Pavone, Sabina. The Wiley Jesuits and the Monita Secreta: The Forged Secret Instructions of the Jesuits: Myth and Reality. Trans. John P. Murphy. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2004.
The standard study of one of the most damaging and long-lived attacks on the Jesuits, which includes an English version of the original text.
THE JESUITS AND POLITICS
Bireley, Robert. The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A masterly study of one of the most contentious aspects of Jesuit history, Jesuit confessors to kings.
Nelson, Eric. The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590–1615). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
The story of the difficult time the Jesuits had in establishing themselves in France.
Shore, Paul. Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Culture, Politics and Religion, 1693–1773. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
A wide-ranging study of the Jesuits in a complex sector of the Habsburg empire.
Van Kley, Dale. The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. Still the best study of the pivotal event in the history of the Jesuits.
THE JESUITS WORLDWIDE
Alden, Daurel. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
A sweeping account of the Jesuits’ relationship to their most important patron nation.
Brockey, Liam Matthew. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Award-winning study of the Jesuits not in Beijing but out in the field.
Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Presents the missions not as a disjointed collection of individual entities but as a single, world-encompassing instance of religious globalization.
Cushner, Nicholas P. Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the Evangelization of Native America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Covers the Jesuits’ efforts with the native peoples from Canada to Paraguay.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
A readable account of this legendary figure and a good introduction to the Beijing mission.
Klaiber, Jeffrey. The Jesuits In Latin America, 1549–2000: 450 Years of Inculturation, Defense of Human Rights, and Prophetic Witness. St Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009.
The basic story from beginning to the present, told with a specific focus.
Mkenda, Festo. Mission for Everyone: A Story of the Jesuits in Eastern Africa (1555–2012). Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013.
The only comprehensive account in English of the Jesuits in any region of Africa.
THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD
Curran, Robert Emmett. The Maryland Jesuits, 1634–1833. Baltimore: The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen, Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, 1976.
An account of the first Jesuits to make a permanent settlement in what would become the United States.
McCoog, Thomas M. “And Touching our Society”: Fashioning Jesuit Identity in Elizabethan England. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013.
The latest book by the expert on the Jesuits in the British Isles.
McKevitt, Gerald. Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848–1919. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Fascinating story of the first Jesuits in the far west.
Schroth, Raymond A. The American Jesuits: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
An accessible account of the Society in the United States.
THE SCHOOLS
Curran, Robert Emmett. A History of Georgetown University. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.
A detailed account of the first Catholic school on American soil.
Grendler, Paul F. The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
The only in-depth study in English of a Jesuit pre-suppression school, by the expert on schooling in early modern Italy.
Padberg, John W. Colleges in Controversy: The Jesuit Schools in France from Revival to Suppression, 1815–1880. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
The best account of schools on the continent after the restoration of the Society.
SCIENCE
Feingold, Modechai, ed. Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
An impressive collection of articles about the Jesuits’ contributions to science.
Findlen, Paula. Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. London: Routledge, 2004.
The story of the famous Jesuit eccentric and his accomplishments.
Helyer, Marcus. Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
The story of how the Jesuits came to adopt modern methods in science.
Wallace, William. Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. How the Jesuits influenced Galileo, told by an eminent historian of science.
THE ARTS
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Award-winning account that begins in Europe and sweeps through the rest of the world.
Celenza, Anna Harwell, and Anthony R. DelDonna, eds. Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America. Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2014.
A window into the world of Jesuit music production, practices, and patronage.
McCabe, William. An Introduction to the Jesuit Theater. Ed. Louis Oldani. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985.
This posthumous work is somewhat outdated but still the best general work on the subject in English.
O’Malley, John W., and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, eds. The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540–1773. Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005.
A sumptuously produced volume covering Jesuit artistic enterprises worldwide.
Rock, Judith. Terpsichore at Louis-le-Grand: Baroque Dance and the Jesuit Stage in Paris. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.
The best introduction in English to the history of Jesuit dance.
NOTES
PREFACE
1. This and all subsequent citations are from the series Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu. Monumenta Nadal, 5:364–65.
CHAPTER 1: FOUNDATIONS
1. Monumenta Ignatiana, Epistolae, 12:310.
2. Monumenta Nadal, 4:215.
3. Monumenta Nadal, 5:773–74.
4. See Serafim Leite, História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, 10 vols. (Lisbon: Livraria Portugália, 1938–1950), 2:282n5.
5. Fontes Narativi, 1:581–82.
CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS
1. Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii, 2:179–212n12.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John W. O’Malley, SJ, currently university professor in the theology department of Georgetown University, is a church historian whose specialty is sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Among his best-known books are The First Jesuits, Trent and All That, Four Cultures of the West, What Happened at Vatican II, A History of the Popes, and Trent. The First Jesuits, translated into ten languages, won both the Jacques Barzun Prize for cultural history and the Philip Schaff Prize for church history. John O’Malley was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and to the American Philoso
phical Society in 1997. He is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Renaissance Society of America. A Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus, Father O’Malley has received lifetime achievement awards from the Renaissance Society of America, the Society for Italian Historical Studies, and the American Catholic Historical Association.
Posthumous portrait of Ignatius of Loyola by Jacopino del Conte, 1556. Courtesy of the Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome.
Detail of the collegiate church of Saints Peter and Paul in Krakow. The facade is one of the most dramatic examples of the international influence of the Jesuits’ mother church, the Gesù in Rome.
Statue of Saint Francis Xavier in Goa, India.
Facade of Saint Paul’s church in Macau, which was the administrative center for Jesuit ministry in Southeast Asia. Today the facade is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Interior of the Church of the Society of Jesus in Cusco, Peru.
São Miguel das Missões was one of the many Jesuit reductions in South America. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Jesuit college at Orsha (Orsza), Belarus
Statue of Matteo Ricci at Saint Paul’s church in Macau, where Ricci studied Chinese. Courtesy of Rev. Ronald Anton, SJ
Catherine the Great refused to suppress the Jesuits and played a vital role in maintaining their training.
Healy Hall at Georgetown University. Courtesy of Georgetown University.
Pedro Arrupe, SJ, the twenty-eighth superior general of the Society of Jesus. Courtesy of the Curia Generalizia of the Society of Jesus, Rome.
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