THE EXPULSION FROM PORTUGAL AND SPAIN
In the Iberian Peninsula we have the same romantic story of the Jesuits
being cast down from a splendid prosperity and expelled with every
token of ignominy from countries in which they had almost attained
a spiritual dictatorship. Here again, moreover, our chronicle will
deal almost exclusively with the actions of a junta of court-Jesuits
who bring the calamity upon their Society. It would not be unnatural
to suspect that in this there is some partiality; that I ignore the
saintly or learned or philanthropic achievements of the majority and
bring into prominence only the court-intrigues and abuses of power of
a few. But a glance at the works of apologetic writers will show that
the candid historian has no alternative. Considering the number and
resources of the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
their record is singularly barren of great and good deeds. A few
examples of shining devotion, which we will notice as we proceed, and a
few small scandals, which we will generally ignore, do little to vary
the undistinguished monotony of the general life. The majority of the
Portuguese and Spanish Jesuits merely continue the work of teaching,
preaching, and writing works of theology, in comfortable and unascetic
homes, which we have previously described. Our story, like the general
history of Spain and Portugal at the time, is mainly concerned with
courtiers and politicians.
We begin with Portugal, where the first destructive blow fell on the
Society. A Portuguese Jesuit, Father Franco, has left us an admiring
chronicle of the doings of his colleagues down to the end of the
first quarter of the eighteenth century. His work (_Synopsis Annalium
Societatis Jesu in Lusitania_, 1726) entirely confirms the feeling
that the life of the vast majority of the Portuguese Jesuits is not
material for history; it is little more than a record of the deaths of
undistinguished (but always very saintly) Jesuits, with a few discreet
references to those events at court which are of real interest. It is
true that Father Franco appends a list of thousands of Jesuits who have
gone to spend or lose their lives in Brazil or India, but we shall see
that in the period with which we are dealing these missionary fields
provided much comfort and little danger. The heroic age was over;
it was the age when royal confessors enabled their brethren to sun
themselves indolently in the warmth of royal favour.
The close of the reign of John IV. in 1656 saw the power and wealth
of the Jesuits greater than they had ever been before. We saw that
at the revolution of 1640, when Portugal won its independence from
Spain, the Jesuits had so nicely distributed their forces that some
were sure to be on the winning side; and John IV. was not the man to
inquire too closely into their conduct. His court soon filled with
Jesuits. Father Nuñez, a man of great piety and austerity, who had an
excellent moral influence on the noble dames of the court, guarded the
consciences of Queen Luisa and her children. Father Fernandez, a very
different type of Jesuit, was confessor to the King, and had great
political influence. He was a member of the State-Council and Bishop
of Japan, and he bore his dignities with a consciousness which greatly
irritated the nobles. When his humbler colleague, Nuñez, died, he
became confessor to the Queen also, and attained a great ascendancy
over the King. When the Viceroy of India, remarking that Jesuits were
forbidden to engage in commerce, took from the Jesuits in that country
property worth twenty thousand crowns a year, which they had acquired
by commerce, Fernandez induced the King to overrule him and order the
restoration of the property. In addition, John IV. gave large annual
sums to the foreign missions, and a comfortable sum as "viaticum"
to each priest who left Portugal for the missions; and he made them
presents of palaces, and showered other benefits on them.
When John died, and Luisa became Regent for her young son, the angry
nobles made a vigorous effort to dislodge the Jesuits. John's elder
son, who had had a Jesuit tutor, had refused to marry, and had wished
to join the Society. Men recalled the earlier King Sebastian, and said
that the Jesuits were attempting to seize the crown. The Jesuit-tutor
was even accused of betraying the military secrets of the country; and
one of his colleagues, Father Vieira, was so badly compromised by a
letter of his which was intercepted that John had been compelled to
make a foreign ambassador of him; another Jesuit was the diplomatic
representative of Portugal at Rome. The nobles resented this situation;
but Fernandez was in too strong a position, and the rule of the Jesuits
continued under the Regency. Fernandez died, however, in 1660, and it
is a second Jesuit of that name (as is sometimes forgotten) who took a
leading part in the extraordinary events of the year 1668.
The elder prince, Theodose, had died prematurely, and Alphonso
succeeded to the throne. Whether there was some incurably morbid strain
in the youth, or whether the Jesuit tuition had made him incapable
of serious political life, we cannot say; but, as he grew to manhood,
Alphonso VI. entered upon ways of violence and licence which recall the
youth of Nero. His court was filled with the wild companions of his
orgies, and he paraded his vices on the streets and in the taverns of
his capital. He exchanged his Jesuit confessor for a Benedictine monk,
snatched the reins from the hands of his mother, and threatened to
drag the country very speedily into the abyss which awaited it. Sober
nobles and statesmen looked on with alarm, and it was inevitable that
a conspiracy to dethrone him should shortly arise. But the details of
the revolution, in which the Jesuits were very active, reflect little
honour on its actors.
Alphonso had married Marie Isabelle de Savoie-Nemours, whose Jesuit
confessor, Father de Ville, listened sympathetically to the story of
the outrages she endured. Father de Ville and his colleagues were not
less sympathetic when Marie Isabelle transferred her affection to the
King's handsome young brother, Dom Pedro, and they entered into a plot
to replace Alphonso by Pedro. The chief plotter seems to have been
Father Vieira, whom the French historian regards as the glory of the
Portuguese Province at that time. Vieira was not without ability, but
he was a turbulent and meddlesome politician, and so eccentric in his
religious ideas that he fell into the prison of the Inquisition. The
Jesuits secretly engaged the nobles in a plan to dethrone and divorce
Alphonso and replace him by his brother. Divorce is, of course, unknown
to the Catholic Church, but it has never failed to discover a flaw in
a marriage which it was expedient to undo, and, with something very
like levity or cynicism, the Jesuits and the Queen determined to accuse
the King of impotence and get the marriage annulled: a king who was
notorious for his amours and had had a child by one of his mistresses.
Pedro was then informed of the Queen's amiable disposition and the
support of the nobles, and the conspiracy began.
The King was recalled from his licentious pleasures by an announcement
that the Queen had retired to a convent and demanded the restitution
of her dowry. He flew to the convent, but found his brother there with
an armed force to protect the Queen, and, after a fruitless struggle,
he was compelled to abdicate and to testify to the virginity of the
Queen. We have the word of the English ambassador that Father de Ville
and his colleagues were the chief authors of this audacious plot, or
"comedy," as the Jesuit apologist calls it. The marriage was dissolved
in March (1668), and it was arranged that a deputation of the Cortes
should wait upon Marie Isabelle, and entreat her to marry Pedro, as
Portugal was too poor to return her dowry. The marriage was celebrated
a few weeks later, Alphonso was sent into a comfortable exile, and the
Jesuits returned to power at the court. Sincerely as we may applaud the
purification of the sordid palace and the relief of the young Queen, we
must recognise that the procedure betrays a considerable lack of moral
delicacy.
The gratitude of Pedro to his Jesuit confessor, Fernandez, and his
colleagues could not be other than princely. He even made Fernandez a
deputy of the Cortes (where he needed supporters), and we gather from
the stern letter (given in Franco) in which General Oliva denounced
this action to the authorities of the Portuguese Province that
Fernandez was very reluctant to resign the honour. Under threat of
punishment he yielded, but he maintained an absolute authority over
King Pedro and placed his Society in a stronger position than ever. In
the Jesuit documents of the time we find constant reference to "the
Fathers of the Palace" and the immense benefits they procure for their
colleagues. Through the King they secured a modification of the Spanish
Inquisition--which had lately imprisoned one of their ablest men--and
in many of the colonies they obtained a monopoly of the trade with the
natives and acquired a wealth similar to that of the Spanish fathers in
Paraguay. Pedro's second wife was no less generous to the Society than
Luisa had been, and the ex-Queen of England, who returned to Portugal
in 1693, joined in the enrichment of the Jesuits. When Pedro died in
1706, his son John V. continued to patronise the Society and enfeeble
the kingdom. There were now more than a dozen Jesuits at the Portuguese
court, and for many years it was hardly possible to approach the King
without their permission.
During the long reign of the incompetent and superstitious John V.
Portugal sank rapidly into the decline that awaited her. Not only did
Jesuits undertake commerce in the colonies and absorb vast sums of
money in donations and annuities, but the Church at large is calculated
to have received about five hundred million francs, wrung mainly from
the decaying colonies, from the priest-ridden monarch. The Jesuits
are by no means wholly responsible for the scandalous expenditure
and economic folly of John V., or for the revival of the burning of
heretics and the erection of palatial monasteries. In his later years
the King transferred his favour to Oratorian and Franciscan priests,
and it seemed as if the long reign of the Jesuits was seriously
threatened. But this appalling clerical parasitism and disregard of
national economy, which were fast sapping the strength of Portugal,
were only the culmination of the sentiments which the Jesuits had
cultivated in the Portuguese court for a century.
The King died in 1750, and the Jesuits returned to power under his son
Joseph. Father Moreira was the King's confessor, and Father Oliveira
the tutor of his children; Father Costa was the spiritual guide of his
brother Pedro, Father Campo of his uncle Antonio, and Father Aranjues
of his uncle Emmanuel. The junta was completely restored, and the
government was again virtually in the hands of the Jesuits. There had,
however, now come into the political life of Portugal a man who was
destined to shake the European power of the Jesuits and, within the
short space of ten years, to drive them from the Empire in poverty and
disgrace.
Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho, Count of Oeyras and Marquis of Pombal,
had been a member of one of the Jesuit Congregations for laymen and
had obtained office, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
with their cordial agreement. There is nothing either mysterious or
discreditable in his hostility to the Jesuits. Even if it be true that
he at times fought them with their own improper weapons, the ground of
the conflict is plain. He perceived, as every non-Catholic historian
perceives to-day, that their rule was as mischievous to the State as
it was profitable to their own Society, and, as Foreign Minister and
lay man of business, he recognised that their commercial activity in
the colonies was injurious to the laity and inconsistent with their
professions. To say that he was influenced by the works of the French
philosophers is absurd--he had no sympathy with their ideas--nor is
it less unjust to say that he wished to protestantise the Portuguese
Church. It was precisely as a Catholic and a patriot that he set out to
reform the swollen and degenerate Church and invigorate the national
economy. We need not imagine vices in Pombal when the defects of the
Jesuits are so flagrant.
The strong man was fortunate in having a weak, timid, and indolent
monarch, and hardly less fortunate in the fact that the King had a
stronger and more attractive brother on whose associates suspicion
could easily be cast. It is difficult to-day to ascertain what truth
there is in the charge that Dom Pedro aspired to the throne and had
the secret support of the Jesuits. King Joseph was not indisposed
to believe such a charge, and events soon occurred which gave it
plausibility. In 1752 the Portuguese proposed to cede Sacramento to
Spain in return for a part of Paraguay in which the Jesuits had seven
of their profitable "reductions," and, when the troops went to enforce
the change of frontiers, the pupils of the Jesuits made a sanguinary
resistance. It is possible to quote letters in which the Jesuits
advised submission, but a _secret_ letter from one of the leading
Spanish Jesuits to the American fathers was intercepted and was found
to advise resistance. Further troops were sent, the Jesuits and their
pupils were expelled, and Pombal drew up and circulated a memoir on the
action of the Jesuits and the virtual slavery which they maintained in
the reductions. Their monopoly of trade with the natives was abrogated,
and Pombal was interested in a company which sought to secure the
trade. The Jesuits fiercely attacked this change, and two members of
the Society were exiled.
For a time the campaign of Pombal was then arrested by the appalling
earthquake which devastated Lisbon in the year 1755. The timid and
superstitious King was undecided as to the nature of the omen. At
first, when it was found that Pombal's house had been spared while
seven Jesuit houses had been wrecked, he was disposed to see in the
catastrophe a punishment of the sins of the Jesuits; but those artful
casuists easily persuaded the country that the only new event in the
life of Portugal to account for this outpour of divine wrath was the
persecution of the Society, and their zeal in succouring the homeless
earned for them a great deal of sympathy. The exiled Jesuits were
recalled, and they seemed to recover all the ground they had lost in
the preceding ten years.
With a maladroitness which we recognise so often in the annals of the
Society, the Jesuits then went on to attack Pombal, and their churches
rang with denunciation of the great reformer. With all his faults
Joseph I. had wisdom enough to choose between the Jesuits and his
able minister. Pombal had effected more real reform in Portugal than
Jesuit politicians had done in their two centuries of influence; he had
abolished _autos da fe_, curbed the power of the Inquisition, clipped
the parasitic growth of monks, set bounds to the pretensions of the
nobles, and made great reforms in every branch of the administration.
He was a hard and ruthless man, sharing, to some extent, the Jesuit
feeling that the end justified the means, but he was a sincere and
enlightened patriot. He retained his influence over the King and took
the next step in his campaign against the Society.
It was not until 1756 that the resistance of the natives in the
Jesuit reductions was finally overcome, and the proofs (which we will
see later) of secret Jesuit provocation deeply impressed the King.
There was at that time on the papal throne a Pope who had repeatedly
condemned the Jesuits. We shall see later that their behaviour on the
Chinese and Indian missions was, in a different way, as irregular as
their behaviour in South America, and Benedict XIV. severely condemned
them. His chief minister, Cardinal Passionei, was also opposed to the
Jesuits. King Joseph now submitted to the Vatican an account of the
conduct of the Jesuits in South America and asked that they should be
reformed. Meantime, in the autumn of 1757, Pombal persuaded the King
that the Jesuits were fomenting disorder in Portugal itself, and an
order was signed for the expulsion of all Jesuit confessors from the
court. In the night of 19th-20th September the servants and soldiers
entered the palace, and Fathers Moreira, Costa, and Oliviera awoke to
find themselves sentenced to removal from their comfortable offices.
Pombal then ordered that no Jesuit should be allowed to approach the
court, sent a very forcible justification of the King's conduct to the
other European courts, and pressed the demand for reform at Rome.
On 1st April 1758 the Pope signed the decree for an inquiry into the
behaviour of the Jesuits, and Cardinal Saldanha was sent to South
America to conduct the inquiry. The proceedings at Rome had been kept
secret from the Jesuits until the decree was signed, and Pombal's
agents had secured the appointment of a cardinal who was no friend
of the Society. But both the Pope and the General died in the spring
of that year, and, when Cardinal Saldanha justly reported that the
Jesuits of South America had been wrongly engaged in commerce, the new
General, Ricci, appealed to the new Pope, Clement XIII., who was known
to be favourable to the Society. Clement appointed a commission of
inquiry which, being composed of friends of the Society and making no
investigation on the spot, declared the Jesuits innocent.
The declaration was absurd and insincere, as we shall appreciate
when we come to examine the conduct of the Jesuits on the missions,
and Pombal saw that he must deal with the fathers in Portugal. In
June (1758) the cardinal-patriarch had laid an interdict on all the
Jesuits in the diocese of Lisbon, and public opinion seemed to be
prepared for a drastic step. An event that occurred in the night of
3rd-4th September of that year gave Pombal his opportunity. As the
King returned from the house of his mistress, the Marchioness Tavora,
several shots were fired at him, and a large number of members of
the Tavora family were arrested and put to the torture. One of the
prisoners, the Duke d'Aveiro, said, under torture, that the Jesuits
were privy to the conspiracy, and eight of the leading fathers were
arrested and tortured. The duke afterwards retracted, and it must be
said that, beyond this worthless declaration, there is no positive
evidence to connect the Jesuits with the outrage, though they had
been in close correspondence with the Tavoras. They were, however,
not punished on that ground with the other prisoners. Only one of the
Jesuits was executed, but for heresy, not treason; the others were kept
in prison, while all the Tavoras were executed.
Instead of attempting to proceed against the Jesuits on such
discreditable evidence Pombal took the more effective ground that
their moral principles, especially in regard to assassination, were
the ultimate source of such outrages, and a very fierce controversy
ensued. It seemed to become gradually plain to all that the long
conflict of the Jesuits and their opponents was about to enter on
its last stage. There were bishops who supported Pombal, and bishops
who appealed to the Pope to check his progress. What Pombal mostly
feared was the stirring of the ignorant and superstitious masses, and
he proceeded with great caution. Before his project was realised in
Portugal, the Jesuits of the colonies were on their way, under guard,
to the mother-country, and, when they arrived, the Jesuit houses were
surrounded by soldiers, the more active fathers were transferred to
prison, and the rest were prevented from communicating with the laity.
By the month of April 1759 about 1500 Jesuits were in jail or under
guard. The King then informed the Pope that he was about to expel the
fathers from his dominions. When Clement protested, stronger evidence
of their intrigues was produced, and it is the general feeling of
impartial contemporaries (like the English historian Coxe) and later
authorities that some of these documents were forged. Clement still
refused to sanction the expulsion, and a ruthless and indefensible
step was taken by Pombal. On the feast of St. Ignatius (31st July) six
Jesuits were condemned to be broken on the wheel, as if some value were
now attributed to the evidence of a tortured witness.
This unjust sentence was not carried out, probably from a fear that
the Pope would seriously question the jurisdiction of the civic
authorities, but the plight of the Jesuits was lamentable. It was in
Portugal that they had first attained power and wealth, and they had
enjoyed an almost uninterrupted dominion for two centuries; now they
lay on straw in the common jails, or tremblingly discussed the dark
future in their overcrowded residences. On the first day of September
the sentence of expulsion was enforced. The younger Jesuits were
offered a dispensation from their vows by Cardinal Saldanha, but few
accepted it, and the majority of them were put on ship and conveyed to
the Pope's dominions. Pombal was cruel and unjust to the end in the
realisation of his design; it is possible that he feared their later
activity on foreign soil. There may be some exaggeration in the stories
of their hardships, and indeed such a sentence could not be carried
out without hardship, but one cannot defend his action in keeping 221
of the Jesuits in the jails of Portugal. One of them, Father Malagrida,
an old man of seventy-two, seems to have been a little deranged by his
imprisonment, and certain works which he wrote in prison were submitted
to the Inquisition. He was condemned to be burned alive by the very
tribunal which the Jesuits had been instrumental in establishing in
Portugal. Of the 200 Jesuits, 88 died in jail, and the rest lingered in
their humiliating captivity until the death of Joseph I. and dismissal
of Pombal in 1777. By that time their Society had ceased to exist.
Such was the tragic issue of Jesuit history in the land which they had
been accustomed to regard as the safest and most generous country in
which they had taken root. However severely we may censure the detailed
procedure of the Marquis de Pombal, his action was in substance just
and patriotic. Portugal, which, in the sixteenth century, had promised
to become one of the greatest powers in the world, had sunk to a
humiliating depth, and its decay had proceeded apace with the power
of political Jesuits. They were incapable of a patriotic conception
of the task of governing, and they took advantage of and encouraged
the economic folly of living on overburdened colonies. If they were
unwilling to discharge the proper duties of priests and refrain from
intrigue for political power, they must depart.
We have already seen how this bold stroke echoed in France and
encouraged the enemies of the Society. We must now turn to Spain and
see how "the most Catholic majesties" of that country came to follow
the terrible example of Pombal. The general outline of the story
is somewhat similar to that of the story of Portugal. A series of
weak and incompetent rulers occupy the throne; they are dominated
(generally) by a group of court-Jesuits, who teach them that the main
duty of a king is to be chaste, zealous for the faith, and generous
to the Church; the broad empire of Spain is repeatedly shorn, as its
increasing weakness is exposed; and at length a strong man realises the
evil of Jesuit domination and induces the King to send the fathers back
to the Pope's dominions from which they came. In one respect the story
is even more unpleasant than that which we have just concluded. Chaste
as the Spanish monarchs generally are in this period, they are so weak
and purblind that the court is filled with the most sordid intrigues
for power, and the Jesuits are deeply involved in these intrigues.
We left the Society in Spain enjoying a splendid prosperity in the
early years of the reign of Philip IV. Readers of Major Hume's
brilliant _Court of Philip IV._ (1907) will not need to be reminded
that this was "the gayest and wickedest court since the days of
Heliogabalus," and that Madrid was in a repellent condition of vice
and decadence. The King's confessor was not a Jesuit, but a worthless
Dominican, and there were spirited struggles between the rival orders.
However, the Jesuits still guided the consciences of most of the nobles
and wealthy people, and were generously patronised by the King. They
prospered richly in the decaying kingdom, were indifferent to the
periodical national disasters, and claim only that they produced such
brilliant casuists as Escobar. At the end of this long and dreary reign
the chronicle of the Society becomes more interesting.
An infant of four years, Charles II., inherited the throne, and
this gave the Jesuits an opportunity under the Regency of Maria
Anna, daughter of Ferdinand III. Queen Anna had brought with her
from her German home a very learned Jesuit, Father Nidhard, who
was her confessor. It was quite natural that this father should
attain predominant power at the death of the King, and we may regard
it as a piece of particularly frivolous Castilian gossip that the
sixty-year-old priest had a more tender relation to the Queen than
that of political adviser. We may further grant that Nidhard's power
was used unselfishly, and he was true to the ascetic ideal of his
Society. But he was flagrantly false to other and more important rules
of the Society in occupying the position he did, and he added a heavy
contribution to the accumulating hatred of the Society. He was not
only royal confessor, but a Councillor of State--in fact, the first
minister--and Grand Inquisitor. He had pleaded his rule when the Queen
pressed these dignities on him. She obtained a "dispensation" from
the Pope, and Nidhard then posed as a Jesuit Ximenes and ruled Spain.
The papal document gives him no moral justification. Had he and his
superiors willed, he could at once have been transferred to Germany.
They acquiesced in his political position on account of the power it
gave them.
The Spanish nobles chafed under the rule of a priest and a woman and
were irritated to see the decay of the nation continue. In 1668 they
lost much of the Low Countries in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the
independence of Portugal was recognised. Don Juan, a natural son of
the late King, seized the opportunity and attacked the Jesuits. They
appointed the prince governor of the Low Countries, and he refused to
go. They forbade him to approach the capital, and he boldly advanced
to Madrid and demanded the dismissal of Nidhard. The troops and people
supported him, and, shedding bitter tears, the Queen was obliged to
"permit Nidhard to retire from office." The crowd threatened to end
his career at once, but he escaped to Rome, where he became Spanish
ambassador, and afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Edessa. He had
greatly strengthened the hostility to the Jesuits in Spain.
The long and disastrous reign of Philip was followed by the long
and disastrous reign of his weak-minded son, and Spain decayed with
frightful rapidity. Piety flourished--on one occasion fifty heretics
were put to death for the entertainment of the young Queen--and the
misshapen King set an admirable example of chastity. Few were sensible
of the greater obligation of arresting the decay of the land, and the
Jesuits were content to float on the sluggish stream. It is probable
that their wealth reached its highest point during the reign of Charles
II.--"one of the most disastrous reigns on record," a distinguished
historian calls it. But there would be little interest in chronicling
the princely gifts and legacies they received and the handsome houses
they erected. Charles died of old age in his fortieth year (1700), and
was persuaded to leave the throne to the Duke of Anjou and thus ensure
the protection of Louis XIV. for the unfortunate country. From this
point the story of the Spanish Jesuits assumes a livelier complexion.
Philip V., a youth of seventeen, was entrusted by Louis XIV. to the
care of the French Jesuit Daubenton. Father Letellier was at that
time the spiritual guide of the grand monarch, and he had recommended
his friend and colleague Daubenton for the important post of ruling
the Spanish King's conscience. Daubenton was a stout little man who
concealed an immense aptitude and eagerness for intrigue under an
air of severe detachment from worldly affairs. On the other hand,
a brilliant Frenchwoman, the Princess Orsini, was sent to sustain
the interests of France in the Queen's circle, and she succeeded in
obtaining so strong an influence that we find her at times writing,
without much exaggeration, of "my administration." She was _camerara
mayor_ to the young Maria Luisa--a mere girl--and her great power drew
on her the hatred of the Spaniards and of some of the French. By the
year 1703 the court was seething with intrigue. The memoirs of the Duke
de Saint Simon, the work of the contemporary English historian Coxe,
and the letters which passed between the Spanish and French courts
indicate that Daubenton was the most active and insidious agent in the
cabal against the Princess Orsini. A very sordid intrigue ran through
the whole of the year 1703, and it ended in the recall of the princess
to France. The Queen was, however, so angry that the plot was exposed
to Louis XIV.--it is authoritatively narrated in the correspondence
of Louis and Philip--and Daubenton was dismissed from the court in
disgrace and the Princess Orsini permitted to return.
Another French Jesuit, Father Robinet, succeeded Daubenton, and the
fate of his predecessor did not intimidate him from taking an interest
in politics, though he at first made the same pretence of aloofness
from secular matters. The next ten years, however, passed without
notable incident, and the Spanish Jesuits continued to accumulate
wealth. Saint Simon tells us that on one occasion a ship from South
America discharged at the quays of Cadiz several boxes addressed
to "The Procurator-General of the Society of Jesus." The contents
were said to be chocolate, but the weight was extraordinary and the
officials decided to open one of the boxes. It was, apparently, full
of bars of chocolate, but the weight of each was so mysterious that
they were more closely examined. They were bars of solid gold,
thickly coated with chocolate. This incident probably gave support to
the rumour in Spain that the Jesuits had hidden gold mines in their
carefully guarded reductions, but we may more probably recognise the
direction taken by the great profit on the reductions and the reason
for the determined efforts of the Jesuit authorities to support their
fathers in this uncanonical industry.
Queen Luisa died in the year 1714, and it was believed at the court,
and is not improbable, that Princess Orsini aspired to succeed her. She
was then more than sixty years old, but she still had great charm and
ability and seemed to be making a tender impression on the chaste and
pious and weak-minded young King. Robinet put an end to her ambition
with a bold retort. When Philip asked him one day what the latest news
was from Paris, he said that it was rumoured that the King was about
to marry Mme Orsini. Philip angrily denied it, and the princess very
shortly passed out of the political life of Spain. There were, however,
many others interested in the exile of Princess Orsini, and the share
of Father Robinet must not be exaggerated. Spain had continued to
decay. At the peace of 1713 her empire was shorn of Sicily, Milan,
Naples, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, and Minorca. Philip
consulted his Jesuit advisers several times a day, but neither they
nor his other counsellors could do more than intrigue for power in the
shrinking kingdom. The Abbé (later Cardinal) Alberoni was now rising to
power, and was associated with Robinet in the ruin of Princess Orsini.
Alberoni persuaded Philip that Elizabeth Farnese was just the quiet
and modest young princess he desired for his second wife, and Philip
yielded. But Elizabeth, a haughty and passionate maiden, was instructed
beforehand in her duty, and at their first meeting she brutally
dismissed the princess. Then Alberoni and Robinet quarrelled about the
appointment of a new Archbishop of Toledo. Robinet secured the dignity
for a friend of the Society (1715), and he in turn incurred the anger
of the Queen and Alberoni and was exiled to Germany.
Before he left, Robinet persuaded Philip to recall Daubenton to his
side, and from that moment the court intrigue turned against Alberoni.
In this Daubenton played a subordinate, but important, part. The
English and French courts, as well as many of the Spaniards, were
eager for the dismissal of the Italian favourite, and Daubenton, who
confessed Philip twice a day and had other consultations with him, was
employed by them to poison the King against his minister. Philip was
persuaded that the great plans of Alberoni contained a danger to the
country and he dismissed him. In this case the Jesuit confessor allowed
himself to become the tool of the enemies of Spain and intrigued
against its ablest statesman.
In the year 1724 Philip handed the crown to his son Louis, and retired
to consecrate his useless life to religious devotions. There is no
serious evidence that the Jesuits pressed Philip to resign, though they
certainly tried to dissuade him from resuming the crown, and they had
taken part in marrying Louis to the daughter of the Duke of Orleans.
However that may be, Louis died a few months later and Philip returned
to the throne.
Daubenton had died in 1723, and his place had been taken by the Jesuit
Bermudez, who sustained the tradition of intrigue. The successor of
Alberoni was a Spaniard from the Low Countries, Ripperdá, who was
obnoxious to the Jesuits on many grounds. In Holland he had consulted
his ambition by turning Protestant, and on his return to Spain, where
he found favour with the King, he promptly recovered his belief in
the older creed. The Queen's confessor, a Jesuit who rejoiced in the
title and robes of Archbishop of Amida, intrigued against this singular
adventurer and overthrew him. Here again the Jesuit merely used his
opportunities to voice the resentment of many others, nor do historians
regard the downfall of Ripperdá with any sympathy, but the intrigues
of the spiritual guides of the court were now so flagrant and so much
discussed in Europe that Philip was angry. When, shortly afterwards,
Father Bermudez offended the Queen by stealthily communicating to the
King letters from France, to be concealed from her, and was found to
be intriguing like his predecessors, he was dismissed from office.
It was related in the court that Bermudez offered to swear on the
crucifix that he was innocent, and that Philip answered: "I have too
much respect for the image of Christ to suffer you to perjure yourself
thus." Bermudez was dismissed, and an Irish Jesuit, Father Clarke,
was made royal confessor for the remainder of the melancholy reign of
Philip V.
The accession of his son, Ferdinand VI., in 1746 brought little relief
to the country and no change in the power of the Jesuits. Ferdinand,
a weak and virtuous monarch, of the type which proved so congenial to
the Jesuits, was devoted to the Society. His confessor, Father Rabago,
was his chief adviser, and courtiers gathered thickly about the Jesuit
in the hope of winning his influence. His position and power, and the
feebleness of the monarch, made him bolder, and a few years later he
ventured upon an action which was to have disastrous consequences for
his Society. In spite of all the efforts of the Jesuits Spain agreed to
cede a part of Paraguay containing seven of the Jesuit reductions to
Portugal, in exchange for Sacramento, I have already mentioned this
incident in speaking of Portugal, and will narrate in a later chapter
what happened in Paraguay. Briefly, an army of 15,000 Indians from the
reductions--not merely the seven reductions in question, which would
not afford more than a few hundred soldiers, but evidently the full
force of the Jesuit troops drafted from the whole of their scattered
reductions--drew up in the path of the Spanish and Portuguese troops,
and it was only after many battles, and at the end of three years, that
the agreement between the two governments could be carried out.
The Marquis de Pombal, who was then in power at Lisbon, at once claimed
that the Jesuits had inspired this treasonable resistance. It would
be difficult for any impartial person to imagine that this army had
been mobilised from the whole area of Jesuit influence and maintained
for so long a period against the will of the Jesuit fathers, who so
completely dominated the Indians and were accustomed to lead them to
battle. Ferdinand hesitated, but at last Pombal intercepted a secret
letter from Father Rabago to the Spanish fathers, in which he urged
them to resist. The English ambassador, Sir Benjamin Keene (quoted by
Coxe in his _Memoirs of the Kings of Spain_), tells us that this letter
and other proofs were put before Ferdinand, and the King expressed
great indignation with the Jesuits in his presence. Coxe himself, who
is often quoted by the Jesuits as an impartial authority, says that
the letter was "undoubtedly" genuine. Rabago was, he says, ignorant at
first of foreign affairs, and ruled by a junta of his colleagues in his
direction of the King, but he became ambitious and intrigued against
the power of the leading statesmen Carvajal and Enseñada. The letters
intercepted in 1754 opened the King's eyes, and when, in the following
year, the confessor was detected in his intrigues against Enseñada, he
was peremptorily dismissed from office.
Ferdinand continued to trust the other Jesuits and resist the pressure
of Pombal, but he died in 1759, and an abler ruler, Charles III.,
came to the throne. Charles was a devout Catholic and was devoted
to the Society. He was, like his predecessor, deaf to the warnings
and entreaties of Pombal, and the ruthless expulsion of the Jesuits
from Portugal (in 1759) only increased his benevolence toward them in
Spain. All their errors were forgotten, and Pombal's charges against
their conduct in the colonies were warmly rejected. Few could have
anticipated that, under such a ruler, in less than ten years from his
accession, the gorgeous structure of Jesuit prosperity in Spain would
be thrown to the ground and the fathers ignominiously expelled.
The first action of the Jesuits to modify the feeling of the King
toward them was their opposition to the canonisation of Bishop Palafox.
Charles keenly desired that the highest honours of the Church should be
paid to this saintly Spanish bishop of the previous century, but, as we
shall see later, Palafox had submitted to Pope Innocent X. a very grave
indictment of the conduct of the Jesuits and, if he had been canonised,
his letters "would have brought disgrace on the Society," as the Jesuit
historian Cordara says. Cordara admits that the means they adopted to
prevent canonisation were not approvable; they were, in fact, chiefly
bribery and an unscrupulous vilification of the bishop. The process
did not get beyond the stage of declaring the bishop "Venerable," and
Charles was displeased with the Jesuits.
In 1766 a less clear, but much more serious, grievance arose. An
attempt to shorten the long cloaks and broad-brimmed _sombreros_ of
the Spanish people, which favoured assassins, led in the spring of
1766 to a revolt at Madrid. Charles was a stern maintainer of royal
authority, and the outbreak greatly angered him. His chief minister
Aranda, a scholar and politician of the liberal school, who was in
sympathy with Choiseul and Pombal and opposed to the Jesuits, now
succeeded in persuading the King that the Jesuits had inspired the
revolt. According to the official "historian" of the Society, the only
ground for this was that the Jesuits had flung themselves bravely upon
the angry mob and disarmed it; which aroused an improper suspicion
of their power. The historian is careful not to relate that in the
autumn of the year a lawyer named Navarro was arrested for bringing
a false charge against certain monks (whom the Jesuits disliked) in
connection with the riot, and that, when the case turned against him,
he declared that the Jesuits had prompted him to do this in order to
avert suspicion from their own conduct. Charles was convinced that they
were the authors of the riot, and he was now prepared to listen to the
charges of Pombal and Choiseul.
It was then submitted to the King that the Jesuits were conspiring
to replace him on the throne by his brother Louis. One of our best
authorities, Coxe, declares that a forged letter in this sense,
purporting to come from General Ricci to the heads of the Spanish
Jesuits, was used amongst the evidence. However that may be, the King
was convinced, a searching inquiry was made into the condition and
activity of the Society, and the King entrusted to the willing hands
of Aranda the task of destroying it. Aranda realised that secrecy
was essential to success, and he and a few confidential colleagues
stealthily drew up the indictment of the Society. Such precautions
had to be taken to outwit the Jesuit spies that the minister would
take pen and ink in his pocket, in order that it should not be known
that the King was signing a document. By the beginning of 1767 it was
decided to banish the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions, and Aranda
set to work to arrange the expulsion without giving the Jesuits an
opportunity to provoke a rising in their favour. Sealed orders were
sent to the local officials all over the empire, and it was strictly
enjoined under pain of death that they were not to be opened until the
evening of 2nd April.[28]
By the end of March the Jesuits must have been aware that some grave
step against them was meditated, but the secret was well kept and
the plan carried out to the letter. Some time after midnight on 2nd
April the troops silently gathered round the six Jesuit colleges at
Madrid and all the other houses and residences of the Society. The
sentence was carried out simultaneously, with perfect order. The
astounded Jesuits awoke to find a soldier and official in every cell,
and they were ordered to dress and proceed to the refectory. There the
royal decree of banishment was read to the assembled community, and
they were promptly conducted by the troops, with such small personal
possessions as their breviaries and their tobacco, to the appointed
port. They were put in separate carriages, and carefully secluded from
each other and the people until they were aboard ship. It seems that
Aranda's precautions were excessive. The Jesuits complain rather of
the harshness of the soldiers than attempt to discover any sympathy
to which they might appeal. Sympathy and anger there were, of course,
as well as delirious rejoicing, when the fall of the Society became
known. But before the country had fully realised that the proud Society
had been doomed to exile by a Spanish king, the 6000 Jesuits of Spain
and its colonies were mournfully crossing the Mediterranean, in
overcrowded vessels, toward the coast of the papal states. A pension
was allotted to each out of their confiscated property, but they were
informed that the pensions of all would cease if one of their number
ventured to assail Spain and defend the Society; this was not an unjust
measure in view of the fact that no Jesuit could publish without
authority.
Another very painful experience awaited the fathers at the Italian
shore. Charles sent word to the Pope that he had found it necessary
to banish the Jesuits, and he was committing them to the Pope's "wise
and holy direction." The letter is not as disrespectful as this may
suggest, but Clement XIII. was so angry that he took an unpardonable
step. It will be remembered that Pombal had previously unloaded his
ships on the papal shores, and the suppression in France had driven
large numbers to Italy. We may assume that the aim of Pombal, Choiseul,
and Aranda was to dispose the Pope to receive their demand for the
abolition of the Society. Clement was so angry that he refused to
receive the wretched exiles. The case is not, as is sometimes said,
that he forgot to send, or refrained from sending, orders to receive
the Jesuits. When the first vessel, bearing 600 dejected priests, made
for the port of Civitá Vecchia, it was warned off by the roar of papal
cannon, and for some weeks the miserable men tossed on the waves of
the Mediterranean in sight of the inhospitable papal states. In the
end they were dispatched to Corsica, to enjoy their slender pensions.
Some apostatised, and some crept back in disguise to their native land,
and were hunted as traitors; but in six years their last hopes were
extinguished by the papal abolition of the Society.
The verdict of the historian on this romantic fall of the Society of
Jesus in the two countries which seemed especially adapted for its
operations must always be coloured by his creed. Protestant historians
have at times commented on the harsh execution of the sentence and the
character of some of the evidence on which it was obtained, but none
questions the justice of the expulsion. On the other hand, although
the Catholic Church was, to say the least, equally divided on the
matter at the time, no modern Catholic historian would admit the
justice of the sentence. I do not propose to consider this in detail
until we come to the abolition of the Society by the Pope. Indeed, we
cannot quite appreciate the whole case of the Spaniards and Portuguese
Catholics against the Jesuits until we have examined their conduct in
the colonies. When we have covered the whole ground we shall be in
a position to weigh the stern and lengthy indictment which Clement
XIV.--who is wilfully misrepresented by Catholic writers--passes on the
Society in pronouncing the solemn sentence of death. For the moment
I need only say that, apart from their great irregularities in the
colonies, the Jesuits were hated in Spain and Portugal on the ground
that, in spite of their high professions, they sought and accumulated
wealth, indulged in commerce, lent themselves to political intrigue,
wronged other spiritual bodies, were lax in moral principles, and
drained the resources of the decaying country without rendering it
any proportionate service. This record of their deeds must suffice to
enable the reader to say if the indictment and sentence were just.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 28: Coxe puts the expulsion on the morning of 1st April, and
the signing of the decree on 2nd April. This seems to be an error.]