priests, lay-brothers, or coadjutors who had taken the first vow, and novices who refused to abandon the society, together with sequestration of their estates.[1] The order was confirmed by the pragmatic sanction of April 2d, published the same day, making known the royal action in the premises, and that the exiled would be allowed, out of the income of the suppressed society’s property, a yearly pension of one hundred pesos to each ordained priest, and ninety pesos to each lay-brother, the foreign born and those of immoral conduct being excepted. It was strictly forbidden them to write anything savoring of rebellion against the royal act, under penalty, in the event of violation of that clause, if it were only by a single member, of the forfeiture of the pensions of all his brethren. Nor was this all. Any Jesuit who should, without the king’s express leave, return to the Spanish dominions under any pretext whatsoever, even that of having resigned from the society and being absolved of its vows, would be treated as a prescript, incurring if a layman the penalty of death, and if a priest that of confinement, at the option of the ordinaries.[2]
- ↑ Subsequent decrees prescribed the mode of disposing of the property. Beleña, Recop., i. pt. iii. 336-40.
- ↑ Aiders and abettors, and persons knowing of such arrivals who failed to make them known to the authorities, incurred the penalties prescribed in the
extinguished the order, permitting its members to reside in France subject to the ordinaries, and submissive to the laws of the kingdom, though later they were forced to quit the country. The suppression was the result, as the partisans of the Jesuits alleged, of palace intrigues. Madame de Pompadour, the king’s mistress, entertained a great animosity to the order, because of the opposition of one or more of its members to her residence at court, and brought her influence to bear upon the king, the minister, duc de Choiseul, and other men, all affliated in the new school of philosophers, to accomplish the ruin of the society of Jesus. It is not my purpose, it being not within the scope of this work, to enter into a full disquisition of the actual causes that prompted the policy of these two prominent sons of the Roman church, the kings of France and Portugal, nor into the history of their negotiations on the subject with the head of the church. The question is fully treated by a number of writers, to whom I must refer the reader. Among them may be mentioned: Expulsion des Jesuites; Encycloæadia Britannica; Dictionnaire de la Conversation; Bustamante, Suplem., in Cavo, Tree Siglos; Id., Expatriacion, in Alegre, Hist. Comp. Jesus; Beaufort, Histoire des Papes; Alaman, Disertaciones; Mendo, Crísis Comp. Jesus (i.-xiii.), and 1-284.
