CHAPTER XI
IT was in 1540, the year before Ignatius was elected General, that the Society first set foot in Germany.
Nowhere had its apostles such need to remember his counsel to all his missionaries abroad; to be constantly on their guard, as those who are surrounded by perils and enemies; to fix the soul on God, keeping a quiet and recollected mind, equal alike in prosperity and adversity, sorrow and joy. A Diet (the second) was assembled at Worms, and Charles V. asked of the Pope and Ignatius a Jesuit to accompany thither Ignatius's one-time enemy, Ortiz. He must be consummate both in eloquence and theology; he must have high personal character; and, alike to Paul and Ignatius, none seemed so eligible as Favre. To Worms, therefore, went Favre; and, arrived thither, speedily lost all surprise at the apparition and success of the Reformation, and almost all hope at the prospect of warring with it. If things had seemed ill in Italy, here they were ten-fold worse. On New Year's Day of 1 541 he wrote to Ignatius:
" I wonder there are not twice or three times the number of heretics that there are, because nothing leads to errors in belief so rapidly as a disordered life. It is not the false interpretation of Scripture, nor the conspiracies of the Lutherans, that have caused so many countries and so many towns and provinces to revolt against religion. All the mischief is done by the scandalous lives of the clergy. Would there were, in this city of Worms, at least two or three churchmen not living openly
in sin, or guilty of some notorious crime, but who had a little zeal for the salvation of souls. They might do anything they pleased with this simple
people; I mean in the towns where they have not abolished all the laws and practices of religion, and entirely thrown off obedience to the Apostolic See. But those whose duty it is to lead the faithless into the fold are precisely they who drive the Catholics to become Lutherans by the spectacle of their dissolute lives.'*
It was not a matter of Indulgences, not a matter of theological subtleties, but a matter of unfulfilled duties and scandalous example: the doctrinal denials of Luther would have found no entrance but for the laxity of the orthodox clergy. It is a terrible indictment, but so, in the main, heresies succeed: they seldom prevail where they arc confronted bv the living argument of good example. In Worms, Favre could find but one faithful priest to help him — ^the Dean, who was also Vicar-General and Inquisitor. Despondent at his isolated position, the Dean took new courage from the advent of Favre; and these two unaided men did largely turn the tide in Worms. Favre thus had the distinction of heading the Jesuit forlorn hope against German Lutheranism. The dauntless struggle he inaugurated failed to reconquer Germany for the Church: even the brave spirit of Ignatius's followers must have felt that hopeless from the outset. Yet it was not a failure. It found the Reformation in full flow of seemingly irresistible aggression; it left it checked and rolled back upon the North. The Conquests of the Reformation abated from the moment that the vanguard of Jesuitism bore the banner of Ignatius over the German frontier.
The political effort which Favre had been deputed to accomplish failed, as all political efforts failed, and for the reasons which made all political efforts futile. A Conference was called at Ratisbon, to which the Emperor Charles V. lent the weight and sanction of his own presence: Melanchthon, Butzer, and the most conciliatory of the Lutheran chiefs attended; Cardinal Contarini, most conciliatory and reforming of prelates, represented the
Pope; and at first all was smoothness and apparent accord. But the Lutherans soon showed they were not in simple earnest; Charles had his personal political irons in the fire; Francis of France intrigued for his own quite opposite ends; and the business came to grief. Charles held out to the Reformers hopes of a General Council in Germany; Paul hastened to respond by announcing a General Council to be convoked by himself. The Conference broke up without result, to await the promised Council. Only certain clergy-reforms determined on were to be pursued forthwith.
Favre foresaw the issue, and confined himself to private evangelisation. Numbers of distinguished men attended his ministrations (for preaching was forbidden him); but in their names we recognise the nobility of the Spanish Court — including the son of Ignatius's old patron, the Duke of Najera, and Juan, nephew of the last Moorish King of Granada. The Lutheran nobles are conspicuously absent. Then Ortiz was sent back to Spain, and Ignatius ordered Favre to accompany him, sending Bobadilla and Le Jay to replace Favre at Ratisbon. Meanwhile the Emperor himself hurried off on his Algerine expedition, for the sake of which he had played into the hands of the Lutherans and prematurely terminated the Conference, only to meet maritime disaster. Favre was not destined to be long absent from Germany, making but a heavenly raid (so to speak) upon Spain: but in the interim wc may follow out the work of those who took his place at Ratisbon.
Bobadilla canie tardily. At Innsbruck, whither he moved from Viterbo, where our own Cardinal Pole had employed him, he was seized on by
Ferdinand, King of the Romans, and carried to Vienna. Vienna was even as Germany: he found what Favre had found in Worms — a degenerate clergy, a neglected people. He preached, held
Latin disputations before Ferdinand, and then turned aside with the Nuncio to Nuremberg. His results do not seem to have been extensive. When the Diet which had drawn thither the Nuncio was over (Diets were numberless in tliat day of conflict), he was back, in Vienna; and with all his disadvantages had some success. Ferdinand would even have had him undertake the reform of the monasteries, w^hich is warrant that his labours were not barren. He refused to do so without the authorisation of the Bishops; and Ferdinand named him as his Theologian for yet another of these weary and futile Diets, summoned at Ratisbon in the year 1543. There, at last, he met and joined Le Jay.
Le Jay had been fighting a hard fight against endless obstacles. He knew no German, yet was sent to a city of Germans, whom he could address only in Latin or French. From those authorities who should have been his helpers he had no help. The Bishop was powerless over his flock; the clergy were suspect of favouring the Lutherans, whom they made no efi^ort to resist; the Dean (unlike the Dean who had stood by Favre's side at Worms) was no better than his fellowpriests. The Imperial authority was no aid: Charles, Catholic zealot in Spain, coquetted with heresy in Germany, to the length of afi^ecting a readiness to consider, and perhaps embrace, the new ideas. He was not now present: the tempest had scattered the fleet he launched against Algiers, and had sent him home with loss to Spain, leaving the seas to the Moorish Corsair, Barbarossa. Yet crowds flocked to hear the eloquent Jesuit expound the Epistle to the Galatians — a remarkable proof how men's minds were then occupied by theological questions. Like Favre, he saw that to convert the sheep he must first convert the shepherds, and upon them chiefly he bent his efforts. The clergy responded with violent anger against the intrusive foreigner, and made common cause against him with the Lutherans. He had to combat heresy allied with those who should themselves have combated heresy. Thepeople were roused against him, and menaced him with the waters of the Danube. '' What matters whether I enter Heaven by land or water? " he said, and persisted.
To him came Bobadilla, none too soon; and to hear him, even in the Latin tongue, thronged the Germans and the strangers within their gates. The attacks redoubled their fierceness as it became evident an impression wsls being made: Le Jay redoubled his activity, and (most practical step, which one wonders had not been considered before) took to studying German, though the poor Frenchman found it " a harsh tongue," and was of a nation not famous as linguists.
Two years of this thankless work at Ratisbon, and Ignatius sent Le Jay to open the attack on yet another German town, Ingolstadt. There he found a footing. The Duke of Bavaria stood strongly behind him. He had restrained his people from reforming Ratisbon. " Sooner would I forfeit my dukedom than give up a man of mine to Luther," he said. Eck was already at Ingolstadt before Le Jay; success awaited him; and the Bishop of Augsburg presently summoned Le Jay to Dillingen, v^here also he prospered. Thence his ceaseless energy was transferred to Salzburg. A provincial assembly w^as there afoot, for yet another conference between the conflicting creeds. The Lutherans demanded a National Council, and Le Jay (consulted by the Bishops) had mainly to do with the refusal of their demand. Abortive, like all such conferences, this conference was of some note, since it issued in the prelates commissioning Le Jay to write to Rome, and press on the Pope the convention of the long-promised General Council. The whole Society, headed by Ignatius, united in pressing for the acceleration of the Council; and thus the Jesuits had largely a hand in the convoking of the great Trent assembly, where their delegates were to play so prominent a
After thiswise the Jesuit advance into Germany began. Favre, who had headed it, meantime was pursuing his Spanish mission, not long to be uninterrupted. He shared the experience common in those days of intermittent war between the French King and the Emperor, of imprisonment by the French in the castle at Mantua, converted his gaoler, the commanding officer, and, dismissed with honour, visited Saragossa, Medina, Madrid, 217 2 E
Alcala, and many Spanish towns, preaching, catechising, and carrying out the usual work of a Jesuit missioner. He acquired the devotion of the Emperor's two young daughters, Dona Maria and Dona Juana, whom he met at Ocana; and two of their chaplains, Juan de Aragon and Alvaro Alonso, became his companions on his return to Germany, and themselves joined the Society. For Pope Paul III., soon recognising that a man like this was more needed to beat back the Reformation in rough Germany than to secure a comparatively easy conquest of Catholic Spain, called him to retrace his steps. It was in the moment of quitting it that this Spanish journey became memorable. Ignatius had sent into Spain Antonio Araoz, to make known there the nature of the Society and its approbation by the Pope; for this was in the outset of 1 542, when Ignatius had scarce been General a year. At Barcelona he met Favre turning back towards Germany. It was Favre's way, when he entered town or province, to ask the aid of its Angel and Patron Saints. The Angel of Barcelona was propitious to his prayer, for he sent him Francis Borgia. Borgia's wife had met Araoz when he called on her husband as Captain- General of Catalonia; she had heard Favre preach; and the result was an invitation to Borgia's table. The reader remembers how the joyful cortege of the young Marquis of Lombay passed the ignominious cortege of Ignatius on its way to prison, in the old days at Alcala. Francis Borgia, Marquis of Lombay, was son of the Duke of Gandia. Flying with his family when the castle of Gandia was sacked during the war of the Comuneros, he was put under the charge of his uncle, the Archbishop of Saragossa, who gave him an excellent training, and sent him in his youth to the Imperial Court. From childhood he was devout. When he hunted with the Court, it is said he used to turn away his eyes at the moment when the quarry was struck, the boar seized, to lesson himself in restraint; and that when called on to sing he sang only hymns. Whether he sang hymns to Leonora de Castro we are not told. For after long suit, as became a lover of those days, he won the hand ot that beautiful and ever-beloved lady. Like Ignatius, he distinguished himself as a soldier, fighting in Lombardy, Provence, and Africa. It was when he was campaigning with the Emperor that Charles sent him with tidings of the war to the Empress Isabella, with whom Leonora and he were special favourites. In the midst of the rejoicings at Toledo the Empress was taken with sudden illness, and in a few days was dead. Francis accompanied her coffin to Granada, and had the duty of verifying the body. Then occurred the incident so often related. The coffin was opened, and he gazed on the fairness he knew so well, in the terrible transformation of decay. The sight so profoundly moved him that he resolved, so soon as duty would suffer him, to forsake the world. But that was not yet to be. The world, on the contrary, seemed to tighten its grip on him. Charles V. made him Viceroy of Catalonia; and he exercised the office with wisdom and conscience, reforming abuses temporal and spiritual, and putting the province in a posture of defence.
To this manner of man it was that Favrc came. His wife was worthy of him. Rebuked for the plainness of her dress, she answered: '* How khuuld
I value rich raiment when my husband wears a hair-shirt? " But her ill-health was a constant anxiety to Francis; the shadow was over her of that death which was to leave him, a widower, to carry out the design formed at the bier of Isabella. And now had come the man who was to point him the future way. He listened with deep attention to Favre's tale of the Society, its rise, and its Founder. Profoundly attracted both by the story and its narrator, he disclosed his heart to Favre, and his yearning to fulfil that vow made at Granada. For the time it could not be: wife and children, no less than his position, held him back. He would have kept Favre, if he could; but since he could not, he wrote to Ignatius asking for Araoz; and Araoz accordingly remained till the end of the year.
Favre resumed his journey to Spire, having (though he knew it not) captured for the Society one of its chief glories, destined to outshine even himself. He nearly fell into the hands of robbers on the Spanish, and of Lutheran soldiers on the German, border, but apart from these little inconveniences of sixteenth-century travel, came securely into Spire. He found the usual laxity among the clergy; but for once he succeeded with them — by mildness and conciliation — where their bishop, using opposite means, had failed; and he brought the majority back to their duties. Thence he was ordered to Mainz. Again erring clerics, unfaith, the struggle of creeds, the tree judged by its fruits; also a Cardinal Archbishop supine about the Lutherans, but now a penitent Cardinal Archbishop, anxious for Favre's help. This Albert von Brandenburg was a type of the noble ecclesiastic embodied for all time in Leo the Tenth, the man steeped in the Renascence, more engrossed with the advancement of humanism than the advancement of faith. But nov^ he loyally supported Favre; and here, too, the Jesuit succeeded in closing up the ranks of Catholicism against the enemy. That task was all but left to the Jesuits at present, for the attempt to call a General Council had failed. Paul had agreed, Trent had been chosen, despite Protestant recalcitrance. Then the Imperial officers executed two French ambassadors who had reached Casale, bent on secret intrigue with Turk and Austrian against Charles v.; Francis declared war anew, the French and Spanish armies were in motion, the Corsair Barbarossa swept the coasts of Italy with his Algerine fleet, took Nice, and Religion once more played second fiddle to the ambition of princes.
But in the breach of the assaulted and distracted Church the Jesuits stood fearless. Even in Germany they were turning the fight which had gone so long against them. At Barcelona, Favre had secured a future Saint for the Society; at Mainz he made an acquisition only less brilliant. He gained Peter Canisius. Born at Nimeguen in the year that saw Ignatius carried prostrate from the breach of Pamplona, Canisius had for father a man of large property, governor to the sons of the Duke of Lorraine. Rainolda of Arnheim, a relation of the elder Canisius, had foretold that his son would join a Society of Jesus, which would be for the profit of the world and of Germany in particular. The prophecy, made when the little band of founders were taking their vows at Montmartre, had been repeated to the youth; and now the fame of Favre's Scriptural expositions drew him to
Mainz. He was scarce twenty-four, a distinguished pupil of the illustrious Esch at Cologne University, and Favre's learning and sanctity moved him to cry that this was less a man than an angel from heaven. He followed him to Cologne, whence a message called Peter to the death-bed of his father. He believed himself to have received a revelation that of a certainty his parents had obtained '-23 salvation, and, in thanksgiving, he divided all his great inheritance among the poor. He returned in poverty to Favre and the Society, bringing vv^ith him another recruit, the first-fruits of his eloquence — one of three travel-companions vv^hom he had converted by the v^ay. Himself was to go dow^n to posterity as Blessed Peter Canisius.
Favre, as he told Ignatius, was startled by his own success, a success which almost frightened his humility. A harder task called to him from Cologne, where the Catholics implored his aid against their own Archbishop, Hermann von Wied. This specimen of the German Prince-Bishop, whose aristocracy was his sole qualification for his high place, knowing no Latin, wearing secular dress, imitated the secular princes of Germany not only in manner of life, but in their favour towards Lutheranism. His Archdeacon strove in vain to make him sensible of his duties. The Archdeacon might coerce him into calling a Synod, but could not coerce him into fulfilling its decisions. He took the trouble, for once, to celebrate Mass at Easter, because it gave him an opportunity to administer Communion in both kinds, with a Protestant public absolution. Tyndale had printed his Bible in the city, and the Archbishop brought in the Reformer Butzer to preach. Favre spoke plainly to von Wied, who listened with a politic semblance of agreement. But again Favre was ordered by Ignatius into Spain, King Joam or Portugal desiring him to accompany his daughter Maria into Castile, where her affianced husband, the young Philip of Spain, awaited her. He got no further than Louvain, where he was taken ill, and on his recovery was sent back to Cologne.
Even in illness he was not idle. Twenty students of Louvain offered themselves to the Society, out of whom he selected ten and sent them, by order of Ignatius, to fill the ranks of the new Jesuit college at Coimbra. Back at Cologne, he found its last state worse than its first. The Archbishop had reinforced his Lutheran attack, and Melanchthon, Butzer, and Pistorius were all preaching under his protection. Favre at once offered battle, engaging them in daily and public conferences. He prevailed so greatly that the Emperor was appealed to by large numbers of the citizens to banish the Lutheran preachers, which was done after Favre had held with them a public disputation.
The Divine empowerment admitted, on the human side the secret of Favre's success is writ clear in his own character, and the methods to which his character led him. We remember in his student days that mildness and a certain diffidence had been his note, threatening indeed to alloy the success of his brilliant gifts. The ardent confidence of the Ignatian spirit had fired and inspirited that too-great modesty; but the "conscience and tender heart " remained for good. No better man could Ignatius have chosen to make way with the rough Teuton temper, which' met challenge with instant defiance. He understood how to take the line of least resistance — the lesson which Ignatius beat in upon his followers. Charity, respect for adverse prejudices, was the policy that Favre emphasised in writing to Lainez of the true way with Lutherans:
" We should seek their goodwill and confidence by a friendly intercourse, conversing of the matters 225 2 F
on which we are agreed, and shunning altercation. We should teach them first what they ought to practise, then what they ought to believe; not, as was the custom of the early Church, when men's minds were first of all to receive the faith which comes from hearing, and then be led by degrees to the practice of good works. Nowadays we should essay to win them from evil ways before we attack their evil doctrine. If Luther himself could be brought to a virtuous life, it would be easy to draw him back into the Church."
Those are words of permanent sagacity; they are not the less valuable to-day because now (as then) there is a general tendency to the sterile methods of doctrinal disputation, effective with the few, fruitless with the many. For the disease of the majority is less ignorance of truth than ignorance of the very spirit of truth — nay, the preoccupation by a spirit deadly to truth, the spirit of this world. Change of heart must precede, and in itself almost involves, change of mind. Our barbaric ancestors, on the contrary, were well-meaning children, needing only to be given belief for the belief gradually to work in them, and draw conduct in its wake.
After some six months, in the July of 1544, Favre left Cologne. He had, before his return thither, collected the scattered Jesuit students of Louvain in one house, and thus laid the foundations of their future establishment there. Canisius, his brilliant new disciple, was left to guard the work in Cologne. He soon had embroilment enough. The Archbishop, von Wied, roused himself to a final effort against these troublers of his ease; and the Lutheran magistracy (anticipating modern French Ministries and their ways) proceeded against them as a new sect, therefore ruled out by law. The Jesuit house was closed, and the Jesuits scattered through Cologne. Presently they were suffered to return, and Archdeacon Groppcr (that old thorn in the side of his Lutheranising Archbishop) convoked clergy and university. By them Canisius was clespatched on a counter-move against the Lutherans, to seek aid from the Prince-Bishop of Liege and the Emperor himself. The Prince- Bishop was actively friendly, and Charles, in spite of the difficulties of his last Diet at Worms, where he had withstood all Le Jay's persuasions to active measures with the Reformation — was won by the young delegate of twenty-five. The issue was the deposition of the obstinate von Wied, and the giving of his bishopric to another, Adolph von Schaumberg. With him the chief scandal, at least, disappeared from among the struggling Catholics of Cologne, and in so far the Jesuits and Canisius had conquered.