IN PARAGUAY.
The Jesuits had a fairer and better field for the display of their
peculiar characteristics, and for the successful establishment of
the principles of their constitution, during the existence of the
Government founded by them in Paraguay, than ever fell to the lot of
any other society or select body of men. It is not too late to try
them by the results they then achieved, so as to assure ourselves of
what might reasonably be expected if the modern nations should so far
forget themselves as to allow that sad and disastrous experiment to be
repeated.
After the Portuguese obtained possession of Brazil, they inaugurated
measures necessary to bring the natives under their dominion. The
problem was not of easy solution. The Indians had no conception of
the principles of international law, which the leading nations had
established to justify the subjugation of the weak by the strong, and
consequently had to be brought by slow degrees under such influences as
should persuade them to believe that their conquerors were benefactors,
and not enemies. The pretense of title, based upon the grant of the
Pope Alexander VI, was not openly avowed. If it had been, the native
population, in all probability, would have united in sufficient numbers
to drive the invaders into the sea. Pacific means of some sort had to
be employed, so as to delude the multitude of natives into a condition
of apparent but false security.
Spain had also acquired possessions in other parts of South America,
and the methods of colonization adopted by the two Governments were
substantially the same. Charles V of Spain and John III of Portugal
were both religious fanatics, and although their chief purpose was
to obtain wealth from the mines of America, each of them professed to
desire, at the same time, the civilization of the natives. Hence, as
this could not be accomplished without the influences of Christianity,
all the expeditions sent out by them to the New World were accompanied
by ecclesiastics, and were therefore under the patronage and auspices
of the Church of Rome. The controlling idea of the period was that
the Church and the State should remain united, so that wheresoever
the latter should obtain temporal and political control, the former
should be constantly present to decide and direct everything
pertaining to faith and morals; that is, to keep both the State and
the people in obedience to the Church. With these objects in view,
missionaries were sent out by the Church with the first Spanish and
Portuguese adventurers, and every step was avowedly taken in the name
of Christianity. So deeply was this sentiment embedded in every mind
that the memory of some favorite saint was perpetuated in the names of
nearly all the newly-established cities. These missionaries were taken
mainly from the ancient monastic orders--the Dominicans, Franciscans,
etc.--and had been regarded by the popes for many years as not only
the most faithful, but the most efficient coadjutors of the Church in
the work of extending Christianity over the world. We have elsewhere
seen that the Jesuits did not sympathize with this belief, and that
Loyola had urged upon the pope the necessity of creating his new
society upon the express ground that these ancient orders had become
both inefficient and corrupt. When the New World, therefore, was about
to be opened before them, the followers of Loyola endeavored to seize
the occasion to supplant the monkish orders, if possible, and take into
their own hands exclusively the dissemination of Christian influences
among the native populations. In this respect the Jesuits displayed
more zeal for their own success than for that of the Church, and
made the cause of Christianity secondary to their own interests. The
history of their missions in South America will abundantly show this,
as it will also display their insatiable ambition and unparalleled
superciliousness.
The first Jesuits were sent to South America by the King of Portugal.
They found a large district of country washed by the waters of the
Rio de la Plata and its tributaries, which had not been reached by
either the Spaniards or the Portuguese, but remained in the exclusive
possession of the Indians, who had never felt the influence of
European civilization. The natives generally had been treated by the
invaders with extreme cruelty, having been often reduced to slavery
and forced to submit to a variety of oppressions and indignities.
All the resources of the country susceptible of being converted into
wealth were seized upon to supply the royal treasuries of the Christian
kings who tyrannized over them. The whole history of that period shows
that, unless some counteracting influences had been introduced, those
who professed to desire the civilization of the natives would, in
all probability, have added to the degradation and misery in which
they were found when first discovered. The Jesuits desired to apply
some corrective, and there is no reason why the sincerity of their
first missionaries in this respect should be suspected. It can not
be justly charged against them that they were disposed to treat the
native populations with cruelty, or to do otherwise than subject them
to the influences of the Jesuit system of education and government.
Whatsoever faults of management are properly attributable to them--and
there are many--are easily traceable to that system itself, which, from
its very nature, has always been, and must continue to be, inflexible.
Inasmuch as blind and uninquiring obedience to the superior is the most
prominent and fundamental principle of the society, everything, in
either government or religion or morals, must bend to that, or break.
There is no half-way ground--no compromise--nothing but obedience.
Everything is reduced to a common level, leaving individuals without
the least sense of personal responsibility except to those in authority
above them. For these reasons, it is necessary to remember, whilst
examining the course and influences of the Jesuits in Paraguay, that
whatsoever transpired was in obedience to the command of the superior
in Rome, who held no personal intercourse with the natives, and whose
animating and controlling purpose was to grasp the entire dominion over
the New World in his own hands. It was chargeable to the constitution
and organization of the society, which, as already explained, so
emphatically embodies the principle of absolute monarchism as to place
it necessarily in antagonism with every form of liberal and popular
government. If the Government they established in Paraguay, and
maintained for one hundred and fifty years, had not been monarchical,
it could not have had Jesuit paternity or approval. If, from any
cause, at any period of its existence, it had become otherwise by the
introduction of popular features, it would have encountered Jesuit
resistance. Monarchism and Jesuitism are twin sisters. Popular liberty
and Jesuitism can not exist in unity; the former may tolerate the
latter, but the latter can not be reconciled without exterminating
everything but itself. Whatsoever institutions existed, therefore,
in Paraguay whilst the country was under the exclusive dominion of
the Jesuits, must be held to have been in precise conformity to the
Jesuit constitution, and of such a character as the society would yet
establish wheresoever they possessed the power either to frame new
institutions or to change existing ones.
The Jesuit idea of exclusiveness and superiority influenced the
conduct of their missionaries in Paraguay as elsewhere. But for this,
different results might have ensued. If they had been content to
recognize the monastic orders as equally important and meritorious
as their own in the field of missionary labor, and the ancient
machinery of the Church as retaining its capacity for effectiveness
in spreading Christianity throughout the world--if, in other words,
they had been content to recognize any merit as existing elsewhere
than among themselves--the natives might have been subjected to a very
different destiny from that which, in the end, overwhelmed them. But
they were not permitted, by the nature and character of their order,
to entertain any such feelings, or to cherish any ideas of success
other than those which promised to inure to their own advancement.
Accordingly we find them--as explained by one of their modern defenders
of high celebrity--basing their claim to exclusive jurisdiction over
the natives of Paraguay upon the express ground that the ecclesiastical
influences sent out under the auspices of the Church and the patronage
of the Spanish and Portuguese kings, had become injurious rather
than beneficial to the natives, in consequence of the most flagrant
corruption. In explanation of the course pursued by the Jesuit
missionaries, he says: "One of the first experiences of the missioners
was, that it was in vain to hope for any permanent fruit among the
Indians, unless they were separated from the evil influences of the
Europeans, who swarmed into the New World, carrying with them all the
vices of the Old, and adding to them the licentiousness and cruelty
which the freedom of a new country and the hopes of speedy riches
bring with them."[93] This same author also speaks of "the hordes of
adventurers who flocked over to the New World, the scum of the great
cities of Europe," in order to show that by intercourse with them the
natives knew "little more of the Christian name than the vices of those
who professed it."[94] To let it be known that "lay adventurers" are
not alone referred to, he mentions expressly the "worldly and ambitious
ecclesiastics and religious," who were "forgetful of the spirit of
their calling, or apostates from their rule."[95] He casts a variety
of aspersions upon the characters of the Bishops of Assumption and of
Buenos Ayres, and maintains the proposition with earnestness, that if
the Indians were allowed to have unrestrained intercourse with the
Spaniards, "they would derive the worst consequences from their bad
example, which is entirely opposed to the principles of morality."[96]
In this the Jesuits displayed their wonderful astuteness, and it may
be supposed that they employed these and other kindred allegations
with effect in Spain, inasmuch as they succeeded in obtaining from the
king a special "prohibition for Europeans to set foot in" Paraguay, so
that they could thereby secure exclusive control of the natives and
bring them under Jesuit influences alone, independent of the monastic
orders and the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church.[97] This
was a great stroke of policy upon their part, because by ignoring
the Church, its ecclesiastics, and the monastic orders, they were
enabled to assume prerogatives of the most extravagant character, and
to hold themselves out to the natives as the only Europeans worthy of
obedience and the only true representatives of Christian civilization.
Not only, therefore, in the manner of securing the royal approval of
their exclusive pretensions, but in the character of the Government
established by them, did they exhibit their chief characteristics of
ambition, vanity, and superciliousness--characteristics they have never
lost.
The Government established by them in Paraguay was essentially
monarchical. It could not have been otherwise under the principles of
their constitution. Under the false name of a Christian republic, it
was, to all intents and purposes, a theocratic State, so constructed
as to free it from all European influences except such as emanated
from their superior at Rome. All the intercourse they had with the
Church and the pope was through him, and whatsoever commands he gave
were uninquiringly obeyed by them, without stopping to investigate or
concerning themselves in the least to know whether the Church and the
pope approved or disapproved them. In order to impress the natives
with the idea of their independence and of their superiority over the
monastic orders and the Church ecclesiastics, they practiced the most
artful means to persuade them to hold no intercourse with either
Spaniards or Portuguese, upon the ground that they could not do so
without encountering the example of their vices and immoralities. The
unsuspecting Indians were easily seduced by acts of kindness, and
the result was that, in the course of a brief period, they succeeded
in establishing a number of what were called _Reductions_--or, more
properly speaking, villages--with multitudes of Indians assembled about
them; the whole aggregating, in the end, several hundred thousand.
These constituted the Jesuit State, and were all, by the mere ceremony
of baptism, brought under Jesuit dominion. At each Reduction the
natives were allowed to select a secular magistracy, with limited and
unimportant powers over such temporal affairs as could be intrusted
to them without impairing the theocratic feature of the Government.
But in order to provide against the possibility of permitting even
these few temporal affairs from being conducted independently of
them, they adopted the precaution of providing that, before any
important decisions were carried into effect, they should obtain their
sanction--as "spiritual shepherds." There never was anywhere a more
thorough and complete blending of Church and State together.
Although this new State was established under the pretense that it was
necessary to protect the natives against the bad influences of the
Spaniards and the Portuguese, the approval of it by the King of Spain,
Philip III, was obtained by the promise that "every adult must pay him
the tribute of one dollar"--a consideration of chief importance with
him. Philip IV was equally disposed to favor the Jesuits, presumably
for the want of proper information; for it would have required but
little investigation at that time to have discovered that the only
motive of the Jesuits for securing royal approbation in Europe was that
they might ultimately acquire power to plot against European royalty
itself when it should stand in the way of their ambition. To show how
little obedience was paid to the public authorities of either Spain
or Portugal, it is only necessary to observe that each Reduction was
governed by a Jesuit father, supported by a vicar and a curate as
assistants, but whose chief duty was espionage. This governing father
was under the orders of a superior, who presided over a diocese of five
or six parishes, the supervision and management of the whole being
lodged in the hands of a provincial, who "received his orders direct
from the general in Rome."[98] If, therefore, the kings of Spain and
Portugal supposed that the Jesuits in Portugal intended to pay fidelity
to them, or to either of them, they were deceived--as, in the course
of events, they discovered. They obeyed their general in Rome, and him
alone.
The praise ought not to be withheld from the Jesuits, that the
natives who were thus brought under their influences were better and
more kindly treated than those who were compelled to submit to the
dominion of Spaniards and Portuguese beyond the limits of Paraguay.
They "partook of their labors, of their amusements, of their joys,
of their sorrows. They visited daily every house in which lay a sick
person, whom they served as the kindest nurse, and to whom they seemed
to be ministering genii." By these and other kindnesses they brought
the Indians to look upon them with a feeling bordering upon idolatry.
But whilst they were friends, they were also sovereigns, and "governed
with absolute and unquestioned authority."[99] This was a necessary and
indispensable part of their system of government, which embodied the
Jesuit idea of a Christian republic. It was in everything pertaining
to the management of public affairs an absolute monarchy, with all its
powers centered in the general at Rome, whose authority was accepted as
equal to that of God, and to whose command obedience was exacted from
all.
Apart from this governing authority, universal equality prevailed.
The principles of socialism or communism--very much as now
understood--governed all the Reductions. Everything necessary to the
material comfort and prosperity of the Indians was in common. Each
family had a portion of land set apart for cultivation. They also
learned trades, and many of them, both men and women, became experts.
But the earnings of the whole were deposited in common storehouses at
each Reduction, and distributed by the Jesuits in such portions to each
individual as necessity required. "Even meat was portioned from the
public slaughter-houses in the same way." The surplus produce remaining
after these distributions was sent to Europe, and sold or exchanged
for wares and merchandise, solely at the discretion of the Jesuits.
Everything was conducted in obedience to them, and nothing contrary to
their orders was tolerated. Rigid rules of conduct and hours of labor
were prescribed, and the violators of them were subject to corporal
punishment. Houses of worship, colleges, and palatial residences for
the Jesuit fathers, were built by the common labor and at the expense
of the common treasury. Suffrage was universal; but "the sanction of
the Jesuits was necessary to the validity of the election." In fact,
says Nicolini, "the Jesuits substituted themselves for the State or
community"[100]--a fact which fully establishes the monarchical and
theocratic character of the Government.
In order to teach the confiding Indians that obedience to authority
was their chiefest duty, they were subjected to rules of conduct and
intercourse which were enforced with the strictest severity. They
were watched in everything, the searching eyes of the Jesuits being
continually upon them. They constituted, in fact, a state of society
reaching the Jesuit ideal completely; that is, docile, tractable,
submissive, obedient, without the least real semblance of manhood.
Having thus completed their subjugation, energetic measures were
adopted to render any change in their condition impossible. For this
purpose care was taken to exclude all other than Jesuit influences,
and to sow the seeds of disaffection towards everything European,
the object being to surround them with a high wall of ignorance
and superstition, which no European influences could overleap, and
within which their authority would be unbounded. They were instructed
that the Spaniards and the Portuguese were their enemies, that the
ecclesiastics and monkish missionaries sent over by the Church were
unworthy of obedience or imitation, and that the only true religion
was that which emanated from their society and had their approval. If
these simple-minded people were taught anything about the Church, it
was with the view of convincing them that the Jesuits represented all
its power, authority, and virtue, and that whatsoever did not conform
to their teachings was sinful and heretical. If they were told anything
about the pope, it was to represent him as inferior to their general,
who was to be regarded by them as the only infallible representative
of God upon earth. That all other ideas should be excluded from their
minds, they were not permitted to hold any intercourse whatsoever
with Europeans; for fear, undoubtedly, they might hear that there was
a Church at Rome, and a pope higher than their general. They were
not allowed to speak any language but their own, so as to render it
impossible to acquire any ideas or opinions except such as could be
expressed by means of its limited number of inexpressive words; that
is, to keep them entirely and exclusively under Jesuit influences. To
sum up the whole, without further detail, the Indians were regarded
as minors under guardianship, and in this condition they remained for
one hundred and fifty years, without the possibility of social and
national development. They were saved, it is true, from the miseries
of Portuguese slavery, but kept in such a condition of inferiority and
vassalage as unfitted them for independent citizenship. Their limbs
were unchained; but their minds were "cabined, cribbed, confined,"
within bounds too narrow for matured thought, sentiment, or reason.
It would not be fair to say that the first Jesuit missionaries to
Paraguay may not have been animated by the desire to improve the
condition of the Indians, or to withhold from them the meed of praise
justly due for the humanity of their motives. It is undoubtedly true,
as already intimated, that they did shield them from many of the
cruelties to which they had been subjected under the Spanish and the
Portuguese adventurers, who overran large portions of South America
in the search after wealth. But it can not be too indelibly impressed
upon our minds, in this age, that they acted in strict obedience to the
Jesuit system, which permitted no departure from absolute monarchism,
and centered all the duties of citizenship in obedience to themselves
as the sole representatives of the only authority that was or could be
legitimate. And not only did their strict adherence to their system
make it necessary for them to hold the Indians in subjugation and treat
them as inferior subjects, but it involved them, at last, in collisions
with the Spaniards and Portuguese, and obliged them to treat the latter
especially as enemies, and to impress this fact upon the minds of the
whole Indian population. The consequence of this was to create an
independent and rebellious Government within the Portuguese dominions,
which necessarily brought the Jesuits in conflict with the legitimate
authority of the Portuguese Government. The Jesuits foresaw this, and
prepared for it. It is a fair inference from all the contemporaneous
facts that they desired it. At all events they subjected the Indians
at the Reductions to military training and discipline, so as to be
prepared for such emergencies as might arise out of their relations
with both the Spaniards and the Portuguese. One would suppose that in
a Government so far separated from the rest of the world, and governed
by those who professed to be laboring alone for "the greater glory
of God," the arts of peace would be chiefly, if not exclusively,
cultivated. But the successors of the first Jesuit missionaries thought
otherwise. Consequently, besides refusing to allow the Indians any
intercourse with the Europeans, they would not permit them even to
leave the Reductions without permission, or to receive any impressions
except those emanating from themselves, or to do anything not dictated
by them. The result was what they designed, that the Indians came to
look upon all Europeans, whether ecclesiastic or lay, as enemies, and
the Jesuit as their only friends. They readily engaged, therefore,
in the manufacture of arms and ammunition, and submitted to military
discipline until they became a formidable army, subject, of course, to
the command of their Jesuit superiors. The sequel of Jesuit history
proves that in all this they were unconsciously creating an antagonism
which, in the end, overwhelmed them.
A violent feud sprang up between the Jesuits and the Franciscan
monks, which undoubtedly arose out of the claim of superiority and
exclusiveness set up and persisted in by the former. It may well be
inferred that the Jesuits were chiefly to blame for this feud, for
the reason that the Franciscans retained the confidence of the Church
authorities, and the Jesuits did not. At all events, however, they were
in open enmity with each other, and prosecuted their controversy with
an exceeding degree of bitterness upon both sides. A distinguished
citizen of the United States, who represented this country as Minister
to Paraguay, alluding to this fact, says: "The Franciscan priests in
the capital regarded them [the Jesuits] with envy, suspicion, and
jealousy. These last fomented the animosity of the people against them,
so that Government, priests, and people regarded with favor, rather
than otherwise, the destruction of the missions, and the expulsion of
their founders."[101] Notwithstanding these hostile relations, however,
between the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and the disturbed condition
of affairs existing between the former and the Portuguese authorities,
neither the pope nor the King of Spain withdrew their patronage
entirely from the Jesuits for some years, and not until it was made
manifest that they had become an independent power, which might, if not
checked, result in complications injurious alike to the Church and the
State. But the time arrived, after a while, when it became necessary
to impose severe restraints upon their ambition, and to teach them
that neither the powers of Church nor State were concentrated in their
hands. They were required to learn--what they had seemed not before to
have been conscious of--that the authority they exercised in Paraguay
was usurped, and that if they desired to continue there as a society,
they must submit to be held in proper subordination. Being unable or
unwilling to realize this, they invited results which they manifestly
had not anticipated.
When the protracted controversy between Spain and Portugal, about the
boundaries of their respective possessions in South America, reached
an adjustment, it furnished an occasion for testing the obedience of
the Jesuits to royal authority. The two Governments, after the usual
delay in such matters, came to an amicable understanding, and arranged
the boundaries to their mutual satisfaction. It placed a portion of the
Jesuit missions under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese, which they
had supposed to belong to Spain. The Jesuits refused to submit to this,
and inaugurated the necessary measures to resist it, being determined,
if they could prevent it, not to submit to the dominion of Portugal.
Their preference for Spain was because of the fact that the king of
that country was more favorably inclined to them than the Portuguese
king. But the history of the controversy justifies the belief that
they would not even have submitted to the former unresistingly,
inasmuch as it had undoubtedly become their fixed purpose to retain
the independence they had long labored to establish, by maintaining
their theocratic form of government. They had been so accustomed to
autocratic rule over the natives, that they could not become reconciled
to the idea of surrendering it to any earthly power. In this instance,
however, they encountered an adversary of whose courage and capacity
they had not the least conception, and whom they found, in a brief
period, capable of inflicting a death-blow upon the society. This was
Sebastian Cavalho, Marquis of Pombal, who was the chief counselor of
the Portuguese king.
Cavalho--better known as Pombal--and the King of Portugal, were both
faithful members of the Roman Church, and conducted the Government
in obedience to its requirements. But neither of them was disposed
to submit to the dictation of the Jesuits of Paraguay with regard to
the question of boundary--which was entirely political--or submit to
their rebellion against legitimate authority. Such a question did not
admit of compromise or equivocation. It presented a vital issue they
could neither avoid nor postpone, without endangering the Government
and forfeiting their own self-respect. Consequently, they inaugurated
prompt and energetic measures to suppress the threatened insurrection
of the Jesuits before it should be permitted to ripen into open and
armed resistance. From that time forward the controversy constantly
increased in violence. The intense hatred of Pombal by the Jesuits has
colored their opinions to such an extent that they deny to him either
talents or merit, and, inasmuch as they charge all the ensuing results
to him, he is pictured by them more as a monster of iniquity than as
a statesman of acknowledged ability. All this, however, should count
for nothing in deciding the real merits of the controversy. The whole
matter is resolved into this simple proposition--that it was the duty
of the Government to vindicate and maintain its own authority in the
face of Jesuit opposition. It had nothing to do with the Church, nor
the Church with it. It did not involve any question of faith, but was
confined solely and entirely to secular and temporal affairs. And if,
under these circumstances, Pombal had quietly permitted the Jesuits to
defy the Government and consummate their object by successful rebellion
against its authority, he would have won from Jesuit pens the brightest
and most glowing praise, but his name would have gone into history as
the betrayer of his country.
With the foregoing facts impressed upon his mind, the reader will be
prepared to appreciate the subsequent events which led to the expulsion
of the Jesuits from all the Roman Catholic nations of Europe, and
finally to the suppression and abolition of the society, as the only
means of defense against its exactions and enormities.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 93: The Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese
Dominions. By the Rev. Alfred Weld, "of the Society of Jesus." London,
1877. Page 24.]
[Footnote 94: _Ibid._, p. 30.]
[Footnote 95: _Ibid._, p. 33.]
[Footnote 96: _Ibid._, p. 42.]
[Footnote 97: The Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese
Dominions. By the Rev. Alfred Weld, "of the Society of Jesus." London,
1877. Page 42.]
[Footnote 98: History of the Jesuits. By Greisinger. Page 140.]
[Footnote 99: Nicolini, p. 302.]
[Footnote 100: Nicolini, pp. 303-304.]
[Footnote 101: History of Paraguay. By Washburn. Vol. I, p. 87.]