A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607-1767

Chapter I

Early history—State of the country—Indian races—Characteristics of the different tribes—Dobrizhoffer’s book—Various expeditions—Sebastian Cabot—Don Pedro de Mendoza—Alvar Nuñez—His expedition and its results—Other leaders and preachers—Founding of the first mission of the Society of Jesus

With the exception of the French Revolution, perhaps no event caused so much general controversy at the end of the eighteenth century as the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and Portugal and their colonial possessions. As no definite charges were ever brought, at least in Spain, against the members of the Company of Jesus (King Charles III. having kept the reasons ocultas y reservadas and the proofs privilegiados), curiosity is to some extent not satisfied as to the real reason of their expulsion from the Spanish possessions in America.

It is almost impossible to understand nowadays the feelings which possessed the average man in regard to the Jesuits from the middle of the last century till a relatively short time ago. All the really great work done by the Society of Jesus seemed to have been forgotten, and every vulgar fable which it was possible to invent to their prejudice found ready acceptance upon every side. Nothing was too absurd to be believed. From the calumnies of the Jansenists to the follies of Eugène Sue the mass of accusation, invective, and innuendo kept on increasing in intensity. Indiscriminate abuse and unreasoning hatred, mixed with fear, seem to have possessed all minds. Even Pascal confesses (in a postscript to the ninth Provincial Letter) that ‘after having written my letter I read the works of Fathers Barry and Binet.’ If such a man as Pascal could be so grossly unfair as to write a criticism on works which he had not read, what can be expected from the non-judicial and uncritical public which takes all upon trust?

From Japan to the interior of Bolivia there is scarcely a country in which the Jesuits have not laboured assiduously, and in which they have not shed their blood freely without hope of reward, yet it would require much time and a lengthy catalogue to enumerate the list of satirical and calumnious works which have appeared against them in almost every language in Europe. Of these, perhaps the most celebrated is the well-known ‘Monarquia de los Solipsos’, by Padre Melchior Inshoffer, an ex-Jesuit, who describes the company in the worst possible terms. It is interesting chiefly on account of the portraits of well-known people of the time (1615 to 1648), as Pope Clement VIII., Francisco Suarez, Claudio Aquaviva, and others, veiled under easily distinguishable pseudonyms. The object of the writer, as the title indicates, is to show that the Jesuits endeavoured to turn all to their own profit. In this, if it was the case, they do not seem to have been greatly different from every other associated body of men, whether lay or clerical. The celebrated Spanish proverb, ‘Jesuita y se ahorca, cuenta le hace’, meaning, Even if a Jesuit is hung he gets some good out of it, may just as well be applied to members of other learned professions as to the Jesuits.

The world has rarely persecuted any body of men conspicuous by its poverty, or if it has done so has rarely persecuted them for long. The Inquisition of Spain, violent against the wealthy Jews and comfortable Moriscos, took little notice of the Gipsies; but, then, ‘Pobre como cuerpo de Gitano’ was and is a common saying in Spain.

As in the case of the Templars, persecution only began against the Jesuits when it became worth while to persecute them. Ignatius Loyola, Francisco Xavier, and Diego Lainez, as long as they confined themselves to preaching and to teaching, were safe enough. Even the annals of theological strife, bloodthirsty and discreditable to humanity as they are, contain few examples of persecutors such as Calvin or Torquemada, to whom, ruthless as they were in their savage and narrow malignity and zeal for what they thought the truth, no suspicion of venal motives is attributed.

Of the Jesuits’ intrigues, adventures, rise and fall in Europe, much may be said in attack or in extenuation; but it is not the intention of the present work to deal with this aspect of the question. It was in Spanish America, and especially in Paraguay and Bolivia, where the policy of the Company in regard to savage nations was most fully developed, as it was only the Jesuits who ever succeeded in reclaiming any large number of the nomad or semi-nomad tribes of those countries.

Many excellent works in French, and the celebrated ‘Christianismo Felice nel Paraguay’ of the Abbate Muratori in Italian, certainly exist. But neither Father Charlevoix, the French historian of the missions, nor Muratori was ever in Paraguay, and both their books contain the faults and mistakes of men, however excellent and well intentioned, writing of countries of which they were personally ignorant. Both give a good account of the customs and regimen of the missions, but both seem to have believed too readily fabulous accounts of the flora and fauna of Paraguay. The fact of having listened too readily to a fable about an unknown animal in no way detracts from the general veracity of an author of the beginning of the eighteenth century, for in all other respects except natural history Charlevoix keeps within the bounds of probability, though of course as a Jesuit he holds a brief for the doings of the Company in Paraguay. Muratori is more rarely led into extravagances, but is concerned in the main with the religious side of the Jesuits, as the title of his book indicates.

Many other French writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, have treated of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded on hearsay evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone. His delightful ‘History of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay’, is perhaps the most charming book dealing with the subject. A simple and easy style, a keen habit of observation, long acquaintance with the country, a zeal for the conversion of the infidel, not only to Christianity, but to a more comfortable mode of life, to which he adds a faith sufficient to move the Cordillera of the Andes, but at the same time restricted by a common-sense and veracity not always observable in religious writers, render Dobrizhoffer a personal friend after the perusal of his writings.

English is singularly barren in regard to the Jesuits in Paraguay. Father Falconer, an English Jesuit, has left a curious and interesting book (printed at Hereford in 1774), but he treats exclusively of what is now the province of Buenos Ayres, the Falkland Islands, and of Patagonia. As an Englishman and a Jesuit (a somewhat rare combination in the eighteenth century), and as one who doubtless knew many of the Paraguayan priests, his testimony would have been most important, especially as he was a man of great information, much education, an intrepid traveller, and, moreover, only entered the Company of Jesus at a comparatively advanced age.

It is in Spanish, or in Latin by Spanish authors, that the greater portion of the contemporary histories and accounts are to be found. Literatures, like other things, have their times of fashion. At one time a knowledge of Spanish was as requisite as some tincture of French is at present, and almost as universal. Men from Germany, England, and Holland who met in a foreign country communicated in that language. In the early portion of the century Ticknor, Prescott, and Washington Irving rendered Spanish literature fashionable to some degree.

Later the historical researches of Sir William Stirling Maxwell drew some attention to it. To-day hardly any literature of Europe is so little studied in England. Still leaving apart the purely literary treasures of the language, it is in Spanish, and almost alone in Spanish, that the early history of America is to be found.

After the struggle for independence which finished about 1825, some interest was excited in the Spanish-American countries, stimulated by the writings of Humboldt; but when it became apparent that on the whole those countries could never be occupied by Northern Europeans, interest in them died out except for purposes connected with the Stock Exchange. Yet there is a charm which attaches to them which attaches to no other countries in the world. It was there that one of the greatest dramas, and certainly the greatest adventure in which the human race has engaged, took place. What Africa has been for the last twenty years, Spanish America was three hundred years ago, the difference being that, whereas modern adventure in Africa goes on under full observation, and deals in the main with absolutely uncivilized peoples, the conquest of South America was invested with all the charm of novelty, and brought the conquerors into contact with at least two peoples almost as advanced in most of the arts of civilization as they were themselves.

When first Sebastian Cabot and Solis ascended the Paraná, they found that the Guaranís of Paraguay had extended in no instance to the western shore of either of those rivers. The western banks were inhabited then, as now, by the wandering Indians of the still not entirely explored territory of the Gran Chaco. Chaco is a Quichua Indian word meaning ‘hunting’ or ‘hunting-ground’, and it is said that after the conquest of Peru the Indian tribes which had been recently subjugated by the Incas took refuge in this huge domain of forest and of swamp.

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