Richard W. Thompson - The Footprints of the Jesuits

Such a reception as this by so distinguished a body of prelates as the Council of Trent, was well calculated to incite the pride and ambition of the Jesuits—especially of Laynez—and to create in their minds the belief that if they continued to pursue the cautious but aggressive policy of Loyola, they would bring the pope and all the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church into obedience to them. Manifestly, the society considered this the ultimate end contemplated by Loyola; and Laynez was sufficiently skilled in the methods of government to understand the necessity of obtaining from the Council of Trent the recognition of the superiority of the Jesuits over the monastic orders. He had not yet succeeded in accomplishing the admission of the society into France, and this he evidently regarded as an important step in that direction. Flattering as was his reception by the Council, it was not all he desired. He considered an additional step necessary to obtain from the Council a full approval of the reasons assigned by Loyola to justify the establishment of his society. Accordingly, after the Council had passed upon the questions of faith and dogma, it proceeded to investigate "the causes of the evils which afflicted the Church." This opened an exceedingly broad field of inquiry, and resulted, doubtless as Laynez desired, in the conclusion stated by Daurignac, "that these causes were, principally, the ignorance and immorality of a great portion of the clergy and the monastic orders," and that "the best remedy for this great evil was to prepare Christian generations by a good system of education;"63 that is to say, that any effort to reform the existing clergy and ancient orders would be unavailing, but that the remedy lay in educating other and future generations. It is easy to see that this conclusion was unavoidable under the doctrine established by the same Council, and affirmed also by the Jesuits, that the clergy who lead virtuous and those who lead vicious lives, possess the same power and authority in the Church.

This was a great triumph for Laynez and his society, inasmuch as it was a specific approval by the Council of Trent of the grounds upon which Loyola had justified the creation of the Jesuit society; that is, the incompetency of the Church to reform itself without extraneous aid, apart from the existing clergy and the monastic orders, and the necessity for an educational organization, like that of the Jesuits, to be maintained by authority and discipline for that purpose.64 And thus equipped by so important an indorsement, the Jesuits at once assumed to have been constituted, with Divine approval, the exclusive educators of the world, and to be endowed with authority to enter every nation at will, and so to train and discipline the "Christian generations" as to bring them down to a common level of obedience to the united authority of Church and State.

Without the indorsement obtained by the Jesuits from the Council of Trent, they might have been kept out of Paris entirely, or, at all events, their entry into that city would have been greatly delayed. As it was, the antipathy against them remained so great and universal among the Gallican Christians, that their admission at last was obtained only upon the condition that they should take a solemn oath to do nothing to impair the liberties of the Gallican Church; that they would submit to the laws of the nation, which recognized the pope as the head of the Church, but denied to him the power to excommunicate the king; or to lay an interdict upon the kingdom; or to exercise any jurisdiction over temporal matters; or to dismiss bishops from their office; or to exercise any authority by a legate, unless empowered by the king; and that they would, moreover, maintain those provisions of law which assigned to a General Council of the Church power superior to that of a pope—in other words, that papal infallibility was not a part of Christian faith.65 There is abundant reason for believing, in view of both preceding and subsequent events, that when the Jesuits took this oath, they had not the least idea of being bound by it. No Jesuit's conscience was ever bound by such an oath.

The authority of Laynez, under the circumstances related, became potential enough to enable him to influence the decisions of the queen-mother and the court of France, and finding himself thus sustained, it was not long before the Jesuit policy began to bear its legitimate fruits. Of course, his most heavily charged batteries were immediately opened upon the Protestants, to whose heresies he traced all the existing evils of the times. An occasion for this soon occurred. The Protestants petitioned for "places of worship;" that is, merely to be allowed to worship at designated places according to their consciences. Laynez fully understood the meaning of this, and the ends it would ultimately accomplish if the Protestant petition were allowed. His keen sagacity enabled him to know that if the differences between Protestantism and the papacy became the subject of intellectual discussion, upon a forum where human reason had the right to assert itself, the triumph of the former over the latter would be assured. Therefore, true to his own instincts and the teachings of his society, he remonstrated with Catharine de Medicis against granting the prayer of the Protestants, and in his memorial upon the subject "pointed out to her so forcibly the danger to the Church and State that such a concession would entail, that, appreciating his arguments, she refused to sanction the erection of Protestant places of worship."66

These facts—related upon Jesuit authority, and boasted of by their historians—furnish the most palpable and incontestable proof of the conspiracy of Catharine de Medicis and the Jesuits, after the latter obtained admission into France, to suppress the freedom of religious worship, and so to mold the policy of Church and State as to render its existence impossible. It was an odious and revolting conspiracy; but the objects to be accomplished justified it in the eyes of the queen, of Laynez, and of all his followers. It was the cardinal point of the professed Jesuit policy—the most prominent feature of their organization. No imagination is fertile enough to picture the condition into which the civilized world would have been plunged if this conspiracy, besides its temporary and bloody triumph in France, had become sufficiently powerful to dictate the Governments of modern States. The Gallican Christians had for centuries successfully resisted all attempts of the papacy to interfere with the temporal affairs of France; and whilst they disagreed with Protestants upon questions of religious faith, the two forces were united in opposition to the Jesuits, because of the direct hostility of the latter to both. Each could see that the entrance of the society into France, under the control and dominion of an alien power, would be the introduction of a disturbing and hostile element, which would put an end to the concord and harmony then rapidly springing up between the two Christian bodies. This the Jesuits intended to prevent by whatsoever means they could manage to employ; for, from the beginning of their existence, they have opposed everything they could not subjugate. Therefore they realized the importance of having the monarchical power upon their side—especially when they saw it wielded by such a queen as Catharine de Medicis—so that by conspiracy with it against the Gallican Christians and the Protestants, they could destroy the liberties of the former, and entirely suppress the spirit of free inquiry asserted by the latter. Keeping these objects always before them, the Jesuits considered them of sufficient magnitude to justify any form of intrigue; and they were sufficiently familiar with the qualities of the queen to know that she possessed such love of power and capacity for conspiracy that they could successfully play upon her ambition and prejudices to accomplish their purposes.