Introduction

What is Jesuit devotional literature? Unlike many of the other topics included in this collection, what should and should not be classified as “Jesuit devotional literature” is difficult to define with precision, although not for lack of material. The Society of Jesus has produced an incredible amount of printed works in its history, much of which can be described as “devotional,” seeking to move the reader toward deeper piety and religious feeling. When describing the “typographical pietas” of early modern Catholicism, John Bossy explained how such texts “created an intimate version of monastic devotion which promoted individual meditation, silent prayer and interior dialogue with Christ.”¹ But such definitions can risk becoming overly elastic, since in the end nearly any text could be meditated upon, and what one reader finds useful the next may find worthless. It is telling that the Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús does not contain a specific entry on devotional writings, and in its brief note for “piété (livres de),” the Dictionnaire de spiritualité declares the category to be “too vague to allow for a determination of [its] limits.”²

For the purposes of this essay, I take “devotional literature” to include manuals for meditation, handbooks for prayer, printed collections of sermons, lives of the saints, and other spiritual and ascetical works. This does not include catechetical works (which are primarily intended to teach the fundamentals of faith, not deepen one’s appreciation of it) and polemical works (written to argue against the religious beliefs of another), and it also excludes scripture itself, which serves as the basis for all devotional writings but is not “authored” in the same sense as other devotional tracts.³ Devotional literature is also popular, both in terms of intended audience (meant for lay readers and written in a straightforward manner) and form (usually cheaply printed in small, portable volumes).⁴ At the same time, I suggest the adjective “Jesuit” should be interpreted as widely as possible. Rather than simply considering works written by members of the Society of Jesus, we should also include devotional literature that was owned, read, and commended by the Society’s members, as well as works produced by non-Jesuits that are inspired, either directly or indirectly, by Jesuit spirituality.

At present there are few overviews of this specific field. As recently as 1999 John W. O’Malley, S.J. could declare that histories of the Society of Jesus “almost totally abstain from dealing with the history of Jesuit devotion or spirituality,” noting how the few that did failed to integrate the history of devotion into larger narratives.⁵ In addition to providing an introduction to the existing historiography, therefore, this essay also points toward areas where more research remains to be done.

Bibliographies and Surveys

A first step in approaching the Society’s vast literary production is to catalog its titles and authors.⁶ This bibliographical tradition dates from the early Society and is exemplified by the 1643 Bibliotheca scriptorum Societatis Iesu, edited by Philippe Algambe (1592–1652), which superseded an earlier list of Jesuit authors compiled by Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1526–1611)(the 1608 Illustrium scriptorum religionis Societatis Iesu catalogus). Such bibliographies were arranged alphabetically by author and, in the case of Algambe’s, sought to highlight the writings’ virtuous qualities. More comprehensive bibliographies appeared in the nineteenth century: first the seven-volume Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus (1853–61) produced by Augustin and Aloïs de Backer (1809–73 and 1823–83, respectively), and later the twelve-volume Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (1890–30), the first nine volumes of which were compiled by Carlos Sommervogel (1834–1902).⁷ Both works are largely arranged by author, but include more detail than the pre-suppression bibliographies and sometimes note links between different works (e.g., a translation published under a different title). Sommervogel’s work remains the gold standard for Jesuit bibliography, but László Polgár, a Hungarian Jesuit working out of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome, attempted to track twentieth-century titles to supplement Sommervogel’s work, producing a single volume covering the years 1901–80 and annual bibliographies thereafter until his death in 2001.⁸

Such bibliographies are indispensable resources for those interested in Jesuit devotional literature, but they are not without their limitations. Its thoroughness notwithstanding, even Sommervogel’s Bibliothèque remains incomplete and contains the occasional error. Moreover, until recently these bibliographies only included works written by Jesuit authors, not about Jesuits and their spirituality. One early exception is Auguste Carayon’s (1813–74) Bibliographie historique de la Compagnie de Jésus, but for devotional literature it, too, proves difficult to navigate, since the large first section is arranged chronologically, the fourth is arranged biographically, and the fifth is a mixture of “satires, pamphlets, apologies, etc.”⁹ The only thematic section, on missions, does not single out devotional titles. Thus, anyone interested in devotional literature must already know the authors or titles of the works in question to utilize these bibliographies effectively.¹⁰

Beyond bibliographies, one survey must be named in particular: Joseph de Guibert’s (1877–1942) La spiritualité de la Compagnie de Jésus, which first appeared in 1953.¹¹ The book was commissioned by Włodzimierz Ledóchowski (1866–1942), superior general of the Society from 1915 until 1942, and was meant to provide a much–needed overview of the Society’s spirituality, especially for Jesuits in formation. The text is organized into three main sections: the first on Ignatius and his spirituality; the second, a rapid overview of Jesuit spirituality from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries; and a final section examining recurring themes in Jesuit spirituality over the years, such as mental prayer, spiritual exercises, and the imitation of Christ. Throughout, de Guibert is interested in how the devotional practices of Ignatius compare to those of later Jesuits, and he underlines this continuity whenever possible. De Guibert’s work remains one of the best points of reference for Jesuit spiritual writings: even if it only skims over the surface, it is replete with lists of authors and the titles of hundreds of printed works. If anything, it can be too narrowly focused on Jesuit writings themselves, without consideration for the contexts in which they were written.¹²

A second noteworthy text is Jean-François Gilmont’s Les écrits spirituels des premiers jésuites (1961).¹³ A historian who has done extensive research on connections between printing and the Reformation, Gilmont offers a masterful introduction to the spiritual writings of the early Jesuits, beginning with Ignatius and continuing through the writings of his famous companions such as Francis Xavier (1506–52) and Diego Laínez (1512–65) as well as authors that are much lesser–known today, including Gaspar Loarte (c.1498–1576) and Frans de Costere (1532–1619). Gilmont offers summaries and context for each work, and he includes a helpful chronology of the titles under consideration. Unfortunately the book does not extend into the seventeenth century, when the Jesuits produced a large number of devotional texts. Ignacio Iparraguirre’s Répertoire de spiritualité ignatienne, de la mort de saint Ignace à celle du P. Aquaviva (1961), covers much of the same period as Gilmont and includes a greater number of titles, though with less information about each one.¹⁴

Devotional Literature in the Early Society

Any discussion of Jesuit devotional literature must begin with the Society’s founder, Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556), whose own conversion experience was rooted in such literature. While recuperating from a leg injury following the battle of Pamplona (1521), Ignatius lay in bed reading two texts that had been translated into Spanish: the Legenda aurea, or Golden Legend, of Jacob of Voragine (c.1230–98), which offered brief sketches of different saints’ lives; and the Vita Christi, or Life of Christ, written by Ludolph of Saxony (c.1295–1378).¹⁵ Scholars have thus sought to situate Ignatius’s experience within the context of late medieval spirituality, asking what currents shaped both Ignatius’s own spirituality and that of his nascent order.¹⁶ Other historians have examined specific devotional works that influenced Ignatius, including the two aforementioned titles, books of hours, and the Imitation of Christ.¹⁷ The latter, a fifteenth-century text attributed to Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471), is emblematic of the larger devotio moderna movement that emphasized interiority, contemplation, and the reading of scripture. It is one of the only works Ignatius explicitly recommends in the Spiritual Exercises, and as Maximilian von Habsburg has demonstrated, the Jesuits were instrumental in its proliferation throughout the early modern period.¹⁸

If Ignatius appreciated the value of devotional literature from the outset, it would nevertheless take some time before similar works were written by Jesuits themselves. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises are not meant to be read in the same manner as other devotional texts, and in theory they should always be made in dialogue with a spiritual director.¹⁹ In fact, although the early Jesuits were active in preaching, hearing confessions, and otherwise ministering to laypeople, Ignatius seems not to have envisioned the Society as a group of authors who would primarily minister through the printed word. The Constitutions say little about book publication, and of the few sections that deal with the subject, most reiterate the need for a manuscript to be reviewed prior to publication, and even then to be published only “if it [were] judged apt to edify.”²⁰ Some were openly skeptical of the endeavor: Alfonso Salmerón (1515–85) declared that publishing books could be “an obstacle to more excellent works of charity.”²¹

Especially given their initial reluctance to engage in writing and publishing, the Jesuits’ extensive literary output demands explanation. At a functional level, the increase in Jesuit publication may have been tied to their growing role in educational enterprises.²² But scholars have tended to agree that this writing, especially of devotional works, was part of the Jesuits’ larger ministry of the word. It was an extension of their preaching, teaching, hearing confessions, and other pastoral actions—in A. Lynn Martin’s words, “The attitude of the Jesuits was that the entire corpus of their literary work had the same ultimate end of saving souls to the glory of God.”²³ Again and again we learn that a certain devotional treatise grew out of a Jesuit’s preaching and teaching, or from his notes from giving spiritual direction, or, in some cases, the laity themselves requested that a work was written. All of these efforts sought to effect conversion or to deepen one’s piety and religious sentiment. In his brief but influential lectures published as The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (1968), H. Outram Evennett argued that the Jesuits were the “outstanding representatives” of the new religious mentality of Catholicism in the wake of the Reformation. Evennett highlighted not only Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises as an example of this new approach, but also the general dedication of the Jesuits to meditation and an active spiritual life, things best exemplified by the devotional texts the order produced.²⁴

Despite there being few overviews of Jesuit devotional writing as a whole, much more has been written about specific authors and their respective works. Early scholarship on Jesuit spiritual writers tends to have been written by other Jesuits, primarily for the edification of the Society’s own members. De Guibert fits this trend, but so do other works focused on specific authors, such as Miguel Nicolau’s excellent study of Jerónimo Nadal (1507–80), which not only examines the Jesuit’s spiritual writings, but also offers a broader image of Nadal’s spirituality and explores how Nadal’s writings on prayer and contemplation compare to those of his contemporaries.²⁵

Older studies also tend to focus on the most famous Jesuits, almost all of whom were part of the first generation of the Society. Scholars have since chosen to concentrate on forgotten Jesuits (including those who lived after the Society’s foundation) and works that were best–sellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but have since been forgotten. John Patrick Donnelly, S.J., for instance, has called attention the Ejercicio de perfección y virtudes christianas of Alonso Rodríguez (1538–1616), which appeared in more than three hundred different editions in twenty-three languages.²⁶ More recently Scott Hendrickson has written a useful study of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595–1658), a Spanish Jesuit who was also a prolific author, producing nearly eighty different works in his lifetime. Like Rodríguez, Nieremberg’s writings were exceptionally popular: his 1640 De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno appeared in seventy-five editions in various languages.²⁷ At the same time, more attention is being paid to the spiritual writings of Jesuits who are better known in other roles or for other writings. Peter Canisius (1521–97), famous for his catechisms, also wrote treatises that were more strictly devotional, such as his Hortulus animae (1563), Manuale catholicorum (1587), and Notae in evangelicas lectiones (1591–93), just as Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), best known as a controversialist and political theorist, produced a number of devotional works toward the end of his life, including De ascensione mentis in Deum (1615), De septem verbis a Christo in cruce prolatis (1618), and De arte bene moriendi (1620). All of these were translated into other languages and printed multiple times.²⁸

Parallel to this is a growing number of editions of devotional treatises, especially within the last decade (though many of these titles have appeared in popular printings for years). Rodríguez’s Ejercicio is now available in a scholarly edition, as are Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (1594) in three volumes complete with reproductions of early modern engravings.²⁹ In addition, the Institute of Jesuit Sources at Boston College has begun a series on “Sources for the History of Jesuit Spirituality,” whose first two titles include La doctrine spirituelle (1694) of Louis Lallemant (1588–1635) and Gaspar Loarte’s Esercitio della vita christiana (1557).³⁰

The subjects of Jesuit devotional writings range widely, and a single work might treat many different topics within its pages. Many are themes commonly treated in other Catholic devotional works: the life and the passion of Christ, different scenes from the Bible, lives of the saints, and the rosary.³¹ Four topics, however, are especially identified with the Society of Jesus. The first is frequent Communion. During the Middle Ages it was common for the laity to receive Communion only a handful of times a year, since it was deemed difficult to be worthy of receiving the sacrament. Ignatius and the first Jesuits, on the other hand, encouraged laypeople to receive the sacrament regularly—weekly, if not more often—and some of the earliest Jesuit publications were devoted to this theme, including Cristóbal de Madrid’s (1503–73) De frequenti usu sanctissimi Eucharistiae sacramenti libellus (1557) and Fulvio Androzzi’s (1524–75) Della frequenza della Communione (1579). This position was not uncontroversial, and Jesuit authors would be forced to defend the practice of frequent Communion in writing, especially when faced with critiques from Jansenists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The historiography on this topic mirrors general patterns for Jesuit devotional literature. Where earlier scholars like Sommervogel and de Guibert diligently compiled lists of Jesuit works addressing frequent Communion, recent studies have explored the social contexts in which such writings were used, including in the Jesuit direction of lay confraternities.³²

A second category of devotional writings relate to the sacrament of confession. This penitential literature, popularized by the Jesuits, was written for two distinct audiences: the laity who were to confess their sins, and the confessors who would hear them. Juan de Polanco’s (1517–1576) Directorium breve ad confessarii... (1554), written at Ignatius’s request, was the first such manual to be printed and would remain the standard until the sixteenth century, when Jesuit theologians began to probe the complexities of moral theology that could arise in confession, asking how individual cases should be treated given a lack of absolute clarity in precepts and the possibility of mitigating circumstances.³³ Scholars have examined in detail the development of these fields, known as casuistry and probabilism, as well as how the Jesuits were eventually attached on the grounds that such flexibility led to moral laxism.³⁴ Besides noting the proliferation of various guides to confession, such as Loarte’s Avisi di sacerdoti et confessori (1579), many studies investigate how the Jesuits approached confession in practice and how such manuals were linked to the broader currents of Jesuit spirituality.³⁵

A third recurring theme is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here too, although this devotion predated the Society’s foundation, the Jesuits would be influential in its spread, producing a number of treatises written on the subject. Álvarez de Paz (1560–1620), Luis de la Puente (1554–1624), and Kasper Drużbicki’s (1589–1662) all wrote about the Sacred Heart, but the devotion is particularly tied to the Society through the life of Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–90), a Visitationist sister who claimed to have received private revelations about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Claude La Colombière (1641–82) was Margaret Mary’s spiritual director and, after finding her stories credible, commended the devotion to others. Following Margaret Mary’s death another Jesuit, Jean Croiset (1656–1738), wrote an account of her life and penned the Dévotion au Sacré Coeur de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1691), which became one of the most widely–reproduced books on the subject.³⁶ Scholarship has shifted from producing bibliographies of Jesuit works on the Sacred Heart to investigating the larger social and cultural significance of the Society’s promotion of this devotion in specific periods and locales.³⁷

A final recurring subject in Jesuit devotional works are the lives of other Jesuits, especially those who were canonized. Written especially for other members of the Society, such accounts often center either on Ignatius and the first Jesuits or on Jesuit missionaries and martyrs. Ribadeneyra’s Vita of Ignatius (1583) reflects a desire to preserve the memory of Ignatius as his contemporaries aged and passed away, the same impulse that lay behind the efforts of Niccolò Orlandini (1554–1606) and Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625) to write histories of the Society and biographies of individual Jesuits.³⁸ Accounts of Francis Xavier’s life were among the most popular and were frequently printed in missionary contexts abroad.³⁹ These texts sought to highlight the individual’s virtue for emulation by others, and as such, they functioned like other hagiographies, a widespread form of devotional literature. Historians and literary critics have also noted the importance of martyrologies in the construction of devotional communities.⁴⁰ In the early modern period examples of Jesuit martyrs in England, including Edmund Campion (1540–81) and Henry Garnet (1555–1606), were especially well-known, but so too were missionaries who died for the faith in distant lands, including Rodolfo Acquaviva (1550–83) and his companions, who were killed in India in 1583. Similarly, the letters and reports produced by Jesuit missionaries around the world reporting their activities (such as the Relations and the litterae annuae) as well as the litterae indipetae (letters written by men asking to be sent to the Indies) circulated widely in Europe and were instrumental in furthering recruitment to the Society. Scholars have begun to explore the relationship between these texts and the Society’s vocations. Pierre-Antoine Fabre, for example, has argued that the indipetae can be read as a form of meditation and an extension of Jesuits’ experience of the Spiritual Exercises.⁴¹

One other aspect deserves to be mentioned. Where earlier studies focused on the lives of individual authors, recent scholarship is interested in the broader cultural trends that influenced Jesuit devotional writings. To begin, scholars have investigated how the same currents of late medieval Christianity that influenced Ignatius affected other Jesuit authors. We know, for instance, that Nieremberg produced a popular translation of the Imitation of Christ, and that a 1581 list of books recommended for novice masters included the Imitation of Christ, Vita Christi, and other medieval titles.⁴² The Jesuits also continued to commend devotional works from the Middle Ages even after they began to write their own books, especially titles tied to the devotio moderna. Works like the Imitation of Christ and Meditationes vitae Christi offered a style of contemplation and meditation that reinforced the devotional practices of the nascent order, often focusing on the life and passion of Christ.⁴³ In addition, scholars have explored how Jesuit authors were influenced by other writers and members of other religious orders. At times this was explicit, such as when the Jesuits chose to reprint or translate the devotional writings of others, but other connections were less obvious. The medieval Franciscan tradition, with its focus on the human suffering of Christ, was especially influential, as were Carthusians from Cologne and Spanish religious figures from the early sixteenth century.⁴⁴ The latter group included Juan de Ávila (1499–1569), a new Christian who was devoted to teaching ascetical practices to the laity, something that mirrored the efforts of Ignatius and the early Jesuits.⁴⁵ Among Ávila’s followers were two future Jesuits, the aforementioned Gaspar Loarte, who would write numerous devotional tracts during his life, and Diego de Guzmán (1522–1606), who penned the Modo per insegnar con frutto la dottrina christiana (1585).⁴⁶ Ávila’s emphasis on mental prayer (silent, individual contemplation as opposed to the spoken repetition of pre-formulated prayers) surely had an impact on these men and thus on Jesuit devotional literature—the sixth chapter of Loarte’s Esercitio discusses how readers should practice mental prayer, for example.

Much more remains to be understood about such connections, especially in the period following the sixteenth century. What has been outlined above comes from comments in studies devoted to other topics, but even this overview underlines how Jesuit spirituality stood in conscious relationship to other mystical and ascetical traditions. There are also connections between different Jesuit devotional writings that remain to be explored. The lasting influence of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, for instance, can be seen not only in the titles of works such as Rodríguez’s Ejercicio and Loarte’s Esercitio but also in commentaries on the Exercises themselves, including Luis de Guzmán’s (1544–1605) Libro sobre los Exercicios (1605) and Luis de la Palma’s (1559–1641) Camino espiritual (1626).

Publishers, Translators, Readers, and Censors

In recent decades the history of the book has gone through important methodological changes and a vast new body of research on printing, reading, and censorship has appeared. While often not directly focused on the Society of Jesus, these studies offer important new perspectives that can help inform the history of Jesuit devotional writing.⁴⁷

The Roman College obtained its own printing press in 1556, and Olaf Hein and Rolf Mader’s research demonstrates that although most of the college’s publications were intended for the Society’s own use, there were some devotional titles printed there, including Madrid’s book on frequent Communion (1557) and Loarte’s instructions for meditating upon Christ’s passion (1570).⁴⁸ This limited output suggests that most Jesuit devotional texts were printed by commercial printers outside of the Society, and by examining the offerings of various printing houses, it is clear that printers concentrated on publishing devotional works and could reprint the same title multiple times, if needed.⁴⁹ Research on the market for early modern religious writings offers general patterns that would hold true for Jesuit titles as well: devotional titles were exceedingly popular and were the most commonly-owned type of book; booksellers stocked them as a large percentage of total offerings; such printings were cheaply-produced and meant to be portable; publishers could combine different texts together in a single volume; etc.⁵⁰

Historians have also studied the subsequent translation of Jesuit works into other languages. According to a preliminary count by Peter Burke, around 260 Jesuits engaged in translation in the early modern period, most of whom were active during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—the same period that saw an increase in the production of Jesuit devotional texts as a whole.⁵¹ One should also note the decision of Jesuits to translate devotional works by non-Jesuits (especially the Imitation of Christ, but also other titles by Luis de Granada, Francis de Sales, and others) as well as the translation of Jesuit titles by non-Jesuits. This confirms Carlos M. N. Eire’s research on Catholic translations in early modern Europe in general, suggesting that Jesuit translators were not unusual in their patterns of work.⁵²

One important element that could come with publication was the addition of illustrations or engravings to devotional works. In some cases printers reused the same woodcuts for multiple titles, but in others, images would specifically be commissioned for a given work. No matter their origin, such images were integral to how individuals approached devotional literature, since they were meant to complement the text and deepen a reader’s religious experience, although decisions about illustrations were often made by the printer, not the author.⁵³ Studies on the artwork accompanying Jesuit devotional works has tended to follow the same trends as devotional literature as a whole, focusing on the most famous Jesuits and the most famous works. Perhaps the best-studied example is Nadal’s Evangelicae historiae imagines, published between 1593 and 1595 with illustrations done by Anton, Hieronymus and Jan Wierix (1552–1604; 1553–1619; and 1549–1618, respectively). Scholars have examined not only the images themselves, but also the impetus behind this composite work and its internal logic. Ignatius himself requested that Nadal write this book, and, as Thomas Buser explains, “the format and content of the book derive naturally from an amplification of the ‘composition of place’ or mental reconstruction of the scene that St. Ignatius recommends as a prelude to the contemplation of the life of Christ in his Spiritual Exercises.”⁵⁴ At the same time, much remains to be explored about the connections between devotional writing and other forms of sacred art and architecture. Jeffrey Chipps Smith has argued for a connection between Jesuit spirituality and architecture in German-speaking lands, suggesting, for instance, that wall decorations in a church in Neuburg an der Donau were inspired by the Pancarpium marianum, a 1607 text written by Jan David (1546–1613).⁵⁵ It is reasonable to assume similar instances of shared devotional content appeared across the early modern world, such that the broader impact of “devotional literature” needs to be taken into account.

Scholars have also asked who owned and read these devotional works. One approach that has borne fruit is to examine the holdings of Jesuit libraries. Brendan Connolly’s dissertation on Jesuit libraries should be mentioned as an important starting place in this endeavor, but recent research by Kathleen M. Comerford, Natale Vacalebre, and Valentino Romani, among others, offers new information that can help us understand what books the Society found important enough to own.⁵⁶ By examining available inventories it becomes obvious that devotional materials written both by Jesuits and non-Jesuits were part of every Jesuit library. It is also likely Jesuits themselves would have been reading these books given the instructions repeated over the first century of the Society’s existence, from Ignatius’s general recommendations that exercitants read devotional literature to the more formal lists of recommended reading for novices, which included titles by both Jesuits and externs.⁵⁷

There were also devotional texts that Jesuits were forbidden to read. The history of censorship has grown exponentially in recent years, and one can mine recent scholarship for mention of Jesuit figures and titles.⁵⁸ This literature reveals the complexity of the relationship between Jesuit authors, readers, and the instruments of ecclesiastical censorship. As Stefania Pastore and Sabina Pavone have explained in detail, Ignatius and his first companions came under the Inquisition’s scrutiny from the very beginning, and that inquisitors would continue to monitor devotional writings produced by the Society as well as those associated with it—for example, the Obras del cristiano, allegedly (but not actually) written by Francisco Borja, was placed on the 1559 Index of Prohibited Books.⁵⁹ Simultaneously, Jesuit superiors attempted to control which devotional authors would be read by the Society. Everard Mercurian (1514–1580), superior general from 1573 to 1580, allowed for writings by “heretical authors on nonreligious subjects” to be kept but only used with permission. This group included Savonarola (1452–1498) and Johann Gropper (1503–1559), both of whose works had been placed on the Index. Mercurian recommended some late medieval authors like Ludolph of Saxony and Thomas à Kempis, but he discouraged the reading of others, including Johannes Tauler (c.1300–61) and Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381).⁶⁰ A final area where much remains to be explored is the role of Jesuit censors, both within the Society (i.e., those who reviewed books for publication in accordance with the Constitutions) and those men who were either members of, or consultants to, the Congregation of the Index and the Roman Inquisition, including Diego Laínez, Juan de Polanco, and Robert Bellarmine.⁶¹

Missions

A subcategory of studies related to Jesuit devotional literature explores how such writings were used in the context of Jesuit missions abroad. Unsurprisingly, scholarship in this field follows the same patterns as research on Jesuit missions in general: the most sophisticated and largest number of studies center on the Chinese mission, with decreasing numbers devoted to devotional literature in Japan, Latin America, India, and North America, with very few studies on the Levant and Africa. Even then, this line of research tends to exist in isolation, removed from the studies of European devotional literature outlined above. As Ronnie Po-chia Hsia has recently observed: “A desideratum would be to connect the reception of the Catholic missionary press to the larger cultural and intellectual trends in Europe.”⁶²

A first step is the creation of bibliographies listing works that were produced in or for missions. Over a century ago Ernest Mason Satow and Johannes Laures created a pioneering bibliographies of Jesuit works in Japan.⁶³ An effort by Erik Zürcher to catalog primary sources related to the Jesuit mission in China has been continued by Nicolas Standaert and Ad Dudink, and the resulting “Chinese Christian Texts Database” (CCT) is now available online through the Catholic University of Leuven.⁶⁴ The CCT database contains both primary and secondary sources, though, like the other bibliographies mentioned above, it is more easily navigable if one already knows the author(s) or devotional work(s) in question. Beyond such bibliographies, there also are other studies that focus on mission presses in specific contexts.⁶⁵

Scholars have been especially interested in the mechanics of publication abroad. Unlike in Europe, where Jesuit texts were usually printed by lay printers, in missions the Jesuits were more likely to operate their own press. The college in Goa received a printing press in 1556, the same year one was installed at the Roman College, and Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) requested a press be sent to Japan shortly after his arrival in 1579.⁶⁶ Printing abroad presented certain challenges, the first being what typeface to use, a Latinized alphabet or specialized woodblocks for the characters of other languages. A second issue was translation: not only the difficulties involved in learning new languages but also deciding how to render theological concepts in them.⁶⁷ Recent studies have also emphasized the important role of lay converts in the translation process.⁶⁸

From bibliographies of the mission presses, we know the majority of devotional texts the Jesuits produced were simply translations of pre-existing European titles. Other works were compilations drawn from several different titles—for instance, the Tianzhu shengjiao nianjing zongdu (1628), which included a variety of prayers—or synopses of them, including Giulio Aleni’s (1582–1649) summary of the four Gospels in Chinese (1635).⁶⁹ The same themes tended to be exported abroad as well. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, for example, was spread through literature written by Jesuit missionaries, creating what J. Michelle Molina has called a “heart-shaped world.”⁷⁰ Penitential literature would likewise appear in colonial contexts. One example is Aleni’s Dizui zenggui (1627), which offered an overview of acts – organized around the Ten Commandments – that might be considered sins, a way of helping Chinese prepare for confession.⁷¹ In addition, it is clear that mission presses published a number of works by non-Jesuit authors. Among the most common titles published in Japan were translations of the Imitation of Christ and Luis de Granada’s Guía de pecadores, for instance.⁷² These translations could themselves be based on other translations, creating several layers of editorial mediation. As one example, Li Sher-shiueh has recently examined the complicated history of Manuel Dias’s (1574–1659) translation of the Imitation of Christ into Chinese, which was at least partially based on Luis de Granada’s earlier Spanish translation of the work.⁷³

To this, one might add research on devotional literature produced in England, where small devotional manuals proved to be an effective tool complementing the activities of Jesuits working covertly in the kingdom. There are numerous studies devoted to Catholic devotional writing in early modern England, beginning with A. C. Southern’s pioneering study of “recusant prose.”⁷⁴ Anthony F. Allison and David M. Rogers’s inventory of Catholic titles remains an invaluable bibliographical resource for those interested in such works, and it can now be supplemented by Thomas H. Clancy’s study of Jesuit literary production during the seventeenth century.⁷⁵ Especially interesting are cases of devotional works being adapted by Puritan authors, the most famous example being Robert Persons’s (1546–1610) The First Book of Christian Exercise (1582), which was revised and published in 1584 by Edmund Bunny (1540–1619), an Anglican clergyman.⁷⁶ Persons revised his own text and published a new edition in 1585, to which Bunny replied in a Brief Answer four years later.⁷⁷ The entire episode points not only to the contested nature of devotional literature, but also how such works proved to be popular even across confessional divisions. What is more, Persons’s work was not the only example of this phenomenon. J. M. Blom, for instance, has noted the popularity of the German Jesuit Jeremias Drexelius’s (1581–1638) devotional writings among Protestant readers in England, to the extent that even the bishop of London approved of their translation and publication.⁷⁸

Suppression, Restoration, and beyond

In 1773, Pope Clement XIV (r.1769–74) universally suppressed the Society of Jesus, and in 1814 Pius VII (r.1800–23) universally restored it. In general historiography on the “new” or “restored” Society is much more limited than the pre–suppression period, a trend that holds true for devotional literature as well.⁷⁹ As before, there is no single overview to Jesuit devotional literature for this period, but the volumes of Sommervogel et al. do include titles through the beginning of the twentieth century. De Guibert remains the best introduction for this period, since his overview of spiritual authors and writings continues to 1940. He remains focused on the question of continuity or discontinuity in the spirituality of the old and new Societies.⁸⁰

Individual studies on the restored Society offer some information about Jesuit authors and their devotional writings. Scholarship on the suppression has increased in recent years, with studies on ex-Jesuits in Germany, Italy, and the United States, as well as the small number of Jesuits who were protected in Catherine the Great’s Russia.⁸¹ Even a cursory survey suggests the writing of Jesuit devotional literature did not cease with the Society’s suppression, as seen in a 1792 edition of Prayers and Devout Instructions, which contained prayers to the Jesuit saint Luigi Gonzaga (1568–91), or the Pious Guide to Prayer and Devotion, published by ex-Jesuits in the United States in 1791.⁸² The involvement of former Jesuits in lay congregations also provided an audience for devotional writings, as in the Amicizia cristiana, a lay community in Turin, where devotional literature continued to circulate.⁸³

The growing number of studies on the restored Society suggests two overarching practices regarding devotional literature. The first is that devotional texts from the “old” Society continued to circulate and be printed in new editions. For example, Dominique Bouhours’s (1628–1702) lives of Ignatius and Francis Xavier were republished in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, as were Gaspar Loarte’s meditations on the rosary and the passion during the same period.⁸⁴ Often these works were intended for Jesuits themselves, especially those still in formation: copies of Rodríguez’s Ejercicio continued to be found in Jesuit novitiates around the world, as were variations of a Thesaurus spiritualis, which often contained the Spiritual Exercises as well as different meditations and spiritual writings, or the Liber devotionum, widely distributed to American Jesuits and which offered content similar to other prayer books, including devotions to the Sacred Heart, Mary, and St. Joseph.⁸⁵

A second theme is the standardization of devotional practices, and thus of devotional texts, across the Catholic world beginning in the nineteenth century. American Jesuit Spirituality, a collection edited by Robert Emmett Curran, offers a sampling of various texts written by Jesuits from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and confirms that most devotional texts used by the Jesuits in the United States were imported from Europe. One reads, for example, of Benedetto Sestini (1816–90), an Italian Jesuit who moved to Georgetown University and founded The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, a periodical aimed to promote that devotion but whose articles were largely drawn from other sources, such as Le Messager du Sacré Coeur de Jésus, a French periodical dedicated to the same topic.⁸⁶ These findings have been confirmed by other studies of the American Jesuits, where scholars such Gerald McKevitt have suggested the Italian Jesuits working in the western United States “sought to bring their long-marooned congregations in line with the universal church [...] by introducing them to the religious practices and theological values found elsewhere in nineteenth-century Catholicism.”⁸⁷ Devotions such as that to the Sacred Heart, McKevitt argues, were part of a “transnational devotionalism.” This is true even at the logistical level, as John T. McGreevy has noted that most devotional works used by American Jesuits were printed in Europe or were European titles reprinted in the United States.⁸⁸

For the twentieth century, and especially post-Vatican II, much focus has been placed on understanding the “charism” or “distinctiveness” of the Society of Jesus, which is closely tied to the devotional practices of the first Jesuits.⁸⁹ This has followed two paths: first, locating and reproducing Jesuit devotional writings themselves; and second, attempting to translate that spirituality into the context of the modern world. For the former, one can point to the efforts of the Jesuit curia to gather papers related to the history of the Society in the Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, or the Institute of Jesuit Sources’s parallel effort to provide English translations of important texts. Similarly, numerous issues of Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits, the journal of the Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality in the United States, address topics related to devotional literature. Notable, too, are efforts to “update” devotional works from the early Society, above all Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises.⁹⁰ This has also given rise to studies in “Ignatian” spirituality, a distinct subset of Jesuit spirituality that is rooted above all in the Spiritual Exercises.⁹¹

The audience for such devotional works is also shifting. While much of what was written prior to the twentieth century was intended for the Society’s own use, more and more books on Jesuit spirituality are clearly intended for the laity, and indeed, might be written by laypersons as well. One can consider William A. Barry, S.J., who has written extensively on spiritual direction and prayer; or James Martin, S.J. (b.1960), whose books treat some of the same themes as devotional literature prior to the suppression, including lives of the saints and meditations on the passion of Christ.⁹² The many works of Margaret Silf (b.1945) are likewise similar to those of the first Jesuit authors, since they are written so as to be “accessible to people with no theological background.”⁹³

Conclusion

This essay can only provide the broadest overview of historiography related to the vast field of Jesuit devotional literature, but even from this high level, several themes emerge. The first is a gradual broadening in focus: not only in terms of the authors under consideration (with growing interest in figures such as Loarte, Lallement, and Nieremberg) but also the recovery of titles that have largely been forgotten (such as Rodríguez’s Ejercicio). The second is an acknowledgment of outside influences on the Society’s spirituality. Although scholars have long been interested in the sources of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, they are increasingly interested in the literary influences on other authors as well as the social and cultural factors that shaped their writings (the development of the printing press and European colonialism, for instance). Lastly, there remains an underlying consistency in the subject matter itself. Despite the multitude of authors producing thousands of different works around the world, the central message of these devotional treatises remains tied to the Gospels, the life of Christ, or one of the devotions common to the Society (such as that of the Sacred Heart or Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises). Moreover, the popularity of Jesuit devotional literature over the centuries is undeniable. This is evidenced not only by the total number of titles written, but also by the multiple printings and translations of those same titles—often centuries after they were first published—as well as their many readers, both inside and outside the Society of Jesus.