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Ignatius on Obedience (1542)

In the following letter, Ignatius offers a reproof to a Jesuit scholastic. Giovanni Battista Viola professed obedience yet sought to impose his own solution to an academic difficulty, which he had created by ignoring Ignatius’s directions. Ignatius responded with his two understandings of “blind” obedience. Viola had gone to Paris with Andrés de Oviedo in […]

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Formula the Institute (1540)

The following text is the “Formula of the Institute” composed by St. Ignatius and his first companions in 1539 as a kind of charter or mission statement for the new Society of Jesus. It was inserted with minor revisions into the 1540 bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, in which Pope Paul III formally approved the foundation

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The Kind of Person the Superior General Ought to Be (1558)

This document, a chapter from the Part IX of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, articulates the desired qualities in the Jesuits’ superior general. Though the Constitutions were not approved until the first General Congregation of 1558, the first Jesuits elected Ignatius as their superior general in April 1541. Ignatius collaborated with Juan Alfonso

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Ignatius on Trent (1546)

In the following letter, Ignatius offers instructions to how Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmerón, and Claude Jay, whom he had sent to the Council of Trent at the order of Pope Paul III, were to deal with others there. He advises the three men to “be slow to speak, deliberate and loving” on matters before the

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General Congregations

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus recognized the difficulty in maintaining a unity among Jesuits so dispersed in the world, noting that “the Society cannot be preserved or governed, or consequently, attain the aim it seeks for the greater glory of God unless its members are united among themselves and with their head.” In Part

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Fathers General

The Society of Jesus—much like “all well-organized communities or congregations”—appoints a person “whose proper duty,” according to the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, “is to attend to the universal good.” For the Jesuits in particular, the superior general’s “duty is the good government, preservation, and growth of the whole body of the Society.” (Rather

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January 2017: Ganson an In-Residence Fellow at the Institute

Barbara Ganson, professor of History and director of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at Florida Atlantic University, starts her Senior Research Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies. She will remain in residence during the spring semester to work on a translation and edited volume of Peruvian Jesuit missionary Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista

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January 2017: New Essays at Jesuit Historiography Online

New essays are now available in the Jesuit Historiography Online, hosted by Brill Reference. An Open Access resource due to the support by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, Jesuit Historiography Online presents essays by experts in their field summarizing key texts, surveying recent scholarship, and suggesting future areas of inquiry.

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