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Introduction20
God, the “common good,” rests not on theological but philosophical founda-
tions, and it has been demonstrated that the sources of the qualities and vir-
tues listed in Ignatius of Loyola’s (c.1491–1556) Constitutions as necessary to
succeed in this undertaking include secular ones like Cicero’s De officiis (Of
duties).51 It is owing to the all-inclusive character of the common good that
while the Constitutions are firm in defining certain goals, in the pursuit of these
goals they provide for expediency and ways of procedure “according to times,
places and circumstances,” from which the famous bent of Jesuits to flexibility
and adaptability—criticized by adversaries as concessions to the profane and
other sorts of opportunism—derives.52
Finally, in searching for Jesuit distinctiveness, it is worth looking more close-
ly at the third ministry mentioned above, that of teaching, which rose to spe-
cial prominence thanks to a 1560 decree of Ignatius’s successor as general, Di-
ego Laínez (1512–65, in office 1558–65), requiring all Jesuits to teach at some
point in their career. Being a teacher thus became fundamental to Jesuit iden-
tity.53 The Society created and maintained an international public education
system, consisting in the mid-eighteenth century of around seven hundred
schools of various kinds in Europe and around an additional one hundred in
other continents, everywhere based on the same curriculum, texts, and peda-
gogy. The schools broadened and redefined the mission of the Society of Jesus
as cultural and, indeed, as civic: located in cities, they served the burghers who
might be indifferent to liturgy, but were concerned about the education of
their offspring, and were willing to make donations.54 As the purposes of Jesuit
education were attuned to the larger aspirations mentioned above—saving
souls and helping neighbors while contributing to the common good, includ-
ing that of civil society as well as the church, understood in unison—it is little
surprise that while the Ratio studiorum actually imposed limitations of philo-
sophical and theological speculation in teaching, the curriculum had a strong
“unclerical” component in the studia humanitatis, implying a dedicated study
and emulation of Latin and Greek classics as recommended by Renaissance
51 Kevin Spinale, “The Intellectual Pedigree of the Virtue of Magnanimity in the Jesuit Con-
stitutions,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 2, no. 3 (2015): 451–69.
52 “Few religious superiors can have told members of their order so firmly to forget the rules
and do what they thought best.” John Bossy, “Editor’s Postscript,” in H. Outram Everett,
The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1968), 126–45, here 130. Cited in O’Malley, “Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus,” 5.
53 O’Malley, First Jesuits, 200–1; Paul F. Grendler, “Jesuit Schools in Europe: A Historiographi-
cal Essay,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 1 (2014): 7–25; Grendler, “The Culture of the Jesuit
Teacher 1548–1773,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 3, no. 1 (2016): 17–41.
54 O’Malley, “Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus,” 14.
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Titel
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Untertitel
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Autoren
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Verlag
- Brill
- Ort
- Leiden
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 492
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Acknowledgments VII
- List of Illustrations IX
- Bibliographic Abbreviations X
- Introduction 1
- 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
- 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
- 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
- 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
- 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
- 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
- 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
- 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
- Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
- Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
- Bibliography 400
- Index 459