Entre el repudio y la sospechalos jesuitas secularizados

Abstract

When the Spanish Jesuits were expelled from Spain, thanks to a Real Order signed by Charles III in April 1767 and, after the Pope Clement XIII refused to welcome them in his Estates, these ecclesiastics were deserted in Corsica. Some of them chose to leave the Order as the only way to mend their lives, most of them trusting that they would return to their country. The most interested party in the increment of desertions were the Spanish ministers. They sent very specific norms to the real commissaries, who had the responsibility of watching over the Jesuits and paying their pension. The intention was to promote the desertions in order to break the strong unity characteristic of the Society of Jesus. In this article we focus on how the Castilian lived the first renunciations, using as the main the Diary written by Father Manuel Luengo. We also study the evolution in the relationship between the Jesuits who preferred to stay in their Order and those who left it, the vicissitudes the secularized suffered and their situation at the end of the 18th Century.