THE JESUITS
1534-1921
Foundation to the Present Time
THOMAS J. CAMPBELL, S.J.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA PRESS
IMPRIMATUR: PATRICK J. HAYES, D.D., Archbishop of New York
The Encyclopedia Press
All rights reserved
PREFACE
Some years ago the writer of these pages, when onhis way to what is called a general congregation of theSociety of Jesus, was asked by a fellow-passenger onan Atlantic liner, if he knew anything about the Jesuits.He answered in the affirmative and proceeded to givean account of the character and purpose of the Order.After a few moments, he was interrupted by theinquirer with, "You know nothing at all about them,Sir; good day." Possibly the Jesuits themselves areresponsible for this attitude of mind, which is notpeculiar to people at sea, but is to be met everywhere.
As a matter of fact, no Jesuit has thus far everwritten a complete or adequate history of the Society;Orlandini, Jouvancy and Cordara attempted it a coupleof centuries ago, but their work never got beyond thefirst one hundred years. Two very small compendiumsby Jesuits have been recently published, one in Italianby Rosa, the other in French by Brucker, but theyare too congested to be satisfactory to the averagereader, and Brucker's stops at the Suppression of theSociety by Clement XIV in 1773. Crétineau-Joly'shistory was written in great haste; he is often a specialpleader, and even Jesuits find him too eulogistic. Atpresent he is hopelessly antiquated, his last volumebearing the date of 1833. B. N. (Barbara Neave)published in English a history of the Society basedlargely on Crétineau-Joly. The consequence of thislack of authoritative works is that the general publicgets its information about the Jesuits from writers whoare prejudiced or ill-informed or, who, perhaps, havebeen hired to defame the Society for political purposes.[vi]Other authors, again, have found the Jesuits a romantictheme, and have drawn largely on their imagination fortheir statements.
Attention was called to this condition of things bythe Congregation of the Society which elected FatherMartin to the post of General of the Jesuits in 1892.As a result he appointed a corps of distinguished writersto co-operate in the production of a universal historyof the Society, which was to be colossal in size, basedon the most authentic documents, and in line withthe latest and most exacting requirements of recentscientific historiography. On the completion of thevarious parts, they are to be co-ordinated and thentranslated into several languages, so as to supplymaterial for minor histories within the reach of thegeneral public. Such a scheme necessarily supposes avery considerable time before the completion of theentire work, and, as matter of fact, although severalvolumes have already appeared in English, French,German, Spanish and Italian, the authors are stilldiscussing events that occurred two centuries ago.Happily their researches have thrown much light onthe early history of the Orde