The Jesuits Unveiled - page 3 of 3

After the publication of the Bull suppressing the Jesuits, the world was allowed to believe that they had disappeared forever; but the politics of Papacy had brought them to political life; the politics of Papacy had supported them; the politics of Papacy had yielded only to a threatening storm in abolishing them consequently; the politics of Papacy was to bring them to life again; even their death was to be but apparent — a deceitful sleep of a few years.

The Jesuits persuaded two non-Catholic rulers to prevent the publication of the brief in their dominions, persuaded themselves that by this device they escaped the heavy spiritual penalties laid on rebels by the brief, and flouted every command of the Pope and his representatives to change at least their name and costume. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine of Russia knew that the Jesuits were excellent teachers. They provided Frederick's State with a comparatively good scheme of education without cost to his treasury; also, the Inquisition had put Frederick's writings on the Index, and the Vatican had obstinately refused to recognise his royal title, so that he was not indisposed to annoy Rome, that is sufficient explanation of his conduct. In 1742 Frederick had won Silesia from Austria, and thus included in his dominions a large and disaffected Catholic population. The Jesuits were a mighty power in Silesia. The Breslau University and nearly all the schools were under their control, and a large proportion of the population, having passed through their schools or enjoyed their ministration, were vehemently attached to them.

When the brief of suppression appeared, Frederick forbade the bishops to publish it in Silesia, and he offered General Ricci and his colleagues the hospitality of his dominions. At first, with their wonted casuistry, the Jesuits declared that the brief was not binding, as it had not been addressed personally. They then pleaded that Frederick conscientiously believed himself bound to maintain the status quo, that he therefore refused to allow them to change their name, and that the interest of religion forbade them to ignore the commands of a powerful secular monarch. They were warned by their own colleagues in Italy that this hypocritically veiled rebellion was of itself a strong justification of Clement’s indictment of the Society. The Catholic world had the singular spectacle of witnessing a band of priests who were understood to be the Pope’s body-guard sheltering from his anathemas behind the shield of a freethinker.

On 15th February 1775 Pius VI. ascended the papal throne. The power and attitude of the Catholic monarchs was still such that there could be little chance of restoring the Society, but it seemed safe to admit a pope who was well disposed toward the ex-Jesuits. An envoy was sent to Rome, in the name of Frederick, to arrange a compromise for the Jesuits. Pius VI. gladly admitted the Prussian envoy and his proposals. Directions were issued that the bishops of Silesia might grant powers to former members of “the extinct Society.” In Silesia they were forced to abandon their costume, depose their superiors, and hand over their property to the State in exchange for a salary. But they were now “Priests of the Royal Scholastic Institute.” In this condition the hundred ex-Jesuits continued to control education in Silesia, and quarrel with the secular clergy, until Frederick died in 1786. His successor modified the Institute in some respects, but the changes were slight until the year 1800, when it was converted into the “Royal Prussian Catholic School Direction.”

The Jesuits fled to Russia; and, meeting there, continued to live as a religious body, under the direction of Czerniwicz, whom they elected their Administrator in 1782. At his death they elected as his successor Linkiwicz, in 1785, he would be General until 1799.

By this time the French Revolution had run its tragic course, and the ex-Jesuits were loudly proclaiming everywhere that it was the natural development of the forces which had demanded the suppression of the Society; that, if these wild and devastating forces were not to wreck civilisation in Europe, they, the Jesuits, must be recalled to put a check on them. For twenty years the Jesuits had maintained that the political storms which swept the old monarchs from their thrones at the end of the eighteenth century were directly due to the removal of their control of the schools and universities.

French armies march on Rome and occupy the city early in 1798. A republic is declared. Pius refuses to renounce his temporal sovereignty, and is taken prisoner by the French in March 1799. He is taken to France, where he dies at Valence in August.

Pius VI. died in 1799, he had approved of the reorganization of the Jesuits in Russia; favored efficaciously their development in that country; and gave to their order his apostolical and solemn sanction.

The Jesuits elected Xavier Caren as General of the Society (1799-1801), and began again their political and criminal life.

Chiaramonti, who, as Bishop of Tivoli, had openly expressed his reluctance to carry out the brief of suppression, a former member of the Benedictine Order, is elected the next Pope, Pius VII, in 1800. Within six months of his election Pius VII. received from the Tsar a pressing request for the approval of the Society, and on the 7th of March 1801 he solemnly recognised its existence in Russia. Paul the Tsar of Russia, had assigned to the Jesuits the Roman Catholic church at St. Petersburg, and to this church was attached the privilege of opening a school. In the course of 1801 and 1802 some of the ablest fathers were sent there from the chief centre at Polotzk, and a school for the sons of the nobles was opened and obtained large numbers of pupils, Russian and Catholic.

In the United States in 1803 we find the Bishop of Baltimore John Carroll writing to Jesuit General Gruber, who had been elected in 1801, in russia that there are a dozen aged ex-Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with sufficient property (of the older Maryland mission) to support thirty; they wish to join Gruber’s authorised Society and receive an accession of strength. The Russian Jesuits had justified their rebellion on the ground that the secular monarch had forbidden them to lay aside their habits; the Americans said it was enough that there was in America no secular monarch to forbid them to wear it. The Papacy counted for little with any of them. Gruber complied, and the foundations were laid of the prosperity of the Jesuits in the United States. In the early years little progress was made. The newcomers were young foreigners, and the population was scattered and generally hostile. One of the German fathers was actually arrested and tried for not betraying the confession of a thief, but the controversy which followed rather promoted their interest. They shrewdly established their chief college and centre at Georgetown, near Washington, and gradually won the regard of American statesmen, who visited and granted privileges to the college.

Some across europe set up a purified Jesuitism under other names. — The “Victims of the Love of God.” The “Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” whose whole structure of the late Society of Jesus was copied, and the studies re-established. The Emperor’s sister, the Archduchess Marianne, was an ardent supporter. A similar body, the “Society of the Faith,” had been founded in Italy. They presently formed a “Society of the Faith of Jesus,” and, to make their meaning plainer, adopted the costume and constitutions of the ex-Jesuits. A similar body already existed in Austria. The feminine branch of the “Sacred Heart” Society also spread to France, and grew into a formidable body of nuns (under the direction of ex-Jesuits) with the particular function of giving a “sound” education to the daughters of wealthy people.

Of all the associations which sprang up mysteriously in the soil of revolutionary France, the most important was a certain “Congregation of the Holy Virgin,” founded in the year 1801. It was controlled by an ex-Jesuit. The young men, very largely university students, were to visit the sick and poor to be practical Christians, in a word. The members of the Congregation of the Virgin generally remained in the world, retaining throughout life their membership of the Society and their link with its directors. A register of their names and occupations was kept, and it meant, in effect, that the Jesuits had friends and ardent secret workers in every school and profession, in the army and navy, in journalism and politics.

Knowing that their existence and prospects depended entirely on the will of the Emperor of Russia, they lavished, to win him, the meanest flatteries, and the most seducing protestations of devotedness. He disliked Romanism, but in matters not religious, they promised to him to profess and preach his aristocratical principles, and thus gained his good will and protection.

Jesuit General Linkiwicz having died in 1799, they elected Xavier Caren who was also replaced after his death, when, in October 1801 the older fathers had met in Congregation and elected Gruber General of the Society. (Catherine the Great had entrusted the education of her son to this Father Gruber). From this month we may plausibly date the restoration of the Society, since its former members were free, and were invited, to come from all parts of Europe and place themselves under the authority of Gruber. In 1803 the London Fathers of the Faith transferred their obedience to Gruber. In the summer of 1803 Gruber sent a father to Rome, “to watch the interests” of the Society. Being a member of an authorised body, he retained his costume, flaunted it in the eyes of the astonished Romans, and visited the Vatican in it. Men felt that the ghost would soon be followed by a resurrection. In the following summer Gruber received from the Pope a genial notification that Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies desired to have a number of fathers for the education of youth in his kingdom. On 6th August 1804 the Society was restored in the Two Sicilies. In a few years the Jesuits attained enormous wealth and power, and it would not be unjust to connect the long somnolence of that beautiful island with the profound influence the Jesuits had on it in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the meantime other Societies which were more or less secretly Jesuit, and various communities of ex-Jesuits in different parts of Europe, were returning to the obedience of the General. In 1804 the more numerous French fathers joined the Russian Society.

In 1811 the Jesuits requested the Tsar to raise their chief college at Polotzk to the rank of a university, which would allow it to control all the schools maintained by the Society. Eventually in 1812 the Polotzk college was raised to the rank of a university, and began to educate the sons of noble or wealthy Russians. In the course of time there were as many as two hundred noble youths, of the Greek faith, sitting on its benches, and, as usual, the interest of the fathers in their pupils led to a respectful concern about their mothers and sisters. It was noticed that many were received into the Roman Church though never by Jesuits.

Though settled in Russia, the Jesuits were dissatisfied, and looked with avidity at the other countries of Europe, where they had not been allowed to have a footing. They felt impatient to invade them, but the word "Jesuits" was used as an epithet for the most wicked men, so much were they hated. The remembrance of their numberless crimes was living in the minds of the people. The kings and emperors were sons of those whom the Jesuis of former times had killed; how were they to overcome these obstacles? They thought that the best way — and the event proved they were right — was to serve the ambition and tyranny of kings and emperors, who, on such a condition, would forget the murder of their ancestors. Then they flattered them, and promised to use all their influence to keep the people under their oppression. Having a swarm of secular emissaries scattered everywhere, they tried to stifle the democratic principles which began to prevail in Europe, and plotted with the French nobility and high clergy who had left France to follow the Bourbons, — that family which, (for many centuries) had dishonored the throne of France by their ignorance, fanaticism, support of Papacy, tyranny, and cruelty. Afterward the Jesuits went to France, when the allied armies, with their numberless bayonets, had opened to the Bourbons and to them a bloody road. (The unpopular Bourbons were restored to the French throne under Louis XVIII by the allied armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great-Britain who are now occupying France, shortly after Napoleons defeat)

In 1814, the young Russian Prince Galitzin, nephew of the Minister of Instruction of that name, joined the Church of Rome. He was in his sixteenth year, and had been attending the Jesuit classes for two years. His uncle now entered upon a violent campaign against the Society, and the city rang with denunciation of their secret machinations. It was discovered that the real number of conversions to Rome had been concealed, as the converts had been instructed to practise their new religion only in secret. There was an intense agitation, and the Jesuits thought it prudent to close their schools to all but the sons of Roman Catholics. It was too late. Priests and professors maintained the stormy agitation. In the midst of this agitation Alexander, who had been Tsar since 1801, returned from France, after the final defeat of Napoleon, and both parties appealed to him. His answer was a ukase, issued in December, sternly ordering the Jesuits to close their schools and quit St. Petersburg. In cold and measured language he recalled that they had been admitted on the strict understanding that they were not to proselytise, and he denounced their “breach of confidence.” It wasn't long before the Jesuits were ordered to evacuate Russian territory altogether. From their estates and princely colleges in Lithuania and Livonia, as well as from the poor colonies in the Caucusus and Siberia.

In 1809 it was the Pope’s turn to quail before this terrible, incarnation of the new spirit in Europe. The Papal States were annexed, and Pius VII. set out for four years of bitter exile. He returned in 1813, and saw the allies closing round the falling monarch. In the spring of the following year Napoleon abdicated, and the restored monarchs set about the task of deleting the past twenty years from the history of Europe, and stamping out the last sparks of the liberalism which was understood to have led to the French Revolution. It was the moment for restoring the Society of Jesus. The monarchs who had pressed for its abolition were dead, the new generation had never realised its power and irregularities, and the Jesuits themselves had for twenty years confidently proclaimed that the terrors Europe had experienced were the direct result of taking from them the education of the young and the spiritual guidance of the adult. The Revolution was due to the maintenance of mediazval injustices in a more enlightened age, and the Jesuits, with all their power over kings, had never uttered a syllable of condemnation of those old abuses.

At this epoch, which was the triumph of tyranny in Europe, (chiefly in France, which fell from that of Napoleon into that of its former oppressors,) the Papacy judged the circumstances ripe enough to raise openly its old standard of domination and despotism.

Speedily the Pope Pius VII. united the rings of the Jesuitical snake, which, for so long a while, had showered poison and death over all the world, and bestowed on him a new political life, issuing on the sixth of August the Bull which established them, the Sollicitudo, — the Jesuits were reinstituted in 1814. In presence of a distinguished gathering of ecclesiastics and nobles in the Gesu, the Pope said mass and then had the bull read. Some fifty members of the suppressed Society had been convoked for the occasion. The Gesu and the house attached to it had been maintained in proper condition. The novitiate also was restored; the old fathers were summoned from their vicarages and colleges and myriad professions; a Provincial and Vicar-General were elected; and the Jesuits spread rapidly over the Papal States. The cloud of Napoleon’s return chilled their enthusiasm for a month or two, but they presently heard of Waterloo and settled down to the task for which they had been restored to life.

At first, the Jesuits denied their true name, and called themselves "Fathers of the Faith." Under this name, they ran through all the Catholic countries, telling that they were poor and humble missionaries; but, as soon as all was ready, they took again their true name "Jesuits," — a qualification as much beloved by themselves, as it was generally hated. Seeing that their odious name stirred up the people against them, they hastened to more closely surround kings and emperors, who, it is true, had been heretofore their victims, but who, having stifled, (at least, for a moment,) liberal principles, and sunk Europe again in darkness, superstition, and tyranny, wanted their support.

The restoration of the Jesuits was an act of the Papacy for which there was no justification in Catholic opinion. Pius VII. ventured to say that he was complying with “the unanimous demand of the Catholic world.” This was, as the Pope knew, wholly untrue. Spain alone, of the great Powers — was interested in the restoration. Austria and France had no wish to see the Jesuits restored, and would not suffer them to return to power when the Pope willed it; Portugal protested vehemently against the restoration. Pius VII. acted on his own feeling and that of petty monarchs like the Kings of Sardinia and Naples. He believed that the Jesuits would be the most effective agency for rooting out what remained of liberalism and revolution.

By the year 1818 there were 86 Jesuits in the United States, and recruits were arriving from Europe. A novitiate had been opened at White Marsh in 1815, but few novices could be secured in America. In fact, as they followed their usual custom of making no charge for education, they had a severe struggle with poverty everywhere. In 1822 the authorities at Rome ordered them to close the school at Washington, as it could no longer maintain itself without charging. The rector, Father Kelly, defied his superiors for a time, and maintained the school on the fees of pupils; but Americanism was not yet sufficiently developed to sustain this, and Father Kelly was expelled from the Society.

It is in the year 1820 that we catch a first interesting glimpse of the reconstituted body. At the beginning of that year General Bzrozowski died at Polotzk, a few months before the Jesuits were expelled from Russia, and the Italians hastened to hold an election. Before he died the General had appointed Father Petrucci Vicar-General, and this official came to Rome and, in conjunction with his fellow-Italians, prepared for the election of the next Jesuit General. Bewildering in its confusion and quarrels and is evidently an angry conflict of personal and national ambitions and of reformers and anti-reformers. It seems to have been the most lively and impassioned election that the old house had ever witnessed. Finally, On 18th of October Father Fortis was elected as the next General. A number of younger men were then expelled from the Society. Fortis, an elderly Italian in his eighth decade of life, had belonged to the suppressed Society, and the conduct of him and his followers suggests that forty years of life without the restraint of discipline had not tended to improve their character. The struggle against the proposal to reform the Society is unattractive; and the facility with which the opposing Jesuit parties appealed to rival cardinals, when the Jesuit tradition was fiercely to resent any outside interference with their Congregations, completes an unpleasant picture. The anti-reformers won, and the voters scattered to their respective provinces and missions.

Parma and Naples already had their Jesuits. The Duke of Modena at once admitted the Society, and Victor Emmanuel, whose brother had surrendered the crown to him in ordr to enter the Society, naturally opened his kingdom to them. Ferdinand VII. of Spain, the most brutal and unscrupulous of the restored monarchs, abrogated the decree of expulsion, and warmly welcomed the Jesuits to co-operate with him in his sanguinary work. John VI. of Portugal refused to admit “the pernicious sect” into his kingdom. Louis XVIII., even when urged by Talleyrand, refused to sanction the presence of the Jesuits in France. Austria refused to recognise them in its Empire, which still included Venice. Bavaria excluded them. And it took the Jesuits years of intrigue to penetrate the Catholic cantons of Switzerland.

Cardinal della Ganga mounted the papal throne under the name of Leo XII in 1823. He had hardly been a year at the Vatican when he gratified the Jesuits by restoring the Roman College to their charge. Other of their old colleges in the Papal States were secured for them by Leo XII. and the Italian Provinces quickly recovered their power.

The Jesuits established colleges in Austria, through all Italy, in Spain, in Savoy, in Piedmont, etc., where they grew up as powerful as formerly; where they still lead government, clergy, and through them the people.

In Spain on 15th May 1815, Ferdinand VII. repealed the drastic sentence of his great predecessor, and ordered that the Jesuits former property should be restored to them. A hundred and fifty of the old members of the Society returned to their native land; colleges and novitiates were opened by means of the restored property and the royal bounty; and, we are told, town after town demanded, and enthusiastically welcomed, its former teachers. We can well believe that the mobs which saluted the perjured Ferdinand with the cry, “Down with Liberty,” would welcome the Jesuits.

In the recoil due to their hatred of the French, and of the new ideas which the French had brought into Spain, the densely ignorant mass of the people fell at the feet of a brutal monarch and a corrupt clergy. The educated middle class, however, remained substantially Liberal. They had admitted Ferdinand only on condition that he promised to maintain their Liberal Constitution, and, as soon as he had attained the crown, he tore his promise and the Constitution to shreds and fell with terrible cruelty on the Liberals. Known Liberals were at once executed, imprisoned for life, or banished; the Inquisition was restored; and a network of spies spread over the kingdom. Men, women, and children were savagely punished, and a “Society of the Exterminating Angel” arose to strengthen and direct the bloody hands of the King and the Inquisitors.

Those five years of Spanish history constitute one of the most repulsive chapters in the chronicle of modern Europe. All the clergy and monks of Spain were allied with their monarch in prosecuting what they regarded as a holy war. The Jesuits flourished and were more than doubled in number within five years. The year 1820 found them increased to 397, with several novitiates and a large number of colleges. The year 1820 gives us some measure of their guilt in connection with the preceding years. The middle class was still strong enough, or humane enough, to put an end to the disgraceful horrors, and reaffirm the liberal constitution of 1810. The Cortes was summoned and it was determined to expel the Jesuits. The terrified King yielded to the deputies, and in August the four hundred Jesuits were pensioned and ordered to quit the country. Unfortunately, the French King espoused the cause of his “cousin,” and his troops restored the savage autocracy of Ferdinand and the power of the Jesuits. The reign of terror returned, and even the other Catholic monarchs of Europe were shocked by the outrages committed and permitted by Ferdinand. It is enough to note that a conservative authority on Spain, Major Hume, says of the renewed reign of terror: “Modern civilsation has seen no such instance of brutal, blind ferocity.” This appalling condition lasted, almost continuously, until the death of Ferdinand in 1833.

From Portugal the Jesuits were rigorously excluded during fifteen years after the restoration of the Society. John VI., a constitutional and sober monarch, refused to irritate his subjects by admitting them. He resisted all the pressure of Rome in their interest, and observed the Liberal Constitution which he had accepted. His granddaughter Maria succeeded to his throne and policy in 1826, under the regency of her uncle, Dom Miguel. Here again the Jesuits were admitted in virtue of an act of treachery and throve in an atmosphere of savagery. Dom Miguel intrigued for the throne, and, when he took an oath to respect the Liberal Constitution, was permitted to occupy it. “His Jesuit training,” says the Cambridge Modern History (X. 321), “would make it easy for him to rest content with the absolution of the Church for a breach of faith committed on behalf of the good cause.” He at once violated his oath and turned with ferocity upon the Liberals. It is estimated by some of the Portuguese writers that more than 60,000 were executed, deported, or imprisoned in the next four years. None of the members of the old Portuguese Province would dare be discovered, or induced to resume work in a bitterly hostile world, and eight Jesuits had to be sent from France, in 1829, to begin the work of restoration.

They had their usual good fortune to attract the sympathy of noble ladies, and were enabled to secure their old house at Lisbon in the following year. When the King saw that no violent upheaval followed their arrival, he began to patronise them, and secured for them their famous college at Coimbra. But the ferocity of Miguel had already deeply stirred the population, and in the following year the defrauded young Queen’s father, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, crossed the ocean to secure her rights and the Constitution. The Jesuits were painfully perplexed. The people of Lisbon saved Don Pedro from the dilemma which this excellent or prudent conduct imposed on him. On 29th July a mixed throng of soldiers and citizens assaulted and sacked the Jesuit residence. It would have gone very hard with the fathers themselves had not certain English naval officers chivalrously saved them. In the following May (1834) Don Pedro renewed the sentence of suppression. From their handsome college at Coimbra they were conveyed to Lisbon, to face the hoots and taunts of a rejoicing mob, and then to be deposited in prison. The French afterwards secured their release from prison.

In England the stream of French emigrants, the Act of Toleration of 1791, the beginning of Irish immigration, and the advocacy of Catholic Emancipation by Pitt enabled the Catholics to enter the nineteenth century in increased numbers. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 so inflated them that they then estimated their numbers in London alone as 146,000, or nearly a tenth of the population. The Jesuits shared the growth with the rest of the clergy. Between 1826 and 1835 they built eleven new churches, and in 1830 the Roman authorities made a formal province of the English group. The Irish fathers had been detached from the English in 1829, and formed a vice-province. Ten years later began the catholic movement within the Church of England, to the considerable profit of Rome.

In the Germanic lands, except Belgium, the restored Jesuits had a severe struggle throughout the nineteenth century. Austria and Bavaria refused to publish the bull of restoration or comply with it, to the great mortification of the Jesuits. The first serious attempt to gain a footing in Germany was made in 1820, when the fathers who had been driven from Russia appeared on the Austrian frontier and humbly asked permission to cross the Emperor’s territory. They might “cross,” he drily answered; and when they secured the customary intervention of noble dames, he permitted them to go and teach loyalty among his poor subjects in Galicia and his restless subjects in Hungary. He granted funds for this purpose, and they soon had a flourishing Province in Galicia, and a general control of education. Even here they were subject to the bishops, and the imperial decrees intimate that there was much suspicion and hostility.

In Switzerland the fortunes of the Jesuits were more romantic. During the suppression they continued to live in communities, and carefully concealed the offensive title from the eyes of Protestant citizens. After 1814 they began to induce their lay followers to petition the authorities to sanction their return to life, and the long and bitter struggle over the Society began. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also was nearly ninety percent Catholic) decided by sixty-nine votes to forty-two to readmit the Jesuits and entrust its schools to them. At the same time they recovered their old house at Brigue, and hegan to spread in Catholic Valais. In 1823 the fathers secured their old college at Freiburg, which they had long coveted. Since their settlement in Freiburg this college had been in the hands of the Franciscan monks who were apparently doing admirable work. In the following year the Jesuits were expelled from the Netherlands (which formed one Province with Switzerland and Saxony) and came to swell the number of their colleagues in Valais and Freiburg.

In the Netherlands the story of the Jesuits during the nineteenth century has been one of great prosperity, checked only by a few early reverses. No sooner had the Pope issued the bull of restoration, and the French rule been destroyed, than the ex-Jesuits who lingered in the country as secular priests and the Fathers of the Faith (who had at last entered the Society) proceeded to organise their body. A novitiate was opened at Rumbeke and another at Destelbergen, in Belgium. The Congress of Vienna, however, placed the united Netherlands under the control of William of Nassau, and he watched the progress of the Jesuits with uneasiness. The former father of the Faith, the Count de Broglie, was now bishop of Ghent, and he and other prelates and nobles sedulously assisted the Jesuits.

The controversies which were bound to arise after the union of Protestant Holland and Catholic Belgium under one crown soon raged furiously, and William, in the summer of 1816, ordered the Jesuits to close their novitiate at Destelbergen. They were forced to retire, but de Broglie encouraged them to resist the King, and lent them his palace for the maintenance of their community. De Broglie himself was afterwards banished for assailing the Constitution, and the fathers were put out of the palace at the point of the bayonet in 1818. As William threatened to expel them from the country, they removed the novitiate to Switzerland, and assumed an appearance of submission. As, however, they continued to stir the Catholics, William ordered the bishops in 1824 to forbid them to give retreats to the clergy, and in the following year he closed two of their residences.

This succinct account will suffice to introduce the Catholic revolution of 1830, in which Belgium won its independence. We are again asked to regard the Jesuits as idle spectators of the fierce Catholic agitation which ended in the rebellion; but, in view of their experience under William, it seems wiser to accept the Dutch assurance that they played a large, if secret, part in it. From that date Belgium has been a golden land for the Jesuits, and Protestant Holland has suffered them to prosper in peace.

Now, let us follow them in France, their favorite field of labor. We say that France is their favorite field of labor, because that country being the most important among the Cathlolic countries, it is for the Jesuits a mine of money, and for the Pope the most precious diamond of his crown. A swarm of the Jesuits invaded the French kingdom. They crowded together in the capitol, in the cities, in the towns and villages. Supported by the sword, the prisons, and the scaffolds of the Bourbons, they dealt out from their houses, from their confessionals, from the sacred desk, in every way, slanders and hatred against the "Liberals;" stirred up the peasants, who are ignorant, superstitious, fanatical, and inflammable, against their own and true friends, who had sacrificed tranquility and fortune, even exposed their lives, to cast down political and religious tyranny. The Jesuits became so powerful, that from Mont Rouge and Saint-Acheuil they ruled clergy and governmnent-clergy, by appointing all bishops-governmnent, by appointing civil and military officers; by distributing charges, employments, gratifications, privileges, favors, and disgraces. And, in what manner, By influencing directly the King, who, knowing full well that his throne would stand only while resting upon them, bore passively their impositions.

The Jesuits choosing the bishops exclusively from among the admirers and followers of their principles, these bishops taught them to the students, who were numberless; (for, according to the prediction of Napoleon, the barracks had been converted into Romish ecclesiastical schools.) These students being ordained priests, taught in the parishes the same principles; thus, the bishops, the priests, and the mass of the people were soon quite jesuitical. The Jesuits presenting and effecting the appointment of their friends alone to the public offices of the government, hypocrisy, hatred, and inquisition, overflowed France.

It is not all. The churches were crowded with unbelievers, who feigned piety to gain the good will and protection of the Jesuits. These fathers, who did not care for it, confessed, absolved, and gave them the holy communion. Everybody celebrated the praises of the Jesuits, but with the lips only, for they, in reality, were heartily hated. They planted numberless crosses, along the roads, in the fields, in the villages, in the towns, in the streets and squares of the cities — everywhere. They lavished by thousands, Salutes, Benedictions of the Holy Sacrament, Novenas, Missions, Jubilees, Indulgences, Dispensations, and ceremonies of all forms, of the most exciting and incredible inventions. They made the peasants desert their plows and the fields, to assist at all these ceremonies, chiefly, at the processions, which took place many times a week.

Wo to the philosophers or Catholics who were not pleased with these practices! Such were drawn out of their homes by invitations, viz.: by polite but significant words, if they were independent in fortune; and by promises and menaces, if they were poor and dependent for their daily bread. As to religious conviction, as to belief, the Jesuits did not care for them. The forms, the appearances, were all that they required.

Wo to the Protestants who tried proselytism; who dared to talk publicly about their religion; did not approve of the quackery of the Jesuits; did not kneel, and did not adorn their houses when the holy sacrament was carried to the sick, and exposed solemnly in the processions! Wo chiefly to authors who were conscientious and anxious to enlighten the people, and to direct society in another way! Such were declared enemies of the King, of the Jesuits, of God and his Church, and persecuted in every manner.

The Departments of "Foreign Affairs," of the "Interior," of the "Public Instruction," and "Worship," of "Commerce," and of "Public Works," — all the Ministries, all the numberless Administrations depended upon them.

In this dark period, the externals of Catholicism shone out in all their splendor, but, certainly the real believers of the Roman Catholic Church have never been there so scarce, and particularly the religion of Christ so low. It was, of course, a condemnable behavior in the French people, still in some degree excusable — the power, intolerance and tyranny of the Jesuits were so dreadful! They so unmercifully deprived the families of their daily bread! They slandered, persecuted so incessantly and so cruelly the Protestants, insulted them so scornfully, exposed them so hatefully to the mockeries of the mob, and excluded them so unjustly and so artfully from the public offices and honors, by the most odious violation of the charter!

Fortunately, highminded and honest men devoted themselves to the holy cause of liberty, of the gospel, and of the public welfare; sacrificed to its triumph all their temporal interests; defied condemnations, fines, incarceration, scaffolds; and began to enlighten the people, to show them the Jesuitical quackery, the artfulness of the contract of association between Royalty and Jesuitism, or rather Papacy. The “little seminaries,” as the French called the preparatory colleges for the clergy, had been left under the control of the bishops, and several of them were notoriously controlled by the thinly disguised Jesuits. A commission of bishops, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head, was appointed to examine the charge, and it was determined that eight of the seminaries were really Jesuit colleges, and must be closed; it was further enacted that the seminaries were to be taken from the bishops and put under the control of the universities, that the number of pupils was to be restricted, and that no priest should henceforth he allowed to teach in them who did not take oath that he did not belong to a non-authorised Congregation. Newspapers and books were published, which, in spite of the tyrannical restraints of the government, circulated and penetrated everywhere. The people, opening their eyes, began to leave the Jesuits, and rose up in a threatening attitude. The Jesuits, feeling the soil moving beneath their feet, and their prey escaping them, excited the King Charles X., and his ministers, to issue ordinances against the freedom of the press. This despotical measure, far from stopping the progress of liberal ideas, and of riveting the chains of ignorance, superstition, and servitude, hastened the triunmph of Liberalism, and of the intellectual emancipation of the people.

The reply of the people, when the ministry returned to the old-coercive measures, was the July Revolution of 1830. The chief Jesuit houses, at Montrouge and St. Acheul, were sacked by the mob, and the fathers scattered in every direction. Once more they had suffered a heavy defeat on what they believed to be the eve of victory. In this Revolution the people shed streams of their blood, and died by thousands, to obtain some political rights, which Louis Philippe was soon again to steal from them.

In the Papal States the Jesuits entered upon their golden age with the accession of Gregory XVI., in 1831. Both Leo XII. and General Fortis died in 1829. A young Dutch Jesuit, Father Roothaan (aged forty-four), succeeded Fortis, and Pius VIII. ascended the papal throne. He died in November 1830, and Gregory XVI. assumed the tiara in the very heat of the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1831. The “White Terror” had failed to conquer what it called the revolutionary element; its thousands of executions and its appalling jails and repulsive spies had merely fed the flame of insurrection, and the international movement for reform gathered strength. The middle class in every country — in Italy, especially, the revolutionary movements were essentially middle class — suffered with burning indignation the brutalities of Austria, the Papacy, Naples, Spain, and France.

In 1831 the Italian rebels, fired by the success of the July Revolution in France, raised their tricolour standard and soon saw it floating over Modena, Parma, and a number of the Papal States. One of the first movements of the insurgents in every place was to assail the Jesuit residences. At Spoleto, Fano, Modena, Reggio, Forli, and Ferrara, the Jesuits were driven from their homes and colleges and hunted over the frontiers of the revolutionary provinces. But Naples and Piedmont were unshaken by the disturbance, and the Austrian troops from Venice quickly trampled out the revolutionary spirit. It was on the eve of this insurrection — a work almost entirely of the educated class — that Gregory became Pope, and his policy after the pacification was one of savage repression. The brutal regime which the Austrians in Venice (to which the Jesuits were formally admitted in 1836) the Pope in central Italy, and the Neapolitan ruler in the south, spread over the land. In the three States, as in Spain and Portugal, the Jesuits were the most ardent auxiliaries of the reactionary and sanguinary monarchs. Gregory XVI., the most repulsive Pope of modern times, was the most generous patron that the Jesuits had had for more than a hundred years. Education was the root of the revolutionary evil, and it was the place of the Jesuits to see that such education as was imparted in Italy — which sank to an appalling degree of illiteracy, 70% in the southern provinces, where the Jesuits ruled longest — was not tainted with modern culture. The Pope had incurred the resentment of the Liberals. Some of the chief grievances of his educated subjects, such as the monopoly of all remunerative offices in the State by clerics, remained untouched. His confessor was replaced by a friend of the Jesuits. Pius was alienated more and more, and a violent conflict approached.

In Spain after the death of Ferdinand in 1833 the country entered upon the long Carlist war, and the Jesuits were soon expelled for the third time. While Queen Christina allied herself with the Liberals, Don Carlos rallied to his standard the absolutists and Ultramontanes, and the great majority of the clergy supported him. Not only the Liberals but the mass of the people in Madrid were persuaded that the Jesuits were on the side of Don Carlos. In 1834 the cholera descended on the capital. The cry was raised that the Jesuits and the Carlists had poisoned the water-supply, and it seems that, by some strange accident or plot, children were found on the street with small quantities of arsenic. In the afternoon of 17th July the citizens flung themselves upon the houses of the Jesuits and other religious, and a fierce riot ensued. Fourteen Jesuits, forty-four Franciscans, and fifteen Dominicans and others were slain in the struggle. Some of their provincial houses also were sacked or closed, and the inmates had to fly for their lives.

In the following year, 1835, the Society was again proscribed, by the Regent Christina, and the Jesuits were scattered. They now sided openly with Don Carlos. Alleging, as usual, that they were indifferent to politics and must discharge the spiritual services demanded of them under any banner, they followed in the rear of the advancing Carlists and opened colleges in the districts conquered by them. One Jesuit guarded the conscience of Don Carlos, another was tutor to his children, and others ministered in his camps. At length an abler Christinist General, Espartero, cleared the Carlists from the Basque Provinces and closed the Jesuit houses. By the time of the revolution of 1848 there were none but a few disguised and timid survivors of the Society in Spain.

After 1840, in the United-States, the Jesuits sent missionaries among the Indians, and won a great affection among them. By that time the Missouri Province alone had 148 Jesuits, and the Maryland Province 103. Many of the Jesuits went out among the struggling pioneers and led lives of great self-sacrifice. Their energies were, however, mainly concentrated on the aggrandisement of their schools and conciliation of politicians in cities like Washington. They made sure of power in the great Republic they foresaw.

A Jesuit had at last brought a ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Kothen, and Father Beckx was confessor to the Duchess at Vienna — and secret agent of the Society. He writes in 1837 that their enemies are very powerful; the Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden to teach. The Tyrol was opened to them in 1838, and from their old college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools.

In Switzerland 1836 when the second revolutionary wave was passing over Europe, the Radicals won power in the majority of the cantons (including Lucerne, Freiburg, and Solothurn). They were not yet in a position to dislodge the Jesuits, but there was constant friction, and a serious struggle for the federal authority began. The aim of the Radicals was to capture and strengthen the federal government, and expel the Jesuits (and other religions) from the whole of Switzerland. In 1844 the struggle became more violent. The Jesuits of Valais refusing to admit government control of their schools, a band of armed Radicals marched upon Sion and had to be defeated by the armed inhabitants. In the same year the Jesuits entered Lucerne for the first time. A wealthy Catholic farmer named Leu threw all his energy into their cause, and the Jesuits aided by sending a preacher occasionally to show, by suave and conciliatory sermons, that the suspicion of them was wholly unfounded. In face of a storm of Protestant and Radical threats the Council decided to admit the Jesuits. There now spread through the country a struggle of passion which was soon to culminate in a deadly civil war.

Leu was murdered, and Catholics and Radicals faced each other with intense hatred. The war that followed was a religious war, and mainly a war over the Jesuits. In the spring of 1845 it was announced that an army of 11,000 Radicals was marching on Lucerne. The Catholic Confederation sent round the fiery cross, and gathered an army sufficiently strong to defeat and scatter the Radicals. It was over the corpses of these opponents that the Jesuits entered Lucerne and began to teach, with passion still seething on every side. A graver struggle impended, and both sides hastily organised. The seven Catholic cantons (to whose enterprise the French Jesuits contributed 98,000 francs) formed a Sonderbund [Separate Alliance], and aimed at setting up a Catholic Republic. The Federal Diet at Berne ordered them to dissolve, and when they refused, pitted the federal army against the Catholic troops. A bloody and disastrous war ended in a victory for the federal troops in 1847, the Sonderbund was destroyed, and the Jesuits (with the other religious orders) were excluded from Switzerland by the Constitution of 1848. The Jesuits had not waited for the troops to enter Freiburg and Lucerne; they had fled to the Tyrol and Austria.

After 1830 the Jesuits literally overran Belgium; they numbered 117 in 1834, and 454 in 1845. After that date came the great revolutionary storm of 1848, and Belgium was almost the one land in which the hunted Jesuits could find refuge. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was too prudent a Protestant to interfere with them, and from the Belgian frontier they maintained the strength of their struggling colleagues in France. In Holland they were treated with leniency by the successor of William; and, when the storm broke upon their German colleagues in 1872, they were able to receive the refugees and maintain houses on the frontier for the invasion of Germany.

In France Charles X., the beloved friend and supporter of the Jesuits, having been banished, they turned in fright. Knowing full well what incontestible claims they had to be the objects of the vengeance of the people, they disappeared hastily, left France, and fled to other countries — where their fellows pursued the same work of destruction, but more prudently and more successfully than they had done in France.

A short while after, when the indignation of the people was calmed, they came again, humble and creeping as a serpent in the grass. Seeing that Louis Philippe constituted himself the murderer of liberal ideas, they offered him their services — which services he secretly accepted, with promises of gratitude and reward. And why did Louis Philippe accept these services? Because, being King against the will of the French people, and against his promises of a republican government, and his throne resting on corruption, secret observation, and bayonets, he wanted agents and spies in all the steps of the social scale, which honorable office no one was more able to fulfil than the Jesuits, and the secular clergy under their direction.

Louis Philippe redeemed faithfully his promises to the Jesuits. Even though the Assembly of Representatives had renewed the decree of their expulsion; though, many times, the Representatives had complained of the non-execution of this law; though the Jesuits had not colleges, at least openly, they divided France (as an owner his property) into two provinces, the one in the North with Paris as its centre, the other in the South with Lyons as its centre. They possessed, in all large cities, houses of Professed, or of Missionaries, or of Noviciate. From these points, they influenced, as now, the choice of the civil officers. How were they allowed it? Because, running through all France to preach sermons, novenas, retreats, and missions — having in their houses registered, the amount of all the private fortunes — knowing, from the bishops, from the priests, and devotees, the political and religious opinions of the citizens — knowing, by — confession, all political movements, all the differences between individuals all the intimate secrets of families, they consequently were more able than any one else of the spies, to give exact information to Louis Philippe.

From their houses they regulated appointments to the bishoprics, for, being the representatives, the support, and advanced guard of Papacy, (as they style themselves), besides, being in France like the "Wandering Jew," (Eugene-Sue had lashed them with his 'Juif Errant'), they were able to choose for the bishoprics, the priests most devoted to their principles. As the Government appointed the bishops, they informed the Ambassador of the Pope, in Paris, who secretly presented their candidates to the King, who admitted them always. Hence, who are the Bishops of France? Some, the creatures of political leaders; and the most of them, the friends of the Jesuits, and Jesuits of the short gown themselves.

What became of the consequences of all these intrigues? The priests — fashioned by the bishops — held and still hold the doctrines of the Jesuits, are Jesuits of the short gown, and lead the population in that way. In France, Jesuitism runs in all the veins and arteries of society, and, if this blood is not purified from all these hostile and deadly elements, the Republic will never grow up: she will fall; for among thirty-five millions of inhabitants, only five millions, and perhaps less, are free of Jesuitism, while all the remainder are led, directly or indirectly, by this Machiavelistic organization. Thus the Jesuits are the majority; by the universal suffrage they send illiberal Representatives to the General Assembly, and Jesuitical laws are passed.

In 1845 one of the French Jesuit treasurers embezzled the funds entrusted to him, and they imprudently prosecuted. In the controversy which followed it was made plain that there were two hundred members of the forbidden Society in France, and their expulsion was stormily demanded. In the end Jesuit General Roothaan submitted to his French subjects that it was expedient to dissolve their chief communities, — at Paris, St.Acheul, Lyons, and Avignon, — and they once more retreated sullenly from the field.

Jesuits spread again over the foreign missions. After 1830 especially, when their number had increased, they began to regain their lost Provinces. In 1845, of 5000 Jesuits, 518 were missionaries: in 1855 there were 111O on the missions: in 1884 they counted 2575 on the missions.

Pope Gregory died in the year 1846 and Mastai Ferretti ascended the throne and took the name of Pius IX.

The fearful storm of 1848 broke and revolution was seething throughout Europe. The Jesuits had only recently been forced to retire from France, so that the outbreak in that country affected them little. But the storm passed on to Austria and Italy, even Rome, and drove the Jesuits before it. Naturally; there were no more vehement opponents in Europe of the new age which the revolutionary movement represented. They had themselves traced the revolutionary spirit to their temporary absence from the schools of Europe, and the revolutionaries (this was mainly a middle-class movement to secure liberty of opinion and other elementary political rights) concluded that the reign of terror had had their support. So from Rhineland, Austria, Galicia, Venice, Turin, Rome, Naples, and Sicily — the only Provinces of the Society which seemed secure — the Jesuits were driven by armed and angry crowds, and a vast colony of bewildered refugees shuddered in Belgium.

The Emperor of Austria was forced on 7th May to sign their expulsion from the whole of his empire, but it was in Italy that they suffered most. Since 1840 the authorities of the Society had received a succession of painful shocks. The Carlists had lost and the fathers had been driven from Spain: in 1845 they had been forced to dissolve the communities in France: in 1847 the Swiss Catholics had lost, and the Jesuit houses had been wrecked. They had attached themselves everywhere to losing causes. Manning was in Rome in the winter 1847-48, and his diary records the coming of the revolution to Rome, and flight of the Jesuits. Then, in January and February 1848, news came that the revolutionaries had triumphed in Sicily and Naples, and the Jesuits were flying north. By March the Jesuits at Rome were ready to fly at a moment’s notice. On 29th March they were expelled; and in the same month the Viennese conquered their Emperor, the Venetians rebelled and drove out the Jesuits, and the Piedmontese won a Liberal Constitution from Charles Albert.

The revolution of 1848 seem to have in most countries only a temporary triumph, and in the course of 1849 and 1850 the Jesuits returned to their provinces. In very many places they returned to find their comfortable home a heap of ruins, but the storm had had one consoling effect. It had proved that the Jesuits were the chief enemies of Liberalism, and to the Jesuits must be entrusted the task of extinguishing such sparks as remained of the revolutionary fire. Pius IX. had been driven to Gaeta, while the Romans set up their short-lived Triumvirate and declared papal rule at an end. He returned to Rome in the spring of 1850, when French troops had cleared out his opponents, and from that moment he became the closest ally of the Jesuits. His first act was to cannonise several members of the Society. He took a Jesuit confessor, and, with the aid of Cardinal Antonelli and the Society, set up the selfish and repressive system which the English ambassador described as “the opprobrium of Europe.”

At last, it seemed, the spectre of revolution was definitively laid in Europe, and a prospect of real restoration lay before the Society. At Rome the Jesuits had enormous power. Their influence is seen in the declaration of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the appalling Encyclical against modern culture and aspirations of 1864. To them in 1866 the Pope entrusted his chief organ, the Civilta Cattolica, and they had a large part in agitating for, and ultimately passing, the declaration that the Pope is infallible in 1870. During all this period they controlled Catholic culture, if not the Papacy. Their power was at the same time restored in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, so that Italy (except Piedmont) was covered with their colleges and residences. In Austria the Emperor, embittered by his hour of humiliation, now opened the whole of his dominions to them, and they collected fathers from all parts of the world to come and restore the prosperity of the Austrian Province. In Belgium they prospered luxuriantly; and they made quiet and stealthy progress in Holland, Bavaria, Switzerland, Saxony, and Prussia, where they were not authorised. In France Napoleon III. cancelled the decrees against them, and cherished them as one of the supports of his throne. In England they found a friend in Wiseman and made rapid progress; in the United States they were growing with the phenomenal growth of the population. The age of trouble was over. The sage old fathers at the Gesh and the Roman College saw chaos returning to order.

In Switzerland the obstinacy of the Jesuits in asserting their rights had been one of the chief causes of a civil war.

(REMINDER: BELOW IS FROM AN 1851 WORK WRITTEN A DOZEN YEARS BEFORE THE UNITED-STATES CIVIL WAR)
(from the work titled: Americans Warned of Jesuitism Or The Jesuits Unveiled, by John Claudius Pitrat)

The Jesuits were over all the Republic, preaching, confessing, apparently without political views, but intriguing, plotting secretly, publishing at one time that they did not care for public affairs, and at another that they were Republicans: aiming at what? To deceive by those fair words and this apparently inoffensive behavior, the Protestants, who, too credulous, began to forget their former mischiefs, admitted them into their parlors and fraternized with them. They held colleges in which they educated a large number of youth, and to which all denominations of believers sent their children. To these colleges flocked together, from all points of France, the nobles and aristocrats, though the teaching of the Jesuits being inferior to that of the French University, they were unable to graduate in France.

All appeared quiet in Switzerland. The Jesuits and other religious societies were looked upon as they are now in the Union. But, in time, they had wrought upon seven Cantons which they ruled conjointly with the secular clergy. Suddenly they fired-up these people; at first, secretly by spies and emissaries; then, in the confessional; going themselves among families in order to harangue them; mounting to the sacred desk not to preach peace, fraternity, and the word of Christ, but to paint the Protestants as enemies and oppressors.

When all was ready — when they had enlisted more than forty thousand men — when they no longer doubted of their success, they called to arms these unfortunate and misled Catholics, and organized them into an army. Thirteen Protestant Cantons being awakened, rise as a single man and rush to arms. A civil and religious war is threatened. The Pope is entreated to pacify the country, by recalling the Jesuits from Switzerland. This prayer is useless, he is their Superior, their head; they had but obeyed him in stirring up the Catholics, in calling them to arms; even he felt impatient to see them conquerors, to increase his power in Switzerland, to oppress fearlessly the Protestants — as he does directly in Italy, and indirectly, as in the Catholic countries — and after a while to impose upon them by the sword the Romish belief. Consequently, the Pope did not recall the Jesuits, and answered in the customary style and formula of the Papal Court — that he regretted with all his heart, these deplorable events (Rome changed by the Pope into a butcher's shop proved lately the sincerity of his feelings) — that he would pray God to withhold his justice and wrath — that he would use all the means in his power for the pacification of Switzerland.

Seeing that the Pope fulfilled none of his promises, though the armies advanced against each other, the Government of the Republic sent to Rome courier after courier, to represent the horror of a war, which was about to be a general massacre: in which fellow-christians and fellow-citizens, acquaintances, friends, kindred, fathers, and sons, were about to kill one another. But all was useless, for the Papal promises had been politic and deceitful. Also he answered — "that he prayed God and had ordered prayers to God — that both he and the General of the Society had deliberated on the recall of the Jesuits — that those Reverend Fathers who are apostles of peace and fraternity, would certainly, and heartily, sacrifice themselves to the general welfare — that since to leave Switzerland was an event calculated to calm this social tempest, and bring safety to the Republic, they would imitate Judas sacrificing his own life for the public salvation!"

Whilst barns, cottages, and houses, were the prey of the flames, the armies met; the cannons roared and mowed down entire lines of soldiers. Bloody battles were fought. Many small towns were burned. Freiburg, the general quarter of the Jesuits, the bulwark of the Catholic army, was besieged. In the suburbs and around the city the blood flowed and reddened the waters of the torrents. Several places, chiefly Lucerne, were rather butcher shops than fields of battle. Whilst these dreadful events were going on, where were the secular clergy, the Ligonans, and other Romish religious societies? In the ranks of the Catholic army? No They had said that their Ecclesiastical and Monacal dress forbade them to carry arms; that their rules and discipline compelled them to avoid the effusion of human blood. Then, where were they? In the military hospitals, at tending to the bodies and souls of the wounded and the dying? No. They had referred, as a pretext, to the incompatibility between the calmness and peacefulness of their sacerdotal and monastical life and the tumult of camps — they either hid themselves, or were going secretlv to Germany, to Italy, to Rome.... in tending to come again triumphantly after victory, and to rest secure and safe in case of a defeat.

Where were at least the Jesuits? Fighting, dying, killed? No. They were passing through the battalions of the Protestant army insultingly, escorted, guarded by the French ambassador, who had been ordered to save them by Louis Philippe, King of France, friend of the Pope and of the Jesuits, to whom he was grateful because they gave a powerful support to his tyranny.

What was done in Roman Catholic Europe, whilst the Catholics and Protestants, either assassinated each other in darkness or killed one another on the field of battle? The Pope, the religious societies, the Bishops and priests prayed and ordered prayers for the triumph of the Catholic army. All over France, cheerfully the Jesuits cursed in their newsletters and from the pulpit the Protestant army, said masses, confessed, gave communion, ordered novena and retreats, blessed the people with the holy sacrament, and recited public and secret prayers, anxious to call down on the Protestants all the maledictions of heaven, and, on the Catholics, all its blessings. They organized subscriptions of every kind, desirous to send them money, arms, and soldiers. Their money, arms, and soldiers were useless, God did not listen to their wishes and supplications, but blessed the arms of the Protestants: the Catholics, blind and unhappy victims of Jesuitical and Papal fanaticism, ambition, hypocrisy, and cruelty, were completely routed.

At length, this monstrous war reached its end. Thanks to the mercy of the conquerors, human blood ceased to flow; but the supplies of vegetables, wheat, and meat, having been either burned or wasted, entire families died with hunger. The barns, cottages, and houses having been consumed by the flames, and all the mountains, valleys, and plains being buried under a deep snow for these dreadful events took place in January, which is, in Switzerland, the coldest month of winter — a great many people were frozen to death. The most of the Catholics, having, thwarted a considerable amount of money to purchase the ammunition for the war, or lost their dwellings, the most of the citizens of the seven Catholic Cantons were ruined, or, at least, impoverished. In twenty Cantons, the families having met again and having counted themselves, found that either one or several of their members, were dead on the field of battle.

All Switzerland was in mourning. Foreign commercial relations having been interrupted, manufactures were stopped, and the mechanics were without work and bread. The capitalists and rich proprietors having fled to France, money had disappeared. A shower of bankruptcies having ruined many commercial houses, and cast down the internal commerce, business transactions had ceased. As a consequence of so many unhappy events, the provision markets were insufficiently furnished, then a famished crowd wandered here and there, either begging or stealing food, and, withal, clothes with which to shelter them against the deadly cold. More than fifteen thousand families wept over their dead, and looked revengefully at their murderers. The social relations were rare and insincere. The armies fought no longer, but a black hatred, a thirst for vengeance still filled their hearts and swelled daily. The Catholic and Protestant Cantons looked hostilely at one another: and, who can foresee the end of such resentment? God alone.

Fortunately, the Protestants, who, being the majority, are more powerful, knew full well that the Catholics had been misled, had been the victims of the secular clergy, Romish religious societies, of the Jesuits and Pope. They spared their vanquished enemies, and, faithful to the maxims of Christ, forgave the leaders of this disastrous war. They pledged themselves to take efficacious means to prevent its renewal, and to defray the expenses which it had made necessary. Consequently, they shut a great many convents, chiefly those of the Jesuits, their colleges, and expelled these Fathers from Switzerland. They taxed the immense monacal property, sold much of it, and imposed fines upon the richest, the most influential and criminal leaders among the secular clergy.

Americans, allow me to submit to you some reflections on these deplorable and mournful events. Perhaps they are wrong, perhaps right. Whatever they may be, weigh them and judge for yourselves.

(REMINDER: THIS IS FROM AN 1851 WORK WRITTEN A DOZEN YEARS BEFORE THE UNITED-STATES CIVIL WAR)
The parallel between Switzerland and what later became history a dozen years later in the United-States with the civil war is remarkable. Another former Roman-Catholic Priest, Charles Chiniquy writes a revealing book in 1885 — Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, detailing Abraham-Lincoln's assassination by the hand of the Jesuits, and their part in the U.S. civil war. He also reminds us that, the Pope of Rome, PIUS IX, is the only crowned prince in the whole world to have publicly shaken hands with Jeff Davis, the leader of the Southern States, and proclaim him President of a legitimate government. That same Pope was later declared infallible in 1870, and all future Popes aswell, on doctrines of faith.

In the same year 1848, France, Austria, Prussia, Hungary, the Roman States, the Kingdom of both the Sicilies, and several Dukedoms of Italy, cast off the shroud and arose from the tomb in which kings, emperors, and the Romish priesthood had buried them. They protested solemnly against their oppressors, and claimed their rights. But their tyrants answered them by riveting their chains: persecuted, imprisoned, and killed the leaders in the holy cause. Then the people, in accordance with the most sacred of human and divine rights, ran to arms, and defied the numberless soldiers of their tyrants. A general and wonderful battle was about to be fought between the democratic and aristocratic principles; between oppressors and the oppressed; between tyrants and victims; between intellectual, moral, social, and religious tyranny, and intellectual, moral, social, and religious liberty.

But, how unhappy were to be the results of these heroical struggles for justice and humanity! How fruitlessly several hundred thousands of its defenders were about to fall under the grape shot or the axes of Kings, Emperors, and Pope! — Under the grape shot or axes of Kings, Emperors, and Pope? What say I? They were to compel, under pain of death, their soldiers, children of the people, to be butchers of their oppressed brothers who fought for the common deliverance.

Oh, dreadful mystery! How is it possible, that the tyrant —, aided by the priesthood, could have blinded the Catholics to such a degree, as to induce them, in the name of God, to support their despotism in killing one another!

In this war, the cities of Austria, Prussia, Italy and Hungary, were to swim in blood. In these countries, the towns were to be burned, and the harvests wasted; innumerable dead bodies were about to cover the fields. Nevertheless, these unfortunate nations were about to fall deeper into the tomb of their former political, social, and religious slavery, until they rise again, and obtain definitively their sacred rights. Alas! when? God only knows.

In this war, France was to expel a King, who, for eighteen years, had dishonored her in the eyes of nations; ruined her agriculture; destroyed her foreign and internal commerce; who held his throne by treason; kept it, and intended to bequeath it to his family, only by corruption; who, sheltered by five hundred thousand bayonets, trampled on her institutions, her rights, her constitution, and exhausted her by an annual budget, the incredible amount of which was 150,000,000 of francs — of which a great part slided into his own hands, into those of his satelites, of his numberless spies, and of more than 160,000 Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Grand Vicars, Canons, Chaplains, Curates, Vicars, Monks, Nuns, and even Jesuits.

In this war, Rome was to dethrone the Pope, who, impiously, in the name of Christ, tyrannised over the people; This autocrat, this tyrant in the right of God, was to be cast down, and the great city to restore its old republic The oppressed were to breathe a moment; but he was, a short time after, to mount his throne again on bloody steps.

In the meantime, when these mournful events were going on, where were the Jesuits, and what were they doing ? They, at first, either left the agitated countries, or effectually concealed themselves, for they knew, full well, that being foes of the people, they had reason to fear their resentment and justice. A few months before, they were noisy in the political world, stirring up the Catholics of Switzerland against the Protestants. Afterwards they were writing in their averred and secret press that they did not care for the affairs of the world, denying without shame before the eyes of all Europe, which had been witnesses of their criminal behavior, that they had caused this religious and civil war. They more closely surrounded the kings and emperors, who were their sole hope, because they had been expelled from the main European republic.

When the Jesuits saw the King of Naples — whom they confessed, and to whom they administered communion — assassinating by the most infamous treason and cruelty, both in the streets and houses, about fifteen thousand citizens who were inoffensive, and guilty only of being ardent democrats, and wishing a liberal constitution — when they saw him and the King of Prussia stifling democracy, drowning their kingdoms in the blood of its most brave defenders, and the Emperor of Austria heaping the innumerable bodies of heroes on the ruins and ashes of the villages, towns, and cities of Austria, of Italy, and Hungary, then these Fathers commenced clapping hands and congratulating them celebrating high masses, and singing "Te Deums" of thanksgiving in the churches: promising to perpetuate their power in bringing up youth with aristocratic principles, and in engraving indelibly upon the minds of the people, through the catechism, administration of sacraments, sacred desk and confessional, 'that kings and emperors reign, order and govern in the name of God — that to disobey them, to rebel against them, to cast off their authority, to wish a republican government, or any other form of government determined by the people, are crimes against God, because he has created the people for kings and emperors, and not them for the people.'

We have seen, and still see now, how heartily all these tyrants accepted their proposals. They immediately granted to the Jesuits money, honors, privileges, and colleges; and these worthy fathers occupy now, peaceably and firmly, a seat of distinction near their thrones, and are the strongest supports of their despotism.

However, the Pope, the first head of the Jesuits, was in Gaeta, far from his palaces and beloved throne. He bade them by filial love and their vows of obedience, to stir up the Catholic countries that he might be throned again. Then, these tender and devoted sons of their father, His Holiness, united with the other Romish religious societies, with the bishops and priests. All this crowd of men, devoted body and soul to His Holiness, began to move heaven and earth. From their pulpits they represented the Democrats of Rome as villains, and the Pope as a martyr in the Holy cause of Catholicism — adding, that he was in the most extreme distress and poverty. They collected money to relieve the holy indigent, who,in Gaeta, received, each month, only about five hundred thousand dollars, by dispensations, indulgences, privileges, without reckoning what he harvested by his other countless means of winning money — holy indigent, who, evidently, was most needy, and wanted even the necessities of life.

Then His Holiness, this martyr in the cause of the religion of Christ — this holy indigent — this being, half God, half man, who stands between heaven and earth to unite them — this being whom mankind and the angels admire, so divine is his power this being, I say, was relieved; he had at least the necessaries of life, but he wanted to be re-established in his former tyranny. For that purpose, the Jesuits intended, at first, to stir up Ireland, and to enlist there an army of about fifty thousand volunteers. But, England was a Protestant country; how to obtain her consent? where to find a fleet? Then, they availed themselves of two circumstances.

In France, soon after the proclamation of the Republic, they had appeared again in exclaiming, conjointly with the bishops and priests, that they were Republicans — though they together sent to the National Assembly aristocratical representatives. Knowing full well that to seduce the President was very easy, and that through him they would reach their aim, they surrounded him, saying "that his uncle Napoleon had bequeathed him his genius and star —; that he was the hope of Catholicism and France — that all Europe looked at him and trusted in him to restore social order, to preserve the nations from the Democrats — those anarchists who disturb the world — that they would aid him to reach the imperial throne, but, on condition that he would restore the Pope to this temporal kingdom."

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the late Emperor by the same name, who is as low minded as his uncle was a sublime genius, who is blind enough to flatter himself with ambitious, dreams, and thus, leading France straight to a dreaded revolution, and perhaps to anarchy —, was flattered by these proposals. He accepted them; was approved by his ministers, who were avowed Jesuits of the short gownl; and found ali echlo in the National Assembly, of which the majority was anti-republican. A decree of war passed. Eight millions of dollars were allowed for the first expenses of the war, and a powerful army was to be sent to Italy, to re-establish the most dreadful and sacrilegious tyranny.

Then the French government presented as strange and as shameful a spectacle as had ever blotted the page of history, namely, The French and Roman Republics are proclaimed among the barricades, they are accepted by the people and ratified by their representatives — the democratic principle generates them — they are born at the same time and from the same mother, freedom. Notwithstanding, the French Republic is to stifle, to kill her sister, who, far from regarding her as her murderer, extends her arms towards her, as being more powerful to protect her cradle and life.

As soon as the French Republic had made all ready for the murder of the Roman Republic, she sent an army against Rome. Then, the French soldiers, though for the most part Republicans in mind and heart, though friends and brothers of the Roman democrats, were compelled by military discipline to go kill their political friends and brothers, to die themselves by thousands — for what purpose? To cast down a Republic which they admired and loved; to crown again a tyrant whom they abhorred, the Pope; to dishonor their own country, which they worship for the glory of which they would have heartily shed every drop of their blood.

The restoration of the Pope to his tyrannical throne, is undoubtedly a very remarkable master-piece of the politics and artfulness of the bishops, but chiefly of the Jesuits, who, now, have acquired the greatest title to the paternal affection of the Papacy. Since that time how happily the Jesuits enjoy themselves near this beloved throne; chiefly in reflecting on their political situation in the world!

Really, they may rejoice. Their riches are countless. Their wealth is almost boundless. They rule all Italy. Spain has been her property for centuries. They are influential in Portugal, demigods in Ireland, Belgium, Savoy, Piedmont, Sardinii, Austria, and her dependencies. They are triumphant in lisia, and peaceably settled in almost all Germany, and the northern European kingdoms. In France, they hold the majority in the National Assembly, and will likely be permitted, in a short time, to establish their colleges. They are in favor in Russia, and are growing up numerous and influential in England and Scotland. Though expelled from Switzerland, they secretly penetrate there, concealing their religious gown, working in darkness upon the Catholics, and repairing, slowly, but prudently and efficaciously, their losses. The greatest part of Asia, of South and North America, are opened to them, and they have there colleges and missions, (even in California,) by which they gain money and the means of keeping the people in deep ignorance, fanaticism, superstition, and wonderful immorality.

The United States still is to them a wild field — a field covered with thorns, and unprepared to receive the seed of their principles; but they work it so rapidly, so indefatigably, that they succeed beyond all their hopes. Knowing too well that this country is the richest among all; that by its geographical position, by the fertility and boundless extent of its lands, by its foreign and internal commerce, and above all, by its wisely liberal institutions, it is destined to be very soon the head of the world — knowing all this, the Jesuits prepare to locate in the United-States their head-quarters. And, in what time, under what circumstances will they prepare to locate here their head quarters? When Democracy, in Europe — and it must infallibly happen — shall expel ignorance, fanaticism, superstition, tyranny, and eject the Jesuits who are the supporters and apostles of these evils.

At that time, Americans, you will see, but too late, what is Jesuitism: what monstrous tree will be produced by the Jesuitical seed which you are now so carefully cherishing. You will see, when this Jesuitical tree shall cover all the United States with its numberless branches, whether or not its shade is deadly to morality, to religion, to peace among families and citizens, to the democratic principles, and to your republic.

Yet, this is fated to happen, for they already have not only a footing on your soil, but they are rich, have numerous missions, public schools and colleges, rule a powerful mass of people, and, even though remaining concealed behind the curtain, influence the elections. From these considerations, we know that the Jesuits rejoice in their political position in all the world; above all, in the prospect of their future condition in the United States.

U.S. Civil War — commentary from Abraham-Lincoln, August 1861, from the book titled, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.

The age of their trouble was apparently over. The sage old Jesuit fathers at the Gesh and the Roman College saw chaos returning to order. At the beginning of this happier turn of their fortunes, Jesuit General Roothaan died, and Beckx, the son of a Belgian shoemaker, was elected General.

Victor Emmanuel began to extend his rule over Italy. From that time until 1870 the Society heard of nothing but disaster. In 1860 Victor Emmanuel annexed Tuscany, Emilia, and Romagna, and the Jesuits were driven from their homes into the Papal States. In the same year, May 1860, Garibaldi leads a 1,000 man volunteer guerrilla army and landed in Sicily, put an end to the brutal rule of the Catholic King, and ejected the 300 Jesuits from their palatial college at Palermo and other residences. After 3 months of fighting Sicily is taken. In the autumn he entered Naples, and swept further hundreds of the Jesuits before him. We learn from a letter of protest which Father Beckx addressed to Victor Emmanuel, that in the two years the Society had lost 3 institutions in Lombardy, 6 in Modena, 11 in the Papal States, 19 in Naples, and 15 in Sicily. Of 308 Jesuits in their most prosperous Province of Sicily only 8 aged and ailing fathers were allowed to remain on the island. Of 5500 members of the Society no less than 1500 were homeless, and were not even allowed to find shelter in Catholic houses in their native Provinces.

Italy is united under the House of Savoy, Victor Emmanuel II is proclaimed the first king of Italy, but the unification is by no means complete. Not included in the new kingdom is the Papal possession of Rome.

Emperor Napoleon I had taken the Papal States — territory in central Italy ruled by the Papacy — from the Pope in 1809. They were restored to the Pontiff by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

Now, the Papal States (or States of the Church) are seized by the armies of Victor Emmanuel and annexed to Italy. The Church's temporal power is shattered! Only Rome — garrisoned by French troops — remains under Papal sovereignty. France considers herself the protector of the Papacy. Garibaldi still dreams of Rome as the capital of the new united Italy. In 1862, he raises a force to capture Rome and annex it to the Italian kingdom. But Victor Emmanuel, desirous of avoiding a conflict with France, orders his own forces to stop Garibaldi. Four years later Garibaldi tries again, but is defeated by Papal and French forces.

The Austrians were ejected from Venice, and further scores of Jesuits were driven from their homes.

The Jesuits were again banished from Spain, to which they had returned under Isabella II.

There was now a great concentration of Jesuits in Rome and the remaining Papal States, and desperate efforts were made to secure that at least this remnant of earthly principality should remain loyal to the Pope. To the great joy of the Jesuits an Ecumenical Council gathered at the Vatican, and the design of declaring the Pope personally infallible in matters of faith or morals was eagerly pressed. In the long and heated conflict of affirming bishops and denying bishops, and bishops who thought a declaration inexpedient, the Jesuits were very active, scorning the idea that it could be imprudent to enhance the power of the Pope. Then came the Franco-German War, the withdrawal of the one Catholic force (France) which could save Rome from Victor Emmanuel, and the clouds gathered more thickly than ever. The Jesuits had declared their opinion of the “usurper” too freely to have any illusion as to the issue.

The Pope is now officially considered the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law. Though weak in the temporal sphere, the Papacy is asserting its strength in the spiritual realm. Pope Pius had convoked the first Vatican Council in 1869. The next year it declared Papal infallibility as a formal article of Catholic belief. This dogma holds that when a Pope speaks officially (ex cathedra ) to the universal Church on a doctrine of faith or morals, he cannot err.

Bismarck's Ultimate Goal — that of uniting all Germany under Prussian leadership — has still not been achieved. His next move will be to bring the south German states into final union with the Prussian-led North German Confederation. He will accomplish this by provoking a war with France. After making sure that Russia will remain neutral in any Franco-German conflict, Bismarck uses the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince to the throne of Spain to goad France into war.

Napoleon III of France declares war on Prussia on July 19, 1870 — just as the Iron Chancellor Bismarck had hoped. The ambitions of the two men have come to a clash. Thus begins the Franco-Prussian War.

As Bismarck had anticipated, German states side with Prussia against France. Fighting side by side against the armies of Napoleon III, Germans of the north and south develop a sense of camaraderie and oneness — another step toward the unification of all Germany.

The German offensive is planned brilliantly by General Helmuth von Moltke. On September 1, 1870 Prussia defeats France at the battle of Sedan. Napoleon III surrenders himself to the Prussians. Paris itself is captured on January 28, 1871.

The Franco-Prussian War brings about a strong feeling among German states for a closer union. The south German states decide to unite with the North German Confederation. The birth of the German Empire coincided with the declaration of papal infallibility.

On January 18, 1871, King William I of Prussia is proclaimed German Emperor (Deutscher Kaiser) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles near Paris. North and South Germany are united into a single Reich, or Empire. Bismarck has succeeded in consolidating Germany under the Prussian Hohenzollerns! Bismarck assumes the office of Reich Chancellor and is made a prince.

Papal Temper Tantrums
With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III's troops in Rome return home. For years they had maintained the temporal power of the Papacy over that city. Now Rome is virtually defenseless.

On September 20, 1870, the forces of Victor Emmanuel II enter Rome. The "Eternal City" is taken by Italian troops in the name of the Kingdom of Italy. In October, Romans vote overwhelmingly to be a come part of the Italian kingdom. Rome officially becomes the capital of a united Italy on July 2, 1871.

After 1500 years, Rome is again the capital of Italy! But what of the Papacy? Victor Emmanuel II and the Pope, those two sovereigns dwelt side by side in Rome until their death in 1878 without ever meeting (they died within a month of each other).

The Pope, Pius IX (1846-1878), has been stripped of temporal power by troops of the Kingdom of Italy. He excommunicates the invaders, declares himself a self-imposed prisoner in the Vatican and refuses to recognize the new kingdom. (Like a child with a temper tantrum he locks himself within the walls of the vatican.) His successors, too, will become voluntary prisoners in their own palace. It will be six decades before a reconciliation is effected; until the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which consisted of 3 historic documents, is signed by Benito-Mussolini (later he allies himself to Hitler) who represents the king and Cardinal Gasparri who represents the Pope.

Struggle for Power in Germany
This German Reich is ruled by a Protestant dynasty, the Hohenzollerns. Bismarck seeks to strengthen the unity of the Reich by limiting the power of the Catholic Church within Germany. He accuses Catholic elements within the Reich of political separatism, and labels them a threat to the unified German state. For some years the Jesuits had made quiet, but considerable, progress in Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, as well as Austria. They had opened a number of colleges at Cologne and in the Rhine Province, always a rich field for their work, and had institutions at Posen, Miinster, Metz, Mayence, Bonn, Strassburg, Essen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Marienthal, Ratisbon, and many other places.

The growth of a more virile and honest culture among the secular clergy, and many of the best Catholic scholars were amazed at the papal claim of infallibility. Politicians and Protestants generally were concerned about this victory of ultramontanism, and attributed it largely to the intrigues of the Jesuits. Even before 1870 the Catholic statesmen of Bavaria were in conflict with the Church over its extreme pretensions. When, in 1870, two more Catholic Provinces were added to Germany, bringing its Catholic population up to fifteen million, Bismarck watched attentively every step in the growth of ultramontanism. Even Austria threatened to break its Concordat with the Papacy when the news of the declaration of infallibility arrived. Over Protestant Germany a feeling of intense hostility spread, and the Old Catholics joined in the outcry.

Thus begins the so-called Kulturkampf (1871-1887), the Catholics against the Government, the conflict between Prussia and the Church of Rome. It is a struggle between two rival cultures and powers — the Catholic Church and the secular state. Bismarck's objective is to wipe out the Vatican's political influence within the Reich. Petitions for the expulsion of the Jesuits began to reach the Reichstag, and the Government proceeded to act. A measure was debated in the Reichstag in June 1872, and on the 4th of July it was signed and promulgated. Six months were allowed for the settlement of their affairs, and in the course of that time the whole of their communities were dissolved. As communities they retired upon Switzerland, Austria, Holland, and Belgium, but the law permitted them to enter the Empire as individual citizens, and Bismarck knew that it availed little to expel Jesuits with a fork. “Exile” had no effect on their growth and prosperity. What contributed mainly to the ending of Kulturkampf was that Bismarck saw a “red terror” growing more rapidly and threateningly than the “black terror,” and he made peace with the Catholic clergy and Rome on the understanding that they would combat Socialism in Germany.

A series of drastic laws are passed to intimidate the Catholic clergy. "What is here at stake is a struggle for power, a struggle as old as the human race, the struggle for power between monarchy and priesthood. That is a struggle for power which has filled the whole of German history," Bismarck declares. Pope Pius dies in 1878 after a pontificate of 32 years — the longest in the history of the Popes. But the Kulturkampf continues, though on a lesser scale, for an other nine ears.

"We are not going to Canossa, either bodily or spiritually!" Bismarck declares, in an allusion to the capitulation of Emperor Henry IV to the Pope at Canossa in 1077.

(Canossa explained)
Pope Gregory VII came to the Papal throne in 1073. He left no doubt as to his position by declaring, "The Pope is the master of Emperors!" Gregory insists that the Pope is above all nations and independent of every temporal sovereign, responsible only to God. Henry IV (1056-1106) is not impressed by such arguments. He becomes embroiled in a bitter dispute with Pope Gregory. Henry defies the Pope, denounces him and attempts to have him deposed. The headstrong Henry ends a letter to Pope Gregory with the curse, "Down, down, to be damned through all the ages!" Gregory is not intimidated. The controversy now escalates. It is a life-and-death struggle between the Papacy and German imperial power! Gregory is determined to free the Church from secular control. He finally excommunicates the unyielding Henry. This action absolves all Henry's subjects from their oaths of allegiance to the Emperor, and triggers a baronial revolt in Germany. Henry's demise appears imminent. He now sees clearly that imperial power depends on the support of the Church. To save his throne, Henry must make peace with the Pope. In January 1077, Henry journeys to a castle at Canossa in northern Italy where Pope Gregory is temporarily staying. For three days the Emperor humiliates himself by standing barefoot and in sackcloth in the snow outside Gregory's window. Gregory finally grants absolution, and Henry is reconciled to the Church. The imperial capitulation at Canossa comes to symbolize the submission of the State to the Church.

At last, in June 1873, a law was published enacting that the monks and religious of all orders must quit Italy. One house was to be reserved at Rome for each order, so that they might communicate with the Vatican, but this privilege was refused to the Jesuits. They were hated by the great majority of the educated Italians, who res called with anger their support of the bloody reigns of Ferdinand of Naples, Ferdinand VII. of Spain, Miguel of Portugal, and Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. They had sided with reaction and lost. There was no general sympathy when, in October, Father Beckx, now a feeble old man of seventy-eight, went sorrowfully to his exile in Florence, and the remaining Italian Jesuits were pensioned and scattered. It was just one hundred years since the Roman Jesuits had been scattered by Clement XIV.

In France the Jesuits had returned to their schools and colleges after the disturbances of 1871, and the Conservative Government permitted them to prosper. A reaction set in in the later seventies, when Gambetta vigorously led the anti-clerical forces and began to denounce the Society. The Catholics had almost succeeded in overthrowing the Republic and enthroning the Duc de Chambord. When in 1877 they went on to demand the employment of French troops for the re-establishment of the Pope in his temporal power, they lost the cause of their Church. From that year Catholicism has decreased in France, shrinking from 30,000,000 to about 5,000,000 followers in thirty years.

Within two years there was an enormous growth of the anti-clerical feeling, especially against the Jesuits. They, and the great majority of the religious orders, had no legal right to existence in France. Only three or four Congregations, of a philanthropic character, were authorised by French law. Yet these useful bodies made no progress, while the unauthorised Congregations held property of the value of 400,000,000 francs. Once more the Jesuits were banished from France, and 2904 members of the Society were added to the number of exiles.

As France was still overwhelmingly Catholic, the successive Governments were unable to enforce the law, and the Jesuits quietly returned to their work. It is enough to say that during the next twenty years, until France had become predominantly non-Catholic and disposed to insist on their exclusion, the 2900 Jesuits actually increased their number; the property of the unauthorised Congregations rose in value from 400,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 francs; the higher education was controlled to a great extent by the Jesuits, whose pupils passed largely into the army and navy.

King Victor Emmanuel II and Pope Pius IX Both Die in 1878. After the sudden death of Victor Emmanuel II in Jan 9, 1878 — Pope Pius IX also dies on the 7 February, 1878. During the Popes closing years the Liberal press had often insinuated that the Italian Government should take a hand in the conclave and occupy the Vatican, but that never actually occured. A new Pope is elected by the cardinals, he will be remembered as Pope LEO XIII and he will reign for 25 years as Pope.

With regard to the Kingdom of Italy, Leo XIII maintained Pius IX's attitude of protest, and continued to insist that Italian Catholics should not vote in Italian elections or hold elected office. He desired complete independence for the Holy See, and consequently its restoration as a real sovereignty. Repeatedly, when distressing incidents took place in Rome, he sent notes to the various governments pointing out the intolerable position in which the Holy See was placed through its subjection to a hostile power.

HUMANUM GENUS — POPE LEO XIII ENCYCLICAL
By 1884 diplomatic relations were renewed between the Vatican and Germany. His 1884 "Humanum Genus" shocked the democratic world and led to considerable distrust of the Vatican's motives among the free nations. The encyclical divided the world into two camps, the Holy Catholic Church which followed Jesus Christ — and then everyone else who, Leo wrote, followed Satan. Specifically, Pope Leo went on to attack and condemn: Free elections — Free public education — Freedom of religion — Freedom of conscience — Freedom of assembly — Freedom of the press — Separation of church and state — The allowance of divorce — Equality before the law.

Two Opposite Parts: The race of man (in Latin, “humanum genus”, hence the title of the encyclical letter), after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.

(Denying that "the Jesuits were his soldiers;" Benedict XIV. called them "Janissaries of the Holy See;" Pope Leo XIII instead publicly condemns the actions of secret societies — as the Jesuits have been proven to be — specifically naming the Freemasons in his encyclical. — (Today the Freemasons are the largest organization of this kind in the entire world.) — The Jesuits have pledged total allegiance to the Pope, the denial of their covert activties, both past and present, empowers their efforts the more. Citizens all over the world who join the ranks of Freemasonry, whether in rebellion against Catholic dotrine or not, would never suspect that its leadership was educated from within the ranks of the foremost secretive society of them all, the Jesuits themselves. The society has in effect cloned itself, and has since appeased public suspicion. By the end of the 20th century the Freemasons will even be renovating official Church buildings such as Cathedrals. The Jesuits have effectively used Freemasonry to further their plans toward their first and only true cause, in service to the Pope, for the sake of the church, to hand him the reins for the mastery of the world in any and all matters, be it political, financial, religious, and spiritual — it all belongs to the Pope, he is the head above everything and everyone else, that is what they aim to achieve. Any other outcome would be deemed a total failure to them.

Freemasons are as devout and reverent in the lodge, as is the Christian in his worship in the sanctuary. There are set prayers, genuflexions, postures, and attitudes, all emphatically religious. There are hymns and odes, it also has a Baptismal service for infants and for youths. It has all the external and essential marks of Religion. Freemasonry has its own distinctive deity whom it worships and adores.

Boulanger became Minister of War in France. His Radical friends soon distrusted him, and the Monarchists and Catholics fanned the popular agitation to have him made Dictator. In this case we have positive and sufficient information of the complicity of the Jesuits. (Count von Hoensbroech wrote an invaluable two volume book Fourteen Years a Jesuit) Count von Hoensbroech, then a young Jesuit, heard from the lips of Father du Lac, the most prominent of the French Jesuits, that he had collected large sums of money for the “Deliverer of France” and the overthrow of the “dirty and impious Republic.”

Boulanger fled, to escape arrest, in 1889, and the Republicans added to the reckoning against the Jesuits. In 1897-99 occurred the famous agitation for the retrial of Dreyfus, and once more the Jesuits ranged themselves on the losing side of tyranny and prejudice. By the end of the century France had become overwhelmingly non-Catholic, and was not disposed to tolerate further the intrigues and wealth of bodies which had no legal existence in the country. The Jesuits, in particular, were a menace to the Republic. The new century opened therefore with an anti-clerical campaign. The Associations’ Bill in 1901 expelled the Jesuits once more from France.

Pope Leo XIII sent a papal delegate, Monsignor Satolli, to represent him at Washington on the occasion of the foundation of the Catholic University of America, which he sponsored.

The death of the Prefect of the Vatican Library Monsignor Carini (25 June, 1895) shortly after some political dispute between France, Italy and "officious" negotiations between the Holy See and the Italian Government through the agency of Monsignor Carini, gave rise that he had been poisoned.

The Popes 1896 bull Apostolicae Curae (on the non-validity of the Anglican orders) declared the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops in Anglican churches (including the Church of England) "absolutely null and utterly void". And yet, in 1903 King Edward VII of England paid the Pope a visit at the Vatican.

His 1899 apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae condemned the heresy called Americanism. American newspapers criticized Pope Leo because they claimed that he was attempting to gain control of American public schools. One cartoonist drew Leo as a fox unable to reach grapes that were labeled for American schools; the caption read "Sour grapes!"

The secrecy of the Society emboldens its apologists to make the most audacious denials of these constant charges of wealth, power, and intrigue, but it constantly happens that some confiscated document or disaffected admirer betrays them. Such an instance may be quoted in connection with the Spanish Jesuits. In 1896 a devout Catholic, a former pupil and employee of the Jesuits, Senor Ceballos y Cruzada, quarrelled with and turned against them. In the little work in which he expounds his grievances (El Imperio del Jesuitismo) he tells us some interesting facts about their wealth and activity. There is in Spain a vast Catholic Society known as the Association of Fathers of Families, which is quite as much concerned with sound politics as sound morals. Senor Ceballos shows how the Jesuits secretly use and direct it for their political aims, and for thwarting rival ecclesiastical bodies. As to their wealth, he says that they have 11 colleges worth from 1,000,000 to 12,000,000 reales each, while their chief house at Loyola has property of incalculable value. At his own college, at Deusto, there were about 300 pupils paying 1500 pesetas a year each; in none of them is education gratuitous. The schooling is very poor and antiquated, and few of their scholars later rise to any distinction. It is curious to know that these wealthy Jesuit institutions have the British flag ready to be hoisted in case of revolution (which they yearly expect).

One of the most singular features of the whole singular story of the Jesuits is that they have increased enormously during this half-century of afflictions. The growth of the Society during the last hundred years.

Year 1838: 3,067 members.

Year 1844: 4,133 members.

Year 1853: 5,209 members.

Year 1861: 7,144 members.

Year 1884: 11,840 members.

Year 1906: 15,661 members.

Year 1912: 16,545 members.

It must be borne in mind always that “members” does not necessarily mean priests.
Rather less than half are priests: the remainder are scholastics or lay coadjutors.

Of those members from 1912, 3531 were on the foreign missions; and the reopening of these fields, under less adventurous conditions, accounts for much of the growth of the Society. The advance of the United States and the British Colonies, with their large percentage of Irish and Italian immigrants, accounts for a good deal of the remainder. The Jesuits of the United States now number 2,300; and there are 373 in Canada and 100 in Australasia.

There are those (i.e. all Jesuits and their admirers) who hold that the Jesuits were never open to grave censure as a body; and there are those who maintain that the Jesuit of the nineteenth or twentieth century is as bad as the Jesuit of the seventeenth, and would poison a pope or forge a cheque complacently in the interest of the Society. A third view is that their heavy and repeated chastisements have made their evil features a thing of history. During the first half of the nineteenth century, however, we have seen that they had no idea of burying their past; they were to co-operate with kings in restoring the old order, and we have not the least ground to think that, had they restored it, they would have used their power otherwise than they did in the seventeenth century.

The Jesuits of Spain, with their political machinations, their sordid legacy-hunting, and their eagerness to support the Spanish Government in the judicial murder of their enemies, are a very different body from the Jesuits of England or Germany or the United States. The Jesuits of Cuba and the Philippines were, until 1898, little different from the more parasitical Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The modern age has affected the Jesuits much as some ancient revolution in the climate of the earth modified its living inhabitants. Where the old tropical conditions more or less linger (say, in Chile or Peru) the Jesuits are hardly changed; and we find the alteration in exact proportion to the environment. There is no change in the inner principles and ideals. “All for the Glory of the Society,” as Mgr. Talbot sardonically translated their Latin motto, is still the ruling principle; the Society remains the Esau of the Roman clerical world. It still chiefly seeks the wealthy and powerful; it is the arch-enemy of progress and liberalism in Catholic theology; its scholarship is singularly undistinguished in proportion to its resources; it embarks on political intrigue, even for the destruction of State-forms, whenever its interest seems to require; it is hated by a very large proportion of the Catholic clergy and laity in every country.

Such has been the past and contemporary history of the Jesuits; of the formidable society which has played and still plays in the political and religious world — from 1541 until our days.