Early Successes of the Jesuits
To excite emulation, and to animate industry, they had public exercises in speaking, and distributed prizes and titles ot distinction. To strengthen and develope the body, gymnastic exercises were introduced, and even the outward demeanor and address were polished by theatrical representations. The schools had an uncommon success, as the best of that time. A single college frequently had several hundred scholars ; the young nobility were almost exclusively sent to them, and even from Protestant countries, so that the Protestants found it necessary to establish lyceums and academies for the gentry, of a character suited to the higher demands of the age. The Jesuits derived the greatest advantage from these institutions, by being enabled to choose the brightest geniuses at an early age, and mould them to their purposes. This explains how the society of Jesus was able to render important services to the cause of literature and science. Jesuits advanced the sciences of history and geography, the study of language and rhetoric, even beyond the limits of their own order and church.
No men understood better than the Jesuits the an of showing off, to the best advantage, their really valuable services ; the world could not but acknowledge them to be improvers and benefactors of their age. Accordingly, their houses and possessions visibly increased, their churches and confessionals were not empty ; they contrived, too, with much address, to obtain legacies and presents, and to seize upon every advantage which pious credulity and die extent of their connexions presented them.
They would not allow their internal constitution to be inquired into or imitated ; and when, in 1623, a number of enterprising females in Italy, and on the Lower Rhine, formed a plan of uniting into an order to be modelled after the society of Jesus, they repulsed all the advances of their would-be sisters, and, in 1631, procured a papal decree for the abolition of the new order.
In 1618 the number of members amounted to 13,112, in 32 provinces, without including those in France, the Rhenish provinces, and the Netherlands, Poland and Lithuania, Spanish America, the Philippines and China. But in England, and the Protestant states of the North, they were not so successful, their repeated attempts to establish themselves there proving fruitless. Elated with this success, they celebrated, in 1640, under general Vitelleschi, the centennial anniversary of their order, with great pomp.
There were some circumstances, however, to damp their exultation; for, notwithstanding the great favor which they enjoyed at court and among the people, the non-Jesuit clergy and the learned men of the age soon discovered the mischief which the society was beginning to do through Christendom. The universities, bishops and clergymen found their interest opposed to that of the Jesuits, whose privileges, where they were carried into effect, would be necessarily injurious and oppressive to the body of teachers and the clergy. The ancient orders of monks, whose hatred they had excited by their encroachments on their province, as much as by their good fortune, found subject enough for complaint and bitter accusations of the duplicity and worldliuess of their conduct. They made no scruple of invading what had been regarded as the appropriate province of other ordere, and were on the best terms with the Carthusians, who, on account of their vow of silence, were the only ecclesiastics, out of their own body, to whom the Jesuits were permitted to make confession. Their busy, intriguing spirit made them the objects of suspicion and jealousy to statesmen and jurists, on account of their interference in political affairs, the mischievous effects of which were already manifest in Portugal, under the reigns of John III and Sebastian, their pupils, and, after the death of the latter, were a principal cause of the surrender of this kingdom to the Spanish crown.
For this reason, the parliament and higher clergy of France, for 20 years, resolutely resisted the attempts of the Jesuits to gain a footing in that country. The university of Paris also declared the whole order to be useless, and its existence incompatible with the rights of the Gallican church. It was owing chiefly to the favor of the court, that they, in 1562, were admitted into France under the name of Fathers of the College of Clermont, with a humiliating renunciation of their most important privileges. Notwithstanding this depressed condition, they soon contrived to establish themselves in Paris and the southern and western provinces, and, during the civil commotions, under the protection of the Guises, to deprive the French Protestants of their rights, gradually to establish their privileges, and to maintain their footing, in spite of the suspicions entertained of their having had a share in the murder of Henry III.
They were banished, indeed, in 1594, on account of the attempt upon Henry's life by their pupil, John Chatel ; yet they still remained undisturbed in Toulon and Bourdeaux, and, at the intercession of the pope, were again received by Henry IV, in 1603. They soon, in their office of court-confessors, carried on the same intrigues as before. Their participation in the crime of Ravaillac, though exceedingly probable, could not be proved against them; they themselves joined in condemning the book in which the Spanish Jesuit Mariana defends the king's assassination, and, by cunning and obsequiousness towards the court, preserved themselves undisturbed. They made themselves still more important to the German empire, when they became the confidential advisers of Ferdinand II and III. They discovered remarkable political talent in the Thirty Years' War ; the League of the Catholics could do nothing without them. Father Lamormaim, a Jesuit, and confessor to the emperor, effected the downfall of Wallenstein, and, by means of his agents, kept the jealous Bavarians in their alliance with Austria.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
