Paul Shore - The Historiografy of The Society of Jesus

The Historiography of the Society of Jesus

Paul Shore
The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits
Edited by Ines G. Županov
Print Publication Date: Jun 2019 Subject: Religion, Roman Catholic Christianity, Christianity
Online Publication Date: Jun 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190639631.013.38
Abstract and Keywords
The historical literature on the Jesuits appeared as soon as the Society was founded. A
significant portion of this literature was written by Jesuits themselves. Anti-Jesuit writ
ings likewise have made up some of the material, and confessional politics dominated the
field for several centuries. The first half of the twentieth century saw a relative lull in
scholarly activity. In recent decades, non-Jesuits and non-Catholics have played a much
greater role in Jesuit historiography, and much of the most recent scholarship on Jesuit
history is innovative in its interdisciplinary and postconfessional aspects. Currently, the
field of Jesuit historical studies is arguably the most liveliest it has ever been, with online
publications and new reference works appearing regularly.
Keywords: Anti-Jesuit, Baroque, edifying literature, hagiography, missions, John W. O’Malley, spirituality suppres
sion, Vatican II
THE historiography of the Society of Jesus has several characteristics that set it apart
from many other categories of writing about the history of Christianity. The first of these
is that from the start, Jesuits very self-consciously set about writing about their own insti
tutional histories with an eye to the multiple and often overlapping audiences that these
histories would speak to.1 This was something different from either the works of ancient
historians such as Eusebius (263–339) that aimed at a less differentiated audience or, for
example, the hagiographic writings on the life of St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226)
compiled by Franciscans in that the identity of the Society as a religious order and the
identities of its members were much more closely intertwined. At the hands of Jesuit his
torians, who, as John O’Malley points out, for centuries were almost by definition poly
maths with many points of view,2 the Society itself soon gained a personality and an insti
tutional history that thus approached biography. The descriptive categories in the centen
nial album of the Society, Imago Primi Saeculi, which describe the Society as “nascens,”
“crescens,” “agens,” “patiens,” and so forth, capture this sentiment perfectly.3
The flip side of this personification framed in the most positive terms possible was the ex
tensive anti-Jesuit literature that began to appear in the sixteenth century and has contin
ued to the present. While few of these works were limited to a historical exposition, many
Page 1 of 30
PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights
Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in
Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

included a rendering of the Society’s history that supported conspiracy theories and
moral indictments of prominent Jesuits of the past, sometimes rendering the Society as a
sentient, spiderlike entity with tentacles stretching across the world.4 This anti-Jesuit ma
terial is both Catholic and non-Catholic in origin, yet shares many characteristics, such as
the attribution of major historical events in the wider world, from assassinations to revo
lutions, to the Jesuits, and places a focus (especially since the rise of nationalism) on the
allegedly nonnational and thus dangerously “cosmopolitan” nature of the Society.5 This
perspective also influenced more serious Jesuit historiography for three centuries.
A third notable characteristic of Jesuit historiography is the trend developing over the last
three decades in which the number of Jesuit scholars writing about the history of the So
ciety has continually declined, while the quantity (and quality) of the historical writing
about the Jesuits has soared. No longer isolated in the histories of Catholic religious or
ders, studies (p. 760) of many new aspects of Jesuit history have flourished and resulted in
multidisciplinary and wide-ranging undertakings, of which the two volumes entitled The
Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540–1773 were among the first and most influ
ential examples.6 These three characteristics provide Jesuit historiography with a unique
dynamic, which will be examined in the following chapter.
Beginnings
Jesuit historiography was born into a world where the business of writing history was un
dergoing rapid change. While uncritical hagiography as practiced in the Middle Ages had
far from disappeared in the sixteenth century, works such as the Annales Ecclesiastici of
Caesar Baronius (1538–1607) aimed at higher standards of evidence, and classical au
thors such as Livy were being carefully studied for their presentation of facts. Pedro de
Ribadeneira’s (1527–1611) Bibliotheca Scriptorum, later augmented by Philippe
Alagambe (1592–1652) and Nathaniel Southwell (1596–1676), was more than a list of
books and their Jesuit authors, providing details about the institutional development of
the Society.7 The Chronicon Societatis Jesu of Juan Alfonso de Polanco (1573–1574)
presents the activities of Jesuits, house by house, province by province, for a nineteen-
year period ending with the death of Ignatius of Loyola in 1556.8 Written from the point of
view of the personal secretary of the founder of the Society, the Chronicon provides a
panorama of individual Jesuits operating with a considerable degree of autonomy.
Yet older trends persisted. One of the first histories (arguably more of a memoir) of the
Society was composed by Simão Rodrigues de Azevedo (1510–1579), who included mirac
ulous and symbolic events, often with a distinctly medieval flavor, alongside eyewitness
accounts of the actions of Ignatius and his companions.9 The intended audience for this
work was broader than simply other Jesuits, as the work aimed at advertising the
Society’s mission and achievements to laypersons and non-Jesuit clergy as well, a feature
that would be found in many later Jesuit histories. Writings such as Rodrigues de
Azevedo’s also sought to preserve a link between traditional folk piety and the narrative
of the Society as a champion of the true faith. Other Jesuit historians sought, consciously
Page 2 of 30

or unconsciously, to recall in their writings the heroic earlier ages of the church’s history.
The Historia Missionis Anglicanæ, ab anno MDLXXX ad MDCXXXV of Henry More (1586–
1661) provides a generally accurate reporting of events in a hagiographic and frequently
polemical style that would later look dated.10 More’s work appeared in Latin, which
meant that its immediate impact was lessened, and its potential readership would shrink
in the long term.
During the first century of the Society’s existence, Jesuit reporting of virtually contempo
raneous events blended imperceptibly into what would now be considered history. Jesuits
were anxious to establish a narrative for their Society, and did not wish to wait for some
“verdict of history” to be handed down at some distant future date. The Spiritual Con
quest of Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1585–1652), which first appeared in Spanish in 1639,
is characteristic of these writings.11 This writer combines accounts of recent historical
events with anthropological observations, descriptions of the natural settings in which
the missionaries worked, and even the music taught to the aboriginal peoples. Montoya’s
work is therefore (p. 761) significant for how it expresses the integrated understanding of
mission that Jesuits brought to their work.
Principal sources for histories of the Society composed by Jesuits appearing in the seven
teenth and eighteenth centuries were the Litterae annuae of the various provinces, which
themselves were sometimes published.12 These “annual letters” were part of the web of
communications between the center and peripheries of the Society’s educational and mis
sionary networks, and they also set forth the achievements of Jesuits for multiple audi
ences, including scholastics and potential donors to Jesuit projects. Reworked and with il
lustrations added, these accounts form the basis of such works as Matthias Tanner’s
(1630–1692) two volumes on the lives and deaths of notable Jesuits,13 as well as for
school dramas, a crucial medium through which Jesuit history was remembered.14
Another product of the seventeenth-century Jesuit capacity for voluminous writing, the
Relations of the Society’s undertakings in New France, did not appear in print for several
centuries but has remained one of the most important landmarks in Jesuit history. At a
more local level, many Jesuit communities produced a Historia Domus not intended for
publication, but nevertheless an important means of supporting institutional memory and
identity.15 Day-to-day events were recorded in Diaria, often in abbreviated fashion. Jesuits
also composed other types of historical works that never saw publication. One such work,
a poem written in the Czech vernacular and dealing with the horrors of the Thirty Years
War, was Sumovní krátké sepsání o hrozné válce . . . (A Short Summary History of the
Horrible War) by František Kocmánek.16
Just as the earliest years of the Society were often recalled in terms of the life of Ignatius,
histories written by Jesuits during the Society’s first century tended to focus on the per
sonalities and accomplishments of the praepositi generales. The history of the Society by
Niccolò Orlandini (1554–1606) was continued by Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625), who
simply included the word “Claudius” (referring to Claudio Aquaviva) in the title of his vol
ume.17 Sacchini belongs to the generation of Jesuit historians that emerged after the So
ciety was well on its way to establishing its own historical narrative. Admired by Ranke,
Page 3 of 30

who called him “by far the most distinguished of the Jesuit historians,”18 Sacchini is little
remembered today.
Here Jesuit historiography paralleled the emerging writing of national histories, which
were often presented in terms of the reigns of monarchs.19 Ignatius was also seen as the
fons et origo of Jesuit spirituality and thus of the presuppression Society’s entire “way of
proceeding.”20 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, approaches focusing on the
Society’s leadership declined in popularity, although the generalate of Pedro Arupe
(1965–1983) inspired a number of studies, which, while mostly biographical in character,
contribute to the historiography of the Society.21
Baroque Visions
Carlo Ginzburg identifies the Jesuit historian José de Acosta (c. 1539–1600) as exhibiting
a path-breaking critical attitude toward sources of speeches reported to have been made
by South American aboriginals.22 Ginzburg’s observation provides a way of approaching
Jesuit histories of Acosta’s time and later, that is, by assessing the degree to which the re
ported speeches of historical personalities continue to reflect the high Renaissance un
derstanding (p. 762) of history. This understanding was enshrined in the Ratio Studiorum,
and was advanced through a literary genre whose primary function was edification as
conveyed through the aesthetics of rhetoric and the presentation of character.23 The
process of creating history operated on several levels. Jesuit historians writing about
their Society self-consciously imitated classical models, but they also believed in the more
modern narratives they were constructing. Moreover, Jesuit historians were well aware
that the narratives they created would be read in a highly politicized and often polarized
environment and that these histories would function as weapons in bitter struggles.
In this context, the enigmatic Jesuit historian and critic of Galileo Melchior Inchofer
(1584–1648) deserves mention. While Inchofer, a Hungarian who spent much of his life in
Italy, is credited with identifying and publishing important historical documents, he has
also been accused of forging materials that supported the claims of his Habsburg pa
trons, and eventually stood trial for defaming the Society.24 The case of Inchofer is a re
minder that Jesuit historians during the Society’s first century operated in a complex en
vironment where the task of rebutting Protestant writers or recording the Society’s tri
umphs might be far less important than rivalries within the Society, individual ambitions,
and the agendas of monarchies within which Jesuits worked.
Over time, the overtly aesthetic and edifying aspects of Jesuit-produced histories of the
Society were supplanted by a more evidence-based approach, although this process was
by no means continual or universal. For example, unpublished materials in the Roman
archives of the Society were utilized by Jesuit Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685) in his history
of the Society in Elizabethan England.25 Yet even these more exact approaches to the
writing of history could still produce slanted works whose intent remained to present the
Society in as favorable a light as possible. The line between apologetics and history was
frequently blurred, and the edifying aspects of writing, reading, and staging scenes from
Page 4 of 30

history—a history in which divine intervention was always an element—continued to be a

major characteristic of the Society’s institutional culture. Jesuit presses published numer
ous editions of classical historians such as Plutarch who used speeches to delineate char
acter and were thus most suitable for use in the Society’s schools.26 Kingdoms and domin
ions of the ancient world were likewise presented as theatra for moral lessons—and there
by served as models for constructs found in Jesuit-composed histories of the Society.
John O’Malley has pointed out that the Society’s early approach to historiography, in
which institutions were often “an unchanging substance unaffected by the Other it en
countered,” was later reflected in historical writing, both sympathetic and hostile, about
Jesuits themselves.27 Pro-Jesuit historians (in the early years almost always Jesuits them
selves), down until the middle of the last century, found solace in setting forth a picture of
a unified Society prepared to endure the attacks of its enemies.28 Meanwhile, historians
more critical of the Society have perceived widespread shared characteristics within Je
suit institutional culture that have informed their historical analysis.29 The former ap
proach was initially informed by Baroque Jesuit theology and teleology, as well as by the
belief in the Society’s special mission, while the latter analysis has often been shaped by
a distrust of or disillusion with the Society. Ironically, these two approaches have often re
inforced one another. Overlaying the “unchanging substance” view of Jesuit history have
been debates regarding an elusive, pre-1773 “Jesuit style” in the visual arts or rhetoric
that was said to have had an impact on world history.30
(p. 763) Anti-Jesuit histories also began to appear after the turn of the seventeenth centu
ry. The Historia Iesuitica of Rudolph Hospinian (1547–1626) details the nefarious activi
ties of the Jesuits, recounting what then were almost current events.31 Hospinian accom
panied his descriptions of the Society’s seditious plots with an outline of the Jesuit em
phasis on obedience. This combination of historical accounts of thrilling crimes with re
ports of a conspiratorial culture has been a mainstay of anti-Jesuit literature down into
the Internet era. The presentation of Jesuit history by nineteenth-century French writers
as a tale of scheming, devious plotters for whom the end justified the means is well
known, but similar presentations also found their way into twentieth-century Swedish
school textbooks.32 Contemporary with Hospinian was Elias Hasenmüller (1593–1596),
who began as a Jesuit novice but eventually converted to Lutheranism. Hasenmüller’s his
tory was not a substantial scholarly work, but pioneered the genre of the exposé offered
by the ex-Jesuit.33
Variants on the theme of exposé were published collections of letters on historical topics,
said to have been written either by Jesuits themselves or by opponents of the Society. Per
haps the most influential of these was a series of letters composed by Juan de Palafox y
Mendoza (1600–1659), a Mexican bishop who lost a struggle with the Society, and which
began to appear in print a century after his death.34
Page 5 of 30

Internal Currents of Historiography

As the Society’s record keeping maintained its continuity, histories of individual provinces
and smaller geographical regions, often preserved only in manuscript form, appeared.
Massive published histories of the Bohemian and Superior German provinces, based on
archival materials, were available by the mid-eighteenth century.35 The tone of these
works was frequently less stridently partisan than in the previous century and inspired
further efforts by Jesuits in other regions.36 Simultaneously, the rising opposition to the
Society and its eventual expulsion from several European states were accompanied by
histories that dwelled on the alleged crimes of the Jesuits, occasionally broadening their
targets to include other Catholic orders and even religion in general.37 For those seeking
to attack organized religions or Catholicism in particular, the retelling of Jesuit history
was a way to make the indictment specific and lurid. The exaggerated portrayals of Je
suits in such works perpetuated an approach to history where good and evil were clearly
delineated and which endured into the nineteenth century.38
The output of Jesuit historians during the first century and a half of the Society’s exis
tence was impressive. In the Western Hemisphere, the Jesuit Gil González Dávila (1559–
1658) produced a history of the evangelization of “The Indies,” in which the Society
played an important role.39 Dávila’s work provides glimpses of the culture of the mission
izing Society, for example, the emphasis on martyrs’ relics, both to fortify the missionar
ies and to awe the aboriginals.40 In a similar way, Simão Marques (1684–?) reviewed the
ecclesiastical history of Brazil and documented disputes over authority and the powers
granted to Society.41 Works such as these were inevitably infused with a Jesuit perspec
tive on events and included the Society as a major player, even though they were not,
strictly speaking, histories of the Society. Focusing more explicitly on the Society, Giovan
ni Pietro Maffei (1533–1603) produced a massive history of Jesuit activities in the Por
tuguese colonies of Asia (p. 764) that provided details about geography and political
arrangements in the Indian subcontinent.42 Maffei’s Latin tome was translated into sever
al European languages and was one of the most influential—if not the most influential—
Jesuit-composed history of the sixteenth century, shaping European perceptions of Japan
for years to come.43
Joseph de Jouvancy (Jouvency) (1643–1719) was a late example of the Jesuit polymath and
pedagogue who took up writing the Society’s history from a deeply partisan perspective.
His Historia Societatis Jesu, a continuation of Orlandini’s work, covers the years 1591–
1610, treating the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot as martyrs and even saints, and
taking a distinctly anti-Gallican perspective.44 Although widely read, Jouvancy’s Historia
was a backward-looking Baroque “grab bag” of fragmented erudition, considered by at
least one later Jesuit historian as inferior to the more ambitious writing of the previous
century.45
In the second half of the eighteenth century, as the Society faced an increasingly hostile
environment, Giulio Cesare Cordara (1704–1785) emerged as the most outstanding exam
ple of an eighteenth-century Jesuit historian still completely committed to the Society but
Page 6 of 30

capable of producing a carefully researched history46 that influenced subsequent histo

ries by non-Jesuits, including Protestants.47 The contrast with his predecessor Jouvancy is
striking; the Baroque era of Jesuit literary culture had ended, at least in Western Europe.
But in his moderation Cordara was an exception in a climate filled with hyperbole on all
sides. Other historians writing both before and after 1773 include an anonymous “lover of
antiquities” who produced a set of mostly anti-Jesuit verse. History blended with polemic
and fiction during this era of extreme emotions regarding the Society and its fate. The ex
pulsions and suppression also triggered less polemical works, a few of which attempted
to document some of the material significance of the fall of the Society. The anonymous
author(s) of one set of reflections even reported how many bottles of wine had been
housed in a Jesuit “cantina.”
The Suppression
During the suppression years, the downfall of the Society’s Paraguayan project only a
short time earlier continued to attract much interest. By 1774, Bernardo Ibáñez de
Echavarri’s (1715–1762) hostile Reyno Jesuítico del Paraguay had been translated into
several languages and had set forth what appeared to be a well-documented indictment
of the order.48 Ibáñez de Echavarri, twice expelled from the Jesuits, had first-hand knowl
edge of the Paraguayan reductions and presented his evidence laced with sources cited,
although it has been recognized that his interpretation of these sources is “loose and
imaginative.”49
John Poynder’s (1779–1849) history, which appeared in England two years after the
restoration of the Society, is far from sympathetic, but it is much more than a conspiracy-
filled and sloppily researched pamphlet.50 Poynder, an evangelical Anglican, relies almost
entirely on secondary sources, but his presentation of documentation lacks (in compari
son with Ibañez de Echavarri) obvious bias and he attempts with some success to inte
grate his narrative into the larger picture of political change in Europe. Poynder’s work
reflects both the different paths Enlightenment ideology took in the continent and in the
British Isles, as well as the characteristics of his intended audience, who no longer saw
themselves as fighting (p. 765) against an entrenched clerical class or threatened by a
Catholic military power. Later British historians would follow Poynder’s lead.
Partisan scholarship regarding the history of the Society appeared in other quarters dur
ing the years of suppression. Utilizing materials in the Züricher Stadtbibliothek, Peter
Philipp Wolf (1761–1808) produced a four-volume work that recounted Jesuit foibles while
criticizing from an Enlightenment point of view the folk piety promoted by the Baroque
Society.51 From a very different corner, Mathieu-Mathurin Tabaraud’s (1744–1832) Du
Pape et des Jésuites takes a Jansenist perspective on alleged Jesuit failings.52 It is in this
context of almost universal criticism that John Adams’s famous 1814 observation about
the Jesuits meriting “eternal damnation on earth and in hell” should be placed.53
Page 7 of 30

Restoration and Beyond

Waterloo and the restoration of the Society changed this picture significantly. While it is
going too far to call Charles X (1757–1836), as some have done, “the Jesuit king,” the
Bourbon restoration did provide an opening for more balanced appraisals of the Jesuits.
Resumé d’histoire des Jésuites (1826) by Charles Laumier (1781–1866) found positive
achievements in the Society’s mission enterprises while acknowledging their decay, which
was explained by an organic model that saw growth and decline as inevitable.54 The Soci
ety could not respond to these and harsher criticisms as they had during the ancien
regime. The nineteenth century might still have a place for the evil Jesuit conspirator as
set forth by Eugene Sue, but his inverse, the heroic Baroque Jesuit martyr, could scarcely
find a home.55
Historians of the Society such as Jacques Crétineau-Joly (1803–1875) could criticize the
Society’s enemies without holding up all Jesuits as plaster saints.56 Yet at midcentury the
atmosphere was still strongly flavored with the partisan and confessional. M. Auguste
Arnould’s (1803–1854) Les Jésuites is representative of the popular histories produced on
the continent and especially in France at midcentury, in which sinister Jesuits deceive in
nocent Christians and weave conspiratorial webs.57 Among the unflattering pictures of Je
suit history to appear during this period is Karl Theodor Griesinger’s (1809–1884) Die Je
suiten (The Jesuits: A History), which took a particular tack reflecting the transformed
view of personal asceticism that characterized the nineteenth century. Griesinger’s cri
tique of the Spiritual Exercises focuses on the Jesuits’ supposed “mania for flogging” and
the implied mental derangement of those engaged in such self-mortification.58 Anti-Jesuit
history had now evolved from tales of scheming conspirators to reports of a damaged and
dangerous group of men, occurring just at the moment that psychology was gaining
recognition as an infant science.
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–1859) five-page digression on the history of the Je
suits has had an influence on perceptions of the Society out of proportion to its length.59
This is in part because of the writer’s rhetorical skills, but also because by Macaulay’s
time a positive assessment of the energy and initiative of the Jesuits was possible, espe
cially when viewed from the point of view of an eager supporter of the British Empire and
its educational goals. Yet Macaulay also detected vices in what he regarded as the Jesuit
character and believed he saw among some French Jesuits a growing allegiance to Louis
XIV that made them “impatient of the yoke” of the papacy. In Macaulay’s retelling of his
tory, Blaise Pascal (p. 766) deals the Society a blow with his Provincial Letters from which,
according to Macaulay, it never recovered. The negative sides of such a narrative ap
pealed both to the rationalist strain in mid-Victorian culture further provoked by the reac
tionary actions of contemporaneous popes and to a persisting mistrust of Catholicism fla
vored more in Macaulay’s day by anti-Irish sentiment than by fear of Spain or France. For
some British readers, Jesuits were now harmless enough to be enjoyed as historical char
acters.
Page 8 of 30

Henry Foley (1811–1891) occupies a unique place among Jesuits writing about the Soci
ety in that he was not a priest, but a coadjutor temporalis, or lay brother. Foley’s magnum
opus was a three-volume survey of the history of the English province in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.60 Much of this work is presented as short biographies of Jesuits
that draw upon rare archival materials. Foley was a product of both the “golden age” of
Victorian historiography and the passionate devotion unleashed by the Oxford movement,
which saw Anglican High Church clergy strive for a closer connection to the traditions
and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. Readers who enjoyed Macaulay’s wit could
sample Foley’s reverent yet carefully documented accounts of martyrs and teachers from
the Elizabethan and Stuart eras with an appreciation whetted by plays, operas, and nov
els dealing with these periods. This romantic view of history probably was an impetus to
the publication of the diary of John Gerard, S.J. (1564–1637), which appeared four years
before Foley’s first volume.61 As interconfessional passions cooled, other voices were
heard, among them Joseph McCabe (1867–1955), whose Candid History of the Jesuits
presented a critique of the Society from an anti-Catholic standpoint of a former member
of the (non-Jesuit) Catholic clergy.62 In a very different vein, the American Reuben Gold
Thwaites (1853–1913) edited a mammoth project encompassing the primary-source docu
ments related to Jesuit missionary activities in New France.63 The use that anthropolo
gists, linguists, and others soon found for the Relations, as the collection was often called,
foreshadowed the ways in which Jesuit historical studies would expand in new directions
at the end of the twentieth century.
Stanislas Załęski’s (1843–1908) pioneering study of the Jesuit community in White Russia
during the suppression represents a milestone in Jesuit history as recorded by Jesuits.64
Using heretofore untapped materials from the Vatican Archives, Załęski meticulously re
ported on an episode that had largely escaped the attention of earlier writers. Załęski al
so managed to steer clear of rivalries with other Catholic religious orders and debates
with Protestant denominations to produce a work that is still of great use to historians.
The contrast with histories published by Jesuit presses a little over a century earlier is
striking: documentary evidence now drives much of the narrative, a consequence at least
in part of the immense impact of Leopold von Ranke’s (1795–1886) success in formulat
ing his historical works on careful combing of the archives.65
While strictly speaking not a work of historical scholarship, the vast bibliography carried
out by Augustin de Backer (1809–1873) and Carlos Sommervogel (1834–1902) deserves
mention because of the influence it has had for the past century on historians of the Soci
ety. This work has long served as a point of departure for researchers and has never been
completely supplanted, although a “New Sommervogel” has been developed by Robert A.
Maryks, which is online and seeks to bring the record of Jesuit publications into the twen
ty-first century. In much the same vein, László Polgár published bibliographic data in the
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu on publications written about the Society, thereby
assembling an invaluable tool for historians.66
Page 9 of 30

Generally speaking, the first half of the twentieth century was not an exciting
(p. 767)
time for Jesuit historiography. The Society itself was just emerging from a long period of
relative penury and caution. Its formerly cutting-edge role in the natural sciences had
been largely curtailed, and it remained associated in the minds of many (including many
Catholics) with political reaction. The close connection of the otherwise respected Jesuit
historian Pietro Tacchi Venturi (1861–1956) with Italian fascism probably did little to en
hance the standing of Jesuit historians generally.67 Two world wars, a worldwide depres
sion, and, after 1945, the expansion of Soviet control over numerous countries where Je
suits had formerly been very active together inhibited the production of historical materi
als in the forms most often chosen by nineteenth-century Jesuits, but no new way forward
had yet appeared. Several works of careful scholarship did appear, among them a biogra
phy of praepositus generalis Jan Philipp Roothaan (1785–1853). The establishment in
Rome of the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu in 1932 created a permanent home for
scholarship on Jesuit history, a home that was completely dominated by Jesuits of Euro
pean background for several decades. The widely read Macht und Geheimnis der Jesuiten
(Berlin: Knaur, 1929) of René Fülöp-Müller (1891–1963) offered little in the way of origi
nal scholarship but moved beyond some stereotypes to report on Jesuit activities in the
arts and on the attraction Jesuit spirituality has held for many young men.68 For many, Je
suits were becoming a bit less sinister and perhaps more intriguing.
Jesuit-generated scholarship in this period was frequently solid if seldom daring. Thomas
Campbell’s survey, which asserts that “no Jesuit thus far has ever written a complete or
adequate history of the Society,”69 sought to remedy this situation with a readable, one-
volume work aimed at a popular and partially non-Catholic audience. The modern scholar
will be frustrated at the lack of citations of sources used (most of which appear to have
been secondary), but Campbell’s book was temperate in tone, widely distributed, and in
fluential. With perhaps an American audience in mind, Campbell devoted far more space
than earlier surveys to Jesuits such as Eusebio Kino (1644/1645–1711), who worked in
what became the United States. Martin P. Harney’s The Jesuits in History shares some
features with Campbell’s work but provides far more documentary support of its narra
tive and is especially strong in its reporting of the worldwide activities of the nineteenth-
century Society.70
During these years, the Monumenta, a publication of primary-source documents of the So
ciety, continued to appear. Although it was conceived shortly before the suppression, this
mammoth project was not formally launched until the last decade of the nineteenth cen
tury.71 This series provides an enduring resource for future scholars while demonstrating
in its entirety the degree to which the Society has been a culture of the written word.72
Tension and Transformation

The decade after the appearance of Harney’s book, filled with war, hot and cold, repre
sented perhaps the nadir of historical scholarship on Jesuits. But brighter days lay ahead.
Vatican II is often and not unfairly understood as ushering in a new era for scholarship
Page 10 of 30

throughout the Catholic world. The church council may be seen as both a cause and, to
some degree, a consequence of the ferment and expectation building within a Society
seeking new directions after the horrors and dislocations of World War II. Yet the fallout
of Vatican II also included (p. 768) the exodus of many Jesuits from their order, among
whom were many who were already or might have become historians of the Society. And
major innovations were already on the horizon before the Vatican Council began. Joseph
de Guibert’s (1877–1942) La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse historique
took a fresh look at a component of the Society’s history that had never been addressed
as a distinct element, and pioneered in examining the role of spirituality in the experience
of ex-Jesuits during the suppression.73 As Trent Pomplun points out, the changes in Jesuit
historiography carried out by Jesuits that became apparent in the 1950s and ’60s were
less a result of Vatican II than an application of the directives of the Society’s Twenty-
Fourth General Congregation of 1892.74 The first generation of Jesuits responding to the
Congregation’s instructions had included Berhard Duhr (1852–1930) and Antonio Astráin
(1857–1928), both of whose works knit together a narrative previously addressed only in
fragments by Jesuit writers.75 The history of the Society in France up until 1575 was be
gun by Victor Mercier and carried forward by Henri Fouqueray (1860–1927), likewise in
response to the General Congregation’s instructions.76 Later writers began the journey to
what eventually became known several decades later as désenclavement, or the freeing of
the Jesuit historiography from its older restrictions and the opening up of connections
with disciplines and scholars whose primary focus may not be the Society of Jesus.77
Large-scale collections of studies, such as the one centered on the fourth general of the
Society, Everard Mercurian,78 have seen dozens of Jesuit and non-Jesuit scholars collabo
rating in ways that would have seemed unlikely when the Archivum had begun publica
tion.
There have also been significant contributions to our understanding of the early history of
the Jesuits made by historians whose primary focus was not the Society itself. One of
these is Louis Chatellier, whose The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and
the Formation of a New Society and The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe
and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–1800 provide a needed picture of Je
suit-created confraternities and sodalities occupying a different world than that of the
Society’s high-flying polemicists and missionary explorers.79
While much of the scholarship on the Society has experienced these broader changes,
twentieth- and twenty-first-century historians working from various national, political,
and linguistic contexts have continued to take their own paths in their scholarship on the
Society. In Spain, the focus long remained on the presuppression Society and on Jesuit ac
tivities in Spain’s colonial empire. This emphasis persisted into the post-Franco era, with
important biographies of Ignatius and Francisco de Borja (1510–1572) produced by Cán
dido de Dalmases (1906–1986).80 France, despite a frequent lack of connection between
Jesuit intellectuals and much of the university system, witnessed the emergence of the
highly individual Jesuit historian-cum-cultural critic and writer on spiritual topics Michel
de Certeau (1925–1986).81 Eva Priester’s Kurze Geschichte Österreichs, published in the
unsettled period immediately after World War II, casts the Austrian Jesuits of the restored
Page 11 of 30

Society in a surprising light, as representatives of a “popular” Church, contrasted with a

more conservative ecclesiastical aristocracy.82 Festo Mkenda has called attention in his
recent study of the Society in Eastern Africa to the role of “home grown” Jesuits in this
region and their ties to the spirituality of Ignatius.83 Lucien Campeau has produced a
monumental collection of documents relating to early Jesuit missionaries in what is now
Canada, using a traditional format but employing great care to place these documents in
context.84 The medical contributions of Jesuit missionaries working in the Rio La Plata re
gion of South America (p. 769) have been reassessed by Iris Kantor so that the scientific
and religious aspects of their work may be seen as a fusion producing a “baroque scientif
ic sensibility.”85 He Jianming, writing at a time when the government of China was again
acknowledging the benefits of Confucianism, stressed the connection between Jesuit edu
cational ideals and Confucian values as exemplified by the Jesuit and Jesuit-inspired
schools of the Qing and Republic periods in China.86 Yet other regions and topics remain
to be explored. Dhruv Raina points out that the historiography of Jesuit missions in India
is still a neglected field.87
The past three decades have seen a transformation of Jesuit historical studies beyond
anything that might have been anticipated only a short time earlier. One of the first and
most influential works to appear on this new landscape is John O’Malley’s The First Je
suits, which not only moved beyond the highly partisan historical literature on the Society
but also shed light on the flexible and at times almost improvisatory character of the or
ganization in its early years.88 O’Malley’s achievement was quickly followed by a flood of
scholarship whose quality has generally been quite high and whose visibility within the
broader field of history has likewise been notable. Some of these works, such as the publi
cations of Gauvin Alexander Bailey, have taken a serious look at the spiritual and institu
tional context of Jesuit activity while maintaining a disciplinary perspective (in Bailey’s
case, art history).89 Others have taken a more integrative approach. Ines Županov calls
works by O’Malley, Bailey, and Dauril Alden “synthetic and secular works”90 that continue
“along the lines of a grand tradition” of earlier Jesuit historians. The point is an important
one, as the differences between generations of historians are usually easier to spot than
the continuities. Some recent writers on Jesuit history do not fit any generational catego
ry. Jean Lecouture’s The Jesuits: A Multibiography is a sui generis undertaking by a jour
nalist and popularizer that nonetheless takes on some serious questions about the motiva
tions of and character of famed Jesuits such as Teilhard de Chardin.91
Conclusion
The most recent scholarship on Jesuit history is innovative in its interdisciplinary and
postconfessional aspects, but still shares to a large extent with its predecessors an under
standing of the Society as a generally coherent entity with identifiable goals and (at least
during its first centuries) a coherent ideology. The cumulative impact of this “secular”
view of Jesuit history cannot yet be predicted, but may prove significant.92 Much is gained
from the insights of those outside the culture of the Society, but an intimate knowledge of
Page 12 of 30

the culture of the Society (which permitted a good deal of individualism) is also crucial to
understanding its past.
In the latter twentieth century critics of the Society (some of them former Jesuits) reap
peared on the right wing of the Catholic Church and elsewhere. While such critics have
always existed, the various crises facing Catholicism in the Northern Hemisphere, among
them declining church attendance, resistance to the reforms of Vatican II, and the
coverup of clerical abusers of children, have encouraged new attacks on a Society ac
cused of being insufficiently “Catholic” or “too liberal.” The implications for the writing of
Jesuit history are indirect yet significant. In the past, many of the critiques of the Society
were offered within the context of historical narratives. As we have seen, some of these
narratives were (p. 770) of very little value as history, but often produced responses from
serious historians (e.g., Jesuit Jakob Greter’s rebuttal to Hasenmüller)93 that advanced
historical knowledge. Today, the postconfessional climate of academic scholarship on the
Jesuits operates in a sphere separate from the blogs and other venues to which critics of
the Society and the curious turn. Thus, a scholarly setting thrives that is largely commit
ted to nonconfessional and indeed nonreligious approaches to examining Jesuit history,
existing simultaneously with a burgeoning online industry of “Jesuit history” that includes
serious critiques of the Society, as well as fantasies such as the notion that Stalin was a
Jesuit.94
The persistence of these more extreme versions of popularly consumed Jesuit history may
be ignored by scholars, but there is an argument to be made that historians of the Society
have a responsibility to educate the public in nonapologetic and measured ways about
this most controversial of religious orders. How this is to be done, and how devoting ener
gy to such a project may affect the more conventional undertakings of historians of the Je
suits, is yet to be determined. At the same time, nonmalicious popular histories of the So
ciety continue to enjoy popularity, among them Jonathan Wright’s swashbuckling God’s
Soldiers.95 The Jesuit historiographic landscape has never been more complex.
A key reference work reflecting the burgeoning interest in Jesuit history was the multivol
ume Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, which largely superseded Koch’s Je
suitenlexikon.96 The history of the Society, especially regarding the writings produced in
its earliest years, has also been addressed in a major reference work on Ignatian spiritu
ality.97 And for the first time, an “Encyclopedia of the Jesuits” has happened.98
In 2014, the two hundredth anniversary of the restoration of the Society called forth a re
newed focus on the years of the suppression, which were now approached from a variety
of perspectives including those that emphasized the impact of non-European cultures in
which Jesuits labored, and on the experiences of Jesuits themselves. Meanwhile, Jesuit
historiography has kept pace with developments in technology. Jesuit Historiography On
line (JHO) is an open-access resource maintained through connections with a major acad
emic press.99 Another new electronic undertaking is the Jesuitica Project at the Faculty of
Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium.100
Page 13 of 30

The prospects of Jesuit historiography are thus both exciting and uncertain. The online
networks of scholars and the commitment of publishers such as Brill to the history of the
Society suggest a very favorable climate for fruitful scholarship on the products of Jesuit
culture. Old landmarks in the periodization of the Society’s history, such as the labels
“Suppression” and “Counter Reformation,” are being reassessed, a process whose impact
on Jesuit historiography can only be salutary. Clichés such as those that cast Iberian Je
suits of the old Society as less progressive in comparison with their Italian, German, and
French colleagues have been challenged.101 Places and projects previously seen as either
“peripheral” or “central” to the Society’s mission are being seen anew. We catch more
glimpses of the human side of the Jesuit experience, as when Dale K. Van Kley describes
the anger of former Jesuits coping with the reality of the suppression.102 Archives in East
ern Europe and Russia are accessible after decades of neglect or restricted access. The
openness of Jesuits generally to the exploration of their own history by scholars of all
backgrounds is encouraging, while the global and interdisciplinary approaches to scholar
ship on Jesuits of the Old Society seem much closer to the world view and assumptions
held by these early Jesuits themselves. Yet as Aliocha Maldavsky points out, the continu
ing focus on how Jesuits (p. 771) contributed to modernity “occludes important questions
about how the Jesuits themselves changed as a result of their missionary activity.”103
The more subjective experiences of Jesuit identity and spirituality likewise are not always
so readily conveyed in the works of historians who must rely on documentation and evi
dence. Yet without an understanding of these factors as the raison d’etre of the Society as
an institution enduring for almost five centuries, the complete story of the Jesuits and
their impact on the larger world cannot be told. A great challenge for future historians of
the Jesuits will be to convey some sense of these intangibles that have always given
meaning and identity to the Society of Jesus.
Acknowledgment
Thanks to the Faculty of Religion and Theology and to Pusey House, both of the Universi
ty of Oxford, for their support during the preparation of this chapter.
Bibliography
[Agricola, Ignaz, Adam Flott, and Franz Xaver Kropf]. Historia Provinciae Societatis Iesu
Germaniae Superioris / 3 Ab Anno 1601 ad 1610. Augsburg: Schlüter & Happach, 1734.
Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Role of the Jesuits in Portugal, Its Em
pire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Arnould, M. A. Les Jésuites. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1846.
Arrupe, Pedro, and Jean-Claude Dietsch. One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey: Autobiographical
Conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986.
Page 14 of 30

Astráin, Antonio. Historia de la Compañia de Jesús en la Asistencia de España. 7 vols.

Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1902–1925.
Bacigalupo, Mario Ford. “Bernardo Ibáñez de Echavarri and the Image of the Jesuit Mis
sions of Paraguay.” The Americas 35 (1979): 475–494.
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art on the Jesuit Missions of Asia and Latin America (1542–
1773). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Bangert, William. A History of the Society of Jesus. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources,
1986.
Bartoli, Daniello. Dell’istoria della compagnia di Giesù L’Inghilterra. . . . Bologna: Gio. Re
caldini, 1676.
Campbell, Thomas J. The Jesuits: A History 1534–1921. New York: Encyclopedia Press,
1921.
(p. 778) Chatellier, Louis. The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the
Formation of a New Society, translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.
Chatellier, Louis. The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of
Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–1800, translated by Brian Pearce. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Conrod, Frédéric. “The Romantic Historian under Charles X: Evaluating Jesuit Restora
tion in Charles Laumier’s Resumée de l’histoire des Jésuites.” In Jesuit Survival and
Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, edited by Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan
Wright, 229–241. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Cordara, Guilio Cesare. Historiae Societatis Jesu pars sexta, tomus prior. Complectens res
gestas sub Mutio Vitellescho, ab anno Christi MDCXVI Societatis LXXVII auctore Julio
Cordara. Rome: Ex Typographia Antonii de Rubeis, 1750.
Crétineau-Joly, Jacques. Histoire religieuse, politique et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jé

sus. 6 vols. S.l.: Forgotten Books, 2015.
Cubitt, Geoffrey. The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth-Century
France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Danieluk, Robert. “Some Remarks on Jesuit Historiography 1773–1814.” In Jesuit Survival

and Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, edited by Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan
Wright, 34–48. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Duhr, Bernhard. Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge. 6 vols. in 4.
Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1907–1913; Munich-Regensburg: Manz, 1921–1928.
Page 15 of 30

Foley, Henry. Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. 3 vols. London:
Burns and Oates, 1875–1878.
Fouqueray, Henri. Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus en France, des origines à la sup

pression (1528–1762). 5 vols. Paris: A. & J. Picard: Études, 1910–1925.
Frijhoff, Willem. “Michel de Certeau 1925–1986.” In French Historians 1900–2000: New

Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France, edited by Philip Daileader and Philip
Whalen, 77–92. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Fülöp-Müller, René. The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, translated by F. S. Flint and D. F.
Tait. New York: Viking Press, 1930.
Gerard, John. A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, edited by John Morris. Roehampton:
Printed by James Stanley, 1871.
Ginzburg, Carlo. History, Rhetoric, and Proof. Hannover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1999.
González Dávila, Gil. Teatro Eclesiastico De La Primitiva Iglesia De Las Indias Occiden
tales, Vidas De Svs Arzobispos, Obispos, y Cosas Memorables De Sus Sedes. . . . 2 vols.
Madrid: Diaz de la Carrera, 1649–1655.
[Gretser, Jakob]. Epistola De Historia Ordinis Iesuitici scripta a Helia Hasenmüller. . . .

Dilingen: Excudebat Joannes Meyer, 1614.
Griesinger, [Karl] Theodor. The Jesuits: A Complete History . . ., translated by A. J. Scott, 2

vols. London: A. H. Allen, 1883.
Guibert, Joseph de. La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse historique. Rome:

Institutum Historicum S. I., 1953.
Harenberg, Johann Christoph. Pragmatische Geschichte des Ordens der Jesuiten, seit
ihrem Ursprunge bis auf gegenwärtige Zeit. Halle: Carl Hermann Hemmerde, 1760.
Harney, Martin P., S.J. The Jesuits in History: The Society of Jesus through Four Centuries.
New York: America Press, 1941.
[Hasenmüller, Elias]. Historia Iesvitici ordinis: in qva de Societatis Iesvitarvm av

(p. 779)
tore, nomine, gradibus, incremento, vita, votis, priuilegijs, miraculis, doctrina, morte, &c.
perspicuè solideq[ue] tractator. Frankfurt am Main: Excudebat Johannes Spies, 1593.
He, Jianming. “The Inspiration of Jesuit Educational Thought in Modern China,” translat
ed by Michael Chang. In Education for New Times: Revisiting Pedagogical Models in the
Jesuit Tradition: International Symposium Organized by the Macau Ricci Institute, Macau
25th–27th November 2009, 205–228. Macau: Macau Ricci Institute, 2014.
Hitchcock, James. The Pope and the Jesuits: John Paul II and the New Order in the Soci
ety of Jesus. New York: National Committee of Catholic Laymen, 1984.
Page 16 of 30

Hospinian, Rudolph. Historia Iesuitica: hoc est, De origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privi
legiis, incrementis, progressu & propagatione ordinis Iesuitarum: item de eorum dolis,
fraudibus, imposturis, nefariis facinoribus, cruentis consiliis, falsa quoque, seditiosa &
sanguinolenta doctrina / Rodolpho Hospiano Tigurino, auctore. Zürich: I.R. Wolphium,
1619.
[Ibáñez de Echavarri, Bernardo]. Histoire du Paraguay sous les Jesuites et de la royauté

qu’ils y on exercée. . . . 2 vols. Amsterdam: Chez Arkstée et Merkus, 1780.
Imago Primi Saeculi. Antwerp: Plantin, 1640.
Jouvancy, Joseph de. Historiae Societatis Jesu Pars quinta, sive Claudius Tom. Posterior.
Rome: G. Plachi, 1717.
Kantor, Iris. “A ciência no império português e espanhol.” História da Historiografia 4

(2010): 294–298.
Kip, William Ingraham. The Early Jesuit Missions in North America. New York: Wiley and
Putnam, 1846.
Koch, Ludwig. Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Jesu einst und jetzt. Paderborn: Boni
facius, 1934.
Kolář, Pavel. “Rewriting National History in Post-War Central Europe: Marxist Syntheses
of Austrian and Czechoslovak History as New National Master Narratives.” In Nationaliz
ing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe, edited by Stefan Berger
and Chris Lorenz, 319–340. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Lecouture, Jean. Jesuits: A Multibiography, translated by Jeremy Leggett. London: Harvill

Press, 1995.
Leitão, Henrique. “Jesuit Mathematical Practice in Portugal, 1540–1759.” In The New

Science and Jesuit Science: Seventeenth Century Perspectives, edited by Mordechai Fein
gold, 229–247. Dordrecht: Springer, 2003.
Letson, Douglas, and Michael Higgins. The Jesuit Mystique. Chicago: Jesuit Way, 1995.
Levy, Evonne. Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004.
[Linguet, Simon-Nicolas Henri]. Histoire Impartiale des Jésuites: Depuis leur établisse
ment jusqu’à leur première expulsion. [Paris]: [s.n.], 1768.
Litterae annuae Societatis Iesu anni MDCII. Antwerp: apud heredes Martini Nutij, 1618.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington. History of England from the Ascension of James II. 3 vols.
New York: John B. Alden, 1883.
Page 17 of 30

Maffei, Giovanni Pietro. Joannis Petri Maffeii Bergomatis e Societate Iesv Historiarvm
Indicarvm Libri XVI. Florence: apud Philippum Iunctam, 1588.
Maldavsky, Aliocha. “Jesuits in Ibero-America: Missions and Colonial Societies.” In The Je
suits and Globalization: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Challenges, edited by
Thomas Banchoff and José Casanova, 92–110. Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Press, 2016.
Manning, Patricia. Voicing Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Inquisition, Social Criti

cism and Theology in the Case of El Criticón. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Marques, Simão. Brasilia Pontificia: sive speciales Facultates, Pontificiae quae

(p. 780)
Brasiliae Episcopis conceduntur . . . per R. P. Simonem Marques. . . . Lisbon: Ex praelo

A.V. da Silva, 1758.
Massarella, Derek. “Japan, pre-1853.” In Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Ency

clopedia, edited by Jennifer Speake, 2 vols., 1:639–641. Abingdon: Routledge: 2003.
McCoog, Thomas. The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541–1588:“Our
Way of Proceeding.” Leiden: Brill, 1996.
McCoog, Thomas. The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–1597:
Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy. Abingdon: Rout
ledge, 2016.
Mkenda, Festo, S.J. Mission for Everyone: A Story of the Jesuits in Eastern Africa 1555–
2012. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013.
Montoya, Antonio Ruiz de. The Spiritual Conquest Accomplished by the Religious of the
Society of Jesus in the Provinces of Paraguay, Parana, Uruguay, and Tape: A Personal Ac
count of the Founding and Early Years of the Jesuit Paraguay Reductions, translated by C.
J. McNaspy. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1993.
More, Henry. The Elizabethan Jesuits: “Historia Missionis Anglicanae Societatis Je
su” (1660) of Henry More, edited and translated by Francis Edwards, S.J. London:
Phillimore and Co., 1981.
Nicolini, Giovanni Battista. History of the Jesuits: Their Origin, Progress, Doctrines, and
Designs. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.
O’Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
O’Malley, John. “The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today?”
In The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, edited by John W. O’Malley,
Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, 3–37. Toronto: Universi
ty of Toronto Press, 1999.
O’Malley, John. Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Page 18 of 30

O’Malley, John W., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, eds.
The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1999.
O’Malley, John W., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, eds.
The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Toronto: University of Toron
to Press, 2006.
Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de. Nuove lettere del venerabile monsignor Giovanni di Palafox
vescovo d’Angelopoli scritte a’ superiori della Compagnia del Messico. . . . Venice: Presso
Giuseppe Bettinelli, 1760.
Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.

Williamstown: Cornerhouse, 1980.
Peschier, Diana. Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourses: The Case of Charlotte

Brontë. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Ploutarchou Chairōneōs peri paidōn agōgēs: Plutarchi chaeronensis de educandis liberis;

in gratiam et usum studiosae juventutis excusum . . . libros divisum: in usum scholarum
Societatis Jesu. Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1606.
Polanco, Juan-Alfonso de. Vita Ignatii Loiolae et rerum Societatis Jesu historia. 6 vols.
Madrid: Excudebat Augustinus Aurial, 1894–1898.
Polgár, László. Bibliographie sur l’histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus 1901–1980. 3 vols. in

6. Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1980–1990.
Pomplun, Trent. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
[Poynder, John]. A History of the Jesuits, to Which Is Prefixed a Reply to Mr.

(p. 781)
Dallas’s Defense of That Order. 2 vols. London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816.
Raina, Dhruv. “The French Jesuit Manuscripts on Indian Astronomy: The Narratology and
Mystery Surrounding a Late Seventeenth-Early Eighteenth Century Project.” In Looking
at It from Asia: The Processes That Shaped the Sources of History of Science, edited by
Florence Bretelle-Establet, 115–140. Dordrecht: Springer Science 2010.
Ranke, Leopold von. Fürsten und Völker von Süd-Europa im XVI, und XVII. Jahrhundert. 4
vols. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1834–1837.
Ranke, Leopold von. The Popes of Rome: Their Ecclesiastical and Political History 3 vols.,
translated by Sarah Austin. London: John Murray, 1847.
The Ratio Studiorum: The Official Plan for Jesuit Education, translated by Claude Pavur.
St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005.
Page 19 of 30

Rockwell, William Walker. “The Jesuits as Portrayed by Non-Catholic Historians.” Harvard

Theological Review 7, no. 3 (1914): 358–377.
Rodrigues, Simão. The Recollections of Simão Rodrigues on the Origins and Progress of
the Society of Jesus, translated by Joseph F. Conwell. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources,
2004.
R.P. Petri Ribadeneiræ, Societatis Iesv presbyteri, De tribvlationibvs huius seculi librid
uo. . . . Cologne: Apud Conradum Butgenium, 1604.
Sacchini, Francesco. Historia Societatis Jesu: Siue Clavdivs Tomvs Prior avtore Francisco
Sacchini. Rome: Ex Typographi Varesij, 1641.
Scaglioni, Aldo. The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System. Amsterdam: John Ben
jamins, 1986.
Schmidl, Johann. Historia Societatis Iesu Provinciae Bohemiae 1550–1632. 3 vols. Prague:
Schweiger, 1747–1754.
Shore, Paul. “Ex-Jesuits in the East Habsburg Lands, Silesia and Poland.” In The Jesuit
Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, edited by Jeffrey D.
Burson and Jonathan Wright, 229–247. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Shore, Paul. “The Life and Death of a Jesuit Mission: The Collegium in Uzhgorod, Tran
scarpathia (1650–1773).” Slavonic and East European Review 18, no. 4 (2008): 601–633.
Szentiványi, Martinus. Curiosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea. . . . 3

vols. Trnava: Typis Academicis Per Joannem Andream Hörmann, 1689–1702.
Tabaraud, Mathieu-Mathurin. Du Pape et des Jésuites, ou exposé de quelques événemens

du pontificat de Pie VII. . . . 2nd ed. Paris: A. Égron, 1815.
Tacchi Venturi, Pietro. Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia. 2 vols. in 4. Rome: Civiltà
Cattolica, 1910–1951.
Tanner, Matthias. Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix. . . . Prague: Typis Universitatis

Carolo-Ferdinandeae, 1694.
Tanner, Matthias. Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans. . . .

Prague: Typis Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeæ, 1675.
Taylor, William B. Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and

Shrines in New Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explo
rations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791; the Original French, Latin,
and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes. 73 vols. Cleveland: Burrows Broth
ers, 1896–1901.
Page 20 of 30

Timon, Samuel. Imago novæ Hungariæ. Vienna/Prague/Trieste: Joannes Trattner, 1762.
Timon, Samuel. Purpura Pannonica Sive Vitae, Et Res Gestae S. R. E. Cardinalium. . . .

Košice: Typis Academicis Societatis JESV, 1745.
Van Kley, Dale K. “Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolu

(p. 782)
tion.” In Religious Differences in France: Past and Present, edited by Kathleen Perry
Long, 91–140. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2006.
Werner, Yvonne Maria. “ ‘The Catholic Danger’: The Changing Patterns of Swedish Anti-
Catholicism—1850–1965.” In European Anti-Catholicism in a Comparative and Transna
tional Perspective, edited by Yvonne Maria Werner and Jonas Harvard, 135–148. Amster
dam/New York: Rodopi, 2013.
Wolf, Peter Philipp. Allgemeine Geschichte der Jesuiten: von dem Ursprunge ihres Ordens
bis auf gegenwärtigen Zeiten. 4 vols. Zürich: Orell, Geßner, Füßli, 1789–1792.
Wright, Jonathan. God’s Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power—A History of
the Jesuits. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Załęski, Stanislas. Les Jésuites de la Russie-Blanche, translated by Alexandre Vivier. Paris:

Letouzey et Ané, 1886.
Zdeňka, Tichá, ed. Kroniky válečných dob. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1975.
Županov, Ines G. Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th

Centuries). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Županov, Ines G. “The Historiography of the Jesuit Missions in India (1500–1800).” In Je
suit Historiography Online, edited by Robert A. Maryks. Leiden: Brill, Brill Online Refer
ence Works, 2016. Accessed August 21, 2017. http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/
entries/jesuit-historiography-online/the-historiography-of-the-jesuit-missions-in-
india-15001800-COM_192579.
Notes:
(1.) On the spiritual, thaumaturgic, and institutional role of writing in the Society of Je
sus, see the chapter in this volume by Martín M. Morales.
(2.) John W. O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 32.
(3.) Imago Primi Saeculi (Antwerp: Plantin, 1640).
(4.) Frances Trollope’s The Abbess and Father Eustace provides just one example of this
popular image. Diana Peschier, Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourses: The Case of
Charlotte Brontë (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 53.
Page 21 of 30

(5.) Representative of this genre is Giovanni Battista Nicolini, History of the Jesuits: Their
Origin, Progress, Doctrines, and Designs (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854).
(6.) John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy,
eds., The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1999); John W. O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T.
Frank Kennedy, eds., The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2006).
(7.) R.P. Petri Ribadeneiræ, Societatis Iesv presbyteri, De tribvlationibvs huius seculi libri
duo: in quibus de omnibus humanae vitae miseriis, ac calamitatibus agitur: veraque, ad
salutares ex iis, animae fructus colligendos, remedia suggeruntur. (Cologne: Apud Con
radum Butgenium, 1604).
(8.) This work did not appear in print until the late nineteenth century as part of the Mon
umenta Historica series. Juan-Alfonso de Polanco, Vita Ignatii Loiolae et rerum Societatis
Jesu historia (Madrid: Excudebat Augustinus Aurial, 1894–1898).
(9.) A Brief and Exact Account: The Recollections of Simão Rodrigues on the Origins and
Progress of the Society of Jesus, trans. Joseph F. Conwell (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 2004).
(10.) More’s work is in available in English as The Elizabethan Jesuits: “Historia Missionis
Anglicanae Societatis Jesu” (1660) of Henry More, ed. and trans. Francis Edwards, S.J.
(London: Phillimore and Co., 1981).
(11.) Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, The Spiritual Conquest Accomplished by the Religious of
the Society of Jesus in the Provinces of Paraguay, Paraná, Uruguay, and Tape: A Personal
Account of the Founding and Early Years of the Jesuit Paraguay Reductions, trans. C. J.
McNaspy (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1993).
(12.) E.g., Litterae annuae Societatis Iesu anni MDCII (Antwerp: apud heredes Martini
Nutij, 1618). In Spanish, these letters were published with the title Cartas ánuas.
(13.) Matthias Tanner, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans . . .
(Prague: Typis Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeæ, 1675); Matthias Tanner, Societas Jesu
Apostolorum Imitatrix . . . (Prague: Typis Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae, 1694).
(14.) See chapter in this volume by Anne-Sophie Gallo.
(15.) The role of a specific Historia Domus modern historiography is illustrated in Paul
Shore, “The Life and Death of a Jesuit Mission: The Collegium in Uzhgorod, Tran
scarpathia (1650–1773),” Slavonic and East European Review 18, no. 4 (2008): 601–633.
(16.) Transcribed in Kroniky válečných dob, ed. Zdeňka Tichá (Praha: Mladá fronta,
1975), 1–86.
Page 22 of 30

(17.) Francesco Sacchini, Historia Societatis Jesu: Siue Clavdivs Tomvs Prior avtore Fran
cisco Sacchini (Rome: Ex Typographi Varesij, 1641). On Orlandini and Sacchini see espe
cially the chapter in this volume by Martín M. Morales.
(18.) Leopold von Ranke, The Popes of Rome: Their Ecclesiastical and Political History,
trans. Sarah Austin (London: John Murray, 1847), 2:464.
(19.) This “great man” approach to history occasionally reflected specific geographic and
political circumstances, as when Samuel Timon (1675–1736), writing in Hungary where
Catholicism faced internal and external challenges, located the biography of Jesuit and
Cardinal Primate Peter Pázmány within a series of Hungarian cardinals. Purpura Pannoni
ca Sive Vitae, Et Res Gestae S. R. E. Cardinalium . . . (Košice: Typis Academicis Societatis
JESV, 1745), 232–278.
(20.) See Thomas McCoog, The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589–
1597: Building the Faith of Saint Peter upon the King of Spain’s Monarchy (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2016), 2–3. On the founding fathers of the Society of Jesus, see the chapter in
this volume by Pierre-Antoine Fabre.
(21.) E.g., Pedro Arrupe and Jean-Claude Dietsch, One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey: Autobio
graphical Conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources,
1986).
(22.) Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hannover, NH: University Press of
New England, 1999), 74–75.
(23.) The Ratio Studiorum: The Official Plan for Jesuit Education, trans. Claude Pavur (St.
Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005). On the Ratio Studiorum see the chapter in this
volume by Cristiano Casalini.
(24.) Paul Shore, “Ex-Jesuits in the East Habsburg Lands, Silesia and Poland,” in The Je
suit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, ed. Jeffrey D. Bur
son and Jonathan Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 232.
(25.) Daniello Bartoli, Dell’istoria della compagnia di Giesù L’Inghilterra . . . (Bologna: Gio.
Recaldini, 1676).
(26.) E.g., Plutarchou Chairōneōs Peri Paidōn Agōgēs = Plutarchi Chaeronensis De Edu
candis Liberis: In Usum Scholarum Societatis Jesu (Ingolstadt: Sartorius, 1606).
(27.) John W. O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 6.
(28.) A very late example of a work showing traces of this trait is William Bangert, A His
tory of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986).
Page 23 of 30

(29.) E.g., James Hitchcock, The Pope and the Jesuits: John Paul II and the New Order in
the Society of Jesus (New York: National Committee of Catholic Laymen, 1984). Hitch
cock acknowledges the post–Vatican II Society’s engagement with the “others” of popular
and youth culture, but suggests that this newer Society has become less engaged with the
more traditional American Catholic lay “other,” as well as with its own past.
(30.) Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004), 15–16; Patricia Manning, Voicing Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Spain: In
quisition, Social Criticism and Theology in the Case of El Criticón (Leiden: Brill, 2009),
251.
(31.) Historia Iesuitica: hoc est, De origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incre
mentis, progressu & propagatione ordinis Iesuitarum: item de eorum dolis, fraudibus, im
posturis, nefariis facinoribus, cruentis consiliis, falsa quoque, seditiosa & sanguinolenta
doctrina / Rodolpho Hospiano Tigurino, auctore (Zürich: I.R. Wolphium, 1619).
(32.) Yvonne Maria Werner, “ ‘The Catholic Danger’: The Changing Patterns of Swedish
Anti-Catholicism—1850–1965,” in European Anti-Catholicism in a Comparative and
Transnational Perspective, ed. Yvonne Maria Werner and Jonas Harvard (Amsterdam/New
York: Rodopi, 2013), 143.
(33.) [Elias Hasenmüller], Historia Iesvitici ordinis: in qva de Societatis Iesvitarvm avtore,
nomine, gradibus, incremento, vita, votis, priuilegijs, miraculis, doctrina, morte, &c. per
spicuè solideq[ue] tractator (Frankfurt am Main: Excudebat Johannes Spies, 1593).
(34.) Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Nuove lettere del venerabile monsignor Giovanni di
Palafox vescovo d’Angelopoli scritte a’ superiori della Compagnia del Messico . . . (Venice:
Presso Giuseppe Bettinelli, 1760).
(35.) [Ignaz Agricola, Adam Flott, and Franz Xaver Kropf], Historia Provinciae Societatis
Iesu Germaniae Superioris / 3 Ab Anno 1601 ad 1610 (Augsburg: Schlüter & Happach,
1734); Johann Schmidl, Historia Societatis Iesu Provinciae Bohemiae 1550–1632 (Prague:
Schweiger, 1747–1754). The latter work retains the Baroque Society’s emphasis on re
porting the erection of buildings, the number of students enrolled in its schools, and ser
mons preached.
(36.) E.g., Samuel Timon, Imago novæ Hungariæ (Vienna/Prague/Trieste: Joannes Trat
tner, 1762).
(37.) [Simon-Nicolas Henri Linguet], Histoire Impartiale des Jésuites: Depuis leur étab
lissement jusqu’à leur première expulsion ([Paris]: [s.n.], 1768) goes back to pagan Rome
for its examples of superstition and religious excess.
(38.) See Geoffrey Cubitt, The Jesuit Myth: Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth-
Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 254.
Page 24 of 30

(39.) Gil González Dávila, Teatro Eclesiastico De la Primitiva Iglesia De las Indias Occi
dentales, Vidas De Svs Arzobispos, Obispos, y Cosas Memorables De sus Sedes . . .
(Madrid: Diaz de la Carrera, 1649–1655). González Dávila is not to be confused with the
sixteenth-century conquistador of the same name.
(40.) William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images

and Shrines in New Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 363.
(41.) Simão Marques, Brasilia Pontificia: sive speciales Facultates, Pontificiae quae Brasil
iae Episcopis conceduntur . . . per R. P. Simonem Marques . . . (Lisbon: Ex praelo A.V. da
Silva, 1758).
(42.) Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Joannis Petri Maffeii Bergomatis e Societate Iesv Histori
arvm Indicarvm Libri XVI (Florence: apud Philippum Iunctam, 1588).
(43.) Derek Massarella, “Japan, pre-1853,” in Literature of Travel and Exploration: An En
cyclopedia, ed. Jennifer Speake (Abingdon: Routledge: 2003), 1:640.
(44.) Joseph de Jouvancy, Historiae Societatis Jesu Pars quinta, sive Claudius Tom. Posteri
or (Rome: G. Plachi, 1717). The work had been condemned by the Parlement de Paris in
1713.
(45.) See Aldo Scaglioni, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 1986), 131. Milestones of Jesuit history are scattered through the appropri
ately named Baroque collection of facts from many disciplines, Martinus Szentiványi, Cu
riosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea . . . (Trnava: Typis Academicis Per
Joannem Andream Hörmann, 1689–1702). For another take on Jouvancy’s fragmentary
historical style see the chapter in this volume by Martín M. Morales.
(46.) Guilio Cesare Cordara, Historiae Societatis Jesu pars sexta, tomus prior. Com
plectens res gestas sub Mutio Vitellescho, ab anno Christi MDCXVI Societatis LXXVII auc
tore Julio Cordara (Rome: Ex Typographia Antonii de Rubeis, 1750).
(47.) E.g., Johann Christoph Harenberg, Pragmatische Geschichte des Ordens der Jesuit
en, seit ihrem Ursprunge bis auf gegenwärtige Zeit (Halle: Carl Hermann Hemmerde,
1760).
(48.) E.g., [Bernardo Ibáñez de Echavarri], Histoire du Paraguay sous les Jesuites et de la
royauté qu’ils y on exercée . . ., 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Chez Arkstée et Merkus, 1780).
(49.) Mario Ford Bacigalupo, “Bernardo Ibáñez de Echavarri and the Image of the Jesuit
Missions of Paraguay,” The Americas 35 (1979): 485.
(50.) [John Poynder], A History of the Jesuits, to Which Is Prefixed a Reply to Mr. Dallas’s
Defense of That Order (London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816).
(51.) Peter Philipp Wolf, Allgemeine Geschichte der Jesuiten: von dem Ursprunge ihres
Ordens bis auf gegenwärtigen Zeiten (Zürich: Orell, Geßner, Füßli, 1789–1792).
Page 25 of 30

(52.) Mathieu-Mathurin Tabaraud, Du Pape et des Jésuites, ou exposé de quelques événe

mens du pontificat de Pie VII . . ., 2nd ed. (Paris: A. Égron, 1815).
(53.) Quoted in Douglas Letson and Michael Higgins, The Jesuit Mystique (Chicago: Jesuit
Way, 1995), 49.
(54.) Frédéric Conrod, “The Romantic Historian under Charles X: Evaluating Jesuit
Restoration in Charles Laumier’s Resumé de l’histoire des Jésuites,” in Jesuit Survival and
Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, ed. Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan Wright (Lei
den: Brill, 2014), 229–241, at 239.
(55.) See the discussion of Sue in Levy, Propaganda, 18.
(56.) Jacques Crétineau-Joly, Histoire religieuse, politique et littéraire de la Compagnie de

Jésus (S.l.: Forgotten Books, 2015). Crétineau-Joly is sometimes incorrectly described as a
Jesuit.
(57.) M. A. Arnould, Les Jésuites (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1846).
(58.) [Karl] Theodor Griesinger, The Jesuits: A Complete History . . ., trans. A. J. Scott
(London: A. H. Allen, 1883), 1:308–309.
(59.) Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England from the Ascension of James II
(New York: John B. Alden, 1883), 1:469–474.
(60.) Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 3 vols. (London:
Burns and Oates, 1875–1878).
(61.) John Gerard, A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, ed. John Morris (Roehampton:
Printed by James Stanley, 1871).
(62.) “The book is an excellent example of history as it used to be written in the eigh
teenth century.” William Walker Rockwell, “The Jesuits as Portrayed by Non-Catholic His
torians,” Harvard Theological Review 7, no. 3 (1914): 366.
(63.) Reuben Gold Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Ex
plorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791; the Original French,
Latin, and Italian Texts, with English Translations and Notes (Cleveland: Burrows Broth
ers, 1896–1901). At least two historians had already made use of Jesuit records from this
period: Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century
(Williamstown: Cornerhouse, 1980); William Ingraham Kip, The Early Jesuit Missions in
North America (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846). Notably, all three historians were
Americans and produced their works for a largely American (and Protestant) audience.
(64.) Stanislas Załęski, Les Jésuites de la Russie-Blanche, 2 vols., trans. Alexandre Vivier
(Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1886).
Page 26 of 30

(65.) Ranke also weighed in on the Society’s history, observing that the Society “war ein
Kriegesinstitut, das für den Frieden nicht mehr paßte.” Leopold von Ranke, Fürsten und
Völker von Süd-Europa im XVI, und XVII. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot,
1834–1837), 4:200.
(66.) Along with references to earlier works, these data were published in László Polgár,
Bibliographie sur l’histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus 1901–1980, 3 vols. in 6 (Rome: Insti
tutum Historicum S.I., 1980–1990).
(67.) Tacchi Venturi’s most important contribution to Jesuit historiography was his Storia
della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia, 2 vols. in 4 (Rome: Civiltà Cattolica, 1910–1951).
(68.) Published in English as The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, trans. F. S. Flint and D.
F. Tait (New York: Viking Press, 1930).
(69.) Thomas J. Campbell, The Jesuits: A History 1534–1921 (New York: Encyclopedia
Press, 1921), v.
(70.) Martin P. Harney, S.J., The Jesuits in History: The Society of Jesus through Four Cen
turies (New York: America Press, 1941).
(71.) John O’Malley, “The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand To
day?,” in O’Malley et al., eds., The Jesuits, 11–15.
(72.) See also the chapter in this volume by Martín M. Morales.
(73.) Joseph de Guibert, La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse historique

(Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1953).
(74.) Trent Pomplun, Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9. See also Thomas McCoog, S.J., The Society of
Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541–1588: “Our Way of Proceeding” (Leiden:
Brill, 1996), 4–5. See also the chapter in this volume by Frédéric Gugelot.
(75.) Bernhard Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1907–1913; Munich-Regensburg: Manz, 1921–1928); Antonio As
tráin, Historia de la Compañia de Jesús en la Asistencia de España (Madrid: Razón y Fe,
1902–1925).
(76.) Henri Fouqueray, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus en France, des origines à la

suppression (1528–1762), 5 vols. (Paris: A. & J. Picard: Études, 1910–1925). The first vol
ume of this series was, however, criticized for excessive pro-Jesuit and pro-Catholic bias.
(77.) Robert Danieluk, “Some Remarks on Jesuit Historiography 1773–1814,” in Maryks

and Wright, eds., Jesuit Survival and Restoration, 42.
(78.) Thomas McCoog, S.J., ed., The Mercurian Project: Forming Jesuit Culture 1573–1580
(St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources/Roma: Institutum Historicum, S.I., 2014).
Page 27 of 30

(79.) Louis Chatellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the For
mation of a New Society, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989); Louis Chatellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the For
mation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1997).
(80.) Manuel Revuelta González, “Historiography of the Post-Restoration Society of Jesus

in Spain,” Jesuit Historiography Online, accessed August 12, 2017, http://
referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/historiography-of-the-
post-restoration-society-of-jesus-in-spain-COM_192572.
(81.) See Willem Frijhoff, “Michel de Certeau 1925–1986,” in French Historians 1900–
2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France, ed. Philip Daileader and
Philip Whalen (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 78–80.
(82.) See Pavel Kolář, “Rewriting National History in Post-War Central Europe: Marxist
Syntheses of Austrian and Czechoslovak History as New National Master Narratives,” in
Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe, ed. Stefan Berg
er and Chris Lorenz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 333.010.
(83.) Festo Mkenda, S.J., Mission for Everyone: A Story of the Jesuits in Eastern Africa
1555–2012 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013). See also the chapter by Festo
Mkenda in this volume.
(84.) Monumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 4: Les grandes épreuves (1638–1640), ed. Lucien
Campeau (Montréal: Les Éditions Bellarmin, 1989).
(85.) “sensibilidade científica barroca que conjuga a intervenção divina com o experimen
talismo.” Iris Kantor, “A ciência no império português e espanhol,” História da Histori
ografia 4 (2010): 296.
(86.) He Jianming, “The Inspiration of Jesuit Educational Thought in Modern China,”

trans. Michael Chang, in Education for New Times: Revisiting Pedagogical Models in the
Jesuit Tradition: International Symposium Organized by the Macau Ricci Institute, Macau
25th–27th November 2009 (Macau: Macau Ricci Institute, 2014), 205–228, at 218.
(87.) Dhruv Raina, “The French Jesuit Manuscripts on Indian Astronomy: The Narratology
and Mystery Surrounding a Late Seventeenth- Early Eighteenth Century Project,” in
Looking at It from Asia: The Processes That Shaped the Sources of History of Science, ed.
Florence Bretelle-Establet (Dordrecht: Springer Science 2010), 115–140, at 115.See,
however, Ines G. Županov. “The Historiography of the Jesuit Missions in India (1500–
1800),” in Jesuit Historiography Online, ed. Robert A. Maryks (Leiden: Brill, Brill Online
Reference Works, 2016), accessed August 21, 2017, http://
referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/the-historiography-of-
the-jesuit-missions-in-india-15001800-COM_192579.
(88.) John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Page 28 of 30

(89.) E.g., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions of Asia and Latin America
(1542–1773) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
(90.) Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Role of the Jesuits in Portugal, Its
Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996); Ines G.
Županov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th Centuries) (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 3.
(91.) Jean Lecouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography, trans. Jeremy Leggett (London: Harvill
Press, 1995). The English edition is a condensation of the original two-volume French
work.
(92.) The majority of articles, e.g., appearing in the Journal of Jesuit Studies, launched in
2014, are by non-Jesuits.
(93.) [Jakob Gretser], Epistola De Historia Ordinis Iesuitici scripta ab Helia Hasen
müller . . . (Dilingen: Excudebat Joannes Meyer, 1614).
(94.) Alan Lamont, “The Jesuit Vatican New World Order,” accessed August 12, 2017,
http://vaticannewworldorder.blogspot.ca/2012/03/stalin-practically-every-right-wing.html.
(95.) Jonathan Wright, God’s Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power—A History
of the Jesuits (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
(96.) Joaquín M. Domínguez and Charles E. O’Neill, eds., Diccionario histórico de la Com
pañía de Jesús: biográfico-temático (Rome: Institutum Historicum, S.I.; Madrid: Universi
dad Pontificia Comillas, 2001). Ludwig Koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Jesu einst
und jetzt (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1934).
(97.) J. G. de Castro, ed., Diccionario de Espiritualidad Ignaciana, 2 vols. (Bilbao: Edi

ciones Mensajero, 2007).
(98.) Thomas Worcester, ed., Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 2017). This reference work follows on the heels of the much
shorter Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), also edited by Thomas Worcester.
(99.) “Jesuit Historiography Online,” Brill, accessed August 12, 2017, http://
www.brill.com/products/online-resources/jesuit-historiography-online.
(100.) “Jesuitica,” The Jesuitica Project at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at
the University of Leuven, Belgium, accessed February 24, 2017, https://www.jesuitica.be/
about/.
(101.) Henrique Leitão, “Jesuit Mathematical Practice in Portugal, 1540–1759,” in The

New Science and Jesuit Science: Seventeenth Century Perspectives, ed. Mordechai Fein
gold (Dordrecht: Springer, 2003), 229–247.
Page 29 of 30

(102.) Dale K. Van Kley, “Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolution,”
in Religious Differences in France: Past and Present, ed. Kathleen Perry Long (Kirksville,
MO: Truman State University Press, 2006), 113.
(103.) Aliocha Maldavsky, “Jesuits in Ibero-America: Missions and Colonial Societies,” in

The Jesuits and Globalization: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Challenges, ed.
Thomas Banchoff and José Casanova (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2016), 92.
Paul Shore
Department of Religious Studies, University of Regina
Page 30 of 30

Paul Shore - The Historiografy of The Society of Jesus

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Paul Shore - The Historiografy of The Society of Jesus

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Historiography of the Society of Jesus

The Historiography of the Society of Jesus

Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

history—a history in which divine intervention was always an element—continued to be a

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Internal Currents of Historiography

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

capable of producing a carefully researched history46 that influenced subsequent histo­

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Restoration and Beyond

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Tension and Transformation

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Society in a surprising light, as representatives of a “popular” Church, contrasted with a

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Arnould, M. A. Les Jésuites. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1846.

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Astráin, Antonio. Historia de la Compañia de Jesús en la Asistencia de España. 7 vols.

Crétineau-Joly, Jacques. Histoire religieuse, politique et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jé­

Danieluk, Robert. “Some Remarks on Jesuit Historiography 1773–1814.” In Jesuit Survival

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Fouqueray, Henri. Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus en France, des origines à la sup­

Frijhoff, Willem. “Michel de Certeau 1925–1986.” In French Historians 1900–2000: New

[Gretser, Jakob]. Epistola De Historia Ordinis Iesuitici scripta a Helia Hasenmüller. . . .

Griesinger, [Karl] Theodor. The Jesuits: A Complete History . . ., translated by A. J. Scott, 2

Guibert, Joseph de. La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse historique. Rome:

[Hasenmüller, Elias]. Historia Iesvitici ordinis: in qva de Societatis Iesvitarvm av­

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

[Ibáñez de Echavarri, Bernardo]. Histoire du Paraguay sous les Jesuites et de la royauté

Imago Primi Saeculi. Antwerp: Plantin, 1640.

Kantor, Iris. “A ciência no império português e espanhol.” História da Historiografia 4

Lecouture, Jean. Jesuits: A Multibiography, translated by Jeremy Leggett. London: Harvill

Leitão, Henrique. “Jesuit Mathematical Practice in Portugal, 1540–1759.” In The New

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Manning, Patricia. Voicing Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Inquisition, Social Criti­

Marques, Simão. Brasilia Pontificia: sive speciales Facultates, Pontificiae quae

Brasiliae Episcopis conceduntur . . . per R. P. Simonem Marques. . . . Lisbon: Ex praelo

Massarella, Derek. “Japan, pre-1853.” In Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Ency­

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.

Peschier, Diana. Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourses: The Case of Charlotte

Ploutarchou Chairōneōs peri paidōn agōgēs: Plutarchi chaeronensis de educandis liberis;

Polgár, László. Bibliographie sur l’histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus 1901–1980. 3 vols. in

[Poynder, John]. A History of the Jesuits, to Which Is Prefixed a Reply to Mr.

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Rockwell, William Walker. “The Jesuits as Portrayed by Non-Catholic Historians.” Harvard

Szentiványi, Martinus. Curiosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea. . . . 3

Tabaraud, Mathieu-Mathurin. Du Pape et des Jésuites, ou exposé de quelques événemens

Tanner, Matthias. Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix. . . . Prague: Typis Universitatis

Tanner, Matthias. Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitæ profusionem militans. . . .

Taylor, William B. Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and

Subscriber: UNAM; date: 26 March 2021

Timon, Samuel. Imago novæ Hungariæ. Vienna/Prague/Trieste: Joannes Trattner, 1762.

Timon, Samuel. Purpura Pannonica Sive Vitae, Et Res Gestae S. R. E. Cardinalium. . . .

Van Kley, Dale K. “Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolu­

Załęski, Stanislas. Les Jésuites de la Russie-Blanche, translated by Alexandre Vivier. Paris:

capable of producing a carefully researched history46 that influenced subsequent histo

Crétineau-Joly, Jacques. Histoire religieuse, politique et littéraire de la Compagnie de Jé

Fouqueray, Henri. Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus en France, des origines à la sup

[Hasenmüller, Elias]. Historia Iesvitici ordinis: in qva de Societatis Iesvitarvm av

Manning, Patricia. Voicing Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Inquisition, Social Criti

Massarella, Derek. “Japan, pre-1853.” In Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Ency

Van Kley, Dale K. “Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolu

(52.) Mathieu-Mathurin Tabaraud, Du Pape et des Jésuites, ou exposé de quelques événe

(97.) J. G. de Castro, ed., Diccionario de Espiritualidad Ignaciana, 2 vols. (Bilbao: Edi