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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: Two problems articulate the study undertaken by Jennifer D. Selwyn of the Jesuit mission in Naples from the mid 16th to the early 17th centuries: to discuss the forging of a corporate identity in the case of the Jesuit missionaries acting in the Kingdom of Naples and to illustrate “the Society of Jesus’ contribution to the cultural mapping of the early modern world”. He novelty of the work comes especially from the first aspect. The author proposes a fresh perspective in the study of the early-modern Catholic missions, a perspective which bears the influences of more recent historiographical developments labeled as cultural history. Accordingly, the focus is on the creation and maintenance of the institutional identity of the Society of Jesus – or, in the author’s own words, on “how missionary activity came to form a central pillar of Jesuit identity” - through the missionary discourse. The thesis of the book is that this institutional identity was produced and reproduced through a specific set of stereotypes, motives, themes, styles examined in separate chapters of the book. The importance of the Neapolitan site resides – according to the author - in the fact that it was a laboratory to test and refine the missionary methods and to forge the collective identify of the missionaries. Since the Jesuit order identified its mission as a civilizing effort, the image of a backward and barbarous Naples (both the city and the Kingdom of Naples) served as background and justification of their own action. This is not to say that it was white when the sources claim it to be black. In fact all the commentators of Neapolitan life shared the consensus that hardship, violence, lawlessness, unorthodox religiosity were linked and characterized the common population of Naples, requiring strict control. But this negative image, emerging in the context of economic decay and social unrest of the second half of the 16th century, was grasped and used by Jesuits for their own purposes. |
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