Conspiracy Theory as a Vehicle for a Jesuit-Free Portugal under the Pombaline Government (1750–77)

Abstract

During the reign of José I (1714–77), his prime minister, the marquis of Pombal paired an expansive program of Enlightenment reform with a dramatic anti-Jesuit policy whose impact extended far beyond Portugal. The Pombaline anti-Jesuit measures, accompanied by intensive international propaganda, were the end result of negative evaluations of the role played by the Jesuits in Portugal. A diabolical causality made the Society of Jesus responsible for the degeneration of the church, the corruption of politics, the backwardness of education, and the laxity in morals. This essay focuses on two aspects of Pombal’s campaign: first, the use of the church structures against a part of the church (the Society of Jesus); secondly, the identification of a philosophical authority, namely Aristotle, as supplying the intellectual underpinnings of the Jesuit order and symbolizing the allegedly outmoded forms of instruction associated with Jesuit pedagogy