A CANDID HISTORY
OF
THE JESUITS
BY
JOSEPH McCABE
AUTHOR OF
"THE DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME" ETC.
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH
1913
PREFACE
It is the historic custom of the Church of Rometo enlist in itsservice monastic or quasi-monastic bodies in addition to the ordinaryclergy. In its hour of greatest need, at the very outbreak of theReformation, the Society of Jesus was formed as one of these auxiliaryregiments, and in the war which the Church of Rome has waged sincethat date the Jesuits have rendered the most spirited and conspicuousservice. Yet the procedure of this Society has differed in manyimportant respects from that of the other regiments of the Church, anda vast and unceasing controversy has gathered about it. It is probablethat a thousand times, or several thousand times, more books andpamphlets and articles have been written about the Jesuits than abouteven the oldest and most powerful or learned of the monastic bodies.Not a work of history can be opened, in any language, but it willcontain more references to the Jesuits than to all the other religiousorders collectively. But opinions differ as much to-day as they did ahundred or two hundred years ago about the character of the Jesuits,and the warmest eulogies are chilled by the most bitter and witheringindictments.
What is a Jesuit? The question is asked still in every civilisedland, and the answer is a confusing mass of contradictions. The mostlearned historians read the facts of their career so differently,that one comes to a verdict expressing deep and criminal guilt, andanother acquits them with honour. Since the foundation of the Societythese drastically opposed views of its action have been taken, andthe praise and homage of admirers have been balanced by the intensehatred of an equal number of Catholic opponents. It would seem thatsome impenetrable veil lies over the history and present life of theSociety, yet on both sides its judges refuse to recognise obscurity.Catholic monarchs and peoples have, time after time, driven the Jesuitsignominiously over their frontiers; Popes have sternly condemned them.But they are as active, and nearly as numerous, in the twentiethcentury as in the last days of the old political world.
No marshalling of historical facts will change the feeling of thepronounced admirers and opponents of the Jesuits, and it would be idleto suppose that, because the present writer is neither Roman Catholicnor Protestant, he will be awarded the virtue of impartiality. Thereseems, however, some need for an historical study of the Jesuits whichwill aim at impartiality and candour. On one side we have large andimportant works like Crétineau-Joly's Histoire religieuse, politique,et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jésus, and a number of smallerworks, written by Catholics of England or America, from the material,and in the spirit, of the French historian's work. Such works asthese cannot for a moment be regarded as serious history. They arepanegyrics or apologies: pleasant reading for the man or woman whowishes to admire, but mere untruth to the man or woman who wishes toknow. Indeed, the work of M. Crétineau-Joly, written in conjunctionwith the Jesuits, which is at times recommended as the classicalauthority on the Society, has worse defects than the genial omissionof unedifying episodes. He makes the most inflated general statementson the scantiest