Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/91

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Marquis de Pombal

reigned unremitting rivalry. The Inquisition feared the progress of the Jesuits then displaying all the fervour of their early zeal. Threats, torture, butchery were the methods of one; the other's strength consisted in apparent yielding to the weakness of man, in making themselves loved, in bending their religion to the customs of the country. "The Inquisition was a tribunal; the Company of Jesus a Society; the one burned the body, the other inflamed souls." During the reign of D. Sebastião the Jesuits enjoyed high consideration. A Jesuit father, Camera, had been tutor to the young King, and cultivated in him the ascetic tastes that led to the fatal expedition to Africa ending in D. Sebastião's death. Under Philippe II's Spanish rule in Portugal the Jesuits held a neutral position, but their influence over the people ever increased, and as Latouche states, was curiously coincident with Puritanical influence in our own country. Up to the reign of D. João V they maintained their strong position, plainly visible even to-day in the number of extinct Jesuit houses one comes across in every town of Portugal. Under that King they experienced certain checks which threatened that their rule approached its end. They were not people to be easily discouraged, and continuing their mission in Brazil as well as Portugal they began to contend with tenacity for the chief favour of the King. Portugal became exhausted with the struggles of the theocracy and fell into an apathetic state from which she was only roused by an entirely new spirit: Carvalho, the famous statesman.

In Brazil the Jesuits made serious political mischief which obliged Carvalho—Marquis de Pombal—to send an army to maintain the treaty made with Spain touching the exchange of a colony. Pombal recognized as soon as he became Chief Minister of State that he must be either

65