“A sinister creature is on the loose”: Anti-Jesuit Conspiracy Allegations as Political and Poetological Strategies in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century in Tyrol

Abstract

The restoration of the Jesuits in Tyrol in 1838/39 shocked the region’s liberals and this shock found expression in the medium of poetry as exemplified by the polemical “Jesuitenlieder” (Jesuit songs) that circulated throughout Tyrol and southern Germany. A few years later a debate developed in German newspapers about the influence of the Jesuits in Tyrol. While older, but also more recent studies often only focused on the literary quality and the liberal elements of the debate, the affinity of this discourse for the tropes of the conspiracy theory has been overlooked until now. Ultimately, the appeal of invoking such tropes was the possibility it afforded of branding the so-called “Jesuitism” and, in doing so, covertly criticizing the government.