Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/268

 POMARIA

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POMBAL

religions such as the AssjTian, Babylonian, Hindu, and the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; see also Animism, Fetishism, Totemism, God, MoN'OTHEisM, Pantheism, Theism etc.

Fomaria, titular see in Mauretania Ca-sarea. It is north of Tlemcen (capital of an arrondisseinent in the department of Oran, Algeria) and in view of the ruins of Agadir, which was built itself on the ruins of Pomaria. Xamed after its orchards, Pomaria was formed under the shadow of the Roman camp. At Agadir and in the outskirts may be found numerous Latin inscriptions principally from the Christian epoch, the most recent from the seventh century, and many with the abbreviation DMS, which had evi- dently lost all pagan meaning. We know of but one bishop, Longinus, mentioned in the list of bishops of Mauretania Csesarea, who was summoned by King Hu- neric, returned to Carthage in 4S4 and was condemned to exile. He was praised by Mctor of Vita, Gregory of Tours, and Fredegarius; the martyrology of Usuard inserts his name on 1 Feb. At the end of the eighth century Idris I founded Agadir on the site of Pomaria; on the fall of the Idrisite d^-nast}-, Agadir was the capital of the Beni-Khazer and Beni-Yala, emirs of a Berber tribe, vassals of the Ommiads of Spain. Tlemcen, founded at the end of the eleventh century by Yussef ben Tashfin, was reunited to Agadir and finally supplanted it.

TouLOTTE, Oeographie de I'Afrique chrelienne. MauretanieSt 117- S. P^TEIDfes.

Pombal, Sebastiao Jos£ de Carvalho e Mello, Marquis de, the son of a country gentleman of mod- est means, b. in Lisbon, 13 May, 1699; d. 8 August, 17S2. He was said to have been edu- cated at the L^ni- versity of Coim- bra and served for a time in the army. After a turbulent life in the capital, he carried oiT and married the niece of the Conde dos Arcos, and his aversion for the nobility origi- nated perhaps with the opposi- t ion offered by her family to what they deemed a mesalliance. Pom- bal then retired to a country estate near Soure, and in his thirty- ninth year re- ceived his first public appointment, being sent as minister to London in 1738. In 1745 he was trans- ferred to Vienna, where his work was to effect a recon- ciliation between the pope and the empress; there in the same year he married as his second wife the daughter of Field Marshal Daun, a union brought about by the influence of John V's Austrian wife, who befriended him more than once, though the king dis- liked him and recalled him in 1749. John died 31 July, 1750, and on 3 August, 1750, the new monarch, Joseph, named Pombal Minister of Foreign AlTairs. The distinguished diplomat, D. Luiz da Cunha, had re- commended Pombal to Joseph when the latter was only prince, but it was the favour of the queen-mother and perhaps also of a Jesuit, Father Moreira, that secured him the coveted post. His superior intelligence and masterful will enabled him in a short time to dominate

his colleagues, who were dismissed or made insignifi- cant, and with the acquiescence of his royal master he became the first power in the State. Some years later the English ambassador said of him, "with all his faults, he is the sole man in this kingdom capable of being at the head of affairs". His energy after the earthquake, 1 Nov., 1755, confirmed his ascendancy over the king, and he became successively first Minis- ter, Count of Oceras in 1759, and Marquis of Pombal in 1770. The mysterious attempt, 3 Sept., 1758, on the king's life gave him a pretext to crush the inde- pendence of the nobility. He magnified an act of private vengeance on the part of the Duke of Aveiro into a widespread conspiracy, and after a trial which was a mockery, the duke, members of the Tavora family and their servants were publicly put to death with horrible cruelties at Belem, 13 Jan., 1759. No penalty was considered too severe for Vese majestS and there is some e\'idence that Joseph himself ordered the prosecution, indicated the Tavoras for punishment, and charged Pombal to show no mercy. If true, this e.xjilains in part the leniency shown him after his fall by Joseph's daughter and successor. Queen Maria. The so-called Pombaline terror dates from these exe- cutions. The people were effectively cowed when they saw that perpetual imprisonment, exile, and death re- warded the enemies or even the critics of the dictator. He was bound to come into conflict with the Jesuits, who exercised no small influence at Court and in the country. They appear to have blocked his projects to marry the heiress presumptive to the Protestant Duke of Cumberland and to grant privi- leges to the Jews in return for aid in rebuilding Lisbon, but the first open dispute arose over the execution of the Treaty of Limits (13 Jan., 1750), regulating Spanish and Portuguese jurisdiction in the River Plate. When the Indians declined to leave their houses in compliance %^-ith its provisions and had to be coerced, Pombal attributed their refusal to Jesuit machinations. Various other difficulties of the Government were laid to their charge and by the cumulative effect of these accusations, the minister prepared king and public for a campaign against the Societ}' in which he was inspired by the Jansenist and Regalist ideas then current in Europe. He had begun his open attack by ha\-ing the Jesuit confessors dis- missed from Court, 20 Sept., 1757, but it was the Tavora plot in which he implicated the Jesuits on the ground of their friendship with some of the supposed conspirators that enabled him to take decisive action. On 19 Jan., 1759, he issued a decree sequestering the property of the Society in the Portuguese dominions and thefollowing September deported the Portuguese fathers, about one thousand in number, to the Pon- tifical States, keeping the foreigners in prison. The previous year he had obtained from Benedict XIV the appointment of a creature of his, Cardinal Sal- danha, as visitor, with power to reform the Society, but events proved that his real intention was to end it. Still not content with his victory, he determined to humiliate it in the person of a conspicuous member, and himself denounced Father Gabriel Malagrida to the Inquisition for crimes against the Faith. He caused the old missionary, who had lost his wits through suffering, to be strangled and then burnt. He entered into negotiations with the Courts of Spain, France, and Naples to win from the pope by joint action the suppression of the Society, and having no success with Clement XIII, he expelled the Nuncio 17 June, 1760, and broke off relations with Rome. The bishops were compelled to exercise functions re- served to the Holy See and the Portuguese Church came to have Pombal as its effective head. The reh- gious autonomy of the nation being thus complete, he sought to justify his action by issuing the "Deduc^ao Chronologica", in which the Jesuits weremade respon- sible for all the calamities of Portugal. In 1773