Chapter XII. Idolatrous Usages Introduced.

It must not be supposed that the only grounds of complaint against the Jesuits were those already enumerated. Wheresoever they were sent among heathen and unchristianized peoples, they gave trouble to the Church, and inflicted serious injury upon the cause of Christianity. When they found a missionary field occupied by any of the monastic orders, they endeavored either to remove them, or to destroy their influence by assailing their Christian integrity, so that they could have everything their own way. They accustomed themselves to obtain their ends by whatsoever means they found necessary, considering the latter as justified by the former. Not in Paraguay alone, but wheresoever else they obtained dominion over ignorant and credulous populations, it was mainly accomplished by persuading them to believe that conversion to Christianity consisted in the mere recital of formal words the professed converts did not understand, and in the ceremony of baptism without any intelligent conception of its character, or of the example and teachings of Christ. The seeds of error they thus succeeded in scattering broadcast among the natives of India, China, and elsewhere, have grown into such poisonous fruits that all the intervening years have failed to provide an antidote, and it remains a lamentable fact that the descendants of these same professing converts have relapsed into idolatry, and continued to shun Christianity as if all its influences were pestilential. They became Brahmins in India, and, by practicing the idolatrous rites and ceremonies of that country, brought the cause of Christianity into degradation. Continuing steadily to follow the advice of Loyola, they everywhere became “all things to all men,” by worshiping at the shrines of the lowest forms of heathen superstition as if they were the holy altars of the Church. And when rebuked for this by the highest authorities of the Church, they justified themselves upon the ground that any form of vice, deception, and immorality became legitimated by Christianity when practiced in its name. In China they engaged with the natives in worshiping Confucius instead of Christ, and made offerings upon his altar without the slightest twinge of conscience. They omitted nothing, howsoever degrading, which they found necessary to successfully planting the Jesuit scepter among the Oriental populations, until at last, after a long and hard struggle, they were brought into partial obedience by the Church, whose authority they had defied, and whose precepts they contemptuously violated. Whatsoever may be said or thought of the various religions which have prevailed throughout the world, there is one thing about which there can be no misunderstanding; that is, that the Brahminism of India and the Christianity of Christ can not be united together harmoniously. There are many reasons for this, apparent to every intelligent mind, but a few only are sufficient for present purposes. It has always been the central idea of the former that Brahma should be worshiped through a multitude of divinities, representing each passion and emotion of the mind; and that his wrath shall be appeased by sacrificial offerings, even of human beings, in order to reach total annihilation as the highest and most perfect state of beatitude after death; whereas the central idea of Christianity is that worship is due only to one God, the Author of all being and the Soyereign of the universe, so that when man shall reach “the last of earth,” his spirit shall enter upon immortality. Brahminism held India for centuries in degrading bondage, and Christianity was designed to lift mankind to a higher plane of being. This belief was universal among all Christians, howsoever they may have differed in forms of faith and modes of worship; and none were louder in its profession than the Jesuits, who pretended that they alone were worthy to occupy the missionary field, and were specially and divinely set apart to spread the gospel among all heathen peoples. In carrying on their work, however, in India, they violated their solemn vow of fidelity to the Church by casting aside every pretense of Christianity, and openly, but with simulated professions of Christian zeal, adopting the idolatrous practices common to the natives. They shamelessly cast aside the profession of Christianity as if it were a thing of reproach, aud performed with alacrity the most revolting Hindoo rites, seemingly as regardless of the obligation of obedience to the Church as of their own dignity and manliness of character. They substituted fraud, deceit, and hypocrisy for that open, frank, and courageous course of conduct which a sense of right never fails to suggest to ingenuous minds. “They unchristianized themselves by becoming Brahmins and pariahs, crawling stealthily and insidiously into the highest places, and sinking with equal ease and skill into the lowest and most degrading. Even in this enlightened and investigating age, many intelligent people will wonder whether or no these things are possibly true, inasmuch as they shock so seriously every sense of personal honor and religious duty. But the verifications of them are sufficiently abundant to remove all possible doubt, furnished, as they are, not alone by the authors of general history, but by those friendly to the Jesuits, and usually prompt to apologize for them.

One of the most conspicuous of the Jesuit missionaries to India, after Xavier, was Nobili, who reached Madura about the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is pretended that his predecessors had been unable to convert any of the Brahmins, inasmuch as they had labored exclusively with the pariahs, who, besides being shunned and despised by the Brahmins, had paid no heed whatsoever to their Christian admonitions. Nobili, therefore, taxed his ingenuity to discover some practical method of removing this difficulty. He had before him numerous examples of those who had spread the cause of Christianity by openly professing and courageously vindicating it. There was something inspiring in the thought that in its past successes Christianity had required no disguises, but had achieved its victories over paganism in the field of open and manly controversy. To a devout and Christian mind there was no ground of compromise between Brahminism and Christianity. One or the other had to yield—they could not unite. Nobili knew this, and but for his Jesuit training would scarcely have departed from the plain line of Christian duty. With his mind, however, disciplined by the belief that it was his duty to be “all things to all men,” he imitated the example of Mahomet, who went to the mountain when it would not come to him, by casting aside his character of Christian and becoming a Brahmin himself. He assumed the character and position of a “Saniassi;” that is, the highest caste among the Hindoos. What that word means is not very plain, but the Jesuits insist that those Brahmins who bore it had given some indications of penitence, and that the object of Nobili was to insinuate himself into their favor, secretly and by false pretenses, and thus bring them over to Christianity. There is much reason for believing that this was an afterthought, set up as a defense when the flagrant and unchristian conduct of the Jesuits excited general distrust among the Christians of Europe. But if it expressed the real motive existing at the time, it was then, as always, wholly without justification or excuse—a plain and manifest breach of Christian obligation and duty. He could not become a Saniassi without denying that he either was or had ever been a Christian, and without solemnly affirming that he was a native Hindoo, and not a European—the latter, known by the hated name of Feringees, being held in special and universal contempt by all the natives, and especially by the Brahmins.

All these things, of course, involve false professions and oaths without number; and, more than that, such stifling of the conscience as to leave it incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, or between fair and false dealing. It was all done, says the Jesuit historian Daurignac, ““ with the approval of his superiors and of the Archbishop of Cranganore;” that is, it had full Jesuit endorsement. And as if it were possible to find merit in such profanation of what all Christians consider sacred, by departing from the rules of Christian life, this same authority informs his readers how Nobili appeared as a Jesuit-Brahmin, after he discarded all the distinguishing marks and characteristics of Christianity, and presented himself in the capacity of a fullfledged native Hindoo. “He assumed,” says he, “the costume of the penitent Brahmins, adopted their exterior rule of life, and spoke their mysterious language.” He shaved his head, wore the Brahmin dress, including ear-rings reaching down his neck. And “to complete the illusion ”—that is, the deception and false pretense—he represents him as having “marked his forehead with a yellow paste, made from the wood of Sandanam”—a practice peculiar to the Hindoo Brahmins. Thus metamorphosed he “passed for a perfect Saniassi, and the Brahmins themselves, wondering at such a rival, sought his presence, and questioned him as to himself, his country, and his family.” His disguise, however, perfect as it was, did not cause him to forget that he was still in fact a Jesuit, and he, obedient to his training, carried his impostures and falsehoods far enough to make his deception complete and effectual. Consequently, “his oath obtained for him admission among the most learned and holy Brahmins of the East. They named him Tatouva-PodagarSonami—a master in the ninety-six qualities of the truly wise.” And thus, by means of the most unblushing hypocrisy and false oaths, Nobili denied his religion, his name, his country, and the God whom he had professed to worship, and became a Hindoo Saniassi, all for “the greater glory of God.”

Numerous other Jesuits imitated this example of Nobili, and became both Brahmins and pariahs. Some of them were specially trained and tutored for the purpose, under the elastic system of Jesuit education, each one, of course, having been carefully instructed in the best and safest modes of practicing deception, of violating oaths, and of making the basest means contribute to the end designed to be accomplished. It is claimed for them, apologetically, that they thus became enabled to convert many hundred thousand Indians, both Brahmins and pariahs, to the cause of Christianity. No intelligent mind, however, can he misled by such a pretense as this, for if even that number of the natives were brought under their influence, they could not have risen higher than the low standard fixed by the lives of their Jesuit instructors. But this story can not be accepted as true, coming as it does only from the active agents in this vast system of fraud and falsehood. It is far more likely to have been only one more untruth added to the multitude which these Jesuit impostors were in the habit of repeating daily. Besides, if any such conversions to Christianity had occurred, the impostures of the Jesuits would have been discovered, and the whole of them driven from the country. The Jesuits then in India admit enough themselves to assure us of this. One of them said: “Our whole attention is given to concealing from the people that we are what they call Feringees. The slightest suspicion of this on their part would oppose an insurmountable obstacle to the propagation of the faith,’—the plain and obvious import of which is, that honesty and fair dealing would have weakened the cause of Christianity, whereas its strength was increased and maintained by false pretenses, false swearing, and the false profession of devotion to the Brahminical religion. Another one of them said : “The missionaries are not known to be Europeans. If they were believed to be so, they would be forced to abandon the country; for they could gain absolutely no fruit whatever. The conversion of the Hindoos is nearly impossible to evangelical laborers from Europe: I mean impossible to those who pass for Europeans, even though they wrought miracles.”

At another place he represents that it “would have been the absolute ruin of Christianity” if the Jesuits had been known as Feringees or Europeans; that is, that in order to advance Christianity, it was necessary to deny it, even under oath, and to profess that the idolatry of the Hindoos was the true worship of God.

The pretense of the Jesuits, therefore, that immense numbers of converts to Christianity were made by them, must have been entitled to no higher credit than their other professions; at all events, the acknowledged authors of a system of falsehoods and deceptions are not entitled to our confidence. It is possible, however, that they may have succeeded in baptizing in secret a few of the natives, and that some Brahmins were among them. But if they did, it is quite certain that the ceremony must have been administered by stealth, and generally so that those who were baptized had no distinct knowledge of what it meant, and may not even have known the time of its administration. At no point in the Jesuit missionary system has more harm been done to the cause of true Christianity than at this. Millions of ignorant and deluded people have been persuaded to believe that Christianity consisted in nothing else but the mere ceremony of baptism, without any intelligent conception of God. Xavier commenced this system in India, and these Jesuit-Brahmins, who followed Nobili, were his imitators. Taking all the accounts together, the number of converts in India was simply enormous, and yet in 1776, after the Jesuits had left there, a very small percentage of their estimated numbers were found.’ But these exaggerations are more excusable than the methods adopted to impose baptism upon unsuspecting and simple-minded multitudes. The German Steinmetz, alluding to this, says: “They insinuate themselves as physicians into the houses of the Indians; draw a wet cloth over the head and forehead of the sick person, even when at the point of death; mutter privately to themselves the baptism service; and think they have made one Christian more, who is immediately added to the list.” The Jesuit De Bourges is represented by him as saying: “When the children are in danger of death, our practice is to baptize them without asking the permission of their parents, which would certainly be refused. The Catechists and the private Christians are well acquainted with the formula of baptism, and they confer it on these dying children, under the pretext of giving them medicine;” that is, by that kind of “pious fraud” which, according to the Jesuits, promotes “the greater glory of God.” Another Jesuit father, whose experience in India enabled him to speak advisedly, mentions one woman “whose knowledge of the pulse and of the symptoms of approaching death was so unerring, that of more than ten thousand children whom she had herself baptized, not more than two escaped death.” The number of such baptisms during a famine in 1737 are alleged by still another Jesuit to have been “ upwards of 12,000.” And he supplements this statement by saying that “it was rare, in any place where there were neophytes, for a single heathen child to die unbaptized.” Looking over this whole field of Jesuit operations, and contemplating the demoralizing influences of the Jesuits in India, this same German historian feels himself warranted in saying that “every Jesuit who entered within these unholy bounds, bid adieu to principle and truth—all became perjured impostors, and the lives of all ever afterwards were but one long, persevering, toilsome LIE.”

It would be a fruitless task to summarize the pretexts invented by the Jesuits to convince ignorant and superstitious people that God not only approved, but directly sanctioned, the frauds and perjuries they practiced in his name, and that he had specially and divinely set them apart—distinct from any other body of people in the world—to demonstrate how “the greater glory of God” could be promoted by such iniquities. If the line could be accurately drawn between their good and evil deeds, it would be most instructive to observe how enormously the latter exceed the former. There was no trouble whatsoever for a Jesuit Saniassi to assume the character of a Christian and an idolatrous Hindoo almost at the same instant of time, in which dual capacity he could perform miracles, like those of Xavier, with the ease and skill of a modern prestidigitator. They even held the wildest animals at bay by the odor of sanctity which encircled them! One of them states that, when traveling at night with his companions, a large tiger was discovered approaching them, when, by simply crying out, “Sancta Maria!” the ferocious animal became terrified and moved away, showing, “by the grinding of his teeth, how sorry he was to let such a fine prey escape.” Another, to show how Providence overshadowed and shielded the Jesuits, said “that when heathens and Christians happened to be together, the tigers devour the former without doing any harm to the faithful—these last finding armor of proof in the sign of the cross, and in the holy name of Jesus and Mary.” Such superstitious tales as these are told, and many pretended miracles added to them, with a seeming unconsciousness upon the part of those who relate them, that the world has reached a period when the truth can be discovered, even through all the disguises which falsehood and deception may throw around it.

To those who have not investigated the history of the Jesuits, as written by themselves, these accusations may seem harsh and unmerited; not so, however, to those who have. No matter where they went, the obligation of being “all things to all men” was held to be obligatory upon every member of the society. Obedience to the Superior was the highest virtue, notwithstanding it may have involved violations of the laws of God, of morality, and of society. How else could professed Christians pretend to be engaged in the practice of virtue by denying Christ, disavowing his worship, and habitually practicing the debasing rites of the Hindoo religion, for more than a century, as Nobili and his Jesuit followers and imitators did? And what other possible pretext can be offered for the Jesuit worship of Confucius in China, in religious confraternity with the natives, who made their public ceremonies and festivities special testimonials of their adoration of him as the founder of their national religion and the chief among the gods of their idolatry? We shall see how these things were by the proceedings which led to their condemnation by the popes, although the Jesuit historians, who are forced to acknowledge them, try hard to show that the pontificial censure was not deserved. Daurignac—the ablest of the Jesuit defenders—referring to the course of Nobili and others who practiced idolatrous rites, says: “Some Europeans had been scandalized by this method of appearing all things to all men, in order to win all to Christ.” This sentence is misleading in this, that instead of there being merely “some” who felt scandalized, there were multitudes throughout Europe. The ecclesiastical authorities at Goa, in India, were also of this number; and when the complaint reached there that Nobili “had become a Brahmin, and given himself up to idolatry and superstition,” he was summoned to Goa to explain his conduct. He could not disobey this summons, and when he reached there, “the sight of his singular costume elicited a general expression of indignation” among the Christians. When required to explain, by the Archbishop of Goa, as the official representative of the Church—appointed by the pope for that purpose—the only defense he could make was that his motives were good; that is, that the prostitution of himself and his sacred calling was well meant because his object was to promote “ the greater glory of God!” The Jesuits at Goa accepted his reasons “as sufficient,” says Daurignac. There are two methods of accounting for this: First, they were Jesuits; and second, because Nobili’s method of falsehood and deception opened to them new and extensive fields of operation, which, if recognized, they could occupy with great success in extending the power of their society. But the archbishop thought otherwise, and “absolutely refused ” to accept Nobili’s reasons as satisfactory. Accordingly—speaking for the Church and the pope, as he was authorized and empowered to do—he condemned the conduct of Nobili and the reasons he assigned. Nobili “asserted that the truths of the gospel could not have been introduced into Madura by any other means;” but the archbishop refused to accept this excuse, evidently regarding it as a debasing doctrine, aimed at the very foundation of Christianity. Neither would yield. Nobili, backed by the Jesuits, insisted that he was under no obligation to obey the archbishop, although he acted under the special authority of the Church and the pope; and the result was that the matter had to be sent to Rome and the decision of the pope awaited. In the meantime Nobili returned to Madura, where he continued his idolatrous practices, notwithstanding the censure of the Archbishop of Goa was resting upon him, and he was thereby placed in the attitude of disobedience to the legitimate authority of the Church.”

Jesuit ingenuity was not sufficient to limit the scope of the inquiry thus brought before the pope and the Papal Curia at Rome, because of the increasing indignation against the society. Added to the complaints of the Portuguese authorities regarding their conduct in Paraguay, and that of Nobili at Madura, their idolatrous worship of Confucius in China came generally to be known about this time. Consequently, the investigation which it became necessary for the pope to make, had not only increased in importance, but became broader almost every day. Not only were the matters involved important to the Church, but to the cause of Christianity throughout the world; for it was easy to foresee the injurious and demoralizing results if the Jesuits were permitted to mingle Christian and idolatrous worship together, so as to make it appear to every heathen people within the limits of their missions that Christianity sanctions both forms of worship in the same degree. Consequently, it became necessary for the pope to examine and decide both questions at the same time; that is, whether the Church could rightfully tolerate either the adoption and practice of the Hindoo rites by the Jesuits in India, or their participation in the idolatrous worship of Confucius in China.

Among the notable events connected with the latter was the arrival in China of some Dominican and Franciscan missionaries, and their surprise at discovering the idolatrous practices of the Jesuits. Having never suspected even the possibility of the teachings of the Church being so tortured as to furnish apology for idolatry, they considered the conduct of the Jesuits “a real scandal,” which deserved to be rebuked. What seemed to them as especially censurable was the fact that the Jesuits had taught their neophytes to use the Chinese term “KingTien,” to express the idea of God—not as the Creator of the universe, but as the presiding Deity over a multitude of other deities, each having a separate sphere of sovereignty. To them it was not easy to conceive of anything more likely to undermine Christianity, because by limiting or lessening in any way the sovereign attributes of God, the whole Christian system would topple and fall. They, accordingly, notified the apostolic vicar in China, as the immediate representative of the Church there, of this unscrupulous and unchristian conduct of the Jesuits, in order, if possible, to apply the proper corrective and remove the “scandal” from the Church. The vicar did not have much to do to discover that the accusations of the monks against the Jesuits were true; and when this became known to him, he not only condemned their idolatry, but “severely censured them” for practicing it. The Jesuits, by way of defense, attempted to explain why they had applied an idolatrous Chinese term to the God of the Christians, and in doing so exhibited their accustomed sophistry—in which they have always been adepts—in such way as to convince the vicar, as well as the Dominican and Franciscan monks, of their entire want of sincerity and candor, to say nothing of their loss of Christian integrity. They pretended that “the honors paid to Confucius were merely civil ceremonies, with which the Christians did not associate any religious ideas whatever, and that the word KingTien, in the Chinese language, simply conveyed the idea of God as understood by Christians.” This, they said, they were informed by the Chinese mandarins and learned men. Hence, they argued that unless the idolatrous worship they had adopted were allowed to prevail, it would be impossible to obtain sufficient influence over the Chinese to draw them to Christianity—the precise meaning of which was, that unless they were permitted to practice the idolatrous rites of heathenism, the Chinese could never be induced to become Christians. This argument was thoroughly Jesuitical, and failed to mislead either the vicar apostolic or the Dominican and Franciscan monks, all of whom could see through the thin disguise with which the Jesuits attempted to conceal their ultimate purpose of bringing the Church authorities, with the pope at their head, in obedience to them. It did not require any Chinese learning for them to understand that it was impossible, in the nature of things, for the Chinese to have introduced into their language any word, or even any set of words, expressive of the idea of God as Christians understood it. They were familiar with the universal rule that the language of every people is constructed solely to express their own ideas, sentiments, and thoughts, and not such as prevail among those with whom they hold no intercourse, Candor and fair dealing with the Church and the cause of Christianity, therefore, required them to recognize the facts that the Chinese word King-Tien conveyed only the idolatrous idea of the superior godship of Confucius, and that it was so used in all the civic and other ceremonies of the Chinese. The result consequently was, that the vicar united with the monks in repudiating the position and doctrine of the Jesuits, and vigorously condemned and censured them for bringing the established worship of the Church into disrepute. This decision alone—made by the regularly constituted authorities of the Church—constitutes a most important and pregnant fact, which should not be overlooked by those who desire to understand the history of the most wonderful society the world has ever known.

This decision undoubtedly conformed to the opinion of the pope and of all the Church authorities throughout Europe, outside the circle of Jesuits. When announced by the apostolic vicar, with the approval of the monks, it should have put a stop to all further idolatrous proceedings on the part of the Jesuits. Any other body of men, who acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Church, would either have obeyed it by entirely abandoning the condemned practices at once, or, at all events, would have ceased to follow them until the prohibition was removed by the pope, whose superior jurisdiction could not be denied without rebellion against the Church. But the Jesuits did not belong to an order accustomed to submission to any other authority than that of their superior, whom each of them had solemnly sworn to recognize as equal to God, and to obey accordingly. They acquiesced in the decisions of the popes when they conformed with their own opinions and purposes; when they did not, they employed all their combined ingenuity and cunning to evade them. Consequently, they disobeyed the vicar, spurned the counsel of the monks, and persisted in continuing their idolatrous practices, under the pretense that they were awaiting the decision of the pope.

The popes were compelled to deal slowly and cautiously with such questions on account of the difficulty of access to such remote countries as India and China, and the unavoidable delays in transmitting intelligence between them and Rome. Precautionary measures were adopted by sending special prelates of the Church, chosen by the pope for that purpose, not only with directions to investigate and report the facts, but with authority to establish temporary regulations which should become operative while waiting the pope’s approval, and final when that was given. One of these prelates was a Spanish Dominican, named Morales, who was sent to China in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII. This was twelve years after the matter had been submitted to Paul V, and was rendered necessary by the fact that it had remained undecided during the pontificate of Gregory XV. When Morales reached China, he entered upon the necessary examination with sufficient care to become convinced of the unchristian conduct of the Jesuits, and, accordingly, condemned their ceremonies as idolatrous. This incensed the Chinese authorities—who are supposed to have been influenced to this by the Jesuits—and “the Dominicans and the Franciscans were driven from the country,” leaving the Jesuits alone to follow their idolatrous practices without the interference of the monks or of Morales, who, being a Dominican, was included among those expelled. Morales had then spent twelve years in China, and all that time was laboring with the Jesuits to induce them to give up their participation in the worship of Confucius; but his efforts were wholly unavailing. They had brought themselves into favor at the court of the Chinese emperor, and were unwilling to surrender the advantages thus obtained, preferring them to the service of the Church. There was, therefore, no other course left to Morales, after his expulsion from China, but to proceed to Rome and report to the pope, who was then Innocent X. This he did in 1645, when he fully laid before the pope what he had observed in China, making known, of course, the fact that he had been banished on account of his fidelity to the trust assigned him. It was impossible for the pope to abandon the matter at this point, and he accordingly submitted to the Congregation of the Propaganda, to be decided for his information and guidance, these two questions: “Is it permissible to prostrate one’s self before the idol Chachinchiam? Is it permissible to sacrifice to Keumfucum; that is, Confucius?” By these questions the Jesuit methods of procedure in China were brought “directly before this established tribunal of the Church at Rome, so that the decision of them by the pope was unavoidable. What that decision was, is shown by the following statement made under the immediate auspices of Archbishop Hughes, of New York, in the “Lives and Times of Roman Pontiffs,” by De Montor: On the reply of the Congregation, the pope issued a decree forbidding missionaries of any order or institute to do either of those things, until the Holy See gave a contrary order.” Thus, whatsoever other popes may have done or omitted to do, Innocent X solemnly decreed that the Jesuit practices were wrong and would be no longer tolerated by the Church. He had not then learned—what became perfectly apparent to many of his successors—that the Jesuits were as familiar with the various methods of brushing papal decrees out of their way as they were with the frauds and hypocrisies by which they duped and misled the heathen at the expense of the Christian cause.

There seems to have been some unnecessary delay, and possibly some undue prevarication, in the manner in which the popes disposed of these troublesome matters. De Montor represents that several of the popes who succeeded Innocent X permitted the Jesuits to continue their idolatrous ceremonies; to wit, Alexander VII, Clement IX, Clement X, Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, and Innocent XII. This general statement, however, is misleading, and calculated to do injustice to these popes, unless taken in connection with the fact that none of them went further than to say that the Jesuits might unite with.the Chinese in their civil ceremonies, when they were, in no sense, religious. None of them undertook to decide whether the sacrifice to Confucius did or did not involve religious worship; for that was the question directly submitted to them, and with regard to which the utmost pains were taken to procure accurate and reliable evidence. But it is undoubtedly true that the Jesuits misconstrued what had been done by these six popes, and perverted their meaning to suit themselves, by continuing their idolatrous practices with increased impunity. And they did this to such an extent, and so openly, that in 1693, Maigrot, Apostolic Vicar, Doctor of the Sorbonne, and Bishop of Conon, was constrained, as the representative of the Church, to forbid the idolatrous ceremonies of the Jesuits by a special prohibitory decree. The date of this decree is important, inasmuch as it shows how many years it took and how hard it was to bring the Jesuits into subordination to the Church; in other words, how little they cared for the Church, or the popes, or vicars apostolic, or the ancient monkish orders, when either of them alone, or all combined, ventured to place the least impediment in their path. The question with regard to the idvlatrous practices of Nobili arose first in 1618, and was submitted to Paul V in 1621. Hence, up to the time of his official decree of condemnation by Maigrot, as vicar apostolic, seventy-two years—nearly three-quarters of a century—had elapsed, during all which time the Jesuits had enjoyed an uninterrupted triumph over the Church, the popes, and Christianity.

This condition of things made it absolutely necessary that the severe and protracted strain upon the authority of the Church should, in some way, be brought to an end, and that the stigma the Jesuits had inflicted upon Christianity should be removed. Consequently, Pope Clement XI—after eight more years of delay—appointed a new vicar apostolic and legate in the person of the distinguished Cardinal De Tournon, in order to insure a complete and thorough investigation of the conduct of the Jesuits in India and China. He was empowered to represent fully the authority of the Church and to act in the place of the pope. De Tournon entered upon his mission with zeal, and having, after investigation, found all the accusations against the Jesuits completely verified, issued a decree, in June, 1704, whereby he condemned in the strongest and most explicit terms the Chinese and Malabar rites practiced by the Jesuits. This decree is given by Nicolini, and a perusal of it will show the degraded state into which the Jesuits had brought the professedly Christian worship—even to the adoption of the superstitious and immoral customs of the idolaters.” Up till this time the Jesuits had enjoyed nearly a hundred years of impunity, and as the Church had been unable, during this long period, to impose upon them any restraint they had not contrived the means to defy, their idolatrous worship and demoralizing doctrines could no longer be tolerated without incalculable harm. Therefore, the severe measures adopted by De Tournon, by the express authority of Clement XI, were fully justified. The Jesuits again evidenced their perverse and stubborn nature by impudently appealing from the decree the pope had authorized De Tournon to make in his name, to the pope himself, manifestly hoping either to bring him over to their side, or to procrastinate his final decision indefinitely. They repeated their favorite argument, that Christianity could not be propagated in India and China without making the worship of idols part of its religious ceremonies. They also impeached the character of the evidence upon which De Tournon had relied, by insisting that it was obtained from those who did not understand the people of India or China, or their languages. In all this they persisted in assuming that, in order to convert a heathen people, Christianity must be first converted into heathenism, that it may furnish a starting point for obtaining ultimate dominion over them. “This meant that heathens must be converted to Christianity by the Jesuits alone, inasmuch as none others besides them had endeavored to engraft upon Christian faith and worship any idolatrous ceremonies, or the duty and necessity of falsehood and hypocrisy, as means to an end. But the pope was not misled by this demoralizing subterfuge, and, after hearing them fully and giving all proper consideration to what they said, he brushed it all aside by giving his express and unreserved approval to the decree published by De Tournon as his legate. De Montor admits this; but there is abundant evidence of it apart from this admission. In his life of Clement XI he says:

“But Clement, having examined the affair in 1710 and 1712, confirmed all the decrees that had been made against the ceremonies, as well as the edicts of Cardinal De Tournon; and on the 19th of March, 1715, by the constitution Ex illa die (found in Vol. X of the Bullariwm Romanum), he more vigorously condemned those rites; and he established the form of the oath which thenceforth was to be taken by every missionary in the Indies, promising that observance in their own names, and in the names of their order.”

No language could be plainer or more emphatic than that here employed by the pope. It was not uttered in a mere brief, which the Jesuits insist may be changed to answer any subsequent emergency, but in a formal pontifical bull, issued ex cathedra, and which, if the popes were all infallible, must be accepted as of divine authority. But whether called by one or the other of these names, it was the solemn official act of a pope—the head of the Church— and as such, according to the teachings of the Church, was final and binding upon all who professed fidelity to it. And it would have been so regarded by any of the ancient monastic orders, and by all who had respect for the authority of the Church. But the Jesuits did not represent either of these classes; and as the power of the pope was not sufficient to change their course, or unsettle them in their purposes, they continued to persevere in their disobedience, with an utter disregard of consequences. They went to the extent of persuading the Emperor of China to order the arrest of De Tournon, which was done by the Bishop of Macao—who was one of their tools—who caused him to be loaded with chains, and thrown into prison, where, from “ill treatment,” he died.”

These incidents, so unfavorable to the peace of the Church, threw the questions into abeyance again during the succeeding pontificate of Innocent XIII, after which it assumed such magnitude and importance that Benedict XII was compelled to deal with it both energetically and sternly. This he did by further confirming the decree of Cardinal De Tournon, and the bull of Clement XI, reasserting the unchristian practices and conduct of the Jesuits, But even this did not overcome their obduracy; and the next pope, Clement XII, was compelled to issue still another bull, confirming those of Benedict XIII and Clement XI. The world has never furnished another instance of such flagrant and persistent disobedience as this. Even another pope, Benedict XIV, found it absolutely necessary to issue two additional bulls of censure and condemnation against the Jesuits, in both of which the decree of De Tournon was approved by words of express reaffirmance. He intended and expected to settle the matter finally, and terminate the long-continued disregard of the Church authority by the Jesuits. Nevertheless, like his predecessors for many years, he was compelled to realize that he was dealing with an adversary whose ambition was insatiable, and whose capacity for intrigue was without limitation and as untiring as the wind. De Montor tells the result, but omits any comment upon the triumph of the Jesuits over all the popes who passed censure upon them and sought to impose restraints upon their conduct. He speaks of the “discord between the other missionaries and the Jesuits, the former reproaching the latter with not fully and frankly observing the bull,” and makes the discomfiture of the popes palpable by adding, “These disputes lasted till the dissolution of the society.” This is equivalent to saying that the only way to bring them into obedience to the Church was to dissolve them. We shall hereafter see, however, that they did not even obey the act of dissolution.

As the society was originally established by Paul III in 1540, and was abolished by Clement XIV in 1773, it thus appears that considerably more than one-half the period of its existence had been spent in open and flagrant resistance to the authority of the popes and the Church—a pregnant fact, which no sophistry can palliate or explain. But as our inquiries proceed, there will be other years of resistance to add to these, along with such combinations of circumstances as show how the society became odious to the Christian world, and how rightfully it was dissolved.

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