department of History
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Roisin Healy

The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany

Based on her doctoral dissertation, Róisín’s first book, The Specter of Jesuitism in Imperial Germany, was published by Brill (Humanities Press) in the series, Central European Histories, in 2003. An analysis of anti-Jesuitism, it examines debates about the law that banned Jesuits from the empire from 1872 to 1917 and the attitudes that sustained it. It will be of interest to all scholars of modern Germany, particularly those specializing in religion, nationalism, liberalism, and political mobilization.

It identifies the sources of anti-Jesuitism not just in the order’s papalism, moral theology, and scholarship, but also in its reputation for magical powers and robotic discipline. The order’s support for the Declaration of Papal Infallibility in 1870 and fears about Catholic disloyalty in the wars of unification intensified anti-Jesuit feeling, among liberal bourgeois Protestants in particular, and led to a successful campaign to ban the order in 1872. Like most Kulturkampf legislation, the Jesuit Law was the subject of strong Catholic opposition, but it remained in force until 1917 because of the resistance of Protestants, who were organized in the Protestant League and in the churches as well as many of the empire’s historically Protestant constituent states. While genuinely disturbed by the paradoxical combination of superhuman and subhuman powers attributed to Jesuits, the league also exploited anti-Jesuitism to promote a liberal Protestant agenda. 

The charges made against the Jesuits are investigated as windows on the particular concerns of the Protestant bourgeoisie. Claims that the order deliberately thwarted Germany’s political development by perpetuating confessional divisions and subjecting its population to papal authority suggest embarrassment about the nation’s relatively late political unification. The extensive literature that took Jesuits to task for lax moral teachings and immoral behaviour, especially of a sexual nature, reflect a sense of moral superiority as well as fears for the patriarchal order. Criticisms that the order’s scholarship followed a line prescribed by its general and served only to promote the dependency of Catholics on their clergy went hand in hand with the defence of traditional authority models in the home and army and thus reveal confusion about the proper balance of freedom and authority in all aspects of life.

The book concludes with an examination of the gradual dilution and eventual repeal of the Jesuit Law in 1917. It argues that the imperial government came to view Jesuits as potential allies against socialism and the repeal of the law as a necessary political concession to the Catholic Center Party. The need to live up to the “civil peace” proclaimed at the outbreak of World War One and to boost Catholic morale provided the impetuses for repeal. Jesuits returned to Germany and soon enjoyed full religious freedom under the Weimar Constitution. Anti-Jesuits naturally protested but found little support among a population sobered by the greater dangers faced first on the battlefield and then in a regime plagued by political and economic instability.

The contents of The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany are as follows: 

Introduction
Chapter One: The Anti-Jesuit Tradition, 1540-1870
Chapter Two: The Jesuit Law of 1872: Genesis and Implementation, 1870-1890
Chapter Three: The Jesuit Law after the Kulturkampf, 1890-1904
Chapter Four: The Historical Critique: Opponents of the Nation
Chapter Five: The Moral Critique: Infiltrators of the Private Sphere
Chapter Six: The Intellectual Critique: Gate-crashers of the Public Sphere
Chapter Seven: The Fall of the Jesuit Law, 1904-1917

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