3. The Eclipse of the Company

The successes the Society of Jesus obtained in Europe and far-off lands, even though interspersed by some misfortunes, assured it a preponderant situation for a long time. But, as we have already mentioned, time was not working in its favour. As ideas evolved and the progress of sciences tended to liberate the minds, ordinary people and monarchs found it more and more difficult to endure the ascendancy of these champions of “theocracy”. Also, many abuses, born out of its successes, impaired the Society inwardly. Apart from politics in which it was deeply involved as one has seen, to the detriment of national interests, its devouring activity had soon made itself felt in the domain of economics.

“The Fathers became involved too much in affairs which had nothing to d o w i t h religion, in commerce, exchange, as liquidators of bankruptcies. The Roman College, which should have remained the intellectual and moral model of all Jesuit colleges had cloth made in huge quantities at Macerata and sold it in fairs at a low price. Their centres in India, Antilles, Mexico and Brazil soon started trading in colonial products. At Martinique, a procurator created vast plantations which were cultivated by negro slaves”.(19)

(19) Pierre Dominique, op.cit., pp.190-191.

This is the commercial side of Foreign Missions which is just the same today. The Roman Church never scorned at extracting a temporal profit from her “spiritual” conquests. As far as that is concerned, the Jesuits were just like all other religious Orders; they even surpassed them. In any case, we know that, recently, the White Fathers were amongst the richest landowners in North Africa.

The sons of Loyola were as intensely active at making the best of the “pagan’s” labours as at winning their souls. “In Mexico, they had silver mines and sugar refineries; in Paraguay, tea and cacao plantations, carpet factories; they also reared cattle and exported 80,000 mules every year”.(20)

As we can see, the evangelisation of their “red children” was a good source of revenue. And to make an even bigger profit, the Fathers did not hesitate to defraud the state treasury, as seen in the well-known story of the so-called boxes of chocolate unloaded at Cadix which were full of gold powder.

Bishop Palafox, sent as apostolic visitor by Pope Innocent VIII, wrote to him in 1647 “All the wealth of South America is in the hands of the Jesuits”. Financial affairs were just as advantageous. “In Rome, the coffers of the Order made payments to the Portuguese embassy in the name of the Portuguese government. When Auguste le Fort went to Poland, Vienna’s Fathers opened a credit account for this needy monarch with the Jesuits of Varsovie. In China, the Fathers lent money to the merchants at 25, 50 and even 100% interest”.(21)

The scandalous greediness of the Order, its loose morals, its ceaseless political intrigues and also its encroachings upon the prerogatives of the secular and regular clergy had stirred up mortal enmity and hatred everywhere. Amongst the higher classes, it had been brought into complete disrepute and, in France at any rate, its efforts to maintain the people in a formalist and superstitious piety gave way to the inevitable emancipation of the minds.

Nevertheless, the material prosperity enjoyed by the Society, the acquired positions at the Courts and especially the support of the Holy See which they thought immovable, maintained the Jesuits in their complete assurance, even on the eve of their ruin. Had they not already gone through several storms, suffered about thirty expulsions from the time of their foundation until the middle of the 18th century? Nearly every time, they had been back sooner or later to reoccupy their lost positions.

But this new eclipse threatening them was to be nearly total, this time, and last for more than forty years.

(20) Andre Mater, quoted by Pierre Dominique, op.cit., p.191. (21) Pierre Dominique, op.cit., p.191.

The strange thing is that the first assault against the powerful Society came from the very Catholic Portugal, one of their principal strongholds in Europe. The influence exercised over that country by England since the beginning of the century was probably one of the causes of this uprising. A treaty fixing the boundaries in America, concluded between Spain and Portugal in 1750, had given the Portuguese a vast territory east of the river Uruguay where the Jesuits were working. In consequence, the Fathers had to retreat with their converts on this side of the new frontier, on Spanish territory. So they armed their Guaranis, led a long guerilla war and finally remained masters of the land which was given back to Spain.

The marquess of Pombal, Portuguese prime minister, felt really insulted. besides, this former pupil of the Jesuits had not kept their “trade-mark” and drew his inspiration from French and English philosophers rather than from his old educators. In 1757, he drove out the Jesuit confessors of the Royal family and forbade the members of the Society to preach. After several quarrels with them, he issued pamphlets to the public—one of which was “Short account of the Jesuits’ kingdom in Paraguay” which made a great noise—obtained an inquiry into their conduct by pope Benedict XIV and finally banished the Society from all his territories. The affair caused a sensation in Europe, and especially in France where, soon after, the bankruptcy of Father La Valette broke out; he was a “businessman” handling huge transactions in sugar and coffee for the Company. Its refusal to pay the Father’s debts was fatal. The Parliament, not content with a civil condemnation, examined its Constitutions, declared its establishment in France illegal and condemned twenty four works of its principal authors. On the 6th of April 1762, it issued a ‘statement of arrest’ (Indictment) in the following terms: “The said Institute is inadmissible in any civilised State, as its nature is hostile to all spiritual and temporal authority; it seeks to introduce into the Church and States, under the plausible veil of a religious Institute, not an Order truly desirous to spread evangelical perfection, but rather a political body working untiringly at usurping all authority, by all kinds of indirect, secret and devious means…” In conclusion, the Jesuits’ doctrine was described as follows: “perverse, a destroyer of all religious and honest principles, insulting to Christian morals, pernicious to civil society, hostile to the rights of the nation, the royal power, and even the security of the sovereigns and obedience of their subjects; suitable to stir up the greatest disturbances in the States, conceive and maintain the worst kind of corruption in men’s hearts”. In France, the Society’s properties were confiscated for the benefit of the Crown and none of its members was allowed to stay in the kingdom unless he renounced his vows and swore to submit to the general rules of France’s clergy.

In Rome, the Jesuits’ general, Ricci, obtained from Pope Clement XIII a bull confirming the Order’s privileges and proclaiming its innocence. But it was too late. In Spain, the Bourbons suppressed all the establishments of the Society, the metropolitan ones as well as the colonial ones. So ended Paguay’s Jesuit State. The governments of Naples, Parma, and even the Grand-Master of Malta also banished the sons of Loyola from their territories. The 6,000 who were in Spain had a strange experience after they had been thrown in prison: “King Charles III sent all the prisoners to the pope with a grand letter in which he said that he “put them under the wise and immediate control of Your Holiness”. But, when the wretches were about to disembark at Civita-Vecchia, they were welcomed with the thunder of cannon shot on the order of their own general who already had to look after the Portuguese Jesuits and couldn’t even feed them. They just managed to find them a wretched sanctuary in Corsica”.(22)

“Clement XIII, elected on the 6th of July 1758, had resisted a long time the pressing requests of several nations demanding the Jesuits’ suppression. He was about to yield and had already arranged a consistory for the 3rd of February 1769 at which he was to tell the cardinals about his resolution to comply with the wishes of these Courts; on the night before that particular day, he suddenly felt ill as he was going to bed and cried out: “I am dying…”. It is a very dangerous thing to attack the Jesuits!”(23)

A conclave assembled and went on for three months. At last, cardinal Ganganelli put on the mitre and took the name of Clement XIV. The Courts which had banished the Jesuits kept on asking for the total suppression of the Society. But the papacy was in no hurry to abolish this primordial instrument for the carrying out of its politics, and four years passed before Clement XIV, constrained by the firm attitude of his opponents, who had occupied some of the pontifical States, at last signed the Brief of dissolution: “Dominus ac Redemptor” in 1773. Ricci, the Order’s general, was even imprisoned at the castle of Saint-Ange where he died a few years later.

“The Jesuits only appeared to submit to this verdict which condemned them… They wrote innumerable pamphlets against the pope and to incite rebellion; they told lies and slanders without number concerning so-called atrocities committed when their properties in Rome were confiscated”.(24)

The death of Clement XIV, fourteen months later, was even attributed to them by a section of European opinion.

“The Jesuits, in principle at least, were no more; but Clement XIV knew very well that, by signing their death warrant, he was signing his own as well: “This suppression is done at last”, he exclaimed, “and I am not sorry about it.. I would do it again if it was not done already; but this suppression will kill me”.(25)

(22) Pierre Doninique, op.cit., p.209.
(23) Baron de Ponnat, “Histoire des variations et des contradictions de l’Eglise romaine”, p.215. til.
(24) J. Huber, op.cit., p.365.
(25) Caraccioli: “Vie du Pape Clement XIV” (Desant, Paris 1776, p.313)

Ganganelli was right; soon, posters started to appear on the palace walls which invariably displayed these five letters: I.S.S.S.V.,and everyone wondered what it meant. Clement understood immediately and boldly declared: “It means “In Settembre, Sara Sede Vacante”, (In September, the See will be vacant’, (that the Pope will be dead)”.(26)

Here is another testimony: “Pope Ganganelli did not survive long after the Jesuits’ suppression”, said Scipion de Ricci. “The account of his illness and death, sent to the Court of Madrid by the Minister for Spain in Rome, proved that he had been poisoned; as far as we know, no inquiry was held concerning this event by the cardinals, nor the new pontiff. The perpetrator of that abominable deed was then able to escape the judgement of the world, but he will not be able to escape God’s justice!”(27)

“We can positively affirm that, on the 22nd of September 1774, Pope Clement XIV died by poisoning”.(28)

Meanwhile, the empress of Austria, Marie-Therese, had also banished the Jesuits from all her States. Only Frederik of Prussia and Catherine II, empress of Russia, welcomed them in their countries as educators. But, in Prussia, they only managed to stay for ten years, until 1786. Russia was favourable to them longer but, there also, and for the same reason, they eventually aroused the animosity of the government.

“… The suppression of the schism and the rallying of Russia to the pope attracted them like a lamp attracts a moth. They launched an active propaganda programme in the army and aristocracy and fought against the Bible Society created by the Czar. They won several successes and converted prince Galitzine, nephew of the Minister for Worship. So the Czar intervened and we have the Ukase of the 20th of December 1815”.(29)

No need to say that the grounds for this Ukase, which banished the Jesuits from Saint-Petersburg and Moscow, were the same as in all the other countries. “We came to realise that they did not fulfill the duties expected of them… Instead of living as peaceful inhabitants in a foreign country, they disturbed the Greek religion which has been since ancient times, the predominant religion in our empire and on which rests the peace and happiness of the nations under our sceptre. They abused the confidence they obtained and turned the youth entrusted to them and inconsistent women away from our worship… We are not surprised that this religious Order was expelled from every country and that their actions were not tolerated anywhere”.(29)

In 1820 at last, general measures were taken to drive them out of the whole of Russia.

But, because of political events favouring it, they had set foot again in western Europe when their Order was solemnly reestablished by Pope Pius VII in 1814.

The political significance of this decision is clearly expressed by M. Daniel- Rops, a great friend of the Jesuits. He wrote, concerning the “reappearance of the sons of Loyola”: “It was impossible not to see in it an obvious act of counter-revolution”.(30)

(26) Baron de Ponnat, op.cit., p.223.
(27) Potter: “Vie de Scipion de Ricci”, (Brussels 1825), I, p. 18).
(28) Baron de Ponnat: “Histoire des variations et contradictions de l’Eglise romaine” (Charpentier, Paris 1882, II, p.224).
(29) Pierre Dominique, op.cit., p.220.
(30) Daniel-Rops, of the French Academy: “Le retablissement de la Compagnie de Jesus” (Etudes, September 1959).

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