Edmond Paris - The Secret History of the Jesuits

Confessors looking after the education of all classes of Society, counsellors and intimate friends of members of the Council, their influence grew day after day, and they did not wait long before exercising it in public affairs. Lucerne and Fribourg were their main centres; from there, they conducted the exterior politics of most Catholic cantons...

"Any plan forged in Rome, or by other foreign powers, against Protestantism in Switzerland was assured of the Jesuits' full support...

"In 1620, they were successful in making the Catholic population of the Veltlin rise against the Protestants and they slaughtered six hundred. The pope gave indulgence to all those who took part in that horrible deed.

"In 1656, they kindled civil war between members of the various confessions... Later again a new war of religion was started by the Jesuits.

"In 1712, peace was being discussed in Aarau; Lucerne and Uri had just accepted it when the Jesuits, on an order from Rome, did all they could to reverse things. They refused absolution to all those who would hesitate to take up arms. They proclaimed loudly from their pulpits that one was not obliged to keep his word, when it was given to heretics; they made moderate councillors to suspect, tried to remove them from their posts and provoked, in Lucerne, such a threatening uprising of the people against the government that the supreme authority resigned herself to break the peace.

The Catholics were defeated in the fight which followed and signed an ponerous peace.

Since that time, the Order's influence in Switzerland became smaller and smaller".(24)

Today, article 51 of the Swiss constitution forbids the Society of Jesus to hold any cultural or educative activity on the territory of the Confederation, and efforts made to abolish this rule have always been defeated.

(24) J. Huber, op.cit., pp.188 ss.

40 Section II

Chapter 4

Poland and Russia

Jesuit domination was nowhere as deadly as it was in Poland. This is proved by H. Boehmer, a moderate historian who does not bear any systematic hostility towards the Society.

"The Jesuits were entirely responsible for Poland's annihilation. The accusation so worded is excessive. The decadence of the Polish State had started before they came on the scene. But they undoubtedly hastened the kingdom's decomposition. Of all the States, Poland, who had millions of orthodox Christians in her midst, should have had religious tolerance as one of the most essential principles of her interior politics. The Jesuits did not allow that. They did worse: they put Poland's exterior politics at the service of Catholic interests in a fatal manner".(25) This was written at the end of the last century; it is very similar to what Colonel Beck, former Polish Foreign-Affairs minister from 1932 to 1939

said after the 1939-1945 war:

"The Vatican is one of the main causes of the tragedy of my country. I realised too late that we had pursued our foreign politics just to serve the interests of the Catholic Church".(26)

So, with several centuries in-between, the same disastrous influence has made its mark once again on that unfortunate nation.

In 1581 already, Father Possevino, pontifical legate in Moscow, has done his best to bring together the Czar Ivan the Terrible and the Roman Church. Ivan was not strictly against it. Full of glad hopes, Possevino made himself, in 1584, the mediator of the peace of Kirewora Gora between Russia and Poland, a peace which saved Ivan from inextricable difficulties This is just what the crafty sovereign had hoped for. There was no more talk of converting the Russians. Possevino had to leave Russia without having (25) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p.135.

(26) Declaration of the 6th of February 1940.

POLAND AND RUSSIA

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obtained anything. Two years later, an even better opportunity offered itself to the Fathers to get a hold on Russia: Grischka Ostrepjew, an unfrocked monk, revealed to a Jesuit that he actually was Dimitri, son of Czar Ivan, who had been assassinated; he declared himself ready to subdue Moscow for Rome if he was master of the Czars' throne. Without thinking it over first, the Jesuits took it into their hands to introduce Ostrepjew to the Palatine of Sandomir who gave him his daughter in marriage; they spoke on his behalf to King Sigismond III and the pope regarding his expectations, and succeeded in making the Polish army rise against the Czar Boris Godounov. As a reward for these services, the false Dimitri renounced the religion of his fathers at Crascovie, one of the Jesuits' houses, and promised the Order an establishment in Moscow, near the Kremlin, after his victory over Boris.

"But it was these favours from the catholics which unleashed the hatred of the Russian Orthodox Church against Dimitri. On the 27th of May 1606, he was massacred with several hundred Polish followers. Until then, one could hardly speak of a Russian national sentiment; but now, this feeli n g was very strong and took immediately the form of a fanatical hatred for the Roman Church and Poland.

"The alliance with Austria and the offensive politics of Sigismond III against the Turks, all of which were strongly encouraged by the Order, were just as disastrous for Poland. To put it briefly, no other State suffered as much as Poland did under the Jesuits' domination. And in no other country, apart from Portugal, was the Society so powerful. Not only did Poland have a

'king of the Jesuits', but also a Jesuit King, Jean-Casimir, a sovereign who had belonged to the Order before his accession to the throne in 1649...

"While Poland was heading fast towards ruin, the number of Jesuit establishments and schools was growing so fast that the General made Poland into a special congregation in 1751 ".(27) (27) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p.135 ss.

42 Section II

Chapter 5

Sweden and England

"In the Scandinavian countries", wrote Mr. Pierre Dominique,

"Lutheranism submerged everything else and, when the Jesuits made their counter-attack, they did not find what was found in Germany: a Catholic party already in the minority, but still strong".(28) Their only hope then was in the conversion of the sovereign who was secretly in favour of Catholicism; also, this king, Jean III Wasa, had married in 1568 a Polish princess, Catherine, a Roman Catholic. In 1574, Father Nicolai and other Jesuits were brought to the recently established school of theology where they became fervent Roman proselytizers, while officially assuming Lutheranism. Then, the clever negotiator Possevino secured the conversion of Jean III and the care of educating his son Sigismond, the future Sigismond III, king of Poland. When the time came to submit Sweden to the Holy See, the king's conditions: marriage of priests, use of the vernacular in services and communion in both kinds, all of which had been rejected by the Roman Curia, brought the negotiations to a dead end. In any case, the king, who had lost his first wife, had remarried a Swedish Lutheran. The Jesuits had to leave the country.

"Fifty years later, the Order won another great victory in Sweden. Queen Christine, daughter of Gustave-Adolphe, the last of the Wasas, was converted under the teaching of two Jesuit professors, who had managed to reach Stockholm pretending to be travelling Italian noblemen. But, in order to change her religion without conflicts, she had to abdicate on the 24th of June 1654".(29)

In England, on the other hand, the situation seemed more faviourable to the Society and it could hope, for a while at least, to bring this country back under the Holy See's jurisdiction.

(28) Pierre Dominique, op.cit, p.76.

(29) H. Boehmer, op.cit., pp.137, 138, 139.

SWEDEN AND ENGLAND

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"When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, Ireland was still entirely Catholic and England 50 per cent so... In 1542 already, Salmeron and Broet had been sent by the pope to survey Ireland".(30) Seminaries had been created under the Jesuits' direction in Douai, Pont-a-Mousson and Rome, with a view to train English, Irish and Scottish missionaries. In agreement with Philip II of Spain, the Roman Curia worked at overthrowing Elizabeth in favour of the Catholic Mary Stuart. An Irish uprising, provoked by Rome, had been crushed. But the Jesuits, who had arrived in England in 1580, took part in a large Catholic assembly at Southwark.