The Jesuits, 1534-1921

When Possevin had finished discussing the political situation with the king, he began his work as ambassador of the Lord. He had many private interviews with his majesty, and convinced him of his errors in matters of faith; but the king insisted on points of discipline and liturgy which could not be granted. In brief, he was a Catholic, but reasons of State prevented him from making any public declaration. However, on May 16, 1578, he decided to take the step, and an altar was erected in a room of his palace. There he assisted at Mass, and in the presence of the queen, the Governor of Stockholm and his secretary, declared himself a Catholic. But he still hesitated about making it known to his people, and begged Possevin to return to Rome to see if he could not obtain the dispensation already asked for, – such as Communion under both kinds, Mass in Swedish, the marriage of priests, which Possevin knew would never be granted. However, he set out for Rome with seven young converts, and sent two Jesuits to Stockholm as preachers. He also got others ready in Austria, Poland, and Moravia, and made arrangements with the Emperor Rudolph to give his daughter in marriage to King John's son, Sigismund. He finally reached Rome, but the congregation of Cardinals, of course, rejected the king's pusillanimous petition.

In spite of this failure, Possevin was then sent as legate to Russia, Lithuania, Moravia, Hungary, and, in general, to all the countries of the North; while Philip II of Spain entrusted him with a confidential mission to the King of Sweden. In Bavaria, he has to see the duke; at Augsburg, he makes arrangements for the Pope with the famous banking firm of Fugger, the Rothschilds of those days, who had figured so conspicuously in the question of Indulgences in Luther's time. From there he proceeded to Prague to deliver a message to the Emperor; and at Vilna he conferred with Bathori, the King of Poland. A Swedish frigate waited for him at Dantzig and, after a fourteen days' voyage, he landed at Stockholm on July 26, 1579. He was no longer dressed as a layman, but went to the court in his Jesuit cassock and was received with great ceremony by the dignitaries of the realm.

Meantime, however, the king's brother and sister-in-law had aroused the Lutherans; the Swedish bishops were banded against him, and finally, when the king learned that none of his demands had been granted, except that of keeping the confiscated ecclesiastical property, he lost courage and reverted to Protestantism. The assurance given him by Possevin that he could rely on the help of Spain, of the Emperor, and of the Catholic princes of Germany did not move him. He saw before him the revolt of his subjects, and the accession of his brother; and, while insisting that he was a Catholic at heart, he refused to act, unless the Pope granted all his demands. On February 19 he convoked a Diet at Wadstena, at which Possevin was present, but as the majority was clearly against returning to the old Faith, the legate had to be satisfied with being merely an onlooker, while the king, convinced that he was acting against his conscience, yielded to the popular clamor. Another Diet was held with the same result. Meantime, the legate remained in Stockholm, devoting himself to the sick and dying, in a pestilence that was then devastating the city. He also succeeded in so strengthening the faith of the young Sigismund, the heir apparent, that when there was question subsequently of his renouncing Catholicity in order to ascend the throne, he had the courage to say that he would relinquish all his rights and withdraw into private life, rather than abandon the Faith.

A much more curious exercise of diplomacy came in Possevin's way in the quarrel between the King of Poland and the ruler of Muscovy. The latter had made vast conquests in the East, and then turned his attention to Livonia, which was Polish territory. Bathori, who was ruler of Poland, met and conquered the invader in a series of successful battles. Whereupon the Czar, knowing Bathori's devotion to the Holy See, asked the Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory XIII, to intervene. Possevin was again called upon, and set out as plenipotentiary to arrange peace between the two nations. Incidentally, the intention of the Pope was to obtain the toleration of Catholics in the Russian dominions, to secure a safe passage for missionaries to China through Russia, to induce the Czar to unite with the Christian princes against the Turks, and even to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches.

Possevin arrived at Vilna in 1581. He found Bathori elated by his victories, but in no humor to entertain proposals of peace, which he wisely judged to be merely a device of his opponent to gain time. However, he yielded to persuasion, and Possevin set out to find the Russian sovereign at Staritza. He was received with all the honors due to an ambassador, and succeeded in gaining a suspension of hostilities, the surrender of Livonia to Poland, as well as the agreement to the demands of the Pope for religious toleration, and the passage across Russia to China for Catholic missionaries. Even the proposal to join the crusade against the Turks was accepted, in the hope that it would put Constantinople in the hands of Russia. But when the question of the union of Churches was mooted, which, of course, implied the recognition of the Pope as Supreme Pastor, the savage awoke in the Czar, and, for a moment, it seemed as if the life of the ambassador was at stake. The treaty of peace was finally signed on January 15, 1582, the delegates meeting in the chapel, where the ambassador celebrated Mass; all the representatives of Poland and Russia kissing the cross as a declaration of their fidelity to their oath. Possevin and his associates then started for Rome towards the end of April. They were loaded with presents from the Czar; but to the amazement of the barbarians, they distributed them among the poor of the city.

There was, however, an appendix to this mission. Though the Polish king did all in his power to preserve the Faith in Livonia, the German Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, and other heretics had already invaded the country, and were inflaming the population with hatred of the Pope and the Church. Added to this was the alarm awakened in the mind of the Emperor of Germany at the growing power of the Poles. Again Possevin had to return to the scenes of his labors, but this time it was more as a priest than a diplomat. Indeed, much of his energy was expended in proving that he was neither German nor Pole, but an ambassador of Christ sent to build up the Faith of both nations against heresy. We hear of him once more in the matter of the reconciliation of Henry IV of France to the Holy See. To him and Toletus was due the credit of inducing the Pope to absolve the king, and by so doing, save France from schism. When this was done, Possevin became an ordinary Jesuit, laboring here and there, exclusively for the salvation of souls. It is a curious story, and it would be hard to find anything like it in the chronicles of the Church, except, perhaps the career of the famous Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio Vieira, surnamed by his fellow-countrymen, "the Great."

Vieira was born in Lisbon, on February 5, 1608, and died at Bahia, in Brazil, on July 18, 1697. He was virtually a Brazilian, for he went out to the colony when still a child, and after finishing his studies in the Jesuit college there, entered the Society in 1623, when he was only fifteen years of age. At eighteen, he was teaching rhetoric and writing commentaries on the Canticle of Canticles, the tragedies of Seneca, and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, but it was twelve years before he was raised to the priesthood. The eloquence of his first sermon astounded everyone.

In 1640 Portugal declared its independence from Spain, to which it had been subject for sixty years. As the union had been effected by fraud and force, and as all the former Portuguese possessions in the East and a part of Brazil had been wrested from Spain by the Dutch and English; and as the taxes imposed on Portugal were excessively onerous, there was a strong feeling of hatred for the Spaniards. This hostility broke out finally in a revolution, and John IV ascended the throne of Portugal, but the change of government involved the country in a disastrous war of twenty years' duration.

Before the outbreak, the Jesuits were solemnly warned by their Superiors to observe a rigid neutrality. But in the excited state of the public mind, Father Freire forgot the injunction, and, in an Advent sermon in the year 1637, let words escape him that set the country ablaze. Crétineau-Joly says "the provincial promptly imprisoned him," which probably meant that he was kept in his room, for there are no prisons in Jesuit houses. But even that seclusion produced a popular tumult. The provincial was besieged by protests, and a delegation was even sent to Madrid to protest that the words of the preacher had been misinterpreted. The Spanish king accepted the explanation, and when the envoys returned to Lisbon, Freire had been already liberated.

Ranke asserts in his "History of the Popes" that as there was question of establishing a republic in Portugal at that time, it is possible that Spain preferred to see the innocuous John of Braganza, whose son was a dissolute wretch, made king, than to run the risk of a republic like those projected at that time by the Calvinists in France and by the Lutherans in Sweden. Later, however, an investigation was ordered, and a Jesuit named Correa was incarcerated for having predicted at a college reception given to John of Braganza some years earlier that he would one day wear the crown. Meantime the explosion took place, and in 1640 John of Braganza was proclaimed king of an independent Portugal.

In the following year Vieira arrived from Brazil and was not only made tutor to the Infante, Don Pedro, as well as court preacher, but was appointed member of the royal council. In the last-named office he reorganized the departments of the army and navy, gave a new impetus to commerce, urged the foundation of a national bank, and the organization of the Brazilian Trading Company, readjusted the taxation, curbed the Portuguese Inquisition, and was mainly instrumental in gaining the national victories of Elvas, Almeixal, Castello Rodrigo, and Montes Claros.

Between 1646 and 1650 he went on diplomatic missions to Paris, the Hague, London, and Rome, but refused the title of ambassador and also the offer of a bishopric. He wanted something else, namely, to work among his Indians, and he returned to Brazil in 1652. There he provoked the wrath of the slave-owners by his denunciation of their ill-treatment of the negroes and Indians, and was soon back in Lisbon pleading the cause of the victims. He won his case, and, in 1655, we find him once more at his missionary labors in Brazil, evangelizing the cannibals, translating the catechism into their idioms, travelling over steep mountain ranges and paddling hundreds of miles on the Amazon and its numberless tributaries. Eleven times he visited every mission post on the Maranhon, which meant twenty journeys along the interminable South American rivers, on some of which he had to keep at the oar for a month at a time. It is estimated that he made 15,000 leagues on foot, and advanced 600 leagues farther into the interior of the continent than any of his predecessors. He continued this work till 1661, and then the slave-owners rose against him with greater fury than ever, and sent him a prisoner to Lisbon. He was no longer as welcome at court as previously, for the degenerate Alfonso, who had to be subsequently deposed, was on the throne. In 1665 the Inquisition forbade him to preach, and flung him into a dungeon, where he lay till 1667, when he was released by the new king Pedro II. He then went to Rome, and was welcomed by the Pope, the cardinals, and the General of the Order, Father Oliva.

While at Rome he met Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated her throne in order to become a Catholic. Ranke, in his "History of the Popes," devotes a whole chapter to this extraordinary woman, and she is referred to here merely because of her admiration for Vieira, and also to call attention to the fact that the first priest she spoke to about her conversion was the Jesuit, Antonio Macedo, who was the confessor of Pinto Pereira, the Portuguese ambassador to Sweden. The "Menology" tells us that Macedo did not wear his priestly dress in that country. He was the ambassador's secretary and interpreter, but he attracted the attention of the queen, who remembered no doubt that the Jesuit, Possevin, had appeared in the same court, in the time of John III, disguised as an officer. She finally asked Macedo about it, and he admitted that he was a Jesuit. Then began a series of conversations in Latin, which Christina spoke perfectly, as she did several other languages. She finally told him that she had resolved to become a Catholic, even if she forfeited her crown, and she commissioned him to inform the Sovereign Pontiff of her purpose. To reward Macedo she asked the Pope to make him a bishop, but as he had been a missionary in Africa, the mitre did not appeal to him, and he went back to Lisbon, where he died after sixty-seven years passed in the Society.

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.