1660 –
EUROPE
• John de Lugo, Spanish Jesuit who taught in the Roman College (1621 to 43) and who became a cardinal, dies.
• Death of Fr. John Armstrong who toiled for 40 years in the English Mission.
ASIA
• Alexandre de Rhodes, French Jesuit missionary to China and Vietnam, dies.
1661 –
EUROPE
• May – GC XI – due to General Nickel’s illness and age (80 years old), the GC chooses a general-vicar in the person of Giovani Paolo Oliva, with the right of succession, granting him exclusively the total powers of the general.
For 3 years Oliva serves as vicar, Nickel as general only in name. Thereafter, Oliva serves
for another 17 years (from 1664 to 1681).
• Cardinal Jules Mazarin dies.
Now Louis XIV 23 years of age, takes charge of France from Cardinal Mazarin (he took
over since Louis XIV was still very young).
He will reign until 1715. This long reign of Louis XIV (54 years from 1661 to 1715) was
favorable to the Society in many respects. But it also was the beginning of those hostile
movements which were to lead to the Suppression. The king’s autocratic powers, his
Gallicanism, his insistence on the repression of the Jansinists by force, the way he compelled the Society to take his part in the quarrel with Rome about the regale (1684-88), led to a false situation in which the parts may be reversed, when the all-powerful sovereign might turn against them, or standing neutral leave them the prey of others. This was seen at Louis XIV’s death, when the regent banished the once influential father confessor Le Tellier, while the gallicanizing archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Noailles, laid them under an interdict (1716-29) and forbade the Jesuits to officiate in his diocese.
• Fr. James Caret publicly defends doctrine of papal infallibility in College of Claremont, causing great excitement among the Gallicans and Jansenists.
• First Jesuits in Tinos, Greece.
• The death of Daniel Seghers, a famous painter of insects and flowers.
ASIA
• Emperor Shun-Chi (China) dies at the age of 24. Schall is accused of the emperor’s death and is sentenced to death. His death sentence is revoked due to a strong earthquake.
• Frs. Gruber and D’Orville reach Lhasa, Tibet.
AMERICAS
• Antonio Vieira is deported back to Portugal from Brazil by colonists.
1662 –
EUROPE
• John de Brito (martyr of India/apostle of Madura) enters the Society at 15 years in Lisboa.
• Zagreb Academy in Croatia opens with Fr. Stjepan Glavac as founder, offering courses eventually in philosophy, theology and law.
In 1669 Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Hungary and Croatia, granted this academy formal university status. This was the first beginnings of the University of Zagreb, the oldest university in Croatia and the rest of Southeastern Europe. It was run by the Jesuits until their suppression in 1773. After the suppression it became the Royal Academy of Sciences with the three faculties mentioned above, and after some further transformation was officially designated the University of Zagreb in 1874.
ASIA
• Diego Luis de San Vitores arrives in the Philippines.
1663 –
EUROPE
• Death of Francis Maria Grimaldi, astronomer who did research on the refraction of light. Isaac Newton made use of his work.
AMERICAS
• S.G. Eusebio Francisco Kino becomes very ill and promises that if he recovers he will devote himself as a Jesuit to the foreign missions just like Francis Xavier.
Later, he recovers and becomes a Jesuit (1665). In the end, he even adds the name “Francis” in memory of Xavier the missionary.
1664 –
EUROPE
• July – General Nickel dies. He had been general for 12 years.
• Giovani Paolo Oliva, Italian, becomes 11th General
During his generalate (17 years and four months) the Jesuit mission in Persia was
established reaching 400,000 converts only after 25 years of evangelization. In 1736 the
mission was destroyed however by violent persecution. Conflicts with Jansenism, the droit
de regale and moral theology came up during General Oliva’s term.
1665 –
EUROPE
• Cheng Ma-no Wei-hsin first Chinese Jesuit ordained a priest in Coimbra
• John von Bolland (responsible for the Bollandists Society, a group of scholars involved in
hagiography, producing critical editions on the lives of saints) dies.
• Philip III decrees that a mission be started in the Mariana Islands.
• Eusebio Kino enters the Society in Bavaria.
1666 –
EUROPE
• The Great Fire of London breaks out. Jesuits are blamed for the fire, together with some Papists. Charles II banishes all Jesuits from England.
ASIA
• Death of Fr. John Adam Schall von Bell in Beijing.
• Ferdinand Verbiest succeeds Schall von Bell as president of the Im
perial Board of Astronomy in Beijing. He is asked by the emperor (Kang-Shi) to make astronomical instruments like those in Europe
AMERICAS
• Jacques Marquette is ordained and is sent to Canada to work as missionary to the Indians.
1667 –
EUROPE
• Alexander VII dies. Clement IX becomes pope.
• Athanasius Kircher publishes work on China.
• William Ireland is ordained.
• The death in Rome of Cardinal Sforza Pallavicini, SJ, a man of great knowledge and humility. While he was Prefect of Studies of the Roman College he wrote his great work, The History of the Council of Trent.
AMERICAS
• Mission of St. Francis Xavier at Kahnawake (now Laprairie), Quebec is founded
• The first missionary to attempt to reach the Huaorani (or Aucas) in Ecuador, Pedro Suarez, is slain with spears
AFRICA
• Fasilides (emperor from 1632 to 1667) emperor of Ethiopia who expelled the Jesuits, dies.
1668 –
EUROPE
• Antonio Vieira goes to Rome (till 1674). Was imprisoned by the Inquisition.
ASIA
• Diego Sanvitores arrive in Guam to begin evangelization of the Mariana Islands.
AMERICAS
• Jacques Marquette works among Ottawa Indians.
1669 –
EUROPE
• Claude de la Colombiere is ordained a priest in Paris.
• Clement IX dies.
• Antonio Escobar de Mendoza (moral theologian who supported much the view of probabilism and which Paschal condemned in his Provincial letters) dies.
• S.G. John Peter Medaille (founder of of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph) dies.
• College-gymnasium founded by Peter Canisius in Innsbruck in 1562 becomes University of Innsbruck.
• Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Hungary and Croatia, grants the Neoacademia Zagrabiensis (Zagreb, Croatia) academy formal university status. This was the first beginnings of the University of Zagreb, the oldest university in Croatia and the rest of Southeastern Europe.
ASIA
• Ferdinand Verbiest is sent to China and succeeds Adam Schall von Bell as head of imperial astronomical bureau, Beijing. He also becomes instrumental in determining boundary between China and Russia.
