Note 7 — THE EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS, 1768–1769

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.) ↑