Jesuits. Parma expelled the Jesuits from its territories, confiscating their possessions. Dissolution in Poland and Lithuania The Jesuit order was disbanded in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1773. However, in the territories occupied by the Russian Empire in the First Partition of Poland the Society was not disbanded, as Russian Empress Catherine dismissed the Papal order. In the Commonwealth, many of the Society's possessions were taken over by the Commission of National Education, the world's first Ministry of Education. Lithuania complied with the suppression. Papal suppression of 1773 After the suppression of the Jesuits in many European countries and their overseas empires, Pope Clement XIV issued a papal brief on 21 July 1773 in Rome titled: Dominus ac Redemptor Noster. That decree included the following statement. Resistance in Belgium After papal suppression in 1773, the scholarly Jesuit Society of Bollandists moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where they continued their work in the monastery of the Coudenberg; in 1788, the Bollandist Society was suppressed by the Austrian government of the Low Countries. Continued Jesuit work in Prussia Frederick the Great of Prussia refused to allow the papal document of suppression to be distributed in his country. The order continued in Prussia for several years after the suppression, although it had dissolved before the 1814 restoration. Continued work in North America Many individual Jesuits continued their work as Jesuits in Quebec, although the last one died in 1800. The 21 Jesuits living in North America signed a document offering their submission to Rome in 1774. In the United States, schools and colleges continued to be run and founded by Jesuits. Russian resistance to suppression In Imperial Russia, Catherine the Great refused to allow the papal document of suppression to be distributed and even openly defended the Jesuits from dissolution. The Jesuit chapter in Belarus received her patronage. It ordained priests, operated schools, and opened housing for novitiates and tertianships. Catherine's successor, Paul I, successfully asked Pope Pius VII in 1801 for formal approval of the Jesuit operation in Russia. The Jesuits, led first by Gabriel Gruber and after his death by Tadeusz Brzozowski, continued to expand in Russia under Alexander I, adding missions and schools in Astrakhan, Moscow, Riga, Saratov, and St. Petersburg and throughout the Caucasus and Siberia. Many former Jesuits throughout Europe traveled to Russia to join the sanctioned order there. Alexander I withdrew his patronage of the Jesuits in 1812,