The economic morals of the Jesuits; an answer to Dr. H. M. Robertson

THE \

ECONOMIC MORALS
OF THE JESUITS

AN ANSWER TO
DR. H. M. ROBERTSON

By
J. BRODRICK, SJ.

La justice et la ve rite sont deux pointes
si subfiles, que nas instruments sont trop
e mousse s pour y toucher exactement. S ils
y arrivent Us en ecachent la points et
appuient tout autour, plus sur le faux que
sur le vrai.

PASCAL, Pensees

LONDON

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
HUMPHREY MILFORD

1934

V

I

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

1061974

PREFATORY NOTE

TN a world where there are so many better things to do,
JL controversy of the kind to which this little book is
committed must seem banal and hateful to the last degree.
There is no unity in it, for one thing, and such a riot of
quotations as might have fatigued the melancholy Burton
himself. To make matters worse, most of these quota
tions are in a foreign language which refuses to be wedded
with any grace to the English text, and yet could not be
translated without an appearance of abominable con
descension. I hope that it is not taking the bread out of
reviewers mouths to say such things. They are sadly
true, but there is this much excuse for them that I had
to follow where I was led. If somebody suggests that
there was no compulsion, I shall suggest in my turn that
he must be singularly untouched by the loyalties of brother
hood and family which ordinary people are not too eman
cipated to cherish. I wrote for the simple reason that
I love the Society of Jesus with all my heart.

J.B.

CONTENTS

I. INDICTMENT OF JESUITS . . i

II. THE LINEAGE OF A LIBEL

1. Arnauld s Effort . .22

III. THE LINEAGE OF A LIBEL (cont.)

2. From Pascal to Pirot . 46

IV. THE BISHOP OF ANGELOPOLIS . 73

V. DR. ROBERTSON S MISLEADING

CASES . . . .88

VI. THE FIVE PER CENT. CONTROVERSY 120
INDEX .... 155

INDICTMENT OF JESUITS

IN a very interesting volume recently issued from the
Cambridge University Press 1 Dr. H. M. Robertson,
Senior Lecturer in Economics in the University of Cape
town, subjects to detailed and, in many respects, highly
effective criticism the well-known thesis of Max Weber
that the capitalist spirit, or, in other words, the pursuit
of gain as a principle of conduct, is a product of Protes
tantism, chiefly in its English Puritan form. Against
that thesis, which he considers to have found such wide
acceptance because of its utility to the propagandist ,
Dr. Robertson wishes to show that the spirit of capital
ism has arisen rather from the material conditions of
civilization than from some religious impulse (Aspects,
p. xvi). Even a complete layman in these matters may
be permitted to say that he thinks he has been extremely
successful in his enterprise. Mr. Tawney had already
reached a similar conclusion in his admirable and
exhilarating book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,
though, while denying that the capitalist spirit was the
offspring of Puritanism , he allowed that Puritanism
in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification
to the appeal of economic expediency and offered a
moral creed in which the duties of religion and the
calls of business ended their long estrangement in an
unanticipated reconciliation . 2
Between the two scholarly and very sincere books

1 Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A criticism of Max Weber and
his school. Pp. xvi+2i3. The book is the first of a new series entitled Cam-
bridge Studies in Economic History , edited by Dr. J. H. Clapham.

2 O.c., London, 1926, pp. 239-40.

B

2 Indictment of Jesuits

above mentioned there is, however, one striking differ
ence. In the establishment of his case Mr. Tawney
found it quite unnecessary to save the Puritans from the
imputations of Weber at the expense of some other reli
gious body. Dr. Robertson, on the contrary, makes the
doings of another religious body a main plank of his
argument, believing that if he can show it to have held
and taught similar views to those of the Puritans on the
ordering of life, and even more liberal views than they
on the ethics of business relationships, then plainly the
Puritans cannot be held solely responsible for the spirit
of capitalism which Weber sought to derive from their
theology. Now, as everybody knows, in famous words,
il n est rien tel que les Jesuites , so to the Jesuits, on
Pascal s hint, Dr. Robertson turns. He is perfectly
within his rights in doing so and, indeed, he makes a
prima facie case of no little cogency. But there would
seem to be one very serious flaw in his logic. Max
Weber s thesis is principally concerned with the rise of
economic individualism in England and North America.
He takes practically all his illustrations from the writings
of English or American Puritans. To confute him, then,
and to show, as Dr. Robertson attempts, that, in so far
as religion had anything to do with the rise of the
capitalist spirit, it was not Calvinism but the religion
of the Jesuits which helped, 1 it would plainly be neces
sary to show Jesuitry working towards this end in
England and North America, during the period in question,
which was roughly the century 1570-1670. What
Jesuits were doing or teaching in other parts of the i/vorld

1 The argument that Calvinism relaxed the discipline of the Christian in
his conduct of commercial affairs is untrue. Jesuitry relaxed this discipline
more than any other branch of religion. Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individual
ism, p. 109.

Indictment of Jesuits 3

is irrelevant to the issue, unless it had some bearing on
the development of ideas in England and America. Now
the only Jesuit mentioned by Dr. Robertson who ever
put foot in England was Father Jasper Haywood, uncle
of the famous Donne of St. Paul s. Most of the man s
sojourn here was spent in a London prison and, as to
his views on the ethics of commerce, he was nothing
less than notorious on the Continent for fanatical
^opposition to any relaxation of the traditional discipline.
Other Jesuits working in England at the time can hardly
be said to have had much opportunity for influencing
the trend of ideas, as their only public platform was a
cart at Tyburn or some other place of execution. And
the same is true of the Jesuits in North America at the
time, eight of whom are now canonized martyrs in
the calendar of the Catholic Church. Isolated in the
Indian settlements from all contact with other white
men, they could scarcely have had much influence on
the commercial thought of the English or Dutch colo
nists, and, besides, we have their own Relations , pub
lished under Government auspices in seventy-three
volumes not so very long ago, to tell us exactly what they
were about.

It must be said immediately that Dr. Robertson does
not claim to have found any link connecting the Eng-
lish or American Jesuits with the triumphant chariot
of capitalism. He never mentions them,. except Hay-
wood, and him only for his part in certain theological
debates in, Bavaria. All his concern is with French,
German, Spanish, or Italian Jesuits, but he makes no
attempt to prove that their teaching, however liberal
it may have been, contributed in the slightest degree to
the evolution of a capitalist mentality in England and

4 Indictment of Jesuits

America. Would it not have been better, then, if,
following Mr. Tawney s example, he had left the Jesuits
alone? Surely they have been mauled enough already
in popular histories to deserve a little peace in sober
academic treatises. Yet I know of no modern book
where they are made to appear in blacker colours than
in Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism. Of 213
pages in that work no fewer than 31 are devoted ex
clusively to the denigration of their teaching and their
practice, so who can blame one of them if he ventures
to point out some unintentional but very grave mis
representations in that heavy indictment?

The Jesuits first come on the scene as early as p. xiv
of Aspects. Dr. Robertson had cited a little before two
passages from English books describing what their
writers conceived to be typical business men. The first
was from the Discourse upon Usury by the amusingly
vituperative Elizabethan, Dr. Thomas Wilson, and the
other, a magnificent piece of satire from the Areopagitica
which runs as follows:

A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits,
finds Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many
piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to
keep a stock going upon that trade. What should he do?
fain would he have the name to be religious, fain would he
bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he therefore,
but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some
Factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole
managing of his religious affairs; some Divine of note. and
estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the
whole warehouse of his religion, with all the Locks and Keys
into his custody; and indeed makes the very person of that
man his Religion; esteems his associating with him a suffi
cient evidence and commendatory of his own Piety. So that

Indictment of Jesuits 5

a man may say his Religion is now no more within himself,
but is become a dividual moveable, and goes and comes near
him, according as the good man frequents the house. He
entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his
Religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supt, and
sumptuously laid to sleepe; rises, is saluted, and after malmsey
or some well-spic t bruage, and better breakfasted than He
whose morning appetite would gladly have fed on green figs
between Bethany and Jerusalem, his Religion walks abroad at
eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all
day without his religion.

Nothing , comments Dr. Robertson, could be
further from the Puritan than either of these two types.
. . . Neither fits in with a Puritan setting. The second,
indeed, would be much more at home among the
Jesuits with their system of expert casuistry. I do not
know whether the reader will agree, but to me it seems
that this is an assertion which no one, and least of all
a teacher in a responsible position, has a right to make
without some show of proof. Because the Jesuits em
ploy casuistry it does not follow that they are ready to
free a man of moral responsibility in the conduct of
his business. Casuistry, after all, is, in Mr. Tawney s
words, merely the application of general principles to ^
particular cases, which is involved in any living system
of jurisprudence whether ecclesiastical or secular . 1
The moots held from time to time at the Inns of Court
are as much casuistry as the subtlest efforts of Escobar,
and if we would seek a lineage for the practice we
must go back to the Stoics and to Cicero with his set
treatise devoted to it in the De qfficiis. As for a merchant
without a conscience finding himself at home among the
Jesuits, it is pertinent to mention at least two of the

1 Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 100.

6 Indictment of Jesuits

fraternity who were not quite so accommodating to
moneyed interests. After St. Ignatius, the most repre
sentative and influential of the early Jesuits was Diego
Laynez. For nine years he ruled the whole Society of
Jesus, at the very time when the question of taking
interest for loans was beginning to assume a formidable
importance. To him as to their greatest theologian the
Jesuits scattered throughout Europe looked for guidance,
and the guidance which they received is set down for us
all to read in his treatise, De usura et variis contractibus
mercatorum. 1 When, in 1553-4, Laynez found himself
in Genoa, the great Mecca of traders and company-
promoters, he felt it was his duty to preach a course of
sermons on the very live topics of contracts and financial
dealings. Such an impression did he make that the civil
authorities published an edict ordering all merchants
to submit their books and contracts for theological
revision. 2 Nor will it be irrelevant to the point at issue
if I turn for a moment to the Jesuits at the Council of
Trent. The three men, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Arch
bishop Guerrero, and Bishop Drascovics, whose aims
and views in the Council they opposed most deter
minedly were the three best friends their Society had
in France, Spain, and Hungary. Without the Cardinal
of Lorraine the Society could not have survived in
France, yet they fought his Gallican schemes inch by
inch throughout the last phase of the Council, and as
for the Emperor, whom Drascovics represented, his
failure to secure from the Fathers the coveted grant of
the lay chalice was due principally to the efforts of
Laynez. At the close of a great discourse which he

1 Grisar, Jacobi Lainez disputationes Tridentinae, vol. ii (Innsbruck, 1886),
pp. 227-331. 2 Grisar, l.c. } pp. 6i*-6a*..

Indictment of Jesuits 7

delivered on the subject, Laynez, then General of the
Jesuits, spoke as follows:

It is not because I am lacking in ready deference to the
wishes of His Imperial Majesty, in all things unopposed to
God and my conscience, that I have reached this conclusion.
I know well that all of us who belong to this least Society
of Jesus are bound to His Majesty s service by many ties.
The Emperor was the first of Catholic princes to receive and
foster our Society in his dominions. He has erected and
founded colleges for us in various places, as those now in
existence at Vienna, Prague, Tyrnau, and Innsbruck testify.
Imitating the example of his father-in-law, the Duke of
Bavaria 1 has likewise given us colleges in Ingolstadt and
Munich and is preparing to establish others. But the more
indebted we are for favours and kindness, the greater has
been my obligation to say out faithfully what I thought
would best promote the glory of God and the salvation of
such great Princes and their subjects. 2

These assuredly are not the accents of a man with
whom Milton s unscrupulous merchant would have
been at home, nor, if we listen to another Jesuit who
ruled the Province of his Order which included the city
of the Fuggers, Augsburg, for fourteen years, do we hear
anything different. Indeed, St. Peter Ganisius was so
persistent in his denunciation of bankers and mer
chants shady dealings from the pulpit of Augsburg
Cathedral that the less squeamish canons there, who
were drawing incomes from questionable investments
themselves, subjected him to a long period of petty
persecution and eventually deprived him of his office
of preacher.3 Yet among St. Peter s closest friends and

1 At that moment another eager petitioner for the concession of the chalice
to the laity. 2 Grisar, I.e., pp. 68-9.

3 Cf. Braunsberger, Beati Petri Canisii epistulae et acta, vol. iii (Freiburg, 1911),
PP. 543-4> 564> 585. 628-30.

8 Indictment of Jesuits

benefactors were Ursula and George Fugger, of the
greatest banking family in Germany, but it was not his
expert casuistry that commended him to these people.
Indeed, his preaching against usury raised the most
serious scruples in their minds. Owing to the number of
colleges and missions which he had started he was
always in sore straits for money to support his men, and
he could have had all he wanted had he been ready to
come to terms with the busy, thriving world about him.
That, however, was a thing inconceivable for him, and
not for him only but for the vast majority of his brethren.
If it be answered that neither he nor Laynez were typical
Jesuits, one is entitled to give a gratuitous denial to a
gratuitous assertion. We have Aristotle s authority for
claiming that the type is the best and not the worst of
its class. There have been bad, unscrupulous, ambi
tious, foolish Jesuits especially foolish ones, and a
Jesuit fool is much the same as any other sort of fool
but if we seek the spirit of the Society of Jesus we are
absolutely justified in turning to its great army of
canonized or beatified Saints and Martyrs who were
the living embodiment of its rules and constitutions.
Speaking of Canisius, a good Cambridge scholar wrote
as follows some years ago: To his energy and sweetness
of character, to his tact and understanding of the needs
of Germany, to his devoted and self-denying life, his
resolve to shame the Catholic "respectables" and to
uphold the highest standard of morals, both in private
and commercial life, was due a success which even
among Jesuit victories is remarkable and hardly has a
parallel in history. 1 Braunsberger s eight volumes of

1 Dr. J. Neville Figgis in The English Historical Review, vol. xxiv (January,
1909), PP- 42-3-

Indictment of Jesuits 9

his correspondence afford irrefragable proof that it was
because St. Peter was so true a Jesuit that he became
so great and noble a man.

On p. 1 7 of his book Dr. Robertson points the contrast
between Puritan and Jesuit ethics once again. He had
been discussing Baxter s Christian Directory, from which
famous treatise he concluded, after an admirable analy
sis, that there were two sides to the teaching of the grand
old Puritan. In some respects liberal and forward-
looking, he remained on the whole profoundly con
servative and accepted the purposive philosophy of the
social idealist rather than the mechanistic one of the
individualist . To illustrate this predominant element
of Baxter s teaching, Robertson cites the following few
lines which show him whole-heartedly on the side of
the objective determination of the just value, quite in
the medieval manner :

But if that which you have to sell be extraordinarily
desirable, or worth to some other person, more than to you
or another man, you must not take too great an advantage
of his convenience or desire.

Having made this point, Dr. Robertson continues: It
is only in his treatment of subordinate matters that the
other Baxter appears and this is the Baxter who is
furthest from the old Puritan and nearest to the Jesuit.
Well, let us see. Cardinal de Lugo, who has his own
place in Dr. Robertson s calendar of reprehensible
Jesuit moralists, was an elder contemporary of Baxter,
and dealt as did the Puritan with the question of just
value. Like him he was strongly for its objective de
termination and held that a just price is either the price
fixed by law or else quod juxta communem hominum
aestimationem et judicium constitutum est, non ex

io Indictment of Jesuits

unius vel alterius private affectu . Baxter, we have seen,
even in his conservative mood did not forbid the seller
to derive some profit from the subjective need of the
buyer. All he insists on is that you must not take too
great advantage of the buyer s convenience or desire.
Let us now hear de Lugo on exactly the same point:

The common value is increased by the scarcity of the
commodities, by the greater number of purchasers, by the
abundance of money, just as it decreases for the contrary
reasons. It is not, however, sufficient in order to increase
the price of an article that the purchaser should have greater
need of it, or from possession of it should have opportunity
to make great profit. Nor can anyone sell bread at a dearer
price to a hungry person, merely because the buyer is hungry,
nor a bundle of common herbs to one who knows a secret
method of making from them a valuable medicine, for these
considerations do not change the common estimate of the
worth of the things. But if the seller himself stands in special
need of the article, or fears loss if he parts with it, or has a
peculiar attachment to it, he can for these reasons increase
the price by the amount at which they may be prudently
estimated; not because the value of the article increases from
the attachment, the loss, or the private necessity of the seller,
but because beyond the just price of the article he asks some
thing, not for the article itself, but in consideration of his
attachment or loss, which also is assessable at a price. The
feeling of the purchaser, on the other hand, or his special
need of the article, cannot be sold, as St. Thomas says,
Quaest. LXXVII, art. i. The reason is that these all apper
tain to the purchaser and not to the seller who cannot sell
what does not belong to him but only what he personally
loses or ceases to gain. 1

The style of this passage is not its loveliest character-

1 Joannis de Lugo, Disputationes scholasticae et morales, vol. vii (Paris ed., 1869),
pp. 273, 275. (De Justitia et Jure, Disp. XXVI, sec. iv, nn. 38, 43.)

Indictment of Jesuits 1 1

istic, but the reader can hardly fail to detect a shrewd
and scrupulously impartial mind behind the clumsily
wrought sentences, one moreover that compares not
unfavourably even with Baxter at his best and most
conservative. On p. 104 of Dr. Robertson s book de
Lugo appears in an odious connexion. The Jesuits, we
are told, writes the author, had a maxim that "there
is nothing like business", and they certainly acted up
to it. When a Jesuit cardinal (de Lugo) approves of
"sweating", we know that we have found a religion
which has moved far from medieval ideas into the world
of laissez-faire.*

Leaving over the question of de Lugo s approval
of sweating for the moment, I think I am entitled
to ask Dr. Robertson whether he can mention one single
book in the whole of SommervogePs vast Bibliotheque
des ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus where the maxim
that there is nothing like business may be found.
Dr. Robertson insists a little on his quality as an histor
ian pure and simple, and censures Max Weber for the
application of non-historical methods to an historical
problem (Aspects, p. xi). Now is it good history on his
own part to attribute the maxim in question to the ^
Jesuits because he found it attributed to them in an
anonymous compilation which he admits in a belated
note five pages farther on to have been put together by
persons concerned to paint the Jesuits in as dark colours
as possible ? And is it good history to say in one breath
the Jesuits, we are told , and in the next the Jesuits
certainly . . . ? Do historians believe everything they are
told, and are they of such a sweet and guileless disposi
tion that they take everything which they find in print
for a certainty?

12 Indictment of Jesuits

The title of that particular compilation is La Morale
pratique des Jesuites, published in 1669. A few lines
farther on Dr. Robertson finds in another anonymous
compilation, La Theologie morale des Jesuites, published
in 1659, that a Jesuit casuist, on being asked whether
an innkeeper might invite a guest to dine on a fast day,
knowing that he is issuing an invitation to sin, answered
that there was a probable opinion for the lawfulness of
doing so because the innkeeper s primary intention is
not to incite to sin but to make profit by providing a
meal. How does this compare , asks Dr. Robertson,
with the prohibition of Saturday and Monday markets
in Scotland? The suggestion here is that the Jesuits,
with their famous maxim about business, were ready to
wink at a good deal, even to condone co-operation in
sin, rather than hinder trade, whereas the godly Puri
tans were so other-worldly that they hedged Sunday
about with two trading holidays lest any one should be
tempted to desecrate it through lack of other times for
recreation or through having to make a journey for
the market on Monday. Dr. Robertson, following his
French source-book, cites a certain Tambourin for the
opinion given, and adds, as though from independent
investigation: This opinion is in conformity with
opinions of Sanchez and Diana. But these two also
are mentioned at the same place in La Theologie morale
des Jesuites. We can leave Diana out, as it has escaped
Dr. Robertson s notice that he was not a Jesuit. It is
surprising that he was not transmogrified into Diane
by the French writers. Tambourin was Tomaso
Tamburini, a Sicilian Jesuit, but, as we shall see later,
he neither propounded the case mentioned nor solved
it in the way he is alleged to have done, so we may dis-

Indictment of Jesuits 13

pense ourselves from, the task of comparing his views
with those of the Scottish Sabbatarians.

Dr. Robertson s next case is an interesting one.
A Jesuit affirms , he writes, that a bankrupt is entitled
to retain as much from his creditors as will maintain
him decorously ut decore vivat and it is explained that
this must not be taken as an incitement to "long-firm
frauds", for the Jesuits do not favour aggrandizement
by injustice, but "if the casuists have milder sentiments,
it is for the good merchants who have received of their
fathers an honourable estate and position, or else who
have arrived by good and legitimate ways to a better
position than their birth brought them". This is, of
course, precisely what is alleged to be an innovation of
the Puritans (Aspects, p. 104). The only reference we
are given for the matter is Pirot, Apologie pour les
Casuistes\ without any indication of date, edition, or
page. 1 In Dr. Robertson s opinion Tirot represents
Jesuit doctrines very admirably (Aspects, p. 158), so we
shall not scruple later on to devote a whole section to
a person of such importance.

All sorts of speculations , he continues, were allowed
by the Jesuits some even of a doubtful morality. Here
is the proof. A servant is given some gold pieces by his
master to make purchases or transact other business.
It was a bi-metallic country and the servant was astute.
Going to a bureau de change he obtained silver for his gold,
did business with the silver and pocketed what he had
gained on the exchange. Was he bound to make restitu
tion? A certain mysterious Professor of Cases of
Conscience at Bourges is reported to have answered

1 Later on (Aspects, p. 159, n. i), this same book is referred to in the following
manner: Tirot, loc. cit., passim.

14 Indictment of Jesuits

that he was not, though he committed a venial sin by
keeping the money. Voila! There is the proof that the
whole Society of Jesus went in for speculations of all
sorts, sometimes doubtfully moral. As Dr. Robertson s
source-book, La Theologie morale des Jesuites, stops the
poor Professor s mouth with an &c. just when he is
about to give his explanations, we may seek them from
his great brother in religion and contemporary,
Lessius: If I give my servant or business agent a thou
sand gold pieces with which to pay my creditor, not
caring in what species of money the transaction is
accomplished, and he should change the gold for silver,
making a profit thereby, and pay the creditor in silver,
keeping the profit for himself, he is not obliged to
restore the latter. The reason is that the profit is the
fruit of the servant s own industry and was made at
the servant s risk. It is consequently not due to me, the
owner of the gold, nor to the creditor, because he did not
stipulate for payment in gold and was fully satisfied
with the silver. But if my intention was that the creditor
should be paid in gold because I desired to gratify him
and to give him the opportunity of making profit on
the exchange, then, if he could and would have made
the profit, the servant is obliged to make good to him
to the amount at which that profit is estimated. ... If,
however, the creditor did not intend to put his money
to advantage on the exchange but only to use it in the
ordinary way at its legal value, then the servant is not
under any obligation to restore, because, though he did
wrong by not paying in gold, he caused the other to
suffer no loss. 1 Before permitting himself to become
indignant with this solution, Dr. Robertson might con-

1 De Justitia et Jure, lib. 2, cap. 23, de Cambiis, dubitatio 2 3 n. 18.

Indictment of Jesuits 15

sider the consequences of other principles. Suppose,
for instance, he were to write a book with pen, ink, and
paper lent to him by Dr. Clapham, might not Dr.
Clapham claim the book as his property, unless the
principle of fructus industriae employed by Lessius is
accepted?

Lessius himself is next invoked by Dr. Robertson
(Aspects, p. 105) to show that wherever the answer to
any problem of morals might have an effect on economic
life, the Jesuits paid great attention to the consequences
their answer would have on trade . He does not go to
Lessius direct, though that great man s treatise, De
Justitia et Jure, is sufficiently well known and easily
available, but takes his impressions from an article by
V. Brants in the Revue d Histoire ecclesiastique. 1 Through
the departure of the English merchants from Antwerp
owing to the religious upheaval, the trade of the city
had suffered severely. Its people clamoured for their
return, and Lessius, being appealed to, answered that
the civil authority might very well allow it because,
though the merchants were heretics, they would be
more likely to become Catholics than to make Protes
tants of the Belgians. In any case, the Belgians would
begin to emigrate to heretical lands if the merchants
were not permitted to return, and that might constitute
a far more serious danger to their faith. \Yhat a con
trast this presents , writes Dr. Robertson, to the
prohibition of the Spanish and Portuguese trade to
Scotsmen on account of the possibilities of religious
contamination! (Aspects, p. 105). That is to say, the
Scots were forbidden to go into Catholic countries for

1 In referring to the article Dr. Robertson first cites the wrong volume of the
Revue, and then, a little farther on, the wrong pagination (Aspects, p. 104, n. 2;
p. 106, n. i).

1 6 Indictment of Jesuits

fear they might lose the bloom of their Calvinism. The
chief argument of Lessius, on the other hand, why the
English merchants should be allowed back to Antwerp
was that otherwise the Belgians might emigrate to
Protestant countries and so lose the bloom of their
Catholicism. What a contrast!

Over the page, we are told that Lessius approved of
merchants evading the decrees by which governments
of the time endeavoured to make their peoples value
good and bad money alike, in defiance of Gresham s
law, and this is set down as proof that the Jesuits not
only never tried to secure restrictions on trade such as
the Calvinists imposed; they even made their opinions
powerful solvents of the restrictions imposed by the
State (Aspects, p. 106). The answer to that is that the
Jesuits, unlike the Calvinists, had not seized on the civil
power of any country and so were in no position to
secure restrictions on trade. In the one place where
they were granted civil administration, namely the
Reductions of Paraguay, they not only restricted the
trade of outsiders with the Indians but stopped it
altogether, and so made for themselves a host of bitter
enemies.

Turning now to the view of Lessius that it was no sin
to evade edicts standardizing the value of different
currencies, we find by going to his own works and not
trusting entirely to a generalized and sometimes obscure
review article that he was not speaking of money as an
ordinary medium of buying and selling but of money
as itself a commodity in the cambia or exchanges. Pieces
of money, he points out, can be considered from two
angles, first as tokens measuring the value of things to
be sold. That is their primary use, and as such they are

Indictment of Jesuits 1 7

worth no more than the amount fixed by the civil
authority or, at any rate, than the value assigned to
them by common usage in buying, selling, or payment
of debts. In the second place, they may be considered
as having intrinsic value on account of the material of
which they are made, the image stamped upon them,
or their antiquity. Some coins will have more material
or purer material in them than others and, considered
as commodities to be bought or sold like other things,
will be more valuable, though as instruments of ex
change this may not be so owing to the edict of authority.
At the exchanges,then, where money is bought and sold
in this second sense, it is permissible to buy or sell at
higher or lower rates than that fixed by law for money
used in its primary sense, juxta receptam locorum consue-
tudinem. In all this Lessius is but following the lines laid
down by the great Dominican theologians, Cajetan and
Soto, so there is nothing peculiarly Jesuitical about his
solution. In the discharge of debts , he concludes, no
one is obliged to take money except at the value fixed
for it by law. 1

The next theologian mentioned by Dr. Robertson is
a certain Bail. This man he found in Pirot s Apologie
pour Us Casuistes and assumed, therefore, that he was a
Jesuit. Louis Bail, however, was no such thing, but Cure
of Montmartres and a doctor of the Sorbonne. 2

After him comes a man called Bauni, who said that it
was not reprehensible to enter into contracts in which
a higher rate of interest was demanded than the maxi
mum stipulated by royal ordinance, as the debtors
entered into them willingly, and for just reasons the

1 De Justitia et Jure, de Cambiis, dubitatio 2, lib. 2, cap. 23.

2 Dr. Robertson gives the name and page of Bail s book, which he found in
Pirot, but not, for some curious reason, the page of Pirot on which they appear,

C

1 8 Indictment of Jesuits

rate fixed by ordinance might be exceeded . So they
might, foijust reasons. Dr. Robertson refers us for all
this to Bauni, Somme desPechez, 5th ed. (1639), PP- 335~
6 . Here at last is a really full and exact reference, only
it is the identical one given in La Theologie morale des
Jesuites, and when Dr. Robertson has occasion to cite
the same man later on (Aspects, pp. 158-9), it is from
La Theologie morale that he does so. Why he should per
sistently misspell Bauny s name it is difficult to guess,
as Pascal s fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth Provinciales
are full of that obscure and much maligned Jesuit. 1

Bauny makes way for Pirot, who speaks this time
without reference of any description. Then enters
Prince Sinister of all the casuists whose name has gone
into the French vocabulary as a synonym for a prevari
cator, none other than Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza.
He, too, will occupy our attention later, so we may pass
on to Dr. Robertson s more generalized indictment.

The Jesuits as these examples show left the way
open , he writes, Tor an unrestrained individualism in
economic affairs. Under pressure from the laity whom
they had to humour, they had given their blessing to
every operation of the commercial spirit; justifying
everything easily by the operation of the twin doctrines
of "Probabilism" and of "the Direction of the Intention".
At this point, Dr. Robertson cites a mysterious Bishop
of Angelopolis , who appears suddenly from the pages
of La Theologie morale like an angel of judgement,
delivers sentence, and vanishes, all unexplained. An
average reader must surely feel tempted to ask, Where
in the name of creation is Angelopolis? Suppose I was

1 The Index to Aspects has this peculiar entry:

Bauni, E., 106, 156 n., 158, 159 n.
Bauny, E., see Bauni.

Indictment of Jesuits 19

to write, The Bishop of Augusta Trinobantium states
that Dr. Robertson picked Dr. Clapham s pocket,
would Dr. Robertson consider that I had sufficiently
identified his accuser? His reverence for the word of
this Roman Catholic prelate is in curious contrast with
his suspicion of the Anglican Archdeacon Cunningham,
whom he introduces as c a staunch enemy of Presby-
terianism (Aspects, p. 89), so that we too may be on our
guard. But we are not given the slightest hint that the
Bishop of Angelopolis was other than a calm, impar
tial critic of the Jesuits, with no personal reasons for
blackening their reputation. However, we shall come
back to His Lordship in due course.

Continuing in his own name, Dr. Robertson says:
They [the Jesuits] had made the skill of the Church in
moral affairs degenerate into probabilism and become
arbitrary. Yet it is said that Calvinists were especially
free in being emancipated from the Jewish law and the
regulations of the Catholic Church. The Jesuits, more
over, practised what they preached. What other order,
asked the Bishop of Angelopolis, had carried on a bank
ing business in the Church of God, made loans for
profit [note by Dr. Robertson: "The answer to this
question is many others "], held butcher and other
shops in their dwellings ? What other religion, he asked,
had ever been involved in a bankruptcy, or covered
practically all the world with its commerce by sea and
land, and with commercial contracts? At this point
another Bishop is introduced, both himself and his
diocese nameless. He says that the Genoese knew
nothing in comparison with the Jesuits about exchange
and re-exchange . Taking up the story personally,
Dr. Robertson continues: If we may believe the tales

20 Indictment of Jesuits

which are told [in La Morale pratique des Jesuites], the
Jesuit foreign missions were not to be distinguished from
establishments for commercial exploitation we are
told of their attempts to monopolize the pearl-fisheries
in Cochin, of their attempts to get all the trade, all the
transport and banking facilities in Cartagena, Quito,
Onda, Mompox and, in fact, all South America into
their own hands. In Seville the Jesuit College even
underwent a bankruptcy caused by trading losses. . . .
This raised a clamour through the countryside [here
enters Angelopolis again], . . . The religion of the
Jesuits was essentially practical. They gained their
experience of practical affairs not merely through the
confessional but also by actual engagement in business
in many cases. They were always informed about com
mercial needs, and always willing to take them into
account in giving opinions in cases of conscience. In
this they contrasted violently with the less adaptable
Calvinists. The argument that Calvinism relaxed the
discipline of the Christian in his conduct of commercial
affairs is untrue. Jesuitry relaxed this discipline more
than any other branch of religion (Aspects, pp. 107-10) .
Towards the end of his indictment Dr. Robertson
adds a lengthy note (Aspects, p. 109, n. 2). There he
writes: These examples of the unrestrained speculative
element which the Jesuits introduced into their own
affairs are admittedly [this is the first time he has given
the slightest hint] drawn from Jansenist sources, con
cerned to paint the Jesuits in as dark colours as possible.

BUT THERE IS NO REASON TO SUPPOSE THAT THE DESCRIP
TIONS OF THE TRADING ACTIVITIES OF THE JESUITS ARE
UNTRUE IN ANY MATERIAL PARTICULAR. In the CaSCS

where I have quoted Jesuit opinions from Jansenist

Indictment of Jesuits 21

sources it will be found that I have not allowed any
Jansenist exaggerations to enter. It will be found that
the opinion is justly attributed to the Jesuits by referring
to the writer concerned [which Dr. Robertson did, or
probably did, in the case of exactly one writer, Pirot],
or as a rule to such a writer as Escobar [whom Dr.
Robertson never looked up at all]. There is more of
this note, one sentence of which I have put in capitals,
but we may leave it for the present. Dr. Robertson, as
has been seen, draws practically all his material from
second-hand sources and principally from the two
anonymous collections entitled La Theologie morale des
Jesuites and La Morale pratique des Jesuites. The only
way to determine whether these volumes were worthy
of his credit is to inquire into their history.

II

THE LINEAGE OF A LIBEL

i. ARNAULD S EFFORT

ALMOST from the time of their establishment in
_L\. France the Jesuits had been looked upon with great
suspicion by the University of Paris and its Theological
Faculty, the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne, unlike the
Parlement, had not been traditionally Gallican in its
views, but the Jesuits soon changed all that. Nous
croyons, en efFet , writes the best authority on the sub
ject, que la rivalite entre deux celebres institutions,
rUniversite et la Compagnie de Jesus, n est pas
etrangere a 1 adoption par la Faculte de la theorie
nouvelle (independance politique des rois a Pegard des
papes dans son sens le plus absolu) : qu elle y contribua
meme, au contraire, plus que tout autre facteur. L Uni-
versite comprit vite quel danger faisait courir a son
prestige seculaire une congregation qui mettait parrni
ses principaux moyens d apostolat l instruction de la
jeunesse, et dont la concurrence devenait de jour en
jour plus redoutable. Elle lutta centre elle de toutes ses
forces et par tous les moyens. 1 Par tons Us moyens! One
of the means was to employ the services of the illustrious
advocate, Antoine Arnauld, to petition for the expul
sion of the Jesuits from France. In his famous plaidoyer
before the Parlement of Paris in 1594, Arnauld spoke
as follows, apostrophizing the spirit of Henri III, who
had been assassinated five years earlier:

Mon grand Prince . . . assiste-moi en cette cause, et, me
representant continuellement devant les yeux ta chemise

1 Martin, Le Gallicanisme politique et le clerge de France, Paris, 1929, pp. 89-90.

The Lineage of a Libel 23

toute sanglante, donne-moi la force et la vigueur de faire
sentir a tous tes sujets la douleur, la haine et 1 indignation
qu ils doivent porter a ces Jesuites. . . . Quelle langue, quelle
voix pourroit suffire pour exprimer les conseils secrets, les
conjurations plus horribles que celle des Bacchanales, plus
dangereuses que celle de Catalina, qui ont ete tenues dans
leur college rue Saint-Jacques, et dans leur eglise rue Saint-
Antoine? . . .*

Eight years later when there was question of allowing
the banished Jesuits to return, the same Arnauld sprang
to arms once more with his Franc et veritable discours au
roi, a manifesto of undiluted absolutism. To prove how
dangerous it would be to re-establish the Jesuits in
France, he shows by a whole anthology of texts from
their writings, especially the writings of le sieur
Bellarmin , that they are the worst enemies in the world
of the sacred doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. 2

Jesuit writers were certainly very prolific and, to the
joy of the Sorbonne and other foes, not always discreet.
Traites ou pamphlets , says Dr. Martin, in the work
cited above, le Parlement et la Faculte lisaient tous ces
ecrits a la loupe. Of course, the microscope revealed
many an unguarded passage which could be interpreted
as derogatory to the absolute power of kings, and then
there followed the inevitable censure.

But the Jesuits provided their antagonists with an
even happier hunting-ground than the field of ecclesi
astical and political theory. As practical moralists they
were very much to the fore and very productive, for the
simple reason that a great part of their work lay in the
confessional munus nostri Instituti valde proprium ,

1 At this point, Sainte-Beuve, the apologist of Port-Royal, who reproduces
the passage, breaks off with a grimace: II faut s arreter: on en sourit. Port-
Royal, aieme ed., Paris, 1860, t. i, p. 73.

2 The Discours is analysed by Dr. Martin, I.e., pp. 101-9.

24 The Lineage of a Libel

as their Founder had written in his Constitutions. But
though they produced a vast number of books discussing
cases of conscience, similar to the Confessionalia and other
such works which had been common since the Middle
Ages, it is advisable, lest we lose our sense of proportion,
to keep in mind a few other important facts. The tenth
volume of Sommervogel s Bibliotheque des ecrwains de la
Compagnie de Jesus arranges the vast number of works,
entered in the previous volumes, under the various
headings of science, mathematics, scripture, poetry,
&c. Moral theology takes up thirty columns of titles,
but books of sermons and ascetical theology require no
fewer than 335 columns to accommodate them. In
other words, there were ten Jesuits writing to make
people perfect Christians by the practice of the Evan
gelical Counsels for one Jesuit writing to trace the limits
of duty according to the precepts of the decalogue. 1

Again, the moral theologians were very far from
thinking that their minimum requirements constituted
an adequate rule of life for any Christian. They were
not writing for the world at large, but for confessors, and
solely with a view to the confessional. They knew and
insisted that in his quality of physician and guide the
confessor must not allow his penitents to install them
selves deliberately on the frontier between the permitted
and the forbidden , but they knew, too, that in his
quality of judge he had a strict obligation to be aware
of the exact import of the laws of God which nothing
could authorize him to make more severe or binding
than God intended. Nevertheless, it is quite true and
very regrettable that some Jesuits of the 10 per cent,
who wrote on moral theology went too far in making

1 Sommervogel, l.c. } vol. x (1909), cols. 190-220, 229-564.

The Lineage of a Libel 25

things easy for the penitent, so laying themselves open
to a well-grounded charge of speculative laxity. But
they were neither so many nor nearly so lax as a hoary
old legend would have us believe, and the two of them
who figure as Pascal s principal victims, Escobar and
Bauny, were men of almost excessive austerity in their
private lives.

In the sphere of dogmatic theology, too, the Jesuits
won for themselves no little eminence. Two of them,
Laynez and Salmeron, were among the most distin
guished theologians of the Council of Trent, and their
brother in religion, Cardinal de Lugo, was esteemed by
a good authority, St. Alphonsus Liguori, himself a
Doctor of the Catholic Church, as the greatest of all
theologians after St. Thomas. One notable character
istic of Jesuit theology in general is its special concern to
defend the fortress of the human will so sorely be
leaguered of old by Lutherans and Calvinists. St. Igna
tius had laid this charge upon his sons in his Spiritual
Exercises, and with filial loyalty they have never for
gotten it.

Within the Catholic Church the first set attack on
the freedom of the human will in modern times was
engineered by Dr. Michael de Bay or Baius, Chan
cellor of the University of Louvain towards the close of
the sixteenth century. Baianism, which included the
aristocratic doctrine of divine Providence common to
Puritanism and all forms of Calvinism that Christ did
not die for all men and that numbers of men, strive how
they may, are predestined to damnation, found in
Leonard Lessius and his brethren of Louvain its most
determined and indefatigable antagonists. As a large
number of the Louvain doctors sided with their Chan-

s6 The Lineage of a Libel

cellor, the Jesuits by no means obtained a bloodless
victory. The University, for reasons similar to those
which inspired the University of Paris, declared war
on their Order, using the same well-tried weapons
of censure and ban that had proved effective in
France.

In the early seventeenth century, two of the Jesuits
own pupils, Cornelius Jansen and his friend Duvergier
de Hauranne, better known from his later title as the
Abbe Saint- Cyran, made a solemn pact not only to
defend the theories of Baius but to carry them a stage
farther and to win the world for their acceptance. It
was a tremendous ambition and was carried out with
a skill and energy hardly believable. Those strange,
austere men would lead the Church back to the stern
discipline of her primitive ages in morals and to what
they conceived to be the pure doctrine of St. Augustine
in belief. For them, nothing of doctrine or practice
beyond what they claimed to have prevailed in the
fourth and fifth centuries had any validity. It was not
a question of back to Christ but back to Augustine, the
familiar cry of so many who have broken with the
Church of Rome.

With a view to better progress, the two friends divided
their work, Jansen undertaking the theoretical exposi
tion and defence of the opinions which they held in
common, and Saint-Cyran devoting himself to securing
acceptance for the practical reforms which followed as
the corollary of those opinions. In the pursuit of his
"Herculean task Jansen said that he had read all of
St. Augustine s works, a library in themselves, ten times,
and his works on grace, thirty times. Saint-Cyran, who
was a splendid tactician, gained an ascendancy over the

The Lineage of a Libel 27

nuns of Port-Royal, where a daughter of Advocate
Arnauld reigned as Superior, the famous Mere Ange-
lique. No fewer than twelve of the Port-Royal com
munity belonged to the Arnauld family, and there also
was Pascal s sister, Jacqueline. On all these genuinely
devout and greatly gifted women Saint-Cyran s spiri
tual direction made a profound and lasting impression.
He introduced among them a penitential spirit and
discipline corresponding to that which he believed to
have been the practice of the primitive Church and
warned them ceaselessly to beware of going to Con
fession unless they had perfect contrition or to Holy
Communion unless they possessed the pure love of God.
That meant, of course, that the frequentation of the
Sacraments ceased practically altogether. It was Saint-
Cyran s conviction that such abstinence was all to the
good, for, in consequence of his theory of grace, he
tended to minimize, nearly to vanishing-point, the
effect of Holy Communion ex opere operate, and to exalt
in proportion the importance of the human effort. It
was a theory absolutely in contradiction to the teaching
of the Council of Trent, of which the Jesuits were the
chief practical propagators, but the Council of Trent
did not mean much to Saint-Cyran.

The Jesuits did mean much to him, though, so much
that he conceived it to be a necessary part of his pro
gramme to blacken and discredit them at every oppor
tunity. While himself holding the heretical opinions of
Wyclif on episcopal orders, he set up as the champion
of the rights of bishops, which, he maintained, the
Jesuits were bent on usurping. It is significant that the
tracts in which he endeavoured to establish his charge
were collected and republished in 1642 by the order

28 The Lineage of a Libel

and at the expense of the Clergy of France . * The Jesuits
are treated there as ridicules pedants, qui, apres s etre
accoutumes a regenter les enfants dans la poussiere et
les tenebres des classes, s enivrent de leur souverainete
imaginaire, et portent leur ambition jusqu a vouloir
gouverner les vrais empires et s arroger le soin des rois .
That was a very sore point with Jansenists and Galli-
cans, that kings and princes should have been so
strangely deluded as to choose Jesuits for their con
fessors. 2 The tone of the book throughout is enough
by itself to show that Bishop Zamet, who appointed
Saint-Cyran to his post of spiritual director at Port-
Royal, was not giving too much rein to his imagination
when he testified publicly afterwards to having recog
nized in him en diverses rencontres son esprit oultra-
geux et violent, fort mal respectueux aux personnes qui
font la moindre opposition a ses pensees . 3 Here lay the
great crime of the Jesuits; they opposed Saint-Cyran s
ideas, being obliged by their very rule to do all in their
power to stimulate the practice of at least weekly or
monthly Communion. On this point let us listen for
one moment to St. Peter Canisius, writing to a young
student of Louvain who had expressed concern at the
revival of the habit of more frequent Communions that
was then taking place, due in good measure to the
efforts of the early Jesuits:
You tell me that you do not like the custom of more

1 Sainte-Beuve has some interesting remarks on the work, Port-Royal, aieme
ed.j t. i, p. 325, n. 3. The Cleri Gallicani thought better of their action in
1656 and condemned the Petri Aurelii opera, as the work was called.

2 Whether the Jesuits particularly wanted such honours may be seen by
consulting Fouqueray, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus, t. ii (Paris, 1913),
pp. 14451; Braunsberger, BeatiP. Canisii epistulae, vol. iv, pp. 148-50, to give
but two of a multitude of references.

3 Cited by Fouqueray, I.e., t. v, seconde partie (1925), p. 403, from the
Dupuy collection in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The Lineage of a Libel 29

frequent Communion. You point out the dangers that may
arise, quoting what St. Basil says in his treatise on Baptism.
But our business is with young men serving their apprentice
ship to learning. Surely they will not serve Christ the worse
by more frequent Confessions and Communions? Where, I
ask you in all earnestness, is to be found a more certain
remedy for sickness of soul and a better spur to holy living
than in Holy Communion? Again, where do studies thrive
best, where are the cold and apathetic set on fire most easily,
where are men of the world taught with least effort obedience
and the fear, of God, where, finally, do married people learn
best how to conquer and control the desires of the flesh? Is
it not in those places where the practice of frequent Com
munion flourishes?

You will object, however, that we cannot be sure if com
municants are rightly disposed. My answer is, what harm
can the perversity of those who abuse the Holy Sacrament
do to It or to us? Be careful, I beg of you, not to require too
much from your brother. He is to be led on gradually in the
way of holiness by the reception of this divine food, and by
assiduous careful instruction. St. Augustine laid it down that
it behoved all Christians to approach the Holy Table every
Sunday, and that was the custom in the Church for many
centuries. To be brief, for the worthy reception of this
Sacrament it is enough that a man s will should be turned
away from evil and resolved, in the strength of Christ, to
pursue virtue. What would you answer if I were to ask you
which is the better course to abstain from Communion
through humility, or to approach It out of loving confidence
in God? The man who partakes of the Body and Blood of
Christ floods with new light the temple of his heart, strengthens
his power of doing good, fortifies his soul against every evil,
establishes himself in unfeigned love, and weakens and casts
off the last relics of his sins. . . . Good-bye, and pray for me,
a poor fellow with more words than wisdom. 1
Those lines were written in August, 1546, some time

1 Braunsberger, l.c. s vol. i, pp. 208-9.

3o The Lineage of a Libel

before the Council of Trent raised its voice on the sub
ject. When it did speak, it spoke exactly in St. Peter s
sense, and exactly contrary to Saint-Cyran s ideas.

Turning now to Jansen, busy on his huge treatise,
we find that he too considered the Jesuits to be his
dearest enemies. In his letters to Saint-Cyran their
Society figures as le Satan romaniste , and he says in
one place with an air of satisfaction: II me semble que
dans le dernier livre j ai bien donne sur les doigts aux
Jesuites. He certainly had, for in his Augustinus, the
great bible of Jansenism, they figure as modern pela
gians or semi-pelagians who seek novelty, renown,
glory, flattery; who pretend to holiness and are nothing
but boasters and hypocrites; who pursue riches under
cover of poverty; who have great esteem for profane
knowledge and are the apes of Aristotle in their abuse
of the syllogism; who have an itch to write many works
but despise the works of other men and travesty their
thought, attributing to them what they never set down;
who simulate holiness but are found to be full of vices
and shameful debauchery; who are as deceitful as foxes
and make a trade of lies, equivocations, and mental
restrictions. 1

If it meant an opportunity of doing the Jesuits
damage Jansen was even willing to forgo work on his
book temporarily, which involved a considerable sacri
fice for a man so wedded to his pen. Thus, he undertook
a mission to Spain to defend the rights of the Louvain
doctors against them when they desired to start a course

1 Augustinus, sen doctrina Sancti Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate aegritudine
medicina, adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses, vol. i (Rouen, 1643), lib. vi, cc. xix
xxiv. By the Pelagians and men of Marseilles in this title Jansen meant
first and foremost the Jesuits, especially Suarez and Molina, two great defenders
of the freedom of the human will under the action of divine grace.

The Lineage of a Libel 3 1

of philosophy at their college, contrary to the privileges
of the University. He died in 1638, two years before the
Augustinuswas printed with great secrecy by hisLouvain
friends. A week after his death, Saint-Cyran was thrown
into prison by Richelieu, and his informal brotherhood
of Solitaries at Port-Royal had to disband.

That might have seemed the end of their ambitions,
but sometimes a man in his grave can be more powerful
for good or evil than when he moved among the living.
In 1641 the Augustinus was reprinted at Paris and
came out fortified with enthusiastic approbations from
five doctors of the Sorbonne. Thus was the veil of
secrecy withdrawn and Jansenism made an issue which
the authorities could not disregard. The book was
promptly forbidden by Urban VIII, together with the
theses which the Louvain Jesuits had drawn up in
answer to it, but the Louvain secular theologians,
rallying to the defence of Jansen s theories, made light
of the Pope s prohibition and so provoked the Bull, In
eminent^ where it was stated that the Augustinus contained
propositions of Baius already condemned. At this junc
ture, the beginning of the year 1643, there came on the
scene a portentous figure, the greatest of all Jansenist de
fenders and propagandists, Maitre Arnauld s youngest
son, Antoine, Doctor of the Sorbonne. In his Observa
tions contre la bulle pretendue, this illustrious man s pre
judice against the Jesuits, learned both from his father
according to the flesh and from his spiritual father,
Saint-Cyran, led him so far as to say that they had
actually forged the Bull, though their own theses were
condemned 1 in it! A short resume of these theses will

1 Not as unorthodox, as they contained nothing but the teaching of the
Church, but because they infringed an order of Pope Paul V that books on
grace were not to be published without the express sanction of the Inquisition.

32 The Lineage of a Libel

show what the Jesuits stood for as against Jansen and
his party: (i) Though children who die without bap
tism are deprived of the vision of God, they will not be
punished with the pain of sense. (2) God truly desires
to save all men and grants to all sufficient graces for
salvation. (3) Jesus Christ died for all men in this sense
that He desired His death to be truly advantageous to
all. (4) Jesus prayed for the salvation of all men without
exception. (5) For an action to be free, it is necessary
that the will should be able to do or not to do it at the
moment when all the requisite conditions for action are
present. (6) There is no commandment of God impos
sible for man to keep. (7) God would be a tyrant if He
made man responsible for the violation of precepts
which it was impossible for him to carry out. (8) In
certain cases, invincible ignorance excuses entirely from
responsibility. (9) Not all the actions of unbelievers are
sins, nor were all the virtues of the philosophers vices.
(10) The love of God, considered as manifested in His
goodness towards us, though less perfect than charity,
is nevertheless licit, and can, like the fear of Hell,
constitute a legitimate motive for imperfect contrition,
or attrition, (i i) Attrition suffices in the Sacrament of
Penance for the remission of sins.

Jansen s pitiless, nightmare creed taught the oppo
site of all these doctrines. It closed the gates of God s
mercy to all but a select coterie, the mignons of Divine
Providence who, do what they listed, could not fail of
Heaven, any more than the others, the poor scape-goats
of eternity, could by even the most desperate efforts
escape the fires of Hell. Christ died for all men, of course.
St. Paul had said that, but what he meant was that
Christ had died for all classes and conditions of men,

The Lineage of a Libel 33

not for all the individual persons in each class. So the
horrible propositions roll out, one after another, in those
sombre tomes, where it is very difficult to descry e la
beaute sinon dantesque du moins miltonienne attri
buted to them by Saint-Beuve. Milton, at any rate,
does not make God out to be a monster of injustice and
cruelty.

Hardly less forbidding, in spite of the moral fervour
that glows in it, was Arnauld s long French treatise,
De lafrequente communion, which appeared in 1643. ^ s
preface, longer even than one of Bernard Shaw s, ex
plains the circumstances under which the book came to
be written. The Marquise de Sable had for her director
the Jesuit Pere de Sesmaisons. Though a society lady,
she went to Holy Communion at least once a month and
did not hesitate to take her part in balls, even on days
when she had been to the Altar. Her friend the Prin-
cesse de Guemene, who had Saint-Cyran for her guide,
was shocked by such conduct. The two ladies talked it
over, whereupon the Marquise submitted to Pere de Ses
maisons the objections of the Princesse, together with
a little treatise of Saint-Cyran bearing upon the point
in dispute. Sesmaisons then composed a little treatise
of his own, calling it Question, s il est meilleur de com-
munier souvent ou rarement? In this he advocated weekly
Communion, very much on the principles now ac
cepted by all Catholics in accordance with the teachings
of Pope Pius X. The Marquise, highly pleased with
herself, no doubt, ran off to show her defence to the
Princesse, who promptly took it to Saint-Cyran. Saint-
Cyran was indignant but left the vindication of his
theories to the abler pen of Antoine Arnauld. Hence
the book that did more than any other book to propa-

34 The Lineage of a Libel

gate Jansenism in France, and hence a long and noisy
war of pamphlets, brochures, treatises, which reverbe
rated down the centuries until, in our own time, Pope
Pius X finally ruled out the erroneous discipline of
Holy Communion advocated by the Jansenists.

In 1643, however, the Jesuit view of the Christian
life did not commend itself to everybody, and Arnauld s
book came on the scene duly munitioned with the warm
approval of sixteen bishops and twenty doctors of the
Sorbonne. People overlooked the fact that a hundred
bishops and two hundred doctors of the Sorbonne
either remained silent or disapproved of the book. In
Paris, at the time, there was a well-known Jesuit spiri
tual writer and preacher named Jacques Nouet. He
judged, and he was right in judging, as St. Vincent de
Paul bore sorrowful witness, that Arnauld s work must
inevitably have the effect of withdrawing people from
the Sacraments altogether, so, greatly daring, and
no doubt unwisely, he attacked and refuted it from
the pulpit. Tableau! The sixteen approving prelates,
headed by the Archbishop of Sens, later a notable
Jansenist, fulminated against him as though he had
been some dangerous heresiarch, and compelled him
to read on his knees in their presence a retractation of
his sermons. 1 Thus did Port-Royal, to its exceeding
joy, find a phalanx of bishops on its side, at least in its
battles against the Jesuits.

Nor must we forget the University of Paris. Quite
apart from the Jansenist debate, the Paris doctors and
masters had their own private bone to pick with the good

1 The fairest and most temperate judgement that was passed on La Frequente
Communion came from the pen of a representative contemporary Jesuit, Cardinal
de Lugo. It is reproduced in Laemmer s Mektematum Romanorum mantissa,
Ratisbon, 1875, pp. 391-4.

The Lineage of a Libel 35

Fathers. For one thing, in the teeth of the most deter
mined opposition on their part, the Jesuits had obtained
royal permission to re-open their College of Glermont
in 1 6 1 8. Eight years later came the doctors first oppor
tunity for a really satisfying revenge. To use such a
term is not in the least to suggest that the Jesuits were
all in the right and the doctors all in the wrong. The
best way to put it is to say that it was a quarrel between
two parties of human beings, neither of which had been
exempted from the frailties common to humanity. In
those days the Jesuits generally held a theory to the
effect that the Pope possessed an indirect power of
jurisdiction over secular rulers, meaning that it was
within his competence to interfere if the action or
legislation of Icing or prince should trench on the domain
of faith or morals. This theory seemed right and reason
able to most theologians outside France, but in France
it was accounted so villainous that the works in which
its two greatest champions, Bellarmine and Suarez,
expounded it were condemned to be burnt publicly in
Paris by the common executioner. The Paris doctors
contended that the theory was tantamount to a justifica
tion of regicide, which no one with the least sense of
fairness would be prepared to admit. However, it was
the contention that mattered and not the truth, so one
of the superiors of the unfortunate Jesuits in Paris wrote
to the Provincials of Italy and Spain begging them to
keep their theologians in restraint. Tf in future , he
said, even one single Jesuit should write anything of
this sort, behold us once again, exiles from France, and,
I fear, for good. 1 The General of the Jesuits, Claude
Acquaviva, issued a terribly stringent prohibition

1 Martin, I.e., p. go.

36 The Lineage of a Libel

against any of his subjects daring to suggest, even in
private conversation, that it might ever be lawful under
any conceivable circumstances to remove a tyrant by
violent means. The order was issued in virtue of Holy
Obedience which involved mortal sin for its trans
gressor and he was declared further to incur ex
communication, suspension, disqualification for all
offices, and other penalties. 1

That document seems plain enough, but the Gallicans
would have none of it. The Jesuits taught the theory of
the Pope s indirect temporal power and therefore the
Jesuits taught the lawfulness of regicide. On February 6,
1626, a Paris bookseller received a consignment of his
wares from Rome. As he opened the box, Pere de la
Tour, Superior of the Maison de Saint-Louis, entered
the shop and noticed six copies of a new treatise by the
Roman Jesuit Antonio Santarelli entitled: Tractatus de
haeresi, schismate, apostasia, sollicitatione in sacramento paeni-
tentiae, et depotestate Romani Pontificis in his delictispuniendis.
The last words, the power of the Pope to punish these
offences , at once made him uneasy. He opened a copy
and began to read hastily a chapter headed The power
of the Pope to punish heretical princes . It was as he
feared, so he purchased the whole six copies, requested
the bookseller to send them to the Maison Saint-Louis,
and himself rushed off to tell his Provincial, the famous
Pere Coton, of his discovery. Coton, the King s con
fessor, knew even better than de la Tour what a find
this work would be for the Parlement and the Sorbonne.
He sent a messenger immediately for the books but, to
his intense anxiety, the man returned with only five.

1 The Latin text is given by Pachtler, Ratio Studiorum et Institutiones Scholasticae
Societatis Jesu, vol. iii (Berlin, 1890), p. 47.

The Lineage of a Libel 37

Pere Goton then repaired to the bookseller, who told
him that a doctor of the Sorbonne had entered his shop
shortly after the departure of Pere de la Tour and,
noticing the six volumes, asked if he might have the loan
of one for a few hours. By good fortune this doctor s
brother was a Jesuit student at Clermont. That same
evening the young religious was sent to the doctor s
house. Helas, mon frere, exclaimed the latter, c je sqais
bien ce qui vous emene icy. Voila un livre qui est capable
de vous ruiner entierement. The young Jesuit replied
eagerly that it was the very thing he had come for, and
implored his brother to give him the book and not to say
a word about it. The doctor agreed willingly, but
remarked that, while he was studying the volume, one
of his confreres of the Sorbonne, very hostile to the
Jesuits, had paid him a visit and hastily jotted down
some passages in a note-book. Within twenty-four hours
copies of the passages were in circulation among mem
bers of the University, the Parlement, and even the
Court. Our enemies , wrote one of the Jesuits con
cerned, went off in their hundreds to the shops of the
booksellers demanding Antonius Santarellus, De Omni-
potentia Pontificis.

As the book was not procurable in Paris, a special
messenger was sent to Lyons for a copy which was put
at once in the hands of a certain Dr. Filesac, notoriously
hostile to the Jesuits. This man s one idea in making
his selection of passages was to furnish the Parlement
with as strong a weapon as possible. All modifying
clauses and other explanations were omitted. Yet even
as thus travestied the work was unobjectionable to any
but the out and out Gallicans. It bore the Imprimatur
of the Dominican Master of the Sacred Palace, Rome,

38 The Lineage of a Libel

and the approbation of another Dominican, a professor
of theology, to the following effect: I have read the
Tractatus de Haeresi, Schismate, &c., with the greatest
attention and have found therein nothing contrary to
sound faith or good morals. Moreover, this work ap
pears to me full of erudition and composed with remark
able intelligence. The author rests his doctrine very
appropriately on the authority of illustrious writers and
on opinions of great weight. I therefore judge that this
book is very worthy of publication for the good and
advantage of great numbers.

Nevertheless, the Paris Jesuits were compelled under
threat of expulsion from France to sign a declaration
disavowing Santarelli, and the book itself was publicly
delivered to the flames. It was only the death of Pere
Goton, whom the King and Queen loved, that pre
vented worse consequences. The Parlement having
vented its spleen, it became the turn of the Sorbonne
doctors, who issued a resounding censure which may be
read in La Theologie morale des Jesuites (iBsg). 1

Seventeen years after the Santarelli incident the
Jesuits of Glermont had the effrontery to demand that
their students should be admitted to stand for the
University s degrees. The Rector of the University,
Louis Gorin de Saint-Amour, who afterwards became
a leader among the Jansenists and their great champion
in Rome, turned at this crisis to Dr. Frangois Hallier,
defenseur attitre du clerge centre les Jesuites . Accord
ing to an authority who shows anything but a desire
to justify the opponents of Antoine Arnauld, those two
men avaient en commun une haine profonde centre

1 Both Martin and Fouqueray deal with the Santarelli affair at great length
and most interestingly. Martin, Le Gallicanisme politique, pp. 163-244; Fou
queray, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jesus en France, t. iv (1925), pp. 141-90.

The Lineage of a Libel 39

les Jesuites 5 . 1 They enrolled in the service of the
University a young canon of Beauvais named Godefroy
Hermant, who promptly came out with two little
volumes showing up the incapacity of the Jesuits as
professors, the faults of their teaching, their sham zeal
which was nothing but self-interest, and the danger of
their doctrines for Church, State, and Christian souls
in general. A entendre les discours emportes de
Hermant , writes the authority referred to above, la
Compagnie de Jesus n etait qu un ramassis d ignorants,
de fourbes, d heretiques, de revolutionnaires. 2 Five
weeks later Hermant had another book ready: Verites
academiques en refutation des prejuges populaires dont les
Jesuites se servent contre I Universite de Paris. This refutation
of popular prejudice consisted in showing that the Jesuit
professors were bad grammarians and bombastic rhetori
cians, while as for their preaching it was something to
make a cat laugh. But Hermant had a sharper weapon
than mere ridicule in reserve. The moral theology of the
Jesuits is a poison sucre qui corrompt les esprits en les
flattant , and to it is due before all things the depravity
of the age. The one idea of the Jesuit moralists is to
accommodate the law of God to the corruption and
vicious habits of the century, nor are they ever reluc
tant to betray the truth in order to serve their politics. 3
This was the first public denunciation of la morale
relachee , and it made a great stir. Emboldened by the
success of their effort, the University, qui confondait
souvent le Saint-Siege et la Compagnie dans ses
attaques passionees , 4 decided to seek the protection
of the Pope. The idea first occurred to Hallier, who

1 Albert de Meyer, Les Premieres Controversesjanse nistes en France, Louvain, 1917*
p. 376. 2 de Meyer, I.e., p. 377.

3 Passage cited by de Meyer, I.e., p. 378. 4 de Meyer, I.e., p. 378.

40 The Lineage of a Libel

suggested that Saint-Amour should write to Urban
VIII. The following are some lines from his letter:

Que Votre Saintete ne nous soupgonne pas d un esprit
d envie ni du desir de nous emporter centre eux a la medi-
sance dans une occasion ou la purete de la doctrine chre-
tienne et de la verite ecclesiastique est visiblement exposee
a un si grand peril. . . .

Qu elle nous permette, s il lui plait, de toucher delicate-
ment des plaies qui coulent encore et qui sont toujours
sanglantes, et de deplorer ces nouveautes des jesuites dont
nous promettons de vous donner pour temoins les yeux de
toute 1 Europe. Comme ils ont des sentiments plus conformes
a la chair qu a Jesus-Christ, et qu oubliant la simplicite
chretienne, ils detournent 1 industrie de leurs esprits a des
subtilites politiques, quelles tragedies ne font-ils pas tous les
jours, quels tumultes n excitent-ils point? Quelles armes,
quels flambeaux funestes ne mettent-ils point entre les mains
des profanes? Ils remplissent la theologie scholastique de
nouveaux dogmes par je ne sais quelle demangeaison de
publier des maximes extraordinaires, et il n y a presque
point de partie dans tout le corps de cette espece de theologie
qu ils n aient entrepris ou de mutiler entierement ou de
corrompre par le fard et le deguisement de la nouveaute.

Est-ce qu ils ont etc plus reserves et plus retenus par les
disputes qu ils ont faites touchant la morale? Au contraire,
ils manient comme il leur plait les dogmes les plus importants
comme si c etait une cire molle a qui Ton fait prendre toutes
les formes qu on veut; ils rendent un ministere honteux a la
paresse et au degout des peuples dont ils favorisent les
inclinations; ils attribuent faussement 1 innocence aux plus
grand crimes et leur promettent 1 impunite par une flatterie
dangereuse et une cruelle misericorde. C est par ces artifices
qu ils s efforcent d acquerir de la reputation a leur societe
qui a une si grande demangeaison d ecrire. 1

1 Reproduced by de Meyer, I.e., p. 379, from Jourdain s Histoire de I Uni-
versite de Paris.

The Lineage of a Libel 41

Ten years later the writer of this letter, whom the
novelties of the Jesuits in the domain of scholastic
theology so greatly grieved, was in Rome as the special
delegate of Port-Royal to defend might and main the
famous Five Propositions in which the majority of the
bishops of France had summed up and condemned
the errors of Jansenism. There, too, by a piquant turn
of fate, was his former friend and ally, Hallier, entirely
converted to the side of the Jesuits and more eager than
they or anybody to see the Propositions anathematized. 1

For the present, however, Hallier is the Jesuits
unappeasable foe. In his first Apologie pour V Universite
Hermant had sought to frighten the Fathers by telling
them that a Theologia moralis Societatis Jesu was in
preparation, for, as de Meyer remarks, les chefs du
parti universitaire savaient trop bien que les erreurs
de certains jesuites leur fournissaient de precieuses
armes dont ils pouvaient se servir dans leur ceuvre de
combat . 2 Hallier himself was secretly preparing the
materials, assisted by the diligence and inherited antho-
logical ability of Antoine Arnauld. Towards the end
of August, 1643, there appeared anonymously a thin
octavo volume entitled Theologie morale des Jesuiles.
Extraict fidellement de leurs limes. Thus, in circumstances
that could hardly be deemed favourable to impartiality,
was born the little book which, when it had grown up
and waxed fat by 1659 on a multitude of other assaults
on the Jesuits, provided Dr. H. M. Robertson in 1933
with material to prove them the begetters or fosterers
of a capitalist mentality.

The book in its primitive form contained upwards of

1 Pastor, Geschichte der Papste, vol. xiv, part i (1929), pp. 194-205.

2 L.c., p. 381.

42 The Lineage of a Libel

a hundred propositions scandaleuses , collected by
Arnauld. He performed his labour of love with remark
able skill, exploiting to the full the fifth edition of Pere
fitienne Bauny s Somme despeches, which had been placed
on the Index in 1 640. It did not worry him in the least
that Bauny had since publicly disavowed some of his
objectionable propositions and that after Rome s con
demnation a new sixth edition of his book had been
brought out with the censured theories altogether
omitted. The Jansenists liked to harp on the fact that
the Somme was in French, seeing in this circumstance a
design of the Jesuits to get at the common people. But
the full title of the book shows exactly for whom it was
intended: Somme des peches qui se commettent en
tous etats; de leurs conditions et qualites . . . et en quelle
fa$on le confesseur doit interroger son penitent.

Four Jesuits wrote answers to La Theologie morale, but
Arnauld and his allies, who were far more skilful in that
kind of controversy, turned their efforts to ridicule.
Though Bauny was in fact a very poor specimen of a
moral theologian and an abominably involved writer,
they cleverly pretended that he represented the general
doctrines of the Jesuits better than Suarez, de Lugo,
Vasquez, Lessius, Laymann, or anybody else. Indeed,
the poor man became a sort of mascot a rebours with the
Jansenists.

Another who at this very time presented them with
a glorious opportunity for an outcry was Pere Hereau,
Professor of Cases of Conscience at the College of
Clermont. In August, 1643, the month when appeared
La Theologie morale, Godefroy Hermant secured posses
sion of two theme-books containing students notes on
the cases propounded by Pere Hereau. Most of them

The Lineage of a Libel 43

dealt with the question of a gentleman s honour and
the lengths to which he could go in defence of it. Honour
was at that time little less than a religion in Spain and
France, and Hereau, arguing on the principle that if a
man may kill another who attacks him in order to save
his life, inclined to the belief that he might also kill
another who attacked his honour, which he valued as
much as his life. The actual case he propounded was
this: Scavoir, situ tasches de detracter de mon nom par
fausses accusations vers un Prince, un Juge, ou des gens
d honneur, et que je ne puisse en aucune fac,on detour-
ner cette perte de ma renommee, sinon en te tuant
clandestinement et en cachette, si je le puis faire licite-
ment? He does not answer for himself but says, Bannes
Fasseure, Quaest. 64, Art. 7, Doute 4 , Banes being the
famous Dominican theologian ofpraedeterminatiopkysica,
who had been no more fond of Jesuits, though for very
different reasons, than was Antoine Arnauld. But that
case was not the one that chiefly interested the Univer
sity doctors. Immediately after it came this one in
Latin: Whether it be lawful for any one to kill a legiti
mate ruler who abuses his authority to the ruin of the
people. What Hereau actually said on this subject we
do not know, as the doctors did not reproduce his words.
They wrote instead: II traite subtilement et malicieuse-
ment la doctrine commune aux theologiens de sa Societe
[the theory of the Pope s indirect power] centre la
seurete de la vie des Roys et Princes souverains, lesquels
pour plusieurs et divers pretextes elle degrade, dethrone,
et prive de leurs Royaumes et Estats, declarant qu ils
ne sont point ou ne sont plus Roys ny Princes souverains.
Gar, bien qu il reponde a la question cy-dessus, enniant
que cela soit permis, il faut remarquer, &c. There

44 The Lineage of a Libel

follows a page of remarks to prove that, though the
Father explicitly denied that it is ever lawful for any one
to kill a tyrant, yet what he really intended to say was
that it is lawful. Their two principal arguments are
drawn from the fact that he mentions only legitimate
rulers and therefore implies that it is licit to kill
those whom the Jesuits do not consider to be such, and,
secondly, he says that it is not lawful for any one, any
individual, implying, of course, qu il est loisible et
permis a quelques-uns de tuer celuy qui a autorite
legitime de regner, et en abuse a la ruine du peuple !
On the strength of this monstrous disfigurement of
Hereau s ideas, the good Sorbonne doctors had the
grave satisfaction of seeing him publicly condemned
and humiliated and his superiors severely reprimanded
by the Parlement and Court. That catastrophe
effectively shut the mouths of the Jesuits on the question
of their students being allowed to stand for Univer
sity degrees, and the doctors, happy in their victory,
lost interest in Jesuit moral theologians till next they
should have need of their services. 1

As a contrast to the easy judgements of the Sorbonne
doctors and their modern imitator, Dr. H. M. Robert
son, we may close this chapter with some words of an
historian whose authority to speak will hardly be ques
tioned. Writing of the dawn of the reign of Louis XIV,
M. Louis Madelin says:

Void le regne des sages. En masse, le siecle restera sage.
II a le gout de 1 autorite, de toutes les autorites, Dieu, le Roi,

1 The whole story may be read in La Theologie morale des Jesuites (1659),
seconde partie, pp. 178-85. Albert de Meyer is singularly unjust to Hereau
when he says: Mais le Pere Hereau avait aussi tolere, sous certaines conditions,
le regicide (Les premieres contravenes jansenistes en France, p. 385). He did no such
thing, as anybody may see at once by glancing at the texts in La Theologie
morale.

The Lineage of a Libel 45

la Tradition, la Loi, la Regie . L 3 education a forme ce
gout. Les Jesuites en sont les maitres. . . . Dans la seule
province de Paris, 13,000 eleves par an se courbent sous la
ferule, d ailleurs douce, 1 de la celebre Societe. Qu enseigne-
t-elle? Une religion imperturbable s il s agit de Tame, et,
s il s agit de 1 esprit, 1 antiquite grecque et latine, surtout la
latine, mais une antiquite qui eUe aussi enseigne la regie.

Ainsi, a 1 origine, deux sources de discipline: la chretienne
et 1 antique. De cette education le siecle est sortie grave,
prenant fort au serieux la vie et la mort. 2

1 Contrast Dr. Robertson s authority, Antoine Arnauld: On a vu des
enfants mourir entre leurs mains . . . sous les coups de fouet dans votre College
de Clennont (Arnauld, (Euvres completes, t. xxx (Lausanne, 1775-83), p. 76).

2 Cited by Fouqueray, I.e., vol. v, p. 463, from an article by Madelin in the
Revue Universelle, February 15, 1924, p. 423. The same thesis is to be found
splendidly worked out and sustained in a remarkable book, L Education morale
dans les colleges de la Compagnie de Jesus en France sous Vancien regime (Paris, 1913),
by Andre Schimberg, who was not a Jesuit nor in any way connected with the
Society of Jesus.

Ill

THE LINEAGE OF A LIBEL (continued)

2. FROM PASCAL TO PIROT

DURING the decade that followed the appearance of
La Theologie morale, 1643-53, Jansenism had spread
to all parts of Belgium and France and split both coun
tries into two hostile camps. The Augustinus had stout
defenders amongst the bishops and clergy of both coun
tries, but in France the great majority of the hierarchy
were opposed to it and eventually submitted five propo
sitions, summing up Jansen s theories, to the judgement
of the Holy See. The fifth proposition ran: It is semi-
pelagianism to say that Jesus Christ died or shed His
Blood for all men without exception. By a Constitution
of May 31, 1653, PP e Innocent X condemned all five
propositions as heretical and declared the fifth to be not
only heretical but false, temerarious, scandalous, and,
understood in the sense that Christ died only for the
salvation of the predestined, impious, blasphemous, con
tumelious and derogatory to the Divine Goodness . 1
With this particular condemnation the Jesuits had next
to nothing to do. The initiative came from the Sorbonne
and the French bishops, while in Rome, of the thirteen
men appointed by the Pope to examine > the Five Propo
sitions only one was a Jesuit, Sforza Pallavicini, the his
torian of the Council of Trent. His judgement, inci
dentally, was one of the most temperate pronounced, and
he was balanced by two Dominicans and one Augus-
tinian who defended the Five Propositions with great
ardour. Despite all this, Saint-Amour, the envoy in

1 Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion Symbolorum (1928), n. 1096.

The Lineage of a Libel 47

Rome of Port-Royal and the pro-Jansenist bishops, gave
out that the Jesuits were at the back of the condemna
tion, though Cardinal Spada had assured him on oath
that they had nothing whatever to do with it. 1

Meantime, the indefatigable Arnauld had come out
with a whole series of Apologies for the doctrines of
Jansen, one of which ran to the astounding length of
1,069 quarto pages. When, in spite of all his efforts, the
doctrines were condemned, he invented the famous
distinction of right and fact , which at once became
the great refuge of his fellow Jansenists. While allowing
that the Pope had the right to condemn the Five
Propositions they denied the fact that Jansen had
taught them in his book. They were, they said, the
inventions of the Jesuits for the purpose of discrediting
St. Augustine s doctrine of grace. For once in a way,
nobody but themselves believed that tall story, and
Arnauld soon found himself with his back to the wall,
as the bishops united at Paris on March 9, 1654, and
Pope Innocent on September 29 of the same year de
clared emphatically that the Five Propositions were in
the Augustinus.

Then a famous incident happened. A cure of Saint-
Sulpice, inspired by the saintly M. Olier, refused absolu
tion to a prominent Jansenist, the Due de Liancourt.
Arnauld at once protested in a Lettre d un docteur de Sor-
bonne a unepersonne de condition, February 24, 1655, which
drew no fewer than eight replies. Finally, on May 26,
there appeared a Reponse from the Jesuit Pere Francois
Annat, 2 confessor to the King, in which he declared that

1 Pastor, "Geschichte der Pdpste, vol. xiv, part i (1929), pp. 2003.

2 There is a story that this man s name was really Canard, which, being too
dangerous to carry in that time of outrageous punning, he Latinized as Anna-
tius, anas meaning a duck.

48 The Lineage of a Libel

the Jansenists were heretics, as they professed the
theories of Calvin on the subject of grace. In July,
Arnauld retorted with a Seconde Lettre a un due et pair de
France, running to 254 pages. Therein he maintained
the distinction of right and fact, and, to pulverize Annat s
contention that the interior grace necessary for the
human will to do the will of God never fails it in presence
of temptation, he pointed to the denial of St. Peter as
proof that indispensable grace is not always accorded
to the just. This Seconde Lettre was denounced to the
Sorbonne by the Syndic, Guyot. Now, the Sorbonne,
as a judicial tribunal, was about equally divided on the
question of Jansenism, but, according to Arnauld and
his allies, the hostile half adopted the clever, unstatutory
ruse of bringing in a contingent, forty strong, of friar-
doctors to their assistance. 1 Thus fortified, they pro
ceeded on January 14, 1656, to a condemnation of Ar
nauld on the first point, the question whether the Five
Propositions were in the Augustinus, by a majority of 130
votes to 71, with 15 abstentions. A fortnight later,
January 19, the same majority condemned Arnauld s
doctrine of grace as impious, scandalous, and heretical.
He and his adherents were given a fortnight in which
to sign a form of retraction, the penalty for refusal being
expulsion from the Sorbonne and the forfeiture of their
doctorate.

It looked like the end for Arnauld. He had been
repudiated by every tribunal, the Pope, the Hierarchy,
the Sorbonne, the Parlement. There seemed to remain

1 Though there does not appear to be a shred of evidence that the Jesuits
had anything to do with the proceedings (and how could they, considering the
attitude of the Sorbonne in their regard?) yet that ardent champion of Port-
Royal, M. Gazier, sees Pere Annat at the back of the whole affair (Histoire
generate du mouvementjanseniste, t. i (Paris, 1922), p. 101).

The Lineage of a Libel 49

only one court of appeal, public opinion, and to that,
by a splendid piece of luck for himself, he was driven
to turn. During the course of his trial, when he kept
carefully hidden, he used secretly to visit Port-Royal
des Champs with his two devoted friends, Nicole and
Le Maitre. At a conference there one day, which in
cluded Port-Royal s new and enthusiastic recruit, Blaise
Pascal, a solitary asked Arnauld whether he was going
to allow himself to be condemned like a child without
letting the public at large know the facts of the case.
Thus stimulated he set about the composition of yet
another Apologie , which he proceeded to read aloud
to his friends. They listened in silence and without
showing any mark of approval. e je vois bien, said Ar
nauld sadly, que vous ne trouvez pas cet ouvrage bon,
et je crois que vous avez raison. Then, turning to Pas
cal, he went on: c Mais vous qui etes jeune, vous devriez
faire quelque chose. Little could he have dreamed how
happily his suggestion was inspired. Pascal retired to
his cell and came back after some hours with the first of
the Lettres Provinciates. 1

It is hardly necessary now to say anything about a
classic so renowned, which put les objets les plus graves
a la portee des societes les plus frivoles, et, prodiguant a
pleine main le sel d une plaisanterie fine et amere,
transformait en scenes comiques et amusantes des dis
cussions qui jusqu alors avaient ete renfermees dans les
formes serieuses de 1 ecole . As everybody knows, the
first three Lettres were taken up practically entirely with
the defence of Arnauld and an attempt to win over the
Thomist theologians to his side against the hated

1 Petitot, Collection de memoires relatifs a Vhistoire de France, t. xxxiii (Paris,
1824), PP- 1 20-1.

E

50 The Lineage of a Libel

Molinists. Though they enjoyed a popular success
rarely equalled in the history of literature, they failed
in their main object, and Arnauld was degraded by the
Sorbonne on February 15, six days after the publication
of the third Lettre.

At this moment Pascal quitted Port-Royal and came
to live in Paris under an assumed name in a house oppo
site the college of the Jesuits. Whether it was the view
out of his window which gave him the idea, or the
advice of his friends to turn from defence to attack, he
began his fourth Lettre with the abrupt address: MON
SIEUR, II n est rien tel que les Jesuites. Up to then he
had referred to them only in their capacity of Molinists,
but from the fourth Lettre to the sixteenth he consecrates
all his matchless ability to the ridicule of their moral
theology and ascetical teaching. Where did he obtain
his material? Let us listen to one of the best authorities,
a very warm admirer of Pascal:

Au total, pur les citations, les Provinciales sont faites de
trois apports: i textes pris par Pascal lui-meme aux ouvrages
d Arnauld deja parus, par exemple a la Remontrance, a la
Lettre a Polemarque, surtout a la Theologie morale des Jesuites ,
2 textes pris encore par Pascal lui-meme a Escobar; 3 textes
enfin fournis a Pascal, par ses amis ces derniers extraits
n etant guere que la recherche des sources d Escobar. 1

It amounts to this then, that for his terrible onslaught
on the whole Society ofjesus, Pascal had two authorities
only, Arnauld and Escobar. Were the texts which he
borrowed from those two sources cited by him ac
curately? La question est singulierement difficile a
resoudre, writes Strowski. Having shown why this
should be, Strowski continues: De la vient que, si on

1 Strowski, Pascal et son Temps, t. iii (Paris, 1908), p. 96.

The Lineage of a Libel 51

mettait d un cote les citations de Pascal, et de 1 autre les
originaux de ces citations, on aurait souvent a noter des
inexactitudes materielles. Tantot on trouverait que
Pascal a omis tel ou tel mot, tantot on remarquerait qu il
a coupe trop tot sa citation, tantot enfin 1 air de son
franais ne paraitrait pas avoir 1 air meme des textes
latins. 1 Is Pascal, then, to be called a falsificator? asks
our authority. By no means, and we are given the edify
ing spectacle of Strowski taking no less a person than
Sainte-Beuve to task for having weakened a little in the
faith. Strowski has what he considers a triumphant
defence of Pascal, for, when that great man omits
essential words, truncates citations, or translates with
less than exactitude, he is but following an example, and
what an example, for it is none other than that of
Escobar ! The fact that Pascal followed Escobar faith
fully is his complete justification: Tautorite d Escobar
le couvre . But does it? Would it exonerate him in an
English Court of Justice, if we could imagine one of the
Jesuits truncated, &c., by their brother Escobar bring
ing a libel action against him? We know well that it
would not. And we know too, if we have any con
sciences at all, that if a man elects to make a serious
charge against another on the strength of something
which he is alleged to have written, then the accuser has
a bounden duty to go straight to the source and see how
the words which he would attribute to his victim stand
in the original context. Nor would it be much extenua
tion if the accuser pleaded that he had given the words
exactly as he had found them in a book by one of his
victim s friends. The victim might well say: If an
angel from Heaven had brought you the words you had

1 L.C., p. 98.

52 The Lineage of a Libel

no right to use them for my defamation until you had
looked them out in my book. What a contrast to all
this special pleading of Pascal s friends are the third
and fourth rules which Pope Benedict XIV laid down
for the Congregations of the Index and Inquisition, in a
Constitution of July 9, 1 753 :

They are to know that they must pass judgement on the
various opinions and views contained in every book with a
mind free from all prejudice. Let them, therefore, shake off
inclinations in favour of nation, family, school, or manner of
living, and put aside party zeal. . . . And this also, we
admonish, is to be carefully borne in mind, that no right
judgement on the true sense of an author can be formed
unless his book is read from end to end, the statements made
in various places of it compared together, and the author s
whole design taken into consideration. Nor must judgement
be pronounced on the book from inspection and examination
of one or other proposition contained therein, isolated from
its context, for it often happens that what is set down by an
author perfunctorily and obscurely in one part of his work
is explained distinctly, fully and clearly in another part, so
that the obscurity shrouding the previous expression of the
proposition, which made it appear to have an ill meaning,
is completely dissipated, and the proposition is recognized to
be free from all blemish. 1

There is a great deal more to be said on this subject,
if this were the place to say it, but we must content our
selves for the present with a more general judgement
on the Lettres Provinciales. In the Preface to his Aspects
of the Rise of Economic Individualism, Dr. Robertson men
tions that Dr. H. F. Stewart very kindly lent him a rare
book of Jesuit casuistry . 2 Dr. Stewart, who is Fellow

1 Bullarium Romanorum Pontificum. Sanctissimi D. JV. Benedicti Papae XIV Bul-
larium, t. iv (Romae, 1758), p. 74.

2 Pirot s Apologie?

The Lineage of a Libel 53

and Praelector in French Studies, Trinity College,
Cambridge, brought out an excellent edition of the
Lettres Provinciates in 1920. He admires Pascal greatly,
and says everything, and perhaps more than everything,
that there is to be said in his favour. He stresses the
general accuracy of Pascal s quotations, emphasizes his
sincerity, and holds that it was natural for him to make
the most of every advantage and never to give his
adversary the benefit of the doubt, for he was writing,
not as a judge, but as an advocate . 1 Dr. Stewart, how
ever, who is the soul of fairness, writes not as an advocate
but as a judge, and here is his verdict:

Granting the clearness of the controversy, was his [Pascal s]
mind clear of prejudice? Was his reading of the evidence
unbiased? Was his interpretation of motive true? Was the
laxity which he deplored entirely due to the Jesuits and their
teaching? Was Trobabilism the poison which he proclaimed
it to be? History and common sense compel us to answer no .

Secondly, was he on the right side? Was the cause which
he espoused worthy of his fiery zeal and of his unmatched
genius? Was he best serving his Master when he thus
furiously assailed men who, with all their shortcomings, were
devoted to the same service? Was Jansenism, whose spirit
he so perfectly expressed in his Letters, and in his own
practice, more apt than the opposing creed not to win
individual souls for Christ, for that it indubitably did but
to regenerate the world? Christian experience compels us
once again to a reluctant negative. . . . Jansenism was im-

1 Is that a good argument, and hasn t an advocate got some duty to be fair?
Arnauld justified the satire and bitterness of the Jansenists in a curious work
entitled: Dissertation selon la methods des geometres pour la justification de ceux qui
emploient en ecrivant, dans de certaines rencontres, des termes que le monde estime durs.
How fond they were of geometry, those Jansenists ! In another writing, entitled
Reponse a une lettre d une personne de condition, Arnauld carefully cited all the
passages of Scripture and the Fathers which, in his opinion, authorized the
liberties a man took to insult and cruelly mock his opponents (CEuvres completes,
t. xxvii, p. i).

54 The Lineage of a Libel

possible alike in theory and in practice. Of its doctrine of
Grace and its appalling results I have already spoken. Its
practice was counter to the most innocent instincts of human
ity. . . . When [Pascal] wrote the Lettres Provinciates he was
blinded by enthusiasm, friendship, and a sense of cruel injus
tice. . . . If he had lived longer we may believe that experience
would have cleared his vision and that he would have found
better weapons wherewith to fight the morale relachee
against which he was pledged almost with his last breath
than those which he fetched from the armoury of an extreme
and narrow sect. 1

It is worth remembering that during the single half
century, 1600-56, when, according to Pascal from his
arm-chair at Port-Royal, the Society of Jesus was en
deavouring to put des coussins sous les bras des
pecheurs , no fewer than eighty-two of her sons gladly
suffered horrible deaths in far-away Japan for the love
of Christ; while in Cartagena, where, according to
Dr. Robertson, the Jesuits were attempting to get all
the trade, all the transport and banking facilities into
their own hands , St. Peter Claver, S.J., was kissing with
tears of compassion the wounds and sores of the negro
slaves and providing night and day for their wants with
more than a mother s tenderness. That, however, is
another story, as is the record of St. Francis Regis, S.J.,
at the same time, among the outcasts of Ardeche and
the Lyonnais.

The first answers to Pascal s devastating attack did
not come from the Jesuits. It was only after the appear
ance of the seventh Letter that they intervened, Peres

1 Modern Language texts: Les Lettres Provinciates de Blaise Pascal. Edited by
H. F. Stewart, D.D. Manchester, at the University Press, 1920. Introduction
pp. xxxiv-xxxvi. Dr. Stewart goes more deeply into the same subject in
Lecture II of his most interesting and delightfully written book, The Holiness
of Pascal (Cambridge University Press, 1915).

The Lineage of a Libel 55

Nouet and Annat again being their principal cham
pions. Neither man had much style or wit to commend
him, but a certain sturdy logic in their criticism, which
was by no means entirely urbane, forced Pascal to
abandon his exquisite ridicule for a tone of aggrieved
personal apology. Meantime he and Arnauld had
found some eager allies among the cures of Paris who,
in Strowski s dry words, avaient quelques petites
raisons d etre jaloux des reguliers . These men, about
eight in number, headed by the Sorbonne doctors,
Rousse and Mazure, professed to be greatly grieved and
shocked by the revelations of Pascal and started a
campaign of their own against the Jesuits which, how
ever, soon linked up with that of the Jansenists. In
July, 1 656, a cure of Rouen launched forth against the
Jesuits from his parish pulpit and was answered vigor
ously by Pere de Brisacier. Other cures of the city who
had already been won over to Jansenism by that match
less proselytizer, the Duchesse de Longueville, rallied
to the support of their brother and in two extensive,
fervently worded Requestes begged the Archbishop of
Rouen to save Christian morality by a public con
demnation of the Jesuits. They then suggested an
alliance with the cures of Paris for a general campaign
against the common foe. The idea was well received,
and caused the cabal, though numerically only a frac
tion of the French secular priesthood, to assume the
grand title of Le Clerge de France .

Not long after the preliminary skirmishes of this new
crusade, Rome pronounced finally against Jansenism.
By a Constitution of October 16, 1656, Pope Alexander ~
VII declared and defined that the Five Propositions
were in the Augustinus and that they had been con-

56 The Lineage of a Libel

demned in the sense in which Jansen understood them.
At once both Arnauld and Pascal rose to the challenge,
but for some mysterious reason the author of the Provin
ciates suddenly broke off his work in the middle of a
sentence, just as he seemed about to declare for a policy
of passive resistance. Some say that it was the charitable
persuasion of Mere Angelique which caused him to
desist, while others, of Catholic sympathies, cherish the
theory that weariness of Jansenism and loyalty to the
Pope were the reasons. But if an excellent authority,
M. Lanson, is right in attributing to Pascal the Lettre
d un avocat au Parlement a un de ses amis, which appeared
on June i , 1 657, it was certainly not regard for the Pope,
as that pamphlet took the form of an appeal to the
Gallicanism of Parlement and Hierarchy. 1 Pascal s
desertion of Jansenism for an orthodox Thomism is
hardly better established, as the French Dominican
scholar, Pere Henri Petitot, has shown with admirable
lucidity. 2 It is therefore more likely that the Provinciales
came to an end not because their author had tired of
baiting the Jesuits or become suddenly alive to his
obligations as a Catholic but because the cures of Paris
had discovered to him a better and safer way to con
found the enemies of Jansenism. By going on with the
Provinciales, which had been condemned in France by
the Parlement of Provence and in Rome by the Holy
Office, he might only have endangered his friends with
out doing much more harm to his enemies. Far better,
then, to fight under the banner of the good cures whose
sympathies with Jansenism and hostility to Jesuitism

1 Lanson s article, Apres les Provinciales , appeared in the Revue d histoire
litteraire de la France, annee 1901, t. i.

2 In his fine study, Pascal: sa vie religieuse et son Apologle du Christianisme,
Paris, 191 1, pp. 345-419.

The Lineage of a Libel 57

he had every reason to trust. The Grand Vicars who
governed the diocese of Paris in the compulsory absence
of its intriguing Archbishop, Cardinal de Retz, had
played their cards skilfully and made a dead letter of
the formula against Jansenism which the General As
sembly of the Clergy promulgated and required all
ecclesiastics to sign. The Jesuits might have the King
and Court on their side, but the Jansenists had de Retz
and his allies of the Fronde, including the Grand
Vicars and other prominent priests of Paris. Moreover,
a good number of the French provincial bishops showed
distinct leanings towards Jansenism, though only the
Archbishop of Sens, Henri de Gondrin, had as yet
openly declared himself the protector and friend of its
initiates.

It was in circumstances such as these, tense with the
possibility of trouble, that a Paris Jesuit, Pere Georges
Pirot, elected to publish a most provocative little volume
entitled, Apologie pour les casuistes contre Us calomnies des
Jansenistes. Pirot was an estimable and learned man,
but he certainly chose the wrong method and the wrong
moment for answering the charges against Jesuit moral
theology. In sum, his method consisted in an attempt-
to justify the various opinions which Pascal had de
nounced. Now, many of the cases cited in the Lettres
Provinciates were what might be called border-line ones,
and the collection of them all in a single book could not
fail to give a bad impression. Further, Pirot let his
temper get the better of him and wrote in a hectoring
tone which had none of Pascal s wit to redeem its un
pleasantness. How, then, did it come about that he was
allowed to publish the book?

According to the account given in his Memoires by

58 The Lineage of a Libel

Pere Rene Rapin, a contemporary of the events, this
is what happened. Pirot s provincial superior, Pere
Jacques Renault, thoroughly disapproved of the Apologie
and refused to permit its publication. The author then
sought the permission of the General of the Jesuits and
obtained it through the good offices of his friend and
fellow townsman, Pere le Cazre, who represented the
French Jesuits in Rome. As a consequence, continues
Rapin, le livre parut, contre 1 avis des plus sages de la
maison professe, du College et des meilleurs amis de la
Societe. . . . Quoi qu il en soit, jamais livre ne parut plus
a contre-temps: on le prit pour un aveu dans le monde
de tout ce qui avait etc objecte aux Jesuites de leur
morale, si decriee par Pascal, et pour une declaration
en forme des sentiments de leur Compagnie. 1

In his History of the Popes, Pastor follows this account
of Rapin, but it is not quite correct. First of all, at the
time when the book was published, December 1657, the
Provincial was Pere Cellot, whom Renault did not suc
ceed until January i, 1658. Now Cellot was one of the
men who had suffered at the hands of Pascal, and it is
possible that he may have given Pirot permission to go
ahead. On the other hand, we know for certain that
the General of the Society of Jesus did not sanction the
publication of the book. Thus, on April i, 1658, he
wrote as follows to the new Provincial, Pere Renault:
In a letter of February i5th, your Reverence informed
me that the book of Father Georges Pirot entitled
Apology for the Casuists against the Jansenists, recently pub
lished anonymously by order of Father Louis Cellot,
the late Provincial, has stirred up great commotion

1 Rapin, Me moires sur l glise et la Societe, publics pour la premiere fois par
Leon Aubeneau, Paris, 1865, t. iii, p. 15.

The Lineage of a Libel 59

against the Society in France. Your Reverence is to
reprehend Father Louis Cellot for allowing that book
to come out without our permission, and you are also
to admonish all subjects to abstain from such matters
which are capable of giving offence. . . . In another
letter of February 18, 1659, to Pere Renault, the
General wrote as follows: Assuredly, if superiors in
France had, as was their duty, prevented the publica
tion of that Apology, instead of urging the author to
rush into print too hastily, without permission from the
General, we should not have been subjected to the
tempest of spite and ill-will which we now suffer and
bewail. And perhaps this is a punishment for the trans
gression of the 42nd rule of the Summary, 1 sent to us
that we may. learn to overcome by patience rather
than by contention. 2

It is clear, then, that, so far from sanctioning the book,
the General strongly disapproved. The fault, it would
seem, lay primarily with Pere Cellot, who, being human,
must have felt sore at the way he had been mauled by
Pascal. Once the damage was done the question arose
whether the book should be defended. On that point
there came to light a sharp division of opinion. Pere
d Avrigny, who, like Rapin, was contemporary with
the events, wrote in strong terms about what he con
sidered the intrigues of Pirot. The Author and his
friends prevailed, he says. In societies of men gener
ally, it is not always the majority of suffrages which

1 Summary of the Jesuit Constitutions, Rule 42: Let us all be of one mind
and, as much as may be, let all say the same thing, according to the Apostle.
Wherefore different doctrines are not to be admitted, either in word in public
discourses, or in written books, which are not to be published without the
General s approbation and consent. . . .

z From a transcript of the original Latin in the archives of the French Jesuits,
which I owe to the courtesy of M. 1 Abbe Becdelievre.

6o The Lineage of a Libel

carries the day. Sometimes, a little energy is sufficient
to set these huge machines in motion. Usually, five or
six dexterous or active men find the secret of getting to
the head of affairs. Everything passes through their
hands and with them rests the final decision. The
reputation of the whole Body is in their keeping, and it
is obliged to them if they do not ruin it. . . . J These are
hard words, but who can deny the truth of them?
Certainly the Jesuits, for all their famous martial
discipline, know the truth of them only too well.

What, then, was the judgement of the French Jesuits
in general on Pirot s book? It would appear from the
documentary evidence to have been as follows: The \
doctrines of Pirot can be sustained, since there are to be
found good and solid moralists who defend them, but,
collected in a single book, they give an unfortunate
impression, as though it was the author s express pur
pose to defend the most indulgent and liberal views.
Pere Philippe Briet, a Paris Jesuit, wrote in exactly these
terms to the General on February 21, 1659. The gist of
his very interesting letter is in this sentence: Though
otherwise I would pass this work because I think its
views can be defended, I am compelled at present to
reject it, since I have heard with my own ears what men
in high esteem think of it . . . Similar was the view of
Pere Francois Annat, a good and wise man whom the
Jansenists could not forgive the crime of being confessor
to the King. But the man best qualified to speak for the
French Jesuits was their Provincial, and the reader may
wonder whether he left any judgement on record. He
did, not only in letters to the General, but in a document
which he caused to be appended to Pirot s book when

1 Memoires Chronologiques et Dogmatiques, t. ii, p. 376.

The Lineage of a Libel 61

it was reissued in 1658. To that document we shall
return a little later. After telling the General in a letter
of June 14, 1658, of the terrible storm that had swept
down on the Society of Jesus in France apropos of the
Apologie, Pere Renault continued:

I do not see a more efficacious remedy for this evil than
that your Paternity should order me to instruct all the
rectors of this Province in your name as to the reply that
our Fathers must make to those not of the Society concerning
this affair, namely that our Society embraces and defends
nothing proper to itself in the domain of moral theology,
except what the Church and her Supreme Pontiffs lay down
and approve. As for what are called probable opinions,
none other are permitted by the same Society to our Fathers
than those which the Church permits to all orthodox doctors,
namely such as are commonly received in the schools without
any taint of suspicion, while from laxer opinions, which seem
to foster licence, the Society, according to its zeal for the glory
of God and the salvation of the neighbour, is far removed.

Finally, your Paternity should enjoin on superiors and
rectors to be assiduously vigilant that henceforth none of our
men may write or say, whether privately or in public, anything
savouring of the mildness of laxer discipline with which our
enemies reproach us. And if superiors find that anybody has
erred in this respect, they must not let him go unpunished.

Should these suggestions appear good to your Paternity, I
hope that we shall be able in future to avert the dislike of
good men and the calumny of enemies, when it shall be
manifest from our unanimous agreement that we are very
much strangers to those opinions which are fastened on to
us, as though we were promoters of laxity. . . .

The General replied on July 22, entering completely
into Pere Renault s views and instructing him to have
them carried out, omnibus quibus potest modis .
And now, to do Pere Pirot justice, we may consider

62 The Lineage of a Libel

for a moment whether he deserved all the opprobrium
that was visited upon him. Here is a considered judge
ment kindly communicated to me by one who has a very-
good right to speak, the successor to Pere Fouqueray as
official historian of the French Jesuits:

Nous devons parler avec reserve et moderation d un
ouvrage qui a etc comme YApologie, vivement attaque et
condamne. Cependant, a tout prendre, il semble que les
contemporains de 1 auteur, meme les amis de la Compagnie,
meme plusieurs Jesuites, mal impressiones par le bruit que
soulevait ce livre et le tort qu il rendait a la cause de la
Compagnie, 1 ont juge trop severement. Et de nos jours, on
continue, peut-etre sans 1 avoir lu, a le juger de meme (voyez
le P. Alexandre Brou, Les Jesuites de la Legende, t. ii, pp. 8 et 9).

J ai sous les yeux une longue lettre du Pere Jacques de
Blic, ecrite au debut de 1922, lorsqu il preparait son article
du Dictionnaire de Theologie. 1 II avait etudie tres soigneuse-
ment YApologie et il m ecrivait que excepte sur la question
de 1 usure qu il n avait pas encore examinee il etait a peu
pres certain que la doctrine du Pere Pirot est inattaquable.
Elle n a ete condamnee que par les Jansenistes. II a manque,
a et la, d exprimer dans les termes certains reserves ou
restrictions, mais elles etaient evidemment dans sa pensee.
Ou I auteur a eu tort, c est dans la forme: il a traite ses
adversaires d une maniere insolente et peu religieuse, qui ne
pouvait manquer de les exasperer.

We shall have occasion later to see how Pirot and his
casuists compare with modern non-Jesuit moral theolo
gians in the solution of a case exploited of old by Pascal
and recently by Dr. H. M. Robertson. As already indi
cated, the Apologie gave rise to a terrible outcry against

1 Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, commence sous la direction de A. Vacant
et E. Mangenot, continue sous celle de E. Amann. This, by far the most exten
sive and learned of Catholic Dictionaries, is now at its eleventh volume. None
of its editors are Jesuits. Pere de Blic s article is under the title Jesuites and
on the subject of Jesuit moral theology.

The Lineage of a Libel 63

the Jesuits all over France. The cures of Paris were the
first to the attack with a Requeste presentee aux Vicaires
Generaux de M. I Archevesque contre cette Apologie, February
1658, according to which the Jesuits in that book not
only defended the very proposition already censured by
the suppliants mais encore de nouvelles plus estranges
et plus impies: en sorte qu il n y a plus de crimes qu ils
ne permettent en conscience, simonie, usure, meurtre,
vengeance, fraudes, larcins, occasions prochaines et
inevitables de peche, calomnies, profanation des sacra
ments, et une infinite d autres, dont les Payens mesmes
auroient horreur.

Already in January these same zealous cures had
determined to enlist the help of their friends the Jansen-
ists, and so it was that, at their request, none other than
Pascal himself drew up a Factum pour les Cures de Paris,
beginning with the brave words, Notre Cause est la
cause de la Morale Chrestienne . It did not seem to
worry them that la foi Chrestienne was, by the express
declarations of the Holy See, in danger from those with
whom they now sealed a close but carefully disguised
alliance. Not to be outdone, the cures of Rouen pub
lished a huge Factum of their own, beginning in the same
style as that of their Paris brethren: Nous continuons
de combattre pour la Morale Chrestienne contre ceux
qui ne cessent point de la corrompre. According to his
biographers the real author of this candescent piece of
invective was Nicole, Arnauld s right-hand man and
the translator of the Lettres Provinciales into Latin. With
it, the cures sent to their Archbishop a letter of close
on ten thousands words, urging him for every conceiv
able reason, including the fact that his uncle had not
liked Jesuits, to condemn the Apologie.

64 The Lineage of a Libel

Meantime, the Jesuits had answered the Paris Factum,
pointing out, as was perfectly true, that it consisted
largely of a rehash of the Lettres Provinciales. To this the
cures replied with a Second Ecrit, couched in a tone of
such authoritativeness that one might look to see at its
foot the name of a Pope denouncing ex cathedra some
terrible heresy. But again, in the judgement of scholars,
the voice is the voice of Pascal, and Pascal, too, was the
real author of the fifth and sixth of these Ecrits which
followed shortly afterwards. 1 In the fifth, he allowed
that it was impossible to deny au moins un bien dans
les Jesuites , namely, that unlike the Calvinists, they had
not broken away from Catholic unity. Continuing in
the same generous strain, he said: Aussi il n est pas
impossible que parmy tant de Jesuites il ne s en ren
contre qui ne soient point dans leurs erreurs. 5 In other
words, it was conceivable that there might be here and
there a Jesuit who did not share the sentiments of cet
Apologiste blasphemateur .

The campaign against the Jesuits, very skilfully
directed by the Jansenists through their willing tools,
the cabal of Paris cures, resulted in the stern condemna
tion of the Apologie by no fewer than twenty-one bishops.
But the fact must not be forgotten that there were close
on a hundred other bishops in France who could not
be cajoled into hostility, while of the twenty-one all but
two are known for their open sympathy with the Jansen-
ist cause. Among them, the most ruthless censurer was
Henri de Gondrin, Archbishop of Sens, an old friend
of Saint-Cyran, whose name headed the list of bishops
approving of Arnauld s De la frequente communion, and

1 All are included in the (Euvres de Blaise Pascal, published by Brunschwieg,
Boutroux and Gazier in 14 volumes, Paris, 1904-14, t. vii, pp. 278-995 308-27;
355-735 t. viii, pp. 42-63-

The Lineage of a Libel 65

who, on January 26, 1 653, had pronounced and solemnly
promulgated sentence of excommunication against any
of his diocesans who should dare to go to confession
to a Jesuit. As is well known, Gondrin came near to
being excommunicated himself for his resistance to the
Bull of Innocent X condemning Jansenism. 1 And then
there were the famous four, the Bishops of Angers
(Antoine Arnauld s brother, Henri!), Pamiers, Beau-
vais, and Alet, all ardent censurers of the Apologie, who
have won a sad immortality in church history for their
contumacious refusal to sign the formula against Jan
senism promulgated by the Pope. The last of them,
Pavilion of Alet, a man of fierce temper and stern
morals, went the length of excommunicating two of his
clergy for putting their names to the Formula. 2

Other Bishops who pronounced against theApologie and
Jesuit moral theology as a whole in the harshest terms
were Godeau of Vence, one of the principal defenders of
the Five Propositions; Vialart of Chalons and Ghoiseul
of Comminges, who warmly supported Godeau s Jansen-
ist activities; Delbene of Orleans and de Gaumartin of
Amiens, approvers of Arnauld s communion book, who,
with nine others, had written to the Pope in April 1651
an extraordinary letter expostulating against the con
demnation of the Augustinus; 3 and Gilles, Bishop of Ev-
reux, whose cures, when petitioning him to condemn
the Apologie, gave the following very significant reason:

La seconde raison, Monseigneur, qui est personelle, est que

1 For his activities see Pastor, Geschichte der Pdpste, vol. xiv, part i, pp. 191-2,
215-21, 431-2, 444-5> 555~9> 5 6 8~7> &c -

2 He lifted the sentence on condition that they retracted in writing, left off
saying Mass for two months, fasted every Friday for six months, paid 25 limes
fine, and promised to read nothing except what emanated from the printing-
press of Port-Royal (Petitot, Collection de Me maires, t. xxxiii, p. 157).

3 Pastor, l.c., pp. 192-3.

F

66 The Lineage of a Libel

ce livre infame combat ouvertement vos propres sentiments,
touchant la penitence; nous voulons dire 1 approbation solen-
nelle que vous avez donnee au livre De la Frequente Com
munion, que vous recommandez a tous les fideles, comme un
don tres particulier de la providence. . . . Ce grand livre ayant
oppose aux erreurs des nouveaux Casuistes la doctrine de
tous les Peres et des Conciles, qui nous avertissent de prendre
garde que les la iques ne soient pas trompez et jetez dans
Penfer par de fausses penitences, cet Apologiste, au contraire
ne travaille qu a retablir ces abus si dangereux, et a entretenir
les pecheurs dans une revolution continuelle de confessions
et de crimes. . . .

These interesting words enable us to see that there were
two opposing conceptions of the Christian life at war
just then, the Jesuit conception, which to all intents and
purposes was that of their own great pupil and warm
friend St. Francis de Sales, and Saint-Cyran s concep
tion, which, in Dr. Stewart s words, was counter to the
most innocent instincts of humanity . The main error
of the Jansenists with regard to the moral discipline of
Christianity was to consider it as a static, immutable
thing instead of a life which develops and adapts itself
to the needs of different epochs and civilizations. Con
founding precepts with counsels, they preached an ideal
perfection, a morale geometrique , impossible to nine-
tenths of mankind, and so circumscribed the pale of
Christianity that, in Saint-Beuve s words, to find in
clusion in it one must be an individu paradoxe de
Pespece humaine .

The Jesuits, on the other hand, remembering their
Master s words that His yoke was sweet and His burden
light, taught tirelessly that God was much more of a
Friend to be loved than a Rex tremendae majestatis
to be placated. In the application of moral principles

The Lineage of a Libel 67

to the constantly changing conditions of human life,
they allowed for the changes and refused, in opposition
to the Jansenists, to consider the Ten Commandments
as ten propositions in geometry. Unfortunately for
them, it was the age of the Art Poetique, when large
numbers of men had fallen in love with straight lines
and antique formulae. With brilliant strategy, the Jan
senists seized upon those rigid, archaic habits of thought
as a lever in the movement against casuistry. We have
seen that there were other levers, too, the sensitiveness
of the Universities of Paris and Louvain with regard to
the Jesuit colleges, the rivalry of seculars and regulars,
the Gallicanism of the Parlement and Sorbonne. All
these forces, which could hardly be looked upon as
disinterested, combined under Jansenist provocation
for the assault on Pirot s Apologie. Is it to be believed
that, in the circumstances, they were likely to do that
unfortunate book even a minimum of justice?

Let us now see what the French Jesuit Provincial
Pere Renault had to say in his short answer to Pascal
entitled, Le Sentiment des Jesuites sur le lime de V Apologie
pour les Casuistes. He begins by protesting that, while the
Society of Jesus does her best to form good and learned
writers and directors of souls, she makes no claim to be
able to render them impeccable. For her, the law of
God, the precepts of the Church, the decrees of Councils,
and the Constitutions of Popes are the foundations of
moral theology:

Elle s attache inviolablement a Tautorite de PEglise, qui
est la Colonne de verite: Elle reconnoist le Chef qui gouverne
cette mesme figlise pour Juge souverain de la doctrine des
mceurs: Elle rejette ce qu il condamne: Elle regoit avec
reverence ce qu il approve: Elle fait sa science des Oracles

68 The Lineage of a Libel

de sa bouche et, comme il ne peut faillir dans ses Decisions,
elle ne pense pas se pouvoir tromper dans la deference qu elle
rend a ses jugements. Qu il parle sur les opinions que Ton
sou.pc.onne d erreur et de scandale, elle ne fera point de
difficulte de signer ses Bulles; elle n eludera point ses Ana-
themes par des distinctions de droit et dejait; elle n epargnera
point le nom de ses auteurs, s ils se trouvent atteints des
foudres de Rome; elle retranchera de leurs ouvrages tout ce
qui ne sera pas conforme a la regie supreme de sa conduite.
Voila en un mot sa Morale.

Pere Renault then goes on to prove that the Society
of Jesus was not attempting to form any sect in theo
logy . She allowed her sons exactly the same liberty that
the Church allowed all theologians, namely to seek the
truth wherever they could find it, and, when it proved
inaccessible, to embrace the most likely solution. Con
tenting herself with prescribing the limits within which
all wise men find their security, she obliges her sons to
shun equally the two pitfalls of attachment, on the one
hand, to opinions condemned by the public conscience,
and, on the other, of inventing novelties of speculation.
Though, in this matter, it is hardly less dangerous to err
by excessive rigour than by too great laxity, the Society
of Jesus for her part inclines rather to the side of rigour.
As for Jesuits straying beyond accepted boundaries,

II se peut faire que quelque particulier sorte de ces limites,
et que, charme par 1 image d une apparente verite, il s em-
porte trop avant a sa poursuite: et il n y a pas lieu de s en
estonner. Si de tous les livres qui paroissent sous le nom des
Jesuites, il ne s en trouvoit aucun qui ne fust pas sans tache,
ce seroit une exemption aussi rare que celle du peche originel;
ce seroit un privilege sans exemple, puis qu il n a pas este
accorde aux Peres ny aux Docteurs de 1 figlise. . . .

D ou vient done que Ton condamne les Jesuites parce que
le P. Hereau (car nos enemis se servent toujours de cet

The Lineage of a Libel 69

exemple), abandonnant presque tous les ecrivains de son
Ordre, a suivi Monsieur Duval, Docteur de Sorbonne, sur
le sujet de 1 homicide, et que Ton n accuse pas les Sorbon-
nistes, parce que le premier homme de leur Maison a servi
d ecueil a ce Jesuite? D ou vient que Ton impute a tout le
Corps la faute d un seul, et qu on ne luy attribue pas le
merite de tous les autres? Le peche d un Jesuite, est-il de la
nature de celuy d Adam? Passe- t-il par une contagieuse
transfusion a tous ceux qui viennent apres lui? . . . Le
P. Bauny, dites-vous, s est trop relasche sur le sujet des
occasions prochaines, et vous m en donnez le blasme parce que
je suis Jesuite comme luy. Je ne dispute pas si vous luy
imposez, si vous alterez sa doctrine pour la rendre criminelle:
je vous demande pourquoy vous vous en prenez a moy?
Pourquoy me jugez-vous par 1 imprudence, soit veritable ou
supposee, d un seul Auteur, me pouvant absoudre, si vous
estiez tant soit peu raisonnable, par la saine doctrine de cent
Theologiens et Predicateurs qui sont tous Jesuites et qui
enseignent neantmoins tout le contraire de ce que vous dites?
Vous m appelez, parce qu il vous plaist ainsi, le Gorrupteur
des moeurs, le Protecteur des simoniaques et des Casuistes
charnels qui publient un second Alcoran parmy les Chrestiens.
Vous faites retentir de ces noms les Chaires et les Tribunaux,
les coles et les Ruelles. Qui d entre les Jesuites vous a
donne sujet d exciter centre eux ce scandale public dans la
ville capitale du Royaume? Sont-ce les Predicateurs qui
portent la parole de Dieu aux fideles? Sont-ce les Confesseurs
qui leur dispensent la grace des Sacrements? Sont-ce les
Directeurs qui les eclairent par la lumiere de leurs conseils?
Si leur Compagnie estoit, comme vous le voulez faire croire,
une source corrompue d ou naissent toutes les ordures de la
terre, ce seroit sans doute par ces canaux qu elle repandroit
son venin. On les ecoute neantmoins (et c est peut-estre la
cause de vostre douleur),on les ecoute, dis-je, avec edification;
on les consulte sans defiance; on leur decouvre dans le dernier
secret les plus intimes mouvements de 1 ame, et personne ne
s en trouve mal, grace a Dieu, personne ne s en plaint,

yo The Lineage of a Libel

personne n apprend dans leur conversation ces horribles
Maximes qu on lit avec etonnement dans vos Satyres ou-
trageuses. ...

Vous m apportez, pour justifier 1 excez de vostre passion,
une nouvelle Apologie qui defend les Casuistes a qui vous
avez declare la guerre? Mais je vous reponds que je ne
prends point de part a cet ouvrage, et que je ne veux point
estre parti dans une guerre que j estime funeste aux victorieux
et aux vaincus, puisqu elle ne peut produire que le rnepris
de la Religion, et la ruine de la Charite, qui est un bien
commun. . . . Vous me dites que la doctrine qu il enseigne
est criminelle, mais il soustient, au contraire, qu elle est en
partie de Monsieur Duval, en partie de Major, et en partie,
d autres Docteurs de Sorbonne, tous excellents Auteurs.
Quoy qu il en soit, je vous assure que ce n est point la mienne,
que ce n est point celle de nostre Gompagnie. . . . Souffrez
que j entretienne la paix avec vous sans blesser Fhonneur qui
est due a ces grands homines, dont la memoire survivra a vos
querelles. . . . Contentez-vous que j evite les fautes ou je croy
que quelques-uns sont tombez sans les faire connoistre au
peuple, qui n en peut tirer que du scandale. S il estoit ques
tion d attaquer les Heretiques, je ferois gloire de combattre
sous vos enseignes, et d apprendre de vous a manier ces
armes de lumiere qu un veritable zele met entre les mains
des enfants de Dieu; mais tandis qu il s agit de flestrir le
nom des plus celebres Theologiens, pardonnez-moy si je dis
que c est une entreprise dont je ne me sens pas capable, et
que j aime mieux attendre la censure de leur doctrine d une
autorite souveraine que de precipiter la mienne.

There speaks the best accredited voice among the Jesuits
of France, and perhaps some will prefer its quiet tone
even to the seductive music of the Provinciates . With Pere
Renault s words, written in the blackest hour of his
Order s desolation, our long quest reaches its term, the
year 1659, when there came into the world a stout
octavo volume of 822 pages, bearing the imprint, A

The Lineage of a Libel 71

Cologne, chez Nicolas Schoute , and the title, La
Theologie morale des Jesuites et nouveaux Casuistes: Repre-
senteepar leur pratique etpar leur limes: Condamnee ily a dejd
long-temps par plusieurs Censures, Decrets d Universitez, et
Arrests de Corns souverains: Nouvellement combattue par les
Curez de France: et CENSUREE par un grand nombre de
Prelats, et par des Facultez de Theologie Catholiques. The
work is divided into five parts, the first being occupied
with Diverses plaintes de 1 fivesque d Angelopolis
contre les entreprises et les violences des Jesuites . Parts
two and three are devoted to the old censures against
Santarelli, Bauny, Hereau, &c., as well as to a variety
of Louvain censures and letters against the Jesuits from
the two most notoriously Jansenist Prelates of Belgium,
Mgr Boonen, Archbishop of Malines, and Mgr Triest,
Bishop of Ghent. Finally, parts four and five, more than
half the whole volume, enshrine all the thunders let
loose on the Apologie of Pirot.

This is the source-book to which Dr. H. M. Robertson
refers with complete confidence. Other authorities of
this class, on which he relies, need not detain us long, as
they were inspired by exactly the same parti pris. The
Morale des Jesuites of 1667 is a collection of texts made by
the declared Jansenist Nicholas Perrault to show that
the Jesuits were bent on profaning all the Sacraments,
destroying all the virtues, and authorizing every sort of
vice. Nicholas was the brother of the man who gave us
Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Puss in Boots,
such gay and lovely fairy-tales compared with the tedi
ous, lack-lustre ones of which the Morale des Jesuites is
composed. In 1669 there came down on the battle-field
of Jesuits and Jansenists the famous, curious Peace of
Pope Clement IX . Arnauld solemnly promised the

72 The Lineage of a Libel

King of France that he would no nothing to disturb it,
but the words were hardly out of his mouth when there
appeared the first volume of La Morale pratique des
Jesuites, yet another collection of old libels against the
Order, made under Dr. Antoine s direction by Mere
Angelique s Clerk of the Holy Thorn , the Abbe de
Font-Chateau. Font-Chateau, though a Port-Royal
solitary, was very much addicted to le tourisme and
went on a special voyage into Spain to secure a copy of
the Teatro Jesuitico, a pseudonymous anthology of anti-
Jesuit stories which circulated there. The second
volume of La Morale pratique was also the fruit of his
industry, but bibliographers attribute the remaining six
volumes, which appeared at intervals between 1690 and
1 695, to Arnauld s indefatigable research, and they are
included in his CEuvres Completes. A scrap of the preface
to this colossal requisitoire may be given: On desire de
tout son cceur que ce travail puisse etre utile aux
Jesuites, car, quoi qu ils en puissent dire, on les aime et
Ton a pour eux toute la charite que Ton doit; mais on
n ose 1 esperer. Comment on such a passage would be
superfluous. On les aime! Even Sainte-Beuve, who was
no friend to Jesuits, could not stomach such hypocrisy
any more than he could abide Port-Royal s ridiculous
anti-Jesuit collections: Us me degoutent etm ennuient
a n en pouvoir parler, he wrote. Que vous dirai-je?
II y cut la queue de Pascal, . . . ce tas de volumes communs
et copies, de compilation polemique . . . acceuillant tout,
croyant tout. 1 Yes; they welcome and believe every
thing, even the pitiful ravings of the Bishop of Angelo-
polis.

1 Port-Rcyal, a i& n e d., t. iii, p. 151.

IV
THE BISHOP OF ANGELOPOLIS

MONO other extracts from La Theologie morale des Jesu-
ites which Dr. Robertson puts before his readers as
serious proof that those men encouraged the spirit of
capitalism by both precept and example is the following
question addressed to Pope Innocent X by the Bishop
of Angelopolis: Quelle autre Religion . . ., au grand
etonnement et scandale des seculiers, a rempli presque
tout le monde de leur commerce par mer et par terre,
et de leurs contrats pour ce sujet? As an historian of
economics Dr. Robertson must surely have known that
the good Bishop was talking the most palpable nonsense.
Histories of commerce are numerous, but not one of
them has a syllable to indicate that the Jesuits covered
practically all the world by sea and land with their
trading activities. It is very strange indeed that a
learned man should repeat such a story without com
ment, so strange that we must be content to leave it a
mystery. On the other hand, there is no mystery at all
about the motives which led the Bishop of Angelopolis
to make his wild statement. A short account of his
career will show them plainly, and at the same time
give a clue to the origin and propagation of myths about
the Society of Jesus.

First, who was this Bishop of Angelopolis? A Spanish
hidalgo, illegitimate, born ugly and deformed, perse
cuted , he says in his autobiography, both before and
after his birth by his wicked mother, who had tried to
destroy him in her womb, and afterwards to drown him.
At his baptism, the autobiography continues, he was

74 The Bishop of Angelopolis

restored to permanent physical beauty and health by a
miracle. 1 After recognition by his aristocratic father he
bore the name of Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, and
so may have been related in some way, horribile dictu, to
Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, S.J. A clever man, he
attracted the notice of King Philip IV of Spain and was
made treasurer of the Council of the Indies in 1626, at
the age of twenty-six. There followed what he called
his conversion, ordination, and appointment in 1639 to
the richest bishopric in Mexico, Puebla de los Angeles,
which in Graeco-Latin is Angelopolis. At the same
time, King Philip created him Visitor of the Audiencia
in Mexico, a post carrying with it jurisdiction over all
the courts of the country.

Within a year of his arrival in the New World in 1640,
he had superseded the King s representative and com
bined in his own person the offices of Viceroy, Captain
General, Bishop of Puebla, Administrator of the vacant
Bishopric of Mexico City, and Visitor of the Audiencia.
How did he use his vast power? We do not require any
biased Jesuits to tell us, for we have a letter on the sub
ject, addressed to Philip IV by the magistrates of Mexico
City, November 10, 1645. The following is an extract
from this document:

It is not so much the troubles to which reference has been
made that Mexico feels as the affliction in which it has found
itself lately throughout the last five and a half years, owing
to the presence of Don Juan de Palafox. . . . The only fruits
visible during this long period have been great expenses and
salaries for his servants, ministers, and partisans, paid from
Your Majesty s royal treasury, and by the residents of this

1 The autobiography is entitled Vida interior de un peccador arrependido. There
are besides a number of biographies, all of Jansenist origin. One of them occu
pies the whole of volume iv of La Morale pratique des Jesuites.

The Bishop of Angelopolis 75

City, now in such a bad state owing to the troubles referred
to above. . . .

He [Palafox] is ever with the whip raised, ready to strike,
and making threats that his power shall never cease. No
sooner are law-suits begun than he carefully delays them.
He is continually absent from his Bishopric, while prisoners
remain in confinement, disputes without any means of settling
them, and the Courts of Justice in suspense. The Religious
Orders are offended because he interferes with everything,
and, in his itch to command, he will have nothing reserved
from him, thereby giving his allies and helpers a pretext for
sending out new commissions and secret orders every day, in
Your Majesty s name. . . .

At the same time his own household is so little controlled
and corrected that its members have been the cause of death
to people, under scandalous circumstances. . . . Not a mem
ber of his suite but has great crimes to his account . . . their
object apparently being to capture the government of the
country. . . . To attain this end, the Bishop, assisted by his
partisans, is to be found writing at his house during the night
and at all hours against all those, whether alive or dead, who
failed or fail to take sides with him ... so that all is fear,
suspicion and sorrow of heart for the people at large and
for each individual. . . . T

1 Cited by Astrain, Historia de la Campania de Jestis en la Asistencia de Espana,
t. v (Madrid, 1916), pp. 360-1, from the original in the Archivo de Indias.
Astrain has long since come to be recognized by all who know his work as an
historian sans peur et sans reproche. His long account of the dispute between
Palafox and the Jesuits (I.e., pp. 356-41 1) is a model of scrupulous impartiality,
in which he spares his brethren nothing that tells against them and not infre
quently adds a personal unfavourable judgement which, in my poor opinion,
another Jesuit could well contest. To give but one example of his methods, it
is well known that Charles III of Spain, who was one of those chiefly instru
mental in bringing about the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, made
great efforts to secure the beatification of Palafox. In connexion with the pro
cess there are eight volumes of reports and documents extant. At first sight ,
writes Astrain (I.e., p. 357, n. i), one could believe from the title that the
volumes treated of the beatification of Palafox. But that is not so. As appears
from the sub-title (Summarium objectionale), what they contain are the objections
officially proposed against his beatification. Here is collected all that could in

76 The Bishop of Angelopolis

Within five days of the date of that letter, the new
Viceroy of Mexico, the Gonde de Salvatierra, wrote on
his own account to the King, complaining that Palafox,
when supposed to be engaged on his duties as Visitor of
the Audiencia, passed all his time in composing an essay
on the life of St. Peter and in giving publicity to an
attack on the Franciscan Friars . Almost from the
moment of his arrival in Mexico he had declared war
on the religious orders, Dominicans, Franciscans,
Augustinians, with one notable exception. For some
time he kept on quite good terms externally with the
Jesuits, visited at their houses, and made considerable
use of their services for missions in his diocese. In a
letter to the King, he warmly commended the work of
the Fathers, took one of them, Lorenzo Lopez, with him
on his pastoral visitations, and for fit least two years and
a half regularly made his confession to another Jesuit, Padre
Ddvalos. 1

The first sign of coming trouble appeared in 1642. A
canon of Puebla thought of endowing the Jesuit College
of Veracruz with a property which he possessed. That
was in 1639, before Palafox s arrival. The chapter in
formed the canon that he must not carry out his project
without adding a clause enjoining on his beneficiaries
the obligation of paying tithes to the Cathedral of
Puebla. In 1642, however, the canon made his first
bequest without the clause, whereupon Palafox, then

one way or another damage the memory of Palafox, and, since the work was
written with the manifest design of objecting, it is not possible to trust it for the
formation of a judgement on him. We have recurred to those volumes, then,
only in order to consult some documents reproduced in them textually which
we could not find elsewhere. Rather a contrast this, is it not? to the methods
of those who go to La Theologie morale and La Morale pratique for enlightenment
on the subject of Jesuits.
1 Astrain, I.e., pp. 363, 372.

The Bishop ofAngelopolis 77

Bishop, promptly excommunicated and imprisoned the
unfortunate man. At the same time he composed a
disquisition to show that all religious orders had an
obligation to pay tithes, in spite of their very clear privi
leges to the contrary, and in this work made such wildly
exaggerated statements about the wealth of the Jesuits
and the poverty of his own Cathedral Church that the
Fathers felt compelled to reply. From that moment
they were doomed. Further orders were issued to all the
Bishop s diocesans that, when bequeathing property to
religious orders, they must insert a clause ensuring the
payment of tithes in perpetuity or else the testator would
incur excommunication and other grave penalties.

As the question of Jesuit wealth has cropped up so
soon, it may be as well before proceeding further to see
how the matter really stood. In another part of his work,
unconnected with Palafox, Astrain prints the text of an
official audit of Jesuit properties in Mexico made on
December 16, 1653. To save space, I have ventured to
tabulate this document on the next page. It shows
that the Jesuits of Mexico possessed all told an annual
income of 156,300 silver pesos between 332 men, and a
capital debt, due to the raising of loans, of 740, 1 20 silver
pesos. With these figures for 2 1 Colleges or missions we
may contrast what Don Juan de Palafox received,
namely 30,000 pesos on taking office, an annual personal
income of 60,000 pesos, and fees in connexion with his
office of Visitador of 290,000 pesos. No wonder that he
was able to bank for himself in Castille out of his savings
a sum of 80,000 pesos. 1

For four years after the dispute about the tithes,
Bishop Palafox left the Jesuits unmolested and never by

1 Astrain, I.e., pp. 321-5, 382, 402.

The Bishop of Angelopolis

Property.

Number of
Men.

Annual Revenue in
silver pesos.

Debts in silver
pesos.

House of Professed,
Mexico City.

28

None ( with great
difficulty they
support them
selves on ordi

None.

nary alms ).

College of SS. Peter and
Paul, Mexico City.

66

30,000

292,000 of which
13,000 must be
paid off annually.

Novitiate of Santa Ana.

4

6,300

1 14,000

Seminary of San Ilde-
fonso.

6

8,000

6,950

College and Novitiate of
Tepozotlan.

33

14,000

33,000

College of the Holy
Ghost, Puebla.

28

20,000

29,000

College of San Ildefonso,
Puebla.

16

16,000

55,000

Seminary of St. Jerome,
Puebla.

2

None.

1,500

College of Veracruz.

7

6,000

10,670

College of Merida.

7

3,000

None.

College of Oajaca.

8

4,000

33,000

College of Guatemala.

13

4,000

1 7,000

College of Valladolid.

7

7,000

14,000

College of Pazcuaro.

8

14,000

10,000

College of Guadalajara.

12

4,000

8,000

College of Queretaro.

7

4,000

28,000

Residence of San Luis de
la Paz.

4

3,000

None.

College of San Luis de
Potosi.

5

4,000

48,000

College of Zacatecas.

6

5,000

40,000

College of Guadiana.

5

4,000

None.

Missions of Cinaloa and

60

None.

None.

the Sierras.

Total

332

156,300

740,120

a word or deed questioned the validity of their right to
preach and hear confessions in his diocese. Then sud
denly, on Ash Wednesday, 1647, he caused the rectors
of the Jesuit houses within his jurisdiction to be informed
that their faculties were suspended and that they must

The Bishop of Angelopolis 79

present the same to him for examination before the
expiry of twenty-four hours. Now, many years earlier,
Pope St. Pius V, in a desire to facilitate the work of
missionaries in America, had decided that the members
of certain religious orders, if licensed to preach and hear
confessions by any bishop in the Indies , might lawfully
continue to exercise their ministry in the dioceses of
other bishops without it being necessary for them to
obtain fresh faculties. On January 2, 1597, Pope
Clement VIII extended this privilege to the Society of
Jesus, at the same time putting the bishops of America
under an order of holy obedience not to oblige the
Fathers to seek fresh approbation when they passed from
one diocese to another. This privilege was confirmed
to the Society by Paul V and again, in even clearer
terms, by Gregory XIII. Gregory XV, however, with
drew the privilege from all orders in 1622 by the Bull
Inscrutabili, but his successor, Urban VIII, exempted all
Spanish territories from the new legislation. 1

The Jesuits of Puebla, thinking that if they submitted
their faculties as the Bishop demanded they would be
renouncing their privilege, made the great mistake of
refusing. 2 When the General of the Society of Jesus
came to know of their action, he condemned it in the
strongest terms, saying that it was beyond his compre
hension how they could have failed to give that gratifica
tion to the Bishop, no matter how brusquely he had
demanded it. You know the great respect and rever
ence which we owe to bishops, a respect and reverence

1 Astrain, I.e., pp. 393-55 where the Latin text of the Papal decrees is cited.

2 Here is Astrain s judgement: Our Fathers ought to have known that [the
Bishop s] demand was just and according to law. By not presenting the
faculties they put themselves in a false position from which they did not get
a chance to retire throughout the whole course of the dispute (I.e., p. 366).

8o The Bishop of Angelopolis

taught us by the example of St. Ignatius, St. Francis
Xavier, and other Saints and Superiors of our Society.
The upshot was that Palafox excommunicated the
Jesuits and any persons of the diocese who should go to
confession to them or listen to their sermons, giving out
that they possessed no faculties, and that their absolu
tions were consequently invalid and sacrilegious. But
this was the very point in dispute, and the Bishop must
have been very well aware that they did possess faculties,
or why had he allowed them all these years to pursue
their ministry in peace, often as his own employees? 1
The remainder of this very painful story, which may be
read in Astrain or Pastor, 2 does not concern us here.
Suffice it to say that Palafox appealed to Pope Innocent
X and won his case, though the Brief ends with these
words: Tor the rest, the holy Congregation 3 seriously
exhorts in our Lord and advises the said Bishop that,
remembering Christian meekness, he act with paternal
affection towards the Society of Jesus, which, according
to its praiseworthy institute, has laboured so usefully in
the Church of God and still labours unweariedly, and
that, recognizing the Society for a very useful helper in
the conduct of his diocese, he treat it favourably and
assume towards it again his first friendliness, which the
Sacred Congregation, knowing his zeal, piety, and
vigilance, is sure he will. 4

1 Astrain mentions another point. Confessions were heard daily in the
Jesuit churches; on feast-days in hundreds and even thousands. Now it is
clearly sacrilegious to hear confessions without faculties, but to suppose that
a religious order systematically committed hundreds and thousands of sacrileges
a day is so absurd that the idea could not have occurred to anybody except
Palafox (l.c., pp. 372-3). 2 Geschichte der Papste, vol. xiv, part i, pp. 154-9.

3 A Congregation of cardinals appointed by the Pope to try the case.

4 I take pleasure in quoting this from La Theologie morale des Jesuites (1659),
p. 61. Port-Royal could not very well leave out the words when printing the
rest of the Brief.

The Bishop of Angelopolis 81

Palafox s way of complying with the Pope s wishes
was to demand that the Jesuits should submit to being
publicly absolved from the excommunication which he
had imposed on them. Notice to this effect was posted
throughout Puebla, including the interesting detail that
the Fathers must appear with ropes around their necks
and lighted candles in their hands. When the Bishop
made known the contents of the Pope s Brief to them,
they at once submitted their faculties and, behold, it was
found that of twenty-four Jesuit priests working in Pue-
bla, sixteen held express licences from none other than
Senor Don Juan de Palafox himself, while three others
held the licence of his predecessor in office ! In other
words these nineteen men, without the use of any privi
leges whatever, were fully authorized to preach and
hear confessions in the diocese. * The remaining five had
obtained their faculties from other Ordinaries and now
lost them. With that the miserable affair might be
thought to be over, but Palafox wanted to taste the last
drop of his revenge by the public humiliation of the
Jesuits. As they appealed and worsted him, he sat down
instead and wrote to Pope Innocent on January 8, 1 649,
the letter of close on 20,000 words (forty-three pages)
with which La Theologie morale des Jesuites (1659) begins.

That letter is its own completest and most shattering
refutation and I only wish I could put every word of it
before the reader. How any man, after looking through
it, as Dr. Robertson must have done, could cite it as an
authority is a thing as mysterious as the dark, irrational
prejudices which sometimes hold the intellects, even of
professors, in bondage. For what does Palafox say?
That these Jesuits, que j ai aime d abord en Nostre

1 Astrain, with documentary proof, I.e., pp. 39&-g.

G

82 The Bishop ofAngelopolis

Seigneur, comme estant mes amis, et que j aime
aujourd huy plus ardemment par 1 esprit du mesme
Sauveur, comme estant mes ennemis , had roused the
whole diocese against him, bribed the Viceroy who
hated him mortally to persecute him, declared war on
his dignity, his person, and his flock, thrown his priests
into prison, and assembled une troupe de gens armes,
composee des plus mechants hommes et des plus
scelerats qu ils purent trouver, afin de s en servir pour
me prendre, pour me depouiller de ma dignite et pour
dissiper mon troupeau, choisissant pour cela le jour de
la Feste du S. Sacrement, comme par une providence
divine; puisque pour prendre un fivesque, il estoit
raisonnable de choisir le mesme jour auquel Pfivesque
des Evesques avoit etc pris .

He then relates how, considering that it would be une
entreprise funeste et tragique de defendre la justice de
ma cause par les armes et 1 effusion du sang de mes en-
fans spirituels (who, he assures the Pope, aimoient leur
fivesque avec tendresse ), he was in doubt what to do
when suddenly he seemed to hear sound in his ears the
words of our Lord: When men persecute you in one
town, fly into another. So he decided to preserve his life
by hiding, car j avois reconnu que le dessein de mes
ennemies tendoit principalement a me prendre ou a me
tuer dans quelque meslee, afin qu estant venus a bout
de Tun ou de 1 autre, ils puissent triompher de ma
dignite, de mon peuple, et de la justice de ma cause .
The account of his so-called flight, which he undertook,
he says, purely to save the State and soften the rage of
his enemies, is as follows:

Je m enfuis dans les montagnes, et je cherchay dans la
compagnie des scorpions, des serpens, et des autres animaux

The Bishop ofAngelopolis 83

venimeux, dont cette region est tres abondante, la seurete et
la paix que je n avois pu trouver dans cette cruelle Com-
pagnie de Religieux. Apres avoir ainsi passe vingt jours avec
grand peril de ma vie et un tel besoin de nourriture que nous
estions quelques fois reduits a n avoir pour tout mets et pour
tout breuvage que le seul pain de 1 affliction et 1 eau de nos
larmes, enfin nous trouvasmes une petite cabane, ou je fus
cache pres de quatre mois. Cependant, les Jesuites n ou-
blierent rien pour me faire chercher de tous costez, et em-
ployerent pour cela beaucoup d argent, dans 1 esperance,
si on me trouvoit, de me contraindre d abandonner ma di-
gnite, ou de me faire mourir.

Ainsi par 1 extremite ou je fus reduit, et par les perils ou
je m exposay, le public fut sauve de cet orage, et la tran-
quillite temporelle rendue a tout un royaume. Gar pour ce
qui est de la spirituelle, T.S.P., lorsque Ton a les Jesuites
pour ennemis il n y a que Jesus Christ, ou V.S. comme son
Vicaire, qui soit capable de la rendre et de 1 etablir. Leur
puissance est aujourd huy si terrible, &c.

A little later, the poor man s persecution-mania causes
him to lose all sense of the plausible. He tells how the
Jesuits caused the boys of their colleges to hold lewd
dances on the feast of St. Ignatius, ou par des repre
sentations horribles et des postures abominables, ils se
moquent publiquement de PEvesque, des Prestres, des
Religieuses, de la dignite Episcopale et mesme de la
Religion Gatholique . After that, their filling presque
tout le monde de leur commerce par mer et par terre
is a mere trifle. The reader has probably had more than
enough by now, so let me conclude with one or two
points of detail. In his 12 7th paragraph Palafox says
that the Jesuit Provincial Ildefonso de Castro expelled
EIGHTY of his subjects from the Order. Astrain, with the
records before him (I.e., vol. iv, p. 422), gives the exact

84 The Bishop of Angelopolis

number. It was six, or at the most seven. To save
appearances, Port-Royal doctored the Bishop s Latin
text when putting it into French. In the Latin, para
graph 26, he says that he knew for absolutely certain
that the Jesuits did not possess faculties either from him
or from his predecessors, but in paragraph 82 he writes:
Licentias exhibitas accepi, et quas a meis Antecessoribus
concessas inveni, quae paucissimae erant (because most of
the Jesuits held faculties from himself!) approbavi. 1
With regard to the Fathers persecution of bishops, on
which the letter dilates, there is this tell-tale passage:
Mais les Jesuites, T.S.P., se voyant armes d un coste du
bras seculier, et se confiant de 1 autre sur ce que Jean de
Munnozga, Archevesque de Mexique, non settlement lesfavori-
soit, mais estoit Vauteur et le chefde leur faction . . . In other
words, the Jesuits had appealed to Palafox s own Metro
politan and he had decided in their favour. Him illae
lachrymae. The last fifty-nine paragraphs of his letter are
taken up with wild charges against the Jesuits Constitu
tions, their moral teaching, and their private behaviour.
In Mexico they are described as being as wealthy as
Croesus, though at the time they owed five times more
than they possessed, and throughout the world they are
declared to be the greatest danger threatening the
Church, though successive Popes believed them to be
the Church s ablest defenders. With tears of sorrow that
he should be compelled by his conscience to do such a
thing, Palafox concludes with an appeal to the Pope in
language of mingled vehemence and pathos either to
suppress the Jesuits altogether or radically to change
their Constitutions. The letter had no effect whatever

1 Cited in Astrain, I.e., p. 404. I have not seen the Latin text. The French
version of the above extracts makes changes to get rid of the glaring contra
diction.

The Bishop of Angelopolis 85

in Rome. Rome was old and wise and had met such
men as Palafox before. He was patently unbalanced,
a headstrong, domineering man who, whatever his
private virtue on which the Jansenists were so given to
harping, had no capacity at all for government. The
Spanish authorities realized it after some further experi
ence of his unhappy character and recalled him to his
native country, where he died in peace. According to
the Encyclopaedia Britannica it was the Jesuits who frus
trated the efforts made by Jansenists and Bourbon kings
to secure his beatification but, unfortunately for the
story, the Jesuits had been some years suppressed when
the non-placet of the Holy See put an end to his chances.
And now we must say good-bye to him, though we have
given only a small sample of his quality. It is difficult to
believe that he was quite sane, and so the more strange
that any man possessed of the least critical sense should
trust a word of his letter without plenty of corroborative
evidence. Yet, on the sole strength of it, and of a similar
document in La Morale pratique des Jesuites, Dr. Robert
son assures his readers that there is no reason to suppose
that the descriptions of the trading activities of the
Jesuits are untrue in any material particular . 1

As a result of the legend of Jesuit wealth, sanguine
romantic souls still dream of buried treasure in the wilds
of Paraguay. Was it not only a year or two ago that a
party of stalwarts left England to find it? And never a
peso did they find, any more than did the other numer
ous expeditions and treasure-hunting parties which
have been organized from time to time in various
countries for the same purpose. As for the Jesuits of
South America attempting to get all the trade, all the

1 Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, p. 109, n. 2.

86 The Bishop of Angelopolis

transport and banking facilities into their hands (As
pects, p. 1 08), it would, perhaps, be too much to expect
of Dr. Robertson that he should have studied Pablo
Hernandez exhaustive and conclusive work, Organiza
tion Social de lasDoctrinas Guaranies de la Compania de Jesus, 1
but he might have glanced at Muratori s essay on the
South American Jesuits, which has been translated into
English, or turned a page or two of Gunninghame
Graham s little classic, A Vanished Arcadia. It will be
pleasant to conclude with a few paragraphs of that great
gentleman who has made the subject of which he speaks
peculiarly his own, not merely out of books but by much
brave and splendid adventuring:

Your Jesuit is, as we know, the most tremendous wild
fowl that the world has known. . . . But into the question of
the Jesuits I cannot enter, as it entails command of far more
foot and half-foot words than I can muster. Still, in America,
and most of all in Paraguay, I hope to show that the Order
did much good, and worked amongst the Indians like
apostles, receiving an apostle s true reward of calumny, of
stripes, of blows, and journeying hungry, athirst, on foot, in
perils oft, from the great cataract of the Parana to the
recessses of the Tarumensian woods. Little enough I per
sonally care for the political aspect of their commonwealth.
. . . For theories of advancement, and as to certain arbitrary
ideas of the rights of man ... I give a fico yes, your fico
of Spain holding that the best right that a man can have
is to be happy after the way that pleases him most. And that
the Jesuits rendered the Indians in Paraguay happy is cer
tain. ... It is certain the Jesuits in Paraguay had faith fit to
remove all mountains, as the brief stories of their lives, so
often ending with a rude field-cross by the corner of some
forest, and the incription hie occisus esf, survive to show. . . .

All the reports of riches amassed in Paraguay by the

1 Two volumes of 1,324 pages, fully documented. Barcelona, 1913.

The Bishop of Angelopolis 87

Jesuits, after the expulsion of their Order, proved to be un
true; nothing of any consequence was found in any of the
towns, although the Jesuits had no warning of their expul
sion, and had no time for preparation or for concealment of
their gold. Although they stood to the Indians almost in the
light of gods, and had control of an armed force larger by
far than any which the temporal power could have disposed
of, they did not resist, but silently departed from the rich
territories which their care and industry had formed.

Rightly, or wrongly, but according to their lights, they
strove to teach the Indian population all the best part of
European progress of the times in which they lived, shielding
them sedulously from all contact with commercialism, and
standing between them and the Spanish settlers, who would
have treated them as slaves. These were their crimes. . . .*

1 A Vanished Arcadia, London, 1901, pp. viii xii.

V
! , DR. ROBERTSON S MISLEADING GASES

npHE contents of this little book must seem annoyingly
JL unrelated, but that is due to the diversity of com
plaint which Dr. Robertson has against the Jesuits. In
his pages they are everything by turns and nothing
good, traders out of their sphere, exploiters disguised
as evangelists, time-servers, and unscrupulous casuists.
All their sympathies, we are to believe, were for pushful,
progressive people who had dedicated their pieties to
the new god of Big Business. To make the burden of a
Christian conscience light for such men would appear
to have been their chief concern, nor could any one
guess from reading this historian that they often beg
gared themselves to relieve other people s necessities
and had made almost a habit of dying in the service of
the plague-stricken. Sophists, economists, and calcu
lators, that is what they were, we must understand, for
all their Xaviers and Glavers. To prove it, Dr. Robert
son provides a variety of cases, derived from his usual
repertory or from some magazine articles. An examina
tion of these will not be alien to the demands of fair play
which even Jesuits have a right to expect from their
critics.

I . CARDINAL DE LUGO

On page 104 of Aspects of the Rise of Economic Indi
vidualism we read: When a Jesuit cardinal approves
of "sweating" we know that we have found a religion
which has moved far from medieval ideas into the world
of laissez-faire? No one will deny that that is a serious
charge against the Jesuits in general, since the Cardinal

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 89

in question was Juan de Lugo, probably the greatest
and most representative of their theologians. We might
expect, then, to find it based on very full and careful
evidence, but all we get from Dr. Robertson is a passage
of four lines out of a Belgian review. They are as fol
lows: { Le card, de Lugo dit que le salaire, qui ne donne
pas a Pouvrier de quoi se nourrir et se vetir decemment,
et a fortiori de quoi entretenir sa famille, n est pas tou-
jours injuste. Tout cela, traite ainsi incidemment,
revele une coutume conforme. 1 The writer of these
words gives a reference to de Lugo which Dr. Robert
son strangely omits. Do the words embody a faithful
account of de Lugo s teaching, and, above all, is Dr.
Robertson justified in proceeding, on the strength of
them, to charge with such abominable opinions a man
who is known to have spent most of his income as a
cardinal on the poor of Rome? 2 Let us see.

The context of the incriminated passage runs as
follows: That is considered a just wage for a house
hold employee (famulus) which amounts at least to the
lowest grade of wage usually and customarily paid to
such persons in that place for that type of work. But
observe that you must not argue, in estimating the just
wage due, from the fact that some people may be in the
habit of giving more than is usual to their servants. . . .
Nor, in the third place, is even that wage always unjust
which does not suffice for the proper maintenance and
clothing of the servant, and, much less so, one with
which the servant may not be able to support himself,
his wife, and his children. For the case occurs where

1 V. Brants in the Revue d Histoire Ecclesiastique, Louvain, t. xiii, no. i (15 Jan
vier 1912), p. 88, n. i.

z For de Lugo s charities cf. Hurter, Nomenclator Literarius, Innsbruck 1871,
vol. i, p. 693.

go Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

the service rendered is not deserving of so large a wage,
and many are satisfied with the one given them because
they are able at the same time to attend to other busi
ness whereby they may supply and provide for them
selves what is lacking for their sustenance and clothing,
as Molina observes, n. 2. 1 All through this passage de
Lugo uses the word famulus, which the French writer
quoted by Dr. Robertson incorrectly translates ouvrier.
An ouvrier is a wage-earner in the modern sense, but de
Lugo was thinking of quite a different type of worker,
and not at all of full-time wage-earners such as we
know, who derive no advantage from their work beyond
the wage given for it and are not allowed time to make
good its possible shortcomings by employing their ener
gies in other directions. That this was the truth of the
matter becomes obvious in the Cardinal s next sen
tences, for he goes on to illustrate what he means from
the cases of apprentices, choristers, pages in noble
families, and others, who make a bargain with the
parties they serve, and are not only willing to take less
than what we call a living wage, but even to pay for
the concomitant opportunities of training and educa
tion which are put within their reach.

If there is no such bargain, the servant leaving the
matter to the master s discretion, then, says de Lugo,
the master is obliged to give a just wage, such as is
commonly and usually given to others for work of the
same kind , and, if he fails to do so, servants are not to
be blamed who, in such circumstances and unable with
out great difficulty to obtain their rights, secretly take
from their master s goods what is necessary for their

1 Joannis de Lugo, Disputationes sckolasticae et morales, editio nova, Parisiis
1860, t. vii, pp. 456-7. Tractatus de Justitia et Jure, disp. xxix, sec. iii, n. 62.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 91

support . So far, then, from approving sweating , the
Cardinal justified recourse to occult compensation, but,
before jumping to the conclusion that he thus condoned
petty thefts, it would be well to read what he has to say
Defurtisfamulorum. 1 We have seen already in Chapter I
what de Lugo taught on the subject of the just price,
and that in buying and selling he does not allow any
advantage whatever to be taken of another s subjective
need. That principle applies to the purchase or hire of
labour in exactly the same way as it does to the pur
chase or hire of goods. The communis aestimatio may not
have been a perfect standard of just values, but it was
the fairest standard men could think of in those days
before the modern organization of industry. When the
Cardinal said that a non-living wage need not always
be unjust, he was thinking exclusively of servants with
other employments to eke out their earnings or of such
as derived educational advantages from their work to
compensate them for the smallness of their pay. What
fair-minded man will say that such people were
sweated , and with Juan de Lugo s approval? In
stead, then, of having found a religion which has
moved far from medieval ideas into the world of
laissez-faire , Dr. Robertson has found a mare s nest.

2. TAMBURINI AND THE INNKEEPER

A Jesuit casuist is asked whether an innkeeper may
ask a guest to dine on a fast day, knowing that he is
issuing an invitation to sin. He answers that it may be
taken as a probable opinion that it is lawful, because
the innkeeper s primary intention is not to incite to sin,
but to make a profit out of the provision of a meal.

1 Disp. XVI, sec. iv, par. z.

92 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

How does this compare with the prohibition of Satur
day and Monday markets in Scotland ? (Aspects, p. 1 04.)
Through being too dependent on La Theologie morale
des Jesuites, Dr. Robertson has propounded this case
quite incorrectly. Tambourin, to whom he refers,
meaning Tamburini, says nothing about an innkeeper
inviting a guest to dine. In those old times the Lenten
regulations were much more severe than at present.
On fast days, not only were people obliged as at present
to confine themselves to one square meal, but at that
meal as well as at the two permitted collations they
might not eat anything except Lenten fare, which ex
cluded all flesh meat, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs.
In other words, one was more or less confined to dry
bread, fish, and vegetables. Tamburini s case turns on
the question whether innkeepers and shopkeepers may
sell such lawful fare to purchasers whom they know
will use it for two square meals or in some other way
contrary to Lenten discipline. The easiest means of
determining Tamburini s doctrine will be to give a
translation of his section, De cauponibus et vendentibus
cibos:

You ask, in the third place, how innkeepers and other
tradesmen ought to act during Lent towards customers who
are not going to fast? I answer that, in order to meet your
query, we must distinguish various cases.

1 . When the innkeeper or tradesman has a good idea that
his customers will not break the fast, you may take it for
certain that it is lawful for him to serve them, procure goods
for them, and even invite them to buy, because he is not
co-operating with any sin.

2. But what if the innkeeper or tradesman, dealing in
Lenten fare, has a doubt as to whether his customers may
not break the fast by making a number of meals of the said

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 93

Lenten fare? I reply that it is still lawful for him to sell,
because no one is to be presumed bad without proof to the
contrary. The innkeeper has no right to think that his cus
tomers are desirous of sinning, and consequently he may
freely serve them and sell to them.

3. But what if the seller of Lenten fare knows that the
purchasers will probably or certainly violate the fast? I
reply with Sanchez and Diana that even so the lawfulness of
his selling is sufficiently probable. The reason for this con
cession is that the provision of goods by the innkeeper or
tradesman, or even their spontaneous solicitation of custom,
is not done by them as a direct allurement to disregard of
the fast and so, not as a direct allurement to sin, but for the
sake of making a profit. The purchasers know that right
well, and, on the other hand, the act of supplying the Lenten
fare and of inviting the customer to buy it is in itself indif
ferent, since the food could be purchased for a lawful use.

But you will say that the purchase is connected with the
sin of violating the fast? I answer that it is so connected
through the malice of the purchasers, and the sellers are
excused by their very trade which they exercise honestly
when they sell the permitted Lenten fare about which we
are now speaking. . . .

4. Having dealt with the case of those who sell lawful
fare, there arises a twofold question, first, as to what is to
be thought of an innkeeper who sells or serves dairy-produce
(lacticinia) on fast-days? and, secondly, what is to be thought
of one who sells or serves meat on the same days?

To these questions Tamburini, following Sanchez,
replies that if a person does not possess a dispensation,
in the shape of a Crusader s Bull or otherwise, to take
milk, butter, cheese, and eggs, and the innkeeper knows
that he does not possess it, then it is not lawful for the
latter to sell those goods on a fast day, nor does his
trade excuse him in the matter. Still less does it

94 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

provide him with an excuse to sell meat. Following Loth,
Tamburini writes: In Catholic districts it is a grave sin for
innkeepers to put meat on the table of their guests on a fast day
and whoever did so indifferently would be heavily punished. . . .
I have said indifferently , because it is allowed in some special
cases by reason of evident necessity, arising from the illness of
a guest, or because there is nothing else to put before the company.
In Protestant countries where meat is provided on
fast days by all other innkeepers, Tamburini, still
following Loth, permits a Catholic member of the trade
to serve it in two sets of circumstances, (i) if his failure
to do so might cause him to be prosecuted in the Courts,
and (2) on condition that he does not serve the meat
unless expressly asked for it. 1 I think that Tamburini s
teaching, as thus unfolded from his own text, does not
serve Dr. Robertson s purpose quite so well as the
tendentious and misleading version which he gives out
of La Theologie morale.

3. THE SEVILLE COLLEGE FAILURE

In Seville the Jesuit College even underwent a bank
ruptcy caused by trading losses. The steward of the
College borrowed 450,000 ducats at interest. With
this he carried on trade. He shipped linens, iron,
saffron, cinnamon; he built houses and mills; bought
estates and gardens and flocks. Then the College went
bankrupt in suspicious circumstances, as the account
books were removed, and the courts were unable to
secure information about the affair. This raised a
clamour through the countryside (Aspects, pp. 108-9).
Here I bow to Dr. Robertson and say, Well hit! The

1 Thomae Tamburini, Tractatus Quinque, in Quinque Ecclesiae Praecepta, opus
posthumum, Venetiis 1719, p. 105, nn. 10-18.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 95

story as he tells it is substantially true, though, as I shall
show, the conclusion he would have us draw from it is
a complete non sequitur. His reference is to La Morale
pratique des Jesuites, but it was too good a story to be
omitted from La Theologie morale either, and here it is
as Monseigneur of Angelopolis saw it:

Toute la grande et populeuse ville de Seville est en pleurs,
T.S.P. Les veuves de ce pays, les pupilles, les orphelins, les
vierges abandonnees de tout le monde, les bons Prestres, et
les seculiers se baignent avec cris et avec larmes d avoir
este trompez miserablement par les Jesuites, qui apres avoir
tire d eux plus de quatre cent mille ducats, et les avoir
despensez pour leurs usages particuliers, ne les ont payez que
d une honteuse banqueroute. . . . Ainsi cette grande multi
tude de personnes qui sont reduites a Paumosne, demande
aujourd huy avec larmes devant les Tribunaux seculiers
P argent qu ils ont preste aux Jesuites, qui estoit aux uns tout
leur bien, aux autres leur dot, aux autres ce qu ils avoient
en reserve, aux autres ce qui leur restoit pour vivre; et ils
declament en mesme temps centre la perfidie de ces Reli-
gieux, et les couvrent de confusion, et de deshonneur dans
le public. 1

The nonsense about widows and orphans is Palafox s
invention, as the creditors of the College were practi
cally all traders like the steward himself, and a con
siderable number were the steward s kinsmen, includ
ing two of his brothers. But let us see who he was and
to what extent the Jesuits in general may be fairly
accounted responsible for his misdemeanours. He was
a lay-brother named Andrew Villar Goitia from the
Province of Biscay, who, before becoming a Jesuit, had
acquired some reputation as an able man of affairs. In
1632 Villar was appointed procurator of the flourishing

1 La Theologie morale des Jesuites, premiere partie, p. 36.

96 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

College of St. Hermenegild in Seville, which at the time
had upwards of nine hundred students on its roll, and
an annual revenue of 8,248 ducats. 1 What the duties
and responsibilities of a procurator in a Jesuit College
were may be seen in the Society s Constitutions, which
were republished, for anybody to read, at Antwerp in
1635. There we find among the Rules for Procurators
no fewer than six prescribing the most exact and de
tailed care in the keeping of books, as well as this
general advertisement: He is to understand that every
thing with an appearance of secular trade in the cultiva
tion of land, the disposal of farm-produce in markets,
and similar matters, is prohibited to members of our
Society. 2 The examples given here are noteworthy,
because to cultivate land and dispose of its products in
markets is not really trade at all, in the sense in which
canon law has immemorially forbidden it to clerics. It
is trade in that sense to buy something with intent to
sell it again, unchanged, at a higher price. But the
seventh General Congregation of the Society of Jesus
which met in 161516 declared in its 84th decree that
it was forbidden to any Jesuit to buy fields with a view
to drawing profit from their cultivation; to buy goods
in order to work on them and then sell them improved
at a dearer price; to pay printing-houses for the produc
tion of Jesuit books, and then take over the sale of the
volumes; to have private printing-presses in the colleges
for the purpose of producing books to be sold to externs .
Besides this ordinary and very definite legislation

1 Astrain, I.e., vol. v, p. 40.

2 Omnia, quae speciem habent saecularis negotiationis, in colendis videlicet
agris, vendendis in foro fructibus, et similibus, intelligat prohibita esse nostris.
Constitutiones Societatis Jesu et Examen cum Dedarationibus, Antwerpiae 1635,
pp. 221-2.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 97

there was the case-law constituted by the replies of
Jesuit Generals to questions occasionally sent them.
Thus Aquaviva was asked in 1594 whether in a ship,
hired to convey a cargo of wheat to some missionary
country, it would be lawful to send back a cargo of salt
for sale, so as to avoid returning the vessel empty. His
answer was: Non permittendum . . . unless, perhaps, out
of charitable regard for the poor the salt is to be sold
at the same price as that for which it was purchased.
On being asked whether a Jesuit procurator might
lend money to a merchant, the agreement being that
he should share the profit or loss of the business on
which the merchant employed it, another General,
Muzio Vitelleschi, answered, March 16, 1641: That
is trading and consequently forbidden to us.

There are plenty more examples of this kind, but
neither the general nor the particular legislation counted
for much with Brother Andrew of St. Hermenegild s,
Seville. He was an utterly unscrupulous person, not in
the least in the interests of the College, but in the
interests of his own family. As came out in the judicial
investigations, the College had never made a penny out
of his financial transactions, which he carried on secretly
with the aid of some Biscayan merchants in Seville. To
keep his dealings from the notice of his superiors he did
not hesitate to falsify the College accounts over a num
ber of years. But at last, in 1642, they began to suspect
that something was amiss and high time, too! The
Brother was put under an order of obedience to reveal
what he had done, and, thus constrained, he admitted
to having contracted a debt of 80,000 ducats. The
superiors then put the affair in the hands of an outside
official, who by dint of laborious inquiries found that the

H

98 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

debts were more than five times the amount to which
Villar had confessed. According to his books, the in
come of the College was 13,749 ducats, but, when
pressed to account for that sum a year after he had
entered it, he said that the figure should have been
9,025 ducats, and finally admitted that the true amount
was 5,413 ducats.

It quickly became known outside that Villar had

tampered with his accounts, and the merchants who had

invested money in his transactions naturally raised a

clamour. Only one man, however, Juan Onofre de

Salazar, accused the Jesuit superior of knowing about

Villar s dealings, and he was not able to sustain his

charge. That he should have known and that he was

culpably negligent, no Jesuit would dream of denying,

though it has to be said for him that Villar bore a good

reputation and had never previously been suspected of

underhand tricks. If we knew more about Villar s two

merchant brothers, Lorenzo and Gregorio, who had

invested respectively six million maravedes and twelve

thousand pesos in his ventures, we might be able to

understand the deplorable affair better. It resulted in

the ruin, not, as Bishop Palafox would have us believe,

of widows and orphans whose tears, on his showing,

must have caused the Guadalquivir to overflow, but of

the once splendid College, which, to pay off Villar s

relatives and other creditors, had to dispose of practically

all its goods and chattels. A sad story, indeed, but how

much does it contribute, when told fairly, as Astrain tells

it from the reports of the judicial investigation, 1 to the

support of Dr. Robertson s universal proposition that

the Jesuits certainly acted up to the maxim, there is

1 L.C., pp. 40-7.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 99

nothing like business ? I am not forgetting Lavalette,
but, as he was too late for inclusion in La Morale pratique,
Dr. Robertson seems to be unaware that he ever existed
and so dispenses me from the necessity of writing about
him. Instead, we may proceed to examine a specula
tive case of bankruptcy ethics, first rendered famous
(or infamous) by Pascal and now newly edited by
Dr. Robertson.

4. PIROT AND THE BANKRUPT

A Jesuit affirms that a bankrupt is entitled to retain
as much from his creditors as will maintain him decor
ously ut decore vivat and it is explained that this must
not be taken as an incitement to "long-firm" frauds,
for the Jesuits do not favour aggrandizement by in
justice but: "if the casuists have milder sentiments, it
is for the good merchants, who have received of their
fathers an honourable estate and position, or else who
have arrived by good and legitimate ways to a better
position than their birth brought them". This is, of
course, precisely what is alleged to be an innovation of
the Puritans (Aspects, p. 104; reference to Pirot, Apolo-
gie pour les Casuistes) . It would be useful to know what
precisely Dr. Robertson means by the adverb decorously
in this context. In his exposition, he rather mixes up r
a number of distinct cases which require careful sorting,
but before doing that we may consider for a moment
Pascal s version of the matter. It is his Jesuit marionette,
on whom with Puckish delight he has fixed an ass s
head, that makes the following speech:

J aurois bien encore d autres methodes a vous enseigner;
mais celles-la suffisent, et j ay a vous entretenir de ceux qui
sont mal dans leurs affaires. Nos Peres ont pense a les
soulager selon Pestat ou ils sont. Car s ils n ont pas assez de

ioo Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

bien pour subsister honnestement et payer leurs dettes tout
ensemble, on leur permet d en mettre une partie a couvert
en faisant banqueroute a leurs creanciers. C est ce que
nostre Pere Lessius a decide et qu Escobar confirme au
tr. 3, ex. 2, n. 163: Celuy quijait banqueroute peut-il en seurete
de conscience retenir de ses biens autant qu il est necessaire pourfaire
subsister safamille avec honneur, ne indecore vivat? Je soutiens que
ouy avec Lessius , et mesme encore qu il les eust gagnez par des injus
tices et des crimes connus de tout le monde, ex injustitia et notorio
delicti, quoy que en ce cos il n enpuissepas retenir en une aussi grande
quantite qu autrement. Comment ! mon Pere, par quelle estrange
charite voulez-vous que ces biens demeurent plustost a celuy
qui les a volez par ses concussions pour le faire subsister avec
honneur, qu a ses creanciers a qui ils appartiennent legitime-
ment et que vous reduisez par la dans la pauvrete? On ne
peut pas, dit le Pere, contenter tout le monde, et nos Peres
ont pense particulierement a soulager ces miserables. 1

In his answer to this passage, Pirot, who merely re
produces the view of Lessius, cries out upon Pascal for
translating the phrase ne indecore vivat by the words
pour vivre avec honneur. It is a famous point of contention,
and some even of Pascal s good friends venture to
whisper a word of criticism. Dr. Stewart, in his excel
lent edition of the Provinciates (p. 282), warmly defends
him, but admits that the full opinion of Lessius con
cerning bankrupts is not given in the paragraph cited
above. Escobar, poor man, is once again made to bear
the blame. The fault is not Pascal s but Escobar s, who
fails to chronicle the exception made by Leys [Lessius]
in the case of fraudulent bankrupts and spendthrift
nobles. As I suggested before, that defence might be
acceptable for a man who went astray on a point of
fact affecting nobody s reputation, but surely it does
not excuse a person whose whole set purpose and inten-

1 Huitieme Lettre.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 101

tion is to pillory and defame living men, entitled by the
law of God and nature as much as he to their good
name?

What, then, precisely did Lessius teach with regard
to this matter? He taught, (i) that a man reduced to
extreme need and unable to pay his creditors without
sacrificing both his own and his children s lives is not
obliged to pay, always presupposing that he cannot by
any other lawful means support his family; (2) that a
man who has come down in the world, so as to be in
very great need, can conscientiously defer the payment
of his debts until his fortunes improve, provided that
his creditor is not in the same straits as himself; (3) that
a man who has ruined his estate by extravagance or by
vice must pay his debts without delay, even if it means
the loss of his social status (De Justitia et Jure, lib. 2,
cap. 1 6, dub. i). With regard to bankrupts who did
not acquire their fortunes by unjust means nor fail
through their own extravagance, he teaches first that
they are not obliged to reduce themselves to beggary
in order to pay in full, and that even a man who had
amassed his fortune by fraud might retain enough to
support life. Then comes the much more delicate point
whether one who has made his fortune fairly and lost
it without fault, through a shipwreck for instance, may
retain enough to prevent him from altogether sinking
in the social scale. Such a one, he says, can conceal as
much as is necessary for him to live sparingly and
modestly according to his station ut tenuiter vivat
secundum suum statum. This, he continues, is the teach
ing of Pedro Navarrus, Silvestro Mazzolini, O.P., and
others, who admit that the bankrupt in question can
retain sufficient to keep him from want ut non egeat

102 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

or, as Silvestro says expressly, lest otherwise he be
obliged to live in a way that spells disgrace ne aliqua-
tenus indecenter vivat. The same is to be gathered plainly
from the Code of Law cited above, especially with re
gard to goods acquired by a man after his bankruptcy,
from which even a debtor who is such through his own
fault can retain as much as is necessary for him to live
without dishonour, according to his condition ut pro
sua conditione non indecore vivat. 1 The three adverbs used
here by Lessius, tenuiter, indecenter, and indecore, are
plainly meant by him to convey the same idea. He is
interpreting the law as it stood in the Low Countries
in his day, and his view is that it allows a man who has
gained his fortune lawfully and become bankrupt inno
cently to retain just so much of the property possessed
by him at the time of his bankruptcy, or subsequently
acquired, as will enable him to live without dishonour
and disgrace in the eyes of those who belong to the
station to which he has himself legitimately risen, while
the man who has gained his fortune lawfully but become
bankrupt through his own fault is allowed to retain the
same amount, only from property acquired after his
bankruptcy. That Lessius was a good interpreter of
the law of his country would seem to be indicated by
the fact that its Governor, Albert the Pious, always
kept the treatise, De Justitia et Jure, on his table, c uti
fidelissimum Consiliarium . 2

It may interest the reader to see how this teaching of
Lessius, muddled if not misrepresented by Pascal, com
pares with the teaching of non-Jesuit Catholic theolo
gians at the present day. Here, then, are the opinions

1 De Justitia et Jure, lib. 2, cap. 16, dub. 3, nn. 42-5.

2 De Vita et Moribus R. P. Leonardi Lessii, Parisiis 1644, p. 39. Lessius died
in 1626.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 103

of two of the most eminent among them, the Domini
can, Father Prummer, and the Redemptorist, Father
Aertnys:

Prummer: A debtor who becomes bankrupt can,
according to the natural and positive law, retain those
goods which are absolutely necessary for an honest
and humble living, and those goods too which are
necessary means to the opening of a new small business.
The same holds true for the wife and children of the
debtor.

Aertnys: C A debtor who becomes bankrupt can, by
the natural law, retain what is necessary for his own
and his family s honest, though modest, support, ac
cording to his condition; for no one is obliged to reduce
himself to grave need, or altogether to give up a status
justly acquired, in order to make restitution. Accord
ingly, he does not sin by concealing such assets, but he
must beware of swearing falsely before a judge. This
teaching of Aertnys is identical with that of St. Al-
phonsus Liguori, the Founder of the Redemptorists, on
which the Catholic Church has set her official seal. It
is identical too, as far as a careful scrutiny has enabled
me to judge, with the teaching of Leonard Lessius,
however one chooses to translate ut non indecore vivat, and
I cannot see that it affords the least support to Dr.
Robertson s thesis that the Jesuits had entered a sort of
conspiracy to make the yoke of conscience light for
merchants. Indeed, might not one urge that had they
been in the least concerned to promote trade their cue
would have been to make things utterly intolerable for
the bankrupt, who is trade s most dangerous enemy?
But, of course, they were not in the least concerned
to promote trade. They were concerned to promote

104 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

justice and to allow unfortunate men whatever measure
of mercy the law of nature and the law of their country
did not deny them.

5. ESCOBAR

We have reached him at last! I personally confess to
a feeling of affection for this man, who, beyond all
possible doubt, is the most universally decried Jesuit
that ever lived. I have noticed the words used of him
by a man not of his own order who knew him well,
Pater pauperum et consolator afBictorum Father of
the poor and consoler of people in sorrow. In the
British Museum I have turned over the pages of his
published poems, great long things, all about our
Lady and the Saints, not remarkable for exquisite taste
but redolent of a childlike piety that makes one forget
the formal crudities. Here is a man, you feel, to whom
the Mother of God and St. Ignatius are not figures in
a niche, good for a perfunctory prayer, but warm,
throbbing, living, day-to-day friends, as truly loved as
the noble lady and grand sefior who were his earthly
parents. 1 For Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza came of
great stock on both sides, a race of warriors and states
men, second to none in the high romance of Spain. He
was born in 1589 and became a Jesuit at the age of
sixteen. As master in the schools, for which he composed
no fewer than 160 dialogues and comedies to be acted
by the boys on festive occasions, he probably had the

1 The titles of his published poems are: (i) San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema
heroico; (2) Historia de la Virgen Madre de Dios desde supurisima Conception hasta su
gloriosa Asuncion, Poema heroico; (3) Gonzaga, Poema lyrico. In manuscript he left
a whole series of poems in the shape of sacred allegories, Autos sacramentales,
another series on the Blessed Virgin s Immaculate Conception, which was a
doctrine exceedingly dear to him, a third series on Jesuit Saints and martyrs,
and a fourth devoted to the instruction of youth, including a catechism in
rhyme. He was a great friend of young people.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 105

great poet Galderon among his pupils. When ordained
priest his literary activity became well-nigh incredible.
The first of his learned works to be published was a
huge folio of exegesis, In Caput VI Joannis de augustissimo
ineffabilis Eucharistiae arcano. That was followed by an
enormous commentary in twelve great volumes on the
Sunday and feast-day Gospels for the use of preachers,
which, even to-day, they would find helpful if they had
recourse to it. Then came a complete commentary on
the Bible in fourteen volumes of which a non-Jesuit
student wrote: In this book I have found united the
good things which separately make the fortunes of other
authors. And everything is put better, in the most
suitable order, expressed with a natural eloquence, un
affected, gravely and most sweetly. Nor is anything
forgotten which might conduce to the literal and moral
understanding of the sacred text. 1 In 1652 Escobar
brought out yet another folio volume of commentary
on the Old Testament to help preachers. Two more
folios appeared at different times, the first, On Para
dise, or the Beauty of Virtue , and the second On the
Ten Plagues of Egypt, or the Foulness of Sin . Besides
these, he also published A hundred Spiritual Exhorta
tions on the Rules of our Father Ignatius , and in the
last year of his life, when he was eighty, a great tome,
the child of my old age , In Canticum Canticorum, sive
de Mariae Deiparae Elogiis. On his desk, when he died,
was another volume, almost completed, De Mariae
Deiparae Conceptione immaculata. Escobar never had a
secretary and wrote every one of his millions of words
with his own hand.

1 Foreword by Emanuel Astete, of the Order of Minims, professor of theology
in Rome and Valladolid, to the second volume of Escobar s Universae Theologiae
moralis receptiores sententiae.

io6 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

The writings mentioned afford overwhelming proof
that the one big aim in life of this good man was to
promote the glory of God and the salvation of his
neighbour. But there is something more. In his own
day he was regarded primarily as a missioner, one
whose active, indefatigable work for souls made people
astonished that he should have been able to write any
thing at all. Besides his regular sermons in Valladolid
throughout the year and those which he delivered as
director of the flourishing sodality of our Lady, he
preached Lenten courses, involving several sermons a
week, for fifty years in succession, and these in the most
famous pulpits of Spain. Never once during the whole
of that period till the last year of his life did he dispense
himself from the rigorous fast of Lent, so that people
used to marvel how he could do all he did without
collapsing. To the poor in their homes, the sick, the
inmates of hospitals and prisons he was a visitor of un
failing regularity, and nothing he could do for their
comfort was ever too much. No wonder that when he
died the whole town went into mourning. Such was
Antonio Escobar, Tineffable Escobar, celebre et ridi
cule pour reternite! whose doctrines { ont ete et sont
encore Pobjet de la reprobation universelle et du degout
des honnetes gens . 1 One wonders what the Escobars
of old, a proud and valiant race, would have thought
could they have known that, by Pascal s doing, their
name was going into the French language as a synonym
for prevarication! 2

1 A Catholic opinion and (I think) a non-Catholic one. Victor Giraud,
La vie heroique de Blaise Pascal, Paris, 1923, p. 116; Augustin Gazier, Blaise
Pascal et Antoine Escobar, Paris, 1912, p. 33.

2 Cf. any moderate-sized French dictionary under the words, escobar, esco-
barder, escobarderie. Talking of prevarication, for which Pascal and his friends
professed such a horror, there is the following good story in the Memoires of the

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 107

Now it was precisely his zeal and charity which
brought upon Escobar the opprobrium that we are so
often invited to endorse, for just as he tried to help
priests in the pulpit with his many volumes of sermon
material, so did he try to help priests in the confessional
by bringing out in Spanish a hand-book of moral
theology for the use of confessors. Within a brief period
this book ran into thirty-seven editions and never a soul
was found in all Catholic Spain to do anything but
praise it. Then, in 1644, Father Antonio put it into
Latin under the title Liber theologiae moralis, and had
it published at Lyons, so that it might become more
widely useful. For more than ten years it circulated
freely in France and went into new editions, without a
word of criticism from any quarter. During the same
period it was also published in Germany, Italy, and
Belgium; enjoying everywhere the favour it had met
with in Spain. The book was read, of course, only by
priests, as no others would have been interested, or
indeed able to understand it properly, however much
Latin they knew. Yet to listen to some apologists for
Pascal, one would think it must have had the vogue
among all classes of a novel by Edgar Wallace. We are
told, for instance, by M. Jacques Chevalier that the

Abbe de Font-Chateau, compiler of the first two volumes of La Morale pratique
des Jesuites. When, in March 1656, the solitaries of Port-Royal des Champs
were obliged to disperse, two remained behind, disguised as poor peasants.
On March 3Oth, Lieutenant d Aubray made an official visit by order of the
Government to see whether the solitaries had obeyed the law. Addressing
himself to one of the pretended peasants named Charles, he asked where was
the imprimerie. Charles, imitating a peasant s speech, answered that he did not
know any nun of that name, whereupon the magistrate getting angry, demanded
to be taken to the press at once. Charles then led him grumblingly to a shed
where his brother-solitary, Bouilly, dressed as a vigneron, was diligently pressing
out grapes! The grave doctors of Port-Royal laughed heartily over this
incident, and we hope that Pascal joined in their merriment.

io8 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

Provinciates, which were mainly an onslaught on the
Liber theologiae moralis, are still a noteworthy and suc
cessful attempt to put men s consciences on their guard
against laxity, to remind them of the integrity of the
moral obligation [as if Escobar didn t!], the purity of
Christian life, and the paramount importance of not
taking the decisions of casuistry for rules of universal
ethics . 1 At the present day there are infinitely more
manuals of moral theology in circulation than in Pas
cal s time, yet who will be so silly as to suggest that they
are read widely by lay Catholics or have the slightest
direct influence on their lives? The fact is that in so far
as moral text-books have done any harm it has been
through the medium of Pascal s charming French prose.
When priests of old read Escobar they read him seri
ously, without omitting the inconvenient bits that rather
negative the seeming mildness of some of his views.
Also, they had the seven volumes of his great work,
Universae Theologiae moralis receptions sententiae, to turn
to if they felt in any doubt as to his meaning. Two of
the seven had appeared at Lyons in time for Pascal s
use, had he wanted to use them.

Some years ago, a professor at the University of Graz,
in Austria, Dr. Karl Weiss, became so puzzled by the
discrepancies between the Escobar of legend and the
Escobar whom a little study of the man s own works
revealed to him, that he gallantly decided on a thorough
investigation. His book appeared in 191 1, a volume of

1 Pascal, English tr., London, 1933, p. 120. In this Catholic book published
by a London Catholic firm we find reference (p. 118) to a certain, unstated
true principle of which probabilism is the distortion? (italics mine) . Curious,
to say the least of it, as the great majority of moral text-books used in seminaries
to-day are based on this same distortion of the true principle, whatever it is.
On p. 14 we are told about all the people who pay homage to Pascal to-day
not excepting the Jesuits, whom he had used somewhat ill (italics mine again) .

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 109

334 large octavo pages with the title: Antonio de Escobar
y Mendoza as a Moral Theologian in Pascal s illumination
and in the light of truth. 1 The method of this book is the
only truly scholarly one of giving the texts in full and
letting the reader judge for himself. Writers favourable
to Pascal, Strowski, for instance, have been willing to
admit that he misjudged Escobar s intentions: Si Ton
lit Escobar, comme V a fait Pascal et a la suite de Pascal
beaucoup d autres, on y trouvera, je 1 ai dit, les maximes
singulieres qui indignent Pascal: mais elles neparaitront
point dictees par un esprit d indulgence a 1 egard du
peche. Elles ne semblent pas voulues, ni amenees a
dessein; elles paraissent imposees par la deduction et la
methode, et, parfois, acceptees a contre-coeur. L exces
dont elles sont le chatiment, c est 1 exces de 1 esprit
juridique, non Tabus de 1 esprit d indulgence. . . .
Escobar n est pas un psychologue, n est pas un mora-
liste, n est pas un theologien: c est un juriste. 2 This line
of argument, which Chevalier also adopts, copying it
from Strowski, amounts more or less to saying: Don t
be too hard on the poor fellow; he was only a lawyer
and knew no better. 3 I am sure Escobar would have
been very grateful to the kind gentlemen, but, in fact,
he does not stand in the least need of such an apology.
Dr. Weiss makes it perfectly plain that he was a great
and profound theologian, a conclusion which anybody
who takes the trouble to read a few pages of the magni
ficently produced folios of his large work on moral
theology will easily reach for himself. The learning
alone embodied in them ought to have preserved him
from the derision of learned men. But alas, they do not

1 P. Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza als Moraltheologe in Pascals Beleuchtung and
im Lichte der Wahrheit, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1911.

2 Pascal et son temps, t. iii, pp. 1 15-16.

i io Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

read him. They choose to go by Pascal. For myself,
I declare that I prefer him in the treatise De Justitia et
Jure to both de Lugo and Lessius. 1 In twenty-seven
finely argued chapters, Dr. Weiss discusses all Pascal s
charges against him, confronts each charge with an
array of texts which overwhelm it, and shows as plainly
as man can show that Pascal not only misjudged Esco
bar s intentions but allowed his passion to blind him to
Escobar s very meaning. True, the actual words which
he cites from the Liber theologiae moralis are certainly in
that book, but there are a great number of other words
which he does not cite also in that book, and frequently
they put a very different construction on Escobar s
thought from that which Pascal tries to make it bear.

Dr. Robertson, in his book, refers us to Escobar with
a very wide gesture: In the cases where I have quoted
Jesuit opinions from Jansenist sources it will be found
that I have not allowed any Jansenist exaggerations to
enter. It will be found that the opinion is justly attri
buted to the Jesuits by referring to the writer con
cerned, 2 or as a rule to such a writer as Escobar (Aspects,
p. 109, n. 2) . Well, let us refer to Escobar on the subject
of bankrupts, which was discussed in the last section.
The reader may remember the capital which Pascal
made of the words ne indecore vivat , and how he
rubbed in Escobar s concession that even a bankrupt
who had contracted his debts ex injustitia et ex notorio
delicto might retain what was necessary ne indecore vivat,
though not as much as a bankrupt who had failed
through no fault of his own. Immediately before mak
ing the concession, however, Escobar had said: A man

1 This treatise has a charming epilogue to it, Ad Deiparentem Dominam
mearn in which Escobar s love for our Lady is beautifully revealed.

2 How often did Dr. Robertson refer to the writer concerned?

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases in

who has become bankrupt is obliged in conscience to
make restitution if he afterwards arrives at better for
tune. Hoc certum. Earlier still, he had referred to the
case when a creditor, through somebody s bankruptcy,
is going to be reduced to as grave need as the debtor
himself. What is the debtor s obligation in such a case?
Escobar s answer is that a debtor, even if in great need,
is not in the least excused from paying what he owes
Minime excusatur pressus gravi necessitate debitor. 1 Those
two sentences ought, by themselves, to have been enough
to give Pascal pause, or, at any rate, to make him look
up Lessius. But it was not his job to be just. He would
have found in Lessius the context of Escobar s thought
when he wrote, rather abruptly I agree, that even a
culpable bankrupt could retain some of his property.
When in 1663 the fifth volume of Escobar s Universae
theologiae moralis receptiores sententiae appeared at Lyons
Pascal had been dead nearly a year, so we cannot say
whether he would have looked at it. Considering what
little impression the earlier volumes had made upon
him, it is unlikely. However, that fifth volume is open
to our inspection and was open to Dr. Robertson s
inspection. There we find (lib. xxxvii, dub. ciii) the
following interesting question: When a bankruptcy is
declared in a public place and accompanied with cer
tain ignominious ceremonies prescribed by law, is the
debtor s obligation in conscience to pay in full ex
tinguished for good? Escobar begins his answer with a
short summary of what he has already written in volume
iv on the subject of bankruptcy. Here are his words:

The immunity of bankruptcy was introduced by the civil

1 Liber theologiae moralis, tractatus 3, examen ii, cap. 6, n. 20; tractatus 3,
examen ii, c. 4, n. 13.

ii2 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

law for the common good, in order that debtors who are
suited and cast into prison for non-payment may cede and
make over all their assets juridically, with a view to the
satisfaction of creditors, as far as is possible. Now, once the
bankruptcy has been declared, two privileges or advantages
follow for the bankrupt, first, that he is delivered from prison
and may not be further molested, and secondly, that if he
afterwards acquires some property he is not deprived of it
altogether, but only obliged to compound as far as he con
veniently can, and a means of subsistence is left to him,
slender indeed, but fitting (relicta ei parca quidem, sed congrua
sustentatione) . This holds good in the tribunal of conscience
also, as it is a privilege conceded by the laws according to
which the contracts are made.

At this point Escobar repeats the question with which
he began. He uses the Sic et Non method of argument
throughout the whole work, giving first an affirmative
answer to the various Dubia, and then a negative one,
after which he winds up with his own opinion. Proceed
ing thus he first writes that all further obligation in con
science to pay in full is extinguished wKen the bank
ruptcy is public and accompanied with ignominious
ceremonies. This, he says, is the opinion of some writers
who argue that the ignominy involved extinguishes the
obligation. Then he gives the negative opinion:

The obligation to pay in full is not extinguished because
that ignominy does not destroy the natural duty of paying
one s debts. Rather is it a punishment for the presumed fault
of the debtor in contracting them beyond his power to pay,
and a deterrent to others, lest by extravagance and negli
gence they come to the same state.

Assuredly, this is by all means the view to be held, as
inforo externo the other one is admitted by nobody.

Next, in Dubium CIV, Escobar asks whether a man

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 113

who has become bankrupt may lawfully conceal some
of the assets which he possessed before the bankruptcy
with a view to living according to his state . The dis
cussion, in the same form as before, is as follows:

He can do so lawfully because this is to be plainly gathered
from the civil laws. So speak Lessius and others afterwards
to be cited.

He cannot do so lawfully, because there is no foundation
in the laws for the assertion that he can. The laws speak only
of property acquired subsequently to the man s failure, from
which he can retain as much as will suffice to maintain him
frugally (parce quidem) according to his condition. So de Lugo.

I know that theologians commonly say that a man can
retain a sufficient amount of the assets which he possessed
before his bankruptcy to enable him to live modestly (tenuiter)
according to his state. So Silvestro, Navarrus, Bonacina
[none of them Jesuits]. Bonacina cites Rebellus [a Spanish
Jesuit], but that man seems to be speaking only of property
acquired after the bankruptcy, though he does not explain
himself with enough detail. All of them are speaking of a
debtor who becomes bankrupt through no fault of his own,
not of a culpable one, so Diana has no justification for saying
that their concession applies also to a debtor who has become
such through notorious crime. For this view of his he cites
Lessius, but erroneously, for Lessius speaks only of property
acquired after the bankruptcy.

I would say, then, about this matter, that from the nature
of the case in the tribunal of conscience, a debtor can retain
what is necessary for his frugal support (necessaria ad se parce
sustentandum) from property owned by him before his failure,
when, without that amount, he would be reduced to grave need [Italics
added]. Notice, however, that, if a debtor ex contractu con
ceals and retains assets in this way, he cannot in conscience
use the privileges granted by law to bankrupts, for the law
declares him bankrupt on condition that he delivers up all
his present assets in payment of his debts. But a man who

ii4 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

retains some of his property, ad alimenta necessaria, does not
make a genuine cession of his goods, and it is for such a
genuine cession that the privileges are granted. Accordingly,
from property acquired subsequently to his failure, he will
not be able to retain as much, perhaps, as he might otherwise
have done, because the privilege by which he is not obliged
to pay his debts from that subsequently acquired property,
except in so far as he conveniently can, is granted only after
a true cession of his goods, and when they have all been
surrendered. He can, however, conscientiously retain as
much as is necessary to keep him from suffering extreme or
grave need. This is conceded to him, not by the privilege
of human law, but by the law of nature. 1

Dr. Robertson sent us to Escobar and that is what we
find. Now let us hear him on the subject of a debtor
ex delicto:

A man who is in debt through criminal folly being the
culpable cause of the whole consequent loss, even though it
may have happened by chance, is obliged to make restitu
tion in full. ... If through grave or extreme need he cannot
and is not obliged to do so immediately, he will have to make
up all his creditor s losses afterwards, as they are the result
of his crime in the first place. 2

And not only is he obliged to restore the full amount of
the creditor s losses, continues Escobar, but also to re
coup him for any damage he may have suffered through
delay in payment. As we should say nowadays, he
would be obliged in conscience to pay back not only the
amount of the debt but interest at current rates on that
amount. And it is to be remembered that this is Esco
bar s ruling for a man who had acquired his fortune
lawfully, though he lost it through a crime. Does not

1 R. P. Antonii de Escobar et Mendoza, Universae theologiae moralis receptiores
absque lite sententiae, vol. v, pars prima, Lugduni 1663, pp. 86-7.

2 L.c., p. 84.

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 115

the evidence as thus fairly presented take a little of the
shine from Pascal s elegant sarcasm? Most of the cases
pilloried by that merciless satirist could be justified in
the same way by reference to Escobar s own plain-
spoken text. Considering the amount which he wrote
it is wonderful how rarely he is wrong. He is subtle,
indeed, as the passages here quoted from him show, and
at times he allows a certain high-spirited exuberance to
run away with his pen. But fundamentally he is as sound
as a bell, for all the jangling tricks of his traducers.

What then, it may be objected, about Escobar s justi
fication of the use of false weights and measures by
merchants, and how defend his opinion, reported by Dr.
Robertson from La Tkeologie morale des Jesuites (Aspects,
p. 107), that they could afterwards deny on oath
before a judge having done so? First, the economic
situation of the period has to be taken into account.
Owing to the different currencies circulating in the same
country prices tended to fluctuate violently. The civil
authority might, for reasons of its own, fix, let us say,
the price of wheat at a certain amount, while the dealers
in wheat and the people who purchased it might be
generally agreed that that legal price was not fair. If the
merchants sell at the legal price they will be ruined, and
if they openly disregard the legal price they will find
themselves in prison. What is to be done? Let us hear
Escobar:

When two prices prevail, the one fixed by the Prince and
the other established by the common estimate of the com
munity, then the price fixed by the Prince must be observed,
in the same way as must his just decrees. But if, all things
considered, it is morally certain that the Prince s price is
unjust and iniquitous, it need not be observed, and the seller

1 1 6 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

can accordingly take so much from the weight or the measure
of his goods as will indemnify him. Should there be a doubt,
though, as to whether the price is just, then it must be pre
sumed just, in favour of the Prince who has authority to
command and fix prices. But if all the people, or the majority
of them, violate the Prince s monetary statute with impunity,
he knowing or winking at such violation, then his statute
is not obligatory, because he is considered to assent to its
violation. I would speak otherwise if transgressors of the
statute were punished. 1

There is nothing very lax about that teaching, nor is
there about Escobar s further opinion that a man
charged with malpractices of the sort indicated might
swear he was innocent. He gives short measure to re
coup himself for the unfairness of the prices fixed by law.
Public opinion is agreed that the prices are unfair, and

^ the civil authority connives at the violation of the law.
No one considers that he is acting unjustly, and he is
morally certain himself that he is not doing so. How
ever, by some mischance he is cited before a court on the
charge of having used false weights and measures in his
business dealings. The judge asks him whether he had
used false weights and he answers on oath that he had

V not, meaning that they were not false in relation to the
unjust prices which the law forced him to accept. The
judge in this case, as Escobar states it, is not questioning
juridically, or ordine juris servato, for which it is required
that there should be a strong presumption of guilt
arising out of the proven ill fame of the accused. We are
not now dealing with English law at the present day
but with Spanish law in Escobar s time. Suppose, how
ever, that the judge is questioning juridically, that is to

1 L.C., pp. 159-60 (lib. 39, sect, i, cap. i, nn. 13-14).

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 117

say, with a right to be told the truth, how does Escobar
solve the case? He solves it thus:

When the judge questions juridically and this is known to
the accused, he is bound to confess the truth even though it
should entail capital punishment for him. The reason for
this is that everybody is obliged to obey a legitimate superior.
But to conceal the truth in a matter of little consequence, or
to tell a lie over it, is not a mortal sin, unless accompanied
by an oath. So too, if the judge asks questions about an
action that was at least not gravely sinful the accused is not
obliged to reply according to the mind of the judge but can
deny having done what he fears will get him into trouble.
For instance, if Titius kills Caius in reasonable and blame
less self-defence, he can deny having killed him before the
judge, because what the judge means by his question is
whether Titius has murdered Caius, and that Titius has
not done. 1

In an earlier part of his work Escobar wrote: It is
certain that, if a judge questions in this juridical manner
which obliges the person interrogated to confess the
truth, such a person will commit a mortal sin if he con
ceals the truth, using an amphibological oath (vol. iv,
lib. 29, sect. 2, cap. 17, n. 194), and he goes on to say
that the same applies if anybody uses an amphibological
oath to strengthen a contract, because he thus deceives
his neighbour in a serious matter . Having dealt with
the cases of persons who employ double-meaning oaths
in courts or in connexion with contracts, he has the
following words for other cases: Nobody can doubt that
to speak and, a fortiori, to swear, without necessity or
for some permitted cause, in any other sense than that
understood by the hearers is a sin; for such a mode of

1 L.c., vol. vii, p. 247. Escobar does not say that a lie is no sin but that it is
not necessarily a mortal sin.

1 1 8 Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases

speech is contrary to the relations of men as social and
political beings.

Here and there in his book, Dr. Robertson mentions
Probabilism. It is the doctrine Tor which the Jesuits are
so notorious and by which they are to be found justify
ing everything easily 5 . Dr. Robertson plainly thinks,
and, indeed, says so in as many words, that the Jesuits
invented the doctrine of Probabilism and that it is and
has always been something peculiar to their Society.
But, as anybody with a moderate knowledge of the
history of theology knows, the first man to expound and
defend the doctrine explicitly was not a Jesuit at all but
the great Spanish Dominican theologian, Bartholomew
Medina, and that from his time to the date of the Lettres
Proviwiales, one of the most brilliant periods in all
theological history, Probabilism was taught practically
x universally and not with least verve and acumen by
the Doctors of the Sorbonne. The Catholic Church con
demned the Tutiorism or rigorism for which Pascal and
the Jansenists stood, just as at the other extreme she
condemned the laxity of some casuists, including a few
Jesuits. Probabilism she has never banned, and it is
to-day, as it was of old, by far the most widely-approved
system for the guidance of consciences within her fold.
Before making his foolish remarks about it, Dr. Robert
son might have tried to understand what it meant. This
is not the place to enlighten him, but I may cite a
passage from the derided Escobar on the subject, with
which to conclude a chapter already too long: When
there are two opinions, I gladly choose the one which
rests more firmly on the sense and bearing of the
particular law and of the whole body of laws, or which
is more approved by custom and received opinion; .

Dr. Robertson s Misleading Cases 119

knowing, however, that against the divine or natural
law human custom has no force. . . . When a problem
arises about which opinions are equally divided, as
regards the number, the testimony, and the authority
of the doctors who have expressed them, I choose and
give greater approval to the opinion which is more
favourable to religion, piety and justice. ... In the
matter of vows, oaths and testamentary dispositions,
my approval goes to the opinion which seems to agree
better with the nature of such actions, and also to that
which tends more to the protection of orphans, widows,
strangers from foreign parts, and other persons called
in law miserabiles. 1

1 L.C., vol. i, Praeloquium, cap. 23.

VI
THE FIVE PER CENT. CONTROVERSY

IN support of his contention that it was the Jesuits
rather than the Puritans who made nascent capitalism
respectable by giving it religious encouragement, Dr.
Robertson devotes a long section of his book (pp. 136-
60) to the controversy about the lawfulness of interest
on loans which divided Catholic theologians in the six
teenth century. His sole authority for what he says on the
subject is an article entitled, Die deutschen Jesuiten im
5% Streit des 16. Jahrhunderts , which Father Bernhard
Duhr contributed in 1900 to the Innsbruck periodical,
Zeitschrift filr katholische Theologie. This article was the
result of much research in Jesuit archives, but it does not
cite documents textually, nor, in the nature of the case,
was it possible for its author to explain very clearly why
the controversy arose. Dr. Robertson, at a further re
move from the original texts, is naturally still more vague.
His discussion hangs suspended in the air, without
attachments to the historical context of the dispute.
One feels while reading him as if one was walking in a
fog out of which loom up all sorts of queer-looking and
sinister objects, two bishops turning a whole city upside
down with their yeas and their nays, a lot of squabbling
Jesuits with funny names, the census realis utrimque
redimibilis, written just like that without a word of
explanation, and finally c a famous book which charac
terized the work of the Jesuits thus: The Jesuits, who
profess an accommodating theology and try to indulge
the passions and desires of men as far as they can, have
worked hard on this matter of usury to find subtleties

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 1 2 1

and means of palliating and excusing it, in order to grant
freedom to exercise it without scruple and in security of
conscience to those who wish to follow their maxims.
In Dr. Robertson s opinion, this description of the acti
vities of the Jesuits is not unjust . The Jesuits, then, in
Dr. Robertson s opinion worked hard to enable people
to exercise usury without scruple. And what is the
famous book containing this truth so advantageous
to the reputation of the Puritans? Of course, dear
reader, you must know it well, as it is famous, and I need
only mention its title, La Morale des Jesuites (1667), for
you to know that you know. 1

Now, let us see the Jesuits busily working to enable
people to exercise usury without scruple. But first of all
what is usury? It is and was and ever will be a sin com
mitted in connexion with the bilateral contract of loan
or mutuum. In the canon and civil law that contract con
sisted of a transaction whereby one party transferred to
another some thing of his, consumable by use, some
thing, in other words, sterile and unproductive, with
the obligation on the borrower s side to return to him
another thing of the same kind, exactly equal in amount
and value. Goods thus transferred were called Tun-
gibles because their place could be supplied by other
goods of the same kind, or, as we might say, other goods
could function for them. A loaf of bread is a simple

1 One could wish that the Jansenists had been more inventive with their titles,
seeing how inventive they were in other directions. It is easy to get this last-
mentioned book confused with La Theologie morale des Jesuites (1659) and La
Morale pratique des Jesuites (1669-95). As already indicated, La Morale des
Jesuites was compiled by the Jansenist Nicholas Perrault. Like the Morale
Pratique it was printed and published by the Elzevir firm in Amsterdam, though
both books have a different inscription on their title-pages. Goldsmid, Biblio-
theca Curiosa: a complete Catalogue of all the publications of the Elzevir Presses,
vol. i (Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 146-7.

122 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

example of a fungible commodity. It does not breed
other loaves of bread as a cow breeds other cows, nor
sprout rolls as a vine sprouts grapes. It is sterile, and to
use it is to consume it. If, then, I lend you a loaf and re
quire back two loaves of the same size, I am charging
you twice, for the use of the loaf and for the loaf itself,
though those two things are really only one thing. I am
a usurer. Usury consisted and consists in precisely that,
to loan some unfruitful thing and to require, not only
the return of a similar thing, but payment for the loan,
considered purely as a loan. It is a breach of contract,
and so, unjust and sinful.

Among fungible goods, the canon and civil law long
considered money to have its rightful place. Certainly,
in the old times money did not breed money, and most
people will agree that, at least until the close of the
Middle Ages, it could rightly be considered unproduc
tive. It is true that in some restricted areas it had
already by then acquired a quasi-fecundity owing to
trade developments, but, generally speaking, it was
sterile, as there was hardly any scope for investing it in
our modern way. A man kept it in a stocking or in the
vaults of some obliging monastery, and, from time to
time, took out what he needed to pay a debt, buy food,
or lend a friend. If he demanded anything of his friend
over and above the return of the sum lent, and that
purely in consideration of the loan, he committed usury.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Council
of Vienne declared that any one who should dare to
affirm the lawfulness of usury was to be punished as a
heretic.

While, however, insisting with great emphasis on the
sinfulness of usury, the Church and her theologians did

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 123

not teach that compensation for the advancement of
money was always unlawful. There might be just titles
to such compensation, extrinsic to the contract of the
loan, but arising on occasion of it. Thus, if a man asked
me, in the long past, to lend him i oo, and I was really
and truly and without pretence going to spend that sum
on the sowing of a crop of wheat, which I could be sure
would yield me a return of at least 5 per cent., or on
repairing a building, which, if left longer, must involve
me in 5 per cent, extra expense, then I could quite justly
require the borrower to pay me back, not a hundred,
but a hundred and five pounds. The two titles arising
here on occasion of the loan were called technically
lucrum cessans and damnum emergens, and, after a brief
period of discussion and hesitation, nearly everybody,
from Pope to peasant, recognized their validity.

It was easy enough to determine whether these and
other good titles 1 had a place in the loan contracts of
medieval Europe, but, with the tremendous develop
ments of commerce consequent on the discovery of new
trade routes by sea, the old, simple tests became more
difficult to apply. Money took on yearly more and more
of the lineaments of productive capital, though not for
centuries would it develop into the monster of fecundity
which nearly throttled its Frankenstein in 1932, and
thus, while the merchants, in their eagerness to get rich
quick, endeavoured by Procrustean methods to make
the ancient tides cover every sort of new and shady
transaction, the theologians, on their side, became more
and more perplexed over the increasingly complicated

1 Such as the poena convmtionalis, a fine, agreed on in the contract, to be
imposed for delay in the return of the sum lent, and the periculum sortis, meaning
the danger to the capital, which could be very real and for which some com
pensation was reasonable.

1 24 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

problems of commercial justice. The following para
graph, written by the Jesuit, Laynez, about 1554, gives
some idea of the state of affairs:

As it is supremely necessary to avoid cheating one s neigh
bour in business or acting towards him unjustly, so is it
extremely difficult to detect when such deception or injustice
has place in commercial transactions. On the one hand,
neither Scripture nor the ancient Fathers and philosophers
deal with the matter in detail, and, on the other, the astute
ness of the merchants, fostered by their lust for gain, has
discovered so many tricks and dodges that it is hardly
possible to see the plain facts, much less to pronounce judge
ment on them. This is the reason why modern writers,
whether theologians or jurists, are so confused and at variance
with one another.

Finally, the matter, being a question of morals, only
admits of a certain probability, because its nature is such
that the least change of circumstances renders it necessary to
revise one s judgement of the whole affair. Consequently,
to decide such variable questions exactly one would need
to be an Argus with a hundred eyes. As St. Basil says very
well: To understand justice is, in truth, the part of a great
intellect and of a very perfect mind. 1

In some parts of Europe,, ever since the fifteenth
century, long before the foundation of the Society of
Jesus, a business arrangement by which the investor
could obtain 5 per cent, for his money had become
prevalent and popular. It was so widespread in Ger
many that it obtained throughout Europe the name of
the Contractus Germanicus. The person in this contract
on whom the theologians fastened suspicious eyes was
a sort of sleeping partner or debenture holder who drew
a steady 5 per cent, from his investment, without in
dustry on his part or danger of losing his capital. This

1 Grisar, jfacobi Lainez disputationes Tridentinae, vol. ii, p. 228.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 125

happy arrangement was secured in the following way.
The investor, when making the contract of partnership
which everybody considered perfectly legitimate, also
entered into, or was supposed to enter into, two other
contracts, one of insurance against the loss of his capital,
for which he had to pay by agreeing to accept a per
centage of the total profits less than he would have
otherwise obtained, and a second, also of insurance, by
which he agreed to accept a still lower but guaranteed
percentage or rate of interest on the profits. All theolo
gians admitted that these contracts, if made with three
separate persons, would be quite just and untainted
with usury, but numbers of them doubted whether, if
made with one and the same person, they could be
pronounced innocent. And certainly at first sight there
was a case against the Triple Contract, as the combina
tion of the three came to be called. It seemed like pure
usury, that is to say, drawing profit without labour, loss,
or risk from the loan of a fungible commodity. But its
defenders denied that it entailed no loss. They argued
that the title, lucrum cessans, was involved, and un
doubtedly they had the rights of the argument if the
lender or investor was in a position to use his money with
profit in other and legitimate ways.

Of course, it is open to any one to say that the titles
to interest recognized by Catholic theologians were all
moonshine, and only invented to allow usury under
other names. Dr. Robertson does say as much. He in
forms us (Aspects, p. 135) that the prohibition of usury
had broken down in practice at the beginning of the
sixteenth century amongst Catholics and continued
during the course of the century to become more and
more unreal 3 . It would take much too long to argue the

126 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

point, so I can but refer the reader, if he cares enough,
to the latest treatise on the subject, August Knoll s Der
%ins in der Scholastik (Innsbruck, 1933), where he will
find it abundantly proved that Dr. Robertson s ideas
are wrong. The principal early defender of the legiti
macy of the Contractus Germanicus was the famous (really
famous) theologian, Johann Eck. First from his pro
fessor s chair in the University of Ingolstadt and then
in a series of printed theses he maintained with great
vigour and acumen that the Contract was perfectly free
from usury. His theses , writes Dr. Robertson, were
peddled with varying success round the Universities of
Ingolstadt, Bologna, Vienna and Mainz. The peddling
is a matter of opinion, but the varying success is true, as,
though Ingolstadt University declared for Eck s view,
its Chancellor, the Bishop of Eichstatt, forbade the
debates, moved probably by an unfavourable report
from the canonists in Mainz.

But Eck was not to be crushed so easily. Encouraged
by the Papal Nuncio, Campeggio, among others, he went
to Bologna, the great University of law, in 1515, and
there, on July 12, debated his thesis with great success.
His humanist enemies in Germany spread a story in
their Epistolae obscurorum virorum that he had explicitly
defended usury, but his own words remain to prove
them libellers. After his good reception at Bologna, he
applied to Paris for a pronouncement on the Triple
Contract argument by which he justified the Contractus
Germanicus, and received word that the Sorbonne s fore
most theologian, John Major, agreed with him as to its
lawfulness. 1

1 Zech, Rigor moderatus Doctrinae Pontificae circa usuras. In Migne, Theologiae
cursus completus, vol. xvi (Paris, 1859), cols. 932-3.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 127

Then, with Luther, came the deluge, and Eck had to
attend to more important matters than the ethics of
partnership. By the year 1549, when the first Jesuits
arrived to settle in Germany, Luther, Eck, and all the
other early valiants of the Reformation struggle had
disappeared from the scene. A decade later, St. Peter
Canisius, the first German Jesuit and first provincial
superior of his brethren in the country, was appointed
by Cardinal Otto Truchsess to the post of Cathedral
preacher in Augsburg, the greatest centre of banking
and exchange in the Emperor s dominions. St. Peter
was not long in discovering that the merchants and
bankers of the City possessed elastic consciences, and he
was not slow to tell them so. In a sermon preached on
the feast of St. Matthew, September 21, 1560, he said:

Have we not many Matthews in Augsburg? They sit not
only in the custom-house but in the town-hall and in the
business offices. The whole earth is full of Matthews and
publicans and usurers and those who grind the faces of the
poor with various practices. Are not they Matthews who in
all their dealing seek only gain, oppressing their neighbour
in buying and selling, in lending money and . . . taking six
or ten per cent, on it a year . . ., even though the poor man
suffers. ... And now come the new preachers to increase
the licence, so that merchants sin without any conscience, so
that nobody makes restitution and whole families are on the
way to damnation, owing to the unjust riches acquired through
usury. 1

In the letters of Canisius to Laynez at this time there
are frequent appeals for advice. Being a saint does not
necessarily make a man clear-eyed on all practical
problems, and Canisius, in certain respects, tended to

1 Braunsberger, BeatiP. Canisii epistulae, vol. ii (1898), p. 855.

128 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

be over-scrupulous in his regard for the letter of the law.
On the usury question, his profound sympathy with
poor men served to reinforce his misgivings and to
render him somewhat blind to the changed conditions
of social life. The consequence was that he remained
an obstinate medievalist on the subject of taking interest
for loans. In other words, he failed to appreciate what
was certainly a fact, that in his time the old titles could
justly be made to cover and legitimize transactions
formerly usurious. Looking back from our superior
vantage-point, it is easy for us to be scornful of the old
controversies; to regard some Jesuits as fools because
they failed to understand that their world had changed
and other Jesuits as unprincipled because they allowed
for the new circumstances.

Besides his difficulties with regard to the Contmctus
Germanicus, which he never succeeded in putting to rest,
St. Peter Canisius had others on the subject of census
or rent-charges customary in Germany. These rent-
charges were annuities of two main kinds, real and
personal. A real rent-charge, what the French call a
rente-fonciere, meant the right to an annual pension,
based on the alienation of some fructifying property,
such as lands or flocks, by the annuitant to another.
The personal rent-charge was so called because founded,
not immediately on the goods, but on the industry,
office, credit of the person to whom the property or sum
of money had been made over. On being questioned,
Laynez, the General of the Society of Jesus at this time,
informed Canisius that the rent-charges were lawful
provided a true sale took place, that is, provided the
alienation of the property was absolute. Father Elderen,
the companion of Canisius in Augsburg, also asked for

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 129

advice on the same subject, and had the following reply
from Laynez on December 29, 1562:

If the annuity be not a true purchase (emptid) but covert
usury, one ought further to consider whether the owner of
the capital is willing but unable to get it back from him to
whom it is loaned. For then, by reason of the title, damnum
emergens, or also by that of lucrum cessans if the lender is able
and ready to lay out his money in some other useful way,
it is legitimate for him to receive some interest. Further, it
will not be usury to require some interest by reason of the
poena conventionalis in the contract, or by reason of any other
of the titles which Father Nadal has set forth. Finally, by
whatever means it can be done, let not the penitents be
reduced to despair nor alienated from Confession. In this
matter one should not use the severest opinions, but those
commonly held by theologians. 1

Dr. Robertson cites the last two sentences of the fore
going letter as a pendant to the following remarks: The
first thing which is apparent is that the hands of the
Jesuits were more or less forced by the pretentions of
their charges. The Jesuits were determined to retain their
influence over the laity and could not afford to strain the allegiance
of their followers too far (Aspects, p. 137. Italics inserted).
Now, anybody reading the passage given above from
Laynez s letter with a little care will observe that he
twice over alludes to the frame of mind of the person
receiving the annuity. If there was no real sale and
consequently no properly constituted rent-charge, the
mind of the annuitant had to be explored. Was he in
sober truth willing to recall his money, laid out usuri-
ously, and was he able to get it back? If he seriously
wanted to recall it so as to invest it in some legitimate
way, but could not, as a matter of hard fact, get it out

1 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. iii, p. 585.
K

130 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

of the borrower s hands, then he plainly had a good
title, ex lucro cessante, to indemnification. In other words,
the validity of the titles depended in the last resort on
the bona fides of the contracting parties. However
plausible they might make things look on paper, if, in
fact, their own minds and wills did not endorse their
words, then, for all their trouble, they were usurers
before God and guilty of mortal sin. How the investiga
tion of a delicate problem of conscience such as this
proves Jesuit determination to retain influence over the
laity, I completely fail to see. Underlying Dr. Robert
son s words is the chivalrous suggestion that the Jesuits
were not beyond letting their principles go by the board,
in case the laity pressed them too hard. He talks airily
about the Jesuits in general, whereas there were only
two concerned, and one of the two is a canonized Saint.
Moreover, St. Peter Canisius and his companion, Father
William Elderen, waged such ceaseless war against
every form of commercial malpractice that they were
both subjected to heavy persecution and eventually
compelled to abandon their work in Augsburg.

Laynez, in his letter, referred to some notes of Nadal,
who, after the General himself, was the most important
and influential man in the whole Society of Jesus. In
1562, Nadal, the representative in Rome of the German
Jesuits, drew up a set of rules for the guidance of the
Fathers at Ingolstadt and Augsburg. The following is
an excerpt from this document:

In the usury cases which happen commonly in Augsburg,
for instance when Socrates gives Plato money and, his capital
remaining intact, receives annually 5 or 6 per cent., clearly
the answer must be that the transaction is against the divine
and natural law, nor can any dispensation be looked for with

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 131

regard to it. But it is lawful to receive the same gain, either
if it is genuinely given as a present, without deceit or fraud,
or on account of damnum emergens or lucrum cessans, provided
that damage really does ensue for Socrates or that he does
really cease to make profit, if Plato has his money. The
poena conventionalis is reducible to this latter title, namely
when Socrates lends Plato his money, stipulating that he
must pay a certain sum over and above if it is not returned
within the agreed time. The sign that this convention is not
a usurer s fraud will be if Socrates is more anxious to have
his money returned at the end of the agreed time, without
a fine added or any gain, rather than later with a fine. 1

As to whether the Jesuits professed e an accommo
dating theology or allowed their hands to be forced by
the pretentions of their charges , we have some news
from Augsburg, dated June 1564. The canons of the
Cathedral chapter there drew up a long list of com
plaints against St. Peter Canisius and his brethren,
among which were the specific charges that they showed
themselves too stern in the confessional and refused to
absolve those whom they judged to be usurers. St. Peter
made his defence in a long document, of which the
following is an excerpt:

With regard to the usurers, of whom, alas, there are too
many cases in Augsburg, the Jesuit Fathers know what is in
accordance with divine and human law in this matter, and
also what modern doctors and canonists think. They go by
the prescriptions of these authorities, lest, acting otherwise,
they damn their own souls and the souls of others. . . . They
consider to be usurious the custom now everywhere common
among the people of taking 5 per cent, for money loaned, the

1 Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu. Epistolae P. Hieronymi Nadal, vol. iv
(Madrid 1905), p. 247. The sixty-two volumes of the Monumenta Historica
published so far (Madrid-Rome, 1903-32) contain the true Morale pratique
des Jesuites.

132 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

capital remaining the creditor s property and returnable to
him at choice.

It is not possible to excuse this custom in conscience,
because formal and real usury is here plainly committed and
the divine precept violated, Mutuum date, nihil inde sperantes.
This is so, no matter what certain jurists oppose, who, argu
ing according to the prudence of this world, think that many
things of this kind are to be winked at, against the common
and received doctrine of both ancient and modern theologians
and canonists. 1

So, rightly or wrongly, did St. Peter Canisius declare
himself, and he was for fourteen years the provincial
superior of his brethren in Upper Germany. Neither
Laynez nor Nadal had been able to tell him definitely
that the Contractus Germanicus was lawful, and he and
most of his brethren accordingly regarded it with the
deepest suspicion, even though it was expressly allowed
in Augsburg by a decree of the Senate. When St. Francis
Borgia succeeded Laynez as General of the Society of
Jesus, he, too, received anxious appeals from Germany
on the subject of the Contract. It was causing the Jesuit
confessors there infinite difficulty from the simple fact
that they were not willing to have their hands forced by
their charges. The first sign of any change in their atti
tude appeared in 1567, when Pope St. Pius V, on being
asked by Borgia, declared as a private theologian, that
he thought 5 per cent., derived from the combined con
tracts of partnership and insurance, that is to say, from
the Triple Contract, might lawfully be taken, at least
in the case of minors and other such persons who could
not themselves traffic with their money. 2 On receipt of
this news, Canisius gratefully recorded the comfort that

1 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. iv, p. 563.

2 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. v, pp. 486-7, 529.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 133

it gave his men, but, at the same time, called the Gene
ral s attention to other elements of the problem which
had not yet been clearly defined. The reason for that
was a curious hesitation in the Pope s own mind about
the whole affair. He inclined to think that the Triple
Contract was lawful, but, fearful of the consequences of
openly sanctioning it, made reservations which had the
effect of further obscuring the issues. One thing is quite
plain, that the German Jesuits never dreamt of acting on
their own responsibility, but were scrupulous to apply
to Rome whenever a point seemed to need explanation.
In I56Q 1 Pope Pius issued the Bull, Cum Onus, on the
subject of rent-charges, a rigorous piece of legislation
forbidding certain developments in the theory of rents
which assimilated them to the Triple Contract. The
Bull, in Dr. Robertson s opinion, was a challenge to
the Jesuits and they accepted it boldly (Aspects, p. 153) .
For any evidence to that effect, though, he has to jump
four years, and then all that he can give us is a snippet
out of Father Duhr, recording the verdict of some
Roman Jesuits in 1573, that where the legislation of
Pius V was not in force it did not bind. And neither did
it, as any tiro in canon law could have told him. He
allows us to think that the developments in the theory
of rent-charges were due to the innovating activities of
the Jesuits when, as a matter of fact, theologians such as
Gabriel Biel and John Major had discussed and de
fended them before the Society of Jesus came into exist
ence. Again, he mentions a certain Father Martin ,
whom he found in Duhr s article, as preaching against
the lawfulness of the 5 per cent. Contract, and appears
to deduce from that and two other completely irrelevant

1 Not 1559 as in Aspects, p. 153, and Index, sub verb. Bulls .

134 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

facts the somewhat remarkable conclusion that the
Jesuits had become terribly lax. At any rate, immedi
ately after recording the three facts he continues: And
so matters went on. By 1571 the laxity of the German
Jesuits was so pronounced that the Austrian Provincial
complained of its spread into Austria (Aspects, p. 138).
Had he but known that Father Martin Gewarts was
the most celebrated preacher the German Jesuits pos
sessed, and that his influence in Munich, the seat of the
Bavarian Court, was very great, he might have reckoned
a sermon of his against the lawfulness of the universally
practised contract evidence of obscurantism, or rigor
ism, or anything else he liked, but not surely of laxity.
As for the Austrian Jesuits and their complaint, the
explanation is perfectly simple. After Pope Pius V had
expressed his mind in a sense at least partially favour
able to the Contractus Germanicus, and before the publica
tion of the Bull, Cum Onus, some of the German Jesuits
went as far as His Holiness had done but not one step
farther. In Austria, on the other hand, the 5 per cent.
Contract was almost unknown, owing to different eco
nomic circumstances, and had no such sanction in the
country s laws as it enjoyed in Germany. The Austrian
Jesuits accordingly declared against it when the ques
tion came up, but only for fear of giving scandal by any
other decision, and not on theological grounds. In any
case, as Dr. Robertson must have seen in Duhr s article,
the Austrian Fathers misunderstood the point at issue,
thinking it to have been settled in Rome that 5 per cent,
could be taken on the capital of minors, widows, and
such people, without reference to any title extrinsic to
the mere loan. But, of course, as already shown, that
was not so at all. The 5 per cent, was permitted only if

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 135

taken according to the terms of the Triple Contract,
which itself depended for its lawfulness on the titles of
damnum emergens and lucrum cessans.

The unreality of Dr. Robertson s treatment of this
question becomes apparent when he refers to the Jesuit
commission set up in Rome in 1573 to discuss the 5 per
cent. Contract. Of the fourteen decisions at which the
Fathers arrived he dismisses all save one as not par
ticularly interesting . Now, why are they not particu
larly interesting? Can the reason be that, instead of
affording support to Dr. Robertson s thesis of Jesuit
laxity, they go dead against it, condemning usury, and
anything bearing the semblance of usury, in the plainest
terms? 1 The single decision on which he fastens for
comment runs as follows: As often as two or three doc
tors are of the same opinion on matters pertaining to
moral theology and cases of conscience, the confessor
can follow their view when the common opinion of doc
tors does not gainsay it. 2 In his footnote reference to
Duhr s article for this decision, which is paraphrased
there accurately enough, Dr. Robertson writes as fol
lows: This is certainly one of the earliest enunciations
of the doctrine of probabilism. He plainly feels that he
has made a discovery, for in his text he says : This might
prove to be one of the beginnings of the doctrine of
"probabilism" for which the Jesuits are so notorious. It
is not impossible that the adoption and development of
this doctrine might be traced to the efforts of the Jesuits
to keep up to date in their economic casuistry. Now,

1 The decisions are given in their Latin original in Braunsberger, I.e.,
vol. vii, pp. 672-4.

2 Quotiescumque duo vel tres doctores idem sentiunt in rebus moralibus et
conscientiae casibus, potest confessarius illos sequi quando non reclamat com-
munis sententia doctorum. Braunsberger, I.e., p. 674.

136 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

as we are indulging in mights , let us say that the deci
sion of the Jesuits might be shown to be something quite
different from probabilism. There are four different
drafts of the decision. In one of them it first ran as
follows: As often as two or three doctors are of the same
opinion in matters pertaining to moral theology and
cases of conscience, the confessor can follow their view,
even if he himself and other doctors think the contrary? If that
last concessive clause had been allowed to stand, Dr.
Robertson would have a good case, but it was crossed
outj and the words when the common opinion of doc
tors does not gainsay it substituted. As thus stated the
doctrine taught is not probabilism at all but something
more like tutiorism, or, at any rate, probabiliorism, for,
ambiguous though it is, it seems to imply that the com
mon opinion must be followed irrespective of the proba
bility of other opinions. The confessor cannot follow the
opinion of two or three doctors, or, as in another draft of
the decision, that of four or five doctors, when the com
mon opinion is against it. The probability of an opinion,
it should be said, does not depend on a counting of
heads, for or against it. It is to be deduced primarily
from internal reasons and by speculative argument. The
intrinsic soundness of those reasons and the cogency of
the argument are what constitute a doctor s authority
in the matter. The opinion of one single doctor, such as
St. Thomas or St. Alphonsus Liguori, might be held
as probable on the ground of their authority, whereas
the common opinion of ten other doctors, or twenty
or a hundred, might not be probable, because they
merely copied one another and the initial reasoning
was weak.

It is not impossible , says Dr. Robertson, that the

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 137

adoption and development of this doctrine [probabilism]
might be traced to the efforts of the Jesuits to keep up
to date in their economic casuistry. Unfortunately, the
great school of Dominican theologians at Salamanca
got in first. We find, for instance, the illustrious founder
of the school, Vitoria, writing in 1539, before the Society
of Jesus was founded, that if an educated man con
siders two opinions to be probable, then, no matter
which of the two he follows, he does not sin . Vitoria s
pupil, the famous Melchior Cano, who, incidentally,
was no lover of the Society of Jesus, underlined that doc
trine about 1 548 and added that a confessor would often
be justified in following a probable opinion even if it
was contrary to what he himself believed. The Jesuits
of 1573, as we have seen, hesitated on this point and
eventually crossed out Cano s concession. Dominic
Soto, one of the most learned and authoritative Domini
can commentators on St. Thomas, expressed himself in
the same terms as Vitoria, in his De Justitia etjure, pub
lished in 1556, and, to make a long story short, Bartholo
mew de Medina, the head of the Dominican school at
Salamanca in 1573, taught explicitly that if an opinion
is probable, it is lawful to follow it, even though the opposite
opinion be more probable 9 . 1 That scrap of history is enough
by itself to dispose of Dr. Robertson s suggestion, but

1 Medina s lectures were published in 1577 under the title, Expositions in
Sanctum Thomam, and there, Prima Secundae, quaest. 10, art. 6, we find the defini
tive expression of probabilism: Si est opinio probabilis, licitum est earn sequi,
licet opposita probabilior sit. His proof of this proposition is exactly what any
probabilist of to-day would put forward: An opinion is said to be probable
not because apparent reasons are adduced in its favour and because it has
assertors and defenders, for by that argument all errors would be probable.
Rather is that a probable opinion which wise men put forward and confirm
with excellent arguments. It would imply a contradiction, he maintains, if
we could not lawfully follow an opinion probable in this sense, even as against
another speculatively more probable.

138 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

much more could be said. The probabilism whose
adoption and development he would trace to the efforts
of the German Jesuits to keep up to date in their eco
nomic casuistry was taught explicitly at the beginning of
the seventeenth century by the most eminent among the
Jesuits traditional foes, the Doctors of the Sorbonne I 1
Moreover, the Jesuits greatest theological antagonist in
Spain shortly before, the Dominican Banes, was in his
moral theology a probabilist.

In March 1575 the Bishop of Augsburg, Johann
Egolph von Knoringen, moved principally by the repre
sentations of his friend Jasper Haywood, an English
Jesuit professing at Ingolstadt, issued an ordinance for
bidding the priests of his diocese, under pain of suspen
sion, to absolve those who put their money out to interest
according to the Contractus Germanicus. At the same time
he declared that those who defended the Contract in
writing would incur excommunication, reserved to him
self. Father Paul Hoffaeus, a man of austere life but
difficult temper, had by this time succeeded St. Peter
Ganisius as Provincial of the German Jesuits. He was
very angry with Haywood for what he had done, because,
according to his version, the Bishop, through Haywood s
advice, was put in the humiliating position of having
to withdraw his orders, so much clamour did they raise.
Now, from the many letters of Hoffaeus published by
Braunsberger it is easy to see that he was given to
exaggerating and interpreting events according as they
suited or opposed his own ideas. He certainly seems
to have exaggerated on the present occasion, because

1 Extracts from the writings of Gamaches, Isambert, and Duval, all profes
sors at the Sorbonne, which expound and defend probabilism as clearly as a
modern Jesuit professor could do it, are given by de Meyer, Les premieres contro-
verses jansenistes en France, p. 51.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 139

everything goes to show that the Bishop did not with
draw his orders. 1

A few months later Bishop Egolph died and was suc
ceeded by Bishop Marquard von Berg, who promptly
quashed his predecessor s ordinance. On this subject
we have an interesting letter from Father Theodoric
Canisius, half-brother of St. Peter and Rector of the
Jesuit University of Dillingen. It was addressed to the
General, Father Mercurian, February 12, 1576:

We daily find our Patron [Bishop Marquard] more diffi
cult to deal with. He has already withdrawn six hundred
florins of the University s annual revenue. . . . Just recently,
some priests of this diocese, formerly our pupils in theology,
showed themselves unwilling to absolve those who desired
to use in future that Contractus Germanicus by which 5 per cent,
is received, with power to recover the capital. Their chief
reason for refusing was the very serious ordinance which the
previous Bishop had published and which had been approved
by leading theologians and jurists, forbidding the absolution
of such persons. ... So incensed was our patron with these
priests that he gave orders for their imprisonment and said
that, if they remained wedded to their opinion, he would
deprive them of their pastoral office. The same was to apply
to all who should in future deny absolution in such circum
stances. He also suspended Father Jasper Haywood from
his office of lecturer, because he had enlarged on the question
in class, when dealing with the subject of usury, and threatened
the rest of us with prison if we should dissuade priests subject
to him from giving absolution in such cases.

On one occasion when I was present, our Patron denied
that the Contractus Germanicus was against the divine law, for
if it had been, he said, he would not permit confessors to
absolve those who employed it. But those people themselves
recognize and confess that it is a mere contract of loan, nor

1 Zech in his Rigor Moderatus gives the true account of the affair, from the
original documents. In Migne, Theologiae Cursus Completes, vol. xvi, cols. 9734.

140 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

can learned theologians and jurists, who are often asked
about the matter, find in it another legitimate contract. At
last we have brought about that Father Jasper should not
be stopped from lecturing at present. I have been informed
by various learned men that they had more than once heard
recently from our Patron s own lips that he was not such an
ignoramus and tiro (he is a doctor of law) as not to know
that the common Contractus Germanicus was usurious; but that
he wished it to be tolerated by confessors, just as it is tolerated
by the civil magistrates (though it has never been approved
by the Estates of the Empire but often condemned). . . . This
affair has caused much scandal, especially as priests through
out the whole diocese are ordered to absolve from this usury
until it is condemned again by the Pope and the Imperial
Courts, et in specie et in Germania. 1 . . . The Bishop, who is
learned in the law, is unwilling to be advised by others, and
least of all by those of our Society, with regard to the matter.
The Fuggers are backing him up and so too are some of the
principal officials of this diocese. 2 . . .

As I was writing these lines I received a summons to the
Bishop. ... In presence of his chief officials he admonished
me seriously and with great weight of words that I must not
henceforth suffer anything to be taught in our schools against
the Contractus Germanicus, nor allow his parish priests to be
frightened by our men from granting absolution to those who
use it. He added that to condemn the Contract publicly
is a heresy more pernicious than all other heresies now in
Germany. . . . He also threw in some serious threats as to
what he would do if he found we were not fully obedient.
I replied that we should take pains to ensure of his having
no just cause of complaint against us, and with that we parted. 3

In Dr. Robertson s opinion, such an episode as this

1 This is a reference to the Bull of Pius V which did not condemn the Con
tract in specie. The Bull was not promulgated in Germany.

2 The Augsburg canons, who so strongly objected to the strict views of St.
Peter Ganisius on the subject of usury. There is much evidence to show what
unworthy ecclesiastics these men were.

3 Braunsberger, l.c., vol. vii (1922), pp. 341-2.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 141

of Bishop Marquard shows very clearly that the com
mercial spirit was working as strongly within the Catho
lic Church as within the Protestant Churches (Aspects,
p. 142). One single hot-headed German bishop is thus
made to represent the whole Catholic Church, which
is a most convenient method of polemics. But the Catho
lic Church can look after herself. It was Jesuits that
Dr. Robertson set out to prove fosterers of the com
mercial spirit; and behold, we find them, on first-hand
evidence, actually being persecuted and threatened with
prison for their opposition to the spirit of commerce.
There is evidence enough, even in Duhr s compressed
article, to the same effect, had Dr. Robertson been suffi
ciently impartial to weigh it fairly, instead of allowing
his preconceived ideas to entangle him in a mass of
contradictions.

The Jesuit General, Father Mercurian, had consulted
the new Pope, Gregory XIII, as to what attitude the
German Fathers should adopt. The Pope advised that
they should not absolve those who used the Contractus
Germanicus, nor, on the other hand, publicly denounce
that usage, and this being communicated to Hoffaeus,
the Provincial, he answered from Munich, April 13,
1576, as follows: I have now instructed our Fathers to
tell their friends who are unwilling to change this Con
tract . . . that they must look out for other confessors.
If His Holiness writes to the bishops about the Contract,
he will be likely to cause a sufficiently serious commo
tion and will succeed in changing nothing whatever

As for ourselves, we shall religiously avoid hearing the
confession of any one who is not prepared to give up using
the Contract. 1 On the Pope s instructions, Cardinal

1 Braunsberger, I.e., p. 343.

142 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

Morone, who was then in Germany, visited Bishop Mar-
quard and informed him that he ought not to constrain
the [Jesuit] Fathers to do a thing which they considered
against their faith and conscience, but to leave them to
their pious zeal and scruple for the salvation of souls . 1
A very good idea of the frame of mind in which a num
ber of the German Jesuits worked may be gathered from
a letter addressed to Mercurian in May 1576 by Father
Gregory Rosephius, the official preacher of Augsburg
Cathedral: I shall strive faithfully and strenuously to
secure that what has been decided in Rome with regard
to the 5 per cent. Contract may be carried out, for the
Pope s wishes and holy obedience mean more to me
than the deceitful favour of men. The Lord will not
abandon us. But I have one scruple left which I shall

lay before your Paternity If we must not and cannot

absolve those who practise the Contractus Germanicus, this
is a plain sign that the Contract is intrinsically wrong.
Now if it is wrong, why is it not permitted to impugn it
publicly, so as to make others afraid of it? For your
Paternity should know that here in Augsburg, in Nu
remberg, and in Ulm all the citizens, not to speak
of wealthy Germans in general, are addicted to the use
of this Contract. If we remain silent and they continue
in their course, they will seem to be excused or, at least,
we shall become sharers of their sin. For what else
should the simple people do when they see that the old-
established custom is defended by the magistrates,
praised by the Bishop, and uncensured by the Preacher? 2

1 Hansen, Nuntiatursberichte aus Deutschland 1572-1583, vol. ii (Berlin 1894),

P-3*-

2 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. vii, pp. 573-4. Dr. Robertson cites a few lines of
this letter from the paraphrase in Father Duhr s article, but he does not give
the first lines, though they are in Duhr.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 143

We might wonder what such eminent Catholics as the
Fuggers were thinking about the controversy and about
the attitude in it of their friends, the Jesuits. Dr. Robert
son cites from Duhr a passage of an interesting letter on
the subject written by Father Theobald Stotz, the con
fessor of Mark Fugger, to Mercurian, but, as so often,
misses the implication of the words. Stotz quotes a letter
which he had received from Mark and this is what Mark
says: If the line of conduct which he [the late Bishop
Egolph] laid down must be obeyed, then not only we
Fuggers, but all Germany would be in beggary in three
years. But neither the Pope nor your Company would mind
that . . . * Of course Mark is being sarcastic, but even so,
it is plain that he did not share Dr. Robertson s convic
tion as to Jesuit championship of high finance.

The true facts of the story, so far, are that the Jesuits,
in common with all other Catholic theologians, recog
nized certain valid titles to interest, but, like other
Catholic theologians, were divided in opinion as to
whether the true titles could be said to cover the Con-
tractus Germanicus. The Provincial, Father HofFaeus, in
clined to think all along that the Contract could be
justified, as Eck and others had justified it in the past,
by showing it to contain implicitly other contracts,
besides that of mere loan, which would allow of interest
being taken. Father Jasper Haywood throughout could
not see how this was so, and he consequently waged war
to the death on the Contractus Germanicus. St. Peter
Canisius, chiefly because he was a saint and had such
a horror of sin, tended to side with Haywood rather
than with HofFaeus but, of course, did not go to Hay-
wood s extremes in opposition. We have seen with what

1 Dr. Robertson s translation, Aspects, p. 143. Italics inserted by me.

1 44 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

scrupulous exactness HofFaeus and those who thought
with him obeyed the Pope s instructions, though they felt
sure that Rome was not cognizant with the full details
of the case. Not a word of the letters written by these
men affords ground for the least suspicion that they were
interested in anything whatever but the triumph of
justice and the avoidance of sin.

At this time (1576), the arrival in Germany of a new
book on the usury question by an Italian jurist named
Caballino added considerably to the worries of the
Jesuits. Caballino did not, as Dr. Robertson erroneously
puts it, throw overboard the traditional teachings of the
Catholic theologians , but he argued vigorously for the
lawfulness of accepting interest in a large number of
cases. If what Caballino says is true, wrote HofFaeus
to the General, we have certainly been too hasty in
condemning the Germans for their 5 per cent. Contract.
We therefore need fresh advice. They certainly did,
because, on the one hand, Caballino s book tended to
confirm in their views those many German Catholics
who deemed themselves justified in accepting 5 per cent,
for their loans, while, on the other, the new Duke of
Bavaria, William V, seemed determined to make the
practice illegal in his dominions. According to Dr.
Robertson, this situation was to reveal the Jesuits in
their true_cojours. The Company of Jesus , he writes,
was about to throw itself wholeheartedly on to the side
of progress that is to say, the side of individualism, of
capitalism (Aspects, p. 146).

Let us see briefly how the Company of Jesus made this
remarkable volte face. First of all, the Duke of Bavaria
applied to the faculties of law and theology in his
University of Ingolstadt for an opinion on the Contractus

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 145

Germanicus. The faculty of law answered on February
8, 1580, that the Contract was always illicit and could
never be sanctioned by His Highness. During Lent that
year Hoffaeus preached three times before the Duke s
Court on the subject of usury, maintaining the views
which he and all his brethren held that it was forbidden
and sinful, but at the same time showing that the taking
of interest need not always be usury. Then, in August
1580, the professors of law and theology at Ingolstadt,
including two Jesuits, met to discuss the Duke s ques
tion. Apparently the theologians influenced the jurists,
for the whole body now signed a letter dissuading their
Prince from forbidding the Contractus Germanicus to every
body, both because it was defended by some good
authorities and because the Bavarian people would
not obey an edict against it.

Shortly after the events narrated, the theologians of
Ingoldstadt, who, so far from being in league with the
Jesuits, were definitely hostile to them, presented Duke
William with a further memorandum in which they
affirmed that the Contractus Germanicus could be assimi
lated to the Triple Contract and that this latter form of
agreement was probably lawful. In other words, they
went back sixty-five years to the old theory so well de
fended by Johann Eck. Among them was the eminent
Jesuit theologian, Gregory of Valencia, 1 but other
Jesuits hardly less eminent did not agree with the find
ings of the Ingolstadt Faculty. Thus the Apostolic
Nuncio in Germany, Feliciano Ninguarda, O.P., in
formed the Cardinal of Como that besides Peter Cani-
sius and Jasper Haywood, two very learned Jesuits,

1 Dr. Robertson, following Father Duhr, calls him Gregory of Valenzia,
but the z was merely an orthographical whim on Father Duhr s part and has
no justification outside the German language.

146 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

Theodore Peltan and Jerome Torres, both university
professors, were opposed to the memorandum. 1 With
these dissentients there also stood Father Theodoric
Ganisius, the Rector of Dillingen, and Martin Dhum, a
secular theologian whose saintly life caused him to be
greatly esteemed by the Duke of Bavaria.

Father HofFaeus, on the other hand, believed sin
cerely that the Ingolstadt Faculty had the better of the
argument and it worried and annoyed him that Duke
William should place so much confidence in the judge
ment of Father Haywood. Indeed, the controversy now
developed into a sort of duel between these two men, in
the course of which Hoffaeus s temper and inclination
to exaggerate were given some play. He even accused
St. Peter Canisius of underhand conspiracy against him,
though the evidence in Braunsberger shows plainly that
Peter s only interference at this time was to restrain
Haywood 2 and to express his own view to the superior
of the Society in Rome. This man, Father Oliver
Manare, who had been elected Vicar-General after
the recent death of Mercurian, replied to St. Peter on
October 27, 1580:

I had already learned from others what your Reverence
told me in your letter, that the old 5% controversy, sup
pressed by so many disputations, decrees, and answers, in
cluding those of Father General, piae memoriae, has again
come to life. This happening has given me some uneasiness,
especially because I have heard ascribed to Father Haywood
certain utterances which help little towards the preservation

1 Apud Braunsberger, I.e., vol. vii, p. 575.

2 L.c., vol. vii, pp. 577, 588, 591. In one place Peter writes: Doleo vicem
Patris Provincialis qui, ob hunc Anglum . . . satis affligitur et vexatur. For
the character and brusque methods of HofFaeus, in general a saintly and
austere religious, cf. Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Landem deutscker

vol. i (1907), pp. 783-98.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 147

of concord, and also that the affair has been carried before
His Serene Highness, Duke William. At present, I can do
nothing to help the situation, for even if the Pope, as your
Reverence says, was formerly inclined to [Father Haywood s]
opinion, I suspect that not all the circumstances were put
before His Holiness at the time. I certainly do not think that
these new doubts could be removed by any orders of mine,
until Father Provincial and the German electors come here
for the Congregation. When they and others, as well as our
theologians, are met here together, as they met before in
another Congregation at which your Reverence was present,
it will be possible to decide something which can then be
referred to the Pope, that, authorized and confirmed by him,
it may serve as a uniform rule for all. . . . Meantime, I greatly
wish that your Reverence would use your authority to per
suade and soothe Father Haywood, that he may not cause
the Duke to change anything until the steps I mentioned have
been taken. I heartily commend this to your Reverence for
the sake of our union and brotherly concord. 1

In this letter we are listening to the official voice of
the Society of Jesus, and will anybody say that it has
an accent of the Stock Exchange? Yet, announces Dr.
Robertson pontifically: The official attitude of the
Jesuit order was crystallizing into one decidedly favour
able to the growth of financial business (Aspects^. 148).
The Jesuits must not be allowed to urge what Biel,
Major, Eck, Navarrus, de Castro, and a host of other
eminent theologians had urged before their Society
came into existence without being tarred with the asper
sion that they were sacrificing their principles on the
altar of Mammon. 2

1 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. vii, p. 581.

2 Dr. Robertson is so little familiar with Jesuit and Catholic ways that he
tells us of the Prior of a Jesuit house and constantly refers to the Jesuits
penitents as their confessants .

148 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

Haywood was so determined to secure the condemna
tion of the Contractus Germanicus that, against the urgent
entreaty of Peter Canisius and others, he set out for
Rome to appeal to the Pope. Thither he was followed
by Hoffaeus and Gregory of Valencia, who had been
summoned to take part in the fourth General Congrega
tion of the Society ofjesus. The primary business of the
Congregation was to elect a new General in place of
Mercurian, but the Fathers, at the wish of the Pope,
also set up a special commission of theologians, includ
ing Valencia, to discuss a case submitted to His Holiness
by the Duke of Bavaria, as well as twenty-seven con
clusions bearing on it, which had been drawn up by
Father Haywood. The case, put briefly, was this : Titius,
a German, lends Sempronius a sum of money. Sempro-
nius is a person cujusvis conditionis and the money is lent
to him ad nullum cerium usum. The conditions are that
Titius is to receive annually five florins for every hun
dred lent and afterwards to have his whole capital back.
There is no danger to the capital and Titius must get
his 5 per cent, whether Sempronius makes profit out of
the loan or not. 1 All the Fathers of the Commission
answered that this case could not be decided absolutely
until the circumstances had been examined in detail.
They therefore stated, (i) that persons entering into such
a contract should be persuaded to find some other way
of investing their money, (2) that the gain made by Titius
would be lawful if it rested on one of the surer titles, such
as damnum emergens or lucrum cessans, (3) that such gain is
manifestly unjust if acquired solely in virtue of the loan
without pretext of some probably valid title, (4) that

1 The case is published in full in Zech, Rigor Moderatus, apud Migne, Theo-
logiae Cursus Completus, vol. xvi, col. 975, and in Braunsberger, l,c., vol. viii, p. 66.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 149

much more is it unjust if all titles extrinsic to the loan are
excluded, or if a valid title is falsely alleged to exist,
contrary to the circumstances. These last three declara
tions are plainly nothing but the traditional doctrine
of Catholic theology.

Asked whether a general knowledge of the methods
employed in contracts was sufficient to justify one in
approving or condemning them, without examination
of the particular circumstances of each case, the Com
mission replied unanimously that it was not, and that
one must know whether the money lent was going into
the hands of a man who could make it fructify. As to
the Triple Contract, the Fathers said that it was toler
able if the three contracts of partnership and double
insurance ran together. They also said that the Census
realis or rent-charge based on some definite, fruitful
object, was lawful, and that the census personalis, or
annuity derived from another person, was not tolerable
if that person did not himself earn by his industry, and,
because exceedingly dangerous through the possibility
of the required conditions not being observed , rarely
to be tolerated even if he did earn by his industry. As
regards Father Haywood s conclusions , the Com
mission approved the greater part of them, while adding
that their author was mistaken in thinking that every
contract of 5% with insurance of the capital and the
income is unlawful; for it is not unlawful unless it is in
the form of a pure loan, which need not be the case if
the contract is made with a merchant or other person
of notable industry . 1

Such were the findings of the Commission of February
1581. Except that they go into the question in greater

1 Braunsberger, I.e., vol. viii, pp. 65-6.

150 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

detail they are in no respect whatever different from the
findings of the Commission of 1573, which Dr. Robert
son did not consider particularly interesting . This
time he is interested, and tells his readers that in every
case the decisions were to the same effect: interpreta
tions were made lax (Aspects., p. 148). After that, I give
up. Dr. Robertson has still another twelve pages on the
Jesuits, but as they consist in the mere repetition, over
and over again, of his fancy that they made it their
business to promote the spirit of capitalism at whatever
cost to justice, it is not necessary to follow him any
farther. As The Times film critic would say: The story
is, of course, all nonsense. And his methods remain the
same. When the Bull, Detestabilis, of Pope Sixtus V
appeared in 1586, forbidding what looked like, but was
not stated to be, the Triple Contract, the then German
Provincial inquired whether it applied to his own
country, as six months had gone by without its being
published there. It was decided , writes Dr. Robertson,
that it might be ignored (Aspects, p. 152). And what
authority has he for saying that it was so decided? An
obscure theological work (author s name misspelt)
which came out at Louvain for the first time ninety-two
years after the German Provincial had put his question.
Two pages later Dr. Robertson introduces Pere Daniel,
author of the celebrated answer ... to the Letters of
Pascal , in the same connexion, but he does not inform
the reader that the celebrated answer was published
more than a hundred years after the Bull of Pope Sixtus,
during which time there had been plenty of other Popes
to settle whether their predecessor s legislation applied
to Germany. Bauny and Pirot are brought back to help
with the good work from p. 155 of Aspects onwards. An

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 151

opinion of Bauny is made to stand for the doctrine of
the whole Society of Jesus, and, by a muddled inter
pretation of a second-hand source, Dr. Robertson feels
himself entitled to say that the Jesuits, for all their
denials, knew well that they were merely cloaking loans
at interest with other contracts , or, in other words, that
they were merely cloaking usury. Such, then, was the
comfortable and accommodating religion of the Jesuits
which forms a strong contrast to the efforts at strict
regulation of the economic life made by the Calvinist
Churches (Aspects, p. 160). Well, perhaps the reader
will turn to see what Max Weber has to say on that
subject.

In an earlier part of his book Dr. Robertson found the
Puritan doctrine of the Calling an embarrassment. To
get rid of it, he attempts to show that the French Jesuits,
Bourdaloue, Crasset, and others, preached the very
same thing. The proof of this is nine short passages,
some of them running only to two lines, which he culled
from Groethuysen s Origines de V esprit bourgeois en France.
In a footnote he tells us that Groethuysen obtained them
from Houdry s La Bibliotheque desPredicateurs, but he does
not say that Houdry s work is in four folio volumes, each
running to nearly 800 pages, with double columns of
compressed print. The nine little passages exhorting
Catholics to work hard and to fulfil the duties of their
state are rather lost in that tremendous ocean of other
worldly teaching. 1 It really does show how hard up

1 As everybody knows who has even scraped the surface of the subject, the
very bases of Puritan and Catholic asceticism were utterly different. The
Catholic conception was and is rooted in supernaturalism, whereas the Puritan
conception, owing to the rejection of the distinction between nature and grace,
remained intramundane, non-contemplative, and confined to the relatively
narrow spheres of domestic life and business activities.

152 The Five Per Cent. Controversy

Dr. Robertson was for arguments that he should have
given us this one. We think, for instance, of the late
Abbe Bremond s great and vast Histoire litteraire du
Sentiment Religieux, wherein are analysed the spiritual
books produced by the Catholics of France alone during
the seventeenth century, and then we think of the
Puritan output of ascetical literature at the same period.
Would not even Dr. Robertson admit that there is a
strong contrast between the two? Crasset, Croiset,
Houdry, and Bourdaloue may have taught the neces
sity of living an ordered life and serving God by diligence
in one s worldly occupation (Aspects, p. 209), but, oh,
Dr. Robertson, they taught so much besides !

One final point. It is hard for a Catholic not to smile
when he finds Dr. Robertson (Aspects, p. 171) arguing
zealously against any belief that Catholicism spells
stagnation in matters of trade, or that Holland s com
mercial greatness, either now or of old, can be ascribed
to a rigid Calvinism , without giving Catholicism any
share of the credit. A Puritan pamphleteer, writing in
1671, thought very differently. There is , he said, a
kind of natural unaptness in the Popish religion to busi
ness, whereas on the contrary among the Reformed, the
greater their zeal, the greater their inclination to trade
and industry, as holding idleness unlawful. . . . The
domestic interest of England lieth in the advancement
of trade by removing all obstructions both in the city
and country, and providing such laws as may help it and
make it most easy, especially in giving liberty of con
science to all Protestant Nonconformists, and denying
it to Papists. 1 As everybody knows, until quite recently

1 Cited in Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 1927, pp. 206-7.
Incidentally, at the present day only about 10 per cent, of the great Dutch
planters in Java, the real financial barons of Holland, are Roman Catholics.

The Five Per Cent. Controversy 153

it used to be a favourite Protestant objection against the
Catholic Church that the countries under her influence
had the poorest trade returns. But, of course, laissez-
faire and capitalism were in honour then, whereas now
their glory has departed.

DE LICENTIA ORDINARII LOCI ET
SUPERIORUM ORDINIS.

INDEX

Aertnys, J. A., 103.
Albert the Pious, of Netherlands, 102.
Alexander VII, Pope, 55.
Alphonsus Liguori, St., 25, 103.
America, Jesuits in, 2 ff., 20, 85 f.
Angelique, Mere, 56, 72.
Angelopolis, Bishop of , 18 f., 71, 72,

73 ff- 95, 98.

Annat, Francois, S.J., 47 f., 55, 60.
Antwerp, Lessius at, 15 f.
Aquaviva, Claude, S.J., 35 f., 97.
Arnauld, Antoine, the elder, 22 f., 27,

31-
Arnauld, Antoine, the great , 31 f.,

33, 41 if., 47 f., 53 n., 55, 56, 63, 64,

71 f.

Arnauld, Henri, Bp. of Angers, 65.
Astete, Emanuel, 105 n.
Astrain, Antonio, S.J., on Mexico,

75 n., 77, 79 n., 80 n., 81 n., 83,

84 n., 96 n., 98.
d Aubray, Lieut., 107.
Augsburg, Canisius, &c., at, 7, 127,

131, 138 f.

Augustine of Hippo, St., al. 26, 29, 47.
Augustinus, of Jansen, 30 f., 46 f., 48,

55> 65.

Austria, Jesuits in, I34f.
d Avrigny,P.,SJ.,59f.

Bail, Louis, 17.

Baius, Michael, 25 , 31.

Banes, Domingo, O.P., 43, 138.

Bankruptcy, morality of, 99 f., 1 10 f.

Basil, St., al. 124.

Bauny, Etienne, S.J., 17 f., 25, 42, 69,
71, 150 f.

Bavaria, Dukes of, 7, 144 ff.

Baxter, Christian Directory, 9 ff.

Beauvais, Bp. of, and Jansenists, 65.

Becdelievre, Abbe, 59 n.

Bellarmine, R. F., St., al. 23, 35.

Benedict XIV, Pope, 52.

Berg, Marquard von, Bp. of Augs
burg, 139 f., 142.

Biel, Gabriel, 133, 147.

Blic, Jacques de, 62.

Bologna, Eck at, 126.

Bonacina, on bankruptcy, 113.

Boonen, Archbp. of Malines, 71.

Bouilly, of Port-Royal, 107 n.

Bourdaloue, P., S.J., 151, 152.

Brants, V., 15, 89.

Braunsberger, on Jesuits, 7 n., 8, 28 n.,

29 n., 127 n., 132 n., 135 n., 138,
140, 141, 142 n., 146, 147, 148, 149.

Bremond, Abbe, 152.

Briet, Philippe, S.J., 60 f.

Brisacier, P. de, S.J., 55.

Brou, Alexandre, S.J., 62.

Caballino, jurist, 144.

Cajetan, al. 17.

Calderon, al. 105.

Calvin, al. 48.

Campeggio, Cardinal, 126.

Canisius, see Peter, St.

Canisius, Theodoric, S.J., 139 f., 146.

Cano, Melchior, O.P., 137.

Cartagena, Jesuits in, 54.

Castro, Ildefonso de, S.J., 83, 147.

Casuistry, 5 f., 24 f., 66 f.

Caumartin, de, Bp. of Amiens, 65.

Cazre, P. le, S.J., 58.

Cellot, P., S.J., 58 f.

Census or rent-charges, 128 f., 149.

Charles III, of Spain, 75 n.

Charles V, Emperor, 8 f.

Chevalier, Jacques, 107 f., 109.

Choiseul, Bp. of Comminges, 65.

Cicero, al. 5.

Clapham, Dr. J. H., i n.

Clement VIII, Pope, 79.

Clement IX, Pope, Peace of, 71.

Clermont, College, 35, 38.

Cochin, Jesuits in, 20.

Congregations, General, S.J., 96, 148.

Constitutions, Jesuit, 59, 96.

Coton, Pere, and Santarelli, 36 f., 38.

Crasset, P., S.J., 151, 152.

Croiset, P., S.J., 152.

Crusaders Bull , 93.

Cum Onus, Bull, 133, 134.

Cunningham, Archdeacon, 19.

Cunninghame Graham, quoted, 86 f.

Damman emergens, title of, 123, 129,

131, 135, 148-
Daniel, P., 150.
Davalos, P., S.J., 76.
Debtors, see Bankruptcy.
Delbene, Bp. of Orleans, 65.
Denzinger-Bannwart, 46 n.
Detestabilis, Bull, 150.
Dhum, Martin, 146.
Diana, theologian, 12, 93, 113.
Dictionnaire de thtologie caiholique, 62.
Drascovics, Bp., 6.

156

Index

Duhr, Bernhard, S.J., 120, 133, 135,

141, 143, 145, 146 n.
Duval, Dr., of Sorbonne, 69, 70,

I38n.
Duvergier de Hauranne, see Saint-

Cyran.

Eck,Johann, 126 f., 143, 145, 147.
Eichstatt, Bp. of, and Eck, 126.
Elderen, Wm., S.J., 128 f., 130.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoted, 85.
England, Jesuits in, 2, 3 f.
Epistolae obscurorum virorum, 1 26.
Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio de,

SJ., 5> 18, 21, 25, 74, 100, 104 fF.,

n8f.

Figgis, Dr. J. Neville, 8.

Filesac, Dr., 37 f.

Five per cent, controversy, 120 fF.

Five Propositions, of Jansenism, 41,

46 f., 48, 55 f., 65.
Fouqueray, P., S.J., historian, 28 n.,

38 n., 45 n., 62.
France, Jesuits in, 3, 6, 22 fF.
Francis Borgia, St., 132.
Francis Regis, St., 54.
Francis de Sales, St., 66.
Francis Xavier, St., 80.
Free will, doctrine of, 25.
Fructus industriae, 15.
Fuggers, and Jesuits, 7, 8, 140, 143.
Fugger, Mark, 143.

Gallicanism, 6, 22 f., 28, 35 f., 56 f.,

67, &c.

Gamaches, Dr., of Sorbonne, 138 n.
Gazier, Augustin, 48 n., 106 n.
Genoa, Laynez at, 6.
Germanicus, Contractus, I24f., 126, 128,

132, 134, 138, 139 fF.
Germany, Jesuits in, 3, 127 f.
Gewarts, Martin, S.J., 133 f.
Gilles, Bp. of Evreux, 65.
Giraud, Victor, 106 n.
Godeau, Bp. of Venice, 65.
Goldsmid, Bib I. Curiosa, 121 n.
Gondrin, Henri de, Archbp. of Sens,

57> 64.

Gregory XIII, Pope, 79, 141 f.
Gregory XV, Pope, 79.
Gregory of Valencia, S.J., 145, 148.
Gresham s law, 16.
Grisar, on Laynez, 6 n., 7 n., 124 n.
Groethuysen, 151.
Guemene, Princesse de, 33.
Guerrero, Archbp., 6.
Guyot, Syndic, 48.

Hallier, Dr. Frangois, 38 f., 41.
Hansen, historian, 142 n.
Hauranne, Duvergier de, see Saint-

Cyran.
Haywood, Jasper, S.J., 3, 138, 139 f.,

143, 145 ff., 148, 149.
Henri III, of France, al. 22.
Hereau, P., S.J., 42 f., 68, 71.
Hermant, Godefroy, of Beauvais, 39 f.,

41, 42 f.

Hernandez, Pablo, 86.
Hoffaeus, Paul, S.J., 138 f., 141,

143 fF., 146 f., 148.
Holland, trade of, 152.
Houdry, P., 151, 152.
Hungary, Jesuits in, 6.
Hurter, Nomenclator Literarius, 89 n.

Ignatius Loyola, St., al. 6, 24, 25, 80.
Index and Inquisition, Congregation

of, 52.

In eminenti, Bull., 31.
Ingolstadt University, and Contractus

Germanicus, 126, 144 f.
Innocent X, Pope, and Jansenists,

46 f., 65; and AngelopoUs, 73, 80,

Intention, Direction of, 18.
Interest, on loans, 120 f.
Isambert, Dr., of Sorbonne, 138 n.
Italy, Jesuits in, 3, 35.

Jansen, Cornelius, 26, 30 f., 32 f., 56.
Jansenists, 20 f., 27 f., 41, 46 f., 53 f.,

55 f., 64, 66, 1 1 8, &c.
Japan, Jesuits in, 54.
Jourdain, C. M., 40 n.

Knoll, August, on usury, 126.
Knoringen, J. E. von, Bp. of Augsburg,
138 f.

Lanson, M., on Pascal, 56.

Lavalette, P., 99.

Laymann, Paul, S.J., 42.

Laynez, Diego, S.J., 6, 7, 8, 25, 124,

127, 128 f., 130, 132.
Le Maitre, Antoine, 49.
Lenten discipline, 92 f.
Lessius, Leonard, S.J., 14 fF., 25, 42,

ioof., no, in, 113.
Liancourt, Due de, 47.
Loan, or mutuum, contract of, 121.
Longueville, Duchesse de, 55.
Lopez, Lorenzo, S.J., 76.
Lorraine, Cardinal of, and Jesuits, 6.
Loth, Professor, 94.
Louis XIV, reign of, 44 f.

Index

Louvain, and Baianism, 25 f.; and

Jansenism, 31; and Jesuits, 67.
Lucrum cessans, title of, 123, 125, 129,

13*. *35> 48.
Lugo, Cardinal de, 9 f., 25, 34 n., 42,

88 ff., no, 113.
Luther, al. 127.
Lying, Escobar on, 117.

Madelin, Louis, on Louis XIV, 44 f.
Major, John, of Sorbonne, 70, 126,

i33> 47-

Manare, Oliver, S.J., 146 f.
Marquard, Bp., see Berg.
Martin, Dr., on Galficanism, &c.,

22 n., 23, 35 n., 38.
Mazure, Dr., 55.
Mazzolini, Silvestro, O.P., 101 f.
Medina, Bartholomew de, O.P., 118,

137-
Mendoza, Don Juan de Palafox y, see

Angelopolis.
Mercurian, Everard, S.J., 139, 141,

142, 146, 148.
Mexico, Palafox in, 74 f.; Jesuits in,

78.
Meyer, Albert de, 39 n., 40 n., 41,

44 n., 45 n., 138 n.
Migne, J. P., 126 n., 139 n., 148.
Milton, quoted, 4.
Molina, Luis de, S.J., 30 n., 90.
Money, 16, 122.

Morale des Jesui tes, Perrault, 71 f., 121.
Morale pratique des Jestdtes, 12, 20, 21,

72, 74 n., 85, 95, 99, 107.
Morone, Cardinal, 142.
Muratofi, on Jesuits, 86.

Nadal, Fr., S.J., 129, 130 f., 132.
Navarrus, Dr., on bankruptcy, 101,

113, 147-

Nicole, Pierre, 49, 63.
Ninguardia, Feh ciano, O.P., 145.
Nouet, Jacques, S.J., 34, 55.

Oaths, Escobar on, 117.
Olier, M., 47.

Pachtler, 36 n.

Palafox y Mendoza, Don Juan, 73 ff.

See Angelopolis.
Pallavicini, Sforza, S.J., 46.
Farmers, Bp. of, and Jansenism, 65.
Paraguay, Reductions of, 16; treasure,

85; Jesuits in, 86 f.
Paris, Cures of, 55 ff., 63 f.; Grand

Vicars of, 57; University of, 22 f.,

26, 34 f., 67.

Pascal, Blaise, 18, 49 ff., 56 f., 59,

62 ff., 99 f., 102, 106, io8ff., 115,

118, 150.

Pascal, Jacqueline, 27.
Pastor, Ludwig, 41 n., 47 n., 58, 65 n.,

80.

Paul V, Pope, 31 n., 79.
Pavilion, Bp. of Alet, 65.
Peltan, Theodore, S.J., 146.
Periculum sortis, title of, 123 n.
Perrault, Nicholas, 71 f., 121 n.
Peter Canisius, St., 7f., 28 f., 127 ff.,

130, 131 f., 138, 140 n., 143, 145 f.,

148.

Peter Claver, St., 54.
Petitot, Henri, O.P., 49 n., 56, 65 n.
Philip IV of Spain, and Angelopolis,

74.
Pirot, Georges, S.J., 13, 17, 21, 52 n.,

57 ff., 71, 99 f., 150.
Pius V, Pope St., 79, 140 n.; on usury,

132 f., 134.

Pius X, Pope, and Jansenism, 33 f.
Poena conventionalis, tide of, 123 n.,

129, 131.

Font-Chateau, Abbe, 72, 106 n.
Port-Royal, Convent of, 27, 31, 41,

49, 72; and Angelopolis, 84, 107 n.
Probabilism , 18, 19, n8f., 135 f.
Procurators, rules for, 96 f.
Profit, and just price, 9 ff., 91, 96, 115.
Property, of Jesuits, 77 f.
Provence, Parlement, and Pascal, 56.
Prummer, D., O.P., 103.
Puebla de los Angeles, Palafox at, 74,

76 f.; Jesuit property, 78.

Rapin, Rene, 57 f.

Rebellus, Ferdinand, S.J., on bank
ruptcy, 113.

Relations of Jesuits, al. 3.

Renault, Jacques, S.J., 58, 59, 60 f.,
67 f.

Retz, Cardinal de, 57.

Richelieu, and Saint-Cyran, 31.

Rosephius, Gregory, S.J., 142.

Rouen, Cures of, 63.

Rousse, Dr., 55.

Sable, Marquise de, 33.
Saint-Amour, Louis Gorin de, 38 f.,

40, 46 f.
Sainte-Beuve, 23 n., 28 n., 33, 51,

66, 72.
Saint-Cyran, Abbe de, 26 f., 30, 31,

33, 64, 66.

Salamanca, Dominicans at, 137.
Salazar, Juan Onofre de, 98.

158

Index

Salmeron, Alphonsus, S.J., 25.
Salvatierra, Conde de, 76.
Sanchez, Thomas, S.J., 12, 93.
Santarelli, Antonio, S.J., 36?., 71.
Schimberg, Andre, 45.
Scottish puritanism, I2f., 15 f.
Sens, Archbishop of, and Jansenists,

34- .

Sesmaisons, P. de, S.J., 33.

Seville, Jesuits in, 94 S.

Silvestro (Mazzolini, O.P.), on bank
ruptcy, 113.

Sixtus V, Pope, 150.

Sommervogel, Bibliotheque, n, 24.

Sorbonne, 22, 69, 70; and Jansenists,
31, 34, 46, 48 ff.; and probabilism,
118, 138.

Soto, Dominic, O.P., 17, 137.

Spada, Cardinal, 47.

Spain, Jesuits in, 3, 6, 35, 94 ff., 106,
116.

Stewart, Dr. H. F., 52 ff., 66, 100.

Stoics, al. 5.

Stotz, Theobald, S.J., 143.

Strowski, on Pascal, 50 f., 55, 109.

Suarez, Francisco, S.J., 30 n., 35, 42.

Sweating, Jesuits on, 1 1, 88 f.

Tamburini, Tomaso, S.J., 12, 91 ff.

Tawney, R. H., i, 2, 4, 5, 152 n.

Teatro Jesuitico, 72.

Temporal power, 35 f.

Theologie morale des Jesuites,iz, 18, 21,

38, 41 f., 44 n., 70 ff., 73, 80 n., 81,

92, 94 f., 115.
Thomas, Aquinas, St., al. 10.

Torres, Jerome, S.J., 146.

Tour, P. de la, S.J., 36.

Trading, Jesuits on, 96 f.

Trent, Council of, 6 f., 25, 27, 30.

Triest, Bp. of Ghent, 71.

Triple Contract, 125 f., 132 f., 135,

i45> I49> 150.

Truchsess, Cardinal Otto, 127.
Tutiorism, 118, 136.

Urban VIII, and Jansenism, 31; and

Gallicanism, 40; and missions, 79.
Usury, 6, 120 ff.

Valencia, Gregory of, S.J., 145, 148.
Vasquez, Gabriel, S.J., 42.
Vialart, Bp. of Chalons, 65.
Vienne, Council of, 122.
Villar, Andrew Goitia, S.J., 95 f., 97 f.
Villar, Gregorio, Lorenzo, 98.
Vincent de Paul, St., al. 34.
Vitelleschi, Muzio, S.J., 97.
Vitoria, P., O.P., 137.

Wage, just, de Lugo on, 89 f.
Weber, Max, i, 2, n, 151.
Weiss, Dr. Karl, 108 ff.
William V of Bavaria, 144 f., 146,

147, 148.

Wilson, Dr. Thomas, 4.
Wyclif, al. 27.

Zamet, Bp., and Saint-Cyran, 28.
Zech, on usury, &c., 126 n., 139 n.,
148.

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