The Jesuits, 1534-1921

"To wage war against the Holy See, and to oppress the clergy, he adopted the measures and employed the arms which, in the hands of the irreligious men of our time, have done and are still doing harm and inflicting grievous wounds on the Church. He corrupted and perverted public education in the schools and universities, especially in Coimbra which soon became a centre of moral pestilence. He took from the hands of the youth of the kingdom the sound doctrinal works which they had so far been made to study; and substituted schismatical and heretical publications such as Dupin's 'De antiqua ecclesia' which had been condemned by Innocent XII; and Hontheim's 'Febronius' condemned by Clement XIII. He also brought into Portugal the works of the régalists, and excluded those writers who maintained the rights and authority of the Holy See, in defence of which he would not allow a word to be uttered. And to the horror of all decent people, he imprisoned in a loathsome dungeon a holy and venerable bishop who had warned his flock against those pernicious publications. Meantime the notorious Oratorian Pereira, who was condemned by the Index, and others who flattered him were remunerated for their writings and could print whatever they liked. He was a Jansenist who, in the perfidious fashion of the sect, exalted the authority of the bishops in order to diminish that of the Pope; and enlarged the authority of kings in church matters to such an extent that the system differed very little from that of the Protestant Anglican Church. Queen Marìa, who succeeded Joseph on the throne, did much to improve conditions; but did not undo all the harm that Pombal had already inflicted on the nation. Disguised Anglicanism continued to exist in Portugal."

Father Weld adds his own judgment to that of the cardinal, and tells us that "the bias in Pombal's nature may be traced to his English associations when he was ambassador in London." He advances this view, probably because of a note of Pacca's, who says that he could venture no opinion about the influence of England on Pombal, merely for want of documents on that point. The author of the "Memoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique du xviiie siècle" assures us that Pombal's purpose was to extend his reforms even into the bosom of the Church; to change, to destroy; to subject the bishops to his will; to declare himself an enemy of the Holy See; to protect authors hostile to the Holy See; to encourage publications savoring of novelty; to favor in Portugal a theological instruction quite different from what had been adopted previous to his time; and finally to open the way to a pernicious teaching in a country which until then had enjoyed religious peace.

This scheme did not restrict itself to a religious propaganda but got into the domain of politics; for the author of the "Vita di Pombal" (I, 145) notes the report, which is confirmed by the "Memoria Catholica secunda" that "Pombal had formed the design of marrying the Princess Marìa to the Duke of Cumberland, the butcher of Culloden – but that this was thwarted by the Jesuit confessor of the king." On this point the Maréchal de Belle Isle writes (Testament politique, 108): "It is known that the Duke of Cumberland looked forward to becoming King of Portugal, and I doubt not he would have succeeded, if the Jesuit confessors of the royal family had not been opposed to it. This crime was never forgiven the Portuguese Jesuits."

Whatever the truth may be about these royal schemes, Pombal soon found his chance to wreak his vengeance on the Society for balking his plans of making Portugal a Protestant country. A scatter-brained individual, named Pereira, who lived at Rio Janerio, raised the cry which may have been suggested to him, that the Jesuits of the Reductions excluded white intercourse with the natives because of the valuable gold mines they possessed; and that it would be a proper and, indeed, a most commendable thing in the interests of religion for the government to seize this source of wealth, and thus compel the Jesuits who controlled that territory to live up to the holiness of their profession. It was also added that the missions were little else than a great commercial speculation; and finally that the ultimate design of the Society was to make a Republic of Paraguay, independent of the mother country.

These three charges had been reiterated over and over again ever since the foundation of the Reductions, and had been just as often refuted and officially denied after the most vigorous investigation. But there was a man now in control of Portugal who would not be biased by any religious sentiment or regard for truth, if he could injure the Society. The first step was to transfer the aforesaid missions to Portuguese control. They all lay on the east shore of the Uruguay, and belonged to Spain. Hence, in 1750, a treaty was made between Spain and Portugal, to concede to Spain the undisputed control of the rich colony of San Sacramento, at the mouth of the River La Plata, in exchange for the territory, in which lay the seven Reductions of St. Michael, St. Lawrence, St. Aloysius, St. John, St. Francis Borgia, Holy Angels and St. Nicholas. According to the treaty, it was stipulated that the Portuguese should take immediate possession and fling out into the world, they did not care where, the 30,000 Indians who had built villages in the country, and were peacefully cultivating their farms, and who by the uprightness and purity of their lives were giving to the world and to all times an example of what Muratori calls a Cristianesimo felice.

To add to the brutality of the act, the Fathers themselves were ordered to announce to the Indians the order to vacate. Representations were made by the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, the Royal Audiencia of Charcas and various civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Spain that not only was this seizure a most atrocious violation of justice which could not be carried out except by bloodshed, no one could say to what extent, but that it was giving up the property of the Indians to their bitterest enemies, the Portuguese. For it was precisely to avoid the Mamelukes of Brazil that the Reductions had been originally created. Moreover, it would almost compel the Indians to conclude that the Fathers had betrayed them, and that they were not only parties to, but instigators of, the whole scheme of spoliation. Southey, in his "History of Brazil," denounces it as "one of the most tyrannical commands that were ever issued, in the recklessness of unfeeling power," and says that "the weak Ferdinand VI had no idea of the importance of the treaty."

The Jesuits appealed; but they were, of course, unheeded; and the Father General Visconti ordered them to submit without a murmur. Unfortunately, the commissioner Father Altamirano, whom he sent out was a bad choice. He was hot-headed and imperious; and according to Father Huonder (The Catholic Encyclopedia) actually treated his fellow Jesuits as rebels, when they advised him to proceed with moderation. Perhaps the fact that he was the representative of the king, as well as of the General, affected him; at all events the Indians would have killed him if he had not fled. Ten years would not have sufficed for a transfer of such a vast multitude with their women and children, and the old and infirm, not to speak of the herds and flocks and farming implements and household furniture, yet they were ordered to decamp within thirty days. Pombal would soon treat his Jesuit fellow countrymen as he had treated the Indians.

When, at last, the cruel edict was published, all the savage instincts of the Indians awoke, and it seemed for a time as if the missionaries would be massacred. It speaks well for the solid Christian training that had been given to these children of the forest that they at last consented to consider the matter at all. Some of the caciques were actually won over to the advisability of the measure, and started out with several hundred exiles to find a new home in the wilderness. A number of the children and the sick succumbed on the way. When, at last they found a place in the mountains of Quanai, they were attacked by hostile tribes. They resisted for a while, but finally returned in despair to their former abode. To make matters worse, the Bishop of Paraguay notified the Fathers that if they did not obey, they would be ipso facto suspended. "Whereas," says Weld, "if the Fathers really wished to oppose the government, a single sign from them would have sent an army of fifty thousand men to resist the Europeans; but owing to their fidelity and incredible exertions, there were never as many as seven hundred men in the field against the united armies of Spain and Portugal when hostilities at last broke out."

During the year 1754, the Indians harassed the enemy by the skirmishes and won many a victory; and they would have ultimately triumphed if they had had a leader. At last in 1755, the combined forces of the enemy with thirty pieces of artillery attacked them with the result that might have been expected. The natives rushed frantically on their foes; but the musketry and cannon stretched four hundred of them in their blood; and the rest either fled to the mountains or relapsed into savage life; or made their submission to the government, many becoming as bad as their kindred in the forests because of the corruption they saw around them. The Portuguese entered into possession of the seven Reductions, but failed to find any gold. So great was their chagrin that, in 1761, Carvalho wanted the rich territory which he had given to Spain returned to Portugal; and when Spain naturally demurred, he prepared to go to war for it. He finally gained his point, and on February 12, 1761, the territories were restored to their original owners, but nothing was stipulated, about restitution to the unfortunate natives and Jesuits who had been the victims of this shameful political deal.

Some of the Indians who fled to the forests kept up a guerilla warfare against the invaders; but the greater number followed the advice of the Fathers and settled on the Paraná and on the right bank of the Uruguay. In 1762 there were 2,497 families scattered through seventeen Reductions or doctrinas, as they had begun to be called, a term that is equivalent to "parish." But the expulsion of the Fathers which followed soon after completed the ruin of this glorious work. The Indians died or became savage again; and today only beautiful ruins mark the place where this great commonwealth once stood. At the time of the Suppression, or rather when Pombal drove the Jesuits out of every Portuguese post into the dungeons of Portugal or flung them into the Papal States, the Paraguay province had five hundred and sixty-four members, twelve colleges, one university, three houses for spiritual retreats, two residences, fifty-seven Reductions and 113,716 Christian Indians. The leave-taking of the Fathers and Indians was heart-rending on both sides.

It is a long distance from the River La Plata to the Amazon; for there are about thirty-five degrees of latitude between the two places. But they were not too far apart to check Carvalho in his work of destruction. After having done all he could for the moment at one end of Brazil, he addressed himself to the Jesuit missions at the other. A glance at the past history of these establishments will reveal the frightful injustice of the brutal acts of 1754.

One hundred years before that time, Vieira had made his memorable fight against his Portuguese fellow-countrymen for the liberation of the Indians from slavery. By so doing, he had, of course, aroused the fury of the whites, and they determined to crush him. They put him in prison; and in 1660 sent him and his companions to Portugal, in a crazy ship to be tried for disturbing the peace of the colony. Nevertheless, he won the fight, although meantime three Jesuits had been killed by the Indians, and their companions expelled from the colony, in spite of the king's protection. In this act, however, the Portuguese had gone too far. His majesty saw the truth and sent the missionaries back. That was as early as 1680. In 1725 new complaints were sent to Portugal, but the supreme governor of the Maranhão district wrote, as follows, to the king: "The Fathers of the Society in this State of Maranhão are objects of enmity and have always been hated, for no other reason than for their strenuous defence of the liberty of the unfortunate Indians, and also because they used all their power to oppose the tyrannical oppression of those who would reduce to a degraded and unjust slavery men whom nature had made free. The Fathers take every possible care that the laws of your majesty on this point shall be most exactly observed. They devote themselves entirely to the promotion of the salvation of souls and the increase of the possessions of your majesty; and have added many sons to the Church and subjects to the crown from among these barbarous nations."

With regard to their alleged commerce, the governor says: "Whatever has been charged against the Fathers by wicked calumniators who, through hatred and envy, manufacture ridiculous lies about the wealth they derive from those missions, I solemnly declare to your majesty, and I speak of a matter with which I am thoroughly acquainted, that the Fathers of the Society are the only true missionaries of these regions. Whatever they receive from their labors among the Indians is applied to the good of the Indians themselves and to the decency and ornamentation of the churches, which, in these missions, are always very neat and very beautiful. Nothing whatever that is required in the missions is kept for themselves. As they have nothing of their own, whatever each missionary sends is delivered to the procurator of the mission, and every penny of it reverts to the use of the particular mission from whence it came. Missioners of other orders send quite as much produce, but each one keeps his own portion separate, to be used as he likes, so that the quantity however great being thus divided, does not make much impression on those who see it. But as the missionaries of the Society send everything together to the procurator, the quantity, when seen in bulk, excites the cupidity of the malevolent and envious."

About 1739, Eduardo dos Santos was sent by John V as a special commissioner to Maranhão. After spending twenty months in visiting every mission and examining every detail he wrote as follows: "The execrable barbarity with which the Indians are reduced to slavery has become such a matter of custom that it is rather looked on as a virtue. All that is adduced against this inhuman custom is received with such repugnance and so quickly forgotten that the Fathers of the Society in whose charity these unfortunate creatures often find refuge and protection, and who take compassion on their miserable lot, become, for this very reason, objects of hatred to these avaricious men."

Such were the official verdicts of the conduct of the Jesuits on the Amazon a few years before Pombal came into power. But in 1753 regardless of all this he sent out his brother Francis Xavier Mendoza, a particularly worthless individual, and made him Governor of Gran Para and Maranhão, giving him a great squadron of ships and a considerable body of troops with orders to humble the Jesuits and send back to Portugal any of them who opposed his will. Everything was done to create opposition. They were forbidden to speak or to preach to the Indians except in Portuguese; the soldiers were quartered in the Jesuit settlements, and were instructed to treat the natives with especial violence and brutality.

In 1754 a council was held in Lisbon to settle the question about expelling the Society from the missions of Maranhão. The order was held up temporarily by the queen; but when she died, a despatch was sent in June 1755 ordering their immediate withdrawal from all "temporal and civil government of the missions." The instructions stated that it was "in order that God might be better served." Unfortunately the bishop of the place co-operated with Carvalho in everything that was proposed. He suppressed one of the colleges, restricted the number of Fathers in the others, to twelve, and sent the rest back to Portugal; and in order to excite the settlers against the Society, he had the Bull of Benedict XIV which condemned Indian slavery read from the pulpits, proclaiming that it had been inspired by the Jesuits. Meantime, in the reports home, the insignificant Indian villages where they labored were magnified into splendid cities and towns all owned by the Society; two pieces of cannon which had never fired a ball were described as a whole park of artillery, and a riot among the troops was set down as a rebellion excited by the Jesuits.

The first three Fathers to be banished from Brazil were José, Hundertpfund and da Cruz. José was a royal appointee sent out to determine the boundary line between the Spanish and Portuguese American possessions. But that did not trouble Pombal; nor did the German nationality of Hundertpfund, nor did he deign to state the precise nature of their offenses. A fourth victim named Ballister had had the bad taste to preach on the text: "Make for yourself friends of the Mammon of iniquity." He was forthwith accused of attacking one of Carvalho's commercial enterprises, and promptly ordered out of the country. Again, when some mercantile rivals sent a petition to the king against Carvalho's monopolies, Father Fonseca was charged with prompting it, and he was outlawed though absolutely innocent. And so it went on. Carvalho's brother was instructed to invent any kind of an excuse to increase the number of these expatriations.

While these outrages were being perpetrated in the colonies, Lisbon's historic earthquake of 1755 occurred. The city was literally laid in ruins. Thousands of people were instantly killed; and while other thousands lay struggling in the ruins, the rising flood of the Tagus and a deluge of rain completed the disaster. Singularly enough, Carvalho's house escaped the general wreck; and the foolish king considered that exception to be a Divine intervention in behalf of his great minister, and possibly, on that account, left him unchecked in the fury which even the awful calamity which had fallen on his country did not at all moderate. The Jesuits were praised by both king and patriarch for their heroic devotion both during and after the great disaster, but those commendations only infuriated Pombal the more. When one of the Fathers, the holy Malagrida, had dared to say in the pulpit that the earthquake was a punishment for the vice that was rampant in the capital, Pombal regarded it as a reflection on his administration; and the offender, though seventy years old and universally regarded as a saint, was banished from the city as inciting the people to rebellion.

However, the furious minister meted out similar treatment to others, even to his political friends. Thus, although the British parliament had voted £40,000 for the relief of the sufferers, besides giving a personal gift to the king and sending ships with cargoes of food for the people, Pombal immediately ran up the tax on foreign imports, for he was financially interested in domestic productions. Even in doling out provisions to the famishing populace, he was so parsimonious that riots occurred, whereupon he hanged those who complained. The author of the "Vita" (I, 106) vouches for the fact that at one time there were three hundred gibbets erected in various parts of Lisbon. The Jesuit confessors at the court were especially obnoxious to him and he dismissed them all with an injunction never to set foot in the royal precincts again. The anger of their royal penitents did not restrain him, so absolute was his power both then and afterwards. The plea was that the priests were plotters against the king. To increase that impression he pointed out to his majesty the number of offenders against him; all members of the detested Order who were coming back in every ship from Brazil. The General of the Society, Father Centurioni, wrote to the king pleading the innocence of the victims; but the letter never got further than the minister. The king did not even know it had been sent.

The next step in this persecution was to publish the famous pamphlet entitled: "A Brief Account of the Republic which the Jesuits have established in the Spanish and Portuguese dominions of the New World, and of the War which they have carried on against the armies of the two Crowns; all extracted from the Register of the Commissaries and Plenipotentiaries, and from other documents." A copy was sent to every bishop of the country; to the cardinals in Rome, and to all the courts of Europe. Pombal actually spent 70,000 crowns to print and spread the work of which he himself was generally credited with being the author. In South America it was received with derision; in Europe mostly with disgust. Sad to say, Acciajuoli, the Apostolic nuncio at Lisbon, believed the Brazilian stories; but he changed his mind, when on the morning of June 15, 1760, just as he was about to say Mass, he received a note ordering him in the name of the king to leave the city at once, and the kingdom within four days; adding that to preserve him from insult a military escort would conduct him to the frontier. Other publications of the same tenor followed the "Brief Account." One especially became notorious. It was: "Letters of the Portuguese Minister to the Minister of Spain on the Jesuitical Empire, the Republic of Maranhao; the history of Nicholas I." The Nicholas in question was a Father named Plantico. To carry out the story of his having been crowned king or Emperor of Paraguay, coins with his effigy were actually struck and circulated throughout Europe. Unfortunately for the fraud, none of the coins were ever seen in Paraguay where they ought to have been current. Moreover, as Plantico was transported with the other Jesuits of Brazil, he would have been hanged on his arrival in Portugal, if he had tried to set up a kingdom of his own in Paraguay. On the contrary, he went off to his native country of Croatia, and was Rector of the College of Grosswardein when the general suppression of the Society took place. Frederick II and d'Alembert used to joke with each other about "King Nicholas I"; and in Spain, that and the other libels were officially denounced and their circulation prohibited.

As for Carvalho, these hideous imaginings of his brain became realities; and the list of Jesuitical horrors which his ambassador at Rome repeated to the Pope, all, as he alleged, for the sake of the Church, almost suggest that Pombal was a madman. Long extracts of the document may be found in de Ravignan and Weld, but it will be sufficient here to mention a few of the charges. They are, for instance, "seditious machinations against every government of Europe; scandals in their missions so horrible that they cannot be related without extreme indecency; rebellion against the Sovereign Pontiff; the accumulation of vast wealth and the use of immense political power; gross moral corruption of individual members of the Order; abandonment of even the externals of religion; the daily and public commission of enormous crimes; opposing the king with great armies; inculcating in the Indian mind an implacable hatred of all white men who are not Jesuits; starting insurrections in Uruguay so as to prevent the execution of the treaty of limits; atrociously calumniating the king; embroiling the courts of Spain and Portugal; creating sedition by preaching in the capital against the commercial companies of the minister; taking advantage of the earthquake to attain their detestable ends; surpassing Machiavelli in their diabolical plots; inventing prophecies of new disasters, such as warnings of subterranean fires and invasions of the sea; calumniating the venerable Palafox; committing crimes worse than those of the Knights Templars, etc."

Unfortunately, Cardinal Passionei who was unfriendly to the Society, exercised great power at Rome at that time. He was so antagonistic that he would not allow a Jesuit book in the library, which made d'Alembert say: "I am sorry for his library." He also refused to condemn the work of the scandalous ex-monk Norbert, who was in the pay of Carvalho. To make matters worse, Benedict XIV was then at the point of death. And a short time previously, yielding to Carvalho's importunities, he had appointed Cardinal Saldanha, who was Carvalho's tool, to investigate the complaints and to report back to Rome, without however taking any action on the premises. The dying Pontiff was unaware of the intimacy of Saldanha with the man in Portugal or he would not have ordered him in the Brief of appointment to "follow the paths of gentleness and mildness, in dealing with an Order which has always been of the greatest edification to the whole world; lest by doing otherwise he would diminish the esteem which, up to that time, they have justly acquired as a reward of their diligence. Their holy Institute had given many illustrious men to the Church whose teachings they have not hesitated to confirm with their blood." As the Pope died in the following month, Saldanha made light of the instructions. His usual boast was that "the will of the king was the rule of his actions; and he was under such obligations to his majesty, that he would not hesitate to throw himself from the window if such were the royal pleasure."

It was currently reported in Lisbon, says Weld (130), that the office of visitor had been first offered to Francis of the Annunciation, an Augustinian who had reformed the University of Coimbra; and on his refusal he was sent to prison where he ended his days. But the obliging Saldanha saw in it an opportunity for still further advancement; he accepted the work and performed it in accordance with the wishes of Pombal. Meantime, new dungeons were being made in the fortress of Jonquiera in which the offending Jesuits were to be buried. Saldanha began his work as Inquisitor on May 31, by going with great pomp to the Jesuit Church of St. Roch. Seated on the throne in the sanctuary, he gave his hand to be kissed by all the religious. When the provincial knelt before him, the cardinal told him to have confidence – he would act with clemency. When the ceremony was over, he departed abruptly without asking any questions or making any examination. But a few days afterward, the provincial received a letter bearing the date May 15, that is sixteen days before this visit to the Church, declaring that the Fathers in Portugal and in its dominions to the ends of the earth were, on the fullest information, found to be guilty of a worldly traffic which was a disgrace to the ecclesiastical state; and they were commanded under pain of excommunication to desist from such business transactions at the very hour the notification was made. The language employed in the letter which was immediately spread throughout the country was insulting and defamatory to the highest degree.

All the procurators were then compelled to hand over their books to the government. And when the horrified people, who knew there was nothing back of it all but Carvalho's hatred, manifested their discontent, it was ascribed to the Jesuits. Hence on June 6, the cardinal patriarch, at the instigation of the prime minister, suspended them all from the function of preaching and hearing confessions throughout the patriarchate. The cardinal had, at first, demurred, for he knew the Jesuits in Lisbon to be the very reverse of Saldanha's description of them, and he therefore demanded a regular trial. Whereupon Carvalho flew into such a rage that out of sheer terror, and after a few hours' struggle, he issued the cruel order. The poor cardinal, who was an ardent friend and admirer of the Society, was so horrified at what he had done that he fell into a fever, and died within a month. Before he received the last sacraments, he made a public declaration that the Society was innocent, and he drew up a paper to that effect; but Carvalho never let it see the light. When the Archbishop of Evora heard that the dying man had shed tears over his weakness, he said: "Tears are not enough. He should have shed the last drop of his blood."

Saldanha was made patriarch in the deceased prelate's place; and though his office of visitor had ceased ipso facto on the death of the Pope, he continued to exercise its functions nevertheless. He appointed Bulhoens, the Bishop of Para, a notorious adherent of Carvalho, to be his delegate in Brazil. Bulhoens first examined the Jesuits of Para, but could find nothing against them. He then proceeded to Maranhão; but the bishop of that place left in disgust; and the governor warned Bulhoens that if he persisted, the city would be in an uproar. Not being able to effect anything, he asked the Bishop of Bahia to undertake the work of investigation. The invitation was promptly accepted; and all the superiors were ordered to show their books under pain of excommunication. They readily complied, and no fault was found with the accounts. He then instituted a regular tribunal; received the depositions of seventy-five witnesses, among them Saldanha's own brother who had lived twenty-five years in Maranhão. Next he examined the tax commissioner, through whose hands all contracts and bills of exchange had to pass; and that official affirmed under oath that he had never known or heard of any business transactions having been carried on by Jesuits. The result was that the courageous bishop declared "it would be an offence against God and his conscience and against the king's majesty to condemn the Fathers." When his report was forwarded to Portugal, Carvalho ordered the confiscation of his property; expelled him from his palace, and declared his see vacant. The valiant prelate passed the rest of his days in seclusion, supported by the alms of the faithful.

In September 1758, a charge was trumped up in Lisbon in a most tortuous fashion, based on the alleged discovery of a plot to assassinate the king. Those chiefly involved were the Duke de Averio and the Marquis de Tavora, with his wife, his two sons, his two brothers and his two sons-in-law, all of whom were seized at midnight on December 12. The marchioness and her daughter-in-law were carried off to a convent in their night-dresses; the men of the family, to dens formerly occupied by the wild beasts of the city menagerie. De Aveiro, who was supposed to be the assassin-in-chief, was not taken until next day. Several others were included in this general round-up, some of them for having asserted that the whole conspiracy was a manufactured affair. At the same time, some of the domestic servants of the marquis, probably for having offered resistance at the time of the arrest, were put to death so that they could tell no tales. Not being able to have the accused parties tried before any regularly constituted tribunal, because of the lack of evidence, Carvalho drew up a sentence of condemnation himself, and presented it to a new court which he had just established, called the inconfidenza, and demanded the signatures of the judges who were all his creatures. After being stormed at for a while, all, with one exception, put their names to the paper. Then, as by the law of the land no nobleman could be condemned to death except by his peers, he constituted himself as a tribunal, along with his secretary of the Navy and the secretary of Foreign Affairs, neither of whom had any difficulty in complying with the wish of their master.

On January 11, 1759, three of the noblemen involved, Aveiro, Tavora and Antongia, were led out to execution before the king's palace. Vast multitudes had assembled in the public square; and to ensure order, fresh regiments had been summoned from other parts of the kingdom. A riot was feared, for the Tavoras were among the noblest families of the realm. The accused had not even been defended and had been interrogated on the rack. The execution was most expeditious, and the heads of the three victims quickly rolled in the dust. That night, the marchioness was taken from the convent to the new dungeons in the fort; and on January 12, she heard the sentence of death passed on her by Carvalho himself who was both judge and accuser. The scaffold was erected in the square of Belem; and long before daylight of January 13 an immense multitude had gathered to witness the hideous spectacle. The marchioness advanced and took her seat in the chair. The axe quickly descended on her neck – and all was over. She was despatched in this hurried fashion because the interference of the king was feared. Indeed, the messenger arrived just when the head had been severed from the body. The two sons of the marchioness and her son-in-law were then stretched on the rack and strangled. The father of the family, the old marquis followed next in order. As a mark of clemency, his torture was brief but effective. Four others were then executed; fire was set to the gibbet; and its blood-stained timbers along with the bodies of the victims were reduced to ashes and thrown into the Tagus. This was not a scene in a village of savages, but in a great European capital which had just passed through a terrible visitation of God but apparently had not understood its meaning. Carvalho was thirsting for more blood, but the king held him back; so he contented himself with destroying the palaces of the Aveiras and Tavoras; sprinkling the sites with salt; forbidding anyone to bear the names hitherto so illustrious, and even effacing them from the monuments and the public archives. He was not allowed to commit any more official murders for the moment; but at least he had thousands who were dying in his underground dungeons.

What had the Jesuits to do with all this? Nothing whatever. They were accused of being the spiritual advisers of the Tavora family which it was impossible to disprove, because though the persons implicated by the accusation were all arrested on the 11th, sentence of death had been already passed on the 9th. There were twenty-nine paragraphs in the indictment. The twenty-second said that "even if the exuberant and conclusive proofs already adduced did not exist, the presumption of the law would suffice to condemn such monsters." Of course, no lawyer in the world could plead against such a charge, and it is noteworthy that in the Brief of Suppression of the whole Society by Clement XIV which brings together all the accusations against it, there is no mention whatsoever, even inferentially, of any conspiracy of the Jesuits against the life of the King of Portugal. Moreover, the Inquisition and all the Bishops of Spain judged this Portuguese horror at its proper value, when on May 3, 1759 they put their official stamp of condemnation on the pamphlets with which the whole of Europe was flooded immediately after Pombal's infamous act. They denounced the charges one by one as "designed to foment discord, to disturb the peace and tranquillity of souls and consciences, and especially to discredit the holy Society of Jesus and religious who laudably labor in it to the benefit of the Church; as is known throughout the world." Over and over again as each book is specifically anathematised, the "holy Society of Jesus" is spoken of with commendation and praise. The condemned publications were then burnt in the market place. That exculpation ought to have been sufficient, coming as it did not only from all the Spanish bishops but from the Inquisition, which from the very beginning had been uniformly suspicious of everything Jesuitical. Against this utterance Pombal was powerless for it was the voice of another nation.

When the year 1759 began, three of the most conspicuous and most venerable Fathers of Portugal were in jail under sentence of death. But neither the king nor Carvalho dared to carry out the sentence of execution. Something however had to be done; and therefore a royal edict, which had been written long before, was issued. After reciting all that had been previously said about Brazil, etc. it declared that "these religious being corrupt and deplorably fallen away from their holy institute, and rendered manifestly incapable by such abominable and inveterate vices to return to its observances, must be properly and effectually banished, denaturalized, proscribed and expelled from all his majesty's dominions, as notorious rebels, traitors, adversaries and aggressors of his royal person and realm; as well as for the public peace and the common good of his subjects; and it is ordered under the irremissible pain of death, that no person, of whatever state or condition, is to admit them into any of his possessions or hold any communication with them by word or writing, even though they should return into these states in a different garb or should have entered another order, unless with the King's permission." It is sad to have to record that the Patriarch of Lisbon endorsed the invitation to the Jesuits to avail themselves of this royal clemency.

The procurators of the missions who occupied a temporary house in Lisbon had been already carried off to jail; and their money, chalices, sacred vessels, all of which were intended for Asia and Brazil, were confiscated. The Exodus proper began at the College of Elvas on September 1. At night-fall a squadron of cavalry arrived; and taking the inmates prisoners, marched them off without any intimation of whither they were going. On the following day, Sunday, they were lodged in a miserable shed, exhausted though they were by the journey, with nothing but a few crusts to eat, after having suffered intensely from the heat all day long. They were not even allowed to go to Mass. During the next night and the following day, they continued their weary tramp and at last arrived at Evora. There the young men were left at the college, and the sixty-nine Professed were compelled to walk for six consecutive days till they reached the Tagus. Many were old and decrepit and one of them lost his mind on the journey. When they reached the river, they were put in open boats and exposed all day long to the burning sun, with nothing to eat or drink. They were then transferred to a ship which had been waiting for them since the month of April. It was then late in September.

Other exiles soon joined them, after going through similar experiences, until there were one hundred and thirty-three in the same vessel. They were all kept in the hold till they were out of sight of land. There was no accommodation for them: the food was insufficient; the water was foul; there were no dishes, so that six or seven had to sit around a tin can, and take out what they could with a wooden spoon, and the same vessel had to serve for the water they drank. The orders were to stop at no port until they reached Civita Vecchia. However, after passing the Straits of Gibraltar, it became evident that unless the captain wanted to carry a cargo of corpses to Italy, he must take in supplies somewhere: for many of the victims were sixty or seventy years of age. There were even some octogenarians among them. Hence, on reaching Alicante, in Spain, one of the Fathers went ashore. There was a college of the Society in that city; and as soon as the news spread of the arrival of the prisoners, the people rushed to the shore to supply their wants, but the messenger was the only one allowed to be seen. They then sailed away from Alicante. Off Corsica, a storm caught them and so delayed their progress that a stop had to be made at Spezia for more food. At last, on October 24, more than a month after they had left Lisbon, they were flung haggard, emaciated and exhausted on the shores of the Papal States at Civita Vecchia. Of course, they were received by the people there with unbounded affection; and as Father Weld relates "none exceeded the Dominican Fathers in their tender solicitude for the sufferers." A marble slab in their church records their admiration for these confessors of the Faith with whom the sons of St. Dominic declared they were devinctissimi – "closely bound to them in affection."

On September 29, troops surrounded the College of Coimbra. The astonished populace was informed that it was because the Fathers had been fighting; that some were already killed and others wounded; and the soldiers had been summoned to prevent further disorders. That night amid pouring rain, the tramp of horses' hoofs was heard; and as the people crowded to the windows, they saw the venerable men of the college led away between squads of cavalry as if they were brigands or prisoners of war. They arrived at the Tagus on October 7, where others were already waiting. They numbered in all 121, and were crowded into two small ships which were to carry them into exile. They had scarcely room to move. Yet, when they arrived at Genoa, they were all packed into one of the boats. At Leghorn, they were kept for a whole month in close confinement on board the ship. When they started out, they were buffeted by storms, and not until January 4, 1760 did they reach the papal territory. They were in a more wretched state of filth and emaciation than their predecessors.

These prisoners were the special criminals of the Society, namely – the professed Fathers. The other Jesuits were officially admitted to be without reproach and were exhorted, both by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, to abandon the Order and be dispensed from their vows. As these non-Professed numbered at least three-fourths of the whole body, the difficult problem presents itself of explaining how the Professed who are looked up to by the rest of the Society for precept and example should be monsters of iniquity and yet could train the remaining three-fourths of the members in such a way as to make them models of every virtue.

Pombal was convinced that he could separate the youth of the Society from their elders; and he was extremely anxious to do so, because of the family connections of many of them, and because of the loss to the nation at one stroke of so much ability and talent. But he failed egregiously. They were all gathered in the colleges of Coimbra and Evora. No seclusion was observed. Everybody was free to visit them from the world outside; and inducements of every kind were held out to them to abandon the Society: family affection, worldly ambition, etc. – but without avail. They had no regular superior, so they elected a fourth-year theologian who had just been ordained a priest. Another was made minister; and a third, master of novices. The house was kept in excellent order; the religious discipline was perfect and the exercises of the community went on with as much regularity as if nothing were happening. Pombal sent commissioner after commissioner to shake the constancy of the young men, but only two of the tempted ones weakened. "Who is their superior?" he asked one day in a rage. The answer was: "Joseph Carvalho – your namesake and relative." On October 20, a letter from the cardinal was read in both houses. He expressed his astonishment that these young Jesuits did not avail themselves of the royal favor to desert; and he warned them that they were not suffering for their faith, and that "their refusal of His Majesty's offer to release them from their vows was not virtuous constancy but seditious obstinacy."

Finally, October 24 was fixed for their departure, and notice was given that they could not expect to go to any civilized land, but would probably be dropped on some desolate island off the African coast. That shook the resolution of two of the band, but the rest stood firm. In the morning, all went to Holy Communion and at an hour before sunset, the word was given to start. They sang a Te Deum and then set out – 130 in all. They were preceded by a troop of cavalry; a line of foot soldiers marched on either side; while here and there torches threw their glare over this grim nocturnal procession. It took them four days to reach Oporto, where they met their brethren from Braganza and Braga. There were only ten from the former place, but sixty soldiers had been detailed to guard them. Indeed, the troopers from Braga had to keep the crowds back with drawn swords, so eager were the people along the road to express their sympathy. At Oporto the young heroes had to witness the desertion of four Professed Fathers; but that did not weaken their resolution. They were all crammed into three small craft, but the weather was too stormy to leave the port; and there they remained a whole week, packed so close together that there was scarcely room to lie side by side. The air became so foul that it was doubtful if they could survive. Even their guards took sick, and, at last, a number of the prisoners were transferred to a fort in the harbor.

At last to the number of 223 they sailed down the Douro. One of them died, and his companions sang the Office of the Dead over him and buried him in the sea. When the ship did not roll too much, Mass was said and they went to Communion. All the exercises that are customary in religious houses were scrupulously performed, and the Church festivals were observed as if they were a community at home. They were quarantined two weeks at Genoa without being permitted to go ashore. Then another scholastic died, and they found that his earthly goods consisted of nothing but a few bits of linen, that must have been foul by this time, besides a discipline and a hair shirt. They cast anchor at Civita Vecchia on February 7, having left inhospitable Portugal in October.

The band from Evora to the number of ninety-eight, of whom only three were priests, had not such a rude experience except in the distress of seeing some deserters, among them two Professed Fathers. The officer in charge of the ship, unlike most of the government employees, was tender and kind to them. How could he have been otherwise? His name was de Britto – the same as that of the Portuguese martyr in India. It meant the loss of his position, perhaps, but what did he care? When they reached Lisbon, the nineteen who had been separated from the first detachment to be kept in jail came aboard, and the little band numbered 115 all told, when the ship hoisted anchor and made for the sea. They reached Civita Vecchia where the two happy troops of valiant young Jesuits met in each others arms. Their number was then 336. They were distributed among the various establishments of Italy, the novices being sent to Sant' Andrea in Rome. Two cardinals and a papal nuncio who were making their retreat in the house at the time insisted on serving them at table, while the Pope sent a message to the General to say: "These young men have reflected great honor on the Society and have shown how well they have been trained."

The fury of Pombal was not yet sated. Not an island of the Atlantic, not a station in Africa or India, not a mission in the depths of the forests of America that was not searched and looted by his commissioners, who ruthlessly expelled the devoted missionaries who were found there. Men venerable for age and acquirements were given over to brutal soldiers who were ordered to shoot them if any attempt at escape was made. They were dragged hundreds of miles through the wildest of regions, over mountains, through raging torrents, amid driving storms; they were starved and had nothing but the bare ground on which to rest; they were searched again and again as if their rags held treasures; were made to answer the roll call twice a day like convicts in jail; and then tossed in the holds of crazy ill-provisioned ships with no place to rest their weary heads, except on a coil of rope or in the filth of the cattle; and when dead, they were to be flung to the sharks. When at last they reached Lisbon they were forbidden to show themselves on deck, lest their fellow-countrymen and their families might be shocked by their degradation. They were then spirited away to the dungeons of St. Julian and Jonquiera to rot, until death relieved them of their sufferings. Those who were not placed in the crowded jails were sent in their rags to find a refuge somewhere outside of their native land.

As has been said, there were two provinces in Portuguese South America – Brazil and Maranhão. In the former, besides the Seminary of Belem, the Society had six colleges and sixty-two residences with a total of 445 members. Orders were given to the whole 445 to assemble at Bahia, Pernambuco and San Sebastian. Everything was seized. At Bahia, the novices were stripped of their habits and sent adrift, though the families of some of them lived in far away Portugal. The rest were confined in a house surrounded by armed troops while the bishop of the city proclaimed that any one who would encourage the victims to persevere in their vocation would be excommunicated. Then, one day, without a moment's notice, all were ordered out of the house and sent to jail in different places. There they remained for the space of three months waiting for the missionaries from the interior to arrive. They came in slowly, for some of them lived eight hundred miles away, and had to tramp all that distance through the forests and over mountain ranges. Before all had made their appearance, however, the first batches were sent across to the mother country to make space. They started on March 16 and reached the Tagus on June 6. Those from Bahia had taken from April to June, and it was fully three months before the convict ship from Pernambuco arrived in port.

All this time the deported religious were kept between decks, and soldiers stood at the gangway with drawn swords to prevent any attempt to go up to get a breath of fresh air. Their food was nothing but vegetables cooked in sea-water, for there was not enough of drinking water even to slake their thirst. The result was that the ship had a cargo of half-dead men when it anchored off Lisbon; but the unfortunate wretches were kept imprisoned there for fifteen days with the port-holes closed. They were then transferred to a Genoese ship and sent to Civita Vecchia. It appears that the Provincial of these Brazilian Jesuits was named Lynch; but strange to say, there is no mention of him in any of the Menologies. The deportation from Pernambuco and San Sebastian were repetitions of this organized brutality; and the same methods were employed at Goa in India, and the other dependencies, such as Macao and China. In the transportations from these posts in the Orient, the ships had to stop at Bahia which had been witness of the first exportations; but the victims in the China ships could learn nothing of what had happened. Twenty-three of them died on one of the journeys from India. It is noted that a Turk at Algiers and a Danish Lutheran sea-captain, had shown the greatest humanity to the victims whose fellow countrymen seemed transformed into savage beasts. The prisoners had been kept in confinement twenty months before they left Goa; and when they arrived at Lisbon on October 18, 1764, they were taken off in long boats at the dead of night, and lodged in the foulest dungeons of the fortress of St. Julian.

But these were not the only victims of Carvalho. There were prisoners from every grade of society, and their number reached the appalling figure of nine thousand. Among them were eminent ecclesiastics, bishops and canons and some of the most distinguished laymen of the kingdom. A description of the prisons in which they were confined for years or till they died has been given to posterity by some of the victims. Father Weld in his "Suppression of the Society in Portugal" quotes extensively from their letters. The jails were six in number: Belem, Almeida, Azeitano, St. George, Jonquiera and St. Julian. They had annexes, also, along the African coasts or on the remote islands of the Atlantic. Belem, the Portuguese name for Bethlehem, so called because it had once been an abbey, was about four miles from Lisbon towards the ocean. It had the distinction of keeping its prisoners behind iron bars, but exposed to the public like wild beasts in a menagerie; so that the public could come and look at them and feed them if so disposed. The Portuguese criminals were given a pittance by the government, to purchase food, but the foreigners had to beg from the spectators for the means to support life. It was admirably contrived to induce insanity.

Jonquiera lay between Belem and Lisbon. The cells were numerous in this place. Moreira, the king's former confessor, and Malagrida were among the inmates. The Marquis de Lorna who was also confined there says "there were nineteen cells, each about seven paces square, and so tightly closed that a light had to be kept burning continually; otherwise they would have been in absolute darkness. When the prisoners were first put in them, the plaster was still wet and yielded to the slightest pressure. The cold was intense. Worst of all for a Catholic country, the sacraments were allowed the prisoners only once a year." The Marquis says that during the sixteen years he spent there "he never heard Mass." In these dungeons there were 221 Jesuits, 88 of whom died in their chains. The Castle of St. Julian stood on the banks of the Tagus and the walls were washed by the tide. In this place, there were 125 Jesuits of all nations; men of high birth, of great virtue and intellectual ability. The cells were situated below the sea-level; and were damp, unventilated, choked with filth and swarming with vermin. Some of the Fathers passed nineteen years in those tombs. The drinking water was putrid; the prisoners' clothes were in rags; often not sufficient for decency; many had no under garments and no shoes; their hair and beards were never cut; the food was scant and of the worst quality, and was often carried off before there was time to eat it. The oil of the single lamp in the cells was so limited that to save it, the wick was reduced to two or three threads. The same conditions prevailed in the other prisons. Meantime the jailers were making money on the supplies supposed to be served to the prisoners. Such was prison life in Portugal during the twenty years of Pombal's administration.

One of the particularly outrageous features of these imprisonments was that Pombal preferred to hold foreigners rather than native Portuguese. The foreigners, having no friends in the country, would not, in all probability, be claimed by their relatives; and as the ministers of nearly all the nations of Europe were of the same mind as himself, he had no fear of political intervention. Thus we find in a letter of Father Kaulen, a German Jesuit, which was published by Christopher de Murr, that in one section of St. Julian, besides fifty-four Portuguese Jesuits, there were thirteen Germans, one Italian, three Frenchmen, two Spaniards, and three Chinese. These Chinese Jesuits must have made curious reflections on the meaning of the term "Christian nations." "There are others in the towers," adds Father Kaulen, "but I cannot find out who they are, or how many, or to what country they belong."

The three Frenchmen, Fathers du Gad and de Ranceau along with Brother Delsart were set free at the demand of Marie Leczinska, the wife of Louis XV; it was through them that Father Kaulen was able to send his letter to the provincial of the Lower Rhine. He himself was probably liberated later by the intervention of Maria Theresa, but there is no record of it. His letter is of great value as he had personal experience of what he writes. His experience was a long one, for he entered the prison in 1759; and this communication to his provincial is dated October 12, 1766. In it he writes: —

"I was taken prisoner by a soldier with a drawn sword and brought to Fort Olreida on the frontier of Portugal. There I was put in a frightful cell filled with rats which got into my bed and ate my food. I could not chase them away, it was so dark. We were twenty Jesuits, each one in a separate cell. During the first four months we were treated with some consideration. After that, they gave us only enough food to keep us from dying of hunger. They took away our breviaries, medals, etc. One of the Fathers resisted so vigorously when they tried to deprive him of his crucifix that they desisted. The sick got no help or medicine.

"After three years they transferred nineteen of us to another place because of a war that had broken out. We travelled across Portugal surrounded by a troop of cavalry, and were brought to Lisbon; and after passing the night in a jail with the worst kind of criminals, we were sent to St. Julian, which is on the seashore. It is a horrible hole, underground, dark and foul. The food is bad, the water swarming with worms. We have half a pound of bread a day. We receive the sacraments only when we are dying. The doctor lives outside but if we fall sick during the night, he is not called. The prison is filled with worms and insects and little animals such as I never saw before. The walls are dripping wet, so that our clothes soon rot. One of the Fathers died and his face was so brilliant that one of the soldiers exclaimed: 'That's the face of a saint.' We are not unhappy, and the three French Fathers who left us envied our lot.

"Very few of us have even the shreds of our soutanes left. Indeed we have scarcely enough clothes for decency. At night a rough covering full of sharp points serves as a blanket; and the straw on which we sleep as well as the blanket that covers us soon become foul, and it is very hard to get them renewed. We are not allowed to speak to any one. The jailor is extremely brutal and seems to make a point of adding to our sufferings; only with the greatest reluctance does he give us what we need. Yet we could be set free in a moment if we abandoned the Society. Some of the Fathers who were at Macao and had undergone all sorts of sufferings at the hands of the pagans, such as prison chains and torture say to us that perhaps God found it better to have them suffer in their own country for nothing, than among idolaters for the Faith.

"We ask the prayers of the Fathers of the province, but not because we lament our condition. On the contrary, we are happy. As for myself, though I would like to see my companions set free, I would not change places with you outside. We wish all our Fathers good health so that they may work courageously for God in Germany to make up for the little glory he receives here in Portugal.

Your Reverence's most humble servant

Lawrence Kaulen,