In 1776 an agreement was arrived at between Pius VI. and Frederick II., according to which the Jesuits in Prussian territory were to be disbanded formally and were to lay aside their dress, but they were permitted to continue under a different name to direct the colleges which they possessed. The Empress Catherine II. of Russia continued till her death to protect the Society. In 1778 she insisted upon the erection of a novitiate, for which oral permission seems to have been given by Pius VI. In the other countries many of the Jesuits laboured as secular priests, others of them united in the congregation, known as the Fathers of the Faith (1797), and others still in the congregation of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart. In 1803 the English Jesuit community at Stonyhurst was allowed to affiliate with the Russian congregation; in 1804 the Society was re-established with the permission of Pius VII. in Naples, and in 1814 the Pope issued the Bull, /Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum/ formally re-establishing the Society. Strange to say the very next year (1815) a persecution broke out against the Jesuits in Saint Petersburg, and in 1820 they were expelled from Russian territory.
It was fear of the Bourbon rulers that forced Clement XIV. to agree to the suppression of the Jesuits. By sacrificing a society that had been noted for its loyal defence of and submission to the Pope, he had hoped to restore peace to the Church, and to avert the many calamities that threatened its very existence in France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples. But he lived long enough to realise that his weakness led only to new and more exorbitant demands, and that the professors, who had taken the chairs vacated by the Jesuits, were only too ready to place their voices and their pens at the disposal of the civil power and against the Holy See. The suppression of the Society was hailed as a veritable triumph by the forces of irreligion and rationalism. The schemes that this party had been concocting for years were at last crowned with success; the strongest of the outposts had been captured, and it only remained to make one last desperate assault on the fortress itself. The civil rulers, who had allowed themselves to be used as tools for promoting the designs of the rationalists and the Freemasons, had soon reason to regret the cruelty and violence with which they treated the Society of Jesus. In a few years the Revolution was in full swing; the thrones of France, Spain, Portugal and Naples were overturned, and those members of the royal families, who escaped the scaffold or the dungeon, were themselves driven to seek refuge in foreign lands, as the Jesuits had been driven in the days of Clement XIV.
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[1] On the /Monita Secreta/, cf. Bernard, /Les instructions secretes des Jesuites/, 1903. Duhr, /Jesuitenfabeln/, 1904. Gerard, /Jesuit Bogey/, etc. (/The Month/, Aug., 1901, p. 179).
[2] Du Breuil, /Un ministre philosophe, Carvalho, marquis de Pombal/(/Revue historique/, 1895, pp. 1 sqq.).
[3] Carayon, /Le pere ricci et la suppression de la compagnie de Jesus en 1773/, 1869.
(e) Failure of Attempts at Reunion. Protestant Sects.
Bossuet, /Oeuvres completes/, 1846 (vii.). /Oeuvres de Leibniz/, etc., 1859. Kiefl, /Der Friedensplan des Leibniz fur Wiedervereinigung der getrennten Kirchen/, 1903. Lescoeur, /De Bossueti et Leibnitii epistolarum commercio circa pacem inter Christianos conciliandam/, 1852. Tabaraud, /Histoire critique des projets formes depuis trois cents ans pour la reunion des communions chretiennes/. Kahnis, /Der innere gang des deutschen Protestantismus/, 3 Auf., 1874. Franke, /Geschichte der protestantism Theologie/, 1865. Erbkam, /Geschichte der protestantischen Sekten im Zeitalter der Reformation/, 1848.
Whatever hopes there might have been of restoring unity to the Christian world during the early years of the Reformation movement, the prospects of a reunion became more and more remote according as the practical results of the principle of private judgment made themselves felt. It was no longer with Luther, or Calvin, or Zwingli that Catholic theologians were called upon to negotiate, nor was it sufficient for them to concentrate their attention upon the refutation of the /Confessio Augustana/ or the /Confessio Tetrapolitana/. The leading followers of the early Reformers found themselves justified in questioning the teaching of their masters, for reasons exactly similar to those that had been alleged by their masters in defence of their attack on the Catholic Church. The principle of religious authority having been rejected, individuals felt free to frame their own standard of orthodoxy, and were it not for the civil rulers, who interfered to preserve their states from the temporal dangers of religious anarchy, and to supply by their own power some organisation to take the place of the Catholic hierarchy, Calvinism and Lutherani** would have assumed almost as many forms as there were individuals who professed to accept these religious systems. As it was, despite the religious formularies, drawn up for the most part at the instigation and on the advice of the civil rulers, it proved impossible for man to replace the old bulwarks established by Christ to safeguard the deposit of faith. As a consequence new sects made their appearance in every country that accepted the reformed doctrine.
In France some attempts were made by Cardinal Richelieu to bring about a reunion between the Catholics and the Calvinists. In taking these steps he was influenced more by considerations of state than by zeal for the welfare of the Church, but the gulf separating the two parties was too wide to be bridged over even by French patriotism. In Poland, where unity was particularly required and where the disastrous consequences of religious strife were only too apparent, Ladislaus V.
