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The Jesuits as Portrayed by non-Catholic Historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

William Walker Rockwell
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary

Extract

From the days of Ignatius Loyola until now the Society of Jesus has bulked large in the imagination of the English-speaking races. The Elizabethan certainty that Jesuits were concerned in plots against the sovereign led with remorseless logic to hangings and quarterings at Tyburn. The Puritan prejudice, common especially in the seventeenth century, that the Pope was Antichrist, made his Jesuit emissaries appear dangerous and almost uncanny. The Enlightenment of the age of Voltaire saw in them a band of obscurantists of darkest dye, whose sinister influence over education and politics properly led the Bourbon courts to expel them from the chief Catholic countries of Europe, and to secure in 1773 from a hesitating Pope their utter and perpetual abolition. In the Brief of suppression the Pope himself enumerated their weaknesses and faults, and declared that these were so great as to outweigh their manifest and signal services; therefore the repudiation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1914

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References

1 Reprinted by Mirbt, C.: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus; 3d ed., Tübingen, 1911, No. 457.Google Scholar

2 Mirbt, No. 471.

3 Ibid., Nos. 499, 504, 508, 509, 558, 559. On the codification see Nos. 555, 561; Hilling, N., Die Reformen des Papstes Pius X. auf dem Gebiete der kirchenrechtlichen Gesetzgebung; Bonn, 1909Google Scholar; Herzog, E., Der papstliche Absolutismus unter Pius X (Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift; Band I., Hefte 1 & 2); Bern, 1911.Google Scholar

4 Historia Societatis Jesu, Rome, 1614–1758, begins with Loyola and continues to 1633. It was edited successively by Orlandini, Sacchini, Possinus, Jouvancy, and Cordara (Catholic Encyclopedia, 11, 317).

5 Catholic Encyclopedia, 14, 96.

6 Ibid., 4, 488.

7 See the comprehensive article by Paul Maria Baumgarten, “Institutes, Roman Historical” (Catholic Encyclopedia, 8, 61–65).

8 Duhr treats Austria, Germany, and Switzerland; Fouqueray, France; Astrain, Spain; Venturi, Italy; Kroess, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; Thomas Hughes, North America; and Pastells, Paraguay. They are written in German, Freneh, Spanish, Italian, or English. Exact titles may be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 14, 94, and 96. On the scrupulous fairness of Duhr as over gainst the unbending partisanship of Fouqueray, see G. L. Burr, in the American Historical Review, Oct., 1913, pp. 143–145. An earlier work deserves mention also: Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. In addition there should be noted the inspired rebuttals of slanders and legends concerning the Order, such as Duhr, Jesuiten-Fabeln (4th ed., 1904, pp. xii, 975); Brou, Les Jésuites de la légende (1907, 2 vols.). Other Catholic works include E. L. Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England, 1580–1773 (1901), and Father Taunton's much discussed article “Jesuits” in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911).Google Scholar

9 Macaulay, T. B., History of England from the accession of James II; New York, 1849, vol. 2, 4956; see also his essay on Ranke's History of the Popes, originally published in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1840.Google Scholar

10 Two German works deserve mention: J. Huber, Der Jesuiten-Orden nach seiner Verfassung und Doctrin, Wirksamkeit, und Geschichte, 1873, and E. Gothein, Ignatius von Loyola und die Gegenreformation, 1895. The latter is a solid contribution, based on work in various archives.

11 Neatby, W. Blair, The Programme of the Jesuits; 1903, p. 191.Google Scholar

12 Walsh, Walter, The Jesuits in Great Britain: a historical inquiry into their Political Influence, 1903, p. 337. Another work of the same temper is Michael F. J. McCarthy's Jesuits and the British Press (1910).Google Scholar

13 H. Stoeckius, Forschungen zur Lebensordnung der Gesellschaft Jesu im 16 Jahrhundert: I., Ordensangehörige und Externe; II., Das gesellschaftliche Leben im Ordenshause, 1910 f.

14 Pilatus (Dr. Viktor Naumann), Der Jesuitismus. Eine kritische Würdigung der Grundsätze, Verfassung, und geistigen Entwicklung der Gesellschaft Jesu, mit besonderer Beziehung auf die wissenschaftlichen Kämpfe und auf die Darstellung von antijesuitischer Seite. Nebst einem literarhistorischen Anhang: Die antijesuitische Literatur von der Gründung des Ordens bis auf unsere Zeit; Regensburg, 1905.Google Scholar

15 Boehmer, H., Les Jésuites. Ouvrage traduit de l'allemand avec une Introduction et des Notes par Gabriel Monod, Membre de l'Institut; Paris, 1910.Google Scholar

16 Monod supplements Boehmer especially on three points: the Chinese and the Malabar rites, the casuistry and ethics of the Jesuits, the policy of the Jesuits (including the Monita Secreta).

17 McCabe, , A Candid History of the Jesuits; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1913.Google Scholar

18 II, 405 f.

19 Das Papsttum in seiner sozial-kulturellen Wirksamkeit, 4th ed. (1902), 2 vols.; Moderner Staat und römische Kirche (1906); Rom und das Centrum (1907).Google Scholar

20 1909 f.; translation, 1911.

21 Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell, arranged with supplements by Petre, M. D.; Longmans, Green, & Co., 1912, 2 vols. Reviewed in this periodical, Jan. 1914, p. 123 f., by the Reverend William Sullivan.Google Scholar

22 Duhr, Jesuitenfabeln, 4th ed., 1–32.

23 Thayer, W. R., Life and Times of Cavour, 1911.Google Scholar

24 Hoensbroech, II, 133

25 Ibid., 164.

26 Quoted in Nielsen, F., History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (1906), II, 91.Google Scholar

27 W. Bornemann lists twenty-six times that various governments have officially expelled the Jesuits (Sind die Jesuitengegner “Lügner” und “Verleumder”? 1903, p. 39 f.).

28 Döllinger, and Reusch, , Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeit in der römischkatholischen Kirche; 2 vols. (1899).Google Scholar

29 Boehmer, p. 293.