The first volume based the International Symposia on Jesuit Studies has been published as part of Brill’s Jesuit Studies book series.
Exploring Jesuit Distinctiveness: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ways of Proceeding within the Society of Jesus offers an introductory essay and 12 chapters. According to the publisher, “The volume theme is the distinctiveness of Jesuits and their ministries that was discussed at the first International Symposium on Jesuit Studies held at Boston College’s Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies in June 2015. It explores the quidditas Jesuitica, or the specifically Jesuit way(s) of proceeding in which Jesuits and their colleagues operated from historical, geographical, social, and cultural perspectives. The collection poses a question whether there was an essential core of distinctive elements that characterized the way in which Jesuits lived their religious vocation and conducted their various works and how these ways of proceeding were lived out in the various epochs and cultures in which Jesuits worked over four and a half centuries; what changed and adapted itself to different times and situations, and what remained constant, transcending time and place, infusing the apostolic works and lives of Jesuits with the charism at the source of the Society of Jesus’s foundation and development.”
Due to support by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, the entire volume is available in Open Access. Its 12 research essays include:
- Francesco Benci and the Origins of Jesuit Neo-Latin Epic, by Paul Gwynne;
- Exploring the Distinctiveness of Neo-Latin Jesuit Didactic Poetry in Naples: The Case of Nicolò Partenio Giannettasio, by Claudia Schindler;
- Civic Education on Stage: Civic Values and Virtues in the Jesuit Schools of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, by Jolanta Rzegocka;
- “Ask the Jesuits to Send Verses from Rome”: The Society’s Networks and the European Dissemination of Devotional Music, by Daniele V. Filippi;
- Priestly Violence, Martyrdom, and Jesuits: The Case of Diego de Alfaro, S.J. (Paraguay 1639), by Andrew Redden;
- Colonial Theodicy and the Jesuit Ascetic Ideal in José de Acosta’s Works on Spanish America, by Bryan Green;
- Purple Silk and Black Cotton: Francisco Cabral, S.J., and the Negotiation of Jesuit Attire in Japan (1570–73), by Linda Zampol D’Ortia;
- Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Vida del P. Ignacio de Loyola (1583) and Literary Culture in Early Modern Spain, by Rady Roldán-Figueroa;
- The Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus’s Mission in Pedro de Ribadeneyra S.J.’s Historia ecclesiástica del schisma del Reyno de Inglaterra (1588), by Spencer J. Weinreich;
- Discerning Skills: Psychological Insight at the Core of Jesuit Identity, by Cristiano Casalini;
- Distinctive Contours of Jesuit Enlightenment in France, by Jeffrey D. Burson;
- One Century of Science: The Jesuit Journal Brotéria (1902–2002), by Francisco Malta Romeiras and Henrique Leitão.