The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

Apart from this governing authority, universal equality prevailed. The principles of socialism or communism—very much as now understood—governed all the Reductions. Everything necessary to the material comfort and prosperity of the Indians was in common. Each family had a portion of land set apart for cultivation. They also learned trades, and many of them, both men and women, became experts. But the earnings of the whole were deposited in common storehouses at each Reduction, and distributed by the Jesuits in such portions to each individual as necessity required. "Even meat was portioned from the public slaughter-houses in the same way." The surplus produce remaining after these distributions was sent to Europe, and sold or exchanged for wares and merchandise, solely at the discretion of the Jesuits. Everything was conducted in obedience to them, and nothing contrary to their orders was tolerated. Rigid rules of conduct and hours of labor were prescribed, and the violators of them were subject to corporal punishment. Houses of worship, colleges, and palatial residences for the Jesuit fathers, were built by the common labor and at the expense of the common treasury. Suffrage was universal; but "the sanction of the Jesuits was necessary to the validity of the election." In fact, says Nicolini, "the Jesuits substituted themselves for the State or community"[100]—a fact which fully establishes the monarchical and theocratic character of the Government.

In order to teach the confiding Indians that obedience to authority was their chiefest duty, they were subjected to rules of conduct and intercourse which were enforced with the strictest severity. They were watched in everything, the searching eyes of the Jesuits being continually upon them. They constituted, in fact, a state of society reaching the Jesuit ideal completely; that is, docile, tractable, submissive, obedient, without the least real semblance of manhood. Having thus completed their subjugation, energetic measures were adopted to render any change in their condition impossible. For this purpose care was taken to exclude all other than Jesuit influences, and to sow the seeds of disaffection towards everything European, the object being to surround them with a high wall of ignorance and superstition, which no European influences could overleap, and within which their authority would be unbounded. They were instructed that the Spaniards and the Portuguese were their enemies, that the ecclesiastics and monkish missionaries sent over by the Church were unworthy of obedience or imitation, and that the only true religion was that which emanated from their society and had their approval. If these simple-minded people were taught anything about the Church, it was with the view of convincing them that the Jesuits represented all its power, authority, and virtue, and that whatsoever did not conform to their teachings was sinful and heretical. If they were told anything about the pope, it was to represent him as inferior to their general, who was to be regarded by them as the only infallible representative of God upon earth. That all other ideas should be excluded from their minds, they were not permitted to hold any intercourse whatsoever with Europeans; for fear, undoubtedly, they might hear that there was a Church at Rome, and a pope higher than their general. They were not allowed to speak any language but their own, so as to render it impossible to acquire any ideas or opinions except such as could be expressed by means of its limited number of inexpressive words; that is, to keep them entirely and exclusively under Jesuit influences. To sum up the whole, without further detail, the Indians were regarded as minors under guardianship, and in this condition they remained for one hundred and fifty years, without the possibility of social and national development. They were saved, it is true, from the miseries of Portuguese slavery, but kept in such a condition of inferiority and vassalage as unfitted them for independent citizenship. Their limbs were unchained; but their minds were "cabined, cribbed, confined," within bounds too narrow for matured thought, sentiment, or reason.

It would not be fair to say that the first Jesuit missionaries to Paraguay may not have been animated by the desire to improve the condition of the Indians, or to withhold from them the meed of praise justly due for the humanity of their motives. It is undoubtedly true, as already intimated, that they did shield them from many of the cruelties to which they had been subjected under the Spanish and the Portuguese adventurers, who overran large portions of South America in the search after wealth. But it can not be too indelibly impressed upon our minds, in this age, that they acted in strict obedience to the Jesuit system, which permitted no departure from absolute monarchism, and centered all the duties of citizenship in obedience to themselves as the sole representatives of the only authority that was or could be legitimate. And not only did their strict adherence to their system make it necessary for them to hold the Indians in subjugation and treat them as inferior subjects, but it involved them, at last, in collisions with the Spaniards and Portuguese, and obliged them to treat the latter especially as enemies, and to impress this fact upon the minds of the whole Indian population. The consequence of this was to create an independent and rebellious Government within the Portuguese dominions, which necessarily brought the Jesuits in conflict with the legitimate authority of the Portuguese Government. The Jesuits foresaw this, and prepared for it. It is a fair inference from all the contemporaneous facts that they desired it. At all events they subjected the Indians at the Reductions to military training and discipline, so as to be prepared for such emergencies as might arise out of their relations with both the Spaniards and the Portuguese. One would suppose that in a Government so far separated from the rest of the world, and governed by those who professed to be laboring alone for "the greater glory of God," the arts of peace would be chiefly, if not exclusively, cultivated. But the successors of the first Jesuit missionaries thought otherwise. Consequently, besides refusing to allow the Indians any intercourse with the Europeans, they would not permit them even to leave the Reductions without permission, or to receive any impressions except those emanating from themselves, or to do anything not dictated by them. The result was what they designed, that the Indians came to look upon all Europeans, whether ecclesiastic or lay, as enemies, and the Jesuit as their only friends. They readily engaged, therefore, in the manufacture of arms and ammunition, and submitted to military discipline until they became a formidable army, subject, of course, to the command of their Jesuit superiors. The sequel of Jesuit history proves that in all this they were unconsciously creating an antagonism which, in the end, overwhelmed them.

A violent feud sprang up between the Jesuits and the Franciscan monks, which undoubtedly arose out of the claim of superiority and exclusiveness set up and persisted in by the former. It may well be inferred that the Jesuits were chiefly to blame for this feud, for the reason that the Franciscans retained the confidence of the Church authorities, and the Jesuits did not. At all events, however, they were in open enmity with each other, and prosecuted their controversy with an exceeding degree of bitterness upon both sides. A distinguished citizen of the United States, who represented this country as Minister to Paraguay, alluding to this fact, says: "The Franciscan priests in the capital regarded them [the Jesuits] with envy, suspicion, and jealousy. These last fomented the animosity of the people against them, so that Government, priests, and people regarded with favor, rather than otherwise, the destruction of the missions, and the expulsion of their founders."[101] Notwithstanding these hostile relations, however, between the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and the disturbed condition of affairs existing between the former and the Portuguese authorities, neither the pope nor the King of Spain withdrew their patronage entirely from the Jesuits for some years, and not until it was made manifest that they had become an independent power, which might, if not checked, result in complications injurious alike to the Church and the State. But the time arrived, after a while, when it became necessary to impose severe restraints upon their ambition, and to teach them that neither the powers of Church nor State were concentrated in their hands. They were required to learn—what they had seemed not before to have been conscious of—that the authority they exercised in Paraguay was usurped, and that if they desired to continue there as a society, they must submit to be held in proper subordination. Being unable or unwilling to realize this, they invited results which they manifestly had not anticipated.

When the protracted controversy between Spain and Portugal, about the boundaries of their respective possessions in South America, reached an adjustment, it furnished an occasion for testing the obedience of the Jesuits to royal authority. The two Governments, after the usual delay in such matters, came to an amicable understanding, and arranged the boundaries to their mutual satisfaction. It placed a portion of the Jesuit missions under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese, which they had supposed to belong to Spain. The Jesuits refused to submit to this, and inaugurated the necessary measures to resist it, being determined, if they could prevent it, not to submit to the dominion of Portugal. Their preference for Spain was because of the fact that the king of that country was more favorably inclined to them than the Portuguese king. But the history of the controversy justifies the belief that they would not even have submitted to the former unresistingly, inasmuch as it had undoubtedly become their fixed purpose to retain the independence they had long labored to establish, by maintaining their theocratic form of government. They had been so accustomed to autocratic rule over the natives, that they could not become reconciled to the idea of surrendering it to any earthly power. In this instance, however, they encountered an adversary of whose courage and capacity they had not the least conception, and whom they found, in a brief period, capable of inflicting a death-blow upon the society. This was Sebastian Cavalho, Marquis of Pombal, who was the chief counselor of the Portuguese king.

Cavalho—better known as Pombal—and the King of Portugal, were both faithful members of the Roman Church, and conducted the Government in obedience to its requirements. But neither of them was disposed to submit to the dictation of the Jesuits of Paraguay with regard to the question of boundary—which was entirely political—or submit to their rebellion against legitimate authority. Such a question did not admit of compromise or equivocation. It presented a vital issue they could neither avoid nor postpone, without endangering the Government and forfeiting their own self-respect. Consequently, they inaugurated prompt and energetic measures to suppress the threatened insurrection of the Jesuits before it should be permitted to ripen into open and armed resistance. From that time forward the controversy constantly increased in violence. The intense hatred of Pombal by the Jesuits has colored their opinions to such an extent that they deny to him either talents or merit, and, inasmuch as they charge all the ensuing results to him, he is pictured by them more as a monster of iniquity than as a statesman of acknowledged ability. All this, however, should count for nothing in deciding the real merits of the controversy. The whole matter is resolved into this simple proposition—that it was the duty of the Government to vindicate and maintain its own authority in the face of Jesuit opposition. It had nothing to do with the Church, nor the Church with it. It did not involve any question of faith, but was confined solely and entirely to secular and temporal affairs. And if, under these circumstances, Pombal had quietly permitted the Jesuits to defy the Government and consummate their object by successful rebellion against its authority, he would have won from Jesuit pens the brightest and most glowing praise, but his name would have gone into history as the betrayer of his country.

With the foregoing facts impressed upon his mind, the reader will be prepared to appreciate the subsequent events which led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the Roman Catholic nations of Europe, and finally to the suppression and abolition of the society, as the only means of defense against its exactions and enormities.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese Dominions. By the Rev. Alfred Weld, "of the Society of Jesus." London, 1877. Page 24.