In the context of news reporting about anti-Jesuit government actions and within the media landscape of eighteenth-century Europe, anti-Jesuitism began to posit a comprehensive superconspiracy and, in doing so, interweave religious and political aspects. Visual media played a decisive role in this process. Due to their high degree of intermediality and frequent recourse to allegory, printed news images were able to bundle ongoing debates and condense complex arguments. The allegorical pictorial language of these images was a specifically baroque form of non-linear “hypertextuality” that went far beyond the linear patterns of causality normally associated with the verbal and textual cultures of the Enlightenment. The visual dimension of news reporting was a means of cross-referencing and connecting that, by defying linear logic, promoted the idea that “nothing is as it seems” and that “everything is connected.”

在有关反耶稣会政府行动的新闻报道背景下，以及在 18 世纪欧洲的媒体格局中，反耶稣会开始提出一个全面的超级阴谋，并在此过程中将宗教和政治方面交织在一起。视觉媒体在这个过程中起到了决定性的作用。由于其高度的中介性和经常诉诸寓言，印刷新闻图像能够捆绑正在进行的辩论并浓缩复杂的论点。这些图像的寓言式绘画语言是非线性“超文本”的一种特殊的巴洛克式形式，远远超出了通常与启蒙运动的语言和文本文化相关的线性因果关系模式。新闻报道的视觉维度是一种交叉引用和连接的方式，通过挑战线性逻辑，