The Last jesuits in Courland and their fate after 1773
ENThe first Jesuits permanently settled in Courland in the second half of the 17th century. It was the ‘third wave’ of the establishment of the Society of Jesus in the Latvian lands. At first, the short-lived college of Rīga and residence of Cēsis (1582–1625) served as a basis for the Jesuit activities in Vidzeme. Later on, the foundation of the residence in Daugavpils in 1630 (elevated to the rank of college in 1761) with numerous missionary stations attached to it was a starting point of long and continuous presence (until 1820) of the Society in Latgale. The first Jesuit community to be founded in Courland was the mission in Skaistkalne (in 1660). Subsequently, Jesuits settled in Jelgava (residence since 1690, united with the mission in Skaistkalne), and a residence in Ilūkste was opened in 1690. After the division of the Lithuanian Jesuit Province in mid-18th century, in 1761 residence of Ilūkste was elevated to the rank of a college, and both Jesuit communities in Jelgava and Skaistkalne started functioning as two independent residences. The aim of this paper is to characterize the group of the Jesuits active in Courland in 1773 and to follow both their collective and individual fates after the suppression of the Society. The most important sources which provide information about the members of the Society until 1773 are the annual and triennial catalogues, fragments of which were published by Joseph Kleijntjens SJ. The last printed catalogue of the province prepared for the year 1773/74 served as a basis for the characteristics of the group of Couronian Jesuits.lThe information of Kleijntens concerning the lives of the Jesuits prior to 1773 has been supplemented by: a) the data contained in the annual catalogues preserved in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (1757/58, 1759/60, 1763/64, 1766/67, 1767/68, 1769/70, 1771/72), in the Wróblewski Library in Vilnius (1756/57, 1770/71), and Vilnius University Library (1768/69, 1772/73), and b) the data from the card index of Fr Paulius Rabikauskas preserved in Vilnius Jesuit House (one can usually find more exact places of origin of Varmian Jesuits there). The majority of the facts concerning the fate of the Jesuits after 1773 are taken from the biographical entries of the encyclopedial dictionary of the Jesuits in the lands of Poland and Lithuania and from the opus of Jan Poplatek. Dates and places (the latter ones are given only in the cases when profession took place in Ilūkste, Jelgava, or Skaistkalne) of the vows of the professed Jesuits are indicated according to the information contained in original manuscript formulas. The data about the academic degrees is taken from the register of promotions of Vilnius University. No reference to these main sources of personal information is given in the text; a few exceptions have been made in the cases of occasional and incidental information contained in the hitherto unused primary (manuscript) sources as well as the information provided by Reinis Norkārkls (in the tables referred to as Norkārkls) to whom the author wishes to express his most sincere gratitude.
