Three pamphleteers of Catholic anti-liberalism: Jesuitism as resistance (1829-1834)

Abstract

This article examines the role of three Catholic pamphleteers – José Agostinho de Macedo, Friar Fortunato de São Boaventura, and Friar Alvito Buela Pereira de Miranda – in shaping an anti-liberal rhetoric centred on the defence of Jesuitism between 1829 and 1834. In a period of acute political instability, marked by the death of King João VI and the civil war between brothers Miguel and Pedro, representatives of conservative and liberal factions, these authors identified in the Jesuits the last bastion of moral order, doctrinal coherence, and resistance to the political and spiritual disintegration driven by Liberalism. Through periodicals, pastoral letters, and pamphlets, they employed a combative, theologically grounded, and strongly polemical language, which transformed Jesuitism into not only a religious cause but also a counter-revolutionary platform. The analysis sheds light on how Catholic anti-liberalism was aligned with political traditionalism, revealing deep tensions between faith, power, and modernity in Portuguese society during the first half of the nineteenth century.