Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/651

 JESUITS 631 suspected them of having instigated the Indi- ans in Paraguay to resist the execution of the treaty of cession above mentioned. Soon after an attempt was made to assassinate Joseph Emanuel, king of Portugal, and several Jesuits, particularly Father Malagrida, were accused of having been privy to the plot. Pombal re- quested the pope to take measures against the Jesuits; but as Clement XIII. took their de- fence, a royal edict of Sept. 3, 1759, declared the Jesuits to be traitors, suppressed the order in Portugal, Brazil, and the other Portuguese colonies, and confiscated its property. All the Jesuits living in Portugal were transported to the Papal States. In France they fell into dis- favor at court when the two fathers who were the confessors of Louis XV. and Mme. de Pom- padour refused to admit them to the sacra- ments, unless the latter was dismissed from court. Mme. de Pompadour and Choiseul uni- ted their influence with that of the parliament to suppress the order. At the same time its reputation among the people, which had long before been injured by the lax contents of some Jesuit books of casuistry, suffered great- ly in consequence of the unfortunate commer- cial operations of Lavalette, superior of an es- tablishment of the order in Martinique. La- valette speculated largely in colonial produce, and, when two of his ships were taken by the English, became a bankrupt. A firm in Mar- seilles brought a suit for indemnification against the whole society, and the inferior courts as well as the parliament of Paris, to which the Jesuits appealed, gave sentence against them, and made them pay 2,000,000 livres to the plaintiff and the costs. Louis XV., who wished to save the society, at first yielded to the ur- gent calls for its suppression only so far as to demand in Rome that the society be reformed, and that the French Jesuits be placed under a vicar of their own. To this demand the gen- eral, Ricci, is reported to have given the fa- mous response: Sint ut sunt, avt non sint; whereupon the king expelled them from France in 1764. Their expulsion from Spain was effected in 1767 by Aranda, on the charge, according to some historians, that treasonable writings had been discovered in one of the colleges, which declared the king a bastard and not entitled to the throne. But the true reason is not known, as the king declared that he kept the secret "locked up in his royal heart." On April 2 all the Jesuits of Spain and the Spanish colonies were arrested at the same hour, and shipped to the territory of the pope, who, at the request of the general of the order, refused to receive them. At the same time, and in a similar way, the order was suppressed in Naples, Parma, and Malta. On Dec. 10, 1768, all the Bourbon courts (France, Spain, Naples, and Parma) demanded from the pope its entire suppression for the whole church. Shortly afterward the pope died (1769), and the Bourbon courts succeeded in procuring the election of Clement XIV. (Gan- ganelli), who had given to the minister of Spain a written declaration that a pope, with- out acting against the canonical laws, was at liberty to suppress the order. For four years Clement XIV. endeavored to put off an event from which he feared the worst consequences ; but at length, when also the court of Vienna consented to the suppression of the Jesuits, he issued, July 21, 1773, the famous brief, Do- minui ac Eedemptor noster, by which the suppression of the society of Jesus in all the states of Christendom was declared. The brief, though not signed or published with the usual canonical formalities, was quickly complied with ; yet the archives and treasures found in searching their houses did not equal in impor- tance and amount the public anticipation. The ex-Jesuits had the choice either to enter other religious orders or to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the bishops. Everywhere, except in Portugal, they received an annuity from the proceeds of their confiscated property. In Rome and the Papal States the colleges and houses of the suppressed society were intrusted to secular priests, who employed many of the former professors, and kept up the method and discipline of their schools. A general resis- tance to the brief of suppression had been ex- pected from the Jesuits and their many power- ful friends; and in anticipation of this, as well as to secure possession of the large funds supposed to be hoarded up in their houses at Rome, the general, Lorenzo Ricci, was imprison- ed in the castle of Sant' Angelo. The members of the order, however, submitted everywhere without hesitation to the pontifical will, Ricci did nothing to incite resistance, and the mi- nutest search discovered no treasures. Ricci on his deathbed, in November, 1775, as he was about to receive the sacrament, read a solemn protest on the part of the extinct society, affirming that the conduct of its members afforded no grounds for the suppression, and that he had himself given no reason for his imprisonment. In Prussia, although they had to abandon the constitution of the order (1776), the favor of Frederick II., who esteemed them as teachers, permitted them to continue as an organized society, under the name of priests of the royal school institute ; but this institute also was abolished by Frederick William II. In Russia, which with the eastern part of Po- land had received in 1772 several houses of Jesuits, they enjoyed the patronage of the em- press Catharine II., who appointed an ex-Jesuit coadjutor of the archbishop of Mohilev, and sent him in 1783 as her minister to Rome. He urged Pius VI. to recognize the society as validly existing in Russia, and Pius, moved by the memoir presented to him by Cardinal Al- bani, as well as by the opinion prevalent in the college of cardinals, that the brief of Clement XIV. was uncanonical, granted to the Russian Jesuits permission to elect a vicar general. The number of Jesuits in Russia amounted at that time to 178, and the total number of ex-Jesuits