MONITA SECRETA. — A code of instructions attributed to the Jesuit superior general, C. Aquaviva, and addressed to superiors, concerning the various methods to be employed to increase the influence and power of the Society of Jesus.
Principal means: to lure wealthy young men into religious vocations in order to take possession of their inheritances; to direct well-to-do widows, persuading them not to remarry and to leave their property to the Order; to seek by every means the episcopal dignity and other ecclesiastical dignities, to discredit members of other Orders, etc.; all this, however, without appearing to do so, displaying the most upright and spiritual intentions and, when necessary, making some concessions to weak and sensitive souls. The work, originally entitled Monita privata Societatis Jesu, was first circulated in manuscript copies and then printed at Cracow in 1614 (with the false indication of Notobrigae 1612); and, being considered, or even deliberately represented, as authentic, at least as an expression of the secret conduct of the Jesuits, it immediately ran into hundreds of editions down to our own day, sometimes under other more sensational titles, and was exploited without any logic or restraint.
The author is the ex-Jesuit Gir. Zahorowski, dismissed from the Order in 1613 as a disturber of domestic peace, later parish priest of Gozdziec, who wished to avenge himself for the treatment he had received. The libellous and venomous character of the pamphlet soon led to its condemnation by the Index (decree of 10 May 1616, promulgated on 28 December 1616); while the bishop of Cracow, Tylicki, had already condemned it by decree of 20 August 1616. On the other hand, it gave rise to a series of apologies, beginning in 1615 with Fr. M. Bembus and in 1616 with Fr. J. Gretser, continuing down to our own times. The glaring contrast between the accusations of the libel and the rules and Constitutions of the Order, together with the childishness of the evidence brought forward, led many people, including opponents of the Jesuits and even Protestants, to refuse to recognize it as authentic and to regard it as nothing more than a satirical and defamatory libel.