I have said that Richelieu despised the Jesuits, and his correspondence with Father (later Cardinal) de Bérulle suggests this. De Bérulle, a man of exalted character and piety, was the founder of the Oratorian priests, and a valued friend of the minister. We have a letter that he wrote to Richelieu in 1623, which contains, in the mild and charitable language of a saint, a very painful indictment of the French Jesuits. Their jealousy of the new congregation and determination to prevent its growth led to some extremely unworthy conduct. In town after town, as de Bérulle describes in detail, the Oratorians removed the prejudice against the Jesuits, and even surrendered property to them, and the Jesuits then repaid their benefactors with slander and intrigue. At Dieppe the governor refused to allow the Jesuits to found a college, but gladly admitted the Oratorians. A Jesuit then asked the hospitality of the Oratorians, and used the opportunity to intrigue against them, in favour of the Society, among the citizens. A letter in which he informed his colleagues of his hope of winning the college from the Oratorians was intercepted and sent to de Bérulle. At Paris the King offered the Oratorians a hotel, but the Jesuits intervened and prevented the gift. They told "strange and atrocious calumnies" of de Bérulle at the court, and at Bordeaux they proposed to indite him for heresy. The intrigue covers the whole of France during more than ten years, and betrays a very general lack of moral sensitiveness among the French Jesuits. In a similar, though less vigorous, way they attempted to hinder the growth of the new congregation of priests founded by St. Vincent de Paul.[20]
A more general view of the conduct of the French Jesuits from 1615 to 1645 does little to alter this unfavourable impression. Even in the pages of their French apologist their record of service is singularly mediocre; they taught tens of thousands of pupils and preached to hundreds of congregations, is all that one can say. On the other hand, when we turn to the numerous facts which the French apologist has discreetly omitted, we find them making unedifying efforts to extend their work and influence. In 1620 the Jesuits of Poitiers defy the bishop, who lays an interdict on their church; the bishop has decreed that his people must attend their parish churches once in three weeks at least, and the Jesuits reply from the pulpit that it is enough if the people attend _their_ church. At Angoulême, in 1622, they secure, through Father Coton and by a secret contract with the mayor, the monopoly of teaching and the control of the university. They continue for four years to defy the bishop and stir the people against him, although they are condemned by Cardinal de Sourdis and their contract is declared void by the Parlement, until the bishop is compelled to excommunicate them. In 1623 they have similar trouble, due to their determination to found petty universities at Toulouse, Pontoise, and Tournon, and all the universities of France combine in what the French apologist calls a "ferocious war" against them. A few years later they obtain from the King letters permitting them to found a house at Troyes, "at the request of the inhabitants." The inhabitants were so little minded to invite them, and so angry at the fraud, that they kept them out of Troyes, in spite of all their efforts, for a hundred years. Their record in France is full of such details. Toward the end of the period it begins to tell of the famous struggle with the Jansenists; but we will consider this story in full in a later chapter.