Girolamo Imbruglia has published The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and a Cultural History of Utopia (1568-1789). The new books “explores the religious foundations of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, and the discussion of the missionary experience in the public opinion of early modern Europe, from Montaigne to Diderot,” according to Brill Publishers.
In particular, Imbruglia examines three relationships emerging from the Jesuit missions: civilization and religion, religion and political imagination, and utopia and history. The text argues, through a study of narrative crafted by the Jesuits, “that the idea and the practice of mission have been one of the essential features of the European identity, and of the shaping modern political thought.”
A table of contents appears below. More information is available at: https://brill.com/abstract/title/17430.
Europeans and Religious Orders in America —
The Society of Jesus : Missionaries and Missions —
The Missions and Public Opinion in the Crisis of European Conscience : Utopias and Republicanism —
Montesquieu, Republican Utopia and Civilisation —
The Age of the Encyclopédie and Rousseau : New Paths and New Needs to Rethink Utopianism —
1750s-1770s: Political and Social Conflicts —
Utopias and Human Sciences : Diderot’s Analysis of Society —
Beyond the Lumières.