Jesuits: Ignatius to Francis

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Their reputation is complex. Lionized by some, vilified by others, the Jesuits have been involved in virtually every facet of early modern and modern culture in all corners of the globe for half of a millennium. This seminar is about the what, why, and how of Jesuit thought and action, and the strong reactions they inspired. Theology has been central to them, but they have also engaged in philosophy, the arts, and the sciences from their 16th-century founding by Ignatius Loyola to the present day, as a Jesuit reigns as pope. Jesuits, individually and corporately, have grappled with politics and political thought from Reformation de-bates over regicide to modern debates over social justice. Jesu-its can be found on all sides of the Galileo Affair, and Jesuits run the Vatican observatory today. Jesuits were among the first Europeans to enter the Forbidden Palace in the 17th century and were expelled from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 20th. Jesuits developed havens for indigenous people in 17th century New Spain and simultaneously engaged in the transatlantic slave trade. Jesuits produced anti-semitic tracts in 1920s Vienna, but participated in the plot to overthrow Hitler in the 1940s. In the last century they ran elite high schools in Mexico, but were executed for advocating radical social and economic reform in Central America. Theologians, polemicists, political theorists, astronomers, dramatists, pharmacists, architects, engineers, governors of Amerindian settlements, cartographers, musicians, and, above all, missionaries and schoolmasters, Jesuits were active in virtu-ally every country of Europe and Latin America, in many countries of Asia, and even in a few in Africa. They are thus an ideal subject for a seminar because participants have a wide range of areas of research to choose from.