The Years of Jesuit Suppression, 1773–1814: Survival, Setbacks, and Transformation (original) (raw)
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Jesuit Survival and Restoration
2015
2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the Society of Jesus, one of the most significant events in nineteenth-century cultural and religious history but also one of the least well-studied. This international conference aims to shed new light on neglected aspects of this vital subject. The 1773 suppression of the Jesuits, and the various national expulsions and banishments that preceded it, sought to destroy the Society as a corporate entity. This did not spell the end of the Jesuit enterprise, however. Persecuted by the Catholic monarchies of Portugal, Spain, and France, the Jesuits survived in various guises and locales across the globe. We focus on three of these and the links between them but we also look at the parallel contexts in other parts of Asia, South and North America, and central and western Europe. The eastern part of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, known as Belarus or White Russia, was occupied by Catherine the Great just before the papal suppression of the Order. She rejected the ratification of the papal brief of suppression in her territories. Local Jesuits not only continued to influence the region's religious history but also expanded their influence beyond the safe haven of the Russian Empire. One of the most striking examples was their enterprise in China. From their intellectual center in Połock-dubbed the Athens of Belarus-they attempted to re-approach China through their easternmost station in Irkutsk, Siberia and their community in St. Petersburg.
The Suppression of the Society of Jesus, 1759-1773
In 1773, Pope Clement XIV officially proclaimed the extinction of the Society of Jesus, thus culminating a concerted international action started in Portugal some 15 years earlier, which involved different European governments, a great deal of diplomacy, and a systematic anti-Jesuit campaign that had already led to the suppression of the Order in several countries. This paper discusses the causes, consequences, and the role played by Portugal in this attack on the economic, political and social power of the Society of Jesus, which stands out as one of the finest examples of a political process that was transnational in nature and global in its effects, since the Jesuits were active in various parts of the world.
Banishment, exile and opposition: jesuit crises before the 1760s
2015
This paper focuses on the different cases of expulsions and persecutions that the Society of Jesus faced before its suppression in 1773. The goal is to reconstruct in a global perspective a phenomenon starting from an ideological dimension (such as anti-Jesuitism) but subsequently spanning - depending on the context in which it manifests itself - the social, political and economic sphere, and not just the religious one. Este artigo identifica os varios casos de expulsao e de perseguicao que a Companhia de Jesus enfrentou antes da sua supressao em 1773. Pretende-se reconstruir em termos globais a amplitude de um fenomeno que tem uma base ideologica, que e o anti jesuitismo, mas que, de acordo com os diferentes contextos em que se manifesta, toca nao apenas a esfera religiosa, mas tambem a politica, a social e a economica.
The Suppression of the Society of Jesus, 1758-1773 Suppression of the Society of Jesus
Ego, 2010
Pope Clement XIV's (1705-1774) brief of July 1773 suppressing the Jesuit order was preceded by a series of repressive acts, starting with the expulsion of the fathers from Portugal and its colonies in 1759. The Jesuit affair set in train a major communication process throughout Europe and saw the transfer of opposing narratives of the events by means of the various contemporary media. It thereby contributed to the polarization and politicization of the European public sphere in the age of enlightenment. TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Rumours soon began to circulate, however, suggesting that the Jesuits had had some part in this affair. The consensus of opinion which had initially characterized the response of the press throughout Europe vanished immediately and the news item of the attempt on the life of the Portuguese king turned into a controversy about the Jesuits. The king and his minister Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits from Portugal in September 1759, accusing them of having provided a theological justification for, and having actually instigated, a plot against the king's life in order to cover up their rebellion in South America, where they had allegedly seized royal territory and founded an independent 'Jesuit Republic'. 4 This first stage of the media event lasted until 1761, when a controversy involving finances and a Jesuit missionary in the French Caribbean called Father Lavalette caused public attention to shift from Portugal to France. Inspired by the Portuguese example, the French high courts or parlements used the Lavalette affair to launch an attack on the French branch of the order, eventually denouncing Father Lavalette's doctrines as seditious. In 1761/1762, much to the king's displeasure, the magistrates declared the constitutions of the order incompatible with the laws and customs of the realm, closed down the Jesuit colleges and forced the fathers to renounce their religious vows or leave the kingdom. Louis XV, seeing no means of contravening the actions of the parlements, confirmed the interdiction in 1764. 5 The Society of Jesus had then lost two of its most important branches and the cumulative character of the repressive acts against the Jesuits was obvious to contemporary newspaper readers. The third and last stage of the media event began with the expulsion of the fathers from Spain and its colonies in 1766. 6 It was then generally believed that the fate of the Society of Jesus as a whole was at stake, a perception which was reinforced by the Jesuits' banishment from Naples in 1767 and from Parma in 1768, and was confirmed by Pope Clement XIV's (1705-1774) (Media Link #aj) issuing of the brief Dominus ac Redemptor in 1773.
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (2018), fasc. 174, p. 289-373, 2018
The present article focuses on the inventories of Jesuit houses in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, issued as a result of the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. The author draws attention to a type of primary source that has rarely been used by historians. Thanks to their accurate and detailed content, inventories can be useful for research in various disciplines. They also offer an unusual perspective on Jesuit history by providing valuable insights into daily life and material culture. The article consists of two parts: in the first part, the author considers the circumstances under which the inventories were issued and provides a sketch of their history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as reflecting on their reliability as a primary source. In the second part, the inventories are viewed from the perspective of their content, thus showing their possible use in a number of different research fields.