Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Jesuits of America
Inscribed 2003
What is it
A collection of 128,000 sheets which comprise the
documentary cultural heritage of the Society of Jesus, or
Jesuits, in the 17th and 18th centuries in Latin America.
Why was it inscribed
The Society of Jesus was among the most important
players in building the new culture and society in Central
and South America under the Spanish imperial rule,
and this is the only collection that records that work
and activity.
Where is it
Archivo Nacional de Chile, Santiago, Chile
The Society of Jesus was founded in Rome in 1540 as a
religious order of priests living under the rule of their
founder, St Ignatius Loyola. By the end of the decade
they had opened their first college for the training
of priests, drawing their teaching philosophy from both
scholasticism, the traditional, medieval educational
training, and the newer, humanist-based teaching that
had emerged from the Italian Renaissance.
From the beginning, the priests of the Society were
trained to serve and undertake missionary and charitable
work anywhere in the world and education was a central
part of this. As a result, they were committed to convert
the people of the new Spanish territory in the Americas
from the 16th century onwards.
In fact, the achievements of the Society in America
went far beyond its pastoral work and its contribution
was crucial to the religious, social, political and economic
development of the continent. Priests explored territories
and drew up maps and charts, learnt local languages and
compiled grammars, and wrote histories and catechisms.
The Society also accumulated property that gave them
economic self-sufficiency and financed their spiritual work.
In 1767 the Society was suppressed in the Catholic
countries of Europe and their overseas territories. Its
priests found themselves banished from their missions
and places of work, and they were expelled from
South America.
206 Jesuits of America
The profitable consequence of the suppression for
the Spanish Crown was that it seized all the Society’s
possessions. The Crown set up the Board of Administration
of Jesuitical Temporalities to take an inventory of the
goods and properties of the Society in each place where it
had settled and the documents they produced comprise
this collection.
Taken as a whole, the collection provides an overview
of the way the Jesuits worked in American society and
the contribution they made to it at a critical point in its
development. The documents have been ordered into six
distinct thematic categories.
The Occupation Series contains inventories and
property appraisal of schools, details of country estates,
data on indigenous populations and numbers of slaves.
The Application Series details how the property was
to be divided up, for example, sent to Spain or used in
the colonies. The Private Series deals with the political,
economic, social and jurisdictional implications
of the expulsion caused by the sale of estates and
other possessions.
The Decision Series comprises minutes of the meetings
of the Board of Temporalities; the Accounts Series details
financial transactions including expenditure and income;
and the Missions Series deals with the conversion of the
native people.
But the Crown proved unable to administer the Society’s
organization as well as it had done. The administration
and accountancy, artisan workshops, pharmacies, schools
and other activities of the Jesuits’ system had been run
coherently and with economic and financial efficiency.
The Board of Temporalities could neither undertake nor
administer all these aspects, so denying the Crown one
of its objectives in the expulsion – to take the profits that
the Society’s holdings had given their former owners.
Between 1801 and 1815, the Society was restored first
by the papacy, then by the countries from which it had
been expelled. Governments requested their educational
and teaching prowess, but did not return their former
buildings, nor did they resume their previous missionary
work nor their artisan, agricultural or trading activities.
Even their liturgical objects, church furnishings and
libraries, dispersed among other religious orders,
were never returned.
Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Gracia,
a wooden church built by the Jesuits in Chile. �