Jesuit, religious order, founded by Ignatius Loyola, and known by the name of Company or Society of Jesus .

We will say nothing here of our own. This article will be no more than a succinct and faithful extract of the accounts given by the procurers-general of the judicial courts, of memoirs printed by order of the parlements, of various rulings, of histories both old and new, and of the works that have been published in such great number in these last times.

In 1521, Ignatius Loyola, after having given the first twenty-nine years of his life to the art of war and the amusements of gallantry, consecrated himself to the service of the mother of God at Mount Ferrat in Catalonia, where he retired in the solitude of Manrese, and where God certainly inspired his work titled Spiritual Exercises —for he was illiterate when he wrote it. Abridged history of the Company of Jesus .

Decorated with the title Knight of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, he set about teaching, preaching, and converting men with zeal, ignorance, and success. Ibid.

It was in 1538, at the end of Lent, that he gathered at Rome the ten companions that he had chosen according to his lights.

After forming and rejecting various plans, Ignatius and his colleagues together dedicated themselves to the work of catechizing children, of enlightening infidels with their wisdom, and of defending the faith against heretics.

In these circumstances, John III, king of Portugal, a prince zealous for the propagation of Christianity, requested missionaries from Ignatius, that these would carry the news of the Gospel to the Japanese and the Indians. Ignatius gave him Rodriguez and Xavier; but this last left by himself for those distant countries, where he performed an infinite number of marvelous things that we believe, and that the jesuit Acosta does not believe.

The establishment of the Company of Jesus suffered several difficulties at first; but on the proposition to obey only the pope, in all things and in all places, for the salvation of souls and the propagation of the faith, the Pope Paul III conceived the project of forming, by means of these religious, a kind of militia spreading across the surface of the earth, and unconditionally subject to the orders of the Court of Rome; and the year 1540, the obstacles having been removed, the institution of Ignatius was approved, and the Company of Jesus was founded.

Benedict XIV, who had so many virtues and who said so many witticisms, a pontiff whom we shall miss for a long time to come, regarded this militia as the janissaries of the Holy See; an intemperate and dangerous band, but which serves well.

To the vow of obedience made to the pope and to a general representing Jesus Christ on earth, the Jesuits joined those of poverty and chastity, which they have observed even to this day, as everyone knows.

Ever since the Bull that established them and named them Jesuits they have obtained ninety-two others that are known, and that they have had to hide, and perhaps others that are unknown.

These Bulls, called apostolic letters , grant them every last privilege of the monastic life, even independence from the Court of Rome.

Besides these prerogatives, they have found a singular method to continually generate others. Whenever a pope unthinkingly speaks a word favorable to the order, it is immediately made into a title and registered in the honors of the society, in a section called oracles spoken aloud: vivoe vocis oracula .

If a pope says nothing, it is easy to make him talk. Ignatius, elected general, took office on Easter of the year 1541.

The generalship, a subordinate honor in its origin, became an unlimited and permanent despotism under Laniez and Aquaviva.

Paul III had limited the number of professed Jesuits to sixty; three years later he annulled that restriction, and the order was allowed to grow as much as it could and as much as it has.

Those who claim to know the management and rule of the order, distribute it into six classes, which they call the professed, the spiritual coadjutors, the approved students, the lay brothers or temporal coadjutors , the novices, the affiliates or adjuncts , or Jesuits of the short robe . They say that this last class is numerous, that it is incorporated in all the estates of the society, that the it disguises itself in all kinds of clothing.

Besides the three solemn vows of the faith, the professed that form the body of the society make yet another vow of special obedience to the head of the Church, but only for that which concerns foreign missions.

Those who have not yet pronounced this last vow of obedience are called spiritual coadjutors .

The approved students are those who have been kept in the order after two years novitiate, and who are individually bound by three vows that are not solemn, but are always declared vows of the faith, and yet are contrary to canon law.

It is the timing and the will of the general that will one day bring the students to the grade of professed or spiritual coadjutor.

These grades, above all that of the professed, require two years of novitiate, seven years of study, not always necessarily done within the society, seven years of regency, a third year of novitiate, and the age of thirty-three years, that age when Our Savior Jesus Christ was crucified.

There is no reciprocal engagement between the company and its students, in the vows that it demands; the student cannot leave, yet he may be expelled by the general.

Not even the pope, but the general alone, may admit or reject a subject.

The administration of the order is divided into assistances, the assistances into provinces, and the provinces into houses.

There are five assistants; each carries the name of his department, and calls himself the Assistant of Italy, of Spain, of Germany, of France, or of Portugal.

The duty of an assistant is to prepare things and put them in order which facilitates passing them on to the general.

Those who watch over a province carry the title provincial ; the chief of a house, that of rector .

Each province contains four kinds of house; professed houses without endowment, teaching colleges, residences where a small number of missionaries live, and novice houses.

The professes have given up all ecclesiastical privileges; they cannot accept the crosier, miter, or rochet, except with the consent of the general.

What is a jesuit ? Is he a secular priest? Is he a regular priest? Is he a layman? Is he a religious? Does he belong to a community? Is he a monk? He is something like all of these, but he is not quite any of them.

When these men have presented themselves in lands where they were soliciting establishments, and when it was demanded of them what they were, they have responded, "some such," tales quales .

At all times they have kept their constitutions a mystery, and never have they given it in complete and free communication to the magistrates.

Their organization is a monarchy; all authority rests on the will of one individual.

Subject to the most excessive despotism in their houses, the Jesuits are the most abject fomenters of despotism in the state. To the subjects, they preach obedience without reserve; to the kings, they preach independence from the laws and blind obedience to the pope; they credit the pope with infallibility and universal dominion, so that, as masters of one man, they may be masters of all.

We would never finish if we entered into the details of the prerogatives of the general. He has the right to make new constitutions, or to renew ancient ones, at whatever time he wishes; to admit or exclude, to build or destroy, to approve or improve, to consult or to ordain alone, to assemble or dissolve, to enrich or impoverish, to absolve, to bind or loose, to send or retain, to hold innocent or guilty, guilty of a minor fault or of a crime, to annul or to confirm a contract, to ratify or to commute a bequest, to approve or suppress a work, to distribute indulgences or anathemas, to associate or to sever associations; in a word, he possesses the whole fullness of powers that one could imagine a chief having over his subjects; he is their light, their soul, their will, their guide, and their conscience.

If this despotic and machiavellian chief happened to be violent, vindictive, ambitious, wicked, and if, in he found even a single fanatic in the multitude under his command, where is the prince, or the private individual, who could be secure, at throne or hearth?

The provincials of all the provinces are made to write to the general once a month; the rectors, superiors of houses, and masters of novices, every three months.

Each provincial is enjoined to go into the finest details about the houses, colleges, and all that has to do with the province; each rector must send two catalogues, one of the age, the country, the studies, and the conduct of the subjects; the other, of their minds, their talent, their characters, their manners: In a word, of their vices and virtues.

In consequence, every year the general receives around two hundred particular statements on each kingdom, and on each province of a kingdom, on all things temporal as well as spiritual.

If the general happened to have sold himself to a foreign power, or if he happened to have an evil disposition, or be drawn by interest to meddle in politics, what evil could he not accomplish?

He is the center where all the secrets of state and families will end up, even those of the royal family; as informed as he is impenetrable; dictating his absolute will, and obeying no one; fortified with the most dangerous designs on the growth and preservation of his company, and the prerogatives of the spiritual power; capable of arming, on our shores, hands that one cannot defy; what man under heaven is there, who this general cannot arouse

For important matters, they write the general in cipher.

But a bizarre aspect of the regime of the Company of Jesus is that the men who compose it are all made by oath to be spies and denouncers of one another.

Hardly was it formed, but the Society was seen to grow rich, numerous, and powerful. At the same time, it existed in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, England, in the north, in the south, in Africa, in America, in China, in the Indies, in Japan, everywhere equally ambitious, redoubtable, and turbulent; everywhere exempting itself from the laws, holding forth its independent character and conserving it, acting as though it were destined to command the universe.

From its foundation until the present day, hardly a year has gone by without it heralding some striking event. Here is the abridged chronology of its history , largely such as it appeared in the decree of the parlement of Paris, 6 August 1762, which suppressed this order, as a sect of impious men, fanatics, corrupters, regicides, etc... commanded by a foreign chief, machiavellian by design.

In 1547, Bobadilla, one of the companions of Ignatius, was expelled from the German states, for having written against the Interim of Augsburg.

In 1560, Gonzalès Silveria was punished at Monomotapa, as a spy for Portugal and for his Society.

In 1578, such Jésuits as were to be found in Anvers were banished, for having refused the Peace of Ghent.

In 1581, Campian, Skerwin, and Briant were put tot death for having conspired against Elizabeth of England.

In the course of this great queen's reign, the Jesuits hatched five conspiracies against her life.

In 1588, they were seen to give life to the League formed in France against Henry III.

The same year, Molina published his pernicious fantasies on the concord of grace and free will.

In 1593, Barriere was armed with a dagger against the best of kings, by the jesuit Varade.

In 1594, the Jesuits were expelled from France for being complicit in the parricide of Jean Chatel.

In 1595, their Father Guignard, found with apologetic writings for the assassination of Henry IV, was taken to the gallows.

In 1597, the congregations de auxiliis were held, on the occasion of the novelty of their doctrine on grace, and Clement VIII said to them: Scatterbrains, you're the ones who trouble all the Church.

In 1598, they corrupted a knave, administered his God to him with one hand, gave him a dagger with the other, showed him the eternal crown descending from heaven onto his head, and sent him to assassinate Maurice of Nassau. They were expelled from the states of Holland.

In 1604, the clemency of Frederic cardinal Borromeo expelled them from the college of Braida, for crimes that ought to have sent them to the butcher.

In 1605, Oldecorn and Garnet, authors of the Gunpowder Plot, were consigned to their punishment.

In 1606, rebels against the decrees of the Venetian senate, they had to be chased from that city and state.

In 1610, Ravaillac assassinated Henry IV. The Jesuits are still suspected of guiding his hand, and, as though they were jealous of it, and as if their aim were to strike terror in the breasts of monarchs, in that same year Mariana published, with his Institution of the Prince an apology for the murder of kings.

In 1618, the Jesuits were expelled from Bohemia, as disturbers of the public peace, men who raised up subjects against their magistrates, infecting spirits with the pernicious doctrine of infallibility and the universal power of the pope, and sowing on all manner of paths the flames of discord between the members of the state.

In 1619, they were banished from Moravia for the same reasons.

In 1631, their cabals stirred up Japan, and the earth was soaked the whole length of the empire with the blood of idolaters and Christians.

In 1641, they alit in Europe the absurd quarrel of Jansenism, that has cost the peace and fortune of so many honest fanatics.

In 1643, Malta, indignant at their privation and rapacity, hurled them far from her.

In 1646, they declared a bankruptcy at Seville which plunged several families into misery. The one in our time is not the first, as you can see.

In 1709, their low jealousy destroyed Port-Royal, opened the tombs of the dead, dispersed their bones, and overturned the sacred walls whose stones fall so heavily today upon their own heads.

In 1713, they obtained from Rome the bull Unigenitus , which has served them as a pretext to cause so much harm, amongst which we may count the eighty thousand lettres de cachet issued against the most upright persons of the state, under the kindest of ministers.

That same year, the Jesuit Jouvency, in a history of the Society, dared to install among the martyrs the assassins of our kings, and our attentive magistrates had his work burned.

In 1723, Peter the Great only found safety for his person and the means of pacifying his domains through the banishment of the Jesuits .

In 1728, Berruyer dressed up the story of Moses as a novel, making the patriarchs speak the language of gallantry and libertinism.

In 1730, the scandalous Tournemine preached at Caën in a temple, and before a Christian audience, that it is uncertain whether the gospel is holy scripture.

It was at the same time that Ardouin began to infect his order with a skepticism as ridiculous as it is impious.

In 1731, the authorities hid—from the fire—the corrupting and sacrilegious Girard.

In 1743, the shameless Benzi sparked the sect of Mamillarians in Italy.

In 1745, Pichon prostituted the sacraments of Penitence and the Eucharist, and abandoned the bread of the saints to all the dogs who asked for it.

In 1755, the Jesuits of Paraguay directed the inhabitants of that country in organized battle against their legitimate sovereigns.

In 1757, a parricide was attempted against our monarch Louis XV, and it was done by a man who lived in the halls of the Society of Jesus, whom these fathers protected, whom they placed in several houses; and in the same year they published an edition of one of their classic authors, wherein the doctrine of king-killing was taught. It was as they had done in 1610 immediately after the assassination of Henry IV: same circumstances, same conduct.

In 1758, the king of Portugal was assassinated, following a plot formed and directed by the Jesuits Malagrida, Mathos, and Alexandre.

In 1759, that entire troupe of religious assassins was expelled from the Portuguese dominions.

In 1761, one of this company, after taking over commerce with Martinique, threatened a total ruin for his connections. In France, they exacted the justice of the tribunals against the bankrupting Jesuit , and the Society was declared the underwriter of Father Valette.

It dragged the affair clumsily from one jurisdiction to another. Familiarity was gained with their constitutions, their abuses were recognized, and the consequences of this event brought its extinction among us.

These are the main epochs of Jesuitism. We could intercalate similar facts between any of them.

With this multitude of known crimes, how many are there which are still unknown?

But the preceding is enough to show that in an interval of two hundred years, there is no kind of enormity that this race of men has not committed.

I add that there is no kind of perverse doctrine that it has not taught. The Elucidarium of Posa alone contains more of it than would be provided by one hundred volumes of the most distinguished fanatics. It is there that we read among other things on the mother of God, that she is Dei-pater and Dei-mater , and that, although she had not been subject to any natural excretion, meanwhile she had worked together as man and as woman, secundum generalem naturoe tenorem ex parte maris & ex parte feminoe , in producing the body of Jesus Christ, and a thousand other follies.

The doctrine of probabilism is a jesuit invention.

The doctrine of philosophical sin is a jesuit invention.

Read the work entitled the Assertions , and published this year, 1762, by decree of the parlement of Paris, and shiver at the horrors that the theologians of this Society have served up since its origin, on simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, magic, irreligion, astrology, immodesty, fornication, pederasty, perjury, dissimulation, lying, bending of the will, false testimony, prevarication of judges, theft, embezzlement, homicide, suicide, prostitution, and regicide; in the words of the king's procureur général in the parlement of Bretagne, in his second report, page 73, this mass of opinions openly attacks the most sacred principles, tends to destroy natural law, to render human faith doubtful, to break all the ties of civil society, by authorizing the infraction of its laws; to stifle all feeling of humanity among men, to destroy royal authority, to bring trouble and desolation to empires, by the teaching of regicide; to overturn the foundations of revelation, and to substitute for Christianity all manner of superstition.

Read in the decree of the parlement of Paris, published 6 August 1762, the infamous list of condemnations they have suffered at all the tribunals of the Christian world and the still more infamous list of the qualifications that have been given them.

No doubt you have stopped at this point to ask how this society is sustained, despite all it has done for its own ruin; famous, despite all it has done to obliterate itself; how it has obtained the confidence of sovereigns while assassinating them, the protection of the clergy while degrading them, such great authority in the Church while filling it with troubles and perverting its morals and dogmas.

The answer is that we have seen, at the same time and in the same body, reason sitting beside fanaticism, virtue beside vice, religion beside impiety, rigorism beside laxity, science beside ignorance, the spirit of withdrawal beside the spirit of cabal and intrigue—all the contrasts reunited. Only humility has ever failed to find refuge among these men.

They have had poets, historians, orators, philosophers, geometers, and scholars.

I do not know if has been the talents and holiness of a few individuals that has carried the society to the high esteem it has until recently enjoyed; but I will assure you without fear of contradiction that these means were the only ones that it had had to save itself, and that this is what these men failed to see.

Given over to commerce, intrigue, politicking, and occupations foreign to their station and unworthy of their profession, they necessarily fell into the division that followed, and will follow, at all times and in all religious houses: the decay of study and the corruption of morals.

It was not gold, o my fathers, nor power, which could prevent a little society like yours, ensconced in the larger, from being stifled.

It was out of a respect that we owe, and still offer to science and virtue, to sustain you and to check the efforts of your enemies, as when we see among tumultuous waves of the assembled people, a venerable man remaining immobile and tranquil at the center of a free and empty space, which our consideration has formed and reserved around him. You have forfeited such common respect, and the curse of Saint Francis de Borgia, the third of your generals, has fallen upon you. He told you, this good and sainted man: "There will come a time when you will no longer put limits on your own pride and your ambition, when you only occupy yourselves with accumulating wealth and getting yourselves credit, when you will neglect the practice of virtues; then there will be no power on earth that can bring you back to your initial perfection, and if it is possible to destroy you, they will."

Necessarily, those who have begun their rule on the same base that sustains the existence and the fortune of the great, should fall as they do; the prosperity of the Jesuits has been nothing more than a somewhat longer dream.

But when did the colossus really collapse? At the very moment when it seemed the greatest and strongest. There was but a moment when the Jesuits filled the palaces of our kings; there was but a moment when youths, who were the hopes of the first families of state, filled their schools; there was but a moment when religion carried them into the most intimate confidence of the monarch, his wife and children; more the protectors than protected by our clergy, they were the great soul of this great body. Who did not believe it? I have seen these proud oaks touch the sky with their tops; I turned my head, and they were no more.

But every event has its reverses. What have been those of the unexpected and rapid fall of this society? Here are some of them, such as they appear to my sense.

The philosophical spirit disparaged celibacy, and the Jesuits suffered from this, just as all religious orders, from the little taste one has for the cloister today.

The Jesuits fell out with the men of letters, right at the moment when these last were going to take up the cause against their implacable and grim enemies. What happened then? Rather than covering their weaknesses, they were exposed, and a finger pointed out the spot where these somber enthusiasts had to hit.

There could no longer be found among them a man who was distinguished by some great talent; no more poets, philosophers, orators, scholars, no writer of note, and the entire body was disdained.

An internal anarchy divided them for several years; and if by chance they had a good candidate, they could not keep him.

They were recognized as the authors of all our internal troubles, and have been disposed of.

Their journalist of Trévoux, a good man as we have heard, but a mediocre author and poor politician, made them a thousand fearsome enemies with his lousy little book, and not a single friend.

He stupidly irritated our Voltaire against his society; Voltaire has poured out disgust and ridicule on him and it, painting him as an imbecile, and his brothers, sometimes as dangerous and wicked men, sometimes as ignoramuses, setting the tone and example for all our underground jokers, and teaching us that we could mock a jesuit with impunity, and that the men of the world could laugh at them without consequences.

The Jesuits got along badly for a very long time with the depositaries of the laws, and they never dreamed that the magistrates, as durable as themselves, would in the end prove the stronger.

They did not know the difference that exists between necessary men and turbulent monks, and if the state ever found that it had to take sides, it would turn its back on those who no longer had anything to offer.

Let us add that at the moment when the storm broke upon them, (p. 516) in that instant when the worm about to be crushed underfoot tried to muster some energy, there could not be found a single man within the order who knew what to say to make people listen. They no longer had a voice, and they had already closed all those mouths that might otherwise have opened in their favor.

They have been hated or envied.

While the university curriculum was improving, it had completed its fall in their college, and this while we had been half-convinced that for the best use of our time, for the good culture of wit, and the conservation of morals and health, we could hardly make a comparison between the public institution and domestic education.

These men have been involved in too many various affairs; they have had too much confidence in their credit.

Their general was ridiculously persuaded that his three-cornered hat sat upon the head of a potentate, and he insulted just when he should have begged pardon.

The lawsuit with the creditors of Father Valette has covered them with opprobrium.

They were quite imprudent when they published their constitutions, and all the worse when they, forgetting the precariousness of their very existence, led the magistrates who already hated them, toward an understanding of their regime; these then compared the laws of the state to this system of fanaticism, independence, and machiavellianism.

And now, this revolt of the inhabitants of Paraguay, will it not have to attract the attention of sovereigns, and give them pause? And what of two parricides executed in the space of a year?

At last, the fateful moment had come; fanaticism had recognized it, and taken advantage.

What could have saved the order against so many combined circumstances that brought it to the very brink? One man, like Bourdaloue perhaps, if he had existed among the Jesuits ; but we must recall the price, of leaving to the worldly the care of accumulating wealth, and of dreaming to raise Cheminais from the ashes.

It is neither by hatred nor resentment against the Jesuits that I have written these things; my aim has been to justify the government that abandoned them and the magistrates who have done justice, and to teach the clerics of that order who will one day try to re-establish themselves in this kingdom that if they succeed, under what conditions I believe that they may hope to maintain themselves in it.