Loyola's Bees

Author(s):  
Yasmin Haskell

This is the first dedicated study of the classical-style, Latin didactic poetry produced by the Society of Jesus in the early modern period. The Jesuits were the most prolific composers of such poetry, teaching all manner of arts and sciences: meteorology and magnetism, raising chickens and children, the arts of sculpture and engraving, writing and conversation, the social and medicinal benefits of coffee and chocolate, the pious life and the urbane life. The book accounts for this investment in so secular a genre by considering the Society's educational and ideological values and practices. Extensive quotation from the poems reveals their literary qualities, compositional methods, and traditions. The poems also command scholarly attention for what they reveal about social, cultural, and intellectual life in this period.

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEMMA ALLEN

AbstractThis article reveals how the ambassadress became an important part of early modern diplomatic culture, from the invention of the role in the early sixteenth century. As resident embassies became common across the early modern period, wives increasingly accompanied these diplomatic postings. Such a development has, however, received almost no scholarly attention to date, despite recent intense engagement with the social and cultural dimensions of early modern diplomacy. By considering the activities of English ambassadresses from the 1530s to 1700, accompanying embassies both inside and outside of Europe, it is possible not only to integrate them into narratives of diplomacy, but also to place their activities within broader global and political histories of the period. The presence of the ambassadress changed early modern diplomatic culture, through the creation of gendered diplomatic courtesies, gendered gift-giving practices, and gendered intelligence-gathering networks. Through female sociability networks at their host court, ambassadresses were able to access diplomatic intelligence otherwise restricted from their husbands. This was never more true than for those ambassadresses who held bonds of friendship with politically influential women at their host or home court, allowing them to influence political decision-making central to the success of the diplomatic mission.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-50
Author(s):  
Camilla Russell

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.


Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau

This work surveys the ways in which theologians, artists, and composers of the early modern period dealt with the passion and death of Christ. The fourth volume in a series, it locates the theology of the cross in the context of modern thought, beginning with the Enlightenment, which challenged traditional Christian notions of salvation and of Christ himself. It shows how new models of salvation were proposed by liberal theology, replacing the older “satisfaction” model with theories of Christ as bringer of God’s spirit and as social revolutionary. It shows how the arts during this period both preserved the classical tradition and responded to innovations in theology and in style.


Author(s):  
Irene Fosi

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.


Author(s):  
David R. M. Irving

The Society of Jesus has long been recognized for its global contribution to the study, practice, and dissemination of European music in the early modern period, and especially for its interactions with non-European music cultures. In Europe, Jesuit colleges played a seminal role in music education and the development of music in drama, major sacred works were composed by or for Jesuits, and treatises on music were written by Jesuit theorists. In the Americas and on islands in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, music served as a device for evangelization and conversion of indigenous peoples; in some of the missions, European music was cultivated to a level reported as comparable with standards of cities in Europe. Meanwhile, elite Jesuit scholars who gained access to high courts in Asia engaged in dialogue with local scholars, impressing powerful potentates and distinguishing themselves through their talent in music and their skills in astronomy, mathematics, cartography, languages, and diplomacy. This chapter surveys and critiques the diverse role of music within the global missions of the early modern Society of Jesus, with case studies drawn from Europe, the Americas, and Asia.


Aschkenas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Stretz

Jewish-Christian relations in village or small-town societies during the early modern period were framed by coexistence and conflict on three major fields of encounter: the rural economy, the practice of religion, and the social relations within the local communities. This study provides case studies of these three aspects by drawing on evidence for the two counties of Castell and Wertheim in Franconia. Analysis of three expulsion proceedings and their different outcomes allows us to add a fourth perspective to this typical picture of integration and segregation, the question of how political rule was enacted and communicated. The conditions of Jewish settlement and community life were always precarious and had to be renegotiated on a regular basis. Negotiations were influenced by the diplomatic skills of individual Jews, by the interests of the community or its leading members, of the rulers and their local representatives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-525
Author(s):  
Robert A. Maryks

The strong resistance of Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556), first superior general of the Society of Jesus (1541–56), to the promotion of his confrères to ecclesiastical offices of (arch)bishops and cardinals because such posts were contrary to the spirit of religious life, requires a brief explanation. Ignatius’s opposition was codified in the Jesuit Constitutions with a requirement that each professed Jesuit promise not to accept such dignities. Nonetheless, Loyola and his successors were occasionally pressured to acquiesce to possible papal appointments of different Jesuits to such offices. This issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies focuses on six of approximately forty-nine cardinals (the definition of Jesuit cardinal can be sometimes tricky for the early modern period). These six represent different historical periods from the late sixteenth until the early twenty-first centuries and different geographical areas, both of origin and of operation (they did not always coincide): Péter Pázmány (1570–1637), Johann Nidhard (1607–81), Giovanni Battista Tolomei (1653–1726), Johann Baptist Franzelin (1816–86), Pietro Boetto (1871–1946), and Adam Kozłowiecki (1911–2007).


Itinerario ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Cátia Antunes ◽  
Susana Münch Miranda

While this special issue raises a significant number of questions, constraints have dictated that only some of these questions are actually answered. The pioneering work presented consequently remains a modest attempt to initiate a more general discussion about the causes and the social and economic consequences of business failure in the early modern period, particularly with regard to colonial enterprises.


Author(s):  
Craig Kallendorf

Even the word “Renaissance” (“rebirth” in French) points to the effort to revive the learning of antiquity that motivated the intellectual elite of that era—for what sprang forth was an urgent awareness of the ancient past, prompting innovations in both ideas and the arts. The classical tradition, accordingly, has long played a central role in Renaissance studies. With the growing interest in nonelite cultures, the classical tradition in what is now sometimes called the early modern period has had to share the scholarly stage with an ever-increasing number of other areas of inquiry, but the recent burst of activity in reception studies has given the classical heritage a new lease on life along with a way to engage with the more theoretical discourse that has flourished in other areas of Renaissance studies over the past generation.


1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
David Sturdy

Consider this statement: the practice of science influences and is influenced by the civilization within which it occurs. Or again: scientists do not pursue their activities in a political or social void; like other people, they aspire to make their way in the world by responding to the values and social mechanisms of their day. Set in such simple terms, each statement probably would receive the assent of most scholars interested in the history of science. But there is need for debate on the nature and extent of the interaction between scientific activity and the civilization which incorporates it, as there is on the relations of scientists to the society within which they live. This essay seeks to make a contribution mainly to the second of these topics by taking a French scientist and academician of the eighteenth century and studying him and his family in the light of certain questions. At the end there will be a discussion relating those questions or themes to the wider debate. There is an associated purpose to the exercise: to present an account of the social origins and formation of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chomel (botanist, physician and member of the Academic des Sciences) which will augment our knowledge of this particular savant.


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