This monumental achievement has been over a decade in the making. Around 2010, Benoist Pierre, assisted by an editorial consulting team, sketched out the principal lines of this volume’s “History” chapters and companion “Dictionary” entries. Between 2010 and 2014, scholarly authors composed and delivered the majority of the dictionary entries. However, the 2014 bicentennial of the Jesuit restoration (1814–2014) unexpectedly necessitated significant readjustments to this original plan. The commemoration catalyzed a large outpouring of research publications, especially regarding the post-1814 Society, which had been sorely neglected in previous scholarship. In 2019, five years after the bicentennial, Pierre Antoine Fabre resumed the project initiated by Pierre nearly a decade earlier. Fabre recalibrated the volume to accommodate the post-2014 historical and historiographical contexts, making necessary additions, adjustments, and revisions. Although these reorientations delayed this volume’s eventual publication, the end product was worth the wait. This magisterial work signals a historiographical milestone in the rapidly evolving “globalized” Society of Jesus, Catholicism, and the world.
Fabre’s introduction, “Pari impossible, pari nécessaire” (Impossible wager, necessary wager), lays out the volume’s overarching concerns, aims, and vision (x–xviii). First, the work is preoccupied with establishing a “real equilibrium” between the “old” pre-1773 and the “new” post-1814 Society. Stereotyped approaches frequently contrast a first dazzling (brillant de mille feux) Society with a less illustrious successor “confined to its ecclesiastical status.” However, the Society’s inextricable involvement with both the industrialized New Imperialism (especially beginning around 1870) and then post-1945 global decolonization tells a very different story.
Second, this preoccupation with giving equal weight to the post-1814 Society leads to an “impossible wager”: the attempt “to de-center, or rather multi-center” (décentrer, ou plutôt multicentrer) as much as possible the history of the Society of Jesus undeniably anchored in Europe. Even as the volume attempts to bring former peripheries to the center, it tries not to lose sight of the steadfastly European centers: “the conquest strategies of the 16th century’s great empires” along with the “Holy See and its own global ambitions.” Hence, “from beginning to end,” the volume aims at revealing “forms of autonomy of vast regions beyond Europe” (emphasis added). These in turn were organized around specific centers (e.g., Goa in Asia or Mexico in the Americas).” Paradoxically, these semi-autonomous “regional Societies” eventually had the capacity to influence “the course of the world and, in particular, that of European history,” from the seventeenth-century Chinese Rites controversy up to twentieth-century liberation theology. History’s dialectic: products shape producers, and margins shape metropoles.
This “impossible wager” entails a corresponding “necessary” one: to write not only the history of yesterday but also the history of the present. For although the Society has always been a “sign of contradiction”—“simultaneously both modern and antimodern”—today’s structures complicate that paradoxical binary. The “crisis of our own modernity, and that which is the most difficult and essential to think through, is that we too must understand ourselves as simultaneously modern and anti-modern: we must invent, as moderns, our post-modernity” (emphasis original). For example, in our contemporary awareness of environmental issues—“our relationship with nature (both inanimate nature and animals)” and the “human species” more generally—we can no longer consider our current epoch to be what was once called “the modern epoch.” Our globalized post-modern world is constituted by a multiplicity of worlds. Moreover, this overall condition of plurality and pluralism—one is tempted to insert here “multiverse” (although Fabre does not)—echoes the Society’s own history. (Compare the emblem legend from Jean Bolland’s 1640 Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesus, used in the cover design of Brill’s Jesuit Studies book series and the Journal of Jesuit Studies: “Vnus non sufficit orbis” [One world is not enough].) The Society “made its appearance at the very moment in which the ‘known worlds’ became a single world, a multiplicity of understandings [savoirs] of this world which was already putting an end to its oneness (unicité).” Fabre concludes this soaring overview with a simple coda: “That, more or less, is the conviction that carries this volume” (xi–xii). In short: Everything Everywhere All at Once.
These lofty considerations come down to earth in the book’s market location. The hybrid “history and dictionary” format is one of several genres published in the hugely popular “Bouquins” collection, its enticingly stylized covers immediately recognizable on French bookstore shelves. (Other titles include the “history and dictionary” of Freemasonry, the French Revolution, madness, Paris, police, the Wars of Religion, and women mystics.) A once innovative venture founded in 1979, this now venerable series of compact (though not slim) volumes aims to reach an audience comprised of scholarly specialists and an educated general public (https://www.editis.com/maisons/bouquins/). Les Jésuites follows this history-dictionary format in its bipartite division: an initial four-hundred-page historical section providing an overall narrative of the Society of Jesus from its founding to the present (along with historiographical analysis of how that narrative has been told); and a companion seven-hundred-page dictionary whose roughly 450 entries provide greater depth.
The difference between the two genres is succinctly illustrated by Fabre’s example taken from the four-volume Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús: Biográfico-temático, ed. Charles E. O’Neill and Joaquín María Domínguez (Rome: jhi/Madrid: Commillas, 2001). The dictionary’s entry for “Martyrs” represents the subject matter “as a series without rupture,” extending from the sixteenth-century martyrs of Japan to the twentieth-century martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. In this seamless presentation, the dictionary genre suggests “an essential continuity”—one might say it essentializes or reifies the subject—“particularly between the two great epochs of the Society,” the modern and the contemporaneous. By contrast, the historical genre “exposes the evolutions, transformations, and even fractures” erased by the static panoptical bird’s-eye view (position de surplomb), itself represented by a dictionary’s organization—not by temporal units but by alphabetical ones, A–Z (xiv). At its best, the dialectical interaction of the hybrid history-dictionary’s two components creates a synergy greater than the sum of its parts. On the one hand, the whole—a broad narrative horizon providing unifying contexts and connections; on the other, the parts—multiple discrete topics explored in narrow depth and individual detail.
The first part of Les Jésuites—“History” (both historical and historiographical)—comprises eight chapters. The first four present a chronological account of the Society from its origins through the suppression. First: for the sixteenth century, Fabre surveys “The Period of the Foundations” up to the term of Superior General Claudio Acquaviva (in office 1581–1615) (3–41). Second: for the seventeenth century, Ronnie Po-chia Hsia explores the Society poised “Between Expansion and Oppositions” (43–94). Third: for the eighteenth century, Bernard Hours examines the “complex relations” between the Society and Enlightenment culture in “The Century of Lights,” including productions in literature, history, and music as well as the legendary Journal de Trévoux (95–150). Fourth: in “The Jesuits between Expulsions and Secularization,” Hours revisits the eighteenth century from another perspective—the Society’s increasingly fraught political entanglements. After surveying the successive national expulsions, Hours recounts the papal global suppression followed by the steps ultimately leading to the Society’s restoration (151–205).
The next two chapters continue the chronological account for the “new” post-suppression Society. For the nineteenth century, Philippe Rocher surveys “A ‘New’ Society of Jesus” from the 1814 restoration up to the 1914 outbreak of the Great War (207–51). Of particular relevance (within the volume’s overall perspective) is the section on “The Resumption of Jesuit Missions.” (239–51). Rocher quotes an astonishing remark made in 1823 by Superior General Luigi Fortis (1748–1829), nine years after the papal bull of restoration. Fortis declared that he had declined requests for Jesuit works abroad: “Our India is Europe.” (As noted below regarding indipetae letters, “Indies” had been a general term used earlier to mean missions beyond Europe.) In 1830, Fortis’s successor, Superior General Jan Roothaan (1785–1853), expressed a similar sentiment. (239). This attitude of the first “restored” Jesuits was far removed from the repeated sixteenth-century maxim of Jerónimo Nadal (1507–80), one of the first Jesuits: “The world is our house.”
However, things quickly changed following the election of Pope Gregory xvi (r.1831–46) who had been prefect of the Propaganda Fide. In 1833, on the December 3rd feast of St. Francis Xavier (“Apostle of the Indies”), Roothaan issued an appeal for volunteers to missions abroad in his letter De Missionum externarum desiderio excitando et fovendo (On encouraging and fostering a desire for the foreign missions). His call was met with an enthusiastic response. Rocher surveys the “new” Society’s missionary engagements, including in the USA (still in its youth), Canada, India, China, Madagascar, Africa, Albania, and Syria. In an appended brief, “Complementary Note,” Fabre explains Rocher’s seeming omission of nineteenth-century Latin American territories by noting several issues (252–56). These include traditional historiography that had, on the one hand, largely privileged the Latin American colonial epoch due to its symbolic representation as the unparalleled high-water mark of the Society’s economic power, political influence, social inventiveness (e.g., the Paraguayan reductions), and artistic fecundity. On the other, its historiography had also been long dominated by “a martyrological tone” and a narrative of a “tragic odyssey of a religious community.”
A further issue raised by Fabre has broader application and significance for Jesuit historiography more generally. The nineteenth century’s frequent expulsions and exiles in both Europe and Latin America were not radically discontinuous from those in the “old” pre-suppression society. This historical continuity raises the question of “holding on to the fetishistic dates of the Suppression and Restoration” (à conserver les dates fétiches de la Suppression et de la Restauration) (253). The constant upheaval marking the post-1814 Society is visually represented in the book’s maps provided for various world regions (1187–97). Fabre notes that, due to the “frequency of closures, displacements, and re-openings of houses or colleges” throughout the nineteenth century, a necessary editorial decision was made to limit dates to only the first installations or reinstallations of “the ‘Restoration’ properly speaking (1814–39), especially in France” (1189). Whether or not the reader sympathizes with Fabre’s suspicions about the “fetishistic” allure of simple demarcations, his deconstructionist use of continuities to blur boundaries between “old” and “new” Societies invites reflection. Further elucidation of this “continuist” perspective (as contrasted with a “rupture” perspective) may be found at the conclusion of the chapter “Writing the History of the ‘New’ Society” (423–42, esp. note 1).
Chronology resumes with the twentieth century as Philippe Chenaux explores “Jesuits Facing World Wars and Modernity” (257–309). This chapter concludes the book’s chronological survey with the March 13, 2013 election of the Argentinian Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (b.1936) as Pope Francis. In the context of the Society’s currently ongoing “displacement of its center of gravity from Europe and North America to the territories [formerly] labeled ‘mission’ (India, Korea, etc.),” Chenaux quotes Francis’s interview in La Civiltà cattolica several months after his election—“The Jesuit must be a person of incomplete thought, of open-ended thought.” Chenaux concludes: “Having become a truly global institution, [the Society] undoubtedly has not spoken its final word in the history of humanity” (308). This self-consciously open-ended chapter nicely represents contemporary fluidity, interrogation, and reconfiguration of formerly assumed spatial arrangements—center and periphery, metropole and colony, Christian and non-, self and stranger.
The following final two chapters depart from the preceding six in their focus on historiographical questions (even as they necessarily include historical narratives). In “The Missionary Question in the Society of Jesus,” Fabre interrogates various aspects of five centuries of Jesuit global extension (311–93). As noted above, this complex question of “mission” lies at the heart of Fabre’s vision for the volume as a whole and reflects interpretative problems raised by late twentieth-century postcolonialism and early twenty-first-century globalization. The historical profession’s recent methodological “turns”—especially the “global” and “spatial”—have provoked new approaches to and questions about old topics, altering investigations and interpretations. However, a half-century ago, as decolonization was approaching its conclusion in the 1970s—recall Saigon, April 30, 1975—Superior General Pedro Arrupe (1907–91, in office 1965–83) observed the tide’s turn. Fabre concludes his chapter with Arrupe’s letter, “On Inculturation,” issued on Pentecost Sunday, 1978, addressed to the whole Society. “It would be a dangerous error,” wrote Arrupe, to deny that countries where the Gospel was assumed to have been considered inculturated for centuries “need a re-inculturation of the faith.” He continued: “The concepts, ‘Missions,’ ‘Third World,’ ‘East/West,’ etc. are relative, and we should get beyond them.” Fabre glosses: “It was an astonishing manner of reconnecting with the great indetermination, or multi-determination of ‘mission lands’ (terres de mission) that we find in the first decades of the Society, during the epoch of the end of the Council of Trent” (393).
Finally, the historiography of “Writing the History of the ‘New” Society”—especially “The French Case”—is surveyed by Dominique Avon and Philippe Rocher (as revised and completed by Fabre) (395–424). Historiographical periods include the “Jesuit vs. Anti-Jesuitism Apologetics” (1820s–1920s), a “Debate Within the Catholic World” (1930s–1970s), and an “Object Dispassionate but Still Debated” (1970s–2010s). This chapter concludes the book’s first part: History.
The book’s second part—Dictionary—then follows. Spanning 700 pages, the roughly 400 entries comprising the dictionary have been written by 104 contributors. In addition to highly visible France, regions across the globe are represented by scholars from Europe (Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland), the Anglophone North Atlantic (Canada, Ireland, UK, USA), Argentina, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates. Although the entries are arranged alphabetically, a thematically arranged table of subject headings (1251–56) shows the relative distributions: the sixteenth century = 76 dictionary subject entries; the seventeenth century = 84; the eighteenth century = 43; the nineteenth century = 28; the twentieth century = 54; “Missionary Figures” = 35; “Intersecting Entries” = 89. Each entry concludes with brief bibliographical citations pointing the reader toward standard scholarly works. These citations are then followed by a “See also” list of cross-referenced subject headings for further consultation and building connections.
Abundant cross-referencing is among this work’s most valuable attributes, and it recalls both the hybrid nature of this History-Dictionary as well as the “Bouquins” collection’s intended audiences. First: a footnote on the initial page of each “History” chapter alerts readers to the synthetic and summary nature of the essays. It directs them to the “Bibliographical Orientations” section at the end of the volume for the foundational original sources (1205–49). This bibliographical section is user-friendly, divided thematically and corresponding to the subject divisions in the “History” chapters.
Second: each “History” chapter concludes with a “See also” list of cross-referenced subject headings available in the “Dictionary” section. This feature enables the kind of synergy hoped for in such a hybrid volume: readers can move back and forth, making comparisons and building connections between the unifying narratives of the “History” and the discrete in-depth explorations in the “Dictionary.” Two alphabetical indexes—one for names of persons (1257–302) and another for names of places (1303–26)—further assist bridge-building.
Third: since each of these entries concludes with its own additional “See also” lists of subject headings available elsewhere in the “Dictionary,” this volume is effectively double- and even triple-cross-referenced throughout. For example: at the end of the “History” chapter “Between Expulsions and Secularization,” recommended subject headings for further consultation in the “Dictionary” section include Anti-Jesuitisms; Architecture; Bellarmine (Robert); Bollandists; Catechesis; Cartography; Exile; Freemasonry; Gonzàlez de Santalla (Tirso); Hervás y Panduro (Lorenzo); Jansenism; Lenkiewicz (Gabriel); Molinism; Monita secreta; Polotsk (College and congregation of); Preaching; Prayer; Ratio studiorum; reductions; Ricci (Lorenzo); Suárez (Francisco); Tyrannicide; Visitor; Vows; Zaccaria (Frencesco Antonio). Each of these dictionary entries, in turn, concludes with its individual “See also” lists. For example, “Anti-Jesuitisms” refers the reader to the following entries: Controversy; History and Jesuit Historians; Ignatius of Loyola; Images; Jansenism; Obedience; Papacy; Rites Controversy; Reductions; Suppression; Restoration; Jesuit Theology. Similarly, “Bellarmine (Robert)” directs the reader to: Catechesis, catechism; Colleges; General Congregation; Controversy; General Curia; Papacy; Preaching; Ratio studiorum; Rector; Rhetoric; Jesuit Theology; Vows. Since each of these entries again concludes with “See also” lists, the cross-referencing provides a formidable web of multi-layered interconnections.
Understandably, in addition to limitations of time and space, all such works reflect and privilege the concerns and narratives of the authors and culture that produced them. For example, several entries found in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester, S.J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) do not seem to be included in the expansive index of personal names in Les Jésuites. Among these are the Jesuits Frederick Copleston, Robert Drinan, Ignacio Ellacuría, Anthony de Mello, Walter J. Ong, Piet Schoonenberg, and (Bl.) Thomas Sitjar. Similar differences are found in lists of places and even more so with regard to topics. This observation is meant not as a critique but as a reminder of cultural standpoints. Hence, the enormous value of this French contribution brings its unique perspectives to English language volumes like Worcester’s Cambridge Encyclopedia (2017), his Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits (2008), The Oxford Handbook for the Jesuits, ed. Ines G. Županov (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), as well as the four-volume Spanish language Diccionario histórico (2000) noted above.
Final supplementary tools: keeping in mind again the educated general audience of the “Bouquins” collection, a useful “Documentary Anthology” (1127–86) includes excerpts from St. Ignatius’s 1544 journal entries on “interior movements”; the Spiritual Exercises; the 1539 Deliberation of the First Fathers; and the papal Brief of the Suppression (1773) and Bull of Restoration (1814). A selection of “Correspondence in the Society of Jesus” (1168–86) has also been added, including several indipetae letters written to the superior general in an application for missions beyond Europe, broadly called the “Indies.” (For the significance of correspondence traveling and connecting great distances in the early modern era, see Fabre, 13–16.) Finally, as noted above, regional maps from across the globe contain initial dates of missions established from both the “old” and “new” Society. Eight pages of photographs (on glossy paper) are inserted in the middle of the volume.
In his introduction, Fabre concludes with a brief note regarding historical figures—as yet unrecognized or unknown—about whom scholarly works might eventually see the light of day: “This volume hopes only to encourage new research.” Certainly, this is an overly modest statement about a monumental work that now takes its place among standard scholarly references. However, given the volume’s overall vision, it also expresses an eminently fitting aspiration. If a Jesuit is indeed a person of incomplete thought, of open-ended thought, perhaps Jesuit studies should likewise maintain focus on that same indeterminate horizon. Semper major … Ad majorem …