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 strengthen the influence and power of the Society of Jesus.

Principal means: to capture the vocations of wealthy young men in order to take possession of their inheritances; to direct well-off widows, persuading them not to remarry and to leave their property to the Order; to seek by every means episcopal dignity and other ecclesiastical dignities, to discredit the members of other Orders, etc.; all, however, without appearing to do so, displaying the most upright and spiritual intentions, and, when necessary, even making some concession to weak and sensitive souls. The work, originally entitled Monita privata Societatis Jesu, was first circulated in manuscript copies, then printed at Kraków in 1614 (with the false indication of Notobrigae 1612); and, considered or even deliberately presented as authentic, at least as an expression of the secret conduct of the Jesuits, it immediately ran to hundreds of editions down to our own day, sometimes under other, more piquant titles, and was exploited with no logic or restraint.

The author is the former 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 caused it to be condemned very soon by the Index (decree of 10 May 1616, promulgated on 28 Dec. 1616); while the bishop of Kraków, Tylicki, had already condemned it by decree of 20 Aug. 1616, and it provoked on the other hand a series of apologies, beginning as early as 1615 with Fr. M. Bembus and from 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, and the puerility of the arguments adduced, meant that many, even adversaries of the Jesuits, and Protestants as well, refused to recognize it as authentic and regarded it as nothing more than a satirical and defamatory libel.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: C. Van Haaken, La fable des M. s. Histoire et bibliographie, in Précis histor., 30 (1881), p. 264 ff.; C. Sommervogel, Le véritable auteur des M. s., ibid., 39 (1890), pp. 83-87; P. Tacchi Venturi, L'autenticità dei M. s. e il prof. R. Moriani, in Civ. Catt., 1902, 1, pp. 695-709; J. B. Reiber, M. s. Die geheimen Instruktionen der Jesuiten vergleichen mit den amtlichen Quellen des Ordens, Augsburg 1902; A. Brou, Les Jésuites de la légende, I, Paris 1906, pp. 275-301; B. Duhr, I Gesuiti. Favole e leggende, Italian trans., I, Florence 1908, pp. 75-101.

Celestino Testore

@incollection{ec8_monita_secreta, author = {Testore, Celestino}, title = {Monita Secreta}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {1295--1296}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/monita-secreta} }

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