4. Poland and Russia

Jesuit domination was nowhere as deadly as it was in Poland. (Webmaster: The land of my grandparents.) This is proved by H. Boehmer, a moderate historian who does not bear any systematic hostility towards the Society.

“The Jesuits were entirely responsible for Poland’s annihilation. The accusation so worded is excessive. The decadence of the Polish State had started before they came on the scene. But they undoubtedly hastened the kingdom’s decomposition. Of all the States, Poland, who had millions of orthodox Christians in her midst, should have had religious tolerance as one of the most essential principles of her interior politics. The Jesuits did not allow that. They did worse: they put Poland’s exterior politics at the service of Catholic interests in a fatal manner“.(25)

This was written at the end of the last century; it is very similar to what Colonel Beck, former Polish Foreign-Affairs minister from 1932 to 1939 said after the 1939-1945 war:

“The Vatican is one of the main causes of the tragedy of my country. I realised too late that we had pursued our foreign politics just to serve the interests of the Catholic Church”.(26)

So, with several centuries in-between, the same disastrous influence has made its mark once again on that unfortunate nation.

(25) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p.135.
(26) Declaration of the 6th of February 1940.

In 1581 already, Father Possevino, pontifical legate in Moscow, has done his best to bring together the Czar Ivan the Terrible and the Roman Church. Ivan was not strictly against it. Full of glad hopes, Possevino made himself, in 1584, the mediator of the peace of Kirewora Gora between Russia and Poland, a peace which saved Ivan from inextricable difficulties. This is just what the crafty sovereign had hoped for. There was no more talk of converting the Russians. Possevino had to leave Russia without having obtained anything. Two years later, an even better opportunity offered itself to the Fathers to get a hold on Russia: Grischka Ostrepjew, an unfrocked monk, revealed to a Jesuit that he actually was Dimitri, son of Czar Ivan, who had been assassinated; he declared himself ready to subdue Moscow for Rome if he was master of the Czars’ throne. Without thinking it over first, the Jesuits took it into their hands to introduce Ostrepjew to the Palatine of Sandomir who gave him his daughter in marriage; they spoke on his behalf to King Sigismond III and the pope regarding his expectations, and succeeded in making the Polish army rise against the Czar Boris Godounov. As a reward for these services, the false Dimitri renounced the religion of his fathers at Crascovie, one of the Jesuits’ houses, and promised the Order an establishment in Moscow, near the Kremlin, after his victory over Boris.

“But it was these favours from the Catholics which unleashed the hatred of the Russian Orthodox Church against Dimitri. On the 27th of May 1606, he was massacred with several hundred Polish followers. Until then, one could hardly speak of a Russian national sentiment; but now, this feeling was very strong and took immediately the form of a fanatical hatred for the Roman Church and Poland.

“The alliance with Austria and the offensive politics of Sigismond III against the Turks, all of which were strongly encouraged by the Order, were just as disastrous for Poland. To put it briefly, no other State suffered as much as Poland did under the Jesuits’ domination. And in no other country, apart from Portugal, was the Society so powerful. Not only did Poland have a ‘king of the Jesuits’, but also a Jesuit King, Jean-Casimir, a sovereign who had belonged to the Order before his accession to the throne in 1649…

“While Poland was heading fast towards ruin, the number of Jesuit establishments and schools was growing so fast that the General made Poland into a special congregation in 1751 “.(27)

(27) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p.135 ss.

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