We have brought down our history to the beginning of the eighteenth century, an epoch in which the power and greatness of the Society of Jesus had, by a gradual march, ascended to a point from which, following the law inherent in all human things, it could not but decline; for institutions, empires, and nations, have, as well as man himself, their successive periods of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and decrepitude; and if institutions, doctrines, or nations, revive after their moral death, they never regain the same degree of force and vitality which they possessed when rising to the maturity of their power. According to this constant rule, it was evident to any profound observer that the Jesuits had attained that height from which they must inevitably descend; but, as always happens, they never dreamed of their impending fate, and scorned the sinister forebodings of some of their number who foresaw and predicted it. Then, when these predictions proved true, they laid the blame of their fall upon every one but its real authors—themselves; for it is to them that must be attributed the ruin of their institution. To the causes of decay which we have stated, we must add that which was perhaps the principal one—namely, that the Jesuits, once in possession of power, remitted their prodigious activity, for which they had been so remarkable at the commencement of their institution, and even disregarded those arts by which they had obtained that power. Even the Instruction, that all-powerful engine which had so admirably served their purposes, was neglected, and had lost its original character. It was no longer either gratuitous or universal; children of families known to be adverse to the Order, were, on one pretence or another, refused admittance, or sorely annoyed if admitted. Twice a year, at Christmas, and on their patron saint’s (Loyola’s) day, the pupils were obliged to bring presents to the masters; and rewards and marks of distinction were given in preference to the children of wealthy families, or to those who brought the richest present. This naturally produced in these young persons a consciousness of independence, so that they would no longer endure the severity of the ancient discipline.[321] Some of them even went so far as to stab their masters, and the revolts of the pupils of the Collegio Romano became proverbial. Besides, the zeal which the fathers had shewn at first to promote study, had not only cooled away, but was directed to oppose any sort of progress.
To those primary and internal causes which accelerated the downfall of the order, must be added also many external ones, all militating against them.
In those countries in which the Jesuits had had the greatest influence, as Spain, Portugal, and Poland, although they preserved, as yet, the favour of the court, they had lost that of all the other classes of society, who, at least in secret, accused them of being the cause of the abasement and the ruin of their respective countries. On the other hand, those sovereigns of Germany who had sought the Jesuits’ help to oppose their Protestant subjects, after the peace of Westphalia, wishing to calm rather than inflame religious quarrels, though they did not withdraw from the Jesuits that protection they had granted them, at least refused to give them that almost unlimited authority they had formerly enjoyed. But the surest, perhaps, of all the symptoms of their approaching ruin was, that the Court of Rome itself began to frown upon them, and to shew a determination to lower their pride, and to bring them to some sense of their duty. We have already seen (pp. 127, 128) many bulls condemnatory of their conduct in China and India, and that Benedict XIV. had applied to them the very harsh and offensive appellations of “disobedient, contumacious, crafty, and reprobate men.” The same Pope, at this period also accepted the dedication of Father Norbert’s Mémoires Historiques, of which we have already spoken; and encouraged the publication of many other books, all adverse to the Society. All this was ominous to the Jesuits.
It was, however, in France, the former seat of their power and glory during the seventeenth century, that the ruin of the order was most effectually prepared. The overthrow of Port-Royal, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the massacre of the Huguenots, and all the persecutions exercised in that country in the name of religion, were justly attributed to the Jesuits. Nor was this all; the exclusion from every office, civil or ecclesiastical, of every person who was not entirely devoted to the Order, had made their tyrannic yoke to be detested and abhorred in the highest degree.
While the despotic Louis XIV. ruled France with an iron hand, and Lachaise and Letellier had a full disposal of lettres de cachet, few dared openly to give vent to the hatred they bore to the Society; but hardly had the bigoted prince expired, when the long-restrained animosity broke forth, and the Jesuits were assailed on every side. The Jansenists, the other religious orders, the curates, the bishops, all now attacked the monks, who, some months before, had kept them in such awe, and had been masters of their fortunes. It has also been asserted—and the Jesuits repeat it every day—that the abolition of their order was due to the then fast spreading subversive doctrines of the Encyclopædists, and that Ganganelli suppressed this bulwark of the Christian religion to please the atheist Voltaire and his disciples. But this, in the exclusive sense in which the Jesuit takes it, is by no means true. The Encyclopædists were not the Jesuits’ particular enemies, nor the auxiliaries of the Jansenists. They were, perhaps, more opposed to the strict and ascetic character of the recluses of Port-Royal, than to the worldly and accommodating morality of the progeny of Loyola. But the Jesuits had identified themselves with the Roman Catholic religion, and all its bigoted and superstitious practices, and the philosophers were happy that they had introduced into it so many ridiculous superstitions and ceremonies, upon which they could exercise their sarcastic and trenchant wit. Voltaire and his school could not have awakened in the hearts of their contemporaries such dislike, nay, contempt and abhorrence, for the religion of Christ, had not the Jesuits furnished them the means, by having introduced into it contemptible and idolatrous superstitions. The Encyclopædists’ principal aim was to destroy the Christian religion; and for this purpose, coupling with malignant sagacity the sublime doctrines and pure morality of Christ with the ridiculous practices and impure doctrines of the Papists, and especially of the Jesuits, held up the whole to the derision and profanation of a superficial public; who, unwilling to make any distinction, boldly asserted that nothing was true, nothing was holy, nothing respectable, in the Christian code. Again, the philosophers, in their praiseworthy endeavours to introduce the principles of civil and religious liberty, attacked the Jesuits, now become the unconditional supporters of all despotism and tyranny. In this sense, and in this sense alone, it is true that the Encyclopædists largely contributed to the overthrow of the order. The pamphlets and books printed and widely circulated at that time against the reverend fathers were mainly a mass of evidence exposing their iniquity, and tending to effect their ruin in the opinion of Europe.
Nor did the Jesuits, blinded as they were by past success, oppose any efficacious resistance to the torrent which threatened to sweep them away. Without changing their conduct in the least, they had recourse to expedients, and thought that a little patience and cunning would suffice to shelter them from the passing hurricane. This was their general practice. However, not to be altogether passive spectators in the contest, they made an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the sceptical and profligate Philip of Orleans, regent of France, not, indeed, by granting him absolution, which he cared very little for, but by negotiating for him with the Papal Court, by discovering to him the secrets of Philip V. of Spain, who had intrusted to his confessor his intention of abdicating, and by procuring for the libertine and ignoble Dubois an episcopal seat and a cardinal’s hat. But if D’Orleans, for political ends, seemed to be the Jesuits’ friend, he was not assuredly the man to use his authority to defend them; and they were, from 1716 to 1729, deprived of the exercise of every ecclesiastical function, having been interdicted by Cardinal de Noaille. Under the sensual and voluptuous Louis XV., the Jesuits attempted again to regain their lost influence, and, as far as the favourable hearing of the sovereign was concerned, they in part succeeded. They contrived to insinuate to him that their cause was the cause of religion and of the throne, both menaced by the philosophers; and, to a certain extent, they persuaded many that such was the case, and their enemies did not remain unmolested. But while the parliament and the court, in their official capacities, condemned the Encyclopædists to the Bastile, and their works to be burnt, they individually read with avidity whatever epigram was aimed at the Jesuits and the Christian religion, and Louis XV. was not the last to participate in the sneer.
Meanwhile, the new doctrines of political reform and civil liberty had spread so fast, and were so eagerly embraced by the populations of different kingdoms, that their sovereigns thought proper to give some satisfaction to public opinion, and call to their councils reforming ministers. In France, Choiseul; in Spain, Wall and Squillace; in Portugal, Carvalho; in Naples, Tanucci—were placed at the helm of the state, and began to attack the most obnoxious abuses against which people had set their minds. Now, in this disposition of the public opinion, it was evident that, at the first favourable circumstance, the ruin of the Jesuits, who had been so greatly damaged in popular favour, would be actually consummated; because it was to be expected that in this case would happen what generally takes place in political movements, that when once the moral revolution is accomplished, the smallest pretext suffices to achieve the triumph of the material one also.
Either the Jesuits furnished this pretext to Carvalho, prime minister of the King of Portugal; or, at any rate, imagining that he had himself discovered it, he attempted the overthrow of the Order. But the causes of this overthrow were not, as is asserted by the able historian of the fall of the Jesuits, wholly local, and of a private and personal nature.[322] Any other occurrence would have served the purpose as well. It may be that Carvalho accelerated their ruin; but even without him the Jesuits must have fallen. We shall briefly trace the order of events which issued in their expulsion from Portugal.
The Jesuits, from their first entrance into the kingdom, had exercised a great influence over the destinies of Portugal. This influence, which they had in part lost during the interval that Portugal was under the sway of the Spanish monarch, became paramount under the new dynasty. The Jesuits governed in the name of the two queens, the widow of John IV. and the wife of Alphonso VI., who had married her brother-in-law during the lifetime of her first husband, whom she dethroned, and chained to a rock.[323] Under John V., their power reached its climax, and it was while they ruled the nation that “Portugal fell exhausted under the protecting power of England, never again to recover her position.”[324] At the commencement of Joseph I.’s reign, which we are now considering, they possessed an equal and again unlimited power; but at that juncture a man arose to arrest their progress. This man was Carvalho. He was born in 1699, of a family of the middle class, or at the most of the lowest grade of the nobility. He was endowed with many rare qualities, with a great aptitude for business and administration, with unequalled energy and courage, and with a mind vast and capable of great designs; but he was proud, vindictive, cruel, and not seldom unjust. To arrive at power, Carvalho (subsequently Count of Oeyras, and Marquis of Pombal, under which last name he is better known to history, and by which we shall henceforth designate him) had courted the friendship of the Jesuits, and was by them brought into favour. He soon became the favourite, and then the master, of the weak and contemptible Joseph I. Pombal, in appearance, shewed himself grateful to the Jesuits, and to the last moment assured them of his friendship. But whether, in his capacity of statesman, he thought them to be prejudicial to the welfare of the Portuguese nation, or whether he began to hate them, because the fathers, perceiving that they could in no way govern such a man as Pombal, had leagued with the nobility, a class of citizens whom the vindictive minister wished to annihilate, it is unquestionable that at a certain period Pombal resolved, if possible, to rid Portugal of these dangerous monks. But, prudent and crafty, he dissembled his sentiments till a pretext or a favourable moment should arrive.
A first unjust pretext he thought he had found in the conduct of the Jesuits in 1753. At this epoch a treaty between the Kings of Spain and Portugal effected a mutual exchange of provinces in America; and, in order that the inhabitants might remain under their former sovereigns, it was stipulated that they should respectively quit the ceded territories. These people resisted such an unjust and tyrannical order; and the population of the Reductions took up arms and fought bravely for their own country, although in vain. The Jesuits were accused by the minister of having excited them to revolt, which they have denied, even affirming that the General wrote to his subordinate of Paraguay to prepare the neophytes for such a change, and warning them that, if difficulties should arise, he would transport himself to the place, to see that the orders of the kings were obeyed.[325] But, from what we know of the power exercised by the Jesuits in the Reductions, it is evident that these submissive beings would never have dared to stir without the consent and the encouragement of the fathers—encouragement which possibly they may have given them underhand, while preaching, in public, obedience to the sovereign’s orders. By resorting to this duplicity, they incurred the blame of both parties, while, if they had boldly asserted their interference in vindicating the inalienable right of men not to be bartered as cattle at the caprice of every despot, they would have earned the applause and the eulogy of every noble and generous soul.
However, Pombal had not as yet acquired that unlimited power which he afterwards attained, and did not dare, or was not able, to strike the blow he was meditating against the Society, and was obliged to be contented to prepare the way for their ruin. But an event soon occurred which rendered him absolute master of the destinies of Portugal, and left him at liberty to deal with the Jesuits as he pleased.
On the 1st of November 1755, an earthquake destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon. A conflagration added to the desolation, and, that nothing might be wanting in this scene of horrors, an armed band of brigands preyed in open day on the unfortunate victims of the direful calamity. Discouragement and despair had seized on the boldest. The courtiers insisted that the court should emigrate to Oporto, and the king and the royal family ardently desired to leave the desolate Lisbon. Pombal alone refused to let them depart. “The king’s place,” said he to Joseph, “is in the midst of his people; let us bury the dead, and take thought for the living.”[326] Under appalling and difficult circumstances, the power belongs to the most energetic. Pombal seized on the helm of the state as his right, declared himself prime minister, and, unaided and alone, prepared to conquer all the difficulties with which Portugal was at this moment threatened. There was something of antique greatness in the courage which Pombal displayed that excited general astonishment.[327] In fact, he was everywhere; he thought about everything; he provided for every emergency; and soon, by his unequalled energy, a new town sprung up on the ruins of the ancient capital.
And now Pombal, having attained a position which permitted him to attempt everything, thought of putting in execution the two great projects he had conceived—the subjection of the aristocracy, and the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal. He had already published a number of edicts to restrain the power and humiliate the pride of the nobility, against whom he had conceived a great hatred, for the scorn they had offered him in refusing to admit him among them. And now the turn of the Jesuits had come. On the morning of the 19th September 1757, without any new motive or circumstance having determined the proceeding, he removed from the court the three Jesuit confessors, and assigned to the royal penitents three ordinary priests. This first act of enmity was immediately followed by manifestoes which soon inundated Europe, in which the premier brought against the Jesuits several terrible accusations. Then, to countenance his accusations, Pombal applied to the Pope, as ecclesiastical chief of these monks, and in his complaint he gave especial prominence to that which was most calculated to displease and provoke the censure of the Court of Rome. He represented to the Holy See that the great mercantile operations of the Society impeded the accomplishment of his commercial plans and the promotion of the national prosperity, and asked for a prompt and efficient measure to put a stop to it. The chair of St Peter was at that time occupied by the amiable, learned, and upright Lambertini. Benedict XIV. did not hesitate a moment to comply with Pombal’s desires, and committed the visitation of the Order to Cardinal Saldanha, a very intimate friend of the minister.
Before we proceed further, we think it necessary in this place to give our readers some general idea of the commercial operations of the Society.
The large donations which, at the commencement of the institution, had enriched the Society, having become less frequent, the Jesuits thought of increasing their wealth by applying themselves to trade. They pretended that there was no material difference between the practice of agriculture, which had formed the principal occupation of the first monastic orders, and the labour of commerce in which they were engaged. The Collegio Romano possessed a manufactory of cloth at Macerata, and though at first they produced it only for their own use, yet they soon proceeded to supply all the other colleges in the provinces, and ultimately the public in general, for which last purpose they attended the fairs. From the close connexion existing between the different colleges, there resulted a system of banking business; and the Portuguese ambassador at Rome was empowered to draw on the Jesuits of Portugal. Their commercial transactions were particularly prosperous in the colonies. The trading connexion of the order extended, as it were, a network over both continents, having Lisbon for its central point.[328] Such is the account given by our contemporary historian. We shall now quote the opinion of an eye-witness, a man high in power in India, and who could certainly have had the best information regarding the facts. M. Martin, general commander of Pondicherry, expresses himself thus:—
“It is certain that, after the Dutch, the Jesuits are the largest and the richest traders in India, richer even than the English, than the Portuguese themselves, who have brought them there.... Those disguised Jesuits intrigue everywhere. The secret correspondence they keep up amongst themselves, apprises them of the merchandises that ought to be bought or sold, and to what nation, in order to make a more considerable profit; so that those disguised Jesuits are of immense advantage to the Society, and are only responsible to the Order represented by other Jesuits, who overrun the world under the true habit of St Ignatius, and who possess the confidence, the secrets, and the orders of their chiefs in Europe. Those Jesuits, disguised and dispersed all over the earth, know each other by signals, like the freemasons, and act all upon the same plan. They send merchandise to other disguised Jesuits, who, having the goods from first hand, realise considerable profits for the order. However, this traffic is highly prejudicial to the interest of France. I have often written about it to the Company (of India), but under Louis XIV. I have received orders very precise, and often repeated, to grant and advance to those fathers all that they may ask. And Father Tashard alone owes at this moment more than 450,000 francs to the Company (of India).”[329] We have reported this document, because it was considered at the time, even in Rome, and by the Papal Court, as of great importance, and as representing the real state of things.
In the West Indies, Jesuits were to be found in all the markets with different kinds of produce; and this they do not even attempt to deny, but excuse themselves by saying that “the ecclesiastical law has never forbidden the sale of the produce of one’s own domains. The Jesuits were the guardians of the Christians, whom they had re-united in society in Paraguay; and in consideration of the inability of these savages to manage their own affairs, many Spanish kings granted to the missionaries the right of selling the produce of the ground cultivated by the neophytes, as well as that of their own industry.”[330] The Jesuits had so well used this liberty of trading, that the largest banking houses in South America belonged to the Company, and one of them[331] alone became bankrupt for more than two millions and a half of francs, an enormous sum at the epoch.
Nor had they been less busy and active speculators in Europe. In Malta, in the year 1639, during a famine, the Jesuits, who had five thousand sacks of corn in their granaries, in order that they might not be obliged to give it up to the government at a lower price than they expected for it, applied to the Grand Master Lascaris for succour to their actual necessities, and were relieved, on account of their supposed poverty, from the public storehouse. But the trick was at last discovered, and they were expelled from the island. But we could not adduce stronger proofs of their eagerness to accumulate wealth than the letters of Vitelleschi, Caraffa, and Nickel, some passages of which we have reported, in which they bitterly complain of that spirit of avarice and speculation which had pervaded all the classes of Jesuits, and which they vainly deprecated.
To return to our narrative; Saldanha, either to satisfy the impatience of Pombal, or because the proofs of the Jesuits’ guilt were too numerous and too clear, soon published a decree severely reprobating the commercial pursuits of the order, and empowering the royal authorities to confiscate all merchandise belonging to those ecclesiastics.[332]
But, in the meanwhile, the man who had ordered the visitation, and to whom belonged the ultimate decision, Lambertini (Benedict XIV.), had departed from this world. Had God granted him a longer life, he would probably have taken energetic and decisive measures against the order; and any other pontiff than the one who succeeded him, would in all likelihood, in one way or another, have given satisfaction to the public opinion. But, unfortunately perhaps for the Jesuits, Benedict XIV. was succeeded by a man wholly blinded in their favour, who declared that, to the last, he would be the protector and the friend of “the holy Company of Jesus.” This man was Raggonico, who assumed the name of Clement XIII. He was pure in soul, and upright in purpose. He was constantly engaged in fervent prayer, and his highest ambition was to obtain a canonisation. But he was a bigoted fanatic—was convinced that the power of the Papacy should be unlimited; and in the Jesuits he beheld the most faithful defenders of the Papal See and of religion. But, besides the disposition of the Pope in their favour, the Jesuits had, in the Court of Rome, a still more efficient supporter in the person of Cardinal Torrigiani, in whose hand actually resided all the power. “He had the reputation,” says Ranke, “of taking a personal interest in the farming of the papal revenues, and was said to be generally fond of power for its own sake.”[333] It is, then, easy to be conceived that the Jesuits, in order to preserve the bulk of their wealth, did not hesitate to sacrifice a part to satiate the avidity of the cardinal; and that to this is to be attributed the partiality, we should say the servility, evinced by Torrigiani towards the order. But this partiality of the Pope and his minister proved fatal to the Company. Had they consented to effect some substantial reforms, the Society might yet have existed for some time longer, or at least have only perished in the general shipwreck produced by the French Revolution, and they would not have had pronounced upon them the terrible and crushing sentence of Clement XIV.
Pombal perceived at once that no hope could be entertained that such a Pope would co-operate in the suppression, or even in the reform and abasement of the Jesuits, but did not, for that reason, renounce his projects; he only waited for a more fitting moment to effect his purpose by his own authority.
Circumstances served Pombal’s designs better than he could have expected. Joseph I. had an intimacy with Dona Theresa, the young wife of the Marquis of Tavora, one of the noblest families in Portugal, and one which, having scorned Pombal’s alliance, was particularly hated by him. Now it happened, on the night of the 3d of September 1758, that the king, returning to the palace from a visit to Dona Theresa, was wounded in the arm by a pistol-shot fired upon him. Next morning the court presented an unusual aspect. The gates of the palace were shut; the king did not make his appearance, and nobody knew exactly what was the cause of these strange measures. It was indeed whispered that an attempt had been made upon the king’s person; but nobody dared to speak it aloud, or knew to what extent it was true. The courtiers were all taciturn and in consternation. Pombal alone appeared calm and serene. This state of things lasted for some days. At last this anxiety was by degrees dispelled, and, a few weeks after, nobody thought any more about the attempt, and many doubted whether it had ever occurred. But on the 12th of September, the Duke of Averio, of the family of Mascarenhas, who, with Tavora, was at the head of the Portuguese aristocracy, the Marquis of Tavora, Dona Eleanor, his mother, and many of their relations and servants, were suddenly arrested and thrown into prison. Our limits will not admit of our examining whether or not the prisoners were culpable, or in what degree. It seems most probable that the young Marquis of Tavora may have attempted to avenge his injured honour; and indeed there is every reason to believe that some of the prisoners arrested were really accomplices of the crime; but, as the trial was not public, as it was conducted by an exceptional tribunal la inconfidenza, and as Pombal has never substantiated, by valid proofs, the accusation brought against them, it would be harsh to form any decided judgment. What is incontestable is, that all forms of justice were violated in the trial, and that the cruel and inhuman way in which the unfortunate prisoners were tortured and executed, would induce us to believe that this sacrifice of human life was offered rather to revenge than to justice. In the night of 12th of January 1759, a scaffold, eighteen feet high, was erected on the square of Belem, fronting the Tagus. At daybreak, this open space was filled with soldiers and the populace, and even the river was covered with spectators. The servants of the Duke of Averio appeared first upon the platform, and were fastened to one of the corners to be burned alive. The Marchioness of Tavora then ascended the scaffold with a rope around her neck, and a crucifix in her hand. She was scantily clad in some tattered clothes, but her whole figure and demeanour were stamped with firmness and dignity. The executioner, in attempting to bind her feet, accidentally raised the hem of her robe. “Stop!” cried she, “forget not who I am; touch me only to kill me.” The executioner fell on his knees before Dona Eleanor, and begged her to pardon him, whereupon she drew a ring from her finger, and said, “Here; I have nothing but this in the world; take it, and do your duty.” This courageous woman then laid her head upon the block, and received her death-blow. Her husband, her sons, the youngest of whom was not twenty years of age, her son-in-law, and several servants, perished after her in frightful torments. The Duke of Averio was led forward the last; he was fastened to the wheel, his body covered with rags, and his arms and thighs naked. Thus was he broken alive, not expiring till after he had endured protracted tortures, making the square and the neighbourhood re-echo with frightful cries. At length the machine was set on fire, and presently wheel, scaffold, bodies, all, were burned and cast into the Tagus.[334] Even if the sentence had been just, the merciless cruelty which Pombal shewed in accomplishing its execution has greatly tarnished his fame, and diminished the admiration due to his other eminent services rendered to Portugal.
Meanwhile, on the night which preceded the execution of the prisoners, the house of the Jesuits was invested, their chiefs were cast into prison, and three of them, Mattos, Alexander, and Malagrida, accused of having fomented the conspiracy. With what degree of truth this accusation was brought against them, it is also difficult to say. According to the sentence passed upon them, the suspicions of their having participated therein were confirmed by their arrogance previous to the attempt, and their desponding after its failure; by their intimate connexion with the chief of the accused (D’Averio), with whom they had formerly been at variance; by a conversation reported of Father Conta, who, it seems, had declared that a man who should murder the king would not be guilty of even a venial sin. Their intercourse with the conspirators was indeed unquestionable. They had been their friends and advisers, and had taken a decided part in the discontent, murmurs, and open opposition of the Fidalgoes.[335] But no other material proof was brought to confirm the charge, and although the three accused were condemned to suffer the highest punishment, the sentence was not executed. Malagrida, who some time after was burned, suffered for the crime of heresy, not for that of regicide. Whatever opinion our readers may form of the Jesuits’ guilt or innocence, Pombal, in his manifestoes, represented them as guilty, and called for the animadversion of Europe upon them, while he himself was taking more decisive measures to destroy the order.
As in Portugal, up to that moment, to the nuncio alone belonged the right of pronouncing judgment upon ecclesiastics, Pombal, although he had already resolved to transfer that right to a commission named by the sovereign, thought proper to solicit the Pope for a nominal authorisation; and as Clement’s answer did not come quick enough for the minister’s impatience, he, on 1st of September 1759, issued a decree for the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the states of his most faithful majesty. All the bishops of Portugal received a command to take the office of instruction out of the hands of the Jesuits, and supersede them instantly in the universities of Coimbra and elsewhere; and immediately after, all the Jesuits residing in Portugal were put on board royal and merchant vessels, and shipped over into Italy;[336] similar orders were given to the governors of all the Portuguese colonies, and immediately executed.
This was the first blow dealt to the Society of Jesus; and, as if it had been a signal, it was followed by a succession, till Ganganelli dealt it the last and mortal one. It seemed as if before no one had dared to attack such a powerful colossus: but when once the people saw with what facility it could be attacked, and even conquered, every one wished to break a spear upon it. France, as was to be expected, struck the second blow. When the minds of men were once bent upon it, any pretext would have been sufficient to expel the Jesuits; and it requires no great insight to perceive that the apparent causes which led to this step were only secondary. It is true that Madame de Pompadour, the king’s mistress, had resolved upon their destruction; but, although it is well known that she harassed the king to obtain it, it is by no means certain that Louis yielded to her influence alone, and we doubt much that she would have been able to effect it at all, had she lived a hundred years before. It seems that the Jesuit confessors of the marchioness and the king refused, we do not know for what reasons, to absolve them, unless the lady should quit the court. She herself has transmitted to us a long recital of her negotiations with the confessor;[337] and when she could not bring him to her wishes, she vowed a mortal hatred against the Society, which, however, remained for some years without result.
But in 1761 a more decisive occasion was offered to the enemies of the order to ask for their expulsion. Father Lavallette, the Superior General of Martinique—a bold and unscrupulous speculator, a priest who, by their own confession, began to operate not only on the produce of the goods belonging to the house, but who purchased large properties, and bought two thousand slaves to work them—was the means of creating this occasion.[338] He entered into vast and complicated speculations with different maritime towns of Europe; and as some of these speculations failed, he stopped payment—a measure which caused the ruin of several houses, among which were one of Lyons and another of Marseilles.
The house of Marseilles, Leoncy, held the Society responsible for the debt of its member, and applied to the General for payment. Ricci, the then chief of the order,[339] committed the irreparable error of refusing to recognise the debt. The Widow Grou & Son, of Nantez, then commenced a process before the consular tribunal of Paris. Leoncy followed the example. The Jesuits having been condemned, were blind enough to bring the cause before the parliament. This supreme court of judicature, the better to estimate the merit of the cause, ordered that the Constitutions of the Society should be brought before the tribunal. The Jesuits consented, and this decided their ruin. After prolonged examination, the parliament gave its judgment, by which the Society was condemned to pay all the engagements incurred by Lavallette, for which, according to the tenor of their Constitution, the whole order was answerable.[340]
Many authors, speaking of this affair, have expressed their astonishment that the Jesuits, who were accounted so cunning, could have committed such blunders. We have nothing to answer to this, except that they may be compared to those generals who, having lost their presence of mind in a difficult and critical moment, have suffered defeat by committing errors that a simple non-commissioned officer would never have been guilty of; or they may be compared perhaps to those consummate criminals who, having long eluded the vigilance of the police with extraordinary dexterity, at last commit such blunders, that one could almost swear they conspired for their own capture. Or it would be more correct to say that God had numbered their days, and their hour was come. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat.
From the moment when the Constitutions of this mysterious and dread Society were brought to light, Constitutions which had been kept jealously secret, all minor questions disappeared. Father Lavallette, the bankrupt, the bankers (who were never paid), all were forgotten in the great question affecting the Society itself. “Dogmatic disputes, which had so long been forgotten, now resumed all the force of present interest, and all the attraction of novelty. There was a universal eagerness to discover and apply those mysterious Constitutions. Women, and even children, were animated with the ardour of old practised lawyers. Pascal became the idol of the day, and La Chalatois its hero.”[341] Innumerable writings were daily printed and read with the greatest avidity by all classes of persons; and for a while nothing else was spoken of but the Society of Jesuits.
In these circumstances, fifty-one French bishops, under the presidency of the Cardinal of Luynes, assembled, and, after a prolonged examination of the Constitutions, declared that the unlimited obedience that the General residing in Rome was empowered to exact from every member, was incompatible with the laws of the kingdom, and with the general duties of the subject to his sovereign. Now the opponents of the Jesuits, and Madame do Pompadour at their head, pressed upon the king to take a decisive measure. Louis XV. was an indolent profligate, whose chief characteristic was the love and veneration of himself. Provided royalty did not perish in his own person, he cared little what should become of it after his death. He had no liking for any person but those who could amuse him—a thing in his old age by no means easy. He cared nothing for the Jesuits, but he feared them. He was persuaded that they had been accomplices in the assassination of Henry III. and Henry IV.; he had always before his eyes the poniard of Damiens, and attributed to the fathers both the will and the power to murder him. For this all-important reason, he resisted long all solicitations to expel them from France, but he consented to address a request to the Pope to grant a reform, but to grant it immediately, and without hesitation or subterfuge. Choiseul himself prepared a plan of reform, which, it may be said, centred in this principal point, namely, to propose to the General the appointment of a vicar-general for France, who was to fix his residence in that country, and pledge himself to render obedience to its laws—a measure which was in conformity with the statutes, since these authorised the General, in case of a great emergency, to name a vicar-general.[342] The fact of this most reasonable demand having been made, would of itself be a sufficient answer to the Jesuits and their partisans, who pretend that the destruction of the order was not the consequence of any of these misdemeanours, but that it had been planned long before between the Encyclopædists Choiseul and Pombal. Yet we shall adduce some further proofs to shew how unfounded their assertions are.
Pombal, although he was executing some of the reforms called for by the Encyclopædists, was no way connected with them, and he is perhaps the only man of mark of this epoch whom Voltaire has not favoured with a word of his inexhaustible correspondence. On the contrary, the Patriarch of Ferney often blames the marquis for his affected deference to the Pope and respect for religion, as well as for his cruelty, so displeasing to the naturally humane heart of Voltaire. Choiseul was indeed for a time the friend of Pombal, and acted in concert with him in affairs of general policy. But Pombal was too haughty, he had too exaggerated an opinion of his own capacity, to act under or by the direction of any man whatever. Besides, the well-known character of Choiseul renders it altogether incredible that he could have been long and deeply engaged in a plot to expel the Jesuits from Europe. The duke was the type of the French gentilhommes of the eighteenth century. He possessed the incredulity, the grace, the vanity, the courage, and that levity which would have sacrificed the dearest interests to the pleasure of an epigram, and which was so characteristic of the French noblesse in the former part of Louis XV.’s reign. He was too frivolous to be capable of nourishing in his heart for years a deep scheme of malice; nor did he honour or value the Jesuits enough to make them the object of a mortal enmity. On the contrary, with the Count of Kaunitz, the Austrian minister, he ridiculed the sort of passion with which the Marquis of Pombal persecuted the sons of Loyola. “Ce, Monsieur,” they would say, “a donc toujours un Jesuite a cheval sur le nez.”[343]
However, it is evident that Choiseul could not be the man to protect the Jesuits: it is evident that, to please Madame de Pompadour, and to court public opinion, he must have shewn himself unfavourable to the fathers, and must have pursued them with his sarcasms. It is also certain that afterwards he became their enemy, not out of hatred, but rather to comply with Charles III.’s wishes, and in order to get rid of them, and that he used all his influence to have them expelled from France, and ultimately abolished. The duke renders our assertions incontestable, when, in a memorial addressed to the king, after having reminded him that he had not been the man who had commenced the great measure of the expulsion of the Jesuits, he adds, “Your Majesty knows well that, although it has been said that I have laboured at the expulsion of the Jesuits, ... I have in no way, either at a distance or on the spot, either in public or in private, taken any step with this intent.” And he finishes by saying, that only at a later period, after he had known them, he had become their enemy. When, then, the duke made application to Rome to obtain the nomination of a vicar-general who should reside in France, with authority independent of the General, he was personally indifferent in the question.
It is well known what answer the General, Ricci, made to this application—“Sint ut sunt aut non sint,” Let them be as they are, or be no longer.
The parliament first abolished and suppressed all the congregations, those powerful engines of the order; then, on the 6th of August 1762, it declared that the Institute of the Jesuits was opposed to all authority, spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and civil, and was calculated to render them entirely independent of such authority by all sort of means, and even to favour their usurpation of the government; it therefore declared that the order should be irrevocably and for ever expelled from the kingdom.[344] In consequence of this decree, the eighty-four colleges of the Jesuits were shut up. The fathers were expelled from all their houses, their properties were confiscated;[345] each individual, however, being allowed a small income from the public treasury, and being permitted for the moment to reside in France, separately, and as secular clergymen. This permission was withdrawn two years after, and in 1764, the repugnance of Louis XV. having been overcome, the Jesuits were ordered to quit the French territories.
But a more serious and unexpected calamity befel the Company only three years after. Till the present moment, the Jesuits and their partisans had boasted of their defeats and persecution, and had haughtily proclaimed in the face of the world that they were only persecuted by the philosophic spirit which had pervaded Europe, and which, its principal aim being the destruction of the Catholic religion, had begun by attacking its firmest bulwark—the Society of Jesus. Pombal and Choiseul were but the emissaries of Voltaire; Joseph and Louis, indolent and voluptuous monarchs, entirely under the guidance and yoke of the two ministers. But what had they to say, now that they were going to be expelled from the dominions of a king not only adverse to the philosophers, not only a bigoted Roman Catholic, but, till the present moment, the friend and the protector of the Order? What had they to say against this exemplary Christian, Charles III. of Spain, loyal, frank, virtuous, chaste, and irreproachable, as he was? Narrow-minded, indeed, he may have been, but no less clear-sighted, active, and considerate; self-willed rather than disposed to succumb to the influence of any person; and if he can be reproached with anything, it were with the fault of having been rather partial to that nursery of monks and nuns which infested Spain, and for one or other of whom he was continually petitioning Rome for a canonisation. Yet this man, more than any other, contributed to the abolition of the order.
The motives which induced Charles to take such a decided part in the destruction of the Society are not very well ascertained, and the two parties attribute it to different causes. We will try to throw some new light on this obscure affair. As every one, in the absence of proofs, has been obliged to have recourse to conjectures, we beg leave to give our own also. We begin by relating the facts.
The long and ample cloaks, and the low, large-brimmed hats, worn at this epoch in Spain, served to facilitate the perpetration of many crimes, and to conceal the criminals. Squillace, the king’s prime minister, by Charles’s order, issued a proclamation prohibiting the use of them; but the populace of Madrid broke out in insurrection, besieged the minister in his house, pulled it down, repulsed the Walloon guards which had marched against them, and obliged the king, whose exhortation they despised, to retire for the moment from Madrid. The revolt lasted for several days, when the Jesuits, mingling amongst the rioters, appeased them in a moment with the greatest facility. This revolt, which happened in 1766, is known in history as the Emeute des Chapeaux.
This outbreak, which had no result, was entirely forgotten, when, on the 2d of April 1767, appeared a royal proclamation abolishing the Society of the Jesuits in the peninsula, and expelling them from the Spanish monarchy. Let the reader imagine the astonishment which the proclamation produced throughout Europe, and the consternation and despair into which it threw the Jesuits. What had happened that could furnish a motive for such a harsh and most severe measure? No sign of change had been the precursor of the storm; no warning had been given to the Jesuits; no signs of enmity had been shewn to them. The proclamation not only was silent as to the motives which had elicited it, but forbade every man to appreciate and discuss either the measure or its causes; and this redoubled the astonishment and the curiosity. Let us try to penetrate this mystery. First of all we shall give the reasons which, according to the Marquis d’Ossun, French ambassador at the court of Madrid, were adduced to him by Charles himself, as having induced him to the suppression of the order.
“Charles pledged his honour to the Marquis d’Ossun that he had never entertained any personal animosity against the Jesuits; that, before the last conspiracy, he had even repeatedly refused to sanction any measures inimical to them. Notwithstanding that he had been warned by confidential advisers, on whose word he could rely, that, ever since 1759, the Jesuits had incessantly traduced his government, his character, and even his faith; his reply to these ministers had uniformly been that he believed them to be either prejudiced or ill-informed. But the insurrection of 1766 had opened the king’s eyes; Charles was convinced that several members of the Society had been arrested in the act of distributing money among the populace. After they had prepared the way by poisoning the minds of the citizens with insinuations against the government, the Jesuits only awaited the signal to spring the mine. The first opportunity was sufficient, and they were content with the most frivolous pretexts;—in one instance, the form of a hat or cloak; in another, the misconduct of an intendant, or the knavery of a corregidor. The attempt (the émeute of 1766) failed, as the tumult had broken out on Palm Sunday. The time fixed upon had been Holy Thursday, during the ceremonies of visiting the churches, when the king was to be surprised and surrounded at the foot of the cross. Such is the substance of the motives stated by the King of Spain to the Marquis d’Ossun, accompanied by a reiterated protest of the truth of what he had said, and, in proof of this, he appealed to judges and magistrates of the most incorruptible integrity; he even reproached himself with having been too lenient to such a dangerous body, and then drawing a deep sigh, added, ‘I have learned to know them too well.’”[346]
These are the motives assigned for this conduct by the opponents of the Jesuits, and they rest, as may be seen, on very high authority. On the other hand, the Jesuits and their friends assert that the whole affair was an abominable and dishonourable plot of Choiseul. They pretend that the duke had managed to put into the hands of Charles an autograph letter supposed to be written by the General of the order to a provincial in Spain, in which it was asserted that Charles was an illegitimate son of Cardinal Alberoni, and that the throne belonged to Don Louis, the king’s younger brother, and that it was this letter that excited the resentment of Charles. Crétineau affirms that such was the case. “Charles, who remained a fervent Christian, would not have destroyed the institute, but that they affixed upon his royal escutcheon the stigma of illegitimacy.... This fact is certified by other contemporary testimonies, and by the documents of the Company.”[347] Ranke, without accusing either party, seems to incline to this supposition, and says, “Charles III. became persuaded that it was one of the purposes of the Jesuits to raise his brother Don Louis to the throne in his place.”[348] Now, rejecting the absurd accusation of the forgery of this letter, which many reasons render altogether impossible, and which is by no means consistent with the character of Choiseul, and adopting the version of Ranke or of Ossun, there still remains to be explained the enmity of the Jesuits against such a good Roman Catholic as Charles; and this enmity, no historian, as far as we know, has ever attempted to explain. Yet this is the point most necessary to be examined; because, unless we suppose that such a sagacious and clear-sighted man as Charles III., after a year of strict and severe investigation, came to the serious decision of condemning the Jesuits solely on the authority of a forged letter, without any other proof of their ill-will to him, it remains certain that the Jesuits were guilty, and adverse to his person and government. Whence, we repeat, this enmity? By considering a little the well-known character of the Jesuits, we may perhaps be able to answer the query.
Every one who directly, or indirectly even, opposes the wishes or the designs of the Society, is regarded as its mortal enemy, and every enemy must, by whatever means, be broken down. Charles, from the beginning of his reign, had constantly insisted upon the canonisation of Palafox, the abhorred opponent of the Society—first grief. Charles did not shew the Jesuits any particular affection, and had protected and befriended them only as he did all other monastic orders—second grief. Charles would not submit as his predecessors had done to the influence of the fathers, and his confessor was of the order of the Dominicans, the ancient and implacable enemy of the Company—third and most serious grief. Now, if once it is admitted that the Jesuits had reason to dislike Charles, all is easily explained. Then no act of enmity on their part ought to surprise us. They would not have hesitated a moment to spread the report that Charles was a bastard, to raise a conspiracy, to excite the people to revolt, and to endeavour to supplant the king by his younger brother. Thus it becomes clear how Charles, after obtaining the proofs of their machinations, became furious against them; and it may easily be conceived that, from pride and delicacy, he did not mention to the French ambassador, among the other causes of resentment against the Jesuits, that of their having slandered him as a bastard liable to be dethroned. This is the view we take of the matter, and we doubt if the conduct of Charles can be explained in any other plausible way.
Such, in our opinion, were the motives which induced the pious King of Spain to expel the Jesuits from all his estates. The way in which this was accomplished was also most remarkable, and deserves to be mentioned. Immediately after l’émeute des chapeaux, which seems to have awakened Charles’s suspicions, the proceedings against the Jesuits commenced, and were continued for a year with the greatest secrecy. D’Aranda, now the principal minister, conducted them. He neglected no precautions to insure the success of his plan. He took great care, above all, that the Court of Rome should have no suspicion of his projects. The king and his ministers admitted into their confidence only Don Manuel de Roda, an able jurist, and previously an agent of Spain in Rome. D’Aranda conferred with Moniño and Campomanes, two very influential magistrates, in a singular and romantic manner. They repaired separately and unknown to one another, to a kind of ruined house, worked alone, communicating afterwards only with the prime minister, who either transcribed himself their informations or intrusted them to his page, who was too young to be mistrusted. Those informations the minister carried himself to the king.[349] Notwithstanding these precautions, it seems the Jesuits were not altogether ignorant that some strange measures were contemplated against them. In fact, it would have been almost incredible that a judicial investigation, although surrounded with mystery and secrecy, in which many persons, no matter of what measure of discretion, were interrogated, could have been so conducted that not a word should have come to the ears of the fathers. They certainly were ignorant of the real state of things, and were perhaps far from suspecting the calamity impending over their heads. But what proves that they must have had some intimation of what was going on, is, that some short time before their expulsion they had requested of the king the confirmation of their privileges, and had removed their papers and their money.[350]
When all measures were ready, despatches were sent from Madrid to all the governors of all the Spanish possessions of Africa, Asia, America, and throughout all the peninsula. These despatches, signed by the king, and counter-signed by D’Aranda, were sealed with three seals. On the second envelop was written, “Under pain of death, you shall not open this despatch but on the 2d April 1767, towards the closing of the day.”[351] The orders to be executed in the different places, on the 2d of April, were all of the same tenor. The alcaldes were enjoined, on the severest penalties (Crétineau says on pain of death), immediately to enter the establishments of the Jesuits armed, to take possession of them, to expel the Jesuits from their convents, and to transport them within twenty-four hours as prisoners to such ports as were designated. The fathers were to embark instantly, leaving their papers under seal, and carrying away with them only a breviary, a purse, and some apparel.[352] The orders were executed everywhere with the utmost rigour, and six thousand Jesuits were very soon floating at the same time on the waste ocean on their way to the coast of Italy.
Charles had not notified his intentions either to the French Court, the indiscretion of whose minister he feared, or to the Court of Rome, which he knew would thwart the measure with all its might. Neither of these courts was informed of the fact till after it was accomplished. When the news reached Rome, the old and infirm Clement XIII. shed a flood of tears. His spirits were broken down by the misfortunes that had befallen his Jesuits. Already, after their expulsion from France, he had declared that the decree which banished them was null and void, adding, “We repel the grave injury offered to the Church and to the Holy See, and we declare in the plenitude of our certain knowledge, certâ scientiâ, that the institution of the Jesuits is in the highest degree pious and holy.”[353] In the present circumstances he again attempted to shelter the children of his predilection under the mantle of his infallibility, and addressed to the King of Spain a brief, in which we read as follows: “Of all the misfortunes that have afflicted us during the nine years of our unhappy pontificate, the most sensible to our paternal heart has been that inflicted by the hand of your Majesty. So you, too, my son, tu quoque fili mi, so the Catholic King Charles III., who is so dear to our heart, fills up the chalice of our suffering, condemns our old age to a torrent of tears, and precipitates us into the grave. The pious Spanish king ... thinks of destroying an institution so useful, so meritorious for the Church, and which owes its origin and its splendour to those saints and heroes whom God chose in the Spanish nation for His greater glory” (this rather savours of Jesuit composition).... “We call God and men to witness, that the Society is not only innocent of all crime, but that it is pious, useful, holy, in its pursuits, in its laws, in its maxims.”[354] Charles answered that he alone knew the crimes of the Society, and that he would keep them concealed in his own breast, to spare Christendom a great scandal.[355] Clement returned to his tears, and this was all that was left him to do in favour of his children.