Part 619

"At the first establishment of the Order, the elder and already educated men, who had just entered it, were for the most part Spaniards; the members joining it from other nations were chiefly young men, whose characters had yet to be formed. It followed naturally that the government of the society was, for the first ten years, almost entirely in Spanish hands. The first general congregation was composed of twenty-five members, eighteen of whom were Spaniards. The first three generals belonged to the same nation. After the death of the third, Borgia, in the year 1573, it was once more a Spaniard, Polanco, who had the best prospect of election. It was however manifest that his elevation would not have been regarded favourably, even in Spain itself. There were many new converts in the society who were Christianized Jews. Polanco also belonged to this class, and it was not thought desirable that the supreme authority in a body so powerful, and so monarchically constituted, should be confided to such hands. Pope Gregory XIV., who had received certain intimations on this subject, considered a change to be expedient on other grounds also. When a deputation presented itself before him from the congregation assembled to elect their general, Gregory inquired how many votes were possessed by each nation; the reply showed that Spain held more than all the others put together. He then asked from which nation the generals of the order had hitherto been taken. He was told that there had been three, all Spaniards. 'It will be just, then,' replied Gregory, 'that for once you should choose one from among the other nations.' He even proposed a candidate for their election. The Jesuits opposed themselves for a moment to this suggestion, as a violation of their privileges; but concluded by electing the very man proposed by the pontiff. This was Eberhard Mercurianus. A material change was at once perceived, as the consequence of this choice. Mercurianus, a weak and irresolute man, resigned the government of affairs, first indeed to a Spaniard again, but afterwards to a Frenchman, his official admonitor; factions were formed, one expelling the other from the offices of importance, and the ruling powers of the Order now began to meet occasional resistance from its subordinate members. But a circumstance of much higher moment was, that on the next vacancy—in the year 1581—this office was conferred on Claudius Acquaviva, a Neapolitan, belonging to a house previously attached to the French party, a man of great energy, and only thirty-eight years old. The Spaniards then thought they perceived that their nation, by which the society had been founded and guided on its early path, was now to be forever excluded from the generalship. Thereupon they became discontented and refractory, and conceived the design of making themselves less dependent on Rome. … They first had recourse to the national spiritual authority of their own country—the Inquisition. … One of the discontented Jesuits, impelled, as he affirmed, by a scruple of conscience, accused his order of concealing, and even remitting, transgressions of the kind so reserved, when the criminal was one of their society. The Inquisition immediately caused the Provincial implicated, together with his most active associates, to be arrested. Other accusations being made in consequence of these arrests, the Inquisition commanded that the statutes of the order should be placed before it, and proceeded to make further seizures of parties accused. … The Inquisition was, however, competent to inflict a punishment on the criminal only: it could not prescribe changes in the regulations of the society. When the affair, therefore, had proceeded thus far, the discontented members applied to the king also, assailing him with long memorials, wherein they complained of the defects in their constitution. The character of this constitution had never been agreeable to Philip II.; he used to say that he could see through all the other orders, but that the order of Jesuits he could not understand. … He at once commanded Manrique, bishop of Carthagena, to subject the Order to a visitation, with particular reference to these points. … The character of Sixtus V. made it particularly easy for Acquaviva to excite the antipathies of that pontiff against the proceedings of the Spaniards. Pope Sixtus had formed the hope, as we know, of rendering Rome, more decidedly than it ever yet was, the metropolis of Christendom. Acquaviva assured him, that the object really laboured for in Spain was no other than increased independence of Rome. Pope Sixtus hated nothing so much as illegitimate birth; and Acquaviva caused him to be informed that Manrique, the bishop selected as 'Visitator' of the Jesuits, was illegitimate. These were reasons sufficient to make Sixtus recall the assent he had already given to the visitation. He even summoned the case of the provincial before the tribunals of Rome. From his successor, Gregory XIV., the general succeeded in obtaining a formal confirmation of the rule of the order. But his antagonists also were unyielding and crafty. They perceived that the general must be attacked in the court of Rome itself. They availed themselves of his momentary absence. … In the summer of 1592, at the request of the Spanish Jesuits and Philip II., but without the knowledge of Acquaviva, the pontiff commanded that a general congregation should be held. Astonished and alarmed, Acquaviva hastened back. To the generals of the Jesuits these 'Congregations' were no less inconvenient than were the Convocations of the Church to the popes; and if his predecessors were anxious to avoid them, how much more cause had Acquaviva, against whom there prevailed so active an enmity! But he was soon convinced that the arrangement was irrevocable; he therefore resumed his composure and said, 'We are obedient sons; let the will of the holy father be done.' … {1891} Philip of Spain had demanded some changes, and had recommended others for consideration. On two things he' insisted: the resignation of certain papal privileges; those of reading forbidden books, for example, and of granting absolution for the crime of heresy; and a law, by virtue of which every novice who entered the order should surrender whatever patrimonial rights he might possess, and should even resign all his benefices. These were matters in regard to which the order came into collision with the Inquisition and the civil government. After some hesitation, the demands of the king were complied with, and principally through the influence of Acquaviva himself. But the points recommended by Philip for consideration were of much higher moment. First of all came the questions, whether the authority of the superiors should not be limited to a certain period; and whether a general congregation should not be held at certain fixed intervals? The very essence and being of the institute, the rights of absolute sovereignty, were here brought into question. Acquaviva was not on this occasion disposed to comply. After an animated discussion, the congregation rejected these propositions of Philip; but the pope, also, was convinced of their necessity. What had been refused to the king was now commanded by the pope. By the plenitude of his apostolic power, he determined and ordained that the superiors and rectors should be changed every third year; and that, at the expiration of every sixth year, a general congregation should be assembled. It is, indeed, true that the execution of these ordinances did not effect so much as had been hoped from them. … It was, nevertheless, a very serious blow to the society, that it had been compelled, by internal revolt and interference from without, to a change in its statutes."

_L. Ranke, History of the Popes, book 6, section 9 (volume 2)._

JESUITS: A. D. 1581-1641. Hostility of the Paulistas of Brazil. Opposition to enslavement of the Indians.

See BRAZIL: A. D. 1531-1641.

JESUITS: A. D. 1595. Expulsion from Paris.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

JESUITS: A. D. 1606. Exclusion from Venice for half a century.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1605-1700.

JESUITS: A. D. 1653-1660. First controversy and conflict with the Jansenists.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1602-1660.

JESUITS: A. D. 1702-1715. The renewed conflict with Jansenism in France. The Bull Unigenitus.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715.

JESUITS: A. D. 1757-1773. Suppression of the Society in Portugal and the Portuguese dominions.

In 1757, a series of measures intended to break the power, if not to end the existence, of the Society of Jesus, in Portugal and the Portuguese dominions, was undertaken by the great Portuguese minister, Carvalho, better known by his later title as the Marquis of Pombal. "It is not necessary to speculate on the various motives which induced Carvalho to attack the Jesuits, but the principal cause lay in the fact that they were wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous force in an absolutist monarchy. It must be remembered that the Jesuits of the 18th century formed a very different class of men to their predecessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary pioneers, but a corporation of wealthy traders, who made use of their spiritual position to further the cause of their commerce. They had done a great work in America by opening up the interior of Brazil and converting the natives, and their administration of Paraguay, one of the most interesting achievements in the whole history of Christianity, was without doubt a blessing to the people. But by the middle of the 18th century they had gone too far. It was one thing to convert the natives of Brazil, and another to absorb much of the wealth of that country, in doing which they prejudiced not only the Crown but the Portuguese people, whom they kept from settling in the territory under their rule. Whether it was a sufficient reason for Carvalho to attack the order, because it was wealthy and powerful, and had departed from its primitive simplicity, is a question for everyone to decide for themselves, but that this was the reason, and that the various excuses alleged by the admirers of the great minister are without foundation, is an undoubted fact. On September 19, 1757, the first important blow was struck, when the king's Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits were forbidden to come to Court. Carvalho, in the name of the King of Portugal, also formally denounced the order at Rome, and Benedict XIV., the then Pope, appointed the Cardinal de Saldanha, a friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer of the Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in making up his mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade the Jesuits to engage in trade. An attempt upon the king's life, which shortly followed this measure, gave the minister the opportunity he wanted for urging the suppression of the famous society. The history of the Tavora plot, which culminated in this attempt, is one of the most mysterious affairs in the whole history of Portugal. … The three leaders of the plot were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of John II., and one of the greatest noblemen in Portugal, the Marquis of Tavora, who had filled with credit the post of Governor-general of India, and the Count of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom Luis de Athaide, the defender of Goa; but the heart and soul of the conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a beautiful and ambitious woman, who was bitterly offended because her husband had not been made a duke. The confessor of this lady was a Jesuit named Gabriel Malagrida. … The evidence on all sides is most contradictory, and all that is certain is that the king was fired at and wounded on the night of September 3, 1758; and that in the following January, the three noblemen who have been mentioned, the Marchioness of Tavora, Malagrida with seven other Jesuits, and many other individuals of all ranks of life, were arrested as implicated in the attempt to murder. The laymen had but a short trial and, together with the marchioness, were publicly executed ten days after their arrest. King Joseph certainly believed that the real culprits had been seized, and in his gratitude he created Carvalho Count of Oeyras, and encouraged him to pursue his campaign against the Jesuits. On January 19, 1759, the estates belonging to the society were sequestrated; and on September 3rd, all its members were expelled from Portugal, and directions were sent to the viceroys of India and Brazil to expel them likewise. The news of this bold stroke was received with admiration everywhere, except at Rome, and it became noised abroad that a great minister was ruling in Portugal. … {1892} In 1764 the Jesuit priest Malagrida was burnt alive, not as a traitor but as a heretic and imposter, on account of some crazy tractates he had written. The man was regarded as a martyr, and all communication between Portugal and the Holy See was broken off for two years, while the Portuguese minister exerted all his influence with the Courts of France and Spain to procure the entire suppression of the society which he hated. The king supported him consistently, and after another attempt upon his life in 1769, which the minister as usual attributed to the Jesuits, King Joseph created his faithful servant Marquis of Pombal, by which title he is best known to fame. The prime ministers of France and Spain cordially acquiesced in the hatred of the Jesuits, for both the Duc de Choiseul and the Count d'Aranda had something of Pombal's spirit in them, and imitated his policy; in both countries the society, which on its foundation had done so much for Catholicism and Christianity, was proscribed, and the worthy members treated with as much rigour as the unworthy; and finally in 1773 Pope Clement XIV. solemnly abolished the Society of Jesus. King Joseph did not long survive this triumph of his minister, for he died on February 24, 1777, and the Marquis of Pombal, then an old man of 77, was at once dismissed from office."

_H. M. Stephens, The Story of Portugal, chapter 16._

ALSO IN: _G. B. Nicolini, History of the Jesuits, chapter 15._

_T. Griesinger, The Jesuits, book 6, chapter 4 (volume 2)._

JESUITS: A. D. 1761-1769. Proceedings against the Order in the Parliament of Paris. Suppression in France, Spain, Bavaria, Parma, Modena, Venice. Demands on the Pope for the abolition of the Society.