calumnies. Their advocate, Versaris, defended them so powerfully, that even the parliament, hostile as it was to the Jesuits, acquitted them. When, at a later period, Henry IV besieged Paris, the Jesuits attracted new odium, by asserting, when interrogated by the citizens, in opposition to the opinion of the other theologians, that excommunication was not the necessary consequence of opening the gates to a heretic king. All the old hatred broke forth anew when Chatel attempted to murder Henry IV. The Jesuits were calumniously charged with being the authors of the attempt, and the parliament tumultuously and unjustly condemned to death the Jesuit Guignard. The judges themselves confessed, some years later, that they had acted over-hastily, and all France acknowledged the innocence of the Jesuits. In the first heat, the Jesuits were banished from the realm by a decree of the parliament; but some parliaments in the provinces openly refused to register the ordinance of the parliament of Paris, and those particularly which were independent upon that of the capital, declared the act illegal, hurried and unjust, and in general protected the Jesuits. For nine years, the Jesuits remained unmolested in Bourdeaux and Toulouse. Students from all France repaired to them, and the king was so much petitioned to restore so useful an order, that he recalled them. The parliament refused to register the royal decree, and sent a deputation to Henry, at the head of whom was the president Harley, who, as the historian Dupleix says, uttered a uniform strain of abuse against the Jesuits. The king answered with a speech extempore, which, as De Thou has not recorded it in his History of France, is hardly known, and we think it proper to give it here, to show how this able monarch spoke extempore: "Your care for my person and the welfare of my empire I acknowledge with pleasure. What you have just told me I have known long since; but my ideas on it were unknown to you. You speak of difficulties, which appear to you great; but I must tell you that I have weighed them duly seven or eight years ago. The best resolutions originate from the lessons of the past, and these I know better than any body else. You imagine that you understand affairs of government, and that you may interfere with them, which seems to me much as if I should interfere with your duties by making a report in a civil process. I therefore must tell you, first, in regard to the affair of Poissy, that, if

all had behaved as one or two Jesuits who happened to be present, every thing would have turned out better for the Catholics. Not their ambition, but their modesty, from that time, has appeared conspicuous; and I cannot conceive how you can accuse those of ambition, who refuse, constantly and unconditionally, abbeys, honorary offices and dignities; nay, who oblige themselves by vows never to strive for them, and whose life, in general, has no other purpose than to be useful to all people. Is it the name Jesuit which excites your zeal? then you must also dispute with those who have taken their name from the holy Trinity (les pères de la Trinité); and, if you believe that you belong as much to the society of Jesus as the Jesuits, you may ask yourselves whether your daughters belong as much to the Filles-Dieu in Paris as the nuns who bear this name, and you may as well call yourselves knights of the order of the Holy Ghost as myself and the other knights of the order. I, for my part, should like as well, or rather better, to be called Jesuit than Jacobin or Augustine. If a part of the other clergy are hostile to the order, it may originate from the circumstance that ignorance always was hostile to science. I have found that, as soon as I declared my intention to recall the Jesuits, two classes of men immediately opposed the measure, viz. the Huguenots and all the Catholic clergy notorious for bad morals and conduct; but this gave me a greater esteem and love for the Jesui s." The king speaks at length on the reason why the Sorbonne could not agree with the Jesuits, because the latter were more learned, and that they should now not only be suffered, but take root within the realm.*-In England, Jesuits never had much footing. The reformed doctrines had already become the prevalent religion of that country, when the order grew up. The Jesuits in England were only a small division of missionaries, who labored among the dispersed and oppressed Catholics, quietly and under the veil of secrecy. Several Jesuits have suffered martyrdom in England, and several laws enacted against them manifest the grossest prejudice, and have been repealed only in modern times.-In the eighteenth century, the Jesuits received their first blow in Portugal. Pombal, minister

*The speech is long, and its genuineness very suspicious, as it goes carefully through all the points for which the Jesuits had been reproached. it is too long for a king, too systematic for an extempore performance.-ED.

of king Joseph, a powerful and passionate man, wished to promote the welfare of Portugal; but his plans were those of a despotic ninister of a despotic government. Every thing opposed to his wishes was to fall. Many circumstances cooperated to render him inimical to the Jesuits, to whose influence, as confessors, he owed his elevation. It would have been better for the Jesuits if they had avoided accepting confessorships at court, in the same way as they declined the dignities of the church. Pombal believed the country of the Paraguay, in which the Jesuits ruled so paternally, contained a number of gold mines, unknown to the inhabitants. He therefore obtained this country from Spain by exchange for another, 1400 miles distant, into which he wished to transplant all the Indians of Paraguay. The Jesuits received orders to prepare the people for this measure. The natives remonstrated very modestly and respectfully against such a forced emigration, representing how impossible it would be to transplant 30,000 people, with all their goods, to such a distance through the wilderness; but the government was inexorable. Only a few months were allowed them for preparation. The Indians, who were to be torn from the ground they had first cultivated, the huts where they were borr, and the graves of their friends and parents, were reduced to despair. Even the Jesuits, who admonished them to obey, were now suspected by the Indians of conspiring with their heartless oppressors in Europe. The Indians armed themselves for resistance. A war broke out, in which the Indians were at first victorious, but were afterwards conquered. Many burnt their villages, and fled into the mountains, where most of them perished. After having searched in vain for gold every where, Pombal was ashamed of his bloody and bootless measure, and, under Charles III of Spain, the lands were reexchanged, after the innocent Indians had become accustomed to all the vices of European outcasts. But, as a despotic minister cannot err, the Jesuits were now to be proved the instigators of the resistance of the Indians to Pombal's humane project of emigration. To make the world believe this, Pombal laid a plan with a certain Platel, whose vices had made him an outcast from various countries. The world was to be persuaded that the Jesuits had maintained a warlike state in Paraguay for 150 years, and even a king, Nicholas, who commanded their forces, &c. In Spain, the story was laughed at. People knew why Span

iards had been prohibited, with the consent of government, from visiting the missions-that they might not infect with European vices the innocent Indians. This prohibition was a point on which Pombal's writer always insisted. The statements of Platel were proved to be false by the governor of Peru and the Mexican bishops, and the book was burnt in Madrid; yet Pombal's libels found belief in Europe. The Jesuits were recalled from Paraguay, and imprisoned in Portugal. There were other reasons to excite the minister's anger against the Jesuits. In a question respecting the marriage of the king's daughter, the confessor of the king, the Jesuit Moreira, gave advice contrary to that of Pombal, and the king followed the Jesuit. In the papers of the queen, who died in 1754, Pombal discovered that the Jesuits in Maranham had often apprized the queen, in consequence of her request, of the extortions, &c., of the governor of the place, the brother of Pombal. His passion rose to the highest pitch. Pombal had excited against him the proprietors of the vineyards of that country by a monopoly of port wine, from which he derived advantage himself, so that the inhabitants devastated his vineyards: the Jesuits, it was reported, had done it. When, after the dreadful earthquake of 1755, the Jesuits made use of this event to bring people to repentance, and the king even expressed the desire to devote himself for eight days to spiritual and solitary meditation, under the direction of the pious Jesuit Malagrida, this resolution of the king gave great uneasiness to Pombal, who feared for his influence. Cost what it would, the Jesuits were to fall. At the same time, another obstacle to Pombal's power was to be annihilated-the high nobility, with whom he lived in decided opposition. These two objects Pombal succeeded in accomplishing with one stroke. Sept. 4, 1758, the king, on his return from a love adventure, was wounded by assassins. Pombal persuaded the king that this attack was owing to a conspiracy of the high nobility and the Jesuits, and don Joseph was now in constant fear of new conspiracies, and therefore totally in the power of his minister. The duke of Aveiro, the whole house of Tavora, were tried by an extraordinary committee, and suffered an ignominious death. Malagrida was arrested as concerned in the conspiracy, and, after several years, was sentenced and burnt by the obedient inquisition as a heretic. When, with the death of don

Joseph, Pombal's despotism was at an end, when the latter himself, being accused and convicted of the most execrable crimes, was sentenced to death by the court unanimously, and pardoned by the queen, and only punished by banishment, then also the affair of the conspiracy was reviewed, and the parties who had suffered were declared innocent. But, if the conspiracy really had existed, nothing proved the connexion of the Jesuits with it. It is true, the Jesuit Malagrida had, shortly before that attempt, declared that, if the king, who was given to sensual pleasures, did not reform his conduct, a great disaster would follow; and other Jesuits were the friends of Tavora and Aveiro. But none but Pombal could have made this circumstance the ground of an accusation against the society. He accused the whole body before the pope, and demanded its abolition. When the pope ordered the trial of the accused, Pombal, without waiting, exiled the Jesuits, sent back the papal nuncio, and broke off all connexion with Rome. 1840 Jesuits were transported, in 1759, to Italy, and suffered the worst treatment. In France, also, the order declined. Madame Pompadour and the minister Choiseul were hostile to it. When the former had appeared at court, without any other claim than because she had become the king's mistress, the scandalous event excited general attention. As most people are more ready to violate the dictates of morality than conventional forms, madame Pompadour resolved to procure a legal title to appear at court, and adopted the idea of becoming dame du palais of the queen. But for this the approval of the good-natured queen was requisite, and it was concluded to deceive her by an appearance of repentance, and to make her believe madame Pompadour had ceased to be the king's mistress. A confessor was necessary, and the choice fell upon the Jesuit De Sacy, a man apparently simple, who, it was supposed, would not penetrate the plan. But Sacy declared that, if it was really her earnest intention to return to virtue and religion, she must, without delay, leave the court, retire into solitude, and try to repair the evil she had done, by real repentance: until then he could not take upon him the direction of her conscience, and he never would profane the sacraments and let himself be made a tool of in such an intrigue. This opposition awakened in madame Pompadour inveterate hatred against the order. Choiseul belonged to the philosophers, so called, who were opposed

to all positive religion; and the Jesuits were greatly in his way, also, on account of his hatred against the dauphin, who loved the society. An opportunity was soon found to attack them. The Jesuit Lavalette, in Martinique, had been engaged in commerce; his vessels were taken by English privateers, and his bills of exchange were not paid; in consequence of which, the whole order, which certainly was not obliged to answer for Lavalette's illegal conduct, were called before the parliament, which nourished the old hatred against the society, and now counted, moreover, several Jansenists among its members. The order was condemned. The process was the signal for a general attack upon the Jesuits. Choiseul had several books written against them, and the order abolished by the parliament without a hearing, though the bishops of all France declared in its favor. The process of the parliament was a mere farce. The total abolition took place in 1767. Meanwhile Charles III ascended the throne of Spain, and assured the general of the order of his protection. But the minister Aranda, an intimate friend of Choiseul, praised by Condorcet, as a decided enemy of priests, nobles and kings, was an enemy of the Jesuits, as was also his friend Campomanes, fiscal of Castile. They procured the exile of the Jesuits in a way that did them little honor. evening, the rector of the Jesuit college at Madrid was apprized that a stranger wished to see him immediately. The stranger coming, as he said, from the Jesuit rector of Seville, gave to the rector of Madrid a parcel of papers, with the request that he would read them attentively, and make his remarks on them. The rector ordered the papers to be carried to his room, and, as the hour of meeting in the refectory had begun, went thither in order not to interrupt the prescribed order. Hardly had he arrived there, when the house bell was rung violently. Royal commissioners enter, and seal up all papers, including the packet just left, and carry them to Aranda. Not long after, in the night of April 1, 1767, all the Jesuit colleges in the kingdom were surrounded by soldiers at the same hour, and the Jesuits carried to the states of the pope. April 2, 1767, the king declared that he had resolved to keep the true cause of the banishment of the Jesuits secret. Pope Pius VI, some years before his elevation, first found the traces of this infamous intrigue. When a cardinal, he had been appointed by Clement XIV a member of the committee who were to inves

One

tigate the affairs of the Jesuits. The Spanish government, to justify itself somewhat with the pope, had sent the alleged proofs against the Jesuits to Rome. Among these were letters purporting to have passed between distinguished Jesuits, containing remarks of the most infamous character; among other things, it was said in them, that the king was an illegitimate son of cardinal Alberoni, and hence not entitled to the throne, &c. Of course, these letters must have excited the king, and prompted him to banish the order. But it was also found, by a comparison of the hand-writings, that these letters were forged. It was now evident who had brought the parcel only a few moments before the seizure of the papers in the Jesuit college in Madrid. The exile of the Jesuits, and several other circumstances, had caused a dispute between the pope Clement XIII and Portugal and Spain. The pope (Rezzonico) died, without an adjustment of the dispute having taken place. The election of his successor was now a matter of the highest importance. The question was, whether the Jesuit party should prevail or not. Cardinal Ganganelli had already, under Clement XIII,expressed his opinion,that it was more advisable to sacrifice the Jesuits, though innocent, than to live in constant dispute with the kings. The Bourbon party therefore supported him at the election. At the same time, in the conclave, he gained the friends of the Jesuits by maintaining that the new pope ought not to think any more of the abolition of the order than of pulling down St. Peter's; and he was elected. The new pope, in fact, after his accession, said, in his missives to the courts of Versailles, Madrid and Naples, that he neither could blame nor abolish an order which 19 of his predecessors had solemnly confirmed; it could be the less expected of him, as the same had been confirmed by an oecumenical council at Trent, whose decrees, according to the principles of the Gallican church, were binding on the pope; but he would, if asked, call another council, in which the Jesuits should be heard, all questions investigated anew and decided upon; that he was obliged to protect the Jesuits equally with the other orders; that, moreover, all the princes of Germany and the king of Sardinia had written to him in favor of the Jesuits, and he therefore could not yield to the wish of some cabinets, which desired the abolition of the order, without drawing upon himself the displeasure of so many other monarchs.

But the papal letter was of little avail. The courts threatened the pope with the publication of his letters, written before he had acquired the pontificate, in which he promised to the courts the abolition of the Jesuits, if they would lend him their support in the election. The abolition was difficult, as Clement XIII, with the assent of the whole college of cardinals, had, a short time before, solemnly confirmed the order by the bull Apostolicum, and the immediate contravention of the bull would have been an unparalleled scandal, to which the cardinals never would have given their consent. There was no way left, therefore, but to choose the form of a brief-a deeree which the popes issue without consulting with the college of the cardinals. In 1773, the brief was issued. The reasons for the abolition were not given in the brief; it was only said that the popes had abolished several other orders, and that the council of Trent had not exactly pronounced a confirmation of the order. Four weeks after this violation of justice, Ganganelli appointed a committee to investigate the accusations against the Jesuits! The Protestant historian John Müller says of this abolition— "It was soon apparent to wise men, that a common bulwark of all authorities had fallen." Prussia did not acknowledge the abolition, but retained the Jesuits, as useful instructers, in Silesia, until at last they themselves, from obedience to the pope, urged the king to complete their abolition. In Russia, also, the order remained, because Catharine was convinced of its utility; and the government obtained the necessary permission from the popes Pius VI and VII. Clement XIV died in 1774. His sickness and death were accompanied by strange symptoms, and calumny immediately accused the Jesuits of having procured his death. The persons in attendance on the pope, and the physicians, gave, however, no satisfactory statements and Le Bret, in his Magazine of Political and Ecclesiastical History, so clearly showed the innocence of the Jesuits, that this calumny never could gain footing. (See Clement XIV.) The abolition of the Jesuits had serious consequences. In most Catholic countries, it produced a chasm in the means of public instruction, which it was not easy to fill. The education of youth lost, in many cases, the salutary religious direction which distinguished so much the instruction of the Jesuits. Neither the archives nor the coffers of the Jesuits satisfied expectation. Some persons believed the money to have been car

ried off; but nothing has been heard of it for 50 years. The order was reinstituted in White Russia in 1801, and in Sicily in 1804, and was put entirely on its old footing in 1814, by the pope. Whether it ought to be restored every where, is a question which, we think, is different from what it was formerly. In the southern countries of Europe, it appears capable of becoming very useful. Of its reestablishment in Germany, there is little hope. There is such a mass of knowledge distributed in the German nation, its public instruction is so thorough, and the establishments for education so well founded, that the Jesuit schools appear, at least, not to be needed. In this nation, too, materialism does not remain to be conquered, but the sound sense of the people soon led it back to religion. Besides, the society's plan of education would little agree with that of the Germans, because that of the Jesuits is by its nature a general, and therefore a stable one, and cannot adapt itself to modern systems of education.*

JESUITES DE ROBE ; secular persons of high rank-as, for instance, Louis XIV of France-who are bound to the order by vows of obedience, but have not taken the spiritual vow.

JESUS, called also Christ (Xporos, the Anointed), the Son of God, the Savior of men, whose birth, life and death were predicted by prophets, and attended with miraculous manifestations of divine power, was born of the virgin Mary, of the tribe of Judah, who was betrothed to Joseph, an obscure artisan. The place of his birth was Bethlehem: the time is uncertain, but is commonly considered to

*

The length of the articles on the Jesuits may be excused from the interesting nature of the subject. Any view, however, of the subject, which could be given in a work of the character of the

present must be too concise to enable the reader

to form satisfactory conclusions; to do which, great knowledge of facts and critical acumen are requisite. The articles can only serve to indicate the most important points to be investigated. The second article was given to show what construction Jesuits themselves put upon the important charges against them. We may close with remarking, that every thing in history has its time, and the order of the Jesuits can never rise to any great eminence in an age in which knowledge is so rapidly spreading. It is connected with the old order of things, not with the new, and has twice returned with servilism into Spain, and once into France. The Encyclopédie Moderne, in its article on the Jesuits, calls them the pretorian guards, the strelitzes, the janizaries of the pope; and it can hardly be supposed that the guards will flourish when the sovereign is daily declining in splendor and power.

have been in the 12th year of the consulate of Augustus, four or five years before the beginning of the vulgar era. Our information concerning him is derived almost entirely from detached sketches of his life, written by four of his followers. The angel Gabriel had announced to Mary, that the power of the Highest should overshadow her, and that she should bear a son who should rule over the house of Jacob forever; and on the night of his birth, an angel appeared to some shepherds and announced the coming of a Savior. On the 8th day, he was circumcised according to the law of Moses, and, on the 40th, was presented in the temple, where the aged Simeon pronounced him to be the light of nations and the glory of Israel. The coming of the divine infant was also hailed by the adoration of the Magi, who were miraculously directed to the house where the young child was. Herod, alarmed by these indications, determined to destroy all the male children of Bethlehem and its vicinity, of the age of less than two years, for the purpose of effecting the death of Jesus. But Joseph, being miraculously warned of the danger, fled to Egypt with the virgin and her child, and, on his return after the death of Herod, went to reside at Nazareth, in Galilee, whence Jesus is called a Nazarene. We have no further accounts of the earlier years of Jesus, except the remarkable scene in the temple, when he was 12 years old, and the general observation of Luke, that he remained in Nazareth with his parents, and served them. At the age of about 30 (Luke iii, 23), he was baptized by John in the river Jordan; the spirit of God descending upon him like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaiming, "This is my beloved son." Previously, however, to entering upon his heavenly office of divine teacher, he retired to a solitary place, where he passed 40 days in fasting, meditation and prayer. His mission is generally considered to have occupied three years, spent in acts of mercy, in inculcating a purer system of morals, more exalted notions of God, and more elevating views of man and his destiny, than had yet been presented to the world. If, when we consider his miracles, he appears like a God, we must also acknowledge something superhuman and divine in his purity of life, his warm love for others, and his self-devotion to their welfare; his meek yet firm and unshrinking endurance of insult, contempt, While he decalumny and suffering. nounces sin, and prophesies the coming