This volume, edited by Girolamo Imbruglia, Pierre-Antoine Fabre, and Guido Mongini, presents the first comprehensive treatment of the Litterae indipetae – letters of petition that Jesuits sent from all over Europe to the Superior General seeking appointment to the “Indies”. Unique to the Society of Jesus, over 22,000 Litterae indipetae are preserved at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu spanning five centuries, giving voice to thousands of individual Jesuits and their collective desire for the missions. Despite their remarkable longevity, the Litterae indipetae have been little known or understood until recent times. Yet like no other source, these petitions testify to the scope and depth of the Society’s missionary identity. The book offers a timely survey of the subject through thirty short chapters in Italian, English, and French, organised both chronologically and thematically, and written by leading and emerging specialists. The volume is intended as an introduction to the source as well as a showcase of the latest scholarship in the field. 

This volume, edited by Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Patrick Goujon SJ and Martín M. Morales SJ, presents thirty-seven essays on the modern history of the Society of Jesus, spanning the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The essays are multilingual, multidisciplinary and range across a wide chronological, geographical and thematic landscape within the field of modern history, while the papal Suppression (1773) and Restoration (1814) of the worldwide Society provide the volume’s main orientation. Until recently, modern Jesuit history has received relatively limited scholarly attention. This volume aims to guide researchers in the riches of this period in the Society’s history and demonstrate its importance for modern historical studies more broadly. A novelty of the volume is that it brings together the later history of the “Old Society”, the interim period of the Suppression (1773–1814), and the “New Society” (from the Restoration). The book’s broad frame provides a window onto the great ruptures of European history, the main events of modern Catholic history, and early globalization. While the well-known upheavals of this period come into view, the persistent continuities of these centuries also emerge, exemplified most potently by the Society’s own partial survival during the forty-one years of its papal suppression. 

In the present work, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India Antony Mecherry SJ explores the underlying dynamics of the accommodation experiments led by Francisco Ros SJ (1559–1624)—a Catalonian from the Jesuit province of Aragón—in the cultural and religious terrain of Malabar, where he worked principally among the region’s Christian communities. Mecherry’s historical analysis becomes an interpretative key to understanding the later mission launched by Roberto de Nobili SJ (1577–1656), the main proponent of accommodation in the non-Christian context of Madurai in South India. Most importantly, the study underscores the Jesuit mission in early modern India as the crucial intersecting point for some of the most prominent promoters of accommodation in the first century of the Society of Jesus, including Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).

This study is the first examination of Jesuit prison ministry in the Holy Roman Empire during the period of witch trials. It provides new insights into the prisons where the persons detained for witchcraft were incarcerated as well as their trials and the applied torture and executions, as seen through the Jesuits’ eyes. In the context of these trials, the Cautio Criminalis appeared, written by the noble Jesuit Friedrich Spee SJ (1591–1635), dealing with the question of the legality of the trials and the related prison ministry, and printed pseudonymously by a Lutheran printer in 1631 and again in 1632. For the first time, the study offers a complete biography of Spee, who was nearly forced to leave the Society of Jesus; it traces the book’s publication, and provides a detailed analysis of the prison visits of his confreres. The book also details Spee’s criticism of prison ministers and questions about the guilt or innocence of the imprisoned, tortured and executed women and men of this tragic period in European history. 

Jesuit missions in Ireland, Scotland, and England were either suspended, undermanned, or under attack. With the Elizabethan government’s collusion, secular clerics hostile to Robert Persons and his tactics campaigned in Rome for the Society’s removal from the administration of continental English seminaries and from the mission itself. Continental Jesuits alarmed by the English mission’s idiosyncratic status within the Society, sought to restrict the mission’s privileges and curb its independence. Meanwhile the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, the subject that dared not speak its name, had become a more pressing concern. One candidate, King James VI of Scotland, courted Catholic support with promises of conversion. His peaceful accession in 1603 raised expectations, but as the royal promises went unfufillled, anger replaced hope. 

Includes critical editions of three 16th-century source documents: a letter from Antonio Possevino to Francesco Sacchini, a letter from Lainez to Catherine de Medici, and a text entitled Qua ratione scribendi uti debeant qui extra urbem in societate nostra versantur. 

Includes a selection of 131 letters written by Gagarin or members of his family. Includes, in French translation, the article written on Gagarin by Paul Pierling for the Biographical Dictionary of Russia (1896-1918). Also includes, in French translation, a biographical essay on Gagarin by the Polish historian Wiktoria S´liwowska. 

English Catholic voices, once disregarded as merely confessional, are now acknowledged to provide important perspectives on Elizabethan society. Based on extensive archival research, this book builds on previous studies for the first thorough investigation of the Jesuit mission to England during a critical period between the unsuccessful armadas of 1588 and 1597, a period during which the mission was threatened as much by internal Catholic conflict as it was by the crown. To address properly events in England, the study engages with the situation in Ireland, Scotland and the continent so as to contextualize the ambitions, methods and effects of the Jesuit mission. For England felt threatened not only by the military might of Spain but also by any assistance King Philip II might provide to Catholics earis and a vindictive James VI in Scotland, powerful nobles in Ireland, and English Catholics at home and abroad. However, it is the particular role of the Jesuits that occupies central place in the narrative, highlighting the way in which the Society of Jesus typified all that Elizabethan England feared about the Church of Rome. Through an exhaustive study of the many facets of the Jesuit mission to England between 1589 and 1597, this book provides a fascinating insight not only into Catholic efforts to bring England back into the Roman Church, but also the simmering tensions, and disagreements on how this should be achieved, as well as debates concerning the very nature and structure of English Catholicism.

Includes facsimile reproductions of a selection of Chinese and Latin documents written between 1701 and 1704; the documents are held by the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. 

Papers presented at an international colloquium held Apr. 7-9, 2010, at the Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU, Valencia, Spain, in commemoration of the fifth centenary of the birth of Saint Francisco de Borja. 

Established in 1941, the Bibliotheca Instituti Societatis Iesu (BIHSI) series is devoted to monographs on the history and culture of the Society of Jesus. 

Established in 1941, the Bibliotheca Instituti Societatis Iesu (BIHSI) series is devoted to monographs on the history and culture of the Society of Jesus.