In Germany the Jesuit institute was received with general and immediate favor. In the Catholic territories, Austria, Bavaria`, and the Rhenish principalities, they not only founded colleges and other establishments of their own, but they were appointed at Ingolstadt and other universities to hold important professorships, and received in many dioceses the charge of the episcopal seminaries then newly established. Before the death of the. first general—St. Ignatius—the order could reckon in Germany twenty-six col leges and ten professed houses; and Lainez, the second general, was able to say that there was scarce a German town of note which had not a Jesuit college. In the mixed states their career was not so unclouded. Their great learning and ability, and their thorough devotion to the church, made them at once eager and formidable polemics. In Hungary and Transylvania much bitterness arose out of their introduction; the same may be said of Bohemia and Moravia; and, through the whole course of the thirty years' war, the Jesuits, though in many instances wrongfully, were regarded by the belligerent Protest ants as the soul and canter of the Catholic camp.
In the Netherlands they encountered some opposition at first; but in 1562 Lainez, the second general of the order, came to the Low Countries, and a college was opened, at Louvain, which eventually became one of the greatest colleges of the order, In the Netherlands the Jansenistical party was less numerous and less influential than in France, and the conflict with them was less permanently prejudicial to the Jesuits In the Protestant kingdoms the Jesuits obtained entrance only as missionaries, and in some, as in England, Scotland, and Ireland, under circumstances of great difficulty and peril. From England they were excluded by the penal laws under pain of death; never theless, with a constancy and devotedness which it is impossible not to admire, they maintained through the worst times an unbroken succession of missionaries in many parts of England. They often resorted to the most singular disguises, and generally bore false names; and several Of the old Roman Catholic mansions still ghow the " priest hole," which was contrived as a retreat for them in cases of sudden emergency. Into Ireland they effected an entrance almost at the first foundation, and after many vicissi tudes, towards the close of the reign of Charles II., they had more than one considerable college for the education of youth.
But a still more fertile field for the enterprise of the order was that of the missions to the heathen, in which they outstripped all the older orders in the church. In the Portu guese colonies of India the successesof Francis Xavier (q.v.) are well known. The results of their missions in China and Japan (see Rictr SCHATA) were even more extraordinary, as also in Northern and Central America. Above all, their establishments in the south ern continent, in Brazil, in Paraguay and Uruguay, upon the Pacific coast, in California and the Philippine islands, were missions of civilization as much as of religion; and sir John Bowring recognizes in the present condition of the native population of the Philip pines to the present day the results of the judicious labors of the early Jesuits.
Such was this association in the first stage of its history. At their first centenary jubilee the members already numbered 13,112, distributed over 32 provinces. At. their suppression, a century later, they had increased to 22,589, and were possessed of 24 professed houses, 669 colleges, 176 seminaries, 61 novitiates, 335 resi dences, and 275 missionary stations in infidel countries, or in the Protestant states of Europe.
The decline in the fortunes of the Jesuits was rapid and decisive in its consumma tion. The first blow which they sustained was in Portugal. An exchange of colonial territory having been effected between that kingdom and the crown of Spain, the so called " reductions" of Paraguay (q.v.), in which the Jesuit missionaries possessed an
authority all but sovereign, were transferred to Portugal. The native Indians having resisted this transfer, the Portuguese ascribed their disaffection to the Jesuit mission aries. The Portuguese minister, Pombal de Carvalho, to whom the Jesuits allege that their possessions in Portugal had long been an object of desire, instituted a commission of inquiry; and while it was still pending, an attempt on the life of the king, Joseph. which was laid to the charge of the Jesuits, furnished him. with a fresh ground of impeachment; and without waiting any juridical proof of either accusation, lie issued, in Sept., 1759, a royal decree, by which the order was expelled from the kingdom. This example was followed in other kingdoms. In France, tinder the duke de Choiseul, the immediate occasion of the disgrace of the Jesuits was a trial in time civil courts. Father Lavntette, as procurator Of the order in Martinique, had consigned to a commercial house in Marseilles two valuable cargoes, which were seized by English cruisers, and Lava !cue being unable to meet the bills, the Marseilles merchants proceeded successfully against the order. The Jesuits replied that Lavalette acted not only without the author ity of the order, but against its positive constitutions, and appealed to the parliament of Paris against the sentence. The inquiry thus raised presented an opportunity of which theancient enemies of the order in the parliament eagerly availed themselves. A report on the constitutions of the society, highly damuatory, was speedily drawn up, and a demand was made for the suppression of the order, as being irreconcilable, in its con stitution and practice, with the interests of the state and of society. A strong effort w is made to arrest the proceeding; but a powerful court-faction, aided by the secret induence of the royal mistress, Mme. de Pompadour, who was irritated by the refusal of her Jesuit confessor to grant her absolution unless on condition of her separating from the king, and supported in the press by the philosophic party, carried all voices, public add private, against the Jesuits. An attempt at compromise was proposed to the general, father Ricci, by which the obnoxious constitutions might be abolished or modified; b a. his unbending reply, " sint ut sent, nut non sint" (" let them be as they are, or let them cease to exist"), cut short all negotiation; and a royal edict was published in 1764. by which the society was suppressed in the French territory. This example was followed by Spain in 1767, with circumstances of great harshness and severity; and by the minor Bourbon courts of Naples, Parma, and Modena. The court. of Rome had zeal ously but vainly interposed in their behalf, and from Clement XIII. especially they received earnest support. But his successor, Clement XIV. (q.v.), inclining in this and all other questions of church and state to the side of peace, having in vain endeavored t.m procure from the courts by which they were condemned a relaxation of their sever ity, and being pressed by the ambassadors of France and Spain, at length issued, July 2 t. 1773, the celebrated bull, " Dominus RC Redemptor Koster," by which, without adopting the charges made against the society, or entering in any way into the question of their justice, acting solely on the motive of '" the peace of the church," he suppressed the society in all the states of Christendom. The bull was put into execution without delay. In Spain and Portugal alone the members of the society were driven into exile. In other Catholic countries they were permitted to remain as individuals eneaged in the ministry or in literary occupations; and in two kingdoms, Prussia under Frederick the 1,1r,mat, and Russia under Catherine, they were even permitted to retain a quasi-corporate existence as a society for education.