Book Reviews - Jesuit Global

Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu
vol. lxxxix, fasc. 177 (2020-I)

Book Reviews

Thomas M. McCoog, ed., With Eyes and Ears Open: The Role of Visitors
in the Society of Jesus. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019. 315 pp. $179.00.
ISBN 978-90-04-39484-1.

This edited volume investigates an office of utmost importance
in the Society of Jesus, which only recently became of interest for
scholars: visitors (visitatores). As the volume’s editor Thomas M.
McCoog SJ rightly observes, a particularly important stimulus to
the field is Liam Brockey’s study of the life and works of André
Palmeiro (1569—1635), one of the first and most influential visitors
of Asia (The Visitor: Andre Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia (Cambridge,
MA, 2014). This volume is different in that, rather than focusing on
one individual, it considers several visitors throughout the history
of the Society of Jesus, paying particular attention to the office itself
from a theoretical and practical point of view. In 12 chapters, the
authors (6 Jesuits and 6 lay scholars) follow the lives and work of
different visitors and the historical figures closely related to them,
from the early modern age until the twentieth century.
   In his thorough Introduction, McCoog points out how other
religious orders employed visitors, but only in the Society of
Jesus they became so important, and mainly for two reasons: “the
centralized government of the Society, and its rapid expansion”
(p. 1). Visitors were directly appointed by the superior general,
“for difficult situations where a resolution has proved elusive” (p.
2). The “powers and nature” of their role were “defined according
to the circumstances”, as Wiktor Gramatowski SJ explained in
Glossario Gesuitico (p. 2). Representing the general, a visitor had to
be his “eyes and ears”: not simply and not only a “policeman but
a formulator of policy, and adaptor of the general principles of the
Society” (p. 3).
   The first chapter is a detailed and essential introduction on
the office of visitor. Robert Danieluk SJ shows how it could
consistently vary depending on the generals’ needs. Visitors were
needed for periodic ‘visits’, indeed, to every Jesuit province. As
external members, they came into direct contact with Jesuits of
every age and importance, listening to complaints, doubts and
issues—and trying to solve them as fast (and painlessly) as they
could. The general’s comprehensive trust allowed them to act
based on their own judgment. This was even more in the case for

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visitors of the missions in the Eastern and Western Indies: even
if the corporate network of the Society of Jesus was remarkable,
the inevitable problems of communications led visitors to act very
autonomously.
   Jesuit visitors had to deal with every kind of geographical,
political and religious situation. The book covers all the years
of the Jesuit endeavour, from the sixteenth century until
contemporaneity, recognizing successes and limits of visitors on
four continents: Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia. The
chapters dedicated to early modern Europe focus on what is today
France (Eric Nelson), the Low Countries (McCoog), Ireland (Tadhg
Ó hAnnracháin), the Czech Republic (Paul Shore) and Portugal
(Francisco Malta Romeiras). As for the twentieth century, Klaus
Schatz SJ and Oliver P. Rafferty SJ’s contributions underline
the challenges and complexities of the German and British
provinces. The Jesuit policies in the Americas are at the core of
the essays written by Andrés I. Prieto and Robert Emmett Curran,
respectively the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in Peru and
Maryland (where former Jesuits were able to survive and thrive
until the official restoration of the order in 1814). Finally, Africa
and Australia respectively are the focus of Festo Mkenda SJ and
David Strong SJ’s contributions.
   During the last fifty years, the office of visitor ceased to be
necessary. As Danieluk well explains, visitors were “intended to
bridge the gap between Rome and the peripheries, between the
superior general and his men distributed throughout the world”
(p. 46). Thanks to technological innovations, Jesuits are constantly
connected and able to communicate and, if needed, generals (or
their assistants) can promptly and easily travel everywhere. This
melancholic note closes the book: such an important Jesuit office
belongs to the past more than it does to the present or future. This
collection hopefully will inspire scholars to pay more attention
to these high ranked Jesuits whose role was essential not only
in the overseas missions, but in Europe as well. Visitors had to
deal with ordinary as well as extraordinary issues, with religious
brothers or ‘rivals’ and with political powers. Since their mission
was to act, as well as take note of what they did and saw, they left a
documentary trail which certainly deserves to be studied, and not
only by historians of the Society of Jesus.

Boston College, USA – University of York, UK		              Elisa Frei

Book Reviews                            261

Victor Houliston, Ginevra Crosignani and Thomas M.McCoog SJ,
eds, The Correspondence and Unpublished Papaers of Robert Persons,
SJ, Volume 1: 1574-1588. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval
Studies, 2017. 729 pp. $115.00. ISBN 9780888442079.

In a splendidly comprehensive introduction to this volume, the
first of three, Victor Houliston asserts “the need for a scholarly
edition of [Robert] Persons’s correspondence” to supersede “the
tendentious historiography of his career”. He and his fellow editors
have succeeded magnificently in this first volume, which carries
the story to the eve of the 1588 Spanish Armada.
   Each letter is prefaced by a meticulous short introduction. The
Latin texts are accompanied by English translations enriched by
succinct and informative footnotes. This first volume constitutes
not only a brilliant introduction to the impact on the Counter
Reformation to the Atlantic Isles, but also an illuminating re-setting
of the story in a European perspective through the lens of the Jesuit
archives.
   Houliston recounts how Persons saw “the Protestant establishment”
in England as “a temporary aberration, alien to the true religious
heart of the nation”. He was wrong. His letters disclose expectations
of restoration which were “doubtless unrealistic, the more so as time
went on”.
   As a Catholic and a Jesuit, Persons understood his pastoral and
missionary objectives to be “the recovery of the connection with
Rome and the cultivation of true devotion” which he described
in The Christian Directory (1582) as “ ‘a joyful promptness to the
diligent execution of all things that appertayne to the honour of
God’ ”.
   What is remarkable in Persons (and not only in Persons) is the
disjoinder between pastoral wisdom and political incompetence.
Houlston’s appreciation of the unrealism informing Person’s
understanding of England is borne out not least in the pages
concerning preparations for the Armada. If it is the great merit
of this edition that “in these letters we are invited to view
Elizabethan England afresh” from a continental and Scottish
perspective in “helpful corrective to Anglocentric accounts of
Reformation-era religion and politics”, there is yet further richness.
Through Houlston’s Introduction we find something balancing
the disjunction between religion and politics, which is found
on every page of these letters: a more realistic understanding, at
once religious and political, of the need for mutual coexistence.

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In a luminous page Houliston remarks on the emergence of “a
measure of loyalism in the Huguenot camp, which both mirrored
and shaped Catholic loyalism in England.” It was found in “those
Catholic nobles, known as the politiques who believed that civil war
was too high a price to pay for religious conformity.” Aquinas had
thought the same.
   In 1580 Edmund Campion and Parsons had sought, “rebus sic
stantibus” the suspension of the 1570 excommunication against
Queen Elizabeth I of England. Following the arrest of Campion in
1582, the significance of the phrase inserted by Pope Gregory XIII
into the faculties granted to Campion and Parsons in 1580 “rebus
sic stantibus” became a matter of contention. For Cecil the phrase
signified the postponement of the bull until such time as an invasion
force could be mounted. For Persons and William Allen it meant
the same. For the politiques of both France and England it offered
the alternative of peace talks and mutual coexistence. In the reign
of King Henri III of France (r. 1574–89) this possibility attained a
new level of support within Rome, Paris and the English Court. It
died with Henri III. The politics of invasion, urged by Persons and
the Guise, prevailed. The civil wars in France raged on until the
accession of Henri IV finally opened a road to the alternative: peace
and Catholic Reform.
   Supported from 1592 by St Philip Neri in the Rome of Pope
Clement VIII, the spiritual renewal introduced by St Teresa of
Avila and developed by St Francis de Sales in his Introduction to
the Devout Life (1604) gained ground. The writings of St Francis de
Sales expanded on the theme of True Devotion earlier advanced
by the Spiritual Directory. But whereas in Persons, (and not only
in Persons) the pastoral dimensions of the work were undermined
by the illusions of commitments best explored in the pages of
Don Quixote, the effect of the Salesian Reformation, selectively
assimilated within the Church of England, was to admit a place of
influence to the healing power promoted in the Spiritual Directory.
   Herein lies the great importance of this three-volume project.
The contents of the first volume are well delineated on the flyleaf:
documents and letters, from and to Persons:

  notably from the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Claudio
  Acquaviva. Letters in Latin, Italian, and Spanish are presented both
  in the original language and spelling. All letters have been collated
  with the extant manuscript witnesses. The Introduction comprises
  Person’s biography, relevant aspects of early Jesuit history, and the

Book Reviews                              263

  Jesuit mission to England, and overviews of the papacy and the
  political situation in England and Scotland, France, the Netherlands,
  and Spain for the period 1574–88 covered by the letters in this
  volume.

It is a breathtaking achievement. An appendix on Anti Catholic
legislation, and another on Currency, is completed by an Index of
Persons, and another on Places and Subjects.
   The editors are to be congratulated on this volume, and the
publishers commended for a major contribution to European
history, and to our understanding of the complex personality and
historical significance of Robert Persons.

Cobh (Ireland)					                                     Dermot Fenlon

Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, ed., Henry Piers’s Continental Travels, 1595–
1598. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal
Historical Society, 2018. 238 pp. ISBN 978-1108496773

Brian Mac Cuarta SJ has produced a meticulous edition of the
manuscript of a curious and instructive work from the late sixteenth
century. Henry Piers (1567–1623) was a Protestant Irish gentleman
who, after encountering Catholic lay people and priests in County
Westmeath, decided to make a journey to Rome in 1595 the occasion
and means of his conversion. The retrospective of his travels, part
pilgrimage, part study tour, describes the confirmation of his new
religious convictions and his sojourns in the English colleges in
Rome and Seville. It has particular relevance to Jesuit historical
research because of his exchanges with Robert Persons, in Rome,
Joseph Creswell in Valladolid and Madrid, and Richard Walpole in
Seville. This was a time of increasing tension amongst the Catholic
exiles, when the Jesuits were under attack both on the mission and
in their management of the seminaries: Piers’s narrative may be
partisan, but it is a valuable witness to a layman’s perspective.
   A discourse of HP his travelles written by him selfe (Bodleian
Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MS D 83) is not altogether an original
work. Much of the portrayal of Rome’s churches, monuments,
processions and antiquities, which takes up a large part of the
text, derives from Girolamo Francini’s Le cose miravigliose dell’alma
città di Roma (Venice, 1588), itself drawing heavily on Palladio. The

264                        Book Reviews

extensive accounts of the naval battle of Lepanto (pp. 145–153) and
the origins of the shrine of Loreto (pp. 173–83) are also heavily
dependent on sources Piers consulted after his return to Ireland:
Richard Knolles’s Generall historie of the Turkes (London, 1603/1604)
and the Jesuit Orazio Torsellini’s Lauretanae historiae (Rome,
1597/1598). But much of the story is fresh and compelling, from the
travellers’ tales of wonders and curiosities such as the monstrous
double child and perpetually dancing man in Rome (pp. 170–01),
the rhinoceros in Madrid (p. 203) and a special dish prepared for
ploughmen in the kitchen of a farmer's house where he stayed on
his way back from Sanlucar de Barrameda to Seville (p. 212), to
the frightening storm on his way back from Spain (pp. 214–15). His
brushes with suspicious authorities, the kindnesses he received
from other Britishers, as well as his own interventions on behalf of
Irishmen abroad, the appellations he gives to Italian cities such as
Padua the Learned, Bologna the Plentiful and Ferrara the Strong,
all contribute to a sense of lived experience invaluable to the social
historian.
   Every scholar of early modern religion, politics and culture will
find something of interest, readily accessible and documented, in
this text. A good example is Piers’s presentation of travel and postal
conditions. He gives exact details of times and distances of overland
travel, and the various ports of call from Genoa to Alicante. He notes
that his vessel almost missed the tide when setting off from Dublin,
because they had to wait for the post from the lord deputy (p. 53).
In Florence, they joined the post for Rome (p. 75). Piers admired
the Jesuits’ reliable and efficient postal network, so that “there is
noe matter of Reckninge wch c[an] happen in all Christendum,
but father generall wthin fewe dayes is certified thereof” (p. 103) –
stretching the point, since in reality, the post from Spain or Flanders
would take about three weeks. Claudio Acquaviva, as superior
general of the Society, was not only the recipient of news, but in
Piers’s view, lived up to his name as the source and wellspring of
living water flowing to all regions of its operations.
   It is as a foil to Anthony Munday’s description of life at the
English college, Rome, The English Romayne lyfe (London, 1582), that
Piers’s Discourse will have particularly widespread appeal. Piers
was a lay student there from 1595 to 1597, at exactly the time when
a majority of the students were in revolt against Jesuit government,
as described in Anthony Kenny’s “The Inglorious Revolution”
(The Venerabile, 1954–1955). Piers unhesitatingly takes the Jesuits’
side, chiefly because of his friendship with Richard Haddock

Book Reviews                            265

(Haydock), a former student, whom he may have met previously
in Ireland. Haddock obtained places for Piers and his manservant,
Philip Draycott, at the college and assisted them in negotiating
the attentions of the inquisition. Haddock’s association with
Robert Persons guaranteed that Piers would welcome Persons’s
intervention in the college in 1597. It was also through Persons’s
good offices that Piers subsequently made the journey to Spain
and joined the English college in Seville, where Richard Walpole
assisted him in much the same way as Haddock had done in Rome.
   As a convert, Piers responded readily to the wealth of Catholic
relics, monuments and festivals in Rome and the other great
cathedral cities of Italy and Spain. The text registers a growing sense
of recovery of Christian tradition, of connection with the church of
the apostles and martyrs. This modulates into polemics, rehearsing
and reinforcing the arguments that contributed to conversion:
the indispensability of the doctrine of merit, the insufficiency of
sola scriptura, the reasonableness of transubstantiation. In all this
there may be some credulity, as in the unquestioning acceptance
of the authenticity of the legends surrounding Loreto, but there is
very little superstition. Instead, Piers recurs to the Christocentric
themes of devotion and discipleship, reserving special praise for
Pope Gregory XIII as the founder of colleges and supporter of
missions, and the current pope, Clement VIII, for restoring and
expanding the churches. His counter-reformation sensibility is
seen especially in pious digressions. Following a lively description
of a storm encountered after passing Cape Finisterre, he retails a
series of Latin quotations and concludes: “This small digression I
have made to encouradge this poore countrie [Ireland] to devotione
and patience, exorting those wch be well enclyned to induere these
calamities and myseries (wch lately have hapened) wth patience
and wth feare and milde spirites to expect the infallible promises of
god, for after the blastering storme of his iustice comethe the sweete
calme of his mercye” (p. 215).
   Given the readability and wide interest of the work, it seems a
pity that the text is presented so diplomatically, perhaps over-scru-
pulously. Original spelling, word division (“agood”) and punctua-
tion are preserved even when misleading or obtrusive. The inser-
tion of words and phrases and other scribal minutiae (even, on at
least one occasion, repeating the catchword at the beginning of the
next page of the manuscript), and the practice of cross-referencing
the page numbers of the manuscript rather than the edition, makes
this a highly reliable document, but this reader at least would have

266                        Book Reviews

appreciated a cleaner text with more informative notes, clearly
separated from the textual apparatus. Whatever reservations one
might have about the editorial policy, however, the introduction is
masterly, providing full and useful information about the religious,
biographical and social context in Ireland, the relevant history of
the English colleges, the provenance of the manuscript, and the
sources. The edition will be of lasting usefulness for historians of
every shade.

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg        Victor Houliston

Živilė Nedzinskaitė, Darius Antanavičius, eds, Fontes Collegii
Crosensis, qui in Archivo Romano Societatis Iesu asservantur = Kražių
kolegijos šaltiniai, saugomi Jėzaus Draugijos Archyve Romoje, tomus/
tomas I, pars/dalis 1: 1608–1700. Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir
tautosakos institutas, 2019.LII, 646 pp. ISBN 978-609-425-227-3.

This book is an edition of the seventeenth-century Latin manuscript
sources related to the college in Kražiai (Polish: Kroże) from the
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter, ARSI). Kražiai is a
town in present day Lithuania, which once belonged to the Principality
of Samogitia, within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and accordingly
part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1569 and 1795.
The Jesuit Fathers were invited to Kražiai by the bishop of Samogitia
Melchior Giedroyć (Lithuanian: Merkelis Giedraitis) in 1608. The
following year they opened a mission, which was soon transformed
into a residence and then a college. The Jesuits were active in Kražiai
until the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773.
   The Kražiai college played an important role in the cultural life
of Samogitia. Christianity had been introduced to this region only
in the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth centuries. Pagan practices
and beliefs still existed among the rural population when the Jesuits
arrived. Moreover, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the
spread of the Protestant Reformation had weakened the Catholic
Church, depriving it of the nobility’s support. To win the local
population back to the Roman Church, the Jesuits developed a
broad missionary and educational programme. They taught not only
rhetoric, but also philosophy and moral theology; they introduced
theatre as a pedagogical tool of religious propaganda, and oversaw
the diocesan seminary, thus playing a crucial role in the formation of

Book Reviews                                     267

secular clergy. The relevance of Kražiai in the global history of Post-
Tridentine Catholicism fully justifies the publication of this source
edition.
   The Editors are well known Lithuanian scholars. Živilė
Nedzinskaitė, a pupil of Professor Eugenija Ulčinaitė, works at the
Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore (Lietuvių literatūros
ir tautosakos institutas, further LLTI). She focuses on the history of
Early Modern Neo-Latin literature in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
and has conducted intensive research into the poetry of Maciej
Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Lithuanian Motiejus Kazimieras Sarbievijus)
and its European reception.1 Darius Antanavičius, a philologist and
historian, works at the Lithuanian Historical Institute (Lietuvos
istorijos institutas) and has extensive experience in the edition of
prose texts, ranging from the late fourteenth- to the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries. Among his fields of interest are Lithuanian
historiography and the history of libraries and book circulation in
Lithuania.2
   The effort undertaken by these two scholars fits into broader
research conducted on the Kražiai college in recent years, which
resulted in the publication of fragments of a prose manuscript from
1695,3 an organ tabulature,4 and the library catalogue from 1803.5

1 Živilė Nedzinskaitė, Tepaliks kiekvienas šlovę po savęs... Motiejaus Kazimiero
  Sarbievijaus poetikos ir poezijos recepcija XVII-XVIII amžiaus LDK jėzuitų edukacijos
  sistemoje [Let everybody leave glory after himself... The reception of M.K.
  Sarbiewski’s poetics and poetry in the 17th–18th century Jesuit educational
  system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania], Vilnius: LLTI 2011.

2 Besides co-editing some of the registers of the Lithuanian Chancellery (Lietuvos
  metrika) and the city books of Kaunas, Merkinė and Trakai, see: Albertas Vijūkas-
  Kojalavičius, Lietuvos istorijos įvairenybės [Lithuanian history], dalis 1, sudarė
  Darius Kuolys; iš lotynų kalbo vertė Darius Antanavičius, Sigitas Narbutas;
  komentarus parašė Darius Antanavičius, Elmantas Meilus, Vilnius: LLTI, 2003
  (Senoji Lietuvos literatūra, kn. 15).

3 Kaip jėzuitai žemaičių mylias trumpino. 1695 m. Kražių rankraščio prozos fragmentai
  [How the Jesuits shortened Samogitian miles. 1695 Prose fragments of Kražiai
  manuscript], sudarė ir parengė Živilė Nedzinskaitė, Darius Antanavičius,
  Vilnius: LLTI, 2014.

4 Liber Organistarum Collegii Crosensis Societatis Jesu, ed. facs. Laima Budzinauskienė,
  Rasa Murauskaitė, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Sub Lupa, 2017 (Fontes
  Musicae in Polonia, B II).

5 Elenchus librorum veteris Collegii Crosensis anno 1803 compilatus = Buvusios Kražių
  kolegijos 1803 metų knygų sąrašas, parengė Darius Antanavičius, 2 vols., Vilnius:
  LLTI, 2017.

268                                  Book Reviews

The interest in the history of this college was also reflected by the
conference, “Jėzuitų kolegijos ir Lietuvos kultūra: Kražių kolegijai
– 400 metų” (Jesuit college and Lithuanian culture: the 400-year
anniversary of the Kražiai college), organized by the Lithuanian
Institute of Literature and Folklore in 2016,6 and recent publications
by Polish historians.7 With regard to the historiography on the
Society of Jesus, it should be noted that the works mentioned have
helped to enlarge the research perspective of Lithuanian scholars,
who traditionally focused on the Vilnius Academy.8 The edition also
fits into a long scholarly publishing tradition focused on the sources
from ARSI. In regard to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
this practice dates back to 1940–1941, when the Dutch Jesuit Jean
Chrétien Joseph Kleijntjens published the documents related to the
Jesuit houses in Livonia (present day Latvia).9
   The work published by Ž. Nedzinskaitė and D. Antanavičius
can be regarded as a model source edition. The introduction, both
in Latin and Lithuanian, clearly explains the criteria according
to which sources were collected and transcribed. The selected
bibliography provides an insight into the historiography related to
the Kražiai college.
   The edition includes different types of archival materials. The
first part (pp. 1–17) describes the activity of Jesuit missionaries in
Samogitia before 1608 on the basis of the Litterae annuae and Historiae
from other colleges (mostly Vilnius and Riga). The second part
(pp. 19–32) includes undated Historiae and Informationes from the
early seventeenth century. The third part (pp. 33–418) contains the
Litterae Annuae, Historiae and catalogues from the Kražiai college in
chronological order from 1608 until 1700. The edition is provided

6 The proceedings of this conference have appeared in the issue “Jėzuitiškosios
  tradicijos paveldas” [The heritage of Jesuit tradition], Senoji Lietuvos Literatūra
  [Early Lithuanian Literature], 44 (2017).

7 Jan Skłodowski, Zapomniane uczelnie Rzeczypospolitej [Forgotten universities of the
  Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth], Warszawa: Narodowy Instytut Polskiego
  Dziedzictwa Kulturowego za Granicą Polonika, 2019, p. 19–128.

8 For a general treatment of Lithuanian historiography on the Society of Jesus, see:
  Liudas Jovaiša, “Jesuit Historiography in Lithuania since 1990: Proximity and
  Distance along World Routes”, AHSI, LXXXV (2016), n. 169, p. 221–232.

9 Fontes historiae Latviae Societatis Jesu = Latvijas vēstures avoti jezuītu ordena archīvos,
  t. 1, ed. Jean Chrétien Joseph Kleijntjens, 2 vols., Rigae: Editio Instituti Historiae
  Latviae, 1940–1941.

Book Reviews                                  269

with an appendix including a list of rectors (pp. 421–22), as well
as of the Jesuits who either took their final vows, were dismissed
or died in Kražiai (pp. 423–428). There is also a list of all Jesuits
active in Kražiai (pp. 429–486), based on the catalogi breves, and a
synoptic table of the sources collected in the edition (pp. 487–500).
The search for specific information is made possible by an index of
names and notable topics.
   Although the edition is mainly based on the sources from the
ARSI, the Editors have made an effort to fill the gaps in the Roman
archive.10 In particular, besides Italy, they have utilised the collections
of the cultural institutions of three other different countries
(Lithuania, Poland and Russia), such as the National Library of
Lithuania (Lietuvos nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo biblioteka), the
State Historical Archive of Lithuania (Lietuvos valstybės istorijos
archyvas) and the Library of the Vilnius University (Vilniaus
universiteto biblioteka), the Library of the Catholic University
in Lublin (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka Katolickiego Uniwersytetu
Lubelskiego), and the Russian State Archive of Historical Records
in Moscow (Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj archiv drevnich aktov).
By comparing the sources from ARSI with other documents, the
Editors acquired a critical view of the information sent by Jesuits to
the General Curia in Rome. This provides an interesting insight into
the activity of the Society’s administration as well as the mentalities
of Jesuit authors. The Editors have also extensively used published
sources and historiography to identify people and places, providing
detailed information about them in the footnotes.
   Compared to the earlier edition of J. Kleijntjens, some choices
made by the Editors can be regarded as a notable advancement. For
example, the decision to publish all manuscripts from the same year
one after another simplifies the use of the source edition. A good
solution is also the publication of the names of all Jesuits contained
in the Catalogi breves, regardless of them being priests, scholastics or
lay brothers. Other choices may be debatable. Necrologies should
also have been published, since many of the Jesuits who died in
Kražiai spent much of their membership in the Society there. As far
as the Catalogi triennales are concerned, the Catalogus primus should
have been fully published, instead of being limited to the names
and geographical origin of the Jesuits. This would have aided

10 For example, they have used the manuscript 206 from the Library of the Catholic
   University in Lublin for the catalogi breves missing in ARSI (1667/68, 1668/69,
   1669/70, 1670/71, 1671/72, 1673/74, 1677/78).

270                       Book Reviews

subsequent prosopographical research that undoubtedly will result
from this work.
   In conclusion, the book Fontes Collegii Crosensis, qui in Archivo
Romano Societatis Iesu asservantur can be regarded as an important
editorial work and hopefully will stimulate similar source
editions on other Jesuit colleges within the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. Once more, the systematic character of the edition
should be emphasized: thanks to extensive research, the editors
provide possibly the fullest edition of sources related to a specific
Jesuit house. Another positive feature of the work is that it is the
result of the cooperation between scholars in both the philological
and historical fields. Such challenging editorial work should be
undertaken only through an interdisciplinary approach. One can
only wish that the second volume, including the years 1701–1773,
appears in the not-too-distant future.

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań		                Andrea Mariani

Kilian Stumpf SJ, The Acta Pekinensia or Historical Records of the
Maillard de Tournon Legation.Volume II: September 1706 – December
1707, Paul Rule and Claudia von Collani, eds. Leiden - Boston: x,
811 pp. €199.00/$239.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-39631-9.

In April 1705 Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon (1668–1710)
arrived in China. He had been sent by pope Clement XI to provide
papal oversight over the eastern missions and, in particular, to
enforce the decisions taken by the Holy Office against the practice
of Chinese rites among Chinese Catholic converts. Appointed as an
apostolic legate a latere, he effectively enjoyed the same powers as
the pope while in China.
   From the outset, there were fundamental questions of jurisdiction
that Tournon’s legation seemed to override. China had long been
regarded as subject to the Portuguese padroado, which meant
that even papal representatives needed to be approved by the
Portuguese throne. China was also a sovereign state in which the
Europeans operated entirely at the grace of the Kangxi Emperor. Yet
Tournon demanded unconditional obedience from all missionaries
and Christians in China. He even required that all Christians
kneel before him when addressing him. This enraged the Kangxi
Emperor, who suspected that Tournon was arrogating to himself
temporal jurisdiction over Chinese subjects.

Book Reviews                             271

   But most damaging was Tournon’s disastrous dealings with the
Kangxi Emperor during his Beijing sojourn. For some unknown
reason, Tournon attempted to obfuscate the true purpose of his visit
and even refused to show the Kangxi Emperor his credentials. He
then made a series of requests that contravened Chinese custom,
such as the establishment of a permanent papal embassy in Beijing.
Although Tournon was entirely ignorant of the Chinese language,
literature and culture, he refused to attenuate his position on the
rites, and invited Maigrot to champion his cause before the Kangxi
Emperor. But Maigrot performed poorly during his interview with
the emperor. He was unable to understand the emperor’s Chinese
or respond to the most basic questions about Chinese literature.
The emperor dismissed him as effectively illiterate in Chinese. The
emperor then hardened his resolve, sending Tournon South and
exiling Maigrot. He required all missionaries to apply for a piao
(residence permit) and to promise to adhere to the practices of
Matteo Ricci. In turn, Tournon issued a decree from Nanjing on 7
February 1707 prohibiting the Chinese rites and the use of Shangdi
and Tian for indicating God. Tournon claimed that he made this
decision in light of Clement XI’s 1704 decision to similar effect, but
he refused to show Clement XI’s decree to the China missionaries.
   Tournon and the Emperor’s conflicting decrees placed the
missionaries in an impossible position. If they were to apply
for the piao, they would risk excommunication. If they were to
continue residing in China without the piao they would risk exile,
imprisonment or even worse punishment. Yet Tournon blamed the
Jesuits for the crisis, claiming that the emperor only demanded that
the missionaries adhere to the Chinese rites at the Jesuits’ insistence.
His breakdown in communications with the emperor was in his
view the result of Jesuit meddling and deliberate misinterpretation.
Tournon ended his legation imprisoned in Macau, accusing the
Jesuits of conspiring against him and even poisoning him. Before
his death on 10 June 1710, he was informed that he had been
proclaimed cardinal in 1707 by Clement XI as a reward for his
actions in China.
   As apostolic notary, Kilian Stumpf (1655–1720) was
commissioned by the Jesuit Superior General to compile a detailed
account of Tournon’s activities in Beijing and their aftermath. The
result of Stumpf’s labours was an enormous 1,467 folio manuscript
which he entitled “Acta Pekinensia”, which literally translates as
“What Happened at Beijing”. The transcription and translation of
this manuscript has been a monumental task that has occupied the
labours of many scholars over decades based in Poland (Monika

272                          Book Reviews

Miazek-Mecyznska, Ewa Jarmakowska, and Katarzyna Prychitko),
Australia (Joseph Holland, John Wilcken, John Begley and Stan
Hogan), and England (Gerard J. Hughes). The final product was
edited by Paul Rule and Claudia von Collani.
   In 2015, the first four hundred pages of this manuscript covering
4 December 1705 to 28 August 1706 were published with a digital
transcription and English translation as part of the Monumenta
Historica Societatis Iesu (MHSI) of the Institutum Romanum
Societatis Iesu (Nova Series 9). The narrative of the second volume
begins in September 1706, just after Tournon’s departure from
Beijing, and finishes in December 1707. Most of the action—such as
Tournon and Maigrot’s meetings with the Kangxi Emperor—took
place in the first volume. In this first volume, we primarily deal with
the tragic aftermath: the dramatic change in the Kangxi Emperor’s
attitude towards the missionaries, the letters that Jesuits exchanged
defending their actions against Tournon’s accusations of sabotaging
his mission and their entreaties to the Kangxi Emperor to forgive the
Europeans for their insolence towards the emperor.
   Unlike the first volume, this volume is published as the inaugural
book of the new Brill series, Studies in the History of Christianity in East
Asia, edited by Prof. M. Antoni J. Ucerler and Dr Xiaoxin Wu of the
Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco. Unfortunately, the
change of publisher entails a change in price. Whereas the first volume
sells for a reasonable €70, this volume costs €199, despite being of
roughly the same length as the second volume and including a CD-
ROM. Besides translating the next 400 pages of the manuscript, Rule
and Collani include a translation of Stumpf’s summary of the events
in 1705 and 1706 and provide a short introduction which briefly
contextualises the volume. Thus the editors have endeavoured to
make this second volume self-contained, though readers are strongly
enjoined to refer to the luxurious 170-page introduction of the first
volume for a more detailed treatment of the manuscript and its
historical context.
   Stumpf’s punctilious record does not make for easy reading. He
laboriously transcribes countless letters that provide exhaustive
information about the legation. Many of the letters deal with the
same events but are provided simply as corroboration or contrasting
views. A continual concern of Stumpf is to point out that the Jesuits
were not alone in their defense of the Chinese rites and terms, but
were supported by various missionaries from other orders and
congregations, such as the Augustinian friar Alvaro de Benavente
(1646-1709), who was titular Bishop of Ascalon and vicar apostolic
of Jiangxi province.

Book Reviews                             273

   Yet the patient reader will be rewarded with remarkable insights
into Qing court life, the complex dealings between the emperor
and the missionaries and the emperor’s changing attitudes towards
Tournon and other missionaries. Stumpf often even records the
Chinese expressions used by the Kangxi Emperor, which are
surprisingly colloquial. In this way, the Acta Pekinensia are not only of
interest to scholars of the Rites Controversy, but also of Qing China,
giving a European account of Qing court life, with tidbits on the
customs the missionaries were expected to obey when meeting Qing
dynasty officials and the Manchu language used at court.
   The emperor himself is revealed as a perceptive and forbearing
observer of European quarrels, going beyond all Chinese precedent
to exend numerous olive branches to the Europeans despite their
continual disregard for imperial orders. Most striking is the rather
prescient line attributed to the emperor who complained that
Claudio Filippo Grimaldi (1639–1712), director of the Imperial
Bureau of Astronomy, had misrepresented Europe to China. The
Emperor remarked, “Europeans usually when they intend to speak
about the East in fact talk about the West, and when they speak about
matters of the West end up speaking about the East.” The Chinese
original, which Rule and Collani reconstruct, is even pithier and
more evocative: “指東學西，指西學東” (p. 685).
   The Acta Pekinensia also features interesting digressions on the
difficulties of translating Catholic liturgical prayers into Chinese. For
instance, the Franciscan friar Basilio da Glemona and the oratorian
father Giovanni Donato Mezzafalce proposed replacing the old
formula for baptism with some new alternatives because he believed
there were grave ambiguities in the meaning of “name” (ming 名) in
the Chinese text owing principly to the lack of grammatical number
in Chinese and also the lack of a precise Chinese analogue to the
Latin preposition in. The conclusion of this digression reveals an
interesting problem: in many respects the Latin expression is just
as ambiguous as the Chinese translation, but Europeans have been
instructed for generations about the correct meaning of the formula,
thus eliminating any ambiguity. Hence the removal of the ancient
formula would in fact counteract this process of habituation. (p. 623)
Stumpf no doubt was hinting to the reader to extrapolate a more
general point about the Terms and Rites controversies: Chinese
Catholics have been schooled in the correct meaning of the terms and
rites for a hundred years, what disruption would a radical change
bring now?
   The translation of this long manuscript is a monument to the
rigours of traditional philology. In general, the translators have

274                        Book Reviews

opted for a slavishly literal translation to the point that they even
indicate the precise page breaks of the original manuscript in the
translation. Such a translation approach is most useful for scholars
who might need to cross-reference with the original text, though
unfortunately unlike the first volume the transcription of the original
is not published with the translation.
   However, this literal approach to translation makes the text
sometimes very stilted and difficult to understand. The problems
are much more acute in the translation of Stumpf’s compendium.
On almost every page there are sentences with extremely unnatural
word order, unnecessary archaicisms, misplaced or missing
commas, inconsistent date formats and syntax errors. Many long
periods would be better broken up, such as “They found the Most
Illustrious Lord twenty-four leagues from Beijing, ill and outside his
boat which was iced up in the river unable to move, and carried him
off by the land route to Beijing where on December 4th the Most
Illustrious Lord by order of His Majesty was carried to the house
of Our Society within the Saffron Wall, which since it was close to
the Palace would be more convenient for the frequent benefits to be
bestowed on him.” (p. 38) The editors make the decision to render
“Canton” as “Guangzhou” when the editors are sure that this
ambiguous toponym refers to the city, but this results in a bizarre
sentence with both Canton and Guangzhou! (p. 35) The translators
are even inconsistent in their rendering of Stumpf’s position, which
is sometimes translated as “Apostolic Notary” (110 times) and other
times as “Notary Apostolic” (29 times). These two inconsistent titles
even find place in the index. Under “Apostolic Notary”the reader is
directed to the entry for Kilian Stumpf, whereas “Notary Apostolic”
is treated as a separate entry.
   The editors have done a tremendous service in modernising
Stumpf’s romanisation of Chinese words and where possible
identifying the corresponding Chinese characters. However, there
are many mistakes that should have been corrected during the
editorial process: huaiji si should be kuaiji si (p. 38); sometimes
characters are not given, for example for the first instance of zhi
(p. 51); normally the modern pinyin is given in the main text and
Stumpf’s romanisation placed in the footnote, but on p. 234 cha
is written as “tche” in the main text; sometimes the customary
apostrophes used in pinyin are not given, such as “shang fuan”
(p. 366) and “Huaian”, but “Nan’an” is correctly rendered (p. 446).
Occasionally modern pinyin and Stumpf’s romanisation have been
mixed up in the main text. For instance on p. 516, “women tiexun

Book Reviews                             275

ji naibude” should be “women de xun ji naibude” (我們的循極耐不
得). The Kangxi emperor’s eldest son is named as “Yinti” and the
editors in a note (p. 126, n. 57) explain Stumpf’s transliteration of the
name as “yn çi” as a possible reference to the prince’s title as a prince
of the Second Rank (zhi 直), but actually the second character of the
prince’s name (胤禔) is not transliterated as “ti” but “zhi”, so Stumpf
is in fact perfectly correct. There are also wrong characters, such as
the final character of Ricci's Chinese name (dou 竇), which is written
as 鐸 on page 80.
    These translation and editing problems should not detract from
the excellent scholarship that infuses every page of this fine volume.
The next volume of this most important monument to Tournon’s
legation is most eagerly awaited.

Sun Yat-Sen University, China			                        Daniel Canaris

Christine W.M. Schunck, Intolerante tolerantie. De geschiedenis van de
katholieke missionering op Curaçao (1499–1776). Nijmegen: Valkhof
Pers, 2019. 403 pp. € 22.50. ISBN 978-90-5625-504-6.

Little has been written lately on the history of the Catholic Church
on Curaçao, in particular regarding the period when the island
was governed by the Protestant Dutch Republic (1634–1795) and
missioned by those champions of Catholicism, the Jesuits (1705–
1742). One cannot but praise the author—a PhD student in her
mid-seventies—for the idea to dedicate her thesis to this topic, an
idea even more praiseworthy, considering how many archival
sources she had to consult at both sides of the Atlantic. Some
were disappointingly small, like the diocesan archives of Curaçao
(destroyed by fire in 1969); others were discouragingly large, like
the archives of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith
in Rome or the Spanish colonial archives in Seville; yet others were
simply unwelcoming, like the archdiocesan archives in Caracas, with
its “rather despotic traits” (p. 22). One would have wished, however,
that the author had been better accompanied, both in her research
and in the writing and editing of her thesis, all of which remain on a
rather low academic level. Also, the Latin transcriptions are far from
flawless, and the index of names, with references to chapters instead
of pages, is unhelpful, to say the least. If her understanding of the
Jesuit ‘way of proceeding’ is anything to go by—often superficial,

276                        Book Reviews

sometimes erroneous—this thesis ought to be consulted with some
caution.
   The presence of the Society of Jesus in present-day Colombia and
surroundings was organised in 1605 in the Vice-Province (in 1611
Province) of the New Kingdom of Granada and Quito (NRQ), with
Quito gaining independence in 1696 – the same period in which
the first non-Spanish Jesuits arrived, namely seven indipetae of the
Bohemian Province, one of whom, Michael Schabel, would work
as the first Jesuit on Curaçao. In 1713, Superior General Tamburini
entrusted the Curaçao Mission to the Flemish Belgian Province,
which reluctantly sent one after the other of its newly ordained men
to the island—seven until 1741—most of whom would die there
within a few years from illness or exhaustion. So what to think of
the author talking about the NRQ Province in the 18th century, as
if it had not ceased to exist as such in 1696? Even its split-off, the
New Kingdom of Granada Province (NR), never really had much
to do with the Curaçao Mission, if not for the erratic Father Schabel.
The latter’s ministry on the island, from 1705 to 1713, did not excel
in the observance of religious vows, with accusations of espionage,
commercial gain, drunkenness, intimate relationships with women,
and in general a spirit of independence unbefitting of a professed
priest of the Society of Jesus; already in 1702, his superiors had
judged his prudence null (p. 92). Nothing could be more obvious
than his dismissal from the Order, one would say, but the author
dedicates a whole paragraph to the question why Schabel had
to leave the Society. “Why does a priest have to be celibate and a
Protestant minister not?”, she asks. “Celibacy was difficult on an
island where many scantily-clad women walked around. Moreover,
there was plenty of alcohol available during his visits to the high
society” (p. 109). Her description of Jesuit formation and of what
might move a young religious to volunteer for the missions is equally
inaccurate and superficial (p. 81–82), leading to loose observations
such as that most of the seven Bohemian indipetae wrote their request
“around the time of their stay at Telc” (p. 85). Indeed they did, but
why? Because, as one can deduct from the tables in the text and
in the appendices (II.B.3a), the college of Telč was where they did
their tertianship. In other words, they were inspired to greater zeal
in this intense, final phase of their religious formation. Others, like
Frantisek Wydra (p. 309), applied for the missions in or shortly after
the novitiate. More remarkable, on the other hand, is the fact that the
seven Flemish Belgian Jesuits were sent to Curaçao alone, without
the usual companion; the second man normally arrived a few years

Book Reviews                             277

later, just in time (or not) to bury his predecessor. The author notes
the fact without explaining it, or it must have been for the same
reason why the Flemish Belgian Province was so reluctant, too, to aid
them financially, namely that it never really had wanted to take over
the Curaçao Mission but had been forced by Tamburini to accept it
in the aftermath of the Schabel scandal (p. 107–108). Interestingly,
three of the seven missionaries made their final vows after having
arrived at Curaçao, in the absence of a (major) superior or any other
Jesuit – an unusual way of incorporation (p. 110). Given the difficult
circumstances in which they had to work, it is not surprising that
they were all professed of four vows. Two Bohemian Jesuits who
earlier had taken final vows as spiritual coadjutors, Albert von
Bukowski zu Hustirzan (not Hustiran) and Elias Sieghardt, were
elevated to professed during the voyage to the New Kingdom of
Granada or after their arrival, and would even become superior, but
their companion Marek Zaurek, praised as “the most enthusiastic
and fervent missionary in this region” (p. 310), remained a spiritual
coadjutor all his life.
   From the perspective of Jesuit history, which comprises the one
but longest of this thesis’s four chapters (p. 77–127), with another
sixty pages of appendices, one must conclude that much remains
to be studied regarding the Curaçao Mission, short-lived as it may
have been. Despite its shortcomings, which cannot only be imputed
to the author, this thesis will prove to be a useful basis for further
research and a tribute to the missionaries who founded the Catholic
Church on Curaçao. In a climate of ‘tolerant intolerance’ (and not the
other way around, as the author has it), where the practice of non-
Protestant worship was only allowed under the strictest conditions,
there was little or no space for a regular priestly ministry. The sixty
Spanish priests who baptized on Curaçao between 1677 and 1707,
sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few months (p. 65–70),
were missionaries in transit, two thirds of them religious; they
may have wanted to stay there, but did not have the chance. Father
Schabel did manage to work on the island, for eight years, baptizing
slaves, wining and dining with the Catholic notables, and keeping
his flock obedient, as the Dutch vice-governor desired (his Nativity
scene had black sheep). His seven Dutch and Flemish successors,
on the other hand, bore the daily burdens of their ministry without
succumbing to the temptations of the flesh. Fr Dominic Dujardin, for
example, “crossed the whole island barefooted, because he did not
have money for a donkey or for shoes” (p. 119), while Fr John Baptist
Cloots, inspired by the same zeal, was the first Jesuit to learn the local

278                         Book Reviews

language, Papiamento. One of their enemies, a vagrant Augustinian,
wrote disdainfully about the handicraft they performed, the wigs
and lay attire they wore, the alms they asked for the administration
of sacraments and blessings (p. 147), but each sneer was actually a
testimony to their poverty and to their selflessness in the service of the
equally poor Catholics of Curaçao, most of them mulattos or blacks
and often slaves, who suffered doubly—racially and religiously—
from the Dutch ‘tolerant intolerance’.

Brussels					                                         Marc Lindeijer SJ

Margarida Miranda, Miguel Venegas and the Earliest Jesuit Theater.
Choruses for Tragedies in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Leiden-Boston:
Brill, 2019, 240 pp. €106.00/$127.00. ISBN 9789004340428.

Margarida Miranda inizia questa monografia su Miguel Venegas,
fondatore del teatro gesuitico portoghese, ricostruendone la vicenda
biografica e la personalità. Attingendo a documenti di prima mano,
l’autrice rettifica anche alcune inesattezze, primamente quelle
relative al cognome e alla data di nascita, fissandoli rispettivamente
in Venegas e 29 settembre 1529.
   Nei primi due capitoli del libro, scopriamo un uomo irrequieto, un
gesuita (fu ammesso nel 1554) colto e apprezzato, ma anche ribelle,
un umanista e un maestro al quale però, talvolta, l’insegnamento
pesava. Passò dalla Penisola Iberica a Roma a Parigi, per tornare,
dopo aver lasciato la Compagnia di Gesù, nella terra d’origine; non
in Portogallo, dove aveva esordito come drammaturgo, ma nella
natia Spagna, docente di retorica (eppure, fu questa la motivazione
con la quale volle lasciare l’Ordine: avrebbe voluto essere un
predicatore!) presso l’Università di Salamanca.
   La sua produzione poetica e oratoria è cospicua; quella
drammaturgica propriamente detta, alla quale vanno aggiunti
dialoghi ed ecloghe, significativa. Essa consta di due tragoediae
sacrae (struttura classica, argomento tratto dall’Antico Testamento)
composte e rappresentate a Coimbra, rispettivamente nel 1559 e nel
1562, Saul Gelboeus e Achabus (disponibile in edizione moderna), di
una tragedia, Juditha, e di un’opera senza titolo delle quali non si
hanno i testi, ma si ha notizia, nonché di una Comedia en la fiesta del
Santisimo Sacramento (disponibile in edizione moderna), composte
e rappresentate a Salamanca. Come d’uso nel teatro gesuitico,

Book Reviews                            279

specialmente per i testi migliori, le opere di Venegas vennero messe
in scena più volte e in paesi diversi; lo conferma l’esistenza, anche
fuori dell’Europa, di numerosi manoscritti di Saul e Achabus. Alcuni
circolarono anonimi, ma la studiosa ne ha meritatamente accertato
la paternità.
   L’autrice sembra, non a torto, tenere molto alla contestualizzazione
e prima di focalizzare il discorso sul drammaturgo, ci offre un
panorama dettagliato dell’ambiente nel quale egli si è formato e
si muove. Venegas ha una formazione universitaria, porta con sé
l’eredità dell’umanesimo cristiano di Alcalá de Henares, dove il
bagaglio culturale (grammatica, retorica, opere) delle tre lingue,
Latino, Greco, Ebraico e il metodo, impostato sulla correttezza
filologica, sono soprattutto un veicolo per la comprensione della
Bibbia.
   Ma la produzione teatrale gesuitica non nasce in un deserto; nel
caso del nostro autore, il retroterra è costituito in particolare dal
teatro, gesuitico e non, spagnolo. È un retroterra vivace e ricco,
nel quale non mancano elementi di novità; nella prima metà del
XVI secolo il Vecchio Testamento è la fonte privilegiata, che non
viene abbandonata neppure dopo il 1550; parimenti, nonostante
l’influenza controriformista e l’apertura all’uso della lingua
vernacola, non viene abbandonato quello che abbiamo definito
bagaglio culturale. Relativamente alle tragedie di Venegas, nel
quadro che Margarida Miranda disegna c’è un elemento da
sottolineare: diversamente da ciò che solitamente accade nel teatro
gesuitico spagnolo, l’alto registro stilistico dell’opera non passa
mai in secondo piano rispetto all’intento morale e catechetico. Una
caratteristica che non appartiene però solamente al nostro autore.
Come si evince dal sottotitolo del volume, un particolare interesse
rivestono i cori. Che le messinscene nei collegi della Compagnia
si giovassero della musica, del canto e di movimenti danzanti che
talvolta sembrano vere e proprie coreografie è noto, ma qui siamo
agl’inizi del teatro dei Gesuiti e dunque vale la pena di spendere
qualche parola.
   Venegas viene da un’università nella quale, diversamente da
quanto accade nelle scuole dell’Ordine, si attribuisce grande
importanza alla cultura musicale. Quando si tratta dei cori, si parla
in particolare di quelli di Achabus, egli non improvvisa, ma si rivolge
al musicista Francisco Mouro. Il risultato della collaborazione è
una simmetria di musica e parole, dove la prima non è un semplice
ornamento, ma, in perfetto accordo con le seconde, ne sostiene
l’espressività e il significato. Quando la tragedia venne rappresentata

280                        Book Reviews

a Roma, presso il Collegio Germanico, dove la sensibilità musicale
si manifestava nella pratica della musica vocale e strumentale, il
drammaturgo non fu costretto a cercare collaboratori ‘esterni’.
   I cori rimasero come un vero e proprio modello, ma forse è
azzardato affermare, come fa Margarida Miranda, che Miguel
Venegas fornì il modello della tragoedia sacra, che, accettato e
codificato dal Generale Borja, avrebbe in seguito, dall’edizione del
1586, ispirato la Ratio Studiorum.
   In sintesi, il volume è ricco e non privo di spunti di discussione.
Non gli giova però l’insistenza sulla grandezza, indiscutibile,
di Venegas, e, soprattutto, sull’essere stato il fondatore del teatro
recitato nei collegi della Compagnia, dal momento che l’autrice
arriva a conclusioni a dir poco frettolose.
   Assodato, e non si può non essere d’accordo, che il teatro
gesuitico non fece le prime prove in Italia, come volle una critica
ormai datata, bensì in Portogallo, l’autrice scrive che Stefano Tucci
(1540-1597) e Bernardino Stefonio (1562-1620) non soltanto non
sono i fondatori di quel teatro, ma che, come drammaturghi «may
be considered disciples of Venegas» (p. 149). Se non bastasse il fatto
che i due appartengono a generazioni diverse, il primo, dopo le
tragedie bibliche, scrisse una trilogia cristologica e Stefonio trasse
i propri soggetti dal martirologio, Sancta Symphorosa (1591) e dalla
storia, Crispus (1597), Flavia (1600)!
   Riferendosi ancora ai suddetti, l’autrice scrive che, secondo
studiosi con i quali, si comprende, non è d’accordo, essi iniziano
«a new form of Christian and Jesuit drama» (p. 163). Ella usa
indifferente gli aggettivi sacra e cristiana, cosa che non va fatta,
quando essi qualificano la tragedia gesuitica. Cristiana si definisce
infatti non la tragedia di soggetto biblico, ma la cosiddetta tragedia
del martire, iniziata con le tragedie storiche di Stefonio e discussa
da Tarquinio Galluzzi in Rinovazione dell’antica tragedia e Difesa del
Crispo (1633). Parliamo della cosiddetta riforma stefoniana, della
quale hanno scritto studiosi quali Marc Fumaroli e Jean-Marie
Valentin. A quest’ultimo si deve inoltre l’aver individuato nelle
tragedie cristologiche tucciane il primo passo verso quella riforma.
Sull’argomento, come su altri, esiste una bibliografia, anche recente,
della quale l’autrice avrebbe dovuto tenere conto.

Roma					                                             Mirella Saulini