XXIII. THE RESTORATION…

XXIII. THE RESTORATION

Tragic death of Father Gruber--Fall of Napoleon--Release of the Pope--The Society Re-established--Opening of Colleges-- Clorivière--Welcome of the Society in Spain--Repulsed in Portugal--Opposed by Catholics in England--Announced in America--Carroll--Fenwick--Neale.

In 1805 the Society met with a disaster which in the circumstances seemed almost irreparable. During the night of March 25-26 its distinguished General, Father Gruber, was burned to death in his residence at St. Petersburg. His friend, the Count de Maistre, who was still ambassador at the Russian Court, hurried to the scene in time to receive his dying blessing and farewell. Gruber's influence was so great in Russia that it was feared no one could replace him. His successor was Thaddeus Brzozowski, who was elected on the second of September. Splendid plans, especially in the field of education had been made by Gruber and had been warmly approved of by the emperor, but they had to be set aside for more pressing needs. Napoleon was just then devastating Europe, and the very existence of Russia as well as of other nations was at stake. It is true that the empire was at peace with France, but at the rupture of the treaty of Amiens, Napoleon complained of the political measures of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, and the ambassadors of both countries received their papers of dismissal. The result was that a coalition of Russia, England, Austria and Sweden was formed to thwart the ambitions of Napoleon who was at that time laying claim to the whole Italian Peninsula. War was declared in 1805. Austerlitz compelled the empire to accept Napoleon's terms, but Prussia and Russia continued the fight until the disasters at Jena, Eylau and Friedland. Then the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia met Napoleon on a raft anchored out in the Niemen, where on the eighth and ninth of July peace was agreed to.

At Erfurt, in 1808 Napoleon and Alexander drew up what was known as the "Continental System," in accordance with which, all English merchandise was to be excluded from every continental nation. This was followed by a defensive alliance of Austria and England, and as Austria was Russia's ally, Alexander again entered the fight against Napoleon, but the victory of Wagram and the marriage of Napoleon with the Austrian archduchess, Maria Louisa, changed the aspect of affairs and the "Continental System" was restored, but in so modified a form that war broke out again, and in 1812 Napoleon began his Russian Campaign. The battle of Smolensk opened the way for him to Moscow, but when the conqueror arrived he found the city in flames. He mistook it for an act of surrender and Alexander purposely detained him, discussing the terms of peace until the winter set in. Then the conqueror decided to return, but it was too late. On February 22, 1813, Alexander sent out a call to all the kings of Europe to unite against Napoleon and they eagerly responded. He beat them at Lutzen and Bautzen, and in Silesia, but in spite of his success he had to continue his retreat. He won again at Dresden and Leipzig, but they pursued him relentlessly, until at last the Rhine was reached. Peace was offered in December 1813, but when its acceptance was delayed, the Allies entered France, and on March 3, 1814, laid siege to Paris. The city surrendered on the following day.

Meantime Napoleon had released Pius VII from captivity, not voluntarily, but as a political measure, to propitiate the anger of the Catholics of the world, who were beginning to open their eyes to the extent of the outrage. Eighteen months previously he had dragged the venerable Pontiff from Rome and hurried him night and day over the Alps, absolutely heedless of the age and infirmity of his victim, until at last the Pope entered Fontainebleau a prisoner. According to Pacca, it was a jail more than a palace. There by dint of threats and brutal treatment Napoleon so wore out the strength of the aged man that a Concordat was signed which sacrificed some of the most sacred rights of the Holy See. It was cancelled, indeed, subsequently, but it almost drove the Pope insane when he realized the full import of what he had been driven to concede. "I shall die like Clement XIV," he exclaimed. But his jailer was heartless and it was only after a year and a half of imprisonment, and when the Allies were actually entering France as conquerors, that he made up his mind to send the Pontiff back to Rome. Had he done it with less brutality he might even then, have succeeded in his calculations, but only one attendant was sent to accompany the prisoner. The cardinals were purposely dismissed some days later in batches, and ordered to go by different routes so as to prevent any popular demonstration on the way.

Pacca overtook the Pope at Sinigaglia on May 12, and on May 24, after a brief stay at Ancona, Loreto, Macerata, Tolentino, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni and Nepi, entered Rome. What happened at these places deserves to be recorded, as it shows that the Faith was not only not dead but had grown more intense because of the outrages of which the Vicar of Christ had been the object. At Ancona, for instance, Artaud tell us, "he was received with transports of delight. The sailors in the harbor flocked around his carriage, unhitched the horses and with silken ropes of yellow and red drew it triumphantly through the city, while the cannon thundered from the ramparts, and the bells of every tower proclaimed the joy of the people. From the top of a triumphal arch the Pope gave his benediction to the kneeling multitudes, and then blessed the wide Adriatic. From there he went to the palace of the Picis for a brief rest. The next day he crowned the statue of the Blessed Virgin, Queen of All Saints, and then set out for Osimo escorted as far as Loreto by a scarlet-robed guard of honor. Entering Rome by the Porto del Popolo, his carriage was drawn by young noblemen, and he was met by a procession of little orphan children chosen from the Protectory of Providence. They were all clothed in white robes and in their hands they held golden palm branches which they waved above their heads, while their young voices filled the air with jubilant songs. When the crowd became too dense, the little ones knelt before him to present their emblems of peace, which he affectionately received, while tears rolled down his cheeks. At last, the city gates were reached and he proceeded along the streets lined on either side by kneeling multitudes who were overcome with joy at his return."

Almost the first official act of the Pope was to re-establish the Society. How that came about may be best told in the words of his faithful servant, Cardinal Pacca.

"While we were in prison together," says the illustrious cardinal, "I had never tired of adroitly leading the conversation up to this important matter, so as to furnish His Holiness with useful information if ever it happened that he would again ascend the Chair of St. Peter. In those interviews he never failed to manifest the greatest esteem and affection for the Society. The situation in which we found ourselves was remarkable, and it shows the admirable Providence of God with regard to this celebrated Society.

"When Barnabo Chiaramonte was a young Benedictine, he had teachers and professors in theology whose sentiments were anti-Jesuit, and they filled his mind with theological views that were most opposed to those maintained by the Society. Everyone knows what profound impressions early teaching leaves in the mind; and, as for myself, I also had been inspired from my youth with sentiments of aversion, hatred and, I might say, a sort of fanaticism against the illustrious Society. It will suffice to add that my teachers put in my hands and ordered me to make extracts from the famous 'Lettres Provinciales,' first in French and then in Latin, with the notes of Wendrok (Nicole) which were still more abominable than the text. I read also in perfect good faith, 'La morale pratique des Jésuites,' and other works of that kind and accepted them as true.

"Who then would have believed that the first act of the Benedictine Chiaramonte who had become Pope, immediately after emerging from the frightful tempest of the Revolution, and in the face of so many sects, then raging against the Jesuits, should be the re-establishment of the Society throughout the Catholic world; or that I should have prepared the way for this new triumph; or, finally, that I should have been appointed by the Pope to carry out those orders which were so acceptable to me and conferred on me so much honor? For both the Pope and myself, this act was a source of supreme satisfaction. I was present in Rome on the two memorable occasions of the Suppression and the Re-establishment of the Society, and I can testify to the different impressions they produced. Thus, on August 17, 1773, the day of the publication of the Brief 'Dominus ac Redemptor,' one saw surprise and sorrow painted on every face; whereas on August 7, 1814, the day of the resurrection of the Society, Rome rang with acclamations of satisfaction and approval. The people followed the Pope from the Quirinal to the Gesù, where the Bull was to be read, and made the return of the Pope to his palace a triumphal procession.

"I have deemed it proper to enter into these details, in order to profit by the occasion of these 'Memoirs' to make a solemn retraction of the imprudent utterances that I may have made in my youth against a Society which has merited so well from the Church of Jesus Christ."

Some of the cardinals were opposed to the Restoration, out of fear of the commotion it was sure to excite. Even Consalvi would have preferred to see it deferred for a few months, but it is a calumny to say that he was antagonistic to the Society. As early as February 13, 1799, he wrote as follows to Albani, the legate at Vienna: "You do me a great, a very great wrong, if you ever doubted that I was not convinced that the Jesuits should be brought back again. I call God to witness that I always thought so, although I was educated in colleges which were not favorable to them, but I did not on that account think ill of them. In those days, however, I did say one thing of them, viz., that although I was fully persuaded of their importance, I declared it to be fanatical to pretend that the Church could not stand without them, since it had existed for centuries before they existed, but when I saw the French Revolution and when I got to really understand Jansenism, I then thought and think now that without the Jesuits the Church is in very bad straits. If it depended on me, I would restore the Society to-morrow. I have frequently told that to the Pope, who has always desired their restoration, but fear of the governments that were opposed to it made him put it off, though he always cherished the hope that he could bring it about. He would do it if he lived; and if he were unable he would advise his successor to do it as quickly as possible. The rulers of the nations will find out that the Jesuits will make their thrones secure by bringing back religion."

Of course, the thought of restoring the Society did not originate with Pius VII and Pacca. Pius VI had repeatedly declared that he would have brought it about had it been at all feasible. Even after the return of Pius VII to Rome, some of the most devoted friends of the Jesuits, as we have seen, thought that the difficulties were insuperable; but the Pope judged otherwise, and hence the affection with which the Society will ever regard him. Indeed, he had already gone far in preparing the way for it. He had approved of the Society in Russia, England, America and Italy. He had permitted Father Fonteyne to establish communities in the Netherlands; Father Clorivière was doing the same thing in France with his approval so that everyone was expecting the complete restoration to take place at any moment. The Father provincial of Italy had announced that the Bull would be issued before Easter Sunday 1814, although some of his brethren laughed at him and thought he was losing his mind. This did not disturb him, however, and in June, 1814 he knelt before the Sovereign Pontiff and in the name of Father General Brzozowski presented the following petition:

"We, the Father General and the Fathers who, by the benignity of the Holy See, reside in Russia and in Sicily, desiring to meet the wishes of certain princes who ask our assistance in the education of the youth of their realms, humbly implore Your Highness to remove the difficulty created by the Brief of Clement XIV and to restore the Society to its former state in accordance with the last confirmation of it by Clement XIII, so that in whatever country we may be asked for we may give to the princes above referred to whatever help the needs of their several countries may demand."

On June 17, Pius VII let it be known that he was more than eager to satisfy the wish of the petitioners; and a few days afterwards, when Cardinal Pacca said to him, "Holy Father, do you not think we ought to do what we so often spoke of?" he replied, "Yes; we can re-establish the Society of Jesus on the next feast of Saint Ignatius." Even Pacca was taken aback by the early date that was fixed upon, for there was not a month and a half to prepare for it. The outside world was even still more surprised, and the enemies of the Society strove to belittle the Pontifical act by starting the report that it was not the old Society that was going to be brought back to life; only a new congregation was to be approved. That idea took possession of the public mind to such an extent that Father de Zúñiga, the provincial of Sicily, brought it to the attention of the Sovereign Pontiff. "On the contrary," said Pius, "it is the same Society which existed for two hundred years, although now circumscribed by some restrictions, because there will be no mention of privileges in the Bull, and there are other things which will have to be inserted, on account of circumstances in France and Spain and the needs of certain bishops."

The chief difficulty was in draughting the document. The time was very short and some of the cardinals were of opinion that the courts of Europe should be consulted about it. But Pacca and the Pope both swept aside that suggestion. They had had a sad experience with the courts of Europe. Hence Cardinal Litta, who when ablegate at St. Petersburg had asked for the confirmation of the Society in Russia, was chosen to draw up the Bull. He addressed himself to the task with delight and presented to the Pope a splendid defense of the Society which he declared "had been guilty of no fault;" but when he added that "the suppression had been granted by Clement XIV unwillingly," and that "it was to be ascribed to the wicked devices, the atrocious calumnies, and the impious principles of false political science and philosophy which, by the destruction of the Order, foolishly imagined that the Church could be destroyed," the language was found to be too strong and even Cardinal di Pietro, who was a staunch friend of the Society, protested vehemently against it. Indeed, di Pietro went so far as to say that certain changes should be made in the Institute before the Bull was issued. Other members of the Sacred College were of the same opinion, but did not express themselves so openly. They were afraid to do so, because the popular joy was so pronounced at the news of the proposed restoration that anyone opposing it would run the risk of being classed as an enemy.

As a compromise, the Pope set aside the Bull drawn up by Litta and also the corrections by di Pietro, and entrusted the work to Pacca. It was his draught that was finally published. It makes no mention of any change or mutilation of the Institute; neither does it name nor abrogate any privilege; it is not addressed to any particular State, as some wished, but to the whole world; it does not reprehend anyone, nor does it subject to the Propaganda the foreign missions which the Society might undertake. Some of the "black cardinals" such as Brancadoro, Gabrielli, Litta, Mattei and even di Pietro, asked for greater praise in it for the Society, while others wanted it just as Pacca had written it; Mattei objected to the expression "primitive rule of St. Ignatius," because the words would seem to imply that the Society had adopted another at some time in its history and he also wanted the reason of the restoration to be explicitly stated, namely: "the Pope's deep conviction of the Society's usefulness to the Church." His reason was that many had asked for it; but only some of his suggestions were accepted.

These details prevented the publication of the Bull on July 31, hence August 7, the octave of the feast was chosen.

A few extracts from it will suffice. Its title is "The Constitution by which the Society of Jesus is restored in its pristine state throughout the Catholic World." The preamble first refers to the Brief "Catholicæ Fidei" which confirmed the Society in Russia and also to the "Per alias" which restored it in the Two Sicilies. It then says: "The Catholic world unanimously demands the re-establishment of the Society of Jesus. Every day we are receiving most urgent petitions from our venerable brothers, the archbishops and bishops of the Church, and from other most distinguished personages to that effect. The dispersion of the very stones of the sanctuary in the calamitous days which we shudder even to recall, namely the destruction of a religious order which was the glory and the support of the Catholic Church, now makes it imperative that we should respond to the general and just desire for its restoration. In truth, we should consider ourselves culpable of a grievous sin in the sight of God, if, in the great dangers to which the Christian commonwealth is exposed, we should fail to avail ourselves of the help which the special Providence of God now puts at our disposal; if, seated as we are in the Barque of Peter, we should refuse the aid of the tried and vigorous mariners who offer themselves to face the surges of the sea which threaten us with shipwreck and death. Therefore, we have resolved to do to-day what we have longed from the first days of our Pontificate to be able to accomplish, and, hence, after having in fervent prayer implored the Divine assistance, and having sought the advice and counsel of a great number of our venerable brothers, the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, we have decreed, with certain knowledge, and in virtue of the plenitude of our Apostolic power, that all the concessions and faculties accorded by us to the Russian empire and the Two Sicilies, in particular, shall henceforward be extended in perpetuity to all other countries of the world.

"Wherefore, we concede and accord to our well-beloved son Thaddeus Brzozowski, at present the General of the Society of Jesus, and to the other members of the Society delegated by him, all proper and necessary powers to receive and welcome freely and lawfully all those who desire to be admitted into the Regular Order of the Society of Jesus, and that, under the authority of the General at the time such persons may be received into and assigned to one or many houses, or colleges or provinces, as needs be, wherein they shall follow the rule prescribed by St. Ignatius Loyola, which was confirmed by the Constitutions of Paul III. Over and above this, we declare them to possess and we hereby concede to them the power of devoting themselves freely and lawfully to educate youth in the principles of the Catholic religion; to train them in morality; to direct colleges and seminaries; to preach and to administer the sacraments in their place of residence, with the consent and approbation of the ordinary. We take under our protection and under our immediate obedience as well as that of the Apostolic See, all the colleges, all the houses, all the provinces, all the members of the Order, and all those who are gathered in their establishments, reserving nevertheless to Ourself, and to the Roman Pontiffs, our successors, to decree and prescribe whatever we consider it our duty to decree and prescribe as necessary to consolidate more and more the same Society, in order to render it stronger and to purge it from abuse, if ever (which may God avert) any may be found therein. And we exhort with our whole heart, in the name of the Lord, all superiors, rectors and provincials, as well as all the members and pupils of this re-established Order to show themselves in all places, faithful imitators of their Father. Let them observe with exactness the rule prescribed for them by their great founder, and let them follow with ever increasing zeal the useful admonitions and counsels which he has left for the guidance of his sons.

"Finally we earnestly recommend in the Lord this Society and its members to the illustrious kings and princes and temporal lords of the various nations, as well as to our venerable brothers, the archbishops and bishops and whosoever may occupy positions of honor and authority. We exhort them, nay we conjure them, not only not to suffer that these religious should be molested, in any manner, but to see that they should be treated with the benevolence and the charity which they deserve."

A difficulty now arose as to the person into whose hands the Bull was to be delivered. It was impossible for the General to be present, for he was unable to obtain permission of the emperor to take part in what concerned him more than any other member of the Society--a condition of things which made it evident that the residence of the next General had to be in some other place than Russia. That, of course, the czar would never permit and the expulsion of the Society from Russia was from that moment a foregone conclusion. Angiolini, who was rather conspicuous in Rome at that time, possibly because he had some years before arrived in the city as an envoy from the Russian court, was first thought of. In fact the Pope had already named him, but Albers in his "Liber sæcularis" does not hesitate to say that Angiolini sought the honor, and had succeeded in enlisting the interest of Cardinal Litta in his behalf. But he was known to be a man of impetuous character, eager to be concerned in every matter of importance and decidedly headstrong. The provincial was chosen, therefore, to represent the General, and Angiolini was consoled by being made consultor of the Congregation of Rites. The difficulty seems almost childish, for whatever prominence Angiolini possessed, it was purely personal whereas that of Father Panizzoni was official. It may be, however, that Angiolini's friendship for Rezzi, who attempted to wreck the Society at the first congregation, had laid him open to suspicion.

At last the great day arrived. It was Sunday; and all Rome was seen flocking to the Gesù. As early as eight o'clock in the morning, as many as one hundred Jesuits along with the College of Cardinals were waiting to receive the Pope. He arrived at last and said Mass at the high altar. He then proceeded to the chapel of the Sodality which was crowded with bishops and most of the notables then in the city. Among them were Queen Marie Louise of Bourbon, the wife of Charles IV of Spain, with her niece and three sons. It was Spain's reparation for the wrong it had done the Society. Behind the cardinals, in a double row were the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Jesuits; the youngest of whom was sixty years of age, while there were others still who had reached eighty-six. It is even asserted that there was present one old Jesuit who was one hundred and twenty-six years old. His name was Albert Montalto and he had been in the Society for one hundred and eight years. He was born in 1689, was admitted to the novitiate in 1706 and hence was sixty-four years old at the time of the Suppression.

This beautiful fairy story is vouched for by Crétineau-Joly (V, 436), but Albers, in his "Liber sæcularis," tells us that there is no such name as Montalto or Montaud in the Catalogue of 1773 or in Vivier's "Catalogus Mortuorum Societatis Jesu."

When the Pope had taken his seat upon the throne, he handed the Bull to Belisario Cristaldi, who in a clear voice, amid the applause of all in the chapel, read the consoling words which the Jesuits listened to with tears and sobs. Then one by one some hobbling up with the help of their canes, others leaning on the arms of the distinguished men present, knelt at the feet of the Pontiff, who spoke to them all with the deepest and tenderest affection. For them it was the happiest day of their lives and the old men among them could now sing their "Nunc dimittis."

Pacca then handed to Panizzoni a paper appointing him superior of the Roman house, until the nomination arrived from Father General. The professed house, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea and other properties were also made over to the Society with a monthly payment of five hundred scudi.

On entering the Gesù, the Fathers found the house almost in the same condition as when Father Ricci and his assistants left it in 1773, to go to the dungeons of Sant' Angelo. It was occupied by a community of priests, most of them former Jesuits, who had continued to serve the adjoining church, which, though despoiled of most of its treasures, still possessed the remains of St. Ignatius. Two years later, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea was so crowded that a second one had to be opened at Reggio. Among the novices at that place was Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, who had resigned his crown to enter the Society. He died there in 1819. In 1815 the Jesuits had colleges in Orvieto, Viterbo, Tivoli, Urbino, Ferentino, and Galloro, Modena, Forlì, Genoa, Turin, Novarra, and a little later, Nice. In Parma and Naples, they had been at work prior to 1814.

Just eight days before these happenings in Rome, an aged Jesuit in Paris saw assembled around him ten distinguished men whom he had admitted to the Society. It was July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius, and the place of the meeting was full of tragic memories. It was the chapel of the Abbaye des Carmes, where, in the general massacre of priests which took place there in 1792, twelve Jesuits had been murdered. In the old man's mind there were still other memories. Fifty-two years before, he and his religious brethren had been driven like criminals from their native land. Forty years had passed since the whole Society had been suppressed. He had witnessed all the horrors of the French Revolution, and now as he was nearing eternity--he was then eighty-five--he saw at his feet a group of men some of whom had already gained distinction in the world, but who at that moment, had only one ambition, that of being admitted into the Society of Jesus, which they hoped would be one day re-established. They never dreamed that seven days after they had thus met at the Abbaye to celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, Pius VII who had returned from his captivity in France would, by the Bull "Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum," solemnly re-establish the Society throughout the world.

The old priest was Pierre-Joseph Picot de Clorivière. He was born at St. Malo, June 29, 1735 and had entered the Society on August 14, 1756. He was teaching a class at Compiègne when Choiseul drove the Society out of the country, but though he was only a scholastic, it had no effect on his vocation. He attached himself to the English province, and after finishing his course of theology at Liège in Belgium, was professed of the four vows about a month after Clement XIV had issued his Brief of Suppression. The decree had not yet been promulgated in the Netherlands. Instead of going to England as one would expect, he returned to his native country as a secular priest, and we find him in charge of a parish at Paramé from 1775 to 1779. He was also the director of the diocesan College of Dinan, where he remained up to the time of the Revolution. Meantime, he was writing pious books and founding two religious congregations, one for priests, the other for pious women in the world. The former went out of existence in 1825. The latter still flourishes.

Having refused to take the constitutional oath, he was debarred from all ecclesiastical functions, and began to think of offering himself to his old friend and classmate at Liège, Bishop Carroll, to work on the Maryland missions; but one thing or another prevented him from carrying out his purpose, though on the other hand it is surprising that he could make up his mind to remain in France. His brother had been guillotined in 1793; his niece met the same fate later; his sister, a Visitation nun, was put in prison and escaped death only by Robespierre's fall from power; several of his spiritual followers had perished in the storm, but he contrived to escape until 1801, when, owing to his relationship with Limoellan, who was implicated in the conspiracy to kill the First Consul, he was lodged in jail. He was then sixty-nine years old.

During his seven years of imprisonment, he wrote voluminous commentaries on the Bible, chiefly the Apocalypse. He also devoted himself to the spiritual improvement of his fellow-prisoners, one of whom, a Swiss Calvinist named Christin, became a Catholic. As Christin had been an attaché of the Russian embassy he posted off to Russia when he was liberated in 1805, taking with him a letter from Clorivière to the General of the Society, asking permission for the writer to renew his profession and to enter the Russian province. Of course, both requests were granted. When he was finally discharged from custody in 1809, Clorivière wrote again to Russia to inform the General that Bishop Carroll wanted to have him go out to Maryland as master of novices. As for himself though he was seventy-five years of age, he was quite ready to accede to the bishop's request. The General's decision, however, was that it would be better to remain in France.

Meantime, Father Varin, the superior of the Fathers of the Faith, had convoked the members of his community to consider how they could carry out the original purpose of their organization, namely: to unite with the Jesuits of Russia, but no progress had been made up to 1814. In his perplexity, he consulted Mgr. della Genga who was afterwards Leo XII, and also Father Clorivière. But to his dismay, both of them told him to leave the matter in statu quo. This was all the more disconcerting, because he had just heard that Father Fonteyne, who was at Amsterdam, had already received several Fathers of the Faith. Whereupon he posted off to Holland, and was told that both della Genga and Clorivière were wrong in their decision. To remove every doubt he was advised to write immediately to Russia, or better yet to go there in person. He determined to do both. At the beginning of June 1814, he returned to France to tell his friends the result of his conference with Father Fonteyne, but during his absence Clorivière had been commissioned by Father Brzozowski to do in France what Fonteyne had been doing in Holland. That settled everything, and on July 19, 1814, Fathers Varin, Boissard, Roger and Jennesseaux were admitted to the novitiate; and a few days later, Dumouchel, Bequet, Ronsin, Coulon, Loriquet, with a lay brother followed their example. On the 31st, St. Ignatius' Day, they all met at the Abbaye to entreat the Founder of the Society to bless this inauguration of the province of France.

In virtue of his appointment Father Clorivière found that he had now to take care of seventy novices, most of whom were former Fathers of the Faith; in this rapidly assembled throng it was impossible to carry out the whole scheme of a novitiate training in all its details. Indeed, the only "experiment" given to the newcomers was the thirty-days retreat, and that, the venerable old superior undertook himself. Perhaps it was age that made him talkative, perhaps it was over-flowing joy, for he not only carried out the whole programme but overdid it, and far from explaining the points, he talked at each meditation during what the French call "five quarters of an hour." But grace supplied what was lost by this prolixity, and the community was on fire with zeal when the Exercises were ended. How soon they received the news of what happened on August 7, in Rome, we do not know. But there were no happier men in the world than they when the glad tidings came; and they continued to be so even if Louis XVIII did not deign or was afraid to pay any attention to the Bull, and warned the Jesuits and their friends to make no demonstration. The Society was restored and that made them indifferent to anything else.

In Spain, a formal decree dated May 25, 1825, proclaimed the re-establishment of the Society, and when Father de Zúñiga arrived at Madrid to re-organize the Spanish province, he was met at the gate of the city by a long procession of Dominicans, Franciscans, and the members of other religious orders to welcome him. Subsequently, as many as one hundred and fifteen former Jesuits returned to their native land from the various countries of Europe where they had been laboring, and began to reconstruct their old establishments. Many of these old heroes were over eighty years of age. Loyola, Oñate and Manresa greeted them with delight, and forty-six cities sent petitions for colleges. Meanwhile, novitiates were established at Loyola, Manresa and Seville.

Portugal not only did not admit them, but issued a furious decree against the Bull. Not till fifteen years later did the Jesuits enter that country, and then their first work was to inter the yet unburied remains of their arch-enemy Pombal and to admit four of his great-grandsons into one of their colleges. Brazil, Portugal's dependency, imitated the bitterness of the mother country. The Emperor of Austria was favorable, but the spirit fostered among the people by his predecessor, Joseph, was still rampant and prevented the introduction of the Society into his domains. But, on the whole, the act of the Pope was acclaimed everywhere throughout the world. So Pacca wrote to Consalvi.

Of course there was an uproar in non-Catholic countries. In England, even some Catholics were in arms against the Bull. One individual, writing in the "Catholic Directory" of 1815, considered it to be "the downfall of the Catholic religion." A congress in which a number of Englishmen participated was held a few years later at Aix-la-Chapelle to protest against the re-establishment of the Order. Fortunately it evoked a letter from the old Admiral Earl St. Vincent which runs as follows: "I have heard with indignation that Sir J. C. Hippisley, a member of Parliament, is gone to the Congress. I therefore beseech you to cause this letter to be laid before his Holiness the Pope as a record of my opinion that we are not only obliged to that Order for the most useful discoveries of every description, but that they are now necessary for the education of Catholic youth throughout the civilized world." With the exception of John Milner, all the vicars Apostolic of England were strongly opposed to the restitution of the Society in that country.

The United States was at war with England just then, and it happened that seventeen days before the Bull was issued Father Grassi and his fellow-Jesuits were witnessing from the windows of Georgetown College the bombardment of Washington by the British fleet. They saw the city in flames, and fully expected that the college would be taken by the enemy, but to their great delight they saw the forty ships on the following morning hoist their anchors and, one by one, drop down the Potomac. They did not, of course, know what was going on in Rome, but as soon as the news of the re-establishment arrived in America, Father Fenwick, the future Bishop of Boston, who was then working in St. Peter's Church, New York, wrote about it to Father Grassi, who was President of Georgetown. The letter is dated December 21, 1814 and runs as follows:

"Rev. and Dear Father,

Te Deum Laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur!

The Society of Jesus is then re-established! That long-insulted Society! The Society which has been denounced as the corrupter of youth, the inculcator of unsound, unchristian and lax morality! That Society which has been degraded by the Church itself, rejected by her ministers, outlawed by her kings and insulted by her laity! Restored throughout the world and restored by a public Bull of the Sovereign Pontiff! Hitherto cooped up in a small corner of the world, and not allowed to extend herself, lest the nations of the earth, the favorites of heaven, should inhale the poison of her pestiferous breath, she is now called forth, as the only plank left for the salvation of a shipwrecked philosophered world; the only restorer of ecclesiastical discipline and sound morality; the only dependence of Christianity for the renewal of correct principles and the diffusion of piety! It is then so. What a triumph! How glorious to the Society! How confounding to the enemies! Gaudeamus in Domino, diem festum celebrantes! If any man will say after that, that God is not a friend of the Society, I shall pronounce him without hesitation a liar.

"I embrace, dear Sir, the first leisure moments after the receipt of your letter, to forward you my congratulations on the great and glorious tidings you have recently received from Europe--tidings which should exhilarate the heart of every true friend of Christianity and of the propagation of the Gospel; tidings particularly grateful to this country, and especially to the College of which you are rector, which will hereafter be able to proceed secundum regulam et Institutum."

A word about this distinguished American Jesuit may not be out of place here. He was born in the ancestral manor of the Fenwicks, in old St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was a lineal descendant of Cuthbert Fenwick who was distinguished among the first Catholic colonists by his opposition to Lewger, Calvert's secretary, then assailing the rights of the Church in Maryland. When Georgetown College opened its doors, Benedict Fenwick and his brother Enoch were among its first students. After finishing the course, he took upon himself what his old admirer, the famous Father Stonestreet, calls "the painful but self-improving duties of the class room," and was professor of Humanities for three years. Later he began a course of theology at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, but he left in order to become a Jesuit. The Fenwicks, both in England and America had been always closely identified with the Society, and when the news came that it was about to be resuscitated, Benedict and Enoch were chosen with four other applicants to be the corner stones of the first novitiate in the United States of North America. He was ordained on June 11, 1808, in Trinity Church, Georgetown, D. C., by the Jesuit Bishop Neale, coadjutor of Archbishop Carroll, and was immediately sent to New York with Father Kohlmann to prepare that diocese for the coming of its first bishop Dr. Concanen. Kohlmann himself had been named for the see, but the Pontiff had yielded to the entreaties of Father General not to deprive the still helpless Society of such a valuable workman; hence, Father Richard Luke Concanen, a Dominican, was appointed in his stead.

Kohlmann and Fenwick were welcomed with great enthusiasm in New York which had suffered much from the various transients who had from time to time officiated there. Several distinguished converts were won over to the faith, and an attempt was made to influence the famous free-thinker, Tom Paine, but the unfortunate wretch died blaspheming. It was Kohlmann and Fenwick who established the New York Literary Institute on the site of the present St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was successful enough to attract the sons of the most distinguished families of the city and merited the commendation of such men as the famous governor of New York, De Witt Clinton, and of Governor Thompkins who was subsequently Vice-President of the United States. At the same time, they were building old St. Patrick's, which was to become the cathedral of the new bishop. Bishop Concanen never reached New York, and when his successor Bishop Connolly arrived in 1814, Father Fenwick was his consolation and support in the many bitter trials that had to be undergone in those turbulent days. He was made vicar general and when he was sent to Georgetown to be president of the college in 1817, it was against the strong protest and earnest entreaties of the bishop, who, it may be said in passing, regretted exceedingly the closing of the Literary Institute,--a feeling shared by every American Jesuit. The reason for so doing is given by Hughes (History of the Soc. of Jesus in North America, I, ii, 945).

While Fenwick was in Georgetown, Charleston, South Carolina, was in an uproar ecclesiastically. The people were in open schism, and Archbishop Maréchal of Baltimore, in spite of his antagonism to the Society appealed to the superior of the Jesuits for some one to bring order out of the chaos. Fenwick was sent, and such was his tact, good judgment and kindness, that he soon mastered the situation and the diocese was at peace when the new bishop, the distinguished John England, arrived. Strange to say, Bishop England had the same prejudice as Bishop Concanen, against the Society; a condition of mind that may be explained by the fact that it had been suppressed by the highest authority in the Church, and that even educated men were ignorant of the causes that had brought about the disaster. But Fenwick soon disabused the bishop. Indeed, he remained as Vicar General of Charleston until 1822, and when he was recalled to Georgetown, Bishop England, at first, absolutely refused to let him go.

In a funeral oration pronounced over Fenwick, later by Father Stonestreet he said in referring to the Charleston troubles; "Difficulties had arisen between the French and Anglo-Irish portions of the congregation, each insisting it should be preached to in its own tongue; each restive at remaining in the sacred temple while the word of God was announced in the language of the other. The good Father, nothing daunted by the scene of contrariety before him, ascends the pulpit, opens his discourse in both languages, rapidly alternates the tongues of La Belle France and of the Anglo-Saxon, and by his ardent desire to unite the whole community in the bonds of charity, astonishes, softens, wins and harmonizes the hearts of all. A lasting peace was restored which still continues."

Bishop Cheverus, who was then at Boston, was subsequently called to France to be Archbishop of Bordeaux and cardinal. Father Fenwick, without being consulted, was appointed to the vacant see. In fact, the first news he had of the promotion was when the Bulls were in his hands, so that no means of protesting was possible. He was consecrated on November 1, 1825, and his friend Bishop England travelled all the way from Charleston to assist as one of the Consecrators. At that time the diocese of Boston was synonymous with New England, but it had only ten churches, two of which were for Indians. Fenwick, however, set to work in his usual heroic fashion. He was particularly fond of the Indians, and bravely fought their battle against the dishonest whites. As the red men were the descendants of the Abenakis to whom the old Jesuits had brought the Faith, there was a family feeling in his defense of them. The same sentiment of kinship prompted him to establish a newspaper which he called "The Jesuit." It was a defiance of the bigotry of New England, of which there were to be many serious manifestations. "The Jesuit" was the pioneer of Catholic journalism in the United States.

Bishop Fenwick was averse to the crowding of Catholics in the large cities, and to segregate them he established the exclusively Catholic colony of Benedicta, but this scheme of a Paraguay in the woods of Maine had only a limited success. Prompted by the same motive of love of the Society he visited the place which Father Rasle had sanctified with his blood when the fanatical Puritans of Massachusetts put him to death in 1724. Father Rasle was the apostle of the Abenakis and had established himself at what is now Norridgewock on the Kennebec. Fenwick went there to pray. Although it was in the wilderness, he determined to make it a notable place for the future Catholics of America; and over the mouldering remains of Rasle and his brave Indian defenders, he erected a monument, a shaft of granite, on which an inscription was cut to record the tragedy. It was too much for the bigotry that then reigned in those parts, and the monument was thrown down; but Fenwick put it in its place again; at a later date when, in the course of time, it had fallen out of perpendicular, Bishop Walsh of Portland corrected the defect and amid a great throng of people solemnly reconsecrated it.

While he was Bishop of Boston, Fenwick made a pious pilgrimage to Quebec; the city from which the Jesuits of the old Society had started on their perilous journeys to evangelize the Indians of the continent. He saw there an immense building on whose façade were cut the letters I. H. S. "What is that?" he asked. "It is the old Jesuit College, now a soldiers' barracks," was the reply. His soul was filled with indignation and he exclaimed in anger, "The outrage that these men of blood should occupy the house sanctified by the martyrs Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant and the others." The good bishop was unaware that the martyrs had never seen the building. It was built after they had gone to claim their crowns in heaven.

During his episcopacy Knownothingism reigned, and in one of the outbreaks the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown was attacked at midnight. The sisters were shot at, the house was pillaged, the chapel desecrated and the whole edifice given over to the flames. The blackened ruins remained for fifty years to remind the Commonwealth of its disgrace, until finally the remnants of the building, which it had cost so much to erect, had to be removed to escape taxation. It was Fenwick who founded Holy Cross College, in Worcester, Massachusetts, an establishment which is the Alma Mater of most of the subsequent bishops of New England. It has also the singular distinction of being the only Catholic College exempted by law from receiving any but Catholic students. Fenwick is buried there. He died on August 11, 1846, after an episcopacy of twenty-one years.

Strange to say the Bull resurrecting the Society was not sent to America until October 8, 1814, and on January 5, 1815, Bishop Carroll wrote to Father Marmaduke Stone, in England, as follows: "Your precious and grateful favor accompanied by the Bull of Restoration was received early in December and diffused the greatest sensation of joy and thanksgiving, not only among the surviving and new members of the Society, but also all good Christians who have any remembrances of their services or heard of their unjust and cruel treatment, and have witnessed the consequences of their suppression. You may conceive my sensations when I read the account of the celebration of Mass by His Holiness himself at the superb altar of St. Ignatius at the Gesù; the assemblage of the surviving Jesuits in the chapel to hear the proclamation of their resurrection, etc."

On returning to America after the suppression of the Society in Belgium, Father Carroll had gone to live at his mother's house in Rock Creek, Maryland, for he no longer considered himself entitled to support from the funds of the Jesuits who still maintained their existence in the colonies. They had never been suppressed, whereas he had belonged to a community in the Netherlands which had been canonically put out of existence by the Brief. He spent two years in the rough country missions of Maryland and then went with Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and his cousin Charles Carroll to Canada to induce the Frenchmen there to make common cause with the Americans against Great Britain. The Continental Congress had especially requested him to form a part of the embassy. The mission was a failure and the Colonies had themselves to blame for it; because two years previously they had issued an "Address to the English People" denouncing the government for not only attempting to establish an Anglican episcopacy in the English possessions, but for maintaining a papistical one on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Clearly it would have been impossible for the French Catholics who had been guaranteed the free exercise of their religion to transfer their allegiance to a country which considered that concession to be one of the reasons justifying a revolution.

When the war was over, Carroll and five other Jesuits met at Whitemarsh to devise means to keep their property intact in order to carry on their missionary work. They had no other resources than the produce of their farms, for their personal support. The faithful gave them nothing. At this conference they decided to ask Rome to empower some one of their number to confirm, grant faculties and dispensations, bless oils, etc. They added that, for the moment, a bishop was unnecessary. The petition was sent on November 6, 1783, and on June 7, 1784, Carroll was appointed superior of the missions in the thirteen states, and was given power to confirm. There were at that time about nineteen priests in the country and fifteen thousand Catholics, of whom three thousand were negro slaves. In 1786 Carroll took up his residence in Baltimore and was conspicuously active in municipal affairs, establishing schools, libraries and charities. Possibly it was due to him that Article 6 was inserted in the Constitution of the United States which declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States;" and probably also the amendment that "this Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Its actual sponsor in the Convention was C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina.

Carroll was made Bishop of Baltimore by Pius VI on November 6, 1789, twenty-four out of the twenty-five priests in the country voting for him. He was consecrated on August 15, 1790, at Lulworth Castle, England by the senior vicar Apostolic of England, Bishop Walmesly. On the election of Washington to the presidency, he represented the clergy in a congratulatory address to which Washington answered; "I hope your fellow-countrymen will not forget the patriotic part in the accomplishment of the Revolution and the establishment of the government or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic Faith is professed."

He convoked the first Synod of Baltimore in 1791. There were twenty-two priests of five nationalities in attendance. He called the Sulpicians to Baltimore in 1791; the first priest he ordained was Stephen Badin, the beloved pioneer of Kentucky, and four years later the famous Russian prince, Demetrius Gallitzin. He also succeeded in having a missionary for the Indians appointed by the government. He had intended to have as his coadjutor and successor in the see, Father Lawrence Grässel, who had been a novice in the old Society and who at Carroll's urgent request, had come out to America as a missionary. Grässel, however, died before the arrival of the Bulls. Father Leonard Neale, a Maryland Jesuit, was then chosen and was consecrated in 1800. A year and two months after the re-establishment of the Society, namely on December 3, 1815, Carroll died. It was fitting that this son of Saint Ignatius should be called to heaven on the feast of the great friend and companion of Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier.

Apropos of this, a note has been quoted by Father Hughes (op. cit., Doc., I, 424) which is often cited as revealing a change in Carroll's attitude toward the Society after he became archbishop. Fr. Charles Neale had written to him as follows, "It is equally certain that I have no authority to give up any right that would put the subject out of the power of his superior, who must and ought to be the best judge of what is most beneficial to the universal or individual good of the members, of the Congregation." On the back of the letter appear the words "Inadmissible Pretensions," said by Bishop Maréchal to have been written by Carroll.

Archbishop Carroll's attitude to the Society is clearly manifested in his letter of December 10, 1814, addressed to Father Grassi, which says: "Having contributed to your greatest happiness on earth by sending the miraculous bull of general restoration, even before I could nearly finish the reading of it, I fully expect it back this evening with Mr. Plowden's letter." It should not be forgotten that Carroll was heartbroken when the Society was suppressed and that he longed for death because of the grief it caused him. The words "Inadmissible Pretensions" noted on Neale's letter referred to a formal protest made by Father Charles Neale against a synodial statute of the bishops convened at Baltimore. Neale, indeed, desired to exercise the special privileges of the Society and to govern as was done in the old Society or as in Russia, a procedure which incurred the disapproval of the General. Grassi writing to Plowden, in England, says: "He (Archbishop Carroll) considers Mr. Chas. Neale as a wrongheaded man, and persons who knew him at Liège and Antwerp are nearly of the same opinion." In brief, Neale's administration both as president of Georgetown and as superior of the mission was most disastrous (cf. Hughes, I, ii, passim).

Leonard Neale, like Carroll, was an American. He was born near Port Tobacco in Maryland in 1746, and with many other young Marylanders, was sent to the Jesuit College of St. Omers in France. After the Suppression he went to England, where he was engaged in parochial work for four years. From there he was sent to Demerara in British Guiana and continued at work in that trying country from 1779 to 1783. His health finally gave way, and he returned to Maryland and joined his Jesuit brethren. He distinguished himself in the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, and remained in that city, for six years as the vicar of Bishop Carroll. In 1797 another epidemic of fever occurred and he was stricken but recovered. In 1798 he was sent to Georgetown College as president, and in 1800 while still president he was consecrated coadjutor of Archbishop Carroll. He continued his scholastic work until 1806, succeeding to the See of Baltimore in 1815. He was then seventy years old and in feeble health. He died at Georgetown on June 18, 1817. Bishop Maréchal who had been suggested to the Pope by Bishop Cheverus of Boston, had already been named for the See.

Bishop Maréchal was a Sulpician. He had left France at the outbreak of the French Revolution and after spending some years in America as a professor both at Georgetown and Baltimore, returned to his native country, but was back again in Maryland after a few years. Neale wanted him to be Bishop of Philadelphia, but the offer was declined, and he was made coadjutor of Baltimore with the right of succession. He was consecrated on December 14, 1817, and occupied the see until 1826. Unfortunately, the whole period from 1820 was marked by misunderstandings with the Society. In spite of this controversy, which was unnecessarily acrimonious at times, Archbishop Maréchal was anxious to have the Jesuit visitor Father Peter Kenny appointed Bishop of Philadelphia. (cf. Hughes, op. cit., Documents, for details of the controversies.)

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XXIV. THE FIRST CONGREGATION

Expulsion from Russia--Petrucci, Vicar--Attempt to wreck the Society--Saved by Consalvi and Rozaven.

The superiors-general who presided over the Society in Russia were Stanislaus Czerniewicz (1782-85), Gabriel Lenkiewicz (1785-98), Francis Kareu, (1799-1802), Gabriel Gruber, (1802-05), and Thaddeus Brzozowski, (1805-20). The first two were only vicars, as was Father Kareu when first elected, but by the Brief "Catholicæ Fidei" he was raised to the rank of General on March 7, 1801. His two successors bore the same title. Father Brzozowski lived six years after the Restoration. But those years must have been a time of great suffering for him. Over the rapidly expanding Society, whose activities were already extending to the ends of the earth, he had been chosen to preside but he was virtually a prisoner in Russia. It soon became evident that such an arrangement was intolerable and not only was there an exasperating surveillance of every member of the Order by the government, but even when Brzozowski himself asked permission to go to Rome to thank the Holy Father in person for the favor he had conferred on the Society by the Bull of Re-establishment, he was flatly refused. Hence it was resolved that when he died, a General had to be elected who would reside in Rome, no matter what might be the consequences in Russia.

The difficulty, however, solved itself. Though officially the head of the Orthodox Church, Alexander cared little for its doctrines, its practises or its traditions, and he set about establishing a union of all the sects on the basis of what he considered to be the fundamental truths of religion. He is even credited with the ambition of aiming at a universal spiritual dominion which would eclipse Napoleon's dream of world-wide empire built upon material power. Whether this was the outcome of his meditations,--for after his fashion, he was a religious man,--or was suggested to him by the Baroness Julia de Krudner, who was creating a sensation at that time, as a revivalist, cannot be ascertained. There is no doubt, however, that he fell under her sway.

Mme. de Krudner had given up pleasures and wealth to bring back the world to what she called the principles of the primitive Church. She travelled through Germany and Switzerland with about forty of her admirers, who kept incessantly crying out: "We call only the elect to follow us." She established soup-kitchens wherever she went, and her converts knelt before her, as this slim diet which they regarded as a gift from heaven was doled out to them. Naturally this attraction worked first on the poor, but the baroness soon reached the upper grades of society. Her opportunity presented itself at Vienna, where the allied sovereigns were in session to determine the political complexion of the world, after they had disposed of Napoleon. They did her the honor of attending some of her meetings, and Alexander who showed himself greatly interested, became the special object of her attention. She styled him: "The White Angel of God," while Napoleon was set down as "The Dark Angel of Hell."

Such a serious writer as Cantù is of the opinion that it was the baroness who drew up the scheme of the Holy Alliance, in which the four monarchs agreed to love one another as brothers; to govern their respective states as different branches of the great family of nations, and to have Jesus Christ, the Omnipotent Word, as their Sovereign Lord. But immediately after making this pious pact they began to distribute among themselves the spoils of war. Prussia took Saxony; Russia, Poland; Austria, Northern Italy; and England, Malta, Heligoland and the Cape. Thus was virtue rewarded.

At the suggestion of Galitzin, his minister of worship, Alexander had begun a devout course of Bible reading as a means of lifting himself out of the gloom into which he seemed to be plunged after the war. It had apparently some beneficial effect on him, and he became an enthusiastic advocate of the practise for all classes of people. The English Bible Society was to help the propaganda and the Catholic Archbishop of Mohilew and his clergy strongly supported the imperial project. Necessarily the Jesuits had to antagonize this wholesale diffusion of corrupt versions of the sacred text, and they endeavored to point out the folly of leaving its interpretation to ignorant people. The consequence was that they provoked the anger not only of the Bible Society and of the emperor, but also both of the Russian and partly of the Catholic clergy. The troublesome Siestrzencewicz, Archbishop of Mohilew, not only strongly favored the project but suggested to Galitzin that the attitude of the Jesuits furnished an excellent opportunity to get rid of them. There was another reason also why the blow was sure to fall. A Catholic Polish woman named Narychkine it is said had been dissociated from the czar by a refusal of absolution at Easter time. The confessor was the Jesuit, Father Perkowski, and, of course, as all his associates would have acted in the same way, the whole Society came under the ban.

Zalenski, in his "Russie Blanche," finds another reason for this loss of Alexander's favor. He was not only not a Romanoff but had not a drop of Russian blood in his veins, except through his father Paul, the alleged bastard son of Catherine before she became empress. He was aware that the Jesuits knew of this family stain, though not a word was ever uttered about it. It made him uncomfortable, nevertheless, and he was quite willing to rid himself of their presence.

As he had officially proclaimed that all religions were alike, many who had professed allegiance to the Greek Church under political pressure became materialists or atheists, and some distinguished women became Catholics. No attention was paid to the atheists, but these conversions to the Faith were blamed on the Jesuits, particularly on three French fathers, among whom was Rozaven. Count de Maistre, who was in St. Petersburg at the time, declares emphatically that they had nothing to do with it. The feeling against them, however, was very intense and only lacked an occasion to show itself. It came when a nephew of Galitzin, announced that he was going to become a Catholic. This was too much for the minister of worship to put up with and although the lad, who was a pupil of one of the Jesuit colleges, had let it be known that the Fathers had absolutely nothing to do with his project and that his resolution was only the result of his own investigations, he was not believed, and a ukase, dated December 25, 1815, was issued, proclaiming their expulsion from the country. This was seventeen months after the Re-establishment.

The decree called attention to the fact that "when the Jesuits were expelled from all the other nations of Europe, Russia had charitably admitted them and confided to their care the instruction of youth. In return, they had destroyed the peace of the Orthodox Church and had turned from it some of the pupils of their colleges. Such an act, said the document, explains why they were held in such abhorrence elsewhere. The ukase bubbles over with piety, deploring the "apostacies" that had taken place, and then goes on to state that: first, the Catholic Church in Russia is hereby re-established on the plan which had been adopted since the time of Catherine II until the year 1800; secondly, the Jesuits are to withdraw immediately from St. Petersburg; thirdly, they are forbidden to enter either of the capitals.

It is noteworthy that the decree of banishment is not stocked with calumnies like those issued by the Catholic courts of Europe. It was based purely on religious ground. Nor was the expulsion characterized by any exhibition of brutality as in Spain, Portugal and France; for although the police descended on the houses, in the dead of night, and drove out the occupants, an almost maternal care was taken against their suffering in the slightest degree on their way to the places of their exile. Of course, all their papers and books were seized but perhaps the Fathers were glad of it; for although, since Catherine's time, they had been brought into closest contact with the hideous skeletons of her court and those of her successors, no mention was made of any family scandal in the voluminous correspondence that had been so suddenly seized by the government. As regards the charge of proselytism, there is a letter from Father Brzozowski to Father de Clorivière, dated February 20, 1816, which stated that not only did none of the Fathers ever attempt to influence their pupils, but that during the thirteen years of the existence of the College of St. Petersburg, no Russian Orthodox student had been admitted to the Church. It goes on to say that for a long time the storm had been foreseen and that everyone was prepared for it.

Before the final blow came, Father Brzozowski petitioned the emperor at least to permit the Fathers to continue their labors in the dangerous mission of the Riga district, in the Caucasus, and on the banks of the Volga, in all of which places, their success in civilizing and christianizing the population had been officially recognized by the emperor. But the request was not granted, and in 1820, just as Father Brzozowski was dying, the Jesuits were ordered out of the empire, and all their possessions were confiscated. The loss was a grievous one in many respects, but it had its compensations. For, in the first place, it effectually settled the question of the General's residence. Secondly, as the Jesuits living in Russia were almost of every nationality in Europe and as many of them were conspicuous for their great ability in many branches of learning, a valuable re-inforcement was thus available for the hastily formed colleges in various parts of the world. Thirdly, the traditions of the Society had remained unbroken in Russia, and the example and guidance of the venerable men who were there to the number of 358 would transmit to the various provinces the true spirit of the Society. In any case Alexander's successor would have expelled them, for he was a violent persecutor of the Church, and, moreover, Freemasonry and infidelity had been making sad havoc with what was left of the religion of the nation.

Brzozowski when dying, had named as Vicar, Father Petrucci, the master of novices at Genoa, a most unfortunate choice; for Petrucci was not only old and ill, but was woefully lacking in worldly wisdom, and proved to be a pliant tool in the hands of designing men. His appointment went to show the impossibility of directing the Society in pent-up Russia, where the General could not be sufficiently informed of the character of the various members of the Order. The congregation was summoned for September 14, 1820, but although there were already in Rome on August 2 seventeen out of the twenty-one delegates, Cardinal della Genga wrote to Petrucci to say that the Pope wanted the congregation to be delayed, because he desired time for the arrival of the Polish Fathers who represented a notable part of the Society.

As no one ever questioned the fact that the Polish province, which alone had remained intact in the general wreck, was a notable part of the Congregation and of the Society, and as, moreover, the Polish delegates would have no difficulty in reaching Rome before September 14, everyone suspected that something sinister was being attempted. That Petrucci and Cardinal della Genga were in league with each other in this matter was clear from the fact that Petrucci, without consulting any one of his colleagues, immediately dispatched letters to all the provinces announcing the prorogation of the congregation, protesting meantime that the office of vicar was too great for one of his age and infirmities. It was also remarked that with the cardinal was a small group of malcontents composed of Rizzi, Pancaldi, who was only in deacon's orders, Pietroboni and a certain number of Roman ecclesiastics, some of them prelates who, like della Genga, did not of course belong to the Society.

These conspirators kept the minds of the waiting delegates in a feverish state of excitement by giving out that there was a great fear, not only in the public at large, but even in the papal court, that a Paccanarist might be elected. Indeed there were already three of them among the electors: Sineo, Rozaven and Grivel, and hence it was desirable to delay the congregation until it would be sure that no others would arrive. Over and above this, some of those recently admitted to the Society maintained that only those who belonged to the old Society or had been a long time in Russia should be accepted as delegates. Doubts were raised also as to whether those who had taken their vows before the formal recognition of the Society in Russia in 1801, or the recognition in Sicily in 1804, were to be considered as Jesuits or as secular priests.

In brief, Rizzi and his associates had so filled the minds of outsiders with doubts, that some prelates and even a cardinal advised that the questions should be submitted to the Pope for settlement. Finally, on the day originally fixed for the congregation, namely, September 14, Cardinal della Genga sent three letters to the Fathers at Rome. In the first he said that the Pope was convinced that the meeting of the delegates should be postponed, and that he had given to the Vicar, Petrucci, all the faculties of a regularly elected General. The second letter was directed to the assistants, who were informed that it was the wish of His Holiness that all the irregularities which della Genga declared existed in the congregation should be remedied, and to that end, he had appointed a committee composed of himself, Cardinal Galiffi and the Archbishop of Nanzianzum, together with Petrucci and Rizzi to consider them. This committee, moreover, was to preside at the election. The third letter ordered that new assistants should be added to those already in office, making seven in all, a thing absolutely unheard of in the Society until then.

Rizzi and Petrucci were in high spirits when this became known, but not so the other delegates, and they determined to appeal directly to the Pope. Then a doubt arose as to which cardinal was to present the appeal. Mattei and Litta, the staunch friends of the Society were dead and Pacca leaned slightly to Rizzi's views. There remained Consalvi. To him Father Rozaven wrote the appeal, but, two of the assistants and Petrucci refused to sign it. Consalvi received the petitioners with the greatest benignity, promised to present the document to the Pope, and bade the Fathers not to be discouraged. He explained the situation to the Holy Father, who immediately approved of the request, and issued the following order: "Having heard the plea, We command that the general congregation be convened immediately, and that, as soon as possible, the General be elected, all things to the contrary notwithstanding." "Everyone," wrote Rozaven, "was delighted, except of course, Petrucci, the provincial of the Italian Province, Pietroboni, and those who had been misled by Rizzi."

The congregation met on October 9. Twenty-four professed Fathers were present and they elected Father Aloysius Fortis as General. Petrucci protested the legality of the election, but when the usual delegation presented itself to the Pope, they were received most cordially and he referred them to Consalvi for the decree of "sanation," if any were needed. "He is altogether devoted to you," said the Pope, "and watches with the greatest concern over your interests." Now that the congregation was regularly constituted, the Fathers proceeded as quickly as possible to the punishment of the conspirators. Both Petrucci and Pietroboni were deposed from their respective offices as Vicar and provincial, and other disturbers were expelled from the Society;--the Pope highly approving of the action. It was Cardinal Consalvi who had averted the wreck.

In view of the great cardinal's attitude in this matter, it is distressing to find Crétineau-Joly declaring that Consalvi acted as he did because he was a diplomat, a man of the world rather than an ecclesiastic. He cared little for the Jesuits (il aimait peu les Jésuites) whom he regarded as adding a new political embarrassment to the actual complications in Europe, but he knew how to be just, and refused to be an accomplice in the plot (VI, 1). This is a calumny. We have the Pope's own words about Consalvi's concern for the Society, and in the "Memoirs" edited by Crétineau-Joly himself the exact opposite is asserted. Thus on page 56, we read: "he made the greatest number of people happy and in doing so was happier than they, because he was thus making them venerate the Church, his Mother." On page 11, he says that whenever Consalvi wrote about Napoleon "he placed himself in the presence of God in order to be impartial in judging his persecutor." On page 180: "He lived without any concern for wealth; he never asked or received any gifts. He realized what St. Bernard and Pope Eugenius III said of a Cardinal Cibo in their day: 'In passing through this world of money, he never knew what money was. He was prodigal in his benevolence and died virtually a poor man." These are not the traits of a "man of the world and a politician."

As for "his not liking the Jesuits," we find in those "Memoirs," which were finished in 1812, and consequently eight years before the meeting of the congregation, the following words (II, 305): "When Pope Pius VII returned to Rome in 1801, he received a letter from Paul I, the Emperor of Russia, asking for the re-establishment of the Jesuits in his dominions. The Pope was delighted to have the chance to gratify the Czar and also to perform a praiseworthy (louable) action;--for it was restoring to life an Institute which had deserved well of Christendom and whose fall had hastened the ruin of the Church, of thrones, of public order, of morality, of society. One can assert this without fear of being taxed with exaggeration or falsehood by honest and reasonable men and by those who are not imbued with a false philosophy or party spirit."

He then narrates how cautious the Pope had to be before granting Paul's request, "so as not," Consalvi says, "to arouse the antagonism of the enemies of the Society: the philosophers and haters of religion and of public order, who, as they had forced its condemnation from Clement XIV, would now employ all the machinery of the courts which had asked for the suppression to prevent its rehabilitation. The Pope succeeded, but a few years afterwards, when the Emperor of Austria asked for the Jesuits, his ministers brought about the failure of the project. They consented to accept the Jesuits, but in such a fashion and under such a form that they could no longer be Jesuits. The Pope would not consent to such conditions, and as the imperial court would not accept them as they were, the matter was dropped." In other words, Pope Pius VII and his great cardinal believed with Clement XIII that no changes should be made in their Institute. Sint ut sunt aut non sint. Let them be themselves or not at all. To assert that in the heart of the great champion of the Faith, Consalvi, there was little love for the Jesuits is to say what is contrary to facts.

The new General, Father Aloysius Fortis, was born in 1748 and was consequently seventy-two years of age when he was elected. In spite of his age, however, he was in vigorous health and governed the Society for nine years. He had been in the old Society for eleven years before the Suppression. In 1794 he was associated in Parma with the saintly Pignatelli, who twice foretold his election. He had been prefect of studies in the scholasticate at Naples, and when the Society was re-established he was named as Father Brzozowski's vicar in Rome. In 1819 Pius VII appointed him Examinator Episcoporum. Hence his election was naturally gratifying to the Pope, and he gave evidence of it by the joy that suffused his countenance when the formal announcement of the result was made to him. The eagerness with which he affixed his signature to the official document also testified to his satisfaction. In the Professed House, the Fathers acclaimed the choice with enthusiasm, as did the throngs of people who had immediately flocked to the Gesù to hear the announcement. They have chosen a saint was the universal cry. The Emperor of Austria, Francis I, Frederick, the Prince of Hesse, and Duke Antony, who was soon to be King of Saxony, all expressed their pleasure at the promotion of Father Fortis.

The letter written by Antony is worth quoting. "I have read with the greatest joy, in the public press," he said, "of the election of a man of whom it may well be said he is Fortis by name and fortis by nature. I am aware that his humility would prompt him to differ with me, but I hoped that such would be the choice, and now my desire has been fulfilled. God who directed this election will give you that strength which you think you lack to fulfill the duties of your office. Now more than ever I commend myself to the fervent prayers of yourself and your associates. I have a claim on them, for ever since my earliest youth, I have been most devoted to the Society, to which I owe my religious training."

In the congregation, Father Fortis proposed a resolution or a decree, as it is called, which is of supreme importance, and which was, it is needless to say, unanimously adopted. It runs as follows: "Although there is no doubt that both the Constitutions given by Our Holy Founder and whatever in the course of time the Fathers have judged to add to them have recovered their force at the very outset of the restored Society, as it was the manifest wish of our Holy Father, Pius VII, that the Society re-established by him should be governed by the same laws as before the Suppression, nevertheless, to remove all anxiety on that score, and to put an end to the obstinacy of certain disturbers of the peace, this congregation not only confirms, but as far as necessary decrees anew, in conformity with the power vested in the General and the congregations by Paul III, and reaffirms that not only the Constitutions with the declarations and the decrees of the general congregations, but the Common Rules and those of the several offices, the Ratio Studiorum, the ordinations, the formulas and whatsoever belongs to the legislation of Our Society are intact, and it wishes all and each of the aforesaid to have the same binding force on those who live in the Society that they had before Clement XIV's Bull of Suppression."

Although Fortis was gentle and humble he admitted no relaxation, especially in the matter of poverty, and those who were unwilling to put up with the requirements, he allowed to leave the Order. "We want fruits," he used to say, "not roots." Again, in spite of his new dignity and of his great natural gifts he was always the same simple Father Fortis. He was such an ardent lover of poverty that he kept his clothes till they were threadbare and torn, and had to be stolen out of his room to be replaced by others more befitting his station. In 1821 he united into a vice-province the various members of the Society scattered through Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Germany and gave it a name descriptive of its composition: "The Vice-Province of Switzerland and the German Missions." In 1823 the Province of Galicia was established. In it were many of the old Fathers of Russia, but the number was so great that many had to be sent to Italy, France and elsewhere. Sicily, especially, was benefited in this way. From the province thus established three others sprung in a short time: Germany, Belgium and Holland.

Father Fortis died on January 27, 1829. The grief for his loss was general and none felt it more keenly than the King of Saxony, who wrote another affectionate letter to express his sorrow. It is worthy of note that, although the royal family of Saxony is still Catholic, no one who has been trained in a Jesuit School is eligible there to any ecclesiastical office. It is a curious condition in a kingdom which in 1821 was ruled by a sovereign who exulted in the fact that he was a Jesuit alumnus.

Chief among the distinguished Jesuits in the congregation of 1820 was, without doubt, the Frenchman, John Rozaven. He was born at Quimper in Brittany, March 9, 1772. His uncle had belonged to the Society when it was suppressed in France in 1760, and had then become a parish priest at Plogonnec. While there, he was elected, in 1789, at the outbreak of the Revolution to be a representative at the Etats Généraux. He accepted the constitutional oath, but soon retracted. He had to atone for his treason to the Church, however, by being made the victim of his bishop, who, like him, had joined the schism but had not recanted. On account of this ill-feeling, Rozaven left the country, taking with him the future Jesuit, his nephew, who was living with him at that time. They both disappeared on the night of June 20, 1792, and on the 24th arrived at the Island of Jersey. From there they went to London and after a few months made their way to the Duchy of Cleves.

Hearing that there was a French ecclesiastical seminary at Brussels, young Rozaven entered it, was ordained sub-deacon, but was obliged to leave after six months, because of the arrival of the French troops. He and his uncle then took up their abode in Paderborn and lodged in an old Jesuit establishment where they lived for four years, at which time the young man was ordained priest and then left his uncle in order to join the Fathers of the Sacred Heart under Father Varin. When informed of the existence of the Jesuits in Russia, John applied for admission and was received on March 28, 1804. He was subsequently made prefect of studies and professor of philosophy in the College of Nobles at St. Petersburg. In the course of his ministerial work, he brought to the Faith the Princess Elizabeth Galitzin, well-known as one of the first of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. The famous Madame Swetchine was another of his converts. He was the professor of the young Galitzin who had created such an uproar in St. Petersburg by his supposed part in the conversion.

At the death of Father General Brzozowski, Rozaven was sent as a delegate to the congregation and, as we have seen, it was his wisdom and courage that saved the Society from shipwreck on that occasion. He was elected assistant to the General, and, with the exception of one short visit to France, remained for the rest of his life in Rome. He was too valuable an aid for the General to be allowed even to be the official visitor to France although everyone there was clamoring for him. It was he who demolished the philosophical system of de Lamennais, and at the same time restrained the hotheads of the French provinces from accepting and teaching the new doctrine. His "Examen of Certain Philosophical Doctrines" came out in 1831, and although his office of assistant gave him plenty of occupation, he taught theology, was a member of several pontifical congregations, and heard as many as 20,000 confessions a year. This immense labor was made possible by his rising at half past three in the morning, and by the clock-like punctuality and system with which he addressed himself to the various tasks of the day. In the cholera epidemic of 1837, despite his sixty-five years of age, he plunged into the work like the rest of his brethren and heard 23,000 confessions during the continuance of the plague.

When the Revolution of '48 broke out, Rozaven remained at Rome more or less secluded, but at last, when there was danger of his being taken to prison, a friend of his, the Count Rampon, said: "You will come to my château and I shall see that you are not molested." The protection was accepted, and a few nights after, a banquet was given at the château, to which the French ambassador and several conspicuous anti-Jesuit personages had been invited. When the guests were seated it was remarked that there was an empty place near the Count. "Are you waiting for someone else?" they asked. "Yes," he said, "I have here a very remarkable old gentleman whom I want to present to you. He is my friend and more worthy of respect than anyone in the whole world." Then leaving the room, he led Father Rozaven in by the hand and said to his guests in a loud voice: "Gentlemen, I have to present my friend, Father Rozaven, who has deigned to accept my hospitality. He is here under my protection and I place him under yours. If, contrary to my expectation, hatred pursues him into my house, the Count Rampon will defend his guest to the last drop of his blood." Then making a step backward, he swung open a door which revealed a formidable array of muskets, pistols and swords which would be available if the contingency he referred to arose. It is needless to say that Father Rozaven was treated with the most distinguished consideration, not only at the banquet but subsequently.

From there he went to Naples but, later, joined Father Roothaan in France. When Pius IX returned to Rome, the Father General and his faithful assistant returned also. But Rozaven had reached the end of his pilgrimage. In 1851 he fell seriously ill and breathed his last on April 2, at the age of seventy-nine. He had put in thirty years of incessant work since the time he had fought so valiantly in the twentieth congregation.

Besides Rozaven, there was present at the twentieth congregation the distinguished English Jesuit, Charles Plowden. He was born at Plowden Hall, Shropshire, in 1743, of a family which had not only steadfastly adhered to the Faith in all the persecutions that had desolated England, but had given several of its sons to the Society of Jesus and some of its daughters as nuns in religious orders. He entered the Society in 1759, and was ordained in Rome three years before the Suppression. He was in Belgium when the Brief was read and was kept in prison for several months. After teaching at Liège, he returned to England where he was appointed chaplain at Lulworth Castle, and as such preached there at Bishop Carroll's consecration. He had much to do with the establishment of Stonyhurst and was the first master of novices in England after the re-establishment, subsequently he was rector of Stonyhurst and provincial. It was he who, with Fathers Mattingly and Sewall, called upon Benjamin Franklin in Paris to persuade him to crush the scheme of making the Church of the United States dependent upon the ecclesiastical authorities of France. He died at Jougne, in France, on his way home from the congregation and was buried with military honors, because his attendant had informed the authorities of the little town that the dead man had been called to Rome for the election of a General. They mistook the meaning of the word "General", and so buried the humble Jesuit with all the pomp and ceremony that usually accompany the obsequies of a distinguished soldier.

On August 20, 1823, Pius VII, the great friend of the Society, died and it was with no little consternation that the Jesuits heard of the election of Leo XII. He was the same Cardinal della Genga who had endeavored to control the twentieth congregation and was supposed to have revealed his attitude towards the Society years before, when he advised Father Varin not to attempt to form a union between the Fathers of the Faith and the Jesuits in White Russia. Father Rozaven, especially, had reason for apprehension, for it was he who had thwarted della Genga's plans at the election of Fortis; but the fear proved to be groundless, and Rozaven hastened to assure his friends in France that in the three years that had intervened since that eventful struggle, God had operated a change in the mind of della Genga. As Sovereign Pontiff he became one of the most ardent friends of the Society.

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XXV. A CENTURY OF DISASTER

Expulsion from Holland--Trouble at Freiburg--Expulsion and recall in Spain--Petits Séminaires--Berryer--Montlosier --The Men's Sodalities--St. Acheul mobbed--Fourteen Jesuits murdered in Madrid--Interment of Pombal--de Ravignan's pamphlet--Veuillot--Montalembert--de Bonald--Archbishop Affre--Michelet, Quinet and Cousin--Gioberti--Expulsion from Austria--Kulturkampf--Slaughter of the Hostages in the Commune--South America and Mexico--Flourishing Condition before Outbreak of the World War.

When Pius VII restored the Society in 1814, he said it was because "he needed experienced mariners in the Barque of Peter which was tossed about on the stormy sea of the world." The storm had not abated. On the contrary its violence had increased, and the mariners who were honored by the call have never had a moment's rest since that eventful day when they were bidden to resume their work.

As early as 1816 the King of the Netherlands, William I, sent a band of soldiers to drive the Jesuits out of his dominions. He began with the novitiate of Destelbergen. Some of the exiles went to Hanover and others to Switzerland. The dispersion, however, did not check vocations. In 1819, for instance, Peter Beckx, who was then a secular priest in the parish of Uccle, never imagining, of course, that he was afterwards to be the General of the Society, entered the novitiate at Hildesheim. Before 1830 more than fifty applicants had been received. The figure is amazing, because it meant expatriation, paternal opposition, and a decree of perpetual exclusion from any public office in Holland. In spite of the law of banishment, however, a few priests succeeded in remaining in the country, exercising the functions of their ministry secretly.

In Russia, the Society, as mentioned above, had been cooped up in a restricted part of White Russia from 1815; on March 13, 1820, Alexander II extended the application of the decree of banishment to the entire country.

Then the storm broke on the Society in Freiburg, the occasion being a pedagogical quarrel with which the Jesuits had absolutely nothing to do. The people of the city were discussing the relative merits of the Pestalozzi and Lancaster systems for primary teaching; and to restore peace, the town council, at the bishop's request, closed all the schools. This drew down the public wrath on the head of the bishop, but as reverence for his official position protected him from open attack, someone suggested that the Jesuits were at the back of the measure. The result was that, at midnight on March 9, 1823, a mob attacked the Jesuit college, and clamored for its destruction. The bishop, however, wrote a letter assuming complete responsibility for the measure and the trouble then ceased.

After the fall of Napoleon, Talleyrand suggested to Louis XVIII to recall the Jesuits for collegiate work. But before his majesty had succeeded in making up his mind, the proposition became known and Talleyrand was driven from power in spite of a proclamation which he issued, assuring the public that he was always a foe of the Society. In the lull that followed, the Fathers were able to remain at their work, but four years afterwards, namely in 1819, they were expelled from Brest but continued to labor as missionaries in the remote country districts.

On May 15, 1815, they had been recalled to Spain by Ferdinand as a reparation for the sins of his ancestors and their reception was an occasion of public rejoicing--the Imperial College itself being entrusted to them. They then numbered about one hundred, and in the space of five years there were one hundred and ninety-seven on the catalogue. They were left at peace for a time, but in 1820 throngs gathered in the streets around their houses, clamoring for their blood, and a bill was drawn up for their expulsion. By a notable--or was it an intentional?--coincidence the document bore the date of July 31, the feast of the Spanish saint, Ignatius Loyola. The feeling against them was so intense that three Fathers, who had been acclaimed all over Spain for their devotion to the plague-stricken, were taken out of their beds, thrown into prison and then sent into exile. Meantime, Father Urigoitia was murdered by a mob, near the famous cave of St. Ignatius at Manresa. The Pope and king protested in vain. Indeed the king was besieged in his palace and kept there until everything the rioters demanded was granted; he remained virtually a prisoner until the French troops entered Spain. In 1824 the Jesuits were recalled again, in 1825 the preparatory military school was entrusted to their care, as was the College of Nobles at Madrid in 1827.

In 1828 new troubles began for the French Jesuits. As they had been unable to have colleges of their own, they had accepted eight petits séminaires which were offered them by the bishops. This was before they had become known as Jesuits, for to all outward appearances they were secular priests. But, little by little, their establishments took on a compound character. Boys who had no clerical aspirations whatever asked for admittance, so that the management of the schools became extremely difficult and, of course, their real character soon began to be suspected by the authorities. Investigations were therefore ordered of all the petits séminaires of the country, though the measure was aimed only at the eight controlled by the Jesuits. As the interrogatory was very minute, it caused great annoyance to the bishops, who saw in it an attempt of the government to control elementary sacerdotal education throughout the country, and hence there was an angry protest from the whole hierarchy, with the exception of one prelate who had been a Constitutional bishop.

It was on this occasion that the younger Berryer pronounced his masterly discourse before the "General Council for the Defense of the Catholic Religion." He established irrefragably the point of law that "a congregation which is not authorized is not therefore prohibited"--a principle accepted by all the French courts until recently. Apart from the ability and eloquence of the plea, it was the more remarkable because his father had been one of the most noted assailants of the Society in 1826. The plea ended with this remarkable utterance: "Behold the result of all these intrigues, of all this fury, of all these outrages, of all this hate! Two ministers of State compel a legitimate monarchy to do what even the Revolution never dreamed of wresting from the throne. One of these ministers is the chief of the French magistracy, and the guardian of the laws; the other is a Catholic bishop, an official trustee of the rights of his brethren in the episcopate. Both of them are rivals in their zeal to exterminate the priesthood and to complete the bloody work of the Revolution. Applaud it, sacrilegious and atheistic race! Behold a priest who betrays the sanctuary! Behold a magistrate who betrays the courts of law and justice!"

Berryer's chief opponent was the famous Count de Montlosier whose "Memoire" was the sensation of the hour. It consisted of four chapters: 1. The Sodalities. 2. The Jesuits. 3. The Ultramontanes. 4. The Clerical Encroachments. These were described as "The Four Calamities which were going to subvert the throne." The Sodalities especially worried him, for they were, according to his conception of them, "apparently a pious assembly of angels, a senate of sages, but in reality a circle of intriguing devils." These sodalities or congregations, as they are called in France, had assumed an importance and effectiveness for good which is perhaps unequalled in the history of similar organizations elsewhere. Their founder was Father Delpuits, "whom it is a pleasure to name," said the eloquent Lacordaire, "for though others may have won more applause for their influence over young men, no one deserved it more."

When the Society was expelled from France in 1762, Delpuits became a secular priest and was offered a canonry by de Beaumont, the Archbishop of Paris. He gave retreats to the clergy and laity and especially to young collegians. During the Revolution, he was put in prison and then exiled, but he returned to France after the storm. There he met young Father Barat, who had just been released from prison and was anxious to join the Jesuits in Russia. Delpuits advised him to remain in France where men of his stamp were sorely needed and hence Barat did not enter the Society until 1814.

In 1801, following out the old Jesuit traditions, Delpuits organized a sodality, beginning with four young students of law and medicine. Others soon joined them, among them Laennec who subsequently became one of the glories of the medical profession as the inventor of auscultation. Then came two abbés and two brothers of the house of Montmorency. The future mathematician, Augustin Cauchy, and also Simon Bruté de Rémur who, at a later date, was to be one of the first bishops of the United States; Forbin-Janson, so eminent in the Church of France, was a sodalist, as were the three McCarthys, one of whom, Nicholas, became a Jesuit, and was regarded as the Chrysostom of France. The list is a long one. When Delpuits died in 1812, his sodalists erected a modest memorial above him, and inserted the S. J. after his name. That was two years prior to the re-establishment. A Sulpician then took up the work, but in 1814, he turned it over to Father de Clorivière who, in turn, entrusted it to Father Ronsin. Its good works multiplied in all directions, and branches were established throughout France. By the time Montlosier began his attacks, the register showed 1,373 names, though Montlosier assured the public that they were no less than 48,000. Among them were a great number of priests and even bishops, notably, Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston and subsequently, Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux. The last meeting of the sodality was held on July 18, 1830. Paris was then in the Revolution and the sodality was suppressed, but rose again to life later on.

While this attack on the sodalists was going on, the Jesuits of course were assailed on all sides. The fight grew fiercer every day until the "Journal des Débats" was able to say: "The name Jesuit is on every tongue, but it is there to be cursed; it is repeated in every newspaper of the land with fear and alarm; it is carried throughout the whole of France on the wings of the terror that it inspires." As many as one hundred books, big and little, were counted in the Bibliothèque Nationale, all of which had been published in the year 1826 alone. They were the works not only of anonymous and money-making scribes, but of men like Thiers and the poet Béranger who did not think such literature beneath them. Casimir Périer appeared in the tribune against the Society, and the ominous name of Pasquier, whose bearer was possibly a descendant of the famous anti-Jesuit of the time of Henry IV, is found on the list of the orators. Lamennais got into the fray, not precisely in defense of the Jesuits, but to proclaim his ultra anti-Gallicanism; thus bringing that element into the war. Added to this was the old Jansenist spirit, which had not yet been purged out of France; indeed, Bournichon discovers traces of it in some of the Fathers of the Faith who had joined the Society.

Finally came the Revolution of 1830, during which the novitiate of Montrouge was sacked and pillaged. Other houses of France shared the same fate. On July 29 a mob of four or five hundred men attacked St. Acheul, some of the assailants shouting for the king, others for the emperor, others again for the Republic, but all uniting in: "Down with the priests! Death to the Jesuits!" Father de Ravignan attempted to talk to the mob, but his voice was drowned in the crashing of falling timbers. The bell was rung to call for help, but that only maddened the assailants the more. De Ravignan persisted in appealing to them, but was struck in the face by a stone and badly wounded. Then some one in the crowd shouted for drink, and wine was brought out. It calmed the rioters for a while, but while they were busy emptying bottles and breaking barrels, a troop of cavalry from Amiens swept down on them and they fled. The troopers however, came too late to save the house. It was a wreck and some of the Fathers were sent to different parts of the world--Italy, Switzerland, America or the foreign missions. But when there were no more popular outbreaks, many returned from abroad and gave their services to the French bishops, with the result that there never had been a period for a long time which had so many pulpit orators and missionaries as the reign of Louis-Philippe.

Pius VIII died on November 30, 1830, and it was a signal for an uprising in Italy. Thanks to Cardinal Bernetti, the Vicar of Rome, peace was maintained in the City itself, but elsewhere in the Papal States, the anti-Jesuit cry was raised. The colleges were closed and all the houses were searched, on the pretext of looking for concealed weapons. Meantime calumnious reports were industriously circulated against the reputations of the Fathers.

In the Spanish Revolution of 1820, twenty-five Jesuits were murdered. In 1833 civil war broke out between the partisans and opponents of Isabella and, for no reason whatever, two Jesuits were arrested and thrown into prison. One of them died after three months' incarceration. Meanwhile threats were made in Madrid to murder all the religious in the city. The Jesuits were to be the special victims for they were accused of having started the cholera, poisoned the wells, etc. July 17, 1834, was the day fixed for the deed, and crowds gathered around the Imperial College to see what might happen.

The pupils were at dinner. A police officer entered and dismissed them and then the mob invaded the house. Inside the building, three Jesuits were killed; a priest, a scholastic and a lay-brother. The priest had his skull crushed in, his teeth knocked out and his body horribly mangled. The scholastic was beaten with clubs; pierced through the body with swords, and when he fell in his blood, his head was cloven with an axe. Four of the community disguised themselves and attempted to escape but were caught and murdered in the street. Three more were killed on the roof; and two lay-brothers who were captured somewhere else were likewise butchered. The rest of the community had succeeded in reaching the chapel, and were on their knees before the altar, when an officer forced his way through the crowd and called for his brother who was one of the scholastics, to go with him to a place of safety. The young Jesuit refused the offer, whereupon the soldier replied: "Very well I shall take care of all of you." He kept his word and fifty-four Jesuits followed him out of the chapel and were conducted to a place of safety. The house, however, was gutted; unspeakable horrors were committed in the chapel; everything that could not be carried off was broken, and in the meantime a line of soldiers stood outside, not only looking on, but even taking sides with the rioters.

Evidently the times had passed when it was necessary to go out among the savages to die for the Faith. The savages had come to Madrid. Nor was this a conventional anti-Jesuit uprising; for on that hideous 17th of July, 1834, seventy-three members of other religious communities were murdered in the dead of night in the capital of Catholic Spain. Nevertheless Father General Roothaan wrote to his Jesuit sons: "I am not worried about our fourteen who have so gloriously died, for 'blessed are those who die in the Lord.' What causes me most anguish is the danger of those who remain; most of them still young, who are scattered abroad, in surroundings where their vocation and virtue will be exposed to many dangers." Nothing was done to the murderers, and before another year had elapsed, a decree was issued expelling the Jesuits from the whole of Spain; but as Don Carlos was just then in the field asserting his claim to the throne, a large number of the exiles from other parts of Spain, were able to remain at Loyola in the Pyrenees until 1840.

The Portuguese had waited for fifteen years after Pius VII had re-established the Society before consenting to re-admit the Jesuits. Don Miguel issued a decree to that effect on July 10, 1829, and the Countess Oliviera, a niece of Pombal, was the first to welcome them back and to place her boys in their college. The Fathers were given their former residence in Lisbon and, shortly afterwards, the Bishop of Evora established them in their old college in that city. In 1832 they were presented with their own college at Coimbra, and on their way thither they laid in the tomb the still unburied remains of their arch-enemy, Pombal, which had remained in the morgue ever since March 5, 1782,--a space of half a century. It seemed almost like a dream. Indeed it was little else, for Dom Miguel, who was then on the throne, was deposed by his rival, Dom Pedro, soon after, and on July 20, 1833 the Jesuits of Lisbon were again expelled. The decree was superfluous, for in the early Spring, their house had been sacked, and on that occasion the inmates would have been killed had not a young Englishman, a former student of Stonyhurst, appeared on the scene. The four that were there he took on his yacht to England, the others had already departed for Genoa.

Hatred for the Society, however, had nothing to do with it. The whole affair was purely political. Had the Fathers accepted Dom Pedro's invitation to go out among the people and persuade them to abandon the cause of the deposed king, they would have been allowed to remain. They were expelled for not being traitors to their lawful sovereign. The Fathers of Coimbra contrived to remain another year, but on May 26, 1834, they were seized by a squad of soldiers and marched off to Lisbon. Fortunately the French ambassador, Baron de Mortier, interceded for them, otherwise they would have ended their days in the dungeons of San Sebastian, to which they had already been sentenced. They were released on June 28, 1834, and sent by ship to Italy and from there, along with the dispersed Spaniards were sent by Father Roothaan to France and South America.

Switzerland, which is the land of liberty to such an extent that it will harbor the worst kind of anarchists, refused to admit the Jesuits, at least in some parts of it. There were seven Catholic Cantons, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Fribourg and Valais. These sections formed a coalition known as the Sunderbund. A war broke out between them and the other cantons, but the Sunderbund was defeated. The Jesuits were then expelled from the little town of Sion where they had an important school. In 1845 the people of Lucerne asked for a college, and though Father Roothaan refused, Pope Gregory XVI insisted on it. The expected happened. The Radicals arose in a rage and with 10,000 men laid siege to Lucerne. They were beaten, it is true, but that did not insure the permanency of the college. In 1847 the Sunderbund was again defeated, and in 1848 when the general European revolution broke out, the College of Fribourg was looted, and its collection of Natural History which was regarded as among the best on the Continent was thrown out in the street.

The rumblings of the storm began to be heard in France on May 1, the Feast of the Apostles Philip and James, Louis-Philippe's name-day. Someone in the Tuilleries said that the Jesuits were starting a conspiracy against the throne. Happily a distinguished woman heard the remark, and admitted that she was concerned in it, along with 300 other conspicuous representatives of the best families of France. It was a charity lottery and most of the conspirators had received a pot or basket of flowers for their participation in the plot.

When that myth was exploded, the "Journal des Débats" attacked de Ravignan for his wide influence over many important people in Paris, and though admitting his unquestioned probity, added "What matters his virtue, if he brings us the pest?" The word caught the popular fancy, but it brought out de Ravignan's famous reply: "De l'éxistence et de l'institut des Jésuites." It was received with immense favor, applauded by such men as Vatemesnil, Dupanloup, Montalembert, Barthélemy, Beugnot, Berryer and others. In this year 1844 alone, 25,000 copies were sold.

The root of the trouble was the university's monopoly of education; which was obnoxious even to many who cared little for religion. Catholics objected to it chiefly because Cousin, the Positivist, controlled its philosophy. Many of the bishops failed to see the danger until Father Delvaux published a digest of the utterances of many of the university professors on religious subjects. Then the battle began. On the Catholic side were such fighters as Veuillot, Montalembert, Cardinal de Bonald, Mgr. Parisis. Ranged against them were Michelet, Quinet, Sainte-Beuve and their followers. The battle waxed hotter as time went on; and the Jesuits soon became the general target. Cousin introduced the "Lettres Provinciales" in the course. Villemain in his Reports denounced "the turbulent and imperious Society which the spirit of liberty and the spirit of our government repudiate." Dupin glorified Etienne Pasquier, the old anti-Jesuit of the time of Henry IV; similar eulogies of the old enemy were pronounced in various parts of France; Quinet and Michelet did nothing else in their historical lectures than attack the Society, while Eugene Sue received 100,000 francs from the editor of the "Constitutionel" for his "Juif errant," which presented to the public the most grotesque picture of the Jesuits that was ever conceived. It was however, accepted as a genuine portrait.

The anti-Jesuit cry was of course the usual campaign device to alarm the populace. It was successful, chiefly because of the persistency with which it was kept up by the press, and, from 1842 till 1845, the book-market was glutted with every imaginable species of anti-Jesuit literature. Conspicuous among the pro-Jesuits were Louis Veuillot and the Comte de Montalembert. The royalist papers spoke in the Society's defense but feebly or not at all. Finally, a certain Marshall Marcet de la Roche Arnauld, who as a scholastic had been driven from the Society in 1824, and who had been paid to write against it, suddenly disavowed all that he had ever said. Crétineau-Joly also leaped into the fray with his rapidly written six volumes of the "History of the Society."

It would have been comparatively easy to continue the struggle with outside enemies, but in the very midst of the battle, the Archbishop of Paris, Affre, ranged himself on the side of the foe. He denied that the Jesuits were a religious order, for the extraordinary reason that they were not recognized by the State; their vows, consequently, were not solemn; and the members of the Society were in all things subject to the curé of the parish in which their establishment happened to be. He even exacted that he should be informed of everything that took place in the community, and if an individual was to be changed, His Grace was to be notified of it a month in advance. The archbishop, however, was not peculiar in these views. They were deduced from Bouvier's theology which was then taught in all the seminaries of France.

Of course, this affected other religious as well as the Jesuits, and, hence, when Dom Guéranger wanted to establish the Benedictines in Paris, the archbishop had no objection, except that "they had no legal existence in France." To this Guéranger immediately replied: "Monseigneur! the episcopacy has no legal existence in England, Ireland and Belgium, and perhaps the day will come when it will not have any in France, but the episcopacy will be no less sacred for all that." The great Benedictine then appealed to the Pope, and when the reply was handed to him, the Apostolic nuncio said: "It is not an ordinary Brief I give you, but an Apostolic Constitution." In it the archbishop was told by His Holiness that the French religious had not been destroyed because of the refusal of the government to give them a legal existence. His Grace had also received a communication from Father Roothaan, the General, who, after reminding him of the provision of canon law on the point at issue, warned him that if he persisted in his view the Jesuits would simply withdraw from his diocese.

Meantime the Pope had suspended the execution of the orders of the archbishop and shortly after, sent him the following severe admonition: "We admit, Venerable Brother, our inability to comprehend your very inconsiderate ruling with regard to the faculties for hearing confessions which you have withdrawn from the Jesuit Fathers, or by what authority or for what reason you forbid them either to leave the city or to enter it, without notifying you a month in advance; especially as this Society, on account of the immense services it has rendered to the Church, is held in great esteem by far-seeing and fervent Catholics and by the Holy See itself. We know also that it is calumniated by people who have abandoned the Faith and by those who have no respect for the authority of the Holy See and we regret that they will now use the authority of your name in support of their calumnies."

Of course the archbishop could do nothing else than obey. But he did not change his mind with regard to the objects of his hostility. Possibly he was constitutionally incapable of doing so. For he treated his cathedral chapter in the same fashion and we read in a communication from the French ambassador at Rome to Guizot who was then head of the Government that the canons of Paris had complained of being absolutely excluded from all influence or authority in the administration of the diocese. This note gives an insight into the methods of Gallicanism, which conceded that the disputes or differences of the clergy with the archbishop were to be passed upon by a minister of state even if he were a Protestant.

The trouble did not end there and the Parliamentary session of 1844 marked a very notable epoch in the history of the French province of the Society and of the Church of France. M. Villemain presented a bill which proposed to reaffirm and reassure the university's monopoly of the education of the country. It explicitly excluded all members of religious congregations from the function of teaching. It is true that there was not a single word in it about the Jesuits, nevertheless in the stormy debates that it evoked, and in which the most prominent men of the nation participated, there was mention of not one other teaching body. Almost the very first speaker, Dupin, pompously proclaimed that "France did not want that famous Society which owes allegiance to a foreign superior and whose instruction is diametrically opposed to what all lovers of the country desire" nor was it desirable that "these religious speculators should slip in through the meshes of the law." His last word was: "Let us be implacable." In the official Report, however, "implacable" became "inflexible." The ministerial and university organ, the "Journal des Débats," admitted that such was the purpose of the bill.

Villemain fancied that he had silenced the bishops by leaving them full authority over the little seminaries. He was quickly disillusioned. From the entire hierarchy individually and collectively came indignant repudiations of the measure and none was fiercer than the protest of Mgr. Affre, Archbishop of Paris. He denounced the university as "a centre of irreligion" and as perverting in the most flagrant manner the youth of France. "You reproach us," he said, "with disturbing the country by our protests. Yes, we have raised our voices, but the university has committed the crime. We may embarrass the throne for the present, but in the university are to be found all the perils of the future." The excitement was so intense that the government actually put the Abbé Combalot in jail for an article he wrote against the bill, and the whole hierarchy was threatened with being summoned before the council of state if they persisted in their opposition.

Montalembert was more than usually eloquent in the course of the parliamentary war. To Dupin who exhorted the peers to be "implacable" he replied: "In the midst of a free people, we, Catholics, refuse to be slaves; we are the successors of the martyrs and we shall not quail before the successors of Julian the Apostate; we are the sons of the Crusaders and we shall not recoil before the sons of Voltaire."

There were thirty-five or forty discourses and twelve or fifteen of the speakers described the Society as "the detested congregation," while the members who admitted the injustice and the odious tyranny of the proposed legislation made haste to assure their constituents that they had no use for the Jesuits. Cousin consumed three hours in assailing them; another member of the Dupin family saw "an appalling danger to the State in the fact that Montalembert could speak of them without cursing them, and that the peers could listen to him in silence, while he extolled the poisoners of the pious Ganganelli." Others insisted that the Jesuits had dragged the episcopate into the fight; even Guizot declared that "public sentiment inexorably repudiated the Jesuits and the other congregations, who are the champions of authority and the enemies of private judgment." The great man was not aware that the same reproach might be and is addressed to the Church.

The measure was finally carried by 85 against 51, but the heavy minority disconcerted the government and better hopes were entertained in the lower house to which Villemain presented his bill on June 10th. There it was left in the hands of Thiers, and it did not reach the Assembly, as a body, for an entire month. As the summer vacations were at hand, the projet de loi was dropped. Guizot then conceived the plan of appealing directly to the Pope to suppress the French Jesuits. He chose as his envoy an Italian named Rossi, who had been banished from Bologna, Naples and Florence as a revolutionist. After a short stay at Geneva, he made his way to France where, by Protestant influence, chiefly that of Guizot, he advanced rapidly to very distinguished and lucrative positions. The country was shocked to hear that an Italian and a Protestant should represent the nation at the court of the Pope from whose dominions he had been expelled, but Guizot intended by so doing, to express the sentiments of his government. It was an open threat. Rossi arrived in Rome and presented his credentials on April 11.

The French Jesuits who had been expelled from Portugal did not return to their native country; for Charles X, discovering at last that the Liberals, as they called themselves, had played him false, resolved to have a thoroughgoing monarchical government; and, to carry out his purpose, made the inept Polignac prime minister. On July 25 he signed four ordinances, the first of which restricted the liberty of the press; the second dissolved parliament; the third diminished the electorate to 25,000. The next day, the press was in rebellion; Charles abdicated and sailed for England. Of course the Revolution was anti-religious and the Jesuits were the first sufferers. House after house was wrecked and the scholastics were gathered together and hurried off to different countries in Europe. Thus ended the first sixteen years of the Society's existence in France, after the promulgation of the Bull of Pius VII "Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum."

The first successor of Father de Clorivière as vice-provincial was Father Simpson. France was made a province in 1820, and on the death of Father Simpson, the new General, Father Fortis, appointed Father Richardot, who at the end of his three years' term asked to be relieved. In 1814 Godinot was appointed, because none of those who had been proposed for the office had been more than ten years in the Society. Godinot himself had been admitted only in 1810. He had been vice-provincial of the Fathers of the Faith, and eleven years after his admission, was directing the scattered Jesuit establishments in Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany. In Switzerland, he had given the impulse to the college of Fribourg, which afterwards became so famous. It is worth noting that when he was a Father of the Faith he was a member of the community of Sion in Valais which enjoyed the exceptional privilege of being united as a body to the Society. Everywhere else each individual had to be admitted separately.

On April 14, the peers met to discuss a very exciting subject. A protest had come from Marseilles signed by 89 electors, against the books of Michelet and Quinet. Immediately Cousin was on his feet and ascribed it to the Jesuits. A few days later, another topic engrossed their attention. Dupin's "Manual of Ecclesiastical Law" had been condemned by Cardinal de Bonald, and more than sixty bishops concurred with him in prohibiting the book. At Rome, it was put on the Index, along with Cousin's "History of Philosophy." The anti-Catholics were in a fury, and on April 24, Cousin addressed the House. At the end of a three hour discourse which he began, unbeliever though he was, by protesting his respect for "the august religion of his country," he concluded by saying that "probably the action of the bishops was due to the Jesuits" and therefore he called for the enforcement of the law for their suppression. The question now arose, whether they could proceed to the suppression by force of law while the government actually had an envoy at Rome to dispose of the affair in a different fashion. It was decided that the non-authorized congregations would be suppressed, no matter what might be the outcome of Rossi's mission. Such a resolution was a gross diplomatic insult, but they cared little for that.

Meanwhile no news had come from Rossi. He had been left in the ante-chamber of the Pope until the Abbé de Bonnechose had succeeded in getting him an audience, a service which de Bonnechose had some difficulty in explaining when he was subsequently made a cardinal. A congregation of cardinals was named to discuss Guizot's proposition, and it was unanimously decided to reject it; and when Rossi asked what he had to do, he was told he might address himself to the General of the Society. To make it easy for him, Lambruschini, the papal secretary of state, proposed to Father Roothaan to diminish the personnel of some of the houses which were too much in evidence or remove them elsewhere. As for dissolution of the communities or banishment from France, not a word was said.

Immediately Rossi despatched a messenger to Paris with the account of what had been done, and twelve days afterwards the "Moniteur" stated: "The Government has received news from Rome that the negotiations with which M. Rossi was entrusted have attained their object. The congregation of the Jesuits will cease to exist in France and will, of its own accord, disperse. Its houses will be closed and its novitiates dissolved." On July 15, Guizot was asked by the peers to show the alleged documents. He answered that "they were too precious to give to the public." They have been unearthed since, and it turns out that Guizot's notice in the "Moniteur" does not correspond with the despatch of Rossi who merely said, "the Congregation is going to disperse;" and instead of saying "the houses will be closed," he wrote: "only a small number of people will remain in each house." In brief, the famous Guizot, so renowned for his integrity, prevaricated in this instance, and one of the worst enemies of everything Jesuitical, Dibidous, who wrote a "History of the Church and State in France from 1789 to 1870" declares bluntly that Guizot's note in the "Moniteur" was not only a lie but "an impudent lie."

A great many militant Catholics in France were indignant that Father Roothaan had not defied the government on this occasion. Yet probably those same perfervid souls would have denounced him, had he acted as they wished. He knew perfectly well that the government was only too anxious to get out of the mess in which it found itself, and the little by-play which was resorted to harmed nobody and secured at least a temporary respite.

"To gain the support of the Catholics against the anarchical elements which were everywhere revealing themselves," says the Cambridge History (XI, 34) "Guizot had tolerated the unauthorized Congregations. This had the immediate consequence of concentrating popular attention upon those religious passions whose existence the populace, if left to itself, might have forgotten. Even the colleagues of Guizot, such as Villemain and the editors of the "Journal des Débats," the leading ministerial organ, began by declaring that they saw everywhere the finger of the Jesuits. In each party, men's minds were so divided on the subject of the Jesuits or rather that of educational liberty which was so closely linked with it, that nothing of immediate gravity to the Government would for the moment arise." Liberals, or rather Republicans, such as Quinet and Michelet, in their lectures at the Collège de France took up the alarm and spread it broadcast.

Bournichon in his "Histoire d'un Siècle," (II, 492) calls attention to the fact that this attack was apparently against the Jesuits, but in reality against the Church. The "Revue Indépendante" did not hesitate to make the avowal that "Jesuitism is only a formula which has the merit of uniting all the popular hatred for what is odious and retrograde in a degenerate religion." Cousin started the hue and cry, in this instance, and Thureau-Dangin in his "Histoire de la monarchie de Juillet" (p. 503-10) says that "Quinet and Michelet transformed their courses into bitter and spiteful diatribes against the Jesuits. Both were hired for the work, and did not speak from conviction." "Quinet," says Bournichon (II, 494) "was quite indifferent to religious matters and had passed for a harmless thinker and dreamer up to that moment. As for Michelet, he had obtained his position in the Ecole Normale from Mgr. Frayssinous, yet he forgot his benefactor, and maintained that not only the Jesuits but Christianity was an obstacle to human progress; paganism or even fetichism was preferable, and Christ had to be dethroned."

Guizot removed Villemain from the office of Minister of public instruction and reprimanded Michelet and Quinet. Then Thiers seized the occasion to denounce Guizot for favoring the religious congregations and succeeded in defeating the minister's measure for educational freedom. It was at this stage that Guizot sent his envoy Rossi to Rome to induce Pope Gregory XVI to recall the Jesuits so as to extricate the French government from its difficulty. The Pope refused, as we have seen, and Father Roothaan merely gave orders to the members of the Society in France to make themselves less conspicuous.

In 1847 Gioberti published his "Gesuita Moderno" which unfortunately had the effect of creating in the minds of the Italian clergy a deep prejudice against the Society. Gioberti was a priest and a professor of theology. He first taught Rosminianism, and then opposed it. Under the pen-name of "Demofilo" or the "People's Friend" he wrote articles for Mazzini in the "Giovane Italia," and was the author of "Del Buono" and "Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani." His first attack on the Society appeared in 1845 in the "Prolegomeni al Primato;" "Il Gesuita Moderno," a large sized pamphlet full of vulgar invective, appeared in 1847. It was followed in 1848 by the "Apologia del Gesuita Moderno." He was answered by Father Curci. Deserting Mazzini, Gioberti espoused the cause of King Charles Albert, and founded a society to propagate the idea of a federated Italy with the King of Piedmont at its head. His last book, "Rinnovamento civile d'Italia" showed him to be the enemy of the temporal power of the papacy. His philosophy is a mixture of pantheistic ontology, rationalism, platonism and traditionalism. Though a revolutionist, he denied the sovereignty of the people. His complete works fill thirty-five volumes.

Of course the Society felt the shock of the Italian Revolution of 1848. Gioberti's writing had excited all Italy and as a consequence the Jesuit houses were abandoned. At Naples, the exiles were hooted as they took ship for Malta; they were mobbed in Venice and Piedmont. The General Father Roothaan left Rome on April 28 in company with a priest and a lay-brother, and as he stood on the deck at Genoa, he heard the cry from the shore, "You have Jesuits aboard; throw them overboard." There was nothing surprising in all this, however, for Rossi, the Pope's prime minister, was stabbed to death while mounting the steps of the Cancelleria. On the following day, the Pope himself was besieged in the Quirinal; Palma, a Papal prelate, was shot while standing at a window; and finally on November 24, Pope Pius fled in disguise to Gaeta.

In Austria, the Jesuits were expelled in the month of April. The community of Innsbruck, which is in the Tyrol, held together for some time, but finally drifted off to France or America or Australia or elsewhere. The emperor signed the decree on May 7, 1848. It applied also to Galicia, Switzerland, and Silesia, and the Jesuit houses all disappeared in those parts.

What happened to the Jesuits in France in the meantime? Nothing whatever. They had obeyed the General in 1845, and had simply kept their activities out of sight. They did not wait for the Revolution, and hence although the "Journal des Débats," announced officially, on October 18, 1845, that "at the present moment there are no more Jesuits in France," there were a great many. Indeed, the catalogues of 1846 and 1847 were issued as usual, not in print, however, but in lithograph, and as if they felt perfectly free in 1848, the catalogue of that year appeared in printed form. Meantime de Ravignan was giving conferences in Notre-Dame, and preaching all over the country. The only change the Fathers made was to transport two of their establishments beyond the frontiers. Thus a college was organized at Brugelette in Belgium and a novitiate at Issenheim. The scholasticate of Laval continued as usual. What was done in the province of Paris was identical with that of Lyons. For a year or so the catalogues were lithographed but after that they appeared in the usual form.

For two years Father Roothaan journeyed from place to place through France, Belgium, Holland, England, and Ireland, and in 1850 returned to Rome. The storm had spent itself, and the ruins it had caused were rapidly repaired, at least in France, where the Falloux Law, which was passed in 1850, permitted freedom of education, and the Fathers hastened to avail themselves of the opportunity to establish colleges throughout the country.

Elsewhere, however, other conditions prevailed. In 1851 there was a dispersion in Spain; in 1859 the provinces of Venice and Turin were disrupted and the members were distributed through the fifteen other provinces of the Society. In 1860 the arrival of Garibaldi had already made an end of the Jesuits in Naples and Sicily. The wreckage was considerable, and from a complaint presented to King Victor Emmanuel by Father Beckx, it appears that the Society had lost three establishments in Lombardy; in Modena, six; in Sardinia, eleven; in Naples, nineteen, and in Sicily, fifteen. Fifteen hundred Jesuits had been expelled from their houses, as if they had been criminals, and were thrown into public jails, abused and ill-treated. They were forbidden to accept shelter even from their most devoted friends, and the old and the infirm had to suffer like the rest. Nor were these outrages perpetrated by excited mobs, but by the authorities then established in Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, Modena and elsewhere. "This appeal for justice and reparation for at least some of the harm done," said Father Beckx, "is placed, as it were, on the tomb of your ancestor Charles Emmanuel, who laid aside his royal dignity and entered the Society of Jesus as a lay-brother. He surely would not have embraced that manner of life if it were iniquitous." But it is not on record that Victor Emmanuel showed his appreciation of his predecessor's virtue by healing any of the wounds of the Society, whose garb Charles Emmanuel had worn.

The Jesuits of Venice had resumed work in their province, when in 1866 war was declared between Prussia and Austria. Sadowa shattered the Austrian forces, and though the Italians had been badly beaten at Custozzio, Venice was handed over to them by the treaty that ended the war. That meant of course another expulsion. Most of the exiles went to the Tyrol and Dalmatia. Then followed the dispersion of all the provinces of Italy except that of Rome.

The Spanish Jesuits had recovered somewhat from the dispersions of 1854, but, in 1868 just as the provincial congregations had concluded their sessions, a revolution broke out all over Spain. Many of the houses were attacked, but no personal injuries were inflicted. After a while, a provisional government was established at Madrid which held the mob in check but made no pretence to restrain the attacks on priests and nuns. Indeed, it inaugurated a bitter persecution on its own account. The minister of justice issued a decree which not only ordered the Jesuits out of all Spain and the adjacent islands within three days, but forbade any Spaniard to join the Society, even in foreign parts. Of course all the property was confiscated. That was probably the chief motive of the whole procedure. The outcasts for the most part went to France, and a temporary novitiate was established in the territory known as Les Landes. They returned home after some time, but were expecting another expulsion in 1912 when the great war was threatening. Possibly the hideous scenes enacted in Portugal in 1912 were deemed sufficient by the revolutionists for the time being.

The expatriation of the Jesuits and other religious from Portugal which was decreed by the Republican government, on October 10, 1910, six days after the bombardment of the royal palace and the flight of King Manuel, is typical of the manner in which such demonstrations are made in Europe. We have an account of it from the Father provincial Cabral which we quote in part.

"After the press had been working up the populace for three years to the proper state of mind by stories of subterranean arsenals in the Jesuit colleges; the boundless wealth of the Fathers; their affiliated secret organizations; their political plots, etc., the colleges of Campolide and San Fiel were invaded. The occupants were driven out and led between lines of soldiers through a howling mob to the common jail. Those who had fled before the arrival of the soldiers were pursued across the fields with rifles, and when caught were insulted, beaten and spat upon, and led like the others to prison. They had to eat out of the dishes with their hands, and at night sentinels stood over them with loaded rifles and warned the victims that if they got up they would be shot. Abandoned women were sent in among them, but those poor creatures soon withdrew. The prisoners were then transferred to Caixas where they slept on the floor. Twenty-three were confined in a space that could scarcely accommodate three. They were kept there for four days, and were not allowed to leave the room for any reason whatever, and were told that they would be kept in that condition until they began to rot, and that then some of their rich friends would buy them off. They were photographed, subjected to anthropometric examinations, and their finger prints taken, etc. They were then expelled from the country and forbidden ever to return. They had only the clothes on their backs, and had no money except what was given them by some friends; their colleges with their splendid museums and libraries were confiscated, and in this condition they set out, old and young, the sick and the strong, to ask shelter from their brethren in other lands. It was almost a return to the days of Pombal."

In Germany the Kulturkampf began in 1870, and in 1872 a decree was signed by the Kaiser, on June 14, 1872, expelling all members of the Society, and with them the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Sacred Heart. Some of the Jesuits went to Holland; others to England and America. Contrary to expectations, this act of tyranny did not harm the German province, for, whereas it then numbered only 775, it now (1920) has 1210 on its roll, of whom 664 are priests.

France had its horror in 1871, when on May 24 and 26, Fathers Olivaint, Ducoudray, Caubert, Clerc and de Bengy were shot to death by the Communists, who were then in possession of Paris. It was not, however, a rising against the Jesuits. There were fifty-seven victims in all: priests, religious and seculars, were immolated. At their head, was the venerable Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Darboy. Again, on March 29, 1880, a decree issued by Jules Ferry brought about a new dispersion and the substitution of staffs of non-religious teachers in the Jesuit colleges. The law was not enforced, however, and little by little the Fathers returned to their posts. Then followed the law of Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 against unauthorized congregations, which closed all their houses, for these religious declined to apply for authorization which they knew would be refused, or if not, would be used to oppress them. The communities were, therefore, scattered in various houses of Europe. The last blow was the summons sent to all parts of the world for every Frenchman not exempt from military service to take part in the great World War, as chaplains, hospital aids or common soldiers.

The simultaneity as well as the similarity in the methods of executing these multiplied expulsions show clearly enough that they were not accidental but part of a universal war against the Church. Thus, at the other ends of the earth, similar outrages were being committed. When, for instance, the Conservatives fell from power in Colombia, South America, in 1850, the Jesuits were expelled. They went from there to Ecuador and Guayaquil, but were left unmolested only for a year. In 1861 they were re-admitted, and soon had fifty mission stations and had succeeded in converting 10,000 natives to the faith. But Garcia Moreno who had invited them was assassinated, and forthwith they were expelled. A second time they were recalled, but remained only from 1883 to 1894, and from there they returned to Colombia where they are at present. In Argentina, whither they were summoned in 1836, their houses were closed in 1841. They entered Paraguay in 1848, where the old Society had achieved such triumphs, but were allowed to remain there only three years. They asked the Chilian government to let them evangelize the fierce Araucanian savages, but this was refused. At the death of the dictator Rosas in 1873, they again went to Argentina and have not since been disturbed. They have had the same good fortune in Chile.

A different condition of things, however, obtained in Brazil. In the very year that Rosas died in Argentina, 1873, the Jesuit College of Olinda in Brazil was looted and the Fathers expelled. The reason was not that the Jesuits were objectionable but that the bishop had suspended a young ecclesiastic who was a Freemason. The College of Pernambuco was wrecked by a mob, and one of the priests was dangerously wounded. Worse treatment was meted out to them when the Emperor, Don Pedro, was deposed in 1889. Since then, however, there has been comparatively no trouble.

Of course, when the Piedmontese broke down the Porta Pia the Jesuits had to leave Rome, where until then they had been undisturbed. The novitiate of S. Andrea was the first to be seized; then St. Eusebio, the house of the third probation, and after that, St. Vitalis, the Gesù, and finally the Roman College. The occupants had three months to vacate the premises. The other religious orders whose general or procurator resided at Rome could retain one house for the transaction of business but that indulgence was not granted to the Jesuits. Their General was not to remain, and hence Father Peter Beckx, though then seventy-eight years old, had to depart with his brethren for Fiesole, where he was received in the family of the Counts of Ricasole on November 9, 1873. From that place he governed the Society until the year 1884, when he was succeeded by Father Anthony Anderledy, who remained in the same city until he died. Father Luis Martín, the next General, returned to Rome in 1893, so that Fiesole was the centre of the Society for twenty years.

As the chief representative of Christ on Earth is the most prominent victim of these spoliations, and as he has been frequently driven into exile and is at present only tolerated in his own territory, the Society of Jesus with the other religious orders cannot consider it a reproach but rather a glory to be treated like him. How does the Society survive all these disasters? It continues as if nothing had happened, and one reads with amazement the statement of Father General Wernz at the meeting of the procurators held in September and October 1910, when in a tone that is almost jubilant he congratulates the Society on its "flourishing condition." He said in brief:

"There are five new provinces; a revival of the professed houses; new novitiates, scholasticates, tertianships and courses in the best colleges for students of special subjects; and a superior course for Jesuit students of canon law in the Gregorian University. Next year there are to be accommodations for 300 theologians (boarders) at Innsbruck, which institution will be a Collegium Maximum for philosophy, theology and special studies. The novitiate is to be moved to the suburbs of Vienna. In the province of Galicia sufficient ground has been bought to make the College of Cracow similar to Innsbruck, and a beautiful church is being built there. The province of Germany though dispersed has built in Holland an immense novitiate and house of retreats and the Luxemburg house of writers is to be united to the Collegium Maximum of Valkenburg. The Holland province has more diplomated professors than any other in the Society, and is about to build a new scholasticate. Louvain is becoming more and more a house of special studies. In England, the Campion house at Oxford is continuing its success and there is question of moving St. Beuno's. The Irish province is looking for another site for the novitiate and juniorate, and is using the University to form better teachers. Canada is looking for another place for its novitiate and so are Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, while Maryland is trying to put its scholasticate near New York.

"Not much remains to be done in Spain. However, Toledo has established a scholasticate in Murcia, and Aragon is planning one for Tarragona. France is dispersed, but it has furnished excellent professors for the Biblical Institute and the Gregorian University. In the mission of Calcutta, 130,000 pagans have been brought to the Faith and in one Chinese mission, 12,000. The numbers could be doubled if there were more workers." This was in 1910, and within a week of this pronouncement, the expulsion in Portugal took place; in 1914 the war broke out which shattered Belgium and made France more wretched than ever. What the future will be no one knows.

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