Suppressed by Rome, Kept Alive by an Orthodox Empress

The mobility and international reach the Jesuits' design made possible produced both the order's greatest successes and, eventually, its temporary destruction. Missionaries trained in the Society's system reached remarkably far within decades of the 1540 approval, including Matteo Ricci's mission to the Ming court in China and the large scale mission settlements, the reductions, established among Guarani communities in Paraguay, both frequently cited as demonstrations of how far the order's mobile, unenclosed structure let it operate compared with older monastic forms. That same reach, wealth and political influence eventually provoked a backlash from Bourbon monarchies in Portugal, France and Spain, who pressured Rome until Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society outright in 1773, dissolving it as a legal institution across most of Catholic Europe.

The order survived this suppression only because of an unlikely protector: Catherine the Great of Russia, ruling a mostly Orthodox empire with no obligation to enforce a papal brief, declined to promulgate the suppression within her territory, allowing Jesuit communities in the Russian Empire to continue operating without interruption until Pope Pius VII formally restored the Society worldwide in 1814, over four decades after its dissolution elsewhere.