
 of the suit ; and that in the meantime matters 
 
 The result. 
 
 would remain as they were before, namely, 
 that without being aggregated to the University, and 
 without judgment being passed on the rights of the 
 parties respectively, the Jesuits might continue to teach 
 publicly till further orders. 2 Fiercely did bitter hearts 
 pour leprous distilment into the ears of Christians during 
 
 1 Annales des Je'suites, i. 28, et scq. ; Quesiiel, ii. ; Coudrette, et alibi. 2 Ib.
 
 PASQUIER AND FATHER RICHEOME. 249 
 
 that agitation. A more rancorous enemy than Stephen 
 Pasquier the Jesuits never had ; and no man did the 
 Jesuits ever abuse so hideously and disgust- 
 
 * . Pasquier 
 
 iiigly as they bespattered Stephen Pasquier. and Father 
 The latter published his celebrated Catechism 
 of the Jesuits, denouncing the Company with the utmost 
 severity. This might be excusable in an ambitious lawyer, 
 seeking his advancement to fame and wealth over the 
 destruction of his enemies : but there was no excuse for 
 " the men of God," the poor, the humble, the chaste 
 members of the Company of Jesus, to retaliate with 
 ten-fold atrocity of insult the most disgusting, as they 
 did by their mouth-piece the Jesuit Kicheome. The 
 very year after the appearance of Pasquier's Catechism, 
 this Jesuit, under the name of Felix de la Grace, put 
 forth his famous Hunt of the Fox Pasquin, in which 
 he seems to exhaust rancour unto gasping ; so fierce 
 and foul are the epithets and metaphors he pours on 
 the devoted head of the enemy. 1 " Pasquier raves," 
 said another Jesuit, Father La Font, " until some one 
 
 1 Here is an extract from the work ; it were absurd to attempt a translation : 
 " Pasquier est un porte-panier, un maraut de Paris, petit galant, boufon, plaisan- 
 teur, petit compagnon, vendeur de sonnettes, simple regage, qui ne merite pas 
 d'etre le valeton des laquais, belitre, coquin qui rotte, pette, et rend sa gorge ; 
 fort suspect d'he'resie, ou bien he're'tique, ou bieii pire ; un sale et vilain satyre, 
 un archi-maitre sot, par nature, par be-quare, par be-mol, sot a la plus haute 
 gamme, sot a triple semelle, sot a double teinture, et teint en cramoisi, sot en 
 toutes sortes de sottises, un grate-papier, un babillard, une grenouille du palais, 
 un clabout de cohue, un soupirail d'enfer, un vieux renard, un insigne hypocrite, 
 renard velu, renard chenu, renard grison, renard puant, et qui compisse tout de 
 
 sa puante u e. Fier-a-bras, trompette d'enfer, corbeau du palais, hibou de 
 
 quelque infernale contree . . . Catholique de bouche, here'tique de bourse, de"iste, 
 et peu s'en faut atheiste de coeur . . . ! que si de toutes les tStes he"retiques 
 ne restait que la sienne, qu'elle serait bientot couple ! Asne qui chante victoire, 
 et comme un baudet qui pensaut avoir atteint son bran, sautille et brait avec 
 son bast, paniers, et clitelles," &c. La Chase du Renard Pasquin, decouvert et 
 pris en sa tannierc, du libelle diffamatoire, faux, marque le Cat&hisme des Jesuites, 
 par le Sieur Felix de la Gr&ce. Villefranche, 8vo, 1603.
 
 250 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 of our Company, or some other person, for the good of 
 the public, makes a collection of his ignorance, ravings, 
 Father La stupidities, malignities, heresies, for to raise 
 Font. hjjQ a tonib where he may be coffined alive ; 
 
 whither the carrion-crows and the vultures may come 
 from a hundred leagues off, attracted by the smell of 
 his carcass, which men will not be able to approach 
 nearer than a hundred steps without stopping their 
 noses on account of the stench where briars and nettles 
 grow where vipers and basilisks nestle where the 
 screech-owl and the bittern hoot, in order that, by such 
 a monument, those who live at present, and those who 
 shall live in future ages, may learn that the Jesuits 
 have had him for a notable persecutor, calumniator, 
 liar, and a mortal enemy of virtue and good people, and 
 that all calumniators may learn not to scandalise, by 
 their defamatory writing, the Holy Church of God." 1 
 The men who wrote thus of an opponent were 
 
 Reflections. . 
 
 highly esteemed for their piety and zeal, and 
 Richeome, particularly, produced many pious tracts, 
 among the rest, " The Sighs and Counsels of a Christian 
 Soul," just as the foul Aretino wrote a life of St. Cathe- 
 rine. And the Jesuit tells us, moreover, that the author of 
 that foul, disgusting abuse, so untranslateable, " received 
 this reward for his most excellent virtue, namely, that his 
 head was seen surrounded with rays God thus render- 
 ing illustrious that obscurity which he courted :" in his 
 eightieth year when laid up by gout, he amused himself 
 with washing pots in the kitchen. 2 Doubtless some will 
 say that such abuse was usual in those days. Let the 
 excuse have its weight : but whose duty was it to give a 
 
 1 Lettres de Pasquicr, x. 5 ; (Euvrcs, ii. ; Quesnel, ii. 152. 
 " Bib. Script. S. J. Ludov. Richcom.
 
 PIUS V. BECOMES POPE. 251 
 
 better example, to teach a better method of rewarding 
 evil, to imitate Him who only denounced the robbers of 
 the widow, the vampires who sucked the blood of orphans, 
 the hypocritical Pharisees ? Surely the " Companions of 
 Jesus " have no right to excuse themselves by appealing 
 to abuses which their title required them to correct. It 
 is indeed painful to hear the restorers of religion, the 
 re-establishers of virtue, the apostles of India and Por- 
 tugal, pouring forth abuse too foul to be translated, and 
 such as would disgrace the worst of sinners. Those 
 were indeed dreadful times when God's representatives 
 on earth conformed themselves unto the image of the 
 worst of men. Such a sample as I have given is neces- 
 sary to prepare your mind for the " religious " horrors 
 about to follow. With such fire-brands (Bicheome was 
 twice provincial in France), with such "bellows" amongst 
 them, on a mission from Rome, " God's oracle/' sanctify- 
 ing all that is worst in the devil, the men of those times 
 may truly be excused for most of their atrocities, since 
 " the priests of the Lord " inflamed their hearts with 
 cruelty and made their swords more ravenous with a 
 benediction. Another bad element in that lowering 
 political and religious firmament was the Pope of Rome. 
 Pius IV. died in the same year of Borgia's election, 
 and was succeeded by Pius V., a pope after the fashion 
 of Paul IV., in the moments of his intensest 
 rigidity. One of those grim bigots who think 
 they honour God whilst they gratify the devil. " We 
 forbid," says he in one of his Bulls, "every physician 
 who shall be called to attend a bedridden patient, 
 to visit the said patient for a longer space of time 
 than three days, unless he receive a certificate within 
 that time, that the patient has confessed his sins
 
 252 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 afresh/' * One of those infatuated Pharisees who irritate 
 men to the very sins they denounce, he would "put 
 down" blasphemy and sabbath-breaking. How 1 Why, he 
 imposed fines of money on the rich. A rich man who did 
 these things who broke God's sabbath or blasphemed 
 his name, had to pay money into the papal exchequer : 
 but and is it not always thus \ the poor man " the 
 common man who cannot pay shall, for the first offence, 
 stand a whole day before the church doors with his 
 hands bound behind his back ; for the second he shall 
 be whipped through the city ; for the third, his tongue 
 shall be bored, and he shall be sent to the galleys." 2 A 
 fiend of the Inquisition was Pius V., and a rancorous 
 hater of the heretics. He sent troops to aid the French 
 Catholics in their " religious " war, and he gave the 
 leader of these troops, Count Santafiore, the monstrous 
 order to take no Huguenot prisoner, but to kill forthwith 
 every Protestant who should fall into his hands ; and 
 the ruthless religionist "was grieved to find that his 
 command was not obeyed ! " 3 To the ferocious Alva, 
 after his bloody massacres, he sent with praises a 
 consecrated hat and sword. His own party lauded this 
 pope for what seemed in the man, singleness of purpose, 
 
 1 Supra Gregem Dominicum, Bull. iv. ii. p. 281 ; Ranke, 92. 
 
 2 Ibid. English law, in this point at least, is curiously just and equitable. 
 By the Act of 19 Geo. II., c. 21, it is decreed, that if any person shall pro- 
 fanely curse or swear, and be convicted thereof, &c. &c., he shall forfeit, if a 
 day-labourer, common soldier, sailor, or seaman, one shilling ; if any other 
 person under the degree of a gentleman, five shillings ; for every second con- 
 viction double, and for every third and subsequent conviction, treble. The 
 penalties are to go to the poor of the parish. Of course all such methods of 
 reform are useless, because they do not reach the root of the abuse or evil ; and, 
 certainly, in the case of the jolly tar, the same act ought to have increased his 
 wages to meet his increased expenditure on the item of his oaths. 
 
 3 " Pio si dolse del conte, che non havesse il commandamento di lui osservato 
 d'amassar subito qualunque heretico gli fosse venuto alle mani." Catena, Vita 
 di Pio V. p. 85.
 
 DISGRACES IN AUSTRIA. 253 
 
 loftiness of soul, personal austerity, and entire devotion 
 to his religion : but all humanity should execrate his 
 memory, because under these cloaks, so easily put on, 
 his nature was grim bigotry, rancorous hatred, sanguinary 
 " zeal " for his religion. 1 He was afterwards canonised 
 made a saint by Rome ; although the Indian savage 
 might say, as in the case of the cruel Spaniards, that he 
 would rather not go to heaven, if he had to meet there 
 such a thing as this sainted Pope Pius. He will give 
 the Jesuits some little trouble, but will command their 
 services to the utmost. 
 
 In spite of the decree against the presence of Jesuits 
 at the courts of princes, we find them striving with 
 more ardour than ever to penetrate within the 
 
 Court-favour. 
 
 dangerous precincts of royal favour. The 
 Emperor Ferdinand had married two of his daughters, 
 one to the Duke of Ferrara, the other to Francis de' 
 Medici. The Jesuits had been the spiritual directors of 
 these princesses before marriage ; and the devoted 
 penitents clung to the fathers with fond endearment. 
 The fathers went with them into their new state of 
 life : but they had the misfortune to excite the disgust 
 and resentment of the ladies at court, who strongly 
 denounced the tyranny of the Jesuits. General Borgia 
 did not remove them according to the decree ; but 
 wrote them a letter of advice. 2 
 
 Ferninand's successor, Maximilian, was no great patron 
 of the Jesuits. The deputies who met in 1565 earnestly 
 demanded the expulsion of the Jesuits from 
 
 . rm . i . . i Disgraces. 
 
 Austria. The tide of popular opinion almost 
 
 swept them from Vienna. In connection with the 
 
 1 See Ranke for a full account of this pope, p. 90 ; and Mendham's " Life of 
 Pius V." 2 Quesnel, ii. 169 ; Sacchin. Pars iii. lib. i.
 
 254 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 strange and curious inquiries proposed in the congrega- 
 tion, touching the vow of "chastity especially," a foul 
 charge raged against the Jesuits in Bavaria : a student 
 of their college at Munich was the accuser : the procu- 
 rator of the college was the accused. The King of 
 Bavaria undertook to investigate the matter, which was 
 one of the most extraordinary cases that ever puzzled 
 a lawyer or mystified a surgeon. It is impossible to 
 enter into the details which Sacchinus gives at full 
 length : but if the Jesuits had no other proof of the 
 procurator's innocence than the "fact" alleged in excul- 
 pation, the guilt of mutilation is not removed and if 
 the expedient suggested to convict the youth of impos- 
 ture was exceedingly clever, it seems to point to some 
 experience in similar cases, which, consequently, only 
 renders the present more probable. 1 Nevertheless, the 
 event points to the rancour that the Jesuits everywhere 
 excited by their ferocious zeal and intemperate religion- 
 ism, which induced Maximilian to discountenance the 
 Company. That Catholic king complained 
 
 Maximilian. ~ ,. 
 
 to Cardinal Commendone that the Jesuits, 
 whom the pope had given the cardinal as advisers, were 
 carried away with too great a zeal for religion, and that 
 
 1 "Exoritur in Bavai'ia . . . infestus rumor . . . Jesuitas, ut pueros ad casti- 
 tatem sanctam compellant, eos eimuchos facere . . . Ipsemet, ad fidem faciendam 
 cum obsignatis chirurgorum, qui inspexerant, testimoniis, circumducebatur 
 puer." Sacchinus then states that the youth had been expelled from the college 
 for indifferent morals 6b mores hand bonos, and then makes the most extra- 
 ordinary assertion, that " ea erat natura, ut, quoties liberet, introrsum testes 
 revocatos apparere non sineret. Inde nequam procaci joco, . . . excisos sibi a 
 Godefrido Hanats .... affirmavit." The physicians of Wolfgang, a "heretic 
 prince," says Sacchinus, " pronuntiant eviratum puerum." When the boy was 
 brought before Albert and his physicians, "statuitur puer in medio nndus . . . 
 at nee virilitas cernebatur . . . cum ab Ducis chirurgo, sagacis inyenii homine, 
 continere spiritum, ac ventrem inflare jussus, id quod calumniatores querebantur 
 exemptum, palom in couspectum dedit." Sacchin. i. 100, 101 ; Ayric. D. iii. 150.
 
 THE WHIPPING ABUSE IN SPAIN. 255 
 
 they did not possess that moderation which the present 
 circumstances required although he thought them 
 learned and upright. He particularly objected to Ca- 
 nisius on account of his obstinate pertinacity ; and even 
 when requested by the Jesuit party at Augsberg to 
 promote the establishment of a Jesuit college, his letter, 
 without giving the Jesuits any commendation, merely 
 alludes to the request, by stating that the people of 
 Augsberg say the restoration of the Catholic faith 
 cannot be more easily effected than by a college of the 
 Company of Jesus, &c., quoting the petition of the 
 Jesuit-party, with which he leaves the merits of the 
 case, though, for political reasons, he requested his 
 minister at Rome to use his endeavours for the fulfil- 
 ment. 1 It was not in his nature to side with the 
 Jesuits : though he made a public profession of the 
 Catholic faith, and maintained the establishment of the 
 church, he never swerved from the most liberal tolera- 
 tion, and in Germany made the religious peace, which 
 he had so great a share in promoting, the grand rule of 
 his conduct. 2 
 
 In Spain other troubles, of their own making, harassed 
 the Jesuits. Under the specious pretext of doing 
 penance, they had established in several towns Thc Jc8uits 
 confraternities of flagellants, who, not content in s P ain - 
 with whipping themselves in the churches of the Jesuits, 
 performed the verberation publicly and in solemn pro- 
 cession. They had even introduced the practice amongst 
 women, as elsewhere. The bishops of Spain were indig- 
 nant at the abuses ; they prohibited them ; and proceeded 
 to examine the book of the " Spiritual Exercises," so well 
 adapted to produce that wild devotion, w r hich manifests 
 
 1 Agvic. uli supra, 159, 183. ! Coxe, Austria, ii. 24.
 
 256 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 itself through all the passions. The Jesuits were 
 alarmed : but credit set them at rest. Their Jesuit 
 courtier, Araoz, was high in favour with Philip II., who 
 now began to find out the utility of the Jesuits in his 
 senseless and atrocious machinations, schemes, and per- 
 petrations. The affair passed off without effects. 1 Philip 
 had ulterior views respecting the Jesuits. 
 
 In India matters were more disastrous. There the 
 Jesuits were trying the impossible problem of serving 
 The Jesuits *wo mas ters at one and the same time. They 
 in India. ] ia( j "been received, together with the Portu- 
 guese, by the chieftain of Ternate, the most important 
 of the Moluccas. The barbarian introduced the Portu- 
 guese for the sake of commerce ; and the Portuguese 
 brought in the Jesuits to serve their own purposes. 2 I need 
 not state that the Jesuits made conversions : but it was 
 painfully discovered that their converts gathered around 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. i. 117 ; Quesnel, ii. 176. 
 
 2 The Jesuits supply curious information on this topic. They tell us that in 
 Cochinchina the very words, in the native language, employed to ask the people 
 " if they would become Christians" meant nothing else but " if they would 
 become Portuguese." This was the general notion among the pagans. The 
 Jesuit Buzome says he saw a comedy performed in the public place, and, by 
 way of an interlude, they introduced a man dressed like a Portuguese, with an 
 artificial paunch so constructed, that a child could be concealed within. In the 
 sight of the multitude the actor pulled out the child, and asked him if he wished 
 to go into the paunch of the Portuguese, namely, " Little one, will you go into 
 the paunch of the Portuguese or not ? " The child said " yes," and the actor 
 put him in accordingly. This scene was repeated over and over again, to the 
 amusement of the spectators ; and it was certainly a most appropriate emblem 
 of the fact. Now the Jesuit says that these identical words were used by the 
 interpreters when they asked the natives if they would become Christians ; 
 that to become a Christian was nothing else than to cease to be a Cochinchinese 
 and become a Portuguese ; in point of fact, swallowed into the paunch of the 
 invader ! The Jesuit says he made efforts to correct " so pernicious an error," 
 but the results did not eventually attest his success, if the " error " could pos- 
 sibly be dispelled in the face of events so admirably typified by the capacious 
 paunch and the simple child. Rdatione della nuova Missione &c., al Regno della 
 Cocincina, p. 107. Ed. Rome. 1631.
 
 THE JESUITS IN BRAZIL AND FLORIDA. 257 
 
 the Portuguese, as in Brazil, leaving their king in a piti- 
 able plight. By these accessions, under Jesuit-influence, 
 the Portuguese became masters of several towns, until at 
 last the poor king found himself a mere tributary vassal 
 of the strangers, whom he had invited to trade, but who 
 had come accompanied by Jesuits. The savage looked 
 out for friendly assistance in his ruined fortunes. The 
 Mohammedans of the adjacent isles espoused his cause ; 
 harassed the Portuguese for some time ; and effected a 
 descent on Attiva, the head-quarters of the Portuguese, 
 and the residence of the Jesuit Emmanuel Lopez. The 
 Portuguese were absent on other conquests : their settle- 
 ment was pillaged, all their stations were retaken by the 
 king of Ternate. The Jesuits took to flight, abandoning 
 to the vengeance of the conqueror 72,000 " converts," 
 whom they deserted, apparently as easily as they had 
 made them Christians. 1 
 
 In Brazil the Jesuits had succeeded in establishing 
 numerous houses and residences : but their prosperity 
 became, as usual, the source of discord and The Jesuits 
 division. The usual causes of strife among in BraziL 
 mortals, avarice and ambition, produced a schism among 
 these religious missioners ; and Borgia deemed it neces- 
 sary to send out a visitor to remedy the evils as well as 
 he could. 2 
 
 The savages of Florida next became the objects of 
 their zeal. Three Jesuits set out on the expedition. 
 One of them, Father Martinez, left the ship 
 in a boat with some of the Spaniards : a storm 
 overtook them : they were driven to the coast. Wan- 
 dering into the interior they were attacked by the 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 175 ; Sacchin. lib. iii. 138, et seq. ; Observ. Hist. i. 226. 
 
 2 Quesnel, ii. ; Cretineau, ii. 137. 
 VOL. II. S
 
 258 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 natives, who had so much reason to hate the Spaniards 
 for their cruelties, and many of the party were mas- 
 sacred, among the rest, the Jesuit. The other two 
 missioners, after much suffering inflicted upon them by 
 the savages of Florida, managed to do little or nothing 
 in the shape of conversion, but nevertheless " founded " 
 two establishments in the country, and wrote to their 
 general for more companions. 1 
 
 On the continent of India the glorious Inquisition, 
 
 which they had advised and proved to be so necessary, 
 
 was doing its work, and they were making 
 
 Persecution. , , , -?- 
 
 wholesale conquests worthy of their zeal. If 
 they did not convert the infidels, they at least demo- 
 lished their temples, burned their idols, and caused their 
 Brahmins to be imprisoned and slaughtered in other 
 words, did, or were a party in doing, what the Catholics 
 and Protestants were doing against each other in Europe 
 at the same time. If the vilest passions of human nature 
 be not sufficient to account for all those contemporaneous 
 atrocities, we must ascribe them to a sort of moral 
 cholera sweeping over the earth and making cruel souls 
 instead of putrid bodies. 2 
 
 In Portugal the Jesuits were high in favour. Father 
 Torrez was confessor to the queen-regent, Gonzalez to 
 The Jesuits the young king, Henriquez to the Cardinal 
 in Portugal. j) om jjenry, the monarch's great uncle. All 
 the lords of the court followed the royal example, and 
 placed their souls into the hands of the Jesuits, who 
 thus acquired unlimited influence in the kingdom and 
 its colonial possessions. Between the queen-regent and 
 the Cardinal Dom Henry the Jesuits interfered, gave 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 190 ; Sacchin. lib. iii. 262, et seq. 
 
 Quesnel, ib. ; Sacchin. lib. ii. 101, lib. iii. 129, et seq.
 
 INVASION OF MOROCCO BY SEBASTIAN. 259 
 
 their hands to the latter, and intrigued to dispossess the 
 queen of her authority, in favour of the cardinal. Torrez 
 was denounced as the leader of the machination, and the 
 queen-regent discharged the Jesuit. The result did not 
 correspond with her wishes. The Jesuits had a party, 
 and the king's confessor was a Jesuit ; and the cardinal 
 was their patron for the nonce. The king was induced 
 to discharge the queen, and the cardinal became regent ; 
 but only to be soon supplanted by the Jesuits, whom it 
 was impossible to dislodge. 1 Under Jesuit-tuition, the 
 young king Sebastian grew up a royal mad- 
 man fierce with the right orthodox hatred 
 of all that was not Christianity according to the interpre- 
 tation of Rome. He conceived the design, if it was not 
 suggested, of invading the Moors of Morocco. Headlong 
 he rushed to destruction : all advice to the contrary only 
 stimulated his madness. On the plains of Alcazarquivir 
 his whole army was cut to pieces or captured by the 
 Moors. The king and kingdom of Portugal perished 
 together. Fifteen Jesuits accompanied the expedition. 
 The calamity is laid to the charge of the Jesuits, in 
 perverting the royal mind by their fanatical exhorta- 
 tions : the Jesuits deny the allegation, and insist that 
 their member, the king's confessor, was opposed to the 
 invasion ; 2 which assertion, however, may have been 
 caused by the unfortunate result. The Jesuits would 
 have been happy to vindicate to themselves the glory of 
 the invasion, had it proved successful. Cardinal Henry 
 succeeded : his short reign was the agony of Portugal's 
 independence : for Philip II. worried her to death. 
 Amongst the numerous candidates who aspired to 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 100 ; Hist. Abr6ge du Port., P. iii. c. 17, p. 736. 
 
 2 Franc. Syn. p. 115. 
 
 S 2
 
 260 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 succeed, Philip was the most determined ; l and the 
 Jesuits lent him their assistance. Henrique/, the royal 
 confessor, confirmed the vacillating mind of the priest- 
 ridden king, who gave his vote to the Spaniard, 2 and 
 died soon after, when Philip sent into Portugal the 
 Duke of Alva, with thirty thousand men, and quietly 
 grasped the sceptre, surrendered almost without a blow, 
 and with that sceptre, the American, Indian, and African 
 possessions of Portugal all destined to furnish the 
 royal bigot with gold, which he would lavishly spend 
 " to stir " all Europe in his senseless schemes. 3 At the 
 time of the event, the common opinion, in Coimbra, at 
 least, was, that the Jesuits were a party to the betrayal 
 of the kingdom into the hands of the Spaniards. Their 
 college was stormed by the people : they were denounced 
 as traitors to their country, as robbers, and devoted to 
 destruction. 4 The Jesuit-rector came forth and pacified 
 the mob : and, by the intercession of two other Jesuits, 
 the Spanish general spared the city, which would have 
 been otherwise given up to the horrors of Spanish 
 warfare. 5 Such was the beginning and end of Jesuit- 
 
 1 The Pope of Rome actually presented himself as candidate for the crown of 
 Portugal ! He rested his claim to the kingdom as the property of a cardinal, to 
 whom by ecclesiastical law he was heir. Hist, of Spain and Port. 
 
 2 Rabbe,i. 231. 
 
 3 Hist, of Spain and Port. 126, et seq. ; Rabbe, i. 229, et seq. 
 
 4 Franco, ubi supra, 125. " Plebs rumore inani permota divulgavit, nostrum 
 collegium esse plenum milite Castellano et armis, ut repente captam urbem 
 traderemus Regi Philippo .... securibus lacerant scholarum valvas, alii 
 scandere per murum, multi ad ostium posticum, multi ad commune ; Nos 
 Lutheranos, prodi tores patrise, latrones vocant, necandos omnes." 
 
 5 This Jesuit tells a curious tale, how the Portuguese women consulted 
 Nostros " Our Men," on that dismal occasion, asking the Fathers " whether it was 
 lawful for them, in order to escape the lustful brutality of the Spaniards, to commit 
 suicide, to throw themselves into the river, or rush to places infected with pesti- 
 lence." Franco,\26. Philip's only opponent, Prince Antonio, expelled the Jesuits 
 from Coimbra for harbouring a Spanish spy ; he met them as they were depart-
 
 SUSPECTED BETRAYAL OP PORTUGAL. 261 
 
 influence in the councils of Portugal from 1556 to 
 1581. History accuses the Jesuits of these two pro- 
 minent transactions the invasion of Morocco, 
 
 Reflections. 
 
 and the usurpation of Philip as being pro- 
 moted by members of the Company. The amount of 
 their guilt can never be ascertained : but their inno- 
 cence would have been certain, had their generals enforced 
 the decree prohibiting the Jesuits from being confessors 
 to kings, or living at courts ; and had not the Jesuits 
 themselves elsewhere mingled with politics during that 
 eventful period. It was certainly somewhat suspicious 
 that Philip showed them marked and distinguished 
 honour immediately afterwards, when he visited his 
 usurped kingdom. He paid their House his first visit, 
 and increased its allowance : and his partisans joined 
 in the benevolence, so that the House was never richer 
 than immediately after the usurpation of the Spaniard. 
 The Jesuit Franco attributes this result to "Our services," 
 ministeria nostra. How far they were honourable to 
 the " men of God " is the question. 1 
 
 ing, and relented, ordering them to return : but the Spanish general came up 
 " with his veteran army and easily routed the tumultuous forces of Antonio," 
 says the Jesuit Franco. Franco, 126. 
 
 1 " Tanta rerum public^ mutatione, credidere qui gerebant animos Societati 
 parum benevolos, earn fore cunctis ludibrio, sed egregie decepti sunt. Nam 
 cessante causa semulationis, quse fuerat Regum favor, ministeria nostra, vel 
 inimicis amabilia, nobis omnium amorem procurarunt. Nunquam Domus 
 Professa magis adjuta eleemosynis, nee majoribus frequentata concursibus." 
 An. 1518,2. Cretineau-Joly, the apologist of the Jesuits, treats the question 
 controversially. If the Jesuits are satisfied with his defence, we have no 
 reason to think that he has done his best to make the matter worse. One slight 
 blunder, if such only it can be called, I will " signalise." He says that 
 " Henriquez, the confessor of the old king, received an order from the general 
 of the company not to meddle with any political affair ; " and for this fact he 
 refers us to Franco, anno 1576. Well, there is no such fact in Franco for that 
 year, nor any other in the Synopsis. In 1578 the general requested " tJie old 
 king " Henry " not to apply his confessor to the administration of secular 
 business," to which the king consented ; but this is evidently not Cretineau's
 
 262 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 In 1567, Pope Pius V. wished the Jesuits to do 
 
 more " service " than they thought expedient, and they 
 
 demurred and memorialised him accordingly. 
 
 Reform at- 
 
 tempted with However favourable to the Jesuits, Pius V. 
 did not approve of their dispensing with the 
 monastic choir. Another objection was the constitu- 
 tional rule by which the Jesuits bound themselves to 
 the Company, whilst the Company entered into no 
 contract with the members in like manner ; and, thirdly, 
 the usual abuse in the Company of making priests of 
 their men almost as soon as they became Jesuits. These 
 reformers, of everybody and everything, particularly 
 objected to being reformed themselves. Their memorial 
 to the pope's delegates contains nineteen arguments 
 against the proposed reform. Sacchinus enters into the 
 details at full length, and Cretineau exhibits the docu- 
 Theirmemo- ment. It is astonishing what eloquence is 
 rial< expended in proving that the Company of 
 
 Jesus was not instituted for the purpose of praising God. 
 Here is a sample or two : Action is the end of the 
 Company, the reformation of morals, the extirpation of 
 heresy. " And what ! do not these causes exist \ The 
 conflagration devours France. A great part of Ger- 
 many is consumed. England is entirely reduced to 
 ashes. Belgium is a prey to the devastation. Poland 
 smokes on all sides. The flame already attacks the 
 frontiers of Italy ; and, without speaking of the innu- 
 merable nations of the East Indies, the West Indies, the 
 New World, all begging us to break to them the bread 
 of the word : without speaking of the daily progress of 
 
 fact as above. If I stopped to signalise such references on both sides of the 
 Jesuit-question, I should be almost continually striking some enemy or some 
 friend of the Jesuits ; it is always signaque sex foribus dextris, totidemque sinistris, 
 six for one, half-a-dozen for the other.
 
 THEIR MEMORIAL AGAINST REFORM. 263 
 
 Turkish impiety, how many persons are there buried in 
 ignorance in Spain, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and other 
 regions of the Christian world infected with error, not 
 only in the villages and country places, not only amongst 
 the laity, but even in the ranks of the clergy, in the 
 midst of the most populous cities." l In the estimation 
 of the Jesuits all their " services " in these various and 
 equivocal departments compensated for the choir. The 
 choir would interfere with their studies as well. " We 
 are, however, ready," they said, " to respect, as we hope, 
 by the aid of divine grace, the will of God in the least 
 sign of the pope's will in the matter ; but you must 
 take into consideration the sentiments which would 
 agitate the other religious bodies if a change in their 
 rules were mooted. We, too, are men, and it cannot be 
 doubted that there are in our Company members who 
 would never have joined it, had they foreseen that the 
 choir would be established in it ; " a most extraordinary 
 declaration by men who are prescriptively " indifferent 
 to all things," dead to their own will, resigned to every 
 fate as holy Obedience shall appoint. " And now, 
 moreover, the members have very little inclination for 
 the choir, because they say it does not enter into our 
 profession ; and had it been the will of God, He would 
 have manifested it to Ignatius our founder." The 
 memorial proceeds to menace the total disorganisation 
 of the Company as likely to result from this reform, 
 and the Jesuits conjure the pope to take into considera- 
 tion their weaknesses, as men, in their prejudice against 
 the choir ; but the last argument is as characteristic as 
 any. " Look to the heretics," they exclaimed. " Do 
 you not see how they strive to prove that there is a 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 28.
 
 264 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 rash inconsiderateness, or even error, both in the judg- 
 ments of the pope and his predecessors, and those of 
 the council ? They will publish this doctrine in their 
 books they will howl it from their pulpits, and, after 
 that, they will strive by degrees to undermine every- 
 thing else. They will pretend that the other orders 
 have also been rashly confirmed, and that the holy 
 council has also given a thousand other proofs of its 
 temerity. In then- insolent joy they will proclaim that 
 discord has crept between the pope and the Jesuits 
 those papists so cruelly bent against us. Truly, what- 
 ever may be the orders of the holy Father, even if we 
 had to sacrifice our lives a thousand times, we hope 
 never to give so disastrous an example. But with all 
 the respect and zeal of which we are capable, we 
 beseech the common protector of the Church, and still 
 more our protector and father, not to offer to the 
 enemies of God, and our own, so favourable an oppor- 
 tunity for insulting and blaspheming against the holy 
 Church." l Thus they put the question to the pope. 
 We cannot fail to observe what boldness the Jesuits 
 have acquired in about ten years. They talked not 
 thus to Paul IV. on a similar occasion. Borgia and 
 A curious Polancus had an interview with the pope. 
 comparison. pj us y was strongly inclined to the choir : 
 but he would dispense with slow singing ; the Jesuits 
 might only pronounce the words of the divine office 
 distinctly : " it is however only just," said the pope, 
 " that in the midst of your affairs, you should reserve a 
 short time to attend to your own spiritual wants." And 
 then he smiled, significantly doubtless, saying : "You 
 ought not to be like chimney-sweeps, who, whilst they 
 
 - 1 Cretineau, ii. 32, et seq.; Sacehin. lib. iii. 25.
 
 THEIR OPPOSITION TO REFORM. 265 
 
 clean chimneys, cover themselves with all the soot they 
 remove j" 1 a comparison as expressive as could possibly 
 be applied to the Jesuits in every department of their 
 labours. Nevertheless, Borgia, who was " the beast of 
 burthen" according to order, held out against the pope, 
 and, by his importunity, induced the pope to give in, or 
 to defer the matter until the publication of the new 
 Breviary, such was the submission of the Jesuits and 
 their " beast of burthen" to the will of the holy Father. 
 But if the article touching the choir was not to be 
 swallowed by the Jesuits, the proposed abolition of the 
 simple vows, and the prohibition of their re- 
 ceiving the priesthood until they took the reforms 
 four vows of solemn profession, roused them 
 to desperate opposition. The latter would at once 
 change the whole nature of the Institute. It would 
 throw the Company into a most embarrassing dilemma. 
 They must either relax the rule respecting the select 
 number of the Company's aristocracy the professed, 
 or at once resign their numerous emissaries in all parts 
 of the world, in every court and city emissaries whose 
 functions as priests were their excuse in the most 
 difficult machinations. It would have spared the world 
 much suffering, and the Jesuits themselves much humi- 
 liation ; but these were not the questions then : the 
 pride of place the pride of the Jesuits, the greatest 
 that ever existed the strong, unconquerable desire to 
 extend, to enrich the Company, a thousand motives 
 rushed to the rescue of this constitutional right and 
 privilege. On the other hand, if in order to have duly 
 qualified emissaries, they relaxed the rule, and admitted 
 a "multitude" to the profession of the four vows, in 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 35.
 
 266 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 other words, to the aristocracy of the Company, then 
 would the monarchy be insensibly changed into the old 
 monkish democracy, and this was not to be endured by 
 the aristocrats in place, who induced their " beast of 
 burthen" to avert the calamity by a crafty expedient. 
 
 Pius V. issued a positive order to his grand vicar not 
 to permit any Jesuit to be ordained before he took the 
 The subter- solemn vows, or was made a professed. This 
 **& was a thunderbolt to the Jesuits. With bulls, 
 
 breves, and privileges on his back, away went the " beast 
 of burthen " to the cardinals to remonstrate : but the 
 pope was inflexible. To all the arguments of Borgia's 
 riders, the pontiff replied that at least as much virtue 
 and talent was requisite for the priesthood as they 
 exacted for profession in the Company ; consequently, 
 those whom they thought worthy of the priesthood, 
 " ought to be worthy a fortiori to take the four vows." 
 Nothing could be more reasonable ; but Sacchinus 
 thinks otherwise. He exhibits all his sophistical elo- 
 quence to prove that it is easier to make a thousand 
 priests than one good and veritable Jesuit ; which, after 
 all, is perhaps too true. 1 What was to be done ? The 
 aristocrats deliberated whether the pope was to be 
 obeyed. Opinions were divided. The privileges of the 
 Company were to be defended. Borgia's expedient met 
 the difficulty most admirably. His advice was that the 
 Jesuits should present themselves for ordination, not as 
 Jesuits, but as beneficiaries or secular ecclesiastics. It 
 follows, from this suggestion, that the Jesuits must have 
 had very many benefices in the res Societatis, the 
 capital of the Company, in order to derive titles for 
 their numerous ordinations ; and it throws some light 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iii. 26, el seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 210.
 
 A RUSE DE RELIGION. 267 
 
 of truth on the charge against the Jesuits, on a former 
 occasion, that they would clutch all the benefices and 
 parishes of Rome. The modern historian of the Jesuits 
 does not mention this ruse de religion suggested by 
 Borgia ; but he says that the matter was accommodated 
 "by a transaction which neither prejudiced the sub- 
 stance of the Institute, nor the authority of the Holy 
 See." 1 Nor had the Jesuits less cogent Cogent 
 reasons for not abolishing the simple vows, reasons. 
 that is, the vows which bind a Jesuit to the Company, 
 immediately after his probation, whether that be two 
 years, according to the Constitutions, or one year, or one 
 month, according to expediency. By a corrective rule 
 of the Constitutions, the Jesuits are allowed to retain 
 their claims to property, and, consequently, their 
 revenues, for a certain time dependent on the will of 
 the superior, notwithstanding the vow of poverty ; 2 a 
 strange piece of inconsistency, but perfectly justifiable 
 to a conscience ruled by holy obedience. This enjoy- 
 ment of their hereditary rights, which this peculiar dis- 
 pensation permitted to all Jesuits who had not taken 
 the solemn vows and consequently the vast majority 
 of the Company this power which they retained of 
 inheriting from their relatives, and even of profiting by 
 speculations, were the resources which guaranteed the 
 Company from the inconveniences of holy poverty and 
 degrading mendicity, alluded to in one of the late 
 decrees, as I have stated. " Certain it is," says Sacchinus, 
 " that this formula of the vows is very convenient for 
 tranquillising the mind, for enforcing the authority of the 
 Company, for its own profit and that of others " 3 which 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 36. 2 Const. P. iv. c. 4,(E) . 
 
 3 " Certum est votorum illam formulam Societati percommodam esse ad 
 tranquillitatem, ad profectum et suum et alienum." Ubi supra, 20.
 
 268 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 word "profit" is somewhat ambiguous perhaps the 
 Jesuits mean spiritual profit, like Leo X.'s indulgences, 
 which served two purposes, as we remember. 
 
 The whole affair passed over as sweetly as any other 
 contest of the Jesuits with the pope. Now, more than 
 Pleasant ever > ^v were in position to demand respect- 
 termination. f u i consideration ; and though, by the advice 
 of the more prudent provincials, it was resolved to 
 obey purely and simply, yet there was no doubt what- 
 ever in the minds of the aristocrats, that they would 
 have their own way in that matter, as in every other, 
 provided they did "good service to the Holy See." 
 Pius V. was the last man in the world to hamper 
 the Jesuits, or to "throw cold water upon them;" 
 you might just as well expect an incendiary to dip 
 his matches in water. Soon he showed how he loved 
 them. " This lightning without a tempest," says their 
 historian, " left no traces between Pius V. and the 
 Company of Jesus." 
 
 Pope Pius demanded a detachment of Jesuits from 
 the Roman College, whom he dispersed all over Italy to 
 A pious propagate the faith and morality. Numerous 
 masquerade. were the conversions, vast the harvest of 
 virtue, if we are to believe the romancist of the Com- 
 pany ; but, after all, they left the Italians bad enough, 
 if those who fought the pope's battles were specimens. 
 Still, the Jesuits did their best stormed and coaxed 
 blazed and chilled soothed and frightened, after the 
 usual manner : but the close of one of their missions is 
 too curious to be omitted. It was nothing less than a 
 pious masquerade for the edification of the faithful ; and 
 it came to pass at Palermo in Sicily. The subject was, 
 The Triumph of Death. The affair came off on Ash
 
 A PIOUS MASQUERADE. 269 
 
 Wednesday. Sixty men, selected from their sodality, 
 covered with a blue sack, and each of them holding a 
 lighted taper, marched in two lines before a troop of 
 musicians, playing on divers instruments. In the rear 
 of the latter, there appeared a huge figure of Christ on 
 the cross, which was carried in a coffin, escorted by four 
 angels and many persons, each of them carrying a torch 
 in one hand, and in the other, one of the instruments 
 used in the passion of the Redeemer such as a nail, 
 scourge, crown of thorns, hammer, and so forth. Imme- 
 diately behind the coffin marched two hundred flagellants, 
 dressed in black, and scourging themselves with all their 
 might, and astonishing and frightening the spectators, 
 both with the clatter of the numerous strokes they gave 
 themselves, and with their blood, which, says the edifying 
 historian, streamed in the streets. They were inflamed 
 to this pious cruelty by a troop of choristers disguised 
 as hermits, by their beard and bristling hair rendered 
 frightful and unrecognisable. They sang, in the mourn- 
 ful tone of lamentation, hymns on the vanities of this 
 world. Next came twelve men, emaciated, pale, all skin 
 and bone, mounted on sorry hacks, precisely in the same 
 sad predicament as to bone and skin. They marched 
 in a line, whilst the leader of the troop sounded a 
 trumpet whose note was frightful. This trumpeter was 
 followed by an ensign who carried a banner on which 
 DEATH was painted. All who followed this personage 
 carried, each of them, some attribute of death, according 
 to the inventive genius of these inexhaustible Jesuits 
 In the rear of this awful procession was a very high 
 chariot, after the fashion of Juggernaut, drawn by four 
 oxen, all black, and driven by a coachman, who repre- 
 sented old TIME. This chariot was adorned with divers
 
 270 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 paintings, representing the trophies of death. It was 
 lighted up at the four comers with four huge lanterns, 
 which gave a light as red as blood, and by a prodigious 
 number of torches made of black resin. From the 
 middle of this chariot there issued a skeleton of colossal 
 magnitude, holding in his hand a tremendous scythe, 
 and carrying on his back a quiver full of poisoned 
 arrows, with spades, hoes, and other grave-instruments, 
 at his feet. Round about this skeleton appeared fifteen 
 slaves, representing the different ranks and conditions 
 of men. Death held them all enchained ; and they sang 
 hymns adapted to the situation which they represented. 
 This frightful skeleton was so tall that it rose as high as 
 the roofs of the houses, and chilled with affright all who 
 beheld it. Through all the principal streets of Palermo 
 the procession wended, and made a great impression on 
 the natives, says the historian, even on those who were 
 accustomed to approve of nothing that was done by the 
 Jesuits. 1 
 
 Nor was the inventive genius of Jesuitism confined to 
 the horrible. In the same year, 1567, at Vienna, they 
 performed the usual procession on the festival of 
 Another. c or p m Christi, with striking magnificence, and 
 glorified themselves as much as the wafer they elevated to 
 the adoring multitude. Their Austrian provincial, Father 
 Lourenzo Magio, presided, and was assisted by no less a 
 personage than the pope's nuncio, and the most distin- 
 guished of Vienna's gentry and nobility. A troop of musi- 
 cians, followed by numerous children representing angels, 
 opened the procession. A band of Jesuits went next 
 in two lines, each being escorted by two of the principal 
 inhabitants with tapers in their hands. Another troop 
 
 1 Sacchin. ubi supra, 106, et seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 211, el seq.
 
 JESUIT- APOSTATES. 271 
 
 of angels followed the Jesuits, and sounded little bells 
 as they walked ; and all the rest of the Jesuits brought 
 up the rear immediately before Father Magio. This 
 personage carried the wafer under a superb canopy, 
 borne by the pope's nuncio, and the most distinguished 
 inhabitants of the city. Magio not only received the 
 incense from young ecclesiastics, but what was most edify- 
 ing, says Sacchinus, one of the principal noblemen of the 
 land scattered flowers before the holy sacrament, during 
 the procession. It passed under a magnificent triumphal 
 arch built for the occasion ; and what inspired more 
 devotion, according to the same authority, was the 
 appearance of twelve young Jesuit-scholars, dressed as 
 angels, but representing twelve different nations. These 
 angels met the procession, and one after the other, 
 addressed a complimentary speech to the wafer, each in 
 the language of the nation he represented. It was 
 thus, says Sacchinus, that the Company succeeded in 
 triumphing over heresy in Germany. 1 If there was 
 then, as at the present day amongst us, a poor-hearted 
 race of sentimental heretics who looked for a god where 
 benighted pagans find one then these Brahminic pro- 
 cessions served the Jesuits a turn : but it unfortunately 
 happened in the very year 1567, that two of their 
 principal professors apostatised and abjured the religion 
 of Rome. The first was Edward Thorn, and Jesuit . 
 the second Belthasar Zuger. Both were pro- apostates. 
 fessors in their college at Dillingen. In these men the 
 Jesuits lost two excellent members, and the loss was 
 the more afflicting inasmuch as they foresaw that the 
 detestable heretics would ring a triumphant peal on the 
 occasion : nor were they wrong in the expectation. 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iii. 120, et seq.; Quesnel, ii. 213.
 
 272 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 The apostacy was duly celebrated throughout Germany, 
 and numerous pens inflicted plagues on the Company. 1 
 but the Jesuits were, on this occasion, wise enough to 
 hold their peace, and not make bad worse, by those 
 petulant recriminations with which they subsequently 
 disgraced themselves and their Company : I allude to 
 the time when their P&IDE overtopped Lucifer's, just 
 before he was seen falling from heaven. 
 
 In the same year, 1567, Pius V. despatched the Jesuit 
 
 Edmund Hay to Mary Queen of Scots. A nuncio was 
 
 , added to the mission, and the Jesuit had his 
 
 Pope Pius and 
 
 the Queen of socius i but he proceeded alone to the scene 
 of peril. 2 It was the critical year in the des- 
 tinies of Mary. She had notified her marriage with 
 Darnley, and the pope sent this mission to congratulate 
 the queen, and to regulate her conduct, chiefly, however, 
 as to the restoration of papal supremacy in Scotland. 
 The zealous pope sent her a letter written with his own 
 hand, assuring her of his paternal affection for herself 
 and her kingdom, and his desire so ardent to see the 
 Catholic religion re-established, that he would sell, said 
 he, the last chalice of the church in the cause a senti- 
 ment which shows the mistaken notions of these times, 
 as if any church can be really defended or established 
 by money. The Jesuit was to follow up this devoted- 
 ness of the pope, by holding forth flattering hopes to 
 the queen, flattering indeed, but cruelly fallacious. 
 Elizabeth being apostolically deprived of her right to 
 the throne of England, proscribed, excommunicated 
 nothing would be easier than to place Mary on the throne 
 as soon as it was made vacant which was to become 
 
 1 Quesnel, ii. 207 ; Sacchin. ubi supra, 126, et scq. 
 - Sacchinus ; Tanner ; Quesnel, ii. 215.
 
 MARY QUEEN OP SCOTS. 273 
 
 the " stirring" problem for the Catholic party with the 
 Jesuits at their head. 1 But that was no time for distant 
 hopes : misery, such as few women should endure or 
 deserve, now began to make despair the cruel prompter 
 of every act performed or permitted by the unfortunate 
 Queen of Scots. Was ever woman more beloved or 
 desired was ever woman more humiliated or Mary Queen 
 debased than Mary Queen of Scots? The ofScota - 
 first calamity that befel her was her education at the 
 dissolute court of France : the next was her marriage 
 with a fragile thing evidently destined to be prematurely 
 cut down : let a veil be thrown over her short widow- 
 hood in the dissolute court of France, for it is not 
 necessary to believe that she did anything more (as is 
 asserted) than write sonnets on her lord deceased. 
 Thus prepared an ardent, self-willed creature, accus- 
 tomed to the display of woman's omnipotence with 
 that sensualism impressed on her features, which con- 
 stitutes the most unfortunate " destiny" of woman, Mary 
 became Queen of Scotland. It was necessary that she 
 should take a husband. She chose Darnley, her first 
 cousin almost a brother the pope gave a dispensa- 
 tion : but the union did not prosper. Darnley disgusted 
 her. The young queen lavished her affections on an 
 accomplished Italian. It is possible that Bizzio was a 
 Jesuit in disguise, sent to the queen by the pope, just 
 like the Jesuit Nicholai', who was sent in disguise to the 
 Queen of Sweden to " wait upon her." 2 Darnley got 
 Bizzio murdered. Then Darnley was murdered ; and 
 within three months the queen is the "wife" of Both- 
 well, who was accused of her husband's murder and a 
 
 1 Thuan. 1. 40 ; Sacchin. lib. v.; Quesnel, ii. 219. 
 - Sacchin. lib. v.; Maimbourg, ii. 249. 
 VOL. II. T
 
 274 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 married man withal. These events took place between 
 1565 and 1567 within two years. And in the next 
 year she began that protracted captivity in England 
 rendered so disastrous to the Catholics and herself by 
 the machinations of her friends, which she must be 
 excused for promoting and finally, by her cruel death, 
 destined to enlist those sympathies of the human heart 
 in her favour, which bewilder the judgments of history, 
 and will for ever procure the unfortunate Queen of 
 Scots admirers and defenders. Her purer sonnets and 
 her letters I admire : they are literally beautiful : but 
 they only attest certain fine states of her finer feelings : 
 they cannot wash away facts, though we add to them 
 the tribute of tears. I lament her fate : but I do not 
 believe her guiltless. 1 And yet pity wrings the hands 
 when we reflect that after all her imprudences or levities 
 or sins, if you please she was made the pretext of so 
 many designing machinators who speculated on her 
 misfortune. Philip of Spain and the Jesuits fed on her 
 calamity like the vultures of the desert. 
 
 And now that most Christian king, from a suspicious 
 disturber of the Jesuits, has become their hearty friend. 
 Spaniards His distinguishing visit and alms to their 
 house in Portugal, immediately after his usur- 
 pation of the throne, was followed up with a more 
 glorious reward : verily had Philip discovered that the 
 Jesuits were useful servants. With gushing bounty he 
 acceded to their request and flung open to the enter- 
 prising Jesuits the gates of Peru. Kingdom of the 
 
 1 See Raumer's admirable Contributions, Eliz. and Mary ; also Politic. Hist, 
 of England, i. ; and Hist, of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. It seems 
 to me that Raumer's industry has completely established the above opinion ; 
 and the question should be now at rest, leaving the Queen's voluminous letters 
 to stand by their own merits, which they will certainly do.
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN PERU. 275 
 
 unfortunate Incas too rich in gold and precious gems 
 the only excuse for the unutterable crimes that Chris- 
 tians committed against their God, to the destruction of its 
 inhabitants ! A hundred pens have celebrated the Eden 
 of Peru ; its incalculable wealth, its wise government, 
 the contentment of its people : and all remember how 
 the kingdom of the Incas was swept away by the 
 Spaniards under Pizarro the cruel free-booter, whose 
 atrocities were countenanced, promoted, exhorted by the 
 Dominican Bishop Valverde. Spain's king was enriched : 
 enormous fortunes were made by his subjects : God's 
 skies above did not rain thunderbolts : the dreadful 
 criminals enjoyed the fruits of iniquity ; and recklessly 
 added crime to crime as though there was no God 
 no avenger in this world as well as the next. What a 
 picture is that which Las Casas unfolds, describing the 
 destruction of the Indies by the Spaniards. The natives 
 slaughtered for sport. An Indian cleft in twain to 
 prove dexterity. Pregnant women torn asunder. Babes 
 at the breast cut in pieces to feed wild beasts and 
 hungry dogs. Some they burnt alive ; others they 
 drowned ; and some they hurled headlong down a pre- 
 cipice. The Indians whom they compelled to fight 
 against their own countrymen, they also compelled to 
 feed on the flesh of their prisoners, whom they slaugh- 
 tered and roasted. And those whom they made their 
 slaves, perished in such numbers by starvation and ill 
 treatment, that Las Casas assures us, their dead bodies 
 floating on the waves answered the purpose of a com- 
 pass to a mariner sailing to the Aceldama of Peru. In 
 forty years eighteen millions of Indians were the victims 
 offered up by Spain in thanksgiving for the New World 
 which the pope conceded to her king. And yet it is 
 
 T 2
 
 276 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 admitted that these poor pagans were the most docile, 
 the most peaceful creatures in the world. But what a 
 sample of Christianity had they experienced! They 
 hated it accordingly ; and when for refusing to receive 
 " the faith," some of them were condemned to death, 
 and the monks still tried to " convert them/' they asked 
 " Whither do Spaniards go after death 1 " " The good 
 go to Heaven," was the reply. " Then," they exclaimed, 
 " we would rather not go to Heaven to meet with 
 Spaniards." They evidently could not distinguish the 
 men from the religion they professed poor miserable 
 pagans but their betters were as blind in their hatred 
 of the Jew and the heretic. 1 It is well known that 
 to supply the place of the slaughtered Indians, or to 
 have more work performed, the Spaniards transported 
 negroes from Africa ; and the dreadful crimes of the 
 conquestadores found defenders in Spain, who argu- 
 mented on the justice and equity of the war carried on 
 by the King of Spain against the Indians words which 
 are the title of a book by Spain's historiographer, the 
 Canon Sepulveda. The Universities of Alcala 
 
 Sepulveda. ^ ' % ' ' 
 
 and Salamanca decided against the publication 
 of the work : but the canon sent the manuscript to 
 Rome, where it was printed without censure. It is 
 creditable to Charles V. that he forbade its publication 
 in his dominions, and caused the suppression of all the 
 copies he could find. 2 
 
 To this depopulated country the Jesuits were dis- 
 patched, under the most favourable auspices, like their 
 glorious beginning. Very different was this mission 
 
 1 For the whole account, see Las Casas's book On the Destruction of the Indies 
 by the Spaniards. I quote from the French, De la Destruction des Indes par les 
 Espagnols. Rouen, 1630. 2 Thuan. 1. 54 ; Du Pin, Bibliot ; Queanel, ii. 250.
 
 ESTABLISHMENT OF JESUITS AT LIMA. 277 
 
 to all others. It was a gushing, a hearty gift to the 
 Company of Jesus, from King Philip II. of Spain and 
 Portugal. At the king's expense a house was pi,iii p ' 
 to be built for them at Lima, the capital of Peru. 
 A general muster of Jesuits was made from the three 
 provinces of the Company in Spain, to found a colony 
 in the wealthy kingdom of the Incas destined to be- 
 come one of the richest strongholds of the Jesuits in 
 the day of their glory. 1 Philip's idea was that " to 
 eternise his domination in a country whose very name 
 had become synonymous with riches, it was necessary 
 to teach the natives to love the Gospel," and " with 
 the hope of insuring a triumph to his new system of 
 conquest, he demanded Jesuits from Francis Borgia/' 2 
 There were eight Jesuits in the expedition. The Jesuits 
 A cordial reception welcomed the Peruvian arrive - 
 Apostles. A magnificent college and a splendid church 
 arose as by the lamp of Aladdin. And the Jesuits did 
 good service to the king did their best to carry out 
 his idea by making the gospel subservient in " eternising 
 his domination " in Peru. Indefatigably they catechised 
 the Indians, and preached to the Spaniards. One of 
 them evangelised the negroes " taught them patiently 
 to endure the toils of slavery." Much better would 
 it have been much more consistent, had the Jesuits 
 taught the king to obviate those toils by proving, as they 
 could, that slavery was incompatible with Christianity 
 but that was not the way to carry out the king's 
 " idea " so they endeavoured to make useful, willing, 
 
 1 Sacchinus, vbi supra, iii. 265, et seq.; Quesnel, ii. 252. 
 
 2 " Philippe II. sentit que, pour eterniser sa domination sur un pays dont le 
 nom inemc e'tait devenu synonyme de richesse, il fallait apprendre aux indigenes 
 a aimer 1'Evangile. Dans 1'espoir de faire triompher son nouveau systeme 
 d'occupation, il demanda des Jesuites a Francois de Borgia." Cretineau, ii. 155,
 
 278 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 docile slaves for the master whom they also served. 
 They established schools for the young, and a congre- 
 gation of young Spanish nobles. In a single year their 
 success was so great, that twelve more Jesuits were 
 imported. With that astonishing rapidity in acquiring 
 languages, which is constantly asserted by 
 their letters, these Jesuits astonished the na- 
 tives by addressing them in their own vernacular. Soon 
 they dispersed all over the kingdom radiating from 
 the capital, which was a certain conquest. Three years 
 scarcely elapsed when a college arose in Cusco, the 
 ancient capital of the Incas : but that was already built : 
 it was a Peruvian palace, and its name was Amarocana, 
 or the House of the Serpents. Another college had 
 arisen in the city of Paz. To supply labourers for these 
 numerous vineyards an extraordinary effort was neces- 
 sary or expedient. The Jesuit-provincial of Peru was 
 also counsellor to the viceroy in direct con- 
 
 " Abuses." . . " 
 
 travention of the Constitutions of the Com- 
 pany, and a decree of the late congregation but that 
 mattered little : the thing was expedient. The pro- 
 vincial looked to the end : the means were " indifferent." 
 He introduced native recruits into the Company, and 
 dispatched them to the work of conversion without suffi- 
 cient instruction. He even admitted the half-castes into 
 the Company. His Jesuit-subordinates were indignant 
 at these and other misdemeanors in his administration, 
 made representations at Rome, and the first provincial of 
 Peru had the honour to be recalled, after beholding the 
 glorious advance of his work in the midst of internal 
 division. 
 
 This is one of the peculiar features of the Jesuit 
 system : however divided amongst themselves, the Jesuits
 
 AVIGNON AND THE INQUISITION. 279 
 
 were always united in their outward labours : if they 
 retained the weaknesses and vices of humanity as indivi- 
 duals, they managed somehow to make the rest 
 
 Peculiar fea- 
 
 of mortals " perfect in other words, as the ture of 
 pope said, "they cleaned chimneys though they 
 covered themselves with the soot." This resulted from 
 " system " from rigid observance of appointed routine 
 mechanical means effectuating mechanical ends. But 
 hence also, the want of durability in all their achieve- 
 ments. Philip was satisfied with the results ; and in 
 1572 he sent thirteen Jesuits to Mexico, to carry out 
 the same idea. 1 It is some consolation that the reign 
 of blood was abolished by this " new system of con- 
 quest " and it was a blessing for the poor remnants of 
 the Peruvian Israel, that the Jesuits were ready to serve 
 the king according to his " idea." 
 
 But this was neither Philip's nor the pope's " idea " 
 with regard to the heretics of Europe. Pius V. had 
 long resolved to establish the Inquisition in all its rigour 
 throughout Italy, and in every place where his p ossevinug 
 authority might prevail. In spite of all his at Av 'g non - 
 efforts, Avignon shrank with horror from the " idea " of 
 the terrible tribunal. Pius, on the contrary, esteemed it 
 exceedingly, because there was no chance of his own 
 limbs being dislocated by the tortures, and because he 
 believed it the most effectual method of promoting 
 orthodoxy so despicable was his opinion of human 
 nature or so utterly blind he was to the fact that 
 compulsion is the least successful of all human expedients. 
 The kingdom of heaven suffers violence in a certain 
 sense, but man invariably kicks against the pricks in 
 every possible sense : it is his nature. Pius V. asked 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 155, et seq.
 
 280 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Borgia for a man capable of providing the Avignonians 
 with the machinery of the Inquisition. Ed abbiamo 
 martin "and we have martyrs for martyrdom if 
 required," said a Jesuit general on one occasion, enume- 
 rating the classes of his heroes and on this occasion, 
 Borgia had a man whom he deemed capable of making 
 martyrs " if required." This was the famous Possevin 
 of Savoy and Bayonne notoriety. Possevin set to work 
 with sermons, gently to entice the people to embrace the 
 horrible monster of the Inquisition. Their taste was 
 too rough to appreciate the delicacy. They were not 
 " perfect " enough to be zealots. So Possevin undertook 
 by sermons to lick the young cubs into shape excuse 
 the metaphor, for it is the veritable figure invented by 
 the Jesuits to typify the function of their preachers 
 concionatorum munus. In the Imago you will see the 
 great bear at work -fashioning minds with her tongue 
 vos mentes fingite lingud. 1 But the young cubs of 
 Avignon had overgrown the licking season. The Jesuit's 
 sermons excited suspicious, which were confirmed by the 
 movements of the pope's legate, and the people of 
 Avignon rose up with one accord against the Jesuits, 
 who had a college in the city. They stormed the 
 college : the fathers barricaded the doors, and held out 
 until the magistrates issued a decree by which they 
 revoked the grant of the college to the Company. This 
 
 1 Page 465. Here is the last grotesque stanza of the ode printed beneath 
 the Jesuit-Bear in the Imago. What an incongruous comparison ! 
 
 " Pergite 6 vastum, Socii, per orbem, " Go forth, Brothers, over the wide 
 Et rudes docta recreate lingua : world, 
 
 Pergite, eeterno similem Parenti And the unshapen polish with your 
 
 Fingere prolem." wise tongues : 
 
 Go, and like unto the eternal Parent 
 Fashion the young cubs."
 
 THEIR CONDUCT IN THREE CASES. 281 
 
 was an infallible method, it appears, to deal with the 
 Jesuits, who required " well founded " colleges : being 
 deprived of their revenues they decamped forthwith. 
 Under the mask of disinterested piety the Jesuits 
 undertake to give instruction gratis : their terms are 
 accepted to the letter : then the mask falls to the 
 ground, their charity evaporates, and more unconcerned 
 than the she-bear of nature, they resign their unshapen 
 cubs without a pang, excepting that which results from 
 the loss of a " consideration." They struggled, however, 
 to have the edict revoked, and left no means untried 
 to soften the magistrates. They appealed to the pope, 
 whose scheme had produced the catastrophe. And the 
 accommodating pope formally denied to the magistrates 
 that he ever thought of introducing the Inquisition, and 
 interceded so warmly for his obedient friends, that the 
 gratuitous teachers were again provided with their 
 college and revenues, and proceeded with their work of 
 charity. 1 If we but compare the conduct of the 
 Company in the three circumstances lately described, it 
 is evident that the Jesuits were ready to carry out any 
 " idea," however at variance with its antece- 
 
 . _ _ -. , Reflections. 
 
 dent or consequent. In India they were 
 demolishing the pagodas of the Hindoos persecuting 
 the priests without quarter or mercy propagating the 
 faith with powder and shot. 2 In Peru they were 
 persuading the poor savages and negroes to serve King 
 Philip and the Spaniards, for the sake of God Almighty 
 and his Christ. At Avignon they were appealing to the 
 same motives in order to make the people submit to the 
 relentless Moloch of Rome's Inquisition simplex duntaxat 
 
 1 Tanner. Ant. Possev.; Sacchin. lib. v. 139 ; extract ex Archiv. Avonen. ; 
 Quesnel, 258. 2 Ante, p. 258.
 
 282 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 et unum, they always kept right before the wind 
 though their gallant bark rolled herself to pieces at last. 
 Pius V. had other work for his faithful legion : he 
 converted them into warriors of the faith. The pope's 
 Pope Pius hatred of heresy and heretics roused him to 
 Stnho War * ne ma ddest efforts in the cause of orthodoxy. 
 dox y- He equipped armies and sent them to the aid 
 
 of various princes then battling with the Turks or their 
 heretic subjects ; but he never sent troops without 
 Jesuits to " excite the soldiers to do their duty, and 
 inspire them with a generosity altogether Christian ; " 
 thus the fathers had the happiness to contribute to the 
 wonderful victories of Lepanto, and Jarnac and Mon- 
 contour, 1 the last over the wretched Huguenots of 
 France. Awful times were those times of incessant 
 commotion, social, political, and " religious." The cor- 
 respondence of Pope Pius V. in the midst of those social 
 tempests is a curious expression of the sentiments pre- 
 valent at that epoch of humanity. When Charles IX. 
 had resolved on war with his heretics, Pius V. wrote to 
 all the Catholic princes, inviting them to maintain that 
 zealous son of the Church, who was undertaking the 
 complete extermination of the miserable Huguenots. 
 His letters to Philip II. and to Louis de Gonzague, 
 Duke of Nevers, to the Doge of Venice, to Philibert, 
 Duke of Savoy all have for their entire object the 
 obtaining of men and money. He granted, himself, 
 ten thousand ounces of gold to carry on the holy war. 
 In his letters to Charles IX., to Catherine de' Medici, 
 he speaks of nothing but the enormity of the crime of 
 heresy, and the vengeance that ought to be inflicted for 
 it, either to satisfy the just anger of Heaven or to reclaim 
 
 1 Verjus, ii. 22.
 
 THE WAR OF ORTHODOXY. 283 
 
 the obedience of rebellious subjects two ideas which 
 were then intimately connected. " Give no longer to 
 the common enemies," said the pope, " give them not 
 the chance of rising against the Catholics. We exhort 
 you to this with all the might, all the ardour of which 
 we are capable .... May your majesty continue, as 
 you have constantly done, in the rectitude of your soul 
 and in the simplicity of your heart, to seek only the 
 honour of God Almighty, and to combat openly and 
 ardently the enemies of the Catholic religion to their 
 death." Whilst the common father, the type, the per- 
 sonification of Catholicism displayed and developed such 
 ideas, ought we to be astonished at the zeal, the heroic 
 ardour which animated his people in the war against 
 the Huguenots ? 1 And fierce and horrible was that 
 bloody warfare to become. There was to be no hope, 
 no rest for the Huguenot. So incessantly was he kept 
 in the roaring blaze of persecution, that the word 
 Huguenot became, and still is, the name for a kettle in 
 France. Huguenots and Catholics all were drunk with 
 the rage of mutual slaughter, whose prime movement 
 came from the Pope of Rome. The King of The K i ng 
 Spain fanned the flame of civil war ; kept it of Spain> 
 alive by his incessant advice, not without gold the 
 gold that was cursed by the blood of Indians crying to 
 God for vengeance. And that vengeance was man's own 
 making the most awful that can befall humanity the 
 prostitution of religion to the vile passions and interests 
 of calculating parties. There was some excuse for the 
 multitude the people who were roused to fight the bat- 
 tles of the designing great ones but the great waded 
 through their despicable blood to the accomplishment 
 
 1 Capefiguc, Ref. 299.
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 of their desires. And there is some excuse for the 
 Jesuits, if their time-serving devotedness to all who 
 would employ them, made a virtue of that intensest lust 
 of their hearts to overtop all competitors in the struggle 
 for influence on mankind. With the armies sent into 
 France by Pope Pius, Jesuits went exulting, 
 
 The Jesuits. J . ^. . 
 
 exhorting, inspiring desperate energy to the 
 fiend of their religion, panting for the blood of a brother. 
 Nor did the Jesuit-aristocrats fail to enlist the feelings 
 of the whole Company in the enterprise. Their histo- 
 rian tells us that Borgia ordered prayers to be said 
 throughout the Company, a thousand masses to be 
 celebrated, for the success of this worse than pagan 
 warfare ; and he adds, that doubtless the said prayers 
 and masses eventuated the glorious Catholic victories of 
 Their 1569! Jesuits were present, as they tell us; 
 exploits. an( j the ^ttle of Moncontour merited, accord- 
 ing to the Jesuit martyrologist, eternal glory for one 
 of their lay-brothers, named Lelio Sanguinini, who 
 perished amongst the slain of the papal army. And 
 at the battle of Jarnac their famous Auger had the 
 honour of assisting the Duke d'Anjou afterwards 
 Henry III. in donning his cuirass and pulling on his 
 boots. 1 The function of a valet he soon exchanged for 
 that of propagandist " converting" in eight days, 360 
 Huguenots, and founding a convent of nuns and then, 
 Their in horrible mockery of premeditated woe, pub- 
 iii fame. ii s hi n g a book which he called The Spiritual 
 Sugar to sweeten the Bitterness of the Wars of Reli- 
 gion I" 1 Adored were the Jesuits by their party: but 
 execrated by their opponents. Listen to one of the latter. 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. iii. 124 147, et seq. 
 
 2 Sacchin. ubi supra, 129, et seq. ; Quesncl, ii. 267.
 
 AN OPPONENT'S DESCRIPTION OF THEM. 285 
 
 "It is not the preaching of the word of God that they 
 [the other party] demand. They care not whether this 
 kingdom be peopled with good preachers, or that the 
 people be instructed in their salvation, or that the 
 strayed sheep may be reclaimed. No, they want 
 Jesuits who inspire the venom of their conspiracy, under 
 the shade of sanctity, in this kingdom : Jesuits, who 
 under the pretext of confession (what horrible hypocrisy) 
 abuse the devotion of those who believe them, and force 
 them to join that league and their party with an oath ; 
 who exhort subjects to kill and assassinate their princes, 
 promising them pardon for their sins, making them 
 believe that by such execrable acts they merit Paradise. 
 True colonies of Spaniards, true leaven of Spain in this 
 kingdom, which has for years soured our dough, has 
 Spaniarded the towns of France under the brows of 
 the Pharisees, whose houses are more dangerous than 
 citadels, whose assemblies are nothing but conspiracies. 
 Such are they known to be : such are for us the fruits 
 of the general assembly which they lately held in Paris, 
 over which presided a certain Jesuit of Pontamousson, 
 the director of those designs. Others there are who 
 blame the king [Henry III.] in open pulpit, inflame the 
 people, arm them with fury against the magistrates, 
 preaching the praises, recommending the virtues of 
 those pretended scions of Charlemagne. This is the 
 ardent zeal, this is the religion that animates them. 
 And would you see them 1 When they are in Germany, 
 they are Lutherans. They have an eye to the clergy ; 
 they have an eye to the service ; they take precious 
 good care of their residences ; possessing numerous 
 bishoprics, numerous abbeys, contrary to the canons, 
 contrary to the Council which they go preaching in
 
 286 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 France ; and selling the woods, they waste the domain, 
 leaving the churches and dwellings to rot ; selling relics, 
 reserving for themselves all that is most precious. Few 
 alms they give : the poor are naked, and even the 
 priests die from hunger. True heirs, not of Charle- 
 magne indeed, but of Charles de Lorraine, who knew 
 how right devoutly to sell the great cross for his 
 profit, with the richest jewels of Metz." 1 Such being 
 the sentiments against the Jesuits in France, the ques- 
 tion is, not how far they merited this obloquy, but how 
 far it was impossible for them to be otherwise than 
 thorns in the sides of the people by their very pre- 
 sence alone keeping alive and stimulating the rancour 
 of parties. 
 
 Wherever they wandered, the Jesuits were drawn, or 
 naturally fell, into every scheme that disturbed, agitated, 
 harassed humanity. In that very year when they 
 joined the pope's army in France, they enlisted them- 
 selves in the expedition of the Spaniard, warring with 
 The Moore ^he Moors of Grenada, whom he drove to 
 of Grenada, revolt. Ferdinand the Catholic had burnt 
 4000 Jews together : he had driven the greater part of 
 the Moors into exile ; those who remained had purchased 
 by the ceremonial of baptism a dear permission to see 
 the sun shine on the tops of Alhambra. The Spaniards 
 despised them, insulted them. They hated the Spaniards 
 and their religion. Clinging together in the Alrezin of 
 Grenada, they never resigned the language of Mo- 
 hammed ; and the dress of the Arab still grace the 
 descendants of that race whose blood had bettered 
 the Man of Spain. The Jesuits went amongst them, 
 and, according to their historian, made numberless 
 
 1 Mornay Du Plessis, Mem. i. 457, et seq.
 
 REVOLT OF THE MOORS OF GRENADA. 287 
 
 conversions. If they did so, there was no necessity 
 for advising royal interference to promote the cause of 
 religion. In concert with the Archbishop of Grenada, 
 they induced King Philip to prohibit, under severe 
 penalties, the use of the baths, all which were to be 
 demolished. Besides, the Moorish women were to dress 
 in the fashion of Spain : all were to renounce their 
 language, and speak only Spanish. The Moors revolted. 
 A thousand remembrances nerved their arms, and awoke 
 the energies which had won for their race glory, king- 
 doms, supremacy among the nations. Led on by a 
 youthful but valiant descendant of that race, they spread 
 havoc and dismay far and wide. They began with the 
 house of the Jesuits, which they forced, and sought, but in 
 vain, the life of the superior. Throughout the surround- 
 ing country they profaned the churches, maltreated the 
 priests and the monks. A war with the rebels ensued ; and 
 the Jesuits joined the armies of their master " to excite 
 the soldiers, and inspire Christian generosity :" whilst 
 those who remained at Grenada stood as sentinels to 
 guard the city from surprise. The Moors were finally 
 defeated, and reduced to a worse condition than before. 
 They were forced more strictly to conform to the Church : 
 they were scattered at a distance from Grenada, can- 
 toned amongst the interior provinces ; and the prisoners 
 were sold as slaves. 1 It was no consolation to the Moors 
 that the Jesuits lost their house in the Alrezin of 
 Grenada. 
 
 The warlike spirit of the Company animated the sons 
 of Loyola in India as well. The Portuguese were 
 masters of Amboyna, where they were well defended ; 
 and they conceived the design of building a fort in an 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. ; Quesnel, ii.; Hist, of Spain, 122.
 
 288 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 adjacent island. The inhabitants granted permission; 
 but whether they repented of their imprudence, or were 
 Jesuit impelled by their neighbours, they set upon 
 
 warriors, the Portuguese workmen engaged in the erec- 
 tion. Vengeance, of course, was resolved. Fearful 
 ravages ensued : the Jesuit Pereira was amongst the 
 leaders of Portugal ; but still the barbarians had the 
 advantage. Two Jesuits headed a reinforcement and 
 decided the victory in favour of the Portuguese, who 
 would otherwise have been cut off to a man. The first 
 Jesuit was Vincent Diaz : he wore a cuirass, and carried 
 a huge cross in the van, whilst father Mascarenia edified 
 the rear. Diaz was wounded, and would have been 
 killed had he not been cuirassed. The conquest of the 
 whole island gave finality to the achievement of these 
 free-booters with the timely aid of the warrior- 
 Jesuits. 1 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Jesuits were doing their 
 utmost to serve the pope in extending the lever of his 
 power and prerogatives. Nor can it be gain- 
 Papai said that Pope Pius was a good master to his 
 good and faithful servants. He had enriched 
 them with benefices. He had exalted them with bulls. 
 He had made them powerful with privileges. And now 
 . he generously gave them the Penitentiary of 
 tentiary of Rome. That word, like a vast many others, 
 has been strangely perverted in the course of 
 time. Its meaning on the present occasion demands 
 some explanation, particularly as this grant was the 
 sixth house of the Jesuits in Rome. The Roman Peni- 
 tentiary is an establishment instituted for the accommo- 
 dation of the pilgrims from all parts of the world, 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. v. ; Quesnel, ii. 271 ; Voyage aux Indes, iii. p. 197.
 
 THE PENITENTIARY OF ROME. 289 
 
 impelled to Rome by their devotion, or by the guilt of 
 some enormous sin, whose absolution was reserved for 
 Rome in particular ; in other words, there were, and 
 there are, certain terrible perpetrations for which there 
 is no absolution either from priest or bishop without the 
 special licence of the pope. The Romans, you perceive, 
 are hereby highly favoured in not having to go far for 
 pardon. This may have been one of the causes which 
 made Rome (the city of Rome) at all times the very 
 model of every possible crime imaginable. Now, to hear 
 the confessions of these multilinguist pilgrims, there 
 were attached to this Penitentiary eleven priests who 
 spoke, altogether, all the languages of Europe. These 
 were presided over by a cardinal with the title of Grand 
 Penitentiary. They did not live in community ; but 
 each had a fixed salary, constituting a benefice for life. 
 Their salaries were liberal ; and, as it usually happens 
 in such cases, particularly in matters spiritual, the peni- 
 tentiaries delegated their functions to priests or curates, 
 whom they remunerated as sparingly as possible a 
 practice which many will pelt at, without considering that 
 their own houses are made of glass. These curates were 
 generally as worthless as their cures or " situations." 
 According to Sacchinus, these abuses determined Pope 
 Pius V. to transfer the establishment to the Jesuits. 
 There were many objections against Borgia's acceptance 
 of the concern. It was easy to dismiss the fact that the 
 donation would excite the envy of many, those whom 
 they supplanted, especially ; but the statutes of the 
 Order positively prohibited the acceptance of any 
 revenues excepting for colleges. It was easily managed. 
 The difficulties vanished like smoke in the clear blue 
 sky of Jesuit-invention. The Jesuits satisfied the 
 VOL. ir. u
 
 290 . HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 sorrowing penitentiaries outgoing, by granting them a 
 pension ; and, secondly, they transferred some of their 
 students to the house, so as to bring it under the mask 
 of a college thus exhibiting one of those curious and 
 edifying practical equivocations whose neatness is equal 
 to their utility on delicate occasions. Thus the holy 
 general yielded to the scheme, like a gentle " beast of 
 burthen," and received on his back at one load, for the 
 res Societatis, the stock of the Company, no less than 
 twelve of the richest benefices in Rome, which were 
 enjoyed by the Jesuits to the day of their destruction. 1 
 They were not less favoured in France. At length, 
 after all their useless efforts to manage the University and 
 Parliament, royal favour enabled them at once 
 
 The Jesuits .% 
 
 favoured by to dispense with the sanction of their rivals. It 
 was certainly to be expected that Charles IX., 
 so completely under the influence of Philip II., should 
 follow the example of the Spaniard, and patronise the men 
 who could carry out his " idea" so successfully. The time 
 was coming when the Jesuits would be useful in France. 
 The French king issued a mandate to his parliament for 
 the speedy termination of the process against the 
 disputed donations, which he confirmed to the Company 
 without reserve. The Jesuits followed up this display 
 of royal patronage with extraordinary efforts at conver- 
 sion : they would repay the king with the souls of 
 Huguenots. Auger and Possevin, the two grand apos- 
 Augerand tolical hunters of the Company, were inces- 
 santly in the pulpit or on horseback. Possevin 
 laid the foundations of a college at Rouen, and threw 
 himself on Dieppe, a stronghold of heresy. He preached 
 two or three sermons, and, wonderful to tell, fifteen 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi.; Quesnel, ii. 283.
 
 A MIRACLE. 291 
 
 hundred Huguenots were converted. Pity that such an 
 apostle did not do the same in every town of France : 
 there would have been no Huguenots left to be slaugh- 
 tered : the space of a single year would have been 
 enough to forefend the maledictions of ages. Possevin 
 left his work unfinished : he was called from his miracu- 
 lous apostolate to gratify the Cardinal de Bourbon at 
 Rouen, with a course of Lent sermons ! His substitute, 
 however, even surpassed the apostle. As rapidly, he 
 converted fifteen hundred Huguenots, which must 
 have exhausted heresy at the small seaport of Nor- 
 mandy. This natural association of seaport with fishes, 
 seems to have suggested a corresponding miracle to the 
 secretaries of Jesuit-ambassadors for we are told that 
 this last apostle at Dieppe, attracted into the 
 nets of the fishermen the shoals of herrings 
 which had swum off to other coasts since the introduc- 
 tion of heresy, says Sacchinus! Poitiers, Niort, Chatel- 
 leraut, and other towns of Poitou, furnished similar 
 miraculous conversions to six other Jesuits although 
 in the middle of the eighteenth century these towns 
 continued to be strongholds of heresy, filled with Cal- 
 vinists, notwithstanding the fine houses which the 
 Jesuits possessed in Normandy and Poitou. 1 And if it 
 be more difficult to make one good Jesuit than a 
 thousand ordinary priests ; and if an ordinary Jesuit 
 may convert fifteen hundred heretics with two or three 
 sermons, then the conversion of a Jesuit must be 
 tantamount to that of some ten thousand he- Another 
 retics and such a conversion came to pass a P state - 
 about the same time : a German Jesuit apostatised and 
 took a wife. He was of the college at Prague. Vain were 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi. ; Quesnel, ii. 286, et seq. 
 
 u 2
 
 292 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 all the provincial's efforts to reclaim the lost sheep ; 
 vain were the prayers of the Jesuits ; vastly they 
 abuse the man for his secession ; deeply they cut into 
 his reputation for bringing discredit upon them in the 
 midst of the lynx-eyed heretics. And they pour the 
 phial of God's judgment upon his head, devoted to 
 destruction by the curses of the Jesuits, saying : " The 
 plague which spared the city of Prague seized the 
 apostate : it killed him and the woman who had the 
 melancholy courage to link her destiny with his ! " l 
 Those who can say such things may be simply infatuated 
 with rancorous zeal : but they can claim no praise or 
 congratulation as to their hearts or their minds. And 
 as a set-off to that rancour, public rumour trumpeted 
 the bad morals of the Jesuits themselves at Vienna, and 
 appealed to the evidence of a woman for the attestation 
 of sin : nay, it was proclaimed that disguises were used 
 to facilitate the indulgence of vice. Truly or falsely, it 
 matters little to inquire, since the Jesuits so rancorously 
 blasted the reputation of a member who joined the ranks 
 of the detestable heretics. 2 
 
 The fortunes of war harassed the Jesuits more 
 
 effectually than the loss of a member or the obloquy of 
 
 fame. The " idea " of the Spaniard was even 
 
 The Spaniard 
 
 in the destined to recoil upon himself with vengeance 
 
 Netherlands. _ . . , 
 
 redoubled, and to re-act against all who lent a 
 hand to its development. The mighty schemes of heretic- 
 extirpation prompted by Pope Pius, undertaken by King 
 Philip and King Charles, were fast progressing to a 
 dreadful consummation. To work the ferocious Alva 
 
 1 " La peste, qui epargnait la ville de Prague, atteignit 1'apostat : elle le tua 
 avec la femme qui avait eu le triste courage d'associer sa destine'e avec la sienne." 
 Cretineau, ii. 48. 2 Sacchin. ubi supra, 93, et seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 287.
 
 THE SPANIARD IN THE NETHERLANDS. 293 
 
 went, exulting over the tortures and the blood of the 
 rebels in Flanders. For the Catholic refugees from 
 England there was gold in abundance, splendid liberality. 
 For the native heretics there were tortures, unspeakable 
 cruelty and yet eventu vasto with vast benefit to 
 the Catholic cause, according to the Jesuit Strada. 1 
 Alva had cut down the Protestant leaders Egmont and 
 Horn. The prisons were filled with nobles and the rich. 
 The " Council of Blood " had the scaffold for its cross of 
 salvation ; and the decrees of the Inquisition for its 
 gospel. Men were roasted alive : women were delivered 
 over to the soldier's brutality. Alva boasted that he had 
 consigned to death eighteen thousand Flemings. And 
 who were these adversaries of the Spaniard 1 Who were 
 the men whom this ruthless tyranny drove to revolt ? 
 A peaceful tribe of fishermen and shepherds, in an 
 almost forgotten corner of Europe, which with difficulty 
 they had rescued from the ocean ; the sea their profes- 
 sion, and at once their wealth and their plague ; 
 poverty with freedom their highest blessing, their 
 glory, their virtue. The severe rod of despotism was 
 held suspended over them. An arbitrary power threat- 
 ened to tear away the foundation of their happiness. 
 The guardian of their laws became their tyrant. Simple 
 in their political instincts, as in their manners, they 
 dared to appeal to ancient treaties, and to remind the 
 lord of both the Indies of the rights of nature. A name 
 decides the whole issue of things. In Madrid that was 
 called rebellion, which in Brussels was styled only a 
 lawful remonstrance. The complaints of Brabant required 
 
 1 " Heeretici plectuntur eventu vasto. Jamque hseretici trahebantur ad ergas- 
 tula, plectebanturque, territis ex eo non paucis, iisque, qui supplicio afficiebantur, 
 non raro Ecclesise restitutis." De Bello Belg. 166.
 
 294 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 a prudent mediator. Philip sent an executioner, and 
 the signal of war was given. 1 Driven to frenzy, the 
 cruel battle-field was their only refuge retaliating 
 slaughter, destruction, their only hope : for kings had 
 not yet been taught to feel that they are simply the 
 servants of their people for punishment, as soon as they 
 cease to be the exponent of God's providence over the 
 land they call their kingdom. The Pope of Rome 
 The pope's sanctioned the wickedness of kings in those 
 days. Pope Pius, as I have stated, praised 
 and rewarded Alva for his atrocities ; he stimulated 
 Philip with exhortation, and even gave him a " dispensa- 
 tion " to marry the betrothed bride of his own son a 
 dispensation to marry his own niece, who was disap- 
 pointed of a husband by the untimely death of Don 
 Carlos of which it were to be wished that Philip was 
 guiltless. 2 Such was the mediation of the popedom 
 
 1 Schiller, Revolt. Introd. 
 
 2 " Protestant writers accuse the king of poisoning his son during his captivity 
 [being suspected of heresy, and known to be favouring the malcontents of the 
 Netherlands], and also his young queen, a few months afterwards, when she 
 died in premature child-bed. Spanish writers generally state that Don Carlos 
 died of a fever ; and of the authors who may be esteemed impai-tial, some 
 allege that Carlos intentionally brought on such a fever by intemperance, whilst 
 others assert that he was solemnly delivered by his father into the hands of the 
 Inquisition ; was convicted by that fearful tribunal of heresy, and sentenced to 
 death, when, as an especial indulgence, he was allowed to choose the mode of 
 his execution, and chose poison. The better opinion seems to be, that his death 
 was a natural one. As such it was announced ; when the king received the 
 intelligence with expressions of deep sorrow, retiring to a monastery for a short 
 time, the court went into mourning, and all the usual forms of grief were 
 observed. Philip gave, however, an air of credibility to the horrible and im- 
 probable accusation of his enemies, by wooing his son's second betrothed bride, 
 although his own niece, shortly after Isabel's death. A dispensation being with 
 some difficulty obtained from the pope, the Archduchess Anne became her 
 
 'uncle's fourth wife, and the mother of his heir, inasmuch as Isabel had left only 
 daughters." Hist, of Spain, (Lib. of Usef. Knowl.) 120. Cretineau gives a 
 curious note on tliis affair. I must remind the reader that Philip's Queen, 
 Isabel of France, had been promised to Don Carlos ; and it is alleged that 
 Carlos never forgave his father for robbing him of his beautiful promised bride,
 
 THE JESUITS DECAMP FROM FLANDERS. 295 
 
 'twixt heaven and earth in those days. And think you 
 that the temporary punishment inflicted by the French 
 and Napoleon has settled the account of humanity 
 against the popedom \ We have yet to see it swept 
 away for ever and many of us may live to see that 
 desirable day for religion for all humanity. 
 
 In the midst of the disorders produced by the 
 revolt of the Netherlands, the Jesuits did not think 
 proper to expose themselves to the discretion of the 
 conquerors, nor the fury of the vanquished. They 
 decamped. But they took precautions to The Jesuits 
 conceal their flight. They doffed their gowns decamp ' 
 and donned the dress of the country, belted on a sword, 
 and thus equipped they dispersed in different directions 
 taking the additional precaution of cutting their 
 beards. Their hair they always wore short ; and that 
 circumstance may have had some effect in exciting their 
 incessantly active brains for short bristling hairs are 
 powerful electrics. 1 But the res Societatis was not 
 
 and that the king entertained a deep and savage jealousy of his son's attachment 
 to that princess. Cretineau's curious note is as follows : " According to a 
 manuscript half Spanish, half Latin, taken during the Peninsular wars in 1811, 
 from the archives of Simancas .... which manuscript was in the possession 
 of the Duke de Broglie, and probably the composition of some chaplain of 
 Isabel, Don Carlos died in a bath, his veins having been opened; and 
 Isabel was poisoned by a drink which King Philip forced her to swallow before 
 his eyes. This writing confirms the intimacy supposed to exist between the 
 queen and the king's son," t. ii. p. 66. What a complication of horrors ! And 
 yet this Philip was the very god of orthodoxy. What a fearful example of 
 believing like a saint and sinning like a devil ! According to De Thou, Pope 
 Pius V. praised Philip for his stern uncompromising severity in the catholic 
 cause (!) for which he had not even spared his own son, qui proprio Jilio non 
 pepertisset. xliii. I must here observe that Cretineau, or the translator he quotes, 
 has taken great liberties with De Thou in the seven lines he puts into inverted 
 commas, as though they were translated from that author, to uphold his idea in 
 defence of Philip's cruelty. ii. 66, note. 
 
 1 Hence to cut short the hair of prisoners is to prolong their wickedness by 
 keeping up their physical excitement in solitude. A clean shave would be in- 
 finitely more to the purpose, just as in madness.
 
 296 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 utterly neglected and forgotten. They left a few com- 
 panions thus disguised, to wander up and down, and 
 yet keep an eye on the interests of the Company, so as 
 not completely to lose the establishment which they had 
 earned with so much difficulty. 1 
 
 The town of Mechlin or Malines was taken by assault, 
 
 and Alva gave it up to his hounds for rape and rapine. 
 
 None were spared : even the monks and the 
 
 1572. The r 
 
 sack of nuns were plundered and maltreated by the 
 troops of the most catholic king under his 
 general, complimented and rewarded by the Pope of 
 Rome, father of the faithful, successor of St. Peter, 
 Christ's vicar upon earth. The sack lasted three days : 
 and the fortunate soldiers, glutted with crime and laden 
 with the booty, marched into Antwerp, where they 
 began to sell off their stolen goods to the best advan- 
 tage. " A priest of the Company of Jesus, who was in 
 high repute in Antwerp, assembled some of the mer- 
 chants," says Strada, the Jesuit, " and induced them to 
 pious buy up the articles so wastefully sold by the 
 
 merchants, troops, in order to restore them to the original 
 owners at the same price." The " pious merchants " 
 complied, according to Strada ; the goods, which were 
 worth one hundred thousand florins, were bought in for 
 twenty thousand, and resold to the owners at the same 
 price the portion which was not redeemed being distri- 
 buted among the poor inter inopes. Nay, the same 
 merchants made a subscription, and freighted a vessel 
 with provisions for the unfortunates at Malines. Even 
 the soldiers, by the same Jesuit's exhortation, sent in the 
 same vessel more than a hundred precious vestments, 
 besides other sacred furniture, to be restored to the 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. viii. 225, et seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 291.
 
 THE JESUIT SCHOOLS. 297 
 
 monks and nuns gratuitously. 1 Such is the Jesuit- 
 version of the affair, which, however, was differently 
 related by other parties. These say that the soldiers 
 gave a portion of the booty to the Jesuits, as it was a 
 common practice with them to share their spoil with the 
 monks : and the Jesuits converted the same into money, 
 with which they built their costly and magnificent house 
 in Antwerp. Sacchinus denies the fact, as a matter of 
 course, stating that the Jesuits were publicly accused of 
 having built their house out of the spoils of Mechlin ; 
 and further, that they had used some of the same money 
 to procure the favour they enjoyed with Alva's successor 
 in the Netherlands an instance, adds the historian, of 
 the malignity and perversity of man, which can find 
 nothing good or virtuous without putting upon it a 
 wrong construction. 2 It would have been better to 
 supply the place of this moral axiom, by stating whence 
 the funds were obtained for building or beautifying the 
 house at Antwerp. However, perhaps we may halve 
 the evidence on both sides, and believe that the Jesuits 
 displayed a kind consideration for the unfortunates of 
 Malines, and provided for their house in the bargain. 
 It is delightful for a sportsman to kill two birds at one 
 shot. 
 
 In the midst of these awful scenes of war in almost 
 every other province of the Company, the Jesuits at 
 Rome were cultivating the arts with their usual activity, 
 were training youth according to their system, 
 and with curious results. The German Col- Jesuit- 
 lege, as I have stated, was filled with the sons 
 of the nobility youths destined for the highest functions 
 
 1 Strada, 432. 
 
 2 Sacchin. lib. viii. 231 ; Meteren, Hist. Des Pays Bas ; Quesnel, ii. 291.
 
 298 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 in church and state youths who would become men and 
 be placed in a position to influence many a social circle, 
 many a city, many a kingdom. Considering the domi- 
 nant ideas of the Catholic reaction headed by the pope, 
 considering the perfect concurrence of the Jesuits in that 
 movement, we may take it for granted that the hatred 
 of the heretics was intensely inculcated in their schools, 
 as Possevinus told the Duke of Savoy. In the spreading 
 establishments of the Jesuits, therefore, we behold one 
 immense source of the desperate spirit of contention 
 which made that most immoral first century of the 
 Jesuits, the most bigoted withal. Everything was post- 
 poned to the bugbear orthodoxy. To insure fidelity to 
 " the Church " everything would be sacrificed. And it 
 was the great, the noble, and the rich, whose heart and 
 hand the champions of Catholicism were eager to enlist 
 around their banners. With such support there would 
 be no necessity for the pope " to sell the last chalice of 
 the Church " for gold, whereon and whereby to establish 
 and defend Catholicism. So the Jesuits were excessively 
 endearing, kind, indulgent to these sprigs of nobility, 
 whom they effectually bound to their cause, and to them- 
 selves or the Company : but not without the usual 
 consequences of partiality, indulgence, and connivance in 
 the management of youth. If there be a class of human 
 beings for whose guidance the most undeviating single- 
 ness of heart, the most candid simplicity, with rational 
 firmness, be absolutely necessary, it is youth youth of 
 all ranks but especially the children of the great and 
 the rich, who imbibe that unnatural pride, selfishness, 
 and self-sufficiency which are destined to perpetuate 
 the abuses of civilisation. Amongst the Jesuit-establish- 
 ments the evils of their system were already apparent.
 
 FACTS AND REFLECTIONS. 299 
 
 Even in the life-time of Ignatius, we beheld them with 
 grief, though we bitterly laughed at the incongruous 
 contrast of rules as rigid as cast-iron, and conduct as 
 unbridled as the ocean amongst their own scholastics 
 the embryo-Jesuits of Portugal. We must not, there- 
 fore, be surprised to read of a " row " in the Roman and 
 German Colleges, managed by the Jesuits. The Jesuit- 
 theatricals were the origin un-" holy emula- 
 tion " was the proximate cause of the strife. 
 The students at the German College had performed a 
 tragedy with the usual display : the pupils at the Roman 
 College had also prepared their drama to succeed among 
 the Roman festivities usual during the carnival. From 
 a commendable spirit of economy, or to lessen the cost 
 of their attractions, the Jesuits thought proper to request 
 the pupils of the Roman College to perform their drama 
 in the theatre already constructed in the German College. 
 As soon as this was made known, the students of the 
 German College resolved to give a second representation 
 of their tragedy. It appears that it was " by particular 
 desire" of the public, who had duly applauded the 
 histrionic efforts of the young Jesuits : but the pupils of 
 the Roman College were determined to fire off their gun, 
 and resolved not to lose the opportunity. The Germans 
 took possession of the theatre : the Romans rushed on, 
 and a desperate struggle ensued ; " In fact," says Sac- 
 chinus, "there was every likelihood of seeing a real 
 tragedy enacted, and the theatre converted into a gla- 
 diatorial arena." On such occasions the Factsaild 
 young are themselves frightened by the serious reflections, 
 consequences of their unbridled humours ; and in that 
 condition they are easily managed. Borgia interposed, 
 prohibited both companies from acting, and dismissed
 
 300 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 the audience. 1 Still the Jesuits persevered in the 
 practice of these exhibitions, and became famous for their 
 theatrical pomps and vanities. Their Shakspeares com- 
 posed tragedies absurd and wretched platitudes most 
 of them and their Keans and Kembles delighted their 
 silly parents and friends, who deemed it an honour to 
 have the family-genius exhibited to the multitude. The 
 Jesuits of course humoured the weakness sacrificed to 
 the vanity ; but those who have some experience in 
 these matters, who have witnessed the total absorption 
 of every other thought by the preparations for a college 
 performance, the feverish anxiety to win applause, the 
 positively demoralising impression produced by the 
 concourse of gaily-dressed women, on the eyes at least 
 of the students previously so strictly secluded, whoever 
 has witnessed these concomitants of college-theatricals, 
 may be permitted to think that they should have been 
 dispensed with by those who make a boast of their 
 moral students. But these displays served the purpose 
 of the Jesuits. They captivated the most vulgar portion 
 of humanity parents blinded by vanity, intoxicated 
 with over-fondness for their progeny. Not only did the 
 Jesuits stimulate the histrionic ambition of their pupils 
 by these regular displays, but their very prizes were 
 neatly bound and gilt plays, composed by their Com- 
 pany harmless, stupid matter enough decidedly, and 
 not worth the binding; but it is the "spirit" thus 
 entertained and stimulated, which demands attention. 2 
 
 1 Sacchin. lib. vi. 9, et seq. ; Quesnel, ii. 312, et seq. 
 
 I fortunately fell in with one of the prizes, now in my possession Petri 
 Mussonii Virdunensis e Societate Jesu Tragedies, " performed in the theatre of 
 Henry IV.'s College," at La Fleche. On the fly-leaf there is a manuscript 
 declaration by Chevalier, the prefect of Studies at the college, attesting that the 
 volume was merited by an " ingenuous youth " named Michel Tartaret, to whom
 
 BELLARMINE. 301 
 
 Their colleges answered another purpose as well 
 they presented a field of selection whence the noble oaks 
 and mighty poplars emerged and towered aloft, 
 
 _ J . r r . . Bellanninc. 
 
 overshadowing the fortunate confederation. 
 Robert Bellarmine was now in condition to begin the 
 glorious career of his pen and his tongue, in defence of 
 orthodoxy. The Jesuits consoled themselves for the 
 disaster at Montepulciano, by the thought that the city 
 gave them a Bellarmine, 1 A cousin of Pope Marcellus II., 
 he was sent very young to the Roman school of the 
 Jesuits, and imbibed a " vocation" into the Company. 
 It is said that his humility and simplicity of character 
 led him to join the Company, on account of the vow by 
 which the Jesuits engaged themselves not to accept 
 any prelacy or church-dignity, unless compelled by an 
 express command of the pope. 2 It seems to me that 
 Ignatius could not have devised a better expedient for 
 making his men most likely to be chosen for such ap- 
 pointments. It made them conspicuous amongst the 
 monks so eager for bishoprics and other church-pick- 
 ings ; and it slily appealed to that ruimus in vetitum, the 
 grasping at the forbidden fruit, which alone, without other 
 motives, will make men, and self-willed popes particularly, 
 enforce their desires. Of course the general as wisely 
 kept a check on his ambitious individuals. Bellarmine 
 
 it was presented in the public theatre of the same college, as a reward for penman- 
 ship " hoc volumen in primum scriptionis prsemium, in publico ejusdem Collegii 
 theatro, meritum et consecutum esse." Aug. 19, an. 1626. I shall allude to the 
 work anon. The matter is certainly unworthy of the binding, which is red 
 morocco, richly gilt, with beaded edges. The price was high, and upon my 
 objection, the bookseller said that it was the binding, the outside, that made it 
 valuable; otherwise, said he, you might have it for a shilling. But he altered 
 his opinion when I paid the price, and explained to him the purport of the manu- 
 script declaration on the fly-leaf, of which he was not aware, and which, of course, 
 would have enhanced the price of the curiosity. l Bartoli, Dell' Ital. 
 
 2 Frizon, Vie de Bellarm. i. ; Quesuel, ii. 309 ; Fuligat. Vita, i.
 
 302 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 passed through his preliminary studies with great suc- 
 cess and edification. We are told that he excelled 
 in poetry, and never committed a mortal sin, nor even 
 a venial sin with full deliberation. 1 In fact he is com- 
 pared by his Jesuit-biographer to the heavens, which were 
 made for the utility of others. 2 Without being pre- 
 judiced against this celebrated man by the wretched 
 absurdities which the Jesuits say of him, it must be 
 admitted that he was one of the best Jesuits in the 
 better sense of the word that ever existed an earnest 
 believer in the doctrines of the Church which he suc- 
 cessfully defended to the utter ruin and destruction 
 of heresy, according to the boast of his party, and not 
 without affright in the ranks of the Protestants. 3 
 He entered the novitiate in 1560, aged only eighteen : 
 but his merits or the want of labourers in the Company, 
 induced the general to dispense with the constitutional 
 two years, which were compressed into two months for 
 Robert Bellarmine. He was then hurried through his 
 philosophy, and sent to teach the languages and 
 rhetoric at Florence, and subsequently at Mondovi. 
 
 1 Fulig. Vita. 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 The title-page to his Life by the Jesuit Fuligati, published in 1 624, is a 
 splendid emblem of that boasting. Bellarmine appears clad as a warrior, " with 
 his martial cloak around him," looking contemptuously but severely on a hideous 
 demoniac, the perfect expression of horrible anguish, tearing out the leaves 
 of a book, whilst her face is averted and dreadfully distorted. Bellarmine has 
 the fore-finger of his right hand on his lip, commanding silence, whilst with his 
 left he holds a fir-top, and a chain which is passed round the neck of the female 
 monster. There are plenty of fir-tops pending from the two trees which bound 
 the emblem, and at the top there is another hideous face with a fir-top stuck in 
 his mouth, by way of " a nut to crack," I suppose. Then there is a most 
 curious Anagram discovered by some idle but orthodox Jesuit. In the words 
 Robertus Cardinalis Bellarminus e Societate Jesu, this Jesuit has discovered 
 anagrammatically the following awful prophecy Lutheri errores ac astutias 
 Calvini omnes delebis you will demolish all the errors of Luther and wiles of 
 Calvin. I suppose the words " if you can " were sub-understood amphibologically, 
 or by equivocation.
 
 BELLARMINE. 303 
 
 His remarkable talent induced the superiors to dispense 
 with the usual course, and he was sent to preach in 
 various places, the Company availing herself of a papal 
 privilege which permitted her members to preach though 
 not in orders. Genoa, Padua, Venice, and other large 
 towns of Italy listened to the young Jesuit, scarcely 
 twenty-two years of age, with profit and admiration. The 
 success of his public disputations and lectures at Genoa, 
 suggested to the superiors that Louvain, where they 
 had so much trouble with the university, was the right 
 position for such a great gun as the young Bellarmine. 
 Besides, there was a sort of Catholic heretic at Louvain, 
 the famous Baius, whose views of Divine grace were 
 censured by others of his Church, who had other views 
 in view. Hitherto the doctor, Baius, had to contend 
 with hidden enemies, excepting a certain tribe of the 
 monks : but now the Company of Jesus took him in 
 hand, and sent Bellarmine, its famous young preacher, to 
 bestow a few words upon him, which he did in a public 
 disputation against the aforesaid views of Divine grace. 
 Bellarmine was ordained shortly after his arrival ; and 
 continued to preach with more zeal than ever. His 
 youth and eloquence astonished all the world, and his 
 reputation became so great that the Protestants from 
 Holland and England were attracted over to hear the 
 new preacher. His great talent consisted in winning 
 over the heretics by mildness. He spared the heretic 
 whilst he inveighed against heresy : he strove to direct 
 the steps of the wanderer rather than to beat him into 
 the fold ; and in wrestling with the opponents of Rome 
 by his eloquence, his triumph was always the result of 
 his mildness, which was charming. 1 Bellarmine was 
 
 1 Frizon, i. ; Fuligat. ii. ; Quesnel, ii. 311.
 
 304 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 one of the very few Jesuits whose peculiar organisation 
 permitted them to pursue that method with the heretics ; 
 and if lie had had more imitators in his Company, 
 Christendom would not have seen so much bloodshed 
 amongst the heretics all victims of that ferocious and 
 sanguinary zeal which irritates and perpetuates dis- 
 sension. There is a remarkable inconsistency in the 
 Jesuits in this matter. How could men, so constantly 
 complaining of persecution and intolerance, be the first 
 to give the example when their bows, and their smiles, 
 and their soft words failed to convert the heretic 1 But 
 so it was, however. At the very time when they most 
 lamented the injustice of persecution, they were else- 
 where advocating the principle in its widest extent. 
 Thus, in 1595, one of the first Jesuits, the 
 bosom friend of Loyola, and the most vene- 
 rable of the Company at the time, Father Ribadeneyra, 
 published a sort of Anti-Macchiavel, whose twenty-sixth 
 chapter is entitled " That the heretics ought to be 
 chastised, and how prejudicial is liberty of conscience 
 Que los hereges deven ser castigados, y quan prejudicial sea 
 la libertad de consciencia" And after heaping together 
 very many arguments from all sources, in defence of his 
 position, he asks : " If he who coins false money is 
 burnt, why not he who makes and preaches false doc- 
 trine ? If he who forges royal letters deserves the 
 penalty of death, what will he merit who corrupts the 
 Sacred Scriptures and the divine letters of the Lord 1 
 The woman dies justly for not preserving fidelity to 
 her husband, and shall not that man die who does 
 not preserve his faith to his God ?" And lastly he 
 concludes, " that to permit liberty of conscience, and to 
 let each man lose himself as he pleases, is a diabolical
 
 THE TURKS. 305 
 
 doctrine" attributing the words to Beza, whom he 
 calls " an infernal fury, and a worthy disciple of his 
 master, Calvin." Nor is Bellarmine himself exempt from 
 the charge of intolerance, though he thought Jesuitical 
 craft and persuasion better adapted for success with 
 heretics. In his practice he was a sleek seducer : in his 
 theory he was a stern persecutor. Thus Ribadeneyra 
 refers his readers for more copious details on the subject 
 to " Father Robert Bellarmine of our Company." 1 In 
 fact it was the universal doctrine of the Churchmen ; 
 and what is more disgraceful still, actually practised by 
 Protestants. Of all crimes in history none seems to me 
 more hideously inconsistent to say nothing of its guilt 
 than the ample share which Calvin had in the burn- 
 ing of Servetus. The plain fact is that there was no 
 true religion, no pure religion on earth in those times, 
 amongst the leaders of parties. All was utter selfish- 
 ness in thought, word, and deed. 
 
 The infidels came in for their share. No one need be 
 told that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 all Christendom was in constant terror of the 
 
 The Turks. 
 
 Turks. It was destined for Pope Pius V. to 
 be the great promoter of an expedition which broke 
 the Ottoman power for ever ; at all events so completely 
 maimed it that since then Turkey has only served to 
 " keep up the balance of power " in Europe one of 
 those incomprehensible axioms that statesmen invent to 
 serve a purpose, until another maxim issues from a 
 diametrically opposite procedure. One of these days 
 Russia will swallow up Turkey, and our statesmen will 
 find their balance somewhere else, without losing their 
 gravity as we hope and trust. 
 
 1 TratadodelaReligion,c.xxvi.ed. Mad. 1595; Ballarm.t.i.l.iii.; DeLaicis,c.xviii, 
 VOL. II. X
 
 306 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Now, in the year 1571 fright and orthodoxy admirably 
 combined to exterminate the Turks : but the Vene- 
 tians the lord-high admirals of the ocean in 
 those tunes were rather the worse for the 
 war of fright and orthodoxy. The Grand Turk was 
 just preparing to smoke his pipe in Cyprus a Christian 
 stronghold rather too important to be sacrificed by the 
 devout sons of orthodoxy. The pope, fierce old Pius V., 
 bestirred himself accordingly applied to the Spaniard, 
 who struck an alliance with him, but sent very few 
 ships to make the Turk strike withal, whilst the 
 "Ottoman grinned fiercely at the prospects before him, 
 as he scanned his mighty armaments ready to devour 
 the Christians. The pope resolved to stimulate the 
 Spaniard. Pius thought it his duty to exterminate the 
 Turks, simply because they were not Catholics. That 
 was the impelling motive of his ferocious zeal, added to 
 the universal fright of Christendom at the encroach- 
 ments of the Ottomans. When the Turkish power was 
 crippled, vast praise was given to the pope for his 
 exertions : but, with his known motives, he merited none, 
 and the results of the victory of Lepanto, so beneficial 
 to the terror-stricken Christians, proved decisive merely 
 from the character of the Turks, who could not digest a 
 disaster. Christendom was delivered of its incubus 
 and the Turks were not capable, by their character, to 
 resume their devilry whereat we have great reason to 
 rejoice and be thankful. But it must be admitted that 
 Pius bestirred himself with vast determination. He 
 dispatched a cardinal to Philip, and sent General Borgia 
 with him as secretary. The celebrated Francis Tolet 
 had joined the Company a " monster of intellect " as 
 his master, Dominic Soto, styled him. Pope Pius set
 
 MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 307 
 
 him to work, dispatched him into Portugal to labour 
 for the same league against the Turks. It was a 
 stirring time for the Company. The Jesuits dispersed 
 themselves in all the kingdoms of Europe, and j esil it- 
 penetrated into their courts, with the noble 
 pretext of begging assistance for the hampered Vene- 
 tians. The Company profited by the work of charity. 
 Her houses were multiplied to such an extent that it 
 was found necessary to appoint six provincials to visit 
 all the new establishments. The increase of their wealth 
 set the Jesuits in constant agitation. They wished for 
 ubiquity, omnipossession ; and by the natural conse- 
 quence of their indefatigable exertions in these stirring 
 times, they constantly managed to fall in for something 
 new establishments arose almost daily. Everything 
 favoured their designs. The ignorance of the people 
 and the priesthood and monkhood, in those days, added 
 to the by-play of the princes, lords, and monarchs, who 
 found the Jesuits useful, furnished them with the 
 grand fulcrum for the lever of intellect, tact, and craft, 
 set in motion by their boundless ambition. 
 
 Early in 1572 Borgia visited the Court of France 
 in behalf of the pope's affairs. He returned to Rome 
 almost dying with lassitude, harassments, 1572 . 
 and disease. In May, the same year, Pius V. ^^ of 
 expired " in the odour of sanctity ;" and on the thoiomew. 
 24th of August, Charles IX. and his mother Catherine 
 performed the grand religious ceremony of St. Bartholo- 
 mew's massacre. It was an universal mandate to cut 
 to pieces every Huguenot in Paris and throughout the 
 provinces of France as if the fiend of religionism in 
 those days wished to mock what we read of the destroy- 
 ing angel in Egypt. How Philip of Spain exulted 
 
 x 2
 
 308 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 thereat ! " So Christian, so great, so valiant an exter- 
 mination and execution " as he called it. " Finish," he 
 wrote to the king, "finish purging your kingdom of 
 the infection of heresy : it is the greatest good that can 
 happen to your majesties " Charles IX. and Catherine 
 de' Medici, his mother. At Rome the news was received 
 with enthusiastic acclamations. Pope Gregory XIII., 
 who had succeeded to Pius V., expressed his joy in a 
 letter to Charles and his mother he congratulated them 
 Rejoicings f r having " served the faith of Christ in 
 shaking off hideous heresy." Bonfires blazed 
 in the streets at Rome, and from the castle of St. Angelo 
 cannons roared glory to the deed of blood and at last 
 they mocked God Almighty by a solemn procession to 
 the Church of St. Louis all Rome's nobility and people 
 uniting in the impious thanksgiving. 1 Such was the 
 
 1 Capefigue, Rforme. This writer gives the best account extant of that 
 dreadful affair. Nothing more need be known on the subject. A medal was 
 struck, by order of the pope, to commemorate this " perambulating sacrifice of 
 not less than 40,000 human victims to the Moloch of Papal anti-Christianity," 
 and ruthless tyranny. If the Jesuits were not directly accessories to the 
 slaughter, they were accessories after the fact, by their approval of the deed, as 
 the following notice of the medal by the Jesuit antiquarian Bonanni, proves but 
 too strikingly. The medal has on the obverse, as usual, a figure of the pope : 
 GREGORIUS XIII. PONT. MAX. An. I. The reverse has a representation of a 
 destroying angel, with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, slaying and 
 pursuing a prostrate and falling band of heretics. The legend is, UGONOTORUM. 
 STRAGES. 1572. The Jesuit Bonanni thus proceeds: "The unexpected change 
 of affairs overwhelmed Gregory, the pontiff, and Italy, with the greater joy, in 
 proportion to the increasing fear produced by the account of Cardinal Alessan- 
 drino, lest the rebels, who had revolted from the ancient religion, should inun- 
 date Italy. Immediately upon the receipt of the news the pontiff proceeded with 
 solemn supplication from St. Mark's to St. Louis's temple ; and having published 
 a jubilee for the Christian world, he called upon the people to commend the 
 religion and King of France to the supreme Deity. He gave orders for a painting 
 descriptive of the slaughter of the Admiral Coligny and his companions, to be 
 made in the Hall of the Vatican, by Giorgio Vasari, as a monument of vindicated 
 religion, and a trophy of exterminated heresy, solicitous to impress by that 
 means how salutary would be the effect, to the sick body of the kingdom, so
 
 CONVERSION OF HENRY OP NAVARRE. 309 
 
 climax of religious zeal, for which the most ardent 
 machinators of the faith the Jesuits with all Catholics 
 of the time might boast : but alas ! how short-sighted 
 it was considering the desperation which it would pro- 
 duce in the persecuted and the excuse it would give, 
 in the eyes of all disinterested observers, for the most 
 savage persecutions by Protestant kings and pagans 
 against the Catholics presenting that retributive justice 
 which never fails to overtake crime, in some shape or 
 another, here in this world, before the criminal departs 
 for the other. 
 
 Two days before the massacre, Henry of Navarre, 
 afterwards Henry IV., had married Charles IX.'s sister. 
 He was still in the Louvre. Henry was a Huguenot : 
 the king would force him to abjure his reli- 
 
 m i Conversion 
 
 gion. To give the transaction the appear- of Henry 
 ance of conviction, he sent for the Jesuit 
 Maldonat. The Jesuit came through the scenes of 
 blood he came trembling but not without self-posses- 
 sion, and addressed the prince of the Huguenots. 
 
 copious an emission of bad blood quam salubris cegro Regni corpori tarn copiosa 
 depravati saiiguinis emissio esset profutura. He sends Cardinal Ursiuo as his 
 legate a latere into France, to admonish the king to pursue his advantages 
 with vigour, nor lose his labour, so prosperously commenced with sharp 
 remedies, by mingling with them more gentle ones. Although these were such 
 brilliant proofs of the piety of Charles, and of his sincere attachment to the 
 Catholic Church, as well as of pontifical solicitude, there were not wanting some 
 who gave them a very different interpretation. But, that the slaughter was not 
 executed without the help of God and the divine counsel, Gregory inculcated in 
 a medal struck on the occasion, in which an angel, armed with a sword and a 
 cross, attacks the rebels ; a representation by which he recalls to mind, that the 
 houses of the heretics were signed with a white cross, in order that the king's 
 soldiers might know them from the rest, as likewise they themselves wore a white 
 cross on their hats." Numism. Pontiff. Rom. a temp. Mart. V. &c. Roma, 1699, 
 t. i. p. 336. See Mendham, who quotes the original Latin, for some pertinent 
 remarks, and other facts, relating to the massacre, its many medals, and its 
 apologists. Life of Pius V. p. 210217.
 
 310 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Henry listened, but made no reply, when Charles IX., 
 in a paroxysm of rage, cried, " Either the mass, death, 
 or perpetual imprisonment choose instantly." The 
 future Henry IV. had no vocation for religious or politi- 
 cal martyrdom, so he abjured heresy with his lips, saved 
 his life, and bided his time. We shall meet him again. 1 
 
 On the 1st of October, 1572, General Borgia expired. 
 His age was sixty-two twenty-two of which he passed 
 Death of m the Company. His generalate lasted eight 
 years. His companions requested him to 
 name a vicar-general ; but he refused, saying that he 
 had to render an account to God for many other things, 
 without adding that appointment to the number. Then 
 he humbly begged pardon of all the fathers for the faults 
 he had committed against the perfection of the Institute, 
 and the bad example he thought he had given them, 
 craving their benediction ; and, in accordance with their 
 earnest request, promising to remember them in the 
 abodes of the blest, should God be merciful to him ; and 
 asked to be left alone. But still they troubled the poor 
 man, anxious to depart in peace, and to give his last 
 moment to God alone. They had the heart to ask the 
 dying man to permit a painter to take his portrait. 
 Borgia refused permission. They disobeyed their dying 
 general, because they wanted the bauble to sanction 
 miracles withal, as the event verified. 2 In spite of his 
 wish to be alone with God in spite of his refusal to 
 have his portrait taken, the Jesuit-aristocrats persisted ; 
 two of them stood before him, with the painter in the 
 rear, at work with his paint and pencils : they actually 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 1 23. 
 
 2 See Verjus, ii. 323, for what he calls " the prodigious effects of a portrait of 
 the saint."
 
 DEATH OF BORGIA. 311 
 
 tried to trick their dying general ! What children would 
 thus persist in annoying a dying parent 1 And yet for 
 them there would be some excuse, since it would be 
 motived by those strong feelings of nature, of which we 
 are proud : but these Jesuits totally disclaimed any 
 feeling of the sort in theory, and they were incapable of 
 it in practice, as their cruel importunity attested. 
 Borgia perceived the trick. The poor man had lost his 
 speech : he could not reproach them : but with his 
 hands he tried to express his displeasure, evidently 
 without effect, for he made an effort, and turned away 
 from the persecutors. Then only did they dismiss the 
 painter ; and then he sighed and expired. 1 
 
 Throughout the eight years of his generalate, Borgia 
 kept his promise to be the " beast of burthen " of the 
 Company's aristocracy ; and the pope of Rome 
 
 - r . . J J His character. 
 
 used him in like manner, to the utter afflic- 
 tion of the man, whose peculiar organisation ever made 
 him the tool of influence ever subservient to the will of 
 others utterly incapable of resistance to impulses from 
 without, and a prey to the wildest notions of ascetic 
 devotion from within. " Thus he was a saint in his 
 infancy at the bidding of his nurse then a cavalier at 
 the command of his uncle an inamorato because the 
 empress desired it a warrior and a viceroy because 
 such was the pleasure of Charles a devotee from seeing 
 a corpse in a state of decomposition a founder of col- 
 leges on the advice of Peter Faber a Jesuit at the will 
 of Ignatius a general of the Order because his col- 
 leagues would have it so. 2 Had he lived in the times and 
 
 1 Verjus, ii. 80 83. I need not say that the Jesuit makes a very edifying 
 affair out of the disgusting conduct of the " fathers " who besieged Borgia on 
 his death-bed. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Review, July, 1842, an article entitled " Ignatius Loyola and
 
 312 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 ill the society of his infamous kinsmen, Borgia would, not 
 improbably, have shared their disastrous renown." l How 
 much soever his intimate connection with the "religious" 
 Borgias of the sixteenth century Philip II., Charles IX., 
 and Pope Pius V., must tend to diminish our esteem of 
 the man the Christian, yet there is evidence to prove 
 that his mind perceived, and his heart embraced, the 
 best intentions ; but palsied as he was by the weakness 
 of his nature, and the rushing force of circumstances in 
 which he was placed, he lived a man of desire, and after 
 doing what he could to avert evil, he died with bitter 
 thoughts and apprehensions respecting that Company 
 for which he made himself a " beast of burthen " not 
 indeed from terror or a grovelling nature but in defe- 
 rence to that internal ascetic devotion which we must 
 experience in order to understand its dictates of undis- 
 tinguishing submissiveness. 
 
 His presence at the court of France, on a mission 
 from the pope, immediately before the horrible massacre 
 ot St. Bartholomew, is suspicious; but, "though he 
 
 his Associates." Cretineau-Joly boldly and confidently palms that article on 
 Mr. Macaulay, and quotes from it triumphantly on many occasions ; not without 
 taking some liberties with the original. It is a curious piece of composition, but 
 evidently written at some " religious " party a cento of biting hints very deeply 
 cut in, Certainly, however, no Jesuit nor friend of theirs should appeal to that 
 article, since there is everything in it to produce a bad impression against 
 Jesuitism even in its best aspects the earlier phase of its history. There is 
 much irony throughout the composition, and its highest praises are knocked 
 down suddenly by a bitter blast of vituperation, all so completely huddled 
 together, that it will be impossible for you to " make head or tail on 't." Still, 
 it is admirably written ; as the phrase is, " brilliant as a diamond flashing like 
 the lightning," and must have been a thunderbolt to the party in view. It had 
 the honour to eventuate a course of lectures and a publication entitled " The 
 Jesuits," which I have read ; but the author, whose intentions were excellent, 
 might have spared himself the ti'ouble of invading the Edinburgh Jesuitarian, 
 whose intention was certainly not to write up the Jesuits, but to write down 
 some others, who mci'it no apologists. Verb. Sap. 
 1 Edinburgh Review, ubi supra, No. clii. p. 357.
 
 BORGIA'S CHARACTER. 313 
 
 maintained an intimate personal intercourse with Charles 
 IX., and his mother, and enjoyed their highest favour, 
 there is no reason to suppose that he was in- 
 
 A doubt. 
 
 trusted with their atrocious secret. Lven m 
 the land of the Inquisition he had firmly refused to lend 
 the influence of his name to that sanguinary tribunal [as 
 Ignatius had done before him] ; for there was nothing 
 morose in his fanaticism, nor mean in his subservience. 
 Such a man as Francis Borgia could hardly become a 
 persecutor." 1 Or rather, he might lend himself as the 
 indirect, or direct, instrument of persecution, in obedi- 
 ence to his undistinguishing submissiveiiess but would 
 never cease to lament his share in the horrible perpe- 
 tration. It may be asked, is it possible that Borgia was 
 not at least aware of the intended massacre he who 
 was intrusted with the designs of Pope Pius V., whose 
 atrocious advice and exhortations to Charles IX. we 
 have perused ? God only knows at the present moment. 
 If he did, it suffices to explain the dreadful increase of 
 his infirmities, which hurried him to his grave so 
 soon after his return from the Court of France, and 
 five weeks after the awful event had desolated that 
 kingdom. 
 
 Humble towards his enemies he appointed public 
 prayer for the enemies of the Company 
 
 Summary. 
 
 kind to his subjects, gentle to all, but merciless 
 
 to his own poor body, he strove throughout life to 
 
 conform himself to the frightful image he had conceived 
 
 of Christian perfection, and constantly displayed an 
 
 example which few of his Company thought proper to 
 
 follow, though they wisely made it the subject of glowing 
 
 laudation. 
 
 1 Edinburgh Review, ubi supra, No. clii. p. 3o7.
 
 314 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 The vast increase of his Company's establishments is 
 to be ascribed to its own elastic energies rather than to 
 Borgia's wisdom, prudence, or calculation. Always the 
 " beast of burthen," he carried his men whithersoever 
 they wished to advance, or the pope and princes directed 
 their efforts. In the armies of Catholic princes battling 
 with the Turks and the Huguenots, his Jesuits bran- 
 dished the crucifix, and sanctified the slaughter of war. 
 To the strongholds of vice or heresy and paganism 
 to Naples, to Poland, Sweden, Spain, France, Scotland, 
 England, Germany, to the East and West Indies, to 
 Africa, and the isles adjacent all the wide world over, 
 the Company sent her Jesuits to expand her power, 
 wealth, and domination, whilst she did " good service " 
 to her patron princes. 
 
 In the midst of this world-encircling expansion, Borgia 
 was not without alarm for the fate of his Company. 
 Borgia's ap- Already had it become the resort of nobles 
 himself attracted doubtless by his name 
 resor t of great names in the circle of 
 letters or the world's renown. His novitiates were 
 filled his colleges were thronged the Company was 
 become the receptacle of the vain, the proud, the 
 sensual. Some he found it necessary to expel : but to 
 others he yielded. One young nobleman " felt himself 
 strongly inspired and urged by the grace of the Saviour" 
 to enter the Company : but this " grace of the Saviour" 
 met with one overpowering objection the young sprig 
 of nobility " could not do without a valet-de-chambre to 
 dress and undress him ! " Borgia promised to allow him 
 a Jesuit to perform the function, and fulfilled the 
 promise. Another " refused to obey the voice of God, 
 because he was accustomed from childhood to change
 
 BORGIA AND EDUCATION. 315 
 
 his linen every day ; and the small dimensions and 
 poverty of the rooms of the novices horrified" a third 
 young lord. Borgia "gave the former his clean shirt 
 every day ; and for the latter he prepared a large room 
 which he got well carpeted." l We are assured by the 
 same authority that these young lords became sick of 
 the indulgences, and begged with equal ardour to be 
 served worse than the other novices the usual old 
 song in honour of expedient concessions. Doubtless 
 Borgia hoped for that result : but undoubtedly during 
 that rush of applicants, noble and rich, some such 
 expedients were absolutely necessary to retain those 
 Birds of Paradise. 
 
 Borgia promoted the education of the Company with 
 considerable vigour, importing French professors from 
 the University of Paris to teach in his college Borgia and 
 of Gandia, and sparing no pains nor expense educatlon - 
 in the cultivation of literature in all the Jesuit-acade- 
 mies : but in so doing he merely conformed to the 
 ambition of the Company that "holy emulation" if 
 you please, with which the Jesuits were inflamed, 
 eagerly advancing to the foremost rank in all the 
 departments of knowledge, human and divine. .No 
 " founder of a system of education " was Borgia, although 
 during his generalate the Jesuit-system of education 
 became "pregnant with results of almost matchless 
 importance" destined to begin its parturition in the 
 eventful times of General Aquaviva. 2 On the contrary, 
 
 1 Verjus, ii. 274. 
 
 - The writer of the article in the Edinburgh, before noticed and quoted, says 
 that Lainez was the author of the Jesuits' peculiar system of theology, and calls 
 Borgia the architect of their system of education ; on what grounds, I am unable 
 to discover. The " peculiar system of theology " adopted by the Jesuits was 
 actually no system at all, but an endless variation adapted to circumstances ;
 
 316 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 there is reason to believe that he apprehended the per- 
 nicious consequences of that wild advancement in letters 
 which left the Jesuits no time to think of the " spirit of 
 their vocation." In a letter which he addressed to the 
 Fathers and Brothers of the Aquitanian Pro- 
 
 His prophetic 
 
 warning to vince in France, he writes in prophetic terms 
 on the subject. The object of the letter is to 
 suggest the means of preserving the spirit of the Com- 
 pany, and the Jesuit's vocation. It was written three 
 years before his death. After quoting the words : 
 Happy is the man that feareth alway, and the other 
 proverb : Darts foreseen strike not, he strikes at the 
 root of the evil as follows : " If we do not at all attend 
 to the vocation and spirit with which members join the 
 Company, and look only to literature, and care only for 
 the circumstances and endowments of the body, the 
 time will come when the Company will see itself exten- 
 sively occupied with literature, but utterly bereft of any 
 desire of virtue. Then ambition will flourish in the 
 Company ; pride will rise unbridled : and there will be 
 
 so that every system of theology may, to a vast extent, find advocates in the 
 multitudinous theologians of the Company. Certainly Lainez advocated some 
 peculiar views at the Council of Trent, but they were nothing new in themselves ; 
 they might be found among the " Fathers." St. Thomas was the Company's 
 theologian ; but according to the Constitutions (as revised) any other might be 
 chosen at the will of the general. P. iv. c. xiv. s. i. ; ib. B. This refers to 
 Scholastic Theology ; of course, in the positive, the doctrines of the Church were 
 matters for the Council of Trent or the pope to decide. As to Borgia and " the 
 system of education " attributed to him, nothing need be said except that he 
 had neither the capacity, nor the will, to do more than favour the onward move- 
 ment, which he found so determined to advance. In proof of the intellectual 
 riot of the Jesuits at the feast of Theology, I appeal to the 83d decree of the 
 7th Congreg., when an attempt to settle the "opinions" of the Company was 
 utterly abortive. See also the 31st Decree of the 9th Congreg., when the 
 vagaries of " certain professors of theology " were complained of, long after the 
 promulgation of the Ratio Studiorum f This was the case throughout the 
 seventeenth century.
 
 BORGIA'S PROPHETIC WARNING. 317 
 
 no one to restrain and keep it down. For if they turn 
 their minds to their wealth, and their relatives, let them 
 know that they may be rich in wealth and relatives, but 
 totally destitute of virtue. Therefore, let this be the 
 paramount counsel, and let it be written at the head of 
 the book lest at length experience should show what 
 the mind perceives by demonstration. And would to 
 heaven that already before this, experience itself had 
 not often taught us and attested the whole evil." Thus 
 we find that Borgia perceived the tendency of the spirit 
 which was salient in the Company. The spiritual 
 maladies which other generals cauterised in vain in their 
 epistles, were already too apparent. The reign of 
 ambition and pride was already begun. Already in 
 receiving their members, the aristocrats of the Company 
 were actuated by the spirit of worldliness, caring more 
 for mental abilities and temporal advantages than true 
 vocation, or the pure spirit of God resulting from a right 
 intention in a right mind. Youths of blood, youths of 
 wit, and youths of fortune or fine prospects, were the 
 desirable members. Pride, mammon, and ambition, 
 prescribed their qualifications. Such were the matters 
 alluded to by Borgia's prophetic warning ; and it is said 
 that he exclaimed on one occasion : " We have entered 
 as lambs : We shall reign like wolves : We shall be 
 driven out like dogs : We shall be renewed as eagles." l 
 Unquestionably Borgia would have totally reformed the 
 Company in its most dangerous abuses, had it been in 
 his power. He was no willing party to the Company's 
 court-favour, its worldliness, its ambition : but he was 
 
 1 I actually heard the Latin of that prophecy of Borgia quoted by one of the 
 novices : " Intravimus ut agni, regndbimus wt lupi, expettemur ut canes, renova- 
 bimur ut aquilee"
 
 318 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 thrown upon the rushing Niagara, and if he himself 
 clung fast and firm on the rock mid-way, the roaring 
 waters dashed foaming past into the gulf beneath, where 
 they whirled and whirled for a time with strange 
 upheavings, and then spread onwards to the gulf of 
 destruction. 
 
 The thought is saddening : but still more painful 
 when we think what good the Jesuits might have done 
 for humanity in those dreadful times of transition. 
 
 This prophetic warning of Borgia was not pleasant to 
 the Jesuits. Before the end of the Company's first 
 century, the prophecy respecting pride and 
 and falsified ambition, was an old experience. Still the 
 words were an eye-sore ; and they were 
 accordingly altered, falsified, or expunged, " by autho- 
 rity," or otherwise. The original occurs in the edition 
 printed at Ipres in 1611 : the amendments in that of 
 Antwerp, in 1635, and all the subsequent editions of the 
 Institute. As the trick is an important fact in the 
 history of the Jesuits, I shall give the two texts, side by 
 side, as a sample of Jesuit-invention, &c. 
 
 Edition of Ipres, 1611, p. 57. . Edition of Antwerp, 1635. 
 
 Profecto si nulla Jtabitd ratione j San si nulla habita ratione voca- 
 
 vocationis et spiritus, quo quisque i tionis et spiritus, quo quisque 
 
 accensus veniat, litteras modo ad- impulsus accedit litteras modo 
 
 spectamus,et opportunitates, habi- 
 litatesque corporis curamus, veniet 
 tempus quo se Societas multisquidem 
 occupatam litteris, sed sine ullo 
 virtutis studio intuebitur, in qua 
 tune vigebit ambitio, et sese efferet 
 solutis habenis superbia, nee a quo 
 contineatur et supprimatur habebit: 
 qitippe si animum converterint ad 
 
 spectemus, et alia talenta et dona, 
 veniet tempus quo se Societas 
 multis quidem Jiominibus abun- 
 dantem, sed spiritu et virtute desti- 
 tutam marens intuebitur, unde 
 existet ambitio, et sese efferet 
 solutis habenis superbia : nee a 
 quoquam contineatur et suppri- 
 matur habebit. Quippe si animum
 
 BORGIA S MIRACLES. 
 
 319 
 
 opes et cogitationes quas habent, 
 intelligent illi se quidem propin- 
 quis et opibus afflueutes, sed 
 oranino virtutum copiis destitutes. 
 Itaque hoc primum esto consilium 
 et in capite libri scriptum, ne tandem 
 aliquando experientia doceat, quod 
 mens demonstratione conchtdit. At- 
 que utinam, jam non ante hoc 
 totum,, experientia ipsa scepius tes- 
 tata docuisset. 
 
 converterint ad opes et cogitationes 
 quas habent, intelligent illi se 
 quidam propinquis et opibus abun- 
 dantes, sed solidarum virtutum, ac 
 spiritualium donorum copiis egenos 
 ac vacuos. Itaque hoc primum 
 esto consilium, et in capite libri 
 scribatur, ne tandem aliquando ex- 
 perientia doceat, atque utinam 
 nunquam [utinam nondum, in edit. 
 Ant. 1702,] docuisset, quod mens 
 demonstratione concludit. ! 
 
 As the Jesuits ascribe the gift of prophecy to Borgia, 
 and relate facts in attestation, it was certainly unfair to 
 endeavour to deprive him of all the credit due to him 
 for a foresight of the calamities which they were obvi- 
 ously preparing for themselves. 
 
 As a tribute of respect to Borgia, I shall be silent on 
 the ridiculous miracles which the Jesuits impudently 
 relate as having been performed by the inter- Borgia's 
 cession, the invocation, the relics, the portrait, miracles - 
 the apparition, and the written life of Borgia making 
 him sometimes a Lucina, or midwife, sometimes a phy- 
 sician, or a ghost phases of character which, however 
 amusing in themselves, would be a very unbecoming 
 prelude to the serious, the tumultuous, the "stirring" 
 events about to follow the death of Francis Borgia, 
 third general of the Jesuits. 2 
 
 1 See Morale Pratique, iii. 76, et seq. 
 
 2 For Borgia's Miracles, see Verjus, ii. 298 337.
 
 BOOK VII. OR, BOBADILLA. 
 
 To Pope Pius V. Catholics must ascribe the glory of 
 having restored the ascendancy of the Roman cause. Call 
 The Catholic & Catholicism, papal prerogative, or Catho- 
 reaction. j| c reac ti on : it matters little : the result was 
 the same all flowing as a consequence from the spread 
 of fanatical orthodoxy the murderous rage of bigotry. 
 What suffering for humanity he prepared, and sanc- 
 tified ! The reeking blood of men, and the exulting 
 shouts of fiends, with clapping of hands, in the midst of 
 social ruin and desolation, attested that horrible glory of 
 the " mighty paramount " of Rome, at the head of his 
 " grand infernal peers." He sounded the key-note shrill 
 and piercing, and the thousand instruments of Loyola in 
 unison responded. They bid cry 
 
 With trumpet's regal sound the great result : 
 Toward the four winds four speedy cherubim 
 Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy 
 By herald's voice explain'd ; the hollow abyss 
 Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell 
 With deafening shout return'd them loud acclaim. 
 
 It was indeed a " false presumptuous hope ; " but it was 
 a " stirring " hope ; that the popedom would once more
 
 THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 321 
 
 give the law to the universe. Time was when ruin 
 utterly impended ; and then the Mamelukes of Rome 
 adventurously tried " if any clime, perhaps, might yield 
 them easier habitation." Over the wide, world they 
 spread and " worked in close design, by fraud or guile, 
 what force effected not." India, Japan, Africa, America, 
 became familiar with " the greater glory of God." In 
 the land of the savage and the heathen, the golden age of 
 the Church was restored by the Annual Letters of the 
 Company, at least ; and a Jesuit-empire was established 
 by the numerous houses, or factories, of the same 
 adventurers. Allegiance to Rome was the sign-manual 
 of the conquest, and thus, and thus only, did the Jesuits 
 make heaven compensate Rome for her eternal and 
 temporal losses. That was magnificent, however. And 
 the Jesuits were the divine paladins of that bewildering 
 crusade the little gods of that pagan metamorphosis, 
 which eclipses the wildest of Ovid. For every one 
 heretic made by the apostate Luther, a thousand savages 
 leaped into "the Church," and made the sign of the 
 cross with holy water. The Jesuits taught them. But 
 this was religion in sport, as far as the popedom was 
 concerned. Pope Pius willed it in right good earnest in 
 Europe. And it was done. He died, leaving every 
 kingdom of Europe distracted with the feuds, the ran- 
 cour of orthodoxy and heresy, war to the death pro- 
 claimed on both sides, reckless, merciless war the war 
 for " religion." 
 
 Gregory XIIL, who succeeded Pius V., was flung on 
 the rushing torrent. The thousand shouts of public 
 opinion cheered him from the shore. Mad Pope Gre . 
 with the glorious excitement, he plied his ? or ? XIIL 
 paddles, like the savage Indian, with redoubled energy for 
 
 VOL. II Y
 
 322 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 the leap over the roaring cataract the speed of lightning 
 was the only chance of achievement. Gregory he called 
 himself the word means " watchful," " vigilant : " for 
 he had " sharpen'd his visual ray " 
 
 " on some great charge employ'd, 
 
 He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep." 
 
 You will understand the man as we proceed : his deeds 
 will dissect him. 
 
 When the harassed, tormented soul of Borgia took 
 flight, the aristocracy of the Company appointed Polancus 
 The pope vicar-general. He was one of the ancients 
 general tf f the Company. I have before described his 
 be elected. laborious and numerous employments in the 
 administration. A man of all work under Ignatius, and 
 the governor of the Company in the last days of the 
 founder ; he was the assistant, admonitor, and secretary 
 of Lainez, the very right hand of Borgia, the depository 
 of the secrets, the general correspondent, and man of 
 business, in short, the Atlas of the Company, which he 
 seemed to bear on his shoulders suis humeris universam 
 quodammodo Societatem sustinere videretur. 1 Undoubt- 
 edly here was a general ready made for the Company of 
 Jesus. The ancients of the Company, with Polancus at 
 their head, went, as usual, to the pope for his " benedic- 
 tion/' ere they proceeded to open the congregation for 
 the election. " How many votes do the Spaniards of 
 your Company number, and how many generals of that 
 nation have there been hitherto 1 " asked Gregory 
 XIII. " Three generals all Spaniards," was the reply. 
 "Well," exclaimed the man of the watch, "it seems 
 to me that you ought now, in justice, to choose a 
 
 1 Bibl. Script. S. J. Joan. Polane.
 
 PREJUDICE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 323 
 
 general of some other nation/' The Jesuits demurred : 
 it was a blow at their prerogatives. " What," rejoined 
 the pope, " have you no other members as capable as the 
 Spaniards to direct your important functions \ Father 
 Everard Mercurian would seem to me worthy of your 
 choice." And thereupon, without giving the Jesuits a 
 moment to protest against the designation, he dismissed 
 them with his benediction, and a charge " to do what 
 was most just." l 
 
 " The apostle," observes the Jesuit-historian, " said 
 that before God there was no difference between a Jew 
 and a Greek ; " but the apostles of bigotry, prejudice 
 in these times, made a remarkable difference ^tenth 
 between a perfectly converted Jew or Moor, century. 
 or their perfectly orthodox progeny, and the true born 
 Christians. The prejudice was desperate and universal 
 like that against " colour" in America, in the East and 
 West Indies, even in our days, though "enlightenment" 
 and gold have, in the last-named kingdom of chromatic 
 prejudice, rendered black and its interminable shades of 
 brown, somewhat more curious and fascinating and 
 respectable, for fathers and mothers to fancy, in their 
 accommodating impoverishment. At the time in ques- 
 tion, the descendants of Jews and Moors were " held 
 infamous" infames habentur and were consequently 
 precluded from the Company of Jesus, according to 
 its Constitutions. 2 Still, a " dispensation " was usually 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 1 70, et seq. 
 
 * "Qui etiam juxta Constitutiones titulo infamise admitti lion possunt." 
 VI. Congreg. xxviii. Touching the blood of Israel, I have nothing to say. 
 Expatriated wanderers over earth, persecuted everywhere, hated, despised, their 
 only resource was to heap up gold, that universal compensating pendulum of 
 society. But the pitchy touch, added to their degradation, poisoned their hearts, 
 made them a cringing, grovelling race, that consoled themselves for all ignominy 
 when they touched and hugged their bursting bags. It was not thus with the 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 granted when the applicant had other endowments 
 natural or acquired, to compensate for the hereditary 
 HOW the taint of infidelity. We may stop for a moment 
 iuh"the deal to observe that no proof can be stronger to 
 "tainted." attest the conviction of" converters" in those 
 days, that they did not believe they ever made a Christian 
 out of an infidel. They never ceased to apprehend a 
 relapse. The base motives of bigotry made them always 
 suspicious. In the Sixth Congregation of the Jesuits, it 
 was decided, on this score, to make inquiries in such 
 cases, as far back as the fifth degree inclusive, with 
 regard to those " who were of good stock in other respects, 
 or noble, or of good reputation!' * Polancus had the 
 misfortune to belong to the "tainted" race. The idea of 
 his being made general of the Company of Jesus was 
 horrifying. The Spaniards were so desperately alarmed 
 that Philip II., Don Sebastian, and the Cardinal Henry of 
 Portugal had written and conjured the pope to oppose 
 the election of every Jesuit suspected of such origin. 
 This explains the conduct of Gregory in suggesting 
 Mercurian for the generalate, and shows that the preju- 
 dice was patronised by "the Vicar of Jesus Christ," 
 just as the prejudice against colour in the West, found 
 accommodating supporters in the priesthood, in spite of 
 their European enlightenment and charity, imbibing 
 
 Moors. Wherever they had mingled with the race whom they conquered 
 wherever they condescended to mix their blood with the Spaniard, they improved 
 it ; grace of body, grace of mind and power withal, noble sentiment, ethereal 
 poesy, beauty, heart, and mind, all were given or enhanced by the blood of the 
 Moor. And now, at the present day, the best of the land should be proud of 
 that " taint" which their predecessors despised. Even Mr. Dunham will give 
 you some idea of " Mohammedan Spain." Hist, of Spain, &c. vol. iv. 
 
 1 " In ceteris, qui alioqui honestee families essent, aut vulgo nobiles, vel boni 
 nominis haberentur, informationes fierent usque ad quintum gradum inclusive." 
 Ibid.
 
 MERCURIAN, THE NEW GENERAL. 325 
 
 prejudice against colour as deeply as any " Creole/' l 
 In the present instance, the Jesuits remonstrated, not 
 in defence of Polanco's taint, but in defence of their 
 prerogative of free election. Still the pope told them 
 that they might please themselves, but he enjoined 
 them to announce to him, before proclamation, the 
 choice they should make, should it fall on a Spaniard. 
 On the following day, these remonstrants elected the 
 pope's choice Everard Mercurian a Belgian, and, 
 consequently, a " Spaniard," inasmuch as he was a 
 subject of King Philip. His age was sixty-eight. 
 
 His name has nothing to do with the god Mercury, 
 but was simply derived from Marcour in Luxemburg, 
 the place of his birth. 2 He was born of poor 
 
 .. T . - T . Mercurianus. 
 
 parents, educated at Liege and Louvain, 
 became a curate, was disgusted with the little " good" 
 he did, and, inspired by the example of Faber and the 
 Jesuit Strada, joined the Company at Paris, whence he 
 
 1 It is well known to all who have resided in the West Indies that the priests 
 perfectly conformed to this prejudice, and made no effort to correct it. I even 
 knew an instance where the priest in the confessional advanced the "taint" of 
 his penitent as a motive for humility 1 Christian humility ! 
 
 2 Among the ridiculous books published by the Jesuits to celebrate the 
 canonisation of Ignatius, was " Lcs Tableaux, or the Pictures of the illustrious 
 personages of the Company of Jesus," published at Douay, to reproduce the 
 impression of the glorious festivities in that town, among the thousands where 
 they were celebrated. I shall hereinafter describe the proceedings. Suffice 
 it here to state, that under the "picture" of Mercurian was the following 
 
 " Qu'on ne dise jamais que la chiche nature 
 Regarda de travers Ardene et Luxembour ; 
 Rome, aiTose" du miel de ce sage Mercure, 
 Se confesse obligee a leur petit Mercour." 
 
 Let no one ever say that nature was stingy 
 
 And looked askew on Ardennes and Luxenibour : 
 Rome, watered with the honey of this wise Mercury, 
 Confesses herself obliged to their little Mercour. 
 
 Tableaux des Personages, &c. p. 82.
 
 326 HISTOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 was summoned to Rome in 1551, was highly esteemed 
 by Ignatius, and, finally, was one of Borgia's assistants. 
 At the intelligence of his exaltation, a brother of his, 
 the son of his mother, not a Jesuit, wrote to Mercurian 
 from the Netherlands, congratulating the general, and, 
 of course, begging his exalted brother to remember his 
 poverty, and the sorry condition of all his relatives. 
 Mercurian very properly wrote back, telling the mistaken 
 applicant, that he was the general and servant of the 
 Company, that his office did not increase his revenue 
 by a farthing, and that he was not richer than the least 
 cook of the Company. 1 
 
 The decrees passed in this congregation are more his- 
 torical as to facts than all the histories of the Jesuits, by 
 themselves or their enemies. To these mines of 
 
 The national 
 
 prejudices of the Company's " spirit " I shall always pene- 
 trate, digging for truth. Ere the aristocrats of 
 the Company proceeded to the election, preliminary reso- 
 lutions had passed : but the pope sent a cardinal who, " in 
 the name of the pontiff, and for the interest of the Uni- 
 versal Church, called upon the electors to elect, for once 
 at least, a general who was not a Spaniard." 2 Other 
 considerations than Spanish prejudice against ancestral 
 taint, seemed to have enlightened the pope, on inquiry. 
 All the high offices of the Company were filled by 
 Spaniards exclusively. And national prejudices were as 
 strong in the Company of Jesus, as that against Jewish 
 and Moorish taint was throughout the realms of ortho- 
 doxy. The " Constitutions of Ignatius " the peculiar 
 training of the Company seemed to subdue the most 
 decided characters, the most turbulent natures : but 
 
 1 Tableaux, p. 79, et seq. ; Bibl. Script. S. J. Ever. Merc. 
 " Cretiueau, ii. 171.
 
 THEIR NATIONAL PREJUDICES. 327 
 
 these characters, these natures, were not subdued. 
 Motives were given unto them, to make them husband 
 or direct their energies to other objects than .the imme- 
 diate suggestions of nature. They remained essentially 
 the same hence the resistless power of each Jesuit in 
 his peculiar sphere of action. But hence, also, the con- 
 temptible littleness, shallowness of his nature, thus 
 contracted and made subservient in all things by selfish 
 motives or fanatical convictions, utterly bereft of that 
 elastic, bounding spirit of freedom, which constitutes the 
 prime prerogative of man his fearless independence of 
 heart and mind. And hence, also, that national egotism 
 which, it is certain and admitted, prevailed from the 
 first among the Jesuits, and was never uprooted. If we 
 read the gorgeous sentiments of the theoretical Jesuits 
 on self-abnegation, on Christian charity, we conclude 
 that these men, above all others, understood and pro- 
 moted that equality of loving brotherhood, which He of 
 Nazareth came to suggest and exemplify ; but it was 
 not so. " The Jesuits, without giving vent to their com- 
 plaints, evinced their jealousy respecting that equality." l 
 Ignatius, Lainez, Borgia, doubtless perceived this ele- 
 ment of decay in the Company ; but how could they 
 afford to attempt that radical reform which would have 
 banished the evil ? Natural passions, strong as ever, 
 and pent up into narrow channels confined to the little- 
 ness, the petty views of small circles, found pride in 
 their Spanish origin ; and untold dislikes, selfish disap- 
 probation, when their " foreign " brothers were exalted, 
 brooded in their souls. 2 
 
 1 "Les Jsuites, sans faire eclater leurs plaintes, se montraient pourtant 
 jaloux du triomphe de cette egalite." Cretineau, ii. 172. 
 
 2 Cretineau, after the Jesuits, mystifies this important fact as follows : " Ignace, 
 Laynez et Borgia, quoique Espagnols, s'etaient, par esprit de justice, conformed
 
 328 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 No mail in the Company was more in the secret of 
 these matters than the secretary and assistant, Polancus. 
 As a preliminary to the election, he proposed 
 abuses in the to appoint a committee of the fathers to ex- 
 amine and report whether the Company had 
 hitherto suffered, or was in danger of suifering damage. 
 Five fathers were appointed from the five nations, Ger- 
 man, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who, with 
 the vicar-general Polancus, and four assistants, with 
 Salmeron and Bobadilla, should receive evidence from 
 the other fathers ; but by a large majority it was decreed 
 that the requisite evidence should be taken only from 
 the electors and the procurators of the provinces, and to 
 be confined to practices, without extending to persons 
 not even to practices which might refer to individuals. 
 The evidence of other members, particularly if they were 
 discreet and approved men, was not to be rejected if 
 offered ; but it was not to be asked ; and such evidence 
 was to be given hi writing, signed with the names of the 
 informers, stringent conditions, which point at once to 
 the purely aristocratical exclusiveness of the Company's 
 government. Besides the constitutional qualifications 
 appointed for the general, the peculiar qualities sug- 
 gested by the Company's present predicament were as 
 follows : " 1. Whether the member proposed to be 
 elected general, was likely to govern the Company with 
 a paternal spirit, and not despotically easy of access, 
 and capable of inspiring confidence. 2. Whether he 
 was likely to direct his serious attention to the re- 
 establishment of that charitv and union so much 
 
 mi voeu doiit ils ne me"eonnaissaient pas 1'influence ; mais, soit que certains 
 peres fussent encore trup assujettis aux passions de 1'humanite pour se laisser 
 dominer, soit plutot que la fierte" castillane reprit trop souveut son empire, des 
 dissentions inte"rieures couvaieut au fond des ames." ii. 172.
 
 INVESTIGATION OF ABUSES IN THE COMPANY. 329 
 
 recommended by the Constitutions, and which had been 
 so much admired in the Company so that he might cut 
 off all the occasio-ns of discord, and strenuously apply 
 himself to restore the whole Company to her former and 
 commendable union. 3. Whether he would be likely to 
 observe the Constitutions as to admissions into the Com- 
 pany, to dismissals, profession, probation, the integrity of 
 the vows of poverty and chastity ; the mortification of the 
 passions, and self-will ; the extirpation of the hankering 
 after distinction, the disease of ambition, carnal affection, 
 and the partialities of kindred the absolute standard of 
 obedience, &c., not indeed according to his own views, 
 but according to the spirit and practice of our Father 
 Ignatius discarding every spirit foreign to, and at 
 variance with, our Institute. 4. Whether he will 
 seriously endeavour to free the Company from many 
 things which do not beseem our Institute, and which so 
 encumber us that we are forced to neglect those which 
 are proper for the Institute : of the former kind are the 
 seminaries, the house of boarders, the college of peniten- 
 tiaries, our presence at the meetings of the Inquisition for 
 passing judgment, &c., contrary to the form of our decree. 
 5. Whether it is feared that he will be inclined to admit 
 new colleges, whilst the Company seems already so 
 burthened and oppressed by the multitude of colleges, that 
 she cannot support the load she has undertaken. 6. 
 Whether he will diligently take care to send proper 
 labourers to relieve the wants of the colleges, especially 
 the foreign missions, where the Company is gravely 
 deficient in the observance of the Institute, and other 
 things, owing to the want of good superiors and labourers, 
 lest those who are the least adapted and qualified be 
 dispatched to them, as the provinces complain that such
 
 330 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 has often happened. .... 8. Whether he will be kind 
 to all without partiality without being suspected of 
 making exceptions as to persons not guided by his own 
 passions, or those motives which are called human and 
 worldly 12. Whether he be full of zeal to pro- 
 mote the perfection of our men, and more inclined to the 
 office of a shepherd, than qualified by industry and 
 business-experience, in carrying on personally, or by 
 others, lawsuits and worldly business; in exacting moneys, 
 and transferring the same from one province to another ; 
 since, on that account, our Company is everywhere 
 branded by princes in Church and State, and it is 
 known that there has been thereby danger of schism 
 in the Company" 1 
 
 Honest Polancus, who suggested these matters, evi- 
 dently was alive to the diseases of the Company. Had 
 he been elected there cannot be a doubt that 
 
 Polancus and . 
 
 Mercunan he would have attempted extensive reforms : 
 but he would have been desperately resisted 
 not by the vulgar herd of the Company, but by the 
 aristocracy already swaying the destinies of the Jesuit- 
 empire. This document gives us a most favourable 
 impression of Polancus. We are compelled to give him 
 the most unlimited credit for a thorough knowledge of 
 the Company's members and their concerns ; and we 
 so admire his honesty of purpose, that we rather con- 
 gratulate him at being postponed on account of his 
 " taint," to Mercurian on account of the pope's nomina- 
 tion. Mercurian's " mildness and prudence " 2 were 
 better adapted to eventuate a comfortable reign in the 
 midst of abuses, than Polanco's honesty and reform in 
 the midst of turbulent opposition. 
 
 1 Dec. iii. Cong. ; Corp. lustit. i. 776, et scq. 3 " Doux et prudent." Cretineau.
 
 VARIOUS NEW DECREES. 331 
 
 Many characteristic decrees were passed in the con- 
 gregation, after the election. The distribution of the 
 hereditary wealth of the brothers, given to Distribution 
 the Company, was a subject of considerable ofmone y s - 
 difficulty still. And again the matter was left chiefly to 
 the discretion of the general always premising due 
 regard to the will of the kings and princes in whose 
 dominions such property was situate. 1 Sixteen decrees 
 are omitted in the printed copy all of them doubtless 
 pertaining to that growing anxiety of the Company in 
 the increase of their wealth in certain quarters too 
 abundant, in others too deficient. 
 
 The promise made by the novices to abdicate their 
 wealth, after the first year of probation, was considered 
 a hard matter by some, and in certain places Abdication of 
 it was not, apparently, complied with. It was P r P ert y- 
 now declared to be simply a promise, not a vow and 
 left to the discretion of the general. 2 
 
 Against the multiplicity of colleges, which was brought 
 forward, no new decree was made : but the general was 
 seriously and urgently requested and advised Multiplicity 
 to attend to the former decree on the subject of colle & es - 
 touching the multiplicity of the Company's colleges, 
 and the insufficiency of their revenues. 3 
 
 Some of the fathers proposed to expunge those enact- 
 ments of the Constitutions which, by the lapse of time or 
 other wise, were no longer in practice a startling 
 
 . i . , ' Inviolability 
 
 declaration at so early a period after these oftheConsti- 
 Constitutions were universally approved by 
 successive popes, and sworn to by the Company. And 
 yet the slightest alteration suggested by the pope him- 
 self, ever met with the staunchest opposition ! It is 
 
 1 Dec. xvi. in MS. D. xxvi. 2 Dec. xix. 3 Dec. xx.
 
 332 H1STOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 inconsistent : but quite natural ; and the fathers on the 
 present occasion wisely and most sagaciously resolved 
 that there should be, on no account, any expunging of 
 obsolete enactments all must remain just as " Igna- 
 tius " left them. 1 Thus, again, you see that the Jesuits 
 could always silence objection by appealing to the 
 inviolate Constitutions. However, there is a hiatus of 
 two decrees, after this question about the old Constitu- 
 tions. Whether any expedient was proposed and 
 adopted to supply their place is a matter of curious 
 conjecture. An enemy of the Jesuits would be tempted 
 Monita to ascribe the idea of the famous Monita Secreta 
 Secreta. ^ ^jg occas i OI1) particularly as Ribadeneyra 
 tells us that General Mercurian " prepared certain very 
 useful monita for the public use of the Company : ipse 
 monita Societati inpublicum usum perutilia concinnavit." 9 
 As to the boarders who paid a stipend at the German 
 College, nothing was decided : but the matter was left 
 to the general, as usual, who was to consider 
 
 Boarders at 
 
 the German whether the " burthen ' was to be removed, 
 
 and the beautiful prospectus-declaration about 
 
 gratis-instruction, honestly practised or not. Two 
 
 decrees are omitted. 3 The Constitutions positively 
 
 declared that no alms, no donations, were to 
 
 Touching 
 
 aims and do- be received for colleges which had revenues 
 enough to support twelve scholars, besides 
 teachers. This enactment had been infringed : the 
 question probably proposed by Polancus was, How 
 the enactment was to be understood \ It was left to 
 the general to enforce, to interpret, or dispense with it, 
 as he should think proper. 4 Four decrees are sunk in 
 
 1 Dec. xxiii. in MS. D. xxxiii. 2 Bibl. Script. S. J. Ever. Merc. 
 
 3 Dec. xxiv. in MS. D. xxxv. 
 
 4 Dec. xxv. It is evident that the general of the Jesuits was superior to the
 
 EDITIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONS. 333 
 
 edifying oblivion ; and the everlasting question about 
 the Latin translation of the Constitutions is again brought 
 forward. It is declared that the two editions The Congti . 
 already published differed in many points in tutlons ' 
 multis invicem discrepant : so the demand was, that the 
 congregation should declare whether the first or the 
 second edition, was the true original of the Constitutions 
 verum originate Constitutionum lest they should 
 subsequently again have to go to the Spanish copy 
 exemplar Hispanicum which, as it was not printed, 
 and not open to all nee omnibus commune might, 
 perhaps, in the lapse of time, be rather easily changed 
 or altered; ^posset fortasse successu temporis facilius 
 immutari a most significant piece of information 
 decidedly. Six fathers were appointed, among the rest 
 Kibadeneyra and Possevinus, to compare the two 
 versions with each other, and with the " autograph ;" in 
 order that the congregation might approve of the second 
 edition and appoint it to be used. The autograph was 
 to be preserved ; 1 and ought to be now in existence, in 
 the Roman archives of the Company ; but there is 
 something very suspicious about these same Constitu- 
 tions and their editions. The subject was mooted in 
 the preceding Congregation, although a "version" had 
 been approved in the First Congregation, under Lainez. 
 In the Fourth Congregation, in 1581, the version with 
 declarations, approved in 1573, was again objected to, 
 with demands for a new examination and comparison 
 with the eternal original, for correction and emendation. 2 
 
 Constitutions when it suited the aristocracy to vote him such ; just as the 
 Jesuits, with Lainez at their head, voted the pope superior to the general 
 council of the Church, when it suited their purpose to fetter the bishops by an 
 appeal from the decrees of the Council, to the privileges conceded by their 
 patronising masters, the popes, who used the Company for his purposes. 
 1 Dec. xxvi. 2 IV. Cong. Dec. viii.
 
 334 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 In the Fifth Congregation, in 1593-4, it was asserted 
 that the Latin translation of the Constitutions differed in 
 many points from the Spanish original of "Ignatius;" 
 that the points were collected ; and it was demanded 
 that inspectors might be appointed to correct the said 
 edition : but the demand was not granted the edition 
 sanctioned by the Fourth Congregation was to be retained 
 there was no time for the examination the dis- 
 crepancies might be referred to the general and assist- 
 ants. 1 In the Sixth Congregation, in 1608, it was at 
 length proposed to alter the Constitutions, which, it is 
 stated, were not sufficiently respected, notwithstanding 
 they were the " product of so many tears and prayers 
 of Blessed Father Ignatius, a B. Patre Nostro tot 
 lacrymis et orationibus conditas ;" 2 and finally, in the 
 Ninth Congregation, in 1649-50, several important points 
 of the Constitutions were proposed for explanation, which 
 was given accordingly. 3 Is it not most extraordinary, 
 most unaccountable, that with so many learned linguists 
 in the Company men engaged with translating the 
 Council of Trent into every language, even Arabic 
 there was not one who could render correctly in Latin, 
 the original draft of the Spanish ? The supposition 
 cannot be entertained for a moment. It follows, there- 
 fore, that the Constitutions, like the Jesuits, underwent 
 the changes of Old Time, and that it took some time to 
 " lick " them into their present shape, without being much 
 obliged for the same to Blessed Father Ignatius, with his 
 tears and prayers so plentiful, after the good round lapse 
 of a hundred years and over ; the last hand ultima 
 manus having been apparently given to them between 
 1608 and 1615, when a new edition, with declarations, 
 
 1 V. Cong. Dec. Ixxvi. 2 VI. Cong. Dec. xi. 3 IX. Cong. Dec. xxxix.
 
 DECREE RELATING TO PROPERTY. 335 
 
 issued from the Company's press at the Roman College. 
 Such is the curious history of the famous Constitutions 
 of the Company of Jesus. Meanwhile, there was always 
 a collection of general rules for universal observance in 
 the Company ; and it is very probable that during the 
 first century of the Company, access to the Constitutions 
 was strictly confined to the professed. 
 
 In the same congregation under Mercurian a decree 
 was passed relating to the property of the members. 
 It was admitted that the Jesuits might enter 
 
 . The wealth 
 
 into contracts with their relatives or any of the 
 other parties, concerning their inheritances 
 and other goods belonging to them, the Company 
 claiming no right to the said property : but, no such 
 contracts should subsequently be entered into, without 
 the general being exactly informed touching the circum- 
 stances of the brother, the inheritance, the property, the 
 whole affair without reserve, and the entire disposal 
 of the business should be directed by his judgment and 
 command. 1 It is obvious that this interference was 
 liable to serious abuses, and likely, at least, to produce 
 much bitterness in families since experience attests 
 that the settlement of money-matters amongst relatives, 
 is generally attended with the unsettling of all the best 
 feelings of kindred frequently converting those nearest 
 by blood into such rancorous foes as are nowhere else 
 to be found. Besides, the decree was an indirect, if not 
 a direct, infringement of a canon of the Great The Jesuits 
 Council. In fact these Jesuits who were for ppose ., th <! 
 
 Council of 
 
 reforming all the world, and for stretching or Trent - 
 clipping all states and conditions to fit the Procrustean 
 bed of the Trent-Council, were themselves the first to 
 
 1 Dee. xxxix.
 
 336 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 infringe the canons where they were at variance with 
 their " Constitutions," and " Privileges." By the thirtieth 
 decree in full congregation, the general was enjoined to 
 solicit from the pope, "a relaxation of those deroga- 
 tions :" and they were the following canons, whose 
 perpetual infringement was, amongst the many other 
 causes, the perpetual source of contention between 
 bishops and the Jesuits, the perpetual source of jealousy 
 among other labourers in the vineyard, the perpetual 
 source of pecuniary annoyance among families. The 
 Council of Trent decreed 1. That all the Regulars must 
 present themselves to the bishop, and get his bene- 
 diction, before they began to preach ; and no Regular 
 is permitted to preach even in a church of his Order, 
 if forbidden by the bishop. 1 The pride of the Jesuits 
 stuck at this ; and they were resolved not to comply 
 with the injunction under the shield of Privilege. 
 2. All ecclesiastical benefices, whether annexed to 
 churches or colleges, are to be visited yearly by the 
 Ordinaries. 2 Jesuit-pride and cupidity shuddered at 
 this mandate, and they determined to hide themselves 
 under the wings of Privilege. 3. Regulars were not 
 to be ordained without a diligent examination by the 
 bishop to the complete exclusion of all privileges what- 
 ever, privilegiis quibuscumque penitus exdusis? 4. In 
 like manner, no Regular, notwithstanding his privileges, 
 can hear confessions unless he has a parish-benefice, or 
 be judged competent by the bishop's examination, or 
 otherwise. 4 5. All censures and interdicts promulgated 
 by order of the bishop must be published and ob- 
 served by the Regulars in their churches. 5 Jesuit-pride, 
 
 1 Sess. xxiv. c. 5v. ; Seas. v. c. xi. J Seas. vii. cc. vii. and viii. 
 
 s Sess. xxiii. c. xii. 4 Sess. c. xv. s Sess. xxv. c. xii.
 
 THE JESUITS OPPOSE THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 337 
 
 his Order's independence, and giant-elasticity were pre- 
 pared to snap these new bonds suggested by the Dalilah 
 of Trent in favour of the episcopal Philistia. 6. The Great 
 and Holy Synod of Trent enjoined all Masters, Doctors, 
 and others in the Universities, to teach the Catholic faith 
 according to the rule laid down by the decrees of the 
 said Council, and required them to bind themselves by 
 a solemn oath at the beginning of every year, to observe 
 this injunction. 1 What possible difficulty could the 
 
 1 Sess. xxv. c, ii. Some historical elucidation is here necessary. As far 
 back as 1560, Martin Kemnicius had published a tract entitled, "Tlie chief heads 
 of the theology of the Jesuits" printed at Cologne. It is a severe attack on the 
 Company and its origin ; but the writer's severity is chiefly directed against the 
 doctrines advanced in the Catechism of Canisius, and a Censure published that 
 year, at Cologne, by the Jesuits. Kemnicius quotes from both productions, to 
 exhibit the extravagant notions of the Jesuits on the Scriptures, sin, free-will, 
 justification, good works, the sacraments, images, &c. &c. A friend of the 
 Jesuits, Payva Andradius, a doctor of divinity, took up their cause, lent them 
 a hand, and attacked Kemnicius in a tract concerning The Origin of the Com- 
 pany of Jesus ; but he leaves the mam charges of Kemnicius entirely out of 
 consideration, lauding the Jesuits for their exertions in the Catholic cause, and, 
 amongst other assertions, stating, that within one or two years, the Jesuits had 
 converted to the faith 20,000 barbarians ! This was in 1566. As the Jesuits, 
 as usual, furnished the apologist with the materials, he talks marvellously of 
 Xavier's achievements and other Jesuit-wonders in India, already blazed to the 
 world hi a publication of their letters from India, and translated into various 
 languages Diversi Avisi, &c. . . . dall' anno 1551 sino al 1558 two years 
 after the death of Ignatius. A professor of the Holy Scriptures, in the Academy 
 at Heidelberg, had also attacked the whole system of the Company, in a work 
 entitled " The Assertion of the old and true Christianity, against the new and 
 fictitious Jesuitism or Company of Jesus. His name was Boquin. Lastly, Dona- 
 tus Gotuisus, a divine at Treves, came forward with a tract called The faith of 
 Jesus and of the Jesuits, in which he contrasts the proclaimed doctrines of the 
 Jesuits, side by side, with the contrary doctrines of the prophets, the evangelists, 
 the apostles, and the fathers of the Church ; and he certainly makes out a strong 
 case against the doctrines then propagated by the Company, and throws some 
 light on the demur of the Jesuits, in taking a solemn oath to teach the doctrines 
 of Trent. The divine of Treves proves himself as deeply learned in the fathers 
 as Lainez in his boastful display at the Council. Some of the Jesuit-doctrines 
 are very curious, for instance : " The Holy Scripture is an imperfect, mutilated, 
 defective doctrine, which does not contain all that pertains to salvation, faith, and 
 good morals." In Jesuitarum Censurd Colonensi, fol. 220 ; in opere Catechistico 
 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 338 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Company of Jesus pronounced to be a " pious Insti- 
 tute " by the same Council patronised, cherished, 
 fondled by the Head of the Catholic Church holding 
 itself forth as the very champion of orthodoxy what 
 difficulty could the Jesuits decently allege for demurring 
 to comply with this injunction ? With what part of 
 the Constitutions can this injunction be at variance ? 
 Certainly none that we can now discover absolutely 
 none that the rabidly orthodox Ignatius ever penned or 
 sanctioned. And yet, immediately after this canon of 
 the Council, we read the following Jesuit-protest : So 
 much for the decrees of the Council of Trent, manifestly 
 repugnant to the laws and customs of our Company! 
 Hcec de locis Concilii Tridentini manifests pugnantibus 
 cum legibus et consuetudinibus nostrce Societatis. 1 Surely 
 it is now evident from this opposition of the Jesuits 
 this extravagant abuse of privilege that the wide- 
 
 Canisii, foL 126, 160, 161, 162. Again, "The Holy Scripture, in its contents 
 and propositions, is like a nose of wax, yielding no fixed and certain sense, but 
 capable of being twisted into any meaning you like." In Censura, f. 1 1 7 ; in 
 op. Canis. f. 44. Thirdly, " The reading of the Holy Scripture is not only not 
 useful, but in many ways pernicious to the Church." In Censura, f. 21 ; in op. 
 Canis. f. 301 . And so on proceeds the divine, convicting the Jesuits of heretical 
 and immoral inculcations, as put forth in their Censure, and the Catechism of 
 Canisius. It may gratify the reader to learn that Gotuisus convicts Canisius 
 and the Jesuit, more severely and triumphantly than Canisius did in his attack, 
 before given, on the doctrines of Luther and the Protestants. Besides, Gotuisus 
 lavishes no abuse whatever ; he merely quotes and subjoins the contrasts from 
 the orthodox sources above named. In the List of Authors printed at the head 
 of this history, you will find the Latin titles of the works just named. I may 
 observe, by the way, that in the subsequent editions of Canisius, the Jesuits 
 took care to expunge the objectionable assertions, which were intended to " put 
 down " the salient doctrines of the Protestants. 
 
 1 Corpus Instit. S. J. i. 815. What stirred the Jesuits still more in the 
 matter was, that Pope Gregory XIII. had just issued a bull revoking all the 
 privileges and concessions before conceded to the Regulars, and plainly sub- 
 jecting them to the disposal of the common law and Council of Trent, although 
 exempt, said the Jesuits in congregation ; but on what grounds, we are not 
 told. Ibid. 816.
 
 JESUIT-RAPACITY. 339 
 
 spread ill-odour of the Jesuits, even among orthodox 
 Catholics, and particularly the bishops, those of France 
 especially, was not without ample cause in the wfa 
 spirit and practice of the Jesuits themselves, Catholic 
 seeking and obtaining extravagant exemp- oppoLVthe 
 tions from solemn injunctions, mounted on 
 which, they could easily distance all their rivals in the 
 race whose reward was influence with the people, of all 
 ranks and conditions, wealth and aggrandisement. 
 
 Nor was this all. There was another canon whose 
 smoke was likely to suffocate the Jesuits. It is mentioned 
 among others " which seem in some way to mill- Jesuit . 
 tate against our Institute and its privileges." rapacity. 
 By a curious coincidence, it actually occurs in the very 
 passage where the Company is called a " pious Institute." 
 One would suppose that this soft impeachment, clipped 
 out of the Holy Synod as eagerly as a publisher snaps 
 up a favourable sentence from a review of his specula- 
 tion, would have gently " moved" the Jesuits to exhibit 
 their " pious" gratitude by swallowing the little fly 
 drowned in the generous wine of the oscumenical toast. 
 Not a bit of it. Nor was it likely, when you perceive 
 that this little fly was, to the Jesuits, a horrible swarm 
 of locusts, eating them out of house and home, for the 
 Synod decreed that, " before the profession of a novice, 
 male or female, the parents, relatives, or guardians of 
 the same, should give no portion of the said novice's 
 wealth to the monastery, on any pretext whatever, 
 except for board and clothing during probation ; " and 
 the reason properly advanced is, "lest the novice, by 
 such donation, be prevented from leaving, because the 
 monastery possesses the whole or the greater part of 
 his substance ; and it will not be easy for him to regain 
 
 z 2
 
 340 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 possession in the event of his leaving. Moreover, the 
 holy Synod rather forbids, under the penalty of anathema, 
 anything of the sort, in any way, to be done, whether 
 by the givers or the receivers, and commands that those 
 who leave before profession, should have all their pro- 
 perty restored to them just as it was before." x To 
 this mandate the Jesuits were opposed, and they did 
 not blush in seeking to evade it by privilege. 
 
 Such are the striking features of the Third Congrega- 
 tion rather unprepossessing, decidedly. I have enlarged 
 
 on the subject by way of additional attestation 
 crees attest for the preceding facts. If you remember all 
 of the that you have read, it must be evident that a 
 
 history of the Jesuits might be written almost 
 entirely from the decrees of their congregations. 2 Such 
 was the state of affairs at Mercurian's accession. " Mild 
 and prudent, all he had to do," says the Jesuit-historian, 
 " was to consolidate the edifice of the Company ; that 
 was his chief vocation/' 3 And yet we have seen that 
 Polancus, the secretary of the Company, and assistant 
 of the late general, thought a vast deal more was to be 
 expected from the " vocation" of Borgia's successor 
 than mere " consolidation of the Company's edifice," 
 destined anon to sink by its own weight mole sud, 
 into the gulph over which it was supported, when the 
 flimsy rafters hastily buttressed, shall no longer resist 
 their irrational, infatuated " consolidation." But much 
 
 1 Sess. xxv. c. xvi. ; Corpus Instit S. J. i. 816. 
 
 2 If my readers can refer to Cretineau- Joly's laudatory history of the Jesuits, 
 they will see how very trippingly the partisan sums up the proceedings of this 
 congregation, totally misrepresenting the whole affair, and dismissing, with one 
 flimsy page, this most important passage of Jesuit-history the very trumpet- 
 notes of warning, booming from the thousand corners of abuses already preparing 
 downfall and destruction. 3 Cretineau, ii. 173.
 
 ATTEMPT TO CATHOLICIZE SWEDEN. 341 
 
 was to be done and undone ere that event could come 
 to pass, according to the everlasting laws of providential 
 retribution. 
 
 To the most "stirring" epoch of Jesuitism we are 
 now advancing. The political schemes of Philip II. 
 suggested the propriety of winning over to the Catholic 
 cause the King of Sweden. I say the King of Sweden, 
 for in those days, and long after, it was of little conse- 
 quence to gain over the people of a kingdom, as long as 
 the strong arm of military domination could enforce the 
 will of potentates. We are at the present moment 
 awaking from that dream. Cast-iron despotism is fast 
 melting away in the furnace of public opinion. 
 
 Gustavus the Great had established Lutheranism in 
 Sweden. He left four sons, among the rest Eric XIV., 
 who succeeded him, and John, Duke of Finland, 
 afterwards John III. of Sweden. Eric was an 
 astrologer and magician. 1 By the revelations of his 
 stars or black art, he believed that his brother John 
 would dethrone him, and thereupon threw him into 
 prison, together with his young wife, the Princess 
 Catherine of Poland, sister to Sigismund Augustus. Of 
 course all the sons of Gustavus "the brood of King 
 Gustavus/' as the Swedes call them were Lutherans ; 
 but John's Catholic wife was a good decoy of Catholicism 
 in the northern wilderness. Meanwhile, King Eric 
 plunged into all manner of vice and atrocity. His old 
 tutor, Denis Burgos, offered him good advice : the savage 
 plunged his dagger into the old man's heart. Many a 
 murder was on his conscience. The ghost of his old 
 friend and tutor seemed to haunt him ; then he seemed 
 to relent, and liberated his brother John, with his young 
 
 1 Florin, de Raym. (the Jesuit Richeome), 1. iv. c. xvi. ; Maimb. ii. 245.
 
 342 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 wife, from prison. But Eric was half mad at least ; his 
 magical terrors came upon him again, and he resolved 
 to cut off all his fancied enemies at one fell swoop. He 
 would celebrate his nuptials with a maiden of low con- 
 dition, and, at the marriage-feast, he would suddenly 
 cut off all his brothers and the nobles. His Dalilah 
 betrayed him to his intended victims. John put himself 
 at the head of the nobles, took Eric prisoner, and then 
 put him to death in the most violent manner. 1 Thus it 
 was that John of Finland became King John III. of 
 Sweden in 1569. 
 
 In 1674 the Jesuit Warsevicz was dispatched by the 
 pope to King John III. He represented himself as the 
 The Jesuit ambassador of Queen Anne of Poland to her 
 jmd'Kin 02 sister Catherine, King John's Catholic partner : 
 John. this was the only means he had to penetrate 
 
 to the Swedish Court. Warsevicz was, we are told, one of 
 those Jesuits whom nobility of birth, experience of the 
 world, a knowledge of mankind, had familiarised with 
 all the positions of humanity. So the queen hid him in 
 a room of the palace : Warsevicz awaited the propitious 
 hour : she sounded at last ; and King John consented to 
 see the Jesuit. 2 The Jesuit's mission had a two-fold 
 object. He had to treat with the king concerning an 
 alliance with King Philip, who was anxious to frighten 
 the Netherlander from the north as well as the south ; 
 and, secondly, he had to prepare the king for a relapse 
 or return to the faith of his ancestors. 3 According to the 
 Jesuits, the king had fructified his former imprisonment 
 by studying the " Fathers," and thus became quite 
 
 1 Maimb. ii. 245, et seq. ; Ranke, p. 150. Maimbourg merely says that Eric 
 "died ten years after; "but the fact of the murder is elsewhere attested, as 
 given by Ranke. 2 Cretineau, ii. 187, 188, 189. 3 i^id. 189.
 
 TRICKS OP THE JESUIT NICOLAI. 343 
 
 learned in theology ; but they say the result was only 
 " chaos amidst light : " six days the Jesuit laboured on 
 the king ; but no sabbath came : the king's anoma- 
 lous Catholicism was nothing more than Protestantism 
 befouled by the prominent vices of Romanism an 
 incongruity which we behold with regret amongst those 
 who, at the present day, are the fiercest brawlers against 
 popery. The expedition was a failure : Warsevicz took 
 leave, and departed, after a month's sojourn in Sweden 
 the first Jesuit who penetrated into that country so 
 essentially anti-catholic. 
 
 It was evident, however, that King John, whether 
 through the " Fathers," or through his wife, was inclined 
 to Catholicism : only he wished, from political Triokg of the 
 motives, to compromise the matter by certain Jesuit Nicola i- 
 engraftings, as I have said, which the Jesuit accordingly 
 reported to his general and the pope. Three years 
 afterwards, a Jesuit, named Nicolai, a Norwegian, was 
 sent from Rome, in disguise, to the Swedish court, with 
 the intention of waiting on the queen, like Mary Queen 
 of Scots' Italian Rizzio, and to concoct, with her 
 Majesty's aid, the means of re-establishing the faith in 
 Sweden. According to the Jesuit Maimbourg, the king 
 entered into his plans, and even cleverly advised him 
 how to set about the matter. At all events, on the 
 same authority, this Jesuit Nicola'i presented himself to 
 the Lutheran ministers and preachers, and told them 
 that he had passed all his life in the study of the high 
 sciences, in which he thought he had, by God's grace, 
 made very considerable progress, which had gained a 
 reputation in several universities ; that having heard 
 that the king was establishing a new college at Stock- 
 holm, he had come to offer his services to his majesty,
 
 344 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 because he much preferred to be somewhat useful to 
 Sweden, so near to Norway, his country, rather than to 
 strangers whom he had hitherto served, by teaching 
 them the sciences which he professed ; and therefore he 
 begged them to employ their credit with the king, in 
 order to get him employment in that college. This trick 
 succeeded admirably, says the Jesuit Maimbourg, whom 
 I have been translating in all the foregoing tissue of lies. 
 These ministers, continues the Jesuit, were surprised at 
 hearing a man speak Latin so easy and elegantly, and 
 had not the least idea that he was anything but a Lutheran, 
 since he ivas a Norwegian n'avaient garde de s'imaginer 
 qu'estant de Norwege il fust autre que Lutherien ; they 
 believed effectually that he was a very clever man, 
 which was true, and did not fail to recommend him par- 
 ticularly to the king, who, playing his own part with 
 equal perfection, told them that he relied on their recom- 
 mendation. Whereupon he gave him the professorship 
 of theology ; in which, without explaining himself, he 
 adroitly sapped all the foundations of Lutheranism in his 
 lectures oil, sans se declarer, il sapait adroitement dans 
 ses lepons tons les fondemens du Lutheranisme. The 
 rector of the college and one of the incumbents of 
 Stockholm detected the Jesuit's manoeuvre : the other 
 ministers, says the unblushing Jesuit, were too ignorant 
 to see through the thing. The former came forward 
 and opposed " such fortunate beginnings," says Maim- 
 bourg. But the king, under pretext that they disturbed 
 public repose by their seditious speeches, drove them 
 from the city, and made Nicolai rector of the college, 
 saying that it was only justice in him to do so, in order 
 to justify so skilful a man, whom those two seditious 
 men had calumniated que ces deux seditieua avaient
 
 JOHN III. OF SWEDEN PATRONISES THEM. 345 
 
 calomnie. Was there ever such bare-faced effrontery ? 
 Or did the Jesuit believe it impossible for any moral 
 sentiment to shrink from denouncing so disgusting an 
 instance of diabolically-deceitful means, employed to 
 promote an end deemed " good" by the perpetrators ? 
 John III. followed up his Jesuit-roguery. He published 
 at the same time a new Liturgy, drawn up by himself, 
 and intended to abolish by degrees, as he said, the 
 Lutheran practices. 1 A battle of pamphlets ensued 
 between the exiled rector and incumbent, and the roguish 
 Jesuit, respecting the new Liturgy, which the former 
 denounced, and the latter defended, although " it was not 
 altogether Catholic," as his brother-Jesuits admit. There- 
 upon the king advanced boldly with Catholic reforms, 
 according to the Jesuit's account, and even sent an 
 ambassador to Pope Gregory XIIL, to treat for " the 
 reduction of Sweden to the obedience of the Church, 
 on certain conditions." Pontus de la Gardie was the 
 ambassador. 2 
 
 1 Maimb. Hist, du Lutheran, ii. 249 ; Sacchin. P. iv. 1. v. 
 
 2 This adventurer is one of the many examples which that stirring epoch pre- 
 sents, of splendid fortunes achieved by talent. Pontus was a Frenchman of 
 low birth, born in Languedoc, and originally a simple soldier in Scotland under 
 Orsel, one of Francis II. 's lieutenants. Thence he enlisted into the armies of 
 Denmark, turned Calvinist, and was made prisoner by the Swedes, under 
 Varennes, their general, another French adventurer who commanded the 
 heretics. Varennes took a fancy to his countryman, recommended him to 
 Eric, who befriended him greatly, and placed such confidence in him, that he 
 appointed him assistant to John, when, after his liberation, he made him lieu- 
 tenant of the kingdom ; assuring his brother that Pontus would prove very 
 useful to him. And so he did with a vengeance ; for Pontus was the foremost 
 in the conspiracy against his benefactor, cut all the guards to pieces, and com- 
 pelled the king to surrender at discretion. By this exploit he secured the good 
 graces of John III. ; and thenceforward became historical under the name of 
 Count Pontus de Gardie, and the right hand of the monarch. A history of 
 French adventurers, who have thus cut their way to riches and renown, would 
 be highly interesting, even if it ended only with Bernadotte in the same king- 
 dom. I remember when a boy, a French priest was dining at the table of the
 
 346 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 It appears that John's main object was to induce the 
 pope to prevail on king Philip to pay some large arrears 
 The stipuia- ^ revenue due to his wife, from the kingdom 
 tions. O f Naples. At all events, that was the pre- 
 
 text of the embassy, according to the Jesuits. The 
 conditions for Swedish orthodoxy were four in number 
 the nobles were to retain the church property which 
 they had seized ; but the king would give them a good 
 example of restitution by restoring, from the royal share 
 of the booty, two hundred thousand livres of revenue. 
 Secondly, the married bishops and priests were to retain 
 their wives ; but celibacy was to be enforced on all 
 future candidates for orders. Thirdly, communion in 
 both kinds. Fourthly, the divine service must be per- 
 formed in Swedish. No decisive answer could be given 
 to these terms ; but the Jesuit Possevin was dispatched 
 by the pope to complete the king's conversion. 
 
 Possevin's J 
 
 splendid Possevin took with him two companions, an 
 Irish Jesuit, William Good, and a Frenchman, 
 Father Fournier, by way of attendants ; for " this skilful 
 man," says Maimbourg, " wishing to have a good pretext 
 for treating freely with the king without giving umbrage 
 to the senators," entered Stockholm as an ambassador 
 from the Empress Maria of Austria. Dressed in a rich 
 and appropriate costume, splendidly embroidered, a 
 sword at his side, " not a trace of the Jesuit remained 
 on his person, " says the Jesuit ; "but to redeem beforehand 
 
 Swedish Governor of St. Bartholomew, in the West Indies. The Swede made 
 some disparaging remark on the French nation ; the priest took him up, 
 gallantly saying : " A paltry nation indeed, whose lieutenants are worthy to 
 become kings of Sweden," alluding to Bernadotte. Pontus de la Gardie was 
 accidentally drowned, in 1584. He had married a natural daughter of King 
 John III., and left behind him two sons to inherit his wealth and titles, among 
 " the great lords of Sweden."
 
 POSSEVIN'S EMBASSY TO SWEDEN. 347 
 
 these transient honours, he had made the greater part of 
 his journey on foot ! " l Such is a specimen of the 
 method how the Jesuits managed their vow of poverty. 
 Doubtless they played the same tricks with that of 
 chastity in fact, we shall find the subject " signalised " 
 in a subsequent decree for the Company. According to 
 Sacchinus, Possevinus completely converted the king, 
 heard his confession, gave him absolution, and thus 
 tranquillised his conscience, distracted by the execution 
 or murder of his brother Eric. 2 Possevinus returned to 
 the pope with no less than twelve conditions, now urged 
 by the king, for obedience to Rome : if he was really 
 so gloriously converted, he would scarcely have urged 
 conditions which he knew would not be granted to a 
 king of Sweden, " after having been refused to other 
 princes more powerful than himself/' observes the Jesuit 
 Maimbourg. 3 The conditions were almost universally 
 rejected by the cardinals ; but Possevinus was ordered 
 to return to the king for further negotiation. 
 
 He returns 
 
 The pope resolved to send the Jesuit with with power 
 more honours than ever. By a breve he 
 made Possevin his legate, appointed him vicar-apostolic 
 of Russia, Moravia, Lithuania, Hungary, and all the 
 north ; his power was unlimited ; and an universal jubilee 
 was announced for the success of his mission. 4 That 
 unlimited power seems to declare that the Jesuit might 
 accept the king's conditions, should he be unable to make 
 Sweden surrender at papal discretion. Evidently the 
 pope thought Sweden was in his grasp : else why make 
 the Jesuit a bishop of all the north, if, in spite of the 
 stiff conditions, he was not to receive the submission of 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 195. 2 Sacchin. lib. vi. ; Maimb. 254. 
 
 3 Maimb. ii. 255. * Cretineau, ii. 201.
 
 348 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Sweden to the dominion of Rome 1 Nay, further, 
 Possevinus had induced Philip II. to send a plenipoten- 
 tiary to Stockholm, who was even subservient to the 
 Jesuit, Philip having entrusted Possevin with his con- 
 fidential negotiation. In fact, it was a determined 
 onslaught on Lutheran Sweden : all that pomp, and 
 splendour, and power, and prayer might effect, was 
 brought to bear on the success of the scheme. Posse- 
 vin's companion was the Jesuit Ludovico a prince 
 Odescalchi ; and on his route he had an interview 
 with King Albert of Bavaria ; and, by the pope's order, 
 held a conference with the Fuggers, the great bankers 
 of Germany, " whose colossal fortune was at the service 
 of the Church," as we are told expressly. At Prague, 
 he had audience from the Emperor Rodolph II. At 
 Vilna he conferred with the King of Poland. What a 
 glorious and important embassy for the Jesuit ! And 
 at length when he got a sight of the Baltic, he found 
 a Swedish frigate awaiting his lordship's embarkation. 
 What more could he desire to " consolidate " the scheme 
 so admirably planned \ Indeed, the Jesuit was so con- 
 fident of victory for Rome, that he would boldly enter 
 Stockholm in the dress of his Order. 1 The Jesuit always 
 throws off his mask as soon as he finds or fancies his 
 weakness changed into strength. 
 
 The result was a lesson to all the crafty schemers 
 
 concerned. Pontus de la Gardie, who had turned 
 
 Catholic again, at Rome, was at Stockholm 
 
 The result. ' m . 
 
 before the Jesuit arrived. The adventurer 
 gave an unfavourable account of his embassy, and having 
 himself received a large portion of church property, 
 likely to be restored with the return of papal dominion, 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 202.
 
 RESULT OF POSSEVm's EMBASSY. 349 
 
 he joined the other nobles situated like himself, in a 
 remonstrance to the king against the project. A gene- 
 ral revolt was menaced. Numerous letters poured in 
 from the Protestant princes of Germany. The king's 
 brother, Charles, had even sent emissaries to seize Posse- 
 vinus on his route. They caught a wandering dignitary, 
 but he turned out to be an Irish bishop of Ross, and not 
 the Jesuit Possevin, who enjoyed, without being aware 
 of it, the misfortune of this poor Irish bishop, and con- 
 tinued his journey without molestation. 1 But what was 
 his surprise to find all his hopes utterly ruined beyond 
 redemption ! He had brought very fine letters from the 
 pope, the emperor, the King of Poland, the Duke of 
 Bavaria, and many other Catholic princes, congratulat- 
 ing King John III. on his conversion and what did he 
 find when he presented himself before the king, boldly 
 enveloped in the garb of the Jesuit 1 The king openly 
 professed Lutheranism, more so than before : he was 
 even oppressing the Catholics : he refused to perform 
 all he had promised. All Possevin's efforts were in 
 vain : the miraculous converter was utterly baffled by 
 the king's inflexibility. The Jesuit Nicolai' had been 
 driven off and he richly deserved it for his dirty craft 
 the college was restored to the Lutherans, its lawful 
 owners ; and Possevin, papal nuncio, vicar-apostolic of 
 all the north, and Jesuit, " was obliged to leave Sweden, 
 and resign the hope which he had conceived of finishing 
 the great work he had so fortunately begun." 2 Once 
 Lutheran, and Lutheran for ever, was the national will 
 of Sweden : the minds and hearts of the nation would 
 never swerve from that determination. As barren as 
 
 1 " Qui jouissait heureusement, sans le sjavoir, de la mauvaise fortune de ce 
 pauvre Evesque Irlanda-s," &c. - Maimb. ii. 255 258.
 
 350 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 her rocks, as hard as her iron, would Sweden ever be to 
 the propagandism of Rome. And yet Sweden is tole- 
 rant, nobly so ; in spite of the craft and tricks which 
 have been from time to time played upon her by the 
 emissaries of the great propagandist. On the other 
 hand, we must give the Jesuits credit for having done 
 all they could for having left no means untried to 
 achieve their end : they failed, but the fault was not 
 theirs : it was a blessing for Sweden that Providence 
 interposed and swamped the bark of Rome, just sailing 
 into port with her cargo of bulls, priests, indulgences, 
 confessionals, all the elements of old chaos renewed. 
 
 Everard Mercurian, the general of the Jesuits, died in 
 1580, after a reign of eight years. Intestine broils and 
 intestine commotions characterised his generalate. The 
 broils. inequality of the gradations of rank, the mode 
 
 of election, the facility of expulsion granted to the 
 general, gave to a party formed in the Company des- 
 perate employment ; whilst another insisted that the 
 Spanish members had a right to elect a head for them- 
 selves alone. Nor was this turbulent spirit confined to 
 the bosom of the Company. 1 In a political quarrel 
 between the Spanish governor of Milan, and Cardinal 
 Borromeo, the Jesuits divided on either side according 
 to their nations, and one of them, Julius Mazarini, who 
 sided with the governor, being his friend and confessor, 
 attacked the cardinal from the very pulpit, and lashed 
 him without moderation. The archbishop bitterly com- 
 plained of the outrage ; the general of the Jesuits repri- 
 manded the delinquent ; and he was suspended from 
 his apostolical functions for the space of two years. 2 
 These wild imaginings of the Jesuits should not surprise 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 218. 2 Ibid. 222.
 
 
 THE COMPANY'S STAR IN THE ASCENDANT. 351 
 
 us ; they are but the preludes of coming events. Mer- 
 curian had soon resigned his functions to an assistant, 
 Father Palmio. Perceiving that this appointment would 
 be, or was, taxed with partiality, he gave Palmio an 
 assistant, Father Manare ; and thereby hurt the feelings 
 of Father Palmio ! l Can it be believed that a Jesuit 
 and one who was so far advanced in perfection, being a 
 professed could possibly exhibit the petty passions of 
 little men ? There is the fact, however. But, notwith- 
 
 standing these internal broils and outward , 
 
 The Com- 
 
 extravagance, the Company's star was high in 
 the ascendant nothing could check her 
 aggrandisement gods and men united to promote her 
 splendid perversion. Already she numbered more than 
 five thousand men, one hundred and ten houses, and 
 twenty-one provinces. Never before had her men been 
 more in requisition, more exalted, more conspicuous. In 
 embassies here, embassies there everywhere infringing 
 the prominent mandates and decrees of their Constitu- 
 tions and congregations. In a whirlpool they floated : 
 they swam indeed lustily : but in that desperate 
 struggle they knew not what they were doing pro- 
 gress in some direction, it mattered not how or whither 
 still progress was the one thing needful. The gene- 
 ralate of the superannuated Mercurian was as disastrous 
 to the Jesuit-Institute as a long minority to a turbulent 
 empire. 
 
 In Pope Gregory XIII. the Jesuits found admirable 
 support. Completely had this pontiff imbibed the spirit 
 of his predecessor. Not only would he imitate him, 
 but he was resolved to surpass him in his zeal for the 
 
 1 " Palmio se montra sensible a cette substitution d'autorite." Cretineau, 
 ii. 224.
 
 352 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 cause of orthodoxy. 1 To Catholic princes at war with 
 their heretic subjects he was lavishly bountiful with 
 Gregory's golden ducats : he gave the King of France 
 subsidies to f our hundred thousand scudi (80,000/.) for 
 
 the warriors x ' 
 
 of the faith, that blessed object ; but, he raised the money 
 by a tax on the cities of " the Church/' which was an 
 oppressive injustice ; and he gave liberal assistance to the 
 Archduke Charles and the Knights of Malta, with a slice 
 of ecclesiastical benefices, which was much more con- 
 sistent at least, and much less deplorable. 2 
 
 Wherever there was a Turk to be bombarded, or a 
 
 heretic to be hunted down, aid from Gregory was always 
 
 forthcoming with a cheer and a benediction. 
 
 Gregory's 
 
 zeal for England, and her Elizabeth above all, caught 
 his fancy : deeply was his heart set on the 
 ruin of that queen in her island-throne. Of this deter- 
 mination the pope made no secret : a general combina- 
 tion against England was his soul's desire. Year after 
 year his nuncios negotiated on this subject with Philip II. 
 and the Guises : Gregory plied them with the most 
 ardent zeal. The French league, so dangerous to 
 Henry III. and Henry IV., owed its origin to the con- 
 nexion between the pope and the Guises. 3 It was zeal 
 for religion run mad. 
 
 In the same spirit, Gregory patronised the Jesuits with 
 their strict system of ecclesiastical education. 
 
 The " semi- * 
 
 nary" of aii To the houses of the professed he made liberal 
 
 presents ; he purchased houses, closed up 
 
 streets, and allotted revenues for the purpose of giving 
 
 the whole college the form it wears to this day. It 
 
 1 " Nella religione ha tolto non solo d'imitar, ma ancora d'avanzar Pio V." 
 Seconda relat. dett' ambasciat, apud Ranke, 108. 
 
 8 Vite de' Pontef. dal Plat, ed Altri. Ven., 1703. 3 Ranke, ubi supra.
 
 JAPANESE EMBASSY TO ROME. 353 
 
 was adapted to contain twenty lecture-rooms and three 
 hundred and sixty cells for students. This was called 
 the " Seminary of all Nations." At its foundation, in 
 order to signify its purpose of embracing the whole 
 world within its scope, twenty-five speeches were deli- 
 vered, in as many different languages, as usual, each 
 immediately accompanied by a Latin translation. 1 To 
 testify their gratitude to the pope for all his benefac- 
 tions, the Jesuits placed, in the large hall of the college, 
 pictures of the two-and-twenty colleges which the pope 
 had founded in various parts of Christendom ; and they 
 also displayed the pope's portrait, with the following 
 inscription : " To Gregory XIII., Sovereign Pontiff, 
 Founder of this College, the whole Company of Jesus, 
 defended by him with the most ample privileges, and 
 increased by mighty benefits, placed this monument in 
 memory of their best parent, and to attest their grati- 
 tude." Nor did the Jesuits stop here. They were never 
 equalled in devising complimental rewards for those who 
 befriended them ; whatever may be said against them, 
 and justly too, for their abuse of the religious sentiment 
 in man their wild encroachments on the rights of 
 others their domineering spirit, if you will still, it is 
 impossible to deny them the respectable praise of having 
 almost invariably made an adequate return to their 
 benefactors adequate, because always exactly the thing 
 to be relished by their patrons. On the present occasion, 
 by way of displaying the enlarged dominion of the Holy 
 See, the great hobby of the zealous Gregory, 
 they induced some petty kings and lords of 
 Japan to send ambassadors to the pope ! The Rome - 
 royal blood of Japan or its representatives did the 
 
 1 Ranke, ubi supra. 
 VOL. II. A \
 
 354 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Jesuits fetch in a journey of twenty thousand miles, to 
 do homage to the father of the faithful. The king of 
 Bungo and the king of Arima, the king of Cugino and 
 the king of Omura, each sent his representative, a youth 
 of about twenty years of age. Great was the jubilation 
 of the holy city at the advent of these kings of the east. 
 But the Jesuits took great care of the precious samples, 
 and lodged them in the Gesu, or House of the Professed. 
 The pope granted them audience in full consistory and 
 with vast magnificence : all the princes of the Roman 
 court vying with each other to honour the interesting 
 strangers. 1 They had, of course, previously paid their 
 respects to King Philip II., now ruler of the East by his 
 usurpation of Portugal, and the king had received them 
 with even more magnificence than the pope of Rome, 
 whose feet they came to kiss, in attestation of the 
 success and gratitude of the omnipotent Jesuits. It 
 seems to have been too much for the pope. Overjoyed 
 at the glorious event, the old pontiff exclaimed : " Nunc 
 dimittis, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
 peace," and effectually died a few days after, killed by 
 his joy at papal supremacy in the isles of the sea- 
 snuffed out as a lamp by the trumpet-blast of ortho- 
 doxy! The idea was indeed a comfort amidst the 
 wild anarchy then raging over Italy and in Rome, as 
 you will read anon. I need scarcely state that there 
 were many who believed the whole affair a hoax 
 concocted by the Jesuits ; but, for my part, I think it 
 probable that it was a veritable embassy, proving the 
 influence which the Jesuits had achieved in Japan ; 
 but if it was a hoax, it must be admitted that it was 
 well conceived, admirably executed, and, what is very 
 
 1 Vite de' Pontef. Greg. XIII.
 
 JAPANESE EMBASSY TO ROME. 355 
 
 significant, rather expensive for the mendicant Company 
 of Jesus. 1 
 
 1 Charlevoix, Hist, du Japon. iii. 106 158. The Jesuit gives a very diffuse 
 but interesting and curious account of the whole affair. He says that Aqua- 
 viva requested the pope to receive the ambassadors without pomp which, if 
 made, was a very ridiculous request at all events, rather too late, after all the 
 grand doings in Portugal and Spain, as even the good old Charlevoix Jesuit 
 remarks : " but," says he, " it would have been useless even if made sooner, for 
 Gregory XIII. had taken his resolve : at the news of the arrival of the embassy 
 in Italy, he had held a consistory, in which it was declared that it was incumbent 
 on the honour of the Church and the Holy See, to receive the embassy with 
 all possible pomp and splendour." P. 120. Gregory sent his company of 
 light cavalry to escort the ambassadors : a multitude of Roman lords, also 
 mounted, with the gentry of the vicinity, formed a cavalcade which extended 
 almost all the way from Viterbo to Rome, which they entered with the sound 
 of trumpets, and the deafening acclamations of the holy mob of the Eternal 
 City. The Jesuits joined in the jollification ; and with their general Aquaviva 
 at their head, escorted the curiosities to their church, where the Te Deum was 
 performed. Nothing could exceed the splendour of the procession to the 
 Vatican. All the foreign ambassadors, with their retinue, graced the pageant 
 with their august presence : the cardinals, the chamberlains of the pope, and 
 officers of the palace, all in their red dresses, immediately preceded the 
 Japanese, who were on horseback, and in their national costume. Nothing 
 could surpass the costliness and magnificence of this costume : it must have 
 swallowed the revenue of a whole Jesuit-province, if the thing was a hoax, or 
 the kings of Japan wisely resolved to make the Jesuits " pay for the piper." 
 In fact, Charlevoix intimates that Valegnani, the Jesuit leader of the Japanese, 
 was resolved to let them have no magnificent equipage, and to make no show 
 with the affair (p. 108), consequently we are at a loss to account for the pro- 
 duction of the following magnificent equipage equipage magnifique. " They 
 wore three long robes, one on the other, but of so fine a texture that all three did 
 not weigh as much as one of ours," says the Jesuit, " and all of dazzling white. 
 These robes were covered with flowers, foliage, and birds, beautifully painted, and 
 seeming to have been embroidered, though each was all of a piece : the figures 
 were coloured after nature, but unusually brilliant. These robes opened in front, 
 and had extremely wide sleeves, which only reached the elbows ; but in order that 
 the fore-arm might not be uncovered, as is the custom in Japan, Father Valegnani 
 had caused them to be lengthened with the same stuff, as well as at the collar, 
 which generally opens so low that a part of the shoulder is visible. On their 
 shoulders they wore a kind of scarf, twelve inches long, and eight inches wide, 
 tied with ribbons, crossed over the breast, thrown behind, and knotted like a 
 girdle. These scarfs were similar to the robes in material ; but of a much finer 
 texture. They had on boots of extremely fine leather, open at the toes. Their 
 cimeters and swords were of the finest temper, and the hilts, as well as scab- 
 bards, were adorned with fine pearls, other precious stones, and many figures 
 in enamel. Their heads were uncovered, and shaved quite clean, except at top, 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 But Gregory had been as lavish in his benefactions 
 on the Jesuits. Their German college had become 
 Gregory's embarrassed with debt and penury from the 
 beiiefacti failure O f the funds ; the pope granted it not 
 only the San Apolinare palace and the reve- 
 nues of San Stefano on Monte Celio, but also ten 
 thousand scudi (2000/.) from the apostolic treasury. 
 He also founded an English college at Rome, and found 
 means to endow the establishment. He aided their 
 colleges in Vienna and Gratz out of his privy purse. 
 There was probably not a Jesuit school in the world 
 that had not cause, in some way or another, to applaud 
 his liberality. 1 And what was his motive 1 Not because 
 he might think that the Jesuits promoted holiness that 
 was a matter he cared little about. His was a jovial 
 nature. He had not scrupled to have a natural son 
 before he became a priest, and though he led a regular 
 life afterwards, he was at no time over-scrupulous, and 
 to a certain kind of sanctimony he rather manifested 
 dislike. 2 Why, then, did he patronise the Jesuits ? 
 Because he thought them the ablest restorers of Catho- 
 licism, and therefore the best props of the popedom 
 and its prerogatives. All the wealth he gave them was 
 therefore so much money deposited on interest. 3 It 
 
 whence depended behind a tuft of hair. The features of their countenances were 
 equally foreign with their dress ; but people remarked that amiable air which is 
 given by virtue and innocence, a modest haughtiness and a je ne sped quoi of 
 nobility, inspired by an illustrious blood, and which nothing can belie." P. 123. 
 I must confess that these last remarks of the Jesuit makes one suspect that the 
 affair was a hoax, most clearly conceived and practised on the stupid king Philip 
 and as stupid Pope Gregory. What baubles entrance with delight old zealots, 
 fanatics, and shallow-brained mortals ! ' Ranke, ubi supra. '" Ibid. 
 
 8 According to Baronius, his expenditure on the education of young men, 
 amounted to two millions : if this sum did not include the cost of the twenty 
 colleges of the Jesuits, it will be impossible to account for the raising of the 
 money. Ranke, i. 431, with authorities.
 
 GREGORY'S SPOLIATIONS OF HIS SUBJECTS. 357 
 
 was an infatuation of course ; but think of the thousands 
 of pounds as senselessly wasted in our days by simple 
 contributors to " religious" funds, by all denominations, 
 year after year, to no purpose whatever in the advance- 
 ment of civilisation, funds which, if expended on the 
 wretched poor of England, would go far to sweeten the 
 bitterness of heart in those who find life miserable, and 
 to prepare body and soul together for better days of 
 enlightenment, whose advent we may accelerate indefi- 
 nitely by the real determination to " fulfil all justice." 
 
 Gregory spent 200,000 scudi (40,000/.) yearly on 
 " pious works," opere pie. We need not stop to inquire 
 what real good he did for Humanity : but Gregory's 
 we must be curious to know how he got the 8 P llatloM - 
 money even should the answer prove that those who 
 received it were little better than receivers of stolen 
 goods. Well, then, Pope Gregory got his pious funds 
 by spoliation. He found out more rights to the property 
 of others than the hungry wolf discovered causes of 
 complaint against the poor lamb in the fable. He laid 
 an impost on the corn of the Venetians : they did not 
 comply soon enough with his measures : he forced then- 
 warehouses at Ravenna, sold the contents by auction, 
 and imprisoned the owners. Then he discovered a host 
 of abuses among the aristocracy of his own dominions, 
 and wolfishly concluded that their abolition would be 
 profitable to the papal treasury. On a most flimsy 
 pretence of feudal rights, he seized and appropriated 
 numerous domains belonging to the barons or gentry of 
 Romagna and other provinces, and congratulated himself 
 at having by such legal means, and not by taxation, 
 augmented the revenues of the popedom by 100,000 
 scudi (20,000/.) The Churchmen of course approved
 
 358 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 of these spoliations because the end justified the means 
 always in those days of rabid orthodoxy, which is 
 invariably roguish. Many great families were thus 
 suddenly ejected from properties they had considered 
 their own by the most lawful titles : others saw them- 
 selves threatened. Daily search into old papers was 
 made in Rome and every day new claims were 
 created from the musty nothings. Ere long no man 
 thought himself secure ; and many resolved to defend 
 their possessions with the sword, rather than surrender 
 them to the commissioners of the papal treasury. One 
 of these feudatories once said to the pope, to his very 
 face, " What is lost, is lost ; but a man has at least 
 some satisfaction when he has stood out in hfe own 
 defence." He did not stop short with the aristocracy. 
 His injudicious, or rather, tyrannical measures inflicted 
 severe losses on towns as well ; by raising the tolls of 
 Ancona, he ruined the trade of that city, and it has 
 never recovered from the blow. Of course 
 
 Their result. 
 
 men rose up against this multiplied iniquity. 
 The whole country was in a ferment : feuds broke out 
 on all sides. Then troops of outlawed bandits swelled 
 into armies, and overran the provinces. Young men of 
 the first families were their leaders. Murder and rapine 
 overspread the country. Anarchy reigned throughout 
 the papal dominions. The confiscations of course ceased 
 but they had done their work already. The aged 
 pope was forced to receive the bandit leader Piccolomini 
 at Rome, and give him absolution for a long list of 
 murders which he read with shuddering. It availed 
 little or nothing. His own capital was full of bandits 
 and revolters. And then the pope, weak and weary of 
 life, looked up to heaven, and cried, " Thou wilt arise.
 
 AQUAV1VA, THE NEW GENERAL. 359 
 
 Lord, and have mercy on Zion ! " l Can anything be 
 more bitterly ridiculous 1 Nevertheless such was the 
 regenerator of Catholicism and such was the country 
 whence the Jesuits were sent to reform and convert all 
 nations of the universe Great Britain among the rest, 
 whose " religious " troubles we are soon to contemplate. 
 Claudius Aquaviva was elected General of the Jesuits 
 by a large majority. His age was only thirty-seven. 
 When the fact was announced to the pope by 
 
 11 Aquaviva. 
 
 the fathers, he exclaimed, " What ! you have 
 elected to govern you a young man not forty years of 
 age!" Claudius Aquaviva was the son of the Duke 
 d'Atri. Renouncing the world, the Court of Rome, all 
 the hopes which his name and talents inspired, he had 
 given himself to the Company ; and now the Company 
 gave him herself in return another instance of Jesuit- 
 gratitude. Piety, virtue, science, became his ambition. 
 A deep, indefatigable student, hard study and the con- 
 stant effort to repress his impetuous passions, are said 
 to have rapidly blighted his personal graces : his black 
 hair was already turned to grey : sufficient by way 
 of introduction to a man whose deeds are his best 
 portrayers. 2 
 
 The Fourth Congregation continued its sessions. The 
 murmurs and heart-burnings of the middle ranks in the 
 Company found a mouth-piece in the midst . 
 
 1 " * Murmurs of 
 
 of that aristocratical assemblage. " Many there the plebeian 
 are in the Company," said that benevolent 
 voice, "who have lived many virtuous years, and complain 
 that their admission to the ' State of the Company ' 
 status Societatis, is deferred too long. They fall into 
 many temptations. They are absorbed in overwhelming 
 
 1 Ranke, 10.9111. 2 Cretineau, ii. 229.
 
 360 H1STOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 sadness, and become a scandal by renouncing our holy 
 Institute." 1 A strong case was that, and as strongly 
 put to the vote : but in vain : nihil innovandum no 
 innovation was the decree : all was left as usual to the 
 judgment and prudence of the general, who was advised 
 to enforce the letter of the Constitutions, without respect 
 of persons, remembering that this was of vital im- 
 portance to the preservation of the Company. 2 The 
 complaint, the decree, and the advice, are equally cha- 
 racteristic and remarkable : that Company which has 
 been " stirring " all the world, is now about to be 
 " stirred " itself. 
 
 Another proposition was made. It was a sort of 
 speculation a literary speculation by the gratis-teachers. 
 Educational Some of the members proposed that, on ac- 
 
 speculation. CQunt of the great fruit that WQuld accrue> 
 
 and the want of good masters, and the advantages that 
 might be derived from the enterprise, the Jesuits might 
 receive boarders in the northern countries, and take 
 them under their care ; but that the stipend should be 
 given over to the procurator : the pupils were not to be 
 solicited, nor received against the will of their parents. 
 The Congregation did not at once reject the proposition : 
 but it was declared much preferable for the Company 
 to be free from such burthens, as far as possible ; and 
 the matter was committed to the prudence of the 
 general, as usual. 3 
 
 And now the aristocracy began to feel their power, 
 and to apprehend their peril. They decreed 
 
 Power of the J 
 
 Jesuit aris- that every Jesuit whether lay-brother or 
 
 scholastic, who after taking the vows should 
 
 return to the world, might be punished as an apostate, 
 
 1 Cong. iv. ix. 3 Ibid. 3 Ibid. xiii.
 
 STATE OP PARTIES IN ENGLAND. 361 
 
 according to the privileges and apostolical letters granted 
 to the Company. 1 
 
 Mercurian and Gregory XIII. had bequeathed the 
 Jesuits and the popedom to Aquaviva and Sixtus V., 
 two men who deserved to be contemporaneous. 
 The very antipodes of each other by birth tus v. and 
 for Sixtus was the son of a swineherd 
 energetic unity of purpose stamped both as leading 
 influences of the age. Both were by their natural 
 organisation impelled to seek, to achieve, and maintain 
 that sovereign power which results more from mental 
 qualifications in the possessor, than from the privileges 
 and prerogatives of rank or station. Such characters in 
 history relieve the dull, drowsy monotony of rulers by 
 prerogative rulers by " right divine/' without any other 
 human right to win admiration or command respect. 
 
 England and Elizabeth now began to engage the 
 special attention of the Jesuits. Protestant ascendancy 
 had triumphed : in other words, Catholicism state of parties 
 was shorn of its wealth, dignity, and power : m En s land - 
 the Catholics themselves, as in the reigns of Henry and 
 Edward, had virtually acquiesced in the change of their 
 religious fortunes. They had unanimously acknowledged 
 Queen Elizabeth's title to the throne of England : 2 it is 
 stated on Catholic authority that a great majority of 
 the people then inclined to the Roman Catholic religion : 3 
 and yet, in spite of this national submission to the 
 Protestant queen, Pope Pius V. fulminated a Bull of 
 deposition against the Queen of England, in order to 
 " stir " her people to rebellion, and rouse ah 1 nations to 
 crush the interesting heretic. This was in 1570, just 
 after the failure of an insurrection set on foot by a few 
 
 1 Dec. liii. - Dodd, ii. 4. 3 Butler, i. 271.
 
 362 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 designing leaders, with papal approbation, to attempt 
 the liberation of Mary Queen of Scots the heiress to 
 the throne of England. The Bull had long been pre- 
 pared by the pope, but prudently withheld during the 
 machinations ; and was now torn from its quietude by 
 the old man's impotent rage of desperate disappointment 
 at the failure of the insurrection. 1 Pius said in his Bull : 
 " We do, out of the fulness of our apostolic power, 
 declare the aforesaid Elizabeth, as being an 
 
 Elizabeth . & 
 
 "deposed" by heretic and favourer of heretics, and her 
 adherents in the matters aforesaid, to have 
 incurred the sentence of excommunication, and to be 
 cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. And 
 moreover, we do declare her deprived of her pretended 
 title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, 
 dignity, and privilege whatsoever ; and also the nobility, 
 subjects, and people, of the said kingdom, and all 
 others who have in any sort sworn unto her, to be for ever 
 absolved from any such oath, and all manner of duty of 
 dominion, allegiance, and obedience : and we also do 
 by authority of these presents absolve them, and do 
 deprive the said Elizabeth of her pretended title to the 
 kingdom, and all other things beforenamed. And we do 
 command and charge all and every one, the noblemen, 
 subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that they presume 
 not to obey her, or her orders, mandates, and laws : 
 and those which shall do the contrary, we do include 
 them in the like sentence of anathema." 2 Thus spake 
 the "Servant to God's Servants," as the popes called 
 themselves by a prerogative which was the only one they 
 never effectuated. Copies of the precious parchment 
 were sent to the Dukt of Alva for dispersion on the 
 
 1 Ling. viii. 56 ; Camd. An. 1570 ; Rapin, ib. &c. 2 Camd. ib.
 
 THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND. 363 
 
 coast of the Netherlands, and he forwarded samples to 
 the Spanish ambassador in England. An enthusiastic 
 or zealous Catholic, Felton by name, and a wealthy 
 gentleman by inheritance, posted one of the 
 
 * , -^ partisan of 
 
 Bulls on the Bishop of London s palace-gates, the pope is 
 biding the result which was that he was 
 hanged ; for the deed was declared treason by the law 
 of the land ; and was decidedly seditious. Felton gloried 
 in his exploit, called the queen a pretender, but sent her a 
 diamond ring as a token that he "bore her no malice" 
 one of those curious abstractions with which party-leaders 
 justified every atrocity. It is the famous right intention 
 recta intentio of the Jesuit and other casuists. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the great body of the English 
 Catholics were by no means inclined for a "stir," 
 according to some authorities. " They never The Ca thoiic 
 were pressed with, nor accepted of, the pope's of ^ a ^ &nd - 
 Bull, that pretended to dispense with them from their 
 allegiance," says the Catholic Church-historian. " They 
 were entertained by the queen in her army," he con- 
 tinues, "and now and then in the cabinet, till such 
 times as the misbehaviour of some particular persons 
 drew a persecution upon the whole body, and occasioned 
 those penal and sanguinary laws, to which their substance 
 and lives have ever since been exposed. From that 
 time, by a strange sort of logic, a Catholic and a rebel 
 have passed current for the same thing, and so they are 
 commonly represented, both in private conversation, in 
 the pulpit, and at the bar." 2 But there was a different 
 opinion proclaimed abroad in those stirring times. On 
 the person of the Scottish Jesuit Creighton, 3 when 
 
 1 Ling. viii. 56, et aeq. * Dodd, iii. 5. 
 
 3 William Crieghton. " This Father," says Dr. Oliver, " was possessed of
 
 364 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 apprehended and imprisoned in 1584, was found a 
 paper detailing "Reasons to shewe the easines" of 
 invasion, grounded on the examples of history, instancing 
 particularly the case of Henry VI. " how a few and 
 
 considerable zeal and talent, but was deficient in judgment. To his misplaced 
 confidence may be principally ascribed the failure of Pope Pius IV.'s secret 
 embassy to Mary Queen of Scots (see p. 105 of 'Tanner's Confessors of the 
 Society of Jesus')," says the pious and loyal doctor. " From the Diary kept in 
 the Tower of London, by the Rev. Edward Rishton, we learn that Father 
 Creighton, on returning from Scotland (where he had converted the Earl of 
 Arran), was apprehended and committed to that prison on the 16th September, 
 1584. How long he remained in custody I know not, but Father Parsons 
 addressed letters to him at Seville in 1596. It is clear that James VI. of 
 Scotland [England's Master Jaques, as Henry IV. called him] had actually 
 employed him in a delicate embassy ; for, in a letter to Father Thomas Owen, 
 dated 4th June, 1605, he says : ' Our kynge had so great a fear of ye nombre 
 of Catholiks, and ye puissance of pope and Spaine, yt he offered libertie of 
 conscience, and sent me to Rome to deal for ye pope's favor and making of a 
 Scottish cardinal ; as I did shew ye kyng's letters to F. Parsons.' Having no 
 guile himself," says Dr. Oliver, " he suspected none in his weak and hollow- 
 hearted sovereign." True enough, decidedly, of Master Jaques, if not so 
 conclusive of this admirable Crichton. Bartoli gives another version of the 
 capture of this Jesuit. He says that " Creighton was caught by the heretics at 
 Ostende, and sent as a gift to Elizabeth, who was so pleased with the prey, that 
 she gave the bearer many gifts, among the rest, a collar of gold," f. 287. Creighton 
 was mentioned by Parry as having dissuaded him from murdering the queen ; 
 and, owing to this, says Bartoli, the queen set him free (1585), saying, " How 
 can the Jesuits be all leagued to kill me in England, if this Jesuit defends my 
 life even in France 1" It appears from Camden that the documents found on 
 Creighton aggravated the negotiations between Elizabeth and Mary, " women 
 that were already displeased with one another, but principally by the discovery 
 of certain papers which Creighton, a Scottishman, of the Society of Jesus, 
 passing into Scotland, and being taken by some Netherland pirates, had torn in 
 pieces : the torn pieces whereof, being thrown overboard, were by the wind 
 blown back again, and fell by chance into the ship, not without a miracle, as 
 Creighton himself said. These being put together by Waad with much pains 
 and singular dexterity, discovered new designs of the Pope, the Spaniard, and 
 the Guises, for invading England." Ad An. 1584. Bartoli complains of 
 Camden's bad faith in recounting this affair, which, however, he strangely 
 mis-translates, with worse faith, making Camden talk to the following effect : 
 " Voile dar luogo [alia favola] delle misteriose lettere stracciate del P. Critton, 
 poiche si trovo in mano degli Ollandesi, e gittate in mare : e quegli sparsi minuz- 
 zoli, dal pazzo movimento dell' onde, con un piu che mezzo miracolo, ragunati, 
 e poco men che non disse da se mede&imi, con magistero musaico, ricongiunti." 
 Dell' Iiujhilt. f. 291.
 
 THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND. 365 
 
 weak have overcome a great many" and appealing 
 actually to the general wish and expectation of the 
 Catholics of England : " as for the contreye of England, 
 it is easy to be overcome with a few forces, few fortresses 
 or strong places in the lande. So as one army would 
 suffice to end that warre, the people given to change and 
 alteration, chieffely when they get some beginninge or 
 assurance." 1 This is a strong contradiction to Dodd's 
 testimony. And yet Dodd is fully confirmed by Camden. 
 " The most part of the moderate papists," says the 
 queen's historian, " secretly misliked this Bull ; . . . and 
 foreseeing also that hereby a great heap of mischiefs 
 hung over their heads, who before had private exercise 
 of their religion within their own houses quietly enough, 
 or else refused not to go to the service of God received 
 in the English Church, without scruple of conscience. 
 And from that time many of them continued firm 
 in their obedience, when they saw the neighbour princes 
 and Catholic countries not to forbear their wonted com- 
 merce with the queen, and that the Bull was slighted as 
 a vain crack of words that made a noise only." 2 The 
 following pages will throw some light on these discre- 
 pancies, and will show how it came to pass that the 
 " people," or rather a faction, were " given to change and 
 alteration ; " and how the effects of the pope's Bull were 
 anything but "a vain crack of words" to the poor, 
 honest Catholics of England. It will follow that both 
 assertions which I have quoted are true ; and it will be 
 curious to note what influence can effect with 
 
 Influence. 
 
 the most discordant elements of individuals 
 
 and nations, provided there be some point or two 
 
 1 MS. Bib. Cotton. Jul. f. vi. fol. 53 (Brit. Mus.). A curious document. 
 
 2 Camd. ubi supra.
 
 366 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 whereon its grappling-irons may be flung. This meta- 
 phor does not adequately express the workings of influ- 
 ence, which are, however, admirably figured by the 
 doings of the little busy bee. If you are a florist, never 
 hope for the continuation of a favourite flower in all its 
 purity, without a sprinkling of sulphur to protect it 
 from the bee. In a range of five miles around the 
 hive, that indefatigable propagandist, with pollen on its 
 wings, will vitiate, adulterate every flower that it fancies, 
 as well as yourself. Sprinkle your flower with sulphur, 
 and then hope on. We have now to see how Queen 
 Elizabeth sprinkled her flowers to protect them from 
 the bees of Loyola. 
 
 An almost total disorganisation had taken place in the 
 ecclesiastical incumbency of the Roman Catholics, after 
 accession of Elizabeth. Most of the monks 
 
 The priesthood 
 
 in England, j^ fj e( j ^ Q fa e continent : most of the secular 
 
 clergy conformed to the new religion. Those who 
 remained were called "the old priests," and "Queen 
 Mary's priests." Some retired to the continent, particu- 
 larly the Netherlands, where, as I have stated, they 
 were liberally patronised by Philip II., and some 
 obtained considerable preferment. The greater number 
 remained in England ; and of these some obtained sine- 
 cures, in which conformity was generally dispensed with : 
 others remained in privacy, unknown, or at least un- 
 heeded. Those who actively discharged the duties of 
 their profession were supported by individuals among 
 the Catholic nobility and gentry who adhered to the 
 ancient faith. Ensconced in London and other large 
 towns, or residing with their patrons in the country, 
 they have gained the honour of having " preserved the 
 remnant of the Catholic religion in England." Age,
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE PRIESTHOOD. 367 
 
 infirmity, and death, had diminished their numbers : a 
 total extinction of the ancient faith was expected both 
 by its friends and its enemies. 1 How true, but incon- 
 gruous, is this statement at all times repeated. 
 
 f . Reflections. 
 
 Why must priests be absolutely necessary to 
 preserve the faith of a nation, if that faith is really 
 a matter of conviction \ How are these priests them- 
 selves preserved f Does this not point at once to that 
 very cankerworm of Christianity the inculcated depen- 
 dence of man on guides as weak as himself, and from 
 their partisan education so likely to have so many 
 selfish motives for " preserving " what they call " reli- 
 gion "? " Never will the asking, the seeking, the knocking, 
 so consolingly set forth by the Redeemer, be fully 
 accomplished until man be enabled to stand alone, in the 
 matter and manner of his faith and practice. Too long 
 has proud man usurped the place of God in the human 
 heart and in the human mind. Too long have we been 
 compelled to be as the blind led by the blind ever 
 falling into the pit of restless, unmitigated disappoint- 
 ment. We are told, forsooth, that man naturally requires 
 human guidance in these matters of religion we are 
 told so in spite of the forementioned divine charter of 
 all real religion. It is an axiom invented by sacerdotal 
 craft to sanction its prerogatives. On the contrary, 
 resistance, the spirit of independence, are the prime 
 impulses in all God's organised creatures and in man 
 immensely more than in any other ; but, as in the 
 former, brute force subdues resistance, so in the latter, 
 brute force and influence, or the appeal to certain 
 motives, manage to fetter that resistance and spirit of 
 independence. This state of things is fast disappearing. 
 
 1 Butler, i. 306, ft seq.
 
 368 HISTORY OF THK JESUITS. 
 
 Man is becoming enlightened on the score of dictatorial 
 religionism, as in all the other checks and clogs of 
 human advancement. The time will come when each 
 man will think for himself, and be none the worse in 
 practice, because he will be freed from the source of 
 numerous abuses which vitiate the heart, deceived by a 
 specious nomenclature craftily invented. Then it will 
 not be asked, "What shall we believe, or do, to be 
 saved ? " but each shall find his God in proportion to 
 his own asking, seeking, and knocking. Systems are 
 vanities. They may suit their framers ; but cannot be 
 made applicable to every individual ; and therefore are 
 too finite for the infinitude of man's religious sentiment, 
 which God alone can fit and fill for ever. System- 
 mongers have always been the bane of humanity. They 
 have given their paltry names to a class of ideas the 
 very product of their own individual organisation. By 
 influence they built up a Party, and then burst forth all 
 the evils of the selfish speculation. Consider the words 
 of Him who made and taught us. What system did He 
 frame ? None. Good action the perfection of man's 
 nature in his duty to himself, his fellow-creatures, and, 
 therefore, to God these constitute the splendid sum of 
 Christ's doctrinal example. Ye who think, who medi- 
 tate good thoughts for man's advancement, beware of 
 the usual vanity of system-mongers. Root out the foul 
 stuff unworthy of your exalted calling. Let the conclu- 
 sion of all your God-inspired argument be freedom 
 to the mind the equipoise of all the faculties and sen- 
 timents, and inclinations which are man's organisation, his 
 dependence on nothing but God fulfilling His part in the 
 covenant of man's creation who is by nature perfect in 
 his sphere of action, through \asfeelings and intellect called
 
 CATHOLIC SEMINARIES ABROAD. 369 
 
 to be perfect even as his Father in heaven. When such 
 shall be the result of enlightenment, man will dispense 
 with the things of party-systems for the " preservation " 
 of his religion " total extinction of his faith " will never 
 be expected, because his faith will not depend upon 
 party-ascendancy, party-views, and party-abuses. 
 
 In order to "preserve the remnant of the Catholic 
 religion " in England a phrase which scarcely com- 
 ports with that of " a great majority of the 
 people," asserted by the same pen William seminaries 
 Allen conceived the project of perpetuating 
 the Catholic ministry in England by a regular succession 
 of priests, to be educated in colleges on the Continent, 
 and thence sent to the English mission. 1 Allen was a 
 zealous man in the cause of orthodoxy : he did not 
 approve of the common practice of conformity in vogue 
 among the Catholics ; he objected to their attending the 
 divine service in Protestant churches, to avoid the 
 severe penalties of recusancy. The English Catholic 
 divines were very far from being unanimous on the 
 question : but Allen was decided, and determined to 
 take what he supposed to be the most effectual means 
 of consolidating a Catholic party in England. The 
 result would be disastrous to human life, to human 
 welfare, to human progress, to everything that makes 
 life valuable but what mattered that "? It was the 
 result of ZEAL and therefore, though heaven should 
 rush amain, let the thing be done. And it was done 
 with a vengeance. His zeal was patronised : funds 
 flowed in : a college arose at Douay in French Flanders. 
 All his clerical revenues abroad, this zealous man sunk 
 in the stirring scheme of stiff-necked orthodoxy. This 
 
 1 Butler, i. 310. 
 VOL. II. B B
 
 370 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 was in 1568. His establishment became the resort of 
 all the emigrant ecclesiastics. Soon he sent missionaries 
 into England. Their favourable account of the scheme, 
 and " the fruits of it, which appeared in the activity and 
 success of their missionary labours, operated so much in 
 its favour, that a petition was signed by the Catholic 
 nobility and gentry of England," by the university of 
 Douay, by several religious communities, and by the 
 Jesuits, recommending the infant college to the liberality 
 of the pope. Gregory XIII. immediately settled on the 
 college an annual pension of 2100 scudi, and soon after- 
 wards raised it to 2500 (500/.) and subsequently to 
 1500/., which was punctually paid from whatever 
 source the zealous pontiff derived his contributions, 
 always generous in the midst of his injustice. These 
 prosperous beginnings did not endure. A party in 
 Douay demanded the expulsion of the collegians : l the 
 magistrates yielded to the cry, and ordered Allen, with 
 his associates, to quit for a time not without reluctance, 
 however, and with a strong testimonial in favour of the 
 exiles. On the invitation of the Cardinal de Lorraine 
 and other members of the house of Guise related to the 
 Queen of Scots the grand and self-seeking nucleus of 
 the Catholic party in France Allen and his associates 
 repaired to Rheims and were received with hospitality. 
 This event chanced in 1576. During the four following 
 years Allen sent one hundred priests into England ; and 
 during the five next years he expedited a greater 
 number to the same disastrous vineyard ! Forty in one 
 
 1 Parsons, the Jesuit, accuses Elizabeth of this demonstration. Philop, 65, 
 et seq. Thei-e may be some likelihood in the thing : for no adequate idea can be 
 formed of the machinations of parties in those dreadful times. See Dodd, ii. 
 164.
 
 TRAINING IN THE CATHOLIC SEMINARIES. 371 
 
 month laid down their lives in their cause. 1 Another 
 establishment was founded at Rome, by Gregory XIII. 
 Thus Douay, Rheims, and Rome, maintained the seed 
 of orthodoxy which was to germinate and ripen into 
 nonconformity in England. Hence these schools were 
 called Seminaries, and the priests there prepared were 
 named Seminary-priests names derived from a Latin 
 word for seed. This vegetable metaphor acquired growth 
 subsequently and we now hear of " propagating " the 
 faith propagandism and propagandists terms which 
 seem to have been invented by way of contrast to Roman 
 celibacy. 
 
 The opinion prevalent in England, at the court and 
 amongst politicians and churchmen, respecting the 
 training pursued in these seminaries, was very T he nature 
 nearly, if not precisely, in accordance with 
 the reality. "Whilst among other things, 
 disputations were held concerning the ecclesiastical and 
 temporal power, zeal to the pope their founder, hatred 
 against the queen, and hope of restoring the Romish 
 religion by the Queen of Scots, carried some of them so 
 far that they really persuaded themselves, and so main- 
 tained, that the Bishop of Rome hath by divine right 
 full power over the whole world, as well in ecclesiastical 
 as temporal causes ; and that he, according to that 
 absolute power, may excommunicate kings, and, having 
 so done, dethrone them, and absolve their subjects from 
 their oath of allegiance." The consequence in England 
 was that " many withdrew themselves from the received 
 service of God, which before they had frequented 
 without any scruple. Hanse, Nelson, and Maine, priests, 
 and Sherwood, peremptorily taught the queen was a 
 
 1 Butler, i. 306309 ; Dodd, ii. 156170. 
 B B 2 
 
 semnares.
 
 372 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 schismatic and an heretic, and therefore to be deposed : 
 for which they were put to death. Out of these 
 seminaries were sent forth into divers parts of England 
 and Ireland at first a few young men, and afterwards 
 more, according as they grew up, who entered over- 
 hastily into holy orders, and instructed in the above- 
 named principles. They pretended only to administer 
 the sacraments of the Romish religion, and to preach to 
 Papists : but the queen and her council soon found that 
 they were sent underhand to seduce the subjects from 
 their allegiance and obedience due to their prince, to 
 oblige them by reconciliation to perform the pope's 
 commands, to stir up intestine rebellions under the Seal 
 of Confession, and flatly to execute the sentence of Pius 
 Quintus against the queen, to the end that way might 
 be made for the pope and the Spaniard, who had of late 
 designed the conquest of England. To these seminaries 
 were sent daily out of England by the Papists, in 
 contempt and despite of the laws, great numbers of 
 boys and young men of all sorts, and admitted into the 
 same, making a vow to return into England : others 
 also crept secretly from thence into the land, and more 
 were daily expected with the Jesuits, who at this time 
 first came into England. Hereupon there came forth a 
 proclamation in the month of June : 'That whosoever had 
 any children, wards, kinsmen, or other relations 
 
 Proclamation , iiir- 
 
 against the in the parts beyond the seas, should alter ten 
 days give in their names to the ordinary, and 
 within four months call them home again, and when 
 they were returned, should forthwith give notice of the 
 same to the said ordinary. That they should not 
 directly or indirectly supply such as refused to return, 
 with any money. That no man should entertain in his
 
 STUKELY'S EXPEDITION TO IEELAND. 373 
 
 house or harbour any priests sent forth of the aforesaid 
 seminaries, or Jesuits, or cherish and relieve them. 
 And that whosoever did to the contrary should be 
 accounted a favourer of rebels and seditious persons, 
 and be proceeded against according to the laws of the 
 land/" 1 
 
 Events had rendered the English government vigilant, 
 if not severe ; but the pope and the Spaniard scarcely 
 made a secret of their aims against England. 
 
 Stukely's 
 
 About two years before this edict was issued, expedition 
 the pope had sent an expedition to invade 
 Ireland. It was a joint-stock concern, conducted by 
 one Stukely, an English refugee and adventurer, formerly 
 patronised by the queen, but subsequently disappointed, 
 a man without honour or conscience. Camden calls him 
 a ruffian, a riotous spendthrift, a notable vapourer who 
 had sold his services at the same time to the queen and to 
 the pope, alternately abusing the confidence and betray- 
 ing the secrets of each, adds Lingard what a man for a 
 champion, a saviour in a time of trouble and disaster ! But 
 
 1 Camden, Ad. Ann. 1580. If the Company of Jesus could not put her foot 
 into England," says Bartoli, " England meanwhile put hers into the Company ; 
 many of that nation, and men of the most valuable qualities, entering the 
 Company. Lainez and Borgia had conceded the favour to so many, that 
 Mercurian, their successor, seeing their multitude daily increasing, exclaimed : 
 ' Now it seems God's will that the Company should march to battle against the 
 heresy of England, since he sends to her such a numerous and valiant host 
 from England.' In a single year, 1578, Flanders alone gave the Company twelve 
 select Englishmen, and they were multiplied from year to year. Their good 
 qualities made them a part of the most worthy and estimable of the Company. 
 They were all exiles, and scattered over Ireland, Flanders, France, Germany, 
 Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Spain and Italy. Many of them became eminent 
 for piety and in letters, and were chosen to sit in the general congregations. 
 Others went as missioners to the East, and to the West, and to the camp of 
 war in Hungary, fighting against the Turks ; and lastly, some devoted them- 
 selves to attend the pest-stricken, and perished in the heroic ministry." 
 Bartoli, f. 72.
 
 374 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 he promised to be useful to the pope notwithstanding : 
 with three thousand Italians he would drive the English 
 out of Ireland, and fire the fleet of England, the 
 apparent preliminaries, as was imagined, to get Ireland 
 as a kingdom for the pope's natural son, whom the holy 
 father had made Marquis of Vineola ; whilst Philip II. 
 thought of retaliating on Elizabeth for her aid to his 
 Netherlander, by aiding her rebel Irish. It is curious 
 to note that "in the meanwhile amity in words was 
 maintained on both sides." What an age of craft and 
 machination ; and yet, by the numberless spies fed and 
 maintained by all parties, in all parts of Europe, nothing 
 was done without being made known respectively : but, 
 as a matter of course, it followed as a certain result from 
 this trade in rumour and espionage, that discordant 
 intelligence mystified all deliberations except those 
 with Elizabeth in the midst, and her cool-headed wily 
 politicians around her ; from a frightful, heterogeneous, 
 chaotic jumble of vain rumours, the English cabinet 
 created security for the realm, and discomfiture for its 
 voracious enemies. The pope made Stukely his cham- 
 berlain, Marquis of Leinster, and advanced 40,000 scudi 
 (8000/.), 600 men, 3000 stand of arms, and a ship of 
 war, for the expedition. Stukely put to sea, and reached 
 the Tagus, where he found King Sebastian just ready to 
 start in his disastrous enterprise against Africa. Sebastian 
 " with youthly heat and ambition" had long before promised 
 the pope his assistance against all Turks and heretics, 
 and was to lead off the expedition against England : in 
 the meantime he persuaded Stukely to go with him first 
 and finish off the Turks before he belaboured the heretics. 
 Stukely, the " subtile old fox," was entrapped, went, and 
 perished with the king and kingdom of Portugal, in the
 
 RESULTS OP REBELLION IN IRELAND. 375 
 
 memorable battle of Alcazarquivir, finishing " the 
 interlude of a loose life with an honest catastrophe or 
 conclusion." It was altogether a providential affair for 
 England, or rather for the poor Catholics, ever the 
 scape-goats. Besides the destruction of Stukely, the 
 fall of Sebastian diverted Philip's attention from England 
 to the usurpation of Portugal which for the nonce he 
 preferred, in spite of the importunities of the Catholic 
 fugitives recommending England to his majesty's zealous 
 attention. Thus all seemed at an end. Of course, the 
 English spies had duly notified all the foreign proceed- 
 ings : a fleet was waiting on the coast of Ireland to give 
 Stukely a warm reception : it was now recalled, and Sir 
 Henry Sydney, the Lord-deputy, bade Ireland farewell 
 with a verse out of the Psalms, saying, " When Israel 
 departed out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from 
 amongst a barbarous people." Meanwhile, Fitzmaurice, 
 "an Irish refugee, likewise, with the aid of 
 papal funds," who had joined Stukely, con- 
 tinued the voyage, with a few Irish and English exiles, 
 and Spanish soldiers, and the famous Dr. Sanders on 
 board as papal legate, provided with a bull constituting 
 the invasion a regular crusade with all its " privileges." 
 A descent was effected near Kerry : but the people were 
 sick of " stirs " which had hitherto only drenched them 
 with disaster ; and they held off until the Earl of Des- 
 mond took arms against the queen. Then the whole 
 island was in commotion. How fared the issue ? Re- 
 verse after reverse like the sledge-hammer's tempest 
 on the glowing metal befel the insurgents. Fitz- 
 maurice himself was cut off in a private quarrel with 
 one of his kinsmen. Desmond slunk off, to perish 
 miserably soon after : the pope's funds fell short : the
 
 376 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 promised aids were not forthcoming : the English pun- 
 ished the invaders and insurgents with horrible cruelty. 
 Sir Walter Raleigh had a large share in this transaction. 
 Men and women were driven into barns, and there burnt 
 to death : children were strangled : all Munster was 
 laid waste : English colonists overran the desolated 
 region. 1 Which do you abhor most the cruelly infa- 
 tuated enterprise, or the savage ferocity of the victors ? 
 I confess that I place them exactly on a par both of 
 them horrible abominations, which there should be no 
 Heaven, no God to behold. But the ruthless hope of 
 zeal sank not. To the rescue once more was the cry of 
 infatuated zeal in the few was the clamour of the self- 
 seeking many was the resolve of the cool, calculating, 
 indefatigable Jesuits. And England, herself, it was 
 resolved to make the field of " Spiritual Exercises," to 
 eventuate political " change and alteration." The 
 notorious Father Parsons, or Persons, and the ardent 
 Campion were dispatched to found the English province 
 of the Company of Jesus, immediately after the failure 
 of the late invasion. Not without rejoicings they 
 departed ; and Campion was congratulated on the 
 glory he was about to achieve by his headlong, enthu- 
 siastic intrepidity. The Jesuits gave out that the 
 Virgin Mary had appeared to Campion, in a visible 
 form on an old mulberry-tree in the garden of the 
 novitiate, and showing him a purple rag un panno tinto 
 purpureo, she had foretold to him the shedding of his 
 blood in the glorious death which he subsequently 
 suffered. 2 If Campion originated this story, our sym- 
 pathy with the man and his fate must be largely 
 
 1 Camd. propr. annis.; Ling. viii. 129, ct seq. ; Ranke, 151, el seq. ; Crawf. i. 
 300, (t seq. 2 Bartoli, Dell Inghil. f. 88.
 
 MALICE PREPENSE OF THE JESUITS. 377 
 
 diminished : it were better to transfer it to the account 
 of Jesuit-inventions so disgraceful to the best members 
 of the Company. 
 
 Not without being perfectly aware beforehand of 
 what was to follow, did the Jesuits embark in this 
 ruinous expedition. From the words of Mer- The malice 
 curian before given, it is evident that they prepense of 
 
 . & J the Jesuits. 
 
 thought the time was now come for a demon- 
 stration. Besides, we have also seen that they had often 
 tried to gain admission into England. And yet they 
 admit that " it was easy to foresee that whether few or 
 many of our Company were in England, great com- 
 motions must necessarily arise both among the Catholics 
 and Protestants. This was so true, that soon after the 
 arrival of the two first as we shall presently see 
 there were more disputes on that score than on any 
 other, as well among the Catholics as among their 
 adversaries ; and this is precisely what Parsons wrote 
 to us at the time : ' It is expected ' these are his 
 words ' that the persecution of the Catholics will be 
 redoubled, and that new and more sanguinary edicts 
 will be issued against the missionary priests and the 
 Catholics in general, as the government of that kingdom 
 is in the hands of Protestants ; and this we shall see 
 fulfilled soon after the two first of our Company shall 
 have set foot in England/" 1 They went notwith- 
 standing, and their historian pretends that their General 
 Mercurian consented with reluctance to the mission 
 though the same writer quotes the general's exclamation 
 prophetic of that mission. At all events, the Jesuits 
 
 1 This is Butler's translation from Bartoli : but in my own copy of Bartoli, 
 all the letter of Parsons is omitted, and there is only the phrase e cost appunto 
 ne scrissero fin d'allora. I know not whether Butler interpolated the passage 
 from other sources by way of elucidation. My edition is that of Rome, 1667.
 
 378 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 might have endeavoured not to fulfil their " apprehen- 
 sions," instead of aggravating their debts to humanity, by 
 producing them to the very letter, in every particular. 
 
 Robert Parsons, or Persons, was born in the parish 
 of Stowey, in Somersetshire, in the year 1546. 1 "His 
 parents were right honest people/' says Parsons 
 himself, "and of the most substantial of their 
 degree among their neighbours while they lived ; and 
 his father was reconciled to the church by Mr. Bryant, 
 the martyr ; and his mother, a grave and virtuous 
 matron, living divers years, and dying in flight out of 
 her country for her conscience." 2 Surely it mattered 
 little to the man whether honour or dishonour attended 
 his birth, at a time when the natural sons of popes and 
 kings were exalted to the highest rank by no other 
 recommendation ; but in the desperate hatred which 
 Parsons boldly excited, no epithet nor reproach was too 
 foul to be flung on the terrible worker. On the other 
 hand, Parsons richly deserved the worst representations, 
 for he spared no man in his rancour. In his Response 
 to the Queen's Edict, he lavishes the lowest reproaches, 
 imputations, and infamy on the queen's ministers, and 
 
 1 He used both forms of signature ; but though often written Persons by 
 Catholics, it is generally pronounced Parsons. 
 
 2 In one of his anonymous diatribes, entitled "A Manifestation of the great Folly 
 and bad Spirit of Certayne in England calling themselves Secular Priests," 1602. 
 " But several Romish priests and others, and among the rest Mr. Thomas Bell, 
 (Anatomy of Popish Tyranny) and Dr. Thomas James (Life of F. Parsons, 
 in Jesuit's Downfall) assert that ' he was basely born of mean parentage at 
 Stokersey, in Somersetshire ; that his supposed father was a blacksmith, his 
 right father the parish priest of Stokersey ; by means whereof he was binony- 
 mous, sometimes called Rob. Parsons, sometimes Rob. Cowback.' And Mr. 
 Gee remarks that the world is not agreed either about his name or parentage, 
 for the name of Parsons, or Persons, as he writes it himself, they will have it to 
 be given him upon a scandalous reason, while the true name of his supposed 
 father was Cowback, or Cubbock." Bayle, Parsons [A.]
 
 ROBERT PARSONS. 379 
 
 still more on the queen herself. 1 In 1563 he went to 
 Baliol College, Oxford, either as a servitor or scholar, 
 where he distinguished himself as an acute disputant, 
 became Master of Arts, a Fellow of the College, and a 
 celebrated Tutor in the University. He did not take 
 priest's orders ; but on two occasions he swore the oath 
 of abjuration of the pope's supremacy. In alluding to 
 this transaction, he exhibits his own character at that 
 time t in no very favourable light. " What a crime ! " 
 he writes ; " ambitious youth that I was, lest I should 
 lose my degree, I pronounced that most iniquitous oath 
 with my lips, though I detested it in my mind licet 
 ammo detestarer. Spare me, merciful God," &c. 2 
 In 1574, he was expelled from the college. Accounts 
 vary as to the cause of this event. His friends attribute 
 it to his Catholic sentiments, which he did not conceal ; 3 
 whilst Camden, who was at the University at the time, 
 and knew Parsons, declares that " he openly professed 
 the Protestant religion, until he w r as, for his loose car- 
 riage, expelled with disgrace, and went over to the 
 Papists." 4 Archbishop Abbott, also contemporaneous 
 with Parsons at Baliol, and styled an " unexceptionable 
 witness," by Gee, an enemy of Parsons, coincides with 
 
 1 See for instance his character and parentage of Bacon, p. 1 8 ; and of Cecil, 
 p. 38 ; but above all, the disgraceful disparagement with which he befouls 
 Queen Elizabeth and her parentage : he actually intimates that Henry VIII. was 
 not her father ! " Si tamen ilia Henrici Octavi filia fuerit, quod Sanderi 
 historia ex Annse Bolense matris incontinentia dubium plane et incertum 
 reddit," &c., p. 260, Ed. Rom. 1593. 
 
 2 " Proh scelus ! bis juramentum illud nequissimum juvenis ambitiosus, ne 
 gradum amittereni labiis pronunciavi, licet animo detestarer. Parce mihi, 
 misericors Deus, ac grande hoc juventutis meae delictum condona ; nondum enim 
 noveram, quid esset te super omnia diligere, et honorem tuum rebus anteferre 
 mundanis." Apud Oliver. 
 
 3 Morus, Hist. Prov. Angl. 1. ii. c. 7. " Cum catholicis sentire baud obscure 
 prse se ferebat." 4 Ad. Ann. 1580.
 
 380 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Camden, not, however, without evidencing, at the same 
 time, that there was an animus against the redoubtable 
 Parsons, who seems to have been always similar to 
 himself, either as Protestant or "Papist." The Arch- 
 bishop says : " Bagshaw, being a smart young man, and 
 one who thought his penny good silver, after he had 
 his grace to be bachelor of arts, was with some despite 
 swindged by Parsons, being dean of the college. Hoc 
 manet alia mente repostum ; and Bagshaw afterward 
 coming to be fellow, was most hot in persecution against 
 Parsons. It was the more forwarded by Dr. Squire's 
 displeasure, who was then master of Baliol College, and 
 thought himself to have been much bitten by vile libels, 
 the author whereof he conceived Parsons to be ; who, 
 in truth, was a man at that time wonderfully given to 
 scoffing, and that with bitterness, which also was the 
 cause that none of the Company loved him. Now, 
 Dr. Squire and Bagshaw being desirous of some occasion 
 to trim him, this fell out." Hereupon the Archbishop 
 informs us that Parsons, as Bursar, falsified the reckon- 
 ings much to the damage of the college, by taking 
 advantage of the weakness of his colleague, who hap- 
 pened to be " a very simple fellow." Other disgraceful 
 swindling is mentioned to the round sum total of one 
 hundred marks, about 70/. Then they found out that 
 he was illegitimate, and the Archbishop declares " that 
 Parsons was not of the best fame concerning inconti- 
 nency ; " but this is only on " hearsay." His enemies 
 now rose up en masse, resolved to expel him ; but, at 
 his earnest request, they permitted him to " resign," 
 which he did accordingly, after having endured con- 
 siderable humiliation from the now triumphant Squire 
 and Bagshaw, whose conduct exhibits all the spitefulness
 
 ROBERT PARSONS. 381 
 
 which grovelling natures call revenge. 1 As we have no 
 reason to doubt the Archbishop's veracity, so are we 
 justified in condemning the proceedings as the petty 
 machinations of a party whose object was revenge rather 
 than justice. This Bagshaw, however, turned "papist" 
 not long after, became a secular priest, and figured in 
 the " stirs" amongst his own party, at the time when 
 they forgot even Protestant persecution to fight their 
 petty battles of jealous prerogative. Doubtless Parsons 
 was "a violent, fierce-natured man, and of a rough 
 behaviour ; " but there was nothing in this treatment 
 at Oxford either to quiet the former or to mollify the 
 latter. The whole tenor of a man's life is often decided 
 by the pang of humiliation shot through the heart in 
 the moment of its pride. Bartoli seems to have been 
 conscious of this fact when he wrote commenting on 
 this transaction : " But the synagogue of his victors," 
 says the bristling Jesuit, " who, at having expelled him 
 with shame, indulged their stupid merriment, will in a 
 few years lament it with despair ; and they shall have 
 him there in the same Oxford, in a different profession 
 of life, and with more trophies for the faith than the few 
 he achieved amongst his pupils, which they envied him 
 so much ; and as long as he lives, yea, as long as his 
 spirit shall live in his books, heresy will be forced to 
 remember Robert Parsons, without any other consolation 
 for its grief than a vain biting at air, badly striving to 
 write and to talk him down, which is the only availing 
 effort of desperate rancour." 2 
 
 1 See Bayle, ubi supra, for the archbishop's letter to Dr. Hussye. Parsons [B.] 
 
 2 " Ma la Sinagoga de' vincitori, che dell' haverlo vergognosamente cacciato, 
 mattegiarouo in isciocca allegrezza, non tarderan molti aiini a farne le dispera- 
 tioni per doglia ; e havranlo quivi stesso in Ossonio, in altra professione di vita, 
 e con altri acquisti alia Fede Cattolica, che non quello scarso de' giovani suoi
 
 382 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Edmund Campion was born in London in 1540, the 
 
 year in which the Company was founded. His parents 
 
 were Catholics. At Christ's Hospital he distin- 
 
 Campion. 
 
 guished himself as a scholar, entered subse- 
 quently at St. John's, Oxford, and had the honour on 
 two or three occasions, to address Queen Elizabeth at 
 Woodstock or Oxford, as spokesman of the College ; 
 and such was the opinion that Cecil, afterwards Lord 
 Burghley, conceived of his wit, erudition, and good 
 taste, that he pronounced him to be one of the Diamonds 
 of England. 1 But it appears that he was all along a 
 Protestant in name only, tormented however with that 
 inner anguish which sometimes results from conscious 
 simulation. As usual, this result is attributed to the 
 " Primitive Fathers," that Catholic source of all con- 
 versions. Campion read the " Fathers," was " con- 
 verted/' and yet suffered himself to be " prevailed upon 
 by dint of importunity " to receive the Protestant order 
 of deacon. This proceeding is said to have "formed 
 the climax of his misery. So bitter was his remorse 
 that he hastened to throw up his fellowship, and quitted 
 the University in 1569." 2 He fled to Ireland, where he 
 was hunted by the queen's commissioners, and com- 
 pelled to escape in the disguise of a servant to avoid 
 martyrdom. In 1571 he reached Douay College, studied 
 theology for a twelvemonth, and went to Rome in 1573, 
 was admitted into the Company of Jesus, and sent to 
 the novitiate at Brunn, where he saw the Virgin Mary 
 on the mulberry tree, with the purple rag of Martyrdom, 
 
 pupilli, che tanto gli invidiarono : e fin ch' egli viva, anzi fin che viverii il suo 
 spirito ne' suoi libri, havra 1'eresia onde ricordarsi di Roberto Personio ; senza 
 altra consolatione al suo dolore, che d'un vano mordere all' aria, facendo a chi 
 peggio ne scrive, e park ; che e quel solo in che il furor disperato sa mostrarsi 
 valente." Bartoli, f. 91. l Oliver, 63. Ibid. 64.
 
 EDMUND CAMPION. 383 
 
 as I have related according to the Jesuit-legend. 
 During the seven subsequent years he taught rhetoric 
 and philosophy at the Jesuit College in Prague, was 
 promoted to holy orders, and was vouchsafed another 
 prediction of his destined martyrdom, according to the 
 statement of Parsons, who says that a certian young 
 Jesuit wrote on Campion's door the words Campianus 
 Martyr. 1 It may have been a pious joke on the pro- 
 fessor's proclaimed aspirations, and his desperate zeal : 
 for at Rheims, on his journey to England, he exhorted 
 the students of the seminary to martyrdom, in an 
 address on the text I am come to send fire upon earth 
 and becoming violently excited, he cried out Fire, fire, 
 fire, so lustily that the people in the streets, thinking 
 there was a conflagration, rushed in with their buckets 
 and water. 2 The career of the ejected Parsons was by 
 no means so determinate. From England he went to 
 Calais, thence to Antwerp, and Louvain, where he met 
 Father William Good, his countryman, and under whom 
 he went through the " Spiritual Exercises." Padua 
 was his next refuge. Here he applied himself to the 
 study of medicine, and likewise civil law : but he 
 changed his mind, and fulfilling the advice of his exer- 
 citant, Father Good, he abandoned his studies, went 
 to the English College at Rome, and gave himself to 
 the Company in 1575 one year after they "trimmed" 
 him so disgracefully at Oxford. In 1578 he was ordained 
 priest, 3 his two years of probation and his four years 
 of theology being epitomised into less than three, by 
 " dispensation," for the quality of his metal, or by the 
 
 1 Oliver, 64. 
 
 2 Bartoli, f. 100. This fact was a standing joke amongst the novices in the 
 English novitiate at Hodder one of our " pious stories " during recreation. 
 
 3 Bayle, Oliver, Bartoli.
 
 384 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 desire to "fix" him which however was not necessary, 
 for Robert Parsons was now in his element. The ex- 
 pedition to England left Rome in 1580. The pope 
 gave the Jesuits his benediction, and their general, 
 Mercurian, enjoined them not to meddle in 
 
 Instructions * t 
 
 to Parsons the least with any " political interests in the 
 affairs of England now continually agitated 
 by the suspicions of the government, the dread of inno- 
 vation, the tumults of Ireland, the imprisonment of the 
 Queen of Scots, and the miserable oppression of the 
 Catholics, besides the suspicion of danger from without." 
 The Jesuits were neither to speak nor listen to any one 
 on the subject of politics : they were strictly to observe 
 the prohibition, and Campion and Parsons were to make 
 that protestation on oath to the ministers and magistrates 
 of England, as soon as they should set foot in the 
 country. 1 On application from Parsons and Campion 
 the pope granted that the Bull of deposition against 
 Elizabeth should be understood in this manner : that 
 it should always bind the queen and heretics : and 
 should by no means bind Catholics, as matters then 
 stood but hereafter bind them, when some public 
 execution of the Bull might be had or made which 
 points at once to the hopes of the party, and their 
 determination: in the event of invasion the Catholics 
 would be bound to stand against the queen and it was 
 now the " mission " of the Jesuits so to strengthen them 
 in their " faith," that this " hope " of the infatuated 
 party should not be disappointed. Forsooth this was 
 no mitigation of the Bull but rather an aggravation ; 
 though neither Allen, Bartoli, nor Butler, ventures to 
 explain its bearings on the events that followed. 
 
 1 Bartoli, f. 93.
 
 DISGUISE OF PARSONS. 385 
 
 Ambo animis, ambo insignes prcestantibus amis, these 
 two Jesuits were well contrasted, according to the Con- 
 stitutions Campion being (by the admission of an 
 enemy) "of a sweet disposition, and a well-polished 
 man," whilst Parsons was "a violent, fierce-natured 
 man, and of a rough behaviour." l Parsons was appointed 
 superior of the mission, or expedition, which consisted 
 of a lay-brother besides seven priests, two laymen, and 
 " perhaps " another who is not named making in all 
 thirteen by way of a good omen from the gospel- 
 number, I suppose. 2 After a prosperous journey through 
 the continent, which they fructified by a conference 
 with Beza at Geneva, Parsons resolved to penetrate 
 first into England, leaving Campion to follow the more 
 adroit and brazen-faced leader. 3 He gave out Disguise of 
 that he was a captain returning from Flanders Parsons. 
 to England. His dress was " of buff, layd with gold 
 lace, with hatt and feather suted to the same." 4 He 
 assumed not only the dress of an officer, but looked the 
 character to admiration, and vaggiunse Finfiorarsi di 
 gale, alia maniera de gli altri " full of strange oaths," 
 he swaggered away, to simulate the soldier completely 
 quel tutto che bisognana a parer dipinto un soldato. 
 When Campion saw him in his character, the imitation 
 was so complete, that he thought the sagacity of the 
 English searchers, however keen-sighted, would be baf- 
 fled and deceived : " thus no one would ever suspect 
 that, under so different an appearance, a Jesuit was 
 concealed si nascondesse un Gesuita." 5 He embarked, 
 
 1 Camden, ad Ann. 1580. 
 
 8 ** E forse un decimoterzo, che altri vi contano." Bartoli, f. 93. 
 8 " Rag ion voile che al Person io, e Superiore, e phi destro, e piu franco, 
 toccasse il fare al P. Edmondo la strada." Bartoli, 101. 
 4 Oliver, 159. Bartoli, f. 101. 
 
 VOL. II. C C
 
 386 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 and reached Dover the next morning. Here the searcher, 
 according to his commission, examined him, " found no 
 cause of doubt in him, but let him pass with all favour, 
 procuring him horse, and all other things necessary for 
 his journey to Gravesend." It is at least amusing to 
 think of the multitudinous falsehoods that Parsons 
 must have told from the time of his embarkation to 
 his shaking hands with the searcher, and decamping 
 with flying colours. However, according to Jesuit-con- 
 science, and Dr. Oliver, " This manifestation of God's 
 care and protection, inspired the Father with courage 
 and confidence, and he told the searcher that he had a 
 certain friend, a merchant, lying in St. Omer's that 
 would follow him very shortly, to whom he desired the 
 said searcher to show all favour : and so he promised to 
 do, and took a certain letter of the same Father to send 
 to Mr. Edmunds, (for so Father Campion was now 
 called,) and conveyed it safely to St. Omer's, in which 
 letter Father Parsons wrote unto him the great courtesy 
 which the searcher had showed him, and recommended 
 him to hasten and follow him in disposing of his stock of 
 jewels and diamonds."" l The astonishing dexterity of 
 these Jesuits is proved by the fact, that their portraits 
 were hung up on the gates of the towns, the seaports 
 particularly, so as to insure their detection. 2 Nor must 
 we fail to remark how active were the queen's spies in 
 discovering the project. This chapter in the 
 
 Espionage m r J ? > r 
 
 the days of history of Elizabeth's reign is worthy of inves- 
 tigation : a history of the method and men, 
 and cost of that spy system would be as interesting 
 
 1 Oliver, 101, 159. Bartoli says, "un PatrUio mercante Irlandese (era 
 quest! il P. Edmondo) lo spacciassero di presents" because his speedy presence 
 in London was necessary for his affairs. 2 Bartoli, ubi suprti.
 
 PARSONS ENTRAPS THE PRIESTS. 387 
 
 as that of the Jesuits. With great difficulty Parsons 
 journeyed on towards London. In consequence of the 
 queen's proclamation, and the general suspicion prevail- 
 ing against strangers, he found it impossible to procure 
 accommodation at the inns, coming, as he did, without 
 a horse. At last he found his way to the Marshalsea 
 prison, where he met his brother- Jesuit, Thomas Pound, 1 
 a fact which seems to prove that the present expedition 
 was not the first settlement, but only a more determined 
 and better organised assault on the dragon of heresy ; 
 and we may note the hypocrisy of the Jesuits in pretend- 
 ing to undertake the mission so reluctantly. The fact is, 
 they wished to secure a right for saying to the secular 
 priests Your master, Allen, invited us we consented 
 with reluctance and you must be silent on the score of 
 our obtrusive ambition and interference. Meanwhile, 
 Campion, in his garb of a pedlar or merchant doubtless 
 with jewels in his box to keep up the deception reached 
 London : Parsons was waiting for him on the banks of 
 the Thames, and saluted him with a sign, and then shook 
 hands with him as an expected friend, in so natural a manner 
 that no one could suspect it was " all artifice and a trick," 
 tutto artificio e scaltrimento says the Jesuit-historian. 2 
 A meeting of the Jesuits and missionary priests now 
 took place, and by unanimous consent Robert Parsons 
 presided. He disclaimed all political objects, p arsons h idg 
 contrary to the general report, and the direct JJJ^JJ s 
 consequence of his presence and that of his the priests. 
 brother-Jesuits, in England. The conversion of Eng- 
 land, with the co-operation of the secular priests, was 
 the only object in view. He swore an oath to that 
 effect e sotto fide giurato certificollo. Then he appealed 
 
 1 Bartoli and Oliver. 2 Bartoli, 104. 
 
 C C 2
 
 388 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 to the Council of Trent, and protested against the 
 attendance of Catholics at the divine service of Protestant 
 churches, and strongly recommended non-conformity, 
 which, of course, was just the very thing to bring on the 
 poor Catholics a torrent of fires, racks, and gibbets. 
 What cared the " fierce-natured man " for that ? No 
 Virgin Mary on a mulberry -tree had doomed Mm to 
 martyrdom with a purple rag and he had no particular 
 fancy for the thing in itself, and so, " until some public 
 execution of the pope's Bull of deposition against the 
 queen might be had or made," he was resolved, by 
 command of authority and inclination, to quicken that 
 result by goading the government to fury against the 
 wretched Catholics, thereby to rouse, as he hoped, all 
 Catholicity, with King Philip II., to the invasion of 
 England and destruction of the queen. In order to 
 prevent conformity, which was, in most instances, the 
 result of indifference to Catholicism, Parsons urged the 
 necessity of supplying all parts of the kingdom equally 
 with priests, and induced the secular priests to place 
 themselves under him as subjects non altramente che 
 sudditi and these "very simple fellows" offered to go and 
 labour in any manner, and at any place, which he should 
 prescribe to them. Thus, besides the end already men- 
 tioned, Parsons at once achieved a party in England, 
 arrogating to himself and his Company an ascendancy 
 in the concerns of the mission, destined to divide the 
 body of mission ers into factions, which tore and worried 
 the English Catholic Church in the midst of ruinous 
 persecution. Heavens ! Can there be a greater curse 
 on humanity than priestly craft, ambition, and selfish- 
 ness, united to all the recklessness of the Jesuits ? * 
 
 1 Butler, i. 36/j, 371, analysing Bartoliaud More.
 
 PROGRESS OP PARSONS' MEASURE. 389 
 
 Then began the sowing of the seed. Parsons and 
 Campion " travelled up and down through the countrey, 
 and to Popish gentlemens houses, couvertly p rogre88 of 
 and in the disguised habits sometimes of soul- the mI88Ion - 
 diers, sometimes of gentlemen, sometimes of ministers of 
 the word, and sometimes of apparitors [a sort of under- 
 ling church-officer], diligently performing what they had 
 in charge, both by word and writing. Parsons being a 
 man of a seditious and turbulent spirit, and 
 
 i . , _ 1 Machinations. 
 
 armed with a confident boldness, tampered so 
 far with the Papists about deposing the queen, that 
 some of them (I speak upon their own credit) thought 
 to have delivered him into the magistrate's hands. 
 Campion, though more modest, yet by a written paper 
 challenged the ministers of the English Church to a 
 disputation, and published a neat, well-penned book in 
 Latin, called ' Ten Reasons in Defence of the Doctrine 
 of the Church of Rome ; ' l and Parsons put out another 
 virulent book in English against Chark, who had soberly 
 
 written against Campion's challenge Neither 
 
 wanted there others of the Popish faction (for religion 
 was grown into faction) who laboured tooth and nail at 
 Rome and elsewhere in princes' courts, to raise war 
 against their own country ; yea, they published also in 
 print, that the Bishop of Rome and the Spaniard had 
 conspired together to conquer England, and expose it 
 for a spoil and prey : and this they did of purpose to 
 give courage to their own party, and to terrific The quee n'8 
 others from their allegiance to their prince manlfesto - 
 and countrey. The queen being now openly thus assailed 
 both by the arms and cunning practices of the Bishop 
 of Rome and the Spaniard, set forth a manifesto, 
 
 1 It was privately printed at Lady Stonor's house at Henley. Oliver.
 
 390 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 wherein (after acknowledgment of the goodness of God 
 towards her) she declareth, ' That she had attempted 
 nothing against any prince but for preservation of her 
 own kingdom ; nor had she invaded the provinces of 
 any other, though she had sundry times been thereunto 
 provoked by injuries, and invited by opportunities. If 
 any princes go about to attempt ought against her, she 
 doubteth not but to be able (by the blessing of God) to 
 defend her people ; and to that purpose she had 
 mustered her forces both by sea and land, and had 
 them now in readiness against any hostile invasion. 
 Her faithful subjects she exhorteth to continue im- 
 movable in their allegiance and duty towards God, and 
 their prince the minister of God. The rest, who had 
 shaken off their love to their countrey, and their 
 obedience to their prince, she commandeth to carry 
 themselves modestly and peaceably, and not provoke 
 the severity of justice against themselves : for she 
 would no longer be so imprudent, as by sparing the bad 
 to prove cruel to herself and her good subjects.'" 1 
 
 Such being the queen's and her cabinet's sentiments, 
 and such being the undoubted, the admitted facts 
 Parsons and whereon they rested, the influx of missionary 
 dreTs P iette priests and Jesuits roused them to exert their 
 to the council, prerogatives to the utmost, and harassing 
 inquiries were everywhere set on foot to discover the 
 priests and the Jesuits, with severe denunciations 
 against all who harboured them, and against all who 
 quitted the kingdom without the queen's license ; 
 and rewards were offered for the discovery of the 
 offenders. Hereupon Parsons and Campion in concert 
 addressed a letter to the Privy Council. The letter of 
 
 1 Camden, ad Ann. 1580.
 
 A CURIOUS ELUCIDATION. 391 
 
 Parsons is lost, says Butler, but Bartoli gives it never- 
 theless. It is entitled a Confession of the Faith of 
 Robert Parsons, and complains of the general persecu- 
 tion, the suspicions against the Company, which he calls 
 most blessed, and affirms the fidelity of the Catholics, 
 which he states to be based on better grounds than that 
 of the Protestants, especially the Puritans, who were 
 then as ruthlessly proscribed as the Catholics. 1 Cam- 
 pion's letter is preserved ; he gave a copy of it to one of 
 his friends, with directions to preserve it secret, unless 
 his friend should hear of his imprisonment ; and then 
 he was to print and give it circulation. His friend 
 printed one thousand copies three or four months after, 
 and thus it became public before his apprehension. 2 
 Such is the ex parte statement emitted by Butler ; but 
 the man who subsequently printed his " Ten Reasons in 
 Defence of the Church of Rome," in such circumstances, 
 would scarcely shrink from flinging before the public, 
 then in uttermost excitation, his ultimate defiance to 
 the excommunicated authorities ; or, as he apprehended 
 its probable effect on himself, why did he not shrink 
 from ever permitting it to entail misery on his fellow 
 Catholics 1 
 
 But then comes the question, who was that " friend" 
 alluded to by the strong Jesuit-partisan Butler, so 
 vaguely, as if he did not know his name f A curioug 
 Why, he was no other than the Jesuit Thomas elucidation - 
 Pound? Butler knew this well enough, but it did not 
 
 1 Bartoli, f. 113, et seq. 
 
 * Butler, 371; Bartoli, 126, 127. 
 
 3 " Convien sapere, che quel nobile Confessoro di Christo, e Religioso della 
 Compagnia, Tomaso Pondo, nelle cui mane dicemmo havere il P. Campiaiio 
 dipositata la sua lettera, e protestatione a Consiglieri di Stato, e inguintogli il 
 divulgarla al primo udir che farebbe lui esser preso : dopo tre 6 quattro mesi da 
 che gli stava otiosa nelle mani, rilettala, e col sommaraente piacergli, persuaso,
 
 392 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 suit his views to state the fact, so plainly evidencing 
 the infatuated or reckless defiance of the Jesuits to all 
 authority, and cruel indifference to the suffering of the 
 Catholics whom they pretended to benefit and console. 
 In his letter, Campion briefly informed the council of 
 his arrival, and the object of his mission, according to 
 the expressed words of the Company ; and earnestly 
 solicited permission to propound, explain, and prove his 
 religious creed, first before the council, then before an 
 assembly of divines of each university, and afterwards, 
 before a meeting of graduates, in the civil and canon 
 law. 1 Then he blazed forth and displayed the heart- 
 and-soul ardour of his infatuated enthusiasm, saying : 
 "As for our Company, I give you to know that all of 
 us who are scattered and spread over the wide world 
 in such numbers, and yet continually succeeding each 
 other, will be able, whilst the Company lasts, to frustrate 
 your machinations. We have entered into a holy con- 
 spiracy, and we are resolved to bear with courage the 
 cross you place upon our backs never to despair of 
 your recovery as long as there remains a single man 
 of us left to enjoy your Tyburn to be torn to pieces 
 by your tortures to be consumed and pine away in 
 your prisons. We have right well considered the matter, 
 we are resolved, and with the favouring impulse of 
 God, neither force nor assault shall end the battle which 
 now commences. Thus, from the first was the faith 
 planted, thus it shall be planted again with vigour 
 renewed." 2 " The spirit of this letter may be admired ; 
 its prudence must be questioned," says Butler, and, we 
 
 che a ben fare, dovea farsi altrimenti da quello ch'era paruto al P. Edmondo 
 con liberta, e findanza d'amico, senza altro attendere, la publico prima del 
 tempo." Bartoli, f. 126. 
 
 1 Butler, i. 371 ; Bartoli, f. 114, et seq. 2 Bartoli, f, 76, 115.
 
 CONTROVERSIAL ENCOUNTERS. 393 
 
 may add, that its publication by another Jesuit aggravates 
 the cruel infatuation. It gave great offence. Campion 
 himself, in a letter to Mercurian, his general, says, that 
 " its publication put the adversaries of the Catholics into 
 a fury/' l The thousand copies of the Defiance, circulated 
 through the court, the universities, throughout the whole 
 kingdom ; and all the world were in expectation of the 
 result. All the Catholics, and a large portion of the 
 Protestants, wished that permission might be given to 
 Campion to make his appearance either at London or 
 one of the universities, for an open field to enter the 
 lists with the Protestant theologians, and vast would 
 have been the concourse from far and near to witness 
 such a glorious tournament, the like to which might 
 never chance again. 2 Thus wished enthusiasm and 
 frivolity : but what good could possibly result 
 
 A , J ' . ,. / J Touching 
 
 in those times, or any times, from a contro- controversial 
 versial tilting-match \ in a matter wherein 
 dexterity is infinitely more likely to triumph than truth 
 or reasonable argument wherein, though vanquished, 
 the disputants will argue still, for ever and a day after 
 in short, where infinite truths are to be propounded by 
 finite intellects, and decided by the votes, the shouts, 
 the stamping and clapping of hands of an audience, even 
 incalculably less qualified to judge than the disputants 
 themselves 1 ? Whatever was the motive of the queen 
 and her council, their non-acceptance of the misguided 
 Jesuit's challenge and defiance was wise in a political 
 point of view. In truth, the elements of national discord 
 were lawless enough, without congregating ten thousand 
 selfish partisans on a given spot to explode with the 
 volcanic rancour of religionism. It was infinitely better 
 
 1 Butler, i. 372. 2 Bartoli, f. 127.
 
 394 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 to let the people indulge their curiosity by listening to 
 
 the adventures of Admiral Drake, then just returned to 
 
 England, " abounding with great wealth and 
 
 An episode. . , . i -i i 
 
 greater renown, having prosperously sailed 
 round about the world ; being, if not the first of all 
 which could challenge this glory, yet questionless the 
 first but Magellan, whom death cut off in the midst of 
 his voyage." Far better it was for Elizabeth to send 
 her idlers to gaze at the good old ship that had ploughed 
 a hundred seas, and which she had tenderly "caused 
 to be drawn up into a little creek near Deptford, upon 
 the Thames, as a monument of Drake's so lucky sailing 
 round about the world (where the carcass thereof is yet 
 to be seen) ; and having, as it were, consecrated it for a 
 memorial with great ceremony, she was banquetted in 
 it, and conferred on Drake the honour of knighthood. 
 At this time a bridge of planks, by which they came 
 on board the ship, sunk under the crowd of people, and 
 fell down with an hundred men upon it, who notwith- 
 standing, had none of them any harm. So as that ship 
 may seem to have been built under a lucky planet." l 
 Why were there any of the queen's subjects compelled 
 to absent themselves from this national jollification 1 
 Why, amidst that ceremony, wherein England's queen 
 identified herself with the fortunes of her subjects, 
 gently praising them unto heroic exertion for their 
 country's weal why were there Catholics who slunk off, 
 having no heart to cheer, no voice to huzza for their 
 queen ? They were busy with their catechism and 
 "the Faith/' and thus promoting the "hope" of the 
 Jesuits and their masters, or, rather, their patrons and 
 friends : but the Jesuits will not succeed as they 
 
 1 Camd. ad Ann. 1580.
 
 ENGLAND'S LOYALTY. 395 
 
 desire. In the most acceptable moment the people of 
 England will be eager to prove their loyalty, in spite of 
 papal bulls and Jesuit-nonconformity. And England's 
 thus it will be for ever. In England loyalty is loyalty. 
 an instinct : but it requires to be cheered by the smiles 
 of royalty. Like a loving heart, it craves some love 
 in return. Give it but that, and all the world may 
 be priest-ridden, faction -ridden, sunk into republican 
 anarchy, or democratic tyranny ; yet England's instinct 
 will shrink from that perilous imitation of an exceed- 
 ingly ambiguous model ; and she will remain for ever 
 the hardest-worked nation under God's heaven the 
 most persevering spider in existence, whose web you 
 may tear every morning, and every night you will see 
 it again, as a proof of her industry ; for, far from 
 preying on any other nation, it is the most remarkable 
 fact in the world, that she has wasted on others incal- 
 culably more than she has ever gained by allies, or by 
 colonies ; and yet she endures. In spite of all her 
 desperate wounds from time to time, still she is a 
 veteran, but not yet pensioned off to repose. Her 
 rulers, her nobles, her people will again and soon be 
 called to decide the fate of the political universe, as they 
 were at the end of the sixteenth century, when that 
 decision went under the name of "religion," with 
 Philip II. and the pope on one side, and Elizabeth, with 
 the people of England, on the other. 
 
 The terrible edict which went forth against the 
 Jesuits flung them into constant peril, but made them 
 objects of sympathy in England. In fact the 
 very words of that edict which throughout of the 
 
 TII 11 i Catholics. 
 
 H.ngland proclaimed it treason to harbour the 
 
 Jesuits, was a sort of useful advertisement to them,
 
 396 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 made them interesting, covered them with merits to 
 which in a time of perfect toleration they would have 
 laid claim in vain. " We are eagerly desired," writes 
 Parsons to his general, " and whithersoever we go we 
 are received with incredible gladness ; and many there 
 are who from afar come to seek us, to confer with us 
 on the concerns of their souls, and to place their con- 
 science into our hands ; and they offer us all that they 
 are, all that they can do, all that they have, do die 
 sono, do che possono, do che hanno." Campion said 
 that these generous Catholics seemed to have forgotten 
 themselves, and set aside all thought for themselves, 
 and to have centred all their solicitude on the fathers. 
 But the Jesuits did not permit these consolatory 
 demonstrations to throw them off their guard. They 
 took every precaution to prevent detection and to baffle 
 the numberless spies everywhere in quest for the pope's 
 emissaries, the Spaniard's jackalls, and, by their own 
 account, the idols of their infatuated dupes. They were 
 Disguises of always disguised, and frequently changed their 
 the Jesuits. di s g u i ses> their names, and places of resort. 
 Thus they deluded the spies, constantly falsifying the 
 descriptions with which they were represented. The 
 fashion and colour of their garb of yesterday, was not 
 the same as to-day : the spies met the Jesuits and had 
 no eyes for the prey. Perhaps they got hold of their 
 names : they repeated them asking for their bearers : 
 they asked in vain, these were no longer the names of 
 the invisible Jesuits who perhaps stood behind them, 
 beside them, before them. Before sun-rise the spies 
 ransacked a house into which one of the Jesuits had 
 entered the night before : he was already flown and 
 many miles off. " My dresses are most numerous,"
 
 ESCAPES OF PARSONS. 397 
 
 writes Campion, " and various are my fashions, and as 
 for names, I have an abundance." 1 The escapes of 
 Parsons were truly wonderful : the wily old 
 
 * Escapes of 
 
 fox was never to be hunted down or entrapped. Parsons and 
 One night the hunters surrounded the house 
 where he was sleeping : he buried himself in a heap of 
 hay and they left him behind. 2 One day, whilst passing 
 through a street, the hue and cry was raised " Parsons ! 
 Parsons!" they cried; and in the universal rush of 
 eager Jesuit-hunters you might see Parsons rushing 
 too, and lustily crying " There he is yonder," and 
 slinking off quietly by a side-turn. 3 They once besieged 
 the house where he was : it was a sudden onslaught. 
 Parsons boldly came forth and asked them what they 
 wanted. " The Jesuit," they cried. " "Walk in," said 
 he, " and look for him quietly," and Parsons walked off 
 without looking behind him. 4 Nor were there wanting in 
 his career, those lucky coincidences which served his turn 
 by " attesting " the special providence over the Jesuit. 
 He was once invited to supper by a priest, in order to 
 convert some heretics : though he knew the place right 
 well, though he walked the neighbourhood up and down 
 three times in search of the spot, and inquired of the 
 neighbours, still he could not find the house ; and tired 
 out at last, he went away. On the following day he 
 learnt that during all that time the house was besieged 
 by the heretics, waiting to seize him, and that they 
 had carried off the priest and six Catholics to prison. 5 
 
 This is one of his own anecdotes, and so is the follow- 
 ing. He had passed the night at the house of a priest ; 
 at break of day he was roused by certain very sharp 
 
 1 Bartoli, 117. 2 Ann. Litt. 1583. 
 
 s A legend I heard related in the English novitiate. 4 Ann. Litt. 1583. 
 
 s Ibid. 1583.
 
 398 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 prickings stimulis quibusdam acerrimis so that he 
 got up and went off as soon as possible, when the 
 heretics came and seized the hospitable priest. 1 
 
 " By the pricking of my thumbs, 
 Something wicked this way comes." 
 
 Wonderful was the fame that Parsons achieved by his 
 dexterity, baffling the uttermost vigilance of his ene- 
 mies, and their multitudinous traps and stratagems. 
 He slipped through their hands like an eel, and glided 
 through his ocean of adventure ever on the watch 
 but feeling secure from his repeated escapes and evasions. 
 There is no doubt that he had made friends even in the 
 court of Elizabeth. There were Catholics around the 
 queen who undoubtedly hated not Catholicism, but the 
 treason with which the pope and his party chose to 
 connect it : the very tenement that the English Jesuits 
 now possess in Lancashire was built by a Catholic 
 nobleman, high in favour with the queen. Parsons was 
 the universal theme of conversational wonder. The 
 queen shared the wonderment of her people. To one 
 of her Catholic lords she said she " would so like to see 
 the invisible Jesuit." " You shall see him," said the 
 lord in question. A few days afterwards the queen 
 and some company were at the palace window gazing 
 into the street. There came staggering down the 
 street a drunken fellow, making all manner of game 
 for the crowd around him. When he was out of 
 sight, the Catholic lord told the queen that she had 
 seen Parsons in that drunken staggerer 
 
 His portrait. . _ 
 
 one of the Jesuit s Dramatis persona, or 
 tragi-comic characters, which he played to perfection. 2 
 Look at the man's portrait : and should you ever see 
 a pike lying in ambush just under the river-bank, 
 
 1 Ann. Litt. 1583. 2 One of the legends I heard related in the English novitiate.
 
 DESCRIPTIVE PORTRAIT OF PARSONS. 399 
 
 where the water is deep, try and catch a glimpse 
 at his eyes, and their expression will remind you of 
 those of Father Parsons awfully wide awake keen 
 and penetrating, yet not without a shade of anxious 
 thought, universal suspicion. Falsehood and equivoca- 
 tion his desperate position compelled him to use without 
 scruple ; but that position resulted from his " vocation" 
 which he had himself embraced ; and thus, without 
 moral excuse, he daily perverted his own heart and 
 mind, whilst he was teaching others unto salvation and 
 orthodoxy, for which the downfall of Protestantism and 
 its queen was the price awarded, with ulterior contin- 
 gencies. It is besides curious to observe, that this pro- 
 fessional stickler for non-conformity conformed in every 
 possible way with every possible thing except the 
 wishes of the queen and her council, and their sharks, 
 to entrap or fang the Jesuit for which, however, he 
 must be excused, though his general, himself, and Cam- 
 pion, are answerable for the immediate consequences of 
 their presence and machinations in England. Their 
 " apprehensions " of that doom which they would entail 
 on the Catholics were speedily fulfilled. 1 
 
 1 A Catholic contemporary thus writes of this Jesuit-expedition : " These 
 good Fathers (as the devil will have it) came into England, and intruded them- 
 selves into our harvest, being the men in our consciences (we mean both them 
 and others of that Society, with some of their adherents) who have been the 
 chief instruments of all the mischiefs that have been intended against her 
 Majesty, since the beginning of her reign, and of the miseries which we, or any 
 other Catholics, have upon these occasions sustained. Their first repair hither 
 was Anno 1580, when the realm of Ireland was in great combustion, and then 
 they entered (viz. Maister Campion, the Subject ; and Maister Parsons, the Pro- 
 vincial) like a tempest, with sundry such great brags and challenges, as divers 
 of the gravest clergy then living in England (Dr. Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, 
 and others) did greatly dislike them, and plainly foretold, that as things then 
 stood, their proceeding after that fashion would certainly urge the state to make 
 some sharper laws, which should not only touch them, but likewise all others, 
 both priests and Catholics. Upon their arrival, and after the said brags, Maister
 
 400 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Campion's letter highly incensed the queen and her 
 ministers. In spite of all that may be said against 
 Elizabeth, it must be for ever impossible to 
 of the perse- deny that she was forced by the Jesuits to 
 adopt severe and cruel measures against 
 the Catholics. Her previous liberal toleration reacted 
 bitterly against her feelings when she beheld the 
 estrangement of her Catholic subjects, so evidently 
 effected by the Jesuits. It is admitted that Catholics 
 frequented her court : that some were advanced to 
 places of high honour and trust : several filled subordi- 
 nate offices ; and though there was an act which 
 excluded Catholics from the House of Commons, still 
 they always sat and voted in the House of Lords. 1 To 
 Allen's seminary-scheme and Jesuit-obtrusion must be 
 ascribed the weight of calamity brought down upon the 
 Catholics of England though we are far from counte- 
 nancing the horrible tortures and measures adopted to 
 put down " Catholicism" when it was roused by Allen, 
 Parsons, and Campion, to struggle for empire. Doubt- 
 less the partisans of religionism think all this human 
 suffering, all these national calamities, bloodshed, deceit 
 and craft of all kind, violence and rancour on all sides 
 nothing compared to the struggle for " the Faith " for 
 never was it more than a struggle in England : doubt- 
 less they think all these things light when compared to 
 the "boon of the Faith :" but Providence has permitted 
 better sentiments at length to prevail. We now feel 
 
 Parsons presently fell to his Jesuitical courses ; and so belaboured both himself 
 and others in matters of state, how he might set her Majesty's crown upon 
 another head (as appeareth by a letter of his own to a certain earl), that the 
 Catholics themselves threatened to deliver him into the hands of the civil magis- 
 trate, except he desisted from such kind of practices." Ipmortant Consideration's 
 by Sundry of Us the Secular Priests. 1601. l Butler, i. 362.
 
 THE LAWS AGAINST CATHOLICS. 401 
 
 convinced that this " boon of the Faith " was nothing- 
 more than the "bone of contention " the cruel pretext 
 of factions and therefore was it doomed never to 
 realise its " hopes " never to effect more than bitter 
 calamity for the unfortunate dupes who lent themselves 
 to the will of the schemers. Roused to exertion in self- 
 defence, the queen and her ministers issued a severe 
 enactment against the offenders and their dupes. The 
 Party in power, like Herod of old, involved the whole 
 mass of Catholics in one indiscriminate proscription. 
 Immediately after the entrance of the Jesuits into England 
 the parliament had provided an act whose execution the 
 proceedings of the Jesuits expedited with a vengeance. 
 The motive principle of the enactment was that the 
 Jesuits, under the cover of a corrupt doctrine, sowed the 
 seeds of sedition : therefore the dreadful laws to 
 counteract that treason were as follows : All persons 
 
 possessing, or pretending to possess, or to 
 
 c \ i e -^ Thelaws 
 
 exercise, the power of absolving or of with- against 
 
 drawing others from the established religion, 
 or suffering themselves to be so withdrawn, should, 
 together with their procurers and counsellors, suffer the 
 penalties of high treason. The penalty for saying mass 
 was increased to 200 marks, about I30L, and one year's 
 imprisonment : for being present at the mass, 100 marks 
 (65/.), and the same term of imprisonment. For 
 absence from church (nonconformity) there was a stand- 
 ing penalty of 20 marks per month (13/.) ; and if that 
 absence was prolonged to a whole year, the recusant 
 was obliged to find two securities for his good behaviour 
 in 200/. each. Imagine an income-tax of 3380/. a year 
 on your attendance at mass alone, instead of only having 
 to pay from one to two shillings, as at present imposed 
 
 A T OL. II. D D
 
 402 HISTOBY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 by your priests, who, for the sake of the music, 
 make your mass-chapels " shilling theatres," as a great 
 duke called them, and rightly too ! Here was a 
 ravenous law almost as bad as the enactments whereby 
 The penal Pope Gregory XIII. plundered and ruined 
 thlUSs * ne n bles of Italy to raise funds for the 
 spoliations, destruction of the heretics, to fee the Jesuits' 
 and Allen's seminaries the two leading causes of 
 Catholic calamity in England : but there is a difference. 
 England, or rather the party in power, cared nothing 
 for the money : they feared for their lives, liberties, 
 and fortunes, menaced by the dreaded consequences of 
 Catholic ascendancy ; and thus, as usual with men, 
 were cruel in their desperation. A horrible excuse was 
 that : but Pope Gregory had not even that for his 
 tyrannical proscriptions. Then open your eyes : trace 
 events to their right sources : compare, perpend, decide 
 that there is no difference between Catholic and Pro- 
 testant selfishness when armed with power, and rendered 
 inordinate by prescriptive abuses unchecked, unrebuked, 
 and rampant as the raging lion. Finally, there was 
 another enactment which corresponds exactly with the 
 proposition made in the last congregation of the Jesuits, 
 just given, the proposition, you remember, to permit 
 Jesuits to take boarders in the northern parts, in order 
 to instruct them and " care for them entirely." This 
 was but another method of propagandism in their rage 
 for the cause which they embraced with all the energy 
 of hungry monopolists, grasping speculators. So the act 
 provided that to prevent the concealment of priests as 
 tutors or schoolmasters in private families, every person 
 acting in that capacity without the approbation of the 
 ordinary, should be liable to a year's imprisonment, and
 
 AIM OP THE LAWS AGAINST CATHOLICS. 403 
 
 the person who employed him to a fine of 10/. per 
 month. It is plain, says Dr. Lingard, that, if these pro- 
 visions had been fully executed, the profession of the 
 Catholic creed must, in a few years, have been entirely 
 extinguished. 1 But, for the great mass of Catholics, 
 these enactments were only a scarecrow. To 
 
 . " The chief 
 
 the heads of the growing faction they were a aim of these 
 ravening tiger and no one can wonder 
 thereat, though we abhor with heart and mind the 
 dreadful severity, and the reckless proceedings of the 
 men who, as leaders, were the nucleus of determined 
 opposition to the government but of course, this was 
 effected " solely by the exercise of the spiritual functions 
 of the priesthood" their own words, glibly advanced, 
 as if this confession did not aggravate their guilt in 
 abusing man's religious sentiment, and making him 
 wretched by the means of the very feelings which should 
 constitute his happiness. Open violence would have 
 been more honourable to the propagandists than this 
 insidious undermining this secret poison administered 
 as by men who had not the courage to attempt assas- 
 sination. Forsooth, treason was not the major nor the 
 minor of the Jesuit syllogism : but it was the infallible 
 conclusion. They reversed the usual method : for here 
 the end was abominable, whilst the means, assuming 
 their description, were " good " for those who needed 
 sacerdotal consolation. Now, you will be surprised to 
 know that it was in reply to these severe enactments 
 that Campion wrote those brave words to the queen and 
 her council following up the defiance with his Ten 
 Reasons for Roman ascendancy. 2 
 
 In the midst of the universal excitement, the shout 
 
 1 Hist. viii. 143 ; Stat. 23 Eliz. c. 1. 2 Ling, uli supra, 144. 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 and the cry for the Jesuits and traitors, Campion and 
 Parsons, by their wonderful efforts at concealment, eluded 
 Sufferings of the pursuit of their enemies ; but heavily 
 the catholics, fgj^ meanwhile, the cataract of persecution on 
 the wretched Catholics. A bitter lesson it is for men, 
 fooled by those who should be their guides cruelly 
 sacrificed by those whose presence should be the good 
 tidings of peace and happiness. Think of the result : 
 imagine the scenes enacted. The names of fifty thou- 
 sand recusants have been returned to the Council. The 
 magistrates are urged to the utmost severity. The pri- 
 sons in every county are filled with persons suspected as 
 priests, or harbourers of priests, or delinquents against 
 the enactments. Whilst the Jesuits changed their garbs, 
 and fashions, and names, every day, and thus scoured the 
 land, untouched by the thunderbolts falling around, no 
 other man could enjoy security even in the privacy of his 
 own house. At all hours of the day, but mostly in the 
 stillness of night, a magistrate, at the head of an armed 
 mob, rushed amain, burst open the doors, and the pur- 
 suivants, or officers, dispersed to the different apart- 
 ments, ransacked the beds, tore the tapestry and 
 wainscoting from the walls in search of hiding-places 
 behind, forced open the closets, drawers, and coffers, 
 and exhausted their ingenuity to discover either a 
 priest, or books, chalices, and priests' vestments at 
 mass. Additional outrage was the result of remon- 
 strance. All the inmates were interrogated : their 
 persons searched, under the pretext that superstitious 
 articles might be concealed among their clothes ; and 
 there are instances on record of females of rank, whose 
 reason and lives were endangered and destroyed by the 
 brutality of the officers. 1 
 
 1 Ling. viii. 1 44, et seq.
 
 THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND THE SCAPEGOATS. 405 
 
 Mirabeau's simple valet was always wretched if his 
 master did not thrash him every day ; and there are 
 men who consider human suffering to be one A re fl cction 
 of the gratifications of man's all-good Creator and a fact - 
 men who actually believe that God delights in seeing 
 his creatures plunged in misery, each pang they feel 
 being an acceptable tribute to Him who said, " Come to 
 me all ye who labour and are heavily laden/' Undoubt- 
 edly the Jesuits consoled the poor Catholics with the 
 usual arguments, for the dreadful sufferings which their 
 presence and their insolent manoeuvres entailed upon 
 the scapegoats. It was a bitter time for the human 
 heart a bitter trial for humanity. And in the midst 
 of that fearful proscription, what heroic devotedness, 
 heroic pity and commiseration, did the Catholics evince 
 towards the Jesuits, though they knew them to be the 
 cause proximate at least of all their calamities. A 
 Catholic nobleman was visited by Parsons. Terrified 
 by the edict, the nobleman sent a message to the Jesuit, 
 requesting him to go elsewhere, for he did not approve 
 of his coming. Parsons turned off: but the English- 
 man's heart got the better of fear : the nobleman sud- 
 denly relented, grieved for the seeming hardness of 
 heart, ran after Parsons, and, with earnest entreaties, 
 brought him back to his mansion, exposing his life and 
 fortunes to imminent peril. 1 
 
 It is but fair to listen to Elizabeth's historian, in his 
 attempt to justify, excuse, or palliate the cruel severities 
 inflicted on the Catholics and their leaders. Exculpation 
 " Such now were the times," says Camden, of Eliza i>etb. 
 " that the queen (who never was of opinion that men's 
 consciences were to be forced) complained many times 
 
 1 Ann. Litt. 1583 ; Miss. Angl.
 
 406 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 that she was driven of necessity to take these courses, 
 unless she would suffer the mine of herself and her 
 subjects, upon some men's pretence of conscience and 
 the Catholic religion. Yet, for the greater part of these 
 silly priests, she did not at all believe them guilty of 
 plotting the destruction of their country : but the supe- 
 riors were they she held to be the instruments of this 
 villany ; for these inferiour emissaries committed the 
 full and free disposure of themselves to their superiours. 
 For when those that were now and afterwards taken 
 were asked, ' whether by authority of the bull of Pius 
 Quintus, bishop of Rome, the subjects were so absolved 
 from their oath of allegiance towards the queen, that 
 they might take up arms against their prince ; whether 
 they thought her to be a lawfull queen ; whether they 
 would subscribe to Sanders's and Bristow's opinion 
 concerning the authority of that bull ; 1 whether, if the 
 Bishop of Rome should wage war against the queen, they 
 would joyn with her or him : ' they answered some 
 of them so ambiguously, some so resolutely, and some 
 by prevarication, or silence, shifted off the questions in 
 such a manner, that divers ingenuous Catholicks began 
 to suspect they fostered some treacherous disloyalty ; 
 and Bishop, a man otherwise devoted to the Bishop of 
 Rome, wrote against them, and solidly proved that the 
 Constitution obtruded under the name of the Lateran 
 Council, upon which the whole authority of absolving 
 subjects from their allegiance and deposing princes is 
 founded, is no other than a decree of Pope Innocent the 
 Third, and was never admitted in England ; yea, that 
 the said Council was no council at all, nor was anything 
 
 1 Dr. Sanders, Romish priest, who was one of the paladins in the pope's 
 crusade against Ireland, led by Stukely and Fitzmaurice.
 
 EXCULPATION OF ELIZABETH. 407 
 
 at all there decreed by the Fathers. Suspicions also 
 were daily increased by the great number of priests 
 creeping more and more into England, who privily felt 
 the minds of men, spread abroad that princes excommu- 
 nicated were to be deposed, and whispered in corners 
 that such princes as professed not the Romish religion 
 had forfeited their regal title and authority : that those 
 who had taken holy orders, were, by a certain eccle- 
 siastical privilege, exempted from all jurisdiction of 
 princes, and not bound by their laws, nor ought they to 
 reverence or regard their majesty." 1 Thus spake 
 rumour, thus believed the authorities ; and if facts did 
 not bear out the assertions, the pope's bull against 
 Elizabeth was a sufficient attestation of the worst that 
 could be rumoured or imagined. That bull was power- 
 less, even ridiculous, before Allen's priests and the 
 Jesuits consolidated a Catholic party in the kingdom. 
 Treason was not perhaps their direct inculcation ; but, 
 in the existing circumstances, in the very proviso which 
 the Jesuits demanded from the pope by way of explana- 
 tion of the deposing bull, if treason was not a direct 
 inculcation, it was undoubtedly the end of the scheme 
 the effect of a cause, so cleverly cloaked with " religion." 
 To all these circumstances we must add the infatuated 
 excitement of the " religious " operators the bellows of 
 sedition and incendiary pharisees, who trusted to their 
 own dexterity for escape, whilst the very sufferings 
 
 1 Camden, Ann. 1581. In effect by one of the privileges given to the Jesuits, 
 all kings, princes, dukes, marquises, barons, soldiers, nobles, laymen, corpo- 
 rations, universities, magistrates, rectors, rulers of all sorts and conditions, 
 and of all sees whatever, are forbidden to dare (audeant) or presume (vel prse- 
 sument) to impose taxes, imposts, donations, contributions, even for the repairs 
 of bridges, or other roads, on the Jesuits ; or to lay on them any burthens what- 
 ever, under penalty of eternal damtiation maledictionis eetemce pcenis ! Com- 
 pend. Priv. Exempt. 8.
 
 408 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 they brought upon their dupes formed a new motive for 
 resistance to the government, and for perpetuating reli- 
 gious rancour. " Some of them were not ashamed to 
 own that they were returned into England with no 
 other intent than, by reconciling men at confession, to 
 absolve every one particularly from all his oaths of 
 allegiance and obedience to the queen, just as the said 
 bull did absolve them all at once and in general. And 
 this seemed the easier to be effected, because they pro- 
 mised withal absolution from all mortal sin ; and the 
 safer, because it was performed more closely under the 
 seal of confession" 1 By the privileges conceded to 
 
 1 Camden, Ann. 1581 . "Our confessors," says a privilege of the Jesuits, "can 
 remit or relax any oatlis whatever, without prejudice to a third party qucelibet 
 juramenta sine praejudicio tertii, relaxare possunt" so that the only question was, 
 what might be called " prejudice to a third party " a salvo so vague that it 
 stood for nothing. Compend. Priv. Confess. 6. 
 
 " The general, and the other fifty heads of the houses, and rectors, appointed 
 by him for a time, can grant a dispensation to our men in all cases witlwut excep- 
 tion nullo excepto, in the confessional only ; but the dispensation in the case 
 of voluntary homicide is conceded, barring the ministry at the altar " so that 
 a Jesuit might commit murder, and all the penalty he would incur would be the 
 prohibition of saying mass ! Compend. Priv. Dispens. 4. 
 
 " The general can, in the confessional, grant a dispensation to persons of our 
 Company, in all irregularities, even in those cases which the pope reserves to 
 himself, namely in murder (morte), in the maiming of limbs (membrorum obtrunca- 
 tione), and enormous spilling of blood (enormi sanguinis effusione) provided, 
 however, any of the three be not notorious [known to the world], and this pro- 
 vision is on account of the scandal [that might ensue] et hoc propter scandalum." 
 lit. 5. 
 
 This does appear a most extraordinary privilege. Why should such a 
 privilege be necessary to men calling themselves the Companions of Jesus and 
 by their profession totally precluded from all occasions where they might commit 
 murder, maim limbs, and shed blood enormously ? In truth, there is no getting 
 over the inferences so imperatively suggested by these privileges. A dispensa- 
 tion to commit murder seems indeed a horrible thing ; and yet here are the very 
 words dispensare cum nostris in komicidio voluntario . . inforo conscientite 
 under the Seal of Confession, as Camden has it. The words admit of no other 
 interpretation. A dispensation means a permission to do what is otherwise pro- 
 hibited such as a dispensation to marry within prohibited degrees. Conse- 
 quently the dispensations given above are bond fide permissions to do the
 
 CAMPION TAKEN AND TORTURED. 409 
 
 the Jesuits, it is evident that these charges are rather 
 more than probable. In their inscription, so gratefully 
 addressed to Pope Gregory XIIL, the Jesuits failed not 
 to state that the pope had " fortified the Company with 
 mighty privileges," as we have read ; and all the privi- 
 leges which I have just given were enjoyed by the 
 Jesuits at the time of the English mission. Long before 
 existing in manuscript, they were printed in 1635. 1 
 
 At length, thirteen months after his arrival, Campion 
 was betrayed by a Catholic, and seized by the officers 
 of the crown. He was found in a secret campion 
 closet at the house of a Catholic gentleman. *? ken .~~: , 
 
 description of 
 
 They mounted him on horseback, tied his the tor ^ r ^- 
 legs under the horse, bound his arms behind him, and 
 set a paper on his hat with an inscription in great 
 capitals, inscribed Campion the Seditious Jesuit. Of 
 course he was racked and tortured words that do not 
 convey the hideous reality. Imagine a frame of oak, 
 raised three feet from the ground. The prisoner was 
 laid under it, on his back, on the floor. They tied his 
 wrists and ancles to two rollers at the end of the frame : 
 these were moved by levers in opposite directions, until 
 the body rose to a level with the frame. Then the 
 tormentors put questions to the wretched prisoner ; and 
 if his answers did not prove satisfactory, they stretched 
 him more and more till his bones started from their 
 sockets. Then there was the Scavenger's Daughter a 
 broad hoop of iron, with which they surrounded the 
 
 wickedness they name voluntary homicide among the rest only the Jesuit who 
 undertook the thing was to be precluded from saying mass. It is this straining 
 at a gnat and swallowing a camel, which corroborates the actual existence of the 
 iniquity. Expediency or a " good " end made the deed necessary, but the letter 
 of the law was to be respected, so that these religionists might " think they had a 
 good conscience ! " 
 
 1 Compendium Privilcgiorum et Gratiarum Soc. Jesu. Ant. 1635.
 
 410 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 body, over the back and under the knees, screwing the 
 hoop closer and closer, until the blood started from the 
 nostrils, even from the hands and feet. They had also 
 iron gauntlets, to compress the wrists, and thus to 
 suspend the prisoner in the air. Lastly, they had what 
 they called " little ease " a cell so small and so con- 
 structed that the prisoner could neither stand in it, 
 walk, sit, nor lie at full length. 1 Rome's, Spain's, 
 Portugal's Inquisitorial atrocities imitated by Protestants ! 
 Was it a horrible inconsistency, or a dreadful RETRI- 
 BUTION by Providence permitted to teach " religious " 
 men that forbearance which was never spontaneous in 
 their hearts, ever possessed by the fiend of persecution 1 
 We abhor these cruelties of England's ministers : but 
 they must not be contemplated without refreshing the 
 memory with their prototypes, the cruelties of Rome's 
 Inquisition : the Protestant party in England did not 
 invent, they only imitated the horrible atrocities which 
 the Catholic party, at that time at least, deemed im- 
 perative to protect and establish the religion of Rome. 
 And we may ask what right had these leaders of Rome 
 to complain of their treatment, when it was exactly 
 what they were prepared to inflict on the heretics in 
 the land of orthodoxy ? Nor must the fact be passed 
 over, that these leaders of Romanism based their base 
 hopes of ultimate success on these very atrocities. Yes, 
 they speculated with the blood of their slaughtered 
 brothers. Listen to the Jesuit's remark on the perse- 
 cution. It is probably written by the " fierce-natured " 
 Parsons. After repeating the torments as above, he 
 exclaims : " But in proportion as her womanish fury 
 
 1 Lingard, viii. 424, quoting the Jesuit Bartoli, whose information came from 
 the Jesuit Parsons.
 
 TEIAL AND DEATH OP CAMPION. 411 
 
 was armed for the destruction of the Catholic name, so 
 on the other hand, equally, the minds of the Catholics 
 were excited to resistance, impelled by their valour, and 
 their fixed obedience to the Pope of Rome, as also by 
 the admonitions and persuasion of the English youths 
 who were sent over from the seminaries at Rheims, 
 and Rome ; for these men, inflamed with the desire of 
 restoring the Catholic religion, and prepared with the 
 aids of learning, either confirmed many in their belief, 
 or converted them to the faith." 1 
 
 It is impossible to arrive at the exact truth from the 
 conflicting accounts of Protestants and Catholics, with 
 regard to the treatment, trial, and death of Trialand 
 Campion. 2 The latter represent him as boldly death of 
 
 i Campion. 
 
 declaring his allegiance to the queen, and his 
 opposition to the papal bull : the former assert that after 
 his condemnation he declared, that should the pope 
 send forces against the queen, he would stand for the 
 pope ; after having refused to answer the question 
 whether Elizabeth was " a right and lawful Queen." 3 
 
 1 Sed quantum ex una parte muliebris furor ad Catholicoruin nomen exciden- 
 dum armabatur ; tantum ex nlterfi Catholicorum animi ad resistendum excita- 
 bantur ; idque turn sua ipsi virtute, insitaque genti Romani Pontificis obedientia, 
 turn vero Anglorum adolescentium qui ex Remensi Romanoque seminariis in 
 Angliam subinde mittebantur monitis et suasu." Ann. Lit. 1583. Miss. Angl. 
 My reason for attributing this letter to Parsons is the fact that as the head of 
 the mission it devolved upon him to write such letter ; and, secondly, in the 
 same letter, he refers for more details to the well-known book (afterwards pub- 
 lished) which he wrote on the Persecution in England " sicut in eo libro, qui 
 de persecutione Anglican^ impressus est, copiose exponitur : quo facilius 
 excusari possum, si in hac missione exponenda, brevior." Ib. 
 
 2 Camden, Ann. 1581. Compare Butler, i. 406, et seq. ; Ling. viii. 146. Con- 
 tinuat. of Holmgshed, p. 456 (hideous in truth), Hist, del glorioso Martirio di 
 diciotto sacerdoti, &c., 1585 by Parsons. See also Hallam, i. 145. 
 
 3 Amongst the awful pious falsehoods concocted by the Jesuits, they say that 
 one of the twelve judges who condemned Campion " saw Uood runniny from 
 his glove ; lie took it off, and found no wound, and nevertheless all he did to stop 
 it, could not prevent the bleeding until the end of that sanguinary and unjust
 
 412 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 Unquestionably the charges of treason against Campion 
 were not legally proven ; nor was there ever more 
 justice in the condemnations of the Inquisition. Surely 
 no man will say that the poor Calvinist whom Lainez 
 tried to convert before they burnt him at Rome, was 
 justly condemned to the flames. Let us therefore abhor 
 both transactions equally as to the facts but we may 
 be permitted to award some excuse to the Protestant 
 party of England, whose cruelties were in their own 
 estimation justified by the direct consequences of the 
 Jesuit's machinations, striking as they did at Protestant 
 ascendancy, and the stability of Elizabeth's royal power, 
 and perhaps, her very existence. Let me not be mis- 
 understood. I pity the fate of this Jesuit. I abhor the 
 persecution of the Catholics. But in like manner do I 
 feel with respect to the heretics and Jews murdered by 
 the Catholics for the faith. I look upon the mere facts 
 in the case of the Catholics as a providential retribution: 
 but at the same time, I cannot see anything in Allen's 
 scheme, and that of the Jesuits, but a direct tendency 
 to subvert the existing government in England. One of 
 the prisoners, Bosgrave, a Jesuit, Rishton, a priest, and 
 Orton, a layman, on being asked what part they would 
 take in case an attempt were made to put the papal 
 bull in execution, " gave satisfactory answers," says 
 Dr. Lingard, and " they saved their lives." It seems to 
 me that had Campion said as much, he would have 
 
 action ! " They call this " a thing altogether prodigious tmtt prodigieuse." 
 Recueil de quelques martyrs, &c., in the Tableaux, p. 440. The same authority 
 contradicts the statement of Parsons about the prediction of Campion's martyr- 
 dom given by a " youth " at " Prague." The author of the Tableaux locates it 
 at Rome, just before Campion's departure, and makes the prophet a " man "- 
 slight contradictions, perhaps, but meseems very significant of that glorious 
 invention which ever characterised the Jesuits.
 
 REMARKS ON CAMPION'S TRIAL. 413 
 
 been spared at least this is the inference. Dr. Lingard 
 very properly observes : " At the same time it must be 
 owned that the answers which six of them gave to the 
 queries were far from being satisfactory. 1 Their hesita- 
 tion to deny the opposing power (a power then indeed 
 maintained by the greater number of divines in Catholic 
 kingdoms) rendered their loyalty very problematical, in 
 case of an attempt to enforce the bull by any foreign 
 prince." 2 Liberty of conscience, offered to all Catholics 
 who would abjure the temporal pretensions of the 
 pontiff, would have been the proper remedy to be 
 
 1 " For amongst other questions that were propounded unto them, this being one, 
 viz. If the pope do by his bull or sentence pronounce her Majesty to be deprived, 
 and no lawful queen, and her subjects to be discharged of their allegiance and 
 obedience unto her ; and after, the pope, or any other by his appointment and 
 authority, do invade this realm ; which part would you take, or which part 
 ought a good subject of England to take 1 Some answered, that when the case 
 should happen, they would take counsel what were best for them to do ; 
 another, that when that case should happen, he would answer, and not before ; 
 another, that for the present, he was not resolved what to do in such a case ; 
 another, that when the case happeneth, then he will answer j another, that if 
 such deprivation and invasion should be made, for any matter of his faith, he 
 thinketh he were then bound to take part with the pope. Now what long in the 
 world, being in doubt to be invaded by his enemies," &c. &c. Import. Consid. 
 "by ws the Secular Priests, 1601. 
 
 2 Hist. viii. 150. Fuller says that Campion was a man of excellent parts ; 
 though he who rode post to tell him so, might come too late to bring him tidings 
 thereof ; being such a valuer of himself, that he swelled every drop of his 
 ability into a bubble by his vain ostentation. And indeed few who were 
 
 reputed scholars had more of Latin, or less of Greek, than he had His 
 
 Ten Reasons, so purely for Latin, so plainly and pithily penned, that they were 
 
 very taking, and fetched over many (neuters before) to his persuasion 
 
 Some days after he was engaged in four solemn disputations, to make good that 
 bold challenge he had made against all Protestants : " he scarcely answered the 
 expectations raised of him," says Camden ; " and in plain truth," continues 
 Fuller, " no man did ever boast more when he put on his armour, or had cause 
 to boast less when he put it off " but then consider that a dose of the rack was 
 a very poor stimulant to the Jesuit's brain and tongue, although they say it was 
 a mild one. " Within a few days the queen was necessitated, for her own 
 security, to make him the subject of severity, by whose laws he was executed in 
 the following December, 1581." Worthies, i. 382. " To Campion's Reasons 
 Whitaker gave a solid answer," says Camden.
 
 414 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 applied by Elizabeth and her council, says Dr. Lingard; 1 
 and so it would, had there been no Allen's Seminary- 
 priests, no Jesuits to uphold " obedience to the Roman 
 pontiff Romani pontificis obedientiam" and to inflame 
 their deluded dupes with their " admonitions and per- 
 suasion monitis ac suasu" 2 To the infamous bull of 
 the sainted Pope Pius V., to Allen's misguided scheme, 
 to the sworn fidelity of the Jesuits in the service of the 
 pope and his royal colleague of Spain to these his- 
 torical plagues must be ascribed all the calamities which 
 befel the deluded and pitiable Catholics of England. 
 In writing of these transactions historians fail to draw 
 attention to the main cause of these struggles on the one 
 hand, and tortures on the other. The question was, which 
 ascendancy there was to be Protestant or Catholic 1 
 The Pope, Allen, and the Jesuits, were on one side, 
 Elizabeth and her Ministers on the other. The sufferings 
 that ensued were the expected price of the struggle. 
 
 Averse to all manner of ascendancies, whether political 
 or religious, yet I for one exult that the Protestant 
 ascendancy was never utterly shaken, and that it has 
 reached the present times ; simply because under that 
 ascendancy we have freedom of thought, freedom of 
 expression, freedom of action which were never, and 
 never will be compatible with Catholic ascendancy. By 
 this freedom, time enables us to correct the abuses 
 which came from Rome ; so that even Catholics have 
 reason to rejoice that those elements are essential to 
 Protestantism, which is necessarily tolerant by nature 
 (if the phrase be allowed) and which became a per- 
 secutor only by an impulse from Rome, the gigantic 
 persecutor of the universe. 
 
 1 Ubisupra,p. 150. 2 Ami. Litt. as before.
 
 s ma- 
 noeuvres. 
 
 PARSONS DECAMPS. 415 
 
 Parsons did not wait to see Campion executed ; he 
 "fled to the Continent/' 1 "preferring the duty of 
 watching over the infant Church to the glory 
 
 f Parsons dc- 
 
 of martyrdom, if I may borrow Lingard s camps to the 
 phrase applied to John Knox on his departure 
 from Scotland to Geneva. Henceforth he will tempest his 
 country by his writings and machinations ; and whilst 
 he will be the cause of desperate unrest and suffering to 
 others, he will keep his own skin perfectly whole just 
 as it should be for the comfort and consolation of all 
 intriguers. Like a skilful general when baffled by an 
 unsuccessful attack on the enemy's van, he shifted his 
 operations to the rear or flank, casting his H i 
 eyes towards Scotland. It was nothing less 
 than an attempt to convert James VI. of Scotland, the 
 son of Mary Queen of Scots, then imprisoned in England. 
 Parsons sent an embassy to the young king, then in his 
 fifteenth year. The Jesuit Creighton was the leader. 
 Young as he was, James resolved to turn the affair to 
 his own account. He promised to connive at the silent 
 introduction of the Catholic missionaries ; he would 
 even receive one at his court as his tutor in the Italian 
 language ; he would co-operate in any plan for the 
 deliverance of his mother : but unfortunately he was a 
 king without a revenue ; and poverty would compel 
 him at last, unless relieved by the Catholic princes, to 
 submit to the pleasure of Elizabeth. Thus did the wily 
 young Scot set a trap for the Jesuit and he caught 
 him easily. Forthwith Parsons and Creighton went to 
 Paris, where they met the Duke of Guise ; Castelli, the 
 pope's nuncio; Tassis, the Spanish ambassador; Beaton, 
 the Archbishop of Glasgow, and Mary's resident in the 
 
 1 Butler, i. 373.
 
 416 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 French court ; Dr. Allen, the President of the Seminary 
 at Rheims ; and the famous Pere Matthieu, the pro- 
 vincial of the French Jesuits. A long consultation 
 ensued. The general opinion was that Mary should be 
 associated with her son on the Scottish throne, and that 
 the pope and the King of Spain should be solicited to 
 relieve the present pecuniary wants of the young king. 
 It is probable that other projects with which we are 
 unacquainted were also formed in this secret consulta- 
 tion, says Dr. Lingard : whatever they were, they after- 
 wards obtained the assent of the captive queen, of the 
 Scottish king, and cabinet, consisting of Lennox, Huntley, 
 Eglinton, and other deep-schemed politicians, who doubt- 
 less had schooled James into his first hints about 
 money-wants, and were resolved to work out the adroit 
 contrivance. Parsons went to Valladolid and induced 
 King Philip to promise the Scotchman a present of 
 12,000 crowns; and the other Jesuit, Creighton, got 
 the pope to promise to pay the expenses of a body- 
 guard for the king's defence, amounting to 4000 crowns 
 per annum. 1 But the English cabinet was made aware 
 of the secret consultation at Paris, and the Jesuits' 
 manoeuvres in Scotland : what the English spies dis- 
 
 1 " Paga annouale d'una guardia di soldati sufficienti a diffendere la persona 
 del Re Jacopo." Bartoli, p. 255. It was the French Jesuit Samnier who was 
 the ambassador from this secret consultation to Mary. He entered England en 
 militaire, accoutred in a doublet of orange satin, slashed and exhibiting green 
 silk in the openings. At his saddle bow he displayed a pair of pistols, a sword 
 at his side, and scarf round his neck. Pasquier asserts this fact on the authority 
 of those whom he says " were not far from the Company." His endeavour was 
 to excite a secret revolt among certain Catholic lords, against Elizabeth. This 
 may be one of the " other projects " alluded to by Dr. Lingard, as I have stated. 
 He induced Mary to embrace the project : but, according to Pasquier, the 
 fellow had ulterior views in favour of the Spaniard, and ceased not to promote 
 them through the instrumentality of the captive queen. " You may conclude," 
 adds Pasquier, " that she had no other forgers of her death than the Jesuits." 
 Catechis. c. xv. p. 250.
 
 PLOT IN FAVOUR OF MARY OF SCOTLAND. 417 
 
 covered, the English cabinet turned to account, and 
 forthwith organised a new revolution in Scotland, the 
 result of which was that the young king was thrown 
 completely into the hands of the Protestant party ; and 
 the Scottish preachers from the pulpit pointed the 
 resentment of their hearers against the men who had 
 sought to restore an idolatrous worship, and to replace 
 "an adulteress and assassin on the throne." Thus was 
 Parsons once more baffled by Elizabeth and her men. 
 Was it not enough to rouse the Jesuit to the utmost of 
 his efforts, after biting his nails to the quick \ The 
 announcement of these transactions, so fatal to his 
 scheme, came whilst he was discussing the subject with 
 Philip : but he fructified his visit notwithstanding. 
 He induced the king to give an annual pension of 
 2000 crowns for the support of more priests at the 
 Seminary of Rheims ; and to promise to ask for a 
 cardinal's hat for Allen by way of giving more dignity 
 and effect to the scheme of conversion and all its 
 machinations. 1 
 
 Again was a secret consultation held at Paris between 
 the Guise, Beaton, the pope's nuncio, and the Jesuit- 
 provincial, Pere Matthieu. The present object 
 
 Machinations. 
 
 was to devise a plan for the liberation of 
 Mary : the duke was to land with an army in the south 
 of England : James was to penetrate by the north with 
 his Scottish forces ; and the English friends of the 
 Stuarts should be summoned to the aid of the injured 
 queen. This project was imparted to Mary by the 
 French ambassador, to James by Holt, the English 
 Jesuit. 2 Here, then, we have an admitted fact attesting 
 
 1 Lingard, viii. 159, et seq. ; More, 113, et seq. ; Bartoli,242 245. 
 
 2 Ling, ubi swpra. 164. 
 
 VOL. II. E E
 
 418 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 a political scheme against England ; a Jesuit provincial 
 is one of the framers ; the pope lends his sanction by 
 his nuncio ; and a Jesuit is the messenger to one of the 
 prime agents. Assuredly it must now be evident that 
 the English cabinet did not proceed against the Jesuits 
 on unfounded rumours. The scheme failed in the issue : 
 Mary refused her assent, being aware that her keepers 
 had orders to put her to death if any attempt were 
 made to carry her away by force. It was soon after 
 these transactions that the Jesuit Creighton was cap- 
 tured and sent to the Tower, where, in the presence of 
 the rack, he disclosed all the particulars of the projected 
 invasion which had so long alarmed Elizabeth. 1 
 
 Numberless schemes and plots succeeded, and failed 
 by the vigilance of Elizabeth and her council : but each 
 Sufferings of was cruelly followed by redoubled persecution 
 catholics. against the poor Catholics of England. The 
 innumerable spies of the British government perpetually 
 added harassments to the agitated debates, whose object 
 was to frustrate the schemes of the enemy and fortify 
 the throne of England. Poor Queen of Scots unfortu- 
 nate indeed, since she was made a misery to herself and 
 to all who professed her religion in England. It is 
 impossible to form an adequate idea of the condition of 
 the English Catholics during that period, when the 
 Jesuit faction exhausted all their resources to bring 
 
 1 Ling. 172. Respecting the papers found with Creighton, Dr. Lingard says : 
 " Creighton had torn his papers and thrown them into the sea, but the frag- 
 ments were collected, and among them a paper, written in Italian about two 
 years before, showing how England might be successfully invaded." Sadler, ii. 
 401. "I suspect," continues Lingard, " that a paper in Strype is a translation of 
 it." Strype, iii. 414. In his confession Creighton detailed all the particulars of 
 the consultation at Paris ; but added that the invasion was postponed till the 
 troubles in the Low Countries should be ended. Sadler, ib. See p. 363 of the 
 present volume.
 
 DEFENCE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 419 
 
 about her deliverance, by the invasion of England and 
 the simultaneous rebellion of the partisans whom that 
 faction continually fed with the hope of Catholic restora- 
 tion. It is not the effort of Mary herself to effect her 
 deliverance that I denounce. That was but natural. 
 Her captivity was unjust, however expedient it might 
 be thought by the British government : but nothing can 
 justify the recklessness with which her partisans entered 
 into the wildest projects, in spite of previous experience, 
 and ever destined to fail in their objects, but sure to 
 redouble the pitiless vengeance of the Protestant party 
 in England. But, on the one hand, whilst "Verily 
 there were at this time some subtle ways 
 
 Defence of 
 
 taken to try how men stood affected ; coun- the queen 
 terfeit letters privily sent in the name of 
 the Queen of Scots and the fugitives, and left in Papists' 
 houses ; spies sent abroad up and down the country to 
 take notice of people's discourse, and lay hold of their 
 words ; reporters of vain and idle stories admitted and 
 credited ; many brought into suspicion, amongst the rest 
 the Earl of Northumberland ; the Earl of Arundel, his son, 
 was confined to his house, his wife was committed to 
 custody ; " whilst such were the proceedings on the one 
 hand, still on the other we read, and from the same pen, 
 that " Neither yet are such ways for discovery, and easy 
 giving credit, to be esteemed altogether vain, where 
 there is fear for the prince's safety. Certain it is, at 
 this time a horrid piece of popish malice against the 
 queen discovered itself : for they set forth books wherein 
 they exhorted the queen's gentlewomen to act the like 
 against the queen, as Judith had done with applause and 
 commendations against Holofernes. The author was 
 never discovered, but the suspicion lighted upon Gregory 
 
 E E 2
 
 420 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. . 
 
 Martin, an Oxford man, one very learned in the Greek 
 and Latin tongues. Carter, a bookseller, was executed, 
 who procured them to be printed. And whereas the 
 Papists usually traduced the queen as rigid and cruel, 
 she who was always careful to leave a good name and 
 memorial behind her, was highly offended with the 
 inquisitors that were to examine and discover Papists, 
 as inhumanely cruel towards them, and injurious to her 
 
 honour She commanded the inquisitors to 
 
 forbear tortures, and the judges to refrain from putting 
 to death. And not long after she commanded seventy 
 priests, some of which were condemned, and others in 
 danger of the law, to be transported out of England : 
 amongst whom those of chiefest note were Jaspar Hay- 
 wood, son to that famous epigrammatist, who was the 
 first of all the Jesuits that came into England ; James 
 Bosgrave, of the Society of Jesus also ; John Heart, the 
 most learned of all the rest ; and Edward Rishton, that 
 impious, ungrateful man to his prince, to whom, though 
 he owed his life, yet he soon after set forth a book 
 wherein he vomited out the poison of his malice against 
 her." 1 
 
 1 Camden, Ann. 1584. There was one very remarkable exception to this large 
 jail-delivery of confessors the Jesuit Thomas Pond, whom Parsons visited at 
 the Marshalsea, and who published Campion's letter to the queen and council. 
 The history of this poor fellow is most touchingly interesting : when we consider 
 his calamities, we are almost compelled to excuse his conduct with regard to the 
 publication of Campion's imprudent letter. His early history also throws some 
 light on the character of Elizabeth in no favourable point of view, however. 
 I shall follow Pond's own narrative as given by the Jesuit Bartoli. He was a 
 gentleman by birth and fortune : his mother was sister to the Earl of South- 
 ampton. Remarkable for manly beauty and stature, as well as mental accom- 
 plishments, he attracted Elizabeth's attention at the College of Winchester, 
 where, as a student, he had the honour of complimenting the queen with a Latin 
 poem, which he recited on the occasion of a royal visit to the college. His father 
 died, leaving the youth master of a fortune, which he resolved to enjoy to the 
 utmost. The court of Elizabeth was the object of his ardent desire ; its splen-
 
 MARY QUEEN OP SCOTS. 421 
 
 At length the fate of Mary Queen of Scots was pro- 
 nounced. There can be no doubt that the unfortunate 
 queen went to great lengths in her declarations Mary QUCCU 
 to the Spaniard Mendoza, Philip's ambassa- 
 dor, who, after his expulsion from England, never ceased 
 
 dours and delights were his attraction. Thither he hastened : the smiles of his 
 queen charmed away his religion : he conformed to that of his royal mistress. 
 From Christmas to the Epiphany, a ceaseless round of amusements, balls, and 
 musical entertainments, gave fresh animation to the English court ; and in the 
 year 1569, no courtier figured with greater lustre than Thomas Pond. His 
 expenditure was lavish, and he danced to admiration. It appears that his am- 
 bition was to excel in a feat, now exclusively confined to female opera-Camillas, 
 namely, to rise, sustaining the body on one toe, and thus to perform a pirouette, 
 or twirl round and round with great velocity, but without giddiness and a fall. 
 Pond performed the feat with immense applause ; the courtiers shouted appro- 
 bation ; the queen, by way of reward, gave him her hand ungloved, and turning 
 to Leicester, her favourite, she took his hat and sent it to Pond to cover his 
 head, as he was very warm after his feat, and hi a profuse perspiration. Inter- 
 ludes succeeded whilst the dancer took rest. The Queen requested him to 
 repeat his performance. He gladly assented. Gloriously he went through the 
 preliminary steps, and came at length to the all-important and most expected 
 pirouette. He made the effort, but alas ! his head swam round faster than his 
 body giddiness overpowered him he fell to the ground with violence. Peals 
 of bitter laughter resounded ; cutting sarcasms lacerated the courtier's heart ; 
 but the cruellest cut of all was, that the queen did not give him her hand, nor 
 take his part ; on the contrary, " as if in revenge for his having thus disgraced 
 the entertainment, brim-full of disgust she said to him, * Get thee up, ox,' and 
 thus redoubled the laughter around, and the poor fellow's confusion. Pond got up, 
 and with one knee on the ground, bending low, he muttered these solemn words : 
 ' Sic transit gloria mundi thus passeth away the glory of the world.' " He 
 retired from the court, where he was never seen again, nor in London. Shame 
 and inward disgust buried him in retirement at Belmont, his mansion. He 
 then returned to his religion, and to God, practising great austerities. Some of 
 the letters from the Jesuit-missionaries in India fell into his hands : the wonderful 
 adventures, labours, and conversions there related inspired him with the wish to 
 join the Company. He applied for admission ; and ere the answer came from 
 Rome, he was imprisoned for the faith : but he was accepted by the general, 
 and took the vows in prison in the year 1578. Long was his bitter, and as far 
 as we are aware, innocent captivity. He was confined in ten different prisons 
 during the space of thirty years, and " in that space," said he, in a letter to 
 Parsons in 1609, four thousand pounds spoil suffered of my substance." On 
 one occasion, when brought before the Court, he says, " laying my hand upon 
 the breast of my cloak, I protested to them that I would not change it for the 
 queen's crown." He had a good esquire's estate, but it was so pillaged by fines
 
 422 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 to machinate the destruction of Elizabeth. A catholic 
 conspiracy the deliverance of Mary Stuart these 
 were the projects uppermost with the stirring Philip of 
 Spain. The Queen of Scots wrote to Mendoza, saying : 
 " The bearer is charged to impart to you certain over- 
 tures in my behalf, considering the obstinacy so great of 
 my son in heresy, which I assure you I have bewailed 
 and lamented night and day, more than my own cala- 
 mity, and foreseeing on that score the great damage 
 which thence will result to the catholic church by his 
 succeeding to the throne of this kingdom, I have taken 
 the resolution, in case my said son 'does not submit to 
 the catholic church before my death, to cede and give 
 by will my right to the said succession of the crown, to 
 the king your master. I beg you again to keep this very 
 secret, the more, because were it revealed, it would, in 
 France, cause the loss of my dowry, in Scotland, the 
 complete rupture with my son, and in this country, my 
 total ruin and destruction. Marie." 1 
 
 " Certain English critics," says the deep-searching 
 Capefigue, " have believed that many of the documents 
 
 and exactions, that even his enemies were ashamed of their cruelty. " Yea, 
 Salisbury himself upon my plaint, telling him that our gospel taught out of 
 Christ's own mouth, that it was more blessed to give than to take away, as they 
 had taken so much from me, took so much compassion on me for his own 
 honour, as to give me back 20 for my relief of 200, which from a ward 
 that fell to me of one of my tenants, he had taken from me and given to his 
 secretary." Of course it was only by dispensation that Pond was permitted to 
 retain his patrimonial rights, deemed expedient for the province. The good old 
 Cavalier- Jesuit subscribes himself to Parsons, " one of your most devoted chil- 
 dren, although hitherto least beneficial." At length James I. restored the 
 venerable confessor to liberty ; and in 1615 he actually died in the very same 
 apartment at Belmont, in which he was born seventy-six years before ! The 
 queen and council must have had some good reason for keeping him so long in 
 durance vile ; perhaps they feared his resentment. James probably knew 
 nothing of his history. Bartoli, lib. i. p. 51, ct seq. ; Oliver, Collect. 
 1 Archives of Simancas ; apud Capefigue, p. 40.
 
 EXECUTION OP MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 423 
 
 produced at the trial were forged by Elizabeth in order 
 to destroy her rival : but there remain in the archives 
 of Simancas, certain documents too decisive and too 
 important to permit the possibility of still denying the 
 participation of Mary in the grand projects of Philip 
 II. against the Protestant crown of England." l The 
 Jesuits had stirred all Christendom, with Mary for their 
 watchword : they had been her advisers : one of them 
 attended her for some time during her captivity, in the 
 quality of physician : but all to no purpose : their ad- 
 dress failed by the superior craft of the English cabinet ; 
 and the Spaniard's gold was as powerless as his arma- 
 ments were destined to prove against Britain. Mary 
 Queen of Scots was executed in 1587. Mary Her execu- 
 could not escape her fate : she suffered like a 1 
 strong woman ; as admirable in her death as she was 
 beautiful and captivating in life. 2 Deep was the 
 
 1 Capef. La Ligue et Henri IV. p. 38. 
 
 3 After all that has been said for and against the conduct of Elizabeth in 
 putting Mary to death, it is somewhat curious to find that the Jesuit Ribadeneyra 
 ascribes her fate to a veritable judgment of Heaven, for having tolerated heresy 
 against the opinion of good Catholics, and for not having " murdered the bastard 
 Stuart, their chief tolerd las heregias contra el parecer de los buenos Catolicos, y 
 no quiso que matasscn al bastardo Stuard que era cabec;a dellos " (!) This is a 
 quoted opinion expressed to Henry III., and sanctioned by this Jesuit-patriarch. 
 He superadds his own as follows : " In this example we see how different are 
 the judgments of God and those of men. For the Queen of Scotland, when for 
 reasons of state, she connived at the heretics of her kingdom, these were nume- 
 rous and powerful, and she was a woman and young, and without experience, 
 and she followed the advice of those whom she had by her side, and told her it 
 was better to conciliate than endanger the loss of all, which are all reasons that 
 may excuse her in our eyes. But the Lord, who is most jealous of his honour, 
 and who does not wish that kings, whom he has honoured above all other men, 
 should be careless of it, punished the Queen on one hand with justice, depriving 
 her of her kingdom and liberty, and afflicting her with so long an imprisonment, 
 and with a treatment unworthy of her royal person ; and on the other hand, 
 ending her miseries with so glorious an end as was the sacrifice of her life for 
 her most Iwly faith [which is decidedly a new view] and for the same religion 
 which she had at first defended with less firmness." Tradad. de laReliy. c. xv. 91 .
 
 424 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 impression made by the fall of that royal head : all 
 Europe shuddered at the tale pity and indignation 
 shared the feelings of humanity. Pope Pius IV. had 
 put to death the nephews of Paul IV., on the flimsiest 
 pretences, and unjustly : no indignant sound boomed 
 forth : the very representatives of all the world's mora- 
 lity at the time, the Jesuits, kissed his guilty hands 
 with as much fervour as before. There was now, how- 
 ever, in the case of the unfortunate Queen of Scots an 
 important difference : she had been the nucleus of the 
 Catholic movement in England, whilst England was 
 connected with France, was an object of anxious desire 
 to the papal party, and was the hope of the Spaniard, 
 whose influence then, in the shape of gold, extended 
 over Europe. It required all these considerations to 
 enlist the sympathies of the Catholic world at that time 
 in the fate of Mary Queen of Scots. 
 
 That event accelerated the glorious Armada which 
 
 Philip was preparing to crush Elizabeth. The pope's 
 
 approval was demanded by the Spaniard, 
 
 Preliminaries lx AII-II 
 
 to the Spanish who also suggested that Allen might be made 
 a cardinal, for the purpose of coming to Eng- 
 land as legate, with a commission to reconcile the coun- 
 try to the communion of Rome, and to confirm the con- 
 quest to the Spanish crown should the expedition 
 prove successful. Philip also demanded an aid of money 
 from the pope. All the former requests were complied 
 with readily by Sixtus V. ; but the subsidy the money 
 a million of crowns was to be paid when the in- 
 vading army should have landed in England a provi- 
 sion which at once shows the deep sagacity of the 
 cunning Sixtus, who knew the value of money. If 
 England were reduced to the dominion of Rome, the
 
 THE FAMOUS " ADMONITION/' 425 
 
 million of crowns would be a very advantageous invest- 
 ment ; which however could never be said respecting 
 its application to a mere attempt. Allen was ordered 
 to prepare an explanatory address to be dispersed 
 among the people on the arrival of the Armada ; and 
 he complied. The result of his pious meditations was 
 the famous Admonition to the nobility and peo- T h e Admo- 
 ple of England and Ireland, concerninge the mtlon -" 
 present warres, made for the execution of his holmes' 
 sentence, by the highe and mightie Kinge Catholicke of 
 Spainc." 1 There can be but one opinion on this pre- 
 cious document ; and it shall be expressed by one of the 
 most candid writers that ever honoured the church of 
 Rome. " This publication," says Mr. Tierney, 
 
 J f , J A Catholic's 
 
 " the most offensive, perhaps, ot the many opinion of 
 offensive libels sent forth by the party to 
 which Allen had attached himself, was printed at Ant- 
 werp, and, in a tone of the most scurrilous invective, 
 denounced the character and conduct of the queen ; 
 portrayed her as the offspring of adultery and incest, a 
 lascivious tyrant, and an unholy perjurer; and con- 
 cluded by calling upon all persons, ' if they would 
 avoide the pope's, the kinge's, and the other prince's 
 highe indignation,' if they would escape ' the angel's 
 curse and malediction upon the inhabitantes of the land 
 of Meros/ to rise against a woman odious alike to God 
 and man, to join the liberating army upon its landing, 
 and thus to free themselves from the disgrace of having 
 'suffered such a creature, almost thirtie yeares toge- 
 ther, to raigne both over their bodies and soules, to the 
 extinguishinge not onely of religion, but of all chaste 
 livinge and honesty/ }: To increase the effect of this 
 
 1 Ling. viii. 271 ; Tierney (Dodd) iii. 28 (note) ; Strada, Ann. 1558.
 
 426 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 address, its substance was, at the same time, compressed 
 into a smaller compass, and printed on a broadside, for 
 more general distribution. It was called, " A Declara- 
 tion of the sentence of deposition of Elizabeth, the 
 usurper and pretended Quene of Englande." 
 
 " Our said Holy Father," declared this broadside, " of 
 his benignity, and favour to this enterprise, out of the spi- 
 rituall treasures of his church, committed to his custody 
 and dispensation, graunteth most liberally to all such as 
 assist, concurr, or help in any wise, to the deposition 
 and punishment of the above-named persons, and to the 
 reformation of these two Countryes, Plenary Indul- 
 gence and pardon of all their sinnes, being duly penitent, 
 contrite, and confessed, according to the law of God, 
 and usual custome of Christian people." 
 
 " The ostensible author of the Admonition," says 
 Mr. Tierney, " was Allen, who inserted his name, as 
 ' Cardinal of Englande,' in the title-page, and thus ren- 
 dered himself answerable for its contents. Still, Watson 
 and others constantly maintained that it was really 
 Parsons is its Panned by Parsons ; a charge which Parsons 
 author. himself, in his Manifestation, (35, 47), rather 
 evades than denies. In another work, however, he 
 notices the accusation of his having ' helped the cardinal 
 to make his book/ and to that replies at once, by 
 denouncing it as a 'he ' (Answer to 0. E., p. 2, apud 
 Warneword)." 1 The underlining of the word " helped," 
 with the delicate " lie," is not what Pallavicino, another 
 Jesuit, would call a " solid lie," but it is an arrant equivo- 
 cation notwithstanding, as who should say, I did not help 
 
 1 Dodd's Church History, iii. 29. See also Watson's Important Considerations, 
 &c. for a comprehensive analysis of the book ; Mendham's Edit. 57, et seq.; and 
 for a systematic digest of the atrocious production, see Lingard, viii. 446, note Q.
 
 PERTINENT CONCLUSIONS. 427 
 
 him : I wrote it for him. And now it seems to me that 
 this Admonition to which Allen lent his name, and 
 which is brought home to the Jesuit Parsons, pertinent 
 attests at once the opinions entertained in 
 England, as expressed by Cainden, respecting the senti- 
 ments and doctrines of Allen's seminary-priests and the 
 Jesuit missionaries. 1 The forceful energy of these 
 hideous sentiments declared by the Admonition and 
 broadside declaration, could scarcely be inspired on the 
 spur of the moment, when the Armada was ready to 
 put the bull into execution. No other inference is 
 admissible ; and therefore I appeal to this last demon- 
 stration, for the opinions I have all along expressed on 
 the machinations of the missionary faction in England. 
 History must be grateful to the Armada of Spain for 
 this important elucidation. All who feel an interest in 
 the veneration due to pure religion, must exult to find 
 that the disastrous consequences of the missionary incul- 
 cations in England, resulted from the abuse of the reli- 
 gious sentiment in men, resulted as the terrible retribu- 
 tion awarded to crime by a superintending Providence. 
 Those who represented themselves as the messengers of 
 peace and salvation, were the roaring bellows of sedition 
 
 1 Amongst the Important Considerations of us, the Secular Priests, we find as 
 follows : " In these tumultuous and rebellious proceedings by sundry Catholics, 
 both in England and Ireland, it could not be expected but that the Queen and the 
 State would be greatly incensed with indignation against us. We had (some of 
 us) greatly approved the said rebellion, highly extolled the rebels, and pitifully 
 bewailed their ruin and overthrow. Many of our affections were knit to the 
 Spaniard : and for our obedience to the pope, we all do profess it. The attempts 
 both of the pope and Spaniard failing in England, his holiness, as a temporal 
 prince, displayed his banner in Ireland. The plot was to depiive her highness first 
 from that kingdom (if they could) and then by degrees to depose her from this. 
 In all these plots none were more forward than many that were priests. The 
 Laity, if we had opposed ourselves to these designments, would (out of doubt) 
 have been over-ruled by ut. How many men of our calliny were addicted to these 
 courses, the State knew not."
 
 428 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 and incendiary Pharisees. Had these priests and these 
 Jesuits directed their efforts to conciliate rather than 
 exasperate the queen and the government, far different 
 would have been the result. But what was their prac- 
 tice must be evident from the sentiments expressed in 
 this Admonition and declaration of the leaders. The 
 man who penned those horrible and disgusting senti- 
 ments, had journeyed far and wide throughout the 
 country, whilst the cruel measures of the crown against 
 the scapegoat Catholics gave him the best opportunity 
 for exasperating the people's rancour against their queen, 
 preparatory to the Spaniard's invasion. Even that very 
 persecution was made the means of stimulating foreign 
 hatred against the queen and government of England. 
 Parsons wrote an account of it, as I have stated, and it 
 was translated into several languages, and scattered 
 over Europe. Wherever there were Jesuits, hatred to 
 the Queen of England was not wanting, if it depended 
 on the representations of the Jesuits ; but none could 
 equal the " Polypragmon " Parsons, whose monster-heart 
 was at length gratified when the " bulky dragons of the 
 grand Armada " sped forth from the dark, deep waters 
 of Vigo. 1 
 
 Spain's mighty armament made sail. Eager were the 
 hungry billows to swallow down the boastful and blas- 
 The grand pheming Groliaths : they were denied their 
 Armada. mea ] ve awn ile ; and down upon Albion 
 bore that gallant fleet which half the forests of Galicia 
 
 1 " The memory of which attempt," say the Secular Priests before quoted, 
 " will be (as we trust) an everlasting monument of Jesuitical treason and cruelty. 
 For it is apparent in a treatise penned by the advice of Father Parsons 
 altogether (as we so verily think) that the King of Spaine was especially moved 
 and drawn to that intended mischief against us, by the long and early solicita- 
 tions of the Jesuits and other English Catholics beyond the seas, affected and 
 altogether given to Jesuitism." Important Considerations, 57.
 
 THE SPANISH ARMADA. 429 
 
 had been felled to build, manned by all the sons of the 
 Spanish seas, impressed from the thousand bays and 
 creeks of the stern Cantabrian shore. 1 There were 
 8000 sailors and 19,000 soldiers. There were 135 
 ships of war : all the mysteries of heaven and the holy 
 men of earth had their namesakes in the motley arma- 
 ment. There was the St. Louis, the St. Philip, the 
 St. Bernard, the St. Christopher, the Maiden and She- 
 Mouse, the Samson, the Little St. Peter, the Trinity, the 
 Crucifix, and the Conception all under the command 
 of the Marquess Santa Crux, or the Holy Cross. 2 No 
 lack of celestial patronage for Philip's glorious " idea." 
 And whilst the indefatigable Jesuits stirred all Europe 
 in the papal-Spanish cause, on every road were met 
 bodies of volunteer-soldiers, noble or otherwise, hasten- 
 ing from Spain, and Germany, and Italy, to the place 
 of the gathering all impelled with one undoubt- 
 able hope to crush the queen in her island-home. 3 
 And what was the fleet that Elizabeth opposed to this 
 awful visitation ? What the number of her men \ It 
 were absurd to tell that computation against the Levia- 
 thians and myriads of Spain. Never was England less 
 able to cope by numbers with the invader ; but the old 
 age of Elizabeth was made youthful by an ardent heart 
 and a vigorous mind, and she sought and she found 
 a world-defying rampart in that new people whom 
 the Reformation dashed into the political movement of 
 the sixteenth century. 4 Tough were the hearts that 
 had defied Rome, with all her terrors they might fear 
 no other devilish foe and they feared not the Spaniard 
 and his invincible Armada. And the poor oppressed, 
 
 1 Borrow's Bible in Spain, c. xxviii. 168. 
 
 2 Capefigue, La Ligue et Henri IV. 42. 3 Ling. viii. 272. 4 Capefigue, p. 47.
 
 430 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 persecuted Catholics will they not now hail the mock 
 sun of freedom, and rise in its deceitful blaze to crush 
 their queen and country for the Spaniard ? Some say 
 they amounted to one half the population, which is 
 very improbable ; others raise the number to two-thirds, 
 which is as absurd as it is improbable ; still they were 
 undoubtedly numerous ; and if being two-thirds, as 
 Allen and the Jesuits stated, they had still sub- 
 mitted to their queen, acknowledged her right to the 
 throne, were loyal, why had they been stimulated to 
 disaffection by their self-appointed teachers ? By their 
 own showing, have we not here a proof of that partisan- 
 infatuation and downright treason which accompanied 
 and motived the Catholic movement in England, impelled 
 by the Jesuits and those seminary-priests who were 
 managed by the Jesuits ? And now, in the very teeth 
 of the Spaniard's demonstration, contemptuously tram- 
 pling on the base prospect of righting themselves by 
 betraying their country, they stood forth to a man 
 loyal as God, as their country, as their own hearts impe- 
 ratively willed in utter defiance of that horrible abuse 
 of religion, whereby their pope pretended to free them 
 from their oaths of allegiance, and to justify the murder 
 of their queen the betrayal of their country. 1 There 
 
 1 " And whereas, it is well known that the Duke of Medina Sidonia [the 
 Spanish admiral after Santa Crux] had given it out directly, that if once he 
 might land in England, both Catholics and Heretics that came in his way should 
 be all one to him : his sword could not discern them, so he might make 
 way for his master, all was one to him." Important Considerations by us, the 
 Secular Priests, 57. In effect, there is no doubt that Philip was the more 
 easily induced to undertake this crusade against England, inasmuch as he had 
 many things to avenge on Elizabeth. She had thwarted him as he deserved to 
 be, on every occasion. Her ships had intercepted his ill-gotten treasures in the 
 Indies ; she had aided his enemies, the Netherlanders, in their battle of freedom, 
 civil and religious. The latter conduct was highly honourable to her, though 
 the former and her dissimulation hi both were reprehensible. Still, let it never
 
 LOYALTY OF THE CATHOLICS OF ENGLAND. 431 
 
 was the admitted end of the admitted machinations 
 of the sacerdotal traitors. What a disappointment for 
 these traitors but how the heart of all humanity should 
 exult to find that God, and nature, and our country's 
 love, are infinitely more powerful, more influential in 
 noble minds and hearts, than all the vile tricks, and 
 craft, and machinations of sacerdotal iniquity. And 
 thus it will ever be. Such will ever be the termination 
 of sacerdotal abuses of man's religious sentiment : they 
 will work out their own punishment amain : God and 
 His providence, and humanity, will be justified to the 
 utter destruction of all sacerdotal pretensions, contri- 
 vances, machinations, and influence amongst men. This 
 is the finality of that retribution which sacerdotal 
 iniquity has deserved and to this finality we are 
 advancing nay, half the providential work is already 
 achieved. Bitter it is to record that the base fears 
 generated by sacerdotal and Jesuitical machinations in 
 England, suggested to some of Elizabeth's politicians 
 the imitation of that Catholic monstrosity the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew, whereat Philip so exulted, 
 and the Pope of Rome gave holiday and sang Te 
 Deum. These short-sighted politicians cruelly advised 
 the queen to cut off the heads of the Catholic party in 
 England. Such is the force of example. Henry VIII. 
 had perpetrated a similar atrocity, when the pope 
 instigated the emperor and the King of France to 
 threaten invasion ; and the massacre of the French 
 Protestants was still fresh in the memories of men. 
 But Elizabeth rejected the barbarous advice. No trace 
 
 be forgotten, that was the very age of craft and roguery of all kinds, civil and 
 religious ; in this respect, they were all nearly alike, if Philip was not worse 
 than any.
 
 432 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 of a disloyal project could be discovered : she therefore 
 refused to dip her hands in the blood of the innocent, 
 " upon some pretence or other," as they basely worded 
 the infernal suggestion. Still she permitted the Catho- 
 lics to be subjected to the severest trials. The " setters " 
 ferreted more keenly than ever. Crowds of Catholics of 
 both sexes, and of every rank, were dragged to the 
 common jails throughout the kingdom. But no provo- 
 cation could urge them to any act of imprudence. They 
 displayed no less patriotism than their more favoured 
 countrymen. The peers armed their tenants and 
 dependents in the service of the queen. Some of the 
 Catholic gentlemen equipped vessels, and gave the com- 
 mand to Protestants ; and many solicited permission to 
 fight in the ranks as privates against the common enemy. 
 But the Eternal seemed to interpose in behalf of Britain 
 and her queen, and her loyal subjects, Catholic and Pro- 
 testant. In truth, it could not be permitted that so 
 crying an injustice as that of Rome and Spain should be 
 crowned with success. Prodigies of valour were achieved 
 by England's pigmy fleet against the dragons of the 
 invader. Fireships shot panic through the men of the 
 flaming Inquisition as by a judgment and all was 
 confusion ; then a mighty tempest undertook the battle 
 of England. "Thou didst blow with thy wind the 
 sea covered them they sank as lead in the mighty 
 waters." In a single night the invincible Armada sank 
 in "the yeast of waves/' a tribute to the manes of 
 Loyola and the spirit of his legion. How the rejoicing 
 waves exulted with the wrecks of that glorious arma- 
 ment one hundred and twenty ships, with Spain's 
 best soldiers, her best trained mariners, down in the 
 worrying waters, tearing them to pieces as the vultures
 
 DESTRUCTION OP THE SPANISH ARMADA. 433 
 
 tear a carrion, and the glutted waves rejoiced and 
 sported with the wrecks of that proud armament. Far 
 along the coast of Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, 
 the floating remnants sped and proclaimed Spain's down- 
 fall begun. England's destiny was developed, and the 
 glorious prosperity and power of the persecuted Nether- 
 landers dawned with that day when Spain was humbled. 
 A single ship reached Spain a crippled wreck pierced 
 on all sides, her masts shattered with shot, almost every 
 man wounded, incapable of duty ; from day to day 
 they had flung their dead by sixes to the deep. Such 
 was the end of Philip's gigantic enterprise that project 
 intended to establish Catholic unity and the immeasura- 
 ble grandeur of his royal power. Pasquin, at Rome, 
 announced that " The pope would grant, from the plenitude 
 of his power, indulgencies for a thousand years, if any one 
 would tell him for certain what had become of the Spanish 
 Armada : whither it had gone, whether it was lifted up 
 to heaven or driven down to hell or was somewhere 
 hanging in the air, or tossing in a sea." 1 What thought 
 Philip when he heard the result ? Heaven only knows : but 
 he said these words : "I sent my army to punish the pride 
 and insolence of the English, and not to fight with the 
 fury of the winds and the rage of the troubled ocean. I 
 thank God that I have still a few ships remaining after 
 such a furious tempest ; " and he forbade all public 
 mourning, and among the survivors he distributed 
 50,000 crowns out of his Indian treasury. 2 Historians 
 vary as to the words of Philip on this occasion : but 
 most of them give him praise for the same ; and 
 
 1 Nares, iii. 385. 
 
 2 Philip had a million of ducats yearly from Peru ; and one-fifth of twenty mil- 
 lions brought from the other Indies yearly. MS. Bib. Cotton. Jul. F. vi. 142. 
 
 VOL. II. F F
 
 434 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Dr. Lingard, otherwise so shrewd, calls this " the mag- 
 nanimity of Philip." For my part, I perfectly agree 
 with the Catholic Condillac, who says : " I would admire 
 the sentiment, perhaps, if he had not had the imprudence 
 to reject the advice of the Duke of Parma. 1 I say 
 perhaps, because I do not think that the courage of a 
 sovereign consists in evincing insensibility, whilst his 
 subjects are perishing around him : especially, if he has 
 not foreseen that there are winds and waves on the 
 ocean. Whilst his generals were winning the battle of 
 St. Quentin, he remained in his tent between two 
 monks, with whom he was praying to heaven for 
 victory ; and he did not go out until he was informed 
 of the total defeat of the French. A king who watches 
 over his own safety with so much prudence is willingly 
 rash when he only exposes his soldiers ; and when he 
 suffers loss, his seeming fortitude is only the mask of a 
 vain mind, which will not admit its errors." 2 
 
 1 Parma advised the reduction of Flushing before the invasion ; and Sir 
 William Stanley, one of the Catholic traitors of England, in the king's service, 
 had advised the occupation of Ireland as a measure necessary to secure the con- 
 quest of England ; but the king would admit of no delay. Parsons had primed 
 and loaded him and he could not help going off. See Lingard, viii. 279. 
 
 2 Hist. Mod. Ouvres, t. xxiv. p. 283. For the Armada and the catastrophe, 
 see Ling. viii. 270 285 ; Capefigue, Ref. et Henry IV. p. 42, el seq. The 
 Spanish clergy, who had prophesied the happy issue of this expedition to be cer- 
 tain, were much embarrassed, but at length laid the blame upon the toleration 
 afforded in Spain to the infidels. All the Protestant powers rejoiced at the 
 failure, for if England had fallen, they would scarcely have been able to resist ; 
 but even the Catholic powers, who h'kewise dreaded the preponderating influ- 
 ence of Philip, did not much regret the issue. To Henry IV. of France it was 
 of immediate advantage, and the independence of the Dutch was as good as 
 decided. They, therefore, above all others, took part hi the joy of the English, 
 and struck medals in commemoration of the destruction of the Invincible Armada, 
 with the inscription, Venit, ivit, fuit, (it came, it went, and was no more). 
 Since that time, Spain has never recovered any decisive influence in the affairs 
 of Europe. Some isolated moments of active exertion and bold enthusiasm 
 have not been able to arrest the lamentable decay of the state and the people. 
 Rnumer, Polit. Hist. i. 356.
 
 THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE IN FRANCE. 435 
 
 Leaving England to follow up her advantages in the 
 crippled condition of Spain the Earl of Essex ravaging 
 the coasts of Portugal, capturing Cadiz, advancing to 
 Seville ; whilst Frobisher and Drake on the ocean 
 winnowed the galleons of Spain, laden with Indian 
 wares and virgin gold, Lancaster pillaging Brazil, 
 Raleigh, Hawkins, Norris, and Cavendish, seizing the 
 South Sea islands ; and leaving the Jesuit Parsons and 
 Allen still machinating in behalf of Spanish interests in 
 England, amidst intestine bickerings and paper-warfare 
 among the body of the still persecuted Catholics let 
 us contemplate the Jesuits in another field, and consider 
 the religio-political opinions which, amidst the 
 
 . fc r The Catholic 
 
 agitations of Europe, they advanced and de- league in 
 fended. In France the Duke of Guise had 
 reached the culminating point of his ambition, swaying 
 the nation with higher prospects unconcealed. The 
 stirring Spaniard, Philip II., was his master. The proud 
 Guise vowed " a most faithful and most perfect obe- 
 dience " to the golden monarch, whose design seems to 
 have been universal sovereignty for himself, amidst 
 Catholic unity for the pope, &C. 1 Orthodoxy, " religion/' 
 were the pretences of Philip and all his humbled and 
 obedient servants. The oath taken by all who joined 
 the league, at once declares its nature and its aim. 
 " I swear to God the Creator and under penalty of 
 anathema and eternal damnation, that I have entered 
 into this Catholic Association according to the form 
 of the treaty which has just been read to me loyally, 
 and sincerely, whether to command or to obey and 
 serve ; and I promise, with my life and my honour, to 
 continue therein to the last drop of my blood, without 
 
 1 Capefigue, quoting a letter from Guise to Philip. Ref. et Henri IV. p. 51. 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 resisting it or retiring at any command, on any pretext, 
 excuse, nor occasion whatever." 1 Henry III., the 
 King of France, finding himself circumvented by the 
 Spanish or Catholic party, and made their tool, tore 
 from them at once, and threw himself into the arms of 
 the opposition, after causing the Duke of Guise to be 
 murdered. This event roused the grand Catholic League 
 or Association to open hostility, and bound it more 
 closely to its motive head, the King of Spain. Pope 
 Sixtus V. was its patron. He resented the fall of Guise : 
 but when the duke's brother, the Cardinal of Guise, also 
 was assassinated, his indignation became religiously 
 inexorable. Henry III. trembled not before the pope's 
 displeasure. His was not the resistance of manly vigour, 
 but the petulant excitement of mental weakness, stimu- 
 lated by the desperate position into which the machina- 
 tions of party had thrown him. He thwarted the pope 
 to the utmost. The Court of Rome made a prospective 
 demand that he should declare Henry of Navarre (the 
 future Henry IV.) incapacitated to succeed to the throne 
 of France. Far from complying, the king struck an 
 alliance with the Huguenot, whom he recognised as the 
 lawful heir to the crown of France. This sealed his fate : 
 but many important events had led to the issue. 
 
 It is a striking fact that whilst the Protestant ascen- 
 dancy of England maintained itself triumphant, and 
 impregnable to the misguided efforts of the Jesuits 
 and seminary -priests, the struggle against the Catholic 
 ascendancy of France was most vigorous and determined 
 full of hope, and, in all appearance, driving to com- 
 plete success in the accession of a Protestant king. It 
 was this desolating prospect that inspired the oath 
 
 1 Cretineau-Joly, ii. 388.
 
 THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE IN FRANCE. 437 
 
 which the Leaguers swore to God Almighty. Catholic 
 theorists amuse themselves with discovering in the 
 League a grand result of religious reaction : and so it 
 was, but let it be always understood as the religious 
 reaction of a most despicably corrupt age a most un- 
 christian humanity. At the prospect of a Protestant 
 a Huguenot king, the Leaguers grew frantic ; and none 
 were more desperate than the Jesuits. They joined and 
 organised the insurrection. 1 It was favoured by Philip II. 
 and the Pope how could the Jesuits hold aloof ? The 
 Jesuits were skilful negotiators ; the League gave them 
 employment. 2 Samnier overran Germany, Italy, and 
 Spain. Claude Matthieu won the title of the League's 
 Courier by his indefatigable exertions in the cause. 
 Henry III. complained to the pope respecting the ardour 
 of the Jesuits in the agitation of which he had the good 
 sense to disapprove, if not induced by fear for his own 
 security. To their general, Aquaviva, he notified his 
 wish that only French Jesuits should for the future be 
 appointed to govern the houses and colleges of France. 3 
 Now it happened that the famous Auger possessed the 
 confidence of the king ; and it also happened that Pere 
 Matthieu was a kind of foreigner, although the provincial 
 of Paris ; and so Matthieu accused Auger, his brother Je- 
 suit, of jealousy and ambition giving him credit for the 
 move. He was nevertheless superseded in his office, and 
 Odon Pigenat was named his successor. 4 When Matthieu 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 391. 2 Id. ib. 392. 3 Id. ib. 393. 
 
 4 The council-faction of the Sixteen, so called because they ruled the sixteen 
 wards of Paris, was sometimes graced by the presence of this Jesuit, for the 
 purpose of moderating " the fury of that execrable tribunal," if we may believe 
 the Jesuit Richeome. Documents, ubi supra. The Jesuit college in the Rue St. 
 Jaques, was sometimes the rendezvous of these secret conspirators and traitors, 
 in the service of the Spaniard. It was in the Jesuit houses that Mendoza, 
 Aguillon, Feria, and other agents of Philip worked out their schemes and plots. 
 Plaid. d'Arnaud, LesJe&uites Crim. p. 200.
 
 438 HISTOEY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 returned from Rome in 1585, the king ordered him to 
 retire toPont-a-Mousson,and menaced him with his anger 
 should he disobey. 1 Aquaviva did not countenance the 
 League, and the king resolved to put down its very 
 active courier, Pere Matthieu the ring-leader of the 
 Jesuit-section. The General of the Jesuits did more. He 
 complained of Pere Matthieu to the pope. It seems an 
 extraordinary procedure for the general to appeal to 
 the pope against his own subject : but it evidences the 
 fact that Pere Matthieu was under authority distinct 
 from that of the Company and its Constitutions. Aqua- 
 viva earnestly requested the pope not to permit any 
 Jesuit to meddle with combinations so foreign and 
 dangerous to the Institute. " Give an order to confirm 
 these words to Claude Matthieu," said the general to 
 the pope, " and permit me to send him into a country 
 where he cannot be suspected of such negotiations." 2 
 Pope Sixtus V. positively refused to accede to the 
 petition. The Jesuit Leaguers Matthieu, Saimiier, 3 Hay, 
 
 1 So far Cretineau and the Jesuits ; but they do not state the object of his 
 mission. He had been sent to Rome by the Leaguers in order to induce the 
 pope to favour the rebellion and the enemies of the state. " We find," says 
 Mezeray, " by a letter of this Jesuit, which was given to the public, that the 
 pope did not approve of the proposal to assassinate the king ; but he advised 
 the seizure of his person, so as to ensure the occupation of the towns under his 
 authority. Abrege Chron. t. ii. 504, ed. 1755. Annales, t, i. p. 457, n. 3. 
 
 2 Cretineau, ii. 395. 
 
 3 The facts which I have quoted from the last Jesuit-historian seem to prove 
 all that the enemies of the Company lay to its charge in the troubles of the 
 League. From Cretineau's account, it is evident that the League owed much 
 of its rapid development to the intrigues and doctrines of the Jesuits. The 
 Jesuit Samnier was the first of the confraternity employed in the machinations. 
 Pasquier styles him a man disposed and resolved for all sorts of hazards. He 
 was sent in 1581 to all the Catholic princes to discover the prospects of affairs. 
 A man better qualified could not be selected for the business. He could trans- 
 form himself into as many forms as objects sometimes dressed as a soldier, 
 sometimes as a priest, at others, as a country clown. Games at dice, cards, &c. 
 were as familiar to him as his breviary. He could change his name as easily as 
 his garb. He visited successively, in his project, Germany, Italy and Spain. His
 
 AQUAVIVA AND MATTHIEU. 439 
 
 Commolet, the Rector of the Parisian House of the 
 Professed, and other Jesuits enrolled under the banner 
 of the League, " only did their duty" according to the 
 pope's opinion. 1 Aqua viva forbade Matthieu to meddle 
 with politics for the future, without his express per- 
 mission. Nevertheless, soon after, he accepted a com- 
 mission from the chiefs of the League, and set off for 
 Italy. At Loretto he received a letter from Aquaviva, 
 couched in the most respectful terms imaginable, accord- 
 ing to the general's practice, but strongly and im- 
 peratively opposed to his return into France, " for a 
 certain affair," which is not particularised (probably 
 referring either to the seizure or the murder of the 
 king) ; and expressly commanding him, in the most 
 respectful terms, not to leave Loretto until further 
 orders. He died in this exile, within fifteen months. 
 " Inactivity killed him in 1587," says the historian of 
 the Jesuits. Thus it appears that Aquaviva sided with 
 the king, whose adviser was the Jesuit Edmond Auger. 2 
 
 business was to represent to the sovereigns the danger of the Catholic religion 
 in France, and the connivance of the king, Henry III., to that state of 
 affairs, by secretly favouring the Huguenots. Pasquier, Cat. des Jesuites, c. xi. 
 In the alphabetical defence put forth by the Jesuits, touching the Jesuit Leaguers, 
 Samnicr is omitted ; so we may suppose that nothing could be said in his favour. 
 Documents, i. ; Jes. Lig. p. 37. 
 
 1 Cretineau, ii. 395, et Juvenc. Hist. Part V. 
 
 2 At the moment of this his most exalted position, Edmond Auger becomes 
 very interesting, particularly as we now find that the most determined adviser 
 of heretic proscription is become indifferent, if not hostile, to the grand Catholic 
 demonstration of France. Edmond Auger, when a youth, was a domestic or 
 cook-assistant among the Jesuits at Rome. His disposition and apparent 
 talents merited and won encouragement ; the Jesuits set him to study, he ad- 
 vanced, figured in France as we have read, and finally became preacher and 
 confessor to Henry III. This was a trying position, for Henry was one of the 
 most profligate men of that most profligate age : still " he had principles of 
 religion," as Father Origny the Jesuit, observes ; and, we may add, that the same 
 praise may be awarded to the worst men of the time and its cause is to be 
 found in the prevailing mania of the " religious " question on all sides. The 
 confraternity of penitents invented by the Jesuits, or at least revived by them,
 
 440 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 This Jesuit kept aloof, with the king, from the machina- 
 tions of the League. Whether it was a clever stroke 
 of policy in the general, the result of that calculation 
 which computed the infallible catastrophe impending, 
 is but a matter of conjecture : certain it is that though 
 Aquaviva kept aloof, the Jesuit Leaguers in France were 
 as active as ever, and even accused Auger of too great 
 complacency towards Henry III., because he did not 
 " throw himself into the League with his habitual fer- 
 vour." Aquaviva yielded or seemed to yield, and sum- 
 moned Auger from the Court of France ! Henry could 
 not do without his father confessor, who " had felt the 
 pulse of his conscience," and appealed to the pope, 
 craving his intervention. The pope complied, the 
 general submitted, and Auger continued to feel the 
 conscience-pulse of King Henry III. Meanwhile the 
 Jesuit Leaguers, determined to achieve a triumph over 
 heresy, had " fashioned themselves to a life half-religious, 
 half-military, which the dangers, the predications, the 
 enthusiasm of every hour rendered attractive to men of 
 courage and men of faith." 1 Many of the Jesuits were 
 
 pleased the king for some reasons unknown, and he took a part in them, dressed 
 in a sack, and performed all the mummeries. Auger published, in 1584, a 
 treatise on the subject, entitled " Metanoelogy [or, a discourse on repentance] 
 touching the arch-congregation of penitents of Our Lady's Annunciation, and all the 
 other beautiful devout assemblies of the Holy Church." The people objected to 
 the practice, and branded it as hypocrisy ; but the king liked these meetings, 
 and the confessor humoured the disgusting fancy, for to suppose piety or devo- 
 tion in Henry III. were absurd. He describes and boasts of these penitential 
 coteries, and their practices, not forgetting their sacks, their girdles, the discipline 
 or whipping, and fails not to be excessively severe on those ecclesiastics and 
 laymen in great numbers who objected to the mummeries. Auger's influence 
 with the king was turned to the account of the Company ; but he seems himself 
 to have led an exemplary life in spite of his connection with the lewd and 
 unprincipled king. His panegyrist, Origny, says that he appeared to several 
 persons after his death. The same companion of Jesus tells us that Auger was 
 the first Jesuit who had the honour to be confessor to the King of France. Vie 
 du P. Edmund Auger, par Jean (TOi'igny, p. 299, et teg. See also Gregoire, 
 Confess, dei Rois, p. 303, el scq. ' Cretineau, ii. 400.
 
 MURDER OP THE DUKE OP GUISE. 441 
 
 massacred by the Huguenots : many of their colleges 
 were sacked : but they received compensation in other 
 numerous foundations, when Aquaviva sent a visitor 
 to investigate the state of the French provinces of the 
 Company of Jesus. He also enjoined Auger to in- 
 duce the king to permit his departure from that royal 
 conscience whose pulse he had felt so deeply. The 
 Jesuit left the king. He went to Lyons, and preached 
 against the League. The people threatened to throw 
 the Jesuit into the Rhone ; and he was ordered to leave 
 the city within four-and-twenty hours. He went into 
 retirement at Como. 1 
 
 It was immediately after the Jesuit's departure that 
 Henry III. murdered the Duke of Guise. Then the 
 pulpits blazed forth execrations, and heaped maledic- 
 tions on the royal murderer. Seventy doctors of the 
 Sorbonne released his subjects from their oath of allegi- 
 ance, and called down upon his head all the wrath of 
 heaven and earth ; and " a miserable little monk," 
 named Jacques Clement, plunged a knife into the 
 stomach of the king ; and the wound was mortal. He 
 had time enough, however, to make Henry of Navarre 
 promise to punish those who had given him so much 
 trouble, but, above all things, to get himself instructed 
 into a Catholic as soon as possible, and then he expired. 2 
 Henry was once before converted, we remember ; and 
 as words cost him as little as deeds, he made the pro- 
 mise to the dying king who had acknowledged him for 
 his successor. It seems to me highly probable, from the 
 Jesuit narrative of all these transactions, that Aqua- 
 viva might have boldly " predicted" the murder of the 
 
 . > Cretineau, ii. 401. 
 
 2 Ranke, p. 172 ; Capefigue, c. ii. and iii. ; Cretineau, ii. 392, et seq. ; Cheverney, 
 Mem. Ann. 1589, &c. &c.
 
 442 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Guises. It remains for us now to consider the curious doc- 
 trine of the Jesuits bearing at once upon the events both 
 in England and in France, which have been just related. 
 The unlimited supremacy of the Church over the 
 State was their aim together with all the results of 
 papal prerogatives. And how was that to be 
 
 Papal supra- . 
 
 macy and established ? Not by kings, whose individual 
 
 regicides. . 111-1 i 
 
 interests clashed with papal prerogatives 
 which in point of fact were the representatives, nay, 
 the very substance of " the Church." If not by the 
 kings then, by whose overwhelming voice was the Su- 
 premacy of " the Church" or the Catholic Party to be 
 established ? By the People. Conscious of their grow- 
 ing influence and ability to govern and to direct the 
 popular will, the Jesuits did not hesitate to advance the 
 most sweeping democratic doctrines as a basis of their 
 machinations. They deduced princely power from the 
 people. They blended together the theory of the pope's 
 omnipotence with the doctrine of the people's sovereignty. 
 Bellarmine, their everlasting oracle, discovered that God 
 had not bestowed the temporal authority on any one in 
 particular : whence it followed that he bestowed it on 
 the masses. Therefore, the authority of the state is 
 lodged in the people, and the people consign it some- 
 times to a single individual, sometimes to several : but 
 the people perpetually retain the right of changing the 
 forms of government, of retracting their grant of autho- 
 rity, and disposing of it anew. The Jesuits roundly 
 asserted that a king might be deposed by the people for 
 tyranny, or for neglect of his duties, and another be 
 elected in his stead by the majority of the nation. 
 Meanwhile the Catholic ascendancy was never for one 
 moment out of view. 1 This salient motive everywhere 
 
 1 Ranke.
 
 PAPAL SUPREMACY AND REGICIDES. 443 
 
 dispels the illusion when a turbulent democrat brightens 
 as he reads his justification by the Jesuit-doctors of the 
 law. The Supremacy of the Church, or Catholic As- 
 cendancy, must be the end of the people's enterprise. 
 Kings are, indeed, responsible to the sovereign People : 
 but the people are subject to the sovereign Pontiff. 
 Such is the theory, but unfortunately the practice is to- 
 tally distinct. Once rouse or justify, or countenance 
 the revolt of a nation, and then you must leave events 
 and the human passions to work out the problem you 
 have proposed. The only point on which you may count 
 infallibly, is the fact of revolt : all beyond you must leave 
 to the direction of events and the passions of men ; and 
 all who pray will call upon Providence to avert or miti- 
 gate calamity. In the Jesuit doctrines on this interesting 
 and most important subject, it is impossible to separate 
 the ideal supremacy of the Church from the sovereignty 
 of the People, which is merely the instrument of Church 
 supremacy. Though the king is subject to the people, 
 ecclesiastics are not subject to the king ; for " the re- 
 bellion of an ecclesiastic against a king is not a crime 
 of high treason, because he is not subject to the king." l 
 Thus taught the Jesuits by Emmanuel Sa, at the period 
 in contemplation. Defending themselves by right divine, 
 they decide the fate of kings and princes with a sweep 
 of the pen. " An infidel or heretic king endeavouring to 
 draw his subjects to his heresy or infidelity, is not to be 
 endured by Christians." Passable enough ; but then who 
 is to decide whether the conduct of the king comes under 
 this ban 1 " It is the province of the sovereign pontiff 
 to decide whether the king draws them into heresy or 
 
 1 Emmanuel Sa, Aphorism. Confess, in verb. Ckricus. " Clerici rebellio in 
 regem, non est crimen Iresae-majestatis, qui non est subditus regi." Ed. 
 Colon. 1590.
 
 444 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 not." This being assumed, the consequence is as 
 follows : "It is, therefore, for the pontiff to deter- 
 mine whether the king must be deposed or not. 1 " 
 What a wide field is here open to such a pope as 
 Gregory XIII., who scrupled not to plunder so many 
 barons on the pretence of musty parchments. And pro- 
 claimed in the very midst of the dreadful struggles for 
 the religion of the sixteenth century, how powerfully 
 such a doctrine must have operated to evolve the 
 desperate " stirs " in Ireland and England, and in 
 France not without blood-guiltiness. It was, never- 
 theless, the doctrine put forth by Bellarmine one of 
 the most influential Jesuits in 1596. Nay, "the 
 spiritual power/' i. e. the pope, may change kingdoms, 
 and take them from one to transfer them to another, 
 as a spiritual prince, if it should be necessary 
 for the salvation of souls!" 2 What is the meaning of 
 this proviso I I am unable to say unless the doctrine 
 was based on the Bull of Pope Alexander VI., who gave 
 the Kings of Spain and Portugal the two hemispheres, 
 dashing in a word for the " salvation of souls." But 
 though we cannot understand the meaning of the 
 proviso, we have but too plainly seen the result of the 
 doctrine in the kingdom of England. Another Jesuit 
 and one of vast authority too goes so far as to 
 " wrench the words of Paul " to the destruction of regal 
 or secular power. "The language of St. Paul," says 
 Francis Tolet, in 1603, "is not opposed to it, who 
 
 ^Non licet Christianis tolerare regeni infidelem aut hereticum, si ille conetur 
 protrahere subditos ad suum lueresim vel infidelitatem. At judicare an rex 
 pertrahat ad hseresim necne, pertinet ad pontificem, cui est commissa cura 
 religionis. Ergo pontificis est judicare, regem esse deponendum vel non depo- 
 uendum." De Rom. Pontif. lib. v. c. vii. 
 
 s " Potest mutare regna, et uni auferre, atque alteri couferre, tanquam priii- 
 ceps spiritualis, si id necessarium sit ad animarum salutem." Bdlarm. ubi 
 tupra, lib. v. c. vi.
 
 PAPAL SUPREMACY AND REGICIDES. 445 
 
 means that all men should be subject to the higher 
 powers, but not to the secular powers : for he does not 
 deny to spiritual ministers the power of exempting 
 whomsoever, and as far as they shall please, from the 
 secular power, whenever they may deem it expedient" l 
 A mere quibble, of course : but the word " expedient " 
 does sound better than " the salvation of souls." Nor 
 should this sweeping prerogative surprise us, since even 
 the eternal is ruled by " the Church " or the pope, 
 according to the Jesuit Maldonat, who affirms " for 
 certain and immovable, that the Church has the power 
 of excommunicating even the dead, that is, she may 
 deprive them of suffrage," or the benefit of prayers. 2 
 Then there is no wonder that the pope " can deprive 
 princes of their empire and kingdom, or may transfer 
 their dominions to another prince, and absolve their 
 subjects from their allegiance which they owe to them, 
 and from the oath which they have sworn, that the 
 word of the Lord which he spake to Jeremiah the 
 prophet, &c. &c." 3 And if the idea of the prophet 
 Jeremiah's giving a vote to this papal empire be pain- 
 fully startling, you must summon all your patience to 
 
 1 " Nee adversatur huic Pauli verbum, qui omnes vult ease subjectos potesta- 
 tibus sublimioribus, non vero saecularibus : non tamen negat potestatem ministris 
 spiritualibus quando id expedire judicaverint, eximendi quos et quantum eis 
 visum fuerit." Comment, in Epist. B. Pauli, Apost. ad Roman. Annat. 2, in 
 c. xiii. 
 
 2 " Duo tamen certa, fixaque esse debent : alterum, Ecclesiam potestatem 
 habereetiammortuosexcommunicandi,idest, jus privandi suffragiis." Comment, 
 in Matth. c. xvi. p. 342, E. 
 
 3 " Potest eos imperio et regno privare, vel eorum ditiones alteri principi 
 tradere, et eorum subditos ab obedientia illis debita, et juramento facto absolvere. 
 Ut verum sit in pontifice Romano illud verbum Domini dictum ad prophetam 
 Jeremiam." Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth : See, I have this day 
 set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull down, 
 and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant." Comment, in Evan- 
 gelic. Hist. <fr. t. iv. P. iii. Tr. 4." t Ed. Colon. 1602.
 
 446 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 hear that even Christ himself is made to subscribe to 
 the article, "for in commanding Peter to feed his sheep 
 Christ has given him the power to drive away the 
 wolves and to kill them, if they should be obnoxious to 
 the sheep. And it will also be lawful for the shepherd 
 to depose the ram, the leader of the flock, from his 
 sovereignty over the flock, if he infects the other sheep 
 with his contagion, and attacks them with his horns." l 
 A word or two from the redoubtable Parsons must be 
 necessarily interesting. " The whole school of theologians 
 and ecclesiastical lawyers," says Parsons, "maintain 
 and it is a thing both certain and matter of faith that 
 every Christian prince, if he has manifestly departed 
 from the Catholic religion and has wished to turn others 
 from it, is immediately divested of all power and dignity, 
 whether of divine or human right, and that, too, even 
 before the sentence pronounced against him by the 
 supreme pastor and judge ; and that all his subjects are 
 free from every obligation of the oath of allegiance 
 which they had sworn to him as their lawful prince ; 
 and that they may and must (if they have the power) 
 drive such a man from the sovereignty of Christian men, 
 as an apostate, a heretic, and a deserter of Christ the 
 Lord, and as an alien and an enemy to his country, lest 
 he corrupt others, and turn them from the faith by his 
 example or his command. This true, determined, and 
 undoubted opinion of very learned men, is perfectly 
 comformable and agreeable to the apostolic doctrine." 2 
 
 1 " Nam praecipiendo oves pascere, dedit illi potestatem arcendi lupos et 
 interficiendi, si infesti sint ovibus. Imo etiam arietem, ducem gregis, si alias 
 oves tabe conficiat, et cornibus petat, licebit pastori de principatu gregis depo- 
 nere." Alp. Salmeron, Comment, inomnes Epist. B. Pauli, &c. Lib. i. P. iii. Disp. 
 12. Ed. Colon. 1604. 
 
 2 Responsio ad Edict. Reginse Angliee, sect. ii. n. 157 ; Ed. Romae, 1593.
 
 PAPAL SUPREMACY AND REGICIDES. 447 
 
 But this terribly practical Jesuit does not long amuse 
 his readers with such spiritual notions, forsooth. Into 
 the very pith of the matter he flings his mighty head 
 and horns, driving all before him in the camp of the 
 "NavarreseLiar" as he calls Henry IV. of France, then in 
 his struggle with the Catholic League. Away to the winds 
 with Henry IV/s " heresy, his suspected illegitimacy 
 suspectis natalibus his practices against the faith and 
 other impediments his deprivation of power by the sen- 
 tence of the pope his rebellion and other crimes against 
 Charles X., Cardinal and King of France (enough, 
 however, to exclude him) let all these impediments be 
 no obstacle to him," cries Parsons, " but this one thing I 
 believe, namely, that the most iniquitous judge of events 
 will not deny that the royal power is founded on civil right 
 and not on the right of nature or the race. But the civil 
 right (according to St. Isidore and all other philosophers, 
 lawyers and even divines) is known to be what every 
 people or state has resolved upon for itself, by those 
 conditions which the commonweal has laid down, and 
 this, by its own will and judgment, according to the 
 interest and arbitrament of each country not by the 
 necessity of nature, or by the decree and consent of all 
 nations by which two points, natural right, and the 
 right of nations, are distinguished in the highest degree, 
 and most properly, from civil right. That kings are not 
 by nature, nor by the right of nations, is plainly evident 
 from the fact that they were not at first necessary, nor 
 have they always afterwards existed from the beginning, 
 nor have they been received among all nations and 
 people, nor have they always everywhere ruled on the 
 same conditions. The agreement of the most learned 
 men has decreed the conditions which are necessary to
 
 448 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 establish the rights of nature and of nations. And 
 certainly if we go back to the beginning, we shall find 
 that the world held together without kings, for many 
 ages ; and, besides the rest, that the Hebrew people of 
 God, after the long lapse of three thousand years, at 
 length received the power from God to appoint a king, 
 not spontaneously, but reluctantly conceded. Among 
 the Romans, for a very long time, there were no kings ; 
 nor are there any among the Venetians, Genoese, and 
 other republics. And where kings are in use in usu 
 sunt it is manifest that they do not rule everywhere 
 by the same right : for the kings of Poland and Bohe- 
 mia succeed not by generation but by election, whose 
 children and relatives lay no claim to succession at their 
 death or deposition. Finally, the right and manner of 
 royal rule are circumscribed by different limits in France 
 to what they are in England or in Spain. From all this, 
 it seems manifest that the royal dignity and power has 
 proceeded from the free will and ordination of the com- 
 monweal, with God's approval, whilst it is bestowed by 
 a Christian people on princes chosen by themselves, 
 with this especial and primary condition, namely, that 
 they defend the Roman Catholic Faith ; and they are 
 bound to this by two oaths, one in baptism when they 
 are made Christians, the other at their coronation. 
 Who will be so absurd, or so blind in mind, as to 
 affirm him competent to reign, who has neither of these 
 rights ?" l This contemptuous treatment of right divine 
 is not intended to favour republicanism, or democracy ; 
 but merely to bring human motives to the exclusion of 
 an obnoxious ruler, such as Elizabeth of England or 
 Henry IV. -of France. Nevertheless, the tendency of 
 
 1 Ubi supr&, n. 153 4.
 
 MARIANA'S REOICIDAL OPINIONS. 449 
 
 such sentiments pronounced authoritatively in a time of 
 agitation, must have added vast energy to the spirit of 
 factions. Then the famous Mariana flung his strong and 
 philosophical sentiments into the whirlpool of politics. 
 His whole book is altogether on kings and their conduct. 
 Full of striking and startling sentiments is this famous 
 book of a famous Jesuit. His heart was brimful of hatred 
 to tyranny : he did not spare his own general and govern- 
 ment, how could he be expected to mince matters with 
 kings and their institute 1 " Many examples, ancient and 
 even recent, might be unfolded to prove the great power 
 of a multitude aroused by hatred of their king, and that 
 the anger of the people is the destruction of the king. 
 Lately in France," continues Mariana, " a noble example 
 was given. It shows how essential it is that the minds 
 of the people should be soothed : a splendid and 
 pitiable attestation that the minds of men are not to be 
 governed just like their persons. Henry III. of France 
 lies low, felled by the hand of a monk, with a poisoned 
 knife driven into his stomach a sad spectacle which 
 hath few equals : but it teaches kings that their impious 
 attempts are not without punishments. It shows that 
 the power of kings is weak indeed, if they once cease to 
 respect the minds of their subjects." Brave words 
 unquestionably ; and then he proceeds, from the summit 
 of this glorious and popular notion, to the very depths of 
 professional bigotry, much in the style of Parsons touch- 
 ing the intended succession of Henry IV. denouncing 
 the murder of the Guises, to whom he thinks no prince in 
 Christendom is comparable and then he exclaims : 
 " but the movements of the people are like a torrent ; 
 soon the tide upsurges .... The audacity of one 
 youth in a short time retrieved affairs which were almost 
 
 VOL. II. G Gr
 
 450 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 desperate. His name was Jacques Clement born in 
 the obscure village of Sorbonne, he was studying theo- 
 logy in the Dominican college of his order, when, having 
 been assured by the theologians whom he consulted, that 
 a tyrant may be rightfully cut off . . . . he departed for 
 the camp with the resolution of killing the king .... 
 After a few words had passed between them, pretending 
 to deliver some letters, he approached the king, conceal- 
 ing his poisoned knife, and inflicted on him a deep 
 wound above the bladder. Splendid boldness of soul 
 memorable exploit ! l . . . By killing the king he achieved 
 for himself a mighty name .... Thus perished Cle- 
 ment, twenty-four years of age, a youth of simple mind 
 and not strong in body ; but a greater power gave 
 strength and courage to his soul." 2 
 
 After this celebration of the regicide, Mariana pro- 
 ceeds to details respecting the method to be pursued in 
 getting rid of a king. Admonition must first be tried : 
 
 1 He was instantly wounded by the king and despatched by the attendants. 
 Nor is Ribadeneyra's notice of this detestable murder less significant in his 
 work professedly written against the principles of Machiavelli. He calls the 
 murder " a just judgment " justo juyzio, effected " by the hand of a poor, young, 
 simple, homely friar, with the blow of a small knife, in the king's own apartment, 
 surrounded by his servants and armed people, and a powerful troop with which 
 lie intended, in a few days, to destroy the city of Paris " (!) " Por mano de un 
 pobre frayle, mojo, simple, y llano, de una herida que le dio cun un cuchillo 
 pequeno en su mismo aposento, estando el Rey rodeado de criados y de gente 
 armada, y con un exercito poderoso con el qual pensava assolar dentro de pocos 
 dias la ciudad de Paris." " Has the world ever had an example like this, so new, 
 BO strange, and never before heard of by mortals," exclaims this religious 
 Machiavel, a thousand times more pernicious to humanity than the political 
 Italian, because the wickedness which he substitutes for that of Machiavel is 
 presented under the cloak of religion. Tratado de la Religion, c. xv. p. 90. Ed. 
 Madrid, 1 595. He wrote before Mariana. 
 
 2 " Insignem animi confidentiam, facinus memorabile. . . . Cseso Rege ingens 
 sibi nomen fecit. . . . Sic Clemens ille periit, viginti quatuor natus annos, 
 simplici juvenis ingenio, neque robusto corpore : sed major vis vires et animum 
 confirmabat." Mariana, De Rege, c. vi.
 
 MARIANA'S REGICIDAL OPINIONS. 451 
 
 "if he comply, if he satisfy the state and correct the 
 errors of his past life, I am of opinion that it will 
 be necessary to stop, and to desist from harsher mea- 
 sures. But if he refuse the remedy, and there remains 
 no hope of cure, it will be lawful for the state, after 
 sentence has been pronounced, in the first place to refuse 
 to acknowledge his empire ; and since war will of 
 necessity be raised, to unfold the plans of defence, 
 to take up arms, and to levy contributions upon the 
 people to meet the expenses of the war ; and if circum- 
 stances will permit, and the state cannot be otherwise 
 preserved, by the same just right of defence, by a more 
 forcible and peculiar power, to destroy with the sword 
 the prince who is declared to be a public enemy. And 
 let the same power be vested in any private individual, 
 who, renouncing the hope of impunity, and disregarding 
 his safety, would exert an effort in the service of the 
 state ... I shall never consider that man to have done 
 wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, would attempt 
 to kill him . . . Most men are deterred by a love of self- 
 preservation, which is very frequently opposed to deeds 
 of enterprise. It is for this reason that among the 
 number of tyrants who lived in ancient times, there 
 were so few who perished by the sword of their 
 subjects . . . Still it is useful that princes should know, 
 that if they oppress the state, and become intolerable by 
 their vices and their pollution, they hold their lives upon 
 this tenure, that to put them to death is not only lawful, 
 but a laudable and a glorious action . . . "Wretched, 
 indeed, is a tyrant's life which is held upon the tenure 
 that he who should kill him would be highly esteemed, 
 both in favour and in praise. It is a glorious thing 
 to exterminate this pestilent and mischievous race from 
 
 G G 2
 
 452 HISTOKY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the community of men. For putrid members are cut 
 off, lest they infect the rest of the body. So should this 
 cruelty of the beast, in the form of man, be removed 
 from the state, as from a body, and be severed from it 
 with the sword. He who terrifies, must fear for him- 
 self; and the terror he strikes is not greater than the 
 shudder he feels l . . . There is no doubt whether it is 
 lawful to kill a tyrant and public enemy (the same 
 decision applies to both) with poison and deadly herbs. 
 The same question was proposed to me some years ago 
 by a prince in Sicily, whilst I was teaching the theolo- 
 gical schools in that island. I know that it has been 
 frequently done et scepe factum scimus nor do I think 
 that any one resolved on the deed of poison would 
 let slip the opportunity of destruction, if given, and 
 wait for the decision of theologians, and prefer to 
 assault with the sword especiaUy as the danger [for 
 the poisoner] being less, his hope of impunity is greater, 
 in order that the public rejoicing be not at all diminished 
 at the destruction of the enemy, if the author and archi- 
 tect of public liberty be preserved. As for my part, I 
 am not considering what men are likely to do, but what 
 is permitted by the laws of nature ; and, indeed, what 
 matters it whether you kill by the sword or by poison ? 
 Especially as treachery and fraud are conceded in the 
 faculty of action ; and there are many ancient and 
 recent examples of enemies cut off by that kind of 
 
 1 * Miseram plane vitam, cujus ea conditio est ut qui occiderit, in magnzi turn 
 gratia, turn laude futurus sit. Hoc omne genus pestiferum et exitiale ex hominum 
 communitate exterminare gloriosum est. Enimvero membra qusedam secantur 
 si putrida sunt, ne reliquum corpus inficiant : sic ista in hominis specie bestise 
 immanitas, k republica tanquam a corpore amoveri debet, ferroque exscindi. 
 Timeat videlicet necesse est, qui terret : neque major sit terror incussus quam 
 metus susceptus." Mariana, De Rege, c. vii.
 
 MARIANA'S REGICIDAL OPINIONS. 453 
 
 death ... In my own opinion, deleterious drugs should 
 not be given to an enemy, neither should a deadly 
 poison be mixed with his food, or in his cup, for the pur- 
 pose of destroying him. Yet it will be lawful to use 
 this method in the case in question, if the person who is 
 destroyed be not forced to drink the poison, which, 
 inwardly received, would deprive him of life, but let 
 it be applied outwardly by another person without his 
 intervention : as when there is so much strength in the 
 poison, that if spread upon a seat, or on the clothes, it 
 would have the power to cause death. Thus I find that 
 the Moorish kings have often destroyed other princes by 
 the [poisoned] presents they sent them, consisting of 
 precious garments, napkins, arms, or saddles? and it is 
 
 1 By a striking coincidence, the alleged attempt at saddle-poison against Queen 
 Elizabeth, by Squires, at the instigation of the Jesuit Walpole, occurred about the 
 same time that Mariana was giving his curious suggestions to the heroes of the age. 
 His book was published at Toledo in 1598, and Squires' s alleged attempt took place 
 in the same year, after having been concocted in Spain. The prominence which 
 Mariana, then in Spain, and an authoritative theologian, gives to these strange 
 cases of poisoning, which he actually suggests as models, must, I think, give some 
 countenance to the affair, as an attempt, however absurd it may seem to our igno- 
 rance of such infernally potent concoctions. It is circumstantially related by Pas- 
 quier and by Camden ; and the facts are as follows : Squires was an English 
 prisoner in Spain : he was set free at the intercession of the Jesuit Walpole, his 
 countryman, who tried to convert him, but finding the heretic firmer than he 
 expected, Walpole got him arrested by the Inquisition. Squires then turned 
 Catholic. Thereupon the Jesuit began to practise on the fellow, and proposed 
 the poisoning of the Queen as a fine offering to God, assuring him that he would 
 run no risk by pursuing the method he would suggest. It was a very subtle 
 poison, which he was to rub on the Queen's saddle, just before she mounted, so 
 that her hands on touching the saddle should receive die venom. The chair of 
 Essex was to be served in like manner. He found his opportunity, got into 
 the royal stable just in time, and performed the operation, which, however, 
 failed in the issue : " her body felt no distemperature, nor her hand no more 
 hurt than Paul's did when he shook off the viper into the fire." His attempt on 
 Essex was equally unsuccessful, although it deranged his stomach at supper. 
 Many mouths elapsed, and Walpole, not hearing of the Queen's death, and 
 supposing that Squires had played him false, resolved to be even with 
 him, and sent over an Englishman, Stanley by name, to accuse Squires of the
 
 454 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 generally known that certain elegant boots were wickedly 
 given by a Moorish chief to Henry, the King of Castile, 
 and as soon as he drew them on, his feet were infected 
 with poison, whereby he suffered ill health to the end of 
 his days. A purple garment, adorned with gold, was 
 sent by another to the King of Grenada, and it killed 
 him within thirty days. A third perished in a poisoned 
 shirt." 1 
 
 I need not inform the reader that the maintenance of 
 these regicidal opinions forms one of the great charges 
 against the Jesuits. They are conscious of the stigma : 
 but instead of at once admitting the evil tendency 
 of these doctrines, and instead of tracing the doctrines 
 
 project. Squires admitted that " Walpole had proposed the murder to him, but 
 that he had never consented to it, nor even employed poison for that purpose." 
 Lingard states that he " died asserting both his own innocence and that of Walpole, 
 with his last breath." Camden and Speed are the authorities to which Lingard refers ; 
 but Camden does not mention that fact, which, however, might have occurred with- 
 out altering the features of the case, since it convicted him of falsehood. Stanley, 
 the accuser, stated that he was sent by the Spanish ministers to ruin Squires in 
 revenge for not killing the queen ; and on being racked, he said he himself was 
 dispatched to shoot Elizabeth. Dr. Lingard treats the affair as a " ridiculous 
 plot ; " and so it might be if disconnected from Mariana's suggestions, rampant 
 at the very time. Walpole strenuously denied the charge, as a matter of course, 
 and vilified the character of Squires, in a pamphlet which he published in self- 
 defence. It is the preciseness of the accusation which seems to give weight to 
 the charge. Not that such poison was really possible, but intended by the parties, 
 after the fashion of Mariana. Dr. Lingard says that Walpole was little known 
 to Squires : but this is contradicted by Walpole himself, stating that he " knew 
 and dealt with Squire in Spaine." Such are the facts, however, and there we 
 may leave them, with Camden saying, " A pestilent opinion had possessed the 
 minds of some men, yea, some priests (I am ashamed to speak it) that to take 
 away the lives of kings excommunicated, was nothing else but to weed out 
 the cockle out of the Lord's field," which is, as we have seen, the veritable 
 opinion of the leading theologians then influencing the age. See Camden, ann. 
 1598 ; Rapin, ii. p. 148 ; Pasquier, Cate'chis. p. 212, et seq. ; Lingard, viii. 341 
 and 453, note U. It is curious that the pamphlet by Walpole (anonymous) is 
 directed against Squires and not against Stanley, though evidently the prime 
 mover in the disclosure. See its title in Lingard. 
 1 Mariana, De Rege, c. vii. ed. Mogunt. 1605.
 
 EXPEDIENCY THE PLEA OP THE REGICIDES. 455 
 
 themselves to the peculiar exigencies of the times when 
 two parties were striving for victory, the apologists for 
 the Jesuit-regicides strive to mystify the minds of their 
 readers with theological distinctions, and what is per- 
 haps still worse, by enlisting the whole body of Catholic 
 teachers, from the earliest times, into the lawless ranks 
 of king-kiUers or king-deposers. 
 
 Like the blinded Samson, as they cannot escape, 
 they shake ruin around them, and enjoy the suicidal 
 triumph. 1 
 
 As many other Jesuits maintained the opposite doc- 
 trine, it becomes of importance to bear in mind that ex- 
 pediency which required their influential theologians to 
 countenance and to suggest rebellion and murder. This 
 expediency was the triumph of Catholic unity. These 
 inflammatory doctrines were intended and issued by 
 order or request, to promote that grand consummation. 2 
 Through numerous editions, these books circulated 
 
 1 See their voluminous apologetic Documents, t. ii. p. 83, et seq., for a list of 
 "some of the Thomist and Dominican theologians, doctors of the university, &c., 
 who have professed the doctrine of Tyrannicide." Such is the title at the head 
 of the column, whilst opposite the same, there is a list of all the Jesuit-professors 
 of the doctrine, amounting to fourteen only, a fact which is most curiously 
 illustrative of Jesuitism. The Jesuits expediently upheld the doctrine during 
 the time it was needed by the cause they served, and as expediently held their 
 tongues or their pens when the politico-religious question subsided or took a 
 different turn about the middle of the seventeenth century, Escobar being the 
 last regicidal professor. The opposite list of other doctors and professors of 
 regicide extends from St. Thomas in the the 1 3th century, with rapid succes- 
 sion, down to the year 1762. There is something extremely unpleasant in 
 seeing religious men so eager to exhibit the shame of their colleagues, for their 
 own excuse or extenuation. 
 
 2 Unquestionably Mariana's work is the most desperate on the subject, and 
 yet " he composed it at the solicitation of several persons at the court of Spain, 
 and it was printed at Toledo with the permission of the king and the approba- 
 tion of the Inquisition." Documents, t. ii. 62. His first chapter is a dedication 
 or address to Philip III., who had just succeeded to his father, the " stirring " 
 Philip II., A.D. 15.98.
 
 45 G HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 rapidly : they were the grateful, the savoury food of the 
 party-spirits then tempesting the world of struggling 
 heresy and ravenous orthodoxy. It must not, for one 
 moment, be supposed that these denunciations of tyranny 
 were meant as universal applications. They were di- 
 rected pointedly and fixedly against heretic rulers, or 
 such as did not go to the utmost extremes of the ultra- 
 catholic party. What greater proof can we need of this 
 view than the fact of these opinions being advanced 
 under the auspices of the ruthless Philip II. and his 
 Inquisition 1 Their Jesuit promulgators were either 
 Spaniards and Portuguese, or the very pillars that sup- 
 ported the Spanish faction in England and in France. 
 Subsequently, when the party which had changed sides 
 in France, or who had reason to oppose the Jesuits, 
 whom they also envied, raised a clamour against these 
 regicidal doctrines, leading, as they believed, to the 
 murder of Henry IV., the general, Aquaviva, issued a 
 decree against any further promulgation of such doc- 
 trines, either privately or publicly, by advice or by 
 writing. This was in 1614. l A Jesuit apologist here- 
 upon exclaims : " This decree was so well observed, 
 that the search has been in vain to find in the four 
 quarters of the world, a Jesuit, who, since then, has 
 taught the doctrine of tyrannicide." 2 Not in books: 
 but there can be no doubt that the Company was not 
 cured of that disease by Aquaviva's first mandate. 
 Another decree was deemed necessary, and issued in 
 1616, against the discussion "of papal power, and the 
 
 1 Contrary to my usual practice, I must here stop to point out a voluntary 
 misstatement a misdate of this decree by the Jesuit of the Documents, t. ii. 64. 
 He dates it the 6th of July, 1610 (the year of Henri/ IV.'s assassination'), whereas 
 it was issued on the 1st of August, 1614. See Censurae Collect, c. v. ; Corp. 
 Imiit. S. J. t. ii. p. 251. Ed. Ant. 1702. - Documents, t. ii. 64.
 
 BOUCHER'S DEMOCRATIC SERMONS. 457 
 
 deposition, &c. of princes" de potestate Summi Pontifi- 
 cis super Principes, eos deponendi, &C." 1 And even a 
 third was called forth from General Vitelleschi ten years 
 after, in 1626. 
 
 But .not the Jesuits alone must bear the blame of 
 these horrible doctrines. They were too convenient 
 not to serve as cloaks for the unscrupulous rebels of the 
 sixteenth century, as they have served in every age, in 
 every nation. 2 Nowhere were they promulgated with 
 such furious violence as in France. It is impossible to 
 meet with any thing more anti-royal than the diatribes 
 thundered from the pulpit by Jean Boucher, succes- 
 sively Rector of the University of Paris, Prior of the 
 Sorbonne, Doctor and priest of Saint Benoit, and one of 
 the most ardent firebrands of the League. This preacher 
 found centered in the estates of the nation, all public 
 might and majesty the power to bind and to loose 
 the indefeasible sovereignty and judicial sway over the 
 sceptre and the realm. In the estates of the nation he 
 found the fountain of these prerogatives : from the 
 
 1 Sic in Orig. Censurse Coll. c. v. 3. Such writings were first to be examined 
 and approved at Rome. Ib. 
 
 2 See the Documents again for a succinct and elaborate dissertation on the pre- 
 valence of rebellious or regicidal practices, from the earliest times, in Italy, Ger- 
 many, Spain, England (which the writer scoffingly calls " the classic land of 
 liberty," and quotes this title as " the language of the simpletons and charlatans 
 of the Revolution," p. til), and France, where "modern instances" were so rife. 
 Fierce is the Jesuit's apostrophe to the modern enemies of his Company. He 
 thunders forth : " Hypocritical friends of kings that you are, declared enemies 
 of the Catholic religion, and its ready persecutors apostles of toleration and 
 liberty, presuming to do violence to consciences, and whose unexampled tyranny 
 penetrates even into the bosom of families to assault the rights of paternity, 
 which are respected even among the most barbarous nations ! Brutally use the 
 right of the strongest, if you have it but go no further ; or if a remnant of 
 shame induces you to attempt a justification of your inconceivable excesses, try 
 and have some gleam of common sense, and learn at least the first elements of 
 history." T. ii. p. 128. Such is a specimen of Jesuit-fire in their apologies for 
 the proud Company of Jesus.
 
 458 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 people he deduced the existence of the king not by 
 necessity and compulsion, but by free election -just as 
 Parsons develops the glorious lever of machination. He 
 takes the same view as Bellarmine of the relation be- 
 tween church and state, and repeats the comparison of 
 body and soul. One condition alone, he says, limits the 
 freedom of the popular choice : one thing alone is for- 
 bidden the people, namely, to accept a heretic king : 
 they would thereby bring down upon them the curse of 
 God. 1 " Strange combination of ecclesiastical pretensions 
 and democratic notions, of absolute freedom and com- 
 plete subjection self-contradictory and anti-national 
 but which still could cast an inexplicable spell over the 
 minds of men/' exclaims Ranke : but there was really 
 no spell at all in the matter. The Catholic party 
 botched up a theory to put down the Protestant party ; 
 and they contrived it so as to flatter the masses to put 
 it into practice. It was a comparatively safe method in 
 those times, and it menaced no reaction when the masses 
 were completely dependent on the great. It is different 
 now-a-days : and those who have stirred the masses 
 will be the first to bleed for their pains and at the 
 hands of the masses themselves. In those days, as at 
 the present time, it was easy to rouse the thoughtless 
 multitude. The Sorbonne had hitherto constantly de- 
 fended the royal and national privileges against these 
 ultra-montane sacerdotal pretensions : but now, after 
 the murder of the Guises, these doctrines were preached 
 from the pulpits ; it was proclaimed aloud in the streets, 
 and typified by symbols on the altars and in proces- 
 sions, that King Henry III. had forfeited his crown. 2 
 
 1 Jean Boucher, Sermons, Paris, 1594. Rankc, p. 177. 
 
 2 Rankc, p. 178. Peleus, t. iv. livre xiv.
 
 ANTI-REGAL DECISION OP THE SORBONNE. 459 
 
 And " the good citizens and inhabitants of the city," as 
 they called themselves, turned, in their scruples of con- 
 science," to the theological faculty of the University of 
 Paris, to obtain from it a valid decision respecting the 
 legality of their resistance to their sovereign. There- 
 upon the Sorbonne assembled on the 7th of January, 
 1589 ; and "after having heard the mature and free 
 counsels of all the magistri," says their Decision, " after 
 many and divers arguments heard, drawn for the most 
 part verbatim from Holy Writ, the Canon Law, and the 
 papal ordinances, it has been concluded by the Dean 
 of the Faculty, without any dissenting voice first, that 
 the people of this realm are absolved from the oath of 
 allegiance and obedience sworn by them to King Henry. 
 Furthermore, that the said people may, without scruple 
 of conscience, combine together, arm themselves, and 
 collect money for the maintenance of the Roman Catho- 
 lic apostolic religion against the abominable proceedings 
 of the aforesaid king." l Seventy members of the Fa- 
 culty were present ; the younger of them, in particular, 
 voted for the resolution with fierce enthusiasm. " The 
 general acquiescence which these theories obtained," 
 says Ranke, " was doubtless owing chiefly to their being, 
 at the moment, the real expression of events. In the 
 struggles of France, popular and ecclesiastical opposition 
 had actually come forward from their respective sides 
 and met in alliance. The citizens of Paris had been 
 countenanced and confirmed in their insurrection against 
 their lawful sovereign by the Pope's Legate. Bellarmine 
 himself had long been in the suite of the latter. The 
 doctrines which he had wrought out in his learned soli- 
 tude and put forward with such logical consistency 
 
 1 Respons. Facult. Theol. Parisiens. ; apud Ranke, p. 178.
 
 460 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 and with such great success, announced themselves in 
 the event which he witnessed, and in part elicited." * 
 Meanwhile the King of Spain was linked in the efforts 
 for the renovation of Catholicism not with the priests 
 alone, but also with the revolted people. The people of 
 Paris reposed greater confidence in Philip than in the 
 French princes at the head of the League. A new 
 ally, as it were, now presented itself to the king in the 
 doctrines of the Jesuits. There seemed no reason to 
 foresee that he might have anything to fear from them : 
 they rather afforded his policy a justification both legal 
 and religious, highly advantageous to his dignity and 
 importance even in Spain, and immediately conducive to 
 the success of his foreign enterprises. The king dwelt 
 more on this momentary utility of the Jesuit-doctrines 
 than on their general purport and tendency." 2 
 
 But to this papal theory of popular domination and 
 omnipotence, there was an antagonistic resistance in 
 Protestantism. The Catholics had accused Protestantism 
 as essentially the spirit of lawlessness and revolt : in 
 their opinion to be a heretic and a disloyal subject was 
 one and the same. Such was Catholic opinion : but 
 the fact to which it alluded was never anything else 
 than the fixed determination in the Protestants to believe 
 what they pleased unfettered by popes, unterrified by 
 papal kings. And now, in this anarchy of Catholicism 
 in the midst of this wild spirit of revolt unscrupulous 
 and regicidal Protestantism upheld the rights of 
 royalty. It was a physical and intellectual, a moral 
 necessity. " The idea of a sacerdotal religion ruling 
 supreme over all the temporalities of the world, encoun- 
 tered a mighty resistance in that national independence 
 
 1 Uanke, p. 178. - Id. ib.
 
 PROTESTANTISM THE BULWARK OP ROYALTY. 461 
 
 which is the proper expression of the temporal element 
 of society." Religion must be the safeguard of man's 
 freedom the shield of his physical, intellectual, and 
 moral rights : if it cease to be such, it is the religionism 
 of a selfish party striving by force or craft to achieve a 
 lucrative domination. Short-lived must ever be such a 
 triumph, whenever and wherever effected, because it is 
 based on injustice, accompanied by the infringement 
 of those moral and intellectual statutes which are the 
 covenant of God with man. In the land of Luther the 
 antagonism of that lawless casuistry, by monks, and 
 doctors, and Jesuits defended, stood forth in defence 
 of royalty. " The Germanic institution of monarchy 
 diffused through the nations of Roman origin, and 
 deeply rooted amongst them, has invariably triumphed 
 over every attempt to overthrow it whether by the 
 pretensions of the priesthood, or by the fiction of the 
 sovereignty of the people, which has always finally proved 
 untenable." Sovereignty of the " People" ! Tell me what 
 is the " People," here alluded to, and I may understand its 
 sovereignty. Half-a-dozen bewildered heads above, and 
 ten thousand convulsive hands, arms, and legs below, 
 may represent the thing in practice. Tell me of the 
 sovereignty of physical, moral, and intellectual Justice, 
 and I can understand the splendid theory of which it 
 can be made the basis : but if you talk of the sove- 
 reignty of the " people," a hundred historical remem- 
 brances rush before me, and I find it impossible to 
 believe its propounders aught else but calculating egotists 
 not even hot-headed fanatics. And in truth the end 
 and aim of that theoretic sovereignty were not mis- 
 understood at the end of the sixteenth century. It was 
 spiritual monarchy for the pope, and it was temporal
 
 462 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 monarchy for the King of Spain. None believed those 
 leagues sincere : the designs of the Catholic princes 
 were refined in the furnace of Rome, and worked to 
 their object by the pope : the extermination of Pro- 
 testantism was the grand finality. 1 The priesthood and 
 the " sovereign people " were combined to overthrow 
 that antagonism, by raising over Europe orthodox and 
 persecuting tyrants, to supply the place of those whom 
 the deposing power and the regicidal doctrines might 
 effectually incapacitate. Then it was that the doctrine 
 which upholds " the divine right of kings " found sup- 
 porters. " God alone," the Protestants maintained, 
 " sets princes and sovereigns over the human race. He 
 has reserved to Himself to lift up and bring low, to 
 apportion and to moderate authority. True, He no 
 longer descends from Heaven to point out with his 
 finger those to whom dominion is due, but through his 
 eternal providence there have been introduced into 
 every kingdom laws and an established order of things, 
 according to which the ruler is chosen. If, by virtue of 
 this appointed order, a prince is invested with power, 
 his title is precisely the same as though God's voice 
 declared, This shall be your king. Time was when God 
 did point out Moses, the judges, and the first kings 
 personally to his people ; but after a fixed order had 
 been established, those who subsequently ascended the 
 throne were equally God's anointed as the former." 2 
 Such was, again, another compensating permission of 
 Providence, to eventuate equilibrium in the affairs of 
 men. When first I called your attention to the subject, 
 
 1 Ph. de Mornay, Mem. i. p. 175. 
 
 2 " Explicatio Controversiarum quse a nonnullis moventur ex Henrici Borboni 
 regis in regnum Francise constitutione," c. ii. ; apud Ranke, p. 179.
 
 PROTESTANTISM THE BULWARK OF ROYALTY. 463 
 
 we beheld Ignatius rushing to the rescue of Catholicism 
 and effectuating something like an equilibrium. 1 We 
 behold that very Protestantism, which he and his 
 followers managed to hold in check, now presenting a 
 rampart against that anomalous tide of opinions which 
 threatened the physical, intellectual and moral freedom 
 of mankind. It was a glorious destiny for Protestantism. 
 In rallying round the banner of royalty and right divine, 
 at that period of man's history, the angels that preside 
 over empires sang Glory to God in the highest, and on 
 earth peace, good will toward men. I allude to the 
 effects of that reaction. The infatuated, senseless, ever 
 abortive attempts of Rome and Spain against England's 
 monarchy, served but to cement more strongly together 
 the everlasting foundations of that essentially Protestant 
 throne : the people's wisdom and loyalty helped them 
 along towards that exalted destiny which has made, 
 and will ever make, Great Britain the central power of 
 the universe. And well had it been for France had 
 faction not compelled Henry IV. to sacrifice to it that 
 religion or theory, if you like, which, once established 
 around the throne, might have utterly shut out those 
 hideous abuses which festered and festered through his 
 reign, and the reigns of his successors, until they were 
 visited with their penalties in the great Revolution. 2 
 
 1 See vol. i. p. 204. 
 
 2 It is indeed most remarkable that, from the Reformation down to the pre- 
 sent time, national calamities have fearfully hung on the abuses of Romanism 
 round about the thrones of Europe. Examine the subject even beginning no 
 farther back than Philip II., and Spain and Portugal through Scotland and 
 Mary England and Charles I. Austria, Poland, Bavaria, France every- 
 where the remnants of that gangrene whose termination is death. It seems 
 almost ridiculous to instance the last illustration in this interesting theory. I 
 mean the late skirmish of the modern Jesuits in Switzerland. That event and 
 its immediate results gave the initiative to the epidemic revolutions which are
 
 464 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Now, therefore, Protestantism was the spirit of peace 
 and loyalty : Catholicism (with a fractional exception) 
 was the spirit of war and revolt. The former " insisted 
 on the necessity of submitting even to unjust and 
 censurable sovereigns. No man is perfect. Now, if it 
 were once deemed allowable to deviate from the order 
 appointed by God, even trifling defects would be seized 
 on to justify the deposition of a sovereign. Not even 
 heresy on the monarch's part could, on the whole, 
 absolve subjects from their allegiance. The son must 
 not indeed obey the impious father in what is contrary 
 to God's commands in other respects, however, he 
 continues to owe him reverence and subjection." l As a 
 contrast, take the following : " What is more execrable," 
 says a contemporaneous author, " the Sorbonne, formerly 
 the honour of the Church, being consulted by the 
 Sixteen, concluded, by a public act [already given], that 
 Henry of Valois was no longer king, and that arms 
 might be justly, and with good reason, raised against 
 him : the Sorbonne approved the sentence of degrada- 
 tion fulminated against the king whence ensued the 
 attempts against his person. We may say in truth that 
 it was the Sorbonne who killed him, since it excited and 
 resolved the assassins to such madness and wickedness . 
 .... The Sorbonne compared the parricide of a great 
 king, oh execrable blasphemy ! to the holy mysteries 
 of the incarnation and the resurrection of our. Lord." 2 
 
 now scattering dismay over Europe : revolutions whereat the thoughtless may 
 exult, but the wise must forebode desolation. In the midst of this crisis and ere 
 these words are printed, war will be Europe's occupation in the midst of this 
 crisis the Pope of Some pretends to forfend retribution from his throne by those 
 little Italian tricks which there is a party in England to cheer and applaud ! 
 
 1 Explic. Controv. ut anted, apud Ranke, p. 179. 
 
 2 This extract from Peleus (t. iii. livre viii. p. 538), is triumphantly alleged by 
 the Jesuit-apologist excusing the regicidal doctrines of his colleagues. Here is
 
 MURDER OF HENRY III. OF FRANCE. 465 
 
 The Jesuits were not content to applaud this execrable 
 deed in their factious assemblies ; they celebrated it in 
 writing ; and they did more. When the assassin's 
 mother appeared at Paris, they told the people to go 
 
 the original, in the quoted form, the capital letters and italics being the Jesuits' : 
 " Ce qui est de plus execrable, la Sorbonne, autrefois Phonneur de 1'Eglise, con- 
 sul tee par les SEIZE, conclut, par acte public, que Henri de Valois n'dtait plus 
 roi, et que 1'on pouvait justement et & bon droit prendre les armes centre 
 
 lui ; la Sorbonne approuva la degradation du Roi, fulmina coutre lui ; 
 
 d'ou s' ensuivirent les attentats commis depuis sur la personne. Nous pouvons 
 dire en ve'rite que C'EST LA SORBONNE QUI L'A TUB, puisqu'elle a INCITE ET RESOLU 
 les assassins a telle forcenerie et me'chancete' .... Elle a compart le parricide 
 d'un grand Roi, oh ! blaspheme execrable ! aux saints mysteres de Vincarnation 
 et resurrection de notre Seigneur." Documents, t. ii. Now it happens that the 
 Jesuit college was one of the rendezvous of the Sixteen/ See Davila, i. 517, 
 and the Jesuits themselves are forced to admit that at least one of them was 
 " sometimes " present at the meeting of the Sixteen, namely, Pigenat, " at the 
 request of Brisson," forsooth, who had nothing to do with the faction, for he 
 " declared for Henry IV., and was hanged accordingly by the Leaguers in 1591," 
 as the Jesuit Feller informs his readers. It was a secret, erratic assembly, and 
 none could be admitted who were not sworn members ; and certainly not for 
 the purpose of " moderating the fury of that execrable tribunal," as Richeome 
 the Jesuit calls it, at the time when affairs had changed faces. It thus follows 
 that one Jesuit, at least, voted for the blasphemy above given. I have before 
 quoted this admission of Richeome (De la Verite def endue, c. Ivi.), and it is 
 among the exceedingly sophistic Documents of the Jesuits, t. i. Des Jcsuitcs 
 Ligueurs, p. 35. Pasquier addresses the Jesuits as follows on the subject : 
 " Respecting what your opponents object to you, (namely, that your Father 
 Odon Pigenat was the captain of the Sixteen who ruled in Paris, not only the 
 ordinary magistrate, but even the king,) you admit the fact, in your pleadings, and 
 also by the book of Montagues (a Jesuit), chap. Ivi. ; true, you say it was in order to 
 moderate their actions somewhat. When we read these two passages we began 
 to laugh, knowing that Pigenat, though by no means gifted with wisdom, burned 
 with fire and anger : in fact, he has since then become so furiously mad, that he 
 is confined in a room well bound and corded." Catichixme, p. 287, b. This 
 Pigenat must not be confounded with his brother, Francis Pigenat, a famous 
 preacher of the League, who signed the deposition of Henry III., pronounced 
 the funeral oration of the Guises, whom he called martyrs, and declared that it 
 was impossible for Henry IV. to be converted moreover, that the pope could 
 not absolve him and, if he did, he (the pope himself) would be excommuni- 
 cated." Feller, Biog. Univ. They were Arcades ambo, as you perceive j but 
 the Jesuit of the Documents is not, of course, satisfied with the evidence against 
 the ,7m<-brother, and would have us believe that the excesses of Francis have 
 been ascribed to Odon ! Ubi supra, p. 34, et seq. 
 VOL. II. H H
 
 466 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 and venerate that blessed mother of a holy martyr. Thus 
 in their pulpits they called the murderer a martyr, and 
 they styled Henry III. a Herod. They placed the 
 portrait of Jacques Clement over the altars of their 
 churches ; and even proposed, it is said, to erect a 
 statue to him in the cathedral of Notre Dame. 1 It is 
 remarkable that the king was murdered on the very day 
 he had appointed for their expulsion from Bordeaux. 
 They had fomented the machinations of the Spanish 
 faction and the League against the king in that city : he 
 ordered them to quit the place quietly, to prevent 
 " scandal and murmuring : " they retired to the neigh- 
 bouring cities ; and in their annual letter celebrated the 
 murder of the king as a vindicating judgment. 2 And 
 no wonder that the servants exulted at the crime, when 
 the master praised it to the skies. Pope Sixtus V., in 
 full consistory, compared the murderer to Judith and 
 Eleazar. " This death," said he, " which strikes such 
 astonishment and admiration, will scarcely be believed 
 by posterity. A most powerful king, surrounded by a 
 strong army, who had compelled Paris to ask mercy at 
 his hands, is killed at one blow of a knife, by a poor 
 monk. Certes ! this great example was given in order 
 that all may know the force of God's judgments." 3 " To 
 nothing but the hand of the Almighty himself," says 
 Spain's ambassador to Philip, "can we ascribe this 
 happy event ; and it leads us to hope that it is now 
 
 1 Hist, abre'ge des Jesuites, i. Ill ; Fabre, Ann. 1589. 
 
 2 Ann. Litt. Soc. Jesu. Ann. 1589. in tit Coll. Burdigalense. "Quo die nos 
 regis edicto Burdigala pellebamur, eo die rex ipse qui edixerat, e vita depulsus 
 est. At nos compingebamur ad S. Macharii . . . . ut simul opprimeremur 
 omnes, seu hoc suspicio multorum, seu 1'nnia tulit, nisi antea oppressus ille 
 unus fuisset." Apud Les Jesuites Crimin. p. 205. Hist, du Mar. de Matignon, 
 livre ii. cc. xviii. xix. ; Coudrette, i. 185, et seq. 
 
 3 Hist, des Jesuites, i. 112 ; Ranke, 173 ; Dispaccio Veneto, 1 Settemb.
 
 HENEY OF NAVARRE. 467 
 
 all over with the heretics!' l The joy of the orthodox and 
 Spanish and papal party was universal, and gushingly 
 expressed. 
 
 Meanwhile, the immediate consequence of the murder 
 proved that it was not all over with the heretics. 
 Henry of Navarre, as Henry IV. assumed the title of 
 King of France, being the next heir to the throne, and 
 named successor by the murdered king. Strange had 
 been the fortunes of the Huguenot Henry. In his 
 infancy a conspiracy had been contrived to seize and 
 deliver him, with his mother and other supporters of 
 heresy, to King Philip and the Inquisition. 2 It failed ; 
 and he lived to be frightened into abjuration by 
 Charles IX., as we have read, during the massacre of 
 St. Bartholomew. Henry III., on his death-bed, advised 
 him to turn Catholic, if he wished to enjoy the crown. 
 He was still a Huguenot, notwithstanding. The League, 
 Philip II., and the pope, were resolved on no condition 
 to suffer Henry to attain the enjoyment of his rights. 
 Pope Sixtus had proposed his own nephew to succeed 
 when Henry III. murdered the Guises : 3 he had since 
 excommunicated Henry of Navarre, and delivered him 
 over to the rancorous animosity and hostility of the 
 papal-Spanish faction in France. The Jesuits did not 
 remain idle. Pope Sixtus, in order to foment the 
 opposition, sent over Cardinal Gaetano as his legate, 
 and associated with him the Jesuits Bellarmine and 
 Tyrius with orders to effectuate the election of a 
 
 1 " II a plus a Nostre Seigneur de nous en deslivrer par un eve'nement si 
 heureux qu'on ne peut 1'attribuer qu' a sa main toute-puissante, et qui faict 
 espe"rer qu'on en a fini avec les he're"tiques." Archives de Simancas, apud 
 Capefigue, p. 124. 
 
 2 Thuan. 1. xxxvi. Ann. 1564. Quesnel gives the plot to the Jesuits, ii. 105. 
 
 3 Ranke, 181. 
 
 H H 2
 
 468 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Roman Catholic king for the people of France. At the 
 head of the other Leaguers they led forth processions ; 
 prescribed double fasts and vows to keep up the agita- 
 tion in Paris ; kept watch in their turn as sentinels ; 
 and made themselves " generally useful," together with 
 the other monks, according to the desires of their master 
 the pope. Over the kingdom they spread with the 
 same pious intention. They preached sedition in their 
 sermons, scattered it by their written addresses, and 
 infused it into their fanatical congregations that powerful 
 arsenal of Jesuit-machination. 1 The horrors of siege 
 came upon the deluded people. Round about the 
 rebellious city Henry IV. and his Huguenot army 
 encamped in array : the Leaguers within monks, 
 doctors, and Jesuits kept up the spirits of the deluded 
 Parisians with potent doses of wild fanaticism : the 
 pensioners of Spain administered a dose of their Catho- 
 licon, and their miserable dupes consented to suffer for 
 what was called religion and orthodoxy. Through the 
 streets they went, following a huge crucifix and image 
 of the Virgin Mary, by way of standard, with the 
 Bishop of Senlis for their captain a motley crowd of 
 priests, monks, Jesuits, and " devout and religious " 
 citizens, resolved to defend their religion by force, like 
 true Maccabees, or die in its defence. " And in that 
 beautiful and devout assemblage, there were some whose 
 bones pierced their skins by stress of fastings and absti- 
 nence, such as the begging friars of St. Bernard, eating 
 only bread and raw herbs, or by way of a delicacy, 
 boiled in salt and water. The sight of this beautiful 
 and devout assemblage so inflamed the hearts of the 
 people, and with a fire so ardent, that it seemed as 
 
 1 Hist, des derniers Troubles, Ann. 1589 ; Coudrette, i. 188.
 
 SIEGE OP PARIS BY HENRY IV. 469 
 
 though the whole ocean would not be sufficient to 
 quench the least spark of it que toute la mer ne fust 
 pas bastante pour en estreindre la moindre estincelle" 1 
 There was one slight drawback on all this gallant devo- 
 tion want of food want of everything. The pope's 
 legate, the Bishop of Paris, and the Spanish ambassador, 
 Mendoza, proposed to convert the silver of the churches 
 into money to pay the troops ; and the Spanish ambas- 
 sador laid a premium on the duration of the miserable 
 siege, by engaging to distribute to the poor dupes of 
 their teachers and masters, a hundred and twenty crowns' 
 worth of bread daily : and thus, in behalf of his master, 
 the King of Spain, he prolonged the sedition so sense- 
 less and useless, at the paltry cost of 30/. per day, 
 yielding a miserable subsistence to starving thousands. 2 
 Meanwhile, Henry IV. pressed vigorously the hopeless 
 but fanatical city : ever yearning for peace, ever pity- 
 ing the deluded dupes of the faction, but still resolute in 
 defence of his rights, and determined to enforce, if he 
 could not conciliate, the surrender of the rebellious city. 
 Vain were the vows of the deluded wretches to our Lady 
 of Loretto in the dreadful hunger of the thousand 
 mouths feeding on horseflesh, muleflesh, and bread made 
 of powdered bones dug out of the tombs. Vain were 
 " the very devout processions of people who went bare- 
 foot," with long prayers and a thousand mummeries all 
 the livelong day and the livelong night whilst harrow- 
 ing disease, like plague, made the spectres of famine 
 more horrible to see. To reduce the swellings of their 
 limbs, and the numberless maladies of the hunger- 
 tortured wretches, the pope's legate distributed pardons 
 and indulgences amain ; and the monks, priests, and 
 
 1 Pierre Cornejo, Ligucur, Discours brcf et veritable. - Id. ib.
 
 470 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Jesuits, gave them sermons " which so encouraged them 
 in all their sufferings, that the sermons served them as 
 bread que les sermons kur servoyent de pain" And 
 when they falsely told them in these sermons that they 
 would be relieved in eight days, they went away con- 
 tented. 1 Poor, miserable dupes of priestcraft. Shall 
 humanity never be rid of the heartless, fiendish iniquity 
 the true Moloch of earth. " Long live the King of 
 Spam," the miserable dupes were taught to shout within 
 the walls of the city, pining in famine, wasting in 
 disease. For a little crust of bread the poor wretches, 
 " blind in their misery, sang songs to the praise of the 
 League, and boasted of their good fortune in belonging 
 to a Roman Catholic king, namely, the King of Spain." 2 
 And Mendoza, his ambassador, to reward their fidelity, 
 scattered among them a quantity of coppers stamped 
 with the arms of Spain : "Long live the King of Spain," 
 more lustily they shouted. 3 Still they starved : the 
 coppers could not feed them. So desperate was the 
 famine that eight thousand persons died in a few days ; 
 and frantic despair, with unavailing tears, called for 
 pity and for food. " Give us bread ; we die of hunger," 
 they now cried, when Mendoza flung them his Spanish 
 coppers. And the people must be fed, if faction must 
 endure : so it was proposed and resolved by the prelates 
 that all the houses of the ecclesiastics should be visited 
 and searched for food to feed the starving dupes of 
 faction : a contribution from each house, according to 
 the supply in hand, was demanded. The Jesuits were 
 the first to refuse consent to the expedient, the charitable, 
 the just demand ; and Tyrius, the rector of the Jesuit 
 
 1 P. Cornejo, ubi supra ; Davila, ii. 154. 
 
 ' 2 P. Cornejo, ubi supra. 3 Id. ib.
 
 FAMINE DURING THE SIEGE OF PARIS. 471 
 
 college, petitioned the pope's legate to exempt him from 
 this visitation. "Your request is neither civil nor 
 Christian," said the sheriff of the merchants to the 
 Jesuit. " Why should you be exempt ? Is your life 
 more valuable than ours 1 ?" They covered the Jesuit 
 with confusion, and set to work with the visitation. It 
 was all clover in the rack of the holy fathers. They 
 found quantities of wheat, hay, and biscuit, enough for 
 a year's consumption. They found also a large quantity 
 of salted meat, which the Jesuits had dried to make it 
 keep. In short, there were more provisions in their 
 house than in the four best houses of Paris. 1 Hence you 
 see how much better it is to be the leaders of a faction 
 than its dupes ; and here we see how the siege was 
 prolonged. If Henry could have starved out the leaders, 
 the Spanish ambassador would have been long before 
 bowed out with his coppers. But is it not bitterly 
 ridiculous to find out at last how these roaring bellows 
 of sedition fortified their lungs to preach their falsehoods 
 to their miserable dupes "? And is it not disgustingly true 
 in all times, that incendiary pharisees, whilst they 
 preach up sacrifice to their dupes, take vast care not to 
 be themselves the victims 1 Not a single house of the 
 ecclesiastics was found without a supply of biscuits 
 sufficient for a year's consumption at the least. " Even 
 the house of the Capuchin monks, who are said to live on 
 nothing but what is given to them day by day, reserving 
 nothing for the morrow, but giving the remnants to the 
 poor even their house was found well provided. Whereat 
 many were astonished" and well they might be, if 
 they were stupid enough to take them at their word. 2 
 The provisions thus obtained, and sold to the hungry 
 
 1 P. Cornejo, ubl supra. - P. Curnejo. uli supra.
 
 472 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 people who had money, and given to those who had 
 none, staved off the famine for a while for the demand 
 was only made for fifteen days ; and when that term 
 expired the supplies stopped, and the second state was 
 worse than the first. Dogs and cats had been boiled 
 up in huge cauldrons, with herbs and roots to feed the 
 poor. A bit of a dog or a cat, and an ounce of bread, 
 had been the allowance nay, it was a stipulated condi- 
 tion announced to the poor wretches that, before the 
 distribution, they must bring all their cats and their dogs 
 to a place appointed. And yet they made them pay, 
 and very dearly too, for the bread at sixpence a pound, 
 and the biscuit at eight pence a nice little traffic for 
 the Jesuits and other churchmen during that fair of the 
 famine. 1 Henry IV. pitied the dupes of the heartless 
 faction. Their cries reached his camp, and resounded 
 afar : shrill were the pangs of agony. Dead bodies 
 strewed the streets of the city. Night and day they 
 buried them, and yet there were more to be buried. 
 
 1 These churchmen sold the skins of the dogs and cats to the starving people. 
 It is affirmed that this dog-flesh and cat-flesh were sold by some of these monks 
 and priests to the amount of 30,000 crowns. " For these priests, foreseeing that 
 the dogs and cats would be in demand, had set some poor people, whom they fed 
 in return, to catch all the dogs that followed the persons who went to mass. Be 
 that as it may, they managed so well, that soon after, not a cat nor a dog was to 
 be seen in Paris." Bref Traite des Miseres &c. annexed to the Satyre Menippee 
 in the Pantheon Litt. The Jesuits even required the crown jewels as security 
 for the cost of provisions which they supplied to the Leaguers ; and the crown 
 jewels were delivered to them by the Duke de Nemours ! The turn which the 
 modern apologists give to this affair is, that some of the jewels were " deposited " 
 with the Jesuits " to prevent their entire dilapidation." They were afterwards 
 restored to the king by an order of the council a sad necessity which is scarcely 
 a matter for boasting, as the Jesuit-apologist makes the transaction. The other 
 depositories of the crown jewels sold them, which shows, perhaps, that the other 
 fat ecclesiastics were less wise in then? generation than the Jesuits, who would 
 have been seriously compromised by such a proceeding. Documents, ubi supra, 
 p. 21, ct seq. ; Cayet, Chron. novenn. t. i. livre vi. ; Meteren, Hist, des Pays Bas, 
 livre xvi. p. 338.
 
 EFFECTS OF THE SIEGE OF PARIS. 473 
 
 Over the walls, into the ditch below, some of the wretches 
 leaped, maddened by hunger, strong by despair, and 
 reached the camp of the Huguenot. With tears they 
 begged him to let some of their fellow-sufferers leave the 
 city of the famine and the plague and Henry con- 
 sented. Four thousand escaped, and more would have 
 followed had the soldiers not driven them back and com- 
 pelled the Parisians to close their gates shutting up the 
 rest to famine and disease. Even the richest and the 
 noblest of the great city now writhed in the fangs of 
 horrible hunger. One lady, of rank and fortune, lost 
 two of her children, who died of hunger. Famine 
 hardened her heart, and made her inventive : she put 
 weights in two coffins which were buried, and she kept 
 the bodies of her poor children to feed her hunger : 
 but never a morsel did she eat of that piteous food, 
 which was not drenched with the tears of a mother ; 
 and she died ere the death-feast was ended. 1 
 
 Still the Faction, the well-fed, comfortable Faction 
 held out in the midst of physical and moral desola- 
 tion. The contact of the soldiers, and the Spaniards, 
 marrans Espagnols, utterly corrupted all morals and 
 decency. The suburbs were ruined, deserted. The city 
 became poor and a solitude. All around it was desola- 
 tion. A hundred thousand persons died in the space of 
 three months, through hunger, disgust of life, and 
 wretchedness in the streets, and in the hospitals 
 without relief or pity. The University was deserted, or 
 served as a refuge for the husbandmen ; and the col- 
 leges were filled with cows and their calves. 2 In the 
 
 1 Bref Traite des Miseres, &c., Sat. Menip. 
 
 2 The Jesuits boasted that during these troubles they benefited the city of 
 Paris by continuing to teach the young, as there was no other college in the 
 university but theirs in full play. " Would you know the reason ? " said some
 
 474 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 palace, the Leaguers and their party had taken up their 
 exclusive above. Grass grew in the streets. The shops 
 were for the most part closed. Horror and solitude 
 reigned where before was heard the sound of the cart 
 and the coach. It was on the lower orders that the 
 greater weight of the tempest fell bitterly and on cer- 
 tain families which were well to do before the war. The 
 well-provisioned ecclesiastics talked of nothing but pa- 
 tience. Roze, the ardent firebrand, Pigenat, Commolet, 
 
 one to Pasquier. " The reason is, that the principals of the other colleges had 
 dropped their hands, deploring in their souls the calamities caused by the 
 rebellion : whereas the Jesuits raised their hands to the skies as those who 
 thought they had won the victory of the enterprise." But, above all, I found a 
 curious letter which was sent to Spain, but intercepted by Le Seigneur de 
 Chaseron, the governor of Bourbonnois, of which Pere Matthieu, Jesuit, was the 
 bearer. This letter was put into my hands, and it was as follows : " Sire, your 
 Catholic majesty having been so kind to us, as to give us to understand by the 
 very religious and reverend Father Matthieu, not only your holy intentions in 
 the general cause of religion, but especially your good affections towards this 
 city of Paris .... We hope soon that the arms of his Holiness and your 
 Catholic majesty united, will deliver us from the oppression of our enemy, who 
 has to the present, for a year and a half, blockaded us on all sides, without any- 
 thing being able to enter into this city except by chance, or by force of arms ; 
 and he would strive to pass through were it not for the troops which your 
 majesty has pleased to appoint us. We can certainly assure your Catholic 
 majesty that the vows and wishes of all the Catholics are to see your Catholic 
 majesty in possession of the sceptre of this crown, and reigning over us, likewise 
 as we most willingly throw ourselves into your arms, as those of our father . . . 
 The reverend Father Matthieu, the present bearer, who has much edified us, 
 being well acquainted with our affairs, will supply the deficiency of our letters to 
 your Catholic majesty, whom we humbly beg to give credence to what he will 
 say." The Pere Matthieu here named is not the famous Claude Matthieu, the 
 courier of the League, but either another Jesuit, or a Spanish monk. The Jesuit 
 apologist of the Documents, in spite of the explanation given by Pasquier, falsely 
 tells his readers that Pasquier or rather Arnaud meant Claude Matthieu. This 
 is one of those mean tricks in which the Jesuits presume on the ignorance of their 
 dupes. Compare Pasquier, Catechisme, p. 28.9, et seq., and the Documents, ubi 
 supra, p. 3'2, et seq. Pasquier is of opinion that this Matthieu was a Jesuit, and 
 gives his reasons ; but he does not say ho was the famous Claude. But the 
 main point here is the letter, with its sentiments and these are not denied. 
 Arnaud said, " The Father Matthieu of the same Order, but a different person to 
 him of whom I before spoke," &c. Plaidoycr, p. 38 ; Jcsuites Criminels, p. 212.
 
 OBSTINACY OP FACTION. 475 
 
 Pelletier, Boucher, Garin, Christin, and other seditious 
 preachers, incessantly thundered against the king and 
 his people, and never delivered a sermon without pro- 
 mising succour from Spain. The Sixteen on one hand 
 the Forty on the other and the supporters of the 
 parliament shoved the wheels along kept the machine 
 of Faction in motion. The chiefs, amongst others the 
 Duke de Nemours, who was contriving mighty projects, 
 being well stocked with provisions for themselves, cared 
 for the people only just as much as they thought neces- 
 sary to prevent them from mutiny. Spanish gold was 
 the cement of this misery, whilst they waited for the 
 arrival of the Duke of Parma with his liberating army. 
 If there were any priests, such as, amongst others, Be- 
 noit and Morenne, who exhorted the people to modera- 
 tion, they expelled them : no man was a zealous Catholic 
 if he did not transform the late king and the present 
 into a sorcerer, devil, heretic damned. The miserable 
 city was full of factions, all vomiting a perpetual fire 
 of deadly hatred against the king. If he appeared gra- 
 cious, they called him a hare and a fox ; if severe, all 
 the tyrants in the world had been good people compared 
 to him : and the more their necessities increased, the 
 more wretchedly they bit the stone which was thrown 
 to them from on high, as they evidenced in the first 
 siege, and in the second which followed the retreat of 
 the Spaniards. Thus, as in a diseased body, whilst the 
 bad humours remain, there is no hope of health so, 
 whilst the chiefs of the League, namely, the Guise party, 
 the pope's legate, the ambassador and agent of Spain, 
 the Sixteen, the seditious preachers, were in Paris, and 
 swayed the people, that body remained in a wretched 
 condition : but in proportion as these humours were
 
 476 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 evacuated, health returned to those who would have 
 perished utterly, if the chiefs of the League had remained 
 however short a time longer in Paris. 1 
 
 Still it cannot be asserted that the Jesuits did not 
 share the dangers of the enterprise. On one occasion 
 they saved the city for the Leaguers and for Spain. 
 Henry had alarmed the city, but without effect, and the 
 weary people had retired to their houses : " but these 
 good fathers," says an admiring Leaguer, " either in 
 order to give an account of the night's proceedings, or 
 by divine inspiration for the salvation of the city, 
 would not retire, and remained on the fortifications 
 until four o'clock of the morning. They heard a noise 
 and gave the alarm : but the enemy had time to plant 
 six or seven scaling-ladders, and mounted the wall 
 the first invader rushed towards one of the Jesuits, who 
 fetched him such a desperate stroke with an old halbert 
 that it split in two on his head and the soldier rolled 
 head over heels into the ditch below. The good fathers 
 served two others in like manner. One of the sealers had 
 already thrown over his ladder inside, so as to get into 
 the city, but the good fathers belaboured him so hotly 
 with two halberts that they wrenched the ladder from 
 his left hand, and did not give him time to use the cutlass 
 he held in his right, though he struck at them lustily, 
 but they aimed at his throat and knocked him into 
 the ditch like the rest. At the noise, an Englishman, 
 named William Baldwin, a lawyer, and one Nivelle, a 
 bookseller, ran up and found these good fathers struggling 
 with another Huguenot, whom they overpowered, dis- 
 patched, and flung into the ditch Soon the city 
 
 was roused, a lot of straw was fired and hurled into the 
 
 1 Abrege des Estats de la Ligue (Pantheon Litt., Sat. Menippee).
 
 THEIR SERVICES DURING THE SIEGE OF PARIS. 477 
 
 ditch, so that the enemy, finding that they were dis- 
 covered, sounded a retreat. It was the third and best 
 opportunity these blinded people had for capturing the 
 city ; for if instead of six ladders they had fixed six 
 hundred, and in different places, as they might have 
 done, having more than fifteen hundred, (the people and 
 everybody being tired and fatigued) they would have 
 succeeded in their enterprise, but God was pleased to 
 blind them as on the other occasions, and wished that 
 these good fathers should have the glory of having 
 defended this city, not only with their doctrine, but also 
 with their arms, and at the risk of their lives. So that 
 there are five things which preserved this people, with- 
 out all of which it seems that it would have been 
 impossible to preserve it namely, the contrivance and 
 valour of Monseigneur de Nemours, the governor, the 
 presence of the pope's legate, the alms of the Spanish 
 ambassador, the persuasion of the preachers, and the 
 news sent by Monseigneur de Mayenne and published 
 by the princesses ; we can say that the sixth and most 
 evident of all was the diligence and care of these good 
 fathers." 1 
 
 1 Pierre Cornejo, Discours bref et veritable, &e. " The method of apology 
 which the Jesuits have always adopted," observes St. Priest, " has always led 
 them to deny everything to serve a temporary purpose, even courageous and 
 honourable deeds." The deed just related was at least courageous and yet 
 the Jesuits deny it in the face of four authorities, Davila among the rest. The 
 only argument they allege is the assertion of De Thou, that the assault failed on 
 account of the shortness of the ladders certainly a very improbable deficiency 
 in such a veteran army as that of Henry IV., who had made the attempt twice 
 before. De Thou actually quotes the fact from Cornejo, and the Leaguer's 
 description of the famine ; though he introduces the man's name as one who in 
 some respects did not write with exact diligence respecting those times illius 
 temporis plerunque minus exact& diligentid scripsit. Still he quotes the fact, and 
 there is no evidence to show that he saw reason to gainsay the Leaguer's account, 
 which certainly has no appearance of a fabrication, as the man writes in admira- 
 tion of the deeds of the good fathers." The apologist of the Documents
 
 478 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 At length, after an important victory or two, and 
 much skilful management to little purpose, or, at least, 
 after the most conciliating conduct on his part, Henry IV. 
 resolved to " take the perilous leap," as he wrote to his 
 mistress, and turned Roman Catholic once more, to 
 confound his enemies and secure the crown of France. 1 
 Henry IV. humbled himself to the pitiful ceremonial in 
 order to consolidate his ascendant, to group round about 
 him the cities of the League, to fling confusion and 
 disorder amongst the powers which resisted his rights 
 of inheritance and victory. 2 What a bitter thing it was 
 for his faithful Huguenots ! But he promised them 
 complete protection and they loved him so well that 
 they let him " take the perilous leap," as he piteously 
 
 truncates De Thou in order to make the aspersion on Cornejo conclusive. The 
 fact is, however, that the expedition was a blunder on the part of Henry, as many 
 believed, according to Davila, and it remained for De Thou to account for the 
 exceedingly curt manner in which he dismisses the transaction. See Davila, ii. 
 175. The affair is also given in the Journal de VEtoile, and the Brieve Histoire 
 des Ouerres civiles avenues en Flandres. The denial is in vol. i. of the Docu- 
 ments, Des Jesuiies Ligueurs, p. 21. In favour of Cornejo, it may be stated, that 
 Capefigue quotes him, p. 152, La Ligue et Henri IV. It seems to me that the 
 authority of Davila is far superior to that of De Thou. Davila served under tlie 
 banners of Henry IV., and therefore knew the cause of the failure : he ascribes 
 it to " a Jesuit," but, of course, leaves it to those within the city to describe the 
 particulars, which the Leaguer Cornejo has done so graphically. Touching 
 Davila, see Sismondi, Historic View, ii. 59. 
 
 1 " ' J'arrivai hier soir de bonheur,' ecrivait-il a sa belle maitresse, ' et fus 
 importune" de Dieu garde jusqu' a mon coucher. Nous croyons la treve, et 
 qu'elle se doit conclure aujourd'hui ; pour moi, je suis a 1'endroict des Ligueurs, 
 de Tordre de Sainct- Thomas. Je commence ce matin a parler aux esveques, 
 outre ceux que je vous mandois hier .... L'espeYance que j'ai de vous voir 
 demain, retient ma main de vous faire plus long discours. Ce sera demain que 
 jeferai le saut perilleux. A 1'heure que je vous escrit, j'ai cent importuns sur 
 les espaules qui me feront hair Sainct Denis comme vous faictes Mantes. Bon jour, 
 mon coeur ; venez demain de bonne heure, car il me semble qu'il y a desja un an 
 que je ne vous ai vue. Je baise un million de fois les belles mams de mon ange 
 et la bouche de ma chere maitresse.' " Henri IV. a la Marquise de Mousseaux; 
 apud Capefigue, ubi supra, p. 251, et seq. 
 
 2 Capef. 247.
 
 HENRY IV. TURNS CATHOLIC ONCE MORE. 479 
 
 wrote to his mistress, just before he abjured his faith, 
 made his confession, was otherwise humiliated in fact 
 did the thing completely, and heard a grand Te Deum 
 sung over his fall from personal dignity, and his ascent 
 to a golden crown of thorns. How Elizabeth of England 
 bewailed that natural but too significant transaction. 
 " Ah ! what grief," she wrote to the unscrupulous con- 
 formist, " and what regrets, and what groans I have 
 felt in my soul at the sound of such tidings as Morlans 
 has related ! My God ! is it possible that any human 
 respect can efface the terror which Divine fear threatens ! 
 Can we even, by arguments of reason, expect a good 
 consequence of actions so iniquitous 1 He who has 
 supported and preserved you in mercy, can you imagine 
 that He will permit you to advance, unaided from on 
 high, to the greatest predicament ? But it is dangerous 
 to do evil with the hope of good from it. Your very 
 faithful sister, Sire, after the old fashion I have nothing 
 to do with the new one. ELIZABETH." 1 Doubtless 
 Henry felt a momentary pang or misgiving at these 
 earnest words of upright expostulation ; but doubtless, 
 too, he smiled it away when he thought of the results 
 which the mummery promised. Indifferent to all creeds 
 but that of Machiavel, Henry of Navarre mocked and 
 made a jest of his abjuration, to which he so flippantly 
 alludes in his love-letter to his mistress by way of 
 
 1 " Ah ! quelles douleurs ! et quels regrets et quels ge'missemens j'ay sentis 
 en mon ame par le son de telles nouvelles que Morlans m'a centres ! Mon Dieu ! 
 est-il possible qu'aucun mondain respect dust effacer la terreur que la crainte 
 divine menace ! Pouvons-nous, par raison meme, attendre bonne sequelle 
 d'actes si iniques ? Celui qui vous a maintenu et conserve' par sa merci, pouvez- 
 vous imaginer qu'il vous permist aller seul au plus grand besoin. Or, cela est 
 dangereux de mal faire pour en esperer du bien. Votre tres assure'e somr, sire, 
 a la vielle mode, avec la nouvelle je n'ay que faire. ELIZABETH." BibL du Roi, 
 MSS. de Colbert, apud Capefigue, p. 251.
 
 480 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 a most dismal preparation for that general confession 
 which he was to make on the morrow with contrition 
 and absolution and holy communion. His veritable 
 motive was a political transaction a purely worldly 
 means for gaining a crown. The preliminaries were 
 clap-trap : the finality was expedience : but the verbal 
 abjuration of his Calvinistic creed was complete. He 
 .cloaked himself with popery the charmed garment 
 that could dazzle and win the blinking religionists of 
 the realm. To the churchmen of St. Denis he swore 
 every article of Roman Faith : to the Protestant princes 
 he only said : " That following the counsel of his friends 
 and other princes, he had consented to hold a con- 
 ference with the Catholic lords and ecclesiastics of the 
 moderate party, and even to adopt the papal ceremonies, 
 as the only means of avoiding a greater defection among 
 his subjects, to destroy that accusation of heretic 
 relapse which served as a pretext of revolt, to save 
 his crown and wait for new succours from abroad : that 
 Queen Elizabeth of England herself had already engaged 
 to give him fresh assistance " x recognising the necessity 
 in which he was placed, which was false, as we have 
 seen by the queen's afflicted letter. 
 
 Here now, however, was a Roman Catholic king to 
 throw all rivals out of the royal field. Besides, there 
 was valour, there was victory, there was force of arms 
 still to advance his pretension. Henry's " conversion " 
 
 1 Correspond, de Henri IV. avec Maurice-le-Savant par M. de Rommel, p. 6. 
 Henry's sister, Catherine, afterwards Duchess of Lorraine, wrote about the same 
 time as follows to the Prince Palatine John I. " I beseech you, whatever you 
 may hear, not to believe that I will change my religion : for with God's aid, I 
 shall make so exemplary a confession of it, that no one will doubt that I am 
 resolved to end my days in it, that I would deem myself very unfortunate if I 
 abandoned God for men. Do me the good, I beseech you, to assure all good 
 people of this." Tb.
 
 CARICATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 481 
 
 was ready money to the moderates ; though Spanish 
 doubloons still stimulated the holy union of sedition. 
 It was a moment of crisis a time when public opinion 
 was totally unsettled, and therefore might be swayed 
 with dexterity in any direction, if skilfully handled. 
 Pamphlets swarmed accordingly biting ridicule cut- 
 ting sarcasm stinging jokes fell thick upon the Spanish 
 faction, so pious, so holy, so comfortable in the midst of 
 starving thousands. In truth, the sixteenth century 
 was the epoch of caricature and pamphlets. Luther, 
 the German and Genevan school, and subsequently the 
 Dutch and Flemish, had popularised those dashes of 
 biting rage which went at once to the common sense of 
 the multitude. They would seize whatever was ridi- 
 culous in a man, or a measure, or a cause, or a system, 
 and fling it to feed the herd of mockers. So desperately 
 given to horrible bloodshed so often in the midst of 
 hideous sights, that sickened the heart until it was made 
 insensible as stone the men of the sixteenth century 
 needed farce, folly, burlesque, and masquerade a mix- 
 ture of religion and debauchery, so necessary to unite a 
 dreadful earth to that heaven which, after all, those 
 religionists felt was receding from them further and 
 further for ever. They sang their mistresses and the 
 holy confraternities together. Fantastic religionism and 
 rampant licentiousness are the most unitable things in 
 existence ; infinitely more so in times when dreadful 
 crimes must be committed with the deliberation we 
 commonly require to perform an act of heroic virtue. 
 Hence the people then loved the excitement of vivid 
 importraitures, whether tending to inspire grief, hatred, 
 pity, or withering contempt. Never had the productions 
 of caricature been more touching,- light, yet penetrating. 
 
 VOL. II. I I
 
 482 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 It pounced on all the emotions, all the creeds of the 
 epoch. Had it to account for religious persecution r ( 
 How naturally it fetched a devil, and showed him up 
 blowing forth the infernal atrocity. Nor did it scruple 
 to paint the great serpent lugging off to his quarters 
 flocks of Huguenots and politicians. Intentions, cha- 
 racters, absurdities were perfectly reproduced, and 
 assumed embodiment life-like, unmistakeable under the 
 creative hand of the artist. The parliamentarians took 
 hold of this powerful arm as soon as it favoured them. 
 Paris was inundated with pamphlets, with caricatures, 
 and striking suggestions. They represented the Spanish 
 ambassador under the figure of a huge hen, her head 
 covered with an enormous red bonnet and plume, 
 carrying on her back a long broom, and holding up a 
 little owl evidently meant for Philip's infanta, the 
 royal dream of the Spanish and Jesuit faction for 
 France or for England. This fowl ambassador is holding 
 a parley with the pope's legate a remarkably fine 
 cock with long feathers, accoutred in a crimson episcopal 
 roundabout, and armed with a cross-bow, at the end of 
 which is a little fish, to represent Saint Peter's hook, 
 which caught beautiful pence rather than the souls 
 of the purgatorial caverns. 1 Disgusting and blasphe- 
 
 1 Cftpefigue, ubi supra, 1 62, et seq. It were impossible to quote many of the 
 fancies emitted in those days of " religious " excitement. Capefigue gives 
 some of the worst. In French, horrible as is the meaning, much of the 
 offensiveness is removed by that conventionality which makes "all things 
 lawful " to that language. The same remark is applicable to all the Roman 
 languages, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Whence comes this ? Is it not a 
 striking proof of that mental debauchery which resulted from the licentiousness 
 that accompanied the highest development of continental intellect ? Words 
 the most revolting to Englishmen are familiar to the French. Imagine the 
 name of a thoroughfare to be " Hell-street t " And yet nobody shudders at 
 hearing and repeating Rue d'Enfer in Paris. These remarks might be very
 
 THE SATYRE MENIPPEE. 483 
 
 mous were many other thoughts and fancies of the 
 hour a terrible reaction, however, against the still 
 more disgusting and blasphemous proceedings of the 
 Leaguers and their sacerdotal bellows. When ridicule is 
 whelminglj brought to bear upon a cause, nothing 
 remains for it but to die, and that was the doom which 
 ridicule prepared for the selfish League, its selfish priest- 
 craft and fanaticism. Cervantes has been awarded the 
 merit of having ridiculed chivalry, or knight-errantry, 
 out of fashion : but many other causes had already 
 combined to direct men's thoughts to more profitable 
 phantoms. It is, however, unquestionable that the 
 authors of the famous Satyre Menippee killed the hydra 
 of the League. This pasquinade tore the veil from 
 men's eyes, whilst it laid bare the deformities of the 
 monster which had preyed upon them so long, so reck- 
 lessly, so cruelly. The original title was the Satyre 
 Menippee, or The virtue of the Spanish Catholicon, and 
 the sitting of the Estates of Paris during the League, 
 published in 1594. 1 It became a joint-stock composition, 
 when it " took " with the public, and consisted of several 
 parts by " different hands." The first, or the Catholicon, 
 was composed by Le Roi, chaplain to the young Cardinal 
 de Bourbon ; the second part, or the Farce of the 
 
 largely extended through the whole range of French conversational expression 
 and literature. One of the causes was the abuse of the religious sentiment, which 
 the Roman teachers apph'ed to the basest purposes, and made subservient to 
 the vilest interests and expedience. 
 
 1 The word Menippee is derived from Menippus, a Cynic philosopher of 
 Phoenicia, originally a slave ; he purchased his liberty and became one of the 
 greatest usurers at Thebes. He grew so desperate from the continual reproaches 
 and insults to which he was daily exposed on account of his meanness, that he 
 destroyed himself. He wrote thirteen books of satires, which have been lost ; 
 "all full of salted witticisms, and peppered jeerings and jokes provocative of 
 laughter, to exasperate the vicious men of his time." Discours de I'Imprimeur, 
 Sat. Menip. (Panth. Litt.) 
 
 I I 2
 
 484 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 Estates of the League, was by many hands ; but Pas- 
 serat and Rapin composed the poetry some of the 
 best specimens in the French language. The harangue 
 put in the mouth of the cardinal legate was by Gillot, 
 canon of the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, and a clerical 
 member of the parliament. His house was the workshop 
 of the whole satire ; and he it was who represented the 
 burlesque procession of the Leaguers, as pictured among 
 the cuts of the early editions. Florent, Chretien, and 
 Pierre Pithon, other wits of the day, produced the 
 curious and striking harangues of the other sacerdotal 
 Pharisees. 1 It is thus evident that it was a systematic 
 onslaught, with determined energy and resolution to put 
 down the humbug, which was done accordingly. The 
 opening at once gives a full idea of the entire performance. 
 Two charlatans are represented, one as a Spaniard, the 
 other as a man of Lorraine, stationed in the court of the 
 Louvre both " quacking " their drugs, and hocuspocus- 
 ing all day long before all who would go and see their 
 performance, which was gratis. " The Spanish charlatan 
 (the Cardinal de Plaisance) was very merry, and mounted 
 on a small scaffold, playing the virginals, and keeping a 
 bank, as we see at Venice in the St. Mark. To his scaffold 
 was attached a great skin of parchment, with inscriptions 
 in several languages, sealed with five or six seals of gold, 
 lead, and wax, with titles in letters of gold, as follows : 
 " Credentials of the power of a Spaniard, and of the 
 wonderful effects of his drug, called Higuiero de Inferno, 
 or Compound Catholicon." 2 The sum of the schedule 
 
 1 Renault, Hist, de France, ii. 600 ; Feller, Biog. Univ. in voce, Gillot. 
 
 2 Higuiero d' 'Inferno means, in Spanish, Fig-tree of Hell. The drug was so 
 called for many reasons. " First, the fig-tree is a wretched and infamous tree, 
 whose leaves, according to the Bible, served to clothe our first parents after they 
 had sinned, and committed high treason against their God, their father and
 
 THE SATYRE MENIPPEE. 485 
 
 was, that this quack was the grandson of a Spaniard of 
 Grenada, exiled into Africa for Mahometanism, physician 
 to the high-priest of the Moors, who, from being a 
 schoolmaster and preacher, made himself King of 
 Morocco by a species of Higuiero, by dispossessing his 
 master by degrees, and finally killing him, and taking 
 his place. The father of this quack being dead, the son 
 
 creator, just as the Leaguers, in order to cover their disobedience and ingratitude 
 against their king and benefactor, have taken the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman 
 church to cover their shame and their sin. Wherefore the catholicon of Spain is 
 the pretext which the King of Spain and the Jesuits, and other preachers, 
 gained over by the doubloons of Spain, have given to the seditious and ambitious 
 Leaguers, to rise up and revolt against then? natural and lawful king, and wage 
 more than civil war in their country : the Catholicon, can, therefore, be properly 
 called the Fig-tree of Hell, whereas that with which Adam and Eve covered 
 
 themselves, was the Fig-tree of Paradise You know, also, that the 
 
 ancients considered this tree a gibbet, as when Timon the Athenian wished to 
 root up one which he had in his garden, and was somewhat in the way, but on 
 which many persons had hanged themselves already, he sent forth a trumpeter 
 to proclaim, that if any one wished to hang himself, he must be quick, because 
 the fig-tree was to be uprooted. Pliny tells us that this tree has no odour, 
 neither has the League : also, that it easily drops its fruit, just like the League : 
 thirdly, that it receives all kinds of graftings, just as the League receives all 
 sorts of people : fourthly, that it is short-lived, just as the League : fifthly, that 
 the greater part of the fruit which appears at first, does not reach maturity, 
 exactly like that of the League. But what beseems it most, and which has more 
 resemblance to the League than St. Francis has to our Lord, is the fig-tree of 
 the Indies, which the Spaniards themselves have named Fig-tree of Hell [Higuera 
 Infernal, the castor-oil plant] of which Mathiol says, that if you cut off only 
 a leaf, and plant it half way in the soil, it strikes root, and then on that leaf 
 another leaf sprouts ; thus, leaves sprouting on leaves, the plant becomes as high 
 as a tree, trunkless, stemless, branchless, and, as it were, rootless, so that it may 
 be placed amongst the wonders of nature. Is there anything so similar and 
 apposite to the League, which, from a single leaf, that is, a small beginning, has 
 attained by degrees, from one accession to another, that great altitude at which 
 we have seen it, and yet, for want of having a good footing, and a strong stem to 
 support it, has toppled over at the first wind \ " And so on, the writer follows 
 up the curious allegory with wonderful and most amusing minuteness of simili- 
 tude, diverging into the cocoa-nut tree, and the numberless uses to which it 
 subserves ; " like the League, which from the first served the purpose of all sorts 
 of people, with all sorts of hopes, with all sorts of means to cover all sorts of 
 passions hatred, avarice, ambition, vengeance, and ingratitude." Piscours dc 
 Vlmprimcur, Sat. Menip. (Panth. Litt.)
 
 486 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 came to Spain, got baptized, and put himself to service at 
 the Jesuits college of Toledo. Here, having learnt that 
 the simple Catholicon of Rome had no other effects than 
 the edification of souls, and caused salvation and beati- 
 tude in the next world only, and being rather annoyed 
 at so long a delay, he resolved (in compliance with the 
 testamentary advice of his father) to sophisticate that 
 Catholicon, so that, by dint of handling, stirring, refin- 
 ing, calcining, and sublimating, he had composed in that 
 college of the Jesuits a sovereign electuary which sur- 
 passes every philosopher's stone, the proofs whereof were 
 couched in five articles." Then follow the said articles, of 
 which I shall translate the most striking. " What that 
 great emperor Charles V. could not do with all the united 
 forces and all the guns of Europe, his brave son, Dom 
 Philip, by the help of this drug [compounded in the 
 Jesuit college of Toledo, a city famous for magic], has 
 been able to do sportively with a simple lieutenant of 
 twelve or fifteen thousand men." " Let a retired king 
 [Philip II.] amuse himself with refining this drug in the 
 Escurial let him write a word in Flanders, to Father 
 Ignatius, sealed with the Catholicon, and the Father will 
 find him a man who (salvd conscientia) will murder his 
 enemy whom he could not conquer by arms in twenty 
 years/' alluding to the assassination of the Prince of 
 Orange at Delft. 1 " If this king proposes to secure his 
 estates to his children after his death, and to usurp his 
 neighbour's kingdom at small cost, let him write a word 
 to Mendoza his ambassador, or to Father Commolet 
 [Jesuit], and let him write at the bottom of his letter, 
 with the higuiero de inferno, ' Yo el Rey, and they will 
 
 1 This murder by Baltazar Girard is ascribed to the instigation of the Jesuits 
 by Pasquicr, Rechercfies dc la France, livre viii. c. 20 ; Catechisme, 202 b.
 
 THE SATYBE MENIPPEE. 487 
 
 furnish him with a religious apostate [Jacques Clement], 
 who will go, with a fine face, like a Judas, and assassi- 
 nate, in cold blood, a great king of France for him, his 
 own brother-in-law, in the midst of his camp, without 
 fearing either God or men : they will do more they 
 will canonise that murderer, and will place that Judas 
 above Saint Peter, and will baptize that horrible and 
 portentous enormity, with the name of a blow from 
 heaven [as did Mendoza], whose godfathers will be the 
 cardinals, the legates, and primates" the Cardinals Gae- 
 tano and Plaisance, legates, the Cardinal de Pelve, and 
 the Archbishop of Lyons. " Serve as a spy in the 
 camp, in the trenches, at the cannon, in the king's 
 chamber, and in his counsels ; although you be known as 
 a spy, provided you have taken in the morning a grain 
 of Higuiero, whoever challenges you will be considered 
 a Huguenot and favourer of the heretics." In the 
 harangue of the Archbishop of Lyons, composed by 
 Rapin, the archbishop is made to speak appositely for 
 all French revolutions, as well as the League. " illus- 
 trious assistants, chosen and appointed at random for 
 the dignities of this notable assembly the pure cream 
 of our provinces the unpressed wine of our govern- 
 ments who have come hither with so much toil, some 
 on foot, others unattended, some by night, and most of 
 them at your expense ! Do you not admire the heroic 
 deeds of our Louchards, Bussys, Senaults, &c. [the Six- 
 teen], who have made their way so well by the pen ? 
 What do you think of so many heads [caboches, noddles], 
 which have been called together, and which God has 
 raised up at Paris, Rouen, Lyons, Orleans, Troyes, Tou- 
 louse, Amiens, where you behold butchers, tailors, 
 knavish lawyers, watermen, cutlers, and other sorts of
 
 488 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 the scum of the mob, possessing the first vote in the 
 council and assembly of the nation, and giving the law 
 to those who were before great by birth, by wealth, and 
 by qualifications, who would not dare now to hem or 
 mutter before them "? Is not that the fulfilment of the 
 prophecy which says : De stercore erigens pauperem f 
 Would it not be a crime to pass over in silence that holy 
 martyr Jacques Clement, who, having been the most 
 debauched monk of his convent (as all the Jacobins of 
 this city know full well), and even after having been 
 publicly reprimanded in the chapter, and whipped, seve- 
 ral times, for his thefts and wickedness, is, nevertheless, 
 to-day sanctified, and is now on high, disputing prece- 
 dence with St. Jago de Compostella "? blessed confessor 
 and martyr of God, how gladly would I deliver an oration 
 and eulogium in thy praise, if my eloquence could reach 
 thy merits ! But I prefer to be silent rather than say too 
 little ; and continuing my speech, I will speak of the 
 strange conversion of my own person. Though Cato 
 observes : Nee te laudaris, nee te culpaveris ipse neither 
 praise nor inculpate thyself ; still I will confess freely to 
 you, that, before this holy enterprise of union, I was not 
 a great eater of crucifixes, mangeur de crucifix, [not very 
 devout,] and some of my relatives, and those who have 
 been most intimate with me, have thought that I smelt 
 somewhat of the fagot, because, when a young scholar, I 
 took delight in reading the books of Calvin, and at Tou- 
 louse had joined the nocturnal disputations with the new 
 Lutherans ; and subsequently I have not much scrupled 
 to eat meat in Lent, nor to commit - , according to 
 the example of the holy patriarchs in the Bible : * but 
 
 1 " L'archevesquo de Lyon, lors irrite centre le Roi [Henri III.] pour des 
 vers qu*il avait faits, et fait faire, en recriminant, et sous les noms de Philon et
 
 THE SATYRE MENIPPEE. 489 
 
 since I have subscribed to the holy League, and the funda- 
 mental law of this estate, accompanied by doubloons and 
 the hope of a cardinal's hat, no one has any longer doubted 
 of my belief, nor made any further inquiries about my 
 conscience, and my conduct You know, gentle- 
 men, that our pensions are matters for serious considera- 
 tion. But, above all, frequently see to the renovation of the 
 oaths of unity, on the precious body of our Lord, and con- 
 tinue the confraternities of the name of Jesus and of the 
 Order : for these are good collars for small folks where- 
 with we charge the honour and conscience of our good 
 fathers the Jesuits ; and we also recommend to them our 
 spies, in order that they may continue to expedite with 
 certainty our news to Spain, and enable us to receive the 
 secret commands of his Catholic Majesty, to ensure their 
 being obeyed by the ambassadors, agents, cure's, con- 
 vents, churchwardens, and masters of the confraternities; 
 and in their particular confessionals, let them not forget 
 to forbid, under penalty of eternal damnation, every one to 
 desire peace, and still less, to talk of it but to make the 
 devout Christians stubborn and resolved on assault, blood, 
 and fire, rather than submit to the Bearnese [Henri IV.], 
 even should he go to mass, as he has charged his am- 
 bassadors to assure the pope. But we well know the 
 antidote should this happen, and we will take care to 
 issue a command that his Holiness shall believe nothing 
 of the kind, and even should he believe, he shall do no- 
 thing, and should he do anything, we will receive no- 
 thing, if I am not made a cardinal Why should I not be 
 made a cardinal, if Pierre de Frontac, being a simple 
 advocate at Paris during the reign of King John, was 
 
 d'Aurore, reprochant a TArchevesque son inceste avec sa soeur." D 'Aubiyne ', 
 Hist. Univ. iii. c. xxiii. 112.
 
 490 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 made a cardinal for having strenuously defended the 
 cause of the church I 1 And I who have deserted my 
 master, and have betrayed my country to support the 
 grandeur of the holy apostolic see must not be a car- 
 dinal ? Yes, I shall indeed I will I promise you 
 or my friends will fail me. I have spoken." 2 
 
 These extracts will serve to give some small idea of 
 this whelming appeal to public opinion against the 
 religious quackery of the League, by which this asso- 
 ciation managed to inflame the people to their own 
 misery and destruction. The Satyre Menippee took 
 effect ; and the good citizens of Paris laughed them- 
 selves into wisdom unquestionably the best method of 
 escape from irrational bigotry and political folly. At 
 the present day, in the midst of our sympathetic 
 stirrings, the British Pasquin of the world may prove 
 himself the grand pacificator of England. It is only to 
 be hoped that the minds and hearts of our governors 
 will not stop short with the triumph of security but 
 will rather make the dutiful effort to reform abuses and 
 forfend calamity by meriting no retribution. 
 
 In its last days the League had lost its primitive 
 grandeur. The prestige the leading idea was no 
 more. Its chiefs had let themselves down by the guilt 
 
 i/ 
 
 of meanness in the eyes of the people. After so much 
 treasure wasted on the part of Philip, so much abomin- 
 able roguery on the part of the pope, the priesthood, 
 the monkhood, and the Jesuits, after so much dreadful 
 suffering on the part of the people by famine and disease 
 
 1 The allusion is to Pierre de Fretiguy, advocate of the parliament and canon 
 of the Church of Paris, who supported the party of the pope, or anti-pope, 
 Clement VII., and was by him made cardinal in 1385, in the reign of Charles VI. 
 See Ciaconius (Clement VII.) ; and the Melanges iVHistoire, t. i. ; Viyneul 
 Marvillc, Calholicon d'Espaynf. - Harangue de M. de Lyon, Sat. Menip.
 
 ANTECEDENTS TO THE DECLINE OF THE LEAGUE. 491 
 
 after all the thing turns out to be a complete failure. It 
 is so delightful to contemplate such a result, that we would 
 do well to fix the antecedents in the memory of the mind 
 and in the memory of the heart. Events and circumstances 
 had antagonised two systems in Europe, that of Philip 
 and ultramontane Catholicism, whose end and aim were 
 universal monarchy in unity of faith which must be 
 Roman Catholic : that of Elizabeth and Protestantism, 
 whose aim and end were simply self-defence in the 
 destruction of the monster enemy. The Catholic League 
 was, for the King of Spain, the principle of an universal 
 policy. Under its influence, France succumbed under 
 the domination of Philip : the Netherlands could scarcely 
 escape the same fate : the fleets of the great king over- 
 shadowed England with their ten thousand sails and 
 fanned Catholic " stirs " or insurrections in the heart of 
 the country and in Scotland. This glorious scheme was 
 completely understood by Elizabeth. And she thwarted 
 it to admiration. The alliances of " the poor old lady 
 la pauvre vieille" as she called herself in her dispatches, 
 tended to effectuate the dismemberment of the Spanish 
 monarchy by the triple league of the Pyrenees, France, 
 and Italy. To that end she enlisted into her service 
 the Protestantism of the Huguenots wherever they ex- 
 isted on the Continent. Henry IV., the exponent of 
 " religious indifferentism," if the expression be not ab- 
 surd placed himself exactly in the midst of the two 
 grand systems. By his abjuration he did not abandon 
 his alliance with England nor the stronger friendship 
 of his brave Huguenot chivalry. Still, a most dexterous 
 politician, at the peace of Vervins, he satisfied Spain, 
 and yet without offending England. Henry IV. was, 
 in politics, exactly what he was in religion indifferent
 
 492 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 as to persons forgetful of services rendered him 
 placing himself between two systems in order to create 
 one for himself alone, both in his personal interests and 
 those of the crown he was assuming. Philip's con- 
 stitutional indecision was an immense advantage to 
 Henry IV. The Spaniard's prodigious activity was that 
 of a doll effected by a string totally irrational, and 
 therefore easily " played off " by a politician as cunning 
 and crafty as ever wore a crown. Consider the 
 Spaniard's agents : all of them small intriguers in- 
 capable of those large contrivances which take into con- 
 sideration all the passions of men their desires, their 
 so-called best interests driving each its own way, 
 apparently, and yet eventuating the mighty result in 
 contemplation. But there never was anything like a 
 well-laid design in any of Philip's machinations. His 
 agents " stirred " everywhere recklessly thwarting each 
 other, exasperating the princes, lavishing heaps of 
 doubloons, which the insatiate avidity of the great vassals 
 in France devoured, without promoting in the least the 
 grand result contemplated namely, the destruction of 
 heresy as an obstacle to Spain's universal domination. 
 In fine, there was needed in that revolution, as in all 
 popular movements, a decided and resolute leader, 
 capable of grasping the energies of the masses to apply 
 them vigorously as he listed, and by a whelming will to 
 necessitate achievement. 1 
 
 1 See Capefigue, La Ligue et Henri IV. p. 271. It is this deficiency this defi- 
 ciency of a superior mind, that renders the present epoch of wild and desultory 
 revolutions a crisis full of gloomy foreboding. All over Europe the revolutionary 
 heads are as weak and shallow as the revolutionary members are wild and 
 frantic. We may be sure that royalism on the continent will take advantage of 
 this desperate deficiency. Counter-revolutions will follow. The scheme may 
 now be machinating, which will render Russia the last but triumphant hope of 
 exasperated royalism. Such a result will be disastrous to the freedom of Europe : 
 the second state will be worse than the first. God forfend it !
 
 THE FINALE OF THE LEAGUE. 493 
 
 In 1594 the good people of Paris opened their gates 
 to Henry IV. " The reduction of the city to the 
 obedience of his majesty was so sweet and so gracious, 
 and with such contentment, that none of the citizens 
 received harm in person or property, and the whole day 
 was spent in thanksgivings for so many unexpected 
 felicities, and bonfires blazed during the night for a sign 
 of gladness." 1 Henry IV., in his turn, by way of 
 attesting his precious adhesion to the Catholic mysteries, 
 accompanied the processions and grand ceremonies 
 which filled the streets of Paris in every direction. The 
 rectors, deans, theologians, all the whole tribe of 
 universitarians were foremost with their allegiance to the 
 Roman Huguenot. They " swore with heart and mouth 
 to the most Christian Henry IV., with all submission, 
 reverence, and homage, to recognise him for their lord 
 and prince temporal, sovereign, sole, and legitimate heir ; 
 renouncing all leagues and pretended unions, both 
 within and without the kingdom ; and we confirm the 
 same/' they said, " placing our hands, one after the other, 
 on the holy gospels." 2 This was the finale of the grand 
 Catholic League so glorious. And a most appropriate 
 ending it was. No other could be expected from its 
 beginning and its progress. Elaborate theories have 
 been developed to explain the phenomenon : but after 
 all, two words suffice to declare both the cause and the 
 effect human nature. How long must we continue to 
 be fooled by names 1 The paltriest clique-skirmishes 
 and feuds of the paltriest villages perfectly represent 
 the contentions of kings and nations. Some petty 
 jealousy, some thwarted selfishness, shall make two or 
 
 1 Thus the event was recorded by the Parisian town-council in their registers. 
 See Capefigue, uli supra, 311, 2 Capefigue, ubi swpra, 328.
 
 494 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 more families desperate enemies to each other. Some 
 unforeseen fortuitous incident shall bring them together 
 once more ; hands will be shaken ; and the lips, which 
 uttered erewhile words of implacable detestation, then 
 fashion themselves to outpour exhaustless compliment. 
 It is precisely thus with the little men of great rank and 
 pretensions. A thousand theories may be invented to 
 explain political events but it is human nature after 
 all. When historians shall cease to mount on stilts in 
 order to instruct mankind respecting the doings of the 
 kings and great ones of earth, then their tomes will be 
 the archives of honest wisdom speaking truth and 
 shaming the devil. 
 
 Poor human nature ! We should be ashamed of it 
 were we not sure that, in spite of its baseness, it is called 
 to a better destiny, which it can and would reach, were 
 it not for our most defective indoctrination and conven- 
 tionalities. The turn-coat University of Paris every 
 other would do the same belied itself expediently. 
 Thereupon, the League was coffined, or rather, was 
 thrown to the dogs or on a dunghill, to vanish by 
 
 / 
 
 eremacausis elemental putrefaction. Woe to the van- 
 quished ! was the fact, and numberless caricatures and 
 libels fixed their talons on the holy union of the holy 
 Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church even as "a 
 violent cross wind from either coast," the reaction 
 " blew it transverse, ten thousand leagues awry into the 
 devious air " 
 
 " Then might ye see 
 
 Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost 
 And flutter'd into rags : then relics, beads, 
 Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
 The sport of winds : all these, upwhirl'd aloft, 
 Fly o'er the backside of the world far off, 
 Into a limbo large and broad, since call'd 
 The Paradise of Pools."
 
 CHANGE OF SENTIMENTS IN FRANCE. 495 
 
 Odes, sonnets, quatrains, stanzas, couplets, in laudation 
 of the Bearnese, were the gushing productions of every 
 pen in the turn-coat city of Paris. All the heroes of 
 pagan mythology lent their attributes and jackets to the 
 triumphant Huguenot. Henri IV. was Perseus, and la 
 France was Andromeda. La France had been sacrificed, 
 and Henri IV. delivered her from the monster who 
 held her in his fangs. Such was the reaction the like 
 to which might at any tune, in any revolution, be 
 brought about by those who understand human nature 
 and have "put money in their pocket." Let me be 
 perfectly understood my firm conviction is, that the 
 originators of all revolutions are invariably the worst 
 specimens of human nature. No man who has a heart 
 to feel for humanity will consign the physical, moral, 
 and intellectual fortunes of millions to the arbitrament 
 of a mob. 
 
 Henry IV., himself, was astonished at the issue of 
 events. " Can I believe/' he exclaimed, " that I am 
 where I am 1 The more I think of it, the more am I 
 astounded." 1 Surely this attestation is enough to silence 
 all theories in explanation except that of human nature. 
 Some of the preachers continued to denounce the 
 Huguenot king. Henry silenced them, drove the 
 most ardent into exile : but where he struck, the blow 
 was inflicted with discernment : he was not a merciful 
 king, but a deeply political sovereign. 2 By favour and 
 money he continued vigorously to sap the foundations 
 of the League. One of its great military heads, Brissac, 
 had betrayed the Spanish cause : treason became con- 
 tagious, or rather in fashion for treason was, and ever is, 
 a matter of example. All rushed to sell their allegiance 
 
 1 Capefigue, ubi supra, 331. 2 Id- ib.
 
 496 HISTORY OP THE JESUITS. 
 
 to the Huguenot : they tried to outstrip each other in 
 their desertion of the conquered cause. When a cause 
 falls on evil days, the most desperate wound it has to 
 endure is dissension amongst its defenders. The exul- 
 tation of victory stifles the fermentation of internal 
 discord : whilst the spring-tide of successful or offensive 
 battle rushes onwards, there is neither time nor inclina- 
 tion for internal strife : but when the receding tide of 
 adversity lays bare the unsightly mud-bottom of the 
 cause, suggesting chilling reflections on the ghastly 
 sights disclosed, in that last winter of a cause erewhile 
 so ardent, when defection from its ranks is bold and 
 prominent, and the future darkens with despair then 
 is the time for mutual, unmeasured, and bitter recrimi- 
 nations amongst the members. This happened to the 
 League, and Henry IV. exerted himself to the utmost to 
 fan the flame of discord. 1 The League and Philip 
 became contemptible. Narrowness of mind, petty 
 jealousies, frivolous vanity supplied the grand motives 
 of action. The Catholic question was sunk before the 
 eyes of all the world, into the uttermost depths of 
 desperate egotism, where it had always been in point of 
 fact, though specifically raised to the surface by the 
 bladders of vain promises and pretences. It now became 
 a trade in corruption hard gold being the circulating 
 medium, and dastardly defection the marketable com- 
 modity. Henry IV. enticed away the chiefs of the 
 League, whilst Philip II. bought up men and war-posts. 
 It was no longer a royal contest of chivalry, but a 
 subornation of the vilest sentiments of the heart. Day 
 by day the strength of the Spanish faction in France 
 vanished amain ; the country was evacuated. The 
 
 1 Capefigue, ubi sv/pra, 336, et seq.
 
 THEIR AVERSION TO HENRY IV. 497 
 
 wonderful activity of Henry IV. reduced, one by one, all 
 the war-posts bought over with doubloons, or acquired 
 by craft. It was now a war of nationality faction was 
 no more. The Spaniards would have to measure their 
 prowess with that of the French : the League was 
 shattered for ever. The furies which had stimulated 
 civil discord in France were now to direct their energies 
 against the very nation whose king and whose gold had 
 roused them to treasonable insurrection and their 
 country's destruction. This was exactly as it should be 
 by way of retribution. 
 
 The Jesuits and the Jacobins had not acquiesced in 
 this turn of affairs so glorious for Henry IV. Popular 
 among their party, and beloved by a certain portion of 
 the masses, the Jesuits and the Jacobins had not bent 
 the knee before the victorious " heretic of Navarre," as 
 the Jesuit Parsons called him at the very time in ques- 
 tion. When the king commanded these preachers to 
 announce his power, and to justify his authority, the 
 two corporations had disobeyed. In the secrets of the 
 confessional, in that mysterious interchange of opinions, 
 advice, and penance, the Jesuits had often recalled to 
 remembrance the glorious days of Catholic power in the 
 League in the midst of grand processions, with incense 
 and flowers, with endless oaths and infinite obtestations. 1 
 
 1 Capefigue, ubi supra, p. 347. The university, the cures, all the orders of 
 monks gladly submitted to Henry IV. The Jacobins and Jesuits were the only 
 dissentients. The oath proposed to them by De Harlay, president of the uni- 
 versity, was simple enough : " I promise and swear, that I will live and die in 
 the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman faith, under obedience to Henry IV., most 
 Christian and Catholic King of France and Navarre ; and I renounce all leagues 
 and assemblies made against his service, and I will undertake nothing against 
 his authority." Jouvenci, the Jesuit historian, says that this oath was framed 
 purposely to destroy the Jesuits : but it is difficult to see what objection they could 
 make to it, unless their party-spirit was by themselves admitted to be paramount 
 
 VOL. II. K K
 
 498 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 As long as these mighty men of influence remained 
 opposed to the king, there could be no security for his 
 rights or his life. The thought of assassinating the 
 king was familiar with the people : the opinion of the 
 corporations was, that a heretic not reconciled to the 
 Church was without the pale of common rights it was 
 a meritorious deed to use the knife in order to rid the 
 city of the anathema. 1 Private suggestions, religious 
 insinuations, were not necessary to arm the hand of 
 a fanatic : it was an article of faith, universally pro- 
 claimed, that a heretic king might be cut off, as we have 
 heard from the Jesuit-schools : there was immortal glory 
 (according to Mariana, whose book was just published,} 
 for the assassin who would cut down an offensive tyrant 
 that is, a heretic king. Few believed in the sin- 
 cerity of Henry's abjuration : the pope mistrusted the 
 Huguenot. Sixtus V. was dead, but Pope Clement 
 VIII. was disposed to carry out the papal policy. The 
 inflammatory book of the Jesuit Parsons against Eliza- 
 beth, but including, as we have seen, strong argumenta- 
 tion against Henry of Navarre, had gone through several 
 editions, with a wide circulation over France : an 
 edition had just appeared, published under the pope's 
 own eyes at Rome. 2 Until the king could be absolved 
 
 to all other considerations of allegiance to the accepted king of the country. 
 This is, doubtless, the secret of the opposition. At Lyons, also, they refused to 
 take the oath, although the mob threatened to storm their house, and over- 
 whelmed them with abuse. Du, Boulay, &c. ; Coudrette, i. 194, et sey. 
 
 1 Capefigue, ubi supra, p. 346. 
 
 s Andrese Philopatri ad Elizabeth* Reginse Edictum, 29 Novembris, 1591, 
 promulgatum responsio. In 1592 it was published at Lyons, and in the same 
 year at Augsburg. The copy in my possession was printed at Rome in 1593. 
 By the superscription on the title page, it belonged to the library of the Roman 
 college of the Company ; and there is also a Latin inscription stating the author 
 to be Parsons ; the inscriptions appear to have been contemporaneous, and the 
 handwriting is that of the end of the 16th, or beginning of the 17th century.
 
 THE POPE'S OPPOSITION TO HENRY IV. 499 
 
 by the pope, the abjuration was incomplete ; and the 
 churchmen, who still were motived to resist Henry IV., 
 made this deficiency the excuse for violent agitation or 
 underhand machination. Henry was aware of this, and 
 was anxious to get absolution from the pope. He sent 
 the Duke de Nevers on the mission to the papal court : 
 but the ambassador was met in Switzerland by the 
 Jesuit Possevin, who presented him a brief from the 
 pope, and informed him that he could not be received as 
 ambassador from Henry IV. to his Holiness. 1 Never- 
 theless, the French ambassador pressed forward to Rome, 
 and obtained an interview ; but the pope positively 
 refused to acknowledge his diplomatic qualifications : all 
 that passed between them must be considered mere 
 private discourse ; and yet there was much public 
 import in what he said to the ambassador of Henry IV. 
 " Do not tell me that your king is a Catholic. I will 
 never believe that he is truly converted, unless an angel 
 come from heaven to whisper it in my ears. As to the 
 Catholics who have followed his party, I look upon them 
 only as disobedient deserters of religion and the crown, 
 and no more than bastards and sons of the bondwoman. 
 Those of the League are lawful children, the real sup- 
 ports and true pillars of the Catholic religion." 2 It is 
 therefore not at all surprising that the pulpits of the 
 faction, which still held out, resounded with appeals 
 
 1 Mem. de Nevers, ii. p. 405 ; Cayet, Chron. Noven. ii. 251. 
 
 * Cayet, livre v. p. 251, et seq. ; Journal de Henri IV. ; Browning ; Ranke. 
 It were tedious to detail the numerous conspiracies and attempts against the lifo 
 of Henry IV., from the year 1584 to 1610, when he was murdered all gene- 
 ratedby the League, advised and sanctioned for the most part by the Court of Rome, 
 inspired and directed by the King of Spain, and by the Jesuits with other monks. 
 Some of Henry's escapes were curious and striking ; but I must refer to other 
 writers for the details. See Cayet, Hist, de la Paix, p. 144, et seq. ; Chronol. 
 Noven. p. 228, et seg., and the Annales des Soi-disans Jesuites, t. ii. p. 161 to 
 p. 289, including authentic letters and extracts from many historians of the times. 
 
 K K 2
 
 500 HISTORY OF THE JESUIT*. 
 
 calculated to excite any violent enthusiast to undertake 
 the deliverance of the Church from its pretended dangers 
 The Jesuit Commolet, in one of his sermons, enlarged 
 upon the death of Eglon, King of Moab ; applauded, like 
 Mariana, the assassination of the late king, and described 
 Jacques Clement as sitting among the angels of heaven. 
 Having thus applied the text, he exclaimed : " We must 
 have an Ehud we want an Ehud be he a monk, a 
 soldier, or a shepherd, it is of no consequence but we 
 must have an Ehud this blow is all we want to put our 
 affairs in the situation we desire/' 1 It is further stated 
 that at the end of his sermon he exhorted his audience to 
 look forward, saying : " You will soon behold a miracle 
 sent express by God yes, you will see it and consider 
 it already done." 2 Such sermons were preached at Lyons 
 and other towns, as well as at Paris. They were sanc- 
 tioned by the Company's theologians, and certainly not 
 discountenanced by the pope's opposition to the king. In 
 
 1 The Jesuit of the Documents denies this apostrophe of his brother Com- 
 molet, stated by Arnaud in his pleadings against the Jesuits in 1594 ; and 
 boastfully says that he had read 500 volumes written at the time or immediately 
 after, without finding the fact which, however, is given in the Journal 
 d'Henri IV., which the Jesuit quotes for other purposes. He says, " let the ma- 
 gistrates anti-jesuitical tell us in what historian, in what monument, in what 
 source Arnaud found an anecdote which no one knew before him " but surely 
 as Arnaud delivered his charge so early as 1594, there is no wonder that the 
 fact had not as yet become historical : the king had only just entered Paris. 
 The anecdote was therefore as yet a tradition, which Catholics venerate next to 
 Scripture, at least. This frothy apologist takes good care not to tell his reader 
 when Arnaud delivered his charge. Again, the alleged services of Commolet 
 subsequently in favour of the king are brought forward by the apologist : but 
 again he fails to state that it was when the tide was setting against the Com- 
 pany, that Commolet made a show of " good service " just as ajl the Jesuits, 
 when subsequently patronised by Henry, vied with each other in the same show 
 of " good service." See Documents, i. Jesuites Lig. p. 25, et seq. 
 
 2 Arnaud, Plaidoy. p. 50 ; Les Jesuites Criminels, p. 210, et seq. Arnaud 
 says that more than 300 persons were able to attest the fact that this sermon 
 was preached by the Jesuit Commolet. See also Pasquier, livre iii. c. vi. De 
 Thou attests the seditious sermons of the Jesuits, lib. cvii.
 
 BARRIERE, THE INTENDED REGICIDE. 501 
 
 effect, one Pierre Barriere was seized, and confessed his 
 resolution to murder the denounced heretical king. When 
 he had resolved to devote himself to the attempt, he 
 applied to the vicar of the Carmelite monks for his opi- 
 nion : the friar praised his courage. A Capuchin likewise 
 pronounced such a deed meritorious : but a Dominican, 
 who happened to be attached to the royalist party, 
 being consulted by the assassin an ignorant man of the 
 lower orders deferred giving his opinion till the follow- 
 ing day, and notified the fact to a royalist, who seized 
 the fanatic. Barriere confessed that he had applied to 
 a priest at Paris, who assured him that the king was not 
 a Catholic, though he went to mass ; and introduced 
 him to Varade, the rector of the Jesuits. Varade, he 
 said, assured him that to kill the king was a great 
 action ; but it required courage, and he must previously 
 confess himself and perform his Easter devotions. He 
 then gave him his benediction, and intrusted him to 
 another Jesuit for confession. Thus encouraged and 
 fortified spiritually, he purchased a double-edged knife, 
 which he had pointed and sharpened, and then set out 
 to kill the heretic king, when he was arrested. Accord- 
 ing to Pasquier, the criminal confessed all these facts 
 without being subjected to the torture, and affirmed 
 them on the scaffold, and even on the wheel on which 
 he was hideously broken " always full of sense and 
 presence of mind," says Pasquier, who had interviews 
 with the wretch in prison. 1 His confession was very 
 simple, and he mentioned the names of his advisers, 
 who were all priests or doctors in theology : " indeed," 
 
 1 Cayet, lib. v. ; Thuaii. lib. cvii. ; Pasquier, livre iii. c. vi. ; Id. Lettres, livres 
 xxi. et xxii. ; Browning, p. 188.
 
 502 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 says Browning, " there is not the least room to doubt 
 their complicity on this occasion/' 1 It was this event 
 which hastened the mission of the Duke de Nevers 
 to Rome for the pope's absolution, by way of a shield 
 for the king against the regicidal preachers of France. 2 
 Meanwhile the king marched into Paris, amidst cries of 
 Vive le Roi, and all manner of gratulations, as I have 
 stated, from an immense majority of the people, monks, 
 priests, and the universitarians. Then the gallant uni- 
 versity put forth the oath of allegiance to Henry IV., 
 which I have given, but which the Jesuits resolved 
 not to swear. Doubtless, the great animosity against 
 the Jesuits still existed in the universitarians : but, even 
 if we give to this motive the greatest possible weight, it 
 must be evident that the determination of the Jesuits 
 to refuse allegiance to the acknowledged king of the 
 realm was sufficient to hold them up as public enemies, 
 bellows of sedition, incendiary Pharisees. To say that 
 they could not take the oath until the king was absolved 
 by the pope would have been reasonable enough, if they 
 had decamped from the kingdom ; but to remain at 
 
 1 Hist, of the Huguenots, p. 188. The Jesuit Juvenci (Hist. Soc. Jesu. 
 lib. xii.) denies the share of Varade in this affair ; but the Jesuits deny every- 
 thing. It does indeed seem most preposterous in the Jesuits to utter their 
 denials in the face of all acknowledged opinions of their theologians, then so rife, 
 in the face of the undoubted resistance of the pope to Henry's accession. How 
 much better it would have been to admit the fact, and to lament it as an abuse 
 of the religious sentiment. But such is the perversity of all partyism, that it 
 pre-supposes a mental blindness hi others as great as the moral obliquity which 
 guides its own proceedings. 
 
 ' Henry permitted the Cardinal de Plaisance, who had strenuously opposed 
 him, to leave Paris without molestation ; he even allowed him to take with him the 
 Jesuit Varade and the priest Aubry, the accomplices of Barriere. Mezerai, A brege 
 Chronol. An. 1594 ; Du Boulay, p. 813. Henry's forbearance was, of course, 
 purely political ; it was his interest to connive at the iniquity whilst his fate seemed 
 to depend on the master of the cardinal and the Jesuits, namely, the Pope of Rome.
 
 MEASURES AGAINST THE JESUITS. 503 
 
 their posts, and yet refuse allegiance to the reigning 
 monarch, was scarcely a resolution likely to meet with 
 toleration in any age not excepting the present. The 
 unreasonableness of the Jesuits is enhanced when we 
 consider their known influence with the people in their 
 famous confraternities which, at that period, belted all 
 Europe, which the Company aspired to move as she 
 listed, by her application of the Archimedean screw to 
 the hearts and minds of humanity. It was therefore not 
 to be wondered at that the University of Paris passed a 
 decree, a month after the king's triumphant entry, 
 to summon the Jesuits to trial, with a view to their 
 expulsion from the kingdom. The parochial clergy 
 joined the University against the Jesuits, and the cause 
 was tried by the parliament of Paris in 1594. The 
 Jesuits were found to have been, one and all, so deeply 
 interested in the Spanish party, that their expulsion 
 from the kingdom was considered necessary. It was 
 futile to say that the whole Company should not be 
 punished for the active exertions of certain members. 
 There was a bad principle, which the whole Company 
 was sworn to defend and to promote the deposition of 
 heretical kings, together with Philip's grand idea : it 
 was therefore perfectly impossible to make exceptions for 
 the sake of the " Company," whilst all its members were 
 under the influence of that principle, so hostile to the 
 interests of the French government, and to every other. 
 This question lasted for a long time : endless machi- 
 nations confused, protracted, exasperated the minds of 
 the debaters. The decree of the University, ordering 
 the proceedings for the banishment of the Jesuits, was 
 signed by the Faculty without any objection. This 
 affair has become memorable by the constant reference
 
 504 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 made to it on every occasion which has brought the 
 Jesuits into collision with the parliaments. The 
 charges then advanced against the Company have 
 been always renewed whenever the public mind has 
 been excited by the Jesuits. Antoine Arnauld was 
 advocate for the University ; Louis Dole* for the cures 
 of Paris : and Claude Duret pleaded on behalf of the 
 Jesuits. Arnauld's speech contained much violent de- 
 clamation ; that of Dole was more argumentative. The 
 defence of the Jesuits was comprised under two heads 
 one, that the accusation against the Company was 
 inadmissable the other, an answer to the accusation, if 
 admitted. 1 Public feeling was so much against the 
 Jesuits, and the assertions made by Arnauld entered so 
 deeply into the experience of the nation at large, that 
 the proscription of the Company was fully expected. 
 The doctors of the Sorbonne had joined in the clamour 
 against the Jesuits, and it was principally in conse- 
 quence of their demand that the trial had been insti- 
 tuted : but by their intrigues and cabals, the Jesuits 
 obtained a partial document from some of the Faculties, 
 withholding their assent to the prosecution. They also 
 produced a " conclusion" under the name of the Faculty 
 of Theology, against their expulsion from the kingdom : 
 but of this pretended document no trace was ever found 
 in the registers or other books of the Faculty. The fact 
 is, that it was "got up," like modern petitions, for party- 
 purposes. As the Jesuits became the sole teachers of 
 Paris during the League when the University was con- 
 verted into an asylum for cows and their calves they 
 had time to form the young doctors of theology, and of 
 
 1 Cayet, livre v. p. 379, et seq. ; Plaid. de_M. Ant. Arnauld j Coudrette, i. 202, 
 et seq. ; Browning, p. 1 90.
 
 HENRY IV. AGAINST THE JESUITS. 505 
 
 course won them over to the interests of the Company. 1 
 This did not succeed : they tried other means patron- 
 age. The nephew and successor of their old friend 
 the Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop of Rouen, was 
 their resource in their time of trouble. This cardinal 
 was the old gentleman whom the Leaguers had raised to 
 mock royalty under the name of Charles X., in opposi- 
 tion to Henry IV. The nephew took the Jesuits under 
 his family wings, and petitioned the parliament, as a 
 party in the litigation, opposing the expulsion of the 
 Jesuits. And the Duke de Nevers (the late ambassa- 
 dor), who saw the danger of exasperating the Jesuits, 
 and, consequently, the pope, by these severe measures, 
 and being otherwise friendly to the Company, gave in a 
 protest against the contemplated expulsion : he said that 
 the Company should not be made responsible for the 
 faults of its members, though he admitted that the 
 Jesuit-rector at Nevers was less wise and less prudent 
 than he ought to be in his office in other words, that he 
 was a good Leaguer. 2 The vacation came on : the pro- 
 secution was deferred. There was evident machination 
 among the members of parliament : it seemed "that the 
 bad party prevailed," although Henry, from the camp at 
 Laon, had written to the parliament, requesting and 
 commanding them "very expressly to pass on ^^ 
 to the judgment of the process," because he against the 
 had heard that " under colour of certain con- 
 siderations in these times, and because the interest and 
 aim of our service seem to oppose it, they wished to 
 
 1 Juvenci (lib. xii. p. 41) states the fact of the "conclusion," but of course 
 omits to explain how it was "got up." See D'Argentre, Collect. Judic. ii. p. 503; 
 Coudrette, i. 200. 2 Du Boulay, p. 819, et seq. ; Coudrette, i. 201.
 
 506 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 hinder the judgment. 1 " These sentiments attested that 
 Henry was well acquainted with the machinations of the 
 Jesuits, and that he was by no means disposed to show 
 them favour. The result was, an attempt on his life. 
 In the following December, whilst Henry was arriving 
 at the Louvre, from the provinces, a young 
 
 Jean Chatel r J 
 
 attempts to man glided through the crowd unobserved, 
 and, with a knife, aimed a blovv at the king's 
 throat. At that moment two gentlemen had approached, 
 making their salutation on bended knee ; and the king, 
 having stooped to raise them up, received the blow on 
 his mouth. The assassin threw away his knife, and, at 
 first, protested his innocence ; but afterwards he con- 
 fessed the attempt : his name was Jean Chatel. Eight 
 days afterwards Henry wrote to Du Plessis, saying : 
 " I am quite cured of my wound. These are the 
 fruits of the Jesuits. But they shall evacuate my 
 kingdom/' 2 
 
 At his examination, Chatel showed that his fanaticism 
 was a sort of inspiration. He stated that he had studied 
 
 1 See the letter in Du Boulay, p. 866. "Many of the magistrates were 
 keenly afflicted to see that the bad party prevailed. Augustin de Thou, presi- 
 dent of the parliament, a man of inflexible uprightness, said he saw well enough 
 that, by leaving such a process undecided, they left the king's life in uncertainty : 
 that this was not what he ought to expect from the parliament : that it would 
 have been better to secure the life of the king by a memorable punishment 
 which might be expected from them : that, as for himself, he was so old that he 
 must expect to see the end of his life sooner than the termination of that 'process, 
 but, that he might not die without having declared his sentiments on the sub- 
 ject, he was of opinion that the Jesuits ought to be expelled from the kingdom." 
 This speech is given by the president's nephew, the celebrated historian of the 
 same name. Thuan. Hist. Lib. 110. Ann. 1594. 
 
 2 Mem. de Du Plessis, t. ii. p. 495. " Je suis du tout guari de ma blessure. 
 Ce sont la des fruits des Jesuites. Mais ils vuideront mon Roiaume." Lettre 
 du 5 Jam: 1 595. When Henry was first told that Chatel was a pupil of the 
 Jesuits, he said, " Was it then necessary that the Jesuits should be convicted by 
 my mouth f "
 
 THE JESUIT OUIGNARD HANGED. 507 
 
 philosophy at the college of the Jesuits ; that in that 
 house he had often been in the Chamber of Meditations, 
 
 vhither the Jesuits introduced the worst , 
 
 The Cham- 
 sinners. In that chamber, said he, are seen t>er of Modi- 
 
 the portraits of many devils of divers frightful 
 shapes, to terrify sinners unto repentance, as they pre- 
 tended, but in reality to shake their minds, and drive 
 them by admonitions to some mighty perpetration. 1 
 He affirmed that he had heard the Jesuits say it was 
 lawful to kill the king, as a tyrant and a heretic, 
 as long as he was not approved by the pope ; and 
 that the act of delivering France from his sway offered, 
 as he thought, the best chance of preserving himself 
 from some part of the torments to which he fancied 
 he was doomed. 2 The miserable wretch suffered 
 the dreadful punishment awarded to regicides at this 
 period. 
 
 It was with difficulty that the populace were restrained 
 from taking vengeance on the Jesuits. Their 
 
 1 he Jesuit 
 
 colleges were surrounded by soldiers : several Guignard 
 Jesuits were taken into custody, and the rest 
 removed to other houses. Amongst those arrested 
 
 1 In the Praxis Exercitiorwn Spiritualium, published by the Jesuit Isquierdo, 
 we have some idea of these monstrous pictures devils without end of horror 
 and absurdity. Nothing could have exceeded the horror inspired by the picture 
 of Hell, at page 72, when enlarged and coloured for the Chamber of Meditations. 
 But the most hideous of all is entitled the Puteus Abyssi, the bottomless pit. It 
 is a naked man sitting in a chair somehow suspended over the mouth of the pit. 
 There are seven swords stuck into him, at different parts of the body each 
 sword being named after one of the passions. The sword of Idleness is stuck 
 betwixt his thighs, Gluttony in his stomach, Lust just above, Anger on a level 
 with the last, but opposite, Envy in his back, Pride in his breast, Avarice 
 between his shoulders, whilst the sword of Vengeance hangs over his head. 
 P. 43. All these bloody images must have had a strange effect on the minds of 
 devotees in those days of political and religious excitement. 
 
 2 Cayet, livre vi. p. 432, et seq. ; Coudrette, i. 216 ; Browning, p. 191 ; 
 Juvenci, lib. xii.
 
 508 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 were Guignard, the rector of the college ; Gueret, who 
 had been Chatel's confessor and adviser ; and Hay, a 
 Scotchman, who had been remarkable for his zeal against 
 the king. On examining the papers found in the col- 
 lege, there were found, in Guignard's handwriting, some 
 propositions to the following effect : " That if some 
 royal blood had been shed at the St. Bartholomew, they 
 would have been spared the evils under which they 
 laboured ; that the act of Jacques Clement was heroic 
 and glorious ; that the crown of France could, and 
 must, be transferred to some other family than that of 
 Bourbon ; that the Bearnese, although converted to the 
 Catholic faith, would be treated more mildly than he 
 deserved if he were confined in some severe convent, 
 there to do penance ; that if he could not be deposed 
 without war, let war be carried on against him ; and if 
 that could not be done, he should be put to death. 
 Shall we call him a Nero," said the writer, " the Sar- 
 danapalus of France, a Fox of Beam 1 ?" Guignard 
 admitted the writing to be his, but the Jesuit apologist 
 insinuates that the treasonable papers had been com- 
 posed four or five years before, and that Guignard had 
 " forgotten " to burn them ! l Guignard was condemned 
 to be hanged protesting to the last moment his inno- 
 cence and allegiance. It was a curious and wonderful 
 retribution, that the judges who condemned this Jesuit 
 were the very men who had, as Leaguers, voted the late 
 king to destruction. 2 The Jesuits were now banished 
 the kingdom as Henry promised in his letter banished 
 in " perpetuity." By way of a memorable example, the 
 house belonging to Chatel's father was razed to the 
 
 1 Documents, De 1'attentat de J. Chatel,p. 39 ; Coudrctte, i. 219. 
 
 2 L'Etoile, Journal, ii. 155, etseq.
 
 WHY SHOULD THE COMPANY BE EXPELLED ? 509 
 
 ground, and a pillar was raised on the site. This famous 
 pyramid had four sides, with appropriate inscriptions. 
 On the first, it was written that " a detestable parricide 
 (imbued with the pestilential heresy of that most per- 
 nicious Sect [of the Jesuits], which, lately covering the 
 most abominable crimes with the veil of piety, has 
 publicly taught men to kill kings, the Lord's anointed, 
 the living images of his Majesty) undertook to assas- 
 sinate Henry IV." 1 It seems ridiculous to hear the 
 Jesuits alone accused of these " abominable crimes," by 
 these Leaguers turned royalists " for a consideration." 
 The Jesuits were not innocent : but there were many 
 others quite as guilty : the great difference was, how- 
 ever, that it was impossible to make exceptions as to 
 particular members who might be innocent, in a Com- 
 pany so universally sworn to uphold a bad principle. 
 The monks acted as individuals, or as cliques : the 
 Jesuits machinated always as one man united ever by 
 unity of purpose. Hence there was no necessity for 
 banishing the Capuchins who continued to attempt the 
 life of the king, after the expulsion of the Jesuits. 
 Among the seven or eight wretches who sought the 
 king's life, three were Capuchin monks. On this fact 
 the " impartial " Linguet observes : " A Carthusian tried 
 to kill Henry IV. : two Jacobins followed his example, 
 and three Capuchins imitated the two sons of St. 
 Dominic : nevertheless, neither the Carthusians, the 
 Jacobins, nor the Capuchins were banished : why then 
 were the Jesuits banished on account of Chatel's attempt, 
 who was not even a Jesuit I" 2 " To this question," 
 says Adolphe Boucher, " the answer seems easy enough. 
 They hanged the Carthusians, the two Jacobins, and 
 
 1 Coudrette, i. 220. 2 Hist. Impartiale des Jesuites, ii. livre x., c. xxvi.
 
 510 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 the three Capuchins : but they did not banish their 
 brethren, evidently because the crime committed was 
 that of the Carthusians, the two Jacobins, the three 
 Capuchins, and not that of all the Carthusians, Jacobins, 
 Capuchins : whereas, in the crime of Chatel, they beheld 
 the work of the whole Company of Jesus united. Besides, 
 who, at the time when Chatel struck Henry IV., flung 
 the regicidal pages of their Bellarmines, and Marianas, 
 at the thrones of kings \ Were they Carthusians ? 
 No. Were they Jacobins or Capuchins "? No. They 
 were Jesuits. Now the Jesuits were always too clever 
 to play with knives themselves : they were generally 
 content with forging, sharpening, and placing them 
 into good hands." 1 Linguet observes, however, that 
 " they did well in banishing the Jesuits : but they would 
 have done better in never receiving them :" still, in point 
 of fact it was as impossible really to banish the Jesuits 
 as it was not to receive them at first : in all manner of 
 disguises they remained in France, steadfastly machinat- 
 ing as usual, and taking all the means in their power 
 to effectuate their return. 2 Henry seemed to breathe 
 freely after the expulsion, especially when numerous 
 inquiries were made respecting the Jesuits in every part 
 of the kingdom ; and it was found that those connected 
 with the Company were generally in expectation of the 
 
 1 Hist. Dramat. et Pittoresque des Jesuites, ii. 
 
 2 Hist. Abrege des Jesuites, i. 1 40. Millot, ex- Jesuit, observes very appo- 
 sitely : " It is certain that most of the other bodies in Paris, ecclesiastical and 
 monkish, might be reproached with a blind zeal for the court of Rome, a crimi- 
 nal attachment to the King of Spam, and to those detestable maxims which led 
 to regicide. But it was deemed necessary to make an example with men more 
 attached by their profession to ultramontane opinions, and more capable, by 
 their intrigues, their talents, and their employments, by their very regularity, of 
 spreading and upholding those opinions. The Company had too much contri- 
 buted to the birth and progress of the League, for the fall of the one not to be 
 disastrous to that of the other." Elem. de VHist. de France, iii. 132.
 
 EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS PROM FRANCE. 511 
 
 attempt upon the monarch's life. A few days before 
 the act was committed, two Swiss were met by some 
 Jesuit at Besan9on, on his road to Rome, who told 
 them that, very soon, the King of Navarre would be 
 killed or wounded. The event was also looked for by 
 the Spanish troops in Bretagne, who were sent to aid 
 the expiring League ; and from informations taken at 
 Bourges, it appeared that one Francis Jacob, a scholar 
 of the Jesuits in that town, boasted that he would kill 
 the king if it were not already done by another. 1 The 
 evident rancour displayed against the Jesuits would 
 lead us to believe these assertions were "idle tales" 
 invented to precipitate their downfall, were we not con- 
 vinced by what we have read, that their unconcealed 
 doctrines at the time led directly to any and every 
 attempt against an excommunicated king. To discuss 
 the merits of the oft-renewed dispute, not only between 
 the Jesuits and the Parliaments, but also their quarrels 
 with the Secular clergy, would be tedious beyond en- 
 durance. They form the staple commodity of the 
 French histories of the Jesuits. It is, however, remark- 
 able that the declaration published by the Jesuits, in 
 answer to the decree for their banishment, contains an 
 observation, which completely proves the danger and 
 confusion that must attend their establishment in any 
 country, where the people have made the least advances 
 in civilization. After arguing upon the bull of Sixtus V., 
 which deprived the king of his right to the crown, and 
 declaring that the Court had usurped the authority of 
 the Church, in stigmatising as impious and heretical 
 the doctrines which Chatel had imbibed, the Jesuits 
 added, " that lay-judges condemning ecclesiastics, and 
 
 1 Hist, des Derniers Troubles, ii. 53.
 
 512 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 particularly ' religious men,' \i. e., Jesuits or monks], the 
 immediate subjects of the pope, were [ipso facto] excom- 
 municated." 1 It was indeed a harsh expulsion, and, in 
 other circumstances, would have been an unjustifiable 
 decree : but consider the case in all its bearings con- 
 sider the conduct of the Jesuits everywhere their 
 forceful ejectments of nuns at Rome, pagans in India, 
 heretics in Bavaria consider all that you have read, 
 and if we frankly despise the universitarians and the 
 new royalists, we cannot, on that account alone, exonerate 
 the Jesuits, or regret their retributive calamity. On the 
 other hand, surely there was infinitely more reason for 
 the king to expel the Jesuits from Paris in those days, 
 than the present Pope Pius IX. could possibly have for 
 expelling them from Rome, at the present time ; and 
 yet Pius IX. has expelled them on the 1st of April, 
 1848 as memorable a Fool's Day as ever was, as far 
 as the pope is concerned for perhaps on that offence 
 against the machinators may hinge the ruin of his 
 house. . . . The Jesuits have always had friends have 
 always found or made sympathisers in the hour of ruin. 
 In effect, the expulsion of the Jesuits threw fresh 
 obstacles in the way of Henry's absolution, so necessary 
 to prevent his assassination. When D'Ossat waited on 
 the pope, after the news reached Rome, Clement en- 
 larged upon the proceedings of the French Parliament ; 
 and concluded by saying : " See if this be the method 
 of accommodating matters !" 2 
 
 Meanwhile, the king was more urgent than ever for 
 the absolution ; however ridiculous it seems to the 
 enlightenment of the nineteenth century, it was abso- 
 
 1 Browning, p. 192 ; Cayet, livre vi. p. 438. 
 
 2 D'Ossat, Lettres, part I. p. 36, Jan. 31, 1595.
 
 PENANCES OF HENRY IV. 513 
 
 lutely necessary in those times of sanguinary fanaticism, 
 and influential monkhood, and stirring Jesuitism. The 
 Spaniards menaced the pope if he consented : but the 
 League was no more ; the cause was broken : the pope at 
 length yielded when he heard that the king was ad- 
 vised to establish a patriarch at the head of the Gallican 
 Church. The idea of this schism frightened the pope: they 
 told him that Clement VII. lost England for wishing to 
 please Charles V. ; and Clement VIII. would lose France 
 if he continued to seek the pleasure of Philip II. ; l the 
 Cardinal Tolet, a Jesuit and a Spaniard, joined in the 
 supplication ; Henry's messenger, D'Ossat, was urgent, 
 and the pope gave the precious absolution, inflicting the 
 requisite penitential blows on the backs of the king's 
 representatives, D'Ossat and Du Perron, whilst the 
 Miserere psalm was entoned by the assisting priests. 
 Thus was the royalty of France humiliated in deference 
 to the despicable and detestable abuse of man's religious 
 sentiment by the Moloch of Rome. 2 You will smile 
 when you hear that Henry IV. agreed to perform the 
 following penances : he was to rehearse the chaplet 
 (five Our Fathers, and fifty Hail Marys) every day, 
 the litanies every Wednesday, the rosary (fifteen Our 
 Fathers, and one hundred and fifty Hail Marys) every 
 Saturday, to hear mass every day. He was to confess 
 his sins, and receive communion publicly, at least four 
 times a year ; he was to build a convent, &c. 3 There 
 
 1 Millot, iii. 134. There is another version of the anecdote in Davila, 
 lib. xiv. 
 
 2 See Browning, Huguenots, p. 193, for the affair of the absolution and the 
 accompanying verberation. 
 
 3 Millot, ubi supra, 135. He says that "these penances were very little in 
 comparison with the humiliating ceremony which Henry's ambassadors endured 
 for him, in receiving, on their knees, strokes of a whip from the hand of the 
 pontiff." 
 
 VOL. II. L L
 
 514 HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
 
 are strange specimens of humanity now-a-days, who 
 yearn for all such proofs of ecclesiastical domination. 
 Poor, flimsy, miserable sentimentalists who are even 
 unworthy to be named with the Jesuits whom they 
 publicly pretend to oppose, but whose slaves they are, 
 and perfectly worthy to remain such for ever. 
 
 END OP VOL. II. 
 
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