The Interim (1773-1814).—The execution of the Brief of Suppression having been largely left to the local bishops, there was room for a good deal of variety in the treatment which the Jesuits might receive in different places. In Austria and Germany they were generally allowed to teach (but with secular clergy as superiors); often they became men of mark as preachers, like Beauregard, Muzzarelli, and Alexandre Lanfant (b. at Lyons, 6 Sept., 1726, and massacred in Paris, 3 Sept., 1793) and writers like Frangois-X. de Feller (q. v.), Zaccharia, Ximenes. The first to receive open official approbation of their new works were probably the English Jesuits, who in 1778 obtained a Brief approving their well-known Academy of Liége (now at Stonyhurst). But in Russia, and until 1780 in Prussia, the Empress Catherine and King Frederick II desired to maintain the Society as a teaching body.’ They forbade the local bishops to promulgate the Brief until their placet was obtained, Bishop Massalski in White Russia, 19 September, 1773, therefore ordered the Jesuit superiors to continue to exercise jurisdiction till further notice, On 2 February, 1780, with the approbation of Bishop Siestrzencewicz’s Apostolic visitor, a novitiate was opened. To obtain higher sanction for what had been done, the envoy Benislaski was sent by Catherine to Rome. But it must be remembered that the animus of the Bourbon Courts against the Society was still unchecked; and in some countries, as in Austria under Joseph II, the situation was worse than before. There were many in the Roman Curia who had worked their way up by their activity against the order, or held pensions created out of former Jesuit property. Pius VI declined to meet Catherine’s requests. All he could do was to express an indefinite assent by word of mouth, without issuing any written documents, or observing the usual formalities; and he ordered that strict secrecy should be observed about the whole mission. ' Benislaski received these messages on 12 March, 1783, and later se the Uae Jesuits an attestation of them (24 July, 1785).
On the other hand, it can cause no wonder that the enemies of the Jesuits should from the first have watched the survival in White Russia with jealousy, and have brought pressure to bear upon the pope to ensure their suppression. He was constrained to declare that he had not revoked the Brief of Suppression, and that he regarded as an abuse anything done against it, but that the Empress Catherine would not allow him to act freely (29 June, 1783). These utterances were not in real conflict with the answer given to Benislaski, which only amounted to the assertion that the escape from the Brief by the Jesuits in Russia was not schismatical, and that the pope approved of their continuing as they were doing. Their existence therefore was legitimate, or at least not illegitimate, though positive approval in legal form did not come till Pius VII’s Brief “Catholicæ Fidei” (7 March, 1801). Meantime the same or similar causes to those which brought about the Suppression of the Society were leading to the disruption of the whole civil order. The French Revolution (1789) was overthrowing every throne that had combined against the Jesuits, and in the anguish of that trial many were the cries for the re-establishment of the order. But amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, during the prolonged captivities of Pius VI (1798-1800) and of Pius VII (1809-14), such a consummation was impossible. The English Jesuits, however (whose academy at Liége, driven over to England by the French invasion of 1794, had been approved by a Brief in 1796), succeeded in obtaining oral permission from Pius VII for their aggregation to the Russian Jesuits, 27 May, 1803. The permission was to be kept secret, and was not even communicated by the pope to Propaganda. Next winter, its prefect, Cardinal Borgia, wrote a hostile letter, not indeed canceling the vows taken, or blaming what had been done, but forbidding the bishops “to recognize the Jesuits’, or “to admit their privileges’, until they obtained permission from the Congregation of Propaganda. :
Considering the extreme difficulties of the times, we cannot wonder at orders being given from Rome which were not always quite consistent. Broadly speaking, however, we see that the popes worked their way towards a restoration of the order by degrees. First, by approving community life, which had been specifically forbidden by the Brief of Suppression (this was done for England in 1778). Second, by permitting vows (for England in 1803). Third, by restoring the full privileges of a religious order (these were not recognized in England until 1 829). The Society was extended by Brief from Russia to the Kingdom of Naples, 30 July, 1804; but on the invasion of the in 1806, all houses were dissolved, except on Sicily. The superior in Italy during these changes was the Venerable Giuseppe M. Pignatelli (q. v.). In their zeal for the re-establishment of the Society some of the ex-Jesuits united themselves into congregations, which might, while avoiding the now unpopular name of Jesuits, preserve some of its essential features. Thus arose the Fathers of the Faith (Péres de la Foi), founded with papal] sanction by Nicolas Paccanari in 1797. A somewhat similar congregation, called the “Fathers of the Sacred Heart”, had been commenced in 1794 in Belgium, under Pére Charles de Broglie, who was succeeded by Pére Joseph Varin as superior. By wish of Pius Vi, the two congregations amalgamated, and were generally known as the Paccanarists. They soon spread into many lands; Paccanari, however, did not prove a good superior, and seemed to be working against a reunion with the Jesuits still existing in Russia; this caused Pére Varin and others to leave him. Some of them entered the Society in Russia at once; and at the Restoration the others joined en masse. (See Sacred Heart of JESUS, SOCIETY OF THE.)