The Jesuits

An astounding history of the accomplishments of the Society of Jesus, from painting and poetry to cartography and physics, from Europe to New France to China.

John W. O'Malley, S.J., is professor in the Department of Church History at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology.Bailey Gauvin Alexander :

Gauvin Alexander Bailey is an associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Clark University.Harris Steven J. :

Steven J. Harris is a professor at the Jesuit Institute, Boston College.Kennedy T. Frank :

T. Frank Kennedy, S.J. is a professor in and chair of the Department of Music at Boston College.

‘Combines cutting-edge scholarship with traditional concerns … An excellent collection.’

Thomas M. McCoog, S.J.:

‘The scope of the contributions is breathtaking.’

Michael W. Maher, S.J.:

‘An important addition to the historiography of the Society of Jesus and the early modern world … Should be ignored only at a scholar’s risk.’

Alison Shell:

‘A triumphalist volume – and a triumphant one.’

Anthony Grafton, Princeton University:

'Cultural historians have been, with few exceptions, slow to appreciate the many cultural roles played by the Society of Jesus from its foundation onwards. These spectacularly learned, lively and wide-ranging essays begin the job. They follow the Jesuits into realms as apparently diverse as prayer and philology and into places as distant from one another as Prague and Paraguay. They reveal some of the extraordinary fertile research currently under way on every aspect of the Jesuit enterprise, from its historical origins to its effects on European political and cultural expansion. And though they shed a particularly bright new light on the histories of science, art, and architecture, they leave few segments of the early modern encyclopedia of the arts untouched.'

Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University:

'Cultural historians have been, with few exceptions, slow to appreciate the many cultural roles played by the Society of Jesus from its foundation onwards. These spectacularly learned, lively and wide-ranging essays begin the job. They follow the Jesuits into realms as apparently diverse as prayer and philology and into places as distant from one another as Prague and Paraguay. They reveal some of the extraordinary fertile research currently under way on every aspect of the Jesuit enterprise, from its historical origins to its effects on European political and cultural expansion. And though they shed a particularly bright new light on the histories of science, art, and architecture, they leave few segments of the early modern encyclopedia of the arts untouched.'

John W. Padberg, S.J., Director, Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis, Missouri:

'Cultural historians have been, with few exceptions, slow to appreciate the many cultural roles played by the Society of Jesus from its foundation onwards. These spectacularly learned, lively and wide-ranging essays begin the job. They follow the Jesuits into realms as apparently diverse as prayer and philology and into places as distant from one another as Prague and Paraguay. They reveal some of the extraordinary fertile research currently under way on every aspect of the Jesuit enterprise, from its historical origins to its effects on European political and cultural expansion. And though they shed a particularly bright new light on the histories of science, art, and architecture, they leave few segments of the early modern encyclopedia of the arts untouched.'