Great was the consternation of the royalists, and greater the rejoicing of the adverse party, at this tragic event. The Council of Seize[170] met on the 6th of September, and addressed a letter to all the preachers, in which, among other things, was the following exhortation:—“You must justify Jacques Clement’s deed, because it is the same as that of Judith, which is so much commended in Holy Writ.”[171] Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, the legitimate heir, after the death of Henry III., assumed the title of king of France, and was supported by the less bigoted of the Roman Catholics and by all the Calvinists. The Cardinal de Bourbon, on the other hand, also took the title of king, and was supported by the fanatic Papists, headed by all the priests and monks in the kingdom. Philip of Spain, the life and guardian of the League, sent an army to its aid; and the Pope despatched Cardinal Cajetan, accompanied by two Jesuits, with large sums of money, to foment and maintain the revolt against the excommunicated Henry IV.
Sixtus V. at first shewed great zeal in opposing the right of the heretic Henry of Navarre.[172] He promised to send 18,000 infantry and 700 horse into France. He threatened the Venetians with excommunication for having acknowledged Henry IV. as king, and for once relaxed the reins of his well-known parsimony, by sending his legate a sum of money to continue the war in France. But, when he perceived what were the projects of Philip; when he learned that that monarch proposed to marry his daughter the Infanta to the young Duke of Guise, who was to assume the title of king; and when Les Seize, instigated by the Jesuits, renouncing every national feeling, went so far as to proclaim Philip king of France, Sixtus, afraid of the domineering spirit of Philip, and the absolute power he would acquire if successful in his design, relaxed in his enmity towards Henry—expressed regret for having excommunicated him—and gave other tokens of the change his opinion had undergone. The legate, however, disregarding the Pope’s intentions, carried out his first instructions with unremitting zeal.[173]
The civil war, with all its horrors, lasted for five years. To shorten it, Henry descended to an act which has tarnished his glory, and the fame of his virtue. He abjured the doctrines of Calvinism to enter into communion with the Church of Rome, which he despised, and excused himself by saying, “Paris vaut bien une messe”—Paris is well worth a mass.[174]
But his apostasy availed him little. The Parisians continued firm against him. The monks, and especially the Jesuits, encouraged them in their resistance. Priests and soldiers simultaneously, they passed from the pulpit to the besieged walls, replacing the sacerdotal robes by a coat of mail, the crucifix by a spear. Solemn processions crossed the town and called upon the people to be firm in defence of their faith, trusting in God to protect them and to bless their impious enterprise. The Pope’s legate, dressed in his pontifical robes, was foremost in these processions, and supported the fanaticism of the multitude, to whom he dispensed a thousand benisons. On the other hand, Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, the same who, after the assassination of Henry, wrote to his master, “We must ascribe this happy event to the Almighty alone”—Mendoza, to divert the hunger of the deluded Parisians, distributed, in the name of his Most Catholic Majesty Philip, some Spanish coin to the populace, who, thus encouraged, raised the shout, “Long life to our king Philip!” It is painful to think of all the horrors which this misguided people endured while they listened to the persuasions of the priests to persist in their rebellion. At last hunger, all-powerful hunger, proved stronger than the king’s army. Famished Paris yielded, and Henry ascended the throne of his ancestors.
Thus ended the League. Let us now see what share the Jesuits had in it. Mezarai, speaking of the League, says, “The zealous Catholics were the chief instruments in it; the new monks (the Jesuits) the paranymphs and trumpeters; and the nobles of the kingdom the authors and chiefs.”[176] From its very beginning, the Jesuits were the most ardent promoters of the League. They ran from place to place, from country to country, to enlist new supporters, and to strengthen the tie of the holy union. Claude Matthieu, the Provincial, went several times from Paris to Rome, to obtain the Pope’s approval of the holy union.[177] He was called the messenger of the League; and Pasquier, in his old, quaint style, in speaking of another Jesuit, says, “As the Company of the Jesuits was composed of all sorts of people, les uns pour la plume, les autres pour le poil, so they had among them one Father Henry Sammier, a man inclined and adapted to all kinds of daring.[178] He was sent by the League in 1581 to various Catholic princes pour sonder le gué, to sound the ford; and, to speak the truth, they could not have chosen a fitter man, for he changed himself into as many different forms as the different affairs he had to undertake—sometimes dressed as a trooper, sometimes as a priest, sometimes as a simple beggar. He was acquainted with cards, dice, ... as well as with his canonical hours; and in doing this, he said that he could not sin, since it was to arrive at a good end.”[179] But, without referring to ancient authors, two lines from Crétineau will say more than we could. “It was at this epoch” (1584), says he, “that the League acquired all its consistency, and it is at the same epoch that you may see the Jesuits in Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, joining the insurrection and organising it.”[180] And of this insurrection, or civil war, Pasquier, an eye-witness, says,—“It was less a civil war than a coupe-gorge—a cut-throat. The colleges of the Jesuits were, as was notorious, the general rendezvous of persons hostile to the king. There were fabricated their gospels in cipher—se forgoient leurs Evangiles en chiffre—which they sent into foreign countries. There their apostles were distributed among the different provinces, some, to keep the troubles alive by their preaching, as did Father Commolet in Paris, and Father Rouillet at Bourges; others, to preach murder and assassination, as did Father Varade and the same Father Commolet.”[181] But we need not multiply quotations to prove that they had a great share in exciting these troubles. They themselves confess it with pride. In their Litteræ Annuæ of 1589, they represent the murder of the king as a miracle which happened the very day they were expelled from Bordeaux. When Clement’s mother came to Paris, the Jesuits called upon the people to worship her; the portrait of the assassin, now called a martyr, was exposed on the altars to public veneration, and they even proposed to erect a statue to him in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
We will, however, admit that all the Jesuits were not fanatic Leaguers; not because they disapproved of the League, but simply from good policy, or from interested motives. Auger, the king’s confessor, and who wished to be provincial, sided with his penitent; and the General Acquaviva, the ablest and most profound politician of his time, disapproved of the Society’s engaging so deeply with one party as to cause the ruin of the order if the other triumphed. He forbade the Jesuits who were in France to take part in the contest (which advice, however, they disregarded), and begged permission of the Pope to command his subordinate Father Matthieu to leave France, and betake himself to a distant country—which clearly proves, that the Jesuits in France acted under the Pope’s own authority. “But Sixtus V.,” says Crétineau, “was not so gentle as Gregory XIII.; when he met an enemy, he fought with him; accordingly he answered the General that the Leaguers acted very rightly, and only did their duty.”[182] Acquaviva, however, was as jealous of his authority as the imperious and terrible Sixtus. When Father Matthieu arrived at Loretto on his return to France, the General ordered him not to leave the town without his consent; and the poor messenger died a few months after, from sheer inactivity. Auger, for reasons unknown to us, was recalled. Another provincial, Father Pigenat, was sent to France—a man who, in the language of De Thou, “was a furious Leaguer, and as fanatic as a Corybante,” and who, according to Arnauld, “was the most cruel tiger that prowled through Paris.” In fact, after his arrival, the Jesuits became still more audacious, and engaged in more criminal proceedings.
After Henry IV. had abjured the Protestant faith, and when he was at Melun, a man was arrested on suspicion of having come thither to make an attempt upon his life. Barrière—such was the assassin’s name—to escape the torture, acknowledged his guilt. He confessed that having consulted with Aubrey, a curate of Paris, regarding his project, he was highly commended, and sent to Varade, the rector of the Jesuits, who confirmed him in his praiseworthy resolution, and gave him his benediction; that next morning he confessed to another Jesuit, and received the communion. Barrière repeated on the scaffold the declaration he had already made; and Pasquier, who was at Melun at the time, declares that he had examined the culprit, had read the informations and depositions, and even handled the knife with which the crime was to have been perpetrated.[183] Mezarai confirms the testimony of Pasquier in the most unequivocal manner. “When the king,” says he, “had reduced Paris to submission, he gave a safe-conduct to the Cardinal of Plaisance, who had acted with so much energy against him, and granted him permission to take with him Aubrey, curate of St André des Arcs, and the Jesuit Varade, although culpable of participating in the horrible assassination of Barrière.”[184]
Barrière was executed, but his fate did not deter other fanatics from making similar attempts, nor the Jesuits from giving them encouragement. A few months after Henry had made his entrance into Paris, a youth of nineteen, named John Chastel, raised an impious hand against the king. The blow was aimed at his throat, but happening to bend his head at the instant to salute one of his courtiers, it only wounded his lips. Chastel was a student of philosophy in the Jesuits’ College under Father Gueret. He confessed that “in the Jesuits’ house, he had been often in the chamber of meditation, into which the Jesuits introduced the greatest sinners, where they were shewn the pictures of devils and other frightful figures to induce them to lead a better life, and, by working upon their spirits, to induce them by these admonitions to perform some extraordinary deed.” He further confessed that he had heard the Jesuits say “that it was lawful to kill the king, since he was out of the Church; and that no one ought to obey him, or acknowledge him as king, till he should be approved of by the Pope.”[185] The murderer, on his examination, boldly maintained this last proposition; and “this avowal,” says Mezarai, “joined to the injurious libels against Henry III. and the reigning king; joined to the ardour which the Jesuits had shewn for the interests of Spain, and to the doctrines their preachers had propounded against the security of the king, and against the ancient law of the kingdom; joined also to the opinion held of them, that by means of their colleges and auricular confession, they directed the minds of the youth and timid consciences to whatever they pleased, gave an opportunity to the parliament to involve the Society in his punishment.”[186] In fact, the parliament, by the same arrêt (29th Dec. 1594), by which Chastel was condemned to the punishment of the parricide, enacted that “the priests and scholars of Clermont College, and all others of the so-called Society of Jesus, as corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, enemies to the king and the state, shall, three days after the present intimation, be obliged to leave Paris and other towns and places where they have colleges, and, within a fortnight after, the kingdom; under the penalty, if found in France after that time, of being punished for high treason. Their property, movable and immovable, shall be employed for charitable purposes, and all the king’s subjects, under the same penalty, are forbidden to send pupils to the colleges of the Society which are beyond the territories of the kingdom.”[187]
All the Jesuits, except Fathers Gueret and Guinard, who were arrested, were expelled from France. Gueret, against whom no substantial proofs of being an accomplice with Chastel, could be produced, was soon after liberated from prison and banished. This is a striking proof of the justice and rectitude of the parliament. Guinard, in whose possession were found most abominable writings, subversive of every principle of justice and morality,[188] was condemned and executed; in conformity with a proclamation issued some months before by the king, in which it was ordered that all books and writings referring to the past troubles should be burned, under pain of death. Crétineau confesses the fact, but exculpates the man, by saying that these writings were composed in the time of the League in the year 1589. But this assertion is contradicted by the quotation we have given in the note, which shews that some of them at least were composed after Henry’s abjuration, which occurred four years later, in 1593. And again, if they had been written at the time specified, why did he not burn them, in obedience to the king’s commandment?
Great horror was now felt throughout France at these repeated acts of regicide, with an abhorrence of the Jesuits, as the well-known instigators of such nefarious deeds. The parliament, the interpreter here of the public opinion (Henry having gained over to him many of his former opponents by his clemency and generosity), by another arrêt, January 10, 1595, ordered that Chastel’s house should be destroyed, and a pyramid be erected in its stead, to perpetuate the memory of his infamy and that of his associates. In consequence, four inscriptions were engraved on the four faces of this pyramid, in all of which, the name of Chastel was coupled with that of the Jesuits. In the first inscription, the assassin was described as impelled to the commission of the crime “by the pestilential heresy of that new sect (the Jesuits), which, concealing under the garb of piety the most atrocious crimes, had of late taught that it was lawful to kill the king.” In the second was the arrêt of parliament, condemning Chastel and the Jesuits, part of which we have already given. In the third, the senate and the people of Paris congratulate the king on his having exterminated “that pestilential sect” (the Jesuits). And the fourth inscription was, “A house once stood here, which was destroyed for the guilt of one of its inhabitants, who had been instructed in a school of impiety by perverse masters.”[189] In 1605, the Jesuits were again powerful enough in France, to get the pyramid demolished; and in 1606 a fountain was erected in its place.
And this seems to us to be the proper place to lay before our readers the political creed of the Jesuits. Observe, the following extracts are taken from none but their most approved authors, and such as are held in high estimation among their brethren.
Emmanuel Sa. Aphorismi Confessariorum. (Venet. 1595. Coloniæ, 1616. Ed. Coll. Sion).—“The rebellion of an ecclesiastic against the king is not a crime of high treason, because he is not subject to the king.”
“He who tyrannically governs an empire, which he has justly obtained, cannot be deprived of it without a public trial; but when sentence has been passed, every man may become an executor of it; and he may be deposed by the people, even although perpetual obedience were sworn to him, if, after admonition given, he will not be corrected.”
John Bridgewater. Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ in Anglia adversus Calvino-Papistas. (Augustæ Trevirorum, 1594.)—“If the kings be the first to break their solemn league and oath, and violate the faith which they have pledged to God, the people are not only permitted, but they are required, and their duty demands, that, at the mandate of the Vicar of Christ, who is the sovereign pastor of all the nations of the earth, the fidelity which they previously owed or promised to such princes should not be kept.”
Robert Bellarmine. Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adversus hujus temporis Hæreticos, tom. I. (Ingolstadii, 1596. Parisiis, 1608. Ed. Mus. Brit.)—“The spiritual power, as a spiritual prince, may change kingdoms, and transfer them from one sovereign to another, if it should be necessary for the salvation of souls.”
“Christians may not tolerate an infidel or heretic king, if he endeavours to draw his subjects to his heresy or infidelity. But it is the province of the sovereign Pontiff, to whom the care of religion has been intrusted, to decide whether the king draws them to heresy or not. It is therefore for the Pontiff to determine whether the king is to be deposed or not.”
John Mariana. De Rege et Regis Institutione libri tres. (Moguntiæ, 1605.... 1640. Ed. Mus. Brit.)—“It is necessary to consider attentively what course should be pursued in deposing a prince, lest sin be added to sin, and one crime be punished by the commission of another. This is the shortest and the safest way;—to deliberate, in a public meeting, if it can be held, upon what should be determined by the common consent, and to consider as firmly fixed and established whatever may be resolved by the general opinion. In which case, the following course must be pursued. First of all, the prince must be admonished and brought back to his senses. If he does not amend, begin by refusing to obey him; ... and, if necessary, destroy with the sword that prince who has been declared a public enemy. But you will ask what is to be done if a public meeting cannot be held, which may very frequently happen. In my opinion, a similar judgment must be formed; for when the state is oppressed by the tyranny of any of the princes, and the people are deprived of the power of assembling, the will to abolish the tyranny is not wanting, or to avenge the manifest and intolerable crimes of the prince, and to restrain his mischievous efforts: I shall never consider that man to have done wrong, who, favouring the public wishes, would attempt to kill him!”
Gabriel Vasquez. Comment. et Disput. in primam Partem, et primam secundæ Summæ, S. Th. Aquinatis, tom. II. (Ingolstadii, 1615. Antverpiæ, 1621. Ed. Coll. Sion.):—“If all the members of the royal family are heretics, a new election to the throne devolves on the state. For all his (the king’s) successors could be justly deprived of the kingdom by the Pope; because the preservation of the faith, which is of greater importance, requires that it should be so. But if the kingdom were thus polluted, the Pope, as supreme judge in the matters of the faith, might appoint a Catholic king for the good of the whole realm, and might place him over it by force of arms if it were necessary. For, the good of the faith and of religion, requires that the supreme head of the Church should provide a king for the state.”
Busembaum and Lacroix. Theologia Moralis, nunc pluribus partibus aucta à R. P. Claudo Lacroix, Societatis Jesu. (Coloniæ, 1757. Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1733. Ed. Mus. Brit.);—“A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope may be killed anywhere, as Fillincius, Escobar, and Deaux teach; because the Pope has at least an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things, as far as may be necessary for the administration of spiritual affairs, as all the Catholics maintain, and as Suarez proves against the King of England.”
Such were the principles and such the acts of the so-called soldiers of Christ, and such the just punishment inflicted on their crimes. We hardly find in history a sect, bearing the Christian name, convicted of so many and such atrocious crimes—so publicly stigmatised and held up to the just hatred of posterity. For if, in moments of feverish exaltation, political or religious fanatics of every denomination have perpetrated iniquitous and barbarous crimes, no other party has subsequently, in calmer times, accepted the responsibility of these crimes, and praised them as virtuous or meritorious actions. But there is no Jesuit, that I know of, who has ever impugned or disclaimed the doctrines I have just pointed out. My English readers ought seriously to meditate upon this fact, and upon those doctrines, to which the Jesuits still firmly adhere. Queen Victoria is in their eyes as much a heretic as Henry of Navarre, and I have no doubt that they wish her to meet with the same fate. I am an advocate for toleration, and abhor the very idea of persecution; but, most assuredly, without persecuting those priests and Jesuits, the most inveterate enemies of the Protestant religion, I would not countenance them, or encourage and support them by grants of public money. Theirs is not a religion of tolerance. They do not look upon other Christians as brethren, holding different forms of belief, or as, at worst, persons who have been misled by ignorance. No! in their view, every one who is not a Roman Catholic is an accursed heretic, condemned already, and, if he die in this condition, doomed to everlasting damnation. They are not content to be received to the rights of citizenship on terms of equality—they aspire to domination. What rights and privileges can they reasonably claim from persons towards whom they cherish such sentiments? Surely those Papists who would maintain their religion by persecution and tyranny, ought to be thankful, if they are suffered to live at peace and unmolested, in a Protestant country.
While the Jesuits in France and in England, where the monarch was adverse to them, not only propounded the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, but taught that every individual had a right to murder the king if he were disliked by the nation or accursed by the Pope—in Poland, Sweden, and Germany, where the population was adverse and the sovereign friendly to them, they inculcated the contrary doctrine, and did not scruple to enforce it by the most cruel and violent proceedings. In France and in England, Henry and Elizabeth had forfeited their thrones by holding the doctrines of the Reformation. In Sweden, the Jesuits compelled the Roman Catholic Sigismond to swear to maintain the Confession of Augsburg, that he might not be driven from his kingdom.[190] But in those countries, the Jesuits, being in close alliance with the civil power, were the cause of more mischief, and greatly injured the cause of truth and religion. The introduction of the Jesuits into the north of Europe was the signal for a powerful reaction against Protestantism; and they not only checked its progress, but, what is more strange, they succeeded in reviving an obsolete doctrine—the temporal supremacy of the Roman Church, which, after having for centuries governed almost the whole of Europe, had fallen into decay, and ought not, according to the ordinary course of human institutions, to exercise any further influence, since it had not undergone any material change or acquired a new prestige. Yet such was the case. Many were the requisites of success possessed by the Jesuits. Admirable unity of purpose—versatility of character—unscrupulous pliability of conscience—the confessional—the pulpit—the conviction that upon their first success depended the duration of their order, and, it must be added, their unexceptionable outward conduct, all rendered them in the highest degree fit for their task. But, above all, it was by the education of the youth, that they wrought such changes in Germany. It was, in fact, for this purpose that they were first introduced into the country. In one of the autograph letters that Ferdinand I. wrote to Loyola, he declares it to be his opinion, that the only means by which the declining tenets of Catholicism could be restored in Germany was, to supply the youth with learned and pious Catholic teachers.[191] The Jesuits entered into the king’s view with amazing activity and energy. They established themselves in Vienna in 1551, and soon after had the management of the university. Their second important establishment was at Cologne; the third, at Ingolstadt; and from these three principal points, they spread all over Germany. We think we cannot do better than transcribe a passage from Ranke on the project:—
“The efforts of the Jesuits were above all directed towards the universities. Their ambition was to rival the fame of those of the Protestants. The education of that day was a learned one merely, and was based exclusively on the study of the ancient languages. This the Jesuits prosecuted with earnest zeal, and in certain of their schools, they had very soon professors who might claim a place with the restorers of classical learning. Nor did they neglect the cultivation of the exact sciences. At Cologne, Franz Koster lectured on astronomy in a manner at once agreeable and instructive. But their principal object was still theological discipline, as will be readily comprehended. The Jesuits lectured with the utmost diligence even during the holidays, reviving the practice of disputations, without which they declared all instruction to be dead. These disputations, which they held in public, were conducted with dignity and decorum, were rich in matter, and altogether the most brilliant that had ever been witnessed. In Ingolstadt, they soon persuaded themselves that their progress in theology was such as would enable the university to compete successfully with any other in Germany. Ingolstadt now acquired an influence among Catholics similar to that possessed among Protestants by Wittemberg and Geneva. They next established schools for the poor—arranged modes of instruction adapted to children—and enforced the practice of catechising. Canisius prepared his catechism, which satisfied the wants of the learners by its well-connected questions and apposite replies.
“This instruction was imparted entirely in the spirit of that fanciful devotion, which had characterised the Jesuits from their earliest establishment. The first rector in Vienna was a Spaniard named Juan Victoria, a man who had signalised his entrance into the Society by walking along the Corso of Rome, during the festivities of the carnival, clothed in sackcloth, and scourging himself as he walked, till the blood streamed from him on all sides. The children educated in the Jesuit schools of Vienna were soon distinguished by their steadfast refusal of such food as was forbidden on fast-days, while their parents ate without scruple. In Cologne it was again become an honour to wear the rosary. Relics were once more held up to public reverence in Treves, where for many years no one had ventured to exhibit them. In the year 1560, the youth of Ingolstadt belonging to the Jesuit school walked two and two on a pilgrimage to Gichstadt, in order to be strengthened for their confirmation ‘by the dew that dropped from the tomb of St Walpurgis.’ The modes of thought and feeling thus implanted in the schools, were propagated by means of preaching and confession through the whole population.”[192]
We add to all this, that their instructions were gratuitous, and that the pupils made such rapid progress, that they were found to have learned more in six months in a Jesuit school, than in two years anywhere else. Many were the Protestants who sent their children to the Jesuit colleges: and these children were kindly received by the masters, treated with great indulgence, and premiums were freely bestowed upon them even in preference to the Roman Catholic children. The Jesuits thus acquired an immense influence, especially over the female part of the population, who were proud of their children’s learning; while these imperceptibly acquired a tinge of their masters’ doctrines and modes of thinking, although in countries where the majority were Protestants, they were expressly forbidden openly to propound them. Yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, the Jesuits could not have hoped for such prodigious success had it not been for the support they received from divers sovereigns of the country. Perhaps we should be more correct in saying, that these sovereigns called in the Jesuits to re-establish the ancient religion.
At the commencement of the Reformation, even those German princes who had not unreservedly embraced the new doctrines were exceedingly glad to shake off the yoke of the Romish See; and, without separating themselves from its communion, they made many concessions to their subjects, which amounted in many places to toleration. Subsequently, however, the Popes made them understand that by these concessions their sovereign authority was greatly diminished, and that temporal princes and the head of the Church were bound by a common interest to support each other. The princes were easily persuaded to a policy which flattered their inclination to despotism, and from that moment they not only resisted every new demand for reform, but, to the utmost of their power, withdrew the concessions they had formerly made. The first who entered upon this reactionary path was Albert V. of Bavaria. Being in continual want of money to pay his enormous debts, the estates would grant him no supplies without obtaining in exchange some concessions, mostly of a religious kind. In this state of things, Pius IV., through the medium of the Jesuits, and especially of Canisius, persuaded him that any new concessions would diminish the obedience of his subjects; and, in order to render him less dependent on the estates, the Pope abandoned to him the tenth of the property of his clergy.[193] The duke perceiving what advantage he might derive from a closer alliance with the Court of Rome, decided at once to resist any further demand, and firmly declared his intentions at the diet of 1563. He found the prelates well disposed to second him; “and, whether it was that the doctrines of a reviving Catholicism, and the activity of the Jesuits, who insinuated themselves everywhere, had gained influence in the cities, or that other considerations prevailed, the cities did not insist as formerly upon religious concessions.”[194] The nobles only kept up an opposition; but the duke, catching the opportunity of a sort of conspiracy which he had discovered, deprived them of their right to seats in the diet, and so became the almost absolute and uncontrolled master of his people’s franchises. Then commenced the reaction. Encouraged by the Jesuits, who had now acquired an unlimited influence over him, Albert resolved not to leave a vestige of those new doctrines which for the last forty years had been spreading so fast in his kingdom. All the professors, all his household, all the civil officers—in a word, all the public functionaries—were compelled to subscribe the Professio Fidei of the Council of Trent, and on their refusal, were immediately dismissed. To obtain a recantation from the common people, he sent through all his provinces swarms of Jesuits, accompanied by bands of troopers, whose bayonets came to the aid of the preachers, when their eloquence was unsuccessful in converting the heretics. The mildest treatment the obstinate Protestants could expect, was to be expelled from the duke’s estates without delay. Prohibited books were sought for in the libraries, and burned in large numbers; those of a rigidly Catholic character, on the contrary, were highly favoured. Relics were again held in great veneration; and, in short, throughout the whole country were revived all the ancient practices, all the absurd superstitions, of the Popish religion. “Above all,” says Ranke, “the Jesuit institutions were promoted; for by their agency it was, that the youth of Bavaria were to be educated in a spirit of strict orthodoxy.”[195]
Duke Albert was now spoken of as the most bigoted Roman Catholic in Germany, and became the protector of all those petty sovereigns who wished to tread in his footsteps.
In Austria, although the reaction had long begun, coercive measures against the Protestants were not resorted to till somewhat later. As we have already said, Ferdinand invited the Jesuits to Vienna, and delivered up to them the university as early as the year 1551. Soon after, he established another Jesuit college at Prague, to which he sent his own pages, and to which resorted all the nobility belonging to the Roman communion. Colleges, and schools of less consequence, were established throughout all the Austrian dominions, and great efforts were made to win back the Protestants to the Romish faith. Yet, under the prudent and conciliating Ferdinand I., and during the reign of the wise Maximilian, the Jesuits could not obtain any severe persecuting measure against the followers of the Reformed religion, but were more successful with Rodolph II. Father Maggio, the Provincial of the Jesuits, was held by the emperor in great estimation, and consulted in every matter of importance. He was continually pressing the monarch to come to the resolution of completely extirpating heresy from his dominions. The Pope’s legate and the Spanish ambassador backed him in his intolerant demand. This bigoted prince at last, under the pretence of a popular tumult, which took place on the occasion of the procession of the Corpus Domini in 1578, banished from his estates Opitz, a Protestant preacher, and all his assistants; and this measure was the signal for a general persecution of the Lutherans. The greatest atrocity and the utmost rigour were displayed in destroying every trace of Protestantism.
In the first place, it was determined to extirpate Protestantism from the imperial cities. The towns east of the Ens, which had separated from the estates of the knights and nobles twenty years before, could offer no resistance; the Reformed clergy were removed, and their places filled by Catholic priests; private persons were subjected to a close examination. A formula, according to which the suspected were interrogated, has come into our possession. ‘Dost thou believe,’ inquires one of its articles, ‘that everything is true which the Church of Rome has laid down as the rule of life and doctrine?’ ‘Dost thou believe,’ adds another, ‘that the Pope is the head of the one Apostolic Church?’ No doubt was to be endured. The Protestants were to be expelled from all offices of state; none were admitted to the class of burghers who did not declare themselves Catholics. In the universities, that of Vienna not excepted, all who applied for a doctor’s degree were first required to subscribe the Professio Fidei. A new regulation for schools was promulgated, which prescribed Catholic formularies, fasts, worship, according to the Catholic ritual, and the exclusive use of the Catechism of Canisius. In Vienna, all Protestant books were taken away from the booksellers’ shops, and were carried in heaps to the Episcopal court. Search was made at the customhouses along the river; all packages were examined, and books or pictures not considered purely Catholic were confiscated.[196]
All throughout Germany the same proceedings were resorted to, and everywhere we find the Jesuits foremost in the reaction. There was no bishop, no prince, who went to visit a province upon religious concerns, who did not bring with him a troop of Jesuits, who, on his departure, were often left there with almost unlimited powers.
If from Germany we pass to Poland, there also we meet the ominous influence of the disciples of Loyola. “The Protestant cause,” says Count Krasinski, in the fourth of his admirable Lectures on Slavonia, “was endangered by the lamentable partiality which Stephen Batory had shewn to the Jesuits; and the Romanist reaction, beginning under his reign, had been chiefly promoted by the schools, which that order was everywhere establishing.” Stephen, however, either too prudent to attack openly the religion then professed, in Lithuania at least, by a great majority of his subjects, or anxious to maintain, to a certain extent, religious liberty, had recourse to no extraordinary measures for the furtherance of this reaction, and contented himself with ordering that in future none but strict Roman Catholics should be appointed to bishoprics. But under the bigoted Sigismond—under that king, who, as the same learned Count says, “gloried in the appellation of the king of the Jesuits, which was given him by their antagonists, and who indeed became a mere tool in the hands of the disciples of Loyola”—the reaction made fearful and continued progress. Although Sigismond could attempt nothing by main force against the liberties of his Protestant subjects, he had it in his power to give, and he at last effectually gave, a mortal blow to the Reformed religion. The chief prerogative of the Polish kings—we should perhaps say, the only real power possessed by these nominal sovereigns—was the right of conferring all dignities and official appointments. Twenty thousand offices were at their disposal; and Sigismond declared that none but strict Roman Catholics should be named to them. The favour of the Jesuits was an essential condition of obtaining a situation under the Government; and “the Starost Ludwig von Montager became Waivode of Pomerellia, because he presented his house in Thorn to the Society of Jesus.”[197] Many of the nobles who had professed the doctrines of the Reformation, were induced to recant, depending exclusively as they did on the king’s favour for the maintenance of their rank, and having no hope for preferment while out of the pale of the Romish Church. The influence of these examples, seconded by the rigorous measures subsequently taken against the Lutherans, and, above all, by the diabolical cunning and artifice of the Jesuits, in a short time brought back the great majority of the Polish nation under the yoke of the Church of Rome.
In Sweden, the efforts of the Jesuits against Protestantism, although no less active and vigorous, were less successful. John III., son of the heroic Gustavus Vasa, on ascending the throne, published a ritual, in which, to the great amazement and dismay of the Protestants, were to be found not only ceremonies, but even doctrines of the Church of Rome.[198] The Pope, apprised of this prince’s good disposition towards his Church, despatched to Stockholm in all haste and secrecy, as his legate, the famous Possevin, one of the cleverest and least scrupulous among the Jesuits. To obviate the difficulty of obtaining admission into the country and court of Sweden as Pope’s legate, Possevin, in passing through Prague, induced the widow of the emperor Maximilian to send him to Stockholm as her extraordinary ambassador. He assumed, in consequence, another name, a splendid costume, and girded himself with a sword, but, “to do penance in advance for these transient honours, he went the greatest part of the way on foot.”[199] Acting publicly as the envoy of the empress, he found means secretly to inform the king of his real name and mission, and had several conferences with him. The result was, that John was persuaded to make the Professio Fidei, according to the formula of the Council of Trent, promising at the same time to take measures, and to use all his endeavours, to induce the nation to follow in the same path, provided the Pope would second him by making certain concessions, the most essential of which were, that the sacramental cup should be administered to the laity, and mass performed in the language of the country. Possevin said that the Pope should be apprised of his majesty’s will, and asked him whether he would submit to his decision in this matter. John having answered in the affirmative, was absolved of his sins, and received the sacrament according to the Roman Catholic ritual.[200]
The Jesuit departed in high glee at his success, far surpassing his most sanguine hopes. He hastened to Rome, and assuming a privilege in use among ambassadors, he boasted of having achieved more than he had really done, assuring Gregory XIII. that Sweden and its king were at his Holiness’s mercy. He then laid before the Pope the conditions on which John had insisted, but Gregory, either too intolerant to make any concession, or considering it unnecessary to grant honourable terms to an enemy who threw himself at his feet, refused to listen to such proposals, and sent back the Jesuit to Stockholm, with letters to the king, in which he required the monarch to declare himself a Catholic without restriction.
This imperious conduct saved Sweden from falling back under the Popish rule. John, indignant at being held in so light account—indignant at the assurance of Possevin, who unceremoniously entered Stockholm and the court in the garb of his order as the Pope’s legate, and accompanied by other Jesuits, as if Sweden had already become a Roman Catholic country—moved by the remonstrances of the Protestant princes and divines, who, in the interval of Possevin’s departure and return, had entreated him to remain in their communion—dismissed the Pope’s ambassador, and returned to the Reformed worship.
The attempts of the Jesuits to convert Sweden to the Roman faith were revived with new vigour under John’s successor, Sigismond, the Polish king. Fortunately, Charles of Sandermania, the king’s uncle, headed the nation in its resistance to Sigismond’s Popish propensities; and although the Jesuits had the sad glory of plunging Poland and Sweden into a bloody war, the last-mentioned country remained Protestant.
The Jesuits experienced some difficulty in entering Switzerland, and in some parts of it they could not get footing; but towards the year 1574, they established themselves in Friburg and Lucerne. They succeeded in keeping back these two towns from the Alliance of Berne, and scattered the flames of that religious discord between these cantons which was not extinguished even by the blood that was shed at the instigation of the Jesuits in 1845-47. The famous Canisius was the principal promoter and founder of the College of Friburg, the resort, till lately, of a great number of young men of the highest families, sent thither for education from divers parts of Europe.
The cruelties exercised by Possevin against the inhabitants of the Alps were most barbarous and revolting. Many Christians, driven out of other countries by Popish persecution, had sought a refuge in these almost inaccessible mountains, where the Waldenses still preserved the religion of Christ in its primitive purity. They had hoped, in the simplicity of their hearts, that there, far from the scene of conflict, they would be permitted to worship God according to their consciences. They were not dangerous persons—they were no chiefs of sects eager to make proselytes—they were single-hearted people, seeking to please God by living a pure and Christian life. It might have been expected that their poverty, their innocence, their peaceful conduct, would have sheltered them from any persecution; and, in fact, for a time they lived unmolested. Unhappily for them, the Jesuits were watching them, and, urged on by that persecuting spirit which led them to seek for victims everywhere, were resolved to trouble them in their retreat, and, if possible, to destroy them. Lainez, in 1560, despatched Possevin to Nice, to Emmanuel Philebert, Duke of Savoy, to excite him to persecute those heretic mountaineers. The Jesuit represented to the Duke that a Catholic prince ought not, even though his own personal interest required it, to tolerate that the heresy should establish itself in his dominions, and that the mountains of Piedmont and the Alps, in particular, served for a retreat to the sectaries of Luther and Calvin.[201] Possevin succeeded in bringing the duke into his abominable views. Ferrier, the governor of Pignerol, commenced a chase against these inoffensive people, who were hunted from one retreat to another, and when taken, were mercilessly and inhumanly consigned to the flames. Driven to despair they took up arms, resolved hereafter to sell their lives at the dearest price. A body of troops was sent against them. The General, the Sieur de la Trinité, placed them at the disposal of Possevin, and the Pope’s nuncio conferred upon him the powers with which he pretended to be invested.[202] The Jesuit, forgetful of his sacerdotal calling, repressing every feeling of humanity, put himself at the head of a chosen body of troops, and hunted down these poor Christians as if they were wild beasts, putting every one who fell into his hands to the sword. Then, when he was tired of the work of slaughter, to procure for himself a sort of triumph, he brought to Vercelli, in solemn procession, thirty-four of those unfortunates, who, not having faith or strength enough to prefer martyrdom to apostasy, publicly abjured their religion in the presence of the duke and the Jesuit.[203] From that day till very lately, the house of Savoy has more or less persecuted the Waldenses.
Our Protestant readers, we presume, have by this time learned what malignant and unrelenting enemies of their religion the Jesuits have always been. They must have learned that all the north of Europe, and France itself, perhaps, would have become Protestant countries, had it not been for the demoniacal arts and ill-employed activity of the disciples of Loyola. They must, further, be aware that the Jesuits did not obtain those results by honest means only, by force of argument, or by active and earnest exertions, which would have at least entitled them to the approbation and esteem of all Roman Catholics, but they had recourse to perjury, to murder, to persecution, to cruelties of every kind—to means, in short, involving the perversion of every principle of morality, for which they at last came to be abhorred by every honest person, even of their own persuasion. Lastly, it clearly appears, from what we have related, that, while pretending to fight for the Roman See, the Jesuits, in reality, fought for their own aggrandisement; that they recognise no religion, but their interest; worship no God, but their order. We must, finally, remind our readers that we have omitted numberless other charges which are generally brought against them, which we consider well founded, but which we cannot satisfactorily prove. All that we have advanced we have proved, according to our promise, by documents of unquestionable authenticity, and we shall continue to observe this rule to the conclusion of our history.
In relating the proceedings of the Jesuits in divers countries of Europe, we have not mentioned Spain; first, because, though firmly established in that country, they, under the absolute Philip II., exercised no influence whatever over its general policy; and, secondly, because we had it in reserve to speak of their proceedings in that country in the present chapter.
In Spain the Jesuits had no heretics to contend with—no zeal or fanaticism to excite. If now and then some Christianised Jew or Moor relapsed into his former belief, the Inquisition was too jealous of her privilege of roasting those accursed of God, in a solemn auto da fè, to permit the Jesuits to meddle in the holy ceremony. Having thus no external enemy to contend with, they, as usually happens, fell out among themselves, and fought with one another.
The so-called Society of Jesus having been mostly established by Spaniards, the Spanish Jesuits pretended that all the honours and dignities of the order were exclusively due to them. A first blow was dealt to these pretensions when, by the interference of the Pope, a General was chosen who was not a Castilian. However, since Mercurianus, the person elected, was old and weak, they submitted without much reluctance to an authority they did not dread. But when the fifth General Congregation chose for General a Neapolitan nobleman, young, active, and enterprising, they broke out into open revolt. This General, elected in 1581, was Claude Acquaviva, son of the Duke of Atri, only thirty-seven years of age at the time of his election. Acquaviva was, and has remained, the beau idéal of Jesuitism. He had grown up in the Court of Rome, where he was chamberlain, and where he acquired a thorough knowledge of men, and of all political intrigues, in which the Roman curia at that epoch excelled all the other courts of Europe. He was crafty, insinuating, persevering. He never uttered a precise command, but never suffered his exhortations to be disregarded. Gentle in appearance, and renowned for the amenity of his manners, he was endowed with an inflexible intrepidity of character. He spoke rarely, never gave a decided opinion, and preserved in all circumstances a placid and calm demeanour. His family had been from of old attached to the French party, and he followed the same line of policy. As we have seen, he disapproved of the League, and gave other tokens of his attachment to the French interest, without, however, openly committing himself with the other party. Such was Acquaviva.