‘Great troubles and discords, and more than intellectual’: Government, Theology and Partisanship in the Society of Jesus under González

Surprisingly enough, the victory of González’s Probabiliorism was not celebrated only in theological terms and in theological texts. In France, Jean Blanchet, one of the Jesuits most openly favourable to González in the province of Aquitaine, and actually a member of González’s network of correspondence and information, wrote several poems celebrating González and his doctrine in the year 1696.1 He was not alone in this endeavour as another French Jesuit, Louis de Fourcroy also wrote a poem entitled ‘Wherefore a General Congregation?’ on the occasion of the Novennial Congregation of 1696, which González had preserved along with those of Blanchet.2