The suppression of the Jesuits was the removal of all members of the Society of Jesus from most of the countries of Western Europe and their colonies beginning in 1759, and the abolishment of the order by the Holy See in 1773. The Jesuits were serially expelled from the Portuguese Empire (1759), France (1764), the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767) and Austria, and Hungary (1782). Political manoeuvrings both in Rome and within each country involved influenced this timeline. The papacy reluctantly acceded to the anti-Jesuit demands of various Catholic kingdoms while providing minimal theological justification for the suppressions. Historians identify multiple factors causing the suppression. The Jesuits, who were not above getting involved in politics, were distrusted for their closeness to the pope and his power in independent nations' religious and political affairs. In France, it was a combination of many influences, from Jansenism to free-thought, to the then prevailing impatience with the Ancien Régime. Monarchies attempting to centralise and secularise political power viewed the Jesuits as supranational, too strongly allied to the papacy, and too autonomous from the monarchs in whose territory they operated. With his Papal brief, Dominus ac Redemptor (21 July 1773), Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society as a fait accompli. However, the order did not disappear. It continued underground operations in China, Russia, Prussia, and the United States. In Russia, Catherine the Great allowed the founding of a new novitiate. In 1814, a subsequent Pope, Pius VII, acted to restore the Society of Jesus to its previous provinces, and the Jesuits began to resume their work in those countries. Background to suppression Before the eighteenth-century suppression of the Jesuits in many countries, there had been earlier bans, such as in territories of the Venetian Republic between 1606 and 1656–1657, begun and ended as part of disputes between the Republic and the papacy, beginning with the Venetian Interdict. By the mid-18th century, the Society had acquired a European reputation for political maneuvering and economic success. Monarchs in many European states grew increasingly wary of what they saw as undue interference from a foreign entity. The expulsion of Jesuits from their states had the added benefit of allowing governments to impound the Society's accumulated wealth and possessions. However, historian Gibson (1966) cautions, "[h]ow far this served as a motive for the expulsion we do not know." Various states took advantage of different events to