XVIII. THE INSTRUMENT
Summary of the Brief of Suppression and its Supplementary Document.
The Brief of Clement XIV which suppressed the Society begins by enumerating the various religious orders which have been treated in a similar manner at different periods in the history of the Church, but it omits to note that their extinction occurred only after a juridical examination. Thus, for instance, when Clement V suppressed the Knights Templars in 1321, he first ordered all the bishops of the world to summon the Knights who had chapters in their dioceses; to subject them to a regular trial and then to forward a report of their proceedings to Rome. When this was done a general council was convened at Vienne in Dauphiné to go over the whole matter and then submit its decision to the Pope. The council brought in a favorable verdict by a majority vote, although the Knights were very poorly defended, but the Pope, terrorized by Philip the Fair, ordered the dissolution of the Order. In the case of the Society there was a dissolution but no trial.
After recounting these facts, the Pontiff says: "Having before my eyes these and other examples of Orders suppressed by the Church and being most eager to proceed with perfect confidence in carrying out the purpose which shall be referred to later, we have left nothing undone to make ourselves acquainted with the origin, progress and actual condition of the religious order commonly known as the Society of Jesus. We have seen that it was established by its Holy Founder for the salvation of souls, the conversion of heretics and especially of the heathen, and also for the increase of piety and religion. To accomplish these purposes its members were bound by a very strict vow of evangelical poverty both in common and individually, with the exception of its houses of study or colleges which are allowed to possess certain revenues, but in such wise that they could not be diverted or applied to the use of this Society.
"In consequence of these statutes and of others equally wise, our predecessor Paul III approved of the Society of Jesus, by his Bull of September 27, 1540, and allowed it to draw up rules and statutes to ensure its peace, its existence and its government; and although he had restricted this Society to sixty members, yet by another Bull dated February 28, 1543, he permitted the superiors to receive all who appeared to possess the proper qualifications for the work proposed. Subsequently, the same Pontiff by a Brief of November 15, 1549, accorded very great privileges to this Society and gave its Generals the power of accepting twenty priests as spiritual coadjutors and of conferring on them the same privileges, the same favor and the same authority as the Professed. His wish was and he so ordained that there should be no limit or restriction put on the number of those whom the General should judge worthy of being so received. Furthermore, the Society itself, all its members and their possessions were entirely withdrawn from all superiorship, control and correction of bishops and taken under the protection of the Holy See.
"Others of our predecessors have exhibited the same munificent liberality to this order. In effect Julius III, Paul IV, Paul V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Gregory XIV, Clement VIII and other Popes have either confirmed or augmented, or more distinctly defined and determined the privileges already conferred on these religious. Nevertheless, the tenor and even the terms of these Apostolic Constitutions show that even at its inception the Society saw spring up within it various germs of discord and jealousies, which not only divided the members, but prompted them to exalt themselves above other religious orders, the secular clergy, the universities, colleges, public schools and even the sovereigns who had admitted and welcomed them in their realms. These troubles and dissensions were sometimes caused by the character of the Society's vows, by its power to admit novices to the vows, to dismiss from the Society, to present its subjects for ordination without any ecclesiastical title and without having made solemn vows. Moreover, it was in conflict with the decisions of the Council of Trent and of Pius V, our predecessor, both with regard to the absolute power arrogated by the General, as well as in other articles which not only relate to the government of the Society, but also on different points of doctrine, and in the exemptions and privileges which the ordinaries and other dignitaries both ecclesiastical and secular claim to be an invasion of their jurisdiction and their rights. In brief, there is scarcely any kind of a grave accusation that has not been brought against this Society, and in consequence, the peace and tranquillity of Christendom has been for a long time disturbed.
"Numberless complaints backed by the authority of kings and rulers have been urged against these religious at the tribunals of Paul IV, Pius V and Sixtus V. Thus, Philip II, King of Spain, laid before Sixtus V not only the urgent and grave personal reasons which prompted his action in this matter, but also the protest of the Spanish Inquisition against the excessive privileges of the Society. His majesty also complained of the Society's form of government, and of points in the Institution which were disputed by some of the members of the Society who were conspicuous for their knowledge and piety, and he asked the Sovereign Pontiff to name a commission for an Apostolic visitation of the Society.
"As the zealous demands of Philip seemed to be based on justice and equity, Sixtus V appointed as visitor Apostolic a bishop generally recognized for his prudence, virtue and intellectual gifts. A congregation of cardinals was also instituted to dispose of the matter, but the premature death of Sixtus prevented any action. On the other hand, the first act of Gregory XIV on his accession to the Chair of Peter was to give by his Bull of June 28, 1591, the most extensive approval of the Institute. He confirmed and ratified all the privileges accorded by his predecessors, and especially that of dismissal from the Order without juridical procedure, that is to say without having taken any previous information, without drawing up any indictment, without observing any legal process, or allowing any delay, even the most essential, but solely on the inspection of the truth of the fact and without regard to the fault or whether it or the attendant circumstances sufficiently justified the expulsion of the person involved.
"Moreover, Pope Gregory absolutely forbade under pain of excommunication ipso facto, any direct or indirect attack on the institute, the constitutions, or the decrees of the Society, or any attempt to change them, although he permitted an appeal to himself or his successors, either directly or through the legates and nuncios of the Holy See, and also the right to represent whatever one might think should be added, modified or retrenched.
"However, all these precautions did not avail to silence the clamorous complaints against the Society. On the contrary, strife arose everywhere about the doctrines of the Order, which many maintained were totally opposed to the orthodox faith and sound morality. The Society itself was torn by internal dissensions while this external warfare was going on. It was also everywhere reproached with too much avidity and eagerness for earthly goods and this complaint caused the Holy See much pain and exasperated many rulers of nations against the Society. Hence, to strengthen themselves on that point these religious, wishing to obtain from Paul V of happy memory a new confirmation of their Institute and their privileges, were compelled to ask for a ratification of some decrees published in the fifth general congregation and inserted word for word in his Bull of September 14, 1606. These decrees expressly declared that the Society assembled in general congregation had been compelled both by the troubles and enmities among the members, and by the charges from without, to formulate the following statute:--
"'Our Society which has been raised up by God for the propagation of the Faith and the salvation of souls, is enabled by the proper functions of its Institute which are the arms of the spirit to attain under the standard of the Cross the end it proposes, with edification to the neighbor and usefulness to the Church. On the other hand, it would do harm and expose itself to the greatest danger if it meddled in affairs of the world and especially with what concerns the politics and government of States. But, as in these unfortunate times our Order, perhaps because of the ambition or indiscreet zeal of some of its members, is attacked in different parts of the world and is complained of to certain sovereigns whose consideration and affection we have been bidden by St. Ignatius to preserve so that we may be more acceptable to God, and as, besides, the good odor of Jesus Christ is necessary to produce fruits of salvation, this congregation is of the opinion that it is incumbent upon all to avoid as far as possible even the appearance of evil, and thus to obviate the accusations that are based on unjust suspicions. Hence, the present decree forbids all under the most rigorous penalties to concern themselves in any way with public affairs, even when invited to do so or when for some reason they may seem to be indispensable. They are not to depart from the Institute of the Society no matter how entreated or solicited, and the definitors are to lay down rules and to prescribe the means best calculated to remedy abuses in cases which may present themselves.'
"We have observed with bitter grief that these remedies and many others subsequently employed failed to put an end to the troubles, complaints and accusations against the Society, and that Urban VIII, Clement IX, Clement X, Clement XI, Clement XII, Alexander VII, Alexander VIII, Innocent X, Innocent XI, Innocent XII, Innocent XIII, and Benedict XIV were unable to give the Church peace. The constitutions which were drawn up with regard to secular affairs with which the Society should not concern itself, whether outside of these missions or on account of them, failed to have any result. Nor did they put an end to the serious quarrels and dissensions caused by members of the Society with the ordinaries and, religious orders, or about places consecrated to piety, and also with communities of every kind in Europe, Asia and America; all of which caused great scandal and loss of souls. The same was true with regard to the practice and interpretation of certain pagan ceremonies which were tolerated and permitted in many places while those approved of by the Universal Church were put aside. Then, too, there was the use and interpretation of maxims which the Holy See deemed to be scandalous and evidently harmful to morality. Finally, there were other things of great moment and of absolute necessity for the preservation of the dogmas of the Christian religion in its purity and integrity which in our own and preceding centuries led to abuses and great evils such as the troubles and seditions in Catholic states, and even persecutions of the Church in some provinces of Asia and Europe.
"All of our predecessors have been sorely afflicted by these things, among others Innocent XI of pious memory, who forbade the habit to be given to novices; Innocent XIII, who was obliged to utter the same threat; and, finally, Benedict XIV, who ordered a visitation of the houses and colleges of our dear son in Christ, the most faithful King of Portugal and the Algarves. But the Holy See derived no consolation from all this; nor was the Society helped; nor did Christianity secure any advantage from the last letter, which had been rather extorted than obtained from our immediate predecessor Clement XIII (to borrow the expression employed by Gregory X in the Ecumenical Council of Lyons.)
"After so many terrible shocks, storms and tempests, the truly faithful hope to see the day dawn which will bring peace and calm. But under the pontificate of our predecessor Clement XIII, the times grew more stormy. Indeed, the clamors against the Society augmented daily and in some places there were troubles, dissensions, dangerous strifes and even scandals which, after completely shattering Christian charity, lighted in the hearts of the faithful, party spirit, hatred and enmity. The danger increased to such a degree that even those whose piety and well-known hereditary devotion to the Society, namely our very dear sons in Jesus Christ, the Kings of France, Spain, Portugal and the Two Sicilies, were forced to banish from their kingdoms, states and provinces all the religious of this Order; being persuaded that this extreme measure was the only means of remedying so many evils and putting an end to the contentions and strife that were tearing the bosom of Mother Church.
"But these same kings, our very dear sons in Jesus Christ, thought that this remedy could not be lasting in its effects or could avail to tranquillize Christendom unless the Society was altogether abolished and suppressed. Hence, they made known to Clement XIII their desire in this matter and asked him with one accord and with all the authority they possessed, adding also their prayers and entreaties to bring about in that way the perpetual tranquillity of their subjects and the general good of the Church. But the sudden death of that Pontiff checked all progress in the matter. Hardly, however, had we, by the mercy of God, been elevated to the Chair of St. Peter, than the same prayers were addressed to us, the same insistent demands were made and a great number of bishops and other personages illustrious by their learning, dignity and virtue united their supplications to this request.
"Wishing, however, to take the surest course in such a grave and important matter, we believed we needed a much longer time to consider it, not only for the purpose of making the most exact examination possible and then to deliberate upon the most prudent methods to be adopted and also to obtain from the Father of Light His especial help and assistance, we offered our most earnest prayers, mourning and grieving over what was before us, and we entreated the faithful to come to our aid by their prayers and good works. We have especially thought it advisable to find out upon what basis this widespread feeling rested with regard to the Society, which had been confirmed and approved in the most solemn manner by the Council of Trent. We discovered that the council mentions the Order only to exempt it from the general decree passed for other Orders. The Jesuit novices were to be admitted to profession if judged worthy, or they were to be dismissed from the Society. Hence the council (Session 25, c. xvi, de reg.) declared that it wished to make no innovation nor to prevent these religious from serving God and the Church in accordance with their pious Institute which had been approved by the Church.
"Wherefore, after having made use of so many necessary means, and aided as we think by the presence and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and, moreover, compelled by the duty of our office which essentially obliges us to procure, maintain and strengthen with all our power, the repose and tranquillity of Christendom, and to root out entirely what could cause the slightest harm; and, moreover, having recognized that the Society of Jesus could no longer produce the abundant fruit and the great good for which it was instituted and approved by so many Popes, our predecessors, who adorned it with so many most admirable privileges, and seeing that it was almost and, indeed, absolutely impossible for the Church to enjoy a true and solid peace while this Order existed, being bound as we are by so many powerful considerations and compelled by other motives which the laws of prudence and the wise administration of the Church suggest but which we keep in the depths of our heart: Following in the footsteps of our predecessors and especially of Gregory X at the Council of Lyons, since the cases are identical, we do, hereby, after a mature examination, and of our certain knowledge, and by the plenitude of our Apostolic power, suppress and abolish the Society of Jesus. We nullify and abrogate all and each of its offices, functions, administrations, houses, schools, colleges, retreats, refuges and other establishments which belong to it in any manner whatever, and in every province, kingdom or state in which it may be found. We do the same for its statutes, customs, usages, decrees, constitutions, even those confirmed by the oath and by the approbation of the Holy See or otherwise, as well as all and each of its indults, both general and particular whose tenor we wish to be regarded as fully and sufficiently set forth by these present letters, as if they were here inserted word for word; notwithstanding any clause or formula to the contrary, no matter upon what decrees or obligations they may be based. Hence, we declare as forever broken and entirely extinct all authority, spiritual or temporal, of the General, provincials, visitors and other superiors of this Society, and we transfer absolutely and without restriction this same authority and this same jurisdiction to the ordinaries of the places where the aforesaid are, according to the case or persons, in the form and under the conditions which we shall explain hereafter; forbidding, as we do by these presents forbid, that any one should be received into this Society or admitted to the novitiate or invested with the habit. We also forbid any of those who have already been received to pronounce the simple or solemn vows, under pain of nullity either of their admission or profession and under other penalties as we may see fit. Moreover, we wish, ordain and enjoin that those who are at present novices, should be immediately, instantly and effectually dismissed, and we forbid those who have not made solemn vows and who have not yet been admitted to the priesthood to be promoted to either under the title or pretext of their profession or in virtue of any privileges accorded to the Society and in contravention of the decrees of the Council of Trent.
"But as the object we have in view and which we are most eager to attain is to watch over the general good of the Church and the peace of the nations, and at the same time to help and console each one of the members of this Society whom we tenderly cherish in the Lord, so that, freed at last from all the quarrels and disputes and annoyances in which they have until now been engaged, they may cultivate with more fruit the vineyard of the Lord and labor with more success for the salvation of souls, we decree and ordain that the members of this Society who have made only simple vows and who are not yet in Holy Orders shall depart from their houses and colleges freed from their vows, and that they are free to embrace whatever state they judge most conformable to their vocation, their strength and their conscience. The ordinary of the place will fix the time which may be deemed sufficient to procure an employment or an occupation, without, however, extending it beyond a year, just as in the Society they would be dismissed without any other reason than because the prudence of the superior so judges, and that without any previous citation or juridical proof.
"We allow those in Holy Orders either to leave their houses and colleges and enter some religious order approved by the Holy See, in which case they must pass the probation prescribed by the Council of Trent, if they have only taken simple vows, if they have taken solemn vows, the time of their probation will be six months in virtue of a dispensation which we give to that effect; or they may remain in the world as secular priests or clerics, and in that case they shall be entirely subject to the authority and jurisdiction of the ordinary of the place in which they reside. We ordain, also, that a suitable pension shall be assigned to those who remain in the world, until such time as they shall be otherwise provided for. This pension shall be derived from the funds of the house where they formerly lived, due consideration, however, being had to the revenues and the indebtedness of such houses.
"The professed who are already in Holy Orders and who fear they may not be able to live respectably on account of the smallness of their pension, either because they can find no other refuge or are very old and infirm, may live in their former houses on condition that they shall have no share in its administration, that they dress like secular priests and be entirely subject to the bishop of the place. We expressly forbid them to supply anyone's place or to acquire any house or place in the future, or, as the Council of Lyons decrees, to alienate the houses, goods or places which they actually possess. They may, nevertheless, meet in one or more houses, in such a manner that such houses may be available if needed for pious purposes, as may appear most in conformity, in time and place, with the Holy Canons and the will of the founders, and also more conducive to the growth of religion, the salvation of souls and public utility. Moreover, some one of the secular clergy, commendable for his prudence and virtuous life, must appear in the administration of such houses, as the name of the Society is now totally suppressed and abolished.
"We declare, also, that those who have been already expelled from any country whatever are included in the general suppression of the Order, and we consequently decree that those banished Jesuits, even if they are in Holy Orders and have not entered a religious order, shall from this moment belong to the secular clergy and be entirely subject to the ordinary of the place.
"If the ordinaries recognize in those who in virtue of the present Brief have passed from the Society to the state of secular priests necessary knowledge and correctness of life, they may grant or refuse them, as they choose, the permission to confess and preach, and without such authorization none of them can exercise such functions. However, the bishops or ordinaries will never grant such powers as are conceded to those not of the diocese, if the applicants live in houses or colleges formerly belonging to the Society; and therefore we forbid such persons to preach or administer the sacraments, as Gregory X, our predecessor prescribed in the general council already referred to. We lay it on the conscience of the bishops to watch over the execution of all this and we command them to reflect on the rigorous account they will have one day to render to God of the sheep committed to their care and of the terrible judgment with which the Sovereign Judge of the living and the dead menaces those who govern others.
"Moreover, if among those who were members of the Society there are any who were charged with the instruction of youth or who have exercised the functions of professors in colleges and schools, we warn them that they are absolutely deposed from any such direction, administration or authority and that they are not permitted to be employed in any such work, except as long as there is a reason to hope for some good from their labors and as long as they appear to keep aloof from all discussions and points of doctrine whose laxity and futility only occasion and engender trouble and disastrous contentions. We furthermore ordain that they shall be forever forbidden to exercise the functions aforesaid, if they do not endeavor to keep peace in their schools and with others; and that they shall be discharged from the schools if they happen to be employed in them.
"As regards the missions, we include them in everything that has been ordered in this suppression, and we reserve to ourselves to take measures calculated to procure more easily and with greater certainty of results the conversion of the heathens and the cessation of disputes.
"Therefore, we have entirely abolished and abrogated all the privileges and statutes of this Order and we declare that all of its members shall as soon as they have left their houses and colleges and have embraced the state of secular clerics, be considered proper and fit to obtain, in conformity with the Holy Canons and the Apostolic Constitutions, all sorts of benefices either simple or with the care of souls annexed; and also to accept offices, dignities and pensions, from which in accordance with the Brief of Gregory XIII of September 10, 1584, which begins with the words: 'Satis superque,' they were absolutely excluded as long as they belonged to the Society. We allow them also to accept compensations for celebrating Mass, which they were not allowed to receive as Jesuits, and to enjoy all the graces and favors of which they would have always been deprived as long as they were Clerks Regular of the Society. We abrogate likewise all permissions they may have obtained from the General and other superiors, in virtue of the privileges accorded by the Sovereign Pontiff, such as leave to read heretical books and others prohibited and condemned by the Holy See, or not to fast or abstain, or to anticipate the Divine Office or anything, in fact, of that nature. Under the severest penalties we forbid them to use such privileges in the future, as our intention is to make them live in conformity with the requirements of the common law, like secular priests.
"After the publication of the Brief, we forbid anyone, no matter who he may be, to dare to suspend its execution even under color, title or pretext of some demand, appeal or declaration or discussion of doubt that may arise or under any other pretext, foreseen or unforeseen; for we wish that the suppression and cessation of the whole Society as well as of all of its officers should have their full and entire effect, at the moment, and instantaneously, and in the form and manner in which we have described above, under pain of major excommunication incurred ipso facto by a single act, and reserved to us and to the Popes, our successors. This is directed against anyone who will dare to place the least obstacle, impediment or delay in the execution of this Brief. We order, likewise, and we forbid under holy obedience all and every ecclesiastic secular and regular, whatever be their grade, dignity, quality or condition, and notably those who are at present attached to the Society or were in the past, to oppose or attack this suppression, to write against it, even to speak of it, or of its causes or motives, or of the extinct Institute itself, its rules, constitutions or discipline or of anything else, relative to this affair, without the express permission of the Sovereign Pontiff. We likewise forbid all and everyone under pain of excommunication reserved to us and our successors to dare to assail either in secret or in public, verbally or in writing, by disputes, injuries and affronts or by any other kind of contempt, anyone, no matter who he may be and least of all those who were members of the said Order.
"We exhort all Christian princes whose attachment and respect for the Holy See we know, to employ all the zeal, care, strength, authority and power which they have received from God for the execution of this Brief, in order to protect and defend the Holy Roman Church, to adhere to all the articles it contains; to issue and publish similar decrees by which they may more carefully watch over the execution of this our present will and so forestall quarrelling, strife and dissensions among the faithful.
"Finally, we exhort all Christians and we implore them by the bowels of Jesus Christ Our Lord to remember that they have the same Master, Who is in heaven; the same Savior, Who redeemed them at the price of His blood; that they have all been regenerated by the grace of Baptism; that they have been all made sons of God and co-heirs of Christ; and are nourished by the same bread of the Divine word, the doctrine of the Church; that they are one body in Jesus Christ, and are members of each other; and consequently, it is necessary that being united by the bonds of charity they should live in peace with all men, as their only duty is to love each other, for he who loves his neighbor fulfills the law. Hence, also, they should regard with horror injuries, hatred, quarrels, deceits and other evils which the enemy of the human race has invented, devised and provoked to trouble the Church of God and to hinder the salvation of souls; nor are they to allege the false pretext of scholastic opinions or that of greater Christian perfection. Finally, let all endeavor to acquire that true wisdom of which St. James speaks (iii, 13): 'Who is a wise man and indued with knowledge among you? Let him show, by a good conversation, his work in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have a bitter zeal, and there be contentions in your heart; glory not, and be not liars against the truth. For this is not wisdom, descending from above; but earthly, sensual, devilish. For, where envying and contention is, there is inconstancy, and every evil work. For the wisdom, that is from above, first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, without judging, without dissimulation. And the fruit of justice is sown in peace, to them that make peace.'
"Even if the superiors and the other religious of this Order, as well as all those who are interested or pretend to be, in any way whatever, in what has been herein ordered, give no assent to the present Brief and were not summoned or heard, we wish, nevertheless, that it should never be attacked, weakened or invalidated on the plea of subreption, obreption, nullity, invalidity or defect of intention on our part or for any other motive, no matter how great or unforeseen or essential it may be, or because formalities and other things have been omitted which should have been observed in the preceding enactments or in any one of them, or for any other capital point deriving from the law or any custom, or indeed contained in the body of the law; nor can there be any pretext of an enormous or a very enormous and extreme injury inflicted; nor, finally, can there be any reasons or causes however just or reasonable they may be, even one that should have necessarily been expressed, needed to give validity to the rules above given. We forbid that it should be ever retracted, discussed or brought to court or that it be provided against by way of restitution, discussion, review according to law or in any other way to obtain by legal procedure, fact, favor or justice, in any manner in which it might be accorded, to be made use of either in court or out of it.
"Moreover, we wish expressly that the present Constitution should be from this moment valid, stable and efficacious forever, that it should have its full and entire effect; that it should be inviolably observed by all and each of those to whom it belongs or will belong in the future in any manner whatever."
Such was the famous Brief which condemned the Society to death. Distressing as it is, it attributes no wrong doing to the Order. It narrates a few of the accusations against the Jesuits, but does not accept them as ever having been proved. The sole reason given for the suppression--and it is repeated again and again--is that the Society was the occasion of much trouble in the Church. It is thus, on the whole, a vindication and not a condemnation. It was not a Bull but a Brief, and on that account could be much more easily revoked than the more solemn document to which the papal bulla is affixed.
Father Cordara's view of this act of the Pope is generally considered to reflect that of the Society at large. It is of special value for he was one of the suppressed Jesuits and happened to be living in Rome at the time. He maintained that "the Pope could, without injustice, suppress the Society, even if innocent, just as a king can deliver over an innocent man to be put to death by an enemy who otherwise would sack a city. Clement XIV thought to save the Church whose existence was menaced."
Two years later however, Cardinal Antonelli when interrogated by Clement's successor, Pius VI, and, consequently, when he was compelled to speak, did not hesitate to condemn the Brief absolutely. His statement is quoted here, not as a view that is adopted, but merely as a matter of history. The document is of considerable importance, for Antonelli was prefect of the Propaganda and with Consalvi was the confidant of Pius VII and was his fellow-prisoner in 1804. We sum it up briefly, omitting its harsher phrases.
"Your Holiness knows as well as the cardinals that Clement XIV would never consent to give the Brief of Suppression the canonical forms which were indispensable to make it definitive. Moreover this Brief of Clement XIV is addressed to no one, although such letters usually are. In its form and execution all law is set aside, it is based on false accusations and shameful calumnies; it is self-contradictory, in speaking of vows both solemn and simple. Clement XIV claims powers such as none of his predecessors claimed, and, on the other hand, leaves doubts on points that should have been more clearly determined. The motives alleged by the Brief could be applied to any other Order, and seem to have been prepared for the destruction of all of them, without specifying reasons it annuls many Bulls and Constitutions received and recognized by the Church; all of which goes to show that the Brief is null and void."
A copy of the Brief was sent to every bishop in Christendom, even to the remotest missions. Accompanying it was another document called an "Encyclical from the Congregation styled 'For the abolition of the Society of Jesus,' with which is sent an exemplar to every bishop of the Brief of Extinction: Dominus ac Redemptor, with the command of His Holiness that all the bishops should publish and promulgate the Brief." The Latin text may be found in de Ravignan's "Clément XIII et Clément XIV" (p. 560). We give here the translation:
"Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lord and Brother.
"From the printed copy herein contained of the Apostolic Letters in the form of a Brief, under the date of the 21st of the preceding month of July, your lordship will learn of the suppression and extinction for just causes of the Regular Clerics hitherto called "of the Society of Jesus" by the most holy Lord Clement XIV; you will also learn by what legal process His Holiness has decreed that the suppression should be carried out in every part of the world. For the complete destruction of the same, he has established a special congregation of their eminences, the Cardinals Corsini, Marefoschi, Caraffa, Zelada, and Casali, together with the Reverend Macedonio and Alfani, who possess the most ample faculties for what is necessary and proper. The Brief establishing this congregation, under date of the 18th of the current month of August, is herein enclosed.
"By command of His Holiness the same congregation transmits the present letters to your lordship, in order that in each house and college and place where the individuals of the aforesaid suppressed Society may be found, your lordship shall assemble them in any house whatever (in qualibet domo) and you shall regularly (rite) announce, publish and intimate, as they say, and force and compel them to execute these letters; and your lordship shall take and retain possession for the use afterwards to be designated by His Holiness, of all and each of the houses, colleges and places of the same, with the lawful rights to their goods and appurtenances, after having removed the aforesaid individuals of the suppressed Society; and in their execution, your lordship will do whatever else is decreed in the letters of suppression and will advise the special congregation that such execution has been carried out. Your lordship will see to it. Meantime we entreat the Lord that all things may prosper with you.
"Yours with brotherly devotedness. "Rome, Aug. 18, 1773."
Carayon gives us the personnel of this congregation (Doc. inédits, xvii). Cardinal Marefoschi, who had been for sixteen years secretary of the Propaganda, had made a digest of all the complaints uttered by missionaries in various parts of the world against the Jesuits, omitting, however, all that had been said in their favor. The Pope had named him visitor of the Irish College, which had been entrusted to the Society by Cardinal Ludovisi, and he immediately removed the Jesuits. Among other professors he put in a certain Tamburini, who had been expelled from Brescia for Jansenism. In Marefoschi's report to the Pope, the former professors (the Jesuits) were accused of neglect of the studies, alienation of ecclesiastical property and swindling, with a consequent diminution of the revenues. He was then sent to visit the College of Tuccioli and similar disastrous results ensued. In June, 1772, he and the Cardinal of York expelled the Jesuits from the Roman Seminary and in the same year from Frascati. The entire city addressed a petition to the cardinal begging him not to drive out the Fathers, but his royal highness was so wrought up by the audacity of the request that he was on the point of putting some of the chief petitioners in jail, magistrates though they were.
With Marefoschi were three other cardinals, Casali, Caraffa, and Zelada, all three of whom had been raised to the purple in the month of May at the suggestion of Mgr. Bottari, who had been filling Rome with defamatory books against the Jesuits. In spite of the entreaties of his family, young Cardinal Corsini accepted the presidency. Macedonio was made secretary, and Alfani, assessor; both of these clergymen were subsequently charged with pillage of the sequestrated property. Finally, to give an appearance of acting in conformity with canon law, two theologians were added to the commission; Mamachi, a Dominican, and de Casal, a Minor Reformed; both were avowed enemies of Probabilism and Molinism, and, singularly enough, were bitterly opposed to the Apostolic Constitution "Unigenitus" in which Clement XI condemned the Jansenistic errors of Pasquier Quesnel.
The Protestant historian Schoell (xliv, 83) speaking of the brief of suppression says: "This Brief does not condemn the doctrine nor the morals, nor the rules of the Jesuits. The complaints of the courts are the sole motives alleged for the suppression of the Order, and the Pope justifies himself by the precedents of other Orders which were suppressed to satisfy the demands of public opinion." As he was about to sign it, he heard the bells of the Gesù ringing. "What is that for?" he asked. "The Jesuits are about to recite the Litany of the Saints," he was told; "Not the Litany of the Saints," he said, "but the Litany of the Dead." It was July 21, 1773.
XIX. THE EXECUTION
Seizure of the Gesù in Rome--Suspension of the Priests -- Juridical Trial of Father Ricci continued during Two Years-- The Victim's Death-bed Statement--Admission of his Innocence by the Inquisitors--Obsequies--Reason of his Protracted Imprisonment--Liberation of the Assistants by Pius VI-- Receipt of the Brief outside of Rome--Refused by Switzerland, Poland, Russia and Prussia--Read to the Prisoners in Portugal by Pombal--Denunciation of it by the Archbishop of Paris-- Suppression of the Document by the Bishop of Quebec-- Acceptance by Austria--Its Enforcement in Belgium--Carroll at Bruges--Defective Promulgation in Maryland.
Two days before the subsidiary Brief was signed, namely on August 16, 1773, the commissioner began operations. Led by Alfani and Macedonio, a squad of soldiers invaded the Gesù, where the General and his assistants were notified of the suppression of the Society. Apparently no one else was cited, and hence, according to de Ravignan, the procedure was illegal as far as the rest of the community was concerned. However, they made no difficulty about it and from that moment considered themselves as no longer Jesuits. It was supposed that a great amount of money would be seized at the central house of the Society; but the hope was not realized; for only about $50,000 were found, and that sum had been collected to defray the expenses of the beatification of St. Francis Hieronymo. It really belonged to St. Peter's rather than to the Gesù. However, there was plenty of material in the gold and silver vessels of the chapels, the works of art, the valuable library, and the archives.
The same process was followed in the other Jesuit establishments of the city. The Fathers were locked up while the soldiers guarded the doors and swarmed through the rooms and passage ways. The old and infirm were carried to the Roman College, and then sent back to the place whence they had been taken; in both instances on stretchers, when the victim was unable to walk. One old Father was actually breathing his last during the transfer. They were all suspended from their priestly faculties, and ordered to report every three months to the authorities with a certificate of their good behavior, signed by the parish priest. They were ecclesiastical "ticket of leave men." Pretexts were multiplied to have many of them arrested. They were paraded through the streets in custody of a policeman, and after being put in the dock with common criminals were locked up or banished from the Papal States.
On August 17 at night-fall, the carriage of Cardinal Corsini drove to the Gesù. In it was the auditor of the congregation with a request to Father Ricci to meet the cardinal at the English College. The invitation was accepted in perfect good faith, although that very morning an offer made by the minister of Tuscany to take the General under his protection and thus secure him from arrest had been declined by Ricci. The freedom of the house was given to him on his arrival, but soon he was restricted to three rooms, and he then noticed that soldiers were on guard both inside and outside of the college. He was kept there for more than a month, during which time he was subjected to several judicial examinations; finally he was transferred to the Castle Sant' Angelo where he was soon followed by his secretary, Commolli, and the assistants, Le Forestier, Zaccharia, Gautier and Faure. They were all assigned to separate cells. The enemies of the Society now had the arch-criminal in their hands, the General himself, Father Ricci; and they could get from him all the secrets of the redoubtable organization which they had destroyed. His papers, both private and official, were in their possession. The archives of the Society were before them with information about every member of it from the beginning, as well as all the personal letters from all over the world written in every conceivable circumstance of Jesuit life. They were all carefully studied and yet no cause for accusation was found in them. The jailors seemed to have lost their heads and to have forgotten their usual tactics of forgery and interpolation.
The trial of Father Ricci was amazing both in its procedure and its length. There were no witnesses to give testimony for or against him, but he was brutally and repeatedly interrogated by an official named Andretti who was suggestively styled "the criminalist." The interrogatories have all been printed, and some of the questions are remarkable for their stupidity. Thus for instance, he was asked, "Do you think you have any authority since the suppression of the Society?" The answer was, "I am quite persuaded I have none." "What authority would you have if, instead of abolishing the Society, the Pope had done something else?" "What he would give me." "Are there any abuses in the Order?" To this he replied, "If you mean general abuses, I answer that, by the mercy of God there are none. On the contrary, there is in the Society a great deal of piety, regularity, zeal, and especially charity, which has shown itself in a remarkable way during these fifteen years of bitter trials." "Have you made any changes in the government of the Order?" "None." "Where are your moneys?" "I have none. I had not enough to keep the exiles of Spain and Portugal from starvation."
The result of this investigation which went on for more than two years was that nothing was found either against him or against the Society, and yet he was kept in a dungeon until he died. As the end was approaching Father Ricci read from his dying bed the following declaration:
"Because of the uncertainty of the moment when God will please to summon me before him and also in view of my advanced age and the multitude, duration, and greatness of my sufferings, which have been far beyond my strength, being on the point of appearing before the infallible tribunal of truth and justice, after long and mature deliberation and after having humbly invoked my most merciful Redeemer that He will not permit me to speak from passion, especially in this the last action of my life, nor be moved by any bitterness of heart, or out of wrong desire or evil purpose, but only to acquit myself of my obligation to bear testimony to truth and to innocence, I now make the two following declarations and protests:
"First, I declare and protest that the extinct Society of Jesus has given no reason for its suppression; and I declare and protest with that moral certainty which a well-informed superior has of what passes in his Order. Second, I declare and protest that I have given no reason, not even the slightest, for my imprisonment, and I do so with that sovereign certitude which each one has of his own actions. I make this second protest solely because it is necessary for the reputation of the extinct Society of which I was superior.
"I do not pretend in consequence of these protests that I or any one may judge as guilty before God any of those who have injured the Society of Jesus or myself. The thoughts of men are known to God alone. He alone sees the errors of the human mind and sees if they are such as to excuse from sin; He alone penetrates the motives of acts; as well as the spirit in which things are done, and the affections of the heart that accompany such actions; and since the malice or innocence of an external act depends on all these things, I leave it to God Who shall interrogate man's thoughts and deeds.
"To do my duty as a Christian, I protest that with the help of God I have always pardoned and do now sincerely pardon all those who have tortured and harmed me, first, by the evils they have heaped on the Society and by the rigorous measures they have employed in dealing with its members; secondly, by the extinction of the Society and by its accompanying circumstances; thirdly, by my own imprisonment, and the hardships they have added to it, and by the harm they have done to my reputation; all of which are public and notorious facts. I pray God, out of His goodness and mercy, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to pardon me my many sins and to pardon also all the authors of the above-mentioned evils and wrongs, as well as their co-operators. With this sentiment and with this prayer I wish to die.
"Finally I beg and conjure all those who may read these declarations and protests to make them public throughout the world as far as in them lies. I ask this by all the titles of humanity, justice and Christian charity that may persuade them to carry out my will and desire. (signed) Lorenzo Ricci."
The trial had been purposely prolonged. At each session only three or four questions would be put to the accused, although he constantly entreated the inquisitors to proceed. Then there would be an interruption of eight, ten and even twenty days or more. At times the interrogations were sent in on paper, until finally, Andretti, the chief inquisitor, said that the case was ended and he would return no more. Nevertheless he made his appearance a few days later.
"No doubt," says Father Ricci, "someone had told him that the whole process was null and void; and I pitied this honest man, advanced in age as he was, and so long in the practice of his profession, who was now told that he did not know the conditions necessary for the validity of a process. Those who gave him that information should have warned him long before. So he began again, going over the same ground in the same way, and I gave him the same answers. His questions were always preceded by long formulæ to which I paid no heed. After each question, he made me repeat my oath. I asked him to let me know the reason of my incarceration and could get no answer; but, finally he uttered these words: 'Be content to know that you have not been imprisoned for any crime; and you might have inferred that from the fact that I have not interrogated you about anything criminal whatever.'"
As a necessary consequence of this exoneration by the official deputed to try him, it follows that the Order of which he was the chief superior was also without reproach; for, if the numberless offences alleged against the Society were true, it would have been absolutely impossible for the General not to have known them; and having this knowledge, he would have been culpable and deserving of the severest punishment, if there had been dissensions in the Order and he had not endeavored to repress them; if lax morality had been taught and he did not censure it; if the Society had indulged in mercantile transactions and he had not condemned such departures from the law; if it had been guilty of ambition and he had not crushed it. Being the centre and the source of all authority and of all activity in the Order, his knowledge of what is going on extends to very minute details and hence if the Order was guilty he was the chief criminal. But even his bitterly prejudiced judges had declared him innocent and he was, therefore, to be set free.
At this juncture, the Spanish minister, Florida Blanca, intervened and in the name of Charles III warned the Pope not to dare to release him. The Bourbons were still bent on terrorizing the Holy See. The difficulty was solved by the victim himself who died on November 24, 1775. He was then seventy-two years of age. He was able to speak up to the last moment and was often heard to moan: "Ah! poor Society! At least to my knowledge you did not deserve the punishment that was meted out to you."
On the evening of the 25th, Father Ricci's remains were carried to the Church of St. John of the Florentines. The whole edifice was draped in black, and the coffin was placed on the bier around which were thirty funeral torches. A vast multitude took part in the services. The Bishop of Commachio, a staunch friend of the Society, celebrated the Mass. He came, he said, not to pray for the General but to pray to him. Another bishop exclaimed: "Behold the martyr!" In the evening, the corpse was carried to the Gesù. It should have arrived by 9 o'clock, but it reached the church only at midnight. To avoid any demonstration, the approaches to the church had been closed, and there were only five or six Fathers present. From Carayon's narrative it would appear that the uncoffined body was carried in a coach and was clothed in a very short and very shabby habit. The curé of the parish and two other persons were in the conveyance. Two other carriages whose occupants were unknown but who were suspected of being spies followed close behind. After the absolution, the body was placed in the coffin and laid in the vault beside the remains of Ricci's seventeen predecessors. The tomb was then closed and a scrap of paper was fixed on it, with the inscription: "Lorenzo Ricci, ex-General of the Jesuits, died at Castle Sant' Angelo, November 24, 1775."
After reciting these facts, Boero asks why the ex-General was kept in such a long and severe confinement? There is no answer, he says, except that such was the good pleasure of His Majesty Charles III. The Spanish minister, Moñino, had declared that such was the case. To let him out alive would have been an indirect condemnation of the pressure exerted by the court of Madrid in directing the course of the commission which had been expressly created to pass a sentence of death on the Society. The knowledge that the General and his assistants had issued alive from the dungeons of Sant' Angelo would have troubled the peace of Charles III and his fellow-conspirators; hence, in spite of the good will and the affection of the Sovereign Pontiff, Father Ricci, after two years imprisonment in Adrian's Tomb, was carried out a corpse. Those of his companions who survived were released, but were commanded by the judges to observe the strictest silence on what had passed during their captivity, or not to tell what questions had been put to them.
One of the victims showed his indignation at this excessive cruelty, and exclaimed, "Why should you require me to swear on the Holy Gospels not to speak of my trial, when you know very well that it consisted of two or three insignificant and ridiculous questions?" Another assistant was merely asked his name and birthplace, and no more. A third satisfied the judges when he replied, "I have neither said nor done anything wrong." He was never interrogated again. The secretary of the Society had been asked in what subterranean hiding-place he kept the treasures. He answered that there were no subterranean hiding-places, and no treasures. In that consisted his whole examination. He died shortly afterwards of sickness contracted in the prison and his death was for a long time concealed.
Father Faure inquired of one of his judges: "For what crime am I in jail?" "For none," was the reply, "but the fear of your pen, and especially the fear of having you write against the Brief. That is the only cause of your imprisonment." "By the same rule," retorted the prisoner, "you might send me to the galleys for fear I might steal, or to be hanged to prevent me from committing murder." He was the only recalcitrant, and he was so dreaded that during his incarceration he was ordered to keep his light burning all night, so that he might be watched. This was after they found a black spot on his bed. They thought it was ink. Father Ricci, however, contrived to keep an exact account of the questions that were asked. Carayon has published them in his "Documents inédits."
One of these redoubtable personages so rigidly kept in confinement was Father Romberg, the German assistant, who was eighty-two years of age. He became very feeble, and had a stroke of paralysis which kept him to his chair. When the governor of the Castle came with the judges and officials to tell him he was free, he thanked them effusively, but requested the favor of being left in his cell to die. "You see," said he, "I have two fine friends who are prisoners here, and they, out of charity, come regularly every morning and carry me in my chair to the chapel where I can hear Mass and go to Communion. If I leave this place, God knows if I should have the same help and the same consolation." This was a specimen of the men who made Charles III and Florida Blanca tremble. In spite of the protests of the Spanish minister, every one was set free on February 16, 1776, and Pius VI cancelled the order of the inquisitors who forbade their victims to hold any communication with their fellow-Jesuits.
The manner in which the Brief was executed outside of Rome varied with the mentality and morality of the nations to which it was sent. Much to the chagrin of the Sovereign Pontiff, it was enthusiastically acclaimed by all the Protestants and infidels of Europe. For, was it not a justification of all the hatred they had invariably heaped on the Society wherever it happened to be? They could now congratulate themselves that they had instinctively divined the malignant character of the Institute which it took centuries for the Church to discover, and they logically concluded that all the laudatory Bulls lavished on the Society by previous Pontiffs were intentional deceits or ignorant delusions. They might have argued contrariwise, but as it would have been against themselves they refrained. They were jubilant because the Sovereign Pontiff had slain their chief enemy, and they had a medal struck to commemorate the event.
In "Les Jésuites" by Böhmer-Monod (p. 278) we find the following: "Cultured Europe triumphed in the Suppression of the Order, and the people everywhere showed their approval. Here and there some pious devotees raised their voices in lamentation, but nowhere in Europe or elsewhere was there any serious opposition to the Brief. The Order had forfeited all esteem; and public opinion evinced no compassion for anything tragic that occurred in its fall. It remained quite indifferent to the atrocities of which Pombal was guilty. The injustices which certain Fathers suffered in various places were considered a just retribution or at least were regarded as necessary for progress of light and virtue." This is not very flattering to "cultured" Europe.
Apart from the self-stultifying utterances on this quotation, as for instance, that "the injustices suffered were a just retribution, or were at least regarded as necessary for the progress of light and virtue," and also that certain Fathers suffered in various places; whereas the same authors give 23,000 who suffered all over the world, it is an absolute contradiction with the facts of the case to say that "nowhere in Europe was there any serious opposition to the Brief" and that "they everywhere showed their approval and evinced no compassion for anything tragic that occurred in the fall."
In the first place, Frederick the Great in Prussia and Catherine II of Russia not only would not allow the Brief in their dominions, but forbade it under the severest penalties. Poland for a long time refused to receive it, and the Catholic cantons of Switzerland sent a remonstrance to the Pope. Moreover, although, even before the document was promulgated, the Fathers had secularized themselves of their own initiative, yet, the authorities would not allow them to give up the colleges. The other side of the picture was that in Naples, Tanucci not only forbade the Brief to be read under pain of death, but forbade all mention of it. In Portugal, of course, no opposition was made for there were no Jesuits to suppress, they were either dead or in prison or exile. It was, however, an occasion of public rejoicing, and the document was received with booming of cannon and ringing of bells, as if a victory had been won, but that governmental device did not extinguish in the heart of the suffering people a deep compassion for the victims of Pombal's "atrocities."
In Spain, it was absolutely prohibited to read it or speak about the Brief, because by its eulogy of the virtues of the members of the Society, it gave the lie to the government, which insisted on the suppression of the Society precisely because of the immorality of its members. In France, its promulgation was forbidden for the very opposite reason, that is, because it praised the Institute, which the politicians had declared to be essentially vicious; though they admitted that the individual Jesuits were irreproachable. Thus, like Spain, France had been officially convicted by the Brief of calumniating, plundering and annihilating a great religious order. Voltaire, commenting on the situation, suggested that there might be a sort of national exchange by France and Spain. "Send the French Jesuits to Spain," he said, "and they will edify the people by observing the Institute, and send the Spaniards to France where they will satisfy the people by not observing it."
The most notable opposition to the Brief, occurred in France. The whole hierarchy and clergy positively refused to accept it, and the Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, who had been especially requested by the Pope to promulgate it, answered by a letter which is unpleasant for a Jesuit to publish on account of its tone; for the most profound affection and reverence for the Holy See is one of the ingrained and distinctive traits of the Society. However, it is a historical document and is called for in the present instance as a refutation of the statement that there was no opposition to the Brief in Europe. This famous letter was dated April 24, 1774, that is more than eight months after the Suppression. It is addressed to the Holy Father himself and runs as follows:
"This Brief is nothing else than a personal and private judgment. Among other things that are remarked in it by our clergy is the extraordinary, odious, and immoderate characterization of the Bull "Pascendi Munus" of the saintly Clement XIII, whose memory will be forever glorious and who had invested the Bull in question with all the due and proper formalities of such documents. It is described by the Brief not only as being inexact but as having been 'extorted' rather than obtained; whereas it has all the authority of a general council; for it was not promulgated until almost the whole clergy of the Church and all the secular princes had been consulted by the Holy Father. The clergy with common accord and with one voice applauded the purpose of the Holy Father, and earnestly begged him to carry it out. It was conceived and published in a manner as general as it was solemn. And is it not precisely that, Holy Father, which really gives the efficacity, the reality and the force to a general council, rather than the material union of some persons who though physically united may be very far from one another in their judgments and their views? As for the secular princes, if there were any who did not unite with the others to give their approbation, their number was inconsiderable. Not one of them protested against it, not one opposed it, and even those who, at that very time, were laying their plans to banish the Jesuits, allowed the Bull to be published in their dominions.
"But as the spirit of the Church is one and indivisible in its teaching of truth, we have to conclude that it cannot teach error when it deals in a solemn manner with a matter of supreme importance. Yet it would have led us into error if it had not only proclaimed the Institute of the Society to be pious and holy, but had solemnly and explicitly said: 'We know of certain knowledge that it diffuses abroad and abundantly the odor of sanctity.' In saying this it put upon that Institute the seal of its approbation, and confirmed anew not only the Society itself, but the members who composed it, the functions it exercised, the doctrines it taught, the glorious works it accomplished, all of which shed lustre upon it, in spite of the calumnies by which it was assailed and the storms of persecution which were let loose against it. Thus the Church would have deceived us most effectively on that occasion if it would now have us accept this Brief which destroys the Society; and also if we are to suppose that this Brief is on the same level in its lawfulness and its universality as the Constitution to which we refer. We abstract, Holy Father, from the individuals whom we might easily name, both secular and ecclesiastical who have meddled with this affair. Their character, condition, doctrine, sentiment, not to say more of them, are so little worthy of respect, as to justify us in expressing the formal and positive judgment that the Brief which destroys the Society of Jesus is nothing else than an isolated, private and pernicious judgment, which does no honor to the tiara and is prejudicial to the glory of the Church and the growth and conservation of the Orthodox Faith.
"In any case, Holy Father, it is impossible for me to ask the clergy to accept the Brief; for in the first place, I would not be listened to, were I unfortunate enough to lend the aid of my ministry to its acceptance. Moreover, I would dishonor my office if I did so, for the memory of the recent general assembly which I had the honor to convoke at the instance of His Majesty, to inquire into the need we have of the Society in France, its usefulness, the purity of its doctrines, etc., is too fresh in my mind to reverse my verdict. To charge myself with the task you wish me to perform would be to inflict a serious injury on religion as well as to cast an aspersion on the learning and integrity of the prelates who laid before the king their approval of the very points which are now condemned by the Brief. Moreover, if it is true that the Order is to be condemned under the specious pretext of the impossibility of peace, as long as the Society exists, why not try it on those bodies which are jealous of the Society? Instead of condemning it you ought to canonize it. That you do not do so compels us to form a judgment of the Brief which, though just, is not in its favor.
"For what is that peace which is incompatible with this Society? The question is startling in the reflection it evokes; for we fail to understand how such a motive had the power to induce Your Holiness to adopt a measure which is so hazardous, so dangerous, and so prejudicial. Most assuredly the peace which is irreconcilable with the existence of the Society is the peace which Jesus Christ calls insidious, false, deceitful. In a word what the Brief designates as peace is not peace; Pax, pax et non erat pax. It is the peace which vice and libertinism adopt; it is the peace which cannot ally itself with virtue, but which on the contrary has always been the principal enemy of virtue.
"It is precisely that peace against which the piety of the Jesuits in the four quarters of the world have declared an active, a vigorous, a bloody warfare; which they have carried to the limit and in which they have achieved the greatest success. To put an end to that peace, they have devoted their talents; have undergone pain and suffering. By their zeal and their eloquence they have striven to block every avenue of approach, by which this false peace might enter and rend the bosom of the Church; they have set the souls of men free from its thralldom, and they have pursued it to its innermost lair, making light of the danger and expecting no other reward for their daring, than the hatred of the licentious and the persecution of the ungodly.
"An infinite number of splendid illustrations of their courage might be adduced in the long succession of memorable achievements which have never been interrupted from the first moment of the Society's existence until the fatal day when the Church saw it die. If that peace cannot co-exist with the Society, and if the re-establishment of this pernicious peace is the motive of the destruction of the Jesuits, then the victims are crowned with glory and they end their career like the Apostles and Martyrs; but honest men are dismayed by this holocaust of piety and virtue.
"A peace which is irreconcilable with the Society is not that peace which unites hearts; which is helpful to others; which each day contributes an increase in virtue, piety and Christian charity; which reflects glory on Christianity and sheds splendor on our holy religion. Nor is there need of proving this, though proof might be given, not by a few examples which this Society could furnish from the day of its birth to the fatal and ever deplorable day of its suppression, but by a countless multitude of facts which attest that the Jesuits were always and in every clime, the supporters, the promoters and the indefatigable defenders of true and solid peace. These facts are so evident that they carry conviction to every mind.
"In this letter I am not constituting myself an apologist of the Jesuits; but I am placing before the eyes of Your Holiness the reasons which, in the present case, excuse us from obeying. I will not mention place or time, as it is an easy thing for Your Holiness to convince yourself of the truth of my utterance. Your Holiness is not ignorant of them.
"Moreover, Holy Father, we have remarked with terror, that this destructive Brief eulogizes in the highest way certain persons whose conduct never merited praise from Clement XIII, of saintly memory. Far from doing so, he regarded it always as his duty to set them aside, and to act in their regard with the most absolute reserve.
"This difference of appreciation necessarily excites attention, in view of the fact that your predecessor did not consider worthy of the purple those whom Your Holiness seems to design for the glory of the cardinalate. The firmness on one side and the connivance on the other reveal themselves only too clearly. But perhaps an excuse might be found for the latter, were it not for the fact which has not been successfully disguised that an alien influence guided the pen that wrote the Brief.
"In a word, most Holy Father, the clergy of France, which is the most learned and most illustrious of Holy Church, and which has no other aim than to promote the glory of the Church, does now judge after deep reflection that the reception of the Brief of Your Holiness will cast a shadow on the glory of the clergy of France; and it does not propose to consent to a measure which, in ages to come, will tarnish its glory. By rejecting the Brief and by an active resistance to it our clergy will transmit to posterity a splendid example of integrity and of zeal for the Catholic Faith, for the prosperity of the Church and particularly for the honor of its Visible Head.
"These, Holy Father, are some of the reasons which determine us, myself and all the clergy of this kingdom, never to permit the publication of such a Brief, and to make known to Your Holiness, as I do by this present letter, that such is my attitude and that of all the clergy, who, however, will never cease to unite in prayer with me to our Lord for the sacred person of Your Holiness. We shall address our humble supplications to the Divine Father of Light that He may deign to diffuse it so abundantly that the truth may be discerned whose splendor has been obscure."
The Bishop of Quebec, Mgr. Briand, refused to promulgate the Brief, and he informed some of his intimate friends that he had no fear of excommunication in doing so, for the reason that he was in constant communication with Pope Clement XIV, who approved of his course of action. Associated with the bishop was Governor Carleton, who was interested in the matter for his own personal reasons. His rival, General Amherst, the conqueror of Quebec, was anxious to see the Jesuits driven out, so as to secure their property for himself. Carleton, on the contrary, proposed to keep it for future educational purposes. He could not seize it immediately, for the treaty at the conquest had guaranteed the protection of the Canadians in their religion. Hence he did not molest the Fathers, though he refused to allow any accession either of novices or former Jesuits to their ranks. The result was that they gradually died out. The last of all was the venerable Casot, who gave up the ghost in 1800 after having distributed all his goods to the poor. What was not available in that way he conveyed to religious communities or to churches. The relics of Brébeuf and Lalemant are now among the treasures of the Hotel-Dieu. The Jesuit College, which was opposite the present basilica cathedral, was occupied by soldiers, and was first known as the "Jesuit Barracks," and subsequently as the "Cheshire Barracks." Later it was a refuge for the poor, until at length Cardinal Taschereau ordered it to be demolished as unsafe. Thus the Brief was not executed in Canada. The Jesuits of New Orleans had been already expelled by Choiseul, and there was no one left to whom it could be read.
The suppression of the Society in what is now the United States is of special interest to Americans, though it possesses also a general value in the fact that it furnishes the only account in English, as far as we are aware, of what took place in Belgium some years before as the prelude of the general suppression. This is based on the highest authority, for it is the personal narrative of John Carroll, the founder of the American hierarchy. He had gone when a lad of fourteen to St. Omers in French Flanders, and after his college course entered the Jesuit novitiate at Watten about six miles away, where he met several of his countrymen who were to distinguish themselves later in the Jesuit mission of Maryland. They were Horne, Jenkins, Knight, Emmot and Tyrer. There also was the English Jesuit, Reeve, whose "Bible History" was once an indispensable treasure in every Catholic family.
On completing his novitiate, Carroll was sent for his theology and philosophy to Liège, and was ordained priest in 1769, after having proved his ability by a brilliant public defense in theology. He then taught at St. Omers and was subsequently made professor of philosophy and theology to the scholastics at Liège. He pronounced his four solemn vows as a Professed Father on February 2, 1771, a little more than two years before the suppression of the Society. As St. Omer was in France the Jesuits were expelled from it in 1764. That the occupants of the house were English did not matter. International comity received scant consideration in those days. Every one was driven out except Father Brown, who was then ninety-four years of age. He was left there alone to die. The others, under the guidance of Father Reeve, crossed the frontier to Bruges where they had been invited by the authorities to found a college.
Here begins a story told by Carroll of government duplicity which shows how largely the motive of plunder entered into the whole movement of the suppression. Belgium was then under the domination of Austria, and the government continually urged the Fathers to begin the erection of a college on a grand scale at that place. In all confidence that they would never be disturbed, they expended on the first set of buildings the sum of $37,000 a considerable amount of money in those days. They would have gone further but their money was exhausted.
While teaching there, Father Carroll was sent on a short tour through Europe as tutor to the young son of Lord Stourton, an English nobleman. He passed through Alsace and Lorraine, where the Jesuits were still protected; was welcomed at the University of Heidelberg, and finally reached Rome. There, though under the very eyes of the Pope, he was compelled to conceal his identity as a Jesuit and hence met none of his brethren. He saw everywhere not only infamous libels on the Society which were for sale in the streets, but books and pamphlets assailing the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and ridiculing the ceremonies of the Mass. The overthrow of the Jesuits was the common topic of conversation and word from the King of Spain was momentarily expected. Henry Stuart, Cardinal of York, the last descendant of James II, was there at the time, but as he was a rancorous enemy of the Society, Father Carroll did not dare to present the young Catholic nobleman to him. He returned by the way of France and saw the ruins everywhere, and finally arrived at Bruges to take part in the tragedy as one of the victims.
The Brief was promulgated on August 16, and the superiors of the two colleges at Bruges, encouraged by the general expectation of the town that their status would not be effected, wrote a letter to the president of the council at Brussels, offering their services as secular clergy to continue the work of education. The rectors were invited to Brussels, and assured that they would be treated with respect, allowed to retain private property and be granted proper maintenance. Even after the reception of the Brief, the Bishop of Bruges assured them that in a few days the excitement would pass and everything would go on as usual. Austria, however, had already accepted and promulgated the Brief.
The first commissioners of the Suppression threw up the work in disgust. It was then handed over to a coarse young fellow named Marouex who was anxious to make a name for himself. He succeeded. Arriving at the college on September 20, he summoned the community to his presence and ordered the Brief and edict to be read. He then forbade anyone to leave the house, or to be allowed to enter, or to write any letters, or to direct the college, or to teach the pupils. He seized the account books and began a hunt for hidden treasures. Each member of the community was examined individually, put under oath, and ordered to produce everything he had, even family letters; "which explains," says Shea, "how there is no trace of Carroll's letters from his mother and kindred in America."
On October 14, Marouex, accompanied by a squad of soldiers, burst into the community rooms and ordered Fathers Angier, Plowden and Carroll to follow him. He would not even permit them to go to their rooms for a moment to get what they needed, but sent them under guard to wagons waiting outside, and hurried them off to the Flemish college, which had been already plundered. There they were locked up for several days without a bed to lie on. The community was still there under lock and key. Three of them were kept as hostages and the rest were ordered out of the country. Thus did Maria Theresa allow her beloved Jesuits to be treated, in return for the benefits they had heaped on her empire from the time when Faber and Le Jay and Canisius and their great associates had saved it from destruction.
Thoroughly heartbroken, Carroll turned his steps towards Protestant England. Before leaving the Continent, he wrote the following pathetic letter to his brother Daniel, who was in Maryland. Because of Carroll's own personal character and his prominence in American history, it is a precious testimonial of love and affection for the Society, as well as a splendid vindication of it for the world at large. It is dated September 11, 1773.
"I was willing to accept the vacant post of prefect of the sodality here, but now all room for deliberation is over. The enemies of the Society and, above all, the unrelenting perseverance of the Spanish and Portuguese ministries, with the passiveness of the court of Vienna have at last obtained their ends; and our so long persecuted, and, I must add, holy Society is no more. God's holy will be done and may His Name be blessed for ever and ever! This fatal blow was struck on July 21, but was kept secret at Rome till August 16, and was only made known to me on September 5. I am not, and perhaps never shall be, recovered from the shock of this dreadful intelligence. The greatest blessing which in my estimation I could receive from God would be immediate death, but if He deny me this, may His holy and adorable designs on me be wholly fulfilled.
"I find it impossible to understand that Divine Providence should permit such an end to a body, wholly devoted, and striving with the most disinterested charity to procure every comfort and advantage to their neighbors, whether by preaching, teaching, catechizing, missions, visiting hospitals, prisons and in every other function of spiritual and corporal mercy. Such have I beheld it in every part of my travels, the first of all ecclesiastical bodies in the esteem and confidence of the faithful, and certainly the most laborious. What will become of our flourishing congregations with you and those cultivated by the German Fathers? These reflections crowd so fast upon me, that I almost lose my senses. But I will endeavor to suppress them for a few moments. You see I am now my own master and left to my own direction. In returning to Maryland, I shall have the comfort of not only being with you, but of being farther out of reach of scandal and defamation, and removed from the scenes of distress of many of my dearest friends whom I shall not be able to relieve. I shall therefore most certainly sail for Maryland early next spring if I possibly can."
At the time of the Suppression there were nineteen Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania; as it was then three years before the Declaration of Independence, they were still English subjects. On October 6, 1773, Bishop Challoner, the Vicar of London, though Chandlery in his "Fasti breviores" says it was Talbot, sent them the following letter:
"To Messrs the Missioners in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
"To obey the order which I have received from Rome, I notify to you, by this the Breve, of the total dissolution of the Society of Jesus; and send withal a form of declaration of your obedience and submission, to which you are all to subscribe, as your brethren have done here, and send me back the formula with the subscription of you all, as I am to send them up to Rome.
"Ever yours, "Richard Deboren. V. Ap."
In passing, it may be remarked that as a missive from a Superior to a number of devoted priests against whom not a word of reproach had been ever uttered and whose lives were wrecked by this official act this communication of the vicar cannot be cited as a manifestation of excessive paternal tenderness.
The formula to which they were required to subscribe, was, in its English translation, as follows:
"We the undersigned missionary priests of the London District of Maryland and Pennsylvania, hitherto known as the Clerks of the Society of Jesus, having been informed by the declaration and publication of the Apostolic Brief issued on July 21, 1773, by our Most Holy Lord Pope Clement XIV, by which he completely suppresses and extinguishes the aforesaid Congregation and Society in the whole world, and orders the priests to be entirely subject to the rule and authority of the Bishops as part of the secular clergy, we the aforesaid, fully and sincerely, submit to the Brief, and humbly acquiescing to the complete suppression of the said Society, submit ourselves entirely as secular priests to the jurisdiction and rule of the above mentioned Bishop, the Vicar Apostolic."
In this document of the vicar there are some features which are worthy of consideration. The first is that it was not communicated personally to those interested but through the post--and it might have been a forgery. Secondly, it was not correct in saying that it was issued on July 21, 1773. It was signed on July 21 but issued or published only on August 16 of that year, and it was not effective or binding until that date. Thirdly, there was no mention of the renewal of faculties to the superior whose ecclesiastical character had now been completely transformed from that of a religious to a secular priest; and they were thus obliged to presume that they were not suspended and that their power of transmitting faculties was not withdrawn. Fourthly, before the Suppression, the vicar Apostolic had warned the Propaganda that he could do nothing to aid the Maryland missioners, and after the Revolution he refused absolutely to have any communication with them. Thus, there was no possibility of fulfilling the injunction of becoming secular priests, as the Brief enjoined.
As far as the Jesuit habit was concerned there was no difficulty, for there is no distinctive habit in the Society. The Jesuits are ecclesiastically in the rank of "clerici regulares," and can wear the garb of any secular priest, just as they do, at present, in many parts of the world. St. Francis Xavier once wore green silk, and in our own days, the English Jesuit dress is rather an academic gown than a cassock. Again in Maryland and Pennsylvania, there were at that time no secular priests; the missionaries were all Jesuits, and it would have been difficult to get any other ecclesiastical attire. What they wore was, as a matter of fact, used only in ecclesiastical functions. An analogous obstacle presented itself in the name. The people continued to recognize them as Jesuits, and it would have been very imprudent to publicly announce that they were no longer such. There are several letters extant, however, in which the Jesuits advise their friends to drop the S. J. in their correspondence, but that is not unusual even now. Exteriorly, the life of those old Maryland Jesuits continued to be precisely the same as it had always been.
Moreover they retained possession of their property, for unlike the Jesuits of Canada, Illinois and Louisiana, they held their estates by personal, not by corporate title; and regularly deeded their possession by will or transfer from one to another. In Maryland, it was impossible to do otherwise, for the English government did not recognize the Jesuits as constituting a legal association.
Indeed, Challoner informs Talbot that he considered the promulgation of the Brief as enjoined by the Pope would be fraught with serious danger, and hence he was convinced that the method adopted for the extinction of the Jesuits of England and her colonies was the only one possible and that the Pope would be so advised.
A lament from one of the Maryland missionaries may be of interest. Father Mosley is the writer. "I cannot think of it," he says, "without tears in my eyes. Yes, dear Sister, our Body or Factory is dissolved of which your two brothers are members; and for myself, I know I am an unworthy one when I see so many worthy, saintly, pious, learned, laborious missionaries dead and alive who were or who have been members of the same, for the last two ages. I know no fault that we are guilty of. I am convinced that our labors are pure, upright and sincere for God's honor and our neighbor's good. What our Supreme Judge on earth may think of our labors is a mystery to me. It is true he has stigmatized us through the world with infamy, and declared us unfit for our business or his service. Our dissolution is known through the whole world; it is in every newspaper, and I am ashamed to show my face. As we are judged unserviceable, we labor with little heart, and what is worse, by no Rule.
"To my great sorrow, the Society is abolished, and with it must die all the zeal that was founded and raised on it. Labor for our neighbor is a Jesuit's pleasure; destroy the Jesuit and labor is painful and disagreeable. I must allow that what was my pleasure is now irksome. Every fatigue I underwent caused a secret and inward satisfaction; it is now unpleasant and disagreeable. I disregarded this unhealthy climate, and all its agues and fevers which have really paid me to my heart's content, for the sake of my rule. The night was as agreeable as the day; frost and cold as a warm fire and a soft bed; the excessive heats as welcome as a cool shade or pleasant breezes, but now the scene is changed. The Jesuit is metamorphosed into I know not what. He is a monster; a scarecrow in my idea. With joy I impaired my health and broke my constitution in the care of my flock. It was the Jesuit's call; it was his whole aim and business. The Jesuit is no more. He now endeavors to repair his little remains of health and his shattered constitution, as he has no rule calling him to expose it.
"Joseph Mosley, S. J. forever, as I think and hope."
It must have been a very hard trial for the Jesuit vicars Apostolic in the various foreign missions to be the executioners of their own brethren in carrying out this decree. One of these sad scenes occurred in Nankin, where Mgr. Laimbeckhoven, S. J., was vicar. He did not live to see the Restoration, for he died in 1787.
XX. THE SEQUEL TO THE SUPPRESSION
Failure of the Papal Brief to give peace to the Church-- Liguori and Tanucci--Joseph II destroying the Church in Austria--Voltaireanism in Portugal--Illness of Clement XIV --Death--Accusations of poisoning--Election of Pius VI-- The Synod of Pistoia--Febronianism in Austria--Visit of Pius VI to Joseph II--The Punctation of Ems--Spain, Sardinia, Venice, Sicily in opposition to the Pope--Political collapse in Spain--Fall of Pombal--Liberation of his Victims-- Protest of de Guzman--Death of Joseph II--Occupations of the dispersed Jesuits--The Theologia Wiceburgensis--Feller-- Beauregard's Prophecy--Zaccaria--Tiraboschi--Boscovich-- Missionaries--Denunciation of the Suppression in the French Assembly--Slain in the French Revolution--Destitute Jesuits in Poland--Shelter in Russia.
Clement XIV did not give peace to the Church as he had hoped. On the contrary, distressing scandals were continually occurring in the Holy City itself under his very eyes. Infamous books and pamphlets directed against the Church were hawked about the streets, and actors and buffoons parodied the most sacred ceremonies in the public squares. Elsewhere the same conditions obtained. Tanucci who had governed Naples for over forty years was continuing his ruthless persecution of every thing holy, and enriching himself by the spoliation of ecclesiastical property. Even St. Alphonsus Liguori could not obtain from the Pope the recognition of the Redemptorists as a congregation because Tanucci opposed it. Doctrinal views leading to schism in the Church were openly advocated in the schools and universities of Austria, in spite of the entreaties and threats of the Sovereign Pontiff. Maria Theresa had proved feeble or false, and her son Joseph II was in league with the Bourbon princes in their work of destruction. In Portugal, Pombal was still raging like a wild beast; filling the schools with the disciples of Voltaire, flouting the papal nuncio, and keeping in dark and filthy dungeons the members of the detested Order which he had exterminated. The Philosophers and Jansenists were rejoicing in their triumph, and were suppressing all religious communities and seizing their property; the morality and orthodoxy of Poland were being rapidly corrupted; Catherine of Russia was creating bishops and establishing sees as the fancy prompted her, and Freemason lodges were multiplying all over Europe. Worst of all, the Pope's own household with but few exceptions kept aloof from him and were silent about what he had done, while many bishops of various countries of Europe and the entire episcopacy of France endorsed the sentiments expressed in the terrible letter of the Archbishop of Paris, denouncing the Suppression.
Ineffably shocked by all this, the Pope began to show signs of depression, and everyone was in consternation. St. Alphonsus Liguori, especially, was anxious about him and kept continually repeating: "Pray for the Pope; he is distressed; for there is nowhere the slightest glimmer of peace for the Church. He is praying for death, so crushed is he by the sorrows that are overwhelming the Church; he remains continually in seclusion; gives audience to no one; and attends to no business. I have heard things about him from those who are at Rome that would bring tears to your eyes." His mind was unbalanced, and one of his successors, Pius VII, related later what he had been told by a prelate who was present at the signing of the fatal Brief: "As soon as he had affixed his signature to the paper he threw the pen to one side and the paper to the other. He had lost his mind." Before that, Pius had said the same thing to Cardinal Pacca at Fontainebleau, when in an agony of remorse for having signed the Concordat with Napoleon: "I cannot get the cruel thought out of my mind. I cannot sleep at night and I am haunted by the fear of going mad and ending like Clement XIV." Another writer who received his information from Gregory XVI tells the same sad story (de Ravignan, Clément XIII et Clément XIV, I, 452). St. Alphonsus Liguori was with the Pope when he died, but according to a Redemptorist writer, it was "in spirit," and not by bodily bilocation. The end came in September 22, 1774, thirteen months after the unfortunate Brief was issued.
Of course, when he died, the report went abroad that the Jesuits had poisoned him, by administering a dose of aqua toffana, but although no one has ever found out what aqua toffana is or was, and as there were no Jesuits in Rome at the time, the story was nevertheless believed by many and was adduced as a proof of the wisdom of the Pope in suppressing the iniquitous organization. The Jansenists even made a saint of the dead Pontiff and circulated marvellous romances about the incorruption of his body and the miracles that were wrought at his tomb.
Cantù in his "Storia dei cent' anni" says that "the Pope whose health and mind were grievously affected, died in delirium, haunted by phantoms, and begging for pardon. It was claimed that he had been poisoned by the Jesuits, but the truth is that the physicians found no trace of poison in the body. Had the Jesuits possessed the power or the will to do so, one might ask why they did not do it before and not after Clement had struck them. But passion often makes light of common sense." The post-mortem which was made in the presence of a great many people showed that the sickness to which he had succumbed arose from scorbutic and hemorrhoidal conditions from which he had been suffering for many years, and which were aggravated by excessive work and the system he had followed of producing artificial perspiration even in the heats of summer."
The poor Pope had exclaimed before he signed the Brief: "Questa soppressione mi darà la morte" (this suppression will kill me.) "After it," says Saint-Priest in his 'Chute des Jésuites,' "he would pace his apartments in agony, crying: 'Mercy! Mercy! They forced me to do it. Compulsus feci.' However, at the last moment his reason returned. He showed his indignation at a proposal made to him even then, to raise some of the enemies of the Society to the cardinalate and drove them from his bedside with loathing.
Bernis, the French ambassador at Rome, wrote to Louis XV that "the Vicar of Christ prayed like the Redeemer for his implacable enemies," and insinuated that he was poisoned. Knowing this d'Alembert warned Frederick II to be on his guard against a similar fate, but the king replied: "There is nothing more false than the story of the poisoning; the truth is that he was profoundly hurt by the coldness manifested by the cardinals and he often reproached himself, for having sacrificed an Order like that of the Jesuits, to satisfy the whim of his rebellious children." Becantini (Storia di Pio VI, i, 31) says: "Nowadays no one believes the story of the poisoning of Clement XIV. Even Bernis who first stood for it, afterwards disavowed it." Cancelleri one of the most distinguished savants of Italy denies the fact; so does Gavani, a bitter enemy of the Church and the Society. Finally, Salcetto the physician of the Apostolic palace, and Adinolfi the Pope's own doctor, in their official report to the majordomo, Archinto, declare it to have been an absolutely natural death and they explain that the corruption which set in was due to the excessive heat that prevailed at the time.
It was even said that the Pope had expressed to the General of the Conventuals, Marzoni, a fear that he had been poisoned. Whereupon Marzoni caused the following statement to be published:
"I, the undersigned Minister General of the Order of the Conventuals of St. Francis, fully aware that by my oath I call the sovereign and true God to witness what I say; and being certain of what I say, I now without any constraint and in the presence of God who knows that I do not lie, do by these words, which are absolutely true, and which I write and trace with my own hand, swear and attest to the whole universe, that never in any circumstance whatever did Clement XIV ever say to me either that he had been poisoned or that he felt the slightest symptom of poison. I swear also that I never said to any one soever that the same Clement XIV assured me in confidence that he had been poisoned or had felt the effects of poison. So help me God.
"Given in the Convent of the Twelve Apostles at Rome July 27, 1775.
"I, Bro. Louis-Maria Marzoni "Minister General of the Order."
Thus Clement XIV, far from giving peace to the Church, left a heritage of woe to his successor, Angelo Braschi, who was elected Pope on February 15, 1775, and took the name of Pius VI. The new Pope was painfully conscious that an error had been committed by suppressing an Order without trial and without even condemnation, and that a reflection had been cast upon a great number of Pontiffs who had been unstinted in their praise of it, no one more so than Clement's immediate predecessor. The act had also given to the Jansenists a terrific instrument in the implied approval of them by the Sovereign Pontiff. They became more aggressive than ever and organized their forces to introduce their doctrines into Italy itself.
By a curious coincidence the leader of the movement was of the same family as the General of the suppressed Jesuits: Scipio Ricci, the Bishop of Pistoia. Supporting him in the civic world was the Grand Duke of Tuscany who was the brother of Joseph II of Austria. Ricci convened the famous Synod of Pistoia, on July 31, 1786. No doubt July 31 was chosen purposely; it was the feast of St. Ignatius. There were 247 members in attendance, all exclusively Jansenists and regalists. The four Gallican Articles were endorsed and among the measures was that of conferring the right on the civil authority to create matrimonial impediments. It advocated the reduction of all religious orders to one; the abolition of perpetual vows; a vernacular liturgy; the removal of all altars but one from the church; etc. The Acts of the synod were promulgated with the royal imprimatur. Indeed Pius VI found himself compelled to condemn eighty-five of the synod's propositions.
Worse than this was the Febronianism of Austria, which went far beyond the Gallicanism of France or Italy in its rebellious aggressiveness. It maintained that the primacy of Rome had no basis in the authority of Christ; that the papacy was not restricted to Rome, but could be placed anywhere; that Rome was merely a centre with which the individual churches could be united; that the papal power was simply administrative and unifying and not jurisdictional; that the papal power of condemning heresies, confirming episcopal elections, naming coadjutors, transferring and removing bishops, erecting primatial sees, etc., all rested on the False Decretals. It was maintained that the Pope could issue no decrees for the Universal Church, and that even the decrees of general councils were not binding until approved of by the individual churches.
In vain Clement XIV had begged Maria Theresa to check the movement. She was absolutely in the power of her son Joseph II, whose very first ordinances forbade the reception of papal decrees without the government's sanction. The bishops, he ruled, were not to apply to the Pope for faculties; they could not even issue instructions to their own flocks without permission of the civil authority. He established parishes, assigned fast days, determined the number of Masses to be said, and sermons to be preached. He even decided how many candles were to be lighted on the altar; he made marriage a civil contract and abolished ecclesiastical ceremonies.
In the hope that a personal appeal might avail, the Pope determined to make a journey to Vienna to entreat the emperor to desist. He arrived there on March 22, 1782, and was courteously received by Joseph himself, but brutally by his minister, Kaunitz, who forbade any ecclesiastic to present himself in the city while the Pope was there. Pius remained a month in the capital and succeeded only in extracting a promise that nothing would be done against the Faith or the respect due the Holy See. How far the royal word was kept may be inferred from the fact that after accompanying the Pope as far as the Monastery of Marianbrunn Joseph suppressed that establishment an hour after the Pope had resumed his journey to Rome.
In Germany the three ecclesiastical Electors of Mayence, Treves and Cologne with the Archbishop of Salzburg met in a convention at Ems in 1786, and attempted to curtail the powers of the Pope in dealing with bishops. That assembly was also strongly Jansenistic. Thirty-one of its articles were directed against the Pope. Pacca, the papal nuncio, was not even received by the Archbishop of Cologne, and three of the Elector bishops refused to honor his credentials. The famous "Punctation of Ems," which consisted of twenty-three articles, declared that German archbishops were independent of Rome, because of the "False Decretals." They pronounced for an abolition of all direct communication with Rome; all monasteries were to be subject to the bishops; religious orders were to have no superior generals residing outside of Germany; Rome's exclusive power of granting faculties was denied; Papal Bulls were binding only after the bishop of the diocese had given his placet; all Apostolic nunciatures were to be abolished, etc. In brief, the synod, or "Congress" as it was called, aimed at establishing a schismatical church. But the Pope's remarkable letter to the dissidents and the progress of the French Revolution, which was then raging furiously, prevented the application anywhere of the doctrines put forth at the meeting.
Spain, Sardinia, Venice and Sicily were all in this movement against the Church, and Ferdinand IV of Sicily claimed the right of appointment to all ecclesiastical benefices, as well as the power to nullify all Papal Briefs which had not received his approval.
Nor did the Brief of Suppression contribute to the political stability of the nations. In Naples, for example, Tanucci was flung from power when the young king married an archduchess of Austria; so that he disappeared from the scene three years after the suppression of the Society. In 1798 the Bourbons fled from Naples; the city was given over to a mob directed by an innkeeper called Michael the Madman; the Duke della Torre and his brother were burned alive in the public square; the Senate was dissolved; the palaces were pillaged; a republic was proclaimed and the whole Peninsula of Italy fell into the hands of the French.
Charles III of Spain died in 1788, and was succeeded by Charles IV, whom Arnado describes as more deficient in character and ability than his father. The rude Florida Blanca, who was so conspicuous for his brutality in terrorizing Clement XIV, was thrown out of office by the inept Godoy, who allied Spain with France against England, and brought on the disaster of Trafalgar. The king was driven from his throne and country by his rebellious son, Ferdinand, and then laid his royal crown at the feet of Napoleon Bonaparte. Since that time, the country has been in a ferment because its politics are filled with the ideas of the French Revolution and of English Liberalism.
In Portugal, retribution came at a rapid pace. Pombal fell from power in 1777 on the death of the king. He had been detected in a plot to have the young Prince of Beira succeed to the throne to the exclusion of Queen Maria. It was possibly with the same end in view that he had endeavored to start a war with Spain. He had seized Spanish posts in America, mobilized troops and fortified Lisbon, but hostilities were never declared. Queen Maria's first act at her accession was to open Pombal's dungeons. Eight hundred men of all classes issued from these sepulchres in which some of them had been for eighteen years without a trial. They were like ghosts; emaciated; hollow-eyed and ghastly; some were sightless, many were half-naked. Among them were sixty Jesuits. The populace were so infuriated at the horrible spectacle that Pombal feared to venture into the street. He might have been torn to pieces, and he was conducted under guard to his country estates. Father Oliviera, the confessor of the queen, was installed in court, and the venerable Father de Guzman issued the following statement to the public:
"At the age of eighty-one and at the point of appearing before the tribunal of Divine Justice, John de Guzman, the last assistant of the Society of Jesus, for the provinces and dominions of Portugal, would believe himself guilty of an unpardonable sin of omission, if, in neglecting to have recourse to the throne of Your Majesty where clemency and justice reign, he did not place at your feet, this humble petition in the name of six hundred subjects of Your Majesty, the unfortunate remnants of a wrong inflicted on them.
"He entreats Your Majesty by the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, by that tender love which Your Majesty bears to the August Queen, His mother, and to the illustrious King Don Pedro, to the princes and princesses of the royal family, that you would deign and even command that the trial of so many of the faithful subjects of Your Majesty, who have been branded with infamy in the eyes of the world, be now reviewed. They are groaning under the accusation of having committed outrages and crimes which the very savages would shrink from even imagining, and which no human heart could ever conceive. They lament and moan that they were condemned without even having been brought to trial, without being heard and without being allowed to make any defense. Those who have now issued from prison are all in accord in this matter, and unanimously attest, that during all the time of their imprisonment, they have not even seen the face of any judge.
"On his part, your suppliant, who is now making this appeal, and who for many years occupied a position where he could acquire an intimate knowledge of what was going on, is ready to swear in the most solemn manner, that the superiors and members of the Spanish assistancy of the Society of Jesus were without reproach. He and all the other exiles are ready to undergo sufferings more rigorous than any to which they have hitherto been subjected, if a single individual has ever been guilty of the least crime against the State.
"Moreover, your suppliant and his brethren, the chief superiors of the Society, have been examined in Rome, again and again, in the most searching manner, and have been declared innocent. Pope Pius VI, now gloriously reigning, has seen the minutes of those investigations, and Your Majesty will find in that great Pontiff an enlightened witness whose integrity nothing on earth can equal; and at the same time you will find a judge who could not commit a wrong without rendering himself guilty of an unparalleled iniquity.
"Deign, then, Your Majesty, to extend to us that clemency which belongs to you as does your throne; deign to hearken to the prayers of so many unfortunates, whose innocence has been proven, and who have never ceased in the midst of their sufferings to be the faithful subjects of Your Majesty; and who could never falter or fail an instant, in the love that they have from childhood entertained for the royal family."
This appeal had its effect. An enquiry was ordered, and in October 1780 a revision of the trial of the alleged conspirators of 1758 was begun. On April 3, 1781, the court announced that "all those, either living or dead, who had been imprisoned or executed in virtue of the sentence of January 12, 1759, were absolutely innocent." Pombal himself was put on trial, found guilty, and condemned to receive "an exemplary punishment." He escaped imprisonment on account of his age, but he died of leprosy on May 8, 1782. His corpse lay unburied until the Society which he had crushed was restored thirty-one years later to its former place in Portugal. One of its first duties was to sing a Requiem Mass over his remains. The details of the trial were suppressed at the request of the Pope, for the reason that too many prominent personages in the Church were implicated. There was another reason. The spirit of Pombal had so thoroughly impregnated the ruling classes that the report was withheld out of fear of a revolution. Indeed, the queen was so terrified by the danger that she lost her mind. Finally, in 1807 a French army occupied Lisbon and the royal family fled to Brazil. Since then Portugal which was once so great counts for very little in the political world.
It is unnecessary to refer to France, except to note that it was Choiseul who purchased Corsica and thus gave his country which he had helped to ruin an alien ruler: Napoleon Bonaparte, who put an end to the orgies of the Revolution by deluging Europe with French blood; who imprisoned the Pope; demolished the Bourbon dynasties wherever he could find them, and bound France in fetters which, in spite of its multiplied changes of government, it has never shaken off.
When Joseph II of Austria ended his lonely and unhappy existence in 1790, he saw in France the beginning of the wreck which his friend Voltaire had helped to effect; he did not live to see the execution of his own sister, Marie Antoinette, but enough had occurred to fill him with terror especially as the existence of his own monarchy was threatened; Belgium was lost; Hungary was in wild disorder, and other parts of the empire were about to rebel. Before he died he wrote his own epitaph. It was: "Here lies Joseph II, who never succeeded in any of his undertakings."
What became of the scattered Jesuits? The scholastics and lay-brothers, of course, went back to the world, but, in France, by a refinement of cruelty they were declared by the courts to be incapable of inheriting even from their own parents, because of the vows they had pronounced on entering the Society. That the vows no longer existed made no difference to the lawmakers. As for the priests they were secularized, and in many places were welcomed by the bishops as rectors or professors in colleges and seminaries. They were in demand, also, as directors of religious communities and not a few became bishops. Thus, in America, the first two members of the hierarchy, Carroll and Neale, were old Jesuits, as was Lawrence Graessel who had been named as Carroll's successor but who died before the Bulls arrived. Crétineau-Joly has a list of twenty-one bishops in Europe alone. Others were called to episcopal sees, but in hopes of the restoration of the Society they had declined the honor.
Father Walcher was appointed imperial director of navigation and mathematics by Maria Theresa; Cabral, Lecci, and Riccati, were engaged by various governments in engineering works; Zeplichal was employed by Frederick II in exploiting mines. The Theresian College of Vienna became one of the best schools in the world under their direction; and Breslau felt the effects of their assistance, as did other colleges such as the Oriental in Vienna, the University of Buda, and the schools of Mayence, and of various cities in Italy.
They must have been often amused at some of the situations in which they found themselves. Thus, for instance in 1784 the Parliament of Languedoc, which had been one of the bitterest enemies of the Society, met to arrange for the solemn obsequies of the Jesuit Father Sesane "the friend of the poor," and the ecclesiastical authorities were busy taking juridical information for his canonization. Again, although not permitted to exist in Switzerland the Council of Soleuse erected a statue in honor of the Jesuit Father Crollanza, who all his life had shunned honor and was conspicuous for his humility. On the pedestal was the very delightful inscription: "Pauperum patrem, ægrorum matrem, omnium fratrem, virum doctum et humillimum, in vita, in morte, in feretro suavitate sibi similem amabat, admirabatur, lugebat Solodurum." In the same way, Maria Theresa in an official document dated 1776 declared that "moved by the consideration of the brilliant virtues, the science, the erudition and the regular and exemplary life of Jean-Theophile Delpini; and reflecting moreover on his apostolic labors in Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania where to our great consolation, he led a vast throng of Anabaptists back to the true Faith, we have chosen and we hereby appoint the said Theophile Delpini who has merited much from the Church and the State, and who is therefore very acceptable to us personally, to the post of Abbot of Our Lady of Kolos-Monostros."
Parhamer obtained a similar distinction in Austria and Carinthia. He was an advanced advocate of what is now called social service, and he made use of his position as confessor and friend of the Emperor Francis I to establish useful popular institutions; among which was an orphanage for the children of soldiers who had died for their country. It was a sort of child's Hôtel des Invalides. The discipline was exclusively military, with drills, camp life, etc. Joseph II wanted to make him a bishop but Parhamer asked for two months to think it over and before the two months had expired he was dead. That was as late as 1786. Meantime, Marie Leczinska, the Queen of France, would only have these prescribed Jesuits hear her confession, and two Poles, Radomiviski and Buganski were chosen for that office. On account of their nationality they could not be exiled from France. In Austria, Father Walcher was kept busy building dykes to prevent inundations. Father Cabral, a Portuguese, had to harness the cataract of Velino, which had so long wrought havoc in the city of Terni, and then he did the same thing for his own country by confining the Tagus to its bed. In doing so he did not remember that his country had kept him in exile for eighteen years. Ximenes made roads and bridges in Tuscany and Rome. Riccati saved Venice from inundations by controlling the Po, the Adige and Brenta, and by order of Frederick II of Prussia Father Zeplichal had to locate the metal mines of Glatz, and so on. All this was over and above their ecclesiastical work for which they were called on by every one, even by the Pope who had suppressed them.
The famous astronomer, Maximilian Hell, was another of the homeless Jesuits of that period; and as it happened that from the beginning, astronomy had always been in honor in the Society, there was a great number of such men adrift in the world when their own observatories were taken away from them. The enthusiastic historian of the Society, Crétineau-Joly has an extended list of their names as well as those who were remarkable in other branches of science.
The "Theologia Wiceburgensis," which is so popular in the modern Society, was composed by dispersed Jesuits, and, according to Cardinal Pacca, "in the difficulties that arose between the Papal nuncios and the ecclesiastical Electors of Germany it was the former Jesuits who appeared in the lists as the champions of the Holy See, to illumine and strengthen the minds of the faithful by their solid and victorious writings." François Xavier de Feller belonged to this period, and in the opinion of Gerlache, the historian of the Netherlands, "he exerted a great influence on the Belgian Congress of 1790." It was he who led the assault on Josephinism and Febronianism. With him in this fight was Francesco Antonio Zaccaria who compelled the author of the "Febronius" to acknowledge his errors. Guillaume Bertier revived the famous "Journal de Trévoux," and Fréron made a reputation for the "Journal des Débats." Girolamo Tiraboschi wrote his "History of Italian Literature," Juan Andrés, his "Origin of All Literature," Francisco Clavigero continued his "History of Mexico" and Antoine de Berault-Bercastel, François De Ligny, Jean Grou, Giulio Cordara, wrote their various well-known works. Besides writing his still popular "Bible History" Reeve translated into Latin verses much of the poetry of Pope, Dryden and Young. The list is endless. A French-Canadian, Xavier du Plessis, was famous in the pulpits of France in those days, as was Nicholas de Beauregard, who in 1775 startled all France by an utterance he made when preaching at Notre-Dame.
"These philosophers," he exclaimed, "are striking at the king and at religion. The axe and the hammer are in their hands. They are only waiting for the moment to overturn the altar and the throne. Yes Lord, Thy temples will be plundered and destroyed, Thy feasts abolished, Thy name proscribed. But what do I hear? Great God! what do I see. Instead of the holy canticles which resounded beneath these consecrated vaults till now, I hear lascivious and blasphemous songs. And thou, the infamous divinity of paganism, lascivious Venus, thou darest to come to take the place of the living God, to sit upon the throne of the Holy of Holies and receive the guilty incense of thy worshippers." The vision was realized eighteen years later.
The sermon caused a tumult in the church. The preacher was denounced as seditious, and as a calumniator of light and reason. Even Condorcet wrote him down as a ligueur and a fanatic. He continued preaching, nevertheless, and his old associates followed his example. During one Lent, out of twenty of the great preachers, sixteen were Jesuits.
Three of these former Jesuits especially attracted attention at this time in the domain of letters and science: Zaccaria, Tiraboschi, and Boscovich.
Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, whose name is sometimes written Zaccheria, was a Venetian who had entered the Austrian novitiate in 1731, when he was a boy of seventeen. He taught literature at Goritz, but was subsequently sent to Rome where he became very distinguished both for his eloquence and his marvellous encyclopedic knowledge. In 1751 he was appointed to succeed Muratori as the ducal librarian at Modena, though Cardinal Quirini had asked for him and the celebrated Count Crustiani subsequently tried to bring him to Mantua. His fame was so great that the most illustrious academies of Italy claimed his name for their registers. In Rome he became the literary historiographer of the Society, and had been so excellent an aid for Clement XIII in the fight against Gallicanism that the Pope assigned him a pension. That was just before the Suppression of the Society; when that event occurred he was deprived of his pension, and after frequently running the risk of being imprisoned in the Castle Sant' Angelo, he was ordered not to attempt to leave Rome. When Pius VI became Pope, Zaccaria's life became a little happier. His pension was restored and even increased; he was made Rector of the College of Clerical Nobles, and regained his old chair of ecclesiastical history in the Sapienza. He died in 1795 at the age of eighty-two. The "Biographie Universelle" says that, besides innumerable manuscripts, Zaccaria left one hundred and six printed books, the most important of which is the "Literary History of Italy" in 14 octavo volumes with supplements to volumes IV and V. His method of leading his readers through the literary labyrinth deserves no less praise than the penetration of his views, and the good taste of his criticism. Besides this literary work, he wrote on moral theology, scripture, canon law, history, numismatics, etc.
Girolamo Tiraboschi, who was born in Bergamo on December 28, 1731, went to the Jesuit school at Monza, and from there entered the Society. His first characteristic work, while teaching literature in Bergamo, was to re-edit the Latin-Italian dictionary of Mandosio. He made so many corrections that it was substantially a new work. When occupied as librarian in Milan, he discovered a set of valuable manuscripts about the suppressed Order of Humiliati. The publication of these MSS. filled up a gap in the annals of the Church, and made Tiraboschi's reputation in the world of letters. The Duke of Modena made him his librarian, the post formerly held by Zaccaria. Thanks to the munificence of the princes of Este, the library was a literary treasure house, and Tiraboschi conceived the idea of gathering up the riches around him and writing a good history of Italian literature; a task that seemed to be too much for one mind. The difficulty was increased by the jealousy of the various Italian states, so that an unbiased judgment about the merits of this army of writers called for a man with courage enough to shut his ears to the clamors of local prejudice. It supposed also a profound knowledge of ancient and modern literature, a sufficient acquaintance with the arts and sciences, and skill enough not to be overwhelmed by the mass of material he had to handle. It took him eleven years to complete the work.
The Spaniards were irritated by the "History" for they were blamed for having corrupted the literary taste of Italy, and three Spanish Jesuits attacked him fiercely on that score. Nevertheless, the Academy accepted a copy of the work in the most flattering terms. The Italians regarded it as a most complete history of their literature and a monument erected to the glory of their country. He was made a knight by the Duke and appointed counsellor of the principality. While he was engaged in this work, the Society was suppressed, and like Boscovich and Zaccaria, he did not live to see its resurrection. He died in Modena on June 3, 1794.
Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich was a Dalmatian from Ragusa, where he was born on May 18, 1711. He was a boy at the Jesuit college of that town and entered the Society at the early age of fourteen. He was sent to the Roman College, where his unusual literary and philosophical as well as mathematical abilities immediately attracted attention. He was able to take the place of his professor in mathematics while he was yet in his theological studies, and subsequently occupied the chair of mathematics with great distinction for a generation. His bent, however, was chiefly for astronomy, and every year he issued a treatise on one or another subject of that science. Among them may be mentioned: the "Sun spots" (1736); "The Transit of Mercury" (1737); "The Aurora Borealis" (1738); "Application of the Telescope in Astronomical Studies" (1739); "The Figure of the Earth" (1739); "The Motion of the Heavenly Bodies in an unresisting Medium" (1740); "Various effects of Gravity" (1741); "The Aberration of the Fixed Stars" (1742); and numberless others. Foreign and Italian academies, among them Bologna, Paris and London admitted him to membership. It was he who first suggested the massive pillars of the college church of St. Ignatius as the foundation of the Observatory in Rome; but the Suppression of the Society prevented him from carrying out the plan. When the great dome of St. Peter's began to crack, he allayed the general alarm by placing iron bands around it. His advice was sought for the draining of the Pontine Marshes; he surveyed the Papal States by order of Benedict XIV and induced the Pope to withdraw the obsolete decree in the Index against the Copernican system.
When King John V of Portugal asked for ten Jesuit Fathers to make an elaborate survey of Brazil, Boscovich offered himself for the arduous task, hoping thus to make a survey in Ecuador, so as to obtain data for the final solution of the problem of the figure of the earth which was then exciting much attention in England and France, but the Pope kept him for the survey of Italy, which Boscovich did, and in 1755 he published a large quarto volume describing the work. In 1748, he had already revived Leibnitz's system of dynamism in the composition of bodies, a view which his fellow-Jesuits generally rejected. When this volume was issued, the publisher added a list of Boscovich's previous works. They amounted to sixty-six and he soon added three more quartos on "The Elements of Mathematics." He even wrote Latin poetry, mostly eulogies of the Pope and distinguished men, and published five volumes of verse on "The Defects of the Sun and the Moon."
Boscovich's advice was sought as an engineer for damming the Lakes which were threatening the city of Lucca; and he acquitted himself so well, that he was made an honorary citizen and his expenses were subsequently paid for his scientific exploration in Italy, France and England. He settled a dispute between his native town and the King of France. He journeyed with the Venetian ambassador to Constantinople to complete his archæological studies, but that journey seriously injured his health. He then accepted the appointment of professor of mathematics at the University of Pavia and helped to found the Observatory of Brera in Milan which with that of the Collegio Romano is among the most prominent in Italy. The London Academy wanted to send him to California in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus, but the opposition to the Jesuits, which was four years later to lead to their suppression, caused the invitation to be withdrawn. Louis XV then called him to France where he was made director of optics for the Navy with a salary of 8,000 francs. He retained this position until 1783, that is ten years after the Society of Jesus had gone out of existence. He then went to Italy to publish five more books, and at the age of eighty-six retired to the monastery of the monks of Vallombroso. On account of his great ability, or rather on account of his being a Jesuit, he was bitterly assailed by Condorcet and d'Alembert and other infidels of France.
Bolgeni, who died in 1811, was made penitentiary by Pius VI in recognition of his services against Jansenism and Josephinism. Unfortunately, however, he advocated the acceptance of some scheme of Napoleon, for which Pope Pius VII deposed him from his office and called Father Muzzarelli from Parma to take his place. In 1809 when Pius VII was exiled, Muzzarelli went with him to Paris or at least followed soon after. His work on the "Right Use of Reason in Religion" ran up to eleven volumes, besides which he produced other books against Rousseau, and several pious treatises, like the "Month of May," which has been translated into many languages.
Possibly a certain number of missionaries remained with their neophytes because they were too remote to be reached. Others, who owed no allegiance to the king who ordered the expulsion, paid no attention to it, as the Englishman King, for instance, who was martyred in Siam after the Suppression; or the Irishman O'Reilly, who buried himself, in the forests of Guiana with his savages; Poirot was kept at the court of Pekin as the emperor's musician; and Benoit constructed fountains for the imperial gardens, invented a famous waterclock, which spouted water from the mouths of animals, two hours for each beast, thus running through the twenty-four hours of the day; he made astronomical observations, brought out copper-plate engravings of maps and so on, and finally died of apoplexy in 1774, one year after Clement XIV had suppressed the Society. Hallerstein, the imperial astronomer, was also there waiting for news of the coming disaster.
B. N. in "The Jesuits; their history and foundation" (II, 274) and Crétineau-Joly both declare that there were four of the proscribed Jesuits in the Etats généraux which was convened in Paris at the opening of the Revolution: Delfau, de Rozaven, San-Estavan and Allain. Of course, the Rozaven in this instance was not the John Rozaven so famous later on. In 1789 John was only eighteen years of age. In the session of February 19, 1790, the famous Abbé Grégoire, who afterwards became the Constitutional Bishop of Loir-et-Cher, startled the assembly by crying out, "Among the hundred thousand vexations of the old government, whose hand was so heavy on France, we must place the suppression of the celebrated Order of the Jesuits." The Deputy Lavie had also asked for justice in their behalf. The Protestant Barnave declared that "the first act of our new liberty should be to repair the injustices of despotism; and I, therefore, propose an amendment in favor of the Jesuits." "They have," said the next speaker, the Abbé de Montesquiou, "a right to your generosity. You will not refuse justice to that celebrated Society in whose colleges some of you have studied; whose wrongs we cannot understand, but whose sufferings were to be expected."
The sentiments of the speakers were enthusiastically applauded, but it was all forgotten as the terrible Revolution proceeded on its course. Jesuits like other priests were carried to the guillotine; but, as no records could now be kept, it is impossible to find out how many were put to death. We find out, however, from "Les martyrs" of Leclercq that in Paris alone there were eleven: DuPerron, Benoit, Bonnand, Cayx, Friteyre, du Rocher, Lanfant, Villecrohain, Le Gue, Rousseau, and Seconds. Crétineau-Joly adds to this list the two Rochefoucaulds; Dulau, who was Archbishop of Aries; Delfaux; Millou; Gagnière; Le Livec; another Du Rocher; Vourlat; Du Roure; Rouchon; Thomas; Andrieux and Verron; making in all twenty-five. In "Les crimes de la Révolution" there are two volumes of the names of the condemned in all parts of France, but as the ecclesiastical victims are merely described as "priests" it is impossible to find out how many Jesuits there were among them. The twenty-five, however, make a good showing for a single city. Probably the proportion was the same elsewhere.
The old Jesuits appear again for a moment in Spain, when in 1800 Charles IV recalled them. A pestilence was raging in Andalusia when they arrived, and they immediately plunged into the work of caring for the sick. Twenty-seven Jesuits died in the performance of this act of charity; but the government soon forgot it and again drove into exile the men whom they had appealed to for help. In Austria they remained in the colleges as secular priests. At Fribourg, Lucerne and Soleure, the people insisted on their retaining the colleges. In China, they clung to their missions until the arrival of the Lazarists in 1783. In Portuguese India, even before the Suppression, they had been forcibly expelled, and the same thing occurred in South America wherever Portugal ruled. The Spanish missions of both South and North America had likewise been wrested from them. In Turkey the French ambassador, Saint-Priest, insisted on their staying at their posts in Constantinople, because of their success in dealing with the Moslems and schismatics. As we have seen when missionaries were needed in the deadly forests of French Guiana, the government was shameless enough to ask the Portuguese Jesuits to devote themselves to the work; and the request was acceded to. They were also entreated to remain in French India.
Speaking of Brazil, Southey says (III): "Centuries will not repair the evil done by their sudden expulsion. They had been the protectors of a persecuted race; the advocates of mercy, the founders of civilization; and their patience under their unmerited sufferings forms not the least honorable part of their character." What Southey says of Brazil applies to Paraguay, Chile and other missions.
Montucla in his "Histoire des mathématiques" tells us that Father Hallerstein, the president of the tribunal of astronomy in China hearing of the Suppression, died of the shock, as did his two distinguished companions. The story related by the Protestant historian Christopher de Mürr in his "Journal" is also illustrative of the general attitude of mind in this trying conjuncture. Just before the Suppression, he informs us, a French Government ship left Marseilles for Pekin with four Jesuits on board. One was a painter, another a physician and the two others were mathematicians. All of them were to be in the personal entourage of the Emperor of China. They were Austrians from the Tyrol, but France, which had expelled the French Jesuits a few years before, was sending these foreign Jesuits to represent her, and to promote the interests of science in the Chinese court. They set sail in the month of July, 1773, and not a word was said to them about the general Suppression, which Choiseul knew perfectly well would soon take place. The Archbishop of Paris, de Beaumont, had warned them of what was in the air, but they could not believe it possible and so they departed for the Far East.
After a weary journey of four months, they arrived at Macao. Meantime the Brief had been published, and the Bishop of Macao, a creature of Pombal's made haste to inform them of the fact. Had he held his peace there would have been no difficulty about the continuance of the journey to Pekin, and their subsequent standing at the court, for the Brief was not effective until it was promulgated. But once they knew it, the poor men were in a dilemma. Not to heed the invitation of the Chinese emperor meant death, if he laid hold of them; but, on the other hand, to go to China without the power of saying Mass or preaching, or hearing confessions, namely as suspended priests, was unthinkable. For three days, the unfortunate wanderers studied the problem with aching hearts, and finally determined to run the risk of capture by the Chinese with its subsequent punishment of death. They stowed themselves away on separate ships and thus got back to Europe. Incidentally, it serves as a proof that the Jesuits did not go out to China to be mandarins, as some of their enemies alleged. They accepted what honors came to them, but only to help them in their apostolic work.
It was found out subsequently that these poor men would have had better luck had they continued on their journey to China instead of returning to Europe. The promulgation of the Brief and the observance of all the legal technicalities connected with its enforcement was next to impossible in China, and hence we find a letter of Father Bourgeois from Pekin to his friend Duprez in France, which bears the date May 15, 1775, announcing that "the Brief is on its way." It had been issued two years previously. Of course, Bourgeois is in tears over the prospective calamity, and tells his friend: "I have nothing now but eternity and that is not far off. Happy are those of Ours who are with Ignatius and Xavier and Aloysius Gonzaga and the numberless throng of saints who follow the Lamb under the glorious banner of the Name of Jesus."
Crétineau-Joly discovered another letter from an Italian lay-brother named Panzi, who writes eighteen months later than Bourgeois. It is dated November 11, 1776. In it he says "the missionaries had been notified of the Bull of Suppression (he does not state how), nevertheless they live together in the same house, under the same roof and eat at the same table." Apparently there had been a flaw in the promulgation of the "Bull" or Brief. The brother goes on to say, that "the Fathers preach, confess, baptise, retain possession of their property just as before. No one has been interdicted or suspended for the reason that in a country like this it would have been impossible to do otherwise. It is all done with the permission of the Bishop of Nankin, to whom we are subject. If the same course had been pursued here as in some parts of Europe, it would have put an end not only to the missions but to all religion, besides being a great scandal to the Chinese Christians who could not be provided for and who would have abandoned the Faith.
"Thanks be to God, our holy Mission is going on well and at present everything is very tranquil. The number of converts increases daily. Father Dollières brought over an entire tribe which lives on the mountains two days' journey from Pekin. The Emperor, so far, shows no signs of embracing the Catholic Faith, but he protects it everywhere throughout his vast dominions, and so do the other great men of the Empire. I am still at my work of painting. I am glad I am doing it for God; and I am determined to live in this holy mission until God wishes to take me to himself."
About this time, the Fathers addressed a joint letter to Cardinal de Bernis, the French ambassador at Rome, who had been so conspicuous in wresting the Brief of Suppression from Clement XIV and had originated the calumny about the poisoning of the Pope.
"Would your Eminence," says the document, "cast a glance at the inclosed report on the present condition of the French missions of China and the Indies which has been asked for by the Holy Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. To these missions as you know, his majesty has sent great amounts of money and a large number of his subjects, knowing as he did that the interests of France are bound up with those of religion, and the advancement of the latter was what he had chiefly in view. It will be gratifying to you to learn that the Chinese Emperor takes great pleasure in having these French missionaries employed in his palace; he frequently takes them with him on his journeys through the empire, and makes use of them to draw up maps of the country, which are of invaluable service to him. On the other hand, the missionaries, on account of the esteem in which they are held, use all their influence to prevent the persecution of Christians and have succeeded in obtaining favors for Europeans and especially for the Frenchmen who arrive at Canton, by protecting them from the annoyances to which they are exposed. Over and above this, several of the Fathers are in correspondence with the Paris Academy of Science, and also with the ministers of State, and are sending them the results of their astronomical observations, and of their discoveries in botany, natural history, in brief, whatever can contribute to the advancement of science and art.
"The king and his ministers, have in the past few years, accorded free transportation to the Fathers who are sent out here to the French missions of India, and deservedly so, for these missionaries have frequently rendered important service to France, and for that reason, the Supreme Council of Pondicherry has taken up their defense against the rulings of the Parliament of Paris, which sent officers out here to seize the little property we possess. The Pondicherry authorities would concede only that the Fathers might make a small change in their soutane and be called the "Messieurs les missionnaires de Malabar." It is in accordance with this arrangement that we continue to exercise our functions under the jurisdiction of the bishop. We are the only ones who understand the very difficult language of the country and there does not seem to be any reason why we should not be left as we are. Besides these two missions, there are two others in the Levant, one in Greece, the other in Syria. They have always been and still are under the protection of France. M. le Chevalier de Saint-Priest, who is ambassador to Turkey, said, on his arrival at Constantinople, that the king had explicitly recommended to him the French missions and ordered him to assure the Fathers of the continuance of his protection."
Of the missions in Hindostan it may be of use to quote here the utterance of M. Perrin of the Missions Etrangères, who went out to India three years after the destruction of the Jesuit Missions in those parts. "I cannot be suspected when I speak in praise of those Fathers. I was never associated with them. Indeed, they were already extinct as a body when Providence placed me in the happy necessity of having had to do with some of the former members. I belonged to an association which had protracted and sometimes very lively debates with the Jesuit Fathers, who might have regarded us as their enemies, if Christians are capable of entertaining that feeling; but I feel bound to say that, notwithstanding these discussions, we always held each other in the highest esteem, and I hereby defy the most audacious calumniator to prove that the Society of Jesus had ever to blush for the conduct of any of its Malabar missionaries either at Pondicherry or in the interior. All were formed and fashioned by virtue's hand and they breathed virtue back in their conduct and their sermons." (Voyage dans l'Indostan, II, 261.)
Among the French Jesuits in China, Father Amiot was conspicuous. Langlès, the French Academian who was ambassador in China, dedicated to him a translation of Holme's "Travels in China," in which the Jesuit is described as "Apostolic Missionary at Pekin, Correspondent of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres; an indefatigable savant, profoundly versed in the knowledge and the history of the sciences, the arts and the language of China and an ardent promoter of the Tatar-Manchou language and literature." With Amiot was Father Joseph d'Espinha, who was president of the imperial tribunal of astronomy, and simultaneously administrator of the Diocese of Pekin. Fathers de Rocha and Rodrigues presided over the tribunal of mathematics, and Father Schelbarth replaced Castiglione as the chief painter of the emperor; there were other Jesuits also who evangelised the various provinces of the country under the direction of the Ordinary.
This condition of things lasted for ten years and it was only then that the question arose of handing over the work to the Lazarists. Thus in a letter of Father Bourgeois, of whom we have already spoken, he says: "they have given our mission to the Lazarist Fathers." The letter is dated November 15, 1783, namely ten years after the suppression of the Society. "They were to have come last year," continues the writer; "Will they come this year? They are fine men and they can feel sure that I shall do all in my power to help them and put them in good shape." It was not until 1785 that a Lazarist, Father Raux, took over the Pekin Mission, and in 1788, three years afterwards, Bourgeois was able to say to Father Beauregard who had contrived to remain in Paris in spite of the Revolution: "Our missionary successors are men of merit, remarkable for virtue, talent and refinement. We live together like brothers, and thus the Lord consoles us for the loss of our good mother, the Society, whom we can never forget. Nothing can tear that love out of our hearts, and hence every moment we have to make acts of resignation in the calamity that has fallen upon us. Meanwhile it is hard to say in our house whether the Lazarists live as Jesuits or the Jesuits like Lazarists."
The old and infirm Jesuits who were homeless and could find no ecclesiastical employment had much to suffer. They became pitiable objects of charity. Zalenski in "Les Jésuites da la Russie Blanche" (I, 77) gives an instance of it, in an appeal made to the King of Poland by one hundred and five of these outcasts, many of whom had been distinguished professors in the splendid colleges of the country. They had been granted a miserable pittance out of their own property in the way of a pension, but even that was often not forthcoming. After reminding His Majesty that this pension had been guaranteed them by the Church, by their country, and by the Sovereign Pontiff, and that the allowance was from their own property; and was due to them from the natural law; and also that the amount needed was every day decreasing, because of the great number among them who were dying, they asked him imploringly: "Will Poland, so long known for its humanity, be cruel only to us; will you permit us the Lord's anointed, the old teachers of the youth of Poland, to go begging our bread on the streets, with our garments in rags, and exposed to insults; will you permit that our tears and our cries which are forced from us by the grief and abandonment to which we are reduced should add to the affliction of our country; will you permit that our country should be accused of inhumanity and insulted because it withholds our pension? It is sad enough for us to have lost the Society, the dearest and nearest thing to our heart in this life, without adding this new suffering. Should you not have pity on our lot and grant us a pension? Do not bring us down to the grave with this new sorrow." Whether their prayers were answered or not we do not know. However, as Cardinal Pallavicini denounces the king as "impious and inert," it is very likely that the poor old men were left to starve.
Quite unexpectedly the Protestant Frederick the Great of Prussia and the schismatical Catherine II of Russia insisted on having what Jesuits they could get for educational work in their respective domains. As neither sovereign would permit the Papal Brief to be read in the countries which they governed, a number of the exiles in various parts of Europe flocked thither. Efforts were made to have the Brief promulgated in both countries, but without success; for Catherine as well as Frederick denied any right of the Pope in their regard; nor would either of them listen to any request of the Jesuits to have it published. They were told to hold their peace. Of course, they were condemned by their enemies for accepting this heterodox protection; but it has been blamed for almost everything, so they went on with their work, thanking God for the unexpected shelter, and knowing perfectly well that Clement XIV was not averse to the preservation of some of the victims.
XXI. THE RUSSIAN CONTINGENT
Frederick the Great and the "Philosophers"--Protection of the Jesuits--Death of Voltaire--Catherine of Russia--The Four Colleges--The Empress at Polotsk--Joseph II at Mohilew-- Archetti--Baron Grimm--Czerniewicz and the Novitiate-- Assent of Pius VI--Potemkin--Siestrzencewicz--General Congregation--Benislawski--"Approbo; Approbo"--Accession of former Jesuits. Gruber and the Emperor Paul--Alexander I-- Missions in Russia.
Even before the general suppression of the Society, Frederick II of Prussia had given a shock to the politicians of Europe and to his friends the philosophes of France, by welcoming the exiled Jesuits into his dominions and employing them as teachers. Hence d'Alembert wrote to remonstrate; though at first glance he appears to approve of the king's action, his insulting tone when speaking of the Pope reveals the animus of this enemy of God. It ran as follows:
"They say that the Cordelier, Ganganelli, does not promise ripe pears to the Society of Jesus and that St. Francis will very likely kill St. Ignatius. It appears to me that the Holy Father, Cordelier though he be, would be very foolish to disband his regiment of guards to please the Catholic princes. Such a treaty would be very like that of the sheep and the wolves; the first article of which was that the sheep should deliver their dogs to the wolves. But in any case, Sire, it will be a curious condition of affairs, if while the Most Christian, the Most Catholic, the Most Apostolic, and the Most Faithful kings are destroying the grenadiers of the Holy See, your Most Heretical Majesty should be the only one to protect them." A little later he writes: "I am assured that the Cordelier Pope needs a good deal of plucking at his sleeves to get him to abolish the Jesuits. I am not surprised. To propose to the Pope to destroy this brave troop is like asking Your Majesty to disband your body guards."
D'Alembert was playing double. He was as anxious as any one to bring about the Suppression, and on April 3, 1770, Frederick wrote him that, "The Philosophy which has had such vogue in this century is bragged about more brazenly than ever. But what progress has it made? 'It has expelled the Jesuits,' you tell me. Granted, but I will prove, if you want me to do so, that the whole business started in vanity, spite, underhand dealing and selfishness."
On July 7, 1770, Frederick wrote to Voltaire and said: "The good Cordelier of the Vatican lets me keep my dear Jesuits whom they persecute everywhere. I will guard the precious seed so that some day I may supply it to those who may want to cultivate this rare plant in their respective countries." Frederick had annexed Silesia which was entirely Catholic, while the part of Poland which was allotted to him at the time of the division had remained only half faithful. To gratify them and keep them at peace, he thought he could do no better than to ask the Jesuits to take care of the education of the youth of those countries, "let the philosophes cry out against it as they may." Hence, on December 4, 1772, he wrote to d'Alembert: "I received an ambassador from the General of the Ignatians, asking me to declare myself openly as the protector of the Order; but I answered that when Louis XV thought proper to suppress the regiment of Fitzjames (the Jansenists), I did not think I could intercede for that corps; and moreover, the Pope is well able to bring about such a reformation without having heretics take a hand in it."
A Jesuit named Pinto had, indeed, presented himself to Frederick to ask for his protection, but he had no warrant to do so. Someone in Rome had suggested it, and he was encouraged in his enterprise by Maria Theresa. When apprised of it, the General sent a very severe reprimand to the volunteer ambassador, and that disposed of Father Pinto. No more was heard of him.
Frederick showed himself a very vigorous protector of the Society. When the Brief was published he issued the following decree: "We, Frederick by the Grace of God, King of Prussia, to all and every of our subjects, greeting:
"As you have already been advised that you are not permitted to circulate any Bulls or Briefs of the Pope, without our approbation of the same, we have no doubt that you will conform to this general order, in case the Brief of the Pope suppressing the Society of Jesus arrives at any department within your jurisdiction. Nevertheless, we have deemed it necessary to recall this to your memory, and as, under the date of Berlin, the sixth of this month, we have resolved, for reasons prompting us thereto, that this annihilation of the Society which has recently taken place shall not be published in our states, we graciously enjoin upon you to take all necessary measures in your district to suppress the aforesaid Bull of the Pope; for which end you will, in our name, as soon as you receive this communication, issue an explicit order, under penalty of rigorous chastisement, to all ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic religion domiciled in your territory not to publish the aforesaid Bull annulling the Society of Jesus. You are commanded to see carefully to the execution of this order, and to inform us immediately in case any high foreign ecclesiastics endeavor to introduce any Bulls of this kind into our kingdom surreptitiously."
This mandate had the effect of protecting the Jesuits who were in his dominions; for as canon law made the promulgation of the Brief an indispensable condition of the suppression, it followed that the Jesuits in Prussia could conscientiously continue to live there as Jesuits. Indeed, the king had previously notified the Pope that such would be his course of action, and an autograph dispatch to the Prussian representative at Rome, dated Potsdam, September 13, 1773, reads as follows: "Abbé Columbini: You will say to whomsoever it may concern, but without any ostentation or affectation, and indeed you will endeavor to find an opportunity to say naturally, both to the Pope and his prime minister, that with regard to the affair of the Jesuits, my resolution is taken to keep them in my States as they hitherto have been. I guaranteed in the treaty of Breslau the statu quo of the Catholic religion, and I have found no better priests than they under every aspect. You will add that as I am a heretic, the Pope cannot dispense me from the obligation of keeping my word nor from nullifying my obligation as an honest man."
The last phrase, of course, is very insulting, but there was no help for it. It was the king's. When d'Alembert heard of the letter, he revealed his true colors, and warned Frederick that he would regret it, reminding him that in the Silesian War, the Jesuits had been opposed to him; that is to say, the Silesian Jesuits were faithful to Silesia. Frederick replied, on Jan. 7, 1774: "You need not be alarmed for my safety. I have nothing to fear from the Jesuits; they can teach the youth of the country, and they are better able to do that than any one else. It is true that they were on the other side, during the war, but, as a philosopher, you ought not to reproach me for being kind and humane to every one of the human species, no matter what religion or society he belongs to. Try to be more of a philosopher and less of a metaphysician. Good acts are more profitable to the public than the most subtle systems and the most extravagant discoveries, in which, generally speaking, the mind wanders wildly without ever finding the truth. In any case, I am not the only one who has protected the Jesuits. The English and the Empress of Russia have done as much." This correspondence with d'Alembert continued for a year or so; and in 1777, when Voltaire was dying, the king wrote to advise him to think of his old school days at Louis-le-Grand. "Remember Father Tournemine, who was your nurse and made you suck the sweet milk of the Muses. Reconcile yourself with the Order which in the last century gave to France its greatest men." To all appearances Voltaire did not take the advice of his royal friend.
The politicians of Spain were particularly irritated at this action of Frederick, but he paid no attention to their anger. It is even said that the Pope ordered his nuncio at Warsaw to suspend all the Jesuits in Prussia from their ecclesiastical and pedagogical function and that a request was made to the King to have it done pro forma, with a promise to lift the ban immediately afterwards, a proposition which seems too silly to have ever been seriously made. But when Clement XIV died, Pius VI, after a few perfunctory protests, so as not to exasperate the other powers, let it be known that he was not dissatisfied with the status of the Jesuits in Prussia, and he not only wrote in that sense to Frederick, but encouraged him to continue his protection of the outcasts. Whereupon Frederick dispatched the following letter to the superior of Breslau. It is dated September 27, 1775:
"Venerable, dear and faithful Father: The new Pontiff having declared that he left to me the choice of the most suitable means to be employed for the conservation of the Jesuits in my kingdom, and that he would put no obstacle in my way by any declaration of irregularity, I have in consequence enjoined on my bishops to leave your Institute in statu quo, and not to trouble any of your members or to refuse ordination to any of your candidates to the priesthood. You will therefore conform to this arrangement and advise your confrères to do likewise."
Until the death of Bishop Bayer of Culm, who was the staunch friend of the Fathers, there was no cloud on the horizon; but he was succeeded by Bishop Hohenzotten, who belonged to the House of Brandenburg. He had been extremely friendly before his installation as bishop, but immediately afterwards he advised the king to secularize the Jesuits and to forbid the establishment of a novitiate. The king, however, would not yield any further than to permit of their dressing as secular priests, and until his death in 1786 they continued to live in community under the name of the "Priests of the Royal Institute." His successor was not so benignant, for he seized all the revenues of the houses and thus put an end to their existence in Prussia, and they, like their brethren elsewhere, took the road of exile. Some joined the secular clergy and others made their way to Russia.
More surprising still was the protection accorded to them by the terrible Empress Catherine II of Russia. Indeed, it was she who made it possible to preserve unbroken the link between the old and the new Society. On the other hand, not a few Pharisees have reproached the Society for having accepted the protection of this imperial tigress. For the same reason, they might have found fault with Daniel in the lion's den. He could not get out of it; and, the animals were kinder than the humans above ground.
Catherine of Russia was not a Russian but a Prussian. Her name was Sophia Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst. She and her unfortunate husband had been adopted by the czarina, Elizabeth, as her successors on the imperial throne of Russia, on condition that they would change their name and religion. There was no difficulty about either, especially the latter. According to Oliphant, Kohl, Döllinger and others who have described the state of the empire as it was about forty years later, sixteen millions or about one fourth of the entire population of Russia did not profess the Greek faith. The educated classes neither cared nor affected to care for the state religion. From the mercantile classes and most of their employees and the landed aristocracy all faith had departed. The peasants were divided into about fifty sects, and hatred and contempt for one another and the enmity of all of them for the Orthodox Church were extreme. No two Russian bishops had any spiritual dependence or connection with any other. They were simply paid officials of a common master who appointed, degraded or discarded them at pleasure. De Maistre who lived in Russia about that time says. "The words: "Oriental Church" or "Greek Church" have no meaning whatever." "I recognize," said Peter the Great, "no other legitimate Patriarch than the Pope of Rome. Since you will not obey him you shall obey me only. Behold your Pope." On that basis the Russian Church was built.
Strictly speaking the Jesuits were not entering Russia but merely staying in their old establishments which were still Polish, though geographically labelled Russia. Nevertheless, with Russia proper they had already a considerable acquaintance. Thus, as early as 1612, Father Szgoda had allowed himself to be taken by the Tatars to the Crimea, so as to evangelize the Cossacks. Later, Father Schmidt had appeared at the court of Peter the Great as chaplain of the Austrian embassy. In 1685, Father Debois brought a letter to the czar from the Pope Innocent XI, and in 1687 Father Vota, encouraged by several Russian theologians of note, was bold enough to propose to Peter the Great a union with Rome. Peter's sister Sophia was favorable to the project and the moment seemed propitious, but a brace of fanatical monks backed by the patriarch, fiercely denounced the scheme and it was dropped. A school, however, was established at Moscow, but when Sophia died, Peter drove out the Fathers. In 1691, however, he returned to a better state of mind and permitted the Catholics of Moscow to build a church and to invite the Jesuits to take charge of it. But in 1719 he again expelled them, for he had conceived the idea of a Church of his own; not only independent of Rome but of Constantinople, and absolutely under his own control--a view it is said that was suggested to him by the French Jansenists whom he met in Paris on a visit there in 1717.
That ended all hopes of Catholicity in Russia, but in 1772 when Poland was dismembered, a large number of Catholics were added to the population of Russia and Catherine II, who had murdered her husband in order to be supreme in the State, addressed herself to the task of constituting these Russianized Poles into an independent Catholic Church. She found an ambitious Polish bishop, named Siestrzencewicz who entered into her views, and on May 23, 1774, by an imperial ukase she established the Diocese of White Russia. Zalenski, S. J., the author of "Les Jésuites et la Russie Blanche" is strong in his denunciation of Siestrzencewicz, as are Pierling and Markowitch, but Godlewski is more benignant and tries to excuse the bishop as a man who did indeed resort to questionable methods, but was striving to stave off an open persecution of the Catholics. Zalenski has the more likely view.
This name of "White" Russia is a puzzle to most people, as are the opposite descriptions of "Black" and "Red" Russia. Indeed Okolski, who wrote in 1646, has a book entitled "Russia Florida," a name not in accordance with the popular notions about that country. There is also a "Greater" and a "Little" and a "West" Russia. The geographical limits of White Russia may be found in any encyclopedia. It is the region in which are Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha, Mohilew, Motislave and Gomel, and is bounded by the rivers Duna, Dnieper, Peripet and Bug. It was Russia's share in the first spoliation of Poland, and had a population of 1,600,000. Moscow is not far to the east but St. Petersburg (Petrograd) is at a great distance to the north.
In 1772 Catherine made known her intention regarding the Jesuits whom she found teaching in the section of Poland which had passed under her sceptre. They were even to retain their four colleges of Polotsk, Vitebsk, Orsha and Dunaberg besides their two residences and fourteen missions. She needed them as teachers and as they were the first to declare their acceptance of the new conditions, and had thus set an example to their countrymen, she revoked the ancient proscription of Peter the Great against the Society in Russia proper, and also apprised the other provinces of Europe that she would be their guardian in the future.
When the Brief of Suppression was announced, the Fathers felt perfectly sure that, like Frederick II, she would not permit it to be promulgated, both because the Russian Church refused allegiance to Rome, and also because she had already bound herself by a promise to protect them. Nevertheless, through their superior, they addressed to her "Sacred Imperial Majesty" the following letter:
"It is to Your Majesty that we owe the privilege of professing publicly the Roman Catholic Religion in your glorious states, and of depending in spiritual matters on the Sovereign Pontiff who is the visible head of our Church. That is the reason why we Jesuits, all of whom belong to the Roman Rite, but who are most faithful subjects of Your Majesty, now prostrate before your august imperial throne, implore Your Majesty by all that is most sacred to permit us to render prompt and public obedience to the authority which resides in the person of the Sovereign Roman Pontiff and to execute the edict he has sent us abolishing our Society. By condescending to have a public proclamation made of this Brief of Suppression, Your Majesty will thus exercise your royal authority, and we by promptly obeying will show ourselves obedient both to Your Majesty and to the Sovereign Pontiff who has ordered this proclamation. Such are the sentiments and the prayers of all and each of the Jesuits, which are now expressed by me to Your Majesty, of whom I have the honor to be, with the most profound veneration and the most respectful submission, the most humble, the most devoted and the most faithful subject,
"Stanislas Czerniewicz."
"Her Sacred Majesty" absolutely refused to accede to the request. On the contrary she insisted that the Brief should not be proclaimed in her dominions. She showed them the greatest consideration and insisted that her nobles should imitate her example, so that it became the fashion for the dignitaries of the empire to visit the various Jesuit establishments; on their part, the Jesuits never failed to show their appreciation of such an honor in as splendid a fashion as possible. The most memorable of all such visits was one in which the "Semiramis of the North" was the central figure. Catherine left St. Petersburg, on May 20, 1780, and reached Polotsk ten days later. In her suite were Potemkin, Tchernichef, de Cobentzel, the Prince Marshal Borjantynski, and Prince Dolkowiouki. On her arrival, while surrounded by all the notables who had hastened to meet her, the Jesuits were pointed out to her and she graciously saluted them. In the evening, the college was splendidly illuminated in her honor, and on the following morning she came to the church, for she was burning with a desire to witness a Catholic ceremonial. After Mass she went through the house, and both at her arrival and departure the rector celebrated her glory in an epic poem.
From thence she set out for Mohilew where Joseph II of Austria awaited her. He had already visited the college at this place, and was received with proper honor by the rector and provincial. He made all sorts of inquiries about the reason why the suppressed Jesuits were permitted to exist in Russia, and the bishop told him laconically: "The people need them; the empress ordered it and Rome has said nothing." "You did well," replied the emperor, "you should not, and could not have done otherwise." With the emperor on this occasion appears the unexpected figure of one of the suppressed Jesuits: Father Francis Xavier Kalatai. He was his majesty's travelling companion, and has left a letter telling us what happened on this occasion.
"At Mohilew," he writes, "at the farthest extremity of the recently dismembered provinces of Poland, the Jesuits still remain on their former footing. They are protected by the empress, because of their ability in training the youth of the country in science and piety. I asked to be presented to the superior when we visited the college and found him to be a very venerable old man. I questioned him and other members of the community on what they based their non-submission to the Brief of Suppression, and they replied in the same formula as the bishop: "Clementissima imperatrice nostra protegente, populo derelicto exigente, Roma sciente et non contradicente;" (i. e. on the protection of our most clement empress, the needs of the abandoned people, and the knowledge and tacit consent of Rome). They then showed me a letter from the Pope expressing his affection for them, and exhorting them to remain as they were until new arrangements could be made. He insisted upon their receiving novices and admitting Jesuits from other provinces, who desired to resume with them the sweet yoke of Christ from which they had been so violently torn. The provincial added that all the Jesuits of Russia were willing to relinquish everything they had, at the first authentic sign of the will of the Pope, and that they waited only a canonical announcement to that effect. Thus, I found that the true spirit of the Society had kept its first fervor among these scattered remnants of it in Russia."
The empress arrived, after making fifty leagues a day on the trip from Polotsk; killing ten horses on the journey. The meeting of the two sovereigns was unusually splendid; ten thousand soldiers stood on guard in the city, and besides state receptions, there were theatrical performances, public sports, banquets and the rest. The Jesuits of other establishments paid their respects, and were presented to the empress by the governor. On the 12th of June, "Semiramis" left for St. Petersburg. Such a favor, of course, made the Jesuits still more popular and, at the same time, checked the papal nuncio, Archetti, who had not yet recovered from his failure to have the suppression made effective. Nevertheless, he still persisted in his efforts, in spite of the threats of the empress. But she never yielded.
Father Brucker writing in the "Etudes" (tom. 132, 1912, 558-59) gives a characteristic letter of the empress to Baron Grimm who was a friend and associate of Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, Holbach and the rest. At that time, Grimm was the envoy of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, at the court of France, and later on, Catherine's own plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony.
The letter is dated May 7, 1779 and runs as follows: "Neither I nor my coquins en titre (my honorable rogues) les Jésuites de la R. Bl. (the Jesuits of White Russia) are going to cause the Pope any worry. They are very submissive to him and want to do only what he wishes. I suppose it is you who wrote the article in the 'Gazette de Cologne' about the hot house (the Jesuit novitiate). You say that I am amusing myself by being kind to them. Assuredly, you credit me with a pretty motive, whereas I have no other than that of keeping my word and seeking the public good. As for your grocers (the Bourbon kings) I make a present of them to you; but I know one thing, namely, they are not going to visit me and sing the song: 'Bonhomme! you are not master of your house while we are in it.'"
As early as 1776, that is only three years after the Suppression, the Jesuits of White Russia already numbered 145 members, and had twelve establishments: colleges, residences, missions, etc. In 1777 the question was discussed about opening a novitiate and the Fathers had sufficient evidence that Pius VI would be glad of it and that even Clement XIV had not been averse. Moreover, the letter sent to Bishop Siestrzencewicz had been found on examination not to be the "formidable decree," as friends in Rome had described it, for it left to him the right of creating and renewing only "what he might find necessary." Finally, as it was not couched in the usual form of Apostolic documents, the superior, Father Czerniewicz, set aside his doubts and wrote both to the bishop and to the firm friend of the Society, Governor General Tchernichef, that he had determined to open that establishment.
Tchernichef's support must have been very strong, for when Father Czerniewicz arrived at Mohilew to arrange matters with the bishop, he received from the prelate a decree dated June 29, 1779, authorizing him to carry out his purpose. This decree began with the words: "Pope Clement XIV, of celebrated memory, condescending to the desire of the Most August Empress of the Russias, our Most Clement Sovereign, had permitted the non-promulgation in her dominions of the Bull 'Dominus ac Redemptor;' and Our Holy Father Pope Pius VI, now happily reigning, shows the same deference to the desires of Her Imperial Majesty, by refraining from all opposition to the retention of their habit, name and profession by the Regular Clerks of the Society of Jesus, in the estates of her Majesty, notwithstanding the Bull 'Dominus ac Redemptor.' Moreover as the Most August Empress to whom both we and the numerous Catholic churches in her vast domains are under such grave obligations has recommended to us both verbally and by writing to do all in our power to see that the aforesaid Regular Clerks of the Society of Jesus may provide for the conservation of their Institute, we hasten to fulfil that duty which is so agreeable to us and for which we should reproach ourselves did we stint our efforts in carrying it out. Hitherto, they have not had any novitiate in this country, and, as their numbers are gradually diminishing, it is evident that they cannot exercise their useful ministry unless a novitiate is accorded them."
In virtue of this permission, a novitiate was established at Polotsk on February 2, 1780, and ten novices entered and began community life under the direction of Father Lubowicki. On that occasion, according to de Mürr, a formidable Latin poem of 169 hexameters was composed by Father Michael Korycki in honor of Bishop Siestrzencewicz. Thus was the house established; and in spite of the importunities of the Bourbon ambassadors at Rome, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius VI, never gave utterance, either personally or through his nuncio in Poland, to any public protest against it. All the denunciations of the alleged "refractory Jesuits" were either letters of private individuals or secret official correspondence, written doubtless in the name of the Pope, but indirectly, that is through the channel of the secretaryship of State and the nunciature; and never going outside the narrow diplomatic circle. Nor is there the slightest positive proof that the Pope regarded the Jesuits of White Russia except as religious.
"On the contrary," says Zalenski (I, 330), "Pius VI knew very well, as did everyone else in Rome, that Clement XIV had published the Brief of Suppression in spite of himself, and only after four years of hesitation and conflict with the diplomats. Moreover, Cardinals Antonelli and Calini, eye-witnesses of what had happened, represented to Pius VI in personal memorials that the suppression was invalid. Pius himself had belonged to that section of cardinals which disapproved of the destruction, and, as has been already said, when he was Pope, he set free the prisoners of the Castle Sant' Angelo, rehabilitated their memory, and ordered Father Ricci to be buried with the honors due to the general of an Order. In brief, Pius VI, as both Frederick II and Tchernichef insisted, was really glad that the Society had been preserved, and his silence was an approbation of it. Indeed, he could not, as the Father of Christendom, exclude the Jesuits from the protection of the general law of the Church and regard them as suppressed and freed from their vows, before the Brief of Clement XIV had been properly made known to them by the ordinary of the diocese. Of course, their enemies systematically rejected this axiom although accepted both by common and canon law. They denounced it as "a vain subterfuge," and even the Apostolic nuncio, in one of his dispatches declared it to be such; but the Holy Father could not, in conscience, accept that view.
In February, 1782, Tchernichef, the great friend of the Society, fell from power, but his successor Potemkin showed himself even a more devoted defender. Fortunately, Father Benislawski, a former Jesuit, but now a canon, was very intimate with him and induced him to give his aid to the Society. As Bishop Siestrzencewicz had meantime become Archbishop of Mohilew, the fear was again revived that he would claim to be the religious superior of the Jesuits. Indeed, by sundry appointments to parishes, he began to reveal that such was his intention, and Archetti, the nuncio at Warsaw, urged him to persist in his attacks. To head off the danger, the Fathers had determined to proceed to the election of a Vicar General, and they obtained permission from the empress to that effect. She issued a ukase, on June 23, 1782, in which she said that the Jesuits were to be subject to the archbishop, in things that pertained to his rights and duties, but that he should be very careful not to interfere with any of the rules of the Order which were to remain intact "in as far as they agree with our civil constitutions." Siestrzencewicz was quite upset by this order, and not knowing that it had been obtained through the intervention of Potemkin, he asked the Prince Wiaziemski, who was then president of the Senate, to obtain a decree from that body subjecting the Jesuits to his jurisdiction. The Senate so ruled by a rescript dated September 12, 1781, but it was a very ill-advised proceeding on their part, for it set them in opposition both to the empress and the powerful Potemkin, besides making a rebel of the archbishop and a meddler of the nuncio.
While a spirited correspondence was going on between those two distinguished ecclesiastics about the matter, the Fathers met at Polotsk, on October 10, 1782, which happened to be the feast of St. Francis Borgia, to hold the twentieth congregation of the Society. Everything was done according to the rule which governs such assemblies, and Father Stanislaus Czerniewicz, the vice-provincial, was chosen Vicar General of the Society. In the following session, it was decreed that for those who re-entered the Society, the years spent involuntarily and by compulsion, in the world, would count as so many years in religion. With this the congregation ended, because orders had come to Polotsk, for the Vicar General to report immediately to the Empress at St. Petersburg. Accordingly, after naming Father Francis Kareu, vice-provincial, he set out for the capital and was welcomed by Catherine with the words: "I defended you thus far, and will do so till the end."
The question now arose how would the archbishop receive the delegates of the congregation which had ignored his claim to control the internal affairs of the Society. The all-powerful Potemkin had attended to that. He had called the prelate to task for daring to oppose the explicit command of the empress, and warned him of the danger of such a course of action. As Siestrzencewicz was primarily a politician, he had no difficulty in modifying his views. Moreover, Canon Benislawski, who had studied him at close range and knew his peculiarities, had taken care to prepare him for the visit of the delegates. When they arrived, he received them with the greatest courtesy and sent a letter of congratulation to the newly-elected vicar. The future of the Society was thus assured. A successor to Father Ricci had been elected; a general congregation had convened and its proceeding had been conducted in strict conformity with the Constitution. Besides, a novitiate had been established, members of the dispersed provinces had been officially recognized as belonging to the Society; and all this had been done with the tacit consent of the Sovereign Pontiff.
Father Czerniewicz remained in St. Petersburg more than three months, during which time he was frequently summoned to discuss with the empress and Potemkin matters pertaining to education, but chiefly to make arrangements for negotiations in Rome, in order to obtain the Pope's express approval of the election. The matter called for considerable diplomatic skill, for in the Acts of the congregation, some very bold expressions had been employed which might cause the failure of the whole venture. Thus, it had declared that "the Brief of Clement XIV destroyed the Society outside of Russia;" and again, that "the Vicar was elected by the authority of the Holy See." The second especially was a dangerous assertion, since the papal nuncio, Archetti, regarded the election as illegal, and even a few of the Jesuits themselves were doubtful as to the correctness of the claim. There was fear, also, about the personal disposition of the Pope on that point.
To dispose of all these difficulties Catherine sent Benislawski as her ambassador to Rome, with very positive instructions not to modify them in any way whatever. He was not to stop at Warsaw, but might call on the nuncio, Garampi, at Vienna, and also on Gallitzin, the Russian ambassador. He was to go by the shortest route to Rome, to visit no cardinals there, but to present himself immediately to the Pope. In his audience, he was to make three requests. They were: first, the preconization of Siestrzencewicz as archbishop; second, the appointment of Benislawski himself as coadjutor; and third, the approbation of the Jesuits in White Russia, and especially the recognition of the Acts of the congregation. The refusal of anyone of them was to entail a rupture of negotiations with Russia.
On February 21, 1783, Benislawski arrived in Rome, and saw the Pope on the same day. He was received most graciously; his own nomination as bishop was confirmed; but, said the Pope: "Siestrzencewicz had no right to open the novitiate." "That was done," replied Benislawski, "by order of the empress." "Since that is the case," said the Pope, "I shall forget the injury done to me by the bishop." He then asked about the Jesuits and their General, and whether the election had been formally ordered by the empress. When assured upon the latter point, he answered, "I do not object." After an interview of two hours Benislawski withdrew.
At the second audience the attitude of the Pope was cold and indifferent, for the Bourbon ambassadors had influenced him meantime. Noticing the change, Benislawski fell upon his knees and asked the Pope's benediction. "What does this mean?" he was asked. "My orders are to withdraw immediately, if my requests are not granted." That startled the Pope, and he immediately changed his tone; he spoke kindly to Benislawski and told him to put his requests in writing. All night long the faithful ambassador labored at his desk formulating each request and answering every argument that might be alleged against it. Zalenski gives the entire document (I, 386), which substantially amounted to this: "The failure of the bishop to abolish the Society in Russia; the establishment of the novitiate, and the election of the General were all due to the explicit and positive orders of Catherine. As she had threatened to persecute the Catholics of Russia and to compel the Poles to enter the Orthodox Church, it was clear that there was no choice but to submit to her demands.
"With regard to the objection that the Bourbon Princes would be angry at Catherine's support of the Jesuits, Benislawski made answer, that, 'as the empress had offered no objections to the suppression of the Order in the dominions of those rulers, she failed to see why they had any right to question her action in preserving it. She owed those kings no allegiance.' Secondly, the approval of the Society would not be a reflection on the present Pope, who had as much right to reverse the judgment of Clement XIV, as Clement XIV had to reverse the judgment of thirty of his predecessors. If none of the kings and diplomats had blamed Clement for acting as he did, why should they blame Pius VI for using his own right in the premises? Moreover, the Brief was never published in Russia, and there was not the slightest prospect that it ever would be. Finally, the empress had made a solemn promise not to harm her Catholic subjects; but she was convinced that she could not inflict a greater injury on them than to deprive their churches of priests and their schools of teachers who in her opinion were invaluable." As to the charge that the whole course of the empress was due to the suggestion of the Jesuits, Benislawski replied that "everyone knew they had petitioned her to have the Brief promulgated, and that she had told them they were asking what was not agreeable to her."
The next day the Pope read the statement, smiled and said, "You want to arrange this matter by a debate with me. But there can be no answer to your contention. Your arguments are irrefutable." Very opportunely, a letter arrived from the empress who expressed her willingness to receive a papal legate to settle the case of the Uniate Archbishop of Polotsk, and asking to have Benislawski consecrated in St. Petersburg. The letter was read to the Pope, in the presence of a number of Cardinals, to whom Benislawski was presented. The Holy Father then gave his assent to the preconization of the archbishop, and the consecration of Benislawski. "As to the third," he said, raising his voice: "Approbo Societatem Jesu in Alba Russia degentem; approbo, approbo" (that is I approve of the Society of Jesus, now in Russia; I approve, I approve). As the verbal utterances of Popes in public matters of the Church, have the same force as when they are in writing, and are designated by canonists and theologians as vivæ vocis oracula, Benislawski contented himself with this approval. Besides, fearing the machinations of the Bourbon politicians, he could not ask for more. He had won his case, and had received the Pope's assurance that the Society in Russia was not and never had been suppressed. No more was needed.
Against the immense majority of historians of every shade of opinion, Theiner in his "Pontificate of Clement XIV" denounces this account of the embassy as "a fabrication of the Jesuit Benislawski," though Benislawski was not then a Jesuit, nor did he ever re-enter the Society. Besides, although Theiner characterizes the distinguished canonist whom the Pope had just made a bishop as "a liar" and "an intriguer," he admits at the same time that he was "a virtuous man" and "a pious priest." If the account of the audience had been untrue, the Pope would certainly have been compelled to denounce it; for it was published immediately in the Florence Gazette; and the falsifier would assuredly never have received his mitre. Nevertheless, to settle the matter definitely and to allay all doubts and suspicions, Benislawski, after he was installed as Bishop of Gadara, was invited to the second congregation of the Jesuits. It met at Polotsk, on July 25, 1785, and he there made the following declaration under oath:
"Having been sent to Rome by the Most Illustrious Empress of all the Russias to interview the Pope with a view of settling the difficulty about the Archbishopric of Mohilew and of the Co-adjutorship of that see, as well as to obtain from the Pope the approval of the Society of Jesus in White Russia, I represented to His Holiness the state of the Jesuits living there in conformity with the laws of their Institute, and I acquainted him with the fact that they had elected a General in obedience to the command of the Most Illustrious Empress. After having heard me, His Holiness kindly approved of the manner of life which the Jesuits were leading in White Russia, and ratified the election of the General, repeating three times, 'approbo, approbo, approbo.' I affirm under a most solemn oath, the truth of this verbal approbation; in confirmation of which I hereunto affix my seal and signature."
Theiner adduces three Briefs of Pius VI to offset this affidavit of Benislawski, but two of them antedate the episode at Rome; the third was issued a month later, and has nothing in common with the question at issue. Besides this, a few years subsequent to this approval, when Father Joseph Pignatelli, who may one day be among the canonized saints of the Church, asked permission of the Pope to go to White Russia "if the Society existed there," His Holiness answered: "Yes, it exists there; and if it were possible I would have it extended everywhere throughout the world. Go to Russia. I authorize you to wear the habit of the Jesuits. I regard the Jesuits there, as true Jesuits and the Society existing in Russia as lawfully existing." (Bonfier, Vie de Pignatelli, 196.)
As their status was now settled, the Fathers addressed themselves to the educational reform which the empress wanted to introduce into the schools of Russia. It consisted mainly in giving prominence to the physical sciences. They had no difficulty in complying with her wishes, and Father Gruber, who was an eminent physicist, immediately established a training-school for the preparation of future professors, and in March 1785, a number of Jesuit scientists were summoned by Potemkin to St. Petersburg.
On June 20, of that year, the Vicar General Czerniewicz died. He was born in 1728, and had entered the Society at sixteen; after teaching at Warsaw, he was called to Rome as secretary to Father Ricci; later he was substitute assistant of Poland. He was then sent to be rector of Polotsk, and was at that post when Clement XIV issued the decree of Suppression. At the congregation which was called on October 1, Father Lenkiewicz was elected to succeed him.
By this time, many of the old Jesuits were sending in their requests for admission. Among them were such distinguished personages as the astronomer Hell; two of Father Ricci's assistants, Romberg and Korycki and others. All could not be received in Russia itself, but wherever they were, in America, Europe, China, the East and West Indies, etc., they were all gladly welcomed back and their names were inscribed in the catalogue. It is of especial interest for Americans to find those of Adam Britt of Maryland and of several who were sent from White Russia to the United States when Carroll was empowered to re-establish the Society in 1805. They are Anthony Kohlmann, Malevy, Brown, Epinette and others. Those who, for one reason or another, were unable to go to Russia in person, were informed that they were duly recognized as Jesuits and were given permission to renew their vows. This arrangement was made especially for the ex-members who had been appointed to bishoprics, or were employed in some important function, such as royal confessors, court preachers, scientists, etc., or again, who were prevented by age and infirmity from making the long and difficult journey.
In the "Catalogus mortuorum," or list of deceased members, which covers the period between 1773 and 1814, Zalenski counts 268 who are extra provinciam; all nations under the sun are represented. From everywhere gifts were sent by former Jesuits. Thus, Father Raczynski who had become Primate of Poland gathered together at various auctions as many as 8000 Jesuit books and sent them to the College of Polotsk. Others followed his example, and in 1815 the college library had 35,000 volumes on its shelves. Other contributions came in the form of money. As early as 1787, Polotsk had a printing-press, and produced its own text-books, besides publishing a number of works which were out of print. Fr. Gruber kept at work forming a corps of able scientists, and he even made many coadjutor brothers architects, painters and skilled artificers in various crafts. The institution soon became famous for its physical and chemical laboratories, its splendid theatre, its paintings, sculpture, etc. The minor colleges soon followed its example, and the Jesuit churches resumed their customary magnificence. Sodalities were established, distant missions were undertaken, and among the neighboring Letts, Jesuit missionaries created a veritable Paraguay.
Catherine reigned for thirty-five years, and until her death, as she had promised, she had never failed to protect the Society. Her word alone counted in Russia. She was alone on the throne for she had murdered the czar, her husband, because of his repudiation of her son Paul, and also because of her natural intolerance of an equal. It is true that Father Carroll, in far-away America, was lamenting that his brethren had such a protectress, but that was beyond their control. It can at least be claimed that they had never yielded an iota in their duties as Catholic priests. During the whole of her reign she kept her unfortunate heir almost in complete seclusion. He was confided to the care chiefly of Father Gruber, who besides being a saint was a man of wonderful ability. He was a musician, a painter, an architect, a physicist and a mathematician. One of his oil paintings adorns the refectory of Georgetown today; brought over, no doubt, by some of the Polish Fathers. It is very far from being the work of an amateur. Naturally, therefore, Paul took to him kindly, and the affection continued till the end. When on the throne, he multiplied the colleges of the Society, enlarged the novitiate, installed the Fathers in the University of Vilna, and even persuaded the Grand Turk to restore to the Jesuits their ancient missions on the Ægean Archipelago.
The intimacy was so great that Gruber was supposed to be able to procure any favor from Paul and hence his life was made miserable by the swarm of suitors who beset him; but he was not foolish enough to forfeit the favor of the prince by being made a tool to further the selfish aims of the petitioners. He did, however, request the czar to ask the newly-elected Pope Pius VII for an official recognition of the Society in Russia. The Pope was only too willing to grant it, but the lingering hostility to the Jesuits, even in Rome itself, made it somewhat difficult. Indeed, a certain number of the cardinals pronounced very decidedly against it, and only yielded, when the Pope made them take all the responsibility of a refusal. He appointed a committee of the most hostile among them to report on the imperial request, thus bringing them face to face with the consequences of opposing the ruler of a great empire and converting him from a friend into a persecutor of the Church. Looking at it from that point of view, they quickly came to a favorable conclusion, and on March 7, 1801, the Bull "Catholicæ Fidei" was issued, explicitly re-establishing the Society of Jesus in Russia. It was the first great step to the general restoration throughout the world thirteen years later. The approbation arrived very opportunely, for sixteen days after its reception Paul I was assassinated.
At his accession, Alexander, though less demonstrative than Paul, showed his esteem for the Society to such an extent that when the General, Father Kareu, was at the point of death, the czar went in person to Polotsk to offer his condolence. This condescension was so marked that Father Gruber availed himself of the opportunity to solicit the publication of the Papal Bull which the turmoil consequent upon Paul's assassination had prevented from being officially proclaimed. The emperor made no difficulty about it, and issued a ukase to that effect. He even went further in his approval, for when Gruber was elected General in place of Father Kareu, he was summoned to St. Petersburg to occupy a splendidly equipped College of Nobles which Paul had established in the city itself. It was there that Gruber met the famous Count Joseph de Maistre who was at that time Ambassador of Sardinia at the imperial court. A deep and sincere affection sprung up between the two great men, and in the storm that, later on, broke out against the Society, de Maistre showed himself its fearless and devoted defender.
Catherine II had, in her time, attempted the colonization of the vast steppes of her empire, and Paul I had been energetic in carrying out her plans. Alexander I, also, was anxious to further the project which called for not a little heroism on the part of those who undertook it. Incidentally, it would relieve the government of considerable anxiety and worry; for as the new settlers came from every part of Germany, and professed all kinds of religious beliefs, it was considered to be of primary importance politically, to establish some sort of unity among them and to accustom them to Russian legislation and ways of life. The Jesuits were selected for the task, and in spite of the hardships and the isolation to which they were subjected, and in face, also, of the hatred and opposition of their enemies as well as the usually surly mood of the brutalized immigrants who had been driven out of their own country by starvation and oppression, order was restored within a year, and the government reported that these few priests had achieved what a whole army of soldiers could never have accomplished. The missions of Astrakhan were said to be similarly successful. But it appears in the light of subsequent events, that no solid or permanent results had been effected.
A glance at the map will show us that these two fields of endeavor were at the extreme eastern and western ends of Russia's vast empire. The Riga district is on the Baltic or, more properly, on the Gulf of Riga. Below it, are the now famous cities of Köningsberg and Dantzic. Astrakhan is on the Caspian Sea into which the great River Volga empties. On both sides of this river, as in the city itself, the Jesuits had established their mission posts. But from both the Baltic and the Caspian they had to withdraw, when driven out of Russia by Alexander in 1820.
The present condition of these two sections of the now dismembered empire is most deplorable. Indeed, as early as 1864 Marshall (Christian Missions, I, 74) says of them: "Let us begin with the Provinces of the Baltic. The Letts who inhabit Courland and the southern half of Livonia, though long normally Christians and surrounded by Lutherans and Russo-Greeks, sacrifice to household spirits by setting out food for them in their gardens or houses or under old oak trees. Of the Esthonians, Kohl says: 'The old practices of heathenism have been preserved among them more completely than among any other Lutheran people. There are many spots where the peasants yet offer up sacrifices.' Let us now accompany Mr. Laurence Oliphant down the Volga to the Caspian Sea. Everywhere his experience is uniform. The Kalmuks whom he discovered are still Buddhists. Near the mouth of the Volga he visits a large and populous village in a state of utter heathenism and apparently destined to remain so. At Sarepta near Astrakhan, the Moravians had attempted to convert the neighboring heathen but the Greek clergy prevented them. One tribe is made up of followers of the Grand Lama; another of pagans; a third of Mahometans. In the city of Kazan, once the capital of a powerful nation, there are 20,000 Mahometans, and the immense Tatar population of the entire region reaching as far as Astrakhan has adopted a combination of Christianity, Islamism and Shamanism, or are as out and out pagans as they were before being annexed to the Russian Empire."
Among these degraded peoples the Jesuits were at work while they were directing their colleges at Polotsk, St. Petersburg and elsewhere until 1814.
XXII. THE RALLYING
Fathers of the Sacred Heart--Fathers of the Faith--Fusion-- Paccanari--The Rupture--Exodus to Russia--Varin in Paris --Clorivière--Carroll's doubts--Pignatelli--Poirot in China--Grassi's Odyssey.
While the Society was maintaining its corporate life in Russia several contributory sources began to flow towards it from various parts of Europe. The most notable was the association that was formed under the eyes and with the approval of the wise and virtuous Jacques-André Emery, the superior of the Seminary of Paris, who himself had been trained in the Jesuit college of Macon. Under his guidance and very much attached to him, was a little group of seminarians consisting of Charles and Maurice de Broglie, sons of the celebrated Marshal of that name, both of whom bore the title of Prince; François Eléonore de Tournély, who was the animating spirit of the little association, and, omitting others, Joseph Varin who succeeded de Tournély as the guide of the growing community.
When the Revolution broke out, Varin yielding to his martial instincts, left the seminary and became a soldier in the royalist army; but Charles de Broglie kept the group together and under the direction of Pey, a distinguished canon of Paris, they plunged into the study of the spiritual life and continued to dream of an association which might in one way or another take up the work of the suppressed Society of Jesus. In 1791 they were compelled to seek a refuge in Luxembourg. Two years later, they fled to Antwerp, and finally found themselves in the old Jesuit villa of Louvain, which is still standing near the château of the Duc d'Arenberg. There they were joined by de Broglie's brother, Xavier, and by Pierre Leblanc, both of whom had served for two years in the army of the Prince de Condé. Varin joined them in that year. He had been a soldier ever since the seminary had closed, and had given up all idea of ever resuming the soutane. But it happened that he was absent from his regiment when a battle occurred, and in disgust he had gone to Belgium to ask to be transferred to another corps. While there, he fell into the hands of his old seminary friends; in a few days his former fervor returned and he was accepted as the sixth member of what de Tournély had determined to call "The Society of the Sacred Heart."
On the very day of Varin's entrance, he and five associates started off on foot, with their bags on their backs, to beg their way to Bavaria. It took them five days to get as far as Augsburg, and there they remained, though their intention was to establish themselves at Munich. But the Bishop of Augsburg told them that if they wanted to learn what the Society of Jesus was, no better place could be found than the city in which they then found themselves, for the memory of many illustrious Jesuits was still fresh in the hearts of the people. The bishop who gave them this welcome hospitality was Clemens Wenzeslaus, who besides being a prelate was a prince of Saxony and Poland. Yielding to his advice, they took up their abode in Augsburg where they were soon joined by two distinguished men who were afterwards to be conspicuous in the reconstructed Society, Grivel, who was to be sent to Georgetown in America as master of novices, and the famous Rozaven, who was to save the Society from wreck in the first general congregation held after the Restoration, and who was subsequently to be the assistant General both of Fortis and Roothaan.
As they were all Frenchmen, they were necessarily debarred from apostolic work among the people whose language they could not speak. But that was providential, for they had thus a better opportunity to devote themselves to the study of the spiritual life. On March 12, 1796, Varin and some others were promoted to the priesthood, and about the middle of December, they were installed first at Neudorf and then at Hagenbrünn, near Vienna, as the invading armies of Moreau and Jourdan made Augsburg an unsafe place to live in. They were now sixteen in number and their close imitation of the Jesuit mode of life caused a sensation there, as Austria had only a short time before suppressed the Society.
De Tournély died on July 9, 1797, and Varin was elected in his place on the first ballot. The organization however, had not yet received the authorization of the Sovereign Pontiff, for as Napoleon held him a prisoner now in one place now in another, it was impossible to make any personal application for his approval of the new organization. Hence, a petition was drawn up, signed by twenty-five or thirty bishops asking the Holy Father's approbation. The answer came in the month of September 1798, assuring them that their project afforded him the greatest consolation, and with all his heart he gave them his blessing.
The establishment of this Society was not as has been said "the underhand work of the Jesuits," for Varin and his associates had as yet never met any member of the old Society, nor were they aware of the existence of any similar organization in Italy. Indeed, when a letter came from Rome, signed Nicolas Paccanari, announcing that he was their superior, and was such, "in virtue of an express wish of the Pope to have the two communities united," the associates regarded it as the abolition of their Society of the "Fathers of the Sacred Heart," especially as this unknown individual announced that he was then on his way to Hagenbrünn to carry the plan into effect.
Nicolas Paccanari was a very curious personage. He had no education whatever, and in his early life had been engaged in various occupations which scarcely seemed to fit him to be the founder of a religious order. He was born near Trent, and had been for some time a soldier, then a merchant on a small scale, and when swindled by an associate, he took to tramping from town to town, vending, as Guidée says, "objects of curiosity," that is, he was an itinerant peddler. He was a pious man, and as he belonged to one of the guilds in the Caravita at Rome, he was prompted by the spirit that prevailed in that famous Oratory to do something more than usual for the glory of God. He first thought of being a Carmelite, and then the fancy seized him that he was destined to resuscitate the Society of Jesus. Strangely enough, although he was not even a priest, he was joined by a doctor of the Sapienza and two French ecclesiastics, Halnat and Epinette, the latter of whom entered the Society and later taught philosophy at Georgetown D. C. He was undoubtedly clever, and so plausible in his speech that he won the confidence of the most distinguished personages in Europe: cardinals and noblemen and heads of religious orders, with the result that he and his two friends made their vows on the eve of the Assumption 1797, in the chapel of the Caravita, and Paccanari was elected superior. He succeeded even in seeing the Pope, who was then a prisoner at Spoleto, and obtained his approval and blessing. He called his organization "The Society of the Fathers of the Faith of Jesus," which was shortened later into "The Fathers of the Faith." In Böhmer-Monod we find them styled "The Brothers of the Faith."
Paccanari failed to arrive at Hagenbrünn for a considerable time, for he had fallen into the hands of the police and was kept a prisoner in Sant' Angelo. His restless activity and constant change of abode had attracted the notice of the authorities, and he was suspected of being concerned in some political plot against the Roman Republic, which the French had just then set up in the Papal dominions. His associates were arrested at the same time, and were not released for four months. It was during this time of incarceration that Paccanari sent a second letter to Varin more startling than the first. It announced that the Fathers of the Sacred Heart had been received into the Paccanari association, and that Father Varin was appointed superior of the society in Germany. Such a communication from a man whom they had not even seen, made them conclude that they had to do with a lunatic. Finally, in the month of February 1799, a third letter arrived, clearing up what had been said in the second. The explanation offered was that not knowing if he would ever be let out of jail, and not wishing that the privileges he had received from the Holy See should lapse, he had as a precaution admitted Varin and his associates into the Society of the Fathers of the Faith.
When at last he was released, he started for Vienna, and on his way, made it his business to see some of the dispersed Jesuits who were in Parma and Venice. They were very kind to him, procured him financial assistance, but did not welcome him with the enthusiasm he expected. They had remarked that he never spoke of uniting his associates with the Jesuits of Russia. Paccanari was keen enough to divine their reason, and he was therefore only the more eager to affiliate with the people at Hagenbrünn, for he had only twenty members of his own, not more than three of whom were priests. He reached Vienna on April 3, and was naturally received with some reserve, but when Cardinal Migazzi and the nuncio made known the desire of the Pope, all opposition ceased and the discussion of the mode of union began. The sessions lasted ten days and ended by the election of Paccanari as general. The Society of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart thus passed out of existence on April 18, 1799.
The house at Hagenbrünn at once took on a different aspect. There was less study, fewer exercises of piety, the recreations were immoderately prolonged, and the Fathers were actually compelled to take up a series of athletic exercises that made them think they were back in their college days. Of course this soon became intolerable, but little else could have been expected from a man like Paccanari, who was absolutely ignorant of the first elements of community life. What is still more curious is that he was not even yet tonsured; but he was, nevertheless, so wonderfully insinuating in his manner that he succeeded in persuading everyone outside of his own household that he was the man of the hour. The public praised him, but his subjects were exasperated at his opinionativeness, his despotism, his repeated absences from home, and above all by his avoidance of all association with the dispersed Jesuits. All that quickly convinced the Fathers of the Sacred Heart that a serious mistake had been made. It is true that on August 11, 1799, Paccanari made a formal announcement that his sole purpose was to amalgamate with the Jesuits of Russia, but it was tolerably clear that if he ever had any such intention it was rapidly vanishing from his mind. He began by founding several establishments in various parts of Europe, even Moravia being favored in this respect. In this distribution, de Broglie and Rozaven were dispatched to England, and Halnat, Roger and Varin to France.
After the example of the old Jesuits, the first work that Varin and his companions undertook when they arrived in Paris was the care of the hospitals of La Salpétrière and Bicêtre, the first of which had 6,000 patients and had not seen a priest in its wards for ten years. The government now admitted the folly of its previous methods of procedure, and sought the help of the ministers of religion. A tremendous transformation was immediately effected. Nor could it have been otherwise, for the zealous priests spent thirteen and fourteen hours a day there, going from bed to bed to comfort the patients.
It was Halnat who first discovered the existence of the venerable Father de Clorivière, a Jesuit of the old Society, who was to be the first provincial of France after the restoration. The pious Mlle. de Cicé, a niece of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, also comes into view at this period. She had been the directress of an association of ladies established by Father de Clorivière to supply as far as possible the place of the expelled nuns, in looking after the young girls of Paris. Varin became her spiritual guide and also directed Mlle. de Jugon, a remarkable woman, who subsequently married a wealthy nobleman; but at his death she resumed with great ardor the charitable works which had previously reflected such glory upon her piety and zeal.
Just at this time, an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon. An "infernal machine," as it was called, was exploded under his carriage, and Mlle. de Cicé was suspected of knowing something about it, chiefly because of her association with the mysterious personages who had recently arrived in France--Varin and his companions. Indeed, although the good woman's holiness of life was vouched for by a great number of witnesses, chiefly the beneficiaries of her charity, she might have been condemned to death, had not Father Varin appeared in court, where he made a candid explanation of the character of his society, as having for its only purpose religion and charity, without any political affiliations whatever. His good temper at the trial was a happy offset to Father Halnat's outburst of anger which almost provoked an unfavorable verdict. Later Halnat applied for admission to the Society of Jesus, but it was thought unsafe to admit him.
At this juncture, there appears the figure of Madeleine-Sophie Barat, the foundress of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, a title chosen at that time not to indicate any social distinction; indeed Madame Barat was from people in very ordinary circumstances, but the name "religious" was in disfavor at that turbulent period, and it was thought advisable not to obtrude unnecessarily the fact that she and her associates formed a community of nuns. They were merely des dames pieuses, who lived together for charitable and educational work. The name "dames" is an old title for nuns in England.
She was the sister of Father Louis Barat, who was one of the Fathers of the Faith, and when Varin was looking around for some capable woman to give the girls of Paris and elsewhere a Christian education, Barat suggested her as a possibility. He had taught her Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, and natural philosophy, besides subjecting her to a very rigid and somewhat harsh training in asceticism. She was then twenty years of age, and with her usual habit of submission, she and her three companions addressed themselves to the task. This was in 1801. Before 1857, she had succeeded in establishing more than eighty foundations in various parts of the world and she is now ranked among the Beatified.
To Varin must also be accorded the credit of forming in the religious life another woman who is among the Blessed; the Foundress of the Sisters of Notre-Dame de Namur, Julie Billiart. Perhaps his prayers had something to do with the restoration to health of this remarkable woman, who had been a paralytic and almost speechless for thirty-one years. She recovered her youthful vigor in 1804, at the end of a novena to the Sacred Heart, which had been suggested by her confessor. She was then at Amiens, and Varin united her and her companions into a teaching community, and drew up the rules and constitutions which they have undeviatingly adhered to ever since. Indeed it was this very fidelity that gave them the name of Notre Dame de Namur. For in the absence of Varin a prominent ecclesiastic attempted to modify their rule, whereupon the indignant women left Amiens and emigrated in a body to Namur. That city has ever since been regarded as their spiritual birthplace. In the space of twelve years, namely between 1804 and 1812, this quondam paralytic founded fifteen convents, and made as many as one hundred and twenty journeys, some of them very long and toilsome, in the prosecution of her great work for the Church. Like the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have establishments all over the world.
Meantime, a very marked difference had displayed itself in the tone of the various members of the Fathers of the Faith. Those who had been followers of Paccanari had no idea whatever of the real nature of religious life, whereas the disciples of Varin for the most part were spiritual men and eager in the work of perfection. How noticeable this was, is revealed in a letter from Bishop Carroll in America. He had asked for help from the new organization, and four priests had been promised him, but only one arrived--an Italian named Zucchi. Whether he lost his way or not, or fancied he could follow his own guidance, he went first to Quebec, but was promptly informed by the government officials there that his presence was undesirable. He finally reached Maryland, and Carroll describes him in a letter to Father Plowden in England as follows: "There is a priest here named Zucchi, a Romano di nascità, a man of narrow understanding, who does nothing but pine for the arrival of his companions. Meantime he will undertake no work. From this sample of the new order, I am led to believe that they are very little instructed in the maxims of the Institute of our venerable mother, the Society. Though they profess to have no other rule than ours, Zucchi seems to know nothing of the structure of our Society, nor even to have read the Regulæ Communes which our very novices know almost by heart."
The bishop had also heard of the establishment of one of the communities of women by Father Varin, and that made him still more suspicious about the genuineness of the Fathers of the Faith. "In one point," he writes to Plowden, "they seem to have departed from St. Ignatius, by engrafting on their Institution a new order of nuns, which is to be under their government."
The rupture in the ranks of the Fathers of the Faith took place in 1803. In the preceding year, Rozaven and Varin had gone to Rome and were there confirmed in their suspicions that Paccanari was not sincere in his protestations about his desire to join the Jesuits in Russia. They were also shocked at the lack of religious spirit in the Paccanarist house in Rome. In the following year, Rozaven again returned to Rome, and besides being confirmed in his conviction that Paccanari was working for the development of an independent society, he was informed of certain charges against the personal character of the man. Paccanari's explanation of the accusations, far from convincing Rozaven, only confirmed him in his opinion. The result was that he obtained a private audience with the Pope, and was authorized to sever his connection with the Fathers of the Faith.
To his amazement, he found on his return to London, that his associates had already taken the matter in hand for themselves and had applied to Father Gruber in Russia, for admission to the Society. The petition was granted, not, however to enter corporately but individually, namely after each one's vocation had been carefully examined. The application was to be made to Father Strickland in England, who had been a member of the old Society. With other candidates from Holland and Germany, twenty-five new members passed over to Russia.
It is very distressing to note that Father Charles de Broglie, who with de Tournély had initiated the whole movement, was not in this group. He and three others remained in London as secular priests, and unfortunately, his relations with a certain number of refractory Frenchmen led him into the schism known as La Petite Eglise. He persisted in his rebellion as late as 1842, when he at last made his submission to the Church.
Rozaven wrote from Polotsk to Varin, giving him an account of what had happened to him in Rome, insisting on the justifiableness of the act, and reminding him that they had joined the Fathers of the Sacred Heart, and subsequently the Fathers of the Faith, solely for the sake of uniting with the Jesuits in Russia. As Paccanari had not only no intention of carrying out that purpose, but was doing everything in his power to prevent it, the duty of allegiance ceased, and so the Pope had decided. Forthwith, Varin, with the approval of all his subjects in France, notified Paccanari that they had severed all connection with his Society. Meantime however, they retained the name of Fathers of the Faith.
But this independence was not satisfactory to Varin. What was he to do? Should he disband his communities which were performing very effective work in France or wait for developments? The Apostolic nuncio at Paris, della Genga, decided that he should continue as he was till more favorable circumstances presented themselves. They had not long to wait. The emperor's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, had thus far protected them, but in 1807 Napoleon publicly and angrily reproached him for this patronage, and on November 1st ordered all the Fathers to report to their respective dioceses within fifteen days, under penalty of being sent to the deadly convict colony of Guiana. Fouché offered several positions of honor to Varin and on his refusal to accept them, drove him out of Paris. By this time, however, Varin was a Jesuit and was following the directions of the venerable Father Clorivière who had been empowered to receive him.
The secession of the Fathers of France and England was quickly imitated by the communities in other parts of Europe. Meanwhile Paccanari's conduct became a public scandal. A canonical process was instituted against him in 1808, and he was condemned to ten years' imprisonment. But when the French took possession of the city in 1809 and opened the prison doors, Paccanari disappeared from view, and no one ever knew what became of him.
While the work of the Fathers of the Faith was progressing in France and elsewhere, the saintly Pignatelli, who had been Angel Guardian of the Spanish Jesuits when they were expelled from their native land, was accomplishing much for the general establishment of the Society. After landing in Italy where the Jesuits were as yet unmolested, he had betaken himself, with the advice of the provincial to Ferrara, and there housed the exiles as best he could. He also established a novitiate in connection with the college which had been handed over to him; but all this was swept away when the Brief of Clement XIV suppressed the entire Society in 1773. Of course, the first thought of Pignatelli after this disaster was to join his brethren in Russia, and with that in view he wrote to Pope Pius VI, who had succeeded Clement XIV, asking him if the Jesuits whom Catherine II had sheltered, really belonged to the Society. The reply delighted him beyond measure, for it told him that he might go to Russia with a safe conscience and put on the habit of the Society. The Jesuits there really belonged to the Society for the Brief of Suppression had never reached that country. The Pontiff also added that he would restore the Society as soon as possible; and if he were not able to do so he would recommend it to his successor.
Pignatelli's joy knew no bounds, and he immediately prepared for his journey to the North, but the Providence of God kept him in Italy, for the Duke of Parma, though a son of Charles III of Spain, had resolved to recall the Jesuits to his Duchy, and for that purpose had written to Catherine II of Russia to ask for three members of the Society to organize the houses. The empress was only too glad to accede to his wish; on February, 1794, three Jesuits arrived in Parma and began their work at Calorno, just when Pius VI was passing through that city on his way to the prisons of France. The opportunity was taken advantage of to ask the august captive for authorization to open a novitiate and he most willingly granted the request. Panizzoni, who was then provincial of Italy, appointed Pignatelli as superior and master of novices. Unfortunately the Duke of Parma died, and the Duchy was taken over by France; however, the Jesuits were not molested for a year and a half, and during this time Pignatelli, who was exercising the office of provincial, succeeded in having the Society restored in Naples and Sicily. This was in 1804. But when Napoleon laid his hands on the whole of the peninsula an order was formulated for the expulsion of the Jesuits. Fortunately its execution was not rigorously enforced and colleges were established in Rome, Tivoli, Sardinia and Orvieto.
Meantime matters were progressing favorably in Russia, so much so that in 1803 Father Angiolini was sent as imperial ambassador to the Pope to solicit alms for the missions. When he appeared in Rome dressed as a Jesuit, he found himself the sensation of the hour. The Sovereign Pontiff received him with effusive affection and granted all that he asked. He remained there as procurator of the Society, and in the following year, was able to communicate to Father Gruber the pleasing news that, at the request of King Ferdinand, the Society had been re-established in the Two Sicilies. Father Pignatelli was made provincial, and as many as 170 of those who had survived after Tanucci had driven them out thirty-seven years previously came from the various places that had sheltered them during the Suppression to resume their former way of life. Several of them who had been made bishops asked the Pope for permission to return but all were refused except two, Avogado of Verona and Bencassa of Carpi.
The whole kingdom welcomed back the exiles with enthusiasm. The King came in person to open the Church which he had persistently refused to enter ever since the expulsion; at the first Mass he and the entire royal family received Holy Communion. He also gave the Fathers their former college, and endowed it with an annual income of forty thousand ducats. This example encouraged others; colleges were founded everywhere, and the number of applicants was so great that the conditions for admission to the Society had to be made as rigorous as possible. Unfortunately this happy condition of affairs did not last long, for in March 1806, Joseph Bonaparte replaced Ferdinand IV on the throne of Naples, and the Jesuits again took the road of exile. The Pope offered them a refuge in Rome, and when they protested that such a course would draw on him the wrath of Napoleon, he replied that they were suffering for the Church, and that he must receive them just as Clement XIII had done when they were exiled from Naples.
While these events were occurring in Italy and France, an opportunity was presented to the Jesuits of Russia to revive their old missions in China. Unfortunately it was frustrated. The story as told in the "Woodstock Letters" (IV, 113) is a veritable Odyssey, and is particularly interesting to Americans, for the reason that the principal personage concerned in what proved to be a very heroic enterprise became subsequently the President of Georgetown College: John Anthony Grassi.
Grassi was a native of Bergamo, and in 1799 entered the novitiate established by Father Pignatelli at Calorno. He thus received a genuine Jesuit training and escaped the influence of the establishments which Paccanari was inaugurating in Italy just at that time. From Calorno he was sent to Russia, and was made Rector of the College of Nobles which was dependent upon the establishment at Polotsk. Meanwhile, he was preparing himself for the missions of Astrakhan, and was already deep in the study of Armenian when the Chinese matter was brought to the attention of Father Gruber by a letter from a member of the old Society, who had contrived to remain in China ever since the Suppression. He was Louis Poirot. It appears that his ability as a musician had charmed the emperor, and thus enabled him to continue his evangelical work in the Celestial Empire.
Hearing of the establishment in Russia, he bethought himself of having the Jesuits resume their old place in China, evidently unaware that the Brief of 1801 expressly declared that the Society had been established "only within the limits of the Russian Empire." But not knowing this he availed himself of the return of a Lazarist missionary and wrote two letters; one to the Pope and another to the Father General in which he said: "I am eighty years of age and there is only one thing I care to live for. It is to see the Jesuits return to China." His letter to the General ends with a request to be permitted to renew his vows, "so as to die a true son of the Society of Jesus." Between the time he wrote this letter and its arrival in Europe, the limitation of the approval of the Society to Russia had been withdrawn, and Father Gruber immediately set about granting the venerable and faithful old man's request. Happily a solemn legation was just then to leave St. Petersburg for China, and the ambassador, Golowkin, was urged to take some Jesuits in his suite. The offer was gladly accepted, but it was decided that it should be better for the priests to go by the usual sea route than to accompany the embassy overland.
Father Grassi was considered to be the most available man in the circumstances, and he was told merely that he was to go to a distant post, and that his companions were to be Father Korsack, a native of Russia and a German lay-brother named Surmer, who happened to be a sculptor. On January 14, 1805, they left Polotsk, and travelling day and night, arrived at St. Petersburg on January 19. Only then were they informed that their destination was Pekin. On February 2 they started on sleds for Sweden. At the end of three days, they were all sick and exhausted, but kept bravely on till they reached the frontier where they found shelter in a little inn. Fortunately a physician happened to be there and he helped them over their ailments, so that in ten days they were able to resume their journey. They then started for Abo, the capital of Finland and from there crossed the frozen sea at top speed, till they reached the Island of Aland. On March 20 they traversed the Gulf of Bothnia in a mail packet, and landed safely on the shore of Sweden. On March 22 they were in Stockholm, but the Abbé Morrette, the superior of the Swedish mission to whom they were to present themselves was dead. An Italian gentleman, happily named Fortuna, who was Russian Consul at that place, took care of them and presented them to Alopeus, the Russian minister.
Alopeus dissuaded them from going to England as they had been directed, and suggested Copenhagen as the proper place to embark. Arrived there, they were informed that there was a ship out in the harbor, waiting to sail for Canton, but that the captain refused to take any passengers; whereupon they determined to follow their original instructions, and after a stormy voyage arrived at Gravesend on May 22. From there they went to London where they met Father Kohlmann.
The same misfortune attended them at London for although Lord Macartney, who had known the Jesuits in Pekin, did everything to secure them a passage to China, he failed utterly. Then acting under new instructions they set sail for Lisbon on July 29, but were driven by contrary winds to Cork in Ireland, where of course they met with the heartiest welcome from everyone especially from the bishop. They finally landed at Lisbon on September 28; passing as they entered the harbor, the gloomy fortress of St. Julian where so many of their brethren had been imprisoned by Pombal. They were befriended there by an Irish merchant named Stack, and also by the rector of the Irish College; but were finally lodged in an old dismantled monastery where they slept on the floor. Then, in the dress of secular priests, they presented themselves to the Apostolic nuncio who was very friendly to the Society, and who would have been a Jesuit himself had it not been for the opposition of his family. He warned them to be very cautious in what they did and said, and informed them that there were very few ships clearing for Macao.
While at Lisbon, they devoted themselves to the study of mathematics and astronomy, and after two months their friend, the Irish merchant, came to tell them that there was a ship about to sail. They hastened to advise the nuncio of it, but were then told that they could not go to China, without the Pope's permission, for the reason that the Society had been suppressed in that country. They also learned from a missionary priest of the Propaganda, that Rome was very much excited about their proposed journey; Father Angiolini who was then in Rome, wrote to the same effect. It was then March 1806. Not knowing what to do, they began a course of astronomy at the observatory of Coimbra, but unfortunately, the founder of the observatory, an ex-Jesuit, José Monteiro da Rocha, was very hostile to the Society; and even went so far in his opposition that in a public oration before the university he had praised Pombal extravagantly for having abolished the Order.
The wanderers remained at Coimbra for two months, and then returned to Lisbon. On their way to the capital they saw the unburied coffin of Pombal. On June 4 a letter came from England which revived their hopes, especially as it was followed by pecuniary help from the czar; but soon after that, they received news of the Russian embassy's failure to reach China, and they also heard that the country of their dreams was in the wildest excitement because a missionary there had sent a map of the empire to Europe. The imprudent cartographer was imprisoned and an imperial edict announced that vengeance was to be taken on all Christians in the empire. Who the poor man was we do not know. It could not have been old Father Poirot. He was merely a musician and not a maker of maps. On December 2, 1806, the nuncio at Lisbon was informed that the Pope quite approved of the project of the Fathers and had urged his officials to assist them to carry it out. The reason of this change of mind on the part of the Holy Father is explained by the fact that he was anxious to propitiate Russia. Nevertheless, the nuncio advised them to wait for further developments.
Another year went by, during which they continued their studies and made some conversions. They had also the gratification of being introduced to the Marchioness of Tavora, the sole survivor of the illustrious house which Pombal had so ruthlessly persecuted. Finally they were recalled to England, which they reached on November 16, 1807, after a month of great hardship at sea. They were welcomed at Liverpool by the American Jesuit, Father Sewall, who was at that time sheltering four other members of the Society in his house. When the little community met at table, they represented seven different nationalities--American, English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Belgian. Father Grassi remained in England, chiefly at Stonyhurst until 1810, and on August 27 of that year set sail from Liverpool for Baltimore, where he arrived on October 20. He had thus passed three years in England where community life had been carried on almost without interruption from the time of the old Society. For although the Brief of Suppression had explicitly forbidden it, nevertheless Clement's successor had authorized it as early as 1778, and had permitted the pronouncement of the religious vows in 1803,--a privilege that was extended to the Kingdom of Naples in 1804. Arriving in the United States, Father Grassi found that there had been virtually no interruption of the Society's traditions in this part of the world. The Fathers had been in close communication with Russia as early as 1805 and were being continually reinforced by members of the Society in Europe. When the Bull of Re-establishment was issued there were nineteen Jesuits in the United States.