Edmond Paris - The Secret History of the Jesuits

"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

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

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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.

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

(21) Pierre Dominique, op.cit., p.191.

THE ECLIPSE OF THE COMPANY

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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 enounced 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

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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.