Ênio José da Costa Brito
An explosive theme in the field of historiography is that of the Inquisition. In recent years more penetrating studies have helped situate the question in a more analytical fashion . An institution, created during the XIII century, to confront the heretical movements, such as the Cathari
2
, it operated under the responsibility of the
Order of Preachers (Dominicans). The Inquisition renders itself present in Portugal in the XV century, in 1478, during the time of the Spanish unification, dependant on the power of the king.
Dom Manuel (1495- 1521), even under pressure from the Portuguese elite, did not implant the Inquisition in Portugal, something only came to pass during the reign of Dom João III (1251-1557) by means of Paul III’s papal bull, Cum ad nihil magis, in 1536. This same pope, in 1540, with the papal bull Regimini militantis
Ecclesiae, officially recognized the Company of Jesus, founded in 1534, by Ignatius of Loyola. In 1542, still during the pontificate of Paul III, the Inquisition became institutionally structured, with the creation of the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition
3
.
These dates are indications of a certain temporal proximity between the Company of Jesus and the Inquisition. The intention behind Jesuits and the Inquisition:
Complicity and Confrontations, co-authored by José Eduardo Franco and Célia
Cristina Tavares
4
, wants to bring to the discussion forum the relationship between the two institutions.
The book, while discussing a doubly explosive theme, has a well defined intentionality, that of undoing myths and oversimplified views which have accumulated down through the ages, either separating or bringing closer together the two institutions. Their historiographies, from the beginning, have come down complex, polemical and apologetic roads. Recently, as we have already mentioned, significant changes have taken place in the field of historiography moving the study of these institutions into the field of social history, a move which is slowly overcoming reductionist views.
1 Researcher in the Programme of Postgraduate Studies on the Sciences of Religion at the PUC-SP and currently the President of SOTER. (Society of Theology and Sciences of Religion).
2 See, BETHENCOURT, Francisco , História das Inquisições (History of the Inquisitions); Portugal, Spain and
Italy: circle of Readers, 1994.
3 A major XII century movement Catharism preached the opposition between matter and flesh, from which one must free oneself. The Catharii, firmly established in the south of France, spread their ideas throughout
Europe. They disapproved of marriage and procreation. They spiritualize worship, which leads them to deny statues, sacraments and exterior ceremonies
4 Cf. VAINFAS, Ronaldo. Inquisition. In: id Dicionário do Brasil Colonial (1500-1800). Rio de Janeiro:
Objetiva, 2000. pp. 308-310.
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The book is divided into four short, clear chapters: “Out-of-focus perspectives”,
“From suspicion to collaboration”, “From criticism to confrontation”, “Anti-Jesuit reform and the Marquis de Pombal’s mythologization of the inquisitorial past”, which unveils and answers the questions raised.
Unilateralism is present, be it in the anti-Jesuitical perspective, which sees there an intimate relationship, or in the philo-Jesuitical one, which seeks out the disagreements and confrontations between the two institutions.
For the authors, the solution to this dilemma lies in the critical analysis of the historical registers passed on to us by the institutions in question. Because of its political and economic importance, the Inquisition, in Portugal, attracted both admirers and critics, having Jesuits among them
One of the many conflicts between the Jesuits and the Inquisition is in relation to the new-Christians, looked at with sympathy by Ignatius of Loyola and his collaborators and treated badly by the Inquisition. It is true that for quite some time, the
Company refused to veto the entrance of Jews and Moors into its ranks. Only in
1593, during the V General Congregation did the veto appear. The VI General Congregation did not suppress the previous decree, but opened up an exception:
Despite the favorable spirit in the Company of Jesus which had recently began to prevail,– even if only hesitantly – in relation to the new-Christians some Jesuits were still willing to collaborate with the Tribunal of the Holy Office, in spite of having preferred, in Portugal, advisory type jobs instead of those giving more visibility, that is, management or judiciary functions, the authors point out (Franco; Tavares, 2007, p.31).
Between the two ecclesiastical institutions there were disagreements but also collaborative relationships. Ignatius of Loyola himself, who had used his prestige with the pope to get the definitive approval for the Inquisition in Portugal, refused
Dom Juan III’s invitation for the Jesuits to accept the post of Inquisitor. Some years later, Tiago Lainez repeated the stand taken by Ignatius recommending the Jesuits not to take part in the inquisition machine.
However, we do find some Jesuits taking part in some of the inferior boards of the tribunal, especially outside the metropolis, as qualifiers, commissioners, inspectors and reviewers (responsible for visiting the ships). Participation as representatives or prosecutors is on a very small scale if compared with the other religious orders. In
India, however, we find a greater participation of the Jesuits, very often due to the imposition of the very tribunal itself.
Nevertheless, the mere occupation of a post did not necessarily signify identification, agreement with the inquisitorial institution.
In general, however, we can conclude that the relationship between the Company and the Holy
Office took place, with a few specific exceptions, without any great upsets and even with some important complicity and cooperation during the period which stretched from its introduction into Portugal up to the proclamation of the restoration of independence of the kingdom in 1640
(Franco; Tavares, 2007, p.47).
These relationships changed from the XVII century on. Different factors marked the increase in friction. Dom João IV positioned himself in favor of the Inquisition in the question of the open market in Evora; another more complex episode, known
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as the “dispute of the Malabar rites” which began in 1619 and only came to an end in 1744: first with the condemnation of the Chinese rites by Benedict XIV, with the papal bull Ex quo singulari, in 1742; followed by the papal bull Omnium sollicitudinum, condemning the Malabar rites.
The relationship between Antonio Vieira and the Holy Office is another tension element between the Company of Jesus and the Inquisition. Vieira was convinced of the real contribution that the new-Christians could give to uplifting Portugal, as well as being convinced that they were being maltreated by the Inquisition.
Great efforts were made to reduce the inquisitorial persecution against them, for the formation of a commercial company with the financial backing of the new-
Christians and to obtain pardon from Rome for the new-Christian members of the community. The reaction of the tribunal did not delay in coming: with the support of the Portuguese elite, the bishops of Évora and Leiria and with a strong manipulation of the masses of the people, it blocked both Vieira’s and some other Jesuits’ plans
As well as this, Vieira himself, by breaking with the orthodox stream of Sebastianism and projecting the messianic nationalist hope on to Dom João IV, who would return to install the V Empire, was imprisoned in 1664 and condemned by the Inquisition on 23 December, 1776.
As a pilgrim to Rome, he obtained from pope Clement X on 17 April 1675 the suspension of the condemnation, and, more extraordinary still, he succeeded in getting the unheard-of suspension by the pope of the Portuguese Inquisition Tribunal, on 03 October, 1674, a suspension which was to last seven years. Rome’s decision hardened even more the anti-Jesuitical positions in Portugal.
Vieira won the love of the new-Christians by defending them against the injustices of the Inquisitorial Tribunal and stirred up the old hatreds against the Jesuits. A hatred very well worked on some years later by the Pombal anti-Jesuitism. For the authors, “one cannot fail to see in this anti-inquisitorial process centered on Vieira’s temperament the presence of outbursts of modernity and humanism, which makes him the forerunner of the movement which was to lead to the quashing of the tribunal in the XIX century” (Franco; Tavares, 2007, p. 78).
The Pombalian reforms had one defined purpose, to change Portugal’s image, especially that of the Portuguese Inquisition, and impute to the Company of Jesus the backward movement in the fact of the Inquisition becoming an independent tribunal, weakening the royal power. The process of State intervention, under the egis of the regalist principle, had orientated the reforms in process since 1760. In
1768, the Royal Censorial Court started to control the printing and distribution of foreign books, and on 20 May 1769, nationalized the Holy Office in Portugal. The apex of this process came about with the publication of the new Charter of the Holy
Office.
Putting itself in line with the regalist tendency of the other diagnostic-works of the Jesuit myth, the conclusion [new Charter] could not be other than the total and exclusive incrimination of the priests of the Company, who had transformed this tribunal, initially considered as being useful to religion when it was under royal jurisdiction, into an institution prejudicial to the Church and the
State (Franco; Tavares, 2007, pp 88-89).
It imputed to the Company the tribunal’s aberrations, ironically enough the selfsame aberrations opposed by Vieira and other Jesuits a century previously. As material proof, Pombal presented the 1613 Charter, which had on the cover the Order’s coat of arms. A historically unsustainable proof, since it was quite popular at the
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time to put a coat of arms on the cover of books for esthetic reasons, as stated by
Camilo Castelo Branco (cf. Franco; Tavares, 2007, p.92).
The new Charter abolished torture, the autos-de-fé pública (public acts-of-faith), the confiscation of property, the secrecy of accusation witnesses and also absorbed the abolition of the distinction between new-Christians and the old-Christians of
1773 and 1774, but made exceptions for those who “practiced witchcraft “ and magic and the “dogmatist heretics”.
In this last category, the tribunal included Antonio Vieira, burned in sphinx, and Gabriel Malagrida, accused of being a heretic of the Holy Catholic Faith, because of the ideas put forward in his books written in prison, The admirable heroic life of the glorious
Saint Anne, dictated by Jesus and his Holy Mother, and, the treatise on the reigning life of the antichrist. On 21 September 1761, Gabriel Malagrida was garroted and burned live, in the public square, with the full pomp of the ancient acts-of-faith.
In reality the new Charter “fully fulfilled the despotic idealization of placing in the hands of the government all mechanisms of mental and social control, subduing or abolishing anything that could put in danger the authority of the state” (Franco;
Tavares, 2007, p 111).
The day-to-day life of the kingdom, like the repressive politics of Dom José I, deny the humanizing intentions of the Charter and confirm the strategy of putting the blame on the Jesuits for the despotic practices which, for so long, had devastated the life of the Portuguese Church and State.
The book, The Jesuits and the Inquisition: complicities and confrontations, asks of its readers two attitudes: the courage to understand it and the willingness to propagate it. To read it is to have the magnanimity of not shutting oneself in with fixed ideas or with already acquired convictions.
The courage to understand it, then, as has already been said in the introduction, because the historiography of the two institutions has been problematic, consequently the possibility of rejecting it because of the title or by thinking that one’s personal view on the theme is already sufficient. The reader would lose out, because the book is rich and provoking in its content and in the way that it dialogues with the historical documents left to us by the two institutions.
The authors visit numerous sources, many of which are inaccessible to the ordinary Brazilian reader, extracting from them facts that support the argumentative structure of the text. Such a return to the originating sources leads the reader to see the complexity of the relationships between the Jesuits and the Inquisition and to accept the challenge of overcoming a simplistic but principally a preconceived view, not only regarding the theme of the book, but also any other theme. This is the reason for propagating it.
Its reading does not dispel all the doubts and questions, neither is this intention of the authors, but it does end up widening the reader’s historical horizon, which opens up the road for a richer understanding of our past. In the words of Ronaldo
Veinfas (apud Franco; Tavares, 2007, p10):
The book is totally faithful to what is proposed to be studied in the subtitle – complicities and confrontations -, redeeming history from the stereotypes and anachronisms enshrined in common sense and even in luso-Brazilian historiography. It convinces the reader that despite the complicities and the convergence in the fight that both institutions fought for the Church of Rome and for the Holy Catholic Faith, Jesuits and Inquisitioners were very different
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