The Jesuits Controversy

For as long as the Roman Catholic Church has been around, it has tried to solidify its control by strengthening its orthodoxy. One way the Church did this was through persecuting the populace for heresy. It is then ironic to find out that one of the churches most influential organizations, the Jesuits, were disbanded by the pope on rumors of heresy. The pope, Clement XIV, did not suppress the Jesuits for heresy but for more political reasons. After losing the support of Portugal, he dispersed the Order to appease the French and Spanish rulers in order to save face and keep their support. It has been argued that the pope did this as a result of a series of localized political moves rather his reason being a theological controversy. These localized political moves were individual monarchies attempting to take power for themselves away from the pope by slandering the Jesuit order. The Jesuits were members of a monastic order known as the Society of Jesus that originated in France. It was founded by Ignatious of Loyola in 1534, after he …show more content…
These political moves came at a time when Western European Rulers were trying to centralize their authority for themselves and be ruled less by the pope. The Jesuits themselves posed a real threat to the monarchies who sought to gain more control over their people. They had wealth, lands and influence over the people. With the Society of Jesus disbanded, the monarchs were able to gain control of the revenues generated from church lands and exert more control of the people. The suppression of The Society of Jesus was seen as a blatant challenge to the Churches authority. Keeping this in mind, it is only logical to conclude that in order to save face the pope himself also had to disband the Jesuits in order to maintain some sort of connection with France and