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The Expulsion of The Jesuits From Spain and Spanish America In 1767 in Light of Eighteenth-Century Regalism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Magnus Mörner
Magnus Mörner*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York, N. Y.
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Extract

When Expelling the Jesuits from his realm in 1767, Charles III of Spain explained this extraordinary measure in only vague and mysterious terms. He said he was “moved by weighty reasons, conscious of his duty to uphold obedience, tranquility and justice among his people, and (was also acting) for other urgent, just, and compelling causes, which he was locking away in his royal breast.” Furthermore, the first part of the report of the committee preparing the expulsion, the Extraordinary Council of Castile, a report which must have contained the motivation, has been missing since at least 1815. The whole history of the expulsion has thus been shrouded in an air of mystery. Historians have not been satisfied with pointing to possible Jesuit implication in the so-called “Hat and Cloak Riots ” of 1766, which caused the Extraordinary Council to be set up to undertake the inquiry that less than a year later produced the royal decision to expel the Jesuits. Instead, they have suggested other explanations according to their gift of imagination and their religio-political orientation. Several theories of “conspiracy ” have been advanced. Either the Freemasons, impious Voltairians or the manteistas, that is, intellectuals of poor background, supposedly resentful of the snobbism of Jesuit education, have been held responsible for such “conspiracies ” against the Jesuits. Important documentation from the Extraordinary Council, which almost compensates for the lost piece, has been easily available since the 1890’s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 156 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2004

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Footnotes

*

Paper read at the A. H. A. meeting in Washington in December, 1964.

References

1 In y Collado, Manuel Danvila, Reinado de Carlos III, vol. III (Madrid, 1894)Google Scholar, appendix. For the historical discussion see Mörner, Magnus (ed.), The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

2 Herr, Richard, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, N. J., 1958)Google Scholar; Sarrailh, J., L’Espagne eclairée de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1954)Google Scholar; Wilckens, R. Krebs, El pensamiento histórico, político y económico del Conde de Campomanes (Santiago de Chile, 1960).Google Scholar

3 Casado, V. Rodríguez, “Iglesia y estado en el reinado de Carlos III,” Estudios Americanos, vol. I (Sevilla, 1948), pp. 5–57 Google Scholar, tries to classify them ideologically but in very few words.

4 Egaña, Antonio de, La teoría del Regio Vicariato Español en Indias (Rome, 1958); pp. 256–257.Google Scholar

5 Mecham, J.L., Church and State in Latin America (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1934), p. 30.Google Scholar

6 Danvila, op. cit., p. 673.

7 Borah, W., “The Tithe Collection in the Bishopric of Oaxaca, 1601-1867,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 29 (Durham, N. C., 1949), p. 505.Google Scholar

8 Danvila, op. cit., p. 652.

9 Aspurz, L. de, La portación extranjera a als misiones españolas del Patronato Regio (Madrid, 1946)Google Scholar. See also Batllori, M.’s viewpoints in Studies Presented at the Conference of the History of Religion in the New World During Colonial Times (Washington, 1958), pp. 96–100.Google Scholar

10 Aspurz, op. cit., p. 252. The decree was issued on January 11th, 1760. Pablo Pastells & Mateos, F., Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Provincia del Paraguay …, vol. 8: 2 (Madrid, 1949), p. 893.Google Scholar

11 Casado, V. Rodríguez, “Notas sobre las relaciones de la Iglesia y el estado en Indias en el reinado de Carlos III,” Revista de Indias, vol. 11 (Madrid, 1951), pp. 89–109.Google Scholar

12 Regla, J. & Alcolea, S., Historia de la cultura española. El siglo XVIII (Barcelona, 1957), p. 23 Google Scholar, call the expulsion “primer desenlace de la lucha entre la Iglesia y el Estado por la educación de la juventud.” See also the comment of Campomanes and Moñino on the Portuguese educational reform, Danvila, op. cit., p. 644. The Spanish reform is highlighted in Góngora, Mario, “Estudios sobre el Galicanismo y la Ilustración católica en América Española,” Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografia, no. 125 (Santiago, 1957), pp. 96–151.Google Scholar

13 A letter of Count Aranda of April 13th, 1767 reproduced in Pastells & Mateos, op. cit., pp. 1244-1247, is rather explicit in this regard. According to a Jesuit historian, W.E. Shiels, it was to “stabilize ” its new, “frankly antipapal ” attitude that the Crown “executed three travesties of patronal right: the acceptance of the Ribadeneyra doctrine on the patronage, the extinction of one of its chief auxiliaries in the field (= the Jesuits), and the calling of the famous Fourth Provincial Council of Mexico.” King and Church: the Rise and Fall of the Patronato Real (Chicago, 1961), p. 245.

14 This is well stated by R. Herr and R. Krebs Wilckens. According to V. Rodriguez Casado (“Iglesia y estado …”, p. 21), “La diferencia más importante entre el regalismo del reinado de Carlos III y el de los siglos anteriores, no está en la doctrina, sino en las personas que lo llevan a la practica.” Unfortunately, Hera, A. de la, El regalismo borbónico en su proyección indiana (Madrid, 1963)Google Scholar, gives a rather vague and confused account of the subject.

15 Pastor, Ludwig v., Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, vol. 16 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1931), p. 517 ff.Google Scholar

16 Herr, op. cit., pp. 26 f. A.J. Clément, , Journal de correspondances et de voyage d’Italie et d’Espagne pour la paix de l’église en 1758, 1768 et 1769, vol. II (Paris, 1802), p. 31 Google Scholar. This French cleric states that he received a letter from the Bishop of Barcelona in early 1768 informing him that “Febronius se répandoit en Espagne, il étoit l’ouvrage à la mode, et l’inquisition le dissimuloit.”

17 See particularly Correspondencia reservada e inédita del P. Francisco de Rávago, confesor de Fernando VI publ, con una introd., por C. Pérez Bustamante (Madrid, 1936).

18 Egaña, op. cit., pp. 259-262.

19 Herr, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

20 Danvila, op. cit., p. 653.

21 Danvila, op. cit., p. 659.

22 Pastor, op. cit., pp. 709-715.

23 V. Rodríguez Casado states that “a partir de este momento, en que D. Carlos siente el poderoso influjo de la Compañía en Roma y España, nace el deseo de acabar con su poder ” (“Iglesia y estado …”, p. 34).

24 Danvila, op. cit., p. 654. Pastells & Mateos, op. cit., pp. XXXIX-XL (with references to the documents).

25 Danvila, op. cit., pp. 631-632.

28 R. Krebs may be overstating the case when he concludes (op. cit., p. 155): “La expulsión de los jesuitas … tuvo su orígen en el antagonismo entre el nacionalismo eclesiastico regalista y el teocratismo papal.”

27 Populism or Suarecism, studied in this connection especially by the Argentine Jesuit historian Guillermo Furlong in several works, is, of course, related with the issue of regalism. “Quien leerá con templanza el modo ultrajante con que el P. Suarez impugna las Regalías Temporales de los Reyes en la apología adversus Regem Angliae?,” exclaim Campomanes and Moñino in their report of November 26th, 1767 (Danvila, op. cit., p. 643). See also Agesta, L. Sánchez, El pensamiento político del despotismo ilustrado (Madrid, 1953), pp. 108–113 Google Scholar. The principal writers of this school are analysed by Hamilton, B., Political Thought in. Sixteenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar

28 A historian like V. Rodríguez Casado has made important contributions to the literature on the subject. But his feeling that “El regalismo fue el gran pecado de Ia historia moderna de España ” (“Iglesia y estado …”, p. 6) and his theory of “conspiracy ” to explain the expulsion of the Jesuits (p. 44 ff.) seem to indicate that he is not unbiased.