At Voltigerode in Saxony some Bernardine nuns had, in 1631, obtained one of the restored houses. The Jesuit fathers persuaded them that the building was unsafe, and, when the nuns retired, claimed it as "abandoned property." The nuns returned, however, and a very lively scene was witnessed. The Jesuits brought the police, and the nuns, who clung valiantly to the seats of the chapel, were physically dragged out of the building. The Cistercian monks afterwards took up the case and secured the expulsion of the Jesuits. At Prague the Jesuits coveted a handsome Cistercian abbey, and persuaded the Emperor that only a half-dozen degenerate monks occupied the vast establishment. An imperial commissary was sent, and found that there were sixty-one monks and thirteen novices in the abbey. The angry Jesuits, who accompanied the commissary, protested that the abbot had put the monastic dress on his farm-labourers; but the Cistercians held their ground and obtained the protection of the Emperor. The Vicar-General of the Order of Cluny reported a large number of these fraudulent attempts of the Jesuits to obtain the property of his monks; and we have civic and ecclesiastical documents relating to great numbers of similar cases in France, Germany, and Switzerland in the early part of the seventeenth century.[21]
When we turn to the missionary field of the Society during this period, we find a remarkable activity which would in itself merit a volume. The casuistic methods of the Jesuits are applied in a singular way to overcome the obstacles to their success, and devices are adopted from which the modern missionary, of any denomination, would shrink with astonishment. The simple fervour of a Xavier had, as we saw, early given way to more calculating methods and political intrigue, but the extent to which this diplomatic procedure was carried in the seventeenth century brought a storm of criticism upon the Jesuits. Here we have only to notice the beginning of the more unusual tactics, and we will in a later chapter consider the missions in the height of their prosperity and irregularity.
An amusing instance of this readiness to adopt questionable, and even downright dishonest, practices in the service of religion is furnished by the mission to the Hindoos. It appears that after all the hundred years of activity in India, with a free and not very delicate use of the Portuguese authority, the results were regarded as meagre and unsatisfactory. Hitherto we have heard nothing but most optimistic accounts of the work of the missionaries in India; but when the hour comes, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for justifying a new and strange policy, the Jesuits tell us that the effect of the older policy had been slight, and that the high-caste Hindoos smiled with disdain on the crowds of ignorant natives who had, on one pretext or other, accepted baptism. In 1605 the Jesuit Robert de Nobili, an Italian of noble birth and a nephew of Bellarmine, joined the Indian mission and initiated the new policy.