FOOTNOTES: (continued 2)

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. Metternich, at least, retained the spirit of Joseph II., and Ferdinand II. was not yet disposed to tempt his subjects by readmitting them. Prussia was, of course, still closed against the Jesuits as 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 1829, Styria and other provinces were opened to them, though the opposition was so violent that at Gratz we find them complaining of having to lodge in some kind of inn, with an actress for neighbour.

Ferdinand II. died in 1836, but his successor could do little for them in face of the prevailing hostility. Father Beckx, the future General, was in Vienna at the time. A Jesuit had at last brought a ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Köthen, 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, and Josephite principles triumphant; the Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden to teach. Ferdinand, however, was not indisposed to enlist their aid in fighting Liberalism, and they quietly spread in the outlying provinces. The Tyrol was opened to them in 1838, and from their old college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools. We shall see presently how the revolutionary storm of 1848 drove them from their new acquisitions.

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. The canton of Solothurn was then more than eighty per cent. Catholic, and in 1816 the Grand Council was urged to restore the Society. It refused, and they then made cautious efforts in Valais and Freiburg. I am aware that in all these cases the Jesuits do not appear in connection with the petition; a few influential Catholics appeal for the return, and the Jesuits are depicted as serenely aloof from the negotiations. We are accustomed to pretences of this character. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also was nearly ninety per cent. 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 began to spread in Catholic Valais.

From the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century the Radicals began their attacks on the growing Jesuits. 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 had adopted the ideas of Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educationist, and were doing admirable work. The bishop complained to the authorities of the friars' innovations, and they were replaced by the Jesuits. The Radicals of the town were malicious enough to suggest that the Jesuits had intrigued to bring about this result,—of which, of course, there is no proof,—and on the night of 9-10th March they attacked the college, and were with difficulty prevented from burning it. 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 1836, however, 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. They and the "young Swiss" were part of the international Liberal movement, which was everywhere anti-clerical. [42] 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. Opinions may differ as to the conduct of the Jesuits in pressing their ministry, since it is clear that the purely political differences would not have stained the hills and valleys of Switzerland with blood. 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.

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. The revolution was just, however, and there were other grounds than religion in the dissatisfaction of the Belgians. [43] From that date Belgium has been a golden land for the Jesuits, and Protestant Holland has suffered them to prosper in peace. After 1830 they 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, as they do to-day.

It is needless to show, in fine, how the restored Jesuits spread again over the foreign missions. After 1830 especially, when their number had increased, they began to regain their lost Provinces. In 1834 six fathers landed at Calcutta to restore the Indian Province, and when the Portuguese missionaries and authorities tried to expel them, they succeeded in getting the protection of the English authorities. Madaura, the richest of their old fields, was restored to them in 1837. Here again the existing missionaries protested so violently that for many years the few Jesuits led a hard and almost fruitless existence. In 1842 some of the Jesuit missionaries secured the charge of a native college in Bengal, but the prince was compelled to evict them after a few years. There was an angry feeling and great outcry against them in India well into the middle of the century. In 1854 they received charge of the vicariate of Bombay, in 1858 of Poonah, and in 1859 of Bengal.

China was re-entered, very modestly, in 1841, and the various Republics of South America admitted them whenever the Catholics alternated in power with the Liberals. They entered Argentina in 1836, but were banished again in 1843; they were permitted to settle in Guatemala in 1853, and expelled when the Liberals came to power in 1871. But it would be little more than a calendar of dates to record their appearances and disappearances in the South American States, and on the foreign missions generally. In 1845, of 5000 Jesuits, 518 were missionaries: in 1855 there were 1110 on the missions: in 1884 they counted 2575 on the missions. They no longer presented to the historian the interesting features of their early years; Jesuits no longer flaunted the silk robes of a mandarin or the mythological vesture of a Saniassi, no vast estates or commerce sent gold to their European brethren, no troops of soldiers marched at their command, no quaint rites or rebellions against bishops engaged the Roman Congregations. They had entered the age of prose.