Suppression of the Society of Jesus

The suppression of the Society of Jesus was the removal of all members of the Jesuits from most of Western Europe and their respective colonies beginning in 1759 along with the abolition of the order by the Holy See in 1773. The Jesuits were serially expelled from the Portuguese Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767) and Austria, and Hungary (1782). Political manoeuvrings both in Rome and within each country involved influenced this timeline. The papacy reluctantly acceded to the anti-Jesuit demands of various Catholic kingdoms while providing minimal theological justification for the suppressions.

Historians identify multiple factors causing the suppression. The Jesuits, who were not above getting involved in politics, were distrusted for their closeness to the pope and his power in independent nations' religious and political affairs. In France, it was a combination of many influences, from Jansenism to free-thought, to the then prevailing impatience with the Ancien Régime. Monarchies attempting to centralise and secularise political power viewed the Jesuits as supranational, too strongly allied to the papacy, and too autonomous from the monarchs in whose territory they operated.

With his papal brief, Dominus ac Redemptor (21 July 1773), Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society as a fait accompli. However, the order did not disappear. It continued underground operations in China, Russia, Prussia, and the United States. In Russia, Catherine the Great allowed the founding of a new novitiate. In 1814, a subsequent pope, Pius VII, acted to restore the Society of Jesus to its previous provinces, and the Jesuits began to resume their work in those countries.