The Portal to Jesuit Studies

Brill’s Jesuit Studies book series features its fourth volume, Jesuit Polymath of Madrid: The Literary Enterprise of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595-1658) by D. Scott Hendrickson, SJ. The publisher notes: “In Jesuit Polymath of Madrid D. Scott Hendrickson offers the first English-language account of the life and work of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595-1658), a leading intellectual in Spain during the turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. Most remembered as a prominent ascetic in the neo-Platonic tradition, Nieremberg emerges here as a writer deeply indebted to the legacy of Ignatius Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises. Hendrickson convincingly shows how Nieremberg drew from his formation in the Jesuit order at the time of its first centenary to engage the cultural and intellectual currents of the Spanish Golden Age. As an author of some seventy-five works, which represent several genres and were translated throughout Europe and abroad, Nieremberg’s literary enterprise demands attention.”

• Update: The Journal of Jesuit Studies has reviewed Jesuit Polymath of Madrid (Volume 3, Issue 4).

Thierry Meynard’s The Jesuit Reading of Confucius: The First Complete Translations of the Lunyu (1687) Published in the West has been published as part of Brill’s Jesuit Studies book series. According to the publisher, “The very name of Confucius is a constant reminder that the ‘foremost sage’ in China was first known in the West through Latin works. The most influential of these was the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius, the Philosopher of China), published in Paris in 1687. For more than two hundred years, Western intellectuals like Leibniz and Voltaire read and meditated on the sayings of Confucius from this Latin version. Thierry Meynard examines the intellectual background of the Jesuits in China and their thought processes in coming to understand the Confucian tradition. He presents a trilingual edition of the Lunyu, including the Chinese text, the Latin translation of the Lunyu and its commentaries, and their rendition in modern English, with notes.”

In addition to the trilingual edition of Lunyu, with notes, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius also provides an extensive appendix, vocabulary guide, and bibliography. 

• Update: The Journal of Jesuit Studies as reviewed The Jesuit Reading of Confucius (Volume 3, Issue 2).

The second volume of Brill’s Jesuit Studies book series is released. According to the publisher, Envoys of a Human God: The Jesuit Mission to Christian Ethiopia, 1557-1632, by Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, “offers a comprehensive study of the religious mission led by the Society of Jesus in Christian Ethiopia. The mission to Ethiopia was one of the most challenging undertakings carried out by the Catholic Church in early modern times. The book examines the period of early Portuguese contacts with the Ethiopian monarchy, the mission’s main developments and its aftermath, with the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. The study profits from both an intense reading of the historical record and the fruits of recent archaeological research. Long-held historiographical assumptions are challenged and the importance of cultural and socio-political factors in the attraction and ultimate estrangement between European Catholics and Ethiopian Christians is highlighted.”

Envoy of a Human God is divided into three parts, which trace the geographical movement of the missionaries, and offers five appendices: Leading Political Figures in the Red Sea, India, and Europe, ca. 1600–1635; National and Provincial Rulers in Christian Ethiopia, 1603–1636; Jesuit Missionaries in Ethiopia, 1555–1632; Intellectual Production during the Mission, 1611–1632; and a Genealogical Chart of the Extended Ethiopian Royal Family (ca. 1550–1640).