The Blog is Back!

By popular request, I shall continue to update you with my poetry and prose.  I am currently in Denver, CO doing a course on Jesuit history,  Here is some of the fruit of my classes...

You know Eric: you have a general idea of how I react to controversies.  You know what sort of projects I get up to creating.  You might even know how I'd respond to people accusing me of things.  Imagine now, if you will, twenty-thousand Erics... of various aims and training, forming a tightly knit international organization in the 18th century. 

Jesuits worked in every corner of the world.  Beyond the borders of Spanish and Portugeuse colonies in South America, protected from slavers and European exploitation, Guarani indigenous peoples were composing chamber music for the harpsichord while missionaries copied volumes of their poetry on local printing presses.  To the Guarani, music, as well as words, are sacred, and arranging them beautifully is a task so important that everyone in town pitches in working in the fields to make time for musicians to practice.

In China, Jesuits serve the Imperial court as astronomers and philosophers, translating the works of Confucius and introducing the literati of the land to Euclid.  They permit the converts to Christianity to keep many of their local spiritual traditions and ceclebrate Christ in their own native language... a fact that earns them reproach from the West.

In Russia, India, Africa, the Polynesian islands, and North America... Jesuits are there and are at work building communities, colleges, and churches.  At home in europe, they are confessors and advisors to kings as well as defenders of the poor on the streets.  They educate without charging a fee, they construct refuges for people to get off the streets, and at the same time produce plays, paintings, and architecture to inspire the heart. 

It's not all good news of course.  They make mistakes as they learn their methods.  And they earn a reputation for being proud: building massive, expensive golden shrines to their saints and martyrs.  They are viewed with distrust by other religious orders and clergy for their name: the name of Jesus rather than the name of their founder.  They are suspected of paganism for their custom of wearing the clothes and speaking the languages of pagan nations. 

Also, back in South America, Portugeuse slavers make deeper raids into Guarani territory.  Under the auspices of the Jesuits, they receive permission to arm themselves against the invaders.  They are taught European fighting tactics and the use of muskets. 

And in old Europe, the rumblings of nationalism swell amidst the tidal forces of the Age of Reason.  Also called the age of exploration.  And the age of Empire.

Two great European empires come to a compromise over how to divide the world's territories between them.  Spanish and Portuguese monarchs draw a neat line across a map, splitting a continent they have never seen.  The Guarani find themselves split in two as well.  The Spanish King orders his Guarani to lay down their arms and submit themselves to Portuguese rule.  The Jesuits side with their friends against the edict of the state; they write pleading letters to Rome explaining as best they can why they cannot comply.  But the treaty is already a fait accompli.  The Spanish army eventually expels the Jesuits from South America.  The Guarani resist being ruled for seven years.  And the very arms the Jesuits had trained them to use were turned against the armies of the Portuguese king.  And the Spanish king is infuriated at this rebellion against his command.

All the while, popu;lar thought in europe is shifting.  Why should the church have so much control over the affairs of the state?  The practical and the rational must rule the day.  Why should the French church submit to an Italian Pope? The greatest symbol of the Pope's power and autonomy in the midst of a sovereign nation stands out like a black robe in a sunny street.  The Jesuits.  They disobey the rightful ruler of a nation.  They excuse rebellion and disorder with their equivocating morals.  The Jesuit style of morality was heavily entrenched in freedom of the moral agent, in 'casuistry', the notion that the person must adapt to the circumstances in which he finds himself.  Whereas the enlightenment set its sights on irreducibly true scientific and moral principles.  This unruly band of unpatriotic clerics, loyal only to Rome, was the enemy within.

Five years after the Guarani lost their war, the prime minister of Porutgal, the Marquis de Pombol, completed a long-waged attack against the Jesuits.  There was a riot against state policies near the capital.  The 'Black Cloak Riots' were a fight over attempts by the government to abolish old practices of clothing in favour of modern (French) styles.  The people were outraged.  It is now agreed by historians that the Jesuits were completely uninvolved, but they were certainly blamed. And the Bourbon dynasty king of Portugal agreed with his minister: the Jesuits were to be expelled from Portugal.  They were woken in the night and told that by dwn they must be aboard sailing ships to the Papal states: "For the peace and harmony of the nation". 

One of the oldest Jesuit provinces was emptied.  And the other great Empires were shown that it could be done.  All that was needed was the courage to stand up to the Pope.  The Jesuits were on the brink of extinction...

TO BE CONTINUED!