Pacca then handed to Panizzoni a paper appointing him superior of the Roman house, until the nomination arrived from Father General. The professed house, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea and other properties were also made over to the Society with a monthly payment of five hundred scudi.
On entering the Gesù, the Fathers found the house almost in the same condition as when Father Ricci and his assistants left it in 1773, to go to the dungeons of Sant' Angelo. It was occupied by a community of priests, most of them former Jesuits, who had continued to serve the adjoining church, which, though despoiled of most of its treasures, still possessed the remains of St. Ignatius. Two years later, the novitiate of Sant' Andrea was so crowded that a second one had to be opened at Reggio. Among the novices at that place was Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, who had resigned his crown to enter the Society. He died there in 1819. In 1815 the Jesuits had colleges in Orvieto, Viterbo, Tivoli, Urbino, Ferentino, and Galloro, Modena, Forlì, Genoa, Turin, Novarra, and a little later, Nice. In Parma and Naples, they had been at work prior to 1814.
Just eight days before these happenings in Rome, an aged Jesuit in Paris saw assembled around him ten distinguished men whom he had admitted to the Society. It was July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius, and the place of the meeting was full of tragic memories. It was the chapel of the Abbaye des Carmes, where, in the general massacre of priests which took place there in 1792, twelve Jesuits had been murdered. In the old man's mind there were still other memories. Fifty-two years before, he and his religious brethren had been driven like criminals from their native land. Forty years had passed since the whole Society had been suppressed. He had witnessed all the horrors of the French Revolution, and now as he was nearing eternity – he was then eighty-five – he saw at his feet a group of men some of whom had already gained distinction in the world, but who at that moment, had only one ambition, that of being admitted into the Society of Jesus, which they hoped would be one day re-established. They never dreamed that seven days after they had thus met at the Abbaye to celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, Pius VII who had returned from his captivity in France would, by the Bull "Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum," solemnly re-establish the Society throughout the world.
The old priest was Pierre-Joseph Picot de Clorivière. He was born at St. Malo, June 29, 1735 and had entered the Society on August 14, 1756. He was teaching a class at Compiègne when Choiseul drove the Society out of the country, but though he was only a scholastic, it had no effect on his vocation. He attached himself to the English province, and after finishing his course of theology at Liège in Belgium, was professed of the four vows about a month after Clement XIV had issued his Brief of Suppression. The decree had not yet been promulgated in the Netherlands. Instead of going to England as one would expect, he returned to his native country as a secular priest, and we find him in charge of a parish at Paramé from 1775 to 1779. He was also the director of the diocesan College of Dinan, where he remained up to the time of the Revolution. Meantime, he was writing pious books and founding two religious congregations, one for priests, the other for pious women in the world. The former went out of existence in 1825. The latter still flourishes.
Having refused to take the constitutional oath, he was debarred from all ecclesiastical functions, and began to think of offering himself to his old friend and classmate at Liège, Bishop Carroll, to work on the Maryland missions; but one thing or another prevented him from carrying out his purpose, though on the other hand it is surprising that he could make up his mind to remain in France. His brother had been guillotined in 1793; his niece met the same fate later; his sister, a Visitation nun, was put in prison and escaped death only by Robespierre's fall from power; several of his spiritual followers had perished in the storm, but he contrived to escape until 1801, when, owing to his relationship with Limoellan, who was implicated in the conspiracy to kill the First Consul, he was lodged in jail. He was then sixty-nine years old.
During his seven years of imprisonment, he wrote voluminous commentaries on the Bible, chiefly the Apocalypse. He also devoted himself to the spiritual improvement of his fellow-prisoners, one of whom, a Swiss Calvinist named Christin, became a Catholic. As Christin had been an attaché of the Russian embassy he posted off to Russia when he was liberated in 1805, taking with him a letter from Clorivière to the General of the Society, asking permission for the writer to renew his profession and to enter the Russian province. Of course, both requests were granted. When he was finally discharged from custody in 1809, Clorivière wrote again to Russia to inform the General that Bishop Carroll wanted to have him go out to Maryland as master of novices. As for himself though he was seventy-five years of age, he was quite ready to accede to the bishop's request. The General's decision, however, was that it would be better to remain in France.
Meantime, Father Varin, the superior of the Fathers of the Faith, had convoked the members of his community to consider how they could carry out the original purpose of their organization, namely: to unite with the Jesuits of Russia, but no progress had been made up to 1814. In his perplexity, he consulted Mgr. della Genga who was afterwards Leo XII, and also Father Clorivière. But to his dismay, both of them told him to leave the matter in statu quo. This was all the more disconcerting, because he had just heard that Father Fonteyne, who was at Amsterdam, had already received several Fathers of the Faith. Whereupon he posted off to Holland, and was told that both della Genga and Clorivière were wrong in their decision. To remove every doubt he was advised to write immediately to Russia, or better yet to go there in person. He determined to do both. At the beginning of June 1814, he returned to France to tell his friends the result of his conference with Father Fonteyne, but during his absence Clorivière had been commissioned by Father Brzozowski to do in France what Fonteyne had been doing in Holland. That settled everything, and on July 19, 1814, Fathers Varin, Boissard, Roger and Jennesseaux were admitted to the novitiate; and a few days later, Dumouchel, Bequet, Ronsin, Coulon, Loriquet, with a lay brother followed their example. On the 31st, St. Ignatius' Day, they all met at the Abbaye to entreat the Founder of the Society to bless this inauguration of the province of France.
In virtue of his appointment Father Clorivière found that he had now to take care of seventy novices, most of whom were former Fathers of the Faith; in this rapidly assembled throng it was impossible to carry out the whole scheme of a novitiate training in all its details. Indeed, the only "experiment" given to the newcomers was the thirty-days retreat, and that, the venerable old superior undertook himself. Perhaps it was age that made him talkative, perhaps it was over-flowing joy, for he not only carried out the whole programme but overdid it, and far from explaining the points, he talked at each meditation during what the French call "five quarters of an hour." But grace supplied what was lost by this prolixity, and the community was on fire with zeal when the Exercises were ended. How soon they received the news of what happened on August 7, in Rome, we do not know. But there were no happier men in the world than they when the glad tidings came; and they continued to be so even if Louis XVIII did not deign or was afraid to pay any attention to the Bull, and warned the Jesuits and their friends to make no demonstration. The Society was restored and that made them indifferent to anything else.
In Spain, a formal decree dated May 25, 1825, proclaimed the re-establishment of the Society, and when Father de Zúñiga arrived at Madrid to re-organize the Spanish province, he was met at the gate of the city by a long procession of Dominicans, Franciscans, and the members of other religious orders to welcome him. Subsequently, as many as one hundred and fifteen former Jesuits returned to their native land from the various countries of Europe where they had been laboring, and began to reconstruct their old establishments. Many of these old heroes were over eighty years of age. Loyola, Oñate and Manresa greeted them with delight, and forty-six cities sent petitions for colleges. Meanwhile, novitiates were established at Loyola, Manresa and Seville.
Portugal not only did not admit them, but issued a furious decree against the Bull. Not till fifteen years later did the Jesuits enter that country, and then their first work was to inter the yet unburied remains of their arch-enemy Pombal and to admit four of his great-grandsons into one of their colleges. Brazil, Portugal's dependency, imitated the bitterness of the mother country. The Emperor of Austria was favorable, but the spirit fostered among the people by his predecessor, Joseph, was still rampant and prevented the introduction of the Society into his domains. But, on the whole, the act of the Pope was acclaimed everywhere throughout the world. So Pacca wrote to Consalvi.
Of course there was an uproar in non-Catholic countries. In England, even some Catholics were in arms against the Bull. One individual, writing in the "Catholic Directory" of 1815, considered it to be "the downfall of the Catholic religion." A congress in which a number of Englishmen participated was held a few years later at Aix-la-Chapelle to protest against the re-establishment of the Order. Fortunately it evoked a letter from the old Admiral Earl St. Vincent which runs as follows: "I have heard with indignation that Sir J. C. Hippisley, a member of Parliament, is gone to the Congress. I therefore beseech you to cause this letter to be laid before his Holiness the Pope as a record of my opinion that we are not only obliged to that Order for the most useful discoveries of every description, but that they are now necessary for the education of Catholic youth throughout the civilized world." With the exception of John Milner, all the vicars Apostolic of England were strongly opposed to the restitution of the Society in that country.
The United States was at war with England just then, and it happened that seventeen days before the Bull was issued Father Grassi and his fellow-Jesuits were witnessing from the windows of Georgetown College the bombardment of Washington by the British fleet. They saw the city in flames, and fully expected that the college would be taken by the enemy, but to their great delight they saw the forty ships on the following morning hoist their anchors and, one by one, drop down the Potomac. They did not, of course, know what was going on in Rome, but as soon as the news of the re-establishment arrived in America, Father Fenwick, the future Bishop of Boston, who was then working in St. Peter's Church, New York, wrote about it to Father Grassi, who was President of Georgetown. The letter is dated December 21, 1814 and runs as follows:
"Rev. and Dear Father,
Te Deum Laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur!
The Society of Jesus is then re-established! That long-insulted Society! The Society which has been denounced as the corrupter of youth, the inculcator of unsound, unchristian and lax morality! That Society which has been degraded by the Church itself, rejected by her ministers, outlawed by her kings and insulted by her laity! Restored throughout the world and restored by a public Bull of the Sovereign Pontiff! Hitherto cooped up in a small corner of the world, and not allowed to extend herself, lest the nations of the earth, the favorites of heaven, should inhale the poison of her pestiferous breath, she is now called forth, as the only plank left for the salvation of a shipwrecked philosophered world; the only restorer of ecclesiastical discipline and sound morality; the only dependence of Christianity for the renewal of correct principles and the diffusion of piety! It is then so. What a triumph! How glorious to the Society! How confounding to the enemies! Gaudeamus in Domino, diem festum celebrantes! If any man will say after that, that God is not a friend of the Society, I shall pronounce him without hesitation a liar.
"I embrace, dear Sir, the first leisure moments after the receipt of your letter, to forward you my congratulations on the great and glorious tidings you have recently received from Europe – tidings which should exhilarate the heart of every true friend of Christianity and of the propagation of the Gospel; tidings particularly grateful to this country, and especially to the College of which you are rector, which will hereafter be able to proceed secundum regulam et Institutum."
A word about this distinguished American Jesuit may not be out of place here. He was born in the ancestral manor of the Fenwicks, in old St. Mary's County, Maryland, and was a lineal descendant of Cuthbert Fenwick who was distinguished among the first Catholic colonists by his opposition to Lewger, Calvert's secretary, then assailing the rights of the Church in Maryland. When Georgetown College opened its doors, Benedict Fenwick and his brother Enoch were among its first students. After finishing the course, he took upon himself what his old admirer, the famous Father Stonestreet, calls "the painful but self-improving duties of the class room," and was professor of Humanities for three years. Later he began a course of theology at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, but he left in order to become a Jesuit. The Fenwicks, both in England and America had been always closely identified with the Society, and when the news came that it was about to be resuscitated, Benedict and Enoch were chosen with four other applicants to be the corner stones of the first novitiate in the United States of North America. He was ordained on June 11, 1808, in Trinity Church, Georgetown, D. C., by the Jesuit Bishop Neale, coadjutor of Archbishop Carroll, and was immediately sent to New York with Father Kohlmann to prepare that diocese for the coming of its first bishop Dr. Concanen. Kohlmann himself had been named for the see, but the Pontiff had yielded to the entreaties of Father General not to deprive the still helpless Society of such a valuable workman; hence, Father Richard Luke Concanen, a Dominican, was appointed in his stead.
Kohlmann and Fenwick were welcomed with great enthusiasm in New York which had suffered much from the various transients who had from time to time officiated there. Several distinguished converts were won over to the faith, and an attempt was made to influence the famous free-thinker, Tom Paine, but the unfortunate wretch died blaspheming. It was Kohlmann and Fenwick who established the New York Literary Institute on the site of the present St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was successful enough to attract the sons of the most distinguished families of the city and merited the commendation of such men as the famous governor of New York, De Witt Clinton, and of Governor Thompkins who was subsequently Vice-President of the United States. At the same time, they were building old St. Patrick's, which was to become the cathedral of the new bishop. Bishop Concanen never reached New York, and when his successor Bishop Connolly arrived in 1814, Father Fenwick was his consolation and support in the many bitter trials that had to be undergone in those turbulent days. He was made vicar general and when he was sent to Georgetown to be president of the college in 1817, it was against the strong protest and earnest entreaties of the bishop, who, it may be said in passing, regretted exceedingly the closing of the Literary Institute, – a feeling shared by every American Jesuit. The reason for so doing is given by Hughes (History of the Soc. of Jesus in North America, I, ii, 945).
While Fenwick was in Georgetown, Charleston, South Carolina, was in an uproar ecclesiastically. The people were in open schism, and Archbishop Maréchal of Baltimore, in spite of his antagonism to the Society appealed to the superior of the Jesuits for some one to bring order out of the chaos. Fenwick was sent, and such was his tact, good judgment and kindness, that he soon mastered the situation and the diocese was at peace when the new bishop, the distinguished John England, arrived. Strange to say, Bishop England had the same prejudice as Bishop Concanen, against the Society; a condition of mind that may be explained by the fact that it had been suppressed by the highest authority in the Church, and that even educated men were ignorant of the causes that had brought about the disaster. But Fenwick soon disabused the bishop. Indeed, he remained as Vicar General of Charleston until 1822, and when he was recalled to Georgetown, Bishop England, at first, absolutely refused to let him go.
In a funeral oration pronounced over Fenwick, later by Father Stonestreet he said in referring to the Charleston troubles; "Difficulties had arisen between the French and Anglo-Irish portions of the congregation, each insisting it should be preached to in its own tongue; each restive at remaining in the sacred temple while the word of God was announced in the language of the other. The good Father, nothing daunted by the scene of contrariety before him, ascends the pulpit, opens his discourse in both languages, rapidly alternates the tongues of La Belle France and of the Anglo-Saxon, and by his ardent desire to unite the whole community in the bonds of charity, astonishes, softens, wins and harmonizes the hearts of all. A lasting peace was restored which still continues."
Bishop Cheverus, who was then at Boston, was subsequently called to France to be Archbishop of Bordeaux and cardinal. Father Fenwick, without being consulted, was appointed to the vacant see. In fact, the first news he had of the promotion was when the Bulls were in his hands, so that no means of protesting was possible. He was consecrated on November 1, 1825, and his friend Bishop England travelled all the way from Charleston to assist as one of the Consecrators. At that time the diocese of Boston was synonymous with New England, but it had only ten churches, two of which were for Indians. Fenwick, however, set to work in his usual heroic fashion. He was particularly fond of the Indians, and bravely fought their battle against the dishonest whites. As the red men were the descendants of the Abenakis to whom the old Jesuits had brought the Faith, there was a family feeling in his defense of them. The same sentiment of kinship prompted him to establish a newspaper which he called "The Jesuit." It was a defiance of the bigotry of New England, of which there were to be many serious manifestations. "The Jesuit" was the pioneer of Catholic journalism in the United States.
Bishop Fenwick was averse to the crowding of Catholics in the large cities, and to segregate them he established the exclusively Catholic colony of Benedicta, but this scheme of a Paraguay in the woods of Maine had only a limited success. Prompted by the same motive of love of the Society he visited the place which Father Rasle had sanctified with his blood when the fanatical Puritans of Massachusetts put him to death in 1724. Father Rasle was the apostle of the Abenakis and had established himself at what is now Norridgewock on the Kennebec. Fenwick went there to pray. Although it was in the wilderness, he determined to make it a notable place for the future Catholics of America; and over the mouldering remains of Rasle and his brave Indian defenders, he erected a monument, a shaft of granite, on which an inscription was cut to record the tragedy. It was too much for the bigotry that then reigned in those parts, and the monument was thrown down; but Fenwick put it in its place again; at a later date when, in the course of time, it had fallen out of perpendicular, Bishop Walsh of Portland corrected the defect and amid a great throng of people solemnly reconsecrated it.
While he was Bishop of Boston, Fenwick made a pious pilgrimage to Quebec; the city from which the Jesuits of the old Society had started on their perilous journeys to evangelize the Indians of the continent. He saw there an immense building on whose façade were cut the letters I. H. S. "What is that?" he asked. "It is the old Jesuit College, now a soldiers' barracks," was the reply. His soul was filled with indignation and he exclaimed in anger, "The outrage that these men of blood should occupy the house sanctified by the martyrs Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant and the others." The good bishop was unaware that the martyrs had never seen the building. It was built after they had gone to claim their crowns in heaven.
During his episcopacy Knownothingism reigned, and in one of the outbreaks the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown was attacked at midnight. The sisters were shot at, the house was pillaged, the chapel desecrated and the whole edifice given over to the flames. The blackened ruins remained for fifty years to remind the Commonwealth of its disgrace, until finally the remnants of the building, which it had cost so much to erect, had to be removed to escape taxation. It was Fenwick who founded Holy Cross College, in Worcester, Massachusetts, an establishment which is the Alma Mater of most of the subsequent bishops of New England. It has also the singular distinction of being the only Catholic College exempted by law from receiving any but Catholic students. Fenwick is buried there. He died on August 11, 1846, after an episcopacy of twenty-one years.
Strange to say the Bull resurrecting the Society was not sent to America until October 8, 1814, and on January 5, 1815, Bishop Carroll wrote to Father Marmaduke Stone, in England, as follows: "Your precious and grateful favor accompanied by the Bull of Restoration was received early in December and diffused the greatest sensation of joy and thanksgiving, not only among the surviving and new members of the Society, but also all good Christians who have any remembrances of their services or heard of their unjust and cruel treatment, and have witnessed the consequences of their suppression. You may conceive my sensations when I read the account of the celebration of Mass by His Holiness himself at the superb altar of St. Ignatius at the Gesù; the assemblage of the surviving Jesuits in the chapel to hear the proclamation of their resurrection, etc."
On returning to America after the suppression of the Society in Belgium, Father Carroll had gone to live at his mother's house in Rock Creek, Maryland, for he no longer considered himself entitled to support from the funds of the Jesuits who still maintained their existence in the colonies. They had never been suppressed, whereas he had belonged to a community in the Netherlands which had been canonically put out of existence by the Brief. He spent two years in the rough country missions of Maryland and then went with Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and his cousin Charles Carroll to Canada to induce the Frenchmen there to make common cause with the Americans against Great Britain. The Continental Congress had especially requested him to form a part of the embassy. The mission was a failure and the Colonies had themselves to blame for it; because two years previously they had issued an "Address to the English People" denouncing the government for not only attempting to establish an Anglican episcopacy in the English possessions, but for maintaining a papistical one on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Clearly it would have been impossible for the French Catholics who had been guaranteed the free exercise of their religion to transfer their allegiance to a country which considered that concession to be one of the reasons justifying a revolution.
When the war was over, Carroll and five other Jesuits met at Whitemarsh to devise means to keep their property intact in order to carry on their missionary work. They had no other resources than the produce of their farms, for their personal support. The faithful gave them nothing. At this conference they decided to ask Rome to empower some one of their number to confirm, grant faculties and dispensations, bless oils, etc. They added that, for the moment, a bishop was unnecessary. The petition was sent on November 6, 1783, and on June 7, 1784, Carroll was appointed superior of the missions in the thirteen states, and was given power to confirm. There were at that time about nineteen priests in the country and fifteen thousand Catholics, of whom three thousand were negro slaves. In 1786 Carroll took up his residence in Baltimore and was conspicuously active in municipal affairs, establishing schools, libraries and charities. Possibly it was due to him that Article 6 was inserted in the Constitution of the United States which declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States;" and probably also the amendment that "this Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Its actual sponsor in the Convention was C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina.
Carroll was made Bishop of Baltimore by Pius VI on November 6, 1789, twenty-four out of the twenty-five priests in the country voting for him. He was consecrated on August 15, 1790, at Lulworth Castle, England by the senior vicar Apostolic of England, Bishop Walmesly. On the election of Washington to the presidency, he represented the clergy in a congratulatory address to which Washington answered; "I hope your fellow-countrymen will not forget the patriotic part in the accomplishment of the Revolution and the establishment of the government or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic Faith is professed."
He convoked the first Synod of Baltimore in 1791. There were twenty-two priests of five nationalities in attendance. He called the Sulpicians to Baltimore in 1791; the first priest he ordained was Stephen Badin, the beloved pioneer of Kentucky, and four years later the famous Russian prince, Demetrius Gallitzin. He also succeeded in having a missionary for the Indians appointed by the government. He had intended to have as his coadjutor and successor in the see, Father Lawrence Grässel, who had been a novice in the old Society and who at Carroll's urgent request, had come out to America as a missionary. Grässel, however, died before the arrival of the Bulls. Father Leonard Neale, a Maryland Jesuit, was then chosen and was consecrated in 1800. A year and two months after the re-establishment of the Society, namely on December 3, 1815, Carroll died. It was fitting that this son of Saint Ignatius should be called to heaven on the feast of the great friend and companion of Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier.
Apropos of this, a note has been quoted by Father Hughes (op. cit., Doc., I, 424) which is often cited as revealing a change in Carroll's attitude toward the Society after he became archbishop. Fr. Charles Neale had written to him as follows, "It is equally certain that I have no authority to give up any right that would put the subject out of the power of his superior, who must and ought to be the best judge of what is most beneficial to the universal or individual good of the members, of the Congregation." On the back of the letter appear the words "Inadmissible Pretensions," said by Bishop Maréchal to have been written by Carroll.
Archbishop Carroll's attitude to the Society is clearly manifested in his letter of December 10, 1814, addressed to Father Grassi, which says: "Having contributed to your greatest happiness on earth by sending the miraculous bull of general restoration, even before I could nearly finish the reading of it, I fully expect it back this evening with Mr. Plowden's letter." It should not be forgotten that Carroll was heartbroken when the Society was suppressed and that he longed for death because of the grief it caused him. The words "Inadmissible Pretensions" noted on Neale's letter referred to a formal protest made by Father Charles Neale against a synodial statute of the bishops convened at Baltimore. Neale, indeed, desired to exercise the special privileges of the Society and to govern as was done in the old Society or as in Russia, a procedure which incurred the disapproval of the General. Grassi writing to Plowden, in England, says: "He (Archbishop Carroll) considers Mr. Chas. Neale as a wrongheaded man, and persons who knew him at Liège and Antwerp are nearly of the same opinion." In brief, Neale's administration both as president of Georgetown and as superior of the mission was most disastrous (cf. Hughes, I, ii, passim).
Leonard Neale, like Carroll, was an American. He was born near Port Tobacco in Maryland in 1746, and with many other young Marylanders, was sent to the Jesuit College of St. Omers in France. After the Suppression he went to England, where he was engaged in parochial work for four years. From there he was sent to Demerara in British Guiana and continued at work in that trying country from 1779 to 1783. His health finally gave way, and he returned to Maryland and joined his Jesuit brethren. He distinguished himself in the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, and remained in that city, for six years as the vicar of Bishop Carroll. In 1797 another epidemic of fever occurred and he was stricken but recovered. In 1798 he was sent to Georgetown College as president, and in 1800 while still president he was consecrated coadjutor of Archbishop Carroll. He continued his scholastic work until 1806, succeeding to the See of Baltimore in 1815. He was then seventy years old and in feeble health. He died at Georgetown on June 18, 1817. Bishop Maréchal who had been suggested to the Pope by Bishop Cheverus of Boston, had already been named for the See.