Connections between the Society of Jesus and astrology used to appear as unexpected at best. Astrology was never viewed favourably by the Church, especially in early modern times, and since Jesuits were strong defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, most historians assumed that their religious fervour would be matched by an equally strong rejection of astrology. This groundbreaking and compelling study brings to light new Jesuit scientific texts revealing a much more positive, practical, and nuanced attitude. What emerges forcefully is a totally new perspective into early modern Jesuit culture, science, and education, highlighting the element that has been long overlooked: astrology.

This book addresses the role of astrology in the Society of Jesus, offering a new perspective into early modern Jesuit culture, science, and education by highlighting an element that has been long overlooked: astrology.

Accompanying DVD includes the opera Patientis Christi memoria by Johann Bernhard Staudt, performed in the chapel of St. Mary's Hall, Boston College.

This study explores the integral role of astrological concepts and imagery in preparing the ground for the Reformation, and in shaping the distinctive characteristics of German Christian culture through the early seventeenth century.

Jesuits and the Book of Nature: Science and Education in Modern Portugal offers an account of the Jesuits’ contributions to science and education after the restoration of the Society of Jesus in Portugal in 1858. As well as promoting an education grounded on an “alliance between religion and science,” the Portuguese Jesuits founded a scientific journal that played a significant role in the consolidation of taxonomy, plant breeding, biochemistry, and molecular genetics. In this book, Francisco Malta Romeiras argues that the priority the Jesuits placed on the teaching and practice of science was not only a way of continuing a centennial tradition but should also be seen as response to the adverse anticlerical milieu in which the restoration of the Society of Jesus took place.

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.

This book sheds light on the role of Jesuit mathematicians in the widespread dissemination of ideas about military architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by means of teaching, writings and consultancy activities aimed at assisting Catholic leaders in their wars against protestants and infidels.