JESUITS. 



239 



was an enemy of the Jesuits, as was also his friend 

 Ciiinpomanes, fiscal of Castile. They procured the 

 exile of the Jesuits in a way that did them little 

 honour. One evening, the rector of the Jesuit col- 

 lege at Madrid was apprized that a stranger wished 

 to see him immediately. The stranger coming, as he 

 said, from the Jesuit rector of Seville, gave to the 

 rector of Madrid a parcel of papers, with the request 

 that he would read them attentively, and make his 

 remarks on them. The rector ordered the papers to 

 be carried to his room, and, as the ho.ir of meeting 

 in the refectory had begun, went thither in order not 

 to interrupt the prescribed order. Hardly had he 

 arrived there, when the house bell was rung vio- 

 lently. Royal commissioners enter, r.nd seal up all 

 papers, including the packet just left, and carry 

 them to Aranda. Not long after, in the night of 

 April 1, 1767, all the Jesuit colleges in the kingdom 

 were surrounded by soldiers at the same hour, and 

 the Jesuits carried to the states of the pope. April 

 2, 1767, the king declared that he had resolved to 

 keep the true cause of the banishment of the Jesuits 

 secret. Pope Pius VII. some years before his eleva- 

 tion, first found the traces of this infamous intrigue. 

 When a cardinal, he had been appointed by Clement 

 XIV. a member of the committee who were to in- 

 vestigate the affairs of the Jesuits. The Spanish 

 government, to justify itself somewhat with the pope, 

 had sent the alleged proofs against the Jesuits to 

 Rome. Among these were letters purporting to 

 have passed between distinguished Jesuits, contain- 

 ing remarks of the most infamous character ; among 

 other things, it was said in them, that the king was 

 an illegitimate son of cardinal Alberoni, and hence 

 not entitled to the throne, &c. Of course, these let- 

 ters must have excited the king, and prompted hins 

 to banish the order. But it was also found, by a 

 comparison of the hand-writings, that these letters 

 were forged. It was now evident who had brought 

 the parcel only a few moments before the seizure of 

 the papers in the Jesuit college in Madrid. The 

 exile ol the Jesuits, and several other circumstances, 

 had caused a dispute between the pope Clement 

 XIII. and Portugal and Spain. The pope (Rezzonico) 

 died, without an adjustment of the dispute having 

 taken place. The election of his successor was now 

 a matter of the highest importance. The question 

 was, whether the Jesuit party should prevail or not. 

 Cardinal Ganganelli had already, under Clement 

 XIII., expressed his opinion, that it was more advis- 

 able to sacrifice the Jesuits, though innocent, than 

 to live in constant dispute with the kings. The 

 Bourbon party therefore supported him at the elec- 

 tion. At the same time, in the conclave, he gained 

 the friends of the Jesuits by maintaining that the new 

 pope ought not to think any more of the abolition of 

 the order than of pulling down St Peter's ; and he 

 was elected. The new pope, in fact, after his ac- 

 c-ession, said, in his missives to the courts of Ver- 

 sailles, Madrid, and Naples, that he neither could 

 blame nor abolish an order which nineteen of his 

 predecessors had solemnly confirmed ; it could be the 

 less expected of him, as the same had be'en con- 

 firmed by an oecumenical council at Trent, whose de- 

 crees, according to the principles of the Galilean 

 church, were binding on the pope ; but he would, if 

 asked, call another council, in which the Jesuits 

 should be heard, all questions investigated anew, and 

 decided upon ; that he was obliged to protect the 

 Jesuits equally with the other orders; that, more- 

 over, all the princes of Germany and the king of Sar- 

 dinia had written to him in favour of the Jesuits, 

 and he therefore could not yield to the wish of some 

 cabinets, which desired the abolition of the order, 

 without drawing upon himself the displeasure of so 



many other monarchs. But the papal letter was of 

 little avail. The courts threatened the pope with the 

 publication of his letters, written before he had 

 acquired the pontificate, in which he promised to the 

 courts the abolition of the Jesuits, if they would lend 

 him their support in the election. The abolition was 

 difficult, as Clement XIII., with the assent of the 

 whole college of cardinals, had, a short time before, 

 solemnly confirmed the order by the bull Apostolicum, 

 and the immediate contravention of the bull would 

 have been an unparalleled scandal, to which the car- 

 dinals never would have given their consent. There 

 was no way left, therefore, but to choose the form of 

 a brief a decree which the popes issue without con- 

 sulting with the college of the cardinals. In 1773, 

 the brief was issued. The reasons for the abolition 

 were not given in the brief; it was only said that 

 the popes had abolished several other orders, and 

 that the council of Trent had not exactly pronounced 

 a confirmation of the order. Four weeks after this 

 violation of justice, Ganganelli appointed a committee 

 to investigate the accusations against the Jesuits! 

 The Protestant historian John Muller says of this 

 abolition "It was soon apparent to wise men, that 

 a common bulwark of all authorities had fallen." 

 Prussia did not acknowledge the abolition, but re- 

 tained the Jesuits, as useful instructors, in Silesia, 

 until at last they themselves, from obedience to the 

 pope, urged the king to complete their abolition. In 

 Russia, also, the order remained, because Catharine 

 was convinced of its utility; and the government 

 obtained the necessary permission from the popes 

 Pius VI. and VII. Clement XIV. died in 1774. 

 His sickness and death were accompanied by strange 

 symptoms, and calumny immediately accused the 

 Jesuits of having procured his death. The persons 

 in attendance on the pope, and the physicians, gave, 

 however, no satisfactory statements ; and Le Bret, 

 in his Magazine of Political and Ecclesiastical His- 

 tory, so clearly showed the innocence of the Jesuits, 

 that this calumny never could gain footing. fSee 

 Clement XI P~.) The abolition of the Jesuits had 

 serious consequences. In most Catholic countries, 

 it produced a chasm in the means of public instruc- 

 tion, which it was not easy to fill. The educa- 

 tion of youth lost, in many cases, the salutary religious 

 direction which distinguished so much the instruction 

 of the Jesuits. Neither the archives nor the coffers 

 of the Jesuits satisfied expectation. Some persons 

 believed the money to have been carried oft' ; but no- 

 thing has been heard of it for fifty years. The order 

 was reinstituted in White Russia in 1801, and in 

 Sicily in 1804, and was put entirely on its old foot- 

 ing in 1814, by the pope. Whether it ought to be 

 restored every where, is a question which, we think, 

 is different from what it was formerly. In the south- 

 ern countries of Europe, it appears capable of be- 

 coming very useful. Of its re-establishment in Ger- 

 many, there is little hope. There is such a mass of 

 knowledge distributed in the German nation, its 

 public instruction is so thorough, and the establish- 

 ments for education so well founded, that the Jesuit 

 schools appear, at least, not to be needed. In this 

 nation, too, materialism does not remain to be con- 

 quered, but the sound sense of the people soon led it 

 back to religion. Besides, the society's plan of 

 education would little agree with that of the Ger- 

 mans, because that of the Jesuits is by its nature a 

 general, and therefore a stable one, and cannot adapt 

 itself to modern systems of education.* 



* The length of the article! on the Jesuits may be ex. 

 ciiaed from the interesting nature of the subject. Any 

 view, however, of the subject, which could bo given in a 

 work of the character of the prevent must be too concise to 

 enabU the reader to form satisfactory conclusions ; to do 



