The Early Modern Jesuit Attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian Strains of Asceticism


Book Description

This book presents an early modern Jesuit attitude towards Hindu and Ethiopian strains of asceticism. The Jesuits’ descriptions of both the yogis and the Ethiopian renunciates were marked by ambivalence. While critical of these ascetics, the missionaries also pointed out admirable facets of their comportment. In both the Society of Jesus’ positive and negative impressions, there are glaring ethnocentric views that shift the spotlight onto the other’s flaws. Like many historical cases, these perceptions evolved into a sort of inverted mirror image of the self that revealed differences between the European Catholic and the native renunciate.




Envoys of a Human God


Book Description

In Envoys of A Human God Andreu Martínez offers a comprehensive study of the religious mission led by the Society of Jesus in Christian Ethiopia. The mission to Ethiopia was one of the most challenging undertakings carried out by the Catholic Church in early modern times. The book examines the period of early Portuguese contacts with the Ethiopian monarchy, the mission’s main developments and its aftermath, with the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. The study profits from both an intense reading of the historical record and the fruits of recent archaeological research. Long-held historiographical assumptions are challenged and the importance of cultural and socio-political factors in the attraction and ultimate estrangement between European Catholics and Ethiopian Christians is highlighted.




FAITH OVER COLOR


Book Description

This dissertation explores multiple episodes of interaction between Ethiopians and Europeans throughout the early modern era. After overviewing the Ethiopian exploration of Europe in the 15th century and the first Catholic attempts to reconnect to the Ethiopian Church at the turn of the 16th century, it focuses on the Ethio-Lusophone encounter by considering the emergence of Ethiopian studies in early modern Lisbon, the Portuguese military intervention in the Ethiopian-Adal War (1529-1543) and the Jesuit mission to Ethiopia (1555-1632). This dissertation argues that in the context of the early-modern Ethio-European encounter, faith trumped skin color in the discourse on sameness and otherness: throughout the 15th and 16th centuries Europeans and Ethiopians perceived each other as belonging to the same Christian world and collaborated to defy the perceived Muslim threat. Starting in the late 16th century however, Counter-Reformation Catholicism and Jesuit proselytism transformed Ethiopians into others, and--in Ethiopian eyes--Europeans became a threat. The Jesuit mission engendered an era of turmoil that crippled both the Ethio-European encounter and the Ethiopian monarchy: in its aftermath, the Ethiopian elites maintained a policy of isolation from Europe, barred Europeans from entering their country and redirected their attention to the Muslim societies of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean basins.




The Secret History of the Jesuits


Book Description

Secrets the Jesuits don't want Christians to know Out of Europe, a voice is heard from the secular world that documents historically the same information told by ex-priests. The author exposes the Vatican's involvement in world politics, intrigues, and the fomenting of wars throughout history. It appears, beyond any doubt, that the Roman Catholic institution is not a Christian church and never was. The poor Roman Catholic people have been betrayed by her and are facing spiritual disaster. Paris shows that Rome is responsible for the two great world wars. Author Edmond Paris explains why he wrote this book... "The public is practically unaware of the overwhelming responsibility carried by the Vatican and its Jesuits in the start of the two world wars -- a situation which may be explained in part by the gigantic finances at the disposition of the Vatican and its Jesuits, giving them power in so many spheres, especially since the last conflict." "In fact, the part they took in those tragic events has hardly been mentioned until the present time, except by apologists eager to disguise it. It is with the aim of rectifying this and establishing the true facts that we present in this and other books the political activity of the Vatican during the contemporary -- activity which mutually concerns the Jesuits." "This study is based on irrefutable archive documents, publications from well-known political personalities, diplomats, ambassadors and eminent writers, most of whom are Catholics, even attested by the imprimatur."




Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism


Book Description

This is the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. It speaks to race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, and provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority.




Jacob & Esau


Book Description

Jacob and Esau is a profound new account of two millennia of Jewish European history that, for the first time, integrates the cosmopolitan narrative of the Jewish diaspora with that of traditional Jews and Jewish culture. Malachi Haim Hacohen uses the biblical story of the rival twins, Jacob and Esau, and its subsequent retelling by Christians and Jews throughout the ages as a lens through which to illuminate changing Jewish-Christian relations and the opening and closing of opportunities for Jewish life in Europe. Jacob and Esau tells a new history of a people accustomed for over two-and-a-half millennia to forming relationships, real and imagined, with successive empires but eagerly adapting, in modernity, to the nation-state, and experimenting with both assimilation and Jewish nationalism. In rewriting this history via Jacob and Esau, the book charts two divergent but intersecting Jewish histories that together represent the plurality of Jewish European cultures.




The Jesuits in Ethiopia (1609-1641)


Book Description

This volume constitutes the first English translation of Latin letters relating to the Jesuit mission in Ethiopia. It covers a period beginning shortly after the accession of Emperor Susenyos, who would convert to Catholicism in 1612 and declare Roman Catholicism the religion of Ethiopia in 1621, to the ejection of the Jesuits by Susenyos's son Fasiladas in 1633 and the suppression of the mission over the course of the following decade. The letters document a fascinating encounter between Western and African Christianities and detailed accounts of the theological, political, and educational activities of the Jesuit mission, as well as the significant role played by Ethiopian aristocratic and royal women in resisting the imposition of Western Catholicism. Much of the official correspondence of the mission remained inaccessible to readers without knowledge of Latin, including all the letters of the head of the mission, Patriarch Mendes, who conducted his correspondence mostly in Latin. The translations by Jessica Wright and Leon Grek are accompanied by a substantial historical introduction by Leonardo Cohen, and an extensive glossary by Wendy Laura Belcher and Emily Dalton. The volume as a whole is a valuable resource for readers with or without access to the letters in the original Latin, and to scholars of Ethiopian history, African studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, and Jesuit and missionary history.




Jesuits and the Natural Sciences in Modern Times, 1814–2014


Book Description

From 1814, linked to their educational work, Jesuits made significant contributions to the natural sciences, especially in the fields of astronomy, meteorology, seismology, terrestrial magnetism, mathematics, and biology in a worldwide network of universities, secondary schools and observatories.







Missionary Tropics


Book Description

A provocative contribution to the history of early modern Euro-Asian interactions that provides new perspectives on the encounter between Catholicism and Hinduism in India