It is impossible to understand the early history of the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church in China without understanding the preeminent role played by the island of Macau in the Jesuit missionary endeavor; indeed, it can even be said that Catholicism would not exist in China if there was no Macau. This book seeks to restore Macau to its proper place in the history of Catholicism and the Jesuit missions in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties by offering a unique insight into subjects ranging from the origins of Jesuit missionary work on the island to the history of Jesuit education...

Almost from the moment the Jesuits were founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and his companions they suffered from misunderstanding, some positive, much of it negative. Myth and misinformation abounded. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits' official name, was a society of saints or of devils incarnate. Not until the mid-twentieth century did historians begin to dispel some of the myths, but only with John O'Malley's The First Jesuits (1993) did a new era open in the study of the Society. Since then the Jesuits have attracted great attention from scholars of all disciplines on an...

In Envoys of A Human God Andreu Martinez 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...

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...

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...

The volume theme is the distinctiveness of Jesuits and their ministries that was discussed at the first International Symposium on Jesuit Studies held at Boston College's Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies in June 2015. It explores the quidditas Jesuitica, or the specifically Jesuit way(s) of proceeding in which Jesuits and their colleagues operated from historical, geographical, social, and cultural perspectives. The collection poses a question whether there was an essential core of distinctive elements that characterized the way in which Jesuits lived their religious vocation and...

Jesuit Foundations and Medici Power, 1532-1621 focuses on the cooperation between two new foundations, the last Medici state and the Society of Jesus, spanning nearly a century, concentrating on the Jesuit foundations in Florence, Siena, and Montepulciano. As the Medici built and centralized their power in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, they sought to control both the civic and religious behavior of their citizens. They found partners in the Jesuits, whose educational program helped establish social order and maintain religious orthodoxy. Via a detailed investigation of both minor and...

In 1588, the Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra published a history of the English Reformation, which he continued to revise until his death in 1611. Spencer J. Weinreich s translation is the first English edition of the History, one fully alive to its metamorphoses over two decades. Weinreich s introduction explores the text s many dimensions propaganda for the Spanish Armada, anti-Protestant polemic, Jesuit hagiography, consolation amid tribulation and assesses Ribadeneyra as a historian. The extensive annotations anchor Ribadeneyra s narrative in the historical record and...

In Founding Father, Michael F. Lombardo provides the first critical biography of John J. Wynne, S.J. (1859-1948). One of the most prominent American Catholic intellectuals of the early twentieth century, Wynne was founding editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) and the Jesuit periodical America (1909), and served as vice-postulator for the canonization causes of the first American saints (the Jesuit Martyrs of North America) and Kateri Tekakwitha. Lombardo uses theological inculturation to explore the ways in which Wynne used his publications to negotiate American...

One of the earliest and most ambitious projects carried out by the Society of Jesus was the mission to the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia, which ran from 1557 to 1632. In about 1621 crucial figures in the Ethiopian Solomonid monarchy, including King Susenyos, were converted to Catholicism and up to 1632 imposing missionary churches, residences and royal structures were built. This book studies for the first time in a comprehensive form the missionary architecture built by the joint work of Jesuit padres, Ethiopian and Indian masons and royal Ethiopian patrons. The work gives ample...