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
9 - The Jesuit Information Network
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
“The night they [the letters] arrived, the bell being sounded, they were read till one past midnight, and in the refectory on all the following ten days. And immediately, a summary of them being copied, they were sent to China, Japan, the Moluccas and Malaca, and all the other places where our Fathers are. And if you knew, dearest ones, how much the news that comes from there resounds here, and how much the people, beyond the brethren, desires and covets it, and how many relics are here made of your letters, doubtless it seems to me that you would offer yourselves to any bodily hardship to give to the brethren here such pleasant recreation.”
– Luis Frois, describing the 1552 reception of Brazil missionary Manuel de Nóbrega's 1549 lettersIn the early-modern world, missionaries – more so even than sailors or long-distance merchants – conveyed exotic information and effected cultural contact. This chapter's treatment of reports and letters as cargo may not be surprising in an age that recognizes the commodification of information, nor did contemporaries doubt the potential of the written word. Officials of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns routinely considered information from the colonies state secrets. The Fugger firm of Augsburg required their overseas agents to supplement business letters with avvisi, gossip about and commentary on local conditions and events. A late seventeenth-century saying from Portuguese India saw less danger in “the point of an Arab's sword” than in “the nib of a Jesuit's pen.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions , pp. 193 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008