Leonhard Lessius and Cardinal Franzelin were some of the leading
Jesuit theologians; Cornelius a Lapide (1567–1637) represents
their old school of scriptural studies, while their new German
writers are the most advanced of all orthodox higher critics;
the French Louis Bourdaloue (q.v.), the Italian Paolo Segneri
(1624–1694), and the Portuguese Antonio Vieyra (1608–1697)
represent their best pulpit orators; while of the many mathematicians
and astronomers produced by the Society Angelo Secchi,
Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich and G. B. Beccaria are conspicuous,
and in modern times Stephen Joseph Perry (1833–1889), director
of the Stonyhurst College observatory, took a high rank among
men of science. Their boldest and most original thinker, Denis
Petau, so many years neglected, is now, by inspiring Cardinal
Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, producing
a permanent influence over the current of human thought.
The Jesuits have produced no Aquinas, no Anselm, no Bacon,
no Richelieu. Men whom they trained, and who broke loose
from their teaching, Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, have powerfully
affected the philosophical and religious beliefs of great
masses of mankind; but respectable mediocrity is the brand on
the long list of Jesuit names in the catalogues of Alegambe and
De Backer. This is doubtless due in great measure to the destructive
process of scooping out the will of the Jesuit novice, to replace
it with that of his superior (as a watchmaker might fit a new
movement into a case), and thereby tending, in most cases, to
annihilate those subtle qualities of individuality and originality
which are essential to genius. Men of the higher stamp will
either refuse to submit to the process and leave the Society, or
run the danger of coming forth from the mill with their finest
qualities pulverized and useless. In accordance with the spirit
of its founder, who wished to secure uniformity in the judgment
of his followers even in points left open by the Church (“Let us
all think the same way, let us all speak in the same manner if
possible”), the Society has shown itself to be impatient of those
who think or write in a way different from what is current in its
ranks.
Nor is this all. The Ratio Studiorum, devised by Acquaviva and still obligatory in the colleges of the Society, lays down rules which are incompatible with all breadth and progress in the higher forms of education. True to the anti-speculative and traditional side of the founder’s mind, it prescribes that, even where religious topics are not in question, the teacher is not to permit any novel opinions or discussions to be mooted; nor to cite or allow others to cite the opinions of an author not of known repute; nor to teach or suffer to be taught anything contrary to the prevalent opinions of acknowledged doctors current in the schools. Obsolete and false opinions are not to be mentioned at all, even for refutation, nor are objections to received teaching to be dwelt on at any length. The result is that the Jesuit emerges from his schools without any real knowledge of any other method of thought than that which his professors have instilled into him. The professor of Biblical Literature is always to support and defend the Vulgate and can never prefer the marginal readings from the Hebrew and Greek. The Septuagint, as far as it is incorrupt, is to be held not less authentic than the Vulgate. In philosophy Aristotle is always to be followed, and St Thomas Aquinas generally, care being taken to speak respectfully of him even when abandoning his opinions, though now it is customary for the Jesuit teachers to explain him in their own sense. De vera mente D. Thomas is no unfamiliar expression in their books. It is not wonderful, under such a method of training, fixed as it has been in minute detail for more than three hundred years, that highly cultivated commonplaces should be the inevitable average result; and that in proportion as Jesuit power has become dominant in Christendom, especially in ecclesiastical circles, the same doom of intellectual sterility and consequent loss of influence with the higher and thoughtful classes, has separated the part from the whole. The initial mistake in the formation of character is that the Jesuits have aimed at educating lay boys in the same manner as they consider advisable for their own novices, for whom obedience and direction is the one thing necessary; whereas for lay people the right use of liberty and initiative are to be desired.
The second cause which has blighted the efforts of the Society is the lesson, too faithfully learnt and practised, of making its corporate interests the first object at all times and in all places. Men were quick to see that Jesuits did not aim at co-operation with the other members of the Church but directly or indirectly at mastery. The most brilliant exception to this rule is found in some of the missions of the Society and notably in that of St Francis Xavier (q.v.). But he quitted Europe in 1541 before the new society, especially under Laynez, had hardened into its final mould; and he never returned. His work, so far as can be gathered from contemporary accounts, was not done on true Jesuit lines as they afterwards developed, though the Society has reaped all the credit; and it is even possible that, had he succeeded the founder as general, the institute might not have received that political and self-seeking turn which Laynez, as second general, gave at the critical moment.
It would almost seem that careful selection was made of the men of the greatest piety and enthusiasm, whose unworldliness made them less apt for diplomatic intrigues, to break new ground in the various missions where their success would throw lustre on the Society and their scruples need never come into play. But such men are not to be found easily; and, as they died off, the tendency was to fill their places with more ordinary characters, whose aim was to increase the power and resources of the body. Hence the condescension to heathen rites in Hindustan and China, and the attempted subjugation of the English Catholic clergy. The first successes of the Indian mission were entirely among the lower classes; but when in Madura, in 1606, Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Bellarmine, to win the Brahmins, adopted their dress and mode of life—a step sanctioned by Gregory XV. in 1623 and by Clement XI. in 1707—the fathers who followed his example pushed the new caste-feeling so far as absolutely to refuse the ministrations and sacraments to the pariahs, lest the Brahmin converts should take offence—an attempt which was reported to Rome and was vainly censured by the breves of Innocent X. in 1645, Clement IX. in 1669, Clement XII. in 1734 and 1739, and Benedict XIV. in 1745. The Chinese rites, assailed with equal unsuccess by one pope after another, were not finally put down until 1744 by a bull of Benedict XIV. For Japan, where their side of the story is that best known, we have a remarkable letter, printed by Lucas Wadding in the Annales minorum, addressed to Paul V. by Soleto, a Franciscan missionary, who was martyred in 1624, in which he complains to the pope that the Jesuits systematically postponed the spiritual welfare of the native Christians to their own convenience and advantage; while as regards the test of martyrdom, no such result had followed on their teaching, but only on that of the other orders who had undertaken missionary work in Japan. Yet soon many Jesuit martyrs in Japan were to shed a new glory on the Society (see Japan: Foreign Intercourse). Again, even in Paraguay, the most promising of all Jesuit undertakings, the evidence shows that the fathers, though civilizing the Guarani population just sufficiently to make them useful and docile servants, happier no doubt than they were before or after, stopped there. While the mission was begun on the rational principle of governing races still in their childhood by methods adapted to that stage in their mental development, yet for one hundred and fifty years the “reductions” were conducted in the same manner, and when the hour of trial came the Jesuit civilization fell like a house of cards.
These examples are sufficient to explain the final collapse of so many promising efforts. The individual Jesuit might be, and often was, a hero, saint and martyr, but the system which he was obliged to administer was foredoomed to failure; and the suppression which came in 1773 was the natural result of forces and elements they had set in antagonism without the power of controlling.
The influence of the Society since its restoration in 1814 has not been marked with greater success than in its previous history. It was natural after the restoration that an attempt should be made to pick up again the threads that were dropped; but soon they came to realize the truth of the saying of St Ignatius: “The Society shall adapt itself to the times and not the times to the Society.” The political conditions of Europe have completely changed, and constitutionalism is unfavourable to that personal influence which, in former times, the Jesuits were able to bring to bear upon the heads of states. In Europe they confine themselves mainly to educational and ecclesiastical politics, although both Germany and France have followed the example of Portugal and refuse, on political grounds, to allow them to be in these countries. It would appear as though some of the Jesuits had not, even yet, learnt the lesson that meddling with politics has always been their ruin. The main cause of any difficulty that may exist to-day with the Society is that the Jesuits are true to the teaching of that remarkable panegyric, the Imago primi saeculi Societatis (probably written by John Tollenarius in 1640), by identifying the Church with their own body, and being intolerant of all who will not share this view. Their power is still large in certain sections of the ecclesiastical
