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Before Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Congregation founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, its members were expelled from Portugal, France, Spain and parts of Italy.
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- Author: Juan Francisco Alonso
- Scroll, BBC News World
2 hours ago
With 14,439 members, 200 universities, 850 schools and thousands of social, cultural and religious works in 127 countries, the Society of Jesus was the largest religious order in Catholicism at least until January 2022.
A position strengthened by the election of one of them a decade ago: Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, current Pope Francis, at the head of the Vatican.
But 250 years ago, the Congregation founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola was in danger of disappearing from the face of the earth by the decision of what he had sworn to obey: the then Pope.
On July 21, 1773, Clement XIV signed a document entitled Dominus ac Redemptor, in which he excluded the Jesuits from the structure of the Church and confiscated all their property.
But for what reasons did Rome decree the suppression of the Jesuits, as the members of the order are popularly known?
The measure did not come overnight: it followed a campaign of slander and persecution against the members of this order, which began 15 years earlier with their expulsion from Portugal and its overseas domains.
It all started in Paraguay
“The news at the time said the missions the company was running in Paraguay had gold mines and the Portuguese king wanted them. After signing an agreement with Spain, he deleted the missions,” Andrés Martínez Esteban explains to BBC News Mundo (BBC Spanish service).
Martínez, a professor of ecclesiastical history at the University of San Dámaso (Spain), says that the decision sparked an uprising by the Guarani indigenous people living in the missions and that the Portuguese authorities accused the Jesuits of being responsible for the problem.
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The Portuguese king José 1° took over the missions of the Jesuits in Paraguay
These events were recreated with historical licenses in the awardwinning 1986 film The Mission, starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.
“Shortly thereafter, two events occurred that increased distrust of the Portuguese crown: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which some Jesuits believed to be a divine punishment due to the king’s decision to withdraw the Paraguayan missions.
A combination of economic, theological and, above all, political reasons led to the monarchs of France, Spain, Naples and Parma following in Portugal’s footsteps in the years that followed.
for your ideas
“The Society of Jesus was a unit with a lot of access to different monarchies. Many Jesuits were confessors or spiritual directors to kings and queens. However, their political ideas disturbed both absolutist and enlightened monarchs,” says Venezuelan Jesuit Arturo Peraza, rector of the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas (UCAB).
“The company adopted Thomism, which does not support the idea of royal absolutism, but rather believed that the king should be accountable to God and also to the people,” adds the specialist, who is a jurist with a PhD in political science.
Thomism is a philosophical and theological doctrine developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Among other things, he considers it permissible for the governed to rebel against rulers if they behave like tyrants, provided that the alternatives for solving the situation have been exhausted.
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The Spanish King Charles III. made an alliance with the French and Italian monarchs to whom he was related to persuade the Vatican to dissolve the Society of Jesus
They were also attacked by the way in which the members of the Order, founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola, carried out their work of evangelization throughout the world.
“The company felt that the cultures reached had a number of positive elements that could be incorporated into Catholic ritual. (…) This triggered a kind of hysteria from conservative groups, similar to what happened recently with Pope Francis’ stance on the use of Latin,” says Venezuelan Jesuit Peraza.
very independent
Martínez, in turn, cites another reason for the hostility of the rulers, especially the Spanish: the way the Jesuits were organized, which prevented them from being controlled like the rest of the Catholic hierarchy.
“The kings had rights over the church and they were the ones who appointed the bishops pope, but that was not the case with the Jesuits.” This lack of control did not please the kings and their advisers,” he says.
Similarly, Jesús Mari Usunáriz, professor of history at the University of Navarre, explains: “Society was not dependent on the States, and if the monarchies and the States suspected them, it was because of their fourth vow: the vow of obedience to the Pope, which placed them outside the jurisdiction of the State,” he says.
Peraza agrees that the Order’s independence was another reason for its suppression.
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The fact that St. Ignatius Loyola brought elements from the military world to organize the Jesuits seems to have contributed to their reputation as conspirators.
“The enlightened people wanted the independence of nationstates against the Vatican’s claim to exercise some sort of moral control over them, and (…) they persecuted the Jesuits as spies for Rome,” he says.
The socalled Esquilache mutiny, which took place in Spain in 1766, was used by critics of the order both conservatives and liberals to insult King Charles III. to convince that the followers of Saint Ignatius were behind these events.
The riot was sparked by a minister’s (Leopoldo de Gregorio e Masnata, Marquis of Esquilache) controversial decision to ban cloaks and other traditional clothing to combat crime, as long garments allegedly helped conceal weapons. The unpopular measure, coupled with the high cost of living at the time, sparked fierce protests that forced the monarch to temporarily leave Madrid.
“Carlos III. was convinced that the Jesuits had staged the riots and feared for his life. And for this reason he not only expelled them from Spain and the colonies, but also concluded a family pact in which the Bourbon crowns (Spain, France, Naples and Parma) united so that after the death of Clement III. a pope would be elected who would commit himself to oppressing the Society of Jesus,” explains Martínez.
Rescued by the Periphery
After threatening to break with Rome, the alliance of the Bourbon monarchies achieved its goal and the new Pope Clement XIV dissolved the congregation.
However, according to experts, the Pope was not convinced of the measure. The researchers point out that the legal instrument used by the pope to abolish the order left a loophole for its reincorporation, which in fact happened 41 years later.
“For the precedent to become law, it had to be approved by the various monarchs in which it was to be applied,” explains Revuelta González.
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Catherine the Great’s refusal to support Pope Clement XIV’s decision to disband the Company enabled the Order to survive in the Russian Empire.
The refusal of Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia to support the papal decision allowed the Jesuits to continue their activities as if nothing had happened in those areas.
About 200 of the then 22,000 Jesuits found refuge under the cloak of Protestant and Orthodox rulers.
“Zarina Katharina wanted the Jesuits to keep running their schools and educating the new Russian ruling class to be able to compete with the rest of the European powers,” explains Peraza.
Both experts and the bibliography consulted by the BBC indicate that the brothers, monks and priests of the Society of Jesus accepted the measures taken against them without resistance, even though hundreds died in their expulsion from the American colonies.
The fact that the then Superior General Lorenzo Ricci was arrested and died in the dungeons of Castel Sant’Angelo next to the Vatican is proof of submission to the Pope’s will.
The period of suppression of the order was followed by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the wars of independence in Latin America. The aftermath of these events finally allowed the company’s return in 1814, with the approval of Pius 7°.
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The Jesuits were the target of a harsh smear campaign in which members of other religious orders also took part.
“The company was reborn in a Restoration political and religious environment. (…) Dethroned dynasties and old borders were restored. (…) The rationalist spirit seemed to recede before the religious spirit recovered,” writes the Jesuit and Spanish historian Manuel Revuelta González.
Professor Usunáriz uses similar terms, stating: “The oppression of society meant, in my opinion, a loss of power for the church. And with its restoration, the Church sought to reclaim an instrument of social, political, and cultural influence.”
Martínez gives other reasons. “The repression was an injustice, a decision that had no canonical or judicial reasons, but political ones,” he says.
When order was restored there were only 2,500 religious, most of them elderly.
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In 2013, Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio became not only the first Latin American pope, but also the first Jesuit to achieve this position.
Despite their restoration, the Jesuits continued to carry some kind of stigma as a result of historical events.
For his part, Peraza admits that it has not always been understood how the followers of Saint Ignatius carry out their work, either inside or outside the Church.
“The Jesuits believe that salvation is not achieved in the monastery but by trying to change reality. So if the monarch or ruler can change reality, why don’t we try to influence him?” he explains.