An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France

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AN ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JESUITS IN FRANCE.

By M. D’ALEMBERT.

Incorruptam fidem professis, nec amore quisquam, & fine odio dicendus est.

Tacit. Hist. ch. 1.

LONDON.

Printed for T. BECKET and P. A. De HONDT, near Surry-street in the Strand.

MDCCLXVI.

To M. • • • COUNSELLOR TO THE PARLIAMENT OF • • •.

Permit, Sir, an unknown, but zealous, citizen, an impartial historian of the Jesuits, to pay public homage to that truely philosophical patriotism which you have displayed in this affair. In exciting against the society the zeal of the magistrates, you have not neglected to fix their enlightened attention on all those men, who may have with this alien society any marks of resemblance, and who, arrayed in black, gray, or white, may acknowledge like it, in the very bosom of France, another country, and another sovereign.

You have shewn no less lights in making known to the sage Depositaries of the laws, all the Men of the party, whoever they be, all the fanaticks, whatever livery they wear, whether they invoke Francis of Paris, or Francis of Borgia, whether they maintain predeterminating decrees, or congruous assistances.

If the author of this writing had been able to ask you your opinions, his work would, without doubt, have gained greatly by it. May you, such as it is, grant it your suffrage, and receive it as a slender mark of the acknowledgement which religion, the state, philosophy, and letters owe to you.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The different pieces which have been published on the affair of the Jesuits (if we except therefrom the requisitories of the magistrates) breathe an animosity or fanaticism in those who have undertaken either to defend or attack the society. We may say of these historians, what Tacitus said of the historians of his time: Neutris cura posteritatis, inter infensos vel obnoxios: “None of them were influenced by any regard for posterity, being themselves among the exasperated or the obnoxious.” As the author of the following writing professes a pretty great indifference for quarrels of this sort, he has had no violence to do himself in order to tell the truth (so far at least as he has been able to come at the knowledge of it) with respect to the causes and the circumstances of this singular event: if he has sometimes told it with energy, he flatters himself at least that he has delivered it without bitterness, and he hopes that thus his work will not displease those, who like him are detached from any spirit of party or interest. He has even waited, before he published this writing, till peoples' minds should be no longer heated, in regard to the matter which is the object of it; he will lose thereby, without doubt, some readers, but the truth will gain by it, or at least be no loser.

The facts which are related here, are, for the most part, very well known in France: they are less so to foreigners, for whom we have proposed to write as well as for the French. The reflexions which have been to this historical account, may be useful to both, and perhaps still more to the French than to foreigners.

ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE JESUITS IN FRANCE.

The middle of the century, in which we live, appears destined to form an æra, not only in the history of the human mind, by the revolution which seems to be preparing itself in our opinions, but also in the history of states and empires, by the extraordinary events of which we have successively been witnesses. In less than eight years we have seen the earth shaken, swallow up a part of Portugal, Spain, Africa, and Hungary, and terrify by its shocks several other nations; a war kindled from Lisbon to Petersbourg, for some almost uncultivated tracts in North-America; the system of Europe changing suddenly its appearance at the end of two centuries by the strict and unhoped-for union of the houses of France and Austria; the consequences of that union, all contrary to what it was natural to have expected from it; the king of Prussia withstanding alone five formidable powers leagued against him, and issuing from the bosom of the storm victorious and covered with glory; an emperor cast headlong from his throne; the king of Portugal assassinated; France terrifyed at a like attempt, and trembling for a life the most precious; lastly, the Jesuits, those men who were thought so powerful, so firmly established, so redoubtable, driven from the former of these two kingdoms, and destroyed in the second. This last event, which is, for certain, neither the most melancholy, nor the greatest of those which we have just recapitulated, is perhaps neither the least surprising, nor the least susceptible of reflexions. It is for philosophers to see it such as it is, to shew it such as it is to posterity, to make known to the sages of all nations, how passion and hatred have, without knowing it, assisted reason and justice in this unexpected catastrophe.

In order to explain myself with impartiality on the destruction of the Jesuits in France, the object of this treatise, we must begin very far back, and reascend to the very origin of this famous society, place in one point of view the obstacles which had been opposed to it, the progresses which it has made, the blows which it has given and received; lastly, the causes apparent and secret, which brought it to the brink of the precipice, and which have terminated by throwing it from thence.

It is somewhat above two hundred years since the society of Jesuits took birth. Its founder was a Spanish gentleman, who having had his brain heated by romances of chevalry, and afterwards by books of devotion, took it into his head to be the Don Quixote of the Virgin[1], to go and preach to infidels the christian religion which he knew nothing of, and to associate himself for that purpose with those adventurers who should think proper to join him.

It will be thought astonishing, without doubt, that an order, become so powerful and so celebrated, should have for its founder such a man. This founder was however wise enough to decline entering into the order of Theatins, which a cardinal, who some years after became pope, had just established a little before the Jesuits began to appear. Ignatius, in spite of all the opposition which his society experienced at its birth, chose rather to be the legislator of an institution than to subject himself to laws which were not of his making. It seems as if he foresaw, from that very time, the future grandeur of his order, and the small figure the other would make, though destined to be in our times the cradle of a pious prelate, raised from the bosom of that order (by an impenetrable Providence) to the first dignities of the state and of the church[2].

Ignatius had also the wit to perceive, that a society which made particular profession of devotion to the holy see, would find infallible support from the head of the Roman church, and by these means from the catholic princes, its dear and faithful sons; and that thus this society would triumph at length over the transitory obstacles which it might meet with at its origin. It was in this view that he gave to it those famous constitutions, since perfected, and always on the same plan, by two successors very superior to Ignatius, the two generals Lainez and Aquiviva, so celebrated in the annals of the Jesuits: the latter especially, intriguing, adroit, and full of great views, was on all these accounts very proper for the government of an ambitious society: to him it is indebted, more than to any other, for those regulations so well contrived and so wise, that we may style them the master-piece of the industry of human nature in point of policy, and which have contributed, during two hundred years, to the aggrandizement and glory of this order. These regulations, it is true, have ended in being the cause or the motive of the destruction of the Jesuits in France; but such is the fate of all human grandeur and power, it is in their very nature to grow worse and become extinct when they have arrived at a certain degree of greatness and lustre. The empire of the Assyrians, that of the Persians, the Roman empire itself, have disappeared, precisely for this very reason, because they were become too large and too powerful. These examples ought to console the Jesuits, if it be possible for Jesuitical pride to be consoled.

We cannot better compare this society, every where surrounded with enemies, and every where triumphant for the space of two centuries, than to the marshes of Holland, cultivated by obstinate labour, besieged by the sea, which threatens every instant to swallow them up, and perpetually opposing their dikes to that destructive element. Let these dikes be pierced but in one single place, Holland will be laid under water after so many ages of labour and of vigilance. This is what has happened to the society; its enemies have at last found out the weak part, and pierced its dike; yet those who had raised it with so much care and patience, those who had afterwards watched so long over its preservation, those who have cultivated, with so much success, the soil which was protected by this dike, merit nevertheless commendation on that account.

Scarce had the company of Jesus (for that is the name which it had taken), begun to shew itself in France, when it met with numberless difficulties in establishing itself there. The universities especially made the greatest efforts to expel these new comers; it is difficult to decide, whether this opposition does honour or discredit to the Jesuits who experienced it. They gave themselves out for the instructors of youth gratis; they counted already amongst them some learned and famous men, superior perhaps to those of whom the universities could boast: interest and vanity might therefore be sufficient motives to their adversaries, at least in these first moments, to seek to exclude them. We may recollect the like opposition which the Mendicant orders underwent from these very universities when they wanted to introduce themselves there; opposition founded on pretty nearly the same motives, and which ceased not but by the state into which these orders are fallen, now become incapable of exciting envy.

On the other side, it is very probable that the society, proud of that support which it found amidst so many storms, furnished arms to its adversaries by braving them; it seemed to shew itself, from this time, with that spirit of invasion which it has but too much displayed since, but which it has carefully covered at all times with the mask of religion, and of zeal for the salvation of souls. This desire of extending itself, and of domineering, appeared already on all sides: the society insinuated itself into the confidence of several sovereigns; it caballed at the courts of some others; it rendered itself formidable to the bishops, by the dependance which it affected on the court of Rome alone; in short, the more it aggrandized itself, the more it seemed to justify, by its credit and its intrigues, the rancour of its enemies against it. To govern the universe, not by force, but by religion, such appeared to have been the device of this society from its origin; a device which it has made appear further to proportion as its existence and its authority gained strength.