The Portal to Jesuit Studies

The annual Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC) is held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from October 26 to October 29, 2017. The SCSC “promotes scholarship on the early modern era, broadly defined (ca. 1450 – ca. 1660).” The 2017 conference commemorates the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s “95 theses.”

Included below are some of the panels and presentations related to Jesuit history. The entire program is available online.

Reaching Out to the Crowds: Jesuit Designs for Improvement

Sponsor: Journal of Jesuit Studies

Organizer: Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University

Chair: Maryanne C. Horowitz, Occidental College & UCLA

• “Take the Same as the Society”: Mary Ward’s “Jesuitesses” and Teaching Girls Latin
  • Laura Feitzinger Brown, Converse College
• Robert Southwell’s Mission to Reclaim the Passions
  • Emily A. Ransom, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
• Encounters with the Other: Jesuit Mission Concept in India and the Far East in 1541–1603
  • Liubou Dzihanau-Vnukousky, Belarusian State University, Minsk

The Reformation(s) in Catholic Contexts

Organizer: Ulrich L. Lehner, Marquette University

Chair: Kristen P. Walton, Salisbury University

• Pater Luther? Teaching Luther in Catholic Seminaries
  • Paul Monson, Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology
• The “General Obscuration” of Catholic Truth: The Synod of Pistoia (1786) between the Reformations
  • Shaun Blanchard, Marquette University
• The Ecclesiology of Francisco Suárez, SJ: Between St. Thomas and Vatican II
  • Eric DeMeuse, Marquette University

Constructing New Roles for Male and Female Religious, in Honor of Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Sponsor: Society for Reformation Research

Organizer: Victoria Christman, Luther College

Chair: Helmut Puff, University of Michigan

• Active Virginity
  • Amy E. Leonard, Georgetown University
• Where Are They Now? The Experiences of Protestant and Catholic Nuns after Confronting the Reformation
  • Marjorie E. Plummer, University of Arizona
• Braving the Waves with Francis Xavier: Jesuit Boat Journeys and the Making of Missionary Manhood
  • Ulrike Strasser, University of California, San Diego

Early Modern Church Building

Sponsor: Ecclesiastical History Society

Organizer and Chair: Andrew Spicer, Oxford Brookes University

• Budgeting the Build: Financing Parochial Transformation in the Elizabethan Church
  • Lucy Kaufman, University of Oxford
• Conflict and Church Building in the Southern Netherlands, c. 1566–1621
  • Andrew Spicer, Oxford Brookes University
• Religion Royale in the Sacred Landscape of Paris: The Jesuit Church of Saint Louis and the Resacralization of Kingship in Early Bourbon France (1590–1650)
  • Eric Nelson, Missouri State University

Saints as Public Figures: Veneration Practices in Politics, Music, and Art

Organizer: Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University

Chair: Karen E. Spierling, Denison University

• Saints in Ecstasy: Discord and Meaning in the Roman Paintings of Visionary Saints, ca. 1590–1620
  • Thomas Santa Maria, Yale University
• Examining Confessional Liminality through Mathias Gastritz’s Novae harmonicae cantiones (1569)
  • Megan Eagen, East Carolina University

Italian Literature Reformed I

Organizer and Chair: Jennifer Haraguchi, Brigham Young University

• A Sixteenth-Century Reader and Critic of Vittoria Colonna: Rinaldo Corso’s Commentary on Her Rime of 1558
  • Sarah Faggioli, Villanova University
• To Love and Be Loved: Petrarch’s Triumph of Death II and Vittoria Colonna’s Triumph of the Cross
  • Elizabeth Anderson, Independent Scholar
• Petrarca lagrimoso: Tears and Ignatian Spirituality in Lucrezia Marinella’s Early Spiritual Poetry
  • Leonardo Giorgetti, University of California, Davis

The Sister Arts: Painting, Music, Theater

Organizer: James Clifton, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation

Chair: Shannon N. Pritchard, University of Southern Indiana

• Affecting the Musical Body: Aural Devotion in Sixteenth-Century Europe
  • Samantha Chang, University of Toronto
• Reformation Theatre: Distinguishing a New Field of Study
  • Patricia McKee, Northern Arizona University
• Devotional Visions and Ecstatic Celestial Choirs in Sixteenth-Century Venice
  • Brian D. Steele, Texas Tech University
• Bernini’s L’Impresario and the Jesuit Concept of Imagery
  • Jenny Körber, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin

Marian Images in Context: Devotions, Doctrines, and Cults II

Organizer: Barbara Haeger, Ohio State University, and Elliott Wise, Brigham Young University

Chair: Kim Butler Wingfield, American University

• Lectulus noster floridus: The Flower-Strewn Bed and the Virgin’s Womb
  • James Clifton, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation
• De Virgine natalitia ad rapientem: Marian Mimesis and Conversion in the First Marian Emblem Book: Jan David, SJ’s Pancarpium Marianum of 1607
  • Walter Melion, Emory University
• Our Lady of Grace: A Holy War for Devotional Hegemony
  • Elliott Wise, Brigham Young University

Beyond Interiority: Prayer, Politics, and Agencies in Northern European and Iberian Devotional Art, ca. 1400-ca. 1700

Sponsor: Historians of Netherlandish Art

Organizer and Chair: Andrea Pearson, American University

• Painted Politics? Revisiting the Miracles in the Margins in the Lamoignon Hours (ca. 1415)
  • Ragnhild Boe, University of Oslo
• Gender, Jesuits, and Domestic Artworks: The Decoration of the Houtappel Sisters’ huys capelle in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp
  • Sarah Moran, Utrecht University
• Devotion and Meditation in Luisa Roldán’s Terracottas
  • Catherine Hall-van den Elsen, Independent Scholar

Establishing Identity Across Reformed Communities

Organizer: Kenneth J. Woo, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Chair: Elsie A. McKee, Princeton Theological Seminary

• “The Great Abuses of the Jesuits”: Sabbath and Education as Dutch Reformed Efforts to Establish Religious Identity
  • Kyle Dieleman, Trinity Christian College
• The Declarations of Prince de Condé: Evidence of Protestant Networks across the English Channel Between 1562–1574
  • David Papendorf, Central Michigan University
• The Admonition’s New Clothes: John Field and the End of Presbyterian
  Polemics in 1579
  • Kenneth J. Woo, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Negotiating Early Modern Catholicism Pere Marquette

Organizer: Janis M. Gibbs, Hope College

Chair: Susan M. Cogan, Utah State University

• The Beloved Disciple: Alfonso Salmerón’s Vision of Catholic Reform
  • Sam Conedera, Gregorian University
• Behind Closed Doors: Widows Hosting Clandestine Mass in Post-Reformation England
  • Jennifer Binczewski, Washington State University
• How to Rebuild a Saint: Bringing Back St. Anne in Early Modern Catholicism
  • Jennifer Welsh, Lindenwood University-Belleville

Theodore Beza as a Polemicist: Three Stages in His Career from 1554 to 1598

Sponsor: Calvin Studies Society

Organizer and Chair: David C. Noe, Calvin College

• The Last to Snatch Up His Tankard: Theodore Beza’s Use of Humor and Invective against Joachim Westphal
  • David C. Noe, Calvin College
• Summoned from Dank Orcus: Theodore Beza’s Anti-Jesuit Emblem
  • Kirk Summers, University of Alabama
• One Final Salvo: Theodore Beza’s Last Polemic
  • Jill Fehleison, Quinnipiac University

An two-day international symposium on famed Jesuit missionary to Tibet Ippolito Desideri (1648-1773) begins on October 13 in Pistoia, Desideri’s birthplace.

The interdisciplinary conference is entitled, “The humane, religious, and scientific value of the Pistoian missionary’s great enterprise, three hundred years later.” It takes place at the Biblioteca San Giorgio.

The program is available online and appears below.

Programma del convegno

Venerdì 13 ottobre 2017

Ore 10.00 Saluti istituzionali
Introduce Maria Stella Rasetti, direttrice della Biblioteca San Giorgio
Saluti del Sindaco di Pistoia Alessandro Tomasi

Ippolito Desideri s.j.: le ragioni di un convegno sulla sua opera. Introduzione di Enzo G. Bargiacchi

Sessione mattutina – ore 11-13 (presiede Leonardo Rombai)

• Francesco Surdich, Il contributo di Ippolito Desideri all’esplorazione del Tibet

• Nicola Gasbarro, Ippolito Desideri antropologo della modernità

• Isrun Engelhardt, Capuchin Monks as Doctors: Lhasa 1707-1745

• Gérard Colas, Ippolito Desideri in the Carnatic mission (1726-1727)

Sessione pomeridiana – ore 14-18 (presiede Francesco Surdich)

• Andrea Cantile, Il viaggio transoceanico di Ippolito Desideri nelle pagine della sua Relazione: riflessioni su una fonte inesplorata

• Donald Lopez Jr., Thupten Jinpa, Desideri and Dialogue: A Reassessment

• Leonardo Rombai, Filippo De Filippi, dalle grandi spedizioni esplorative al lodevole lavoro sui manoscritti di Ippolito Desideri

• John Bray, Father Ippolito Desideri and his Muslim Guides in the Buddhist Kingdom of Ladakh

• Alessandra Vezzosi, Tra passato e presente: percorso tra gli studi pistoiesi e nuovi reperimenti biografici su Ippolito Desideri

• Trent Pomplun, God and Emptiness. Ippolito Desideri’s Use of Madhyamaka Philosophy [Giuseppe Toscano S.X. and Desideri] / Dio e la vacuità buddhista. Come Desideri utilizza la filosofia madhyamaka [Giuseppe Toscano S.X. e Desideri]

ore 17: Dispelling the Darkness. A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet [Dissolvendo l’oscurità: un gesuita alla ricerca dell’anima del Tibet], by Donald Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa, Harvard University Press, 2017: Presentazione del libro / Presentation of the book

ore 18: Trasferimento dalla Biblioteca San Giorgio a Palazzo Sozzifanti per l’inaugurazione della mostra “La rivelazione del Tibet. Ippolito Desideri e l’esplorazione scientifica italiana nelle terre più vicine al cielo”

Sabato 14 ottobre 2017

Sessione mattutina – ore 10-13 (presiede Massimiliano A. Polichetti)

• Enzo G. Bargiacchi, Dalle prime notizie sul viaggio di Desideri alla presentazione della sua opera da parte di Carlo Puini

• Karsten Schmidt, A philosophical take on Ippolito Desideri. What we can learn from Desideri’s approach to Tibetan Buddhism about the methodology of interreligious dialogue

• Elena De Rossi Filibeck, Luciano Petech e il Desideri / Luciano Petech and Desideri

• Robert Maryks, New Directions in Recent Historiography on Jesuit Missionaries

• Ugo Baldini, La formazione di un Gesuita tra ’600 e ’700: Ippolito Desideri nel Collegio Romano

• Don Francis Tiso, Ippolito Desideri: un’esperienza di trasformazione inter-religiosa

Sessione pomeridiana – ore 14-18 (presiede Andrea Cantile)

• Massimiliano A. Polichetti, Le dolorose sorti della rinascita. Ippolito Desideri di fronte all’arte sacra tibetana

• Thomas Cattoi, Ippolito Desideri and the Universality of Aristotelian Rationality: a Model or a Hindrance?

• Antonio Attisani, Ciò che si vede, ciò che si scrive. Ippolito Desideri testimone dei prodigi dell’Altro

• Michael Sweet, Spigolature dal ‘Diario Spese’ di Desideri. 2: Nuova luce su alcuni episodi della sua vita in Tibet / Gleanings from Desideri’s ‘Expense Diary’, 2: New Light on Some Episodes of his life in Tibet

• Leonard Zwilling, Spigolature dal ‘Diario Spese’ di Desideri, 1: Il cuoco, il munshi, e il factotum / Gleanings from Desideri’s Household Expense Diary 1: The Cook, the Munshi, and the Factotum

A three-day symposium, “Sailing Routes, Sea Straits, and Global Oceans,” begins on October 9 at the Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau (the Macau Scientific and Cultural Center) in Lisbon, Portugal. The event is organized by the Centro and the Macau Foundation, under the leadership of Luís Filipe Barreto, Roderich T. Ptak, and Wu Zhiliang. It has the additional support of the Jorge Álvares Foundation and Casino Estroil.

Included in the symposium’s program is a panel on Jesuit missionaries and their voyages to China. Noël Golvers (Faculteit Letteren/Katholieke Universite Leuven) serves as the panel’s chair. The presenters are:

• Anttonella Romano (EHESS-Centre Alexandre Koyré), on “Representing the global space: some reflections about maritime and terrestrial routes in the 16th century missionary sources”

• Eugenio Menegon (Boston University) on “Sailing to China: The Maritime Journey of Catholic Missionaries”

• Ugo Baldini (Università di Pádua) on “The Jesuit projects for routes to the Asian missions alternative to the Carreira da India”

More information on the international symposium can be found online, and the program is also available.

More information about the presentation made by Menegon–an Affiliated Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies–can be found at Boston University’s website.