Abstract
“Thematic History”: the hybrid term seems paradoxical. Organization by themes or topics (e.g., an encyclopedia) suggests an ahistorical approach—although perhaps noting synchronic or “transversal” intersections—that emphasizes continuity across chronological periods. By contrast, “historical” organization is typically chronological or diachronic. It lays out events along a timeline and emphasizes discontinuities and ruptures arising from changed circumstances. A useful analogy: the thematic is textual and the historic is contextual. “Thematic History” reads texts within contexts.
Historians of the Jesuits have long needed to make decisions while shaping this history spanning nearly five centuries across several continents. Claudio Ferlan acknowledges his debt to the late John W. O’Malley, SJ (2), who theorized that the Society of Jesus had at least five “foundings,” each marked by continuities and ruptures: 1534 (Paris), 1540 (Rome), 1548 (Messina/Schools), 1814 (Restoration), and 1965–83 (Arrupe/GC 31–32). Other present-day scholars offer alternative periodizations. Recent scholarship catalyzed by the 2014 bicentennial of the Society’s papal restoration has recovered just how deeply divided nineteenth-century Jesuits were themselves regarding continuities between their “new” post-1814 Society and the “old” pre-1773-suppression Order. For some (like Fr. Jan Roothaan, Superior General, 1829–53), maintaining a sense of continuity was imperative for establishing post-1814 legitimacy. Others, however, drew strong distinctions between the “old” and “new”—some even repudiating pre-1773 elements—as they sought to legitimate the papal suppression and forge a fresh identity in the post-Napoleonic ultramontanist church.
Scholars today debate these issues of continuity. For example: if Jesuits experienced as much (or even more) political violence from nineteenth-century liberal nationalists as they did from pre-1773 monarchical regimes, does this not suggest stable self-continuity? (Note F.’s omission of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in his segue from pre-suppression to post-restoration expulsions [112]; and compare F.’s 200-year leap from Clement XIV’s 1773 suppression to Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae [103].) Or again: contrast the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Is Fr. Arrupe’s post-1965 legacy—embodied in the Jesuit Refugee Service (88–89) and GC 32’s “faith that does justice” (117)—continuous with that of his nineteenth-century predecessors, embodied in the intransigent, reactionary, and deeply anti-Semitic journal La Civiltà Cattolica, founded in 1850 (30–31; cf. David I. Kertzer’s The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara [New York: Knopf, 1997])? Perhaps the limit case for examining continuity is Jesuit slaveholding. Since this topic leads to recognizing “in Jesuit history the occurrence of major changes rather than recognizable continuities,” F. endorses “speaking of a single Society”: “within Jesuit history, we recognize at the same time a single religious order and its multiple lives” (90, emphasis added). These exemplify issues underlying the “thematic history” hybrid.
The book is divided into four general themes: “Identity”; “A Special Obedience in Regard to Missions”; “Our Way of Proceeding”; and “Government, Politics and Conflicts.” Each of the four has several sub-sections (some quite short): for example, Negotiated Obedience, Americas, Jesuits and Women, Theater, and Secular Powers. While these thematic sub-sections are laid out chronologically, the reader travels backward and forward in time while moving from one section to the next. This leads to a cumulative encountering of various points of intersection (“transversals”)—that is, both synchronic and diachronic—between different thematic planes.
What is the potential disadvantage of this structure? Its emphasis on continuity can mask the Jesuits’ trademark trait of creative adaptation to different circumstances—“the complexities of the Jesuit way of proceeding” (33–34)—acknowledged by both friends and foes. (See F.’s index entries for “accommodation,” “adaptation (accommodatio),” and “inculturation.” Rigorist foes, yesterday as today, attacked Jesuits’ “excessive flexibility” as heterodox [100–102].) For an example of creative adaptation, consider missions and imperialism. Just as colonization differed significantly before and after the industrial revolution—that is, the steam ships, railroads, and telegraphs making possible industrial imperialism’s total administration of vast territories (e.g., the Zambezi mission [66])—so too Jesuit activities, in tandem with late-modern liberal imperialist European “civilizing missions,” differed significantly from their premodern predecessors. Or on a smaller scale: nineteenth-century US colleges used theatrical productions to inculcate democratic virtues in newly arrived Catholic immigrants. How were these vernacular (English) theatrical productions continuous (or not) with those Latin ones advocated in the 1599 Ratio Studiorum, inculcating civic virtues for monarchical states by means of edifying examples from antiquity, the Bible, and hagiography (86–87)?
However, F.’s structure also has a strong, convincing advantage: it gives readers a sense of the Society’s solid cohesive identity. Historically organized narratives—whether sprawling (like Markus Friedrich’s magisterial 872-page The Jesuits: A History [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022]) or compact (like O’Malley’s 160-page The Jesuits: A History from Ignatius to the Present [New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014])—admittedly convey a wealth of information. However, they can also make it difficult for some readers (especially non-historians) to find the forest amidst the trees. By contrast, F. offers a strong sense of corporate identity and coherence conveying stability and continuity over time.
Given these inherent tensions, F. does a superb job of judiciously balancing this hybrid’s competing aims. The book’s structure is clearly laid out; details do not overwhelm; the prose style is direct; the narrative moves at a brisk clip; and the size is suitable for popular purposes. Meanwhile, F.’s firm command of the wide-ranging scholarly literature is abundantly displayed in four concise bibliographical essays supporting each of the thematic chapters. The book will attract an audience both scholarly and non-scholarly, especially readers in search of a succinct synthesis of Jesuit “mission and identity” beyond stereotypes and slogans—“a single religious order and its multiple lives” throughout the centuries (90).