“Nor is there in this bibliography any mention of the _Monumenta
Historica Societatis Jesu_, nor of the _Monumenta Pædagogica_,
nor is there any allusion to the great and learned works of Duhr,
Tacchi-Venturi, Fouqueray, and Kroes, which have just been published
and are mines of information on the history of the Society in Spain,
Germany, Italy and France; and although we are told of the _Historia
Societatis Jesu_ by Orlandini, which bears the very remote imprint of
1620, is very difficult to obtain, and covers a very restricted period,
there is apparently no knowledge of the classic work of Jouvency, nor
is Sacchini cited, nor Polanco. The _Bibliothèque des écrivains de la
Compagnie de Jésus_, by De Backer, not ‘Backer,’ as the Encyclopædia
has it, is listed; but it is simply shocking to find that there was no
knowledge of Sommervogel, who is the continuator of De Backer, and who
has left us a most scholarly and splendid work which is brought down to
our own times, and for which De Backer’s, notable though it be, was only
a preparation. In brief, the bibliography is absolutely worthless, not
only for a scholar, but even for the average reader.
“On the other hand it is quite in keeping with the character of the
writers who were chosen for the article. The New York _Evening Post_
informs us that before 1880, when a search for a suitable scribe for the
Jesuit article was instituted, some one started on a hunt for Cardinal
Newman, but the great man had no time. Then he thought of Manning, who,
of course, declined, and finally knowing no other ‘Jesuit’ he gave the
work to Littledale. Littledale, as everyone knows, was an Anglican
minister, notorious not only for his antagonism to the Jesuits, but also
to the Catholic Church. He gladly addressed himself to the task, and
forthwith informed the world that ‘the Jesuits controlled the policy of
Spain’; that ‘it was a matter of common knowledge that they kindled the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870’; that ‘Pope Julius II dispensed the Father
General from his vow of poverty,’ though that warrior Pope expired eight
years before Ignatius sought the solitude of Manresa, and had as yet no
idea of a Society of Jesus; again, that ‘the Jesuits from the beginning
never obeyed the Pope’; that ‘in their moral teaching they can attenuate
and even defend any kind of sin’; and, finally, not to be too prolix in
this list of absurdities, that, prior to the Vatican Council, ‘they had
filled up all the sees of Latin Christendom with bishops of their own
selection.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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