These fragmentary notices of the life of the Jesuits in the Germanic countries suffice to explain that growth of hostility which culminates in the destruction of the Society. There is a sharp contrast between the picture suggested by these secret Jesuit documents and the picture offered to us by writers like Crétineau-Joly and Father Duhr. Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. There were many such in the long calendar of the Germanic provinces. But the fortunate accident of the confiscation of their papers in many places enables us to obtain a fuller and truer knowledge of the body than we get from this one-sided admiration of its more religious members and its public professions. As a body the Society, in Germany as well as in France, Spain, Portugal, and on the missions, was deeply tainted with casuistry, covetousness, intrigue for wealth and for power, commercial activity, duplicity in political matters, and a lamentable attitude toward rival priests. They maintained their power, not so much by the affection of the people as by the hard-won favour of princes and prelates; and, the moment these princes became sensible of their defects, their seemingly unassailable prosperity fell with a crash, to the delight of half of Catholic Europe. It remains only for us to glance at their fortunes in Italy until the year when the Pope, whose select regiment they affected to be, ratified the action of kings and abolished the Society of Jesus "for ever." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 32: Jacobi's _Das Thorner Blutgericht_, and other documents.] [Footnote 33: The _Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher zunge_, which the German Jesuits are publishing, has not advanced beyond the first period.] [Footnote 34: Published by the Benedictine monk Dudik in the _Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte_, vol. liv. p. 234.] [Footnote 35: See, especially, the sordid details in Dr. von Lang's _Jacobi Morelli, S.J., amores_, 1815.] [Footnote 36: _Archiv für oesterreichische Geschichte_, Bd. 79, pp. 277-354; and Bd. 80, pp. 356-458.] [Footnote 37: _Mémoires des R.R.P.P. Jésuites du Collège de Colmar._] CHAPTER XIII THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SOCIETY