The Portal to Jesuit Studies

The popular Jesuit Studies Café series closes its fourth season on April 24 with a presentation led by Jean-Pascal Gay of the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Gay speaks on “Why Theology Should Matter to Historians. Knowledge and Agency in the Early Modern Society. Around Théophile Raynaud (1583–1665).” Registration for the event is required. The deadline is April 23.

Gay draws from his recent book on Raynaud to consider the contributions that a much needed “social and cultural” history of theology can offer to our understanding of early modern societies and religion. He argues that scholars’ interest in theological ideas does not necessarily mean interest in theology itself. In early modern times, for example, theology was not merely a set of ideas reflecting social and political context, nor was it merely a language for the religious interpretation of social reality, it was also a social activity itself in which early modern communities, and even more so early modern Catholic religious orders, invested considerable human and economic resources. Therefore, studying this context of the Society of Jesus yields significant results, because of the archival material that the Jesuits have produced and because of the importance of theology and theologians in the everyday-life of the Society. The talk centers around a few theses:
– Theology plays a central part in defining social relations within the Society of Jesus.
– Theology is a situational knowledge. It can and must be studied as such.
– Theological proficiency remained in the 17th century a source of considerable agency.
– Theology is nonetheless losing ground in the 17th century to other knowledges as a source of agency.
– Theology offers insight about the contradictory process of confessionalization.
– A social and cultural history of theology can help free historical discourse from the grand narrative of the history of theology that theologians themselves have elaborated.

The full Spring 2020 Jesuit Studies Café season appears below. This series, hosted by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, presents informal conversations with the world’s preeminent scholars working on the history, spirituality, and educational heritage of the Society of Jesus. These discussions – hosted at the Institute over coffee and also available via videoconference – are unique opportunities to learn more about the newest and most interesting scholarship in Jesuit Studies. Advanced registration is required to attend the events. Contact the Institute if you have questions or wish to participate (iajs@bc.edu).

February 28
Institute Library | 9:15 a.m.–10:00 a.m.
“Working and editing new sources: The first Jesuit philosophical text taught in Paris”
Anna Tropia, Charles University, Prague

How did the Jesuits teach philosophy during the sixteenth century? How did they organize lectures? What did they teach? How did they fit the current debates on hot topics such as the immortality of the soul, the relation between faith and reason, or the ancient authorities?
Anna Tropia will offer some insights on these important questions, by presenting the De origine, natura et immortalitate animae (about 1564) by the Spanish Jesuit, Juan Maldonado (1533/34 – 1583), a manuscript she has recently edited. This text is the only extant trace of the course that Maldonado taught in Paris in 1564, the first year after the inception of the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, but it provides precious details and a solid perspectives on how the Jesuit philosophical tradition would develop in the early modern period.

March 26
Institute Library | 9:15 a.m.–10:00 a.m.
“New Database: The Digital Indipetae Database”
Emanuele Colombo, DePaul University
Marco Rochini, Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

This café will demonstrate of the new Digital Indipetae Database, an open-access resource that collects thousands of indipetae (Jesuit petitions for extra-European missions) preserved at the Jesuit Roman Archive (ARSI) and other archives. The tradition of writing indipetae, pretty unique to the Society of Jesus, lasted for at least four hundred years, between the 1560s and the 1960s. At this café, Colombo and Rochini will demonstrate the database’s robust functionality by exploring the first series of letters uploaded — the nearly eight hundred indipetae written during the generalate of Jan Roothaan (1829-1853), which highlight the evolution of Jesuit missions after the restoration of the Society.

April 24
Institute Library | 9:15 a.m.–10:00 a.m.
“Why Theology Should Matter to Historians. Knowledge and Agency in the Early Modern Society. Around Théophile Raynaud (1583-1665)”
Jean-Pascal Gay, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

The purpose of this talk is to discuss how a much needed “social and cultural” history of theology can bring new insights for our understanding of early modern societies and religion. As often, for such an endeavor, studying the context of the Society of Jesus yields significant results, because of the archival material that it has produced and because of the importance of theology and theologians in the everyday-life of the Society. To illustrate his point Jean-Pascal Gay will draw on material from his last monograph about a mid 17th century Jesuit theologian (Le dernier théologien? Théophile Raynaud, histoire d’une obsolescence, Paris, 2018).

James Bernauer, S.J., has published a new history of the development in Jesuits’ attitudes towards Judaism in the mid 20th century. Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance, published by University of Notre Dame Press, examines how Jesuit hostility toward Judaism before the Holocaust gave way to a “new understanding of the Catholic Church’s relation to Judaism that culminated with Vatican II’s landmark decree Nostra aetate.”

Bernauer, a Jesuit priest and the Kraft Family Professor of Philosophy and the director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, demonstrates how Jesuit hostility operated before identifying “an influential group of Jesuits whose thought and action contributed to the developments in Catholic teaching about Judaism.” Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea was instrumental in leading the post-war change. Jesuit Kaddish also contains an appendix presenting the fifteen Jesuits who have been honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Center.

More information about the book can be found at the publisher’s website: https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268107017/jesuit-kaddish/.

A citation for the book appears on the Jesuit Online Bibliography: https://jesuitonlinebibliography.bc.edu/catalog/18156.

The Irish Jesuit Archives has begun a new online catalogue, starting with the catalogue of St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, Offaly. Catalogues for two other collections are also now available: one for the Waterford-born Jesuit and Irish language scholar Michael McGrath (1872-1946), and another on the Isle of Man Mission (1826-1837). Further collections will be added as time permits.

The project is the result of a collaboration between the Irish Jesuit Archives and Offaly History. It uses open source application AtoM. To make archival material discoverable online, the Irish Jesuit Archives’ catalogue allows users to search for names or keywords to find particular records and to browse by collection, name, subject, and place.

The mission of the Irish Jesuit Archives is to record the challenges, aspirations, and experiences of Irish Jesuits, documenting their successes and failures since 1575. Pope Francis, in addressing officials of the Vatican Secret Archives in 2019, compared archival work “to the cultivation of a majestic tree,” with archivists tending to the soil and roots, “in such a way that even the greenest and youngest branches of the tree may draw good sap for their future growth.” This archival endeavor is often “carried out in silence and far from clamor,” however, this online catalogue can help share the connected histories of the Society of Jesus.

The Irish Jesuit Archives is an institutional partner in the Jesuit Online Bibliography.