Our space will not allow us to enter into details, and to follow the Jesuits step by step in their prosperous course. Let it suffice that we have shewn how the Society developed itself by degrees, and by what means it arrived at the pinnacle of power and greatness. We shall now proceed to shew, in its principal facts, what use the Jesuits made of their ill-gotten influence.
As we have already said, France was now the chief seat of their power, and the field where they reaped their laurels. Under Louis XIII., or, to speak more correctly, under Richelieu, they could not pretend to a great share of authority. The despotic cardinal will only have them as his tools. He will protect them; he will go with his royal slave to lay the first stone of a Jesuit edifice in a faubourg of Paris (St Antoine), but he will cause to be condemned and burnt by the hands of the hangman, the books of Keller and Santarelli, that exalt the papal above the royal authority, which Richelieu considered his own. Cardinal Mazzarini was as little disposed as his predecessor to tolerate any rival domineering influence; and during his administration, the Jesuits had no considerable part in the public affairs. If Mazzarini shewed them some kindness, and afforded them his protection, it was because he wanted their support in opposition to the Jansenists, the partisans of the Cardinal of Metz, Archbishop of Paris, and Mazzarini’s rival in power and in gallant intrigues. But when Louis XIV., on reaching his twentieth year, assumed the government of his kingdom, then really began the reign of the Jesuits. Not that the man who entered the Parliament in his hunting apparel, with his whip in his hand, and was accustomed to say, _L’état c’est moi_, was much disposed to act by the advice and under the influence of other persons; yet the Jesuits had a great share in all the great events of his reign.
Louis had a Jesuit confessor from his childhood,[255] who, by insidious and daily-repeated insinuations, had rendered him a fanatical bigot, and made him believe that the greatest glory he could achieve would be the upholding of the Popish religion. In this point, as indeed in many others, Louis bears a resemblance to Philip II. of Spain. Both gloried in the appellation of champions of Popery, both had its persecuting spirit, both sacrificed the love of their people to the wish to appear most zealous Romanists; yet both, despotic and jealous of their royal prerogative, waged war against their god on earth when he attempted to impugn it. Philip sent Alva, who, having conquered the Papal troops, entered Rome, and obliged the Pope to subscribe his master’s conditions; while Louis took possession of Avignon, threw the Papal nuncio into prison, and obliged every member of the French clergy to subscribe the four articles of the Gallican Church, expressly got up against the pretensions of Rome. With such a man as Louis, the Jesuits could not succeed in gaining their ends but by the most complete subjection to his orders or caprices. So, accommodating themselves at once to the prince’s character, there was no mark of devotion and servility which they did not shew to him. They supported him in his schism against the Pope, subscribed the articles of the Gallican Church, and refused to publish the bull of excommunication the former had fulminated against _the first-born of the Church of Rome_,[256] persuading him, however, that he would always remain a good Roman Catholic while they confessed and absolved him. They praised him for his military achievements, and encouraged him in his profligacy, taking great care to abandon the former mistress the moment they saw the inclination of the prince directed towards a new one. For these criminal compliances, they obtained, in exchange, full liberty to persecute the Jansenists and Protestants to their hearts’ content.