' 



LOYOLA, IGNATIUS. 



LOYOLA, IGNATIUS. 



960 



The general* of the society chow men acquainted with matheuiatica 

 and mechanical science*, which they knew were in request at Pekin 

 and thin they obtained a footing and an influence at the emperor's 

 court which no other Knropoana have ever acquired. Although perse- 

 cutions bunt out ncainst the Chriatians of China, yet the Jesuits never 

 entirely lout their hold there, and their home at Pekin has continued 

 to exist till our own times. [ A JIIOT, JosBl'U.] 



From India Jesuit missionaries found their way into Abyssinia, 

 where Portuguese travellers had penetrated many years before [ALVA- 

 REZ), but the Jesuit* went farther into the country, especially in its 

 southern parts, than any other Europeans, either before or after them. 

 Pars and Lobo visited the sources of the Bahr-el-Azrek, or Abyssinian 

 Nile, and Father Fernandez proceeded as far as Narea, about 3 N. lat 

 [TELI.EX.] 



In Paraguay the Jesuits had an open field for the display of their 

 abilities and principles. Their missionaries went to South America 

 after the country had been devastated by the Spanish conquerors, who 

 hunted the Indians like wild beasts. The Jesuits judged that the poor 

 natives might be converted by milder means, and be made Christians 

 and happy at the same time. They obtained from the court of Spain 

 a declaration that all their Indian proselytes should be considered 

 free men, and that the Jesuits should have the government of the 

 communities of converts which they should form in the interior of the 

 country. And the Jesuits did form a flourishing community of Indian 

 converts on the banks of the Paraguay and the Parana, who are said 

 to have amounted to between one and two hundred thousand, and 

 they governed them for a century and a half, keeping them in the 

 condition of docile but contented pupils, directing their labours, and 

 instructing them in the useful arts, but not in the refinements or 

 luxuries of Europe. There were no taxes or lawsuits io Paraguay ; 

 each able-bodied man had a moderate task to perform, and the produce 

 of their common labour provided for the wants of all. Writers of 

 very different opinions, Raynol, Montesquieu, Robertson, Muratori, 

 Souther, and others, have done justice to the paternal administration 

 of the Jesuits in Paraguay. In 1750, Spain, by a treaty with Portugal, 

 gave up seven district- of Paraguay to the latter power, in exchange 

 for a territory which the Portuguese had occupied on the left bonk of 

 the river La Plata, and the Spanish government ordered the Jesuits 

 and their Indian pupils to abandon their homes and remove to some 

 other part of the Spanish territories. The fathers in vain remonstrated 

 against the injustice and cruelty of expelling men from the fields which 

 they bad by their labour reclaimed from the wilderness ; the harsh 

 mandate was repeated, and the Jesuits were prepared to obey. But 

 the natives refused to submit, and resisted the Portuguese and Spanish 

 forces which were sent against them, and although a subsequent 

 change in the diplomatic relations of the two countries left the Indians 

 in possession of their country, yet the Jesuits were falsely accused of 

 having encouraged what was styled the rebellion. The Spanish govern- 

 ment, after mature investigation, acquitted them, but it was otherwise 

 with the Portuguese. An attempt by some noblemen to murder the 

 king, Joseph of Portugal, was charged upon the Jesuits, because 

 Father Malagrida, one of the society, was the confessor of some of the 

 guilty. As proof however could not be obtained against him, Father 

 Malagrida was accused of heresy, on account of some ascetic visionary 

 works which ho hod published, was condemned by the Inquisition, 

 and executed; and in September 1759 the minister Pombal, in the 

 king's name, gave an order for the expulsion of the society from the 

 Portuguese territories and for the confiscation of their property. 



Franco followed next in the same course of proscription. The 

 Jesuits had made themselves many enemies in that country by their 

 long and bitter persecution of the Jansenists, and their controversies 

 with that sect had brought much obloquy upon their institutions and 

 moral principles. Pascid, in his ' Lettres Provinciates,' had assailed 

 them with ridicule, which has always proved most powerful in France. 

 The parliament of Paris felt an old and hereditary hostility towards 

 them : the minister Choiscul disliked them on personal and political 

 grounds; he had felt and ascertained that their secret influence could 

 often thwart and balance the credit of any minister ; besides which, 

 Cboiseul was partial in a certain degree to some of the freethinking 

 philosophers of his time, who had no sympathy for the society. To 

 crown all, even the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, arrayed 

 herself against the Jesuits. A pretence soon occurred for effecting 

 their expulsion. Father Lavalette, who was at the head of the mis- 

 sions in the French West Indies, had been speculating in colonial 

 produce. His cargoes were seized by the English, then at war with 

 France. Father Lavalette became a bankrupt for 3,000,000 livres. 

 His creditors in France appealed to the parliament of Paris, which, 

 having seen in the constitutions of the society that no individual 

 belonging to it could possess property on his own account, considered 

 Father Lavalette' s debt as that of the whole body, and condemned 

 the society to pay the creditors. An immense outcry was raised 

 against the Jesuit*, and the parliament in 1762 declared that an inde- 

 pendent body like the society, having peculiar laws, and being all 

 subject to one individual residing at Koine, was an institution danger- 

 ous and unfit for any well-regulated state ; the other parliaments made 

 similar declarations; and at last, in 1764, by an order of the king, the 

 society was entirely suppressed in France, and their property was con- 

 uncated ; but a small pension was givtn to the members, who were 



allowed to remain dispersed in the country, on condition of swearing 

 to renounce the society and its institutions. 



The fall in Spain took place three years later. Cboiseul is said to 

 have contributed to it by persuading Charles III. that an insurrection 

 which broke out at Madrid in 1766 against the minister of the day was 

 the work of the Jesuits. D'Aranda, the president of the council of 

 Castile, already prepossessed against the society, was the confidant of 

 King Charles in effecting their expulsion. The society was frared, 

 perhaps more than there was need, and everything was planned against 

 them with the greatest secrecy. The king with his own hand wrote 

 letters to all the governors of provinces throughout the Spanish 

 monarchy in Europe and in the colonies, which were not to be opened 

 until a specified day and in a specified place. When the appointed 

 time came, the 31st of March 1767, the colleges and houses of the 

 Jesuits throughout Spain were surrounded at midnight by troops, 

 seutinels were posted at every door, the bells were secured, and 

 king's commissioners having roused and assembled the respective 

 communities in the refectory, read to them aloud the royal decree 

 which expelled them from Spain. The members, having taken their 

 breviaries, some linen, and a few other conveniences, were plae 

 carriages and escorted by cavalry to the coast, where they embarked 

 for Italy. After being refused admittance in several harbours, and 

 kept for some months on board crowded ships, during which many 

 of the aged and infirm died, the survivors were at last landed in 

 Corsica. 



Similar measures were executed in Spanish America, only with 

 circumstances of still greater harshness. In Paraguay the Indians 

 were amazed and distracted at the news, and would have opposed by 

 force the execution of the decree, but the fathers exerted all their 

 unbounded influence to appease the enraged Indians, and to induce 

 them to submit quietly to the royal decree. No more than 9000 

 dollars, about '20001. sterling, were found in their coffers. By a com- 

 promise between the pope and the king of Spain, the latter allowed a 

 pension of a shilling a day to the expelled fathers ; but on condition 

 that no apology of any sort should be written by any member of the 

 order, under pain of all losing their pensions. 



In the following year (176S)the King of the Two Sicilies and the 

 Duke of Parma suppressed the Jesuits' Society in their dominions. 

 It still continued in the Sardinian and the Papal states ; but in Feb- 

 ruary 1769 their supporter Clement XIII. died, and Gan^anelli was 

 elected iu his stead. France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, all insisted, in 

 very strong terms, on tho final suppression of the society by the new 

 pope. Ganganelli proceeded with caution ; he took three years to con- 

 sider tho matter. He appointed a congregation of five cardinals to 

 examine the charges brought against the society. At last, on the 21st 

 of July 1773, the pope issued a bull, in which, after descanting on 

 the laudable object of the founders of the society, and on the services 

 it had rendered to religion, he observed that on many occasions a 

 spirit of discord had broken, out between them and tho other eccle- 

 siastical authorities, that many serious charges had been brought 

 "orward against individual members, who seem to have deviated from 

 ;he original spirit of their institutions ; that, lastly, most Roman 

 Catholic princes had found it necessary for the peace of their domi- 

 nions to expel the Jesuits therefrom, and that now, for the peace of 

 ;he Christian world, and being moved by the moat weighty cousidera- 

 ,iona, and considering that the Society of Jesus could no longer bring 

 'orth those fruits of piety and edification for which it was intended, 

 le declared the said society to be suppressed and extinct, its statutes 

 annulled, and its members who had been ordained priests to be con- 

 sidered as secular priests, and the rest to bo entirely released from 

 ;heir vows. Ho allowed those professed members who were old and 

 infirm to remain in the houses of the extinct society, but merely as 

 guests, without interfering in their future management, which was 

 entrusted to commissioners. 



In consequence of this bull, the Jesuits wore likewise suppressed in 

 he Sardinian monarchy, in the Austrian dominions, and in every 

 Catholic state. Two powers only, Prussia and Russia, one Protestant 

 and the other Greek schismatic, allowed the fathers an asylum in their 

 dominions, and continued to entrust them with the education of their 

 Jutholic subjects. From Russia they were however expelled by an 

 ukase of the Emperor Alexander in June 1817. 



At the time of the first expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal, in 

 .759, the society reckoned altogether 22,589 members, half of whom 

 were priests. They had 24 professed houses, 669 college?, 176 semin- 

 aries, or boarding-houses, 61 noviciate houses, 335 residences, and 273 

 missions. Their principal professed house, in which the general 

 resided, was a vast building attached to the splendid church of the 

 3esu at Rome. They had besides the Roman college and church of 

 St. Ignatius in the same capital, several other colleges and seminaries 

 or boarders of various nations, a noviciate-house on the Quiriuul, a 

 seminary and college at Froscati, a house at Tivoli, and numerous other 

 colleges and schools in the Papal states. All these, after the suppres- 

 sion of the society, were entrusted to secular priests and professors, but 

 till the method and the discipline of the society were in most instances 

 continued, being found too useful to be abrogated. 



The general of the society, Father Uicci, was confined in the castle 



f St. Angela, being suspected of still assuming in secret his former 



authority over tho dispersed Jesuits, and also, but apparently without 



