Since General Borgia conferred with her at Blois some months before the massacre, it has been thought by many that he was initiated. A careful consideration of the character of Borgia disposes one to acquit him confidently of this suspicion; it seems incredible that he should approve, or that Catherine should expect him to approve, so inhuman a measure. It is a common mistake to suppose that there was a fixed type of Jesuit, and that almost any member of the Society may be regarded as a man who would sanction criminal means for the attainment of a good end. Our narrative has already shown us that Jesuits differed considerably in character, and that individual features were not, as is sometimes thought, obliterated by the impression of a corporate stamp. Borgia was cruel only to himself, and he does not seem to have been much of a casuist.
The real question is how far such men as Auger, Possevin, and Manares were responsible for that general mood and temper of Catherine which culminated in the Bartholomew massacre. It does not seem probable that any of them were actually initiated to the plot. They were not the keepers of the royal conscience in France at that time, and were not at all constantly consulted by Catherine. But since the days when, at and after the colloquy at Poissy, Lainez had sternly forbidden her to grant an elementary freedom of worship to the Huguenots, they had impelled her toward that harsh and intolerant policy which at length took this criminal form in her diseased mind. Their intellectual campaign against the Huguenots was a failure. They made few converts from it, and they urged coercion to prevent it from spreading. Then, when the Huguenots stirred under this unjust treatment, they were very zealous in warning the court of "plots." It seems to me a grave circumstance that in 1567, Father Manares "discovered" on the part of the Huguenots of Paris a design not unlike that which the Catholics afterwards perpetrated against them; it is probable that this was the germ of Catherine's bloody enterprise. Whether she ever discussed her plan with any of the leading Jesuits we have no evidence whatever to determine. At a later date, when their house is raided and their preachers are bolder, we shall find the Jesuits of Paris expressly advocating crime in the interest of religion. At this stage we can only say that they pressed a policy of violence and injustice, and Catherine's crime, in which they acquiesced, was an extreme deduction from it.