After the Jew, the Jesuit

After the Jews, the Jesuits

Christmas time in Portugal owes many of its traditions to the Jesuits and
Franciscans. It is first mainly Church oriented. For one thing, there is
the building of the nativity scene, the preparation of lavish dishes and
sweet pastry, the concoction of home made liqueurs, the Midnight Mass,
(known as the "Rooster Mass,") and the very special meal, the "Consoada"
with cod fish and age old Portuguese delicacies. In other words convent
traditions became the way the Portuguese would celebrate their Christmases
until recently when as everywhere else it has become more commercialized.
The Jesuits and Franciscans, indeed, had a tremendous impact on the
Portuguese society as well as in all the lands the Portuguese discovered.
After the mass executions and exodus of the Jews and other non-Christian or
Catholic groups from the Portuguese territories the way was opened for the
supremacy of various Church organizations such as the Jesuits', Franciscans'
and the Dominicans'. Totally in control, these groups proliferated and
became very powerful. In no time, they held key positions once controlled by
the Jews at the university, the court, and all other key institutions,
including in the newly acquired territories.
Wherever they went, they built churches, convents and "colégios,"
(schools). They baptized, taught and influenced the people they encountered.
Scholars and missionaries, they were teachers, entrepreneurs, developers,
social workers, explorers, commune leaders, court clerks, politicians and
above all very intelligent strategists.
Spread throughout an empire that was quadrupled the area of the Roman and
Persian Empire combined, they had an impact that would change the face of
the Earth forever. Wherever they went, they subdued the natives, had them
work, build, fight and die for them. Under them, the arts and literature
prospered, so did commerce and the Portuguese expansion in the newly acquire
territories. They moved deep into the interior of Brazil and settled as far
as inland as Paraguay and the heart of the Amazon River region. The same
happened in Africa, India and China. Everywhere this army of missionaries
converged, eager to do God's bidding, make Portuguese and Christian the
people and the lands newly discovered.
In Vietnam they introduced the Latin alphabet. In Japan they evangelized
and taught new manners and new vocabulary. In China, Malaysia and Indonesia
they built majestic Churches (Macao). They also brought with them their
printing presses, their Bibles, religious icons, libraries, but most
importantly their belief that it was their fate to evangelize and change the
world for God.
Committed to Christianizing the heathen, they not only brought the
Christian doctrine to the most remote places, but empowered themselves in
ways that exceeded their mission. Doggedly, they cut their way through
forest and jungles; went where no other European had been before. After
converting the indigenous people, they became their masters, took charge of
their destinies and made good use of their cheap labor. That is how
sumptuous temples were built in the middle of jungles or in lands as far
remote as Macao and Timor. It is also thanks to them that the Portuguese
language ranks today, after English and Spanish, as the third European
language of worldwide span, the eighth most spoken language in the world.
Needless to say, they were key figures in the exchanges between the new and
the old world. Sugar and spices became part of their kingdom, and they
spread it to all of Europe. From their kitchens cocoa (chocolate) and
coffee, sugar ad coconut, rice and cinnamon, and other exotic spices wound
their way to Rome and Vienna, London and Paris. It was through their
influence that many monastery gardens throughout Europe added many exotic
new plants and crops, among them potatoes, corn, yams, tea plants, pepper,
you name it; as well as many a medicinal herb.
Gradually with the increase in power and influence came the excesses of
power. Many saw in these orders a way to exploit their next, be there where
diamonds and spices, cacao and sugar were of easy access, or where religious
services became a profit making business, an easy way to gaining riches or
making a living.
They were ultimately so overwhelmingly powerful, as to become a state
within a state. They sapped all the riches of India and Brazil to the point
of absorbing all the wealth of the Portuguese Empire, leaving very little
for the crown.
Holding the authority over the best of two worlds, the temporal and the
spiritual, they were the nobility's and queen's confessors, the prince's and
rich people's tutors, the King's and colonial viceroys' advisers. Everywhere
they held a position of power that put at risk the monarchy itself.
In 1750, a certain Marquis Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, better known
as Marquis of Pombal, became the royal minister to the court. Loathing the
influence of all these religious orders, he decreed that their power be
restrained. With the support and backing of the king, D. José I, he forced
the Pope to pass special measures to have the Jesuits put under control and
their abuses curbed. Later they, the monks and the clergy, were rudely
purged from the court and forced to stay out of the way of the royal family
and the Marquis'.
After an attempted regicide, the clergy and their immediate families,
especially the Távora family, were quickly rounded up and sentenced to death
in the gallows. These were cruel sentences that shook the Portuguese
nobility and clergy as in no other time in the Portuguese history. With the
Marquis, the Jesuit golden age was over.
As the Inquisition was still part of the establishment, next, the Marquis
of Pombal placed his brother in charge of it, and before you know it, the
old inquisitors themselves were given the same treatment they had given many
heretics, (what goes around comes around). They were quickly accused of
insanity, of being deranged, and a danger to the Church and to the court and
as such cruelly put to death at the gallows, one after another. These
barbaric executions were performed publicly for all the people to see how
the crown treated those who challenged or questioned its authority.
In Paraguay the Indians did revolt against the crown in favor of the
Jesuits. It was, namely, the Jesuits who had made them subservient to their
will, ready to fight and to die for the Christian, i.e. the Jesuit cause.
There they were successful and Portugal lost hold of that area. Everywhere
else in the kingdom those who rebelled were treated with utter cruelty.
Their property was expropriated; the priests and monks evicted and brought
back to Lisbon or killed on the spot if they showed contempt or rebelled
against the crown.
Not satisfied, in 1759, the Marquis of Pombal decreed that all the Jesuits
had to be expelled from all the Portuguese territories and Portugal itself.
They were quickly put in ships and sent to Civita Vechia, namely to Rome.
Rumors had it that many of the ships carrying the many Jesuit priests and
monks never got to their destiny. They couldn't, because they had been
purposely set to sink the moment they left the harbor.
In 1755, when old Lisbon, all its churches and convents, was razed to the
ground by a powerful earthquake, fire and tsunami all in one, he decreed
that anyone who dared to proclaim that disaster as punishment from God would
be imprisoned and executed.
Then, with the same impetus he used to fight the Jesuits, he set himself to
rebuilding Lisbon, giving it the aspect one sees today. Most of the Churches
and convents, "Colégios" and monasteries were totally razed to the ground. A
new design for the downtown, consisting of new streets in straight lines
replaced the medieval maze of narrow streets. His statue is seen today in
one of main Plazas by the same name, the Marquis of Pombal Square in Lisbon
and the King whom he represented, D. José, is found riding his horse at the
main square by the riverside.
Under the Marquis' drastic reforms, Portugal saw again the exodus and
annihilation of its best minds. The Jesuits and the Franciscans had
contributed to the refinement of the Portuguese society. They had been
involved not only in spreading Christianity, but educating and cultivating
the people they came into contact. Their vicious annihilation left Portugal
into a deeper intellectual void that would affect it, still affects it in
many ways. For one, deprived of the support of the Jew and the Jesuit,
Portugal became increasingly more a protectorate of England than their
oldest ally. The English, in other words, took the place of Jew and Jesuit
in matters of counseling the court. It was for example the English who
convinced the Portuguese royalty to flee to Rio during the Napoleonic Wars
and betook themselves next to rampage and robbery of national treasures in
their free time, with no one to stop them or decry their crime.
During that time in history, the English influence became very strong and
treaties between Portugal and England began to favor England over Portugal
itself in its commercial affairs. That is, the Portuguese became England¹s
sole customers and Port and Madeira wine became British institutions in the
heart of Portugal itself. Thanks to England, industrialization attempts
were thwarted in Portugal in favor of the English made imports that as much
as they pleased the Portuguese, they put money into English pockets and not
the other way around. Wherever they could, the English dictated how
Portugal would run its business. Under such influence the Portuguese empire
itself would become a shadow of the British Empire, side by side in India at
Goa, Damão and Dio, across from one another in China at Macao and Hong Kong,
as well as in various colonies in East and West Africa.
As for the Marquis of Pombal, upon the death of the king, D. José, the
queen, who was a pious woman, forced the Marquis into exile in the area of
Pombal, north/central Portugal where he was from. He was divested of all the
honors and duties of the court and reduced to a nonentity. Portugal,
however, would never again be the same, as the Jesuits' churches, convents
and monuments had been banished, their convents confiscated by the state
and/or claimed by the terrible Lisbon earthquake, fire and tsunami of the
year 1755.
Through the barbaric measures introduced by the Marquis of Pombal to curb
the power of the Jesuits, the court regained full control of its assets
overseas and at home. In Ponta Delgada, as an example, only recently did the
local government hand back to the Church one of those assets, the Igreja do
Colégio, a sumptuous temple that had been stopped midway in its construction
and abandoned as the result of the Marquis decrees and subsequent expulsion
of the Jesuits from these islands. Many of their best buildings have been
turned into museums or some other function or allowed to fall into ruins all
over Portugal.
Here in the Azores, both in Angra and Ponta Delgada, as everywhere else in
the Portuguese empire, the influence of the Jesuits and the Franciscans was
very strong. One only needs to look for the massive structure of their
churches and convents and right away they will be spotted with their
imposing facades (Angra Museum), with their majestic chimneys that point to
sumptuous kitchens and a regal way of life. One could also say, that the
ubiquitous presence of the "A shaped", or "praying hands" chimneys of the
Azores go back to the convent chimneys themselves and this is the time of
the year when each home becomes an extension of the formal Jesuit convents
when good cooking, a lavish repast and a table always set with goodies waits
for any holiday visitor that comes to the door.
Now, as their modus-operandi here on the islands, they dug out long tunnels
that brought them from one part of town to another. Angra and Ponta Delgada
have a maze of such tunnels that were built to no other function but to
provide the monks with the freedom of movement. Some believe that they
built them to hide their cache from riches that kept coming from the new
world; others that they built these in order to protect themselves from
pirates, and still others that they just dug these in order to carry on
their covert businesses.
The exodus and elimination of the Jews from Portugal; the Spanish control
of the Portuguese court after the death of D.Sebastião in North Africa; King
Afonso V megalomaniac squandering sprees; Pombal's vicious attacks on the
Jesuits and other clergymen and their families; the Lisbon earthquake; and
finally England's tutelage of Portugal for its own ends, contributed to
Portugal's economical and intellectual impoverishment, and ultimately to
Portugal's fifty year long Fascism. Somehow, in spite of the successful
eradication of Jew and Jesuit, their downfall became Portugal's downfall.
After building an empire that exceeded the Roman and the Persian Empire
combined, Portugal quickly faded into an insignificant country on the
periphery of Europe. This is a legacy that has been the hardest for Portugal
to accept, but that affected it from ever ranking along with the other
European powers. With its back to Europe, self consumed by inner strives,
excesses of greed and self delusion, Portugal's relationship with England
and its own self-centeredness, made it, a country that had given "new worlds
to the world," to slip by the wayside of history. Only now, with its
membership in the European Union, does it breathe a new hope and a new
vitality that is correcting centuries of injustice and ineptitude and
gradually placing it again on the maps.

Silverio Gabriel de Melo
Terceira, Açores