Suppression of The Society of Jesus - Portugal

Portugal

The expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal has been reduced by the Catholic Encyclopedia to a personal quarrel with the prime minister of Joseph I of Portugal, the reformist and autocratic Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis de Pombal. Whether Pombal's or Portugal's, the quarrel with the Jesuits began over an exchange of South American colonial territory with Spain. By a secret treaty of 1750, Portugal relinquished to Spain the contested colony of San Sacramento at the mouth of the Uruguay River in exchange for the Seven Reductions of Paraguay, the autonomous Jesuit missions that had been nominal Spanish colonial territory. The native Guarani, who lived in the mission territories, were ordered to quit their country and settle across the Uruguay, an early example of population transfer. Owing to the harsh conditions, the Guarani rose in arms against the transfer, and the so-called Guarani War ensued. It was a disaster for the Guarani, in which the Portuguese believed the Jesuits had a hand. In Portugal a battle of inflammatory pamphlets denouncing or defending the Order escalated. The Jesuit fathers, suspected of attempting to build an independent empire in the New World, were forbidden to continue the local administration of their former missions, and the Portuguese Jesuits were removed from Court.

On April 1, 1758, the aged Pope Benedict XIV issued a brief appointing the Portuguese Cardinal Saldanha, recommended by Pombal, to investigate royal allegations against the Jesuits. Benedict was skeptical as to the gravity of the alleged abuses. He ordered a "minute inquiry", but so as to safeguard the reputation of the Society, all serious matters were to be referred back to him. Benedict died the following month on May 3. On May 15, Saldanha, having received the papal brief only a fortnight before, declared that the Jesuits were guilty of having exercised "illicit, public, and scandalous commerce", both in Portugal and in its colonies. He had not visited Jesuit houses as ordered, and pronounced on the issues which the pope had reserved to himself. Pombal moved quickly during the papal sede vacante: in three weeks' time, he ordered the Jesuits stripped of all Portuguese possessions. Before Cardinal Rezzonico had been made pope, as Clement XIII, on July 6, 1758, the Portuguese dispossession of the Society was a fait accompli.

The last straw for the Court of Portugal was the attempted assassination of the king on September 3, 1758, of which the Jesuits were supposed to have had prior knowledge (see Távora affair). Among those arrested and executed was Gabriel Malagrida, the Jesuit confessor of Leonor of Távora. The Jesuits were expelled from the kingdom, and important non-Portuguese members of the Order were imprisoned. In 1759, the Order was civilly suppressed. The Portuguese ambassador was recalled from Rome and the papal nuncio sent home in disgrace. Relations between Portugal and Rome were broken off until 1770.