A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767Cunninghame Graham, R. B. (Robert Bontine)
History
A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767
Cunninghame Graham, R. B. (Robert Bontine)
Jesuits -- Paraguay; Paraguay -- History -- To 1811
[306] This celebrated tumult, generally known in Spain as ‘el Motin de
Aranjuez’, and sometimes as ‘el Motin de Esquilace’, occurred on Palm
Sunday, 1766. The ostensible reason was an edict of the King (Charles
III.) prohibiting the use of long cloaks and broad-brimmed hats, which
had been for long popular in Spain. The tumult assumed such formidable
dimensions that the Walloon Guards were unable to quell it, but two
friars, Padre Osma and Padre Cueva, in some manner were able to stem
the confusion. The King and the court were so much disturbed that they
quitted Madrid and went to Aranjuez. There is no proof that the Jesuits
had any hand at all in the affair.
[307] Ferrer del Rio, in his history of the reign of Charles III.
[308] Such, at least, several of his letters to the Pope, Clement XII.,
would seem to indicate. It is not impossible that the strenuous
opposition which the Jesuits gave to the Inquisition may have had
something to do with their expulsion. Some of them went great lengths
in their attacks. P. Antonio Vieyra, the celebrated Portuguese Jesuit,
in his ‘Relaçaõ Exactissima, Instructiva, Curioza, Verdadeira,
Noticioza do Procedimento das Inquiziçois de Portugal’ (Em Veneza,
1750), is almost as severe as Protestant writers have been against the
Inquisition. Particularly does he inveigh against the prison system of
the Holy Office (pp. 3-5, chap. i.). In the last chapter (p. 154),
Vieyra calls Saavedra, the founder of the Portuguese Inquisition, a
tyrant, and in recounting his deeds calls him _tyranno, cruel,
falsario, herege_, and _ladram_ (a thief), and finishes by asserting
that the tribunal invented by such a man ‘had its roots in hell’, and
that ‘its ministers could not go to heaven’.
[309] His full name was Don Francisco de Paula Bucareli y Ursua.
[310] Brabo (‘Coleccion de Documentos’, etc.) says of him, ‘speaking of
the petty jealousies and intrigues which the decree of expulsion
evoked: ‘En medio de tantas contrariedades, crimenes y miserias destaca
serena la figura de Bucareli, no solo llevando a cabo con incansable
celo su cometido, si no atendiendo a suplir en la organizacion
religiosa, intelectual y civil los numerosos vacios que dejaba la falta
del absorbente y decisivo influjo jesuitico.’
[311] ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap.
viii., p. 119.
[312] Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.
[313] ‘Tambien en algunos pueblos hay unas escopetas inglesas muy
largas con sus horquillas si se quieren usar de ellas no son muy
pesadas y tienen buen alcance’ (Funes, ‘Ensayo de la Historia Civil del
Paraguay’, etc., vol. iii., cap. viii.).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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