In the Jesuit schools the greatest order reigned. The Jesuit masters were men of polite and agreeable manners, in general of a _comely appearance_, with a cheerful and smiling countenance. They descended with a winning affability to the level of their pupils, and accommodated their language and manners to the capacities and dispositions of the _class of persons_ they had to deal with. The parents, who were highly pleased with the polished manners and the high attainments of their children, sounded forth the praises of their kind instructors far and wide, and repaid their gratuitous instructions sometimes by large donations, always by a deference and devotion never withdrawn. It is an incontestable fact, that even Protestants and philosophers, who had been educated in these seminaries, and who afterwards became the most hostile to the Jesuits as a religious community, continued to preserve a grateful recollection of their Jesuit teachers. Voltaire himself dedicated his tragedy _Merope_ to his dear master Father Porée; and the different princes who were brought up by the Jesuits never lost, when on the throne, that affection and veneration which they had conceived for their kind instructors at an age when generous minds are most susceptible of noble and generous impressions.
Nor was this all. Another strong link, that of religion, was added to the chain of sympathy by which they bound their pupils to the order, and insured for themselves in the different nations of Europe an all-powerful and irresistible influence. In 1569 the Jesuit Leon, a teacher, thought of assembling during the interval of studies such of the boys as were willing to sing the praises of the Virgin, and perform certain external acts of devotion, contributing at the same time, monthly, small sums of money, part of which was employed in works of charity, the merit of the action being always attributed, not to the donors, but to the Jesuits. These meetings took the form of associations, and increased so rapidly, that fifteen years after, in 1584, Gregory XIII. erected them into primary congregations, under the title of _Congregations of the Holy Virgin_. “These congregations, of which the General of the order was the supreme director, soon broke out from the walls of the colleges with those young men who left them to embrace a career, and who wished to remain in a communion of prayers and remembrances with their masters and their fellow-scholars. They became a link of connexion and friendship; they spread in Europe and in India; they united in the same association the east and the west, the populations of the north and of the south. They had statutes, rules, prayers, and duties in common. It was a numerous brotherhood, extending from Paris to Goa, and descending from Rome to the most insignificant hamlet. The congregations of Avignon, of Antwerp, of Prague, of Friburg, were the most celebrated. There were congregations composed of ecclesiastics, of military men, of magistrates, of nobles, of burgesses, of merchants, of artisans, of servants, all occupied in good and meritorious works.”[205] With the exception of this last clause, this description is perfectly true. A Jesuit was at the head of every congregation. At appointed times the members met together to repeat the office of the Virgin, and to listen to whatever exhortation or advice the Jesuit might think proper to give. His influence was greater or less, according to the quality of persons composing the congregation. Over the poor and the ignorant he had an almost absolute control, and whatever he enjoined, they unscrupulously obeyed. If he exercised no such absolute control over members of the higher classes, he still possessed a great influence over them, and had free access to their families, where he more leisurely practised those arts by which the Jesuit very seldom fails to attain his ends. One is amazed when he considers what immense power these congregations must have given the General of the society. His orders, his curses or commendations of a book, of a man, or of a measure, were repeated in the same tone throughout all the world by tens of thousands, who considered it a sin to disbelieve his word, or to disobey his commands. No wonder, then, that the Court of Rome itself was obliged to submit to the ascendancy of the Jesuits, and that the suppression of the order was with difficulty effected by the united efforts of almost all the sovereigns of Europe.