News in Jesuit Studies
The following are notices of significant events related to the field of Jesuit Studies.
The notices appear chronologically, and all entries are indexed into the Portal’s search capabilities.
To contribute news of significant publications and events, both recent and forthcoming, please contact the Portal’s editors (jesuitportal@bc.edu)
Jesuit Sources has published a new English translation of De discendi et docendi ratione, or The Way to Learn and the Way to Teach, by French Jesuit poet, pedagogue, philologist, and historian Joseph de Jouvancy. In this book, Jouvancy describes how young instructors might effectively pursue their own studies during their years of teaching while also detailing the essentials of good teaching.
The new edition by Jesuit Source presents an English translation as well as the Latin of the 1703 edition of Jouvancy’s Ratio, the version produced pursuant to the decree of General Congregation 14, whose authority it invokes on its very frontispiece.
More information is available at Jesuit Sources: https://jesuitsources.bc.edu/the-way-to-learn-and-the-way-to-teach/
David Salomoni, a postdoctoral researcher at the Project RUTTER—Making the Earth Global, has published “Jesuits on Board: A Reasoned Bibliography on the Early Modern Jesuit Trans-Oceanic Sailing Experiences.” The essay appears as the third installment of the RUTTER: Technical Notes, an open-access serial publication covering topics as diverse as the research activities of the RUTTER research team. The essay, which Salomoni will update regularly, may be downloaded for free at: https://www.rutter-project.org/uploads/1/2/9/4/129482413/salomoni_tn3.pdf
Salomoni’s essay provides a historiographical overview and a bibliographical summary of Jesuit missions and travels, including the reports, histories, treaties, and travel accounts written by the members of the Society of Jesus between the 16th and 18th centuries. While particular attention is paid, in this “global history of the seas,” to the Jesuits’ scientific contributions, Salomoni addresses the missionaries experiences on the seas as well. “The aim of this continually updated bibliography, therefore, is to collect all the modern and ancient titles relating to the on-board oceanic travel experiences of Jesuit missionaries, but not to them only,” Salomoni writes. “Another ongoing attempt here is to collect the same kind of material on the oceanic travels of other religious missionary orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians) to be compared with the Jesuits for a more detailed and comprehensive overview of such phenomenon. This bibliography will serve as a basis for articles, an edition of sources, and finally a book that will allow us to take stock of a decisive moment in the scientific, intellectual and social history not only of the Society of Jesus, but of the entire world. ”
The essay’s bibliography runs 23 pages and includes a section on selected literature on Jesuit missions and travels (including those for Jesuits at sea and in the missions as well as on their scientific work), a list of Jesuit reports, histories, treaties, and travel accounts, another list of travel accounts from other religious orders, one for non-religious travel accounts, and, finally, a list of relevant online resources.
Composed of an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers, the RUTTER Project has a mission to “write a narrative of the scaling up of a scientific description of the earth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and how it grew out of the lived experience of travelling and observing the earth in long-distance sea voyages. It aims at radically improving our present knowledge of the historical processes that led to the formation of global concepts about the earth.” Henrique Leitão serves as the group’s principal investigator and Antonio Sánchez as the senior researcher. The RUTTER project receives funding through the European Research Council (ERC). Learn more about the project at https://www.rutter-project.org/.
The 2020 Global Digital History of Science Festival organized by the British Society for the History of Science features a virtual book launch of Jesuits and the Book of Nature: Science and Education in Modern Portugal by Francisco Malta Romeiras. The event features remarks by Malta Romeiras as well as a question-and-answer period hosted by Nuno Castel-Branco, a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Science at Johns Hopkins University.
The virtual discussion is free and open to the public. It takes place at Wednesday 8th July, 16:00 – 17:00 (UTC+1). More details are available at https://bshsfestival.org.uk/index.php/programme/author-qas/book-launch-jesuits-and-the-book-of-nature/.
Malta Romeiras published Jesuits and the Book of Nature with Brill Publishers, as part of its Jesuit Studies book series. According to the publisher, the book offers “an account of the Jesuits’ contributions to science and education after the restoration of the Society of Jesus in Portugal in 1858. As well as promoting an education grounded on an “alliance between religion and science,” the Portuguese Jesuits founded a scientific journal that played a significant role in the consolidation of taxonomy, plant breeding, biochemistry, and molecular genetics.” The Jesuits’ prioritization of the scientific teaching and practice not only continued their order’s long tradition but also was a “response to the adverse anticlerical milieu in which the restoration of the Society of Jesus took place.”
The online book launch features a summary of the book and is targeted to those those interested in the role of religion and politics in the development of science and education.
Malta Romeiras largely wrote Jesuits and the Book of Nature while serving as a senior research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. Learn more about the Institute’s in-residence fellowship program at: https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/centers/iajs/research-/in-residence-fellows/meet-the-fellows.html.