How the Jesuits re-emerged after forty years of suppression In 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus. For the 823 Jesuits living in the Low Countries, it meant the end of their institutional religious life. In the Austrian Netherlands, the Jesuits were put under strict surveillance, but in the Dutch Republic they were able to continue their missionary work. It is this regional contrast and the opportunities it offered for the Order to survive that make the Low Countries an exceptional and interesting case in Jesuit history. Just as in White Russia, former Jesuits and new Jesuits in the Low Countries prepared for the restoration of the Order, with the help of other religious, priests, and lay benefactors. In 1814, eight days before the restoration of the Society by Pope Pius VII, the novitiate near Ghent opened with eleven candidates from all over the United Netherlands. Barely twenty years later, the Order in the Low Countries – by then counting one hundred members – formed an independent Belgian Province. A separate Dutch Province followed in 1850. Obviously, the reestablishment, with new churches and new colleges, carried a heavy survival burden: in the face of their old enemies and the black legends they revived, the Jesuits had to retrieve their true identity, which had been suppressed for forty years. Contributors: Peter van Dael, SJ (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Pontifical Gregorian University Rome) Pierre Antoine Fabre (École des hautes études en sciences sociales Paris); Joep van Gennip (Tilburg School of Catholic Theology), Michel Hermans, SJ (University of Namur), Marek Inglot, SJ (Pontifical Gregorian University Rome), Frank Judo (lawyer Brussels), Leo Kenis (KU Leuven) Marc Lindeijer, SJ (Bollandist Society Brussels), Jo Luyten (KADOC-KU Leuven), Kristien Suenens (KADOC-KU Leuven), Vincent Verbrugge (historian)

"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"--

Jesuits and Race examines the role that the Society of Jesus played in shaping Western understandings about race and explores the impact the Order had on the lives and societies of non-European peoples throughout history. Jesuits provide an unusual, if not unique, lens through which to view the topic of race given the global nature of the Society of Jesus and the priests’ interest in humanity, salvation, conversion, science, and nature. Jesuits’ global presence in missions, imperial expansion, and education lends insight into the differences in patterns of estrangement and assimilation, as well as enfranchisement and coercion, with people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The essays in this collection bring together case studies from around the world as a first step toward a comparative analysis of Jesuit engagement with racialized difference. The authors hone in on labor practices, social structures, and religious agendas at salient moments during the long span of Jesuit history in this fascinating volume.

During the past 50 years, theological libraries have confronted secularisation and religious pluralism, along with revolutionary technological developments that brought not only significant challenges but also unexpected opportunities to adopt new instruments for the transfer of knowledge through the automation and computerisation of libraries. This book shows how European theological libraries tackled these challenges; how they survived by redefining their task, by participating in the renewal of scholarly librarianship, and by networking internationally. Since 1972, BETH, the Association of European Theological Libraries, has stimulated this process by enabling contacts among a growing number of national library associations all over Europe.

In Jesuit Survival and Restoration leading scholars from around the world discuss the most dramatic event in the Society of Jesus's history. The order was suppressed by papal command in 1773 and for the next forty-one years ex-Jesuits endeavoured to keep the Ignatian spirit alive and worked towards the order's restoration. When this goal was achieved in 1814 the Society entered one of its most dynamic but troubled eras. The contributions in the volume trace this story in a global perspective, looking at developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Nineteenth-century female congregation founders could achieve levels of autonomy, power and prestige that were beyond reach for most women of their time. With a subject hidden for a long time behind a curtain of modesty and mystery, this book recounts the fascinating but ambiguous life stories of four Belgian religious women. A close reading of their personal writings unveils their conflicted existence: ambitious, engaged, and bold on the one hand, suffering and isolated on the other, they were both victims and promotors of a nineteenth-century ideal of female submission. As religious and social entrepreneurs these women played an influential role in the revival of the church and the development of education, health care and social provisions in modern Belgium. But, equally well, they were bound to rigid gender patterns and adherents of an ultramontane church ideology that fundamentally distrusted modern society.

The forty-one years between the Society of Jesus’s papal suppression in 1773 and its eventual restoration in 1814 remain controversial, with new research and interpretations continually appearing. Shore’s narrative approaches these years, and the period preceding the suppression, from a new perspective that covers individuals not usually discussed in works dealing with this topic. As well as examining the contributions of former Jesuits to fields as diverse as ethnology—a term and concept pioneered by an ex-Jesuit—and library science, where Jesuits and ex-Jesuits laid the groundwork for the great advances of the nineteenth century, the essay also explores the period the exiled Society spent in the Russian Empire. It concludes with a discussion of the Society’s restoration in the broader context of world history.