The Portal to Jesuit Studies

Claudio Ferlan, a researcher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation’s Italian-German Historical Institute in Trento, has published a one-volume history of the Jesuits, I gesuiti.

According to the publisher, il Mulino, Ferlan’s book “offers a detailed history of the Societas Jesu, chronicling its entire development, from the life and works of its founder, Ignatius of Loyola, up to the present day.” In particular, it examines how the “Society of Jesus played a crucial role in 16th and 17th century Europe, educating its elites, and beyond Europe, with intense missionary works (symbolized, for example, by the accomplishments of Matteo Ricci in China).” Even after the Restoration of the Jesuits in 1814, Ferlan argues that the Society of Jesus “continued to be an important part of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in cultural terms, as in Latin America, where it has spread innovative thinking developed within the post-Council II Church.”

The full table of contents, in Italian, appears below.

More information about this 208-page book is available at the il Mulino website: https://www.mulino.it/isbn/9788815254320.

• Update: The Journal of Jesuit Studies has reviewed I gesuiti (Volume 3, Issue 3).

Introduzione

I. Ignazio di Loyola e la fondazione della Compagni di Gesù (1510-1556)

1. L’educazione di Iñigo e la sua conversione

2. Gli Esercizi spirituali e le prime forme di apostolato

3. Il riconoscimento pontificio, le Costituzioni, la struttura della Compagnia di Gesù

4. Gli ideali ignaziani e le donne

II. La fortuna della Compagnia di Gesù nel primo secolo di vita (1556-1640)

1. Un ordine insegnante

2. La Ratio Studiorum e il sistema scolastico

3. Oltre le scuole: il teatro, la predicazione, le congregazioni mariane

4. La costruzione dell’identità gesuitica: azione e celebrazione

5. I gesuiti nel cuore della politica europea

III. Un ordine missionario, un esperimento di globalizzazione (1547-1767)

1. Le origini di un progetto ambizioso: Francesco Saverio

2. Aspirare alla missione

3. La Compagnia in oriente: conversione dolce e adattamento

4. La Compagnia in occidente: conversione e trasferimento di cultura

5. Insuccessi e successi limitati

IV. La militanza. Attivismo, espulsione e soppressione (1640-1814)

1. Povertà, splendore e spiritualità

2. Giansenismo, gallicanesimo, illuminismo. I gesuiti in Francia tra sostegno del sovrano e ostilità diffusa

3. Le espulsioni

4. La Santa Sede e la soppressione

5. La sopravvivenza

V. La «Seconda Compagnia»: dalla rinascita alle guerre del Novecento (1814-1945)

1. La «restituzione della Compagnia di Gesù»

2. L’Ottocento tormentato: espulsioni e riammissioni

3. Le nuove frontiere missionarie

4. Le scienze umane e i campi d’azione della Compagnia di Gesù a cavallo di due secoli

5. Le dittature del XX secolo

VI. La «Terza Compagnia»: una nuova geografia, un’identità rinnovata (1945-2013)

1. Le priorità pastorali del secondo dopoguerra

2. Pedro Arrupe e la «Terza Compagnia»

3. La Compagnia di Gesù nelle Americhe

4. L’Argentina

5. Contemplativi nell’azione: due campi dell’apostolato gesuitico recente

Letture consigliateIndice dei nomi

Joseph Gavin’s Teachers of a Nation: Jesuits in English Canada, 1842-2013 and Builders of a Nation: Jesuits in English Canada, 1842-2013 are available as the first installments of the Jesuit History Series published by Novalis. The series will look at the Jesuits of English Canada. In Teachers, Novalis notes, Gavin “focuses on the Jesuits’ role in education in Canada” and their “vital contributions to academic excellence, founding institutions and nurturing young minds across generations.” Builders, meanwhile, examines “the Jesuits’ work with native spirituality, their involvement in media and communications, and their commitment to social justice.” A third volume (Conscience of a Nation) will be available in 2017.

• Update: The Journal of Jesuit Studies has reviewed Teachers of a Nation (Volume 3, Issue 2).

• Update: The Journal of Jesuit Studies has reviewed Builders of a Nation (Volume 3, Issue 4).

Victor Salas and Robert Fastiggi have edited A Companion to Francisco Suarez, a detailed examination of the Jesuit’s philosophical and theological scholasticism. Published through Brill, the volume fourteen essays:

• Introduction: Francisco Suárez, the Man and His Work, by Victor Salas and Robert Fastigg;

• Political Thought and Legal Theory in Suárez, by Jean-Paul Coujou;

• Suárez, Heidegger, and Contemporary Metaphysics, by Jean-François Courtine;

• Suárez on the Subject of Metaphysics, by Rolf Darge;

• Suárez and the Baroque Matrix of Modern Thought, by Costantino Esposito;

• Francisco Suárez as Dogmatic Theologian, by Robert Fastiggi;

• Suárez on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Universals, by Daniel Heider;

• Suárez’s Psychology, by Simo Knuuttila;

• Suárez’s Influence on Protestant Scholasticism: The Cases of Hollaz and Turretín, by John Kronen;

• Suárez on Beings of Reason, by Daniel Novotný;

• Suárez and the Natural Law, by Paul Pace;

• Original Features of Suárez’s Thought, by José Pereira;

• Suárez’s Doctrine of Concepts: How Divine and Human Intellection are Intertwined, by Michael Renemann;

• Between Thomism and Scotism: Francisco Suárez on the Analogy of Being, by Victor Salas.