scholarly journals Grave Matters: Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Partida a la eternidad (1643) and Jesuit Approaches to Death in Early Modern Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 638-659
Author(s):  
D. Scott Hendrickson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Ars Moriendi ◽  
Spiritual Tradition

Abstract This article examines the key themes in Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Partida a la eternidad and its relationship to the Jesuit production of ars moriendi tracts in early modern Spain. Special attention is given to the intended readership of this and other similar texts, the focus Nieremberg places on the reading of devotional books and treatises, and the manner in which Jesuit death manuals came to reflect the emerging apostolic goals and the spiritual tradition in the Society of Jesus around the time of its first centenary. Here, the author highlights Nieremberg’s inclusion of imaginative and visual contemplations, his approach to condemnation and hell, and the rhetoric he develops around the joy and delight readers are invited to experience in the actual, or imagined, states of illness and dying.

Becoming “Indians”: The Jesuit Missionary Path from Italy to Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-50
Author(s):  
Camilla Russell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jesuit Missions ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Italian Provinces ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jesuit Missionary

The Jesuit missions in Asia were among the most audacious undertakings by Europeans in the early modern period. This article focuses on a still relatively little understood aspect of the enterprise: its appointment process. It draws together disparate archival documents to recreate the steps to becoming a Jesuit missionary, specifically the Litterae indipetae (petitions for the “Indies”), provincial reports about missionary candidates, and replies to applicants from the Jesuit superior general. Focusing on candidates from the Italian provinces of the Society of Jesus, the article outlines not just how Jesuit missionaries were appointed but also the priorities, motivations, and attitudes that informed their assessment and selection. Missionaries were made, the study shows, through a specific “way of proceeding” that was negotiated between all parties and seen in both organizational and spiritual terms, beginning with the vocation itself, which, whether the applicant departed or not, earned him the name indiano.

Bjørn Okholm Skaarup, Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (Farnham/Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), xii + 285pp. ISBN: 9781471448162

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Spain

This chapter reviews the book Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (2015), by Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. The book traces the development of anatomy in Spain and Mexico from 1500 to the end of the seventeenth century. Skaarup cites particular instances where the Spanish experience can contribute substantially to wider debates, including Juan Tomas Porcell’s autopsies of plague victims in a hospital at Zaragoza in 1568 and the detailed plan of 1586 for a ‘house of anatomy’ there. He challenges O’Malley’s exaggerated description, based on Vesalius’s comments on his time in Spain between 1559 and 1561, that doctors and surgeons lack interest in anatomy. Skaarup reveals the difficulties faced by those who wished to introduce dissection as an essential part of the education of a doctor, as well as the objections that might be made.

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