“Some of the expelled [Jesuits] did not content themselves with removing [from Corsica] to the States of the Church and the Italian cities, but ventured to make their appearance in Barcelona and Gerona; and when the Council committee had notice of this fact they assembled, and decided that the observance of the pragmatic sanction [for the expulsion] ought to be decreed, imposing the penalty of death on the secular lay-brothers, and perpetual confinement on those ordained in sacris.” (Danvila, op. cit., iii, pp. 114, 115, 117.) The “suspension” referred to above evidently applies to certain persons who returned to secular life and occupations, some coadjutors even marrying wives. [↑]
[7] It has been seen (note 135, ante) that the Jesuits were bitter enemies of the visitor Palafox; and the proposal to canonize him, which was made by Carlos III to the pope in 1760, aroused the strong opposition of that order. His letters to the pope in 1647 and 1649 had led to papal decrees enforcing the episcopal authority against the encroachments of the Jesuits, which, after attempting to oppose them, the latter were finally compelled to obey. It was not until 1694 that the ecclesiastical authorities began to examine the writings of Palafox; and it appears that his letter of 1649 was prohibited in the Index expurgatorius in 1707 and 1747, and that by an edict of the Inquisition of May 13, 1759 certain letters attributed to him were seized and publicly burned by the hangman—not because there was in them anything deserving theological censure, but on merely technical charges of having been published without the necessary “red tape” prescribed in such cases, and “in order to renew controversies already finished, with the sole object of calumniating and discrediting among the faithful the order of the Society of Jesus, against the intention and good fame of that prelate to whom they were attributed.” The Spanish rulers Felipe V and Fernando VI, and later Carlos III, had all at various times made efforts to have Palafox’s writings examined by the Roman Congregation of Rites; for they regarded him as one of the defenders of the royal right of patronage in America. This was finally accomplished, the Congregation declaring unanimously that they found therein nothing contrary to the faith or to good morals, or to sound doctrine; and that the process for his beatification might now be undertaken. The Pope approved this finding, on December 9, 1760, and on February 5 following the supreme Inquisition of Spain published a decree annulling the above-mentioned prohibitions of his writings. It was thereupon made known to the Spanish ministers that in the Council of the Indias no document remained which favored the cause of Palafox; the records had been cut out and carried away. This mutilation was ascribed to the Jesuits. The beatification of Palafox was approved by the Congregation of Rites, and the pope confirmed this on September 6, 1766; but its execution forthwith encountered delays, showing that his enemies in Rome were the same whom he had pointed out in his letter of 1649. (Danvila, op. cit., ii, pp. 255–270.) [↑]
[8] This decree, “if we view the occasion of its publication, and the terms in which it is expressed, accepted in the name of the court of Roma the war to which all the Catholic nations were provoking it; and accepted that war without sufficient power to defend itself. The attitude of France, España, Portugal, Naples, and Parma, and later of Vienna, was the result of a new policy which strove to limit the power of the pontificate and to take away its temporal power; and the latter ought not to have begun hostilities without weighing well the consequences, and, above all, without estimating the forces on which it might depend for the combat. The monitory decree of Parma, as the brief of January 30 is called, in which his Holiness protested against all the measures which the Catholic courts were putting into execution, was the origin and cause of the expulsion of the Jesuits by the duchies of Parma and Plasencia; of the prohibition of the circulation in the Catholic states of the bull In cœna Domini and of obedience to it; of the reëstablishment in those states of the pase regio, which had been suspended in España since 1763; of barring from circulation the monitory decree, because it was considered hostile to the regalías of the crown and to the rights of the sovereigns; of the publication by order of the Council, and at the cost of the Spanish government, of the ‘Imperial judgment,’ in which the rights of the Holy See were limited exclusively to the faith, to matters of dogma, and to purely spiritual matters; of the reprisals with which the pope was threatened if he did not revoke the monitory decree; of the occupation of Benevento and Pontecorbo (which was an actual outbreak of hostilities), and the attempt to do the same with Castro and Ronciglione; of a mutual understanding between all the courts hostile to the Holy See; and of the establishment of a general agreement that the extinction of the Society of Jesus would be an indispensable condition for the continuance of correspondence with the court of Roma. The monitory decree of January 30 will signify, in the view of history, the termination of the secular dispute which Roma kept up during two centuries; the triumph of a new policy; and the menace against the temporal power of the popes, which constituted the essential part of the controversy. With the monitory decree, Roma was conquered, and the revolution made rapid advance.” (Danvila, op. cit., iii, pp. 228–230.) [↑]
[9] Danvila’s researches in the archives of Simancas brought to light the opinions of the Spanish prelates on the expulsion of the Jesuits from that country; out of sixty, forty-six approved the suppression of the Jesuit order, eight were opposed to it, and six excused themselves from expressing their opinions. (Danvila, op. cit., iii, pp. 428, 429.) [↑]
[10] Among the charges made in this paper is the following: “From Filipinas comes evidence of not only their predictions against the government, but the illicit communication of their provincial with the English commander during the occupation of Manila.” [↑]
[11] A note by Crétineau-Joly (p. 237) declares that Alva, when on his death-bed, confessed to Felipe Bertram, bishop of Salamanca, the general of the Inquisition, that he “was one of the authors of the uprising of 1766, having incited it in hatred to the Jesuits, and in order to cause it to be imputed to them. He also avowed that he had composed a great part of the supposed letter by the general of the Jesuits against the king of Spain.” A Protestant writer is cited as saying that Alva made this same declaration to Carlos III, in writing. [↑]
[12] Spanish, capas y sombreros; an edict had been issued forbidding these to be worn by the inhabitants of Madrid. [↑]
[13] Alluding to accusations against the personal character of Isabel Farnese, Carlos’s mother and wife of Felipe V. [↑]
[14] “Don Joseph Raon was one of the most shrewd of the governors of Manila in enriching himself without causing any one to complain; but he did nothing whatever for the service of the king. In 1768, Manila was at the same point where the English left it in 1763, without cannon or gunpowder, the troops ill-fed and ill-paid.” (Le Gentil, Voyage, ii, p. 167.) It will be remembered that the French scientist was in Manila at the same time when Raón was. [↑]
[15] In Política de España en Filipinas, 1894, pp. 175, 176, Retana describes a collection of documents which he had recently acquired, relating to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the islands. Among these were the official expedientes, and a series which contained the inventories of all the property which the Jesuits possessed. The list of the papers and letters found in the college of San Ignacio formed a folio volume of more than 600 pages. (There was also a list of all the books which the Jesuits kept for sale. Among these were more than 200 copies of Noceda’s Diccionario, the first edition, of which copies are now considered exceedingly rare. “In this inventory appear books of which I believe not a single copy is now in existence.”) The collection thus acquired by Retana contained original letters from Anda and Santa Justa to Conde de Aranda, and others by the Jesuit Clain, Camacho, Raón, Anda, Basco, and other noted persons. At the time, according to Montero y Vidal (Hist. de Filipinas, ii, p. 222) this collection, which contained more than 20,000 folios, was deposited in the Colegio de Agustinos at Valladolid. [↑]