Montalembert was more than usually eloquent in the course of the parliamentary war. To Dupin who exhorted the peers to be "implacable" he replied: "In the midst of a free people, we, Catholics, refuse to be slaves; we are the successors of the martyrs and we shall not quail before the successors of Julian the Apostate; we are the sons of the Crusaders and we shall not recoil before the sons of Voltaire."
There were thirty-five or forty discourses and twelve or fifteen of the speakers described the Society as "the detested congregation," while the members who admitted the injustice and the odious tyranny of the proposed legislation made haste to assure their constituents that they had no use for the Jesuits. Cousin consumed three hours in assailing them; another member of the Dupin family saw "an appalling danger to the State in the fact that Montalembert could speak of them without cursing them, and that the peers could listen to him in silence, while he extolled the poisoners of the pious Ganganelli." Others insisted that the Jesuits had dragged the episcopate into the fight; even Guizot declared that "public sentiment inexorably repudiated the Jesuits and the other congregations, who are the champions of authority and the enemies of private judgment." The great man was not aware that the same reproach might be and is addressed to the Church.
The measure was finally carried by 85 against 51, but the heavy minority disconcerted the government and better hopes were entertained in the lower house to which Villemain presented his bill on June 10th. There it was left in the hands of Thiers, and it did not reach the Assembly, as a body, for an entire month. As the summer vacations were at hand, the projet de loi was dropped. Guizot then conceived the plan of appealing directly to the Pope to suppress the French Jesuits. He chose as his envoy an Italian named Rossi, who had been banished from Bologna, Naples and Florence as a revolutionist. After a short stay at Geneva, he made his way to France where, by Protestant influence, chiefly that of Guizot, he advanced rapidly to very distinguished and lucrative positions. The country was shocked to hear that an Italian and a Protestant should represent the nation at the court of the Pope from whose dominions he had been expelled, but Guizot intended by so doing, to express the sentiments of his government. It was an open threat. Rossi arrived in Rome and presented his credentials on April 11.
The French Jesuits who had been expelled from Portugal did not return to their native country; for Charles X, discovering at last that the Liberals, as they called themselves, had played him false, resolved to have a thoroughgoing monarchical government; and, to carry out his purpose, made the inept Polignac prime minister. On July 25 he signed four ordinances, the first of which restricted the liberty of the press; the second dissolved parliament; the third diminished the electorate to 25,000. The next day, the press was in rebellion; Charles abdicated and sailed for England. Of course the Revolution was anti-religious and the Jesuits were the first sufferers. House after house was wrecked and the scholastics were gathered together and hurried off to different countries in Europe. Thus ended the first sixteen years of the Society's existence in France, after the promulgation of the Bull of Pius VII "Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum."
The first successor of Father de Clorivière as vice-provincial was Father Simpson. France was made a province in 1820, and on the death of Father Simpson, the new General, Father Fortis, appointed Father Richardot, who at the end of his three years' term asked to be relieved. In 1814 Godinot was appointed, because none of those who had been proposed for the office had been more than ten years in the Society. Godinot himself had been admitted only in 1810. He had been vice-provincial of the Fathers of the Faith, and eleven years after his admission, was directing the scattered Jesuit establishments in Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany. In Switzerland, he had given the impulse to the college of Fribourg, which afterwards became so famous. It is worth noting that when he was a Father of the Faith he was a member of the community of Sion in Valais which enjoyed the exceptional privilege of being united as a body to the Society. Everywhere else each individual had to be admitted separately.
On April 14, the peers met to discuss a very exciting subject. A protest had come from Marseilles signed by 89 electors, against the books of Michelet and Quinet. Immediately Cousin was on his feet and ascribed it to the Jesuits. A few days later, another topic engrossed their attention. Dupin's "Manual of Ecclesiastical Law" had been condemned by Cardinal de Bonald, and more than sixty bishops concurred with him in prohibiting the book. At Rome, it was put on the Index, along with Cousin's "History of Philosophy." The anti-Catholics were in a fury, and on April 24, Cousin addressed the House. At the end of a three hour discourse which he began, unbeliever though he was, by protesting his respect for "the august religion of his country," he concluded by saying that "probably the action of the bishops was due to the Jesuits" and therefore he called for the enforcement of the law for their suppression. The question now arose, whether they could proceed to the suppression by force of law while the government actually had an envoy at Rome to dispose of the affair in a different fashion. It was decided that the non-authorized congregations would be suppressed, no matter what might be the outcome of Rossi's mission. Such a resolution was a gross diplomatic insult, but they cared little for that.
Meanwhile no news had come from Rossi. He had been left in the ante-chamber of the Pope until the Abbé de Bonnechose had succeeded in getting him an audience, a service which de Bonnechose had some difficulty in explaining when he was subsequently made a cardinal. A congregation of cardinals was named to discuss Guizot's proposition, and it was unanimously decided to reject it; and when Rossi asked what he had to do, he was told he might address himself to the General of the Society. To make it easy for him, Lambruschini, the papal secretary of state, proposed to Father Roothaan to diminish the personnel of some of the houses which were too much in evidence or remove them elsewhere. As for dissolution of the communities or banishment from France, not a word was said.
Immediately Rossi despatched a messenger to Paris with the account of what had been done, and twelve days afterwards the "Moniteur" stated: "The Government has received news from Rome that the negotiations with which M. Rossi was entrusted have attained their object. The congregation of the Jesuits will cease to exist in France and will, of its own accord, disperse. Its houses will be closed and its novitiates dissolved." On July 15, Guizot was asked by the peers to show the alleged documents. He answered that "they were too precious to give to the public." They have been unearthed since, and it turns out that Guizot's notice in the "Moniteur" does not correspond with the despatch of Rossi who merely said, "the Congregation is going to disperse;" and instead of saying "the houses will be closed," he wrote: "only a small number of people will remain in each house." In brief, the famous Guizot, so renowned for his integrity, prevaricated in this instance, and one of the worst enemies of everything Jesuitical, Dibidous, who wrote a "History of the Church and State in France from 1789 to 1870" declares bluntly that Guizot's note in the "Moniteur" was not only a lie but "an impudent lie."
A great many militant Catholics in France were indignant that Father Roothaan had not defied the government on this occasion. Yet probably those same perfervid souls would have denounced him, had he acted as they wished. He knew perfectly well that the government was only too anxious to get out of the mess in which it found itself, and the little by-play which was resorted to harmed nobody and secured at least a temporary respite.
"To gain the support of the Catholics against the anarchical elements which were everywhere revealing themselves," says the Cambridge History (XI, 34) "Guizot had tolerated the unauthorized Congregations. This had the immediate consequence of concentrating popular attention upon those religious passions whose existence the populace, if left to itself, might have forgotten. Even the colleagues of Guizot, such as Villemain and the editors of the "Journal des Débats," the leading ministerial organ, began by declaring that they saw everywhere the finger of the Jesuits. In each party, men's minds were so divided on the subject of the Jesuits or rather that of educational liberty which was so closely linked with it, that nothing of immediate gravity to the Government would for the moment arise." Liberals, or rather Republicans, such as Quinet and Michelet, in their lectures at the Collège de France took up the alarm and spread it broadcast.
Bournichon in his "Histoire d'un Siècle," (II, 492) calls attention to the fact that this attack was apparently against the Jesuits, but in reality against the Church. The "Revue Indépendante" did not hesitate to make the avowal that "Jesuitism is only a formula which has the merit of uniting all the popular hatred for what is odious and retrograde in a degenerate religion." Cousin started the hue and cry, in this instance, and Thureau-Dangin in his "Histoire de la monarchie de Juillet" (p. 503-10) says that "Quinet and Michelet transformed their courses into bitter and spiteful diatribes against the Jesuits. Both were hired for the work, and did not speak from conviction." "Quinet," says Bournichon (II, 494) "was quite indifferent to religious matters and had passed for a harmless thinker and dreamer up to that moment. As for Michelet, he had obtained his position in the Ecole Normale from Mgr. Frayssinous, yet he forgot his benefactor, and maintained that not only the Jesuits but Christianity was an obstacle to human progress; paganism or even fetichism was preferable, and Christ had to be dethroned."
Guizot removed Villemain from the office of Minister of public instruction and reprimanded Michelet and Quinet. Then Thiers seized the occasion to denounce Guizot for favoring the religious congregations and succeeded in defeating the minister's measure for educational freedom. It was at this stage that Guizot sent his envoy Rossi to Rome to induce Pope Gregory XVI to recall the Jesuits so as to extricate the French government from its difficulty. The Pope refused, as we have seen, and Father Roothaan merely gave orders to the members of the Society in France to make themselves less conspicuous.
In 1847 Gioberti published his "Gesuita Moderno" which unfortunately had the effect of creating in the minds of the Italian clergy a deep prejudice against the Society. Gioberti was a priest and a professor of theology. He first taught Rosminianism, and then opposed it. Under the pen-name of "Demofilo" or the "People's Friend" he wrote articles for Mazzini in the "Giovane Italia," and was the author of "Del Buono" and "Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani." His first attack on the Society appeared in 1845 in the "Prolegomeni al Primato;" "Il Gesuita Moderno," a large sized pamphlet full of vulgar invective, appeared in 1847. It was followed in 1848 by the "Apologia del Gesuita Moderno." He was answered by Father Curci. Deserting Mazzini, Gioberti espoused the cause of King Charles Albert, and founded a society to propagate the idea of a federated Italy with the King of Piedmont at its head. His last book, "Rinnovamento civile d'Italia" showed him to be the enemy of the temporal power of the papacy. His philosophy is a mixture of pantheistic ontology, rationalism, platonism and traditionalism. Though a revolutionist, he denied the sovereignty of the people. His complete works fill thirty-five volumes.
Of course the Society felt the shock of the Italian Revolution of 1848. Gioberti's writing had excited all Italy and as a consequence the Jesuit houses were abandoned. At Naples, the exiles were hooted as they took ship for Malta; they were mobbed in Venice and Piedmont. The General Father Roothaan left Rome on April 28 in company with a priest and a lay-brother, and as he stood on the deck at Genoa, he heard the cry from the shore, "You have Jesuits aboard; throw them overboard." There was nothing surprising in all this, however, for Rossi, the Pope's prime minister, was stabbed to death while mounting the steps of the Cancelleria. On the following day, the Pope himself was besieged in the Quirinal; Palma, a Papal prelate, was shot while standing at a window; and finally on November 24, Pope Pius fled in disguise to Gaeta.
In Austria, the Jesuits were expelled in the month of April. The community of Innsbruck, which is in the Tyrol, held together for some time, but finally drifted off to France or America or Australia or elsewhere. The emperor signed the decree on May 7, 1848. It applied also to Galicia, Switzerland, and Silesia, and the Jesuit houses all disappeared in those parts.
What happened to the Jesuits in France in the meantime? Nothing whatever. They had obeyed the General in 1845, and had simply kept their activities out of sight. They did not wait for the Revolution, and hence although the "Journal des Débats," announced officially, on October 18, 1845, that "at the present moment there are no more Jesuits in France," there were a great many. Indeed, the catalogues of 1846 and 1847 were issued as usual, not in print, however, but in lithograph, and as if they felt perfectly free in 1848, the catalogue of that year appeared in printed form. Meantime de Ravignan was giving conferences in Notre-Dame, and preaching all over the country. The only change the Fathers made was to transport two of their establishments beyond the frontiers. Thus a college was organized at Brugelette in Belgium and a novitiate at Issenheim. The scholasticate of Laval continued as usual. What was done in the province of Paris was identical with that of Lyons. For a year or so the catalogues were lithographed but after that they appeared in the usual form.
For two years Father Roothaan journeyed from place to place through France, Belgium, Holland, England, and Ireland, and in 1850 returned to Rome. The storm had spent itself, and the ruins it had caused were rapidly repaired, at least in France, where the Falloux Law, which was passed in 1850, permitted freedom of education, and the Fathers hastened to avail themselves of the opportunity to establish colleges throughout the country.
Elsewhere, however, other conditions prevailed. In 1851 there was a dispersion in Spain; in 1859 the provinces of Venice and Turin were disrupted and the members were distributed through the fifteen other provinces of the Society. In 1860 the arrival of Garibaldi had already made an end of the Jesuits in Naples and Sicily. The wreckage was considerable, and from a complaint presented to King Victor Emmanuel by Father Beckx, it appears that the Society had lost three establishments in Lombardy; in Modena, six; in Sardinia, eleven; in Naples, nineteen, and in Sicily, fifteen. Fifteen hundred Jesuits had been expelled from their houses, as if they had been criminals, and were thrown into public jails, abused and ill-treated. They were forbidden to accept shelter even from their most devoted friends, and the old and the infirm had to suffer like the rest. Nor were these outrages perpetrated by excited mobs, but by the authorities then established in Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, Modena and elsewhere. "This appeal for justice and reparation for at least some of the harm done," said Father Beckx, "is placed, as it were, on the tomb of your ancestor Charles Emmanuel, who laid aside his royal dignity and entered the Society of Jesus as a lay-brother. He surely would not have embraced that manner of life if it were iniquitous." But it is not on record that Victor Emmanuel showed his appreciation of his predecessor's virtue by healing any of the wounds of the Society, whose garb Charles Emmanuel had worn.
The Jesuits of Venice had resumed work in their province, when in 1866 war was declared between Prussia and Austria. Sadowa shattered the Austrian forces, and though the Italians had been badly beaten at Custozzio, Venice was handed over to them by the treaty that ended the war. That meant of course another expulsion. Most of the exiles went to the Tyrol and Dalmatia. Then followed the dispersion of all the provinces of Italy except that of Rome.
The Spanish Jesuits had recovered somewhat from the dispersions of 1854, but, in 1868 just as the provincial congregations had concluded their sessions, a revolution broke out all over Spain. Many of the houses were attacked, but no personal injuries were inflicted. After a while, a provisional government was established at Madrid which held the mob in check but made no pretence to restrain the attacks on priests and nuns. Indeed, it inaugurated a bitter persecution on its own account. The minister of justice issued a decree which not only ordered the Jesuits out of all Spain and the adjacent islands within three days, but forbade any Spaniard to join the Society, even in foreign parts. Of course all the property was confiscated. That was probably the chief motive of the whole procedure. The outcasts for the most part went to France, and a temporary novitiate was established in the territory known as Les Landes. They returned home after some time, but were expecting another expulsion in 1912 when the great war was threatening. Possibly the hideous scenes enacted in Portugal in 1912 were deemed sufficient by the revolutionists for the time being.
The expatriation of the Jesuits and other religious from Portugal which was decreed by the Republican government, on October 10, 1910, six days after the bombardment of the royal palace and the flight of King Manuel, is typical of the manner in which such demonstrations are made in Europe. We have an account of it from the Father provincial Cabral which we quote in part.
"After the press had been working up the populace for three years to the proper state of mind by stories of subterranean arsenals in the Jesuit colleges; the boundless wealth of the Fathers; their affiliated secret organizations; their political plots, etc., the colleges of Campolide and San Fiel were invaded. The occupants were driven out and led between lines of soldiers through a howling mob to the common jail. Those who had fled before the arrival of the soldiers were pursued across the fields with rifles, and when caught were insulted, beaten and spat upon, and led like the others to prison. They had to eat out of the dishes with their hands, and at night sentinels stood over them with loaded rifles and warned the victims that if they got up they would be shot. Abandoned women were sent in among them, but those poor creatures soon withdrew. The prisoners were then transferred to Caixas where they slept on the floor. Twenty-three were confined in a space that could scarcely accommodate three. They were kept there for four days, and were not allowed to leave the room for any reason whatever, and were told that they would be kept in that condition until they began to rot, and that then some of their rich friends would buy them off. They were photographed, subjected to anthropometric examinations, and their finger prints taken, etc. They were then expelled from the country and forbidden ever to return. They had only the clothes on their backs, and had no money except what was given them by some friends; their colleges with their splendid museums and libraries were confiscated, and in this condition they set out, old and young, the sick and the strong, to ask shelter from their brethren in other lands. It was almost a return to the days of Pombal."
In Germany the Kulturkampf began in 1870, and in 1872 a decree was signed by the Kaiser, on June 14, 1872, expelling all members of the Society, and with them the Redemptorists, Lazarists, Fathers of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Sacred Heart. Some of the Jesuits went to Holland; others to England and America. Contrary to expectations, this act of tyranny did not harm the German province, for, whereas it then numbered only 775, it now (1920) has 1210 on its roll, of whom 664 are priests.
France had its horror in 1871, when on May 24 and 26, Fathers Olivaint, Ducoudray, Caubert, Clerc and de Bengy were shot to death by the Communists, who were then in possession of Paris. It was not, however, a rising against the Jesuits. There were fifty-seven victims in all: priests, religious and seculars, were immolated. At their head, was the venerable Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. Darboy. Again, on March 29, 1880, a decree issued by Jules Ferry brought about a new dispersion and the substitution of staffs of non-religious teachers in the Jesuit colleges. The law was not enforced, however, and little by little the Fathers returned to their posts. Then followed the law of Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 against unauthorized congregations, which closed all their houses, for these religious declined to apply for authorization which they knew would be refused, or if not, would be used to oppress them. The communities were, therefore, scattered in various houses of Europe. The last blow was the summons sent to all parts of the world for every Frenchman not exempt from military service to take part in the great World War, as chaplains, hospital aids or common soldiers.
The simultaneity as well as the similarity in the methods of executing these multiplied expulsions show clearly enough that they were not accidental but part of a universal war against the Church. Thus, at the other ends of the earth, similar outrages were being committed. When, for instance, the Conservatives fell from power in Colombia, South America, in 1850, the Jesuits were expelled. They went from there to Ecuador and Guayaquil, but were left unmolested only for a year. In 1861 they were re-admitted, and soon had fifty mission stations and had succeeded in converting 10,000 natives to the faith. But Garcia Moreno who had invited them was assassinated, and forthwith they were expelled. A second time they were recalled, but remained only from 1883 to 1894, and from there they returned to Colombia where they are at present. In Argentina, whither they were summoned in 1836, their houses were closed in 1841. They entered Paraguay in 1848, where the old Society had achieved such triumphs, but were allowed to remain there only three years. They asked the Chilian government to let them evangelize the fierce Araucanian savages, but this was refused. At the death of the dictator Rosas in 1873, they again went to Argentina and have not since been disturbed. They have had the same good fortune in Chile.
A different condition of things, however, obtained in Brazil. In the very year that Rosas died in Argentina, 1873, the Jesuit College of Olinda in Brazil was looted and the Fathers expelled. The reason was not that the Jesuits were objectionable but that the bishop had suspended a young ecclesiastic who was a Freemason. The College of Pernambuco was wrecked by a mob, and one of the priests was dangerously wounded. Worse treatment was meted out to them when the Emperor, Don Pedro, was deposed in 1889. Since then, however, there has been comparatively no trouble.
Of course, when the Piedmontese broke down the Porta Pia the Jesuits had to leave Rome, where until then they had been undisturbed. The novitiate of S. Andrea was the first to be seized; then St. Eusebio, the house of the third probation, and after that, St. Vitalis, the Gesù, and finally the Roman College. The occupants had three months to vacate the premises. The other religious orders whose general or procurator resided at Rome could retain one house for the transaction of business but that indulgence was not granted to the Jesuits. Their General was not to remain, and hence Father Peter Beckx, though then seventy-eight years old, had to depart with his brethren for Fiesole, where he was received in the family of the Counts of Ricasole on November 9, 1873. From that place he governed the Society until the year 1884, when he was succeeded by Father Anthony Anderledy, who remained in the same city until he died. Father Luis Martín, the next General, returned to Rome in 1893, so that Fiesole was the centre of the Society for twenty years.
As the chief representative of Christ on Earth is the most prominent victim of these spoliations, and as he has been frequently driven into exile and is at present only tolerated in his own territory, the Society of Jesus with the other religious orders cannot consider it a reproach but rather a glory to be treated like him. How does the Society survive all these disasters? It continues as if nothing had happened, and one reads with amazement the statement of Father General Wernz at the meeting of the procurators held in September and October 1910, when in a tone that is almost jubilant he congratulates the Society on its "flourishing condition." He said in brief:
"There are five new provinces; a revival of the professed houses; new novitiates, scholasticates, tertianships and courses in the best colleges for students of special subjects; and a superior course for Jesuit students of canon law in the Gregorian University. Next year there are to be accommodations for 300 theologians (boarders) at Innsbruck, which institution will be a Collegium Maximum for philosophy, theology and special studies. The novitiate is to be moved to the suburbs of Vienna. In the province of Galicia sufficient ground has been bought to make the College of Cracow similar to Innsbruck, and a beautiful church is being built there. The province of Germany though dispersed has built in Holland an immense novitiate and house of retreats and the Luxemburg house of writers is to be united to the Collegium Maximum of Valkenburg. The Holland province has more diplomated professors than any other in the Society, and is about to build a new scholasticate. Louvain is becoming more and more a house of special studies. In England, the Campion house at Oxford is continuing its success and there is question of moving St. Beuno's. The Irish province is looking for another site for the novitiate and juniorate, and is using the University to form better teachers. Canada is looking for another place for its novitiate and so are Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, while Maryland is trying to put its scholasticate near New York.
"Not much remains to be done in Spain. However, Toledo has established a scholasticate in Murcia, and Aragon is planning one for Tarragona. France is dispersed, but it has furnished excellent professors for the Biblical Institute and the Gregorian University. In the mission of Calcutta, 130,000 pagans have been brought to the Faith and in one Chinese mission, 12,000. The numbers could be doubled if there were more workers." This was in 1910, and within a week of this pronouncement, the expulsion in Portugal took place; in 1914 the war broke out which shattered Belgium and made France more wretched than ever. What the future will be no one knows.