ABSTRACT
In his 1997 article, Enrique Giménez called attention to one of the least known chapters in Spanish anti-Jesuitism: to wit, the persecution of certain devotions, such as Our Lady of Light, which was being spread in Spain during the reign of Ferdinand VI and the early years of Charles III by members of the Society of Jesus as an attempt to stop the other “Lights” coming from enlightened philosophy.1 More recently, Teófanes Egido recalled that because they were established among laypeople, the Marian congregations were victims of attacks by the royalist government in the years around the expulsion. After their dramatic 1767 suppression, the Jesuits were forced to leave the Philippines after their arrival almost two centuries earlier from the Viceroyalty of New Spain.2 Furthermore, the Council of Castile, led by Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes (1723-1802), conducted a veritable “witch hunt” against the Jesuits and their followers.3
