Jesuits !

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 325, 11 July 1879, Page 2

Jesuits !

Translated from the trench of paul feval by t. f. galwey. Baltimore, 1879. Among those whom Father Valignani prepared for the strange and difficult fencing, which no one before could have dreamed of, the young Fathers Pazio, Ruggicri, and Matthew Ricci issued from the ranks, perfect instruments, Ricci above all, who iv every respect was a masterpiece of education. If anything can be more astonishing than the recital of the intelligent and minutely suitable preparation", it is the admirably correct, bold, and precise use that was made of these gymnastics in the epic struggle begun by Ricci, and continued by his successors. Xavier, the image or the reflection of Christ, had his hands full of prodigies ; he commanded men and things from the heights of his love ; what he might have done in China if God had permitted him to land there, sanctified by his long victory in India and Japan cannot be known, but Xavier was dead. It «as necessary to replace the divine talisman which he had had from heaven by human prudence, aided, of course, by grace from above, without which all labor is in vain. For that reason, though less supernatural than Xavier, Ricci excites a more lively interest, through the ep ; sodes of his Christian Odyssey. He is a man ; he contends with the Chinese empire, that gigantic trifle, a creation of all the world's chimeras : if we may say so he is at once apostle and adventurer, St. Paul and Robinson Crusoe sublime, mdustiious, keen, bold, artful, playing with the eclipse like Christopher Columbus, slighting no detail, using the high road, while noticing the diverging paths, fearless iv piosecutlng his way, but turning back without delay, if needful, to try another route. He knows everything : all that is known to the Chinese to insinuate himself ; all that the Chinese do not know, to make himself master. He is a doubly keen Jesuit, having his own clear perception and his master s ready wit. He has a parry for every thrust. He knows the tongue of the literati better than the literati themselves, and as to the philosophy of the screen, he is equal to Confucius ' He has the mandaiin's geography at the end of his fingers, he is familiar with their earth as square as a tile asleep in space under the protection of the emperor, the son of heaven ; he knows what gratitude this earth owes to the celestial Van Lie, the same emperor who from the innermost of his palace, obligingly sustains if, and by his goodness of soul, prevents it from being lost in the abyss, but he knows still better the real earth which Km ope has journcyma- thioivh space and the sun, and the planets, and the whole worldly system known at Tans, which is very plausible, and perhaps true. At his choice— and this is important— he can revel in the outlandish sense of the liteiati, or suddenly astonish thorn *wth unexpected revelations. As far as the unexpected goes he has brought treasures with him. If he wished, instead of announcing Chiist "he himself would pass for a God, merely by using the first book of EucJUu, anapted for the bonzes. After much time consumed in getting across the threshold of the empire, he is at last naturalised. He writes to consult Father Valigani, then in Macao, as to the choice of an official dress ; he is that i Considering the country, it is a question of the first importance and his former master replies to put on the long gown and mitre of tne Lumese liteiati. The choice is good : Ricci adopts it and thus, after many strange and heroic adventures, ariives at Nankin where he marks the future pobiuon of a house of the Company, then at Pckin itself, and one day

he is admitted to visit (supreme honour !) certainly not Van Lie himself, who could not of course for a minute abandon the square earth for fear of its destruction, but Van Lie's empty throne, which amounts to the same thing, and gives him an influence equal to that held by mandarins of the highest grade. Do not suppose that he lingers too long on so fortunate a road 1 Without being at all responsible for it, a rumour gets about that the " Son of Heaven" admits him during the night to private interviews, where together they discuss the weightiest matters, among others the shape of a new helmet which is to put the Tartars to flight without a battle. This rumour, starting among the people, gets to the court ; as no control is possible over an invisible and dumb emperor, the incredible fact happens that, the Great Minister of the Empire himself, believing what is talked of everywhere, aeeks the friendship of the pretended favourite and becomes his most obsequious servant. But where is God in all that 1 And the word of God ? What has become of the apostle in the midst of these strange adventures 1 It is unnecessary to say that the apostolate is in all this, and nothing but the apostolate. These adventurers are on tba flanks of a column where the apostolate is certainly advancing. It required extraordinary prudence and numberless roundabout methods before beginning to preach. Here nothing is like elsewhere. Everything is understood, played with, discussed, avoided, and yet everything is welcome. The point is to live alongside all this and to utilize these materials. The subtlety of the Chinese mind is taken by the evident grandeur of evangelical morals, but it admits Christ only with caution, and then as far as the cross, not at all. This childlike yet ancient people, this aristocracy, half polished, half barbarous, where every mandarin is at bottom a clown, does not like the humility of the cross. They may admit all the rest ; but not this. It is not Chinese. No Chinese would have suffered that. A Chinese disembowels himself without much hesitation, but he would never let himself be nailed to a cross. And how could the Chinese adore the God of the Christians, if he transgressed the received and venerated decorum ? For a long while this obstacle was absolutely insurmountable. Ricci had won in everything else, but Chinese obstinacy disputed this ground steadfastly. Great pride may become humble, but not so puerile vanity, and the very life of this fantastic people is made up of boasts, competition, tricks, all intended to satisfy its childish vainglory ; it subsists on gigantic drollery, on microscopic monstrosities which astonish logic, disconcert reason, and at every step on the road that seemed to be level, opens ridiculous and terrible abysses. However there were already very great results. Churches arose ; seminaries were filled before being completed. Bonzes carried the Holy Sacrament, and converted mandarins were counted by hundreds. There were Chinese apostles, true, invincible confessors, among whom Paul Sin, the admirable orator, the great mandarin Li, and many other brilliant ones. They were men of that antique stature whose virtue and wisdom would have done honour to the primitive Church, If we were elsewhere than in China, I should say that one of the greatest and finest Christianities of the earth was here, but we are in China, the home of the nightmare, where one is ever liable to a sudden and disagreeable awakening. The awakening came. And as everything happens contrariwise among this people of extravagant originality, where even strangers arc soon taken with the fever of the impossible, the awakening was to a persecution that came not from the bonzes, noi from the governors, nor from the mandarins, noi from the emperor, but to a persecution, I say, that came — I shall not leave it for you to guess, you could not — that came from ecclesiastical authority ! The Church, infallible at its summit, has frequently had incapable servants at various points of the ascent. This weakness is lost in the glory of the whole, but it has existed, and still exists. In tli e year 1(506. which was the eighteenth of the skilful and happy apostolate of Matthew Ricci, the ecclestiastical authority was represented in those far-off parts by the vicar-general of Macao, where there was a college of the Jesuits. The rector of this college having been chosen arbiter in a dispute between the vicar-general aud a Franciscan fiiar, decided in favour of the latter. In the excitement of his anger, the vicar-general published an interdict against all the Franciscans and all Jesuits of the city and within the city's jurisdiction. At the same time, taking advantage of Chinese fancies, the Jesuits were pronounced to the authorities at Canton as building citadels and summoning the Portuguese and Japanese fleets to invade the countiy. It needed not so much. Entire provinces arose against the Christians ! A terrible massacre is related, and Father Martinez dies in torture. It was only a violent but passing gust of wind. Ricci soon ruled | the storm, and a short time afterwards established a novitiate-house in the middle of Pckin. When (Jod called him to Himself four years later, the entire population of the capital followed the cross that rose above his funeral procession, and Father Schall. the successor of that really great man, well managed his inheritance. Adam Schall. not less illustrious than Ricci, was mixel up with all the revolutions of the era just opening for China, and which ended in a change of dynasty. At his doath, the Jesuits had a hundred and fifty public churches, and thirty-eight houses or colleges in China. After the second persecution, which we shall pass over in silence, out of respect for an illustrious order, another piospcrous era began under Fathers Veibicst, Gci billon, Paiennin and Gaubil ; and these long years, filled with the scientific and literary labours of the Chinese apostolate, became the gloiy of the Chuich and the admiration of the learned of Europe.

It must not be supposed that the Jesuits' great efforts in China had led them to abandon India. They had at one time Mogul, Cey-

tem',W ga !% nd Cor <> man <¥. At the end of the 16th century their S^&Jffiffi,? 701^ lessors beyond the Ganges, the S^S^^K* ne P bew . of Popes and of Emperors, becomes 2o^£. ? the brahmins, while others evangelise the Pariahs. The tnelvl™ lf th £V he blessed John de Britto > who was a son of sSTK/a 8 Mad -°° ra With hiß blood ' Ben g» 1 » Thibet > Tarta^ nS*S I ? nd Armenia, see the cross planted and hear the gospel SlnVa^ 7 eS - mtSf ,TL tb them the faith Penetrates the deserts of c£wi» ♦k m ff reß °LAL Ab y ssinia a^ Morocco, along the coasts of oaffrana, the Mozambique and Guinea. benenWr.S^^nf l^.^^ 6 . to brin & the New Worid «*<*<* «» notthefpK 6 of Cbnstiancivilisation. There they have to encounter, CalrinlS v y?f ?e? c T^ ges onl y > their moßt envenomed enemies are St W? 7 ?£ Dd ?^ h COlßairß ; alas ' and Frenchmen, too, thPi! feLT Su ntn tb f redßkins > massacre every Jesuit who falls into SS The order is given. Calvin himself has been careful to feprt^ T Com , pa - ny , °? Jesus as the Principal amd mortal enemy. SXSStX^r* one or that one ' but he "*■ : " There [s thP wili? VlBY 18 fa ? thfu "y obeyed I Thus, on the 15th of July, 1570, dSh'ni^ $?"*?* d Azevedo and his tbirty-nine companions destined for the mission of Brazil, perished in sight of Palma. Thirty others, a few days afterwards, shared their fate. It w^ hh t e K?°™ pa " 7 Of Je T owed s eventy-one martyrs to heretic rage. th«S£w P1^ G S crasade - Souri e. Capdeville and others enriched ntW *> ' e3wltho " ch and as they skimmed the sea, while with the «W. be y, WOQ the Calvinistic heaven by murdering missionaries whenever they met them. TOM B , at n <* £ II J the . missionaries fell beneath the blows of pirates who were dissatisfied with Roman morals. Those who escaped their cutlasses and the Indians poisoned arrows, dashed across the desertß in another crusade. There were some left for the holy war, and it was these who conquered Canada for the Catholic faith and for France ; these heroes of religion and of patriotism who died for God and for «2? n th mbeaven enjoy the glory of being forgotten by that land, w h °lt' I 6ba , "' at least wrifce Renames of Jogues, Baniel, Brebeuf, the noble auxiliaries of Champlain. . «,« h ° has n^ b , eard of the CatQ olic governments of Paraguay, & T n Y duet J, on 8" lauded by Robertson, Albert de Haller, Sn ! Montesquieu, Ra ynal and Chateaubriand, of which Voltaire SpIL rv ! establishment in Paraguay by unassisted Spanish Jesuits, IsS ™l ♦ ?6? 6 tr i u ™ pb of baman ity." We shall have to speak again unfortunately of Paraguay and of the cruel reward meted out to the Jesuits by Voltaire s contemporaries. At Carthagena, in South America, the Jesuits performed other cban . tv j jQ st as they had become Pariahs in India to convert the Pariahs, and Brahmins to convert Brahmins, the blessed i-eter Uaver became a negro, and more than a negro, •' the slave of the negroes, in order to raise these miserable victims of European avarice to the sentiment of religion. One must read his history to understand the distance between philanthropy and charity. The philanthropists of free America have Überated the blacks, and thej have done well. But where is the American that would take the hand of a negro 1 In New York men and women object to the admittance of negroes- into public conveyances as if they were unclean animals, whose presence would poison the atmosphere. The liberty that has been given them does not remove their degradation any more than have done the tiresome romances that sought to win them the pity of Europe. • ,, Cla 7 er has not the right to emancipate them, but he awaits them in the places where they are brought like cattle to be sold. 11l and poor as he is, and dying of fatigue, he loads himself down with provisions he has begged, and he nurses them, washes their faces and their feet and kisses their tears, exclaiming : » O my brothers ! Omy friends ! Omy dear masters ! what do you wish me to do ? Do not fear to ask an.> thing of your servant, even his life, for I belong to you • you have bought me in Jesus Christ : lam Peter Claver, the slave of the negroes for ever." J v\ -i Then *; be ? c is / ather d e Rhodes at Tong-King, Father Cabral in ihi bet and m Nepaul, Fathers Medrano and Figueroa in New Grenada, John de Arcos at Caraccas. It was there that the Jesuits were accused for the first time of commerce, ' because they furnished their neophytes, at a slight advance, with merchandise which the real traffickers would have sold at usurious rates. That is a crime which will never be pardoned them n is a dangerous thing to come between the trader and his prey. Neither evidence nor time can assuage the rancor of those who have been injured !by having their exaggerated profits cut down, and you will still find people to tell you that the Jesuits maintain immense but invisible fleets which traverse the ocean with devouring speed bearing unknown tributes from absolutely mysterious correspondcuts* When a Jebuit engages in trade— and there is one unlucky and too celebrated example— the Order puts him under interdict, cashiers him expels him, and ruins itself to pay a debt it has not conNevertheless, the Order must suffer for it. * v WyeW y e sh ? l1 I r el at e the orgy of iniquity known in history as the trial of Father de la Valette. The Jesuits do not trade. They give, but do not sell. They have neither warehouses nor fleets. They let people act and In their own books you will find no testimony to their zeal, their courage and their stubborn charity. They rarely deny even the most dangerous accusations, and it is to their enemies we must go for refutations of the absurd calumnies against them. "It is a remarkable thing that those authors who have the most severely blamed the licentious manners of the regular Spanish monks, all agree in honouring the conduct of the Jesuits. Governed by a more perfect discipline thau prevailed among other orders, or restrained by the need of preserving the Society's honour, so dear to each of its members, the Jetmts. whether of Mexico or of Peru, have ever maintained a» ir-

reproachable regularity of manners." It is not a Jesuit nor even a Catholic who says that.* That, the thought of a Protestant, an honourable man and intemgent writer, is very different from the vile inventions that appear in our journals and our books 1 Before Chioseul's ministry, when the supiession of the Jesuits, which Montalembert, after Montyon, has called " the greatest iniquity or modern times," was consummated, the following was the general * «i ?f? f the missionß founded by St. Ignatius' disciples among the inndels m various countries of the world : the Portuguese Jesuits, who I 11!I 11 !- 72vears > fron i 1551 to- 1623, had sent 662 missionaries to the Indies, and 222 to Brazil ; or at the rate of 12 a year, in 1616 numbered 280 in the province of Goa, and 180 in that of Brazil, this latter afterwards (1759) had 445. The mission of Japan in 1581 counted 150,000 Christians, 200 churches, 59 missionaries. In China, about 1680, the one province of Nankin contained mor« than 100,000 Christians. In the Indies, in Madura, Father Laynez baptized (1699) 15,000 idolators in six months. In 1763, America had 526 Jesuits in Peru ; 572 in Mexico ; 195 in the New Kingdom (Carthagena la nuova); 209 at Quito ; 269 (564 in 1767) in Paraguay ; 242 in Chili. At Marnon, in 1667, Father Vieyra da Silva organised fifty Christian villages along more than 400 leagues of coast. The missions of the Levant, founded by Henry IV. and revived by Louis XIV, propagated French influence along with the Catholic faith in Greece, at Constaninople, in Persia, at Smyrna, throughout the Archipelago, in Armenia, Crimea. Chaldea, Syria and Egypt. That was the prosperous and ever growing situation of the Company's missions at the time when cautious and violent tyranny, on the faith of the Pombals, of the Arandas, and of the Choiseuls, in one moment destroyed those foundations which had cost so much industry and so many years, extending over the world and worthy of the name of an empire I The mind is astounded that men so petty, so disastrously powerless to produce or to preserve anything, should yet have been able to annihilate so gigantic an institution ! We shall say nothing here of the Portuguese, the Spaniard, or the Frenchman, because in a little while they will come under our special study. And they are worth the trouble, not for what they have produced, because their work is null, but for the immense moral and material wealth, destroyed by the blindness of their hatred. (To be continued.)