THE EDUCATORS AND CONFESSORS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE 415

tion of mankind. They took no money for a mass; they refused to confess a woman unless in the presence of a brother priest; they practised and enforced upon their pupils strict chastity of life; and they never sacrificed the interests of their order to any consideration of selfish ease. Unlike the members of the old monastic organizations, they wore no peculiar garb, but dressed like the ordinary clergy, or, when deemed advisable, even adopted the costume of the country in which they lived. No time was spent by them in idle ceremonies, but they devoted themselves to an active life as preachers, teachers, and confessors. Recognizing the spirit of the age, instead of disparaging science they took a leading part in its development. They cultivated literature, and won high renown as scholars-oratory, and became the first preachers in the Church.

But their greatest pre-eminence was attained in the province of education. Knowing that as the twig is bent the tree will be inclined, they devoted their chief energies to the training of the young. All over Catholic Europe they established schools, in which the instruction was entirely free. Reversing the old traditions under which teachers and scholars were natural enemies, they won the love and confidence of their pupils, binding them by chains of affection which no time could weaken. Preparatory schools took up children in their infancy, and thence they were transferred to colleges which turned them out as finished scholars, in everything except the power of thinking for themselves in matters of religion. The system which they established was a vast machine for enrolling and disciplining an army of civilians, sworn to obey the orders of their leader, and that leader they looked up to as God's representative on earth.

While thus training the rising generation, they did not, however, neglect those who had already reached maturity. Here their chief influence was exerted through the confessional. Rigid in their own lives, they gained the respect and confidence of the sincere. These formed their early followers. But as time rolled on, after the death of Loyola, it was charged, and perhaps not unjustly, that for others they made religion comfortable. In a sense very different from that intended by the great apostle, they became all things to all men; not to save the men, but to build up the power of their order. To their own members, however, no relaxation of discipline was shown, and no body of soldiers, working together or as single scouts, ever showed more clearly what discipline and intensity of purpose can accomplish. When they were first organized Loyola had nine companions; in sixteen years the nine had grown to a thousand; by the end of the century they numbered over ten times as many. They then had obtained the chief direction of the education of youth in every Catholic country of Europe. They had become the confessors of almost all its monarchs, and of almost every person eminent for rank or power, thus holding in their keeping the secrets of governments and of individuals without number.*

Such was the all-powerful organization which sprang up to fight the battles of Catholicism against the Reformation. In after-years it became one of the curses of

* Robertson's "Charles V." Bacon, who knew of what he spoke, pays the Jesuits the high tribute of having "enterprised to reform the discipline and manners of the Church of Rome," and, with Luther and the divines of the Protestant Church, "awaked to their great honor and succour all human learning."-Bacon's "Filum Labyrinthi."

THE JESUITS SUSTAIN THE PAPAL AUTHORITY

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the world, and among Protestants the name Jesuit is often synonymous with the atrocious doctrine that the end justifies the means. There is no danger that the crimes or the pernicious influence exerted by some of the members of this order will ever be overlooked. Still, it is not consistent with historic truth, while painting their dark side to conceal their virtues, or to deny the great services which they have rendered to humanity. Too much of this has been done in the heat of controversy, while the opposite rule has been applied to the Protestant reformers, and especially to our own ancestors, English and American. This mode of dealing with the characters of the dead is sometimes, apparently, considered to be in the interest of patriotism or religion. It is very difficult, however, to reconcile it with morality, except by adopting the principle imputed to the Jesuits, which mankind unite in holding up to execration. One thing is very certain, no one can understand the religious history of the sixteenth century, in which the Company of Jesus came into existence, who fails to recognize the honesty and devotion to principle which actuated the great majority of its members.

When the order arose, the papacy was confronted by enemies from within as well as from without. Protestantism was sweeping over Europe and carrying everything before it. The Jesuits, by proclaiming the principle of reform within the Church, stayed its tide and confined it within its present narrow limits. But they did much more than this for the pope himself. Many of the Catholic rulers and a number of the bishops were disposed to dispute the authority of the head of the Church. Every one knows how readily the people of England accepted their king in place of the pope of Rome, and the feeling which led to this action was not

unknown in other lands. A number of the French and Spanish prelates asserted that an ecumenical council could control the holy see, and claimed that they held a commission from Heaven, independent of the pope. At the Council of Trent, which settled some of these questions, the representative of the Jesuits, speaking in the name of the whole fraternity, proclaimed that the government of the faithful had been committed by Christ to the pope alone; that in him all sacerdotal authority was concentrated; and that through him only priests and bishops derived their divine authority.* It was largely owing to the efforts of the Jesuits that a formal decree of this famous Council established the jurisdiction of the pope as an article of Catholic faith, leaving the question of his infallibility in matters of doctrine to be settled by future generations.

Thus the Catholic Church stood fully committed to the theory of the papal jurisdiction, and, abandoning the defensive, entered upon an aggressive policy. How it crushed out heresy in Italy and Spain, how it curbed the Reformation in Germany, and throttled it in France, are familiar stories. How the Jesuits carried their missionary work to Asia, Africa, and the New World, we have already noticed. We have also seen something of the death-struggle going on in the Netherlands. In the crusade which the Church was carrying on, to win back the recusants and to gain new converts, England came last. It had been purely Catholic until the days of Henry the Reformer; it had been again nominally Catholic for a brief period under Queen Mary; it was now nominally Protestant under Queen Elizabeth; in fact, it was in some respects almost a pure missionary field.

* Macaulay's "England," ii. 54, and authorities cited.

TRAINING CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES FOR ENGLAND

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This the papal authorities recognized after a few years' experience, and they set about its cultivation with system and deliberation.

The great obstacle in England to a religious awakening of any kind lay in the general ignorance of the people, including the clergy. The priests of the old Church who remained at home had little education, and those of the new establishment were mostly in the same condition. The first thing, therefore, to be done by the Catholics, if they wished to gain the advantage of their adversaries, was to educate preachers who would expound anew to these islanders the doctrines which their fathers had accepted without question. This work was begun in 1568 by the establishment at Douay, in what is now Belgium, of a college for the education of English Catholics. It was founded under the auspices of Philip II., and was conducted by a number of professors from Oxford, who had taught in that university during the reign of Mary, but who had fled to the Continent to avoid the persecution of Elizabeth. During the rule of Requesens in the Low Countries it was removed to Rheims, and in 1579 it was supplemented by another college, founded at Rome by Pope Gregory XIII. The pupils instructed at these institutions. which were wholly free both as to board and education, stood pledged to return to England and preach the doctrines of the old religion.

The enterprise flourished from the outset. Three years after its opening, the college at Douay contained one hundred and fifty pupils. Three years later, in 1574, these missionaries began crossing the Channel to revive the drooping faith of their compatriots. In four years more, the Spanish minister at London was able to write to Philip that there were a hundred of these