Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Charts
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Organizing the Society of Jesus
- 3 Decentralizing the Society of Jesus
- 4 Imagining Global Mission
- 5 Space, Time, and Truth in the Jesuit Psychology
- 6 The Missionary Motivation
- 7 The Jesuit Missionary Network
- 8 The Jesuit Financial Network
- 9 The Jesuit Information Network
- 10 The Jesuit Sacred Economy
- 11 An Edifying End: Global Salvific Catholicism
- Appendix A Abbreviations for Document Sources
- Appendix B Chronological Tables (1540–1722)
- Appendix C Principal Prosographical Information
- Appendix D Monetary Systems
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - Organizing the Society of Jesus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Charts
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Organizing the Society of Jesus
- 3 Decentralizing the Society of Jesus
- 4 Imagining Global Mission
- 5 Space, Time, and Truth in the Jesuit Psychology
- 6 The Missionary Motivation
- 7 The Jesuit Missionary Network
- 8 The Jesuit Financial Network
- 9 The Jesuit Information Network
- 10 The Jesuit Sacred Economy
- 11 An Edifying End: Global Salvific Catholicism
- Appendix A Abbreviations for Document Sources
- Appendix B Chronological Tables (1540–1722)
- Appendix C Principal Prosographical Information
- Appendix D Monetary Systems
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
“Vice-rei vá, vice-rei vem / Padre Paulista sempre tem”
“Viceroys come, viceroys go / But you always have Jesuits”
– Goan jingleThe Birth of the Society
This project studies a Jesuit religious network that helped create, and which itself could only have functioned in, a globalized world. The discovery of new lands across the Atlantic prompted Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492–1503) to issue a series of three bulls in May 1493, usually referred to as Inter caetera, the title of two of them. Justified by the Vicar of Christ's unique authority to offer protection to the natives, the bulls drew a meridian one hundred leagues (about five hundred fifteen kilometres) west of the Cape Verde Islands, demarcating the territories of the two Iberian kingdoms. The Treaty of Tordesillas shifted the demarcation line to a position three hundred seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.
Much of the urgency behind such efforts at organizing the world was soteriological. Whose responsibility were the newfound souls? The pope enjoyed spiritual jurisdiction over Christendom through his bishops. A bishop's ordinary jurisdiction, however, stopped at the borders of his diocese. Regions outside the territorial limits of any bishopric became mission territories, where the pope alone held jurisdiction. In addition, the idea that all islands belonged to the pope dated back at least to the Donation of Constantine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions , pp. 20 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008