Kitabı oku: «The Jesuits, 1534-1921»

PREFACE

Some years ago the writer of these pages, when on his way to what is called a general congregation of the Society of Jesus, was asked by a fellow-passenger on an Atlantic liner, if he knew anything about the Jesuits. He answered in the affirmative and proceeded to give an account of the character and purpose of the Order. After a few moments, he was interrupted by the inquirer with, "You know nothing at all about them, Sir; good day." Possibly the Jesuits themselves are responsible for this attitude of mind, which is not peculiar to people at sea, but is to be met everywhere.

As a matter of fact, no Jesuit has thus far ever written a complete or adequate history of the Society; Orlandini, Jouvancy and Cordara attempted it a couple of centuries ago, but their work never got beyond the first one hundred years. Two very small compendiums by Jesuits have been recently published, one in Italian by Rosa, the other in French by Brucker, but they are too congested to be satisfactory to the average reader, and Brucker's stops at the Suppression of the Society by Clement XIV in 1773. Crétineau-Joly's history was written in great haste; he is often a special pleader, and even Jesuits find him too eulogistic. At present he is hopelessly antiquated, his last volume bearing the date of 1833. B. N. (Barbara Neave) published in English a history of the Society based largely on Crétineau-Joly. The consequence of this lack of authoritative works is that the general public gets its information about the Jesuits from writers who are prejudiced or ill-informed or, who, perhaps, have been hired to defame the Society for political purposes. Other authors, again, have found the Jesuits a romantic theme, and have drawn largely on their imagination for their statements.

Attention was called to this condition of things by the Congregation of the Society which elected Father Martin to the post of General of the Jesuits in 1892. As a result he appointed a corps of distinguished writers to co-operate in the production of a universal history of the Society, which was to be colossal in size, based on the most authentic documents, and in line with the latest and most exacting requirements of recent scientific historiography. On the completion of the various parts, they are to be co-ordinated and then translated into several languages, so as to supply material for minor histories within the reach of the general public. Such a scheme necessarily supposes a very considerable time before the completion of the entire work, and, as matter of fact, although several volumes have already appeared in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, the authors are still discussing events that occurred two centuries ago. Happily their researches have thrown much light on the early history of the Order; an immense number of documents inédits, published by Carayon and others, have given us a more intimate knowledge of the intermediate period; many biographies have been written, and the huge volume of the "Liber sæcularis" by Albers brings the record down to our own days. Thus, though much valuable information has already been made available for the general reader the great collaborative work is far from completion. Hence the present history of the Jesuits.

WORKS CONSULTED

Institutum Societatis Jesu.

Jouvancy – Epitome historiæ Societatis Jesu.

Jouvancy – Monumenta Societatis Jesu.

Crétineau-Joly – Hist. relig., pol. et litt. de la Comp. de Jésus.

B. N. – The Jesuits: their foundation and history.

Rosa, I Gesuiti dalle origini ai nostri giorni.

Meschler, Die Gesellschaft Jesu.

Böhmer-Monod – Les Jésuites.

Feval, – Les Jésuites.

Huber – Der Jesuitenorden.

Duhr – Jesuiten-Fabeln.

Brou – Les Jésuites et la légende.

Belloc, Pascal's Provincial Letters.

Foley – Jesuits in Conflict.

Fouqueray – Histoire de la compagnie de Jésus en France.

Bournichon – La Compagnie de Jésus en France: 1814-1914.

Albers – Liber sæcularis ab anno 1814 ad annum 1914.

Tacchi-Venturi – Storia della compagnia di Gesù in Italia.

Monti – La Compagnia di Gesù.

Duhr – Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutschen Zunge.

Kroess – Geschichte der böhmischen Provinz der Gesellschaft Jesu.

Astrain – Hist. de la Comp. de Jesús en la asist. de España.

Hughes – History of the Society of Jesus of North America.

Alegre – La Compañía de Jesús en la Nueva España.

Frias – La Provincia de España de la compañía de Jesús, 1815-63.

Pollard – The Jesuits in Poland.

Hogan – Ibernia Ignatiana.

Tanner – Societas Jesu præclara.

Lives of Jesuit Saints.

Menologies of the Society of Jesus.

Southwell – Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Jesu.

Sommervogel – Bibl. des écrivains de la comp. de Jésus.

Chandlery – Fasti breviores Societatis Jesu.

Maynard – The Studies and Teachings of the Society of Jesus.

Daniel – Les Jésuites instituteurs.

Weld – Suppression of the Society of Jesus in Portugal.

De Ravignan – De l'existence et de l'institut des Jésuites.

De Ravignan – Clément XIII et Clément XIV.

Theiner – Geschichte des Pontifikats Klemens XIV.

Artaud de Montor – Histoire du pape Pie VII.

Carayon – Documents inédits concernants la Compagnie de Jésus.

Bertrand – Mémoires sur les missions.

Brou – Les Missions du xixe siècle.

Seaman – Map of Jesuit Missions in the United States.

Marshall – Christian Missions.

Bancroft – Native Races of the Pacific States.

Campbell – Pioneer Priests of North America.

Charlevoix – Histoire du Japon.

Charlevoix – Histoire du Paraguay.

Charlevoix – Histoire de la Nouvelle-France.

Crasset – Histoire de l'église du Japon.

Avril – Voyage en divers états d'Europe et d'Asie.

Thwaites – Jesuit Relations.

Bolton – Kino's Historical Memoir.

Janssen – History of the German People.

Lavisse – Histoire de France.

Ranke – History of the Popes.

Lingard – History of England.

Tierney-Dodd – Church History of England.

Pollen – The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell.

Haile-Bonney – Life and Letters of John Lingard.

Pollock – The Popish Plot.

Guilday – English Catholic Refugees on the Continent.

MacGeoghegan – History of Ireland.

Flanagan – Ecclesiastical History of Ireland.

O'Reilly – Lives of the Irish Martyrs and Confessors.

Rochefort – Histoire des Antilles.

Eyzaguirre – Historia de Chile.

Tertre – Histoire de St. Christophe.

Rohrbacher – History of the Church.

Hübner – Sixte-Quint.

Huc – Christianity in China, Tartary and Tibet.

Robertson – History of Charles V.

Shea – The Catholic Church in Colonial Days.

Pacca – Memorie storiche del ministero.

Sainte-Beuve – Causeries.

Petit de Julleville – Histoire de la littérature française.

Godefroy – Littérature française.

Schlosser – History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

Cantü – Storia universale.

The Cambridge Modern History, Vols. VIII, XII.

The Month.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, passim.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, passim.

Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, passim.

CHAPTER I
ORIGIN

The Name – Opprobrious meanings – Caricatures of the Founder – Purpose of the Order – Early life of Ignatius – Pampeluna – Conversion – Manresa – The Exercises – Authorship – Journey to Palestine – The Universities – Life in Paris – First Companions – Montmartre First Vows – Assembly at Venice. Failure to reach Palestine – First Journey to Rome – Ordination to the Priesthood – Labors in Italy – Submits the Constitutions for Papal Approval – Guidiccioni's opposition – Issue of the Bull Regimini – Sketch of the Institute – Crypto-Jesuits.

The name "Jesuit" has usually a sinister meaning in the minds of the misinformed. Calvin is accused of inventing it, but that is an error. It was in common use two or three centuries before the Reformation, and generally it implied spiritual distinction. Indeed, in his famous work known as "The Great Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ," which appeared somewhere about 1350, the saintly old Carthusian ascetic, Ludolph of Saxony, employs it in a way that almost provokes a smile. He tells his readers that "just as we are called Christians when we are baptized, so we shall be called Jesuits when we enter into glory." Possibly such a designation would be very uncomfortable even for some pious people of the present day. The opprobrious meaning of the word came into use at the approach of the Protestant Reformation. Thus, when laxity in the observance of their rule began to show itself in the once fervent followers of St. John Columbini – who were called Jesuati, because of their frequent use of the expression: "Praised be Jesus Christ" – their name fixed itself on the common speech as a synonym of hypocrisy. Possibly that will explain the curious question in the "Examen of Conscience" in an old German prayer-book, dated 1519, where the penitent is bidden to ask himself: "Did I omit to teach the Word of God for fear of being called a Pharisee, a Jesuit, a hypocrite, a Beguine?"

The association of the term Jesuit with Pharisee and hypocrite is unpleasant enough, but connecting it with Beguine is particularly offensive. The word Beguine had come to signify a female heretic, a mysticist, an illuminist, a pantheist, who though cultivating a saintly exterior was credited with holding secret assemblies where the most indecent orgies were indulged in. The identity of the Beguines with Jesuits was considered to be beyond question, and one of the earliest Calvinist writers informed his co-religionists that at certain periods the Jesuits made use of mysterious and magical devices and performed a variety of weird antics and contortions in subterraneous caverns, from which they emerged as haggard and worn as if they had been struggling with the demons of hell (Janssen, Hist. of the German People, Eng. tr., IV, 406-7). Unhappily, at that time, a certain section of the association of Beguines insisted upon being called Jesuits. There were many variations on this theme when the genuine Jesuits at last appeared. In Germany they were denounced as idolaters and libertines, and their great leader Canisius was reported to have run away with an abbess. In France they were considered assassins and regicides; Calvin called them la racaille, that is, the rabble, rifraff, dregs. In England they were reputed political plotters and spies. Later, in America, John Adams, second President of the United States, identified them with Quakers and resolved to suppress them. Cotton Mather or someone in Boston denounced them as grasshoppers and prayed for the east wind to sweep them away; the Indians burned them at the stake as magicians, and the Japanese bonzes insisted that they were cannibals, a charge repeated by Charles Kingsley, Queen Victoria's chaplain, who, in "Westward Ho," makes an old woman relate of the Jesuits first arriving in England that "they had probably killed her old man and salted him for provision on their journey to the Pope of Rome." No wonder Newman told Kingsley to fly off into space.

The climax of calumny was reached in a decree of the Parliament of Paris, issued on August 6, 1762. It begins with a prelude setting forth the motives of the indictment, and declares that "the Jesuits are recognized as guilty of having taught at all times, uninterruptedly, and with the approbation of their superiors and generals, simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, the black art, magic, astrology, impiety, idolatry, superstition, impurity, corruption of justice, robbery, parricide, homicide, suicide and regicide." The decree then proceeds to set forth eighty-four counts on which it finds them specifically guilty of supporting the Greek Schism, denying the procession of the Holy Ghost; of favoring the heresies of Arianism, Sabellianism, and Nestorianism; of assailing the hierarchy, attacking the Mass and Holy Communion and the authority of the Holy See; of siding with the Lutherans, Calvinists and other heretics of the sixteenth century; of reproducing the heresies of Wycliff and the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians; of adding blasphemy to heresy; of belittling the early Fathers of the Church, the Apostles, Abraham, the prophets, St. John the Baptist, the angels; of insulting and blaspheming the Blessed Virgin; of undermining the foundations of the Faith; destroying belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ; casting doubt on the mystery of the Redemption; encouraging the impiety of the Deists; suggesting Epicureanism; teaching men to live like beasts, and Christians like pagans (de Ravignan, De l'existence et de l'institut des Jésuites, iii).

This was the contribution of the Jansenists to the Jesuit chamber of horrors. It was endorsed by the government and served as a weapon for the atheists of the eighteenth century to destroy the religion of France, and finally the lexicons of every language gave an odious meaning to the name Jesuit. A typical example of this kind of ill-will may be found in the "Diccionario nacional" of Domínguez. In the article on the Jesuits, the writer informs the world that the Order was the superior in learning to all the others; and produced, relatively at every period of its existence more eminent men, and devoted itself with greater zeal to the preaching of the Gospel and the education of youth – the primordial and sublime objects of its Institute. Nevertheless its influence in political matters, as powerful as it was covert, its startling accumulation of wealth, and its ambitious aims, drew upon it the shafts of envy, created terrible antagonists and implacable persecutors, until the learned Clement XIV, the immortal Ganganelli, suppressed it on July 21, 1773, for its abuses and its disobedience to the Holy See. Why the "learned Clement XIV" should be described as "immortal" for suppressing instead of preserving or, at least, reforming an order which the writer fancies did more than all the others for the propagation of the Faith is difficult to understand, but logic is not a necessary requisite of a lexicon. "In spite of their suppression," he continues, "they with their characteristic pertinacity have succeeded in coming to life again and are at present existing in several parts of Europe." The "Diccionario" is dated, Madrid, 1849. In other words, the saintly Pius VII performed a very wicked act in re-establishing the Order.

Of course the founder of this terrible Society had to be presented to the public as properly equipped for the malignant task to which he had set himself; so writers have vied with each other in expatiating on what they call his complex individuality. Thus a German psychologist insists that the Order established by this Spaniard was in reality a Teutonic creation. The Frenchman Drumont holds that "it is anti-semitic in its character," though Polanco, Loyola's life-long secretary, was of Jewish origin, as were Laínez, the second General, and the great Cardinal Toletus. A third enthusiast, Chamberlain, who is English-born, dismisses all other views and insists that, as Loyola was a Basque and an Iberian, he could not have been of Germanic or even Aryan descent, and he maintains that the primitive traits of the Stone Age continually assert themselves in his character. In reading the Spiritual Exercises, he says, "I hear that mighty roar of the cave bear and I shudder as did the men of the diluvial age, when poor, naked and defenceless, surrounded by danger day and night, they trembled at that voice." (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, I, 570.) "If this be true," says Brou in "Les Jésuites et la légende," "then, by following the same process of reasoning, one must conclude that as Xavier was a Basque, his voice also was ursine and troglodytic; and as Faber was a Savoyard, he will have to be classified as a brachycephalous homo alpinus." Herman Müller, in "Les Origines de la Compagnie de Jésus" claims the honor of having launched an entirely novel theory about Loyola's personality. "The 'Exercises' are an amalgam of Islamic gnosticism and militant Catholicism," he tells us; "but where did Ignatius become acquainted with these Mussulmanic congregations? We have nothing positive on that score, though we know that one day he met a Moor on the road and was going to run him through with his sword. Then too, there were a great many Moors and Moriscos in Catalonia, and we must not forget that Ignatius intended to go to Palestine to convert the Turks. He must, therefore, have known them and so have been subject to their influence." Strange to say, Müller feels aggrieved that the Jesuits do not accept this very illogical theory, which he insists has nothing discreditable or dishonoring in it.

Omitting many other authorities, Vollet in "La Grande Encyclopédie" (s. v. Ignace de Loyola, Saint), informs his readers that "impartial history can discover in Loyola numberless traits of fantastic exaltation, morbific dreaminess, superstition, moral obscurantism, fanatical hatred, deceit and mendacity. On the other hand, it is impossible not to admit that he was a man of iron will, of indomitable perseverance in action and in suffering, and unshakeable faith in his mission; in spite of an ardent imagination, he had a penetrating intelligence, and a marvelous facility in reading the thoughts of men; he was possessed of a gentleness and suppleness which permitted him to make himself all to all. Visionary though he was, he possessed in the supreme degree, the genius of organization and strategy; he could create the army he needed, and employ the means he had at hand with prudence and circumspection. We can even discover in him a tender heart, easily moved to pity, to affection and to self-sacrifice for his fellow-men." Michelet says he was a combination of Saint Francis of Assisi and Machiavelli. Finally Victor Hugo reached the summit of the absurd when he assured the French Assembly in 1850 that "Ignatius was the enemy of Jesus." As a matter of fact the poet knew nothing of either, nor did many of his hearers.

As far as we are aware, St. Ignatius never used the term Jesuit at all. He called his Order the Compañía de Jesús, which in Italian is Compagnia, and in French, Compagnie. The English name Society, as well as the Latin Societas, is a clumsy attempt at a translation, and is neither adequate nor picturesque. Compañía was evidently a reminiscence of Loyola's early military life, and meant to him a battalion of light infantry, ever ready for service in any part of the world. The use of the name Jesus gave great offense. Both on the Continent and in England, it was denounced as blasphemous; petitions were sent to kings and to civil and ecclesiastical tribunals to have it changed; and even Pope Sixtus V had signed a Brief to do away with it. Possibly the best apology for it was given by the good-natured monarch, Henry IV, when the University and Parliament of Paris pleaded with him to throw his influence against its use. Shrugging his shoulders, he replied: "I cannot see why we should worry about it. Some of my officers are Knights of the Holy Ghost; there is an Order of the Holy Trinity in the Church; and, in Paris, we have a congregation of nuns who call themselves God's Daughters. Why then should we object to Company of Jesus?"

The Spaniards must have been amazed at these objections, because the name Jesus was, as it still is, in very common use among them. They give it to their children, and it is employed as an exclamation of surprise or fear; like Mon Dieu! in French. They even use such expressions as: Jesu Cristo! Jesu mille veces or Jesucristo, Dios mio! The custom is rather startling for other nationalities, but it is merely a question of autre pays, autres mœurs. A compromise was made, however, for the time being, by calling the organization "The Society of the Name of Jesus," but that was subsequently forbidden by the General.

As a rule the Jesuits do not reply to these attacks. The illustrious Jacob Gretser attempted it long ago; but, in spite of his sanctity, he displayed so much temper in his retort, that he was told to hold his peace. Such is the policy generally adopted, and the Society consoles itself with the reflection that the terrible Basque, Ignatius Loyola, and a host of his sons have been crowned by the Universal Church as glorious saints; that the august Council of Trent solemnly approved of the Order as a "pious Institute;" that twenty or thirty successive Sovereign Pontiffs have blessed it and favored it, and that after the terrible storm evoked by its enemies had spent its fury, one of the first official acts of the Pope was to restore the Society to its ancient position in the Church. The scars it has received in its numberless battles are not disfigurements but decorations; and Cardinal Allen, who saw its members at close quarters in the bloody struggles of the English Mission, reminded them that "to be hated of the Heretikes, S. Hierom computeth a great glorie."

It is frequently asserted that the Society was organized for the express purpose of combatting the Protestant Reformation. Such is not the case. On the contrary, St. Ignatius does not seem to have been aware of the extent of the religious movement going on at that time. His sole purpose was to convert the Turks, and only the failure to get a ship at Venice prevented him from carrying out that plan. Indeed it is quite likely that when he first thought of consecrating himself to God, not even the name of Luther had, as yet, reached Montserrat or Manresa. They were contemporaries, of course, for Luther was born in 1483 and Loyola in 1491 or thereabouts; and their lines of endeavor were in frequent and direct antagonism, but without either being aware of it. Thus, in 1521, when Loyola was leading a forlorn hope at Pampeluna to save the citadel for Charles V, Luther was in the castle of Wartburg, plotting to dethrone that potentate. In 1522 when the recluse of Manresa was writing his "Exercises" for the purpose of making men better, Luther was posing as the Ecclesiast of Wittenberg and proclaiming the uselessness of the Ten Commandments; and when Loyola was in London begging alms to continue his studies, Luther was coquetting with Henry VIII to induce that riotous king to accept the new Evangel.

Ignatius Loyola was born in the heart of the Pyrenees, in the sunken valley which has the little town of Azcoitia at one end, and the equally diminutive one of Azpeitia at the other. Over both of them the Loyolas had for centuries been lords either by marriage or inheritance. Their ancestral castle still stands; but, whereas in olden times it was half hidden by the surrounding woods, it is today embodied in the immense structure which almost closes in that end of the valley.

The castle came into the possession of the Society through the liberality of Anne of Austria, and a college was built around it. The added structure now forms an immense quadrangle with four interior courts. From the centre of the façade protrudes the great church which is circular in form and two hundred feet in height. Its completion was delayed for a long time but the massive pile is now finished. At its side, but quite invisible from without, is the castle proper, somewhat disappointing to those who have formed their own conceptions of what castles were in those days. It is only fifty-six feet high and fifty-eight wide. The lower portion is of hewn stone, the upper part of brick. Above the entrance, the family escutcheon is crudely cut in stone, and represents two wolves, rampant and lambent, having between them a caldron suspended by a chain. This device is the heraldic symbol of the name Loyola. The interior is elaborately decorated, and the upper story, where Ignatius was stretched on his bed of pain after the disaster of Pampeluna, has been converted into an oratory.

The church looks towards Azpeitia. A little stream runs at the side of the well-built road-way which connects the two towns. Along its length, shrines have been built, as have shelters for travelers if overtaken by a storm. The people are handsome and dignified, stately in their carriage – for they are mountaineers – and are as thrifty in cultivating their steep hills, which they terrace to the very top, as the Belgians are in tilling their level fields in the Low Countries. There is no wealth, but there is no sordid poverty; and a joyous piety is everywhere in evidence. Azpeitia glories in the fact that there St. Ignatius was baptized; and when some years ago, it was proposed to remove the font and replace it by a new one, the women rose in revolt. Their babies had to be made Christians in the same holy basin as their great compatriot, no matter how old and battered it might be.

Ignatius was the youngest of a family of thirteen or, at least, the youngest of the sons; he was christened Eneco or Inigo, but he changed his name later to Ignatius. His early years were spent in the castle of Arévalo; and, according to Maffei he was at one time a page of King Ferdinand. He was fond of the world, its vanities, its amusements and its pleasures, and though there is nothing to show that there was ever any serious violation of the moral law in his conduct, neither was he the extraordinarily pious youth such as he is represented in the fantastic stories of Nieremberg, Nolarci, García, Henao and others. After the fashion of the hagiographers of the seventeenth century and later, they describe him as a sort of Aloysius who, under the tutelage of Doña María de Guevara, visited the sick in the hospitals, regarding them as the images of Christ, nursing them with tenderest charity, and so on. All that is pure imagination and an unwise attempt to make a saint of him before the time.

Indeed, very little about the early life of Ignatius is known, except that when he was about twenty-six he gained some military distinction in an attack on the little town of Najara. Of course, he was conspicuous in the fight at Pampeluna, but whether he was in command of the fortress or had been merely sent to its rescue to hold it until the arrival of the Viceroy is a matter of conjecture. At all events, even after the inhabitants had agreed to surrender the town, he determined to continue the fight. He first made his confession to a fellow-knight, for there was no priest at hand, and then began what was, at best, a hopeless struggle. The enemy soon made a breach in the walls and while rallying his followers to repel the assault he was struck by a cannon-ball which shattered one leg and tore the flesh from the other. That ended the siege, and the flag of the citadel was hauled down. Admiring his courage, the French tenderly carried him to Loyola, where for some time his life was despaired of. The crisis came on the feast of St. Peter, to whom he had always a special devotion. From that day, he began to grow better. Loyalty to the Chair of Peter is one of the distinguishing traits of the Compañía which he founded.

It is almost amusing to find these shattered limbs of Ignatius figuring in the diatribes of the elder Arnauld against the Society, sixty or seventy years after the siege. "The enmity of the Jesuits for France," he said, "is to be traced to the fact that Loyola took an oath on that occasion, as Hannibal did against Rome, to make France pay for his broken legs." An English Protestant prelate also bemoaned "the ravages that had been caused by the fanaticism of that lame soldier." Other examples might be cited. To beguile the tediousness of his convalescence, Ignatius asked for the romance "Amadis de Gaul," a favorite book with the young cavaliers of the period; but he had to content himself with the "Life of Christ" and "The Flowers of the Saints." These, however, proved to be of greater service than the story of the mythical Amadis; for the reading ended in a resolution which exerted a mighty influence in the history of humanity. Ignatius had made up his mind to do something for God. The "Life of Christ" which he read, appears to have been that of Ludolph of Saxony in which the name "Jesuit" occurs. It had been translated into Spanish and published at Alcalá as early as 1502. Thus, a book from the land of Martin Luther helped to make Ignatius Loyola a saint.

When sufficiently restored to health he set out for the sanctuary of Montserrat where there is a Madonna whose thousandth anniversary was celebrated a few years ago. It is placed over the main altar of the church of a Benedictine monastery, which stands three thousand feet above the dark gorge, through which the river Llobregat rushes head-long to the Mediterranean. You can get a glimpse of the blue expanse of the sea in the distance, from the monastery windows. Before this statue, Ignatius kept his romantic Vigil of Arms, like the warriors of old on the eve of their knighthood; for he was about to enter upon a spiritual warfare for the King of Kings. He remained in prayer at the shrine all night long, not however in the apparel of a cavalier but in the common coarse garb of a poverty-stricken pilgrim. From there he betook himself to the little town of Manresa, about three miles to the north, on the outskirts of which is the famous cave where he wrote the "Spiritual Exercises." It is in the face of the rock, so low that you can touch the roof with your hand, and so narrow that there is room for only a little altar at one end. Possibly it had once been the repair of wild beasts. It is a mistake, however, to imagine that he passed all his time there. He lived either in the hospital or in the house of some friend, and resorted to the cave to meditate and do penance for his past sins. At present it is incorporated in a vast edifice which the Spanish Jesuits have built above and around it.

Perhaps no book has ever been written that has evoked more ridiculous commentaries on its contents and its purpose than this very diminutive volume known as "The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius." Its very simplicity excites suspicion; its apparent jejuneness suggest all sorts of mysterious and malignant designs. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is nothing but a guide to Christian piety and devotion. It begins with the consideration of the great fundamental truths of religion, such as our duty to God, the hideousness and heinousness of sin, hell, death, and judgment on which the exercitant is expected to meditate before asking himself if it is wise for a reasonable creature who must soon die to continue in rebellion against the Almighty. No recourse is had to rhetoric or oratory by those who direct others in these "Exercises," not even such as would be employed in the pulpit by the ordinary parish preacher. It is merely a matter of a man having a heart to heart talk with himself. If he makes up his mind to avoid mortal sin in the future, but to do no more, then his retreat is over as far as he is concerned. But to have even reached that point is to have accomplished much.

From Ferrara Le Jay hastened to Bagnorea to end a schism there, and though neither side would listen to him at first, yet his patience overcame all difficulties, and finally, everybody met everybody else in the great church, embraced and went to Holy Communion. Peace then reigned in the city. The other envoys achieved similar successes elsewhere throughout the peninsula; and Crétineau-Joly says that their joint efforts thwarted the plot of the heretics to destroy the Faith in Italy. The winter of 1538 was extremely severe in Rome, and a scarcity of provisions brought on what amounted almost to a famine. This distress gave Ignatius and his companions the opportunity of showing their devotion to the suffering poor; and they not only contrived in some way or other to feed, in their own house, as many as four hundred famishing people, but inspired many of the well-to-do classes to imitate their example.

With this and other good works to their credit, they could now ask the authorization of the Sovereign Pontiff for their enterprise. Hence on September 3, 1539, they submitted a draught of the Constitution, and were pleased to hear that it evoked from the Pope the exclamation: "The finger of God is here." But they were not so fortunate with the commission of cardinals to whom the matter was then referred. Guidiccioni, who presided, was not only distinctly hostile, but expressed the opinion that all existing religious orders should be reduced to four and hence he contemptuously tossed the petition aside. It was only after a year that he took it up again – he scarcely knew why – and on reading it attentively he was completely converted and hastened to report on it as follows: "Although as before, I still hold to the opinion that no new religious order should be instituted, I cannot refrain from approving this one. Indeed, I regard it as something that is now needed to help Christendom in its troubles, and especially to destroy the heresies which are at present devastating Europe." Thus it is Guidiccioni who is responsible for setting the Society to undo the work of Martin Luther.

The Pope was extremely pleased by the commission's report, and on September 27, 1540, he issued the Bull "Regimini Ecclesiæ," approving "The Institute of the Society of Jesus." In this Bull and that of Julius III, the successor of Paul III, we have the official statement of the character and the purpose of the Society. Its object is the salvation and perfection of the souls of its members and of the neighbor. One of the chief means for that end is the gratuitous instruction of youth. There are no penances of rule; but it is assumed that bodily mortifications are practised and employed, though only under direction. Great care is taken in the admission and formation of novices, and lest the protracted periods of study, later, should chill the fervor of their devotion, there are to be semi-annual spiritual renovations, and when the studies are over, and the student ordained to the priesthood, there is a third year of probation, somewhat similar to the novitiate in its exercises. There are two grades in the Society – one of professed, the other of coadjutors, both spiritual and temporal.

All are to be bound by the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but those of the coadjutors are simple, while those of the professed are solemn. The latter make a fourth vow, namely, one of obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, which binds them to go wherever he sends them, and to do so without excuse, and without provisions for the journey. The Father-General is elected for life. He resides in Rome, so as to be at the beck of the Sovereign Pontiff, and also because of the international character of the Society. All superiors are appointed by him, and he is regularly informed through the provincials about all the members of the Society. Every three years there is a meeting of procurators to report on their respective provinces and to settle matters of graver moment. The General is aided in his government by assistants chosen mostly according to racial divisions, which may in turn be subdivided. There is also an admonitor who sees that the General governs according to the laws of the Society and for the common good. Disturbers of the peace of the Order are to be sharply admonished, and if incorrigible, expelled. When approved scholastics or formed coadjutors are dismissed they are dispensed from their simple vows. The simple vow of chastity made by the scholastics is a diriment impediment of matrimony. Because of possible withdrawals or dismissals from the Society, the dominion of property previously possessed is to be retained, as long as the general may see fit, but not the usufruct – an arrangement which has been repeatedly approved by successive Pontiffs, as well as by the Council of Trent.

All ambition of ecclesiastical honors is shut off by a special vow to that effect. There is no choir or special dress. The poverty of the Society is of the strictest. The professed houses are to subsist on alms, and cannot receive even the usual stipends. Moreover, the professed are bound by a special vow to watch over and prevent any relaxation in this respect. The rule is paternal, and hence an account of conscience is to be made, either under seal of confession or in whatever way the individual may find most agreeable. A general congregation may be convened as often as necessary. Its advisability is determined at the meeting of the procurators. In the first part of the Constitution, the impediments and the mode of admission are considered; in the second, the manner of dismissal; in the third and fourth, the means of furthering piety and study and whatever else concerns the spiritual advancement, chiefly of the scholastics; the fifth explains the character of those who are to be admitted and also the various grades; the sixth deals with the occupations of the members; the seventh treats of those of superiors; the eighth and ninth relate to the General; and the tenth determines the ways and means of government. Before the Constitutions were promulgated, Ignatius submitted them to the chief representatives of the various nationalities then in the Order, but they did not receive the force of law until they were approved by the first general congregation of the whole Society. After that they were presented to Pope Paul III, and examined by four Cardinals. Not a word had been altered when they were returned. The Sovereign Pontiff declared that they were more the result of Divine inspiration than of human prudence.

For those who read these Constitutions without any preconceived notions, the meaning is obvious, whereas the intention of discovering something mysterious and malignant in them inevitably leads to the most ridiculous misinterpretations of the text. Thus, for instance, some writers inform us that St. Ignatius is not the author of the Constitutions, but Laínez, Mercurian or Acquaviva. Others assure their readers that no Pope can ever alter or modify even the text; that the General has special power to absolve novices from any mortal sins they may have committed before entering; that the general confessions of beginners are carefully registered and kept; that a special time is assigned to them for reading accounts of miraculous apparitions and demoniacal obsessions; that before the two years of novitiate have elapsed a vow must be taken to enter the Society; that all wills made in favor of one's family must be rescinded; that in meditating, the eyes must be fixed on a certain point and the thoughts centered on the Pater Noster until a state of quasi-hypnotism results; that the grades in the Society are reached after thirty or thirty-five years of probation, after which the applicant becomes a probationer; the professed are called "ours"; the spiritual coadjutors "externs." The latter do the plotting and have aroused all the ill-will of which the Society has been the object; whereas the professed devote themselves to prayer and are admired and loved.

There are also, we are assured, secret, outside Jesuits. The Emperors Ferdinand II and III, and Sigismund of Poland are put in that class, and probably also John III of Portugal and Maximilian of Bavaria; while Louis XIV is suspected of belonging to it. The Father-General dispenses such members from the priesthood and from wearing the soutane. "Imagine Louis XIV," says Brou, who furnishes these details, "asking the General of the Jesuits to be dispensed from wearing the soutane!" Unlike the other Jesuits, these cryptics would not be obliged to go to Rome to pronounce their vows. Again, it is said, Pope Paul IV had great difficulty in persuading the Jesuits to accept the dispensation from the daily recitation of the breviary. Perhaps the most charming of all of these "discoveries" is that the famous phrase perinde ac cadaver, "you must obey as if you were a dead body," was borrowed from the Sheik Si-Senoussi who laid down rules for his Senoussis in Africa, about two centuries after St. Ignatius had died. The authors of these extraordinary conceptions are Müller, Reuss, Cartwright, Pollard, Vollet and others, all of whom are honoured with a notice posted in the British Museum, as worthy of being consulted on the puzzling subject of Jesuitry, and yet the Constitutions of the Society and the explanations of them, by prominent Jesuit writers, can be found in any public library.

CHAPTER II
INITIAL ACTIVITIES

Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy – Election of Ignatius – Jesuits in Ireland – "The Scotch Doctor" – Faber and Melanchthon – Le Jay – Bobadilla – Council of Trent – Laínez, Salmerón, Canisius – The Catechism – Opposition in Spain – Cano – Pius V – First Missions to America – The French Parliaments – Postel – Foundation of the Collegium Germanicum at Rome – Similar Establishments in Germany – Clermont and other Colleges in France – Colloque de Poissy.

The pent-up energy of the new organization immediately found vent not only in Europe but at the ends of the earth. Portugal gave its members their first welcome when Xavier and Rodriguez went there, the latter to remain permanently, the former only for a brief space. Araoz evangelized Spain and was the first Jesuit to enter into relations with Francis Borgia, Viceroy of Catalonia, who afterwards became General of the Society. A college was begun in Paris and provided with professors such as Strada, Ribadeneira, Oviedo and Mercurian. Faber accompanied Ortiz, the papal legate, to Germany; Brouet, Bobadilla, Salmerón, Codure and Laínez went everywhere through Italy; while Ignatius remained at Rome, directing their operations and meantime establishing orphanages, night refuges, Magdalen asylums, shelters for persecuted Jews, and similar institutions. Strangely enough, Ignatius was not yet the General of the Society, for no election had thus far taken place. Strictly speaking, however, none was needed, for none of the associates ever dreamed of any other leader. However, on April 5, 1541, the balloting took place; those who were absent sending their votes by messenger. That of Xavier could not arrive in time, for he had already left Portugal for the East; indeed he had departed before the official approval of the Order by the Pope – two things which have suggested to some inventive historians that Francis Xavier was not really a Jesuit. They would have proved their point better, if they could have shown Xavier had remained in Europe after he had been ordered away. As a matter of fact; he had been one of the collaborators of Ignatius in framing the Constitutions and was still in Portugal when the news arrived of Guidiccioni's change of mind.

In the election every vote but one went for Ignatius. The missing one was his own. He was dissatisfied and asked for another election. Out of respect for him, the request was granted but with the same result – Such a concession, it may be noted, is never granted now. The one who is chosen submits without a word. The office is for life but provisions are made for removal – a contingency which happily has never arisen. As in the beginning, those elections are held at what are called general congregations. The first one was made up of all the available fathers but at present they consist of the fathers assistant, namely the representatives of the principal linguistic groups in the Society or their subdivisions – a body of men who constitute what is called the Curia and who live with the General; the provincials; two delegates from each province; and finally the procurator of the Society. With one exception, these congregations have always met in Rome; the exception is the one that chose Father Luis Martín in 1892, which assembled at Loyola in Spain. That these elections may be absolutely free from all external and internal influence, the delegates are strictly secluded, and have no communication with other members of the Society. Four days are spent in prayer and in seeking information from the various electors, but the advocacy of any particular candidate is absolutely prohibited. The ballot is secret and the voting is immediately preceded by an hour's meditation in presence of the crucifix. The electors are fasting, but the method of voting is such that a deadlock or even any great delay is next to impossible. Up to the time of the Suppression of the Society in 1773, there had been eighteen Generals. In the interim between that catastrophe and the re-establishment, there were three Vicars-General, who were compelled by force of circumstances to live in Russia. In 1802 on the receipt of the Brief "Catholicæ Fidei," the title of the last Vicar was changed to that of General. Since then, there have been eight successors to that post.

St. Ignatius was chosen General on Easter Sunday, 1541. After the election, the companions repaired to St. Paul's outside the Walls and there renewed their vows. On that occasion it was ordained that every professed father should, after making his vows, teach catechism to children or ignorant people for forty days; subsequently this obligation was extended to rectors of colleges after their installation. Ignatius acquitted himself of this task in the church of Our Lady of the Wayside at the foot of the Capitol.

In 1541 we find Salmerón and Brouet on their way to Ireland as papal nuncios. They had been asked for by Archbishop Wauchope of Armagh, when Henry VIII was endeavoring to crush out the Faith in England and Ireland. Wauchope is a very interesting historical character. He had been named Archbishop of Armagh after Browne of that see had apostatized. He was generally known as "the Scotch Doctor," and had been the Delegate of Pope Paul III at Spires where Charles V was striving in vain to conciliate the German princes. With him as advisers were Le Jay, Bobadilla and Faber. What made him especially conspicuous then and subsequently, was the fact that he had risen to the dignity of archbishop and of papal delegate though he was born blind. This is asserted by a host of authors, among them Prat in his life of Le Jay, and Crétineau-Joly, MacGeoghegan and Moore in their histories.

On the other hand we find in the "Acta Sanctæ Sedis" (XIII) a flat denial of it by no less a personage than Pope Benedict XIV. It occurs incidentally in a decision given on March 20, 1880, in connection with an appeal for a young theologian, whose sight was very badly impaired at the end of his theological course. The appellants had alleged the case of the Archbishop of Armagh and the court answered as follows: "Nec valeret adduci exemplum cujusdam Roberti Scoti, cui quamvis cæco a puerili ætate, concessa fuit facultas nedum ad sacerdotium sed etiam ad episcopatum, ascendendi, uti tenent Maiol. (De irregularitate), et Barbos (De officio episcopi). Respondet enim Benedictus XIV, quod reliqui scriptores, quibus major fides habenda est, Robertum non oculis captum sed infirmum fuisse dicunt;" which in brief means: "Benedict XIV declares that the most reliable historians say that Scotch Robert was not blind but of feeble vision." As Benedict XIV was perhaps the greatest scholar who ever occupied the Chair of Peter, and as his extraordinary intellectual abilities were devoted from the beginning of his career to historical, canonical and liturgical studies, in which he is regarded as of the highest authority, such an utterance may be accepted as final with regard to the "Scotch Doctor's" blindness.

Codure was to have been one of the Irish delegates, but he died, and hence Salmerón, Brouet and Zapata undertook the perilous mission. The last mentioned was a wealthy ecclesiastic who was about to enter the Society and had offered to defray the expenses of the journey. In the instructions for their manner of acting Ignatius ordered that Brouet should be spokesman whenever nobles or persons of importance were to be dealt with. As Brouet had the looks and the sweetness of an angel, whereas Salmerón was abrupt at times, the wisdom of the choice was obvious. They went by the way of France to Scotland, and when at Stirling Castle, they received a letter from James V, the father of Mary Queen of Scots, bespeaking their interest in his people. Crétineau-Joly says they saw the king personally. Fouqueray merely hints at its likelihood. From Scotland they passed over to Ireland and found that the enemy knew of their arrival. A price was put upon their heads, and they had to hurry from place to place so as not to compromise those who gave them shelter. But in the brief period of a month which they had at their disposal before they were recalled by the Pope they had ample opportunity to take in the conditions that prevailed. They returned as they had gone, through Scotland and over to Dieppe, and then directed their steps to Rome, but they were arrested as spies near Lyons and thrown into prison – a piece of news which Paget, the English ambassador in France, hastened to communicate to Henry; Cardinals de Tournon and Gaddi, however, succeeded in having them released and they then proceeded to the Holy City to make their report.

Eighteen years later, Father Michael Gaudan was sent as papal nuncio to Mary Stuart. He entered Edinburgh disguised as a Scottish peddler and succeeded in reaching the queen. As a Frenchman could not have acted the part of a Scottish peddler, it is more than likely that Gaudan is a gallicized form of Gordon. Indeed, there is on the records a Father James Gordon, S. J., who had so exasperated the Calvinists by his refutation of their errors that he was driven out of the country. He returned again, however, immediately, as he simply got a boat to take him off the ship which was carrying him into exile, and on the following day he stood once more upon his native heath, remaining there for some years sustaining his persecuted Catholic brethren (Claude Nau, Mary's secretary).

That the "blind Archbishop" also succeeded in reaching his see is clear from a passage in Moore's "History of Ireland" (xlvii), which tells how during the reign of Edward VI two French gentlemen, the Baron de Fourquevaux and the Sieur Montluc, afterwards Bishop of Valence, went to Ireland as envoys of the French king and were concealed in Culmer Fort on Loch Foyle. They kept a diary of their journey which may be found, we are assured, in the "Armorial-général ou registre de la noblesse de France." The diary relates that while at the Fort "they received a visit from Robert Wauchope, better known by his pen name as Venantius, a divine whose erudition was the more remarkable as he had been blind from birth and was at the time, titular Archbishop of Armagh." He did not, however, remain in Ireland. MacGeoghegan says "he returned to the Continent and died in the Jesuit house at Paris in the year 1551." Stewart Rose in her "Saint Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits" tells us it was at Lyons, but that was impossible, for there was no Jesuit establishment in Lyons until after the great pestilence of 1565, when the authorities offered the Society the municipal college of the Trinity as a testimonial of gratitude to Father Auger. The generosity of this offer, however, was not excessive. The Fathers were to take it for two years on trial. They did so and then the provincial insisted that the gift should be absolute or the staff would be withdrawn. After some bickering on the part of a number of Calvinist échevins or aldermen, the grant was made in perpetuity and confirmed by Charles IX in 1568.

Meantime, Faber had been laboring in Germany. He was to have been the Catholic orator at Worms in 1540, but conditions were such that he made no public utterance. Melanchthon was present, but whether Faber and he met is not clear. In 1541 Faber received an enthusiastic welcome at Ratisbon from the Catholics, especially from Cochlæus, the great antagonist of Luther. Among his opponents at the Diet were Bucer and Melanchthon; the discussion, as usual, led to no result. In one of his letters he notes the inability of the Emperor to prevent the general ruin of the Faith. From Ratisbon he went to Nuremberg, but as the legate had been recalled, Faber's work necessarily came to an end. Le Jay and Bobadilla succeeded him in Germany. The former addressed the assembly of the bishops at Salzburg, preached in the Lutheran churches, escaped being poisoned on one occasion and drowned on another; he failed, however, to check the flood of heresy, which had not only completely engulfed Ratisbon, but threatened to overwhelm Catholic Bavaria, although Duke William maintained that such an event was impossible. Ingolstadt had already been badly damaged, both doctrinally and morally; and Bobadilla was despatched thither by the legate to see what could be done.

Faber had, meantime, returned to Germany. In spite of attacks by highwaymen, imprisonment, ill-treatment at the hands of disorderly bands of soldiers and heretics, he reached Spires and completely revived the spirit of the clergy. From there he hastened to Cologne, but in the midst of his work he was sent off to Portugal for the marriage of the king's daughter. By the time he reached Louvain, he was sick and exhausted, so that the order to proceed to Portugal had to be rescinded. He then returned to Cologne, where he again met Bucer and Melanchthon, who were endeavoring to induce the bishop to apostatize. Apprehensive of their success, he had them both expelled from the city. Again he was summoned to Portugal, and in 1547 the king, at his instance, gave the Society the college of Coimbra. Similar establishments were begun about the same time in Spain – at Valencia, Barcelona and Valladolid, chiefly through the influence of Araoz.

Le Jay, meanwhile, had been made professor of theology at Innsbruck, on the death of the famous Dr. Eck, and the university petitioned the Pope to make his appointment perpetual; but he was clamored for simultaneously by several bishops, and we find him subsequently at Augsburg, Salzburg, Dillingen and elsewhere, battling incessantly for the cause of the Faith. He succeeded in inducing the bishops assembled at Augsburg to prohibit the discussion of religion at the Diet, and a little later he assisted at the ecclesiastical council of the province. With him at this gathering was Bobadilla, who, says the chronicler, "resembled him in energy and zeal but was altogether unlike him in character." Le Jay was gentle and persuasive; Bobadilla, impetuous and volcanic. Bobadilla's fire, however, seems to have pleased the Germans. He strengthened the nobles and people of Innsbruck in their faith, was consulted by King Ferdinand on the gravest questions, scored brilliant successes in public disputes, and was made socius of the Apostolic nuncio at Nuremberg, where, it was suspected, a deep plot was being laid for the complete extirpation of the Faith. At the king's request, he attended the Diet of Worms, and by his alertness and knowledge rendered immense service to the Catholic party. He was shortly afterward summoned by the king to Vienna where he preached to the people incessantly and revived the ecclesiastical spirit of the clergy. He was again at Worms for another diet, and persuaded both the emperor and Ferdinand to oppose the Lutheran scheme of convoking a general council in Germany. At the suggestion of St. Ignatius, an appeal had been made to the bishops, through Le Jay, to establish seminaries in their dioceses. They all approved of the project; and several immediately set to work to carry it out.

When the Diet adjourned, Le Jay left Germany to take part in the Council of Trent, while Bobadilla remained with the king as spiritual adviser to the court and general supervisor of the sick and wounded soldiers of the royal armies. In the latter capacity he acquitted himself with his usual energy – his impetuosity of character often bringing him into the forefront of battle, where he merited several honorable scars for his daring. He also succeeded in falling a victim to the pestilence which was ravaging the country; he was robbed and maltreated by marauders, but came through it all safely, and we find him at the Diets of Ratisbon and Augsburg, everywhere showing himself a genuine apostle, as the Archbishop of Vienna informed Ignatius. The king offered him a bishopric, but he refused. He was soon, however, to know Germany no more.

The Council of Trent had already been in session for three years, when Charles V issued an edict known as the Interim, which forbade any change of religion until the council had finished its work; but at the same time he made concessions to the heretics which angered the Catholics both lay and clerical. Bobadilla was especially outspoken in the matter and in a public discourse was imprudent enough to condemn the imperial policy. Clearly he had not yet acquired the characteristic virtue of his great leader. Not only did he not mend matters by his intemperate eloquence, but he created an aversion for the Society in the mind of Charles V, which lasted till the time of St. Francis Borgia. Besides, he virtually blasted his own career. He was ordered to Naples by St. Ignatius and forbidden to present himself at the Jesuit house as he passed through Rome. He appears only once later and then in a manner scarcely redounding to his credit: objecting to the election of Laínez as vicar, although he had previously voted for him and obeyed him for a year. Happily the brilliant services of his fellow Jesuits who were at the Council of Trent and elsewhere, as well as his own splendid past, averted any very great damage to the Society.

Although Ignatius had been invited to be present at the sessions in Trent, he sedulously avoided the prominence which that would have given him personally; moreover, absence from his post as General of the newly-formed Institute would have materially interfered with the task of preparing successors to the great men who were already at work. Thus, Salmerón and Laínez were the Pope's theologians and Father Faber was summoned from his sick bed in Portugal to assist them, but he arrived in Rome only to die in the arms of Ignatius and never appeared at the council. Le Jay was present as theologian of the Cardinal Archbishop of Augsburg; Cavallino represented the Duke of Bavaria; and later Canisius and Polanco were added to the group. The coming of Canisius was due more or less to an accident. He had been laboring at Cologne to prevent the archbishop, Herman von Weid, from openly apostatizing; when the concessions to Melanchthon and Bucer had become too outrageous to be tolerated, he had hurried off to meet the emperor and King Ferdinand to ask for the deposition of the prelate. With the king he met Truchsess, the great Cardinal of Augsburg, and had no difficulty in gaining his point, but the Cardinal was so fascinated by the ability of the young pleader that he insisted on taking him to Trent as his theologian in spite of the protests of the whole city of Cologne.

Naturally, many of the Fathers of the Council had their suspicions of these new theologians. They were members of a religious order which had broken with the traditions of the past, and they might possibly be heretics in disguise. Moreover, they were alarmingly young. Canisius was only twenty-six, Salmerón thirty-one, Le Jay about the same age, and Laínez, the chief figure in the council, not more than thirty-four. But the indubitable holiness of their lives, their amazing learning, and their uncompromising orthodoxy soon dissipated all doubts about them. Laínez and Salmerón were especially prominent. They were allowed to speak as long as they chose on any topic. Thus, after Laínez had discoursed for an entire day on the Sacrifice of the Mass, he was ordered to continue on the following morning. Entire sections of the Acts of the council were written by him; and by order of the Pope both he and Salmerón had to be present at all the sessions of the council, which lasted with its interruptions from 1545 to 1563. Bishoprics and a cardinal's hat were offered to Laínez; and, at the death of Paul IV, twelve votes were cast for him as Pope. Indeed one section of the cardinals had made up their minds to elect him, but when apprised of it, he fled and kept in concealment until the danger was averted. He was at that time General of the Society.

After the first adjournment of the council, these men whose stupendous labors would appear to have called for some repose were granted none at all. Thus, we find Laínez summoned by the Duke of Etruria to found a college in Florence. The Pope's vicar wanted him to look after the ecclesiastical needs of Bologna, whither he repaired with Salmerón, while Le Jay was working at Ferrara and elsewhere in the Peninsula. The most remarkable of them all, however, in the matter of work during these recesses was undoubtedly Peter Canisius (Kanees, Kanys or De Hondt, as he was variously called.) One would naturally imagine that he would have been sent back to Cologne to the scene of his former triumphs. On the contrary, he was ordered to teach rhetoric in the newly-founded college of Messina in Sicily. He was then recalled to Rome, where he made his solemn profession in the hands of St. Ignatius; after this he started with Le Jay and Salmerón to Ingolstadt, where he taught theology and began his courses of catechetical instructions which were to restore the lost Faith of Germany.

While all this was going on, another college had been established at Pamiers, which was in the heretical territory of Navarre. Its founders were none others than the rector of the Roman College, Jean Pelletier, and Edmond Auger. But in the beginning the inhabitants were suspicious and refused the commonest hospitality to the new comers, so that their first dwelling had the advantage of being like the Stable of Bethlehem – a hut with no doors and no windows. Finally, however, their sermons in the churches captivated the people and the "Jezoists," as they were called, succeeded in getting a respectable house and beginning their classes. This was in 1559, but before the end of 1561 the "Jezoists" were expelled by the excited Huguenots, and were compelled to take refuge in Toulouse.

The Edmond Auger just mentioned was perhaps the most eloquent man of that period in France. He was called the Chrysostom of his country. Wherever he went, crowds flocked to hear him, fanatical Calvinists as well as devoted Catholics. His first sermon was in Valence, where the bishop had just apostatized and the Huguenots were in complete possession. A furious outbreak resulted, and he was seized and sentenced to be burned to death. While standing at the stake, he harangued the people before the torch was applied, and so captivated the mob that they clamored for his release. His devotedness to the sick in a pestilence at Lyons won the popular heart and a college was asked for. At various times he was chaplain of the troops, confessor of Henry IV, rector and provincial; but unfortunately he was so outspoken in his denunciation of the League that the people of Lyons, who once admired him, were wrought up to fury by his utterances on the political situation, and were on the point of throwing him into the Rhône. His unwise zeal had thus seriously injured the Society.

When the council of Trent had concluded its sessions, Canisius was sent back to Germany by the Pope to see that the decrees were promulgated and enforced. He labored for five years to accomplish this task, but failed completely. With the exception of some bishops like Truchsess of Augsburg, very few paid any attention to the Pope's wish, the reason being that they were mostly scions of the nobility, who were accustomed to live in luxury and had adopted the ecclesiastical profession solely because of the rich revenues of the sees to which their relatives had had them appointed. At that very time fourteen of them, it is said on the best authority, were wearing their mitres without even having notified the Pope of their election or asking his approbation. They, more than Martin Luther, were responsible for the loss of Germany. Their lives were such that Canisius forbade his priests to accept the position of confessor to any of them. Of course, such men turned a deaf ear to the papal decree about establishing diocesan seminaries; and those who desired them were prevented by their canons, some of whom were not even priests. It was for this reason that Canisius begged the Pope to establish burses in foreign seminaries, where worthy ecclesiastics might be trained whose lives would be in such contrast with the general depravity and ignorance of the clergy that the bishops would perhaps be shamed out of their apathy.

The establishment of burses, however, was only a temporary expedient; for the few secular priests they might furnish could scarcely support the strain to which they would be subjected in the terrible isolation which their small number would entail. They would not have the compact organization of a religious order to keep them steady, and yet they would be the victims of the same kind of persecution as Canisius and his associates had to undergo. From this difficulty arose the idea of the Collegium Germanicum already referred to, an establishment in Rome under the direction of the Jesuits, to which young Germans distinguished for their intellectual ability and virtue could be sent and trained to be apostles in their native land. It was the Collegium Germanicum that saved to the Faith what was left of Germany and won back much that was lost.

"The German College at Rome," said a Protestant preacher in 1594 (Nothgedrungene Erinnerungen, Bl. 8), "is a hotbed singularly favorable for developing the worst kind of Jesuitry. Our young Germans are educated there gratuitously; and at the end of their studies they are sent home to restore papistry to its former place and to fight for it with all their might. You find them exercising the ministry in a great number of collegiate churches and parishes. They become the advisers of bishops and even archbishops; and we see these Jesuits under our very eyes defending the Catholic cause with such zeal that we Evangelicals may well ask ourselves in what lands and in what towns such fervent zeal for the beloved Gospel is found among our own party. They seduce so many souls from us that it is too distressing even to enumerate them." Martin Chemnitz, the Protestant theologian, said that if the Jesuits had done nothing but found the German College, they would deserve to be regarded for that one achievement as the most dangerous enemy of Lutheranism. "These young men," said another Protestant controversialist in 1593, "are like their teachers in diabolical cunning, in hypocritical piety, and in the idolatrous practices which they propagate among the people. They preach frequently, pretending to be good Christians, they frequent hospitals and visit the sick at home, all out of a pure hypocrisy saturating the very hides of these wretches. They are again persuading the simple and credulous people to return to their damnable papistry" (Janssen, op. cit., IX, 323, sqq.).

Echsfeld, Erfurt, Aschaffenburg, Mayence, Coblentz, Trèves, Würzburg, Spires and other places soon felt the effects of the zeal of these students of the Collegium Germanicum. Their manner of life meant hardship and danger of every kind; assaults by degenerate Catholics and infuriated heretics; vigils in miserable huts and pest-laden hospitals, resulting sometimes in sickness and violent death; but "these messengers of the devil," as the preachers called them, kept at their work and soon won back countless numbers of their countrymen to the Faith. Similar establishments also grew up at Braunsberg, Dillingen, Fulda, Munich and Vienna. Representatives of other religious orders entered into the movement and gave it new life and vigor. Janssen (IX, 313) informs us that the foundation of seminaries for poor students also was due to Canisius and his fellow-workers. At their suggestion Albert V founded the Gregorianum at Munich in 1574; and Ingolstadt, Würzburg, Innsbruck, Halle, Gratz and Prague soon had similar establishments. As early as 1559 Canisius assumed the responsibility for two hundred poor students, and by having them live in common was able to supply all their needs. After each of his sermons in the cathedral, he went around among the great personages assembled to hear him, to ask for alms to keep up his establishments. Father Voth, following his example forty years later, collected 1400 florins in a single year for the same purpose.

The work of regeneration was not restricted to the foundation of ecclesiastical seminaries. Janssen (l.c.) gives us an entire page of the names of colleges taken from the "Litteræ annuæ," in some of which there were nine hundred, one thousand, and even thirteen hundred scholars. Between 1612 and 1625 Germany had one hundred Jesuit colleges. In all of them were established sodalities the members of which besides performing their own religious exercises in the chapel, visited the hospitals, prisons and camps and performed other works of charity and zeal. On their rosters are seen the names of men who attained eminence in Church and State – kings, princes, cardinals, soldiers, scholars, etc. These sodalities had also established intimate relations with similar organizations all over Europe. Naturally, this intense activity aroused the fury of the heretics. Calumnies of every kind were invented; and in 1603 a preacher in Styria announced that the most execrable and sanguinary plots were being formed to drown the whole Empire in blood in order to nullify the teaching of the Evangel. "O poor Roman Empire!" he exclaimed, "your only enemies, the only enemies of the Emperor, of the nation, of religion are the Jesuits." Janssen adds: "The facts told a different story."

Father Peter Pázmány figures at this period in a notable fashion. He was a Hungarian from Nagy Várad, also known as Grosswardein. His parents were Calvinists, but he became a Catholic and at the age of sixteen entered the Society at Rome, where he was a pupil of such scholars as Bellarmine and Vásquez. He taught in the college of Gratz, which had been founded by the Jesuits in 1573 with theological and philosophical faculties. The Archduke Ferdinand enriched it with new buildings and furnished it with ample revenues, giving it also ecclesiastical supremacy in Carinthia and other estates of the crown. Pázmány became the apostle of his countrymen, both by his books and his preaching. He was a master in his native tongue, says Ranke (History of the Popes, IV, 124), and his spiritual and learned work "Kalaus," produced an irresistible sensation. Endowed with a ready and captivating eloquence, he is said to have personally converted fifty of the most distinguished families, one of which ejected twenty ministers from their parishes and replaced them by as many Catholic priests. The government was also swung into line; the Catholics had the majority in the Diet of 1625, and an Esterhazy was made Palatine. Pázmány was offered a bishopric which he refused, but finally the Pope, yielding to the demand of the princes and people, appointed him primate and then made him a cardinal. His "Guide to Catholic Truth" was the first polemic in the Hungarian language. He founded a university at Tyrnau which was afterwards transferred to Buda. The Hungarian College at Rome was his creation, as was the Pazmaneum in Vienna. His name has been recently inserted in the Roman Breviary in connection with the three Hungarian martyrs, two of whom were Jesuits, Pongracz and Grodecz, who were put to death in 1619.

Italy exhibited a similar energy from one end to the other of the Peninsula. Chandlery in his "Fasti Breviores" (p. 40) tells us that "the first school of the Society was opened in the Piazza Ara Cœli in 1551, and soon developed into the famous Roman College. In 1552 it was removed to a house near the Minerva; in 1554 to a place near the present site; in 1562 to the house of Pope Paul IV; and in 1582 to the new buildings of the Gregorian University." It was in this college on March 25, 1563, that the Belgian scholastic, John Leunis, organized the first sodality of the Blessed Virgin. Fouqueray, however, contests this claim of the Ara Cœli school, and asserts that the first college was at Messina, and was begun in 1547, and that St. Ignatius determined to make it the model of all similar establishments. Its rule was based on the methods that prevailed in the colleges of the University of Paris, with changes, however, in its discipline and religious direction. Its plan of studies was the first "Ratio studiorum." It had two sessions of two or three hours each daily; Latin was always employed as the language of the house, but both Hebrew and Greek were taught. Vacation lasted only fifteen days for pupils in humanities and the higher grades; and only eight days or less for those in the lower classes. The students went to confession every month and assisted daily at Mass. Nearly all the cities of the peninsula had called for similar colleges. In what is now Belgium there were thirty-four colleges or schools, an apparently excessive number, but the fact that they were, with two exceptions, day-schools and that small boys were excluded will explain the possibility of managing them with comparatively few professors. Six or seven sufficed for as many hundred pupils. Moreover, something in the way of a foundation to support the school was always required before its establishment.

In 1564 the Roman Seminary was entrusted to the Society; and in 1578 the Roman College. Five years previously, the Collegium Germanicum, after Canisius had presented a memorial to Gregory XIII on the services it was expected to render, obtained a subsidy for a certain number of students. The Bull, dated August, 1573, exhorted the Catholics of the German Empire to provide for a hundred students of philosophy and theology. The Pope gave it the palace of St. Apollinaris, the Convent of St. Sabas and the revenues of St. Stephen on Monte Cœlio. Over and above this, he guaranteed 10,000 crowns out of the revenues of the Apostolic Treasury. In 1574 it had one hundred and thirty students and in a few years one hundred and fifty. The philosophers followed a three years' course, the theologians four. Between 1573 and 1585 the Pope disbursed for the Collegium Germanicum alone about 235,649 crowns – equivalent to about a quarter of a million dollars. Besides this, as early as 1552 St. Ignatius had obtained from Julius III a Bull endowing a college for the study of the humanities, in which young Germans could prepare themselves for philosophy and theology. In its opening year it had twenty-five students, and in the following twice as many. Under Paul IV when the establishment was in dire want, St. Ignatius supported it by begging, and he told Cardinal Truchsess that he would sell himself into slavery rather than forsake his Germans. It was while engrossed in this work that Ignatius died. His memory is tenderly cherished in the Collegium Germanicum to this day. When his name is read out in the Martyrology on July 31, the students all rise, and with uncovered heads listen reverently to the announcement of the feast of their founder.

CHAPTER III
ENDS OF THE EARTH

Xavier departs for the East – Goa – Around Hindostan – Malacca – The Moluccas – Return to Goa – The Valiant Belgian – Troubles in Goa – Enters Japan – Returns to Goa – Starts for China – Dies off the Coast – Remains brought to Goa – Africa – Congo, Angola, Caffreria, Abyssinia – Brazil, Nobrega, Anchieta, Azevedo – Failure of Rodriguez in Portugal.

When John III of Portugal asked for missionaries to evangelize the colonies which the discoveries of Da Gama and others had won for the crown in the far east, Bobadilla, Rodriguez and Xavier were assigned to the work. Bobadilla's sickness prevented him from going, and then His Majesty judged that he was too generous to his new possessions and not kind enough to the mother country; so it was decided to keep Rodriguez in Portugal, his native land, and send Xavier to the Indies.

Xavier arrived at Lisbon in June, 1540, and waited there eight months for the departure of the vessel, during which time he and Rodriguez effected a complete reformation in the morals of the city. He then began a series of apostolic journeys which were nothing less than stupendous in their character, not only for the distances covered during the eleven years to which they were restricted, but because of the extraordinary and often unseaworthy craft in which he traversed the yet uncharted seas of the East, which were swept by typhoons and infested by pirates, and where there was constant danger of being wrecked on inhospitable coasts and murdered by the savage natives. Three times his ship went to pieces on the rocks, and on one occasion he had to cling to a plank for days while the waves swept over him. Several times he came near being poisoned, and once he had to hide in the bush for a long time to escape the head-hunters of the Moluccas. The distances he traversed can only be appreciated by having an atlas at hand while perusing the story.

Leaving Europe, his course lay along the west coast of Africa, rounding Cape of Good Hope and then making for far away Mozambique. From there he pointed across the Arabian Sea to Goa on the west coast of Hindostan. Shortly afterwards, he continued down the coast to Cochin and Cape Comorin and across to Ceylon, then along the eastern side of the peninsula to the Pearl Fisheries, and back to Goa. Soon after, he is sailing across the Bay of Bengal to distant Malacca, which lies north of Sumatra; from there he penetrates into the Chinese Sea, and skirting Borneo and the Celebes, he arrives at the Molucca Islands, going through them from north to south and back. Returning to Goa, he again makes for Malacca and points north to Japan, passing the Philippines on his way, though it is claimed that he landed at Mindanao. From Japan he returns to Goa and then sets out for China. He reached an island opposite Canton, pined away there for a month or so, as no one dared to carry him over to the coast. He then took his flight to heaven, which was very near.

It was a great day for Lisbon when, on April 7, 1541, which happened to be his birthday, Xavier set sail for India. He was papal nuncio and King John's ambassador to the Emperor of Ethiopia. Nevertheless the princes and potentates whom this poorly clad ambassador met on his way must have gazed at him in wonder; for in spite of his honors, he washed and mended his own clothes, and while on shipboard refused the assistance of a servant and scarcely ate any food. The crew were a rascally set, as were most of the sea-rovers of those days; but this extraordinary papal nuncio and ambassador passed his time among them, always bright, approachable and happy, nursing them when they were sick, and gently taking them to task for their ill-spent lives. All day long he was busy with them, and during the night he was scourging himself or praying. By the time the ship reached its destination it was a floating church.

Goa was the capital of Portuguese India. It was not yet the golden Goa of the seventeenth century; but it had churches and chapels and a cathedral, an inchoate college and a bishop and a Franciscan friary. Mingled, however, with the Christian population was a horde of idolaters, Mussulmans, Jews, Arabians, Persians, Hindoos and others, all of them rated as inferior races by the Portuguese who were the hidalgos or fidalgos of Goa, even if they had been cooks and street-sweepers in Lisbon or Oporto. They were now clad in silks and brocades, and wore gold and precious gems in profusion; they delighted in religious displays; but in morality they were more debased than the worst pagans they jostled against in the streets. There were open debauchery, concubinage, polygamy and kindred crimes.

The coming of the papal nuncio was a great event, but he refused all recognition of his official rank. He lived in the hospital, looked after the lepers in their sheds, or the criminals in the jails, taught the children their catechism, and conversed with people of every class and condition. He got the secrets of their conscience; and in five months, Goa, at least in its Christian population, was as decent in its morals as it had formerly been corrupt and depraved. At the end of the peninsula, but beyond Cape Comorin, were the Pearl Fisheries, where lived a degraded caste who had been visited by the Franciscans and baptized some years before; but they had been left in their ignorance and vice, and no one in Goa now ever gave them a thought. Thither Xavier betook himself with his chalice and vestments and breviary, but with no provisions for his support.

On his way he passed Salsette, where Rudolph Aquaviva was martyred in later days; and he saw Canara and Mangalore and Cananon, where there was a mission station. He then went to Calicut and Cranganore and Cape Comorin, where the goddess Dourga was worshipped, and finally arrived at the Fisheries, where he found a people who were wretchedly poor, with nothing to cover them but a turban and a breech-clout, and who lived in huts along the shifting sands near the cocoanut-trees. With their tiny boats and rafts they contrived to get a livelihood from the sea, but they were shunned by the other Hindoos; for baptism had made them outcasts, and they were also the helpless victims of the pirates who were constantly prowling along the coast. Xavier lived in their filthy houses, talked with them through interpreters, gave them what instructions they were capable of receiving, and baptised all who had not yet become Christians. He remained two years with them, and after getting Portuguese ships to patrol the Sea, sent other missionaries to replace him when he had built catechumenates and little churches here and there. Although Xavier appears to have justified these rapid conversions by the precedent of 3000 people becoming Christians after the first sermon of St. Peter, yet Ignatius, while not blaming his methods, wrote him later that the instructions should precede and not follow baptism, and that quality rather than quantity should be the guide in accessions to the Faith.

Xavier returned thence to Goa, but we find him in the last days of September, 1545, abandoning India for a time and going ashore near the Portuguese settlement on the Straits of Malacca. It was a dangerous post, for it swarmed with Mohammedans. There were fierce écumeurs de mer, or sea-combers, on the near-by coasts of Sumatra, and on the island of Bitang the dethroned sultans were waiting for a chance to expel the Portuguese, while all through the interior were fierce and unapproachable savage tribes. Besides all this, the whites who had settled there for trade were a depraved mob; it is recorded that Xavier spent three whole days without food hearing their confessions, and passed entire nights praying for their conversion. In spite of all this accumulation of labor, he contrived to write a catechism and a prayer-book in Malay. In 1546 he went further east, past Java and Flores, and reached the Moluccas after a month and a half. He was on sociable terms everywhere, with soldiers and sailors and commandants of posts as well as cannibals, and made light of every hardship and danger in his efforts to win souls to God. Up and down the islands of the archipelago he travelled, meeting degeneracy of the worst kind at every step. But he established missionary posts, with the wonderful result that ten years later, De Beira, whom he sent there, had forty-seven stations and 300 °Christian families in these islands. Xavier spent two years in the Moluccas to prepare the way, and was back again in Goa in 1548.

During his absence, a number of missionaries, making in all six priests and nine coadjutor brothers, had been sent from Portugal. With them were a dozen Dominicans. Among the Jesuits were Fernandes and Cosmo de Torres, who, later on, were to be along with Xavier the founders of the great mission of Japan. There came also Antonio Gomes, a distinguished student of Coimbra, a master of arts, a doctor of canon law, and a notable orator. But, except as an orator, he was not to have the success in Goa that he had won in Lisbon. Likewise in the party was Gaspard Baertz, a Fleming, who had had a varied career, as a master of arts at Louvain, a soldier in the army of Charles V, a hermit at Montserrat, a Jesuit in Coimbra, and now a missionary in India. It was Baertz's capacity for work that prompted Xavier's famous petition: "Da mihi fortes Belgas" (Give me sturdy Belgians). Criminali, the first of the Society to be martyred in the East, had arrived previously, as had Lancilotti, a consumptive, who seemed to be particularly active in writing letters to Rome complaining of Xavier's frequent absences from Goa.

Gomes was appointed rector of the nondescript college, which belonged to the Bishop of Goa, and which had been partly managed by Lancilotti up to that time. The new superior immediately proceeded to turn everything upside down, and his hard, authoritative methods of government immediately caused discontent. According to Lancilotti, he was utterly unused to the ways of the Society in dealing not only with the members of the community but with the native students. His idea was to make the college another Coimbra – a great educational institution with branches at Cochin, Bacaim and elsewhere. However, the plan was not altogether his conception. Something of that kind had been projected for India in connection with a great educational movement which was agitating Portugal at that time. In writing to Lisbon and Rome about this matter, Xavier incidentally reveals his ideas on the question of a native priesthood. He required for it several previous generations of respectable Christian parents. The division of castes in India also created a difficulty, for the reason that a priest taken from one caste was never allowed intercourse with those who belonged to another; and, finally, he pointed out that for a Portuguese to confess to a native was unthinkable.

Meanwhile, although domestic matters were not as satisfactory as they might have been, Xavier was planning his departure for Japan. He first visited several posts and settled the difficulties that presented themselves. Gomes was his chief source of worry, and there is no doubt that he would have been removed from his post as rector on account of the dissatisfaction he had caused, had it not been for his wonderful popularity in the city as a preacher. Just then a change might have caused an outbreak among the people and a rupture with the bishop. Xavier contented himself, therefore, with restricting the activities of Gomes to temporal matters; and assigned to Cypriano the care of the spiritual interests of the community. He could have done nothing more, even if he had remained at Goa.

These repeated absences of Francis Xavier from Goa have often been urged against him as revealing a serious defect in his character; a yielding to what was called "Basque restlessness," which prompted those who had that strain in their blood to be continually on the road in quest of new scenes and romantic adventures. The real reason seems to have been his despair of doing anything in Goa, with its jumble of Moslems and pagans and corrupt Portuguese, and its string of military posts where every little political commandant was perpetually interfering with missionary efforts. It could never be the centre of a great missionary movement. "I want to be," he said, "where there are no Moslems or Jews. Give me out and out pagans, people who are anxious to know something new about nature and God, and I am determined to find them." He had heard something about Japan, as verifying these conditions; and, though he had travelled much already and was aware of the complaints about himself, he resolved to go further still; so, taking with him de Torres and Fernandes, besides a Japanese convert, Xaca, and two servants, he set his face towards the Land of the Rising Sun. He was then forty-three years of age.

He was at Malacca from May 31 to June 24, 1549, and found that the missions he had established there were doing remarkably well, as were the others in the Moluccas. The latter, however, he did not visit. He started for Japan in a miserable Chinese junk, three other associates having joined him meantime, – a Portuguese, a Chinaman, and a Malay. It took two months before he saw the volcanoes of Kiu Siu on the horizon, and it was only on August 15, 1549, that he went ashore at Kagoshima, the native city of his Japanese companion. The day was an auspicious one. It was the anniversary of his first vows at Montmartre.

Xavier began studying the language of the country and remained for a time more or less in seclusion; with the help of Xaca, or Paul as they called him, a short statement of the Christian Faith was drawn up. With that equipment, after securing the necessary permission, he, Fernandes and Xaca started on their first preaching excursion. Their appearance excited the liveliest curiosity. In the eyes of the people Xavier was merely a new kind of bonze, and they listened to him with the greatest attention. The programme adopted was first for Xaca to summon the crowd and address them, then Xavier would read his paper. They were always ready to stop at any part of the road or for any assembly and repeat their message. Soon their work rose above mere street preaching. They were invited to the houses of the great who listened more or less out of curiosity or for a new sensation. When they had accomplished all they could in one place, they went to another, always on foot, in wretched attire, through cities and over snow-clad mountains, always, however, with the aim of getting to the capital of the empire, both to see the emperor and to reach the great university, about which they had heard before they set out for Japan. Naturally, the teaching of this new religion brought Xavier into conflict with the bonzes, who were a grossly immoral set of men, though outwardly pretending to great austerity. The people, however, understood them thoroughly and were more than gratified when the hypocrites were held up to ridicule.

By this time he discovered his mistake in going about in the apparel of a beggar, and henceforward he determined to make a proper use of his position as envoy of the Governor of the Indies and of the Bishop of Goa. He, therefore, presented himself to the Daimyo of Yamaguchi in his best attire, with his credentials engrossed on parchment and an abundant supply of rich presents – an arquebus, a spinnet, mirrors, crystal goblets, books, spectacles, a Portuguese dress, a clock and other objects. Conditions changed immediately. The Daimyo gave him a handsome sum of money, besides full liberty to preach wherever he went. He lived at the house of a Japanese nobleman at Yamaguchi, and crowds listened to him in respectful silence as he spoke of creation and the soul – subjects of which the Japanese knew nothing. His learning was praised by every one, and his virtue admired; soon several notable conversions followed. After remaining at this place for six months, Xavier went to the capital, Meaco, the present Kioto, but apparently he made little or no impression there. Then news came from Goa which compelled him to return to India. So leaving his faithful friends, de Torres and Fernandes, to carry on the work which was so auspiciously begun, he started for Goa, somewhere between 15 and 20 November, 1551. He had achieved his purpose – he had opened Japan to Christianity.

CHAPTER IV
CONSPICUOUS PERSONAGES

Ignatius – Laínez – Borgia – Bellarmine – Toletus – Lessius – Maldonado – Suárez – Lugo – Valencia – Petavius – Warsewicz – Nicolai – Possevin – Vieira – Mercurian.

St. Ignatius died on July 31, 1556. During his brief fifteen years as General, he had seen some of his sons distinguishing themselves in one of the greatest councils of the Church; others turning back the tide of Protestantism in Germany and elsewhere; others again, winning a large part of the Orient to the Faith; and still others reorganizing Catholic education throughout regenerated Europe, on a scale that was bewildering both in the multitude of the schools they established and the splendor of their success. Great saints were being produced in the Society and also outside of it through its ministrations. Meantime, its development had been so great that the little group of men which had gathered around him a few years before had grown to a thousand, with a hundred establishments in every part of the world.

Magnificent as was this achievement he did not allow it to reflect any glory upon himself personally. On the contrary, he withdrew more and more from public observation, and devoted to the establishment of his multiplied and usual charities, among the humblest and most abandoned classes of the city of Rome, what time was left him from the absorbing care of directing, advising, exhorting and inspiring his sons who were scattered over the earth in ever changing and dangerous situations. The palaces of the great rarely, if ever, saw him, and he was the most positive and persistent antithesis of what he is so commonly accused of being: a schemer, a plotter, a politician, a poisoner of public morality and the like. Nor was he seeking to exercise a dominating influence either in the Church or State, as he is calumniously charged with doing. The glory of God and the advancement of the spiritual kingdom on earth was his only thought, and so far was he from imagining that the Society was an essential factor in the Church's organization that he did not hesitate to say that if it were utterly destroyed, or as he expressed it, "if it were to dissolve like salt in water," a quarter of an hour's recollection in God would have been sufficient to console him and restore peace to his soul, provided the disaster had not been brought about by his fault.

He was not, as he has often been charged with being, stern, severe, arbitrary, harsh, tyrannical; on the contrary, his manner was most winning and attractive. He was fond of flowers; music had the power of making him forget the greatest bodily pain, and the stars at night filled his soul with rapturous delight. He would listen with infinite patience to the humblest and youngest person, and every measure of importance before being put into execution was submitted to discussion by all who had any concern in it. He would show intense and outspoken indignation, it is true, at flagrant faults and offences, especially if committed by those who were in authority in the Society; his wrath, however, was vented not against the culprit, but against the fault. Moreover, while reprehending, he kept his feelings under absolute control. Indeed, his longanimity in the cases both of Rodriguez and Bobadilla is astounding, and it is very doubtful if St. Francis Xavier, whom he wanted to be his successor, would have been as tolerant or as gentle. In his directions for works to be undertaken he was not meticulous nor minute, but left the widest possible margin for personal initiative; nor would he tolerate an obedience that was prompted by servile fear. He continually insisted that the only motive of action in the Society was love of God and the neighbor.

The gentle Lionel Johnson, poet though he was, gives us a fairly accurate appreciation of the character of Saint Ignatius. "In the Saints of Spain," he says, "there is frequently prominent the feature of chivalry. Even the great Saint James, apostle and Patriarch of Spain, appears in Spanish tradition and to Spanish imagination as an hidalgo, a knight in gleaming mail who spurs his white war horse against the Moor. And of none among them is this more true than of the founder of the Society of Jesus. Cardinal Newman, describing him in his most famous sermon, finds no phrase more fitting than 'the princely patriarch, St. Ignatius, the Saint George of the modern world with his chivalrous lance run through his writhing foe.' He was ever a fighter, a captain-general of men, indomitable, dauntless. The secret of his character lies in his will; in its disciplined strength; its unfailing practicality; its singleness and its power upon other wills. It was hardly a Franciscan sweetness that won to him his followers who from the famous six at Montmartre grew so swiftly into a great band; it was not supremacy of intellect or of utterance; it was not even the witness of his intense devotion and self-denial. It was his unequalled precision and tenacity of purpose; it was his will and its method. But we can detect no trace of that proud personal ambition and imperiousness often ascribed to him. He simply had learned a way of life that was profitable to religion which was all in all to him, and he could not be lukewarm in its service. Noblesse oblige, and a Christian holds a patent from the King of kings. The Jesuit A. M. D. G. was his ruling principle. The former heroic soldier of Spain was still a soldier, a swordsman, a strategist, but in a holy war. His eyes were always turned towards the battle; but he was far from forbidding, harsh, grim. He was tender and stern and like Dante kept his thoughts fixed on the mysteries of good and evil."

His death was in keeping with his life. There was no show, no ostentation, nothing "dramatic" about it, as Henri Joly imagines in his "Psychologie des Saints." There was no solemn gathering of his sons about his bedside, no parting instruction or benediction, as one would have expected from such a remarkable man who had established a religious order upon which the eyes of the world were fixed. He was quite aware that his last hour had come, and he simply told Polanco, his secretary, to go and ask for the Pope's blessing. As the physicians had not said positively that there was any immediate danger, Polanco inquired if he might defer doing so for the moment, as there was something very urgent to be attended to; whereupon the dying Saint made answer: "I would prefer that you should go now, but do as seems best." These were his last words. He left no will and no instructions, and what is, at first, incomprehensible, he did not even ask for Extreme Unction – possibly because he was aware that the physicians disagreed about the seriousness of his malady, and he was unwilling to discredit any of them; possibly, also, he did so in order to illustrate the rule that he laid down for his sons "to show absolute obedience in time of sickness to those who have care of the body." When at last they saw that he was actually dying someone ran for the holy oils, but Ignatius was already in his agony.

For one reason or another, he had not designated the vicar, who, according to the Constitution, was to govern the Society, until a General was regularly elected. Hence, as the condition of the times prevented the assembling of the professed from the various countries of Europe, the fathers who were in Rome elected Laínez. He, therefore, summoned the congregation for Easter, 1557, but it happened just then that Philip II and the Pope were at odds with each other, and no Spaniard was allowed to go to Rome. Because of that, Borgia, Araoz and others sent in a petition for the congregation to meet at Barcelona. This angered the Pope, and he asked Laínez, who put the case before him: "Do you want to join the schism of that heretic Philip?" Nevertheless, when the papal nuncio at Madrid supported the request of the Spanish Jesuits, his holiness relented somewhat, and said he would think of it.

The situation was critical enough with a Pope who was none too friendly, when something very disedifying and embarrassing occurred. The irrepressible Bobadilla who had not only voted for the election of Laínez as vicar, but had served under him for a year, suddenly discovered that the whole previous proceeding was invalid, and he pretended, that, because St. Ignatius had failed to name a vicar, the government of the Society devolved on the general body of the professed. The matter was discussed by the Fathers and he was overruled, but he still persisted and demanded the decision of Carpi, the cardinal protector of the Society. When that official heard the case, he decided against Bobadilla who forthwith appealed to the Pope. This time the Cardinal assigned to investigate was no other than the future St. Pius V. He took in the situation at a glance and dismissed Bobadilla almost with contempt. There was another offender, Cogordan, who does not appear to have objected to Laínez personally but who sent a written communication to his holiness saying that Laínez and some others really wanted to go to Spain, so as to be free from Roman control. This so incensed the Pope that Laínez, though greatly admired by Paul IV, obtained an audience only with the greatest difficulty, and was then ordered to hand over the Constitutions for examination. Fortunately, the same holy Inquisitor was sent, and Cogordan never forgot the lesson he received on that occasion for daring to suggest such a thing about Laínez. In the meantime, Philip had allowed the Spanish Jesuits to go to Rome, and Laínez was elected General on July 2, 1558. As has been said in speaking of Rodriguez, this incident is another illustration of the tremendous difficulty of the task St. Ignatius undertook when he gathered around him those unusually brilliant men, who were accustomed to take part in the diets of the Empire, to be counsellors of princes and kings and even popes. He proposed to make them all, as he said "think the same thing according to the Apostle." He succeeded ultimately.

The splendid work performed by Laínez at the Council of Trent had naturally made him a prominent figure in the Church at that time. Personally, also he was most acceptable to the reigning Pontiff, Paul IV; nevertheless, owing to outside pressure, there was imminent danger on several occasions of serious changes being made in the Constitutions of the Society. The Pope had been dissuaded from urging most of them, but he refused to be satisfied on one point, namely the recitation of the Divine Office. He insisted that it must be sung in choir, as was the rule in other religious orders. Laínez had to yield, and for a time the Society conformed to the decision, but the Pope soon died, and in the course of a year, his successor, Pius IV, declared the order to be merely the personal wish of his predecessor and not a decree of the Holy See.

During this generalate there were serious troubles in various parts of Europe. Thus, in Spain, when Charles V withdrew into the solitude of Yuste he was very anxious to have as a companion in retirement his friend of many years, Francis Borgia. It was hard to oppose the expressed wish of such a potentate as Charles, but Laínez succeeded, and Borgia continued to exercise his great influence in Spain to protect his brethren in the storm which was then raging against them. There were troubles, also, throughout Italy. A veritable persecution had started in Venice; an attempt was made to alienate St. Charles Borromeo in Milan; in Palermo, the rector of the college was murdered. The General himself had to go to France to face the enemies of the Faith at the famous Colloquy of Poissy; Canisius was continuing his hard fight in Germany; there were the martyrdoms of two Jesuits in India where, as in Brazil, the members of the Society were displaying the sublimest heroism in the prosecution of their perilous missionary work.

Laínez died in 1565, and was succeeded by Francis Borgia, who for many years had been the most conspicuous grandee of Spain. He was Marquis of Lombay, Duke of Gandia, and for three years had filled the office of Viceroy of Catalonia. His intimacy with the Emperor Charles V, apart from his great personal qualities, naturally resulted in having every honor showered upon him. Astrain, in his history of the Society in Spain, notes the difference in the point of view from which the Borgia family is regarded by Spaniards and by other mortals. The former always think of the saintly Francis, the latter see only Alexander VI. It is not surprising, however, for it is one of the weaknesses of humanity to exult in its glories and to be blind to its defects. Francis Borgia was the great-grandson of Alexander on the paternal, and of King Ferdinand on the maternal, side; there are, however, bar sinisters on both descents that are not pleasant to contemplate, and Suau says, "he was unfortunate in his ancestry."

Born on October 28, 1510, Borgia began his studies at Saragossa, interrupting them for a short space to be the page of the Infanta Catarina, daughter of Joanna the Mad. At eighteen, he was one of the brilliant figures of the court of Charles V. At nineteen, he married Eleanor de Castro, who belonged to the highest nobility of Portugal, and at that time he was made Marquis of Lombay. When he was twenty-eight, the famous incident occurred, which has been made the subject of so much oratorical and pictorial exaggeration – his consternation at the sight of the corrupting remains of the beautiful Empress Isabella, and his resolution to abandon the court and the world forever. Astrain in speaking of this event merely says: "he was profoundly moved;" Suau, in his "Histoire de Saint François de Borgia," makes no mention of any perturbation of mind and ascribes Borgia's vocation rather to subsequent events. The Bollandists do not vouch for the story of his consternation, but note that he was the only one who dared to approach the coffin, the others keeping aloof on account of the odor. They add that his biographers make him say: "Enough has been given to worldly princes." As a matter of fact, later on, he willingly accepted the office of major domo to Prince Philip, who was about to marry the Infanta of Portugal. As the King and Queen of Portugal, however, refused to accept him in that capacity, he was simply disgraced in the eyes of all diplomatic Europe and was compelled to keep out of the court of his own sovereign, for three whole years. "This and other serious trials, at that period," says Suau, "probably developed in him the work of sanctification begun at Granada."

Borgia was thirty-six years of age when his wife died in 1546, and he then consulted Father Faber, who happened to be in Spain at the time, about the advisability of entering a religious order. He made the Spiritual Exercises under Oviedo, and determined to enroll himself as one of the members of the Compañía founded by Ignatius, with whom he had been for some time in communication. He was accepted and given three years to settle his worldly concerns. By a special rescript, the Pope allowed him to make his vows of profession immediately. In January, 1550, he was allowed to present himself for ordination to the priesthood whenever he found it feasible. On August 20 of the same year, he obtained the degree of doctor of theology and ten days later, set out for Rome with a small retinue. Accompanying him were nine Jesuits, among whom was Father Araoz, the provincial. In every city he was officially received, the nobility going out to meet him at Rome. He was sumptuously lodged in the Jesuit house, part of which St. Ignatius had fitted up at great expense to do honor to the illustrious guest. Soon, however, it was rumored that he was to be made a cardinal, whereupon he took flight, making all haste for Spain, without any of the splendor or publicity which had surrounded him three months before. His only purpose was to escape observation. Arriving in Spain, he visited Loyola, the birthplace of Ignatius, and then fixed his residence at the hermitage of Oñate, where, after receiving the Emperor's leave, he renounced all his honors and possessions in favor of his son Charles. He was ordained priest on May 23, 1551.

After six months spent in evangelizing the Basques, Borgia was sent to Portugal to put an end to the troubles caused by Simon Rodriguez, but did not reach that country until 1553. Meantime, sad to say, Father Araoz astounded every one by displaying an intense jealousy of Borgia, who had been made independent of all superiors except Ignatius himself, and he demanded that his former friend and benefactor should show himself less in public and give evidence of greater humility. His complaints were incessant, and unfortunately an accidental unpopularity involving the whole Borgia family which just then supervened gave some color to the charges. In the meanwhile the Pope had again insisted on bestowing the cardinalitial honor upon Borgia, and for a moment Nadal, the Commissary General of Spain, was afraid that it might be accepted, not out of any ambition on the part of Francis, but because of his profound reverence for the will of the Sovereign Pontiff, especially as he had not as yet pronounced the simple vow of the professed against the reception of ecclesiastical dignities. Whereupon, Ignatius sent an order for him to make the vow, and from that forward his conscience was at rest on the question of running counter to the desires of the Pope.

In 1554 he was made commissary general in place of Nadal, who had been summoned to Rome to assist Ignatius, now in feeble health. The appointment of Borgia to such a post was most extraordinary for the reason that he had been but such a short time in the Society, and had never been in a subordinate position. The difficulty of his task was augmented by the fact that he had been commissioned to divide the Spanish section of the Society into four distinct provinces, and to assume, in this and other matters the duties and functions of an office which had no defined limitations, and which would inevitably bring him into conflict with other superiors. As a matter of fact, the commissariate was such a clumsy contrivance that it had soon to be done away with.

Araoz had previously been at odds with Nadal, but he found it still more difficult to get along with Borgia. This disedifying antagonism continued for some time, and it is said that the old worldly superiority of the viceroy showed itself occasionally in Borgia. His dictatorial methods of government, his resentment of interference with his plans, even when Nadal spoke to him, showed that he was not yet a Jesuit saint. As if he still possessed unlimited revenues he established no less than twenty new houses; and, when there were not sufficient resources to carry them on, he expected his subjects to live in a penury that was incompatible with general content and fatal to the existence of the institutions. Moreover, his old propensity for great mortifications manifested itself to such an extent that there was danger of the Jesuits under him becoming Carthusian in their mode of life. Indeed, he was of opinion that the old monastic prison and stocks should be introduced into the Society, and he sent a postulatum or petition to that effect to the congregation which elected Laínez. The result was that a spirit of revolt began to manifest itself in Spain, and Nadal, who was temporarily there, was happy when recalled to Rome.

How all this can be reconciled with the admittedly remarkable prudence of St. Ignatius and his profound knowledge of the character of those he had to deal with is difficult to say. Had he perhaps received some divine intimation of what Borgia was yet to be? On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these isolated instances of impatience, authoritativeness, resentment and the like, naturally attract more attention when seen in one who is possessed of brilliant qualities than they would in any ordinary personage. Moreover, they occurred only in his dealings with Jesuits of the same official standing, and were never remarked when he had to treat with the rank and file who were entrusted to his care and guidance. They were, in any case, faults of judgment and not of perversity of will. Indeed so intent was he on acquiring the virtue of obedience that he fell into a state of almost despondency and distress when he was warned that Ignatius would disapprove of his methods and measures. Finally, he was then only on the way to sanctity; he had not yet achieved it.

It must be confessed, however, that Nadal was not at all pleased with the attitude of Borgia and the other Spanish Jesuits, when the call for the election of a new general was issued. He fancied that it was the beginning of a schism. When, as previously pointed out, Philip II allowed the Spanish delegates to go to the congregation, Borgia, remained in Spain. The fear of the red hat still haunted him. The famous postulatum about the prison and stocks which he sent to the congregation was, of course, promptly rejected. Borgia, however, had other reasons not to go to Rome. Several Spanish cities were up in arms against the Society; he himself was assailed openly in church by Melchior Cano; a book he had written or was accused of having written was condemned by the Inquisition, and he expected momentarily to be arrested; evil things were also said about his character. Unfortunately, Araoz took advantage of all this and began to pen a series of denunciatory letters to the General against Borgia, and, though he was rebuked for them and made public reparation for his offense, he soon relapsed into his customary antagonism. To put an end to it all Laínez summoned Borgia to Rome and conferred on him the honor of assistant. Even that lesson Araoz failed to take to heart.

Francis reached Rome only in 1561. In the following year when Laínez had to attend the re-opened Council of Trent, he made Borgia vicar general, and, when Laínez died at the age of fifty-three in January, 1565, the congregation which was convened in July of that year elected Borgia in his place. At the same time stringent laws were enacted against the hasty multiplication of houses and the inevitable lack of formation which ensued. This was a notice served on the new General to control his zeal in that direction. Borgia instituted novitiates in every province; he circulated the book of Exercises and laid down rules for common life, which on account of the enormous growth of the Society had now become a matter of primary importance. Instead of showing any proneness to the eremitical life or wishing to impose it on the Society, he gave an example of immense and intense activity in public matters. Thus he had much to do with the revision of the Bible, the translation of the "Catechism" of the Council of Trent; the foundation of Propaganda; and, omitting other instances of his administrative ability, when the plague broke out in Rome in 1566, he so successfully organized the financial and medical machinery of the city that two years afterwards, when the plague appeared again, all the public funds were immediately placed in his hands.

The impression that his administration was severe, exacting, harsh and narrow has no foundation in fact. It is sufficient to glance at the five bulky volumes made up mainly of correspondence and documents in the "Monumenta Borgiana" to be convinced that the reverse was the case. There is a kindliness, a graciousness, even a joyousness observable in them on every page. He even kept a list of all the sick in the Society, and consoled them whenever the opportunity offered. The vastness of his correspondence is simply astounding; his letters are addressed to all kinds of people, the lowest as well as the highest, and deal with every variety of topic. Finally, there was no General who developed the missions of the Society so widely and so solidly as did St. Francis Borgia. He reformed those of India and the Far East, created those of America, and before he died he had the consolation of knowing that sixty-six of his sons had been martyred for the Faith during his Generalate. The discovery of him by St. Ignatius was an inspiration, for Borgia is one of the great glories of the Society. He ended his remarkable life by a splendid act of obedience to the Pope and of devotion to the Church.

On June 27, 1571, St. Pius V, his intimate friend, requested him to accompany Cardinal Bonelli on an embassy to Spain and Portugal. He was just then recovering from a serious illness, and felt quite sure that the journey would result in his death, but he accepted the call. In Spain he was received with the wildest enthusiasm. Indeed the papal legate was almost forgotten in the public ovations. Portugal also lavished honors on him, and when in consequence of new orders from the Pope the embassy continued on to France to plead with Charles IX and Catherine de' Medici, he was received in the same manner in that country. On February 25 he left Blois but by the time Lyons was reached he had been stricken with congestion of the lungs. From Lyons, the route led across the snow-clad Mt. Cenis and continued by the way of Turin to Alexandria, where they arrived on April 19.

As the invalid was in too perilous a state to permit of his going any further for the moment, his relative, the Duke of Ferrara, kept him through the summer until September 3, when another start was made for Rome, where he wanted to die. The last stage of his journey inflicted untold suffering on him, but he never complained. On September 28, he arrived at the professed house in Rome, and throngs of cardinals and prelates hurried to see him to get his blessing, for he was already canonized in the popular mind. For two days he lingered, retaining full consciousness, conversing at times with those around him, but most of the time absorbed in prayer. When asked to name his vicar he laughed and said: "I have enough to do to give an account of my own stewardship." Towards evening he became speechless and about midnight peacefully expired, ending a career which it would be hard to equal in romance – a gorgeous grandee of Spain, a duke, a viceroy, the affectionate friend of the greatest potentate on earth, and now dying in the poor room of a Jesuit priest, atoning by his splendid sanctity for the offenses which have made the name of the family to which he belonged a synonym of every kind of iniquity.

Following close upon St. Francis Borgia came a number of men who have reflected glory upon the Church and on the Society, some of them, the most illustrious theologians of modern times, and others acting as the diplomatic agents of the great nations of Europe in the tentative but usually unsuccessful efforts to reunite Christendom. We refer to Bellarmine, Toletus, Suárez, Petavius, Possevin and Vieira.

Speaking of Bellarmine, Andrew White, in his "Conflict of Science and Religion" informs us that "there must have been a strain of Scotch in Bellarmine, because of his name, Robert," – a typical illustration of the unreliability of Andrew White as a witness. The first Robert who appears in Scottish history is the son of William the Conqueror, and consequently a Norman. Even the name of Robert Bruce frequently occurs as Robert de Bruce, just as there is a John de Baliol; Robert de Pynkeny, etc. There is also a Robert of Arbrissel, associated with Urban II in preaching the Crusades; Robert of Geneva, an antipope; Robert de Luzarches, who had to do with the building of Notre-Dame in Paris, and scores of others might be cited.

Robert Bellarmine was born at Montepulciano, in 1542. He was a nephew of Pope Marcellus II, and after entering the Society was immediately admitted to his vows. He studied philosophy for three years at the Roman College and was then assigned to teach humanities. In 1567 he began his theology at Padua, but towards the end of his course, he went to Louvain to study the prevailing heresies of the day at close range. While there, his reputation as a preacher was such that Protestants came from England and Germany to hear him. In 1576 he was recalled to Rome to fill the recently established chair of controversy, and the lectures which he gave at that time form the groundwork for his remarkable work "De controversiis." It was found to be so comprehensive, conclusive and convincing in its character that special chairs were established in Protestant countries to refute it. It still remains a classic. Singularly enough, though Sixtus V had permitted the work to be dedicated to him, he determined later to put it on the Index, because it gave only an indirect power to the Holy See in temporal matters. But he died before carrying out his threat, and his successor, Gregory XIII, gave a special approbation to the book and appointed its author a member of the commission to revise the Vulgate, which Sixtus had inaugurated, but into which certain faults had crept. At Bellarmine's suggestion the revision was called the "Sixtine edition" to save the reputation of the deceased Pontiff.

He was rector of the Roman College in 1592, and in 1595 provincial of Naples. In 1597 he was made theologian of Pope Clement VIII, examiner of bishops, consultor of the Holy Office, cardinal in 1599, and assessor of the Congregation "de Auxiliis," which had been instituted to settle the dispute between the Thomists and Molinists on the question of the conciliation of the operation of Divine grace with man's free will. Bellarmine wanted the decision withheld, but the Pope differed from him, though afterwards he adopted the suggestion. He had, meantime, been consecrated Archbishop of Capua, by the Pope, and was twice in danger of being raised to the papacy. He remained only three years at Capua, and passed the rest of his life in Rome as chief theological adviser of the Holy See. During this period occurred the dispute between Venice and the Holy See in which Bellarmine and Baronius opposed the pretensions of Paolo Sarpi and Marsiglio, the champions of the Republic. The English oath of allegiance also came up for consideration at that time. In this controversy Bellarmine found himself in conflict with James I of England. He was conspicuous also in the Galileo matter. His life was so remarkable for its holiness that the cause of his beatification was several times introduced, but was not then acted on, because his name was connected with the doctrine of papal authority, which was extremely obnoxious to the French regalist politicians. It has, however, been recently re-introduced.

Macedo's departure from Stockholm was so sudden that it excited comment, and possibly to persuade the public she had nothing to do with it, the queen pretended to despatch messengers in pursuit of him. In fact, she had requested the General of the Society to send some of the most trusted members of the Order to Sweden. It may be that the old African missionary, Macedo, was not skillful enough in elucidating some of the metaphysical problems which she was discussing. "In February, 1652," says Ranke, "the Jesuits who had been asked for arrived in Stockholm. They were two young men who represented themselves to be Italian noblemen engaged in travel, and in this character they were admitted to her table." They were Fathers Cavati and Molenia, who were able mathematicians as well as theologians. Descartes also was there about that time. The queen did not recognize the young noblemen in public, but, says Ranke: "as they were walking before her to the dining-hall, she said, in a low voice to one of them: 'Perhaps you have letters for me.' Without turning his head he replied that he had. Then, with a quick word, she bade him keep silence. On the following morning they were conducted secretly to the palace. Thus," continues Ranke, "to the royal dwelling of Gustavus Adolphus there now came ambassadors from Rome for the purpose of holding conferences with his daughter about joining the Catholic Church. The charm of this affair for Christina was principally the conviction that no one had the slightest suspicion about her proceedings."

The conferences seem to have been long drawn out, although the envoys subsequently reported that "Her Majesty apprehended with most ready penetration the whole force of the arguments we laid before her. Otherwise we should have consumed much time. Suddenly she appeared to abandon every desire to carry out her purpose, and attributed her doubts to the assaults of Satan. Her spiritual advisers were in despair, when just as suddenly she exclaimed: 'There is no use. I must resign my crown.'" The abdication was made with great solemnity amid the tears and protests of her subjects. She left her country and spent the rest of her life in Rome, where her unusual intellectual abilities and great learning excited the wonder of everyone. Her heroism in sacrificing her kingdom was, of course, the chief subject of the praise that was showered upon her.

When Vieira arrived in Rome and fascinated everyone by his extraordinary eloquence, Christina wanted him to be her spiritual director. But the old hero preferred ruder work, and by 1681 he was again back in Brazil among his Indians. Even in his old age he was a storm centre, and although he had done so much for the glory of God and the good of humanity, he was deprived of both active and passive voice in the Society, that is to say, he could neither vote for any measures of administration or be eligible to any office, because he was supposed to have canvassed a provincial congregation. It was only after he had expired, at the age of ninety, that his innocence was established. His knowledge of scripture, theology, history, and literature was stupendous, and he is said to have been familiar with the language of six of the native races. Southey, in his "History of Brazil," calls him one of the greatest statesmen of his country. He was a patriot, whose one dream was to see Portugal the standard-bearer of Christianity in the Old and New Worlds. As an orator he was one of the world's masters, and as a prose writer the greatest that Portugal has every produced. His sermons alone fill fifteen volumes, and there are many of his manuscripts to be found in the British Museum, the National Library of Paris, and elsewhere.

When St. Francis Borgia, the third General of the Society, died in 1572, his most likely successor was Polanco, who had been the secretary of St. Ignatius, and was generally credited with having absorbed the genuine spirit of St. Ignatius. Had he been elected, he would have been the fourth successive Spanish General. It would have been a misfortune at that time, and would have fastened on the members of the Society the name which was already given to them in some parts of Europe: "the Spanish priests," a designation that would have been an implicit denial of the catholicity of the Order, even though the Spanish monarch was "His Catholic Majesty."

Their devoted friend, Pope Gregory XIII, saw the danger and determined to avert it. Fortunately, he had just been asked by Philip of Spain, Sebastian of Portugal, and the cardinal inquisitor not to allow the election of Polanco, who was of Jewish descent. The Pope determined to go further and to exclude any Spaniard from the office, for the time being. At the customary visit of the delegates, prior to the election, he intimated that as there had been three successive Spanish Generals, it might be wise, in view of the world-wide expansion of the Society, to elect someone of another nationality, and he suggested Mercurian. Doubtless his words found a ready response in the hearts of many of those to whom they were addressed, and even most of the Spaniards must have seen the wisdom of the change. A remonstrance, however, was respectfully made that His Holiness was thus withdrawing from the Society its right of freedom of election, to which the Pope made answer that such was not his intention; but in case a Spaniard was chosen he would like to be told who he was, before the public announcement was made. As the Pope's word is law, the Spaniards were excluded as candidates, and apparently, as a measure of conciliation, Everard de Mercœur, or Mercurian, was elected. As his native country, Belgium, was then subject to Spain, the blow thus given to the Spaniards was, to a certain extent, softened. But it was the beginning of trouble which at one time almost threatened the Society with destruction. Fortunately, Mercurian's successor, Aquaviva, had to deal with it when it came.

Mercurian had as yet done nothing great enough to attract public attention; but he evidently enjoyed the unqualified esteem of the Pope. In the Society itself he had filled many important posts such as vice-præpositus of the professed house in Rome, rector of the new college of Perugia, visitor and provincial of Flanders and France, and assistant of Francis Borgia. And in all of these charges he was said to have reproduced in his government the living image of St. Ignatius. A man with such a reputation was invaluable, especially for the spiritual life of the Society, and that is of infinitely greater importance than outward show. There is one thing for which the Order is especially very grateful to him namely, the "Summary of the Constitutions," and the "Common Rules" and the rules for each office, which he drew up at the beginning of his administration. This digest is read every month in the refectory of every Jesuit house and selections from it form the basis of the domestic exhortations given twice a month to the communities by the rector or spiritual father. By this means the character and purpose of the Institute is kept continually before the eyes of every Jesuit, from the youngest novice to the oldest professed, and they are made to see plainly that there is nothing cryptic or esoteric in the government of the Society. Hence, when the priest, after his ordination, goes through what is called his third year of probation, in which the study of the Institute constitutes a large part of his work, nothing really new is presented to him. It is familiar matter studied more profoundly.

There were other great men whose names might be mentioned here, but they will appear later in the course of this history.

CHAPTER V
THE ENGLISH MISSION

Conditions after Henry VIII – Allen – Persons – Campion – Entrance into England – Kingsley's Caricature – Thomas Pounde – Stephens – Capture and death of Campion – Other Martyrs – Southwell, Walpole – Jesuits in Ireland and Scotland – The English Succession – Dissensions – The Archpriest Blackwell – The Appellants – The Bye-Plot – Accession of James I – The Gunpowder Plot – Garnet, Gerard.

When Dr Allen suggested to Father Mercurian to send Jesuits to the English mission, Claudius Aquaviva came forward as an enthusiastic advocate of the undertaking, and was one of the first to volunteer. He was not, however, accepted, because evidently only English-speaking priests would be of any use there. But his election as General shortly after gave new courage to Campion and his companions when they were in the thick of the fight.

Dr Allen had left England in 1561, and taken refuge in Belgium, but he returned in the following year, and went around among the persecuted Catholics, exhorting them to be steadfast in their Faith. He found that the people were not Protestants by choice, and he was convinced that all they needed was an organized body of trained men to look after their spiritual needs, to comfort them in their trials, and to keep them well-instructed in their religion. Because of the lack of such help they were not only becoming indifferent, but were almost ready to compromise with their persecutors. Henry had confiscated ninety colleges, two thousand three hundred and fourteen chantries and free chapels and ten hospitals, besides putting to death seventy-six priests and monks, beginning with Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, as well as a great number of others, gentle and simple, conspicuous among whom was the illustrious chancellor, Thomas More. There was a partial cessation of persecution when Edward VI, a boy, was placed on the throne, and, of course, the conditions changed completely when Mary Tudor came to her own. But when the terrible Elizabeth, infuriated by her excommunication, took the reins of government in her hands, no one was safe. Unfortunately, however, in the interval, the people had become used to the situation, and it began to be a common thing for them to resort to all sorts of subterfuges, even going to Protestant churches to conceal their Faith. Hence, there was great danger that, in the very near future, Catholicity would completely die out in England. Allen proposed to Father Mercurian to employ the Society to avert that disaster.

Some of the General's consultors balked at the project because it implied an absolutely novel condition of missionary life. There were none of the community helps, such as were available even in the Indies and in Japan; for, in England, the priest would have to go about as a peddler, or a soldier, or a sailor, or the like, mingling with all sorts of people, in all sorts of surroundings, and would thus be in danger of losing his religious spirit. The obvious reply was that if a man neglected what helps were at hand he would no doubt be in danger of losing his vocation, but that otherwise God would provide. Allen had already founded a missionary house at Douai in 1568, and its success may be estimated from the fact that one hundred and sixty priests, most of them from the secular clergy, who had been trained there, were martyred for the Faith. He had succeeded also in obtaining another establishment in Rome. In 1578, however, when the occupants of Douai were expelled, they were lodged at Rheims in the house of the Jesuits. Meantime, the Roman foundation had been entrusted to the Society; and with these two sources of supplies now at his disposal, Father Mercurian determined to begin the great work.

The most conspicuous figure in this heroic enterprise was Edmund Campion. He was born in London, and after the usual training in a grammar school was sent to Christ's Hospital. There he towered head and shoulders over everyone; and when Queen Mary made her solemn entry into London, it was he who made an address of welcome to her at St. Paul's School. With the queen on that occasion was her sister Elizabeth. Later, when Sir Thomas White founded St. John's College, Oxford, Campion was made a junior fellow there, and "for twelve years," says "The Catholic Encyclopedia," "he was the idol of Oxford, and was followed and imitated as no man ever was in an English University except himself and Newman." The "Dictionary of National Biography" goes further and informs us that "he was so greatly admired for his grace of eloquence that young men imitated not only his phrases but his gait, and revered him as a second Cicero." He was chosen to deliver the oration at the re-interment of Amy Robsart, the murdered wife of Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester. The funeral discourse on the founder of the college was also assigned to him. In 1566 when Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford, Campion welcomed her in the name of the University, and was defender in a Latin disputation held in presence of her majesty. The queen expressed her admiration of his eloquence and commended him particularly to Dudley for advancement.

Father Persons assures us that "Campion was always a Catholic at heart, and utterly condemned all the form and substance of the new religion. Yet the sugared words of the great folk, especially the queen, joined with pregnant hopes of speedy and great preferment, so enticed him that he knew not which way to turn." While in this state of mind, he was induced by Cheyney, the Bishop of Gloucester, who had retained much of the ancient Faith, to accept deacon's orders and to pronounce the oath of supremacy, but the reproaches of a friend opened his eyes to his sin; and in anguish of soul, he abandoned all his collegiate honors. In August, 1569, he set out for Ireland. The reason for going there was to participate in a movement for resurrecting the old papal University of Dublin, the direction of which was to be entrusted largely to him. The scheme, however, fell through, chiefly on account of Campion, but very much to his credit. His papistry was too open. Meantime, he had written a "History of Ireland" based chiefly on Giraldus Cambrensis, which has ever since strongly prejudiced Irish people against him, notwithstanding his sanctity. But his good name has recently been restored by the distinguished Jesuit historian, Father Edmund Hogan, who tells us, that when Campion fled from Dublin to escape arrest for being a Catholic his manuscript fell into the hands of his pursuers who garbled and mutilated it at pleasure. He himself never published the book.

It will be of interest to students of literature to learn that one of Shakespeare's most famous passages was borrowed from this "History," namely, the description of Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII. Whole passages have been worked into the play. As Campion wrote it in 1569, when Shakespeare was only four or five years old, its authorship is beyond dispute. Conditions finally became so unpleasant in Dublin that he was obliged to take to flight. He left Ireland disguised as a serving-man and reached London, in time to witness the execution of Dr. Storey in June, 1571. That completed the work of his conversion, and he went to Douai, where after a recantation of his heresy, he resumed his course of scholastic theology; a year later, he set out for Rome as a penniless pilgrim, arriving there barefooted and in rags, much to the amazement of one of his former Oxford admirers, who met him on the street.

He was received into the Society by Father Mercurian, and made his novitiate at Prague in Bohemia, where he was ordained in 1578. He was one of the first group of missionaries who left the Continent for England under the guidance of Persons. In the party were Dr. Goldwell, Bishop of Saint Asaph, thirteen secular priests, three Jesuits: Persons, Campion and Ralph Emerson, a lay-brother, besides two young men not in orders. Goldwell had been consecrated as early as 1555 and had accompanied Cardinal Pole to England; he was England's sole representative at the Council of Trent. He was now on his way again to his native country, but he fell ill at Rheims and, according to the "Dictionary of National Biography," was recalled by the Pope. "This," says Dr. Guilday (English Refugees, p. 125), "was a disappointment to Persons. The presence of a bishop in England had been a condition of the Jesuits' taking up the burden of converting lapsed Catholics, and despite all the rebuffs the demand for a hierarchy met at Rome, the Jesuits themselves continually renewed it." These words of the distinguished historian who is the most recent witness in the matter of the archipresbyterate are invaluable testimony on a sorely controverted point.

The missionaries left Rome on foot, and passing through Milan were detained for a week by St. Charles Borromeo, who made Campion discourse every day to the episcopal household on some theological topic. From there they directed their steps to Geneva and were bold enough to visit Theodore Beza in his own house, but he refused to discuss religious matters. At Rheims Campion spoke to the students on the glory of martyrdom. Finally he and Persons arrived at Calais, and made their plans to cross the Channel; the other missionaries had meantime scattered along the coast, as it would have been manifestly unsafe for all to embark at the same place. Persons went aboard the boat disguised as a naval officer, and on stepping ashore at Dover presented himself with supreme audacity to the port warden or governor, and asked for a permit for his friend "Patrick," a merchant who was waiting on the other side for leave to cross. "Patrick" was Campion. He had used that name when escaping from Ireland, and as it had stood him in good stead then, he again assumed it.

Campion, however, did not play his part as well as Persons, for the governor eyed him intently and said: "You are Doctor Allen." "Indeed, I am not," replied Campion. "Well, you are a suspicious character, at all events, and your case must be looked into." A council was accordingly held, and it was decided to send the new-comer to London, under an armed escort. Campion thought himself lost, but up in his heart arose a prayer: "O Lord, let me work at least one year for my country, and then do with me what Thou wilt." Immediately a change came over the Governor's face, and, to the amazement of everyone, he said: "I was mistaken; you can go." Full of gratitude to God, the future martyr made all haste for London, where someone was on the look-out for him, and he soon met Father Persons.

Such are the plain facts taken from the writings of Campion to his superiors, describing his arrival in England. But the public mind had to be debauched on this as on every other point concerning the Jesuits, even at the expense of the man whom Oxford is still proud of as a scholar and a gentleman, who was called by Cecil "one of the diamonds of England," and whose grace and beauty and eloquence made him the favorite of Dudley and Elizabeth. In spite of all that, however, Kingsley, in his "Westward Ho" (chap. iii), describes Campion at this juncture of his life as "a grotesque dwarf whose sword, getting between his spindle shanks, gave him, at times, the appearance of having three legs, and figuring sometimes as a tail when it stuck out behind. He was so small that he could only scratch at the ribs of his horse which he was trying to mount on the wrong side, but he finally succeeded in gaining his seat by the help of a stool." He also wore "a tonsure," we are informed, "cut by apostolic scissors," and Londoner though he was, he is made to speak of his countrymen as "Islanders." Persons also is described as a blustering, blaspheming bully, who gives himself absolution for his own transgressions. All this is omitted, however, from the school edition of "Westward Ho."

Persons and Campion set to work immediately, and soon managed to call a meeting of the priests who were in hiding in various places of the country. The purpose of the summons was to let them know that the newcomers had received the most stringent orders from their superiors to keep absolutely aloof from anything savoring of politics. At Hoxton, Campion made a written statement to that effect; and it was there that he received a visit from one of the most interesting, and, to some extent, the oddest of the English missionaries – a man who was made a Jesuit by letter – the famous Thomas Pounde.

Pounde had begun by being a very conspicuous fop at the court of Queen Elizabeth. He was a favorite of the queen, and had, on one occasion, prepared a splendid pageant at which her majesty was present. One of its features was a dance, a pas seul by himself. However, as luck would have it, he stumbled and fell right at the queen's feet. The accident was ridiculous enough to humiliate him, but when his gracious sovereign honored him with a brutal kick, and called out scoffingly: "Get up, Sir Ox," Pounde arose, indeed, but not as an ox. He was a changed man. Up to that, though a Catholic, he had put his religion aside altogether. Now, he openly proclaimed his Faith and exhorted others to do the same. The result was that he was confined in almost every dungeon of the kingdom. He was loaded with fetters and shut up in cells where no ray of light could penetrate; and when liberated, either through the influence of friends, or because he had served the appointed term, he was incarcerated again. Everywhere and at all times he preached the truths of the Faith, not only in a courageous, but in an extraordinarily joyous fashion to his fellow-prisoners, or to people outside the jail, making converts of many and inducing others to amend their lives. Of the latter class was a certain Thomas Cottam, an Oxford man, who, thanks to his friend Pounde, not only became very devout, but, after he had succeeded in getting to the Continent, became a Jesuit and returning later was martyred at Tyburn on May 30, 1582.

A chance reading of the Jesuit missions in India had quite captivated Pounde, as well as a friend of his, named Thomas Stephens, who used to go around disguised as Pounde's servant. They determined to make for the Continent and to ask for admission to the Society. On the way, Pounde was captured because he had stopped too long in trying to convert a Protestant who had given him shelter; Stephens, however, reached Rome and was admitted to the Society. But instead of being sent back to England, as one would have fancied, his longing for India was satisfied, and we find him in Goa, on October 24, 1579. He was there known as Padre Estevão, or Estevan, or again as Padre Busten, Buston, or de Buston, the latter names being so many Portuguese efforts to pronounce Bulstan, in Wiltshire, England, where Stephens was born about 1549. As we see from the dates, he had then reached the age of 30. He is mentioned in Hakluyt's "Voyages" as the first Englishman who ever went to India. Hakluyt's information came from a series of letters which Stephens wrote to his father, "offering the strongest inducements to London merchants to embark on Indian speculations." These letters bore such evidence of sound commercial knowledge that they are regarded as having suggested the formation of the English East India Company.

Father Stephens spent his first five years as minister of the professed house at Goa, and was then sent to Salsette as rector, and, for a time, was socius to the visitor. After that he spent thirty-five years as a missionary among the Brahmin Catholics of Salsette, but his labors in that field did not prevent him from doing a great deal of hard literary work. Thus, he was the first to make a scientific study of Canarese. He also plunged into Hindustani, and wrote grammars and books of devotion in those languages. Most of his writings, however, were lost at the time of the Suppression of the Society. He died in Goa in 1619. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, XIV, 292.)

Pounde's Jesuit work was quite different from that of Stephens. Not being able to present himself in person to the General, he asked by letter to be received into the Order. It was on December 1, 1578, while he was imprisoned in the Tower that an answer came from Father Mercurian granting his request. That encouraged him to labor more strenuously than ever, and for thirty years he kept on defying the Government. Lingard gives one notable instance of his audacity, though the great historian does not seem to be aware that Pounde was a Jesuit. In the proceedings connected with the Gunpowder Plot, someone was sentenced for harboring a Jesuit. Pounde appeared in court to protest against the ruling of the judge, with the result that he himself was arrested. He was condemned to have one of his ears cut off, to go to prison for life, and to pay a fine of a thousand pounds, if he did not tell who advised him to act as he did. He did not lose his ear; while he was in the Tower the queen, Anne of Denmark, interceded in his behalf. Her loving husband, however, King James I, told her: "never to open her mouth again in favor of a Catholic." Finally he got off by standing a whole day in the pillory, an experience which he probably enjoyed, for in spite of dungeons and chains and loss of property and his own terrible austerity – he often scourged himself to blood – he never lost his spirit of fun. He ended his wonderful career on March 5, 1615, at the age of 76, at Belmont, breathing his last in the room in which he was born.

When Campion was caught on his way to Lancashire and brought to London, where he was stretched on the rack and interrogated again and again while being tortured, the story was circulated that he had, at last, not only recanted, but had revealed secrets of the confessional. Pounde was in a fury about it, and wrote Campion an indignant letter, but he found out that it was one of the usual tricks of the English Government. The same villainy had been practised by Elizabeth's father on More and Fisher, but like them, Campion was too true a man to yield to suffering. On August 31, by order of the queen, bruised as he was and almost dismembered by the long and repeated rackings, he was led with Sherwin to a public disputation in the royal presence. Against them were Nowell and Day, two of the doughtiest champions of heresy that could be found in the kingdom. The dispute lasted for four hours in the morning and four in the afternoon – the intention being to keep it up for days. It was during this debate that the listeners saw with horror, as Campion stretched out his arms to emphasize his words by a gesture, that the nails had been torn off the fingers of both hands. The public discussions ended after the second session, for Nowell and Day had been completely beaten. What happened in the examinations held after that, behind closed doors, the authorities never let the world know, but it leaked out that Campion had made many converts among those who came to hear him. One of them was Arundel, who subsequently died for his faith on the scaffold.

On November 14 the Jesuits, Campion and Thomas Cottam, with Ralph Sherwin, Bosgrave, Rhiston, Luke Kirby, Robert Johnson and Orton, secular priests, were called for trial. They all pleaded innocent of felony and rebellion. "How could we be conspirators?" Campion asked, "we eight men never met before; and some of us have never seen each other." On November 16, six others were cited. It was on this occasion that Campion answered the question: "Do you believe Elizabeth to be the lawful queen?" "I told it to herself," he said, "in the castle of the Duke of Leicester." Thither he had been called for a private interview, and Elizabeth recognized him as the Oxford man and the little lad of Christ Church, who, not then dreaming of the terrible future in store for him, had paid the homage of respectful and perhaps affectionate loyalty to her majesty. At that meeting were Leicester, the Earl of Bedford, two secretaries of state and the queen. As the prosecution was so weak and the defense made by Campion was so unassailable, everyone expected an acquittal, but to their amazement, a verdict of guilty was brought in. "The trial," says Hallam, "was as unfairly conducted and supported by as slender evidence as can be found in our books." (Constitutional History of England, I, 146.)

When the presiding judge asked the accused if they had anything to say, Campion replied: "The only thing that we have now to say is that if our religion makes us traitors we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise we are and have been as true subjects as ever the queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all that was once the glory of England, the Island of Saints, and the most devoted child of the See of St. Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned along with those who were the glory not of England alone but of the whole world by their degenerate descendants is both glory and gladness to us. God lives; posterity will live, and their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to condemn us to death." When the sentence was uttered, Campion lifting up his voice intoned the "Te Deum laudamus" in which the others joined, following with the anthem "Hæc est dies quam fecit Dominus, exultemus et lætemur in ea" (This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and exult in it.) There were conversions in the courtroom that day.

The scene at the scaffold on December 1, was characterized by the brutality of savages. The victims were placed on hurdles and dragged through the streets to Tyburn. Campion was the first to mount the fatal cart, and when the rope was put about his neck and he was addressing the crowd that thronged around, Knowles interrupted him with, "Stop your preaching and confess yourself a traitor." To which Campion replied, "If it be a crime to be a Catholic, I am a traitor." He continued to speak, but the cart was drawn from under him and he was left dangling in the air. Before he breathed his last he was cut down, his heart was torn out and the hangman holding it aloft in his bloody hand, cried out, "Behold the heart of a traitor!" and flung it into the fire. Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin then met the same fate. Previous to this gruesome tragedy, 4,000 people had been won back to the Faith.

Garnet answered that he had been debarred from making known his information of the plot for the reason that it had been imparted to him under the seal of confession, and could not be revealed until it had become public property. His concealment of it, nevertheless, was considered by the judges as misprision of treason, and on that ground, and not by anything adduced by the attorney-general, was he condemned. Indeed, Coke had so utterly failed to prove his case that even Cecil confessed that nothing had been produced against Garnet, except that he had been overheard to say in conversation with Oldcorne in the Tower, that "only one person knew of his acquaintance with the conspiracy." It is this particular feature of the trial that has evoked ever since a great deal of hypocritical denunciation of Garnet's lack of veracity. When asked if he had spoken to Oldcorne or written to Greenway, he replied in the negative; but it was proved that he had done both. As it is Coke who alleges this inveracity of Father Garnet, we may reject it as a calumny for that same distinguished personage declared in his official report that Garnet, when on the scaffold, admitted his complicity in the crime, whereas this was flatly denied by those who were present at the execution. If Coke could lie about one thing, he could lie about another. But in any case a criminal court is not a confessional, and the worst offender can plead "not guilty" without violating the truth. Garnet was executed on March 3, 1606, but his body was not quartered until life had left it.

Gerard, who had been proscribed, but who was perfectly innocent of any knowledge of the conspiracy, had made haste to leave the country. It was a difficult thing to do but he finally succeeded, and at the very time that Garnet was standing on the scaffold, Gerard was leaving London as a footman in the train of the Spanish ambassador. A lay-brother was with him in some other capacity. Such was his farewell to his native country. He had been sent there as a missionary in 1588, and had stepped ashore on the Norfolk coast just after the defeat of the Armada – a time when everyone was hunting for Papists. The story of the adventure of this handsome, courtly gentleman, who had three or four languages at his disposal, who was a keen sportsman, a skilful horseman, and a polished man of the world, and was at ease in the highest society, yet who was always preaching the Gospel wherever he went, in prisons and even on the rack, forms one of the most attractive pages in the records of the English mission. He died in Rome at the age of seventy-three.

During the trial of Father Garnet, Oldcorne had been removed from the Tower and executed at Worcester on April 7 or 17. Littleton, who had saved himself at the time of the conspiracy by informing on the others, begged the father's pardon on the scaffold and died with him. Two years afterwards, on June 23, 1608, Father Garnet's nephew, Thomas was martyred in London. He was then thirty-four years old, and had been only three years a Jesuit.

After the execution of Garnet a much more drastic penal code was enacted. Henry IV of France, through his ambassador and the Prince de Joinville, tried hard to restrain the anger of King James, but without avail, except that two missionaries, under sentence of death for refusing to take the oath, were saved by the French king's intercession. He could not obtain the reprieve of Drury, however, who was condemned to death because a copy of a letter from Persons denouncing the oath of allegiance was found in his possession. Whether this Drury was a Jesuit or not cannot be ascertained, for the "Fasti Breviores" and the "Menology" speak only of a Drury who was killed with another Jesuit in the collapse of a church at old Blackfriars in 1623. James would not listen to the remonstrances of Henry; he assured the ambassador that he was, by nature, an enemy of harsh and cruel measures, and that he had repeatedly held his ministers in check, but that the Catholics were so infected with the doctrine of the Jesuits that he had to leave the matter to parliament. When the ambassador remarked that there was apparently no difference of treatment whether Catholics took the oath or not, the king did not reply.

CHAPTER VI
JAPAN
1555-1645

After Xavier's time – Torres and Fernandes – Civandono – Nunhes and Pinto – The King of Hirando – First Persecution – Gago and Vilela – Almeida – Uprising against the Emperor – Justus Ucondono and Nobunaga – Valignani – Founding of Nangasaki – Fervor and Fidelity of the Converts – Embassy to Europe – Journey through Portugal, Spain and Italy – Reception by Gregory XIII and Sixtus V – Return to Japan – The Great Persecutions by Taicosama, Daifusama, Shogun I and Shogun II – Spinola and other Martyrs – Arrival of Franciscans and Dominicans – Popular eagerness for death – Mastrilli – Attempts to establish a Hierarchy – Closing the Ports – Discovery of the Christians.

When Francis Xavier bade farewell to Japan in 1551, he left behind him Fathers Torres and Fernandes. They could not possibly have sufficed for the vast work before them, and hence, in August of the following year, Father Gago was sent with two companions, neither of whom was yet in Holy Orders. They were provided with royal letters and well supplied with presents to King Civandono, who was a devoted friend to Francis Xavier.

The newcomers were amazed at the piety of the 3,00 °Christians, who were awaiting further instruction. They found them kind and charitable, very much given to corporal austerities, and extremely scrupulous in matters of conscience and there was no difficulty in getting enthusiastic catechists among them to address the people and teach them the new religion. As the belief of the Japanese, was then, as it is today, Shintoism, which has no dogma, no moral law, and no books, and is tinctured with Buddhism, the main doctrine of which is the transmigration of souls, it was easy to arouse interest in a religion which presented to their consideration spiritual doctrines, a moral law and sacred books. In 1554 there were 1500 baptisms in the kingdom of Arima alone, though no priest had as yet entered that part of the country. The feudal system of government then prevailing made conversions easy. Thus, when the Governor of Amaguchi became a Christian, more than three hundred of his vassals and friends immediately followed his example. This influence was still more in evidence whenever a distinguished bonze accepted the Faith, an example of which occurred when the two most celebrated personages of that class came down from Kioto to Amaguchi for a public disputation. After the conference they fell at the feet of Torres, and not only asked for baptism, but became zealous instructors of the people. Naturally all the bonzeries of the Empire were alarmed and they rose in revolt against the Government for not checking these conversions. But Civandono called his troops together to quell what soon assumed the proportions of organized warfare. Indeed at one time, the insurgents seemed to be getting the upper hand: but just as the king was on the point of being entrapped, Fernandes at the risk of his life slipped through the ranks of the enemy and gave Civandono information which won the victory. After that the friendship of the monarch never failed his Christian subjects. He had ample opportunity to show his devotion to them, for uprisings were as common as the earthquakes in Japan, which were said to average three a day.

Father Nunhes, the provincial, had been induced by the Viceroy of the Indies to pay a visit to Japan at this juncture, and he arrived with Father Vilela and a number of young scholastics. With them was a rich Portuguese named Pinto, who had resolved to employ most of his money in building a school in Civandono's dominions. In order to help the scheme, the viceroy had made Pinto his ambassador. They arrived in April, 1556, after a perilous journey, only to find a letter there from St. Ignatius, reminding Father Nunhes that provincials had no business to undertake such journeys and leave their official work to others. However, such a pressing invitation had come meantime from the King of Firando or Hirando, as it is now called, and the chance seemed so promising for the king's conversion, that Father Nunhes presumed permission to delay his return to India. He was received by Civandono, whom he had to visit on his way to Hirando, with the same splendid ceremonies that had been accorded to St. Francis Xavier; and, during a long conference which was held with the help of Fernandes, he urged the king to become a Christian, but Civandono insisted that reasons of State prevented him from doing so for the moment. Nunhes then set out for Hirando, but fell ill before he reached it, and, in consequence, was compelled to return to Goa. As he had not converted a single idolater, and as Pinto's grand plans for the education of the Japanese were a failure, the provincial concluded that it would have been wiser to have remained in Hindostan, where he was accomplishing great things, than to engage in apostolic work to which obedience had not assigned him. Pinto's failure, however, was compensated for by the devotion of another rich man, Louis Almeida, who had come with Father Nunhes to Japan. Almeida being a physician, immediately set to work to build two establishments – a hospital for lepers and a refuge for abandoned children, which the immorality of the Japanese women made extremely necessary. This was another expression of gratitude to Civandono, which the king appreciated. By this time Almeida had become a Jesuit.

Meantime the King of Hirando, who had asked for Nunhes, was propitiated by having Father Gago sent to him. The missionary's success was marvellous. Numberless conversions followed his visit, beginning with that of the king himself. Helpers were sent, among them being the illustrious bonze, Paul of Kioto, whose conversion had caused a great stir some few years before. In a month or so 1400 baptisms were recorded; but Paul had reached the end of his apostolic career and he returned to die in the arms of Father Torres.

The usual uprising occurred, and the king who had made so much ado about calling Father Nunhes turned out to be a very weak-kneed Christian. Churches were destroyed, crosses desecrated, and other outrages committed, but he did nothing to quell the disturbance. Political reasons, he alleged, prevented him. It was in this outbreak that the first martyrdom occurred, that of a poor slave-woman who had been accustomed to pray before a cross erected outside the city. She had been warned that it was as much as her life was worth to declare her Christianity so openly; she persisted, nevertheless, and was killed as she knelt down in the roadway to receive the blow of the executioner's sword. Even Father Gago himself came near falling a victim to the popular fury. In view of subsequent events, if they were as reported, it is to be regretted that he missed the opportunity of winning the crown.

The first Jesuit who reached Kioto and remained there was Vilela. He had travelled a long distance to visit a famous bonzery to which he had been invited; and then, finding himself not far away from the imperial city, he determined to present himself to the emperor, or Mikado as he was called. His method of approaching that great potentate amazed the onlookers by its novelty. Holding his cross high in the air, he proclaimed his purpose in coming to Japan. To the surprise of every one, the Mikado seemed extremely pleased; but that alarmed the bonzes, and they accused Vilela of all sorts of crimes, not excluding cannibalism. Indeed, they had seen great pieces of human flesh at Vilela's house, they said. To stop their clamors, the Mikado finally consented to a public debate, doing so with great apprehension, however, for Vilela's success. The discussion took place, but, if the metempsychosis set forth by their spokesman on that occasion, represented the popular creed, one is forced to say that the Japanese mentality of that period was not of a very superior character. Vilela's easy victory gave him the right to preach everywhere in the Empire; and the number of converts was so great that many missionaries were needed to help him.

Father Gago, who had missed the chance of martyrdom a short time before, was looked upon as the man for the emergency. Francis Xavier had chosen him expressly for Japan; his facility in learning the language was marvellous; his piety was admitted by all; his zeal knew no bounds, and his success corresponded with his efforts. Indeed, he was almost adored wherever he went; but suddenly, just as he was needed he appeared to be a changed man. His energy, his zeal, his enthusiasm had all evaporated. There was, absolutely, nothing amiss in his conduct – not even a suspicion suggested itself. But he wanted to give up his work; and to the dismay of his associates he returned to Goa. He was nearly shipwrecked on his way, but that resulted only in a temporary revival of his fervor. He was sent to Salsette and was taken prisoner but was subsequently released. He was never again, however, the man that he had been in the beginning of his career. "I have enlarged on this," says Charlevoix, "for I am writing a history and not a panegyric." The "Menology" of Portugal, however, assails both Charlevoix and Bartoli for this charge, but the defence lacks explicitness.

From Kioto, Vilela went to Sacai, which was an independent city – republican in its administration, but in its rule as tyrannical as Venice was about that time. Over and above that, it was grossly immoral, and only one family in it would have anything to do with the missionary. So he shook its dust from his feet and went elsewhere.

Almeida, the physician, distinguished himself in his missionary journeys at this time, and he tells how he came across a whole community of people in a secluded district who had seen a priest only once in passing, yet had remembered all that had been told them, and were keeping the commandments as well as they knew how. He baptized them all, and leaving them capable catechists, one of whom had written a book about Christianity, he continued on his way, hunting for more souls to save. It was largely due to him that some of the reigning princes were gained over. One of them, Sumitanda by name, had distinguished himself by throwing down a famous idol, called the God of War, just at the moment the army was going into battle. As the fight was won, most of the soldiers not only became Christians, but, later on, when Sumitanda found himself attacked by two kings who resented his conversion, a great number of his men fastened crosses on their armor and swept the enemy from the field.

Meantime a revolution had broken out at Kioto against the Mikado; he was besieged in his citadel, but finally succeeded in beating back the foe. When peace was restored in 1562 Vilela returned to the capital; and multitudes, not only of the people, but many princes of the blood and distinguished nobles, made a public profession of Christianity. This again brought the bonzes to the fore, and as a prelude to a decree of expulsion of the missionaries, they succeeded in having two of the most influential men of the kingdom, both bitter pagans, constituted as a commission to examine into the new teachings. So convinced was everyone that it was only the beginning of a process of extermination that Vilela was advised to withdraw from the capital. He acquiesced, much against his will; but it happened that two of his Christians of the humbler class so astounded the inquisitors by their answers that both of the great men asked for baptism. A discourse of Vilela gained another convert in the person of the father of a man who became famous in those days of Japanese history – Justus Ucondono.

In 1565 the missionaries were treated with special consideration by the Mikado, on the occasion of the splendid court ceremonies which marked the opening of the new year. The whole nation was astounded at the unprecedented favor, but as usual it was only the prelude of a storm. In the following year the Mikado was murdered; and all his adherents were either put to the sword or expelled from the capital. This was the first act of a tragedy that would make a theme for a Shakespeare. It is as follows: The successful rebels had placed the younger brother of the emperor on the throne, but fearing a similar fate, he had fled to the castle of the distinguished soldier, Vatadono, who, finding himself not strong enough to maintain the claim of the fugitive monarch, induced the ablest military man of Japan, Nobunaga, the King of Boari, to take up the cause of their sovereign. The offer was accepted; two bloody battles followed; the insurgents were cut to pieces, and the young emperor, under the name of Cubosama, was enthroned at Kioto. The palace, which had been wrecked in the war, was replaced by a new one, built of the stones of the bonzeries and the statues of the national idols. The two conquerors then made haste to show their esteem for the missionaries and assured them of protection; Nobunaga withdrew to his kingdom when the work was completed, and Vatadono, his lieutenant, remained as viceroy at Kioto. All these events occurred in the single year of 1568.

Just then the illustrious Alexander Valignani, the greatest man of the missions in the East after Francis Xavier, came on the scene. For thirty-two years all his efforts were directed to shaping and guiding the various posts of the vast field of apostolic work in this new part of the world, his success being marvellous. He was born at Chieti. The close friendship of his father with Pope Paul IV made the highest offices of the Church attainable if he chose to aspire to them; but he left the papal court, and was received into the Society by Francis Borgia, beginning his life as a Jesuit by the practice of terrible bodily mortifications, which he continued until the end of his career. He was chosen by Mercurian to be visitor to the Indies; thirty-two companions were given him, and he was authorized to select eight more, wherever he might find them.

At that time Japan had only twenty missionaries, while there were none at all in China. When Valignani died, there were in the empire of Japan one hundred and fifty Jesuits and six hundred catechists, who in spite of wars and persecutions had three hundred churches and thirty-one places for the missionaries to assemble. There were a novitiate, a house of theological and philosophical studies, two colleges where the Japanese nobles sent their sons, besides a printing establishment, two schools of music and painting, multitudes of sodalities, schools, and finally, hospitals for every kind of human suffering, and when the persecutions began, he had resources enough at his disposal to provide for nine hundred exiled Japanese. Finally, it was his guidance and help that enabled Matteo Ricci to plant the cross in the two capitals of China. He wielded such an influence over the terrible Taicosama that it was a common saying in the empire that if Father Alexander had survived, the Church of Japan would never have succumbed. There was great rejoicing when his arrival was announced. The ship which brought him to port had not dropped anchor, before it was surrounded by hundreds of boats filled with Christians, all of them carrying flags on which a cross was painted. When he approached the city, throngs of people came out to meet him, some kissing his robe, others his hands, others his feet, and a long procession led him in triumph to the Church, where a Te Deum was sung to thank God for his coming.

In that year, Nagasaki, which was afterwards to furnish so many martyrs to the faith, suddenly developed from an inconspicuous village to a great city, because of the number of Christians who had settled there. A great sorrow, however, just then fell on the Church; Fernandes, one of the missionaries whom Xavier had left behind him in Japan, had died. Torres still remained, indeed, but he also was to end his glorious career in a year or two. However, they had built up a splendid Church; and under such conditions the work of evangelization could not fail to proceed rapidly. Indeed, the records of that period teem with accounts of conversions of princes and entire populations; and when Cabral arrived as superior in place of Torres, the emperor gave the missionaries his protection, in spite of the unrelenting opposition of the bonzes, who still exercised a preponderating influence at Court. In one of the provinces, Cabral, in his official visitations, found a very remarkable evidence of solidity in the faith. No priest had been there for ten years; yet a beautiful church had been erected and a fervent congregation filled it continually. In another place where the constant wars in which the ruler was engaged and the carnage which he had committed in conquering the territory had kept out the missionaries for at least twenty years, thanks to an old blind man named Tobias whom St. Francis Xavier had baptized and named, all the people who were left in the vicinity were thoroughly instructed in their Faith.

Meantime a new historical drama was being enacted, which was more marvellous than the first. The weak character of Cubosama had made him the victim of the bonzes, whom he heartily detested. They had also succeeded in disrupting the friendship of Vatadono and Nobunaga. Fortunately, the two friends were reconciled in time, but that gave rise to a counter movement to destroy them. War was declared on some pretext or other, and in one of the first engagements Vatadono was killed. It was a sad blow for the missionaries, for the hero was a catechumen and was waiting to be baptized. Left alone now and supposed to be unable to defend himself, Nobunaga was more fiercely assailed than ever by the bonzes. Wearied of it all, he called his troops together and set out for Kioto. His enemies fled before him. He took the city and set it on fire, and then, not because he was actuated by motives of personal ambition, but because he saw that if Cubosama was allowed to rule the state of warfare would continue, he locked up the feeble monarch in a fortress, and constituted himself supreme military commander or Shogun. It was then that Civandono, King of Bungo, the original friend of Francis Xavier, became a Christian and took the name of Francis; furthermore he built a city in which only Christians were allowed to live. There he passed the rest of his days an example of piety to all.

Meantime, Nobunaga continued to shower favors on the missionaries. He built a new and splendid city, and in the best part of it founded a college and a seminary. Christianity made great strides under his administration, as he was the deadly enemy of the bonzes who for years had endeavored to compass his ruin. Nevertheless, though he listened with interest and pleasure to explanations of the creed, and asked the missionaries, half roguishly, if they really believed all they said, and if they were not as bad as the bonzes, he went no further.

In the first years of Nobunaga's rule, Valignani conceived the idea of having a solemn embassy sent by the various Christian kings of the country, to pay their homage to the Sovereign Pontiff in the Eternal City. It was not an imperial delegation, but was restricted to the three devout rulers of Bungo, Arima and Omura. Nobunaga willingly gave his consent, and the ambassadors left Nagasaki on February 22, 1582, and repaired to Kioto. From there they went by the way of Malacca to Goa. On this part of the journey they were frequently in imminent danger of shipwreck, but they arrived safely in Goa at the beginning of 1583. There they were received with great ceremony by the Viceroy, Mascaregnas, who entertained them for several months. Valignani, who had conducted them thus far, returned to Japan after putting them in the hands of Fathers Mesquita and Rodrigues, who remained with them till they reached Rome.

They set sail at the end of February, and on August 10 dropped anchor in the Tagus. Charlevoix remarks that "this part of the journey was not long," though it was nearly six months in duration. The prince cardinal who was at that time Viceroy of Portugal showered honors upon them, and made them his guests in the royal palace for an entire month. They then visited the principal cities of Portugal. Nothing was too much for them in the way of honor and even in the way of money. Finally they were conducted to Madrid and had a public audience with Philip II, to whom they presented their credentials and offered the presents of the Christians of Japan and their expression of gratitude for all that his majesty had done for the infant Church of their country. Philip is said to have embraced them affectionately, assuring them of the great regard he had for the kings whom they represented. The Queen Maria put her carriages at their disposal, and on the following day they were conducted to the Escorial where they received the congratulations of the princes and grandees of Spain. The French ambassador also paid them a ceremonious visit. Even the king himself called upon them and had a vessel equipped at Alicante to conduct them to Italy. They left Madrid on November 26, and were received with almost royal honors in every city on their way. It was already January, 1585, when they left Spain. The Mediterranean treated them badly; and it was only in the month of March that they stepped ashore at Leghorn, amid the salvos of artillery from the fort. The carriages of the grand duke carried them on their journey to Pisa. There the prince and all his court were waiting to receive them, and led them to the palace, where a splendid banquet was prepared, after which Pietro de' Medici and the grand duke came to pay them their respects.

They saw the carnival at Pisa, and then journeyed on to Florence, where the papal nuncio and the cardinal archbishop, who was afterwards Pope Leo XI, bade them welcome. From there they passed to Siena, where, as guests of the Pope, they were met at the frontier by two hundred arquebusiers sent by the vice-legate of Viterbo to show them special honor. Gregory XIII was then on the Pontifical throne; and feeling that his end was approaching, he sent a company of light horse to hasten their coming. It was Friday, March 20, 1585, when they entered Rome, and their first visit was to Father Aquaviva, who was then General of the Society. He led them to the church, where a Te Deum was sung; and on the following day the Pope held a consistory which ordered that the envoys should be regarded as royal ambassadors; that their reception should be as splendid as possible; and that their first audience should be at the full consistory in the papal palace.

On the day appointed for the solemn entry, March 23, the Spanish ambassador sent his carriages to convey the visitors to the villa of the Pope; and then with the papal light horse at the head, followed by the Swiss guards, the cardinalitial officials and the ambassadors of Spain and Venice, with their pages and officers and trumpeters and all the papal household in their purple robes, the delegates proceeded to the City. The Japanese were on horseback and wore the costume of their country; princes and archbishops rode on either side, and followed by Father Diego, who acted as interpreter. A throng of mounted cavaliers in gorgeous apparel closed the pageant. The whole city turned out to receive them. The streets were crowded with people, as were the roofs of the houses, all observing a reverential silence, interrupted only by the blast of the trumpets or the occasional but enthusiastic acclamations of the multitude. When the bridge of Castle Sant' Angelo was reached, the cannon boomed out a welcome which was repeated by the guns of the papal palace and taken up by strains of musical instruments that resounded from every quarter as the envoys approached the palace.

So great was the throng of cardinals and prelates in the hall that the Swiss guards had to force their way through it, to conduct the Pontiff to his throne. When he was seated the ambassadors approached, holding their credentials in their hands; and then, kneeling at the feet of the Pope, they announced in a clear and loud voice that they had come from the ends of the earth to see the Vicar of Jesus Christ and to offer him the homage of the princes whose envoys they were. Tears flowed down the cheeks of the Pontiff as he lifted the envoys up and embraced them tenderly, again and again, with an affection they never forgot. They were then conducted to a raised platform; and the secretary of the Pope read aloud the letters, which they had brought. When that was concluded, Father González explained at length the purpose of their mission, and a bishop replied in the name of His Holiness. The second kissing of the feet was next in order, and the cardinals crowded around the wondering Japanese to ask them numberless questions about their country and the events of their voyage, to all of which replies were given with a refinement and courtesy that charmed all who heard them. The session was now ended, and rising from his throne, the Pope withdrew, giving to the visitors the honor, conferred only on the imperial ambassadors, of bearing the papal train. They were then entertained at a sumptuous banquet.

Private interviews with the Pope followed; and after receptions by various dignitaries, at some of which the Japanese wore their national dress, at others appearing in the Italian apparel, the Pope gave them expensive robes, which they wore with an ease and grace that was amazing for men so unaccustomed to such surroundings and ceremonies. When they went to offer their prayers at the seven churches they were received processionally at each of them, the bells ringing and organs playing. Meantime physicians were sending hourly bulletins to His Holiness, who was deeply concerned about one of the envoys who had been debarred from all these ceremonies by an attack of sickness. The invalid, however, did not die, but, later on, in his native country, gave his life for the Faith.

CHAPTER VII
THE GREAT STORMS
1580-1597

Manares suspected of ambition – Election of Aquaviva – Beginning of Spanish discontent – Denis Vásquez – The "Ratio Studiorum" – Society's action against Confessors of Kings and Political Embassies – Trouble with the Spanish Inquisition and Philip II – Attempts at a Spanish Schism – The Ormanetto papers – Ribadeneira suspected – Imprisonment of Jesuits by the Spanish Inquisition – Action of Toletus – Extraordinary Congregation called – Exculpation of Aquaviva – The dispute "de Auxiliis" – Antoine Arnauld's attack – Henry IV and Jean Chastel – Reconciliation of Henry IV to the Church – Royal protection – Saint Charles Borromeo – Troubles in Venice – Sarpi – Palafox.

When Mercurian died, on August 1, 1580, Oliver Manares, who, like the deceased General, was a Belgian, called the general congregation for February 7, 1581. Two of the old companions of St. Ignatius, Salmerón and Bobadilla, were there, as were also the able coadjutor of Canisius, Hoffæus, and Claude Matthieu, the latter of whom was beginning to be conspicuous in the League against the King of Navarre. Maldonatus, also, occupied a seat in the distinguished assembly. Before the congregation met, rumors began to be heard that Manares was seeking the generalship for himself. The grounds of the suspicions seem almost too frivolous for an outsider, but in an order which had pronounced so positively against ambition in the Church, it was proper that it should be scrupulously sensitive about any act in the body itself that might resemble it. The grounds of the accusation were that he had sent a present to Father Toletus who was very close to the Pope, and had also once said to a lay-brother: "If I were General, I would do so and so." A committee was appointed to examine the case, and Manares was declared ineligible. The Pope found the action of the congregation excessively rigid, but, possibly, as in the preceding congregation it had been decided that the succession of three Spanish Generals contained in it an element of danger, so it was feared that as the dead General who had appointed one of his own race to be vicar, there might be reason for apprehension in that also. As a matter of fact, the power given to the General to appoint his vicar was by some looked upon as quite unwise, as it afforded at least a remote opportunity for self-perpetuation.

On February 19, 1581, Claudius Aquaviva was elected General of the Society by thirty-two votes out of fifty-one. He was not yet thirty-eight years of age. The Pope was astounded at the choice, but the sequel proved that it was providential. "No one," says Bartoli, "was raised to that dignity who had given more evident or more numerous signs that his election came from God, and perhaps, no one, with the exception of St. Ignatius, has a greater claim to the gratitude of the Society or has helped it more efficaciously to achieve the object for which it was founded." He was the youngest son of the Duke of Atri, and was born at Naples in 1543. As his youth was passed in his father's palace, he could at most only have heard the names of some of the companions of St. Ignatius, but when he was about twenty years of age he was sent to Rome to defend some family interest, and he attracted so much attention that he was retained at court, first by Paul IV, and afterwards by Pius V, both of whom were struck by his superior qualities of mind and heart. There for the first time he came in contact with the Jesuits. It happened that Christopher Rodriguez, John Polanco, and Francis Borgia were frequently admitted to an audience with the Holy Father, and young Aquaviva was so drawn to them when he heard them speaking of Divine things, that he began to make inquiries about their manner of life and the rule they followed. He felt called to join them but he hesitated a while, for the Roman purple was an honor that was assured him; finally, however, he made up his mind, and after the Pontifical Mass on St. Peter's day he fell at Borgia's feet and asked for admission to the Society. When Ormanetto, the papal legate, heard of it, he exclaimed: "The Apostolic College has lost its finest ornament."

Nine years later, Aquaviva was made rector of the Roman Seminary, and then, by a strange coincidence, became rector of the College of Naples, as successor of Dionisio Vásquez, who later on was to be very conspicuous in an attempt by the Spanish members to disrupt the Society, and thus occasion the bitterest trial of Aquaviva's administration as General. After rapidly repairing the ruin that Vásquez had caused in Naples, Aquaviva was made provincial, and was then entrusted with the care of the Roman province. He had served in that capacity only a year when he was elected General. Some years before that, Nadal must have foreseen the promotion when he advised Aquaviva to make the Constitutions of Saint Ignatius his only reading. "You will stand very much in need of it," he said. The congregation formulated sixty-nine decrees, one of which gave the General power to appoint his vicar, and another to interpret the Constitutions. Such interpretations, however, were not to have the force of law, but were to be considered merely as practical directions for government. Another decree regulated the method to be followed in the dissolution of houses and colleges.

Aquaviva's first letter to the Society was concerned chiefly with the qualities which superiors should possess – especially those of vigilance, sweetness and strength. His second was more universal, and dealt with the necessity of a constant renewal of the spiritual life. To him the Society is indebted for the "Directorium," or guide of the Spiritual Exercises.

Under his administration the "Ratio Studiorum," or scheme of studies, was produced. It was the result of fifteen years of collaboration (1584-99) by a number of the most competent scholars that could be found in the Society. It covers the whole educational field from theology down to the grammar of the lower classes, exclusive, however, of the elements. Of course, this "Ratio" has not escaped criticism, for scarcely anything the Society ever attempted has had that good fortune. Thus, to take one out of many, Michelet bemoans the fact that "the Ratio has been; in operation for 300 years and has not yet produced a man." Such a charge, of course, does not call for discussion.

The greatest service that Aquaviva rendered the Society, and for which it will ever bless his memory is that he saved it from destruction in a fight that ran through the thirty years of his Generalate, and in which he found opposed to him Popes, kings, and princes, along with the terrible authority of the Spanish Inquisition and, worst of all, a number of discontented members of the Order, banded together and resorting to the most reprehensible tactics to alter completely the character of the Institute and to rob it of that Catholicity which constitutes its glory and its power.

He began his work by making it impossible, as far as it lay in his power, for a Jesuit to be used as the tool of any prince or potentate, no matter how dazzling might be the dignity with which one so employed was invested, or the glory which his work reflected on the Society. Thus, he put his ban on the office of royal confessor, which some of the members of the Society in those days were compelled to accept. He could not prevent it absolutely just then, but he laid down such stringent laws regarding it, that all ambition or desire of that very unapostolic work was eliminated. Its inconveniences were manifest. It is inconceivable, for instance, that a sovereign like Henry IV, who was a devoted friend of the Society, ever consulted Father Coton about scruples of conscience; for his majesty was never subject to spiritual worry of that description; and on the other hand, the unfortunate confessor was often suspected or accused of influencing or advising political measures with which he could have had nothing whatever to do. Jealousy also, of those who were appointed to the office was inevitable, and dislike and hatred not only of the individual who occupied the post, but of the order to which he belonged was aroused. Even the confessor's own relatives and friends were alienated, because he was forbidden to make use of his spiritual influence for their worldly advantage. Finally, apart from the loss of time, daily contact with the vice of the court, which he could not openly reprehend, necessarily reacted on the spiritual tone of the religious himself.

The same objections obtained for the flamboyant embassies which had been so much in vogue up to that time, and which are still quoted as evidencing the wonderful influence wielded by the Society in those days. They, too, were stopped, for the reason that although they were nearly always connected with the interests of the Faith, yet they were very largely controlled by worldly politics. Hence Possevin, who had made such a stir by his embassies to Muscovy, Sweden, Poland and elsewhere, was relegated to a class-room in Padua. Matthieu, who figured conspicuously in the politico-religious troubles of France as the "Courier de la Ligue," was told to desist from his activities, although Pope Sixtus V judged otherwise; and finally, the most famous orator of his day in France, Father Auger, who was loud in his denunciation of the Holy League, received peremptory orders to desist from discussing the subject at all. His quick obedience to the command was the best sermon he ever preached.

Aquaviva had also a very protracted struggle with Philip II in relation to the Spanish Inquisition. The king had frequently expressed a desire to have a Jesuit in one or other of the conspicuous offices of that tribunal, but Aquaviva stubbornly refused, first, because of the odium attached to the Inquisition itself, and also because he suspected that Philip designed, by that means, to lay hold of the machinery of the Society and control it. His most glorious battle, however, was one that was fought in the Society itself, against an organized movement which was making straight for the destruction of the great work of St. Ignatius. It is somewhat of a stain on the splendid history of the Order, but it should not be concealed or palliated or explained away, for it not only reveals the masterful generalship of Aquaviva, but it also brings out, in splendid relief, the magnificent resisting power of the organization itself.

The Spanish Jesuits were profoundly shocked when the Pope prevented the perpetuation of Spanish rule in the Society. The psychological reason of their surprise was that the average Spaniard at that time was convinced that Spain alone was immune from heresy. As a matter of fact, all the other nations of Europe, Ireland excepted, had been infected, and possibly it was a mistaken loyalty to the Church that prompted a certain number of them to organize a plot to make the Society exclusively Spanish or destroy it.

It will come as a painful discovery for many that the originator of this nefarious scheme was Father Araoz, the nephew of St. Ignatius. Astrain (II, 101) regrets to admit it, but the documents in his hands make it imperative. He quotes letters which show that even in the time of St. Ignatius, Araoz complained of the Roman administration, putting the blame, however, on Polanco. His discontent was more manifest under Laínez, when he maintained that the General should not be elected for life; that provincials and rectors should be voted for, as in other Orders; that there should be a general chapter in Spain to manage its own affairs, and not only that no foreigner should be admitted to a Spanish province, but that there should not even be any communication with non-Spaniards in other sections of the Society. One would not expect such Knownothingism in a Jesuit, but the documents setting forth these facts which were found among the papers of Araoz after his death make it only too manifest. They contain among other things accounts of the opposition of Araoz to Laínez, to Francis Borgia, and to Nadal, none of which is very pleasant reading.

In a letter unearthed by Antonio Ibáñez, the visitor of the province of Toledo, Araoz goes on to say: "(1) We must petition the Pope and ask that all religious orders in Spain shall have a Spanish general, independent of the one in Rome, so as to avoid the danger of heresy. (2) No Spaniard living outside of Spain should be elected general, commissary or visitor in Spain. (3) As there is such a diversity of customs and usages in each nation, they should not mix with one another. (4) General congregations expose the delegates to act as spies for the enemy. (5) The king should write to the cardinal protector of the religious orders not to oppose this plan." Other papers by Spanish Jesuits were found among those of Ormanetto, nuncio at Madrid, who died on June 17, 1577. They call for drastic changes, in the difference of grades, the manner of electing superiors, dismissals from the Society, and such matters. The authorship of the Ormanetto papers could not be determined with certainty, but suspicion fell upon Father Solier, and for a time, even upon Ribadeneira who, at that time, was in Madrid for his health, and was in the habit of calling frequently at the nunciature with Solier. In the following year, it was admitted that the suspicion about him was unfounded. As a matter of fact, he subsequently wrote a denunciation of the conspiracy and a splendid defense of the Institute. That King Philip knew what was going on was revealed by certain remarks he let drop, such as: "Your General does not know how to govern; we need a Spanish superior independent of the General; we have able men here like Ribadeneira and others, etc."

At the end of 1577 it was discovered that Father Dionisio Vásquez, who was of Jewish extraction, was disseminating these ideas by letter and by word of mouth. The friendship that existed between him and Ribadeneira from childhood again threw a cloud over the latter, but finally the provincial learned from Vásquez himself that Ribadeneira knew nothing at all about the whole affair. By that time the names of the chief plotters were revealed, and it was also discovered that Vásquez had given one copy of his memorial to the king and another to the Inquisition. Two more had been shown to various other people. Vásquez alleged eight reasons for this attempt to change the character of the Society: (1) Because the General had to treat with so many depraved and heretical nations, that there was a danger of contaminating the whole Society. (2) Money and subjects were being taken from Spain to benefit other provinces. (3) If any one was in danger of being punished by the Inquisition it was easy to send the culprit elsewhere. (4) Rome was governing by means of information which was frequently false. (5) There were delays in correspondence. (6) As the General never left Rome, he could not visit his subjects. (7) When the king asks for missionaries, Rome often answers that there are none to send. (8) There should be a commissary in Spain, because Spaniards are badly treated in Rome. Astrain notes that these pretences of the danger of heresy, respect for the Inquisition, and the needs of satisfying the king's demands for missionaries were devised merely to win the favor of Philip. Another conspirator whose name appears is Estrada. He is described by the provincial as a "novus homo whose conversation is pestilential."

There was no public manifestation of this spirit of schism in the first years of Aquaviva's Generalship, though in Spain a great deal of underhand plotting was going on between some of the discontented ones and the Inquisition. Four persons, however, had caused grave anxiety to their Superiors, namely: Dionisio Vásquez, Francisco de Abreo, Gonzalo González and Enrique Enríquez. Following in their wake, came Alonso Polanco, nephew of the famous Polanco, José de San Julian, Diego de Santa Cruz, and a certain number of inconspicuous persons whose names it is not necessary to give. In the background, however, there were two men of considerable importance: Mariana, whose writings have given so much trouble to the Society, and José de Acosta. To these Jouvancy in his "Epitome" and Prat in his "Ribadeneira" add the name of Jerome de Acosta, but according to Astrain, the two historians are in error both as to the character of Jerome and his participation in the plot. He was, indeed, suspected of being mixed up in it, but the suspicion was soon dispelled, as in the case of Ribadeneira. Manuel López was at most a suspect, because he was a friend and admirer of Araoz and because, although the oldest man in the province, he gave no aid to the defenders of the Institute. When the fight was ended, however, he pronounced for those who had won.

Meantime Enríquez, by means of false accusations, had induced the Inquisition to put in prison on various charges Fathers Marcen, Lavata, López and the famous Ripalda. That tribunal also expelled others from Valladolid and Castile, and called for the Bulls, the privileges, and the "Ratio studiorum" of the Society. The findings of the judges were put before the king, and the Inquisition then demanded all the copies of the aforesaid documents that the Fathers had (Astrain, III, 376). So far the inquisitors were safe, but they took one step more which ruined the plot in which they were conscious or unconscious participators. Under pain of excommunication they forbade a band of thirty Jesuit missionaries who were on their way to Transylvania to leave Spain, the reason being that they endangered their faith in embarking on such an enterprise. It was the plotter, Enrique Enríquez who suggested this piece of idiocy. When Sixtus V, who was then Pope, heard of the order, he sent such a vigorous reprimand to the Inquisition that all the confiscated papers were immediately restored and the imprisoned theologians were liberated from jail after two years' confinement.

But the enemy was not yet beaten. Anonymous petitions kept pouring in upon the Inquisition, "all of them," says Astrain, "bearing the stamp of the atrabilious Vásquez, the rigorist González, the under-handed Enríquez, and the sombre Abreo." Besides the old demands, a new one was made, namely, the investigation of the Society by an official of the Inquisition. Finally, in the provincial congregation of 1587, the hand of Vásquez was visible when a general congregation was asked for unanimously and a request made for a procurator for the Spanish provinces. Meantime, Philip had been wrought upon and he supported the petition for the visit of an inquisitor, who was none other than D. Jerónimo Manrique, the Bishop of Cartagena, a choice which shows that these Jesuit insurrectos were not gifted with the shrewdness usually attributed to their brethren. For apart from the odiousness of having an unfriendly outsider investigate, it so happened that Manrique had a very unsavory past, and when that was called to the attention of Sixtus, the whole foolish project collapsed of itself, and King Philip confessed his defeat.

All this finally convinced Sixtus V that there was something radically wrong with the Society, and he ordered the Congregation of the Holy Office (the Roman Inquisition) to examine the Constitutions. Aquaviva protested that it was unjust to judge the Order from anonymous writings, many of them forgeries by a single individual; and that the faults were alleged not with a view to correction, but to alter the Institute radically. With regard to the proposal of a capitular government, several objectionable consequences, he said, must follow, such as ambition, simony, laxity of discipline, and the like, and he emphasized the fact that Sixtus himself, only a short time before, had urged the appointment of Italian superiors in France. He convinced the Pope, also, that the exclusiveness advocated by the Spaniards, in refusing subjects from other parts of the world would soon shrivel up the Spanish provinces themselves. Finally, a capitular government in missionary countries was a physical impossibility, and would disrupt the whole Order. Indeed, when Cardinal Colonna mentioned the word "capitular" to the Pope, His Holiness interjected: "I don't want chapters in the Society. You would have one in every city and every family; and that does not suit the system of the Jesuits."

While this was going on, letters were received from the Emperor Rodolf, King Sigismond, the Duke of Bavaria, and other princes and distinguished personages, entreating the Pope to make no change in the Institute. The protest of the Duke of Bavaria especially startled the Pontiff, and he surmised that it was a Jesuit fabrication, or that it had been asked for or suggested. Such was really the case. The points had been drawn up by Alber, the provincial of Germany, and the Duke had heartily approved of them. At that, the Pope relented and declared that he never had any intention of changing the Institute. What he chiefly desired was to prevent certain Jesuits from interfering in politics more than was proper – an allusion, in Sacchini's opinion, to Possevin and Auger, who had already been retired by the General. Sixtus had apparently changed his mind about these semi-political occupations.

Thus ended the year 1589, but the year 1590 had new troubles in store. Up to that time, the Sacred Congregation, whose members, especially Caraffa, were friendly to the Society, had purposely delayed sending in a report to the Pope. He was indignant at this, and handed the case over to four theologians. Their verdict was in conformity with the views of Sixtus. They were more timid than the cardinals. By deduction from Aquaviva's argument against the findings, the first complaint was about the name: "The Society of Jesus." Then follow the various matters of stipends, penances, the profession, the examinations for grade, doctrines, the eighth rule of the Summary forbidding assistance to relatives, obedience, the account of conscience, delay of profession, fraternal correction, censors, and simple vows. Astrain gives Aquaviva's answer to all these charges in detail (III, 465). The cardinals, without exception, admitted Aquaviva's rebuttal, and when they gave the Pope their verdict, he said: "All of you, even those who are of my own creation, favor these Fathers." One thing, however, he insisted on, and that was the change of name, and he therefore ordered Aquaviva to send in a formal request to that effect. There was nothing to do but to submit, and the Pope signed the Brief, but as the bell of San Andrea summoned the novices to litanies that night, Sixtus died, and ever since the tradition runs in Rome that if the litany bell rings when the Pope is sick, his last hour has come. As was to be expected, the Society was accused of having had something to do with the Pope's opportune demise. The successor of Sixtus tore up the Brief, and the Society kept its name.

In spite of all this, the battle continued. Clement VIII succeeded Sixtus V on January 29, 1592, and his election was welcomed by the Spanish rebels, for he was credited with a personal antipathy to Aquaviva. Hence they revived Philip's interest in the matter. His ambassador at Rome was more than friendly to the project, and it was confidently hoped that the great Spanish Jesuit, Toletus, the friend of the Pope, could be won over. The fact that, at the suggestion of Aquaviva, the Pope had rendered a decision about the sacrament of Penance which the Inquisition regarded as an infringement of its rights, again brought that tribunal into the fray. The new plan of the conspirators was, first, to re-assert the claims advanced by Vasquez the year before, and failing that, to demand, at least, a commissary general for Spain. They wrote to Philip asking for his authorization and support. When Aquaviva was apprised of all this, he requested the king to name anyone he chose to pass on the proposal for a commissary. Philip picked out Loyasa, the instructor of the heir apparent; but he, after examining the question, bluntly told the insurgents: "I do not at all share your opinion, and I am positive that Ignatius, like St. Dominic and St. Francis, was inspired by God in the foundation of his Order. One Pope is enough to govern the Church, and one General ought to be enough for the Society." Foiled in this, they induced the Pope and the king to compel the General to call a general congregation; and in order to make it easier to carry out their plot, they persuaded the Pope to send Aquaviva to settle a dispute between the Dukes of Parma and Mantua, thus keeping him out of Rome for three whole months. Toletus is accused of having been a party to this removal of Aquaviva, but the proof adduced is not convincing. At Naples, Aquaviva fell seriously ill, and the Fathers demanded his recall. It was only on his return that he began to appreciate the full extent and bearing of the movement as well as the peril in which the Society was involved. For although all the cardinals were on his side, yet arrayed against him were the king, the Pope and a number of the professed. The case seemed hopeless. Finally, Toletus informed him that the Pope insisted on a general congregation and it was summoned for November 4, 1593.

To make matters worse, Toletus was then made cardinal; whereupon the insurgents asked the Pope to authorize José Acosta and some of his associates to enter the congregation – a privilege they had no claim to – and also to have Toletus preside. The congregation began its sessions on the day appointed. There were sixty-three professed present among them Acosta, but Aquaviva, not Toletus, was in the chair. The usual committee was appointed for the business of the congregation, and Aquaviva insisted that they should begin by investigating the complaints against his administration. They did so, and were amazed to find that all the charges were based on false impressions, personal prejudices, and imaginary acts. They were naturally indignant and when they reported to the Pope, he said: "They wanted to find a culprit and they have discovered a saint." The demands of the Spaniards were then examined. According to Jouvancy, the province of Castile fathered them. They were in the main: a modification of the time and manner of profession; the abolition of grades; the introduction of a new mode of dismissal; and the full use of the "Bulla Cruciata."

The business of the congregation was conducted as usual up to the twenty-first decree. Philip II of Spain had asked that the members of the Society should not avail themselves of the privileges accorded them – first of reading prohibited books; secondly, of absolving from heresy; thirdly, of exemption from honors and dignities outside the Society. The twenty-first decree states that the first two royal requests had already been acted upon. With regard to the third, it was decreed that his majesty should be entreated to use his authority against the acceptance of ecclesiastical and civic honors by members of the Society. It was only in the fifty-second decree that the Society expressed its mind on the race question, by ruling that applicants of Hebrew and Saracenic origin were not to be admitted to the Society. It even declared that those who were admitted through error should be expelled if the error were discovered prior to their profession. It had been found that out of the twenty-seven conspirators, twenty-five were of Jewish or Moorish extraction.

The twenty-seven guilty men were denounced as "false sons, disturbers of the common peace, and revolutionists (architecti rerum novarum) whose punishment had been asked for by many provinces. The congregation, therefore, while grievously bewailing the loss of its spiritual sons, was nevertheless compelled in the interests of domestic union, religious obedience, and the perpetuation of the Society, to employ a severe remedy in the premises." After recounting their charges against the Society, and their claim to be "the whole Society," although they were only a few "degenerate sons" the decree denounces them and their accomplices as having incurred the censures and penalties contained in the Apostolic Bulls, and orders them to be expelled from the Society. "If for one reason or another, they cannot be immediately dismissed they were declared incapable of any office or dignity and denied all active or passive voice." It also orders that "those suspected of being parties to such machinations shall make a solemn oath to support the Constitution as approved by the Popes, and to do nothing against it. If they refuse to take the oath, or having taken it, fail to keep it, they are to be expelled, even if old and professed."

Aquaviva had thus triumphed all along the line. He had not only saved the Institute, but had received the power of expelling every one of the insurgents if they refused the oath of submission. Acosta, the leading rebel, was one of the chief sufferers; although he was the representative of Philip II, he was struck, like his associates, by the condemnation. The one who was punished, most, however, was Toletus, who like Acosta had a Jewish strain, which may explain the moroseness which the delegates remarked whenever they met him, and also his complaints that "the proceedings of the Congregation could not have been worse … that it had treated Philip like a valet."

Toletus, however, continued to fight. On January 12 he advised Aquaviva to propose the discussion of a change of assistants and a sexennial congregation. A commission was immediately formed to wait on the Pope, but it failed to see him; whereupon Toletus appeared on January 14 and informed the General that the two points should be regarded as settled without discussion. Accordingly, four days later, new assistants were elected, but the law of the six-year convocations became a dead letter. On January 8 Toletus had presented a document to the Pontiff urging nine different changes in the Constitutions, adding that Philip II had asked for them, though in reality the king had only asked that they should be discussed. Doubtless Toletus had misunderstood. Fortunately, the Pope would not admit all of the changes, but suggested to the congregation four harmless ones – first, that except for the master of novices, the term of office should be three years; second, that at the end of their term the provincials should give an account of their administration; third that the papal reservations should be observed; and fourth, that the assistants should have a deciding vote. The three first were readily accepted, and the fourth respectfully rejected. The remaining business was then expedited, and the congregation adjourned on January 19, 1594.

CHAPTER VIII
THE ASIATIC CONTINENT

The Great Mogul – Rudolph Aquaviva – Jerome Xavier – de Nobili – de Britto – Beschi – The Pariahs – Entering Thibet – From Peking to Europe – Mingrelia, Paphlagonia and Chaldea – The Maronites – Alexander de Rhodes – Ricci enters China – From Agra to Peking – Adam Schall – Arrival of the Tatars – Persecutions – Schall condemned to Death – Verbiest – de Tournon's Visit – The French Royal Mathematicians – Avril's Journey.

At the very time that Queen Elizabeth was putting Jesuits to death in England, there was a remarkable pagan monarch reigning in what is now part of English India, who was inviting Jesuits to his court and making them his friends. His name was Akbar, and he is known in history as the Great Mogul. He was born in 1542, and ruled four years longer than the forceful Eliza. She was queen from 1558 to 1603; he was king from 1556 to 1605. Akbar appears first as the ruler of the Punjab and the country around Delhi and Agra; but in 1572 he drove the Afghans out of Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to Hindostan. Later, he annexed Cabul, Kashmir, Sind and Kandahar. He was a mighty warrior, but remarkable likewise as a civil ruler, the proof in this case being that he levied more money in taxes than England extracts at the present day from the same territory. He was very much interested in religious matters, and Christianity appealed to him, because one of his numerous wives had been a Christian; but he fancied that it was part of a general system which could be incorporated in a new cult which he had devised to conciliate the conflicting creeds of his realm. His own personal devotion was sun-worship, and he appeared every morning in public, devoutly offering up his orisons to the god of day. He fancied it was the world-soul that animates all things, a concrete form of one of the illusions of the present time.

At the invitation of Akbar, Rudolph Aquaviva, accompanied by Anthony Montserrat and Francisco Henriques, left Goa in 1579, to present himself at his court for the purpose of explaining to him the doctrines of the Christian Faith. He listened with pleasure and intelligence, but his interest was purely academic. As with other Oriental despots, nothing practical could be hoped for, on account of the harem. Seeing that it was lost time to remain there, Aquaviva returned to Goa, and was then sent down to the peninsula of Salsette, as superior of the mission established at that place. His stay there was not a long one, for on July 15, 1583, he and Alfonso Pacheco were attacked by the natives and cut to pieces. Fathers Pietro Berno, Antonio Francisco and Francisco Aranha, a lay-brother, together with twenty of their neophytes were included in the massacre.

Hearing of the tragedy, the Great Mogul despatched an embassy to the viceroy and to the superior of the Jesuits to express his sympathy, and also to urge that other missionaries might be sent to instruct his people. In compliance with the request, Jerónimo Xavier, a nephew of St. Francis Xavier, was sent there in 1595 and succeeded in winning the favor of Akbar. The "Encyclopedia Britannica" informs us that Jerónimo, at the suggestion of the monarch, translated the four Gospels into Persian. Ranke adds in his "History of the Popes" that "while the Jesuit was there the insurrections of the Mahometans contributed to dispose the emperor towards the Christians, for in the year 1599 Christmas was celebrated at Lahore with the utmost solemnity. The manger and the leading facts of the Nativity were represented for twenty days consecutively, and numerous catechumens proceeded to the Church with palms in their hands to receive baptism. The emperor read, with great pleasure, a 'Life of Christ' composed in Persian, and a picture of the Virgin, copied from the Madonna del Popolo in Rome, was by his orders taken to the palace that he might show it to the women of his household. It is true that the Christians drew more favourable conclusions from these things than the facts justified; still, great progress was really made. Indeed, after the death of Akbar, three princes of the blood royal were solemnly baptized. They rode to the church on white elephants, and were received with the sound of trumpets, kettle-drums and martial music. This took place in 1610, so that Christianity seemed gradually to acquire a position of a fixed character, although suffering from certain vicissitudes and the prevalence of fickleness in the matter of religious opinion. Political considerations, also, largely affected the public mind. In 1621 a college was founded in Agra, and a station established at Patna. In 1624 hopes were entertained that the Emperor Jehanguire would himself become a Christian."

Shortly after Jerónimo Xavier had settled down in the court of the Great Mogul, Father Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine, broke through the caste barrier in India in a way that, for a time, gave considerable scandal. He had gone to the mission of Madura, a territory somewhat in the interior towards the northeast of the Fisheries, and found there that Father Fernandes, a very pious and energetic missioner who had been living for fourteen years among his pagans, had never made a convert, as he could not get in touch with the influential people of the country. Two difficulties stood in the way: first, he was a Portuguese or a Prangui, and the Prangui were held in abhorrence, because they ate meat and drank wine; secondly, he mingled with the most degraded castes of India.

De Nobili determined to get rid of these obstacles. First, he insisted, that he was not a Prangui but a Roman nobleman in name and in fact; secondly, with regard to wine and meat, he would abstain from them and live on rice; thirdly, he would become a Brahmin, as far as their manner of life and dress was concerned, and, moreover, he would outdo them in the knowledge of their own language, literature and religion. Indeed, within a year, he was master of Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit. He was now equipped for his work, and in 1606 he bade good-bye to Fernandes, and shut himself up in a hut which, for a long time, no one was allowed to enter. He wanted the news to spread among the natives that a great European Brahmin had made his appearance. Curiosity, he said, would do the rest, for his rigid seclusion would make them all the more intent on seeing him. The scheme succeeded, and when, at last, visitors were admitted to speak to him, they found him to be even holier in appearance than they had imagined him to be, and were amazed to hear him converse in Tamil, and show a perfect acquaintance with the literature of the language. He made it a point, also, to recite and even to sing the songs of their poets, for he was an able musician and had a good voice.

When his reputation was established he began to discuss some of the truths of fundamental theology, not as coming from himself, but which, as he showed them, were actually set down in their own Vedas. His knowledge of Sanskrit – perhaps he was the first European to venture into that field – had given him a more thorough knowledge of the sacred books than was possessed by any of the Brahmins themselves, and hence it happened that, before a year had passed, he had baptized several persons who were conspicuous both for their nobility and learning. He permitted his converts to continue to besmear their foreheads with sandal-wood paste, to cultivate the tuft of hair on the top of their heads, and to wear a string on the left shoulder. He did this after he had thoroughly convinced himself that there was no superstition in such practices. Meantime he was living on milk, rice, herbs and water, which were handed to him once a day by the servant of a Brahmin. It was a precaution to forestall any suspicion that other food was supplied surreptitiously.

In the second year, his flock was so numerous that the hut he lived in was insufficient to contain them all, and he had to build a church. That, of course, caused some alarm among the Brahmins, but it was nothing in comparison to the storm that de Nobili's life excited in Europe. Cardinal Bellarmine, his uncle, thought he had apostatized, and wrote him an indignant letter, and the General of the Society added to it a very severe reprehension. His brother Jesuit, Fernandes, had denounced him as a traitor, because of his rejection of the name "Prangui," or Portuguese, and also of his connivance at idolatry in allowing his neophytes to retain their heathenish customs. This was the origin of the famous question of the "Malabar Rites" which created such a stir in the Church, one hundred years later. These charges gave de Nobili a great deal of trouble for some time, but at last everything was satisfactorily explained, and the cardinal, the General and the Pope told the innovating missionary to continue as he had begun. Hence in order to obviate the apparent neglect and even contempt of the lower castes, other priests were assigned to that work, and de Nobili restricted himself to his peculiar vocation for forty-two years. He then lost his sight and was sent to Jafanapatam in Ceylon, and afterwards to Mylapore, where he died on January 16, 1656.

The mission had prospered. About the time de Nobili ended his labours, it had an average of 5000 converts a year, and it never dropped below 3000, even in the times of persecution. At the end of the seventeenth century its territory had extended beyond Madura to Mysore, Marava, Tanjore and Gingi, and the Christians of the entire Madura Mission, as it was called, amounted to 150,000 souls. Besides being a field for apostolic zeal, the mission also produced eminent scholars in Tamil and Sanskrit, like Beschi, Cœurdoux, and others. In 1700 it reached into the Carnatic and probably took in what Christians had been left there by the missionaries among the Moguls. This mission glories in its great martyr, John de Britto, who arrived there twelve years after the death of de Nobili. He, too, adopted the manners of a Saniassi, and labored as such for twenty-one years. It was a life of continual and horrible martyrdom. He was finally put to death as a magician, because of the multitudes of people attracted to the Faith by his holiness and teaching. Like his predecessor de Nobili, he did not worry his converts about their tufts of hair or the cotton cords on their shoulders, and it is noteworthy that long after his death, and just while the process of his beatification was going on, the theologians were hotly discussing the liceity of the Malabar Rites. If they were condemned, how would the decision affect de Britto's canonization? Pope Benedict XIV decided that it would not stand in the way, and so de Britto was placed among the Blessed.

The companions of de Nobili and de Britto went everywhere in Hindostan, they even reconciled to the Church the community of natives who called themselves the Christians of St. Thomas the Apostle, but who were in reality commonplace Nestorians. They built the first Church of Bengal, and penetrated into the kingdoms of Arracan, Pegu, Cambogia, and Siam, all the time busy avoiding the Dutch pirates who were prowling along the coast.

The most dazzling of these picturesque missionaries was undoubtedly the Italian, Constant Beschi, who arrived in Madura in 1700, one hundred years after de Nobili, and twenty-eight after de Britto. He determined to surpass all the other Saniassis or Brahmins in the austerity of his life. He remained in his house most of the time, and would never touch anything that had life in it. On his forehead was the pottu of Sandanam, and on his head the coulla, a sort of cylindrical head dress made of velvet. He was girt with the somen, was shod with the ceremonious wooden footgear, and pearls hung from his ears. He never went out except in a palanquin, in which tiger skins had to be placed for him to sit on, while a servant stood on either side, fanning him with peacock feathers, and a third held above his head a silken parasol surmounted by a globe of gold. He was called "the Great Viramamvuni", and like Bonaparte, he sat "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality." Not even a Jesuit could come near him or speak to him. A word of Italian never crossed his lips, but he plunged into Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil, studied the poets of Hindostan, and wrote poems that conveyed to the Hindoos a knowledge of Christianity. For forty years he was publicly honored as the Ismat Saniassi, that is, the penitent without stain. The Nabob of Trichinopoli was so enthusiastic about him that Beschi had to accept the post of prime minister, and thenceforth he never went abroad unless accompanied by thirty horsemen, twelve banner-bearers, and a band of military music, while a long train of camels followed in the rear. If, on his way, any Jesuit who was looking after the Pariahs came across his path, there was no recognition on either side, but both must have been amused as the Jesuit in rags prostrated himself in the dust before the silk-robed Jesuit in the cavalcade, the outcast not daring even to look at the great official, though, perhaps, they were intimate friends.

Numbers of Jesuits were, meantime, besieging the General with petitions to be made missionaries among the Pariahs, for few could act the part that Beschi was playing. To be a Pariah was easy, and attempts to evangelize that class continued to be made in Madura up to the time of the Suppression. Conversions were numerous, and Bouchet, a contemporary of Beschi, heard as many as 100,000 confessions in a single year. It is said that the particularly fervent converts among the Brahmins used to cut off their hair as a sacrifice, when they were baptized, and a great number of locks, some of which were four and five feet long, adorned Beschi's church in Tiroucavalor.

But these conversions connoted persecution. Bouchet, who was Beschi's successor among the high-class Brahmins, was several times arrested and condemned to death. On one occasion, when he was sentenced to be burned alive and was being covered with oil to make the flames more active, the executioners were so startled by his apparent unconcern that they dropped the work and set him free. Bouchet thought that the Church of Madura was specially blessed by being persecuted, and that explained for him how he was able to baptize 20,000 Hindoos. He had the care of thirty churches, which meant untold labor. About the trifles of never eating meat, fresh eggs or fish, living in straw-covered cabins without beds, seats or furniture, and never having the luxury of a table or spoon or knife or fork at meal times, – that never gave the missionaries a thought. The consolation for these privations was that at times they would hear the confessions of entire villages and never have to deal with a mortal sin. Probably Simon Carvalho, – Marshall calls him Laynez – who had received 10,000 people into the Church, and was at one time almost torn to pieces by a mob, and at another hunted for five months to be put to death, would have preferred this work, in which he had been employed for thirty years, to that of administering the diocese of Mylapore, of which Clement XI made him bishop later.

"They were giants," wrote the Abbé Dubois who was a missionary in India in modern times, "and they triumphed in their day, because neither the world nor the devil could resist the might that was in them. Possessing for the most part the rarest mental endowments, so that if they had aimed only at human honors they would have encountered scarcely a rival in their path, versed in all the learning of their age, and conspicuous even in that great Society, which attracted to itself for more than a century the noblest minds of every country in Europe, they had acquired in addition to their natural gifts such a measure of Divine grace and wisdom, such perfection of evangelical virtue, that the powers of darkness fled away from before their face, and the Cross of Christ wherever they lifted it up, broke in pieces the idols of the Gentiles." And Perrin in his "Voyage dans l'Indoustan," II, 166, writes: "I confess that I have criticized the Jesuits of Hindostan with critical, perhaps with malignant temper. I have changed my mind now, and if I spoke ill of them, all India would tax me with imposture."

The hermit kingdom of Thibet was first entered by Father Antonio de Andrada. He was one of the missionaries in the kingdom of the Great Mogul, and started from Agra in 1624 to cross the Himalayas and enter, if possible, the Grand Lama's mysterious domain. He joined a troop of idolaters who were going to present their offerings at the celebrated pagoda of Barrinath, whither thousands flocked from all the kingdoms of India and even from the island of Ceylon. "That part of the trip," he says in his narrative, "was the easiest, although in ascending the valley of the Ganges I had often to creep along a narrow path cut in the face of the rock, sometimes scarcely a palm in breadth, while far below me were roaring torrents into which, from time to time, some unfortunate traveller would be hurled. Here and there we had to pass rivers with the help of ropes strung across the stream, or perhaps on heaps of snow which the avalanches had piled up in the valley, but which were especially perilous, for the mountain torrents were all the while eating through them at the base. If there was a cave-in the whole party would disappear in the depths. It was dreadful work, but when I saw my companions, many of them old men, keeping up their courage by repeating the name of Barrinath, I was ashamed not to do more for Jesus Christ than these poor pagans for their idols and pagodas."

After the shrine was reached, the valiant missionary continued his journey, and arrived at the town of Manah, the last habitation of the mountaineers on the India slope. "Before us was a desert of snow, inaccessible for any living creature for ten months of the year, and which called for a twenty days' march, without shelter and without a bit of wood to make a fire. With me were two natives and a guide. However, I had put my trust in God, for whom alone I was attempting this dangerous task. Each step costs incredible struggles, for every morning there was a new layer of snow, knee-deep or up to the waist or even to the shoulders. In some places, to get across the drifts, we had to go through the motions of a swimmer; and to avoid being smothered at night, we were compelled to remove the snow, at least every hour." He finally arrived at his destination and was well received by the Lama. He was given leave to establish a mission in the country, he then made haste to return to Agra and in the following year he established a base at Chaparang. But he himself was not to remain in the country which he had so gloriously opened to the world. He was named provincial of the Indies, and had to set out for Goa immediately. Nine years later, on March 19, 1634, he was poisoned by the Jews. Meantime the Thibet mission tottered and fell.

In 1661 Father Johann Gruber, one of Schall's assistants in Pekin, reached Thibet on his way to Europe. He could not go by sea, for the Dutch were blockading Macao, so he made up his mind to go overland by way of India and Thibet. With him was Father d'Orville, a Belgian. After reaching Sunning-fu, on the confines of Kuantsu, they crossed Kukonor and Kalmuk Tatary to the Holy City of Lhasa in Thibet, but did not remain there. They then climbed the Himalayas and from Nepal journeyed over the Ganges plateau to Patna and Agra. At the latter city d'Orville died, he was replaced by Father Roth, and the two missionaries tramped across Asia to Europe. Gruber had been two hundred and fourteen days on the road. In 1664 he attempted to return to China by way of Russia, but for some reason or other failed to get through that country. He then made for Asia but fell ill at Constantinople, finally he died either in Italy at Florence or at Patak in Hungary. Fortunately he had left his "Journal" and charts in the hands of the great Athanasius Kircher, who published them in his famous "China Illustrata."

Other missionaries entered Mingrelia, Paphlagonia, and Chaldea; in the latter place they brought the Nestorians back to the Church. Besides laboring in nearby Greece and Thessaly, at Constantinople, they were in Armenia and at Ephesus, Smyrna, Damascus, Aleppo, at the ruins of Babylon, and on the shores of the Euphrates and the Jordan, and they founded the missions of Antourah for the Maronites of Libanus, whom Henry IV of France took under his protection.

The origin of these Maronite missions reads like a romance. It is found in the French "Menology" of October 12 which tells us that one day, at a meeting of his sodalists in Marseilles, Father Amien was talking about the propagation of the Faith and incidentally mentioned Persia, which only one missionary had as yet entered. Among his hearers was a rich merchant named François Lambert, who, excited by the sermon, determined to go and put himself at the disposal of that solitary Persian apostle. He crossed the Arabian desert, reached Bagdad, embarked on the Euphrates, with the intention of getting to Ispahan in Persia and when he failed in this, he turned towards Ormuz on the straits connecting the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea. That place, however, could not keep him; it was too luxurious and too licentious; so he went over to upper Hindostan, where the Great Mogul was enthroned. He passed through Surate and Golconda, but from Mylapore, which holds the tomb of St. Thomas, he could not tear himself away for several weeks. Finally, he boarded a ship which was wrecked on the shores of Bengal, and twice he came within an inch of disappearing in the deep. After two days and two nights on the desolate sands, he and five other castaways sang the Te Deum to make them forget their sorrow. They must have struck inland after that for we are told that later they built a raft and floated down one of the great rivers of India. It was a journey of thirty-five days, and several of the poor wanderers died of hunger on the way. At last they reached a native settlement and were led to the nearest Portuguese post. Unfortunately, the geography at this part of Lambert's narrative is too vague for us to be sure of the places he saw on his journey.

From India he made his way to Rome, where he entered the Jesuit novitiate of San Andrea, and from there, after his ordination, he was sent to Syria. Again he was shipwrecked, and when picked up on the beach he was taken for a pirate and brought in chains to the chief of the mountaineer clan. Happily they were the Maronites of Libanus, and there Lambert remained till the end of his days, helping the persecuted people to keep their faith against their furious Mussulman neighbours. These Maronites had been represented, by postulatory letters at the Lateran Council as early as 1516, and later Pope Gregory XIII built for them in Rome a hospital and a college which produced some very eminent scholars. In 1616 Clement VIII sent the Jesuit, Girolamo Dandini, to preside at the Maronite council, for the purpose of introducing certain liturgical reforms; but it was the wanderer Lambert who was the first to remain permanently among this heroic people. He lived only three years after his arrival; it was long enough, however, to prepare the way for the five mission centres which were subsequently established there.

Alexandre de Rhodes, who appears at this juncture, is another of the picturesque figures in the history of the Society. According to Fénelon, it is he who inspired the formation of the great association of the Missions Etrangères, which has sent so many thousands of glorious apostles, many of whom were martyrs, to evangelize the countries from which he had come in a most unexpected and extraordinary fashion. He was born in Avignon, the old French City of the Popes, and was called by his contemporaries the "Francis Xavier of Cochin-China and Tonkin." He left Rome for the Indies when he was only twenty-six years of age, and began his missionary work in the East by looking after the slaves and jailbirds of Goa. On his way from that city to Tuticorin he baptized fifty pagans on shipboard, his eloquence being helped by the furious tempest that threatened to send the frail bark to the bottom. While waiting at Malacca for the ship to get ready, he and his companion captured another two thousand souls for the Lord, and when he arrived at his destination, other thousands came into the fold, among them the king and eighteen members of the royal household, and two hundred of the priests of the pagan temples. Nor did this rapidity denote instability, for twenty-five years later the Church of Tuticorin which he founded could count at its altars no less than 300,00 °Christians.

It is said that he had even the power of making thaumaturgists out of his catechumens. By the use of holy water or the relic of the cross, they restored people to health, and as many as two hundred and seventy sufferers from various maladies were the recipients of such favors. When he was thrown into prison and loaded with fetters, as he often was, he converted his jailers and others besides. When carried off in a ship to be ejected from the country, he baptized the captain and crew and got them to put him ashore in a desolate place where he began a new apostolate. Fifteen times, in his journeys to Tonkin and Cochin-China, he crossed the Gulf of Tonkin, which had a terrible record of tempests and shipwrecks, and finally he started on his famous overland tramp to Europe in search of evangelical laborers. He achieved his purpose, though it took him three years and a half to do it.

On that memorable journey he risked his life at every step, for he had to travel through countries whose language he did not understand, and where he could expect nothing but suspicion, ill-treatment and, if he escaped death, privations and sufferings of every description. On his way to Rome the Dutch in Java threw him in jail, but he converted his keepers, and was segregated in consequence and put in solitary confinement; he regarded that seclusion only as a splendid chance to make his annual retreat, and when he was let out he resumed his pilgrimage through India and Asia. As he said himself, he was carried on the wings of Divine Providence, through storms and shipwrecks, and cities and deserts, and barbarians and pagans, and heretics and Turks. He finally reached Rome in 1648, and told the Father General and the Pope what was needed in the far-away Orient. The purpose of this voyage, so replete with adventure, was of very great importance.

It was chiefly by the help of Portugal, which was then at the most brilliant epoch of its history, that missions had been extended for thousands of miles in the East, beginning at Goa and Malabar, and stretching round the Peninsula of Hindostan to Cochin-China, Corea, and Japan, in many of which splendid ecclesiastical establishments had been founded. They were all begun, supported and protected by Portugal. But unfortunately, Christianity and Portugal were so inextricably entangled, mixed and confused with one another that the religion taught by the missionaries came to be considered by the people not so much the religion of Christ as the religion of the Portuguese. Another consequence was that a quarrel between any little Portuguese official or merchant with an Oriental potentate meant a persecution of the Church. Furthermore, as Portugal's possession of the country was so exclusive that not even the most humble missionary could leave Europe unless he was acceptable to the Government, it amounted to an actual enslavement of the Church. Finally, as every other nation was debarred from commercial rights in the East, it became the practice of rivals to represent to the natives that the missionaries were merely Portuguese spies or advance agents who were preparing for invasion and conquest.

Unfortunately, in return for all that Portugal had done and was to do for the advancement of Christianity in those newly discovered lands, an arrangement had been made with the Pope that no bishop in all that vast territory could take his see unless Portugal accepted him; no new diocese could be created unless Portugal were consulted; no papal bull was valid unless passed upon by the Portuguese kings. To put an end to all that, was the reason why de Rhodes went to Europe. But he did not dare to appear before the Pope as a Jesuit, for if it were known what his mission was every Jesuit house in the Portuguese possessions would have been immediately closed, as happened later. Hence it was that he had to wait in Rome for three whole years until 1651 before he could even get his petition considered, and this explains also why he made the extravagant demand for "a patriarch, three archbishops, and twelve bishops." By asking much he thought he might at least get something.

The Pope wanted de Rhodes himself to be a bishop; he refused the honor, and then was told to go and find some available candidates. For that purpose he addressed himself to a group of ecclesiastics at Paris whom the Jesuit Father Bagot was directing in the ways of the higher spiritual life, and who were often spoken of as the Bagotists. Among them were Montmorency de Laval, the future Bishop of Quebec, and M. Olier, who was, later on, to found the Society of St. Sulpice. His appeal had no immediate result, and he then prepared to return to Tonkin, but he received an order to go elsewhere. Probably no Portuguese vessel would take him back, for the purpose of his visit to Europe must have by that time got abroad. He was, therefore, sent to Persia, although he was then over sixty years old; so to Persia he went, and we find him studying the language on his way thither, and, when travelling through the streets of Ispahan, making a fool of himself in trying to stammer out the few words he had learned, but always making light of the laughter and sometimes of the kicks and cuffs and even threats of death that he received. He was planning new missionary posts in Georgia and Tatary when death called him to his reward. But he had already won the admiration of Ispahan, and the city never saw a costlier funeral than the one which, on November 7, 1660, conveyed to the grave the mortal remains of the glorious Alexandre de Rhodes.

The Mohammedan mandarin, Yang, who had trumped up the astronomical accusations against Schall, had meantime succeeded to the post as head of the mathematical board, but the young emperor was not satisfied with the results obtained, and he ordered a public dispute on the relative merits of Chinese and European astronomy. Verbiest was on one side, and Yang on the other. The test was to be first, the determination, in advance, of the shadow given at noon of a fixed day by a gnomon of a given height; second, the absolute and relative position of the sun and the planets on a date assigned; third, the time of a lunar eclipse. The result was a triumph for Verbiest. He was immediately installed as president, and his brethren were allowed to return to their missions. Verbiest's career, at Pekin, was more brilliant than that of either Ricci or Schall. There is no end of the things he did. The famous bronze astronomical instruments which figured so conspicuously in the Boxer Uprising of 1900 were of his manufacture; he built an aqueduct also, and cast as many as one hundred and thirty-two cannon for the Chinese army. The emperor followed his astronomical classes, appointed him to the highest grade in the mandarinate, and gave him leave to preach Christianity anywhere in the empire. Innocent XI, to whom he dedicated his Chinese Missal, sent him a brief in 1681, which contained the greatest praise for "using the profane sciences to promote Christianity," a commendation which was more than welcome at that time, when the book of Navarrete was doing its evil work against the Society.

In 1677 when Verbiest was appointed vice-provincial, he appealed for new laborers from Europe. He even advocated the use of the native language in the liturgy in order to facilitate the ordination of Chinese priests. It was a bold petition to make when the memory of Luther and his German liturgy was still so fresh in the mind of Europe. The reason for the petition was that otherwise the conversion of China was impossible. Brucker in his history of the Society tells us that for one hundred years no native had been ordained a priest in China. He gives as a reason for this, the disgust of the Portuguese government at the failure met with in Hindostan, where the formation of a native clergy was attempted. That alone would be sufficient to acquit the Society of any guilt in this matter; but he gives facts to his readers which go to show very plainly that this failure to create a native Chinese priesthood clearly evidences the Society's desire to have one at any cost. It is paradoxical, but it is true.

The great lapse of time that passed without any ordinations need cause no alarm. There are instances of greater delay with less excuse very near home. For instance, there were secular priests and religious in Canada as early as 1603, but there was no seminary there till 1663, although the colony had all the power of Catholic France back of it. There were Catholics in Maryland in 1634, yet there was no theological seminary until 1794, that is for a space of 160 years. After a few years' struggle with only five pupils, and in some of these years none, it was closed and was not re-opened until 1810, which is a far cry from 1634. New York did not attempt to found a seminary until the time of its fourth bishop. The house at Nyack was burned down before it was occupied; the Lafargeville project also proved a failure and it was not until 1841 that the diocesan seminary was opened at Fordham.

Moreover, in none of these seminaries was there the remotest thought of forming a native clergy in the sense of the word employed in the anti-Jesuit indictment. The seminarians were all foreigners or sons of foreigners. There were no native Indians in these establishments, as that, apart from intellectual and moral reasons, would have been a physiological impossibility. Nature rebels against the transplanting of a creature of the woods and mountains to the confinement of a lecture hall. The old martyr of Colonial times, Father Daniel, brought a number of Indian boys from Huronia to Quebec to educate them, but they fled to the forests, while the Indian girls, who were lodged with the Ursulines, died of consumption. Even in our own times, Archbishop Gillow of Oaxaca, Mexico, brought a number of pure-blooded Indians to Rome, in the hope of making them priests, but they all died before he attained any results. In brief, we in America have never formed a native clergy.

Moreover, this century-stretch of failure in China is cut down considerably when we recall the fact that for a considerable time there were only two or, at most, three Jesuits in that vast empire, and that they contrived to remain there only because they interested the learned part of the populace by their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, never daring to broach the subject of religion, though they succeeded under the pretence of science in circulating everywhere a catechism which enraptured the literati. It was only in the year 1601 that permission was given to them to preach. Hence, the figure 100 has to be cut down to 83. In two years time, namely in 1617, there were 13,00 °Christians in China. How were the rest to be reached? No help could be expected from Europe, which was being devastated by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Independently of that, the caste system prevailed in China, and the learned, even those who were converted, found it difficult to understand why the wonderful truths of Christianity should be communicated to the common people, yet it is from the people that ecclesiastical vocations usually come. Thirdly, the Chinaman has an instinctive horror of anything foreign. Yet here was a foreign creed which, moreover, could be thoroughly learned only by a language which was itself foreign even to the priests who taught it.

The audacious project was then formed to petition the Pope to have the liturgy, even the Mass, in Chinese. No other modern mission ever dared to make such a request. As early as 1617, the petition was presented, and although Pope Paul V favored the scheme, yet the undertaking was so stupendous and the project so unusual that he withheld any direct or official recognition. Whereupon the missionaries began the work of translating into Chinese not only the Missal and Ritual, but an entire course of moral theology with the cases of conscience. In addition a large part of the "Summa" of St. Thomas along with many other books which might be useful to the future priest were rendered into the vernacular. The work was begun by Father Trigault in 1615 and was continued by others up to 1682, when the Pope while accepting the dedication of a Chinese Missal by Verbiest, finally concluded that it would be impolitic to grant permission for a liturgy in Chinese. This gigantic undertaking ought of itself to be a sufficient answer to the charge that the Jesuits were averse to the formation of a native clergy. The scheme failed, it is true, but the attempt is a sufficient answer to the hackneyed charge against the Society.

It might be asked, however, why did they not foresee the possible failure of their request and provide otherwise for priests? In the first place, there were Dominicans and Franciscans in China, and it might be proper to ask them why they excluded the Chinese from the ministry? Secondly, the Jesuits had all they could do to defend themselves from the charge of idolatry for sanctioning the Chinese Rites. Thirdly when Schall arrived in 1622 there were no missionaries to be met anywhere – they were in prison or in exile. Fourthly, in 1637 there was a bloody persecution. Fifthly, in 1644 the Tatar invasion occurred with the usual havoc, and the Manchu dynasty was inaugurated. Sixthly, in 1664 Schall hitherto such a great man in the empire was imprisoned and condemned to be hacked to pieces and Verbiest was lying in chains. It is quite comprehensible, therefore, that in such a condition of things, quiet seminary life was impossible, and as the Jesuits were suspected of leaning to Confucianism it would have been quite improper to entrust to them the formation of a secular clergy.

When Verbiest wrote home for help, numbers of volunteers left Europe for China. Louis XIV was especially enthusiastic in furthering the movement, and, among other favors he conferred the title of "Fellows of the Academy of Science and Royal Mathematicians" on six Jesuits of Paris, and sent them off to Pekin. But when they arrived, Verbiest was dead. They were in time, however, for his funeral, which took place on March 11, 1688, with the same honors that had been accorded to Ricci and Schall. He was laid to rest at their side. His successors began their work by establishing what was called the French Mission of China, which lasted until the suppression of the Society. The great difficulty in sending missionaries thither by sea had long exercised the minds of the superiors of the Society, especially after a startling announcement was made by Father Couplet, who, after passing many years in China, had returned home, shattered in health and altogether unable to continue his work. He said that, after a very careful count, he had found that of the six hundred Jesuits who had attempted to enter China from the time that Ruggieri and Ricci had succeeded in gaining an entrance there, as many as four hundred had either died of sickness on the way or had been lost at sea. De Rhodes had shown that an overland route was possible from India to Europe; the lay-brother Goes had succeeded in getting to China from the land of the Great Mogul, Gruber had reversed the process, and in 1685 an attempt was made by Father Avril, to reach it by the way of Russia, but he failed.

Avril's account of his journey has been shockingly "done out of French" by a translator who prudently withheld his name. It was "published in London, at Maidenhead, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street." Its date is 1693. From it we learn that Father Avril started from Marseilles and made for Civita Vecchia, after paying his respects in Rome to Father General de Noyelle, he went to Leghorn, where he took ship on a vessel that was convoyed by a man-of-war called the "Thundering Jupiter." Passing by Capraia, Elba, Sardinia, and nearly wrecked off the "Coast of Candy," his ship dropped anchor in the Lerneca roadstead after three days' voyage, but without the "Thundering Jupiter." It was still at sea. He touched at Cyprus and Alexandretta, then proceeded to Aleppo, crossing the plain of Antioch in a caravan. He was fleeced by an Armenian who professed to be a friend of the Jesuits, then he crossed the Tigris or Tiger, and arrived at Erzerum in time for an earthquake. Continuing his journey through the intervening territory to what he calls the "Caspian Lake", he finally reached Moscow, after being almost burned to death on the Volga, when his ship took fire. At Moscow he was welcomed by the German Jesuits who had a house there, for Prince Gallichin (Galitzin) was then prime minister. He was soon bidden to depart, and crossed a part of Muscovy, Lithuania and White Russia, reaching Warsaw on March 12, 1686. It was eighteen months since he had left Leghorn. He made effort after effort to get back to Muscovy, but in vain. Ambassadors and princes and even Louis XIV found the Czar obdurate, and so, after two years of unsuccessful endeavor, Avril arrived at Constantinople, after being imprisoned by the Turks on his way thither. Finally, he reached Marseilles, having proved, at least, that the road through Russia would have to be abandoned; hence, it was determined to make those overland journeys in the future through the territory of the Shah of Persia.

CHAPTER IX
BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

Aquaviva and the Spanish Opposition – Vitelleschi – The "Monita Secreta"; Morlin – Roding – "Historia Jesuitici Ordinis" – "Jesuiticum Jejunium" – "Speculum Jesuiticum" – Pasquier – Mariana – "Mysteries of the Jesuits" – "The Jesuit Cabinet" – "Jesuit Wolves" – "Teatro Jesuítico" – "Morale Pratique des Jésuites" – "Conjuratio Sulphurea" – "Lettres Provinciales" – "Causeries du Lundi" and Bourdaloue – Prohibition of publication by Louis XIV – Pastoral of the Bishops of Sens – Santarelli – Escobar – Anti-Coton – "Les Descouvertes" – Norbert.

Father Claudius Aquaviva died on January 31, 1615, after a generalship of thirty-four years. To him are to be ascribed not only all of the great enterprises inaugurated since 1580, but, to a very considerable extent, the spirit by which the Society has been actuated up to the present time and which, it is to be hoped, it will always retain. The marvellous skill and the serene equanimity with which he guided the Society through the perils which it encountered from kings and princes, from heretics and heathens, from great ecclesiastical tribunals and powerful religious organizations, and most of all from the machinations of disloyal members of the Institute, entitle him to the enthusiastic love and admiration of every Jesuit and the unchallenged right to the title which he bears of the "Saviour of the Society." Far from being rigid and severe, as he is sometimes accused of being, he was amazingly meek and magnanimously merciful. The story about forty professed fathers having been dismissed in consequence of their connection with the sedition of Vásquez is a myth. The entire number of plotters on this occasion did not exceed twenty-eight, and only a few of those were expelled. In any case, whatever penalty was meted out to them was the act of the congregation and not of Aquaviva. Indeed, Aquaviva's methods are in violent contrast with those of Francis Xavier, who gave the power of expulsion to even local Superiors, and we almost regret that Xavier had not to deal with his fellow-countrymen at this juncture. It must also be borne in mind that the great exodus from the Society which occurred in Portugal antedated Aquaviva's time, and was due to the mistaken methods of government by Simon, Rodriguez.

The congregation convened after his death met on November 5, 1615, and the majority of its members must have been astounded to find the Spanish claim to the generalship still advocated. Mutio Vitelleschi an Italian, however, was most in evidence at that time; he was forty-five years old, and had been already rector of the English College, provincial both of Naples and Rome, and later assistant for Italy. As in all of those positions of trust he had displayed a marvellous combination of sweetness and strength which had endeared him to his subjects, the possibility of his election, at this juncture, afforded a well-grounded hope of a glorious future for the Society. Nevertheless some of the Spanish delegates determined to defeat him, and with that in view they addressed themselves to the ambassadors of France and Spain, to enlist their aid; but the shrewd politicians took the measure of the plotters, and, while piously commending them for their religious zeal and patriotism, politely refused their co-operation. That should have sufficed as a rebuke, but prompted by their unwise zeal they approached the Pope himself and assured him that Vitelleschi was altogether unfit for the position. The Pontiff listened to them graciously and bade them be of good heart, for, if Vitelleschi were half what they said he was, there could be no possibility of his election. The balloting took place on November 15, and Mutio was chosen by thirty-nine out of seventy-five votes. The margin was not a large one, and shows how nearly the conspirators had succeeded. To-day an appeal to laymen in such a matter would entail immediate expulsion.

Vitelleschi's vocation to the Society was a marked one. When only a boy of eleven, he was dreaming of being associated with it, and before he had finished his studies he bound himself by a vow to ask for admittance, and, if accepted, to distribute his inheritance to the poor. But as the Vitelleschi formed an important section of the Roman nobility, such aspirations did not fit in with the father's ambition for his son, and the boy was bidden to dismiss all thought of it. He was a gentle and docile lad, but he possessed also a decided strength of character, and like the Little Flower of Jesus in our own times, he betook himself to the Pope to lay the matter before him. The father finally yielded, and on August 15, 1583, young Mutio, after going to Communion with his mother at the Gesù, hurried off to lay his request before Father Aquaviva. His great desire was to go to England, which was just then waging its bloody war against the Faith, but, as with Aquaviva himself, his ignorance of the English language deprived him of the crown of martyrdom.

Crétineau-Joly is of the opinion that the generalate of Vitelleschi was monotone de bonheur. Whether that be so or not, it certainly had its share in the monotony of calumny which has been meted out to the Society from its birth. Thus, the beginning of Vitelleschi's term of office coincided with the publication of the famous "Monita secreta" which, with the exception of the "Lettres provinciales" is perhaps the cleverest piece of literary work ever levelled against the Society. The compliment is not a very great one, for nearly all the other books obtained their vogue by being extravagant distortions of the truth. But good or bad they never failed to appear.

The first in order was the diatribe of Morlin in 1568. This was a little before Vitelleschi's time. It was directed against the schools, and denounces the professors for having intercourse with the devil, practising sorcery, initiating their pupils in the black art, anointing them with some mysterious and diabolical compound which gave the masters control of their scholars after long years of separation. "God's gospel," they said, "was powerless before those creatures of the devil whom hell had vomited forth to poison the whole German empire and especially to do away with the Evangelicals who were the especial object of Jesuitical hatred." The immediate expulsion of the "sorcerers" was demanded, and even their burning at the stake, for "they not only deal in witchcraft themselves, but teach it to others, and impart to their pupils the methods of getting rid of their foes by poisons, incantations and the like." It was asserted that "those who send their boys to be educated by them are throwing their offspring into the jaws of wolves; or like the Hebrews of old immolating them to Moloch."

In 1575 Roding, a professor of Heidelberg dedicated a book to the elector, in which he denounces the Jesuit schools as impious and abominable, and warns parents "not to give aid to the Kingdom of Satan by trusting those who were enemies of Christianity and of God." "They are wild beasts," he said, "who ought to be chased out of our cities. Though outwardly modest, simple, mortified and urbane, they are in reality furies and atheists – far worse indeed than atheists and idolaters. The children confided to them are constrained to join with their swinish instructors in grunting at the Divine Majesty" (Janssen, VIII, 339). "They are not only poisoners but conspirators and assassins. Their purpose is to slay all those who have accepted the Confession of Augsburg. They have been seen in processions of armed men, disguised as courtiers, dressed in silks, with gold chains around their necks, going from one end of Germany to the other. They caused the St. Bartholomew massacre; they killed King Sebastian; in Peru, they plunged red hot irons into the bodies of the Indians to make them reveal where they hid their treasures. In thirty years the Popes killed 900,000 people, the Jesuits 2,000,000; the cellars of all the colleges in Germany are packed with soldiers; and Canisius married an abbess." This latter story went around Germany a hundred times and was widely believed.

The chief storehouse of all these inventions in Germany was the "Historia jesuitici ordinis," which was published in 1593, and was attributed by the editor, Polycarp Leiser, to an ex-novice, named Elias Hasenmüller, who was then six years dead – a circumstance which ought to have invalidated the testimony for ordinary people, but which did not prevent the "Historia" from being an immense success. Its publication was said to be miraculous, for it was given out as certain that any member of the Order who would reveal its secrets was to be tortured, poisoned or roasted alive. It was only by a special intervention of the Lord that Hasenmüller escaped. The readers of the "Historia" were informed that the Order was founded by the devil, who was the spiritual father of St. Ignatius. Omitting the immoralities detailed in the volume, "the Jesuits were professional assassins, wild boars, robbers, traitors, snakes, vipers, etc. In their private lives they were lecherous goats, filthy pigs." Even Carlyle says this of St. Ignatius – "The Pope had given them full power to commit every excess. If we knew them better we would spit in their faces, instead of sending them boys to be educated. Indeed it would not be well to trust them with hogs." There were other productions of the same nature, such as the "Jesuiticum jejunium" and "Speculum jesuiticum." Some of these "histories" denounced Father Gretser as "a vile scribbler, an open heretic and an adulterer who carried the devil around in a bottle." Bellarmine was "an Epicurean of the worst type, who had already killed 1642 victims; 562 of whom were married women. He used magic and poison, and pitched the corpses of his victims into the Tiber. He died the death of the damned, and his ghost was seen in the air in broad daylight flying away on a winged horse," and so on.

Etienne Pasquier was the leader of the French pamphleteers. It was he who had acted as advocate against the Jesuits of the College of Clermont. The plaidoyer presented to the court on that occasion was embodied in his "Recherches," and, in 1602, when he was seventy-three years of age, he published "Le Catéchisme des jésuites, ou examen de leur doctrine." He finds that the Order, besides being Calvinistic, is also spotted with Judaism. Ignatius was worse than Luther or Julian the Apostate; he was a sort of Don Quixote, who laughed at the vows he made at Montmartre; he was a trickster, a glutton, a demon incarnate, an ass. The first chapter in book II is entitled "Anabaptism of the Jesuits in their vow of blind obedience." Chapter 2 is on the execution of the Jesuit, Crichton, for attempting to kill the Scotch chancellor, of which he had been accused by "Robert de Bruce." In chapter 3, a Mr. Parry is sent by the Jesuits to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. In chapter 4, another attempt is made by the same person, in 1597, etc. Father Garasse wrote an answer to the book, and though he found no difficulty in showing its absurdities, yet his language was rough and abusive and quite out of keeping with the dignity of his state; besides, it centred public attention on him to such extent that later when, three pamphlets with which he had had nothing to do were written against Cardinal Richelieu, he was accused of being the author of them and had to swear in the most solemn manner that he knew nothing whatever about them. This charge against Garasse came near alienating Louis XIII from the Society.

Much harm had also been done by Mariana's alleged doctrine on regicide. On the face of it, the book could not have been seditious, for it was written as an instruction for the heir of Philip II, and it is inconceivable that an autocrat, such as he was, should not only have put a book teaching regicide in the hands of his son, but should have paid for its publication. As a matter of fact, the king conjured up by Mariana as a possible victim of assassination is a monster who could have scarcely existed. In other circumstances the book would have passed unnoticed, but it served as a pretext to attack the Society by ascribing Mariana's doctrine to the whole Society.

Now, Mariana never was and never could be a representative of the Society, for: first sixteen years before the objectionable book attracted notice in France, namely in 1584, Mariana had been solemnly condemned by the greatest assembly of the Society, the general congregation, as an unworthy son; a pestilential member who should be cut off from the body, and his expulsion was ordered. He was one of the leaders of the band of Spanish conspirators who did all in their power to destroy the Society. Secondly, his expulsion did not take place, possibly because of outside political influence like that of Philip II and the Inquisition. Nevertheless in 1605, that is five years before the French flurry, he wrote another book entitled, "De defectibus Societatis" (i. e. the Weak Points of the Society), which was condemned as involving the censure of the papal bull "Ascendente Domino." Instead of destroying the MS., as he should have done, if he had a spark of loyalty in him, he kept it, and when in 1609, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish authorities for his book on Finance which seemed to reflect on the government, that MS. was seized, and subsequently served as a strong weapon against the Society. Why should such a man be cited as the representative of a body from which he was ordered to be expelled and which he had attempted to destroy?

Another harmful publication was the "Monita secreta," which represented the Jesuit as a sweet-voiced intriguer; a pious grabber of inheritances for the greater glory of God; enjoying a vast influence with conspicuous personages; working underhand in politics, and revealing himself in every clime, invariably the same, and always monstrously rich. The "Monita" appeared in Poland in the year 1612. It was printed in a place not to be found on any map: namely Notobirga, which suggests "Notaburgh," or "Not a City." It purported to be based on a Spanish manuscript, discovered in the secret archives of the Society at Padua. It was translated into Latin, and was then sent to Vienna, and afterwards to Cracow, where it was given to the public. It consists of sixteen short chapters, of which we give a few sample titles: "I. How the Society should act to get a new foundation. II. How to win and keep the friendship of princes and important personages. III. How to act with people who wield political influence or those who, even if not rich, may be serviceable. VI. How to win over wealthy widows. VII. How to induce them to dispose of their property. VIII. How to induce them to enter religious communities, or at least to make them devout."

To achieve all this the Jesuits were to wear outwardly an appearance of poverty in their houses; the sources of revenue were to be concealed; purchases of property were always to be made by dummies; rich widows were to be provided with adroit confessors; their family physicians were to be the friends of the Fathers; their daughters were to be sent to convents, their sons to the Society, etc. The vices of prominent personages were to be indulged; quarrels were to be entered into, so as to get the credit of reconciliation; the servants of the rich were to be bribed; confessors were to be very sweet; distinguished personages were never to be publicly reprehended, etc., etc. As the phraseology of these "Monita secreta" was a clever imitation of the official document of the Society known as the "Monita generalia," the forgery scored a perfect success in being accepted as genuine. It was such a cleverly devised instrument of warfare in a country like Poland, for instance, with its mixed Protestant and Catholic population, that it would be sure to strengthen the Protestants, and, at the same time, shame the Catholics, by discrediting the Jesuits, who were then in great favor. It was anonymous, but was finally traced to Jerome Zahorowski, who had been dismissed from the Society. When charged by the Inquisition with being the author, he denied it, and said he had no complaint against his former associates. The book was put on the Index, and Zahorowski's declaration that he was not the author was believed. Later, however, it was publicly declared by those who had the means of knowing the facts that he was really the guilty man. Indeed, just before he died, he confessed the authorship and bitterly regretted the crime he had committed. He recanted all that he had said in the book, but it was too late; the mischief had been done and the evil work has continued. There were twenty-two editions of it, issued during the seventeenth century, and it was translated into many languages. Its title was changed from time to time and it was called: "The Mysteries of the Jesuits;" "Arcana of the Society;" "Jesuit Machiavelism;" "The Jesuit Cabinet;" "Jesuit Wolves;" "Jesuit Intrigues," and so on. There appeared also a huge publication of six or seven bulky volumes entitled "Annales des soi-disants Jésuites," which is an encyclopedia of all the accusations ever made against the Society.

Another ex-Jesuit named Jarrige perpetrated the libel known as "The Jesuits on the Scaffold, for their Crimes in the Province of Guyenne." He, too, like Zahorowski, when he came to his senses, repented and tried ineffectually to make amends. The "Teatro jesuítico" was also a source from which the assailants of the Society drew their ammunition. It was condemned by the Inquisition on January 28, 1655, and the Archbishop of Seville burned it publicly. Arnauld borrowed from it most of his material for the "Morale pratique des Jésuites," and to give it importance, he ascribed its authorship to the Bishop of Malaga, Ildephonse of St. Thomas. Whereupon the bishop Wrote to the Pope complaining that "an infamous libel, unworthy of the light of day, and composed in the midst of the darkness of hell and bearing the title: 'Morale pratique des Jésuites' has fallen into my hands, and I am said to be the author of it, – a feat which would have been impossible, for it was published in 1654, when I was yet a student, and in ill-health." Although this solemn denial was published all through Europe, Pascal and his friends continued to impute it to the bishop, according to Crétineau-Joly; but Brou says that the mistake or the deceit was admitted. The book, however, was not withdrawn, and continued to do its evil work.

"Condemned by his Order, though he affected to vindicate it from the injuries of the Jesuits, he fled to Holland and thence to England, in both of which countries he found congenial spirits. In the latter, he established first a candle and afterwards a carpet factory, under the patronage of the Duke of Cumberland. Thence he wandered into Germany, and subsequently, having obtained his secularization and put off the religious habit which he had defiled, he went to Portugal. Here remorse seems to have overtaken him and he was permitted by an excess of charity to assume once more the habit of a Capuchin, which he a second time laid aside. Finally, after having attempted to deceive the Sovereign Pontiff, he died in a wretched condition in an obscure village of France." The "Biographie universelle" gives some more details which are useful as a matter of history. After Benedict XIV had forbidden Norbert to print his book, he brought it out either at Lucca or Avignon; in England he assumed his old name of Peter Parisot; when he landed in Germany he was known as Curel, and when in France his pen-name was Abbé Platel. According to the "Biographie," "Norbert was dull and heavy, without talent or style and would have been incapable of writing a single page if he were not actuated by hate. All of his works have passed into oblivion."

Americans have not been troubled to any extent by such publications, except, perhaps in one instance, when a certain R. W. Thompson, who had been Secretary of the Navy, though he lived 1000 miles from the sea, warned his fellow-countrymen in 1894 that the one danger for the Constitution of the United States was the teaching of the Jesuits. Even the Church is in peril, because "their system of moral theology is irreconcilable with the Roman Catholic religion." "I refrain from discussing it," he says, "because that has been sufficiently done by Pascal and Paul Bert." No one was excessively alarmed by the "Footprints of the Jesuits."

CHAPTER X
THE TWO AMERICAS
1567-1673

Chile and Peru – Valdivia – Peruvian Bark – Paraguay Reductions – Father Fields – Emigration from Brazil – Social and religious prosperity of the Reductions – Martyrdom of twenty-nine missionaries – Reductions in Colombia – Peter Claver – French West Indies – St. Kitts – Irish Exiles – Father Bath or Destriches – Montserrat – Emigration to Guadeloupe – Other Islands – Guiana – Mexico – Lower California – The Pious Fund – The Philippines – Canada Missions – Brébeuf, Jogues, Le Moyne, Marquette – Maryland – White – Lewger.

In 1567 Philip II asked for twenty Jesuits to evangelize Peru. The request was granted, and in the Lent of 1568 the first band arrived at Callao and made its way to Lima. They were so cordially welcomed, says Astrain, that the provincial found it necessary to warn his men that much would have to be done to live up to the public expectation. Means were immediately put at their disposal, and they set to work at the erection of a college. While the college was being built they heard confessions, visited the jails and hospitals, gave lectures on canon law to the priests of the cathedral, and started their great training school on Lake Titicaca, to which we have already referred. There the novices were set to learn the native languages to prepare them for their future work. For the moment the population of the city also gave them plenty to do. It was made up of three classes of people: negroes, half-breeds, and wealthy Spaniards. Father López looked after the negroes, and by degrees succeeded in putting a stop to their orgies and indecent dances. Others were, meantime, taking care of the whites and mestizos. The usual Jesuit sodalities were put in working order, and soon it was a common thing to see the young fashionables of the city laying aside their cloaks and swords, and helping the sick in the hospitals, going around to the huts of the poor or visiting criminals in the jails.

A new detachment of missionaries arrived in the following year with the Viceroy Toledo, who evidently took to them too kindly on the way over, for besides their normal duties, he wanted them to assume the office of parish priests, and he immediately wrote to Philip II to that effect. They refused, of course, with the consequence of an unpleasant state of feeling in their regard on the part of the authorities. Indeed, the pressure became so great that the superior finally yielded to a certain extent, and even assigned some of his professed to the work, but he was promptly summoned to Europe for his weakness. Meantime novices came swarming in, among them Bernardin d'Acosta, whose virtues merited for him, later on, a place in the "Menology." There was also little Oviando, called the Stanislaus of Peru. He was an abandoned child whose parents had come out to America and had lost him or had died, and he was begging his bread in the streets of Lima when the Fathers picked him up. They sent him to the college and helped him to become a saint.

The great man of Peru and, subsequently, of Chile, was Father Luis de Valdivia, who was hailed by both Indians and whites as "the apostle, pacificator and liberator of Peru." The Indians had fascinated him, and he learned their language in a month or so. When he saw that the only difficulty in making them Christians was the slavery to which they were subjected, coupled with the immorality of their Spanish masters, he got himself named as the representative of the colonial authorities, and started to Spain to lay before Philip III the degraded condition of his overseas possessions. The king received him cordially, enacted the most stringent laws against the abuses, and appointed him royal visitor and administrator of Chile, where similar disorders were complained of. He also wanted to make him a bishop, but Valdivia refused. Returning to Peru from Spain, he gave 10,000 Indians their freedom. When that got abroad among the savages, all the tribes that were then in rebellion immediately came to terms, and on December 8, 1612, the grand chief Utablame, with sixty caciques and a half-a-score of pagan priests, all of them wearing wreaths of sea-weed on their heads, and holding green branches in their hands, descended from their fastnesses and the grand chief, their spokesman, addressed Valdivia as follows: "It is not fear that makes me accept the peace. Since my boyhood I have not ceased to defy the Spaniards, and I have withstood sixteen governors one after another. I yield now only to you, good and great Father, and to the King of Spain, because of the benefits you have bestowed upon me and my people."

In spite of the difficulties and dangers of the work, as well as the calumnies of the slave-hunters and even the wrong impressions of some of his brethren, Valdivia succeeded in establishing four great central Indian missions, which evoked the commendation of successive kings of Spain. Before Valdivia went to Chile, Viga, who had been there since 1593, had already compiled a dictionary and grammar in Araucanian, and Valdivia followed his example by writing other books to facilitate the work of the missionaries. The colleges founded at Arauco and also at Valdivia – a town named not after the missionary, but to honor his namesake, the governor of the province – furnished a base of operations among the Araucanian savages, a fierce and, for a long time, indomitable people, who were united against the Spaniards in a league composed of forty different tribes. The work among them was slow and hard, and three of the priests were killed by them in the wilderness. Their success also aroused the colonists to fury, and a war of extermination of the Indians was resolved upon, but Valdivia opposed it, and not only succeeded in getting the Araucanians to agree to terms of peace, but brought in the Guagas, and persuaded them to lay down their arms. The great missionary was eighty-two years of age when called to his reward.

The famous Peruvian bark was brought to Europe about this time, but it was regarded with extreme suspicion because of its sponsors, and the wildest stories were told of it. Medical treatises teemed with discussions about its properties, some condemning, others commending it. Von Humboldt says: "It almost goes without saying that, among Protestant physicians, hatred of the Jesuits and religious intolerance were at the bottom of the long conflict over the good or evil effected by the drug." The illustrious physician, Bado, gave as his opinion that "it was more precious than all the gold and silver which the Spaniards obtained in South America."

It was in 1586, eighteen years after their arrival in Peru, that the work of the Jesuits in Paraguay was inaugurated. Francisco de Victoria, Dominican Bishop of Tucumán had invited them to his diocese, which lay east of the Andes, and his brother in religion, Alonso Guerra, Bishop of Asunción, which was on the Rio de la Plata or Paraná River, also summoned them to his aid, both for the whites and Indians of his flock. They obeyed, and without delay colleges, residences, and retreats for the Spiritual Exercises were instituted in Santiago del Estero, Asunción, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Tarija, Salta, Tucumán, Santa Fe and elsewhere. These were for the civilized portion of the community, while a new system was devised to save the Indians from their white oppressors. These poor wretches knew the colonists only as slave-dealers and butchers; hence, every attempt to teach them a religion which the whites were alleged to follow was futile.

On the other hand, when it was represented to the authorities that Indian slavery had to cease before the natives could be pacified, angry protests were heard on all sides, even from some of the resident priests who maintained that the proper thing for a savage was to be a Spaniard's slave. The missionaries took the matter in their own hands, as they had done in Peru. They went to Spain and applied for royal protection. They obtained what they wanted, so without waiting for the edict to arrive, began their work by plunging into the woods, where cougars, pumas, serpents and savages met them at every step. But this vigorous act only enraged the colonists the more, and the inhuman method of cutting off the missionaries' food-supplies was resorted to in order to force them into submission.

In this group of heroic apostles there was, curiously enough, an Irish Jesuit whom Crétineau-Joly calls Tom Filds, which is probably a Spanish or French attempt at phonetics for Tom Fields, or O'Fihily, or O'Fealy, a Limerick exile. Paraguay was the second field of his missionary labors, for he had previously been associated with the Venerable José Anchieta in the forests of Brazil. He had left Ireland when very young, and after studying at Paris, Douay and Louvain, had gone to Rome to begin his novitiate. Six months of trial were sufficient to prove the solidity of his virtue, and he then walked all the way from Rome to Lisbon, to take ship for America. He reached the Bay of All Saints in 1577, and spent ten years in the wilderness, with sufferings, privations and danger of death at every step. From thence he was sent to Paraguay, but was captured by pirates at the mouth of the Rio Plata, and then, loaded with chains, he and his companion, Manuel de Ortega were cast adrift in a battered hulk which drifted ashore at Buenos Aires, where their help as missionaries was gladly welcomed. He was at Asunción when the plague broke out, and the way in which he faced his duty won "Father Tom" as great a reputation among the white men as he had already acquired among his copper-colored brethren. When the plague was over, he again became a forest ranger, and in 1602 found himself all alone among the Indians, his companion, Father de Ortega, having been cited before the Inquisition on some ridiculous charge or other. O'Fealy finally died at Asunción on May 8, 1624, at the good old age of seventy-eight, after fifty hard years as a South American missionary – ten in Brazil and forty in Paraguay.

These journeys among the wandering tribes in the wilderness gave occasion, it is true, for extraordinary heroism, and saved many a soul, but the results were far from being in proportion to the energy expended. Hence, at the suggestion of Father Aquaviva, the missionaries all met at Saca, far out under the Andes, and determined to gather the Indians together in separate colonies which no white man, except the government officials, would be allowed to enter. Such was the origin of the "Paraguay Reductions," which have won such enthusiastic admiration from writers like Chateaubriand, Buffon, de Maistre, Haller, Montesquieu, Robertson, Mackintosh, Howitt, Marshall, Muratori, Charlevoix, Schirmbeck, Grasset, Kobler, du Graty, Gothain, and even Voltaire. The most recent eulogist of all is Cunninghame-Graham in his "Vanished Arcadia." The villages in which these converted Indians lived were called "reductions," because the natives had been brought back (re, ducir) from the wilds and forests by the preaching of the missionaries to live there in organized communities under Christian laws.

The first reduction was begun in 1609, in the province of Guayará, approximately the present Brazilian territory of Paraná. In 1610 another was inaugurated on the Rio Paranapanema; in 1611 the Reduction of San Ignacio-miní, and, between that year and 1630, eleven others with a total population of about 10,000 Indians. The savages flocked to them from all quarters, for these reservations afforded the only protection from the organized bands of man-hunters who scoured the country – the Mamelukes, as they were called because of their relentless ferocity. They were also described as "Paulistas," probably because they generally foregathered in the district of lower Brazil, known as St. Paul. These wretches, half-breeds or the offscourings of every race, made light of royal decrees or the angry fulminations of helpless governors, and when they could find no victims in the forests, did not hesitate to attack the Reductions themselves. These raids began in 1618. In 1630 alone, according to Huonder (in the Catholic Encyclopedia) no less than 30,000 Indians were either murdered or carried off into slavery in what is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

This led to the great exodus. Father Simon Maceta abandoned the northern or Guayará mission altogether, and taking the survivors of the massacres, along with the Indians who were every day hurrying in from the forests, led them to the stations on the Paraná and Uruguay. It was a difficult journey, and only 12,000 reached their destination, but they served to reinforce the population already there, and in 1648 the Governor of Buenos Aires reported that in nineteen Reductions there was a population of 30,548; by 1677 it had risen to 58,118. He found also that they had determined to live no longer as sheep, waiting to be devoured by the first human wolves that might descend on them, but were fully armed and disciplined by their Jesuit preceptors. Indeed, in 1640 ten years after the Guaraní massacre, they could put a well-trained army in the field, not only against the Mamelukes, but against the Portuguese, who, from time to time, attempted an invasion of Spanish territory from Brazil. This military formation was not only permitted but encouraged by the king. He repeatedly sent the Indians muskets and ammunition, and later they built an armory themselves, and made their own powder. They had their regular drills and sham battles, with both infantry and cavalry, which did splendid service year after year in repelling invasions and suppressing rebellions. Nor did they ever cost the crown a penny for such services. Loyalty to the king was inculcated, and Philip V declared in a famous decree that he had no more faithful subjects than the Indians of Paraguay.

The Indians of the Reductions were taught all the trades, and became carpenters, joiners, painters, sculptors, masons, goldsmiths, tailors, weavers, dyers, bakers, butchers, tanners etc., and their artistic ability is still seen in the ruins of the missions. They were also cultivators and herdsmen, and some of the stations could count as many as 30,000 sheep and 100,000 head of cattle. They built fine roads leading to the other Reductions, and, on the great waterways of the Paraná alone, as many as 2000 boats were employed transporting the merchandise of the various centres. They were, above all, taught their religion, and their morals were so pure that the Bishop of Buenos Aires wrote to the king that he thought no mortal sin was ever committed in the Reductions. The churches occupied the central place in the villages, and their ruins show what architectural works these men of the forest were capable of accomplishing. The streets were laid out in parallel lines, and the principal ones were paved. In course of time the primitive huts were replaced by solid stone houses with tiled roofs, and were so constructed that connecting verandas enabled the people to walk from house to house, under shelter, from one end to the other of the settlement.

The Reductions extended as far as Bolivia on one side, and to northern Patagonia on the other, and from the Atlantic to the Andes. Altogether there were about a hundred of them, and as their formation required the subduing and transforming of the wildest type of savage into a civilized man, it is not surprising that in effecting this stupendous result as many as twenty-nine Jesuits suffered death by martyrdom.

In 1598 the Jesuits Medrano and Figuero were in Nueva Granada or what is now called The United States of Colombia. They also buried themselves in the forests, after having done their best to reform the morals of the colonists at Bogotá. Not that they had abandoned the city; on the contrary, they established a college there in 1604, and others later in Pamplona, Mérida and Honda. At first the natives fled from them in terror, but little by little, the presents which these strange white men pressed on them won their confidence, and helped to persuade them to settle in Reductions. Three of the Fathers lost their lives in that work, devoured by cougars or stung by venomous serpents. Unfortunately, the bishop was persuaded that the Indian settlements were merely mercantile establishments gotten up by the Jesuits for money-making, and all the fruit of many years of dangers and hardships was taken out of their hands and given to others.

There was no one, however, to covet the place of Peter Claver, who was devoting himself to the care of the filthy, diseased, and brutalized negroes who were being literally dumped by tens of thousands in Cartagena, to be sold into slavery to the colonists. He had come out from Spain in 1610, after the old lay-brother, Alfonso Rodriguez, had led him to the heights of sanctity and determined his vocation in the New World. His work was revolting, but Claver loved it, and as soon as a vessel arrived he was on hand with his interpreters. They hurried down into the fetid holds with food, clothing and cordials, which had been begged from the people in the town. It did not worry Claver that the poor wretches were sick with small pox or malignant fevers; he would carry them out on his back, nurse them into health, and even bury them with his own hands when they died. The unfortunate blacks had never seen anything like that before, and they eagerly listened to all he had to say about God, and made no difficulty about being baptized, striving as well as they could to shape their lives along the lines of conduct he traced out for them.

He was on his feet night and day, going from bed to bed in the rude hospitals, with supplies of fruit and wine for the sick. He even brought bands of music to play for them, and showed them pictures of holy scenes in the life of Christ to help their dull intellects to grasp the meaning of his words. No wonder that often when he was among the lepers, who were his especial pets, people saw a bright light shine round him. His biographers tell us that he did not find these ordinary sufferings enough for him, and though he wore a hair-shirt and an iron cross with sharp points all day long, he was scourging himself to blood at night and praying for hours for his negroes. He died on September 8, 1654, and is now ranked among the saints, like his old master, Brother Alfonso.

To the long line of islands, alternately French and English, which form, as it were, the eastern wall of the Caribbean Sea, and are known as the Lesser Antilles, the French Jesuits were sent in 1638. They are respectively Trinidad, Grenada, Saint-Vincent, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and near the northern extremity of the line, one that is of peculiarly pathetic interest, Saint Christopher, or, as it is sometimes popularly called, Saint Kitts. When the French expedition under d'Esnambuc landed at Saint Kitts in 1625, they found the English already in possession, but like sensible men, instead of cutting each other's throats, the two nationalities divided the island between them and settled down quietly, each one attending to its own affairs. In 1635 the French annexed Guadeloupe and Martinique, and, later still, Saint-Croix, Saint-Martin and a few others.

The population of these islands consisted of white settlers and their negro and Indian slaves. They were cared for spiritually by two Dominicans, one of whom, Tertre, has written a history of the islands. But these priests had no intercourse with the savages, whose languages they did not understand, and hence to fill the gap, three Jesuits, one of them a lay-brother, were sent to Martinique, arriving there on Good Friday, 1638. They began in the usual way, namely by martyrdom. Two of them were promptly killed by the savages. Others hurried to carry on their work but many succumbed to the climate, and others to the hardships inseparable from that kind of apostolate. An interesting arrival, though as late as 1674, was that of Father Joseph-Antoine Poncet, one of the apostles of Canada, who is remembered for having brought the great Ursuline, Marie de l'Incarnation, to Quebec, and also for having been tortured by New York Mohawks at the very place where Isaac Jogues had suffered martyrdom a few years before. Poncet was old when he went to Martinique and he died there the following year. The names of de la Barre, Martinière, de Tracy and Iberville, all of them familiar to students of Canadian history, occur in the chronicles of the Antilles.

For people of Irish blood these islands, especially Saint Kitts and Montserrat, are of a thrilling interest. On both of them were found numbers of exiled Irish Catholics held as slaves. As early as 1632 Father White on his way to Maryland saw them at Saint Kitts. He tells us in his "Narrative" that he "stopped there ten days, being invited to do so in a friendly way by the English Governor and two Catholic captains. The Governor of the French colony on the same island treated me with the most marked kindness." He does not inform us whether or not he did any ministerial work with them but in all likelihood he did. He is equally reticent about Montserrat, and contents himself with saying that "it is inhabited by Irishmen who were expelled from Virginia, on account of their Catholic Faith." He remained at Saint Kitts only a day, and on this point his "Relation" is very disappointing. In 1638 the Bishop of Tuam sent out a priest to the island, but he died soon after. He was probably a secular priest, for in the following year the bishop was authorized by Propaganda to send out some religious. But there is no information available about what was done until 1652, when an Irish Jesuit was secured for them. In the "Documents inédits" of Carayon he is called Destriches, which may have been Stritch, but there is no mention of either name in any of the menologies; Hughes, in his "History of the Society of Jesus in North America" (I, 470), calls him Christopher Bathe. He was not, however, the first choice. A Father Henry Malajon had been proposed, but the General did not allow him to go. A Welshman named Buckley was then suggested, but though his application was ratified he never left Europe. Next a Father Maloney offered himself, but was kept in Belgium; finally, however, Father Christopher Bathe or Stritch arrived.

The missionary found there a very great multitude of enslaved Irish exiles, for on April 1, 1653, the London Council gave "license to Sir John Clotworthie to transport to America 500 natural Irishmen." On September 6, 1653, he asked leave to transport 400 Irish children. Ten days later liberty was granted to Richard Netherway of Bristol to transport from Ireland one hundred Irish tories. When Jamaica was captured by the English in 1655, one thousand Irish girls and a like number of Irish boys were sent there. The earlier throngs had been sent first to Virginia, but had been driven over to the islands, as we learn from White's "Narrative." The English authorities in Ireland wrote to Lord Thurlow: "Although we must use force in taking them up, yet it being so much for their own good and likely to be of great advantage to the public, it is not the least doubted but that you may have as many as you wish." He offers to send 1500 or 2000 boys. "They will thus," he said, "be made good Christians." The first of these "good Christians" were found by Father Bathe when he arrived in Saint Kitts in 1652 and they eagerly came to the little chapel which he built on the dividing line between the English and French settlements. For three months he was busy from dawn till nightfall saying Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing babies and preaching. After that he started for Montserrat which was entirely under English control and hence he was compelled to go there disguised as a lumber merchant who was looking for timber. As soon as he landed he passed the word to the first Irishman he met and the news spread like wildfire. A place of meeting was chosen in the woods where every day Mass was said and the people went to confession and communion. That took up the whole morning, and in the afternoon they began chopping down the trees so as to carry out the deception. Unfortunately, the Caribs found them one day, and killed some of them, but we have no more details of the extent of the disaster.

By the time Father Bathe got back to Saint Kitts, the English had taken alarm and had forbidden their Irish slaves ever to set foot on the French territory. But there must have been disobedience to the order, for one night, after they had returned home, a descent was made upon their houses, and one hundred and twenty-five of the most notable among them were flung into a ship and cast on Crab Island, two hundred leagues away, where they were left to starve, while those who remained behind at Saint Kitts were treated with the most frightful inhumanity. One instance is cited of a young girl who, for having refused to go to the Protestant church, was dragged by the hair of her head along the road, and treated with such brutality that some of the more timid of the victims were terrified and obeyed the order about keeping away from the chapel. The greater number, however, came to Mass secretly, walking all night through dense forests and at the edge of precipices, so as to escape the sentries posted along the ordinary road. Two very old men were conspicuous in this display of faith.

The castaways on Crab Island kept life in their bodies for a few days by eating what grass or roots they could find or by gathering the shell-fish on the beach. At last to their great delight a ship was sighted in the distance and when they hailed it, came to take them off. Unfortunately, however, it was too small for such a crowd, and only as many as it was safe to receive were allowed on board. The rest had to be abandoned to their fate. What became of them nobody ever knew. It is supposed that they made a raft and were lost somewhere out on the ocean. Even those who sailed away came to grief. When they reached Santo Domingo, they were not permitted to land, because they came from Saint Christopher, which made the Spaniards in the fort suspect a trick. Then they were caught by a tornado and carried four hundred leagues away. At one time hunger had brought them so low that they were on the point of casting lots to see who should be killed and eaten, but fortunately they caught some fish and that sustained them till they reached the land. What land it was we do not know.

A characteristic example of Irish feminine virtue is recorded in this very interesting account, which is worth repeating here. A young girl, for her better protection, had been disguised as a boy by her father when both were exiled. After he died, she obtained work in the household of a respectable family where her efficiency so charmed the mistress of the household that the husband grew jealous of the friendship of his wife for this estimable man-servant. To avert a domestic disaster, the good girl had to make known her identity and she was then more esteemed than ever. What became of her ultimately is not recorded. Meantime, Father Bathe had gathered what was left of his poor people and carried them off to Guadeloupe, where there were no English. God spared him for five years more, and he went from island to island under all sorts of disguises, if there was danger of meeting the English. He even succeeded in converting not a few of the persecutors.

Hughes informs us further that in 1667 an Irish priest named John Grace returned to Europe from the islands, and reported on the deplorable condition of his compatriots in the Caribbean. Passing through Martinique, Guadeloupe and Antigua he heard the confessions of more than three hundred of them. He related, also, that fifty of the three hundred had died while he was there. In Barbadoes there were many thousands who had no priests and were conforming to Protestantism. In St. Bartholomew, there were four hundred Irish Catholics who had never seen a priest. At Montserrat, however, Governor Stapleton was an Irishman and a Catholic, and consequently there was no difficulty in having a priest go there. There were as many as four hundred Catholics at that place and they formed six to one of the population. These islands of the Caribbean were the favorite hiding places of the "filibusteros," a set of abandoned men of various nationalities, French, Dutch and English, who were lying in wait for the rich galleons of Spain, on their way from the silver mines of Peru to the palaces of Madrid. Their life was a continued series of daring adventures, robberies, massacres and wild debauchery. They were ready for any expedition and against any foe. With them nothing could be done, but with the great numbers of negro slaves who were sold at Martinique and elsewhere there was ample opportunity for apostolic work. It was a most revolting task; the whites, regarded them as devils, but the Fathers took care of them and sent many of them to heaven.