The Suppression of the Jesuits in Spain…
January 1767 CE
The Spanish crown had already begun a series of administrative and other changes in their overseas empire, such as reorganizing the viceroyalties, rethinking economic policies, and establishing a military, so that the expulsion of the Jesuits is seen as part of this general trend, known generally as the Bourbon Reforms.
The aim of the reforms is to curb the increasing autonomy and self-confidence of American-born Spaniards, reassert crown control, and increase revenues.
Some historians doubt that the Jesuits were guilty of intrigues against the Spanish crown that were used as the immediate cause for the expulsion.
Contemporaries in Spain attribute the suppression of the Jesuits to the Esquilache Riots, named after the Italian advisor to Bourbon king Carlos III, that erupted after a sumptuary law was enacted.
The law placed restrictions on men's wearing of voluminous capes and limiting the breadth of sombreros the men could wear was seen as an "insult to Castilian pride."
When an angry crowd of those resisters converged on the royal palace, King Carlos had fled to the countryside.
The crowd had shouted "Long Live Spain! Death to Esquilache!"
His Flemish palace guard had fired warning shots over the people's heads.
An account says that a group of Jesuit priests appeared on the scene, soothed the protesters with speeches, and sent them home.
Carlos had decided to rescind the tax hike and hat-trimming edict, and to fire his finance minister.
The monarch and his advisers are alarmed by the uprising, which challenges royal authority, but the Jesuits are accused of inciting the mob and publicly accusing the monarch of religious crimes.
Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, attorney for the Council of Castile, the body overseeing central Spain, articulates this view in a report the king reads.
Charles III orders the convening of a special royal commission to draw up a master plan to expel the Jesuits.
The commission first meets in January 1767.
It models its plan on the tactics deployed by France's Philip IV against the Knights Templar in 1307—emphasizing the element of surprise.
Charles's adviser Campomanes had written a treatise on the Templars in 1747, which may have informed the implementation of the Jesuit suppression.
Jansenists and mendicant orders have long opposed the Jesuits and seek to curtail their power.
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