1. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA & THE EARLY JESUITS: STUDIES

 

John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) paperback, $23.  Must reading.  It marks such an advance that most previous studies look woefully out-of-date.  O’Malley’s gift is not just the balance of his historical judgment and the lucidity of his prose, but his ability to put things in context—to see the forest for the trees.

 

Thomas Worchester, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) paperback, $30.  NEW.  A valuable collection of essays on Ignatius, the early Jesuits and its worldwide missions.

 

Sélim Abou, The Jesuit ‘Republic’ of the Guaranís (1609-1768) and Its Heritage (New York: Crossroad, 1998) paperback.

Antonio de Aldama, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: An Introductory Commentary, trans. Aloysius J. Owen (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1989).

Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond: 1540-1750  (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Presss, 1996).

Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999) paperback, $35.

William Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus, 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986) paperback, $28.  A solid, if sometimes, wooden survey.

William Bangert, Jerome Nadal, S.J. (1507-1580): Tracking the First Generation of Jesuits, ed. Thomas M. McCoog (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992) paperback.

William Bangert, Claude Jay and Alfonso Salmeron: Two Early Jesuits (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985) paperback.

William A. Barry, Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way (New York: Paulist Press, 2002) paperback, $12.  A brief but precise introduction to Jesuit spirituality.

Paul Begheyn, "Bibliography on the History of the Society of Jesus," Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 75 (2006): 385-528.

Robert Bireley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1529-1724 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press / Harvard University Press, 2008) paperback, $20.  NEW.

Philip Caraman, Ignatius of Loyola: a Biography (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990) paperback.

Philip Caraman, A Study in Friendship: Saint Robert Southwell and Henry Carnet (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995) paperback.

Philip Caraman, Tibet: The Jesuit Century, Studies in Jesuit Topics 20 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1997).

Thomas Clancy, The Conversational Word of God: A Commentary on the Doctrine of St. Ignatius of Loyola concerning Spiritual Conversation, with Four Early Texts (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978).

Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) hardcover, $99.  NEW.

Nicholas P. Cushner, Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the First Evangelization of Native America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) paperback, $30.

Candido de Dalmases, Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Life and Work, trans. Jerome Aixala (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985) paperback, $14.

Cándido de Dalmases, Francis Borgia (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991) paperback, $18.  Borgia was the 3rd general of the Society and imposed his organizational stamp on the Society.

John Patrick Donnelly, Ignatius of Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits, Library of World Biography Series (London: Longman, 2004) paperback, $21.

Vincent J. Duminuco, ed., The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspectives (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).

Francis Edwards, Robert Persons: The Biography of an Elizabethan Jesuit, 1546-1610 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995).

Harvey D. Egan, Ignatius Loyola the Mystic, Way of the Christian Mystics 5 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991) paperback.

Harvey D. Egan, The Spiritual Exercises and the Ignatian Mystical Horizon (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1976) paperback.

Mordechai Feingold, ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002) hardcover, $50.

Joseph de Guibert, The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Practice, trans. William J. Young (1952; reprint: St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972) paperback.  Dated in many ways, but a classic.

Marcus Hellyer, Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

James V. Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debates at the Tower of London in 1581 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998) hardcover, $35.

Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540-1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) hardcover, $90.

William Jaenike, Black Robes in Paraguay (Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers, 2008) paperback, $25.  NEW.

Lance Gabriel Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005) hardcover, $60.

Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) hardcover, $55.  A study of the iconography of Jesuit Baroque churches, especially the work of Andrea Pozzo.

David Lonsdale, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: An Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality, Traditions of Christian Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000) paperback, $19.

Thomas M. Lucas, Landmarking: City, Church, & Jesuit Urban Strategy (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997) hardcover, $35.

A. Lynn Martin, The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).

D.E. Mungello, ed., The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994).

Eric Nelson, The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590-1615), Catholic Christendom 1300-1700 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005) hardcover, $95.

John O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steve Harris & T. Frank Kennedy, eds., The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) hardcover, $80.

John O’Malley & Gauvin Alexander Bailey, ed., The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773 (Buffalo: Univerity of Toronto Press, 2006) hardcover, $95.  NEW.

John O’Malley, “To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerome Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 15, no. 5 (1983). A fine study of early Jesuit spirituality.

Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Loyola’s Acts: The Rhetoric of Self, The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics 36 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

John Padberg, "Ignatius, the Popes, and Realistic Reverence," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 25 (May 1993): 1-38.

André Ravier, Ignatius of Loyola and the Founding of the Society of Jesus, trans. Maura Daly (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987).

Andrew C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994).

George Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, His Life, His Times, 3 vol. (Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973).  German scholarship at its most exhaustive.  The definitive study of Xavier.

Paul Shore, "The Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony and Its Influence on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 30 (Jan. 1998): 1-32.

Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Senuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) hardcover, $50.

Josef Franz Schutte, Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan, 2 vol. (St. Louis:; Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980).

George W. Traub, An Ignatian Spirituality Reader (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008) paperback, $19.  NEW.

Ines G. Zupanov, Disputed Missions: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) paperback, $20.

 

Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, 4 vols. (Rome: Instituto Histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, 2001 / Madrid: Ponficia Universidad de Comillas).

 

 2. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA & THE EARLY JESUITS: TEXTS

 

Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1991) paperback, $25.  This volume, translated by some of the top Jesuit historians, offers Ignatius’ Autobiography, which details his conversion and the formation of the early Jesuits. Ignatius’ other classic, The Spiritual Exercises, should not really be read.  It is what it says it is: a gymnastics book for the spirit, and really should be used under the guidance of a spiritual director.  This volume has some good excerpts from Ignatius’ little-known letters and his Constitutions.

 

The Ratio Studiorum: The Official Plan of Jesuit Education, trans. Claude Pavur (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005).

Robert Bellarmine, Spiritual Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality, ed. John Patrick Donnelly and Roland J. Teske (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) paperback, $15.

Guilio Cesare Cordara, On the Suppression of the Society of Jesus: A Contemporary Account, trans. John P. Murphy (Chicago: Jesuit Way, 1999)

Ignatius of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms, ed. John Padberg (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996).

Ignatius of Loyola, Counsels for Jesuits: Selected Letters and Instructions of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, ed. Joseph Tylenda (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1985).

Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the Text of the Spiritual Exercises, Penguin Classics, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz & Philip Endean (London: Penguin Books, 1997) paperback, $16.

Jerome Nadal, Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, ed. Frederick Homann, 3 vol. (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 2003).

Roberto de Nobili, Preaching Wisdom to the Wise: Three Treatises by Roberto de Nobili, S.J., Missionary and Scholar in 17th Century India, trans. Anand Amaladass & Francis X. Clooney (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2000).

Matteo Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci, 1583-1610, trans. Louis Gallagher (New York: Random House, 1953).

John Patrick Donnelly, ed., Jesuit Writings of the Early Modern Period (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006) paperback, $13.

Edmond C. Murphy & Martin E. Palmer, trans., The Spiritual Writings of Pierre Favre: The Memoriale and Selected Letters and Instructions, Jesuit Primary Sources in Translations I, 16 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1997).

Martin E. Palmer, trans., On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit Manuscript Discoveries and the Official Directory of 1559 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996).

Martin E. Palmer, trans., Ignatius of Loyola: Letters and Instructions, Jesuit Primary Sources in English Translations 3 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006) paperback, $29.

Robert S. Miola, ed., Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) paperback, $45.  NEW.

 

 3. COUNCIL OF TRENT & EARLY MODERN CATHOLICISM

 

Michael A. Mullet, The Catholic Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1999) paperback, $33.  Some of the best advances in current Reformation scholarship are from study of the Catholic side.  This uneven survey catches readers up on some recent developments; not very good on the Jesuits.

 

John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) paperback, $16.  O’Malley traces out the historical prejudices that have caused historians to read Catholic developments in terms of Protestant ones, rather than seeing 16th-century Catholicism for what it was: a complex, many-sided Church with reformist elements, with backward looking ones, with evolving trends in piety and the intellectual life.  Lucid and pungent.

 

David Luebke, The Counter Reformation: The Essential Readings, Essential Readings in History (New York: Blackwell, 1999) paperback, $36.  The title is a bit misleading.  Not a collection of original sources, but of interpretations of the Counter-Reformation by leading historians.

 

John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) An eccentric interpretation.

Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999) paperback, $20.

Louis Châtellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society, trans. Jean Birell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Arthur G. Dickens, The Counter Reformation, Library of World Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968) paperback, $13.

Barbara B. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) paperback, $22.

Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation, ed. John Bossy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) paperback, $8. A classic.

Gigliola Fragnito, ed., Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy, Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) hardcover.

R. Po-Chia Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, New Approaches to European History 30, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) paperback, $26.

Martin D.W. Jones, The Counter Reformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge Topics in History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) paperback.

Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism, Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006) hardcover, $100.

Paul V. Murphy, Ruling Peacefully: Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Patrician Reform in Sixteenth Century Italy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007) hardcover, $80.

Hilmar M. Pabel & Kathleen M. Comerford, Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001) paperback, $28.

Regina Portner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, Styria 1580-1630, Oxford Historical Monographs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) hardcover, $60.

Richard Rex, The Theology of John Fisher: A Study in the Intellectual Origins of the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) paperback, $32.

Gianvittorio Signorotto & Maria Antonietta Visceglia, eds., Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492-1700, Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) hardcover, $60.

Anthony D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From The Council of Trent to the French Revolution, 1564-1789, Longman History of the Papacy (London: Longman, 2000) hardcover, $38.

Anthony D. Wright, The Counter-Reformation: Catholic Europe and the Non-Christian World, 2nd ed., series: Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005) hardcover, $100.

 

 

Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila, Outstanding Christian Thinkers (reprint, 1991; New York: Continuum, 2004) paperback, $13.  Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, is a superb patristics scholar, but also a deep concern for the history of spirituality.  Here he gives a fine introductory study to the lively down-to-earth mystic who reformed the Carmelites.

 

Gillian T.W. Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) paperback, $20.

Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) paperback.

Joseph F. Chorpenning, The Divine Romance Teresa of Avila’s Narrative Theology (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992).

Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable. Vol. 1: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) paperback, $22.  A difficult and at times oracular, but full of brilliant insights into the invention of "mysticism."  Incomplete.

Louis Dupré & Don E. Saliers, ed., Christian Spirituality III: Post-Reformation and Modern, World Spirituality Series 18 (New York: Crossroad, 1991) paperback, $38.

Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain: the Alumbrados (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) hardcover.

Stephen Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) paperback, $28.

Edward Howells, John of the Cross & Teresa of Avila: Mystical Knowing and Selfhood (New York: Herder & Herder, 2002) paperback, $40.

Kieran Kavanaugh, John of the Cross: Doctor of Light and Love, Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series (New York: Crossroad, 2000) paperback, $17.  A good popular study by John’s English-language translator.

Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) paperback, $13.

Carole Slade, Teresa of Avila: Author of a Heroic Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Colin P. Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003) hardcover, $50.

Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) paperback, $19.

Wendy M. Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition, Christian Spiritual Traditions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004) paperback, $14.

God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross (Washington, DC: Institute of Cistercian Studies, 1991) paperback, $40.

 

Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez (New York: Paulist Press, 1979) paperback, $22.  Teresa is warm and chatty, but is a shrewd analyst of the interior life.  This is perhaps her best work.

 

John of the Cross, Selected Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh (New York: Paulist Press, 1987) paperback, $22.  John is perhaps the greatest and most austere analyst of mysticism in the Catholic tradition.  His paradoxical language can be baffling and easily misunderstood by one unfamiliar with the tradition of ‘negative theology.’ 

 

Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Mary E. Giles (New York: Paulist Press, 1981) paperback, $12.

John of the Cross, The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, rev. ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh & Otilio Rodriguez (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991) paperback, $18.

Luis de Leon, The Names of Christ, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Manuel Duran & William Kluback (New York: Paulist Press, 1984) paperback, $12.

Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of Teresa of Avila, 3 vol. (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976-1980) paperback, $14-$18 per volume.

Teresa of Avila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, Penguin Classics, trans. J.M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1988) paperback, $11.

William V. Hudon, ed., Theatine Spirituality, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1996) paperback, $23.

 

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Revised: April 14, 2009

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