JESUITS. 



23 



to assist him, some hundred thousands to Christianity 

 in Goa, Travaneore, Cochin, Malacca, Ceylon, and 

 even in Japan, and died (1551) on his way to China, 

 with the fame of a true martyr for religion, which 

 gained for him the name of the apostle of India, and 

 the honour of canonization. His triumphs over 

 heathenism were confirmed by the cruelties of the 

 inquisition at Goa, while other Jesuits went to 

 South America, and laboured successfully in the 

 civilization and subjugation of the natives in Brazil, 

 and in the neighbouring country of Paraguay. Africa 

 alone resisted their efforts ; on the western coasts 

 they never gained a settlement, and from the east 

 they were driven by the Copts ; while the Abyssini- 

 ans, whom they had governed for a long time with 

 the aid of Portugal, rose against them, and put them 

 to death. But in Europe, their influence rapidly in- 

 creased. Their efforts were chiefly instrumental in 

 removing the impressions, so dangerous to the Catho- 

 lic church, which the reformation had left even in 

 Catholic countries. They carried out upon a grand 

 scale, and for the higher classes, the improvements 

 in the system of instruction, which had been already 

 begun by the Barnabites, the fathers of the Christian 

 doctrine, those of Somasquo and of the oratory, and, 

 finally, by the Piarists, for the humbler classes of the 

 community. Claudius Aquaviva, of the family of 

 the dukes of Atri, general of the Jesuits from 1581 

 to 1615, was the author of their system of education, 

 and his work, Ratio et Institutio Studiorum Societatis 

 Jesu, is the platform of the far-famed schools of the 

 Jesuits. These were partly boarding-schools for boys 

 of all classes, and partly seminaries for those youths 

 who were intended for the order, in which they staid 

 till their entrance upon their novitiate. The scholars 

 (so called) and coadjutors, living together in the col- 

 leges, gave instruction by methods well suited to the 

 wants of the young, and accompanied with surprising 

 success, so as to be considered as worthy of imita- 

 tion even in the eighteenth century. A free, affable 

 and affectionate manner towards the pupils, united 

 with unceasing vigilance and a wise solicitude for the 

 preservation of their innocence and virtue, distin- 

 guished these above all other monastic schools. Love 

 and confidence prevailed in them. To excite emula- 

 tion, and to animate industry, they had public exer- 

 cises in speaking, and distributed prizes and titles of 

 distinction. To strengthen and develop the body, 

 gymnastic exercises were introduced, and even the 

 outward demeanour and address were polished by 

 theatrical representations. It is true that these last, 

 which were intended to allure the public, and the 

 miserable Latin which the pupils were often obliged 

 to speak in the plays, were not the bright side of the 

 Jesuit schools. The want of deep critical learning, 

 and the arbitrary mutilation of the old classics for the 

 use of the young, exposed the Jesuit teachers to the 

 censure of the philologists. Nevertheless, the schools 

 had an uncommon success, as the best of that time. 

 A single college frequently had several hundred 

 scholars ; the young nobility were almost exclusively 

 sent to them, and even from Protestant countries, so 

 that the Protestants found it necessary to establish 

 lyceums and academies for the gentry, of a character 

 suited to the higher demands of the age. The Jesuits 

 derived the greatest advantage from these institutions, 

 by being enabled to choose the brightest geniuses at 

 an early age, and mould them to their purposes. 

 This explains how the society of Jesus was able to 

 render important services to the cause of literature 

 and science. Such Jesuits as Serrarius, Petavius, 

 Sirmond, Tursellinus, Bellarmin, Balde, Mariana, 

 and Flechier advanced the sciences of history and 

 geography, the study of language and rhetoric, even 

 beyond the limits of their own order and church. 



Scheiner and Boscovich were eminent in mathema- 

 tics and astronomy. No men understood better than 

 the Jesuits the art of showing off, to the best advan- 

 tage, their really valuable services ; the world could 

 not but acknowledge them to be improvers and bene- 

 factors of their age. Accordingly, their houses and 

 possessions visibly increased, their churches and 

 confessionals were not empty ; they contrived, too, 

 with much address, to obtain legacies and presents, 

 and to seize upon every advantage which pious cre- 

 dulity and the extent of their connexions presented 

 them. They would not allow their internal constitu- 

 tion to be inquired into or imitated ; and when, in 

 1623, a number of enterprising females in Italy, and 

 on the Lower Rhine, formed a plan of uniting into 

 an order, under the name of the Jesuitines, to be 

 modelled after the society of Jesus, they repulsed all 

 the advances of their would-be sisters, and, in 1631, 

 procured a papal decree for the abolition of the new 

 order. But in England, and the Protestant states of 

 the North, they were not so successful, their repeated 

 attempts to establish themselves there proving fruit- 

 less. In 1618, however, the number of members 

 amounted to 13,112, in thirty-two provinces, without 

 including those in France, the Rhenish provinces, 

 and the Netherlands, Poland, and Lithuania, Spanish 

 America, the Philippines, and China. Elated with 

 this success, they celebrated, in 1640, under general 

 Vitelleschi, the centennial anniversary of their ordsr, 

 with great pomp. There were some circumstances, 

 however, to damp their exultation ; for, notwith- 

 standing the great favour which they enjoyed at 

 court and among the people, the non-Jesuit clergy 

 and the learned men of the age soon discovered the 

 mischief which the society was beginning to do 

 through Christendom. The universities, bishops, and 

 clergymen found their interest opposed to that of the 

 Jesuits, whose privileges, where they were carried into 

 effect, would be necessarily injurious and oppressive 

 to the body of teachers and the clergy. The ancient 

 orders of monks, whose hatred they had excited by 

 their encroachments on their province, as much as 

 by their good fortune, found subject enough for 

 complaint and bitter accusations in the duplicity and 

 worldliness of their conduct. They made no scruple 

 of invading what had been regarded as the appropri- 

 ate province of other orders, and were on the best 

 terms with the Carthusians, who, on account of their 

 vow of silence, were the only ecclesiastics, out of 

 their own body, to whom the Jesuits were permitted 

 to make confession. Their busy, intriguing spirit made 

 them the objects of suspicion and jealousy to states- 

 men and jurists, on account of their interference in 

 political affairs, the mischievous effects of which were 

 already manifest in Portugal, under the reigns of 

 John III. and Sebastian, their pupils, and, after the 

 death of the latter, were a principal cause of the sur- 

 render of this kingdom to the Spanish crown. For 

 this reason, the parliament and higher clergy of 

 France, for twenty years, resolutely resisted the 

 attempts of the Jesuits to gain a footing in that 

 country. The university of Paris also declared the 

 whole order to be useless, and its existence incompa- 

 tible with the rights of the Gallican church. It was 

 owing chiefly to the favour of the court, that they at 

 last, in 1562, were admitted into France under the 

 name of fathers of the college of Clermont, with a 

 humiliating renunciation of their most important priv- 

 ileges. Notwithstanding this depressed condition, 

 they soon contrived to establish themselves in Paris 

 and the southern and western provinces, and, during 

 the civil commotions, under the protection of the 

 Guises, to deprive the French Protestants of their 

 rights, gradually to establish their privileges, and to 

 maintain their footing, in spite of the suspicions enter- 



