Dr. von Lang has also written a sketch of the history of the Jesuits in Bavaria (_Geschichte der Jesuiten in Baiern_, 1819), and we have a picture of degeneration and prosperity as in so many other countries. We saw, in an early chapter, the unattractive story of their settlement in Bavaria and coercion of the Protestants. Before and during the Thirty Years' War they were the most ardent instigators of Maximilian, and, when the terror of the Swedes had passed away, they entered upon a period of great prosperity in the impoverished country. When Maximilian died, however, in 1651, some attempt was made to check their progress by the statesmen who knew how deeply they were responsible for the desolation of Bavaria. Members of a rival religious order, the Theatines, were patronised by the Duchess Maria, and the Jesuits conducted an unedifying campaign against the Theatines, who made a spirited resistance. Each body accused the other of forging miracles in honour of its saints. Von Lang estimates that a little after the middle of the seventeenth century the 585 members of the Bavarian branch of the Society enjoyed a permanent income of 185,950 florins. To this, however, we must add fees, salaries, gifts, and legacies. Dr. von Lang shows that between 1620 and 1700 large donations amounting to 800,000 florins were made to the Society, often at the suggestion of its members.
The later wealth of the Jesuits in Bavaria cannot be estimated as the larger contributions to their funds were only stated in strictly secret documents which have never seen the light. We know that the Society prospered more than ever in the eighteenth century. In 1727 there were 875 Jesuits in Bavaria and the Tyrol, and the papers confiscated at the suppression proved that their wealth was enormous. Their college at Ingolstadt alone owned hundreds of farms, or a series of estates worth about 3,000,000 florins. A dozen other colleges were also richly endowed with landed property. As the eighteenth century wore on, however, the hostility to the Jesuits increased. Protestants were never without some serious ground for complaint of Jesuit controversy, and in Bavaria we find them accusing the Jesuits (quite justly) of recommending the sons of Protestant parents to _steal_ the "bad books" of their fathers and bring them to the college. Catholics, on the other hand, complained that the Jesuits rendered no material service in proportion to their great wealth, and, as the successive messages of suppression came from Portugal, France, and Spain, their opponents became bolder. The Jesuits so little expected to be disturbed that in 1770 they created a separate Bavarian province, with more than 500 members. Three years later they were secularised and dispersed on account of the suppression of the Society.