The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present TimeCampbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
Jesuits -- History
From the pulpit and platform and in the press Cano denounced and decried
the new religious, not only as constituting a danger to the Church, but
as being nothing else than the precursors of Antichrist. His own
Master-General wrote a letter eulogizing the Society and forbidding his
brethren to attack it; but this had no effect on Melchior, nor did the
fact that the new Order was approved by the Pope avail to keep him
quiet. Finally, in order to mollify him he was made Bishop of the
Canaries, but he actually resigned that see in order to return to the
attack. His hostility continued not only till his death, but after it;
for, before he departed, he left in the hands of a friend a document
which was of great service to the enemies of the Society at the time of
the Suppression. "God grant," he wrote, "that I may not be a Cassandra,
who was believed only after the sack of Troy. If the religious of the
Society continue as they have begun, there may come a time, which I hope
God will avert, when the Kings of Europe would wish to resist them but
will be unable to do so." One of the reasons of Cano's hostility to the
Society was that the Fathers urged Catholics to frequent the sacraments
(Suau, Vie de Borgia, 136). This opposition of Cano was backed by the
Archbishop of Saragossa, who was Francis Borgia's uncle. Bands of street
children carrying banners on which hideous devils were painted marched
to the new church of the Society and pelted it with stones. Then the mob
drove the luckless Fathers out of the city; when Borgia's sister
sheltered the exiles in her castle her uncle, the archbishop,
excommunicated her. But that was the way of the world in those days.
Even the illustrious Cardinal Carranza was kept in the prison of the
Spanish Inquisition for seventeen years, because of something discovered
in his writings by his brother Dominican Melchior Cano (Suau, _op.
cit._, 136).
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