Saints or devils incarnate? : : studies in Jesuit history / / by John W. O'Malley.

• Author: O'Malley, John W.
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : Brill,, 2013.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Jesuit Studies 1.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (326 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Almost from the moment the Jesuits were founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and his companions they suffered from misunderstanding, some positive, much of it negative. Myth and misinformation abounded. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits' official name, was a society of saints or of devils incarnate. Not until the mid-twentieth century did historians begin to dispel some of the myths, but only with John O'Malley's The First Jesuits (1993) did a new era open in the study of the Society. Since then the Jesuits have attracted great attention from scholars of all disciplines on an international basis. O'Malley has continued to write about Saint Ignatius and the subsequent history of the Jesuits. This volume contains a number of such studies and presses forward the trajectory he launched two decades ago with his book.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / John W. O’Malley -- The Historiography of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today? / John W. O’Malley -- The Pastoral, Social, Ecclesiastical, Civic, and Cultural Mission of the Society of Jesus / John W. O’Malley -- The Society of Jesus / John W. O’Malley -- Was Ignatius of Loyola a Church Reformer? How to Look at Early Modern Catholicism / John W. O’Malley -- The Ministry to Outsiders: The Jesuits / John W. O’Malley -- Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556) / John W. O’Malley -- Ignatius’s Special “Way of Proceeding” / John W. O’Malley -- Early Jesuit Spirituality: Spain and Italy / John W. O’Malley -- To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation / John W. O’Malley -- Some Distinctive Characteristics of Jesuit Spirituality in the Sixteenth Century / John W. O’Malley -- Renaissance Humanism and the Religious Culture of the First Jesuits / John W. O’Malley -- How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education / John W. O’Malley -- Mission and the Early Jesuits / John W. O’Malley -- Saint Ignatius and the Cultural Mission of the Society of Jesus / John W. O’Malley -- The Many Lives of Ignatius of Loyola: Future Saint / John W. O’Malley -- Index / John W. O’Malley.