- And highly controversial - appeal of Hermetic philosophy in the Asian missions; the political underbelly of the Chinese Rites Controversy; and the persistent European fascination with the land of snows."--Résumé de l'éditeur.
Introduction to Inquiry concerning the doctrines of previous lives and emptiness -- Selections from Inquiry concerning the doctrines of previous lives and emptiness -- Introduction to Essence of the Christian religion -- Essence of the Christian religion -- A final thought
Mission to Tibet recounts the fascinating eighteenth-century journey of the Jesuit priest ippolito Desideri (1684 - 1733) to the Tibetan plateau. The italian missionary was most notably the first european to learn about Buddhism directly with Tibetan schol ars and monks - and from a profound study of its primary texts. while there, Desideri was an eyewitness to some of the most tumultuous events in Tibet's history, of which he left us a vivid and dramatic account. Desideri explores key Buddhist concepts including emptiness and rebirth, together with their philosophical and ethical implications, with startling detail and sophistication. This book also includes an introduction situating the work in the context of Desideri's life and the intellectual and religious milieu of eighteenth-century Catholicism.
This is the first truly global study of the Society of Jesus's early missions. Up to now historians have treated the early-modern Catholic missionary project as a disjointed collection of regional missions rather than as a single world-encompassing example of religious globalization. Luke Clossey shows how the vast distances separating missions led to logistical problems of transportation and communication incompatible with traditional views of the Society as a tightly centralized military machine. In fact, connections unmediated by Rome sprung up between the missions throughout the seventeenth century. He follows trails of personnel, money, relics and information between missions in seventeenth-century China, Germany and Mexico, and explores how Jesuits understood space and time and visualized universal mission and salvation. This pioneering study demonstrates that a global perspective is essential to understanding the Jesuits and will be required reading for historians of Catholicism and the early-modern world.
The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, is the most successful and enduring global missionary enterprise in history. Founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the Jesuit order has preached the Gospel, managed a vast educational network, and shaped the Catholic Church, society, and politics in all corners of the earth. Rather than offering a global history of the Jesuits or a linear narrative of globalization, Thomas Banchoff and Jos Casanova have assembled a multidisciplinary group of leading experts to explore what we can learn from the historical and contemporary experience of the Society of Jesus--what do the Jesuits tell us about globalization and what can globalization tell us about the Jesuits? Contributors include comparative theologian Francis X. Clooney, SJ, historian John W. O'Malley, SJ, Brazilian theologian Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer, and ethicist David Hollenbach, SJ. They focus on three critical themes--global mission, education, and justice--to examine the historical legacies and contemporary challenges. Their insights contribute to a more critical and reflexive understanding of both the Jesuits' history and of our contemporary human global condition.
"Since its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus ("The Jesuits") has been intimately involved in the unfolding of the modern world. The young Jesuit order played a crucial role in the Counter Reformation, especially in Poland, southern Germany, and several other parts of Europe. The Jesuits were also participants in the establishment and spread of European empires, engaging in missionary activity in east and south Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries, and becoming central to the spreading of Christianity in the New World. At the same time, Jesuits often tangled with the Roman curia and the Pope, leading to the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. After the subsequent restoration of the order in 1814, the Jesuits continued to be leaders in Catholic education and theology. In 2013 Jorge Bergoglio became the first Jesuit Pope, taking the name Pope Francis I. In this book, Markus Friedrich presents the first comprehensive account of the Jesuits from a non-Catholic perspective. Drawing on his expertise as a historian of the early modern world, Friedrich situates the Jesuit order within the wider perspective of European history. In particular, he places the Jesuits in the context of social, cultural, and imperial history, showing that the Jesuits were not monolithic but rather were very sensitive to local context and that the order's core texts, especially Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, were templates to engage with, rather than instructions manuals to be followed slavishly"--
In The Jesuits, Malachi Martin reveals for the first time the harrowing behind-the-scenes story of the "new" worldwide Society of Jesus. The leaders and the dupes; the blood and the pathos; the politics, the betrayals and the humiliations; the unheard-of alliances and compromises. The Jesuits tells a true story of today that is already changing the face of all our tomorrows.
Through its missionary, pedagogical, and scientific accomplishments, the Society of Jesus-known as the Jesuits-became one of the first institutions with a truly "global" reach, in practice and intention. The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits offers a critical assessment of the Order, helping to chart new directions for research at a time when there is renewed interest in Jesuit studies. In particular, the Handbook examines their resilient dynamism and innovative spirit, grounded in Catholic theology and Christian spirituality, but also profoundly rooted in society and cultural institutions. It also explores Jesuit contributions to education, the arts, politics, and theology, among others. The volume is organized in seven major sections, totaling forty articles, on the Order's foundation and administration, the theological underpinnings of its activities, the Jesuit involvement with secular culture, missiology, the Order's contributions to the arts and sciences, the suppression the Order endured in the 18th century, and finally, the restoration. The volume also looks at the way the Jesuit Order is changing, including becoming more non-European and ethnically diverse, with its members increasingly interested in engaging society in addition to traditional pastoral duties.
Provides a broad and deep survey of Roman Catholic life and thought, updated and expanded throughout The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism provides an authoritative overview of the history, doctrine, practices, and expansion of Catholicism. Written by a group of distinguished scholars, this comprehensive reference work offers an illuminating account of the global, historical, and cultural phenomena of Catholicism. Accessible chapters address central topics in the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, including God and Jesus Christ, creation and Church, the Virgin Mary, the sacraments, moral theology, eschatology, and more. Throughout the text, the authors illustrate the unity and diversity of Catholic life and thought while highlighting the ways Catholicism overlaps with, and transforms, other ways of living and thinking. Now in its second edition, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism is fully updated to include recent developments in the study of Catholicism. Extensively revised and expanded chapters, many of which written by new authors, address contemporary issues such as theology and politics, environmentalism, and the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Entirely new chapters cover the early modern Church, the Bible in Catholic theology, the Eastern Catholic churches, liturgy, care for creation, the consecrated life, challenges for the Catholic Church, and more. An informed and engaging intellectual journey through the past and present of Roman Catholicism, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism: Illustrates the diversity of modern Catholic life and thought Describes Catholics in different lands, including the Holy Land, India, Africa, Europe, the British Isles, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas Surveys spirituality and ecumenism, inter-religious dialog, Catholic schools and hospitals, art and the sciences, the Holy See, and other central Catholic institutions and practices Covers major eras in Catholic history, from the Scriptures and the early Church to Post-Modernity Features new material on diverse practices of Catholicism across cultures, the global dimensions of the Catholic Church, race and ethnicity, and Eastern Catholic Churches The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, Second Edition, is the ideal textbook for surveys classes on Catholicism and Catholic theology in Catholic, Protestant, and non-confessional colleges and universities. It is also an invaluable resource for scholars and general readers interested in broadening their knowledge of Catholicism.
In 1295, a house fell from the evening sky onto an Italian coastal road by the Adriatic Sea. Inside, awestruck locals encountered the Virgin Mary, who explained that this humble mud-brick structure was her original residence newly arrived from Nazareth. To keep it from the hands of Muslim invaders, angels had flown it to Loreto, stopping three times along the way. This story of the house of Loreto has been read as an allegory of how Catholicism spread peacefully around the world by dropping miraculously from the heavens. In this book, Karin Vélez calls that interpretation into question by examining historical accounts of the movement of the Holy House across the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century and the Atlantic in the seventeenth century. These records indicate vast and voluntary involvement in the project of formulating a branch of Catholic devotion. Vélez surveys the efforts of European Jesuits, Slavic migrants, and indigenous peoples in Baja California, Canada, and Peru. These individuals contributed to the expansion of Catholicism by acting as unofficial authors, inadvertent pilgrims, unlicensed architects, unacknowledged artists, and unsolicited cataloguers of Loreto. Their participation in portaging Mary’s house challenges traditional views of Christianity as a prepackaged European export, and instead suggests that Christianity is the cumulative product of thousands of self-appointed editors. Vélez also demonstrates how miracle narratives can be treated seriously as historical sources that preserve traces of real events. Drawing on rich archival materials, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto illustrates how global Catholicism proliferated through independent initiatives of untrained laymen.