The Jesuits, 1534-1921

Although Mexico and the Philippines are geographically far apart, yet ecclesiastically one depended on the other. Legaspi, who took possession of the islands in 1571, built his fleet in Mexico, and also drafted his sailors there. Andrés de Urdaneta, the first apostle of the Philippines, was an Augustinian friar in Mexico who accompanied Legaspi as his chaplain. Twenty years after that expedition, the Jesuits built their first house in Manila, and Father Sánchez, who was, as we have said, one of the supervisors of the great tunnel, was sent as superior from Mexico to Manila. One of his companions, Sedeño, had been a missionary in Florida, and it was he who opened the first school in the Philippines and founded colleges at Manila and Cebú. He taught the Filipinos to cut stone and mix mortar, to weave cloth and make garments. He brought artists from China to teach them to draw and paint, and he erected the first stone building in the Philippines, namely the cathedral, dedicated in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. His religious superior, Father Sánchez had meanwhile acquired such influence in Manila as to be chosen in 1585, by a unanimous vote of all the colonists, to go to arrange the affairs of the colony with Philip II and the Pope. He brought with him to Europe a Filipino boy who, on his return to his native land, entered the Society, and became thus the first Filipino Jesuit.

The college and seminary of San José was established in Manila in 1595. It still exists, though it is no longer in the hands of the Society; being the oldest of the colleges of the Archipelago, it was given by royal decree precedence over all other educational institutions. During the first hundred years of its educational life, it counted among its alumni, eight bishops and thirty-nine Jesuits, of whom four became provincials. There were also on the benches eleven future Augustinians, eighteen Franciscans, three Dominicans, and thirty-nine of the secular clergy. The University of St. Ignatius, which opened its first classes in 1587, was confirmed as a pontifical university in 1621 and as a royal university in 1653. Besides these institutions, the Society had a residence at Mecato and a college at Cavite, and also the famous sanctuary of Antipole. They likewise established the parishes of Santa Cruz and San Miguel in Manila.

France began its colonization in North America by the settlement of Acadia in 1603. De Monts, who was in charge of it, was a Huguenot and, strange to say, had been commissioned to advance the interests of Catholicity in the colony. Half of the settlers were Calvinists, and the other half Catholics more or less infected with heresy. A priest named Josué Flesché was assigned to them; he baptized the Indians indiscriminately, letting them remain as fervent polygamists as they were before. The two Jesuit missionaries, Pierre Biard and Enemond Massé, who were finally forced on the colonists, had to withdraw, and they then betook themselves, in 1613, to what is now known as Mount Desert, in the state of Maine, but that settlement was almost immediately destroyed by an English pirate from Virginia. Two of the Jesuits were sentenced to be hanged in the English colony there, but thanks to a storm which drove them across the Atlantic, they were able, after a series of romantic adventures, to reach France, where they were accused of having prompted the English to destroy the French settlement of Acadia.

Meantime, Champlain, who had established himself at Quebec in 1608, brought over some Recollect Friars in 1615. It was not until 1625 that Father Massé, who had been in Acadia, came to Canada proper with Fathers de Brébeuf, Charles Lalemant, and two lay-brothers. With the exception of Brébeuf, they all remained in Quebec, while he with the Recollect La Roche d'Aillon went to the Huron country, in the region bordering on what is now Georgian Bay, north of the present city of Toronto. The Recollect returned home after a short stay, and Brébeuf remained there alone until the fall of Quebec in 1629. As the English were now in possession, all hope of pursuing their missionary work was abandoned, and the priests and brother returned to France. Canada, however, was restored to its original owners in 1632, and Le Jeune and Daniel, soon to be followed by Brébeuf and many others, made their way to the Huron country to evangelize the savages. The Hurons were chosen because they lived in villages and could be more easily evangelized, whereas the nomad Algonquins would be almost hopeless for the time being.

The Huron missions lasted for sixteen years. In 1649 the tribe was completely annihilated by their implacable foes, the Iroquois, a disaster which would have inevitably occurred, even if no missionary had ever visited them. The coming of the Jesuits at that particular time seemed to be for nothing else than to assist at the death agonies of the tribe. The terrible sufferings of those early missionaries have often been told by Protestant as well as Catholic writers. At one time, when expecting a general massacre, they sat in their cabin at night and wrote a farewell letter to their brethren; but, for some reason or other, the savages changed their minds, and the work of evangelization continued for a little space. Meantime, Brébeuf and Chaumonot had gone down as far as Lake Erie in mid-winter and, travelling all the distance from Niagara Falls to the Detroit River, had mapped out sites for future missions. Jogues and Raymbault, setting out in the other direction, had gone to Lake Superior to meet some thousands of Ojibways who had assembled there to hear about "the prayer."

The first great disaster occurred on August 3, 1642. Jogues was captured near Three Rivers, when on his way up from Quebec with supplies for the starving missionaries. He was horribly mutilated, and carried down to the Iroquois country, where he remained a prisoner for thirteen months, undergoing at every moment the most terrible spiritual and bodily suffering. His companion, Goupil was murdered, but Jogues finally made his escape by the help of the Dutch at Albany, and on reaching New York was sent across the ocean in mid-winter, and finally made his way to France. He returned, however, to Canada, and in 1644 was sent back as a commissioner of peace to his old place of captivity. It was on this journey that he gave the name of Lake of the Blessed Sacrament to what is called Lake George. In 1646 he returned again to the same place as a missionary, but he and his companion Lalande were slain; the reason of the murder being that Jogues was a manitou who brought disaster on the Mohawks. Two other Jesuits, Bressani and Poncet, were cruelly tortured at the very place where Jogues had been slain, but were released.

In 1649 the Iroquois came in great numbers to Georgian Bay to make an end of the Hurons. Daniel, Gamier and Chabanel were slain, and Brébeuf and Lalemant were led to the stake and slowly burned to death. During the torture, the Indians cut slices of flesh from the bodies of their victims, poured scalding water on their heads in mockery of baptism, cut the sign of the cross on their flesh, thrust red-hot rods into their throats, placed live coals in their eyes, tore out their hearts, and ate them, and then danced in glee around the charred remains. This double tragedy of Brébeuf and Lalemant occurred on the 16th and 17th of March, 1649. After that the Hurons were scattered everywhere through the country, and disappeared from history as a distinct tribe.

As early as 1650 there was question of a bishop for Quebec. The queen regent, Anne of Austria, the council of ecclesiastical affairs, and the Company of New France all wrote to the Vicar-General of the Society asking for the appointment of a Jesuit. The three Fathers most in evidence were Ragueneau, Charles Lalemant and Le Jeune. All three had refused the honor and Father Nickel wrote to the petitioners that it was contrary to the rules of the Order to accept such ecclesiastical dignities. The hackneyed accusation of the supposed Jesuit opposition to the establishment of an episcopacy was to the fore even then in America. The refutation is handled in a masterly fashion by Rochemonteix (Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France, I, 191). Incidentally the prevailing suspicion that Jesuits are continually extolling each other will be dispelled by reading the author's text and notes upon the characteristics of the three nominees which unfitted them for the post. "Le Jeune," he says, "would be unfit because he was a converted Protestant who had never rid himself of the defects of his early education." It was not until 1658 that Laval was named.

Meantime in 1654, through the efforts of Father Le Moyne to whom a monument has been erected in the city of Syracuse, a line of missions was established in the very country of the Iroquois. It extended all along the Mohawk from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Many of the Iroquois were converted such as Garagontia, Hot Ashes and others, the most notable of whom was the Indian girl, Tegakwitha, who fled from the Mohawk to Caughnawaga, a settlement on the St. Lawrence opposite Lachine which the Fathers had established for the Iroquois converts. The record of her life gives evidence that she was the recipient of wonderful supernatural graces. These New York missions were finally ruined by the stupidity and treachery of two governors of Quebec, de la Barre and de Denonville, and also by the Protestant English who disputed the ownership of that territory with the French. By the year 1710 there were no longer any missionaries in New York, except an occasional one who stole in, disguised as an Indian, to visit his scattered flock. There were three Jesuits with Dongan, the English governor of New York during his short tenure of office, but they never left Manhattan Island in search of the Indians.

Attention was then turned to the Algonquins, and there are wonderful records of heroic missionary endeavor all along the St. Lawrence from the Gulf to Montreal, and up into the regions of the North. Albanel reached Hudson Bay, and Buteux was murdered at the head-waters of the St. Maurice above Three Rivers. The Ottawas in the West were also looked after, and Garreau was shot to death back of Montreal on his way to their country, which lay along the Ottawa and around Mackinac Island and in the region of Green Bay. The heroic old Ménard perished in the distant swamps of Wisconsin; Allouez and Dablon travelled everywhere along the shores of Lake Superior; a great mission station was established at Sault Ste. Marie, and Marquette with his companion Joliet went down the Mississippi to the Arkansas, and assured the world that the Great River emptied its waters in the Gulf of Mexico. A statue in the Capitol of Washington commemorates this achievement and has been duplicated elsewhere.

The beatification of Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Daniel, Gamier, Chabanel and the two donnés, Goupil and Lalande, is now under consideration at Rome. Their heroic lives as well as those of their associates have given rise to an extensive literature, even among Protestant writers, but the most elaborate tribute to them is furnished by the monumental work consisting of the letters sent by these apostles of the Faith to their superior at Quebec and known the world over as "The Jesuit Relations." It comprises seventy-three octavo volumes, the publication of which was undertaken by a Protestant company in Cleveland. (See Campbell, Pioneer Priests of North America.)

On March 25, 1634, the Jesuit Fathers White and Altham landed with Leonard Calvert, the brother of Lord Baltimore, on St. Clement's Island in Maryland. With them were twenty "gentlemen adventurers," all of whom, with possibly one exception, were Catholics. They brought with them two hundred and fifty mechanics, artisans and laborers who were in great part Protestants. It took them four months to come from Southampton and, on the way over, all religious discussions were prohibited. They were kindly received by the Indians, and the wigwam of the chief was assigned to the priests. A catechism in Patuxent was immediately begun by Father White, and many of the tribe were converted to the Faith in course of time, as were a number of the Protestant colonists. Beyond that, very little missionary work was accomplished, as all efforts in that direction were nullified by a certain Lewger, a former Protestant minister who was Calvert's chief adviser. The adjoining colony of Virginia, which was intensely bitter in its Protestantism, immediately began to cause trouble. In 1644 Ingle and Claiborne made a descent on the colony in a vessel, appropriately called the "Reformation." They captured and burned St. Mary's, plundered and destroyed the houses and chapels of the missionaries, and sent Father White in chains to England, where he was to be put to death, on the charge of being "a returned priest." As he was able to show that he had "returned" in spite of himself, he was discharged.

Calvert recovered his possessions later, and then dissensions began between him and the missionaries because of some land given to them by the Indians. In 1645 it was estimated that the colonists numbered between four and five thousand, three-fourths of whom were Catholics. They were cared for by four Jesuits. In 1649 the famous General Toleration Act was passed, ordaining that "no one believing in Jesus Christ should be molested in his or her religion." As the reverse of this obtained in Virginia, at that time, a number of Puritan recalcitrants from that colony availed themselves of the hospitality of Maryland, and almost immediately, namely in 1650, they repealed the Act and ordered that "no one who professed and exercised the Papistic, commonly known as the Roman Catholic religion, could be protected in the Province." Three of the Jesuits were, in consequence, compelled to flee to Virginia, where they kept in hiding for two or three years. In 1658 Lord Baltimore was again in control, and the Toleration Act was re-enacted. In 1671 the population had increased to 20,000, but in 1676 there was another Protestant uprising and the English penal laws were enforced against the Catholic population. In 1715 Charles, Lord Baltimore, died. Previous to that, his son Benedict had apostatized and was disinherited. He died a few months after his father. Benedict's son Charles, who was also a turncoat, was named lord proprietor by Queen Ann, and made the situation so intolerable for Catholics that they were seriously considering the advisability of abandoning Maryland and migrating in a body to the French colony of Louisiana. As a matter of fact many went West and established themselves in Kentucky.

Of the Jesuits and their flock in Maryland, Bancroft writes: "A convention of the associates for the defence of the Protestant religion assumed the government, and in an address to King William denounced the influence of the Jesuits, the prevalence of papist idolatry, the connivances of the previous government at murders of Protestants and the danger from plots with the French and Indians. The Roman Catholics in the land which they had chosen with Catholic liberality, not as their own asylum only, but as the asylum of every persecuted sect, long before Locke had pleaded for toleration, or Penn for religious freedom, were the sole victims of Protestant intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Catholic would become an apostate the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the Proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the methods adopted to prevent the growth of Popery. Who shall say that the faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faith of the common people? Who shall say that the many are fickle; that the chief is firm? To recover the inheritance of authority Benedict, the son of the Proprietary, renounced the Catholic Church for that of England, but the persecution never crushed the faith of the humble colonists."

The extent of the Jesuit missions in what is now Canada and the United States may be appreciated by a glance at the remarkable map recently published by Frank F. Seaman of Cleveland, Ohio. On it is indicated every mission site beginning with the Spanish posts in Florida, Georgia and Virginia, as far back as 1566. The missions of the French Fathers are more numerous, and extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay, and west to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Not only are the mission sites indicated, but the habitats of the various tribes, the portages and the farthest advances of the tomahawk are there also. Lines starting from Quebec show the source of all this stupendous labor.