Resumo

TOLEDO, Cézar de Alencar Arnaut de  e  RUCKSTADTER, Vanessa Campos Mariano. Anti-jesuitism in the eighteenth century: an analysis of the jésuite entry in the encyclopédie of the enlightenment. Contrapontos [online]. 2011, vol.11, n.02, pp.228-235. ISSN 1984-7114.

This paper presents a discussion of anti-Jesuit feeling in Enlightenment thought, based on an analysis of the Encyclopedia entry for Jésuite (Jesuit), organized and directed by Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783). In this entry there is the personification of snares, falsehoods and lies in the figure of the members of the Society of Jesus. The Enlightenment thinkers were representatives of the ideas that at the end of the Century would become the mainstay for the bourgeois revolution in France. The Enlightenment, among other ideas, defended the secularization of the State and all its institutions. Born in France, this movement was quickly and widely disseminated throughout Europe. In relation to formal education, the most direct attack was against the Society of Jesus, the Order that had the highest number of colleges in Europe at that time and therefore, still exerted a strong influence on the training of the European elite, as well as having widespread influence in the Iberian colonies. As soon as it was founded in 1539, and approved by the papal bull Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae from 1540, the Society of Jesus was noted for its educational endeavors. Thus, the education offered by the Jesuits, and their teaching method, was widely attacked by the Enlightenment, leading to a movement known as anti-Jesuitism. This movement can be defined as feelings, concepts and writings that were openly opposed to the Society of Jesuits. It began with the German Protestant preachers in the sixteenth century, spanning the launch in 1614, of the Secret Monita by the Polish Hieronim Zahorowski, and reinforced in the eighteenth century, when the Jesuits were expelled from the Portuguese Kingdom (1759) and abolished by the papacy in 1773. It was a century when heated altercations were taking place in Europe, both in intellectual and political circles, regarding the activities of the Jesuit priests. The attacks intensified in the nineteenth century, led by revolutionaries (or sympathizers of the Revolution) following the restoration of monarchy in France, and the positivists. Echoes of positivist anti-Jesuitism can be found in most history books of education, and also in Brazilian historiography. When analyzing the Encyclopedia entry, broader determinations will be considered, since the dispute between these two educational projects - Jesuit and Enlightenment - represents the struggle for dominance in society’s form of thinking, economy, politics and culture in this century.

Palavras-chave : Anti-Jesuitism; 18th Century; Enlightenment.

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