[CHAPTER XIII]
CONDITIONS BEFORE THE CRASH
State of the Society — The Seven Years War — Political Changes — Rulers of Spain, Portugal, Naples, France and Austria — Febronius — Sentiments of the Hierarchy — Popes Benedict XIV; Clement XIII; Clement XIV.
Just before its suppression, the Society had about 23,000 members. It was divided into forty-two provinces in which there were 24 houses of professed fathers, 669 colleges, 61 novitiates, 335 residences and 273 mission stations. Taking this grand total in detail, there were in Italy 3,622 Jesuits, about one-half of whom were priests. They possessed 178 houses. The provinces of Spain had 2,943 members (1,342 priests) and 158 houses; Portugal, 861 members (384 priests), 49 houses; France, 3,350 members (1,763 priests), 158 houses; Germany, 5,340 members (2,558 priests), 307 houses; Poland, 2,359 members; Flemish Belgium, 542 members (232 priests), 30 houses; French Belgian, 471 members (266 priests), 25 houses; England, 274 members; and Ireland, 28. Their missions were in all parts of the world. In Hindostan, de Nobili, and de Britto's work was being carried on; in Madura, there were forty-seven missionaries. The establishments in Persia extended to Ispahan and counted 400,000 Catholics. Syria, the Levant and the Maronites were also being looked after. Although Christianity had been crushed as early as 1644, the name of the province of Japan was preserved, and in 1760 it counted fifty-seven members. There were fifty-four Portuguese Fathers attached to China at the time of the Suppression, and an independent French mission had been organized at Pekin with twenty-three members mostly priests. In South America, the whole territory had been divided into missions, and there were 445 Jesuits in Brazil, with 146 in the vice-province of Maranhão. The Paraguay province contained 564 members of whom 385 were priests; they had 113,716 Indians in their care. In Mexico, which included Lower California, there were 572 Jesuits, who were devoting themselves to 122,000 Indians. New Granada had 193 missionaries; Chili had 242; Peru, 526; and Ecuador, 209.
In the United States, they were necessarily very few, on account of political conditions. At the time of the Suppression, they numbered only nine, two of whom Robert Molyneux and John Bolton survived until the complete restoration of the Society. The French had missions in Guiana, Hayti and Martinique; and in Canada, the work inaugurated by Brébeuf among the Hurons, was kept up among the Iroquois, Algonquins, Abenakis, Crees, Ottawas, Miamis and other tribes in Illinois, Alabama and Lower Mississippi. At the time of the Suppression there were fifty-five Jesuits in Canada and Louisiana.
This world-wide activity synchronized with the Seven Years War, which was to change the face of the earth politically and religiously. The unscrupulous energy of Lord Clive had, previous to the outbreak of hostilities, given Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and the Carnatic to England. Before war had been proclaimed, Boscawen, who was sent to Canada, had captured two French warships and the feeble protest of France was answered by the seizure of three hundred other vessels, manned by 10,000 seamen and carrying cargoes estimated to be worth 30,000,000 francs. In 1757 Frederick the Great won the battle of Rosbach against the French; and in the same year triumphed over the imperial forces. In 1759 he defeated the Russians, only to meet similar reverses in turn; but in 1760 when all seemed lost, Russia withdrew from the fight and became Frederick's friend. In 1758 France scored some victories in Germany, but in 1762 was completely crushed and consented to what a French historian describes as "a shameful peace." Quebec fell in 1759, and Vaudreuil capitulated at Montreal in 1760.
Peace was finally made by the treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg in 1763, in virtue of which, France surrendered all her conquests of German territory as well as the Island of Minorca. In North America, she gave up Canada with its 60,000 French inhabitants. She also lost the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, the valley of the Ohio, the left bank of the Mississippi, four islands in the West Indies, and her African trading-post of Senegal. In return, she received the Islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Marie-Galande, Désirade and St. Lucia. In Asia, she was granted Pondicherry, Chandernagor and other places, but was prohibited from fortifying them. Spain yielded Florida and Pensacola Bay to England, in order to recover Cuba and the Philippines; and after a while, France made her a present of Louisiana. Thus, New France was completely effaced from the map of America; and France proper, while losing almost all her other colonial possessions, saw her maritime power, her military prestige and her political importance disappear. She was now only in the second grade among the nations. On the same level stood Spain, while Portugal had long since ceased to count. Austria had declined and Protestant England and Prussia ruled, while schismatic Russia was looming up in the North.
In Spain, Charles III had succeeded to the throne in 1759. He had previously been King of Naples, where he had reigned not without honor. It is true he made the mistake of accepting Choiseul's "Family Compact" which united the fortunes of Spain with those of the degenerate Bourbons, but he is nevertheless credited with being paternal in his administrations and virtuous in his private life. Unfortunately while in Naples, he had chosen as his minister of finance, the Marquis de Tanucci, a Tuscan who had at an early stage inaugurated a contest with the Holy See on the right of asylum. "But one seeks in vain anything on which to build the exalted reputation which Tanucci enjoyed during life and which clung to him even after death. His financial system was false; for instead of encouraging the arts, perfecting agriculture, building roads, opening canals, establishing manufactures in the fertile country over which he ruled, he did nothing but make it bristle with custom-houses. Men of science, jurists, archæologists, literary and other distinguished men, he left in prison or allowed to starve" (Biographie universelle).
Tanucci's moral character may be inferred from the fact that when entrusted with the regency at Naples, he purposely neglected the education of the crown prince, keeping him aloof from political life, and giving him every opportunity to indulge his passions. He declared war against the Holy See; he restricted the ancient rights of the nuncios; diminished the number of bishoprics; suppressed seventy-eight monasteries; named one of his henchmen Archbishop of Naples, and forbade a ceremonial homage to be paid to the Pope which had been in use ever since the time of Charles of Anjou. He governed the Two Sicilies for fifty years and took with him to the grave the execration of the nobles and the hatred of the people of the Two Kingdoms. Duclos said of him "he was of all the men I ever knew the least fitted to govern."
The Spanish ministers were very numerous and very bad. There was Wall, whom Schoell described as Irish, whereas Ranke deprives him of that distinction by classing him among the political atheists of that time. Of Squillace, little is said except that he was a Neapolitan and probably belonged to one of the branches of the Borgia family. He is the individual whose legislation caused a burlesque disturbance in Madrid about cloaks and sombreros. The Jesuits were falsely accused of being the instigators of the riot and suffered for it in consequence. Finally, after many changes, there came the saturnine and self-sufficient Aranda, "who," says Schoell, "sniffed with pleasure the incense which the French Encyclopedists burned on his altar, and whose greatest glory was to be rated as one of the enemies of the altar and the throne." A former minister of Ferdinand V with the ominous title of the Duke of Alva was his intimate and shared his many schemes in fomenting anti-Jesuitism. Aranda is described as follows, by the Marquis de Langle in his "Voyage en Espagne" (I, 27): "He is the only Spaniard of our time whose name posterity can inscribe on its tablets. He is the man who wanted to cut in the façade of every temple and unite on the same shield the names of Luther, Calvin, Mahomet, William Penn and Jesus Christ; and to proclaim from the frontiers of Navarre to the straits of Cadiz, that Torquemada, Ferdinand and Isabella were blasphemers. He sold altar-furniture, crucifixes and candelabra for bridges, wine-shops and public roads."