Confession-building, long-distance networks, and the organization of jesuit science

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 287-318

  Harris, Steven J ^a  

^a BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; GERMANY; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; RELIGION;

CATHOLICISM; GERMANY; HISTORY, 16TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; RELIGION AND SCIENCE; SOCIETIES;

EID: 0030325992     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157338296X00051     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Edward Grant, "In Defense of the Earth's Centrality and Immobility: Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the 17th Century," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 4 (1984): 1-69 and his more-recent
2. Planets, Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687 (Cambridge, 1994).
3. See also James Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology (Chi cago, 1994).
4. See Karl Meyer, Optische Lehre und Forschung im frühen 17. Jahrhundert, dargestellt vornehmlich an den Arbeiten des Joachim Jungius (Hamburg, 1974),
5. A.I. Sabra, Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (Cambridge, 1981)
6. Catherine Chevalley, "L'optique des Jèsuites et celle des mèdecins: A propos de deux ouvrages rècents," Revue d histoire des sciences, 40 (1987), 377-382.
7. See Albert Krayer, Mathematik im Studienplan der Jesuiten (Stuttgart, 1991)
8. Ugo Baldini, Legem importe subactis: Studi su filosofia e scienza dei Gesuiti in Italia, 1540-1632 (Rome, 1992)
9. Peter Dear, Discipline & Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1995).
10. See John L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study in Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, 1979).
11. e Siècle, ed. Renè Taton (Paris, 1964)
12. Cornelius Wessels, S.J., Early Jesuit Travelers in Central Asia 1603-1721 (The Hague, 1991).
13. For a discussion of Kircher's work in collecting and publishing see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994)
14. and for a general overview of Jesuit natural history see William Ashworth, "Catholicism and Early Modern Science," in God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, eds. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, (Berkeley, 1985), 136-166.
15. See Charles Lohr, S.J., "Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-Century Metaphysics," Paradosis 32 (1976), 203-220
16. William A. Wallace, O.P., Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science (Princeton, 1984), as well as the articles by Hellyer and Leijenhorst.
17. A quantitative analysis of the Jesuit scientific corpus may be found in Steven J. Harris, "Jesuit Ideology and Jesuit Science: Religious Values and Scientific Activity in the Society of Jesus, 1540-1773." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1988.
18. Rivka Feldhay has examined this question in her article, "Knowledge and Salvation in Jesuit Culture," Science in Context 1 (1987), 195-213
19. and book Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge, 1995).
20. While the polemical tone of the conflict thesis, as originally developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century in John William Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874)
21. Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896)
22. has certainly abated, the theme of "inevitable conflict" still informs scholarly interpretation. See, for example, Richard S. Westfall, Essays on the Trial of Galileo (Rome, 1989), 1-57
23. Pietro Redondi's Galileo Heretic (Princeton, 1987).
24. The historiography on confessionalization owes its basic orientation to a "hypothesis" proposed some twenty-five years ago by the Catholic historian, Jean Delumeau. After arguing that medieval Europe was Christian in legend only and that the vast majority of people (i.e., the illiterate, rural, and poor) had litde understanding of Christian doctrine and ritual, Delumeau offered the following hypothesis as guide to future research, "on the eve of the Reformation, the average Westerner was but superficially christianized. In this context the two Reformations, Luther's and Rome's, were two processes, which apparently completed but in actual fact converged, by which the masses were christianized and religion spiritualized." Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter Reformation (London, 1977), 161.
25. Ernst Walter Zeeden, Die Enstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen der Konfessionsbildung (Munich, 1965)
26. Konfessionsbildung (Stuttgart, 1985)
27. and especially Zeeden and H. Molitor, eds., Die Visitation im Dienst der kirchlichen Reform (Münster, 1977).
28. For a fuller treatment of the theoretical framework of the confessionalization thesis, see Wolfgang Reinhard's two articles, "Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters," Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 10 (1983), 257-77
29. "Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State: A Reassessment," The Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989), 383-404.
30. See also Heinz Schilling, "Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich: Religiöser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620," Historische Zeitschrift 246 (1988), 1-45.
31. "The end of this Society is to devote itself with God's grace not only to the salvation and perfection of the members' own soul, but also with that same grace to labor strenuously in giving aid toward the salvation and perfection of the souls of their fellowmen." So wrote Ignatius in the "General Examen" of the Society's Institutes. In the "Formula" he elaborated further, "Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross of our Society... should... keep the following in mind. He is a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine, by means of public preaching, lectures, and any other ministration whatsoever of the word of God, and further by means of the Spiritual Exercises, the education of children and unlettered persons in Christianity, and the spiritual consolation of Christ's faithful through hearing confessions and administering the other sacraments." The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, ed. George E. Ganss, S.J. (St. Louis, 1970), 77-78 and 66.
32. These issues are touched upon in Steven J. Harris, "Transposing the Merton Thesis: Apostolic Spirituality and the Establishment of the Jesuit Scientific Tradition," Science in Context 3 (1989), 29-65.
33. Still one of the best introductions to the cult of the virtuoso is Walter E. Houghton's "The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century," Journal for the History of Ideas 3 (1942), 51-73; 190-219.
34. The theme of organization was present in the work of Heinrich Böhmer, Die Jesuiten (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1907)
35. well before Renè Fülöp-Miller's highly influential The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, trans. by F.S. Flint and D.F. Tait (New York, 1930)
36. Max Weber addressed the question of Jesuit organization in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1930)
37. chapter 4. For a rejoinder to Weber, see Gustav Gundlach, S.J., "Zur Soziologie der katholischen Ideenwelt und des Jesuitenordens." Ph.D. diss., Universität zu Berlin, 1928.
38. John Law, "On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation and the Portuguese Route to India," Sociological Review Monographs 32 (1986), 234-63.
39. Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 223. Latour's model of long-distance networks follows from his extended discussion of "short networks". Whether Latour's notion of short networks could also be applied to parts of the Society or to individual members, though promising, will not be addressed in this article.
40. A. Lynn Martin, The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modem France (Ithaca, New York, 1988).
41. Josef Franz Schütte, S.J., Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan: Volume 1. From His Appointment as Visitor until His First Departure f or Japan (1573-1582), trans. John J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis, 1980).
42. Robert Bireley, S.J. Religion and Politics in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S.J., and the Formation of Imperial Policy (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981).
43. G.P. Brizzi, La formazione della classe diligente nel Sei-Settecento: I seminaria nobilium nell 'Italia centro-settentrionale (Bologna, 1976).
44. These modifications in turn suggest the need for a typology of long-distance networks with perhaps two major classifications, the "charismatic network" orchestrated by the forceful individual - e.g., of the sort Latour assigns to Louis Pasteur in his The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA, 1988) - and the "corporate network" developed here. Such a division need not preclude the possibility that the latter, under appropriate circumstances, could evolve from the former.
45. Latour, Science in Action, 232-56.
46. Both the human and herbal recruits had explicit duties in the Society and were subject to strict regulation. Regarding the schedula Romana to which the latter was subjected, see Saul Jarcho, Quinine's Predecessor: Francesco Torti and the Early History of Cinchona (Baltimore, 1993), 17-18.
47. On the notion of "translation", see Latour, Science in Action, 108-21.
48. The following description of Jesuit administrative correspondence is taken from John Correia-Afonso, S.J., Jesuit Letters and Indian History (Bombay, 1955), 1-44
49. Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 6 vols. (Chicago, 1965), 1: 314-331.
50. Ganss, Constitutions, 292-93, 324-25, 327.
51. Ganss, Constitutions, 327.
52. For an example of this iterative process, see Schütte, Valignano's Mission Principles, 48-53. Before his departure to India as the new-appointed visitor of the Society's Indian province, Valignano took with him copies of instructio generalis (general instructions regarding the overall scope and goals of the given project.), instructio particularis (detailed instructions on particular matters), and facultà (lists of articles specifying special powers and duties of the relevant offices) - all of which were modified through repeated exchanges of correspondence both before and after his departure.
53. Ganss, Constitutions, 292.
54. From the Latin hebdomas, meaning "seventh day", since it was Ignatius's original intention to have such edifying letters written and circulated (at least locally) once a week. The Constitutions required that the office be given to a "father of talent and prudence" and, like the office of the secretary to the general, it existed from the Society's earliest days. The Society's first hebdomadarius was in fact Francis Xavier. Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters, 2.
55. Correia-Afonso. Jesuit Letters, 33.
56. Lach. Asia, 315-16.
57. The Introduction to Copia de algumas cartas (Lisbon, 1562), edited by the Jesuit fathers of Coimbra, provides the following justification for the Society move to print. "Since from this Province of Portugal have to be sent to all the colleges and houses of the Society the letters which each year are written to us from India, Japan, and China, and other eastern regions by our Fathers and Brothers who are there engaged in the conversion of the gentiles, and it is not possible to satisfy the desires of all if they were to be copied by hand and by other ordinary processes, it seemed convenient in the Lord to print some of the many that have arrived."
58. Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters, 34.
59. See also Lach, Asia, 317-20.
60. Ignatius to Gaspar Berze (also Barzaeus), dated February 24, 1554. Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters, 14 (citing Monumenta Ignatiana. Espistolae et Instructiones, V, 329-30).
61. Already as early as 1547 we find Ignatius urging missionaries in India to send information about "such things as the climate, diet, customs and character of the natives and of the peoples of India." Ibid., 13 (citing Monumenta Ignatiana. Espistolae et Instructiones, I, 648-50.
62. The first of thirty-four volumes of the Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, ècrites des Missions Etrangères par quelque Missionaires de la Compaignie de Jésus appeared in 1702, the last in 1776, with several re-editions thereafter. Ibid., 39. It is important to note here that in the years between the publication of the last volume of the Annuae Litterae and the first volume of the Lettres Édifiantes French Jesuits also brought out annual volumes of the Jesuit Relations, which consisted almost entirely of missionary correspondence from New France. See R.G. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations (Cleveland, 1896)
63. J.C. McCoy, Jesuit Relations of Canada (New York, 1937). From 1726 to 1758 Josef Stöcklein edited the series Neue Weltbott (Augsburg and Vienna), which contained translations into German of many letters from the Lettres Édifiantes as well as a large number of previously-unpublished correspondence from Germanspeaking missionaries in India, China, South and Central America and the Philippines.
64. See Anton Huonder, "P. Joseph Stöckleins 'Neuer Welt-Bott', ein Vorläufer der Katholischen Missionen im 18. Jahrhundert," Die Katholischen Missionen 33 (1904-1905), 1-4, 30-33, 80-83, 103-107.
65. e Siècle, ed. G. Bollème et al. (Paris, 1965), 33-59.
66. Acosta informs us in his "Advertisement to the Reader" of his Historia Natural that in regard to what he has written concerning the Indians of the New World, "I have beene carefull to learne from men of greatest experience and best seene in these matters, and to gather from their discourses and relations what I have thought fit to give knowledge of the deedes and custome of these people. And for that which concernes the nature of those Countries and their properties, I have learned it by the experience of many friends, and by my diligence to search, discover, and conferre with men of judgement and knowledge." Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, trans. Edward Grimston (1604; reprint, with Introduction by Clements R. Markham, New York, 1912), xxiv.
67. His important publications in theology were De Christo revelaio (Rome, 1588)
68. De temporibus novissimis (Rome, 1588).
69. The works on the conversion of Indians De promulgatione Evangelii apud barbaros and natural history De natura novi orbis were published in Salamanca in 1588-89. The latter work Acosta soon translated into Spanish, appended several chapters, and published anew under the title Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590).
70. The Historia Natural went through a total of four editions in Spanish, two in Dutch, two in French, three in Latin, two in German, and one in English - almost all appearing before 1610. Acosta, Natural and Moral History, xii-xiv.
71. Acosta, Natural and Moral History, xix-xx.
72. After the publication of the Hislaria Natural, he was named visitor of the Society's Spanish provinces of Andalusia and Aragon and eventually became embroiled in an "unedifying" theological and administrative disputes with the Jesuit General Claudio Aquaviva and in the Society's Fifth General Congregation (1593). His last years he served as rector of the Jesuit college at Salamanca where he died in 1600. See William V. Bangert, S.J. A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, 1972), 98-102.
73. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1624; reprint, Glasgow, 1906), p. 417. Appended to Tristâo's "Treatise of Brazil" (pp. 418-503) is his (or what is presumed to be his) "Articles for Brasil" (pp. 503-517), in which the author makes a number of recommendations regarding improvements in the governance of the Brazilian territory.
74. Paula Findlen, "Scientific Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Athanasius Kircher and the Roman College Museum," Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 3 (1995), 625-65. Findlen provides extensive detail on Kircher's activities in Rome and embeds it in the rich cultural connotations of the time.
75. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 165.
76. Kircher relied heavily not only upon Boym's spoken word about the wonders of China but also upon his written and published word. He cited both Boym's correspondence and his Flora sinensis (Vienna, 1656)
77. in his own China Mustrata (Rome, 1667)
78. as well as the Novus atlas Sinensis (Vienna & Amsterdam, 1655) of Boym's fellow-missionary Martin Martini.
79. Findlen, "Kircher and the Roman College Museum," 653.
80. Correia-Afonso, Jesuit Letters, 34.