Simultaneously with the trouble in France, Alva was engaged in
"pacifying" the Netherlands. Here the Jesuits had miscalculated the
strength of the Catholics, and, in encouraging the policy of violent
repression, led to their own undoing. Only the favour of princes
had secured some shelter for them in Belgium, and their houses now
disappeared in the flames of the civil war. Their college at Douai had
been interdicted by the university authorities in 1567, but relieved by
papal authority. As the Spaniards proceeded, however, in the drastic
and bloody policy which the Jesuits were known to favour, the crowds
stormed their residences, and by 1570 they were almost driven from
the country. They returned in the wake of Alva, but there was bitter
hostility to them, and they were generally accused of rebuilding their
house at Antwerp out of the loot of Flemish towns. Father Sacchini
is moved to lament the perversity of men who could entertain such a
suspicion, though, as their sardonic critic Steinmetz observes, "it
would have been better to supply the place of this moral maxim by
stating whence the funds were obtained for building or beautifying the
house at Antwerp."
When we pass to Germany we naturally find that the Jesuits are apostles
of toleration, charity, and calm intellectual discussion of differences
of creed in the north, fanatical intolerantists in the south, and
advocates of every conceivable compromise between the two extremes in
the intervening or mixed States. Canisius still maintained his great
work and his austere standard. Appointed Legate of the Pope in 1565 he
traversed the whole of Germany on foot, and strengthened the loyalty
of the Catholic rulers to the Council of Trent. In the following year
we find him, at the Diet of Augsburg, helping to unite Protestants and
Catholics against the Turk. Many new colleges were founded by him,
including three in Poland, before the death of Borgia. On the other
hand, grave reports had to be sent to Rome from the more Catholic and
prosperous centres. The University of Dillingen, which the Jesuits
controlled, was found in 1567 to be permeated with heresy, and a
rigorous scrutiny ended in some of the Jesuits (including an English
refugee, Edward Thorn) going over to the Protestants. In 1570 the
Jesuit rector of Prague College became a Protestant and married. In
Bavaria the cry was raised that they mutilated boys in their colleges.
A most extraordinary trial resulted in their acquittal, but there
was a deep and widespread prejudice against them. In the same year,
1565, they were fiercely assailed in Austria. Their college at Vienna
was raided by an angry mob; and the nobles, who had been convoked by
Maximilian, refused to give their aid in the campaign against the Turk
unless the Emperor expelled the Jesuits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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