Mission is Possible: Italian Jesuits and Popular Missions between the Old and the New Society
- Book Title:
- La Compagnie de Jésus des Anciens Régimes au monde contemporain (XVIII-XX siècles)
- Book Editor:
- Format:
- Book Chapter
- Year:
- 2020
- Publisher:
- Ecole Française de RomeInstitutum Historicum Societatis Iesu
- Place published:
- Rome
- Language:
- Abstract:
This essay shows how, during the dramatic time when the Society was officially suppressed (1773-1814), Italian ex-Jesuits considered de so-called 'popular missions' to be a crucial instrument for preserving the Society’s identity. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Jesuits wondered about their future: what should it be and what would the "new" Society of Jesus become? In order to glimpse the future, they looked back to their past. Fidelity to the missionary method of the first generations of Jesuits was an opportunity for the Society to survive and to remain faithful to its glorious past. In a new world, Jesuits once again could become what they were, and popular missions were one of the fields in which they could demonstrate their continuity with the past. An example of this approach is the “Plan for the Missions” (Piano per le missioni), a document published in the appendix to this essay: preserved in the Roman archives of the Society of Jesus (ARSI), it was authored in 1806 by the prominent ex-Jesuit Luigi Mozzi de' Capitani (1746-1813).
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Publisher URL:
- Page Range:
- 183-213
- ISBN:
- 97888704138169782728314195