Absolute Monarchs (50 page)

On March 10, 1766, a decree was published in Madrid forbidding the wearing of the traditional flowing cloak and broad-brimmed sombrero in all royal residential towns, university towns, and provincial capitals in Spain. Instead, men were enjoined to wear the short French wig and tricorne. The forbidden costume, it was claimed, was un-Spanish and served only to enable criminals to conceal their faces and so to pass unrecognized. A fortnight later, on Palm Sunday, serious riots—they were known as the “hat and cloak riots”—broke out; the Jesuits played no part but were once again held responsible. On February 27, 1767, Charles III banished them from Spain and all its overseas territories. In November of the same year they were similarly expelled from Naples and Sicily and in 1768 from the island of Malta—still in the hands of the Knights of St. John—as also from the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, whose Duke Ferdinand was the nephew of Charles III.

Although the duchy had been created as a fief for a bastard son of Pope Paul III, it had long since ceased to acknowledge the historic suzerainty of the Holy See. Successive popes, on the other hand, had continued to assert their claims. Most recently, Clement XIII had reaffirmed the papal case when in 1765 Philip was succeeded by his fourteen-year-old son, Ferdinand. But Parma—or, more accurately, the duchy’s chief minister, Guillaume du Tillot, Marquis of Felino—was spoiling for a fight. Within months of Ferdinand’s accession he had issued a law imposing crippling dues on ecclesiastical property, and in January 1768 he promulgated another, forbidding the reference of disputes to Rome and the publication of any ecclesiastical decree without ducal permission. This was too much for Pope Clement, who immediately convened a congregation of cardinals and bishops to consider a suitable response. The result was a papal brief which reiterated the feudal rights of the Holy See over the duchy and declared all Parma’s anticlerical laws null and void. For good measure Clement included all those responsible for the two laws in the bull
In Coena Domini
, which contained a list of those excommunicated for reasons of faith or morals and according to an age-old tradition was read out on Maundy Thursday every year.

Here was just the pretext Tillot needed. Not only Parma but the three great Bourbon monarchies of France, Spain, and Naples reacted in fury. The pope’s ban, they maintained, applied as much to themselves as it did to the duchy; Clement had effectively released all their subjects from their duty to their sovereigns. Bernardo Tanucci, the chief minister in Naples, went so far as to suggest depriving him of all his worldly possessions. The French foreign minister, the Duc de Choiseul, abandoned diplomatic language altogether:

The Pope is a complete ninny, and his minister is a first-class fool. The insult is aimed not only at the Duke of Parma: it applies to the whole House of Bourbon. It is an act of revenge, a reprisal against those monarchs who have driven out the Jesuits. If this first detestable step is tolerated, the Roman Court, led by a man that knows no bounds, will stop at nothing. The dignity of the monarchs and the Family Compact demand that we allow no prince of this House to be insulted with impunity.

The best way to resolve the crisis, he believed, was for the House of Bourbon—France, Spain, and Naples—to send a joint memorandum to the pope, expressing its astonishment that he should have addressed such a missive, as insulting as it was unjust, to the Duke of Parma. The Holy See must now formally countermand its brief. If the pope were to refuse, diplomatic relations with Rome would be broken off for the remainder of his pontificate. Predictably, he did refuse, and in June 1768 a French army reoccupied Avignon and the Venaissin, together with Neapolitan Benevento, which had been a papal fief since the eleventh century.

Meanwhile there was another problem that refused to go away: what was to be done with the luckless exiles? It had been vaguely assumed that they would all be accommodated in Rome, but a special congregation of cardinals decided, by a majority of six to two, to deny them admission. These exiles were numbered in their thousands; the Society’s houses had no spare capacity, nor any spare funds to pay for their lodging elsewhere. An attempt was made to land some three thousand Spanish Jesuits on the island of Corsica, but this proved disastrous. For nearly forty years the island had been in revolt against its Genoese overlords; there was fighting all over, and the inhabitants had barely enough food for themselves. The new arrivals were not permitted even to disembark for well over a month, and then they were obliged to forage for themselves among a resentful and often openly hostile peasantry. Within five months sixteen members of the Castilian Province were dead.

Then, on May 15, 1768, Corsica was purchased by France. Having expelled all Jesuits from his territory four years earlier, King Louis was certainly not going to allow them to overrun his new island. They were collected up again, embarked on French ships, and dropped off at Sestri Levante, between Genoa and La Spezia, from which it was hoped that they would gradually and secretly make their way, in small parties, into the Papal States. But from the moment of their arrival on Italian soil, the attitude toward them changed. The more compassionate Italians were horrified to see these hundreds of homeless and penniless men of God, tattered and emaciated, physically and emotionally exhausted, wandering without even a definite destination in view. Clement could no longer close his doors against them. At long last they were allowed entry into papal territory, though they were forbidden to come to Rome without special permission from the Society’s general.

No similar degree of pity, however, was shown by the Bourbon powers. Nothing would now satisfy them but the universal suppression of the Jesuit order; and on Monday, January 16, the Spanish envoy in Rome handed the pope a communication from his government. Clement took it and dismissed the envoy with his blessing; only then did he open it—and he canceled all his audiences for the next two days. The shock and humiliation were too much for him, and he never properly recovered. He summoned a special consistory for February 3, but the night before suffered a massive heart attack. He was dead by morning.

His had been a sad pontificate, poisoned by the implacable hatred of the House of Bourbon for the Society of Jesus, for which he could hardly be blamed. He was, however, unimaginative and—for a Venetian—surprisingly narrow-minded.
³
Perhaps, had he been a greater pope than he was, more self-confident and more decisive, he might have been able to defend the Society rather more effectively—but even then he would have been unlikely to make much difference. The fault was in the age; the Enlightenment approved of the pope as little as the pope approved of the Enlightenment. The Papacy had lost its prestige, and with it much of its power. Christian Europe might pay it lip service but very little more.

CLEMENT XIII DIED
fighting to save the Jesuit order; Clement XIV killed it. Lorenzo Ganganelli was a Franciscan of humble origins who, in 1743, had, ironically enough, dedicated a book to the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius Loyola. The conclave which, after three and a half months, elected him pope was from the very beginning dominated by the Jesuit question. It also had the distinction of being visited by Joseph II of Austria. Joseph had been emperor since the death of his father, Francis I, but exerted little real power, his mother, Maria Theresa, being still alive and very much in control. In answer to polite questioning, he gave it as his opinion that she was too pious to do anything to bring about the suppression of the order; neither, however, would she do anything to oppose that suppression, and she would on the whole be happy if it occurred. He himself felt much the same way.

It was plain from the start of the conclave that any candidate who openly favored the Jesuits would be vetoed by one or all of the Catholic powers; on the other hand, to win the election on the strength of a previous promise to abolish them would smack of simony. Ganganelli was therefore careful to tread a middle path. He let it be known that he considered the complete suppression of the order to be a possibility, no more. He probably had no very strong views one way or the other; but he was an ambitious man and he was determined to play the Jesuit card quietly—but only very quietly—to his advantage. On May 19, 1769, at the age of sixty-three, he was elected pope.

Clement XIV possessed many admirable qualities. He was highly intelligent, friendly and unassuming, and totally incorruptible, with a fine sense of humor. When, on November 26, 1769, he was taking part in the
possesso
—the immense procession preceding the ceremonial to take possession of the Lateran—his horse, terrified by the cheering of the vast crowd, reared up and threw him. He remarked later that he hoped that when he was on his way up to the Capitol he looked like St. Peter, but hoped even more that when he fell he looked like St. Paul. He was handicapped by a sad lack of political experience: he had never been out of Italy and had never held a diplomatic post abroad. It was perhaps his consciousness of this disadvantage that sapped his confidence. In the words of an anonymous contemporary who knew him well:

he lacks courage and stability; he is unbelievably slow in taking any decision. He deceives people with fine words and promises, weaves his web around them and enchants them. He begins by promising them the world but then makes difficulties and in true Roman fashion withholds a decision.… Anyone who seeks a favor should endeavor to obtain it at his first audience.

Cardinal François de Bernis, the French ambassador to Rome, wrote:

Clement XIV is intelligent, but his knowledge is confined to theology, church history, and a few anecdotes of court life. He is a stranger to politics, and his love of secrecy is more than his mastery of it; he takes a delight in friendly intercourse, and in the process he lays bare his inmost thoughts. He has a pleasant manner. He wants to please and is in mortal fear of displeasing. In vain he arms himself with courage; timidity is the fundamental feature of his character. In his government he will show more kindness than firmness; to the church finances he will bring order and thrift. He is frugal and active, though not a quick worker. He is cheerful, and he wants to be at peace with everyone and to live long.

That love of secrecy would cause him serious difficulties with the Sacred College. His cardinals were never confided in, nor even asked for their opinions. They began to complain and when their complaints went unheeded took matters into their own hands, boycotting the great ceremonies of the Church and leaving the pope to officiate virtually unattended. Moreover, Clement’s habit of surrounding himself with men of low degree put a severe strain on his relations with the Roman nobility, to the point where, only four months after his accession, they refused to give the ceremonial attendance that was their traditional duty. A particular irritation to them was the pope’s private secretary and favorite, a fellow Franciscan named Bontempi, son of a cook in Pesaro. It was to Bontempi, far more than to the papal secretary of state, Cardinal Opizio Pallavicini, that he confided his innermost thoughts and secrets.

The pope’s instinctive wish to conciliate led him, immediately on his accession, to open up discussions with Portugal and the Bourbon powers. Portugal was easily dealt with. After ten years of severed relations, virtually every Portuguese from the king down wished heartily to end the quarrel. The only exception was Pombal; but after Clement had confirmed all his nominees in various bishoprics and offered a red hat to his brother, even the dread marquis was persuaded to relent. Then, in 1770, the pope took another major step. He discontinued the annual reading of the bull
In Coena Domini
, in which the inclusion of Parma two years before had precipitated the Bourbon ultimatum—thereby ending forever a tradition which had continued since at least the early thirteenth century.

These gestures and others like them did something to improve relations between the two sides, but Clement was still under constant pressure and was well aware that the breach could never be healed until the Society of Jesus was dissolved once and for all. He delayed action for as long as he could, but then, in 1773, came the news that the Bourbon states were preparing for a showdown, which would almost certainly result in a complete rupture: nothing less than the secession of the most powerful Catholic states of Europe from the authority of the Holy See. Some doubts remained over Habsburg Austria, since Maria Theresa had formerly favored the Jesuits, entrusting them with the education of her children, but in April the empress, who had high hopes of marrying off her daughter Marie Antoinette to the French dauphin, the future Louis XVI, wrote to Charles III of Spain confirming that, despite the high esteem in which she held the Society, she would put no obstacle in the way of its suppression if the pope considered it expedient in the interests of Catholic unity. We have the evidence of several of those closest to her that she regretted this letter for the rest of her life; her remorse would have been greater still had she known the ultimate fate of her daughter, for whose sake she had sacrificed the Jesuit order.

With the publication of Maria Theresa’s letter, the pope had no more cards left to play. The bull authorizing the suppression,
Dominus ac Redemptor Noster
, was accordingly prepared in the offices of the Curia, and was published on August 16, 1773. On the following day the general of the order, Lorenzo Ricci, was taken to the English College in Rome, from which, a month later, he was transferred to Castel Sant’Angelo. Meanwhile, the contents of his wine cellar were shared out among the cardinals. The same was true of much of the Jesuits’ art collection, though many of the most important items found their way to the Vatican Museums.

Ricci was joined in the castle by his secretary, his five assistants—Italian, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, and German—and seven others. On the orders of their jailer, the odious Monsignor Alfani, and of the Spanish ambassador to Rome, José Moñino, they were prevented from speaking to each other and their windows were boarded up to ensure that they made no effort to communicate with the outside world. In October they were forbidden to say Mass, and the sum set aside for their food was reduced by half. A prolonged and exhaustive investigation failed to prove anything against them, but their confinement continued. Despite repeated appeals to Clement and to his successor, the seventy-two-year-old Ricci died in November 1775, still in the Castel Sant’Angelo—though he was to be buried in the Jesuit Church of the Gesù. After his death, however, the proceedings against his colleagues were suspended. Two had predeceased him; the last were released in February 1776.