1680 –
EUROPE
• Brother Andrea Pozzo is summoned by Fr. General Oliva to finish and decorate San Ignazio (Pozzo was the painter who gave the illusion that San Ignazio had a dome)
• Innocent XI issues a decree in defense of Probabiliorism of Tirso Gonzales (SJ who became General in 1687 – cf. 1687).
• Estimated Jesuits 17, 650 (7,870 priests) and 1,250 missionaries (450 in non-Catholic lands of Europe and 800 in pagan lands); 35 Provinces and 578 Colleges.
• Athanasius Kircher, German Jesuit, taught in the Roman College since 1634, (a scientist, linguist, writer), dies.
1681 –
EUROPE
• Nov – General Oliva dies (vicar from 1661 to 1664; general from 1664-1681)
He is able to put Portugal again into one province
• Italian Jesuit Eusebio Kino sails for Vera Cruz, Mexico from Cadiz (Spain)
He founded several missions and drew maps of the new lands (ex. California, New Mexico,
Arizona) and lived with the Pimas Indians. He was asked to return to Mexico (due
assumedly to being superficial in his instruction and baptizing Indians without much
preparation)
Gonzales (general from 1687 to 1705) asks the Mexican provincial to send Kino back.
Kino lived with the Indians till his death in 1711.
• Fr. Geoggry Henschen dies. He was assistant to Fr. Jan von Bolland in compiling Acts of the Saints.
• Claude la Colombiere goes back to Paray town and visits Margaret Mary once again.
• Anthony Baldinucci enters the novitiate of Sant’ Andrea.
AMERICAS
• Jacques Marquette publishes journal of voyage with Jolliet.
• A college is added to the small church founded by Jose Anchieta in 1554. This small church became the center of Jesuit missionary work in the city and vicinity of São Paulo, Brazil.
• Antonio Vieira returns to Brazil.
1682 –
EUROPE
• July – GC XII – elects Charles de Noyelle (Belgian) as 12th General
(like Ignatius’ experience, he received all the votes except his own)
He will be general for 4 years and five months.
• Around this time, dispute between Louis XIV of France and Innocent XI was intensifying. This culminated in the publication of “Declaration du clerge de France” (Mar 1682). This placed the Society in a difficult position in France, as its spirit of devotion to the papacy not in harmony with contents of the “Declaration”.
Innocent XI not satisfied with position of the Society and threatened to suppress the order,
proceeding even so far as to forbid the reception of novices.
Also tensions with Spanish Hapsburgs (w/ Carlos II) and French Bourbons (w/ Louis
XIV). Each demanded that General Noyelle pay a diplomatic visit to its own ambassador
in Rome before that of the other. General Noyelle went first to France. Carlos II reacted
negatively to this forbidding all communication between Government of Spain and General
of the Society. Much pressure from both of these governments planting the seeds of
division between the Society and Spain and France.
Once Louis XIV also demanded that the Gallo-Belgian Province in the Spanish
Netherlands (lately conquered by him) become part of the French rather than the German
Assistancy. Spain responded by demanding that Naples, Sicily and Milan become part of
the Spanish Assistancy and not the Italian.
• Claude La Colombiere (Apostle of the Sacred Heart, spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque) dies. St. Margaret alleged that in a vision Christ referred to Claude as “My Faithful Servant and Perfect Friend”. He promoted much the devotion to the Sacred Heart.
• College of Clermont becomes “Louis-le-Grand”.
• Jesuits take over the home of Ignatius and convert it into a shrine by putting in a chapel dedicated to Mary Immaculate.
AMERICAS
• Sao Francisco de Borja reducciones in Brazil is established.
• Kino, from Mexico, goes to Lower California.
1683 –
EUROPE
• Julian Maunoir (Blessed) dies. Beatified in 1951.
He was “Apostle of Brittany” famous for preaching to the poor in the northwest of France.
He started this group of priests Breton Missionaries – had 7 priests (1651); 300 priests
(1665); and almost 1,000 priests when he died (1683).
• Fifth estancia (of 6) Candelaria in Argentina is established.
• Denmark bans Catholics and imposes capital punishment for “monks, Jesuits and similar papistic priests”. (Later in 1768 this would not be followed with the coming of Jesuit Maximillian Hell to Denmark-Norway for scientific expedition)
AMERICAS
• Province of Chile is established.
• Fifth (of the 6 estancias) – Estancia La Candelaria in Argentina is founded.
1684 –
EUROPE
• Louis XIV of France sends Jesuit missionaries to China bearing gifts from the collections of the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles
ASIA
• Another group of Jesuits arrive in Thailand with a French embassy to the King of Siam. The earlier (Portuguese) group came in 1655. This French group would leave in 1712 after French-Thai relationships would deteriorate.
1685 –
EUROPE
• James II succeeds Charles II.
ASIA
• John de Brito, after 11 years on the mission, is made superior in Madura.
AMERICAS
• Jesus de Tavarangue (Paraguay reducciones) is founded.
AFRICA
• Fr. Guy Tachard (Frenchman) sets foot in South Africa at Cape Town. He was an astronomer-teacher. Although the Dutch authorities did not allow Catholics to disembark, because the governor of the Cape Colony wanted astronomical readings taken, he was allowed ashore
1686 –
EUROPE
• Dec – General Noyelle dies (12th General of the Society). He was general for 4 years and 5 months.
• Jesuit College of Budapest is founded.
• Coronation Church in Trinity Square (also called the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Church of the Assumption, and Matthias Cathedral or Church), the oldest building in Buda, (Hungary) is given to the Jesuits who renovate it from the queen’s donations. The original church was built in 1255-1269. Many of the kings of Hungary were crowned here. When the Turks invaded in 1526 they burned the church, but then rebuilt it for use as a mosque from 1541. After the recapture of the city the church was given briefly to the Franciscans and then to the Jesuits (in 1686) who held it until the Suppression in 1775
ASIA
• John de Brito is captured and almost martyred but in the end is released by the Brahmans.
Later he leaves Goa for Lisboa.
AMERICAS
• Kino begins his 1,500 mile trek to the Pimeria Alta, a region that included northern Sonora and southern Arizona, that is, land west of the San Pedro River and as far north as the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers (thus, now northern Mexico and southern Arizona).
• Bolivia mission of Trinidad is founded by Fr. Cipriano Barace.
• Laying of cornerstone for a Seminary in Bethlehem of Cachoeira, Brazil (first boarding school for laymen). This is started by Alexander de Guzman, considered the major educational figure of colonial Brazil. This institution will continue to run for 73 years (until the suppression), taking in some 1,500 boarders.
1687 –
EUROPE
• June – GC XIII – Innocent XI insisted that he wanted Tirso Gonzales (who defended probabiliorism) to be the next 13th General. And also he wanted the GC to have a decree stating that SJs were free to defend Probabiliorism. The GC did as the pope wished.
• During this time the controversy between Probabilism (moral system w/c holds that one can safely follow a theological opinion if it is proposed by someone having sufficient theological authority and standing) and Probabiliorism (requires that the more lenient opinion be stronger than the stricter opinion).
General Gonzales went against Probabilism which caused many problems in the Society
since most Jesuits were in favor of it.
At this time Jesuits were vilified as laxists by Jansenist rigorists, most notoriously by
Blaise Paschal in his Provincial Letters.
General Gonzales attacked points laid down in the “Declaration du clerge de France”
(cf. 1682), Gonzales’ work published at Rome in 1689 by order of Innocent XI who was
against Louis XIV of France.
Later Alexander VIII would ask that this published work of Gonzales be withdrawn since
it was straining much the relationship between France and Holy See.
General Tirso Gonzales had 18 long years of severe distress and tension, given the issues
above. He also fostered foreign missions in the Society.
ASIA
• John de Brito (martyr of India) arrives in Lisboa to report on the status of the mission and Church in India. He stays in Portugal for 3 years and returns to India in 1690.
AMERICAS
• San Miguel (Brazil reducciones) chief mission of the seven, is founded.
• Fr. Kino arrives in Pimeria Alta region (land of the Pima; now northern Mexico and southern Arizona). From 1687 to 1711, he will do missionary work with the Indians in Pimeria Alta region (now northern Mexico and southern Arizona).
• Jesuits begin their mission in Trinidad, Bolivia, building the Cathedral Church of Trinidad.
• Jesuits found The National College of Our Lady of Montserrat (a secondary school) in Argentina.
1688 –
EUROPE
• Louis XIV forbids all correspondence and interchange between French Jesuits and General Tirso Gonzales (who is Spanish).
• Birth of Giuseppe Castiglione. Jesuit Italian painter who “undertook the role of official painter to this distant court (China) with the positive conviction that art was above all a means of carrying out his evangelical mission”.
• Jesuits are forced to leave New York with James II losing his crown and the brief period of toleration of Catholics ending in the English colony.
• English Jesuits build a chapel in Chevremont, Belgium. They were doing their studies in exile in Liège, and came to Chevremont and built the chapel.
ASIA
• Ferdinand Verbiest dies (successor to Adam Schall as math professor at the imperial court in Peking and superior of the Jesuits in China).
• George Joseph Kamel, establishes a herb garden and pharmacy at the Jesuit college in Manila, from where he sent botanical specimens to Europe.
AMERICAS
• Antonio Vieira becomes provincial in Brazil.
1689 –
EUROPE
• Innocent XI dies. Alexander VIII becomes pope.
• Francis Retz (from Prague), future General, enters the Society.
