Map of Candide's travels, with important cities and countries marked
The Jesuits and Their Reductions
"The establishment in Paraguay by the Spanish Jesuits appears alone, in some way, the triumph of humanity. It seems to expiate the cruelties of the first conquerors. The Quakers in North America and the Jesuits in South America gave a new spectacle to the world."
— Voltaire
Map of South America, with the area of the Reductions circled
The Jesuit missions in South America (especially the reductions in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil) were unique. Beginning in 1549, the Jesuits came to the region in an attempt to Christianize the indigenous people, spreading settlements across the area. After being expelled from what is now Brazil by groups of slavers who did not want the Jesuits interfering with their very lucrative trade, they came back in 1682 and founded seven eastern reductions. Eventually they established more than thirty of these little cities.
The cities all had the same basic structures, with a central church, a school, a cemetery, areas for crops, and many community houses. In these cities, there were no social classes, no king, no slaves, and no beggars. According to the Jesuits, this was the model of society God wanted man to follow. Everyone had their place and function. All tools, seed, and animals were owned in common. Everyone would work a certain number of days as a kind of payment to the common good. As a theocracy, there were no real kings or leaders. Everything was decided by the Jesuit priests and the native elders. All the indigenous people were catechized. They were educated in both basic literacy and in the arts, especially music, sculpture, and even ironcraft. There was also training in the care of children, making clothes, medicine, animal husbandry, and, most significantly, civil defense.
Plan of the Reduction of San Juan Bautista, c. 1756
The slavers knew that their success rested on their ability to overwhelm the indigenous people—who were previously living a nomadic life in the rain forest—with advanced weaponry. But the Jesuits gathered these scattered tribes together, raised these small cities with them, and taught them to defend themselves. The slavers saw a great dropoff in the success of their enterprise; no longer could four men with muskets capture fifty natives to be sold in Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires, because the natives fought back. Essentially, the Jesuits armed the indigenous people and turned them into an effective fighting force.
Between 1750 and 1770, Spain and Portugal, whose economies both relied on slavery, signed a series of treaties which effectively declared the Reductions illegal. As they had created such a threat to European economic stability, the Jesuits found themselves with many enemies. The royal houses of Europe, and even other religious orders (especially the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Augustinians) convinced the Pope to disband the order in 1767. At that time there were a little over 2,000 Jesuits in South America, who had over 700,000 natives in the Reductions.
When the Jesuit order was suppressed, Jesuits were expelled from every European country and colony, and all their assets were confiscated. The Reductions were declared illegal, and the natives ordered to return to their forests. The slavers then came back to the Reductions. The natives fought as well as they could, but in the end their cities were sacked and burned. The few natives who didn't return to the forest were enslaved or murdered. By the time the Order was restored, in 1814, the Reductions were in ruins, the indigenous tribes scattered and diminished.
Detailed map of some of the Reductions
Most of the Reductions are ruins now
For a dramatic look at the Reductions, the Jesuits, and how European politics led to their destruction, see The Mission, winner of the Palme D'or at Cannes and nominated for seven Academy Awards. It is (very loosely) based on historical events. It stars Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson. The score, by Ennio Morricone, is even better than his work on Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. Here's the trailer:
Hortus Conclusus is a Latin term meaning “enclosed garden.” Beginning in Persia and then becoming a part of architecture in Constantinople, North Africa, Rome, and across Europe, these carefully laid out hidden sanctuaries were often enclosed by fences, walls or impenetrable hedges protecting the privacy of their (noble) owners from the public or stray animals.
These gardens usually had at their center a fountain or well surrounded by trimmed flower beds and borders displaying highly symbolic flowers like thornless roses, violets, iris, Madonna lilies, and wild strawberries.
Hortus Conclusus gardens can be found in cloisters and monasteries across the Old World, where they served mainly as private retreats for contemplation, meditation and communication. With their inner beauty and perfect divine order, enclosed gardens were sanctuaries of peace and quiet offering protection from the unknown world outside and nourishing body and soul at the same time.
Another Hortus Conclusus
In late medieval iconographic images, the Virgin Mary was often displayed with her child in an enclosed hortus conclusus, which could be interpreted as a metaphor for the earthly paradise or the Garden of Eden.
This metaphoric use of the hortus conclusus is not merely a thing of the past. Joni Mitchell's popular song "Woodstock" compares the site of the famous 1968 festival to paradise with the line, "and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden." Groups as disparate as The Byrds, The Ramones, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Prince, and Lenny Kravitz, have all used the image of the walled or enclosed garden to represent some sort of idyllic state.
Contemporary Enclosed Gardens
Since we can't get back to the garden, we have to create our own:
the Hortus Mentis
Of course, Mr. Rogers knew this all along . . .
This one is because you probably didn't get the chance
to know Mr. Rogers when you were growing up.
