In Belgium, which was now predominantly Catholic and had only passed from the control of Catholic Spain to that of Catholic Austria, the Jesuits prospered down to the time of the suppression of the Society. The last remnants of Protestantism had been crushed under the heel of the Spanish soldiers or driven to Holland, and the province was an excellent field for tranquil work. The only notable episode is that, in their eagerness to rise above the other clergy, the Jesuits pressed Rome to apply to Belgium the famous test of belief which had been devised for the "Jansenists" of France. Arnauld had many admirers in Belgium, and the University of Louvain, especially, strongly resented the prospect of being forced to say that there were in the obscure work of Bishop Jansen five propositions which were not there. The Archbishop of Malines and the Nuncio were won by the Jesuits, but Innocent XII. hesitated to extend that miserable struggle to the peaceful Belgian Church. The Nuncio deliberately withheld the Pope's brief until the Jesuits made another attempt to win their demand, but in 1694 the Pope insisted that only priests who were found to hold the five propositions in question should be molested. As usual, the Jesuits failed to find any one who held the famous propositions and the matter was abandoned.
The story of the Jesuits in the States which now form the German Empire and in Austria has not yet been systematically written, and the material is a large and undigested mass of laudatory episodes and drastic charges.[33] In Austria, or the Holy Roman Empire, as it was then called, we might follow the fortunes of the Society with some continuity, but it would add little, in regard to Jesuit character, to what we have gathered from the records of France, Spain, and Portugal. The central and most important fact is the continued influence of the Jesuit confessors at the court. Amongst the interesting manuscripts which were seized at the time of the suppression of the Society was a document, dating from the time of General Acquaviva, giving royal confessors secret instructions as to their duty;[34] openly, of course, the Jesuit rule was to refuse such offices as far as possible, and to confine themselves to purely spiritual matters if the office was accepted. These instructions make the confessor a spy not only on the monarch, but upon his ministers and civic officials, and direct that he shall obtain information even about the private lives of his principal subjects. We know from other confiscated manuscripts which have been published (especially by Döllinger and Reusch) that this information was regularly sent to Rome, and that at every important juncture the confessor, who used to ask the monarch for time to consult God and his conscience, sent a secret messenger to Rome (or consulted other Jesuits) and acted on the policy of the Society.