Latest / The History of Portugal: The Small Nation That Built a Global Empire — Fexingo History / The Jesuits and the Making of Modern Lisbon
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- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know that 1755 was the year Lisbon burned, shook, and drowned in a single morning. But while we’ve talked about the tectonic shifts and the architectural rebirth of the Baixa Pombalina, there’s a darker, more political undercurrent that defined the decade that followed. Luna: The political side of the rebuild? Lucas: Exactly. It wasn’t just about raising ruins; it was about raising a new man. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, who would become the Marquês de Pombal, used the chaos of the Terremoto de Lisboa to consolidate power in ways that terrified the old aristocracy and the Church alike. Lucas: Before the quake, Pombal was already a sharp, controversial figure, known for his work with the wine trade and his disdain for courtly fluff. But when King João V died and Prince Pedro fell ill, leaving the throne to the young Queen Maria I, Pombal stepped into the vacuum as her chief minister. Luna: And he didn't let go. Lucas: He never did. He treated the disaster not as a tragedy to be mourned, but as a problem to be solved with brutal efficiency. He organized the cleanup himself, hiring soldiers to dispose of bodies before plague could spread, and famously declared that the dead should be buried 'at sea, beyond the Tagus,' ignoring ecclesiastical burial rites. Lucas: This pragmatic, almost secular approach to death and survival was shocking to a deeply Catholic society. It signaled immediately that the old order of privilege and ritual was being replaced by the new order of statecraft and utility. Luna: Did the Church push back against that? Lucas: Violently. And that brings us to the central conflict of Pombal’s reign: his war with the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were incredibly powerful in Portugal and its vast colonial empire, controlling education, missions in Brazil, and holding immense sway over the royal family through their confessor positions. Lucas: Pombal saw them as a state within a state, loyal to the Pope in Rome rather than the Crown in Lisbon. He believed they hindered economic progress and kept the population superstitious. So, he began quietly stripping their privileges, replacing them with lay professors in universities and cutting their colonial subsidies. Luna: That sounds like asking for trouble. Lucas: It was. And in 1758, they tried to strike back. There was an assassination attempt on Pombal’s carriage as it left the palace. He survived, but the shockwave was immediate. This became the catalyst for everything that followed. Lucas: The investigation that followed was less about justice and more about extermination. Pombal arrested the Duke of Aveiro, a high-ranking noble, and accused him of leading a conspiracy called the Plano de Aveiro to kill the king and install a puppet ruler backed by the Jesuits. Luna: Was there any real evidence? Lucas: Most historians agree it was a fabrication or at least heavily exaggerated. The so-called 'evidence' came largely from coerced confessions under torture. But Pombal didn't care about truth; he cared about the pretext. He needed a reason to crush both the rebellious nobility and the Jesuit order simultaneously. Lucas: The trial was swift. The Duke of Aveiro was executed, his properties confiscated, and his title erased. His house, the Casa dos Bicos, was symbolically torn down, its stones scattered and the site salted so nothing would ever grow there again. Luna: That’s incredibly harsh symbolism. Lucas: It was designed to terrify everyone in Lisbon. They called it the Terror de Lisboa, and it worked. The message was clear: loyalty to the Crown was absolute, and any challenge would be met with total annihilation. Lucas: But the nobles were just the beginning. The real target was the Jesuits. With the 'conspiracy' proven, Pombal moved to expel them from all Portuguese territories. In 1759, a royal decree ordered all Jesuits to be deported to Italy, stripped of their positions, and forbidden from teaching or preaching. Luna: Where did they send them? Lucas: They were loaded onto ships bound for Civitavecchia, near Rome. It was a massive logistical operation, removing hundreds of missionaries from Brazil, India, and Africa overnight. Their colleges were seized, their libraries cataloged, and their assets absorbed by the state. Lucas: This had huge implications for the Empire. In Brazil, the Jesuits had protected indigenous populations from enslavement, which actually conflicted with Pombal’s goal of integrating natives as productive subjects of the crown. Removing them cleared the way for greater colonial expansion and exploitation. Luna: So it was economic as much as political. Lucas: Absolutely. Pombal was also targeting the Cristãos-Novos, the New Christians, or Jewish converts, who were often distrusted by the Inquisition but relied on by the state for their commercial networks. By attacking the Jesuits, who were allies of the Inquisition, Pombal weakened the religious tribunal's grip on commerce. Lucas: He even introduced reforms that reduced the power of the Inquisition in economic matters, arguing that faith was private but trade was public. It was a radical separation for the time, driven by the need to rebuild the national economy after the earthquake. Luna: Did people think he was going too far? Lucas: Many thought so, including some within the royal family. There were whispers of an 'Illuminati' movement among the nobles, a group called the Iluminados de Portugal, supposedly plotting to overthrow Pombal. These rumors were likely fueled by Jesuit propaganda, but they added to the atmosphere of paranoia. Lucas: The government responded with surveillance and arrests. Even the Queen’s husband, Prince Pedro, got tangled in the accusations. He was implicated in plots against Pombal, leading to his temporary imprisonment and eventual exile. Pombal effectively isolated the royal couple from each other. Luna: He controlled the narrative completely. Lucas: He did. And he rebuilt Lisbon not just physically, but ideologically. The new Baixa Pombalina was designed with wide streets, standardized facades, and wooden internal frames to resist earthquakes—a practical, rational city for a rational state. Lucas: It was a monument to Pombal’s belief that the state, not the Church or tradition, should guide society. He created a meritocratic bureaucracy, though it was still elitist, promoting men like himself who served the crown rather than inherited status. Luna: What happened when he lost power? Lucas: When Queen Maria I ascended fully to the throne in 1777, she hated Pombal. She blamed him for the suffering of her husband and the humiliation of the monarchy. One of her first acts was to dismiss him and recall the exiled Jesuits, though only a few returned. Lucas: However, many of his structural reforms stuck. The expulsion of the Jesuits remained permanent across the Portuguese Empire. The centralized administration persisted, and the model of secular governance he established influenced European thinking for decades. Luna: So his legacy was mixed. Lucas: Deeply mixed. He saved Lisbon from collapse and modernized Portugal, but he did it through tyranny and conspiracy theories. He broke the power of the old feudal and religious orders, paving the way for liberalism, but he was no liberal himself. Lucas: He was a despot who believed he knew best. And in doing so, he changed the soul of Portugal forever, trading mystery for geometry, and privilege for efficiency. Luna: It feels like that tension between efficiency and freedom is still relevant. Lucas: It certainly is. And if you want to support our deep dives into these complex histories without ads interrupting the flow, we deliberately don't run ads on these. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Thanks for keeping the content ad-free. Lucas: We appreciate every bit of help. Now, back to the shadows of the eighteenth century. Lucas: Let’s look closer at one specific detail of the Aveiro Plot: the role of the testimony itself. The main witness against the Duke was a low-level servant who claimed to have heard the conspiracy discussed. Luna: And his word was enough to execute a duke? Lucas: In Pombal’s court, yes. The legal standards were suspended. Confessions obtained under torture were accepted as fact, and denial was proof of guilt. It was a judicial theater designed to produce a specific outcome. Lucas: This set a precedent for how political dissent would be handled in Portugal for the next fifty years. The state apparatus became the primary arbiter of truth, sidelining traditional courts and religious tribunals. Luna: That’s a scary shift in power. Lucas: It was. But it also allowed Pombal to implement his educational reforms. Without the Jesuits running schools, he opened the first secular technical institutes, training engineers, doctors, and administrators who owed their careers solely to the state. Lucas: These men formed the backbone of the Pombaline administration, ensuring that the reforms survived even after his fall. They were the true architects of modern Portugal, born out of the ashes of the earthquake and the fire of political conflict. Luna: It’s remarkable how much one event can accelerate change. Lucas: Disaster is a great accelerant. It forces choices that peace allows you to delay. For Portugal, the earthquake forced a choice between the old world of privilege and the new world of the state. Lucas: Pombal chose the latter, with iron hands and little regret. And in the end, Lisbon rose from the rubble, not just as a city, but as a symbol of that new, secular, centralized vision. Luna: A city built on pragmatism. Lucas: Exactly. And every time you walk through those symmetrical squares in the Baixa today, you’re walking through Pombal’s mind. It’s a reminder that history isn’t just about what happens, but who gets to decide what it means. Luna: That’s a haunting thought. Lucas: Perhaps. But it’s also a testament to human resilience. Even in the face of terror and destruction, we build, we organize, and we move forward. Though sometimes, we leave a lot of ghosts behind. Luna: I’ll keep that in mind next time I visit Lisbon. Lucas: Do. And look for the salt on the ground where the Casa dos Bicos once stood. A small, silent marker of a very loud time.