Tag: Jesuit

Free Download A Mission Divided : The Jesuit Presence in Zimbabwe, 1879-2021
by David Harold-Barry
English | 2022 | ISBN: 1779224117 | 418 Pages | True PDF | 53 MB

Free Download Leonardo Cohen, "The Early Modern Jesuit Attitude Towards Hindu and Ethiopian Strains of Asceticism "
English | ISBN: 9004538550 | 2023 | 284 pages | PDF | 100 MB

Free Download Guillaume Alonge, "A History of Jesuit Missions in Japan: Evangelization, Miracles and Martyrdom, 1549-1614 "
English | ISBN: 1032229772 | 2023 | 108 pages | PDF | 1475 KB
In the aftermath of the religious crisis triggered by the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church set out to conquer faithful in new territories. The first missionaries to arrive in Japan were the Jesuits who were forced to adopt a different type of evangelization, with a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. This volume shows that Japan turned out to be a land of experimentation and development of a global Catholicism, as well as an unprecedented laboratory of encounter between political, scientific and religious cultures in the age of the first globalization. It analyzes the different conversion strategies developed by the Jesuit fathers toward various groups, including samurai, Buddhist bonzes and Japanese peasants. A key step was the appropriation of sacred space by the missionaries: first in a violent way with the construction of large crosses and the destruction of temples, pagodas and pagan idols, then through strategies more flexible and accommodating of replacing pre-existing cultural practices. To be attractive, the Jesuit fathers had to compromise with local culture and spirituality, but they were also forced, in some way, to simplify and modify their very way of understanding and living Christianity. This book also reflects on the reasons for the failure of this ambitious Catholic conversion project: the hostility of the Japanese ruling class, the irreducibility of a different culture and spirituality, but also, if not above all, the rise of internal rivalries in Catholicism between Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the history of the Jesuits, Catholic missions and Christianity in Japan.

Free Download Jean-Pascal Gay, "Jesuit Civil Wars: Theology, Politics and Government under Tirso González (1687-1705) "
English | ISBN: 140943852X | 2012 | 336 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus quickly established itself as one of the most dynamic, influential but divisive orders within early-modern Catholicism. Yet whilst the order’s role in combating Protestantism, reforming the Catholic Church and advising rulers during its first century has been well documented, much less is understood about its later years. Covering the generalate of Tirso González (1687-1705), this book offers a window onto Jesuit politics and theology during the late seventeenth century. González’s generalate was dominated by two crises – one political, the other theological – both of which were to have important ramifications for the Jesuits and the wider Catholic world. The first of these was the confrontation between Louis XIV and the Papacy over the question of control of the church in France. González strongly and publicly supported Pope Innocent XI’s primacy over the French clergy, despite widespread opposition from many French Jesuits who took a more ‘Gallican’ position. The second crisis revolved around González’s opposition to the theory of ‘Probabilism’, to which the bulk of Jesuits subscribed. His publication of a book opposing a theological position that was deeply ingrained within the order, provided another fracture line that was to generate much heat. Whilst both crises were essentially matters for the Jesuits, this study demonstrates how they developed and played themselves out on a wide, international and increasingly public stage, showing how contending identities were forged from apparently narrow but intense and durable conflicts. As such, the book not only illuminates the role and theology of González, but also the tensions within late seventeenth-century Catholicism. It contends that, by the end of the century, Catholic confessional culture appears unable to resolve its contradictory relationship to the individual, which it empowers and dismisses at the same time.

Free Download Akihiko Watanabe, "Japan on the Jesuit Stage: Two 17th-Century Latin Plays with Translation and Commentary "
English | ISBN: 1350217204 | 2022 | 272 pages | PDF | 24 MB
The Jesuits were a major source of European information on Japan from the late 16th to early 17th century. Not only were they active missionaries but they also produced linguistic, religious and cultural tracts, regional chronicles, as well as hundreds of Latin plays written in imitation of classical Greco-Roman theatre but set in Japan. An intriguing yet underexplored segment of Jesuit school theatre is that which stages non-classical, non-Western subjects such as Japan, and this volume is the first to present Latin texts of two of these plays alongside full English translations, commentaries and an extensive introduction.