73 Section IV
Chapter 4
Rebirth of the Society of Jesus during the 19th century We mentioned that, when Clement XIV was constrained to suppress the Jesuit Order, he apparently said: "I have cut off my right hand". The phrase seems plausible enough. The Holy See must certainly have found it hard to part with its most important instrument in the domination of the world. The Order's disgrace, a political measure imposed by circumstances, was gradually attenuated by the successors of Clement XIV: Pius VI and Pius VII; and if the official eclipse of the Jesuits lasted forty years, it was because of the upheavals in Europe resulting from the French Revolution. In any case, that eclipse was never total. "Most of the Jesuits had stayed in Austria, France, Spain, Italy, mingling with the clergy. They met with each other or gathered in large numbers as much as possible. In 1794, Jean de Tournely founded the Society of the Sacred Heart in Belgium as a teaching body. Many Jesuits joined it. Three years later, the Tyrolean Paccanari, who thought he was another Ignatius, founded the Society of the Brothers of Faith. In 1799, the two Societies merged with Father Clariviere as the head; he was the only surviving French Jesuit. In 1803, they joined the Russian Jesuits. Something coherent was coming back to life again, but the masses, and even most of the politicians, did not recognise it at first".(31) The French Revolution, and then the Empire, gave the Company of Jesus an unexpected credibility again; it was a defensive reaction against new ideas springing up in the ancient monarchies. Napoleon the First described the Society as "very dangerous; she will never be allowed in the Empire". But, when the Holy-Alliance triumphed, the new "monarchs" did not disdain the help of these absolutists in bringing ( 3 1 ) Pierre Dominique, op.cit., p.219—Here is, according to M. Daniel-Rops, the strange death of Paccacaci, founder of the Brothers of Faith: "He was brought before the Holy See, imprisoned at the castle of Saint-Ange and finally was "assassinated". (Etudes, September 19 59).