In Our Time - The Jesuits

Episode Date: January 18, 2007

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order of priests who became known as “the school masters of Europe”. Founded in the 16th century by the soldier Ignatius Loyola, they became a major force throughout the world, from China to South America. “Give us a boy and we will return you a man, a citizen of his country and a child of God”, they declared. By the 17th century there were more than 500 schools established across Europe. Their ideas about a standardised curriculum and teaching became the basis for many education systems today.They were also among the greatest patrons of art in early modern Europe, using murals and theatre to get their message across. To their enemies they were a sinister collective whose influence reached into the courts of kings. Their wealth and their adaptability to local customs abroad provoked suspicion, prompting their eventual suppression in the late 18th century. They were re-established in 1814 and now have more than twenty thousand members.So why was education so important to the Jesuit movement? How much influence did they really have in the courts and colonies of Europe? And were they really at the heart of conspiracies to murder kings?With Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester; Simon Ditchfield, Reader in History at the University of York; Dame Olwen Hufton, Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, today the Jesuits, the Catholic religious order of priests who became known as the Schoolmasters of Europe, founded in the 16th century by the Basque soldier Ignatius Loyler.

They became a major force throughout the world from China to South. America. Give us a boy and we will return you a man, they said, a citizen of his country and a child of God. By the 17th century, there were more than, there were more than 500 schools established across Europe. Their ideas about a standardized curriculum and teaching became the basis for many education systems today. They were also among the greatest patrons of art in the early modern Europe, using murals and theatre to get their message across. More surprisingly, they played an important part in the Enlightenment. However, their alleged influence over monarchs and their wealth and their adaptability to local customs abroad

provoked envy and suspicion, prompting their eventual suppression in the late 18th century. They were re-established in 1814 and now have more than 20,000 members. So why was education so important to the Jesuit movement? How much influenced they really have in the courts of Europe and in the colonies, and were they really at the heart of conspiracies to murder kings? Joining me to discuss the Jesuits are Nigel Ashton, reader in early modern history at the University of Leicester, Dame Orwin Houghton, Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, Oxford,

and Simon Ditchfield, reader in history at the University of York. Nigel Ashton, can you tell us, can you say, as a set the scene for us in about the 1530s when the Jesuits began to come into me in? Could the Jesuits, for example, would be seen as a response to the Reformation? I think in many respects, yes, they can. They can be seen as part of an attempt by the Catholic Church to come to terms with what must be described as meltdown in the context of the 1530s. The church is facing a threat from two particular areas, the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean and in eastern and central Europe,

but above all from Lutheranism and the Protestant sects that it spawned, such as Anabaptism, a response is required, a package of measures is required, and the Jesuits are a very important dimension of that. this is in the air before, as it were, Loyola came on the scene at all. I suppose the English dimension was quite big there too. England had been a great prize for them. I mean, Henry the 8th was called Defender of the Faith by the Pope in just before 1520, wasn't he? Absolutely. Yes, England is a very important dimension of the whole.

Of course, the divorce proceedings are going on in the late 1520s and very early 1530s. That's proving something of a distraction for Pope Clement the 7th. And he's taking his eye off the ball in some respect. many scholars would argue. The 1530s, however, sees the accession of a new pontiff, Paul the 3rd in 1534, and he proves rather quicker of the mark in trying to get the church in a position to respond to the challenges it faces across the whole of Europe. Among those is a reform of the religious orders. New orders are founded at this time, the Ursulins and the Barnabites, but of course it's the Society of Jesus that we're interested in this morning.

So in a sense, it's come the man come the moment. But how did Loyal, Ignatius Loyola, come to be such a seriously engaged and important Roman Catholic? Roman Catholic. He started off as a soldier. He started off as a soldier. He's very badly wounded at the siege of Pamplona in 1521. He has his leg reset twice. It gives him plenty of time to think, I imagine. And to undertake a series of profound meditation.

and to embark upon a kind of personal spiritual quest, which takes him to the Middle East in the 1520s. Should he be engaged in converting the Muslims? That's one of the projects that occurs to him. But no, he decides to go to Paris, a centre of humanist learning in the late 20s. He meets a lot of fellow-minded, fellow-minded, restless spirits.

And together in 1534, they take monastic vows, but without actually becoming monks themselves. One of their principal concerns is that they should be engaged in a task of spiritual renewal. But let's just concentrate on Loyla for a moment. He had independent means. Can you give us some more of his background? He's been a soldier. We know that.

He'd been a soldier. We know that. He'd been converted, already a Christian, but converted to being full-time evangelical Catholic. But what more about his background? Well, fairly like so many of his time, interested in chivalry. ideals and how those could be translated into practical action in the context of the 1520s, working for the church. But engaged too in this personal spiritual renewal, purification and trying to find the best way

of putting himself in the service of the church. A man with a personal quest driven, looking for a sense of how he can respond in the troubled context of the 20s and 30s. And some independent major to know. independent means coming from a nightly background with cash in his pocket. Which helped him to help his friends. Absolutely, yes. Simon Ditchfield, his loyalist early work attracted the attention of the Inquisition,

which seems... What was he doing that they were so worried about when he was a young man? This is before the order has been established, really. Well, I think one has to take into consideration here very much the Iberian context. I mean, it was the Spanish Inquisition that were interested in him, and the Spanish Inquisition were founded before the Reformation

to deal with a particular peculiar problem of the Iberian Peninsula, which is to say the consequences of the forced conversion of the Jewish and Moorish populations, known respectively as the New Christians or Conversos

for the former Jews and the Moriscos for the Moors. And so it was this body whose attention was drawn by Loyola's work. And also, there was the other context here was that at that time there were groups of the so-called illuminated ones or illuminists called the Alombrados who believed that merely reflecting on scripture directly was enough to understand it without the intermediary of the priests. And we have a very interesting, probably one of the earliest accounts.

of Loyola from a witness to the inquisition trial of Al-Qaala. And one of the witnesses says he spies through cracking the door at the hospice where Loyola is resident. And so he's a peculiar sight of this man who was basically a smelly pilgrim. He was barefoot. He was in rags. and he'd given up all his wealth and around him were people a very high proportion of women

from the sort of artisan class who were clearly gripped by his message and his message as far as the acquisition was concerned could be construed to be saying well it's enough for me as a layman to tell you that you must examine your conscience you must think of your sins

you must preferably think about your sins you've committed twice a day you should go to confess once a week and to take communion once a week. And this is at a time when in Western Europe, on average, laymen are taking communion once a year at Easter. And in fact, what happens is that the Inquisition say to him, who are you to be, as a layman, to be telling people what to do with their sins? It's one of the age-old battles which the church has had for 2,000 years,

whether you can have spirituality and be a religious person outside the organisation's structure of a commanding church, isn't it? But he was imprisoned for it? Yes, he was imprisoned. In fact, very interestingly, in relation to what you said in the introduction, I mean, the two places he is hauled up are Al-Qala and Salamanca, the kind of Oxbridge of Castile, if you like, of 16th century Castile. So he already is attracted to these intellectual centres.

But of course, here at this stage is before he goes to Paris. He's not educated. He's had a minimum amount of education. He's literate. In fact, he has minor orders. Although he went off for a military career, he actually received first tonsure when he was a teenager. His family owned right to appoint

to quite a few churches in the Basque lands. Where did the name Jesuits come from? The Society of Jesus. And it developed just from that. They were members of it. But I understood it was used in a derogary fashion to start with. Yes, just as Jesuitary. The word has been made more and more derogatory in the hands of its enemies as time went on.

As I understand, their early vows emphasized that they would work with people who were very poor, emphasized their own chastity, and a missionary work. How important were these particular missionary work in the early days? Well, they began by wanting to be. missionaries. They began by believing that they could go and convert the Turks. The ten of them, 10 bright young men, Loyola is older than the others, turn up in Venice and hope that they can get a boat, but find the Turk is in fact in the Mediterranean. There isn't a sailor who would land them in effect. They have been to Rome, they've got permission to do this, and they have to reformulate

what their purpose is going to be. They want to stay together. And they decide that they will preach, teach, and, as it were, enhance the quality of religious life of individuals. But then they have all sorts of other problems that emanate from that. In what form will they do this? How will they live? So they have to take on board the kinds of logistics of life.

one of which is if they're going to teach, where are they going to teach? How are they going to come by schools? You don't get schools for nothing. Somebody's got to build the schools. Or if they're going to be preachers in the countryside, again, what are going to be the structures of all this? And so the first couple of years I felt I spent in some very active thinking about how they're going to proceed. Was it unusual? There were only three of them went to Rome, as I understood it,

and got this order established. It seems rather remarkable that three people, unknown to the Pope, turn up and he says, yes, you can have an order, and away you go. Was there some sort of special pact that we read about between that they made with the Pope, that they would be especially responsible to and him actually be his spies too strong a word, his own private army inside the church? I don't think there was anything sinister in it. There were in fact ten of them, three arrived in Rome. There were initially a group of ten.

And they were somewhat thrown by this abortive attempt to go to convert the Turk. And so you have to think of them as thinking, well, what's the next step? They wanted desperately to do something and to stay together, to operate together. Although saying that, they immediately sent them off, sent people off in all directions to help the Pope, as they saw it,

in particular tasks. Did they have a unique pact with the Pope, though? I'm just trying to nail this. They had, Paul III certainly liked them. But then, of course, he had a successor who didn't, Carrafa, the Pope Caraffa, didn't like them. He thought they should have been theatines and joined an order that was already existing. So they had some problems.

Nevertheless, they got a lot of their own way. I mean, in 1547, they had a constitution that was very flexible for the time. They didn't have to go to all the services through the day because they had other things to do. They educate work, their day, tuition work, and so on and so forth. That was their bargain, that they did not want to be cloistered. They did not want to, as it were, keep choir, which means perform regular religious services themselves. They wanted to be out and about. And it's this action which is important to them.

So there they are established. The head of their order is called a general, not surprising for a loyaler. They're a group of extraordinarily clever, well-educated young men with a mission in life. Mission is Catholicism and their mission is to go right. the world and this mission is encouraged. It was an age of exploration at that time, Simon Ditchfield. But by the time Loyola died in 1556,

remarkably soon, after the order being established, they seem to be over many parts of the world, with more than a thousand members. Can you talk about their mission to India briefly and then South America? Yes, well, very importantly, is their sort of first bridgehead to speak outside Europe is courtesy of the Portuguese.

Empire and of course one of the jewels and the crown of the Portuguese territories was Goa. And already in 1542 Francis Xavier on the first companions of Loyola in Paris, he goes off to Goa and when he arrives there he comes across a community of Nestorian Christians who traditionally have been founded, their community of been founded. their community being founded by the boss of St Thomas but he sets about turning them into Roman Catholics and very characteristic

I'm sure we'll come back to this we know that he takes with him a lot of engravings pictures statues and we know that he regularly would preach with the cross and with images

near him and he very early on sets out a catechism for in the local languages which are used by locals to help him catechise. How are effective were they in Go? I mean, it's very difficult with numbers.

I mean, all the lives of Xavier talk of thousands upon thousand, but we do know that he concentrated very much on the Paravia fishing communities in southwest India. Xavier was one of the people that Loyola had met at the Sorbonne and his closest friend and allies, as far as you can understand it. In South America, they had a dramatic element. influence, as we understand.

Yes. I mean, the next stage, in fact, was the next of Jesuit province after Goa is they go to Brazil, which, of course, again, part of the Portuguese territories. Then they're in Florida by 56, but 1570s. They're in Peru, or New Granada, as it's then called, and then in Mexico and New Spain. They're in fact, in all these places, they're not the first. They're already the mendicant orders, the Franciscan orders, the Franciscan. And the Mexicans and Dominicans have already gone there before them. But they do take with them a tremendous elan and a tremendous engagement,

particularly with the local cultures. I mean, we have, for example, our first dictionaries of Guarani and Tupi, the language is spoken by the tribes of Amazonia, are written by a Jesuit. Same with Aymara, same with Ketja for Peru. So this is one characteristic, Nigel Ashton. Then, almost more, most dramatically of all, they got into China and Japan. How were they received there? Why were they so determined to get to China and Japan?

And they're scaling all over the world. I think we have to try to tell listeners where this massive impulse came from. And so quickly they're out there doing... Taking Japan first. This is the country which St. Francis Xavier, wanted to reach. He's frustrated, but his followers are quick to sort of make landfall in Japan. Because they're aware that it's an ancient culture, they're aware that there might be traces of an earlier Christian presence there, as Simon pointed out. And they see, they're in a way

travelling on the backs of the Portuguese. They're very, very good at 50s. into existing social arrangements. Japan in the 16th century is a country which really lacks a kind of unifying presence. The warlords are important forces. And the Jesuits seem to, for instance, the shoguns controlling much of central Japan in that time. I'm able to fit in with their own sort of military agendas. And also the Jesuits are very strongly anti-Budius. Buddhist in Japan. It's a very distinctive dimension to their mission work there. China, of course, is going to be one of the central mission areas for the Jesuits, and it's going to raise all kinds of problems for them with their notorious willingness to accommodate Confucianist culture. The great influence, of course, is mass.

Riqui, the 16th century Jesuit, who a great Confucian scholar in his own right, somebody who networked very effectively and encouraged his followers to network effectively with the elite scholars and civil servants in Beijing, and very much sort of made a pitch at that level of Chinese society. Well, that takes us out brilliantly, Nigel Asson, to what I'd like to talk to Orwin Huffman, because listeners would say, what a brilliant thing they're doing. They're irrigating a global culture. They're accommodating themselves. As Simon has said, learning languages in what we now call South America and so on, as Nigel's pointed out in Japan and China and so on. But they were getting, and I'd like to talk a little more about this, their adaptability.

But as it were, back on the home front, where religiously. was the politics, to a great extent. They were being heavily criticized, who being too adaptable, going too native, going away from the truth. Now, maybe that's too simplistic. I see you draw back to the microphone. Please come close to the microphone and put me right.

I think one of the things I would just like to add is that Xavier, when he got to India, was very disappointed in two directions. One is that nobody had the languages of the natives. and he made a big bid for language learning. The only way that you can have real Christians is not to go and talk mumbo-jumbo and have a translator. You've got to do it.

He wipes out the real of the translators, but never mind. Well, he wasn't convinced that what they were saying was actually Christian. Right. So he's constantly as well dissatisfied with the Portuguese ascendancy. goer. And he believes that the Jesuits can somehow operate best outside this framework. And this is

one of the reasons for this great push towards Japan and China, which he sees as a superior civilisation. He sees them as higher races, doesn't he? He sees them as a higher races. And the Jesuits do, would be very unfavourably

viewed in our time. He sets races up as dominant and, you know, defective, really. But the whole missionary activity of the Jesuits, one doesn't realize just how few the numbers of actual Jesuits there are. I mean, Savié went, there were two of them when Saviéié went, perhaps by the end of the 20 years on, there were 15.

There were never more than 10 Jesuits at a time in China in the, 16th century, but they go up to 40 in the 17th century. We're looking at very, very small numbers. But we're looking at very effective people. Very effective people. I mean, what the knowledge they brought back to the West was in almost to start. That's right. But let's just concentrate on what they did there as Jesuits and how, A, it worked there and B, why it drove people, let's say back in Europe, against them. Those two points I'd like to nail before we move on. In Europe, they were active, particularly on the educational front. And they took as a mission, a schooling mission, which they believed would lift the level of society generally. And they saw education as a way forward for everyone, but also as a bigger manufacturing of Jesuits.

And also, the more educated you were, the better chance you had to get close to God. That was a view they had, too. Yes, it gave you a privilege, understanding. But of course, the schooling mission was also allied with other missions. They had to raise money to start with. Sorry, yes. I thought you wanted to stop. They had to raise money.

Schools don't come cheap. They had to find important supporters. And they actually did this very well through the court system, but it took time. Now, your quest, I'm perhaps getting a little bit. Yeah, you are really. I really want to get this now. What they did in China and how they did it, and then we can move on to education. Okay.

Well, in China, when they arrived, they first of all decided there were only three or four of them, but they arrived. Mateo Ricci and Ruggieri, when they got there, came with some of the language. which they learned in Macau. First of all, they dress like Buddhist priests, which turned out to be a mistake because Buddhists were rather low level in China. And Richie realized that if they were going to get anywhere,

they had to negotiate on the same terms. So that was the beginning of their dressing in the Chinese style, Mandarin hats, and talking to a group that they identified as the most promising group, the literati. Those who could read, write, would do the civil service exams to work for the emperor. In other words, they would have this infiltration, they hoped, into the court. And they did go to the heart of the court?

They did. They were magnificent language learners. Ritchie realized that there was a scientific exchange possible because they were dealing with a very high level. situation, civilization. And we have to move to education now, and I'm sorry to move on. Simon Ditchfield, this was one of the big, the educators of Europe, the hundreds of schools they had, the standardization of schools,

which the Germans took up, various people taken up as the way to do a great teacher. Can you just tell us how they set about that? Ormond has begun to tell us how they said about that. Can you briskly drive through how they set about that and why that became so important and why that became the mark of the Jesuits, the great intellectual teaching force, a drilled teaching force inside the Roman Catholic Church. Well, of course, the irony really is that, first of all,

they didn't necessarily have, nothing, for example, in the formula initial, the order a particular apostolate for education. Their plan at first was, as Alwyn has said, was to educate their own. But in response to a request by the town of Messina in Sicily in 1548, and in response to the wife of the Spanish viceroy there,

who helped put up some of the cash, they found at their first school that was an instant hit also among the elite of the area. And in fact, then, as you said in your introduction, we have hundreds by the time they're suppressed in 73, there were 800. And so the initial idea was to provide free education,

but clearly this was because of the scope and the sheer numbers they're dealing with, this proved to be impossible. So they then start charging, and of course, who can afford are the wealthy and the elite. What about what were the keys there, you guys? as I understood it, they were teaching classical as well as religious education. And so people from other religions were piling their children into these schools

because they were getting a very ample, even-rounded education. Yes, I mean, you do get cases, particularly in the German-speaking lands. You do get the occasions of some of the Protestants and were sending their kids to the Catholic schools, and that's later, you know, post-Reformation period. But essentially what you have with the Jesuit education, it's a marriage of really the Sorbonne and Schlesicism to Cicero and she. humanist rhetoric, and particularly borrowing from the, they call the modus parisensis, the Parisian way,

a sort of a very clear progression in levels, which is something that had not been really used at a secondary level before. And as I understand it, at the basis of it, the disputation, the idea of the dispute, the disputation. I want to go to Nigel now, if I might or one. They were also important, they were at the cutting edges, we might use that rather than hackneyed phrase, of ideas. Can you give us one of two examples of this?

Yes, in the course of the 17th century, the Jesuits produced some outstanding scholars who make a genuine contribution to what some scholars still look on as the scientific revolution. People like Athanasius Kirchner, for instance, one of the greatest polymaths of his time, with an enormous range of interests covering things like sunspots, music. Here's a man who is keen to set bird song to music. Here's somebody who descends into Vesuvius into 1639 to get a sense of the sort of noxious gases emanating from the mountain. He's a good example. Taking it further forward slightly, one comes up against somebody like Roger,

Roger Boscovich. Roger Boscovich, yes. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1761 at the same time as Reynolds, a man whose contributions to Enlightenment sign are well-way. It's better over Europe as free-range intellectuals that competing with other intellectuals, or competing, working alongside other intellectuals

in the Enlightenment and extraordinary way, really. I think it's very easy to exaggerate, as has often been done in the past, the differences at that level between Jesuits and non-Catholics. There's a great degree of cooperation. For instance, Johnson, who was very anti-Jesuit, was delighted

to meet this quiet culture gentleman in 1761. And we are, after all, talking about the Republic of Letters, scholarly endeavour, which transcends confessional divisions. But to get back to Simon Ditchfield, to a more received notion

of the Jesuits, they did oppose certain ideas of them. They did oppose Copernicus. They did oppose Galileo. So there seems an interesting incoherence about them. Yes, I mean, it has been said you find Jesuits on both sides of the divide in a lot of the debates at the time. And the Galileo cases is a very good example of this

because, sure, they are against Galileo, but in fact, Galileo, as has been shown recently by scholars, was very dependent on a lot of the, work being done on natural philosophy and physics by Jesuits. It's interesting that one of their great criticus Volta, he also had been educated by... Well, absolutely, of course. Descartes is another one. Quite a few people who are famous for being opponents, educated by the Jesuits,

the ultimate compliment maybe. But in the case, say, with Galileo, actually the Jesuit position is they are, actually follow the Taiko Brahe in the sense of the compromise. They don't believe that any longer that all the... stars revolve around the earth. They've basically, as Brahe believed, the stars all except the earth go around the sun, but then all that goes around the earth. So they make a compromise. And in fact, they're his supporters very early on. He falls out with them in the end. But of course, Cardinal Robert Bellamy, who's a very leading intellectual of Jesuits, he's quite

gentle with Galileo to begin with. So it's really, I think, pulling the Jesuits sort of against learning and science, I think, is problematic and simplistic. Orwin, can you tell us briefly about the way they patronise the arts? What I'm trying to get across the listeners is they started off as this fierce, religious force. They became an intellectual powerhouse for the paper. And then they spread across the landscape of ideas almost at will, well, at will, which is one of the problems they heard, which I hope we've got time to come to. We'll see.

The V really is. But their attitude, the way they use the arts and patronise the arts. Yes. They had a word edify. They believed that society needed uplifting and edifying. And that this was a process which took place through the eyes, through hearing, through all sorts of intellectual experiences. They used a very impressive architect.

When they built, they built big. They raised money for enormous buildings. They used patterns which were echoed across Europe. They used a kind of art messages. They put into the hands, but there were also simple things, like they put into the hands of ordinary people, emblem books with little pictures in,

which, for I could give you an example, a picture of a stork. What do I have to think about when I see a stork? I have to think about a bird that carries its aged father on its back, i.e. looks after the old. And these immediate messages, first of all, the grandeur of their buildings, but the simplicity of the other artefacts that they were prepared to use. Now, aside from this, of course, is the work of their own schoolboys.

Now Jesuit theatre is largely written for schoolboys to perform for their parents and for the wider community. And this is where the whole disputatio comes in because many of these plays, to us now, look very secular. They're not, religious people aren't involved in them at all. But there's always a moral issue. So they want to bring up front the debating of moral issues in literature and on the stage.

In other words, they infiltrate at so many levels a kind of psychological event. And just to complete this picture, before we look at the way they were suppressed, Nigel Asson, from what Alderman said, we can conclude all the buildings and so on, they had access to an immense amount of money and also to immense amount of influence. You don't just build you, as you get to get permission and patronage. So can you tell us about how they got that access? Then that sort of completes it for our purposes before we move. want of what happened next?

Yes, by the middle and later part of the 17th century, the Jesuits are right at the heart of court society in Catholic Europe. Their role as confessors to monarchs and princes is absolutely pivotal. And it's their intellectual ability that's driven them there? Their intellectual ability, but also their ability to use the patronage networks, which criss-cross elite society, and do it as well as any other group. So I think that's right at the heart of their achievement, their ability to move into the right circles at the right time.

And also the liberal attitude towards women, bringing women into the constituency, as it were. Bringing women into their constituency, yes. I mean, women, of course, can't be members of the Jesuit order. There was a perhaps a princess, I think, in the 1550s, who did have membership on the condition that she didn't use her name. But clearly women as patron, and this is very much Old Wins turf, I think, are in the endowments that they offered to the Jesuits,

in their willingness to look at the educational material they supplied, their role as confessors, of course, again, absolutely crucial here with women. So we've been looking over a few centuries of the way it's being described in this conversation so far has been a tremendous and extraordinary success story. As Simon said, we're getting towards. 800 schools all over the globe,

even though they're only tentative of them at a time, as always pointed out, they're really doing things in China and other places and bringing stuff back to Europe and so on. But there's been opposition to them all the time. The Janseness of Pascal, have complained about their over-adaptability. They're going native.

They're bringing in of women, everything that we might find what a good thing to do. They say, no, no, no, they're not strict enough, and so on. and envy has grown up and fear of them has grown up. And eventually they are suppressed in 1773. Now, I think that any listener would have every right to feel surprised at it. Look, they're doing this wonderful work.

Why were they suppressed? Simon, briefly first. Well, I think here we have, you know, it's not unrelated to the notions of forms of conspiracy theory, is that the very policy of accommodation could be seen as hypocrisy, It could be seen also there's a public front and then there's a private front. In 1614, there is published an anonymous track

called the secret sort of constitutions of the Jesuits, the Moneta Seguereta, which we now note in written by a disgruntled Polish former Jesuit who didn't pass his final exam, So Horowski, in which he basically says, now what they're really saying is, you know, he has a little sections like how to basically win your way with the prince, how to get a rich widow to empty her pockets. And all these things, and of course the reason why it's so effective,

and this gets republished, there are about 30 editions in the 17th century, and as many in the 18th, particularly leading up to the depression, is that there's a feeling, there's really, it's actually, it's plausible. We know, for example, there are a lot of public, I mean, there are masters of public relations, Jesuits, all the accounts of the overseas. These missions are published in order to help raise money, but they also know there was a private letter is going regularly to the headquarters in Rome. So there's an element of which, you know, okay, there's a public and a private face.

There's also the economic costs of Jesuits. There's a very famous case made, even becomes a Hollywood film, The Mission, where the Jesuits are shown, it's based on a real story, how they gather together Guarani peoples in the so-called reductions or settlements in order to save them from being enslaved by the Portuguese settlers. And in fact, they removed 12,000 of them to safety. Now, of course, in the 18th century, this is really impacting on local settlers who need impressed labour, the numbers of slaves are getting across Africa and not enough. And so there really are economic interests that the Jesuits are.

tied up with and seen as profiting from. Neil Nigel Ashton, even so, to suppress this order seems a very dire thing to do, to reprimand it, to cut it back, to clip its wings, but to suppress it. There's an immense amount of pressure on Clement 1773, yes. There's immense amount of pressure on Clement the 14th in 1773.

It's accumulated steadily over the previous 20 years. It's led by, very often by the leaders of national churches in Catholic Europe. It also has the support of most Catholic monarchs. The Jesuits have passed their sale by date for many of these people. Many of the leaders of national churches look enviously upon the possessions, the lands, the churches, the material culture. Paulman, what's your view on now? And what happened? How do you suppress all these people?

Do you close the schools? Well, that's the problem, because most of the schools, in fact, were endowed by the civic government. themselves. So what do you do? Well, you can perhaps hope that some of the Jesuits will stay on as school teachers. You can't sell schools. They don't really have a great deal.

I mean, there's an enormous disappointment with the so-called wealth of the Jesuits because it's in schools and novitiate houses. So the schools will eventually, say, in France, become Lise or in Germany, gymnasia. They will get employees who are civic paid. But the big churches will either be abandoned or they will be modified. And of course, the French Revolution is de-Christianising. So there's a lot of church property around. And so there are ones left with the kind of fabric of the Jesuits,

which still remains today. most people in Italy do their archive work, probably doing it in an old Jesuit house. Many Liceo are still Jesuit of Jesuit foundations, so the Jesuits have long gone. And so it was a very artificial situation. And it came back relatively soon after 1773 to 1814. Isn't all that long.

We're pushing under the programme, unfortunately, in Nigel. It's not a lot long. and a lot of the Jesuits had remained, particularly in Eastern Europe, and Catherine had allowed them to remain in Russia, and some of them have become journalists or writers, and some of them as it's always had to stay honest teachers. So they were ready to be, choose the word, resurrected. Why were they called back in 1814?

Because the papacy realized they were better off with them than without them, better inside the tent. I think we should see it as part of a determination by the papacy and the recently restored ruling powers of Europe to prevent the disaster of the French Revolution ever happening again. It's also an attempt, too, at reinvigorating pastoral life across Catholic Europe following the sort of de-Christianising experiments in France. A lot of people had lost contact with the church.

Getting the Jesuits back in place would be a quick way, perhaps, of restoring them. That's what Piusa 7th, quite an intelligent and far-thinking Pope certainly thought. And briefly, I'm sorry to be briefly, Simon, Do you think since 1814, they have been as effective in that period as there were in the period before the suppression? Well, I think numerically, I mean, they reached a peak actually in late in 1963. They're about 36,000 then. Since then, there's been a fall off of about a third. But I think in the 19th century they become, in a sense, identify much more with the sort of, you know, the conservative establishment, part of what Nigel already referred to,

the restoration of traditional Europe. and it's only really post-V Vatican 2, you get really a shift very famously in a meeting of 1975, the General Congregation, then they link faith with social justice. Well, thank you very much, Nigelassen, Dem Orwin-Huffton and Simon Ditchfield, and next week we'll be talking about Archimedes.

Thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio four.