A new history illuminates the Society of Jesus in its first century from the perspective of those who knew it best: the early Jesuits themselves. The Society of Jesus was established in 1540. In the century that followed, thousands sought to become Jesuits and pursue vocations in religious service, teaching, and missions. Drawing on scores of unpublished biographical documents housed at the Roman Jesuit Archive, Camilla Russell illuminates the lives of those who joined the Society, building together a religious and cultural presence that remains influential the world over. Tracing Jesuit life from the Italian provinces to distant missions, Russell sheds new light on the impact and inner workings of the Society. The documentary record reveals a textual network among individual members, inspired by Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. The early Jesuits took stock of both quotidian and spiritual experiences in their own records, which reflect a community where the worldly and divine overlapped. Echoing the Society’s foundational writings, members believed that each Jesuit’s personal strengths and inclinations offered a unique contribution to the whole—an attitude that helps explain the Society’s widespread appeal from its first days. Focusing on the Jesuits’ own words, Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy offers a new lens on the history of spirituality, identity, and global exchange in the Renaissance. What emerges is a kind of genetic code—a thread connecting the key Jesuit works to the first generations of Jesuits and the Society of Jesus as it exists today.

A new history illuminates the Society of Jesus in its first century from the perspective of those who knew it best: the early Jesuits themselves. The Society of Jesus was established in 1540. In the century that followed, thousands sought to become Jesuits and pursue vocations in religious service, teaching, and missions. Drawing on scores of unpublished biographical documents housed at the Roman Jesuit Archive, Camilla Russell illuminates the lives of those who joined the Society, building together a religious and cultural presence that remains influential the world over. Tracing Jesuit life from the Italian provinces to distant missions, Russell sheds new light on the impact and inner workings of the Society. The documentary record reveals a textual network among individual members, inspired by Ignatius of LoyolaÕs Spiritual Exercises. The early Jesuits took stock of both quotidian and spiritual experiences in their own records, which reflect a community where the worldly and divine overlapped. Echoing the SocietyÕs foundational writings, members believed that each JesuitÕs personal strengths and inclinations offered a unique contribution to the wholeÑan attitude that helps explain the SocietyÕs widespread appeal from its first days. Focusing on the JesuitsÕ own words, Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy offers a new lens on the history of spirituality, identity, and global exchange in the Renaissance. What emerges is a kind of genetic codeÑa thread connecting the key Jesuit works to the first generations of Jesuits and the Society of Jesus as it exists today.

An authoritative account of the intellectual and educational history of the late Italian Renaissance. Twenty essays on major themes, institutions, and persons of the Italian Renaissance by one of its most distinguished living historians.

Between Renaissance and Baroque is a stunning achievement - the first book to be written about the original painting commissions of the Jesuits in Rome. Offering a uniquely comprehensive and comparative analysis of the paintings and stuccoes which adorned all of the Jesuit foundations in the city during their first half century of existence, the study treats some of the most crucial monuments of late Renaissance painting including the original decorations of the church of the Gesù and the Collegio Romano, and the martyrdom frescoes at S. Stefano Rotondo. Based on extensive new archival research from Rome, Florence, Parma, and Perugia, Gauvin Alexander Bailey's study presents an original, revisionist treatment of Italian painting in the last four decades of the sixteenth century, a critical transitional period between Renaissance and Baroque. Bailey relates the Jesuit painting cycles to the great religious and intellectual climate of the period, isolates the new stylistic trends which appeared after the Council of Trent, and looks at the different ways in which artists met the challenges for devotional art made by the religious climate of the post-Tridentine period. Bailey also succeeds in providing the first ever written reconstructions of the Jesuit churches of S. Tommaso di Canterbury, S. Saba, and S. Apollinare, and the original novitiate complex of S. Andrea al Quirinale, the site of the most complex and original hospital decoration in late Renaissance Italy. Through these reconstructions, Bailey sheds new light on such works as Louis Richeôme's meditation manual on the paintings at S. Andrea, Le peinture spirituelle, a lively and detailed treatise on late Renaissance art that has never before been the subject of a thorough study. Ultimately, Bailey provides us with a new understanding of the stylistic and iconographic strands which shortly afterward were woven together to form the Baroque.

"An arrestingly new picture of the early Jesuits and the world in which they lived. ...." [from back cover]

Introduction -- The first Jesuits as university students at Paris and Padua -- The battle of Messina and the Jesuit Constitutions -- Messina and Catania 1563 to 1678 -- The attempt to enter the University of Turin -- The Padua disaster -- The Civic-Jesuit University of Parma -- The Civic-Jesuit University of Mantua -- Two new universities in the marches: Fermo and Macerata -- The bishop says no: Palermo and Chambéry -- The Jesuits and the University of Bologna -- The battle over Canon Law in Rome -- The Jesuits and the University of Perugia -- Jesuit mathematicians in the Universities of Ferrara, Pavia, and Siena -- Philosophical and pedagogical differences -- The Jesuit contribution to theological education -- Conclusion

Universities were driving forces of change in late Renaissance Italy. The Gonzaga, the ruling family of Mantua, had long supported scholarship and dreamed of founding an institution of higher learning within the city. In the early seventeenth century they joined forces with the Jesuits, a powerful intellectual and religious force, to found one of the most innovative universities of the time. Paul F. Grendler provides the first book in any language about the Peaceful University of Mantua, its official name. He traces the efforts of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, a prince savant who debated Galileo, as he made his family’s dream a reality. Ferdinando negotiated with the Jesuits, recruited professors, and financed the school. Grendler examines the motivations of the Gonzaga and the Jesuits in the establishment of a joint civic and Jesuit university. The University of Mantua lasted only six years, lost during the brutal sack of the city by German troops in 1630. Despite its short life, the university offered original scholarship and teaching. It had the first professorship of chemistry more than 100 years before any other Italian university. The leading professor of medicine identified the symptoms of angina pectoris 140 years before an English scholar named the disease. The star law professor advanced new legal theories while secretly spying for James I of England. The Jesuits taught humanities, philosophy, and theology in ways both similar to and different from lay professors. A superlative study of education, politics, and culture in seventeenth-century Italy, this book reconsiders a period in Italy’s history often characterized as one of feckless rulers and stagnant learning. Thanks to extensive archival research and a thorough examination of the published works of the university's professors, Grendler's history tells a new story.