Jesuit History:A New Hot Topic

- BY JOHN W. O'MALLEY -

Hi.s roRiAN.s ARE A CAUTIOUS lot and do not use the word revolutionlightly. But that is the right word to describe what has been happeningin the study of the history of the Societ\̂ of Jesus. The seene is so differ- |ent now from what it was as recently as a dozen years ago that it is hard- gly recognizable. All at once the Jesuits have become a hot topic—indeed, "

one of the hottest—in the field of early modem history. >

Of course revolutions do not spring up out of nowhere. A century ago, a group of tSpanish Jesuits launched publication of critical editions of documents from the early years Pof the Societ); a project that has now reached some 135 volumes. These texts provided a ^

JOHN W. O'MALLEY, S.J.. professor of Church history at Weston Jesuit School ofTheology in Cambridge, Mass., is the author, most recently, of Four Cultures of the

Wesf (Harvard Univ. Press. 2004).

America May 9, 200.5

solid and easily accessible base for scholars. Meanwhile otberJesuits, especially in Spain, France and Italy, began approach-ing the histoiy ot their order and its spirituality witb a newcritical acumen. Ignacio Iparraguirre, Joseph de Gtiibert,Michel de Certeau, Mario Scaduto—these are just a tew of tbenotahle names. In North America, George Ganss, William V.Bangert, Robeit Birelcy, John Witek and John PatrickDonnelly, among others, moved the enterprise along in sig-nificant ways. But nobody anticipated that from this founda-tion would empt wbat we arc currendy ex{>cricncing.

WHAT IS HAPPENING? First of all, tbe number of scholars publish-ing cm the histoiy ot the Society ofjesiis has expanded almostexponendaliy. Books—good books-—are rolling ot̂ die pres.s-es, witb France. Italy and North Ajiierica leading tbe pack.The Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis, under JohnPadbergs direction, continues to pub-lish fine translations of importanttexts, but now the most prestigiousuniversit}' presses—Princeton,

Han'ard, Stanford and Toronto, forexample—also publish on Jesuit histo-ry, a venture almost unheard of before.When I was in Italy two years ago,four different scholarly conferenceswere heing held on the Societ\-, noneof them sponsored by the ItalianJesuits. Germany, Spain and parts ofSpanish .America are beginning to show signs of a great awak-ening. The Jesuits are in vogue.

Second, tbe status of scholars bas changed radically. Untila few years ago, Jesuits wrote about tbe Jesuits, with all tbeadvantages and disadvantages that in-house scholarshipentails. Today the vast majority of those writing about tbeSociety are not Jesuits. Indeed many, or maybe most, of themare not Roman Catholics or even C'hristians. Yet departingfrom the anti-Jesuit polemic tbat traditionally marked writingon tbe Society by non-Jesuits, tbese scholars tend to be fair-minded and even appreciative, willing to give the Jesuits atleast an even break. This does not mean, I am sure, that we areentering a golden age when old legentls and prejudices wallonce and for all be laid to rest, but there is no denying the newopenness. I am speaking, of course, alx>ut serious bistor\', notthe sometimes vicious drivel about the Jesuits (some of it writ-ten by Jesuits themselves or former Jesuits) to be found inabundance on the Internet and in bookstores.

'Fhe rea.sons for this change are difficult to pinpoint.Surely one factor has been a growing awareness tbat theJesuits, in their manifold activities, provide windows ontoextremely important though ofren neglected aspects ofWestern history. .And because the network of the Society'sinstitutions is international, these are windows onto the rela-

R u 1 u-ecent scholarshipis making vivid for usthe civic and culturaldimension of Jesuit

spirituality.

donsbip ofthe West to the rest ofthe globe. This has result-ed in a tendency' to move the Jesuits as a topic of study beyondthe confines of "church historv" into broader perspecdves.Tbe inadequacy of categories like Counter Refomiadon ;mdCatholic Refomi tradidonally applied to the Jesuits bas there-by become increasingly apparent and has made the Jesuitsmore intriguing to scholars.

Third, scholars are asking new quesdons. Instead of "Howwere tbe Jesuits agents ofthe Counter Refomiadon" (sdll nota bad quesdon), they are asking "What were the Jesuits like?"I his quesdon further moves the Jesuits out ofthe somedmes

stale categories in whicb they were once confined.Questions like tbat have thrown wide the gates onto areas

of the Jesuit enterprise of which some of us were aware butabout which we knew precious little. Wo knew Jesuits weresought-afrer teachers, esteemed theologians, guides for a

devout life, dreless missionaries and,of course, defenders of die Cadiolicfaitb. It was along these lines thatscholarship (favorable and unfavor-able) tended to move. What a changetoday! Transcending the specter ofthe "Galileo case," scholarship on theJesuits' reladonsbip to the sciencesand mathemadcs, for instance, ispouring from the presses, most of itfavorable. Excidng ardcles and bookskeep appearing on tbe Jesuits and the

theater, the Jesuits and dance, tbe Jesuits as [xjets, the Jesuitsas patrons of Rubens and Bernini, the Jesuits as impresariosfor civic celebradons, tbe Jesuits as managers of great estates,the Jesuits and women. Those are just samples. Wiiereas 10years ago not a single CD of Jesuit music was on the market,today tbere are a ntunber.

Finally, a shift has taken place from an almost excltisivelyEuropean perspecdve to a muldcultural approach. "Missionhistory" was pracdcally an airdght category, ist)lated from tbebroader picture and segregated from it. Post-colonialism isthus finally bearing fhiit in scholarship on the Jesuits, just aspostmodernism is making us more appreciadve of die differ-ent ways Jesuits interacted with cultures fomierly consideredexodc. Scholarship on the Jesuit experiment in China, forexample, has become a booming industry, whose areas ofstudy include the impact of Europe on the experiment, oftheexperiment on Europe, of the Jesuits on China and, perhapsmost interesdng, of China on the Jesuits.

THE UPSHOT OF THIS REVOLUTION IS that t h e Jesu i t s o f t h e o l dSociety (that is, before the suppression ofthe order in 1773)are emerging with a new profile. We sdll see them, of course,as religious figures for whom their religious eommitmentremained fmidamental. But they were something more. They

May 9, 2005 America

were "learned clerics," like many others of their day, hut theirlearning was somehow hroader, their enterprise less tradi-tionally clerical. They had a .systemic commitment to culturethat was more exjiansive than that of any other cohesive reli-gious group, Catholic or Protestant. T would go so far as tosay that integrated into their pastoral, ecclesial and religiousmission was a cultural and civic mission. That latter missionwas never articulated in their nomiadve documents, which isone reason why it has never been s\'stematically addressed,hut it is not for tliat reason less important. That mission, Ipropose, has implications for Jesuit spirituality and how westudy it.

The original 10 companions founded the order in 1540 asessentially a band of preachers of die Gospel, ready to he sentanywhere in the world. That definition was modified later toinclude "defense of the faith," as in 1550 the bull of PopeJulius III ex-pressed it—that is, the order became more self-consciously an agent to counter the Refonnation. These self-definitions were explicit and done with ftjll awareness.

But another self-definidon was already in the makingwhen die Jesuits began to operate schools, a decision thatchanged almost every aspect of their life and work, thoughthey took little account of it explicidy. They acquired hugeproperties, for instance, and engaged in sometimes franticfundraising to keep their academic institutions afloat.

But perhaps most fundamentally, they engaged in a rela-

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donship with culture that was new for clerics. They spentmany more hours in the classroom than in the sacristy.Furthermore, ii:i those classrooms they were not teachingclerics, nor were they for the most part teaching the tradi-tional clerical subjects of "philosophy" and theolog}'. Theywere teaching poetry, historv; oratorv', drama and otlier worksot literature.

They taught this program not as a preparation for theol-ogy, the traditional clerical rationale for such study, but as aprogram complete in itself that would provide laymen withthe learning and skills they needed to he successful in thisworld. Aside from a few hours of catechism per week, theJesuit "colleges," roughly the equivalent of our high schools,taught no "religion." Yet, according to the philosophy of edu-cation to which the Jesuits subscribed, the most basic purposeof the schools was to instill the virtue oipietas—that is, to helpthe students develop into upright Christians with a commit-ment to the common good. As Juan .Alfonso de Polanco,Ignadus's secretary, put it in 1551: "Those who are now onlystudents will grow up to be pastors, civic officials, administra-tors of justice, and will fill other important posts to every-body's profit and advantage."

How was this goal to be accomplished? It was accom-plished in part by what we would call extracurriculars—school plays, sports, production of religious spectacles.Activities like these helped lead Jesuits into new and impor-

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tant relationships to music, dance and art. But the classroomwas as always the center ofthe school, and there the pagansreigned. Demosthenes, Sophocles, Liv\', Virgil and theirbeloved Cicero—these were the authors at the center of thecurriculum. The Jesuits taught these authors not simply asmodels of eloquence hut as thinkers with ethical and spiritu-al relevance. They believed these texts embodied a philoso-phy of upright living especially appropriate tor young laymenheaded for leadership roles.

The upright living that the texts held forth as an ideal hada strong civic orientation, especially notable in Cicero. 1 hevirtuous person was virtuous especially by contributing to thecommon good, which was not something abstract but themoral and cultural good ofthe city in which the person lived.This orientation in fact corresponded to the reality of theJesuit schools, which were founded, as Polanco implied, toperform a civic function. They were usually established at therequest of the city, in some fonn or other paid for by the cityand established to serve the families of the city, which, asrecent scholarship has shown, entailed listening to the expec-tations of those families and trying to meet them. We can callthem confessional schools, but we perhaps do better to callthem civic institutions.

But they were also cultural institutions. How otherwisecan we explain tbeir promotion of six or seven choirs and acorresponding number of musicians at purely academic func-tions in some of their colleges? Is it not easier to see ballet atthe Jesuit college in Paris, which King Louis XT\'' somedmesattended, as more a cultural function than a religious one?Why is it that most books produced at that time on the his-tory and theory of dance were by Jesuits? The plays producedat the Jesuit schools drew large audiences from the local pop-ulation; and in an era before there were public libraries, theoften magnificent libraries of the Jesuit schools sometimesperformed precisely that function. True, all this was doneunder a religious aegis, but with religion integrated into cul-ture and not standing apart from it.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO with Jesuit Spirituality? I find itbard to believe that this cultural aspect of the Jesuits' livesdid not have an impact on tbe way they thought, felt andviewed tbeir vocation, even though they may not havebeen able clearly to articulate it. Most Jesuits taught theclassical texts (almost no matter where they were in theworld) for at least a few years of their lives, sometimes fortheir whole lives. They knew their Cicero better than theyknew their Bible. Most of them, even wben engaged inother ministries, lived in the school communities and fromthere often helped orchestrate great civic celebrations thatentailed music, dance, poetry, plays and elaborate parades.Did this not get into their souls?

Usually, when we study spirituality, we turn to "spiri-

tual" texts—writings about prayer, union with God, devo-tions and similar matters. To study Jesuit spiritualit\' we goto the Spiritual Exercises., to Ignatius' so-called autobiogra-phy, and to his other writings. Then we might go to thewritings of other "great masters ofthe spiritual life." Welland good, but does not this method need to be expanded?Wliat about taking into account also wbat the recentscholarship is making so vivid for us? Do we not need toadd, for instance, a civic and cultural dimension to Jesuitspirituality?

Part IX of the Jesuit Constitutions, composed principal-ly by St. Ignatius, lists virtues that the superior general ofthe Society of Jesus should possess, which is really a pro-file of the ideal Jesuit. These are the virtues, the textimplies, that every Jesuit should strive for and that are thusconstitutive elements of Jesuit spirituality. Among thevirtues is "magnanimity and fortitude of soul." The para-graph about tbese virtues that Tgnatius wrote turns out tobe a loose paraphrase of a passage by Cicero {"On Duty,"De Ojficiis, 1.20.66). I know of no similar phenomenon inthe foundational documents of any other religious group,and I find it congruous with wbat I have been saying. Evenif you do not agree with me about the congruity, youmight at least find it is interesting that in describing animportant aspect of Jesuit spirituality, Ignatius hadrecourse not to the Bible but to Cicero. W

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