Читать книгу The Jesuits, 1534-1921 - Thomas J. Campbell - Страница 9

Brouet had already given proofs of his ability in dealing with difficulties; for with Salmerón he had faced the danger of death in Ireland, and when there was question of creating a Patriarch of Abyssinia or Ethiopia, another place of prospective martyrdom, he was the first choice, though Oviedo was ultimately selected, probably because of his nationality. Shortly after his arrival, a new college was attempted at Billom, but Father de la Goutte who was appointed rector was captured by the Turks and died on an island off the coast of Tunis. A substitute, however, was appointed, and in a few years the college had five hundred students on its roll. Applications were made also for establishments at Montarges, Périgueux and elsewhere. In 1560 the first friend of the Society in France, the Bishop of Clermont, died, leaving rich bequests in his will to the colleges at Paris and Billom, but they were disallowed by the courts because the Society was not an authorized corporation. For, in spite of the fact that not only the sanction of Henry II but also that of Francis II had been given, yet the university and the Archbishop of Paris had contrived by all sorts of devices to delay the complete official recognition of the establishment. In the long fight that ensued against this injustice, Father Cogordan, who was the procurator of the province, distinguished himself by his resourcefulness in facing and mastering the various situations.

The opposition finally collapsed in a very dramatic fashion. Charles IX was on the throne, but the reins of government were in the hands of his mother, Catherine de' Medici, who, contrary to the express wish of the Sovereign Pontiff, had consented to the demands of the Huguenots for a general assembly, where the claims of the new religion might be presented to the representative Catholics of the kingdom. The Colloquy, as it was called, took place at Poissy in 1561. The experience of Germany in permitting such gatherings had shown very clearly that, instead of conducing to religious peace, they only widened the breach between Catholics and Protestants. For the calm statement of dogmatic differences was ignored by the appellants, and the sessions were purposely turned into a series of disorderly and virulent denunciations and recriminations.

The Colloquy in this instance was very imposing. The queen mother, Charles IX and the whole court were present. There were five cardinals, forty bishops and a throng of learned divines from all parts of France. Cardinal de Tournon presided; Hôpital was the spokesman for the crown; while the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé represented the Huguenot party. Among the Protestant ministers were Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr, the ex-friar. Eight days had gone by in useless squabbles when into the assembly came James Laínez, who was then General of the Society, and had been sent thither by the Pope to protest against the Colloquy. Beza had already been annihilated by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Peter Martyr was speaking when Laínez entered. The great man who had held the Council of Trent enthralled by his leaning and eloquence listened for a while to his unworthy adversary and then arose. Addressing the queen, he said: "It may be unseemly for a foreigner to lift his voice in this presence, but as the Church is restricted to no nation, it cannot be out of place for me to give utterance to the thoughts that present themselves to my mind on this occasion. I will first advert to the danger of these assemblies and will especially address myself to what Friar Peter and his colleague have advanced."

The use of the name "friar" publicly pilloried the apostate. He writhed under it, but he could not escape. It recurred again and again as the tactics of Beza and his associates were laid bare. Then, turning to the queen, Laínez said: "The first means to be taken to avoid the deceits of the enemy is for your Majesty to remember that it is not within the competency either of your Majesty or any other temporal prince to discuss and decide matters pertaining to the Faith. This belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff and the Councils of the Church. Much more so is this the case when, as at present, the General Council of Trent is in session. If these teachers of the new religion are sincerely seeking the truth, let them go there to find it." After adding his authority to the splendid reply already uttered by the Cardinal of Lorraine, Laínez said: "As Friar Peter has asked us for a confession of faith, I confess the Catholic Faith, for which I am ready to die; and I implore Your Majesties, both you, Madame, and your son, the Most Christian King, to safeguard your temporal kingdom if you wish to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. If on the contrary you care less for the fear and love of God than the fear and love of man, are you not running the risk of losing your earthly as well as your heavenly kingdom? I trust that this calamity will not fall upon you. I expect, on the contrary, that God in his goodness will grant you and your son the grace of perseverance in your faith, and will not permit this illustrious nobility now before me, and this most Christian kingdom, which has been such an example to the world, ever to abandon the Catholic Faith or be defiled by the pestilential touch of these new sects and new religions."

This discourse was a particularly daring act, on the part of Laínez. According to a recent authority (Martin, Gallicanisme et la Réforme, 28, note 4), Du Ferrier, the government delegate at Trent, circulated a note which said among other things: "As for Pius IV we withdraw from his rule; whatever decisions he may have made we reject, spit back at him (respuimus) and despise. We scorn and renounce him as Vicar of Christ, Head of the Church and successor of Peter." Far from reprehending his ambassador for these furious words, Charles IX and, of course, Catherine praised the ambassador unreservedly. Catherine had busied herself previous to this in trying to persuade the different governments to have a council in which the Pope should have nothing to say, one whose object would be, not to define dogma or enforce discipline, but, to draw up a formula of reconciliation which would satisfy Protestants. Even the French bishops, though admitting that the Pope was a supreme power in the Church, denied that he had supreme power over it, and refused to acknowledge "his plenitude of power to feed, rule and govern the Universal Church." The separation of France from the Church was at that time openly advocated. Since such were the conditions in France at that time, it is clear that Catherine never expected an attack of the kind that Laínez treated her to. She burst into tears and withdrew from the Colloquy. There was never another public session. Crétineau-Joly says that Laínez told Condé: "The queen's tears are a bit of comedy;" but such an utterance from a man of the character of Laínez and in such surroundings, where the insult would have been immediately reported to the queen, is simply inconceivable. He could never have been guilty of such an unpardonable indiscretion.

Meantime, the bishops and archbishops of France had been meeting during the recesses of the Colloquy to consider the question of legislation for the Jesuit colleges. With the exception of Cardinal de Châtillon and the Archbishop of Paris, they were all anxious to put an end to the proscription to which the Society had been so long and so unjustly subjected. As it happened that Cardinal de Châtillon, the brother of the famous Admiral Coligny, the patron saint of the French Calvinists, was just then on the point of apostatizing and taking a wife and as the scandal was of common knowledge it evidently would not do for the Archbishop of Paris to be ranged on his side. That and, probably, the fact of his being tired out by the long fight which had been protracted only because of his natural stubbornness, made him give way, and the Society was legalized in France. No doubt the presence of Laínez and his closing up of the Colloquy by his audacious discourse had helped largely to bring about that result. Some disagreeable restrictions were appended to the grant, it is true, but they were cancelled a few years later by a royal decree. Parliament finally yielded and signed the charter of the College on January 14, 1562. Laínez saw the queen frequently after the Colloquy, and remained in France for some time, striving unweariedly to win back to the Faith such men as Condé, the King of Navarre and others, and continuing to warn the queen that her unwise toleration would result in disaster to the realm. Unfortunately he was not heeded.

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.