ConceptualizedNetherlandr wrote
To what end hide wealth? Until when? If indeed wealth was hidden and not yet recovered in the Americas somewhere they have probably lost ownership/title to it. Poor strategy if you ask me.
I am
not speaking for our mutual amigo Gollum, but think your point is as to
why the Jesuits would hide wealth - wealth means power, and they did not want to "share" any of their booty with the Spanish royal authorities. Nor with the Portuguese, French etc for that matter, and it is to be used for their main goal which is to establish a global monarchy under their head. Remember what they were founded for - to counter the horrifying rise of Protestantism and secularism, the decay of the Papal rule as a state form of government. They were and are, the "militant" Order of priests, not just kindly fathers looking to save souls but have always been heavily involved in political controversies including inciting rebellions and even assassinations of the heads of state. As you know, politics means money and lots of it, to buy influence and friends, or to destroy and reduce enemies.
Unlike all the other Orders operating in New Spain, the Jesuits had managed to get exemptions from paying property taxes and numerous other privileges; the Spanish royal authorities could SEE that the Jesuits were in fact amassing wealth in astonishing quantities, and yet they could NOT see it getting shipped OUT of the Spanish territories. The logical conclusion reached by the king and his advisers was that the Jesuits were massing treasure IN Mexico, for what purposes they could not know, but they did get wind of the Jesuits plan to betray the whole of the Spanish possessions to the Dutch, and when Jesuits were implicated in riots and an attempted assassination in Spain and Portugal, it was too much. You know the rest of that story - the Jesuits were rounded up, the authorities searched for the concealed treasures and (mostly) failed to find it.
To some people the fact that the Spanish failed to find much, "proves" there never was any to start with. Considering that the discovery of just ONE cache of treasure in Brazil was worth many millions of dollars, I get the opposite conclusion.
This idea of massing wealth and hiding it may not seem like the smartest strategy to you, but the Jesuits did not necessarily look at things the way you do. In hiding their wealth, they fully expected to one day return, and retrieve it. They have been allowed back into many of the countries they got thrown out of over the centuries, in some cases they got thrown out again, but they do not look at it in the terms of a few years or even the lifetime of one man, but in centuries. The Jesuits also hedged their bets by hiding a LOT of money in Dutch banks, and in Belgium as well, where they thought it was safe from the Spanish or even the Papal authorities if and when the hammer should fall on them. Don't make the mistake of trying to reason it out by your own logic, we are talking about people whom were committed, "true believers" types, whom were working for a Holy goal etc not on the same points of logic that you or I might use. I won't use the term "fanatics" to describe these Jesuits, but it is not that far off from accurate either.
On where these valuable "decorations" of the various Jesuit missions originated, some items came direct from Europe, some even from China and Asia, and some were manufactured locally - there is an excellent study online done on the Jesuit missions to the Tarahumara at:
http://www.udel.edu/ArtHistory/ARTH435/Bargellini.pdf
Good luck and good hunting amigos, I highly recommend reading up on the Jesuits and from both sides, including the Jesuit apologists and the "enemies" of the Jesuits, to reach your own conclusions.
Oroblanco
