Were The Jesuits The Architects Of Their Own Downfall In the Eighteenth Century?

The Jesuits were a catholic religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534¹. They received an official Papal Bull in 1540². The Jesuits were different to most other religious orders of their time. They had four vows, the usual three of poverty, chastity and obedience, then a fourth vow of loyalty to the Pope. The Jesuits were also different to most religious orders in that they concentrated on pastoral activities and did not have regular fixed daily times for prayer. By the eighteenth century, they had become one of the most successful catholic religious orders, with over twenty two thousand members and eight hundred educational institutions³. Yet, by the end of the eighteenth century they had been expelled from most of Europe and officially dissolved by the Pope.

The Jesuits had managed to gain influential positions in the Papal Curia and most of the royal courts of catholic Europe. The Jesuits had educated nearly all the Popes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries⁴. Their position gave them a certain amount of power and influence in deciding political matters. The Jesuits also educated most of the nobility and middle classes of Europe⁵. This success meant that other groups became jealous and resentful of their power. Protestants regarded them as being underhand⁶. However, despite these problems the Jesuits still remained one of the largest religious orders until the middle of the eighteenth century.

The Jesuits were also highly successful missionaries. It was issues related to their missions in China and Paraguay that started the events that led to their dissolution. The early Jesuits had been criticized for their work in China. They were seen as having compromised too much with local belief. The papacy rebuked the Jesuits for allowing Chinese priests to celebrate the mass in Chinese⁷. This affair of the Chinese rites gave the Jesuits a lot of bad publicity.

The Jesuits also ran missions in Paraguay. They helped the converted Indians to set up reservations, to educate them and protect them from settlers and slave traders. The Jesuits were keen to protect the Indians and this led to claims that they were hiding and protecting great wealth⁸. In 1750, Spain and Portugal signed a treaty on South America, which meant that seven out of thirty reservations were transferred to Portuguese land⁹. The Portuguese told the Jesuits that they had to move the reservations to areas where the land was worse. The Jesuits refused claiming that such a move would be too difficult to carry out and would destroy the community that had become built up. The Portuguese army tried to force the move, and the Indians fought back¹⁰. These actions led to the Jesuits being blamed for the revolt. The Marquis of Pombal, the leader of the Portuguese government, demanded a papal inquiry into the Jesuits. They were accused of fermenting revolution, illicit trading to build up their own wealth and the pursuit of power. The Portgeuse cardinal Saldanha carried out the inquiry. Saldanha’s report found the Jesuits guilty of scandalous trading, despite Saldanha never having visited the Jesuit missions in Portugal. The Jesuits were then banned from Commerce and had their accounts confiscated. Their situation was not helped by the attempted assassination of the King in 1758. The Jesuits were accused of being involved in the plot and mobs began to lay siege to Jesuit houses¹¹. In 1759, Pombal confiscated all Jesuit property and a few months later ordered the expulsion of all Jesuits from Portugal. When the Pope tried to complain to the Portuguese government, Pombal broke of all diplomatic relations with Rome¹².

The Jesuits were also suffering from scandals relating to their overseas missions in France. The French Jesuits ran missions in the Caribbean Islands of Martinique and Dominica. In 1754, Lavalette was appointed head of all the Jesuits in the West Indies. Through trade, commerce and investment he had made these lands profitable. However, a series of disasters befall him in 1756, which led to him being declared bankrupt¹³. The leader of the Jesuits in Paris, Fr. Frey, decided that the West Indian mission must pay the debt. The creditors sued the mission and then sued the French Jesuits collectively. The courts decided for the creditor and ordered the French Jesuits to pay the debt. The Jesuits appealed but lost. The whole case resulted in a lot of adverse publicity for the Jesuits. The size of the debt was now so large that the Jesuits in France were facing ruin, if they had to pay it¹⁴. They appealed to the Jesuit General in Rome. However, he was already having problems coping with the refugees from Portugal. In April 1762, the Paris Parliament solved the issue by confiscating Jesuit property to pay the debt¹⁵. The Jesuits in France were willing to compromise for their survival by signing the Gallican articles, but were overruled by Ricci, their leader in Rome. Ricci did not believe in the affairs of the Jesuits being interfered with by the state. He refused any compromise stating, “Let them be as they are be, or not be”¹⁶. During the first half of 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from France. The King needed to have the parlements on his side, as he needed to raise taxes, to help pay the costs of the Seven Years War. Therefore, he had to agree with them on the Jesuit issue to ensure that he had their support¹⁷. If the Jesuit leader had not had such an uncompromising attitude and the King had not needed the support of his parlements, the Jesuits may have been able to survive in France. War was also a factor in the downfall of the French Jesuits. As many of Levette’s ships were sunk by war ships, the war contributed to his financial downfall¹⁸. In addition, the king would not have needed to raise taxes to fund a war and would have been in a better position to argue with the parlements. The political situation at the time may well have been a large contributing factor in the downfall of the Jesuits in France.

The financial scandals affecting both the French and Portuguese Jesuits had badly damaged the order. As the enlightenment in the eighteenth century developed, their education also came under attack. The Jesuit education was a very strict one, with little room for innovation or new teaching methods. It was also very classical and did not teach sciences, modern languages or history. By the eighteenth century, this was beginning to look a very old -fashioned approach, and people were loosinng confidence in the idea that the Jesuit schools were the best¹⁹. The Jesuits failed to respond to the changing times and adapt which made them vulnerable.

The Jesuits had become linked in the minds of many in Europe with conspiracy and attempting to assassinate kings. When rioting broke out in Spain in 1766, King Charles III was quick to lay the blame for civil unrest on the Jesuits. A report was produced that laid the blame on the Jesuits and they were expelled from Spain²⁰. By this time the Jesuits had become the scapegoats for many of the political and social problems in catholic Europe.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits also came under increased attack from their old enemies the Jansenists, who had their roots in a religious movement of the seventeenth century. The Jansenists held a view similar to that of predestination. This had been declared heretical by the papacy in 1653²¹. The Jansenists had begun to occupy positions of power and influence when they began to be persecuted. In an effort to sway public opinion and get attention away from the Jansenists, Blaise Pascal wrote Les Provinciales. These were a series of letters attacking the Jesuits and accusing them of undermining the gospels with lax morals. The Jesuits were already unpopular and the letters only reinforced people’s views of the Jesuits as condoning theft, fornication, adultery, murder and regicide²². This added to the perception of them watering down the Christian faith left from the Chinese rites affair. Pascal also attacked the Jesuit argument that sin was only sin if the person involved knew that they were committing a sin. Pascal's writings were followed by those of others, all on a n anti-Jesuit theme. The Jansenists now had many supporters outside the order and were beginning to resemble a political rather than a religious movement²³. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the two groups were at loggerheads. “For more than a century and a half there has been an open and uninterrupted war between the Jesuits on the one side, and on the other the messieurs of Port-Royal, the appellants, and all those called Jansenists²⁴.”

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits had been accused of Pelagianism, Nestorianism, Arianism, Socininaism, swindling unsuspecting citizens, amassing great wealth and assassinating princes²⁵. The Jansenists also claimed that the laxness within the Jesuits was not only due to immorality. They accused the Jesuits of the much greater sin of heresy. The Jesuits had abandoned the teachings of the Church Fathers in favour of a modern theology that was humanist more than it was Christian. The Jansenists called on people to abandon the Jesuits and return to the decent, conservative, values of the church fathers²⁶.

The Jesuits were also attacked for their use of Probalism. This involved looking at previous cases of moral dilemmas and seeing what expert theologians had said, and then following the consensus. However, some Jesuits abused this system by claiming that even if only one expert theologian gave a particular opinion, it was permissible to follow it²⁷. This was often used in support of the nobility in matters such as paying debts and dueling. Many Jesuits had started to live a far more lax lifestyle than their predecessors. These ‘laxist’ Jesuits demanded the right to luxuries such as tea coffee and chocolate. They smoked tobacco, and generally did not keep their houses like a monastic house. They also did not carry out the spiritual exercises as laid down by Ignatius Loyola, and did not give themselves bodily penances. They justified this by saying that they were following the writers of liberal theologians and that if a judgment on behavior was in print by at least one moral theologian it could be accepted and followed. This behavior brought many complaints from older and more disciplined members of the society²⁸.

The general political situation of eighteenth century Europe did not help the Jesuits. Many European leaders were looking for ways to increase their power over the church. The Jesuits fourth vow of loyalty to the Pope meant that they could be seen as enemies of the state.

Pope Clement XIII was a supporter of then Jesuits. He resisted the pressures from the catholic heads of state. In 1765, he issued a papal bull in support of the society. However, he died suddenly in 1769. When it came to choosing a new pope, it was obvious that any attempt to choose someone that supported the Jesuits would face heavy opposition. Lorenzo Ganganelli was know to believe that dissolution of the Jesuits was a possible idea. He was duly elected and become Pope Clement XIV²⁹. The death of his predecessor meant that the Jesuits had lost their most powerful ally.

The final blow for the Jesuits came in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV issued a papal brief dissolving the order. The use of a papal brief rather than a papal bull, suggest that the pope only took this action with reluctance. The papal brief accuses the Jesuits of causing discord and splits in the church.

“almost at the very moment of it’s institution, there arose in the bosom of

this Society divers seeds of discord and dissention, not only among the

companions themselves, but with other regular orders, the secular clergy,

the academies, the universities, the public schools and lastly, even with

the princes of the states in which the society was received.”³⁰

The pope seems to have been reluctant to dissolve the Jesuits, but to decide that for the sake of the unity and survival of the church they had to go. The pope was already under pressure from the heads of catholic Europe. The pope had already lost authority in an argument with the duke of Parma³¹. On that occasion, he had received no support from the other heads of Catholic Europe. If the Pope did not do something about the Jesuits, he faced losing more power, and possibly even control over parts of the church. In order to maintain control and unity of the church the pope had to sacrifice the Jesuits. However, the catholic powers of Europe could not give in to the Pope. If the catholic powers gave into the Pope now, they would risk the loss of large amounts of power in their own countries to Rome.

In some ways, the Jesuits were the victims of the power struggles between church and state. Their vow of loyalty to the pope made them a target for monarchies that were trying to win power for the state from the church. They were also the victims of a change in public opinion, which turned against religious orders of all descriptions. However, they suffered from unwillingness to react to changing times. They also suffered from having a few members that created scandals, which affected the rest. Their vow of loyalty to the pope also made them dangerous to the kings of the monarchial countries in Europe. The immorality and lax behavior that was allowed to take place within the Jesuit order made them open to attacks from groups such as the Jansenists. If the Jesuits had responded to the changing times by modernizing their education system and had been more disciplined with their own members they may have been able to avoid complete dissolution. However, any order that swore loyalty to the Pope was at risk in an eighteenth century Europe that was reforming the relationship between church and state.

However, even the suppression of the Jesuits failed to stop the weakening of the papacy. In the future the gap between church and state would continue to widen, with the church getting less and less say in secular affairs. Indeed, less than a hundred years after their suppression, the Jesuits were no longer considered a threat and were re-instated.

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Bireley, R. The Refashioning of Catholicism, 14050-1700 (London: Macmillan 1999)

Chadwick, O. The Popes and the European Revoloution (Oxford: Calrendon Press 1981)

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Duffy, E. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Italy: Yale University Press 1997)

Johnson, P. A History Of Christianity ( London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1976)

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Van Kley, D. The Jansenists and The Expulsion Of The Jesuits From France 1757-1765 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1975)