Note 175 — LETTER VIII.[173]

The Jesuits exemplified their own maxim in this case by the famous bankruptcy of their College of St. Hermenigilde at Seville. We have a full account of this in the memorial presented to the King of Spain by the luckless creditors. The simple pathos and sincere earnestness of this document preclude all suspicion of the accuracy of its statements. By the advice of their Father Provincial, the Jesuits, in March, 1645, stopped payments after having borrowed upwards of 450,000 ducats, mostly from poor widows and friendless girls. This shameful affair was exposed before the courts of justice, during a long litigation, in the course of which it was discovered that the Jesuit fathers had been carrying on extensive mercantile transactions, and that instead of spending the money left them for pious uses—such as ransoming captives, and alms-giving—they had devoted it to the purposes of what they termed “our poor little house of profession.” (Theatre Jesuitique, p. 200, &c.)