Sthepen Harris 1

Confession-Building, Long-Distance Networks, and the Organization of Jesuit Science
Author(s): Steven J. Harris

Source: Early Science and Medicine, Vol. 1, No. 3, Jesuits and the Knowledge of Nature (Oct.,
1996), pp. 287-318
Published by: BRILL
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LONG-DISTANCENETWORKS,
CONFESSION-BUILDING,
AND THE ORGANIZATIONOFJESUIT SCIENCE
STEVEN
J. HARRIS
BrandeisUniversity
The Paradox of esuit Science

Jesuit engagement with the recovery, analysis, and dissemination
of both received and contemporary learning relating to the explanation of natural phenomena, as well as with the description, examination, and manipulation of nature itself-what we might generally, but all too crudely, call "Jesuit science"-has attracted an increasing amount of scholarly attention in recent years. While the
work of recovering Jesuit contributions to the fields astronomy,1
optics,2 'physico-mathematics',3 experimental philosophy,4 geography,5 natural history,6 and neo-Aristotelian scholastic philosophy7
I EdwardGrant, "In Defense of the Earth'sCentralityand Immobility:Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the 17th Century," Transactionsof the American
PhilosophicalSociety,4 (1984): 1-69 and his more-recent Planets,Stars, & Orbs:The
MedievalCosmos,1200-1687 (Cambridge, 1994). See also James Lattis, Between
and Galileo:ChristophClaviusand the Collapseof PtolemaicCosmology
(ChiCopernicus
cago, 1994).
imfrifhen 17.Jahrhundert,
2 See KarlMeyer,Optische
Lehreund Forschung
dargestellt
an denArbeiten
vornehmlich
of
ungius (Hamburg,1974), A.I. Sabra,Theories
desJoachimJ
Lightfrom Descartesto Newton(Cambridge, 1981), and Catherine Chevalley, "L'optique des Jesuites et celle des mrdecins: A propos de deux ouvrages rbcents,"Revue
d histoiredessciences,40 (1987), 377-382.
im StudienplanderJesuiten(Stuttgart,1991), Ugo
3 See Albert Krayer,Mathematik
Baldini, Legemimponesubactis:Studisu filosofia e scienzadei Gesuitiin Italia, 15401632 (Rome, 1992), and Peter Dear,Discipline&Experience:
TheMathematical
Wayin
theScientificRevolution(Chicago, 1995).
A Studyin Early
in the 17thand 18th Centuries:
4 See John L. Heilbron, Electricity
ModernPhysics(Berkeley,1979).
5 See FranCoisde Dainville, S.J., "Enseignementdes 'GCographes'et des 'G0oet Diffusiondes Sciencesen Franceau XVIII Siicle, ed. Rene
metres',"in Enseignement
Taton (Paris, 1964) and Cornelius Wessels, S.J.,EarlyJesuit Travelersin CentralAsia
1603-1721 (The Hague, 1991).
6 For a discussion of Kircher's work in collecting and publishing see Paula
Findlen, PossessingNature:Museums,Collecting,and ScientificCulturein EarlyModern
Italy (Berkeley, 1994) and for a general overview of Jesuit natural history see
WilliamAshworth,"Catholicismand EarlyModern Science," in God & Nature:Hisand Science,eds. David C. Lindberg
toricalEssayson theEncounterbetweenChristianity
and Ronald L. Numbers, (Berkeley,1985), 136-166.
7 See Charles Lohr, S.J., "JesuitAristotelianism and Sixteenth-CenturyMetaphysics,"Paradosis32 (1976), 203-220, William A. Wallace, O.P., Galileoand His
Sources:TheHeritageof the CollegioRomanoin Galileo'sScience(Princeton, 1984), as
well as the articlesby Hellyer and Leijenhorst.
? E.J.Brill, Leiden, 1996
ESM1,3

288
STEVEN J. HARRIS
has added considerably to our understanding ofJesuit science, the

net effect of these studies has been to highlight a central paradox:
why Jesuits? That is, why was it that a religious corporation, consisting largely of university-trained theologians and ordained
priests formally committed to the "care of souls", was able to produce a corpus of some 5,000 published titles touching on virtually
every branch of the natural and mathematical sciences and a corps
of priest-mathematicians, priest-astronomers, priest-philosophers,
and priest-naturalists continuously active for nearly two hundred
years?8 What did science have to do with salvation;9 or with faith,
doctrine, prayer, holy offices, the sacraments, or any of the many
other spiritual matters with which members of religious orders
were traditionally occupied?
The Jesuit authors responsible for the production of the Order's scientific corpus were, after all, members not of a scientific
society but a society of clerks regular.1' Ignatius had conceived of
his followers as latter-day apostles whose supreme task was to go
into the world to work for the salvation of the souls of others and
thereby to spread and strengthen the Catholic faith wherever it
was found to be weak, unknown, or under attack. While this apostolic, or Ignatian, spirituality carried the early Jesuits into a
number of worldly ministries, it is not at all obvious how the good
sons of Ignatius could, within a hundred years of his death,
emerge as the leading-or
among the leading-philosophers,
mathematicians, astronomers, and naturalists of their day. The
paradox then is why a religious order so often associated with the
conservative agenda of the Catholic Counter-Reformation-and
directly implicated in the condemnation of heliocentricism and
at the same time be so successthe recantation of Galileo-could
ful in nurturing and sustaining a tradition of scientific scholarship
within its own ranks.
8 A quantitativeanalysisof the Jesuit scientific corpus may be found in Steven
J. Harris, "JesuitIdeology and Jesuit Science: Religious Values and Scientific Activity in the Society of Jesus, 1540-1773." Ph.D. diss., Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, 1988.
9 RivkaFeldhayhas examined this question in her article, "Knowledgeand Salvation in Jesuit Culture,"Sciencein Context1 (1987), 195-213 and book Galileoand
the Church:Political Inquisition or CriticalDialogue? (Cambridge, 1995).
10The Society of Jesus was neither monastic, like Benedictines and Carmelites,
nor mendicant, like the Dominicans and Franciscans,but part of a group of "reformed orders of clerks regular"founded in the sixteenth century as part of the
Catholic Reformation.The Somascans,Theatines, and Barnabiteswere, along with
the Jesuits, the most importantof the reform orders.

JESUIT SCIENCE
289
Confession-buildingand Learned Ministries

I would like to suggest that this combination of religious activism and scientific activity is not so much a paradox as a puzzle.
That is, the juxtaposition of "Jesuit" and "science" is neither inexplicable nor self-contradictory; rather, it presents us with the challenge of trying to discern underlying patterns of coherence in the
hope of finding how the pieces fit together. I believe a coherent
picture does begin to emerge when we place Jesuits' scientific activities-and especially their work as authors-within the organizational context of the Society's long-distance networks and within
the religious context of the Society's program to extend and consolidate the Catholic confession. As the most effective-or at least
order emerging
the most disproportionately effective-religious
from the Catholic Reformation, the Society pursued a multipronged program of confession-building. Motivated by the same
overarching commitment to spread the "monarchy of the Church"
around the globe, the Society also mastered the difficult organizational and administrative tasks required to operate what John Law
and Bruno Latour have called long-distance networks. Through a
push-pull process involving the needs and aspirations of both the
Society and society, Ignatius and his advisors made two decisive
moves; one into education (specifically, the education of "externs"
who were not members of the Society) and the other into the overseas missions. Both ministries demanded sophisticated administrative apparatus that entailed intelligence gathering, competent execution of directives, and the recruitment of both human and
non-human resources. The combination of overseas experience
and direct access to members of the educated elites (i.e., students,
parents, and patrons) presented Jesuits with a number of opportunities for novel forms of confession-building, including what may
be called "ministries among the learned". I would like to argue
that Jesuit long-distance networks provided the infrastructure, and
the learned ministries the initial justification for the Society's entry
into so many branches of early modern science, an entry marked
by the emergence of specific literary forms, or genres, of scientific
publication. Or to state the matter rather simply, the means of
Jesuit science are to be found in the operation of networks and its
ends in confession-building among the learned.
Any thesis that seeks to construe scientific work as an organic expression of the religious work of clerics is of course very much at

290
STEVEN
J.
HARRIS
odds with the traditional view, usually referred to as the conflict

thesis, which sees a deep and seemingly inevitable antagonism between the waysof science and the waysof religion.11The fact that a
robust scientific tradition emerged from within a Catholic religious order long noted for its counter-reforming zeal may be
taken as a partial indication of the inadequacy of this view as a
totalizing framework. A more-recent and in many respects moresatisfying historiographic orientation can, however, be found in
the work of several continental (mostly German) historians whose
work falls broadly under the umbrella label of "confessionalization
thesis". The point of departure for most confessional historians is
the emphasis, not on the self-evident conflicts between Protestant
and Catholic but on the shared strategies and methods the major
churches used to accomplish broadly similar goals; namely, "to
christianize the masses and spiritualizeeverydaylife."12
The work by Zeeden and his students on the processes of
focused initially on the common use of visitaKonfessionsbildung
tions in order to maintain confessional unity,13while more-recent
contributions from Schilling and Reinhard have identified a broad
range of shared structuresand strategies.14The most important of
" While the polemical tone of the conflict thesis, as originallydeveloped in the
latter half of the nineteenth century in John WilliamDraper'sHistoryof the Conflict
betweenReligionand Science(1874) and AndrewDickson White'sA Historyof theWarin Christendom
(1896), has certainlyabated, the theme of
fare of Sciencewith Theology
"inevitable conflict" still informs scholarly interpretation. See, for example,
Richard S. Westfall, Essayson the Trial of Galileo (Rome, 1989), 1-57 and Pietro
Redondi's GalileoHeretic(Princeton, 1987).
12The historiography on confessionalization owes its basic orientation to a
"hypothesis"proposed some twenty-fiveyears ago by the Catholic historian,Jean
Delumeau. After arguing that medieval Europe was Christian in legend only and
that the vast majorityof people (i.e., the illiterate,rural,and poor) had little understanding of Christiandoctrine and ritual, Delumeau offered the following hypothesis as guide to future research, "on the eve of the Reformation, the averageWesterner was but superficially christianized. In this context the two Reformations,
Luther's and Rome's, were two processes, which apparentlycompleted but in actual fact converged, by which the masses were christianized and religion spiriA NewViewof theCounterReformation
tualized."Catholicism
between
Lutherand Voltaire:
(London, 1977), 161.
13ErnstWalter Zeeden, Die Enstehungder Konfessionen:
Grundlagenund Formen
derKonfessionsbildung
(Munich, 1965), Konfessionsbildung
(Stuttgart, 1985), and esReform
pecially Zeeden and H. Molitor, eds., Die Visitationim Dienstderkirchlichen
(Mfinster,1977).
14 For a fuller treatmentof the theoretical frameworkof the confessionalization
thesis, see Wolfgang Reinhard'stwo articles, "Zwangzur Konfessionalisierung?ProHistorische
legomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,"Zeitschriftfiir
Forschung10 (1983), 257-77 and "Reformation, Counter-Reformation,and the

JESUIT SCIENCE
291
these include the development of a confessional hierarchy who,

through a coherent system of doctrines, rituals, and social norms,
seek to inculcate confessional values among the masses. Although
the configuration of values varied from confession to confession,
the methods employed by the major churches were similar and
centered on the use of new-or newly deployed-institutions of
propaganda (where oral, print, and artistic media were used to enhance confessional messages in the form of sermons, catechisms,
emblematic literature, religious plays, church architecture, etc.);
institutions of moral policing (e.g., the organization and supervision of confraternities, the hearing of public and private confessions, and church involvement in domestic affairs through marriage courts and domestic counseling, etc.); and, most especially,
institutions of education (both higher and lower) where the values, ideas, and doctrines of a given confession could be brought
into focus with great effect on young minds. The Leitmotifrunning
through the literature on confessionalization is that of social disciplining; that is, the common concern connecting institutions of
propaganda, moral policing, and education was to bring people
from every estate into the social grid of well-defined and well-run
confessions.
It would not be difficult to place most, if not all of the Society's
worldly activity into the framework of Konfessionsbildung.
Ignatius
had fashioned a religious corporation that from the very outset
was outwardlyoriented and its chief ministries were intended to be
"in the world."15As itinerant preachers, confessors, theologians,
Early Modem State: A Reassessment," The CatholicHistoricalReview 75 (1989),
383-404. See also Heinz Schilling, "Die Konfessionalisierungim Reich: Religioser
und gesellschaftlicherWandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,"Historische
246 (1988), 1-45.
Zeitschrift
15 "The end of this Society is to devote itself with God's grace not only to the
salvationand perfection of the members' own soul, but also with that same grace to
labor strenuously in giving aid toward the salvation and perfection of the souls of
their fellowmen."So wrote Ignatius in the "GeneralExamen"of the Society's Institutes. In the "Formula"he elaborated further, "Whoeverdesires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross of our Society ... should ... keep the
following in mind. He is a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to
strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress
of souls in Christianlife and doctrine, by means of public preaching, lectures, and
any other ministrationwhatsoeverof the word of God, and further by means of the
SpiritualExercises, the education of children and unlettered persons in Christianity, and the spiritual consolation of Christ's faithful through hearing confessions
and administering the other sacraments."TheConstitutions
of the SocietyofJesus, ed.
George E. Ganss,S.J (St. Louis, 1970), 77-78 and 66.

292
STEVENJ. HARRIS
educators, and authors of an enormous range of sacred literature,

Jesuits engaged in a number of programs, or "ministries," designed to extend and consolidate the Catholic confession. My concern here, however, is neither to review the entire gamut of Jesuit
confession-building activities nor to trace the parallels between
Jesuits and other Catholic religious orders nor, for that matter, between Catholic and Protestant activist groups.'6 Rather, I wish to
explore in some detail one part of the Jesuit confession-building
program; namely, its ministries among the learned.
While the learned ministries were primarily concerned with
right-belief and right-conduct, they also attempted to influence
"right-thinking." The Society's up-scale strategy of proselytization
(i.e., ministering to all but targeting elites for conversion and confirmation) in combination with its decision to pursue an apostolate in education, gave Jesuits the opportunity to establish themselves not only as the educators of rising elites but also as Kulturtriigeramong the learned generally. By catering to their needs, attitudes, tastes, and intellectual interests, Jesuit scholars could ingratiate themselves with the culturally powerful and at the same time
engage in a certain measure of "cognitive disciplining." The most
visible residue of this attempt to bring both young and established
intellectuals into the conceptual grid of the Catholic world view is
to be found in Jesuit publications.
For the sake of convenience, these learned ministries may be
grouped under three heads corresponding roughly to the three
main target audiences of Jesuit literary endeavor. These are the
studiosi, or the young externs from both lay and clerical estates (as
well as Jesuit scholastics) attending the Society's colleges, universities, and seminaries; the virtuosi, the mostly aristocratic connoisseurs and patrons of the arts and sciences who took special delight
in collecting and displaying antiquities, natural curiosities, and
rarities of all sorts;17 and the cognoscenti, a catch-all term comprising the citizenry of the Republic of Letters and especially the
skilled readers and technically-competent authors who possessed
some form of expertise or specialized knowledge. Despite the im16 These issues are touched upon in StevenJ. Harris,"Transposingthe Merton
Thesis: Apostolic Spiritualityand the Establishmentof the Jesuit Scientific Tradition," Sciencein Context 3 (1989), 29-65.
17Still one of the best introductions to the cult of the virtuosois Walter E.
theHisHoughton's "The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century,"Journalfor
toryof Ideas3 (1942), 51-73; 190-219.

JESUIT SCIENCE
293
precise nature of these labels and the self-evident ways in which

these populations overlapped and interpenetrated, they do nonetheless help demarcate at least approximately both institutional
loci (school, court, and "Republic") and their associated literary
genres. For it would seem that most of the Society's scientific publications fall into genres that were developed in the context of one
or more of these three ministries. Thus we find Jesuits becoming
master-writers in the collegiate genres of textbooks in mathematics
and philosophy, commentaries on Aristotle, and ceremonial publications (disputations, dissertations, and theses) in natural philosophy; in the gentlemanly genres of illustrated encyclopedias, travel
accounts, and reportage of natural curiosities; and in scholarly
treatises, in experimental and observational articles in learned
journals, and in technical tables and manuals for the emerging
communities of trained specialists. While the collegiate genres
were concerned primarily (though not exclusively) with the transmission of received, text-based knowledge, several of the genres associated with the virtuosi and cognoscenti functioned as important
channels for the dissemination of knowledge of the natural world
gained through the Society's overseas experience.
Law and Latour on Long-DistanceNetworks
If ministries among the studiosi, virtuosi, and cognoscenti offered
multiple lines of justification for Jesuits' study of nature, then it
was the Society's mastery of long-distance networks that provided
them with much of the means and mat6riel. While scholars have
long pointed to the Society's talent for organization as the "power
and secret" behind its success,18 I believe the model of long-distance networks as developed by John Law and Bruno Latour provides both a more comprehensive and a more concise account of
Jesuit organizational practices. Let me now turn to a pr6cis of their
work.
18 The theme of organization was

present in the work of Heinrich B6hmer, Die
Jesuiten (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1907), well before Rena Fiillp-Miller's highly influential
The Power and Secretof theJesuits, trans. by F.S. Flint and D.F. Tait (New York, 1930).
Max Weber addressed the question of Jesuit organization in his The ProtestantEthic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1930), chapter 4. For a
rejoinder to Weber, see Gustav Gundlach, S.J., "Zur Soziologie der katholischen
Ideenwelt und desJesuitenordens." Ph.D. diss., Universitait zu Berlin, 1928.

294
STEVEN J. HARRIS
Takingthe Portuguesespice tradeof the fifteenthand sixteenth

centuriesas his exemplar,Lawasks,how werethe Portugueseable
to gain long-distancecontrol over a region previouslydominated
control,"he argues,
by resident Muslimtraders?"Long-distance
a
creation
of
of
the
network
"dependsupon
passiveagents (both
human and non-human)which makes it possible for emissaries
(alsoboth humanand non-human)to circulatefrom the centerto
the peripheryin a waythatmaintainstheirdurability,forcefulness,
and fidelity."19
In orderfor the Portugueseto gain long-rangecontrol of the traderoutesto the EastIndies,theyhad to masterthree
what Lawcalls "devices,drilled people, and
types of "emissaries":
documents."Devicesare the technologicalaides requiredto develop and sustainrepeatedcyclesof long-distancenavigationand
would embraceeverythingfrom sextantsto lateen-riggedcarracks
and large-borecannon. The list of drilled people would include
everyone employed as trained and disciplined agents of the
crown-from advisersto the king, financiers,astronomers,instrument- and chart-makers
to captains,crews,shipwrights,and merchants-who willinglysubmitto a centralauthorityand who believe that their individualinterestsare best servedby helping to
achievecorporateends;i.e., profitabletraderuns to and from the
SpiceIslands.
that servesto
By documentsLawmeans all the work-on-paper
record,direct,and coordinateactivitiesdemandedby those trade
runs. Law uses two groups of documents (among the many re(or pilot's book) and
quired) to illustratehis point, the regimento
rutter(or portolano).The formeris a distillationof astronomical
theorytranslatedinto a seriesof recipesor procedureswherebya
and sextantin
captainwith moderatetraining-and withregimento
hand-could
solve the practical problems of open-sea navigation
(e.g., measuringthe elevationof the pole star or sun, setting a

course along a rhumbline, estimatingdistancestraveled,reckoning of time, etc.). The lattergivesadditionalnavigationalinformation in graphicalformand at the sametime provides(like the captain's log-book) a surface for the recording of new details of
shoals, shorelines,soundings,winds, and currents.As individual
or ruttertakenon boardand consulted
documents,each regimento
by a captain is essentiallya portable compendium of practical
19John Law, "On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation
and the Portuguese Route to India," Sociological Review Monographs 32 (1986),
234-63.

JESUIT SCIENCE
295
knowledge of immediate relevance to the navigational tasks at

hand. Yet as part of stable genres, the usefulness of each class of
documents grows with every cycle of voyages since manual-writers
and cartographers back in Lisbon would routinely incorporate
newly-received information from in-coming logbooks and seacharts into revised versions of the out-going regimentoand rutter.
This reciprocating relationship between documents and trade
runs meant that just as reliable genres helped make voyages more
successful, successful voyages helped make the genres more reliable. And it is precisely this functional role in the operation of a
long-distance network that calls forth and stabilizesvarious categories of documents.
Finally,Law emphasizes that in order for devices, drilled people,
and documents to come together and enable a long-distance network to run its cycles, they must also possess "forcefulness,fidelity,
and durability".Thus, in regard to devices, the forcefulness of
carracksand cannon is preserved only if each remains in one piece
during use. Equally necessary is the fidelity of human subjects to
the Portuguese crown; that is, the conscientious execution of the
duties required of them and the subordination of personal gain to
corporate goals. And third, the durability of newly-acquiredinformation is greatly enhanced if it is somehow written down on paper
(e.g., in log-books, sea-charts,or in printed pilot's manuals) rather
than committed only to memory.
The central question for Latour is essentially the same as for
Law,namely "how to act at a distance on unfamiliar events, places,
and people?" and his answer owes much to Law's work.20Latour
recasts Law'snotions of the durabilityof devices and documents in
terms of "immutableand combinable mobiles." Such mobiles consist chiefly of "inscriptions"-the reports, charts, and logs where
reliable information about remote events, places, and people is recorded-which are brought back to a center where they are "cumulated, aggregated, or shuffled like a pack of cards."21Thus, as
in Law's model, centralized administrations can strengthen their
position vis-4-visremote peoples and events if they obtain regular
20 Bruno Latour,Sciencein Action (Cambridge,MA, 1987), 223. Latour's model
of long-distancenetworksfollows from his extended discussion of "shortnetworks".
Whether Latour's notion of short networks could also be applied to parts of the
Society or to individual members, though promising, will not be addressed in this
article.
21
Ibid., 223.

296
STEVEN J. HARRIS
and reliable intelligence from the field. Latour, however, emphasizes more so than Law the iterative nature of this process and
gives it a name, "cycles of accumulation." With each cycle useful information about the distant world is brought back to an administrative center (what Latour calls a "center of calculation") where
information from the periphery is gathered together, collated, distilled, reduced, and made available for the next round of emissaries. While this is all very much as in Law's model, Latour manages
to sharpen the image by insisting that the knowledge cannot be reduced solely to the stable inscriptions, the "immutable and combinable mobiles," gathered at the center. Rather, knowledge is inseparable from the means by which it is acquired.22
The Societyof esus as a Long-DistanceCorporation
If Law tends to emphasize the structural elements, and Latour
the processes of long-distance networks, there are still many
shared features of their models that find immediate resonance in
the operation of the Society ofJesus. A centralized administration,
the training and deployment of reliable agents acting under instruction, the cycles of administrative correspondence bearing directives from Rome and intelligence from the Society's missionary
fields all worked together to help the Jesuit leadership engage in
"action at a distance." Especially in the early work of the Society's
itinerant preachers venturing into Calvinist territory in southern
France,23 its visitors seeking to re-invigorate missionaries in India,24 its confessors to Catholic princes in Germany and Austria,25
or its educators teaching the sons of nobles in Italy,26we see Jesuit
22 Tbid.,219-222. Thus knowledge and power (as expressed in the operation of
the network) are linked neither solely by a one-way flow of the former to the
centers of power, nor by the latter dictating the contents of the former. Rather,
knowledge-and-powerreside in the network as embedded processes marked by repeating cycles of cumulation and calculation.
Mind:TheMentalityof an Elitein EarlyModernFrance
23 A. Lynn Martin,TheJesuit
(Ithaca,New York,1988).
forJapan:Volume1. From
24Josef FranzSchiitte, S.J.,Valignano'sMissionPrinciples
His Appointment
as Visitoruntil His FirstDeparture
forJapan (1573-1582), trans.John
J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis, 1980).
25 Robert Bireley, S.J. Religionand Politicsin the Age of the Counterreformation:
and the Formationof ImperialPolicy
EmperorFerdinandII, WilliamLamormaini,
S.J.,
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1981).
I seminarianobidellaclassedirigentenel Sei-Settecento:
26 G.P. Brizzi,Laformazione
liumnell7taliacentro-settentrionale
(Bologna, 1976).

JESUITSCIENCE
297
generals and their assistants in Rome gradually learning how to

process information from Jesuits in the field and use it effectively
to direct their further movements. Certainly by the end of the
third quarter of the sixteenth century the elements necessary for
the maintenance of long-distance networks had become permanent features of the Society's administrative apparatus.27
Before examining the details of the Jesuit long-distance networks-and especially the Society's use of "documents and drilled
people"-I would like to suggest a few modifications to the model
to bring it in line with the empirical evidence of the Society's actual practices.28 First, Latour's notion of "centers of calculation,"
with its emphasis on numbers and measurements,29 seems more
appropriate for a twentieth-century census bureau or actuarial
firm than for a religious order. Calculation of the sort Latour discusses simply were not a prominent part of what the Society did.
What the Jesuit administration in Rome did do remarkably well
(given the constraints on travel and communication in the age of
sail) was to gather and concentrate information obtained from its
domestic and overseas stations. The more appropriate label would
therefore seem to be "centers of concentration" rather than of calculation.
By the same token, Latour's cycles of accumulation might, in the
context of the Society, be better thought of as "cycles of recruitment."30 What is crucial to the operation of a long-distance network is not the mere accumulation of knowledge (the center of a
network is, after all, much more than a repository for data) but its
27 This schematic representation of the Society is of course meant to highlight
those featureswhich seem to match the central elements of long-distancenetworks.
What it does not convey, however, are the difficulties, inefficiencies, and outright
failures of the Jesuit systemin practice.As the detailed studies cited in the previous
few footnotes demonstrate, the struggles to establish the order and efficiency for
which the old Society is famous were great. While the gap between actual practice
and the schematic model presented here is large, the purpose is to bring into relief
key organizational elements without denying the complexity of operations on the
ground.
28 These modifications in turn suggest the need for a typology of long-distance
networkswith perhaps two major classifications,the "charismaticnetwork"orchestrated by the forceful individual-e.g., of the sort Latourassigns to Louis Pasteurin
his The Pasteurizationof France(Cambridge, MA, 1988)-and the "corporate network"developed here. Such a division need not preclude the possibility that the
latter, under appropriatecircumstances,could evolve from the former.
29 Latour, Sciencein Action, 232-56.
30 "Recruitment"
is understood here to be the functional equivalent of Latour's
notion of "enrollment".

298
STEVENJ. HARRIS
incorporation into network processes. Moreover, the Society's

most important resources, its young novices, were in fact recruits
who, after being "tested in experience," were brought directly into
the body of the Society. But, as in Latour's usage, these cycles can
refer equally well to the recruitment of non-human-i.e., natural
and technological-allies. And, to broaden the notion of recruitment somewhat further, recruits (both human and non-human)
may be either "internal"and directly subject to the Society's procedures and control, or "external"and bound only loosely and informally to the Society. Thus successful novices and effective medicines like cinchona (once known as "Jesuit'sbark") may both be
considered internal recruits since the Society could largely control
their performance and therefore count on them as reliable
agents,31 while aristocratic patrons and Spanish galleons were
weakly-controlled, external recruits whose reliability was always
more a matter of "translationof interests"than of direct control. 32
Whether external or internal, human or non-human, the crucial
point is that the effectiveness and growth in projective power of
the Society depended fundamentally on the recruitment of resources, the deployment of reliable agents in designated fields of
activity,and their on-going control by a central administrativeauthority.
With these modifications in place, we can now think in terms of
the Society's chief center of concentration in Rome (with ancillary
centers in Coimbra, Seville, and the provincial capitals), its cycles
of recruitment involving both the incorporation of novices and
natural objects, and its translation of patrons' interests all being
subsumed under the broad goals of confession-building. The
question remains, however, regarding the precise linkages among
the general workings of the Jesuit long-distance network, the
learned ministries, and the Society's engagement in the study of
nature. The easiest wayof seeing these interconnections is through
Law's notion of functionally-embeddeddocuments, for it was from
the Society's internal administrative documents that the naturebearing genres ofJesuit publications first arose.
31 Both the human and herbal recruits had explicit duties in the Society and
were subject to strict regulation. Regardingthe schedulaRomanato which the latter
was subjected, see SaulJarcho, Quinine'sPredecessor:
FrancescoTortiand theEarlyHistoryof Cinchona(Baltimore,1993), 17-18.
32 On the notion of "translation",
see Latour,Sciencein Action,108-21.

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A Taxonomyof esuit AdministrativeDocuments

While historians have long recognized the importance of Jesuit
correspondence, most of their attention has focused on the content of those letters rather than on their generic classification and
functional significance.33 Yet the few works that have addressed
these problems give evidence of a surprisingly systematic-and
symmetric-structure governing the Society's administrative documents.34 In the terse prescriptive statements found in the Constitutions and other normative documents,35 in Ignatius's own letterwriting habits,36 in the offices established to assist the general in
the governance of the Society, and in its actual organizational
practices, what we find is a near-perfect symmetry in two parallel
administrative apparatus. One was intended to facilitate the good
governance of the Society and the other to build and maintain the
morale of its members. Each was supported by a specified set of
administrative offices and each charged with handling specific categories of administrative correspondence.
The most obvious aid to good governance (though by no means
the easiest to achieve) concerned the knowledge the governing
have of the governed. To this ends the Constitutions enjoined the
Jesuit general to keep "himself frequently informed by the
provincials of what is occurring in all the provinces and by writing
to the provincials."37 Well before the Constitutions were approved,
33 As B6hmer noted at the beginning of this century, "Alreadyin the time of St.
Ignatius communications by letter in the Order had an importance as in no State
of contemporaryEurope."DieJesuiten,43. It was from this enormous body of correspondence that the hundred or so published volumes of the MonumentaHistorica
SocietatisIesu have been drawn.

34 The following description of Jesuit administrativecorrespondence is taken
from John Correia-Afonso,S.J., Jesuit Lettersand Indian History (Bombay, 1955),
1-44 and Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Makingof Europe,6 vols. (Chicago, 1965),
1:314-331.
35Ganss,Constitutions,
292-93, 324-25, 327.
36 It is perhaps worth noting that, although Ignatius had traveled extensivelyas
a soldier, student, and pilgrim, he never left Rome after becoming general of the
Society.Yet it was during these later years that he wrote the vast majorityof his administrativeletters, which constitute the largest survivingcorrespondence from the
sixteenth century.
37 Ibid.,324 & 326. The regular exchange of administrativecorrespondence was
to extend up and down the ranks of the Society, for the Constitutionsalso required
that "local superiors or rectors ought to write their provincial superior everyweek
[and] the provincial should likewise write to the general every week if he is near.
The general too will see to it that a letter is written to them ordinarily once a

300
STEVENJ. HARRIS
reports from the field took form as a stable genre of administrative

correspondence called hijuela. These in-coming reports, written
primarily by provincials, covered matters of personnel,38 the state
of the province or house, and local events and developments of
relevance to the Society; and they were to be sent to Rome at regular intervals, factual in content, succinct in expression, sufficiently
detailed to give the general and his advisers a picture of the situation in question, and (most importantly) confidential.39 To assist
the general in the review of in-coming hijuela the office of secretary to the general was created, and the secretary's chief duties
were to read through all the hijuela, digest and prioritize their contents, and summarize key points for the benefit of the general and
his advisors.40 The secretary also helped the general with the composition of responses, which often took the form of the instructio,
or instructions and directives. These out-going instructions carried
the core administrative decisions of the Jesuit leadership and, like
the hijuela, they were confidential, detailed, and iterative.41
The other major division of Jesuit correspondence had as its
task the "union of hearts" through the systematic circulation of
"edifying reports." In addition to the self-evident need for regularized communication of administrative matters, Ignatius recognized from early on the importance of establishing procedures for
month, at least to the provincials;and the provincialsin turn will take care that a
letter is sent to the local superiors [and] rectorsonce a month."Ibid.,292.
38 In addition to regular reports of events in the field, each provincialwas also
to send to Rome every four months updated lists of personnel working under his
direction, along with confidential "accountsof the qualities of these persons for in
this wayit will be possible to have better information about the persons and to govern the whole body of the Society better, for the glory of God our Lord."Ibid.,293.
Jesuit Letters,5-7. So important were the hijuela that both
39 Correia-Afonso,
Ignatius and his secretaryJuan Polanco, produced long instructions-amounting
almost to a manual for the writing of the Society's internal correspondence. Here
Polanco clarified what sort of information each class of correspondence should
contain, the style in which each should be written, and how information should be
arranged.Ibid.,15-16.
`
Ganss, Constitutions, 327.
For an example of this iterativeprocess, see Schfitte, Valignano s Mission Principles,48-53. Before his departure to India as the new-appointedvisitor of the Society's Indian province, Valignano took with him copies of instructiogeneralis(general instructions regarding the overall scope and goals of the given project.), instructio particularis(detailed instructionson particularmatters), andfacultia (lists of
articles specifying special powers and duties of the relevant offices)--all of which
were modified through repeated exchanges of correspondence both before and after his departure.
41

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the regular composition, editing, and circulation of newsletters

"through which each region can learn from the others whatever
promote mutual consolation and edification in our Lord."42 Every
four months provincials were to gather from the colleges, missionstations, and houses under his charge correspondence containing
"only edifying reports."43 After making any emendations he
thought appropriate, the provincial had multiple copies of the
quadramestral reports made (in both the vernacular and Latin),
oversaw their circulation within his province, and sent copies to
Rome. The in-coming quadrimestral reports were the special responsibility of the office of the hebdomadarius.44Like the secretary
to the general, the hebdomadariuswas to gather, collate, and review
all in-coming reports, make judgments about what was the most
important news or the most edifying stories, and then pass the resulting distillation on to the general for his approval. The out-going correspondence took the form of newsletters and Annuae
Litterae, which circulated among all of the Society's far-flung members. As reservoirs of edifying stories and de facto chronicles of the
Society's activities for that year, the Annual Letters played an important role in bolstering Jesuit morale and building a sense of
corporate identity and purpose. And despite the administrative
burden they imposed, the edifying newsletters were much-loved by
Jesuits and became a permanent feature of the internal correspondence of the Society.
The distinct functions, but similar modes of organization of the
offices of secretary and hebdomadariussuggest a simple of way of arranging the Society's internal correspondence.45 These two offices
42 Ganss, Constitutions, 292.
43 Because of the administrative burden this four-month cycle imposed on provincials, the quadrimestral reports were made annual in 1565.
44 From the Latin hebdomas, meaning "seventh day", since it was Ignatius's original intention to have such edifying letters written and circulated (at least locally)
once a week. The Constitutions required that the office be given to a "father of talent and prudence" and, like the office of the secretary to the general, it existed
from the Society's earliest days. The Society's first hebdomadariuswas in fact Francis
Xavier. Correia-Afonso,Jesuit Letters, 2.
45 Correia-Afonso offers the following five-part classification of Jesuit administrative documents: those meant for 1) the superiors of the Order, 2) the members
of the Society in general, 3) the public at large, 4) personal friends within or without the Society, and 5) "allied documents" consisting of "studies or reports on particular topics, such as the life and customs of a particular tribe", etc. Ibid., 8-9. Although the scheme I suggest covers only the first two or three categories, it has the
advantage of emphasizing specific administrative functions within the Society. And
while personal correspondence, both among Jesuits as well as between Jesuits and

302
STEVEN
J.
HARRIS
give us the two major divisions of "administrative"and "edifying"

correspondence; the former confidential, private, and written as
an aid to governance and the latter familiar, pubic, and written to
help maintain the Society'sespritde corps.Each body of correspondence may in turn be subdivided into two categories, depending on
whether the correspondence is "in-coming"(i.e., directed toward
an administrative center) or "out-going" (directed outward to
Jesuits working in the apostolic fields). Administrativegenres may
thus be arranged in a two-by-twogrid with the two administrative
cells occupied by private, in-coming hijuelaand the private, out-going instructions and directives. Similarly, the public, in-coming
quadrimestral letters and the public, out-going Annual Letters
make up the cells of edifying correspondence. This arrangement
not only highlights the symmetry of the cycles of in-coming and
out-going correspondence but also the symmetrybetween the private/administrative and the public/edifying cycles. More importantly, this scheme also suggests how the Society could successfully
move from genres designed solely for employment internal to the
Society to genres intended for use among externs.46
Of the four internal administrative genres we have touched
upon, it was the Annual Letters that held the greatest potential as
a medium for an external reading public. If the Society's members
were hungry for news from their far-flung confreres and if they
found reports of their deeds and accomplishments uplifting, then
externs, surely carried a great deal of scientific information (the published correspondence of virtuallyevery major scientific figure of the period, from Tycho and
Kepler to Leibniz and Lalande, contain numerous letters from Jesuits), unpublished literarycommerce lies beyond the scope of this paper.
46 It is worth noting in passing that while Lawacknowledges the importance of
the "fidelityof drilled people" and Latour elaborates upon the waysin which the
translation of interests can lead actors to become enrolled in someone else's network, neither provides a mechanism for how group identity and loyaltymight be
maintained. What the empirical evidence from the Society of Jesus suggests, however, is that the "union of hearts"among members and their "mutualconsolation
and edification"were valued as highly as administrativeintelligence and control.
What is more, the organizational machinery to accomplish the task of edification
was strikinglyparallel in structure to that employed in the making and communicating of administrativedecisions. While there were other elements necessaryfor
the task of boosting morale (e.g., well-articulated"Rulesof Deportment,"the early
inculcation of ideals, and the Jesuit habit of assigning members to small "primary
groups"), it would seem that the sociological mechanisms of loyalty,whateverthey
might be, deserve a more prominent place in the received model than they thus far
have. Clearlythese mechanisms would have a greater role to play in longer "corporate"than in shorter "charismatic"networks.

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perhaps similar benefits could be expected from the circulation of

such news and reports among non-members. In fact, a key element in the legitimization of the Society's move from an internal,
"public" genre to external, published genres intended for a
learned and lay readership was the prospect of edifying (and perhaps recruiting) externs. The move from internal to external and
from manuscript to print was therefore also largely a move from
vocatus to ministerium; that is, while the primary function of edifying reports within the Society was to help confirm Jesuits in their
calling through a heightened sense of fraternal solidarity and corporate identity, the published versions of those reports were
meant to confirm members of the learned elite in their commitment to the Catholic confession and in their patronage of the Society's educational and missionary apostolates. The crucial point
here is that the published "genres of edification" were also the earliest vehicles for the dissemination of Jesuit reports of nature and
therefore, I would argue, the common ancestors of several lineages of publications that figure prominently in the Society's scientific corpus. In a word, the legitimization of published letterbooks
for the learned elites opened the door for other forms of "profane" publications, including scientific genres tailored to the tastes
of the virtuosi and eventually the cognoscenti.
The Phylogenyof Scientific Genres
Ignatius himself had recognized the broader "public relations"
value of the edifying correspondence he helped create, and he explicitly stated that the circulation of judiciously-edited news from
the missions among friends of the Society was "a means to secure
their interest and goodwill."47 Juan Polanco, secretary to Ignatius,
appended to his manual on the writing of administrative letters a
list of reasons why correspondence was important to the Society: in
addition to edification and good governance, reports could advertise the good works and name of the Society, attract readers to the
Jesuit vocation, and inspire friends of the Society to continue or increase their support of its missions.48 Such insights were quickly
put into practice; in the 1540s Ignatius arranged to have extracts
47 Correia-Afonso,Jesuit Letters,33.
48 Ibid., 33-34.

304
STEVENJ. HARRIS
from Jesuit letters transcribed for the personal collection of

Marcello Cardinal Cervini (later Pope Marcellus II), and already
by 1545 we find that letters written the previous year by Francis
Xavier in Cochin had been translated into French and published
to great acclaim. This was one of the earliest publications from the
Society and the first letter from the East ever to be published in
Europe.49 So great was European curiosity for "news from overseas"-and so well-positioned was the Society to exploit that curiosity-that the Jesuit leadership took the remarkable step of systematically printing portions of its internal correspondence and
distributing those collections through secular booksellers.50 By
1573-less than thirty years after the first published letter from
Francis Xavier and just ten years after the final session of the
Council of Trent-the Society had published more than fifty editions of letterbooks from the Indian mission alone.
The thirst of the learned for all thing foreign extended of
course to the natural world of foreign places. Ignatius understood
early on that assuaging this curiosity, while perhaps not the royal
road to salvation, was nonetheless a road to royalty (or at least to
those members of the aristocracy taken by the cult of virtuosity)
and therefore to friendships of great potential value to the Society.
In his instructions to the Jesuit superior in Goa, Ignatius remarked
that he had "taken the pulse of persons of great quality and intelligence" and found that they desired not only more information
from the Indian missions but also information of a sort different
from what had been found in previous reports. Ignatius therefore
suggested the following shifts in focus and emphasis in order to
better accommodate the appetites of his patients.
Some leading figures who in this city [Rome] read with much edification for
themselves the letters from India, are wont to desire, and they request me
repeatedly, that something should be written regarding the cosmography of
those regions where ours [i.e., members of the Society of Jesus] live. They
49Lach,Asia, 315-16.
50
The Introduction to Copia de algumas cartas (Lisbon, 1562), edited by the
Jesuit fathers of Coimbra, provides the followingjustification for the Society move
to print. "Since from this Province of Portugal have to be sent to all the colleges
and houses of the Society the letters which each year are written to us from India,
Japan, and China, and other eastern regions by our Fathersand Brotherswho are
there engaged in the conversion of the gentiles, and it is not possible to satisfythe
desires of all if they were to be copied by hand and by other ordinaryprocesses, it
seemed convenient in the Lord to print some of the many that have arrived."
Letters,34. See also Lach,Asia, 317-20.
Correia-Afonso,Jesuit

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want to know, for instance, how long are the days of summer and of winter;
when summer begins; whether the shadows move towardsthe left or towards
the right. Finally, if there are things that may seem extraordinary,let them
be noted, for instance, details about animals and plants that are either not
known at all, or not of such a size, etc. And this news-sauce for the taste of
a certain curiosity that is not evil and is wont to be found among men-may
come in the same letters or in other letters separately.51
It bears repeating that, despite the mild tone in which they were
conveyed, these "suggestions" were in fact part of an instructio and
therefore binding, that Ignatius was in fact the general of the Society, and that he was explicitly altering the instructions for the letter-writing duties ofJesuit missionaries in order to please "persons
of great quality and intelligence." What we have here then is compelling evidence that before the end of the Society's second decade-and coincident with its move into the publication of genres
of edification-the
content of the Society's internal edifying reports was deliberately broadened to include information of particular interest to the virtuosi scattered among Europe's well-educated. By catering to the tastes and interests of the virtuosi, Ignatius
opened a space within the Society's growing corpus of external
publications for reports from nature. Thus the presence of such
reports in the Society's early publications was neither an unintended consequence of Jesuit missionary travel nor purely a matter of individual Jesuit initiative, but a matter of policy set by the
Society's founder and leader. And when we recall that these reports appeared in genres that proved to be among the early Society's most successful publishing ventures, then we can begin to see
the extent to which the study of nature was itself becoming "naturalized" within the Society and confessionalized within the Society's strategies of recruitment.
Once the move to print had been taken and as long as the cycles
of administrative correspondence from the Society's ever-expanding network of overseas missionaries continued to turn, the Society
was able to sustain not just occasional letterbooks but a number of
different published genres based on its quadrimestral and annual
reports. Beginning in 1583 and continuing for more than thirty
51 Ignatius to GasparBerze (also Barzaeus), dated February24, 1554. CorreiaAfonso, Jesuit Letters, 14 (citing Monumenta Ignatiana. Espistolae et Instructiones, V,
329-30). Already as early as 1547 we find Ignatius urging missionaries in India to

send information about "suchthings as the climate, diet, customs and characterof
the natives and of the peoples of India." Ibid., 13 (citing MonumentaIgnatiana.
Espistolaeet Instructiones, I, 648-50.

306
STEVENJ. HARRIS
years, the leadership in Rome oversaw the publication of the

Annuae Litterae SocietatisJesu (or Annual Letters), which were sys-
tematic compilations based on the in-coming reports from all

Jesuit provinces.52The consolidation of editorial control in Rome
not only solved many of the problems that had plagued earlier
letterbooks (e.g., unauthorized editions, irregular censorship of
sensitive material, embarrassingfactual inaccuracies or contradictions, poor translations, inconsistencies in content, style, and emphasis, etc.), it also served to standardize the genre, sanction the
content, and legitimate the publication of works that could be classified as neither explicitly theological, liturgical, catechistical, nor
spiritual. In a word, through a series of decisions to tolerate, encourage, and then control the printing of works deemed useful in
the edification of externs, the Jesuit leadership effectively legitimated a new category of publications neither strictly sacred nor
strictlyprofane but nonetheless instrumental in the recruitment of
friends and patrons.
There is yet another important consequence of this move into
the publishing arena. The centralized editorial control of correspondence from afar intended for continuous publication in a series of indefinite duration gave the Annuae Litteraemany of the
characteristics of a genre usually associated with the late seventeenth century, the learned journal. And indeed, by the beginning
of the eighteenth century there appeared in Paris under the
editorship of French Jesuits two serial publications, the Lettres
Edifianteset Curieuses53and the periodical (properly so-called) enti52The first series, initiallyentitled AnnuaeLitteraeSocietatisJesu
annii MDLXXXI
ad Patreset FratreseiusdemSocietatis(Rome, 1583), covered the years 1581-1614 in
thirtyvolumes. After a long hiatus, the second series (published in the 1650s) covered the years 1650-1654. Ibid.,38.
53 The first of thirty-fourvolumes of the Lettres
Edifianteset Curieuses,ec'itesdes
MissionsEtrangekres
de la Compaignie
deJisus appeared in 1702,
par quelqueMissionaires
the last in 1776, with several re-editions thereafter.Ibid.,39. It is important to note
here that in the years between the publication of the last volume of the Annuae
Litteraeand the first volume of the LettresEdifiantesFrenchJesuits also brought out
annual volumes of theJesuitRelations,which consisted almost entirely of missionary
correspondence from New France. See R.G. Thwaites,Jesuit Relations(Cleveland,
1896) and J.C. McCoy,JesuitRelationsof Canada (New York, 1937). From 1726 to
1758 Josef St6cklein edited the series NeueWeltbott(Augsburgand Vienna), which
contained translations into German of many letters from the LettresEdifiantesas
well as a large number of previously-unpublishedcorrespondence from Germanspeaking missionariesin India, China, South and CentralAmerica and the Philippines. See Anton Huonder, "P.Joseph St6ckleins 'Neuer Welt-Bott',ein Vorldtufer
der Katholischen
Missionenim 18.Jahrhundert,"Die Katholischen
Missionen33 (19041905), 1-4, 30-33, 80-83, 103-107.

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307
tled,Journal de Trevoux.54Although smaller in format and in scope

and focusing primarily on French overseas missions, the Lettres
Edifiantes was like the Annuae Litterae in that it drew its substance
from Society's edifying reports, catered to the tastes and interests
of the learned, and was enormously successful as a publishing venture. The Trevoux was created to compete with the Journal des
Scavans and sought to address a broad range of cultural topics of
current interest to citizens of the Republic of Letters. About half
of the journal's articles were in the natural and mathematical sciences and a great many of those (especially in astronomy, natural
history, geography, anthropology, and medicine) depended directly on reports and observations from the overseas missions. The
fact that the Trevoux was one of the most successful learned journals of the eighteenth century suggests that, like the Annuae Litterae and LettresEdifiantes, it was at least partially successful in accomplishing its implicit task of winning or retaining the cultural allegiance of the learned.
While each member of this family of genres, from letterbooks to
learned journals, was a form of published correspondence gathered and edited under the auspices of the Society and distributed
among the educated elites with the implicit goals of edification,
patronage, and recruitment in mind, none (with the partial exception of the Trevoux) could be considered a scientific genre properly so-called. However successful these genres of edification may
have been in their primary tasks, none was dedicated to the description, study, or manipulation of natural objects or phenomena. Given that the tastes of the target audiences, this should not
be too surprising. What one finds in these genres are works with
varying amounts of space (depending on time and place-less in
the early letterbooks and a great deal in the LettresEdifiantes) given
over to largely anecdotal but reliable descriptions of exotic flora,
fauna, landscapes, rivers, mountains, and peoples with occasional
runs of systematic measurements and observations (primarily in
54
The full title wasJournal de TrevouxMimoirespour servir i 1histoiredes scienceset
desarts. Its name was taken from the small town of Tr&vouxnear Lyonswhere it was
published from 1701 until 1731, when it was moved to Paris and continued under
the name Mimoiresde Trevouxuntil the dissolution of the order in France in 1762.
See Jean Erhardand Jacques Roger, "Deux Periodiques FranCaisdu 18e siecle, Le
'Journal des Savants' et des 'Memoires de Trevoux': Essai d'un Etude Quantitative," in Livre et Societedans France du XVIIe Siecle, ed. G. Bolleme et al. (Paris, 1965),
33-59.

308
STEVENJ. HARRIS
the fields of astronomy and positional geography and mostly in the

eighteenth century).
One might object with justification that occasional reports of the
"remote and heterogeneous" productions of nature with little attention to sustained programs of observation, measurement, or
collection scarcely constitute a scientific tradition. If the matter
ended with the genres of edification, the point would be well
taken. My claim, however, is that once this literary pathway to the
curious had been opened and once genres intermediate between
the sacred and profane became acceptable vehicles for Jesuit authors, a veritable commerce in natural knowledge arose between
Jesuits and segments of the learned laity. Other genres would,
however, be needed if the trade in natural knowledge were to be
expanded. The gifts of exchange upon which this commerce was
based in fact soon over-topped the bits of "cosmographical" information Ignatius suggested and gave way to long missives giving detailed reports in response to specific requests on this or that natural phenomenon; to natural objects themselves (e.g., plant and
animal specimens, herbal medicines, exotic stones, gems, and minerals); and to published treatises on the natural history, geography, and anthropology. As the body of natural knowledge used
and controlled by the Society grew, enterprising Jesuit authors
old genres new to the Society-through
found new genres-or
which to court patrons and benefactors.
The Ontogenyof a Scientific Treatise
The expanding role of natural knowledge in the operations of
the Society as well as the move from anecdotes and curiosity reports to full treatises in natural history is nicely illustrated in the
work of Jose de Acosta. Born in Medina del Campo the same year
the Society of Jesus was founded, Acosta joined the order when
only thirteen years old. By age sixteen Acosta had written three
plays (which count as among the earliest recorded in the Society)
and by age thirty-two he had set sail with several fellow-Jesuit for
Peru. There he joined the entourage of the Viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, and accompanied him on his extensive travels
through the region. In addition to the considerable experience he
gained during his travels (he crossed and re-crossed the Andes on
several occasions, traversed jungles and valleys, and even witnessed

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the famous comet of 1577 at the Jesuit enclave of Juli near the
shore of Lake Titicaca), Acosta also availed himself of the reports
of his fellow-Jesuits some of whom had traveled as far as the Amazon, others had already lived for years among indigenous peoples,
and still others had mastered several of the indigenous languages.
During his travels as missionary and itinerant preacher, he recorded his observations on mountains, rivers, peoples, plants, and
animals he had seen and summarized his conversations with ship's
captains and soldiers.55 And during his more sedentary duties as
professor of theology at the recently-founded College of St. Martin
in Lima and provincial of the Peruvian province, Acosta began reworking his notes into the first two chapters of what would become
his celebrated treatise, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias.
His literary intentions notwithstanding, Acosta's knowledge of
peoples and places stood him in good stead during the Provincial
Council of 1582-83 in Lima, where he helped prepare highly detailed instructions for missionary priests and catechisms for the Indians. A solid grasp of the geography of a region as well as a
minute understanding of local beliefs and customs was of critical
importance to the success of the Society's proselytizing efforts. After the close of the Council, Acosta departed for Mexico, again recording his observations of both the natural and human worlds.
Recalled to Spain by Philip II and to Rome by Claudio Aquaviva,
the Jesuit general (both of whom desired to have personal reports
from him regarding the state of Peruvian Viceroyalty and Province), Acosta left Mexico in 1587. Once he was back in Madrid,
Acosta quickly brought to press several manuscripts in theology,
one on the conversion of Indians, and another on the natural history of Peru and Mexico.56
55 Acosta informs us in his "Advertisement to the Reader" of his Historia Natural
that in regard to what he has written concerning the Indians of the New World, "I
have beene carefull to learne from men of greatest experience and best seene in
these matters, and to gather from their discourses and relations what I have
thought fit to give knowledge of the deedes and custome of these people. And for
that which concernes the nature of those Countries and their properties, I have
learned it by the experience of many friends, and by my diligence to search, discover, and conferre with men of judgement and knowledge." Acosta, The Natural
and Moral Historyof the Indies, trans. Edward Grimston (1604; reprint, with Introduction by Clements R. Markham, New York, 1912), xxiv.
56 His important publications in theology were De Christorevelato (Rome, 1588)
and De temporibusnovissimis (Rome, 1588). The works on the conversion of Indians
De promulgationeEvangelii apud barbarosand natural history De natura novi orbis were
published in Salamanca in 1588-89. The latter work Acosta soon translated into

310
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J. HARRIS
This last work contained a wealth of observations-as well as

some rather astute speculations-regarding both the general
problems of geography (e.g., the distribution of land masses and
oceans, the formation of mountains, the cause of winds and tides,
the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes) as well as the particular problems of New World natural history. Here Acosta speculates about the historical relationship between inhabitants of the
New World and the Old (and surmises that a land-bridge must
have once connected the two regions), and reports in considerable details on the customs, beliefs, and practices of New World
peoples and on the natural plant, animal, and mineral productions of Peru and Mexico. Acosta's descriptions are generally quite
accurate with little tendency toward exaggeration or invention; he
is critical of received opinion and balanced in his assessment of explanations; and his breadth of information is astounding. These
qualities, along with the sheer novelty of his material, helped make
the work enormously successful.57
After his initial meetings with Philip II-and after receiving the
king's leave to do so-Acosta dedicated his HistoriaNatural to the
Infanta Dofia Ysabela Clara, the daughter of Philip and Elizabeth
of Valois. In that dedication we find an echo both of Ignatius' implicit praise of "a certain curiosity that is not evil" and of his explicit concern to strengthen the bonds of friendship between "persons of great quality"and the Society.
[Als knowledge of, and speculations concerning the works of nature, especially if they are remarkable and rare, causes a feeling of pleasure and delight in refined understandings, and as an acquaintance with strange customs and deeds also pleases from its novelty, I hold that this work may serve
as an honest and useful entertainment to your Highness. It may be that, as
in other things so in this, your Highness showing a liking for it, this little
work may be favored so that the King our Lord may choose to pass a short
time in the consideration of affairs and of people so nearly touching his
royal crown. I dedicated another book to his Majesty,which I composed in
Latin, touching the preaching of the evangel to those Indians. I desire that
all I have written may serve, so that the relation of what God, our Lord, deposited of his treasure in those kingdoms, may cause the people of them to
receive more aid and favor from those to whose charge His high and divine
providence has entrusted them.58
Spanish, appended several chapters, and published anew under the title Historia
naturaly moralde las Indias (Seville, 1590).
57The HistoriaNaturalwent through a total of four editions in Spanish, two in
Dutch, two in French, three in Latin, two in German, and one in English-almost
all appearing before 1610. Acosta,Naturaland MoralHistory,xii-xiv
58Acosta,Naturaland Moral
History,xix-xx.

JESUIT SCIENCE
311
While the dedication may have been a gracious and discreet

plea for continued patronage from the crown, the book itself,
though perhaps an "honest and useful entertainment", was nonetheless a deeply erudite work displaying both Acosta's humanist
learning and his critical reflection on his observations of the Peruvian and Mexican territories. It was, in other words, a scholarly
treatise worthy of the attention of the best naturalists of the day.
As important as Acosta's Historia Natural was to contemporaries'
understanding of the New World, we ought not loose sight of its
significance as a Jesuit publication. This work ranks not only as
one of the most important treatises of the period on the natural
history of the New World, it is also one of the first book-length
treatises by a Jesuit author dedicated solely to natural history.
Moreover, Acosta had gathered his observations while serving in
various offices of the Society; he compiled, distilled, and organized
his notes while serving as professor and provincial in Lima; his informants were very often members of his Order (whose experiences among the Indians far exceeded his own); and his work on
natural history was but one treatise in a veritable explosion of publications in theology and missiology released immediately following his return to Spain. And while Acosta was clearly an intelligent
observer and deeply curious about the natural world, much of the
information he gathered was crucial to the operation of the Society. And just as clearly, Acosta massive work was not called forth by
casual requests from friends of the Society back in Europe. Rather,
it was a product of Acosta's own initiative, his critical reading of received texts, and the opportunity of extensive travel afforded him
by his vocation as a Jesuit and assignment to an overseas mission.
And finally, just as in the case of letterbooks, the treatise in natural
history could now be construed as a pious double-entendre; on
the one hand it was a thing in itself, pursued for its own sake and a
contribution to the scientific discourse of the day. On the other, it
was a means to an apostolic end, an instrument used in the recruitment of patrons, and a way of advertising the talent and accomplishments of Jesuits to a powerful reading audience consisting
certainly still of the ever-curious virtuoso but now also of the informed scholar, the cognoscento.
The Historia Natural was Acosta's only published work in natural
history and his only contribution to the natural sciences generally;
all his many other publications were in theology and missiology.59
59 After the publication of the HistoriaNatural,he was named visitorof the Society's Spanish provinces of Andalusiaand Aragon and eventuallybecame embroiled

312
STEVEN
J. HARRIS
It would not, of course, be the Society's only contribution to the

natural sciences. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Jesuit authors produced a steadily increasing number of
works in natural history resulting in a collective literary output of
nearly one thousand published treatises, textbooks, journal articles, reference works, and compendia on topics ranging from descriptive and mathematical geography, hydrography, mineralogy
and meteorology to botany, zoology, and what we would now call
cultural anthropology. Until about the middle of the eighteenth
century (when local and regional natural histories entered the
Jesuit corpus), the vast majority of Jesuit publications in natural
history came from authors who either themselves had served in
the overseas missions or who were in contact with those who had.
And in a great many cases, the works arose directly from missionary work. Two examples will have to suffice to illustrate the character of the Jesuit tradition in natural history, the obscure work
of Manuel Tristao and the well-known activities of Athanasius
Kircher.
At about the time of Acosta's death, a Jesuit lay brother and "infirmarian" (a nurse and perhaps also an apothecary) by the name
of Manuel Tristao was nearing the completion of a manuscript on
the natural and moral history of Brazil (based on his thirty years of
experience among the indigenous peoples) when an English raiding party headed by Frances Cooke took it from him. The manuscript was eventual sold to Samuel Purchas who included it in his
well-known Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims. Tristao's
only compensation for his literary labors (virtually nothing is
known about him otherwise) is Purchas's praise of the work as
"the exactest Treatise of Brasil which I have seene written by any
man, especially in the Historie of the multiplied and diversified
Nations and customs of men; as also in the naturall Historie of
Beasts, Serpents, Fowles, Fishes, Trees, Plants, with divers other
remarkeable [sic] rarities of those Regions."60 While in this highly
in an "unedifying"theological and administrativedisputes with the Jesuit General
Claudio Aquavivaand in the Society's Fifth General Congregation (1593). His last
years he served as rector of the Jesuit college at Salamancawhere he died in 1600.
See WilliamV. Bangert,S.J.A History of theSocietyofJesus (St. Louis, 1972), 98-102.
6
Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1624; reprint,
Glasgow,1906), p. 417. Appended to Tristdo's"Treatiseof Brazil"(pp. 418-503) is

his (or what is presumed to be his) "Articlesfor Brasil"(pp. 503-517), in which the
author makes a number of recommendations regarding improvementsin the governance of the Brazilianterritory.

JESUIT SCIENCE
313
unusual case the path to publication lay far beyond the control of
the Society, the content of the work suggests its original purpose.
The treatise is mostly devoted to the geography of the region (especially to the location of rivers, impenetrable jungles or swamps,
and hospitable openings); the identity and character of the many
tribes of the region (i.e., which ones were of a mild disposition,
which ones hostile, and how to identify each tribe by its characteristic style of haircut); the symptoms and cures of diseases (many of
which seemed indigenous and unlike those in Europe, and had
cures based on local materia medica), and the careful descriptions
of edible and on-edible plants, poisonous serpents, and dangerous
beasts. Such choices of topic and emphasis mark the work as a
handbook (or rather a survival manual) for pioneer-missionaries.
This would seem to be exactly the sort of book that a missionary
might wish to pore over during the voyage to Brazil and have in
hand as he sets off to find his assigned mission-station. Had
Tristaio's treatise not been abducted as one of Purchas's unwilling
pilgrims but instead seen print as a mission manual, Jesuit missionaries bound for Brazil would, in Latour's words, "be familiar with
things, people and events, which are distant" and therefore would
be that much stronger as they entered into their trials of strength
against an otherwise unknown human and non-human environment.61 Whatever the intended purpose of Tristao's manuscript
may have been within the Society, clearly it suited Purchas's purpose in reaching an audience of well-educated, well-born, and
well-placed friends (and potential patrons) of English long-distance voyaging. Presumably it could have been as useful a literary
emissary for Jesuit interests had its publication remained under
the authority of the Society.
One could scarcely imagine a greater contrast than the one between Tristao, the poor and obscure lay-brother missionizing at
the margins of the Society who was wrongfully deprived of what
was very likely his only literary production, and Athanasius Kircher,
the learned priest, theologian, and mathematician who became
perhaps the most famous Jesuit of the seventeenth century and
one of the Society's most prolific authors while working in Rome,
the very heart of the Catholic imperium. The distance separating
Trist~io and Kircher is, however, only the distance between periphery and center within a single organizational network. Rome of
61
Latour, Sciencein Action, 219-220.

314
STEVEN
J. HARRIS
course had alwaysbeen the administrativenerve-center of the Society, and Kircher'syears there coincided with what most historians
consider the golden era not only of the Society but also of the
counter-reforming Church.62 And it would seem that Kircher's
work in the Society-his disparate roles as author and editor of a
startlinglywide-ranging opus, as an intelligencer who amassed one
of the largest bodies of correspondence of the seventeenth century, as a collector and exhibitor of rarities of unimaginable variety, and as an impresario evangelizing through the emblematica of
nature and wonder-making"devices"-takes on a good deal of coherence when viewed in context of a center of concentration.63
Kircher sat at the center of a network largely coincident with the
Society's administrativenetwork but one that had as its object intelligence reports not about the human world but about the natural. As Findlen demonstrates, the fraternal bond among Jesuits
made it easy for Kircher to trust his confreres located in the over-
seas missions to provide him with reliable reports on nature, to

carry out his instructions regarding observations, to send of specimens for display in his museum or as gifts to selected friends of
the Society. As missionaries were recalled to Rome for debriefing
with the Jesuit general, Kircher was quick to avail himself of the
opportunity and converse at length with them, as he did for example with Michael de Boym after his return from China in 1664.64
And it was Kircher (along with his students and assistants)who col62
Paula Findlen, "Scientific Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Athanasius Kircher

and the Roman College Museum,"RomaModernae Contemporanea
3 (1995), 625-65.
Findlen provides extensive detail on Kircher'sactivitiesin Rome and embeds it in
the rich culturalconnotations of the time.
63 Ibid., 628. Insofar as the institutional
support for Kircher's activities is concerned, her discussion of Kircher'scontacts with Jesuit missionaries, exchange of
correspondence, and his requests of specific information or objects seems largely
consistent with the notion of center of concentration developed here. As Findlen
her writes, "Itis hardly surprisingthat a religious order which produced the prototype of the professional traveler,the missionary,should have facilitated the work of
one of Europe's greatest collectors who used the information accumulated by his
fellowJesuits to create a new encyclopedia of knowledge. ... Training collectors of
scientific data, corresponding with Europe's leading scholars and cultivating patrons whereverhe went, Kircherwas uniquely situated to receive the riches that increased traveland exploration had uncovered."Ibid.,630-31.
64Findlen, PossessingNature, 165. Kircherrelied heavily not only upon Boym's
spoken word about the wonders of China but also upon his written and published
word. He cited both Boym's correspondence and his Florasinensis (Vienna, 1656)
in his own China ilustrata (Rome, 1667), as well as the Novus atlas Sinensis (Vienna
& Amsterdam,1655) of Boym'sfellow-missionaryMartinMartini.

JESUIT SCIENCE
315
lated the information and objects sent from afar, classified it, and
arranged it in both the published encyclopedias for which he was
so well-known and in the innumerable displays and exhibits found
in his Wunderkammerand museum for the edification and entertainment of the wealthiest and most powerful patrons in western
Christendom-Protestant
as well as Catholic. Thus Kircher, operating from the very center of the most important center of concentration in the Society, could amass a greater quantity of natural
knowledge and a greater number of natural objects than any Jesuit
before (or after) him. Even more importantly, he could put both
knowledge and objects to work in securing the intellectual allegiance and material support of patrons by deciphering for them
the great emblem of nature, the meaning of which bespoke of
god's omnipotence, wisdom, and care as well as of man's moral
and spiritual responsibilities to the deity.65
If there is irony in Kircher's repeated requests-and
repeated
denials-for permission to travel to China as a missionary, there is
also a deep logic. Those on the periphery and those at center were
bound together not only by iterated cycles of correspondence,
they were also bound by codes of trust and a common identity
based on their shared formation as Jesuits and their commitments
to the ideals of the Society. While Kircher may have longed for the
overseas adventures of an itinerant missionary, he surely must have
also realized that he never could have gained as much knowledge
of the periphery from the periphery as from the center. And he
must have also realized that however much he might have envied
his fellow-Jesuits "laboring in the vineyards of Christ," he too was
laboring in the vineyards-though
perhaps the vintage he sought
was more in the way of confirmation of the faithful (and powerful)
than conversion of those with little or misplaced faith.66 Indeed, in
Kircher's correspondence, publications, and collections we see
perhaps the clearest example of the uses of the Jesuit long-distance network in the recruitment of nature for the purposes of
confession-building.
65Ibid.,379.
66 Findlen, "Kircher and the Roman College Museum," 653.

316
STEVENJ. HARRIS
Conclusion
Within a hundred years of its foundation the Society had successfully established an extensive network of overseas missions and
the largest unified system of higher education ever known in Europe. At the same time the administrative apparatus required to
operate both apostolates had matured and stabilized; appropriate
offices had been created, duties defined, procedures codified, categories of administrative documents standardized, and the training and oversight of personnel routinized. By the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the Society's involvement in the learned ministries (primarily among the studiosi but, as we have seen, also
among the virtuosi and cognoscenti) had produced a number of
well-respected scholars publishing in well-marked genres within
the mathematical and natural sciences as well as in natural philosophy.67 Young Jesuits entering at this time with an inclination toward the study of nature not only found themselves in a religious
order that tolerated and even encouraged their interests through
a curriculum that included mixed mathematics and emphasized
natural philosophy,68 they also found themselves in an international corporation capable of providing them with informational
and organizational resources not generally available in the era before the foundation of large, state-supported scientific academies.
Thus, while originally intended to serve the administrative needs
of an apostolic religious order dedicated to the extension and consolidation of the Catholic confession, by the seventeenth century
the organizational elements of the Society's long-distance networks also served to facilitate and coordinate collaborative efforts
between Jesuit professors in the Society's colleges and universities
and Jesuit missionaries scattered throughout its overseas stations.
67 The publications of Christoph Clavius in mathematics, the Coimbra commentaries on Aristotelian natural philosophy, and as we have seen above, Acosta's
treatise on natural history may be taken as generally representative of the stable
genres of the Jesuit scientific corpus ca. 1600.
6 While the scope of this article precludes an examination of the forces acting
in the legitimization of collegiate genres in the early Society, the accompanyingarticles by Leijenhorst and Hellyer make clear both the centralityand pervasiveness
of academic publications.From the enormouslyinfluential Coimbracommentaries
printed at the turn of the century to the ubiquitous textbooks and Cursusin natural
philosophy and mathematics, collegiate publications remained the single largest
family of genres in the Society's scientific corpus throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, accounting for well over half of the entire scientific corpus.

JESUIT SCIENCE
317
The resonance between a network capable of the in-gathering of

natural knowledge from the remote parts of the world and multiple university-based centers for the concentration and dissemination of that knowledge can scarcely be over-emphasized. While neither component was unique to the Society, no other long-distance
corporation of the early modern period succeeded in operating
both a long-distance network of the sort described here and a system of higher education. While the other large Catholic religious
orders involved in the overseas missions faced similar problems of
long-distance control, not even the Franciscans and Dominicans
(both mendicant orders with a strong tradition in education) were
able to develop and expand their studia generalia in such a way
so as to take advantage of the natural knowledge now available
through their respective long-distance networks. And if the largest
and most successful overseas trading companies (like the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the Dutch in the seventeenth, and
English in the eighteenth) were wealthier and more efficient in
matters regarding the durability of "devices" (i.e., ships and cannon) and in the control of travel than the Society, none was in the
business of educating the sons of nobles and ambitious burghers.
Although merchant ships provided the means of travel for a large
number of naturalists and their cargo of natural specimens in
the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth centuries, the nature of the mercantile enterprise itself did not generally encourage the open communication of knowledge lest that knowledge
strengthen rival companies. Most crucially, no other long-distance
corporation seems to have possessed the organizational means or
incentive to transpose administrative correspondence into published genres useful in the advancement of corporate programs.
While other religious orders and a few trading companies tried
their hand at letterbooks of one form or another, none was as systematic in their redaction, as sophisticated in their "marketing", or
as successful in their sustained exploitation as the Society of Jesus.69 Only with the arrival of large, state-supported scientific academics toward the end of the seventeenth century do we begin to
find the sort of organizational structures necessary to run long-distance networks capable of both gathering and dissemination natural knowledge from remote regions.
In sum, the movement of the Society's authors into genres bear69
Correia-Afonso,Jesuit Letters, 34.

318
STEVEN
J. HARRIS
ing natural knowledge from afar depended upon a unique combination of factors at play in the origin and development of the Society: the mastery of long-distance networks, an apostolate in education, and the expansion of its confession-building program to include ministries among the learned elites. The Society's sustained
"scientific interests" were in part a reflection of the fact that a certain amount of natural knowledge was required in order to run
that network (geography, surveying, practical natural history, practical anthropology, medicine, and pharmacy) and in part a reflection of the learned interests of its target clientele. By construing
their knowledge of the natural world as a means of securing access, friendship, and patronage among cultural elites, Jesuits as
priests and theologians could justify their engagement with mathematics, natural history, natural and experimental philosophy.
Thus we may see the entry of the Society into so many branches of
early modern science neither as an aberration of the religious vocation nor as an abandonment of the cleric's primary duty to god
and church, but as the attempt to recruit nature as an ally in the
central task of confession-building.
ABSTRACT
The ability of the Society ofJesus to engage in a broad and enduring tradition of
scientific activity is here addressed in terms of its programmatic commitment to
the consolidation and extension of the Catholic confession (i.e., to a multipronged program of confession-building) and its mastery of the administrative
apparatus necessary to operate long-distance networks. The Society's early move
into two major apostolates, one in education and the other in the overseas missions, broughtJesuits into regular contact with the educated elites of Europe and
at the same time placed the Society's missionaries in remote parts of the natural
world. The modes of organization of travel and communication required by the
Society's long-distance networks (i.e., the training and deployment of reliable
agents willing to work under direction in remote locations and capable of providing trustworthyreports and observations to their superiors through regular exchange of correspondence) not only facilitated scientific communication and collaboration within the order, it also provided Jesuits with the resources they
needed to engage successfully in 'ministries among the learned'. Evidence of a
sustained attempt byJesuit authors to assume the role of Kulturtrfgeris found in
the several genres of scientific publications that dominate the Society's scientific
corpus. Thus the Society's early recognition of the "apostolic value" of scientific
publications in recruiting friends and allies among Europe's intellectual elites, I
argue, allowed a robust interest in natural knowledge to emerge as a legitimate
part of the Jesuit vocation.


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Confession-Building, Long-Distance Networks, and the Organization of Jesuit Science

Author(s): Steven J. Harris

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The Paradox of esuit Science

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has added considerably to our understanding ofJesuit science, the

the Church:Political Inquisition or CriticalDialogue? (Cambridge, 1995).

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Confession-buildingand Learned Ministries

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odds with the traditional view, usually referred to as the conflict

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these include the development of a confessional hierarchy who,

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educators, and authors of an enormous range of sacred literature,

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precise nature of these labels and the self-evident ways in which

18 The theme of organization was

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Takingthe Portuguesespice tradeof the fifteenthand sixteenth

solve the practical problems of open-sea navigation

(e.g., measuringthe elevationof the pole star or sun, setting a

and the Portuguese Route to India," Sociological Review Monographs 32 (1986),

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knowledge of immediate relevance to the navigational tasks at

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generals and their assistants in Rome gradually learning how to

29 Latour, Sciencein Action, 232-56.

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incorporation into network processes. Moreover, the Society's

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A Taxonomyof esuit AdministrativeDocuments

SocietatisIesu have been drawn.

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reports from the field took form as a stable genre of administrative

Ganss, Constitutions, 327.

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the regular composition, editing, and circulation of newsletters

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give us the two major divisions of "administrative"and "edifying"

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perhaps similar benefits could be expected from the circulation of

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from Jesuit letters transcribed for the personal collection of

The Introduction to Copia de algumas cartas (Lisbon, 1562), edited by the

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329-30). Already as early as 1547 we find Ignatius urging missionaries in India to

Espistolaeet Instructiones, I, 648-50.

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years, the leadership in Rome oversaw the publication of the

tematic compilations based on the in-coming reports from all

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tled,Journal de Trevoux.54Although smaller in format and in scope

The full title wasJournal de TrevouxMimoirespour servir i 1histoiredes scienceset

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the fields of astronomy and positional geography and mostly in the

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This last work contained a wealth of observations-as well as

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While the dedication may have been a gracious and discreet

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It would not, of course, be the Society's only contribution to the