The Jesuits (15 page)

Some of those changes are of course more important than others. In the history of the Society, four are undoubtedly pivotal. Each of them has marked a significant moment in Jesuit self-definition that was at the same time a partial redefinition of the Society. These moments were turning points. A more dramatic way to express the phenomenon is to say that the Society has several times refounded itself. Although each refounding has drawn its core identity from the past, it has partially reshaped the past or moved beyond it. If we adopt the conceit of a prologue and four foundings to organize the history of the Society of Jesus, the following is the result.

In 1534 Ignatius and six other students at the University of Paris pronounced a vow of poverty and determined to travel together
to the Holy Land. They were no longer simply students who associated with one another; they were now bonded together in a common enterprise. Though they were not aware of it, they at that moment took the first step that would lead to the official founding of the Society. Before they left Paris they were joined by three other students. They began to describe themselves as members of a
compagnia di Gesù
, a brotherhood of Jesus.

In 1540 the companions of Paris now bound themselves together permanently as members of a religious order, formally recognized as such by the church. This meant they replaced their informal and egalitarian lifestyle with that of members of an organization with
Constitutions,
procedures, superiors, and subjects. From a close-knit band of ten friends, they had grown by the death of Ignatius to a membership a hundred times larger.

Sometime around 1550 Ignatius, in consultation with his closest advisers, took the momentous step of committing the Society to formal schooling as its primary ministry. This was a decision of immense import for the future of Catholicism but more immediately for the Society of Jesus. The original ideal of a band of missionaries and itinerant preachers now had to be modified to take account of the Society as also a band of resident schoolmasters. Moreover, Ignatius's decision wrought a profound change in the
culture of the Society, as Jesuits became specialists in every branch of knowledge and every cultural form, including theater, music, and dance.

By virtue of the papal brief of 1773, the Society of Jesus had ceased to exist. By virtue of a papal bull forty-one years later, it was restored to life. The Society was restored as part of a wave of conservative restorations initiated in that year, 1814, and its self-understanding began to reflect that fact. In its essential identity it was the same Society as before the suppression, yet its cultural, political, and even religious mind-set reflected the culture of restoration prevalent in Catholicism in this period.

General Congregation Thirty-One, 1965–1966, made its decisions under the influence of two powerful factors that no previous Congregation had had to take into account. The first was the cumulative effect upon Jesuit self-understanding of the intense study of Jesuit sources that had been under way for the previous half-century. That study had resulted in an understanding of the early Society and its normative documents that was more flexible and less moralistic than the understanding generally operative since the restoration in 1814.

The second was Vatican Council II, which ended just as the Congregation was beginning. The Congregation saw its major
task as implementing for the Society the ideals and vision of the council. It gave the Society the mandate, for instance, to promote understanding and dialogue among people of all religious faiths. It in more general terms took account of the great cultural shifts that had occurred since the restoration of 1814 and moved the Society beyond certain positions it had formally or informally adopted in those circumstances.

In the meantime the four Congregations that have subsequently taken place have directed the Society along those same lines. What is clear is that the Society is now evolving in new ways in a world that seems to be evolving even faster. Its challenge now, as always, is to retain its identity while at the same time exploiting its tradition of adaptation to persons, places, and circumstances.

There is reason to believe the identity will hold. Through all the changes over the years, the Jesuits have had to guide them some remarkable resources that have continued to be their touchstones for authenticity. Absolutely primary among them are the
Spiritual Exercises,
the
Formula,
and the
Constitutions.
While each of these documents counsels flexibility and adaptability, the principles that undergird them are firm. They provide the foundation for an identity that in its general contours is discernible by an alert eye.

T
he quantity of literature on the Jesuits is overwhelming. Although earlier writings about them often still have merit, most are marred by either apologetic or polemical concerns. About the middle of the last century that situation began gradually to change, but only in the past twenty years have studies of the Jesuits for the most part altogether shaken off those prejudices and in other ways entered an entirely new phase. The Jesuits currently excite more interest among scholars of almost every discipline than ever before, and they do so on an international basis. I limit myself here to a highly selective sampling of works written in English.

Arrupe, Pedro.
One Jesuit's Spiritual Journey: Autobiographical Conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch.
Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986.

An important testimony from one of the Society's most important superiors general.

Bangert, William V.
A History of the Society of Jesus.
Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972.

Although somewhat outdated, the most thorough and reliable treatment.

Lacouture, Jean.
Jesuits: A Multibiography.
Trans. Jeremy Leggatt. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995.

A lively but selective account by a leading French journalist and biographer.

Padberg, John W.
The General Congregations of the Society of Jesus: A Brief Survey of Their History.
Saint Louis, MO: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 1974.

The best account of the central component of Jesuit governance, to be complemented by Padberg's later study of the recent Congregations.

O'Malley, John W., et al., eds.
The Jesuits; Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Together with a further volume published in 2006, impressive studies on a wide range of topics related to the Jesuits and cultural issues.

Worcester, Thomas, ed.
The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

This volume complements the Toronto volumes with topics more related to the institutional history of the order. It includes a bibliography.

Brodrick, James.
Saint Peter Canisius.
Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1962.

Originally published in 1935, this biography of one of the order's most important members is outdated and hagiographical but still basic and unsurpassed.

Dalmases, Cándido de.
Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Life and Work.
Trans. Jerome Aixalá. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985.

On the pious side, but impeccably reliable in factual details.

Lazar, Lance Gabriel.
Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

A careful study of a generally unrecognized but important enterprise of Ignatius and the other Jesuits of that generation.

O'Malley, John W.
The First Jesuits.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

The standard work on the first generation of Jesuits.

Tellechea Idígoras, José Ignacio.
Ignatius of Loyola, the Pilgrim Saint.
Trans. Cornelius Michael Buckley. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1994. A lively, somewhat romantic biography by a distinguished Spanish historian.

Burke, Peter. “The Black Legend of the Jesuits: An Essay in the History of Historical Stereotypes.” In Simon Ditchfield, ed.,
Christianity and Community in the West: Essays for John Bossy.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, 165–82.

An overview of the problem by a distinguished historian.

Maryks, Robert Aleksander.
Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. An interesting study of this important aspect of the culture of the Society of Jesus, which concludes with a chapter on the Jansenist offensive against probabilism.

Pavone, Sabina.
The Wiley Jesuits and the Monita Secreta: The Forged Secret Instructions of the Jesuits: Myth and Reality.
Trans. John P. Murphy. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2004.

The standard study of one of the most damaging and long-lived attacks on the Jesuits, which includes an English version of the original text.

Bireley, Robert.
The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A masterly study of one of the most contentious aspects of Jesuit history, Jesuit confessors to kings.

Nelson, Eric.
The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590–1615).
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

The story of the difficult time the Jesuits had in establishing themselves in France.

Shore, Paul.
Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Culture, Politics and Religion, 1693–1773.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

A wide-ranging study of the Jesuits in a complex sector of the Habsburg empire.

Van Kley, Dale.
The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. Still the best study of the pivotal event in the history of the Jesuits.

Alden, Daurel.
The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.

A sweeping account of the Jesuits' relationship to their most important patron nation.

Brockey, Liam Matthew.
Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Award-winning study of the Jesuits not in Beijing but out in the field.

Clossey, Luke.
Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Presents the missions not as a disjointed collection of individual entities but as a single, world-encompassing instance of religious globalization.

Cushner, Nicholas P.
Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the Evangelization of Native America.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Covers the Jesuits' efforts with the native peoples from Canada to Paraguay.

Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia.
A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

A readable account of this legendary figure and a good introduction to the Beijing mission.

Klaiber, Jeffrey.
The Jesuits In Latin America, 1549–2000: 450 Years of Inculturation, Defense of Human Rights, and Prophetic Witness.
St Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009.

The basic story from beginning to the present, told with a specific focus.

Mkenda, Festo.
Mission for Everyone: A Story of the Jesuits in Eastern Africa (1555–2012).
Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013.

The only comprehensive account in English of the Jesuits in any region of Africa.

Curran, Robert Emmett.
The Maryland Jesuits, 1634–1833.
Baltimore: The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen, Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, 1976.

An account of the first Jesuits to make a permanent settlement in what would become the United States.

McCoog, Thomas M.
“And Touching our Society”: Fashioning Jesuit Identity in Elizabethan England.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013.

The latest book by the expert on the Jesuits in the British Isles.

McKevitt, Gerald.
Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West,
1848–1919.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Fascinating story of the first Jesuits in the far west.

Schroth, Raymond A.
The American Jesuits: A History.
New York: New York University Press, 2007.

An accessible account of the Society in the United States.

Curran, Robert Emmett.
A History of Georgetown University.
3 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.

A detailed account of the first Catholic school on American soil.

Grendler, Paul F.
The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630.
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

The only in-depth study in English of a Jesuit pre-suppression school, by the expert on schooling in early modern Italy.

Padberg, John W.
Colleges in Controversy: The Jesuit Schools in France from Revival to Suppression, 1815–1880.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

The best account of schools on the continent after the restoration of the Society.