The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors.

Byrne, Joseph P.

The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors. By Robert Bireley, S.J. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xii + 300 pp. $65.00 cloth.

Robert Bireley, a Jesuit and historian at Loyola University in Chicago, has crafted a fine study of the activities and fates of the Jesuit confessors at the major Catholic courts of Europe--Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Madrid--during the Thirty Years War (1618-48). He was well prepared for the task by his work on two previous monographs: Maximilian von Bayern, Adam Contzen, S.J., und die Gegenreformation in Deutschland, 1624-1635, Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1975), and Religion and Politics in the Age of Counterreformation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981). The result is a straightforward narrative that divides the era into seven periods and deals with each court and its ruler's confessor in turn (in the case of Spain the prime minister's confessor, since the king did not employ a Jesuit). The centralized nature of the Society of Jesus also requires another key player for such a study: the superior general resident in Rome. Bireley's principal source is the correspondence between the generals and the various confessors, but he brings to bear a wide familiarity with the era's other archival remains as well. This allows him to posit three major questions, the answers to which emerge from his narrative: (1) What effects did the Jesuit confessors have on the policies of the courts and the conduct of the war? (2) Was there a specifically "Jesuit" position and policy regarding the war and Catholic aims? and (3) What principles guided the superior generals in their dealings with the confessors and the courts? The book opens by "setting the scene" regarding some of the main issues that led to the war, the position and general expectations of a court confessor from the ruler's perspective, and the same from the Society's perspective. In 1602, superior general Claudio Acquaviva issued Instructions for Confessors of Princes, which outlined the acceptable boundaries of social and political involvement of the man responsible for the ruler's conscience and soul. This proved a fitting and useful guide and touchstone for successive superiors general. Nonetheless, as someone once remarked, all plans become irrelevant once the shooting starts.

The period of the war only saw two men hold the position of top Jesuit, Muzio Vitelleschi (1615-45), the first non-Spanish superior general, and Vincenzo Carafa (1646-49) of the Neapolitan Carafas. Needless to say, Vitelleschi's letters and policies take center stage, especially in answering questions two and three. Bireley finds that he imposed no specifically Jesuit spin in his advice and direction; rather that he pursued a generically Catholic course that accepted the linkage between the pursuit of political and religious goals. As the war progressed--or perhaps devolved--the Catholic powers found that on the national and military levels the linkage grew increasingly weak. Catholic defeats, the defection of the French, the Peace of Prague (1635), and general war weariness blunted the tip of the confessional spear. The roles of Vitelleschi and Carafa were key in maintaining the orthodox, Jesuit hand on the consciences of the Catholic rulers, and they were played out against a complex landscape. They had the popes ruling above them, with their support and suspicions, and responsibility for the good of the whole Society. One aspect of this was the almost utter reliance on the good will of the secular rulers for Jesuit success and even presence within their kingdoms. A whiff of conspiracy or a major misstep by one of their men could send the Society packing.

The confessors in many ways had their fates in their own hands as they were the men in the trenches. They too played on a dangerous field, amid court intrigue, rival clerics, and spiritual sons whose demands for advice or counsel chafed against Acquaviva's Instructions and the Generals' directions. Jean Suffren, for example, had long been Marie de'Medici's confessor and served King Louis XIII as well. They shared him with Richelieu during his rise to power, but the wily cardinal knew he had to separate the couple, and this meant disentangling their relationship with Suffren. The Jesuit, against Vitelleschi's advice, remained with the queen and fell from grace at court in 1631. Given both his earlier work and the huge cache of surviving letters, it is natural that Bireley would concentrate a good deal of attention on William Lamormaini, the Spaniard who replaced Martin Becan at the Imperial court (1624-35), and the scholarly Adam Contzen, his exact contemporary at the court of Maximilian of Bavaria. Yet Bireley manages to balance his coverage in such a way that the reader sees the full picture.

Bireley's efforts have resulted in a clearly articulated view of relationships and activities that have generally been backgrounded in studies of the period. His integration of the four courts in each chapter allows for synchronic comparison among nicely articulated studies of each court and its personalities. The touchstones of Vitelleschi and Carafa and the war itself provide coherence and unity that Bireley deftly uses to his best advantage. While never a direct player in the great conflicts that made up the war, the Society was a force behind the scenes, especially at Munich and Vienna. Yet, as Bireley makes clear, the confessors' successes and failures were more a function of their individual characters, agendas, and choices as of their "Jesuitness." As vulnerable as they were influential, the Jesuit confessors and the Society of which they were a part constituted no grand conspiracy, possessed no grand scheme to dominate the Catholic world. This work, which is as much a political study as a religious one, assumes a good deal of knowledge about the period. Even so, Bireley provides enough background--and some repetition--to support the nonspecialist without annoying the student of the period: never an easy task.

Joseph P. Byrne

Belmont University