book reviews 563

John W. O’Malley Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History [Jesuit Studies 1]. Brill, Leiden/Boston 2013, xiii + 312 pp. isbn 9789004255340. €131; us$ 182.

With this collection of fifteen elegant articles published between 1984 and 2008 by John O’Malley on the early history of the Society of Jesus Brill’s new series, ‘Jesuit Studies,’ could hardly have got off to a more propitious start. One of the main objectives of Saints or Devils Incarnate? is to dispel some of the myths with which the image of the Society has been tarnished over the centuries. The days when the Jesuits were regarded as devils incarnate are, at least where younger historians are concerned, happily over, but O’Malley still tackles a number of other misconceptions. Some of these are simply questions of ter- minology. In two of his articles he argues against the use of the terms ‘Counter- Reformation’ and ‘Catholic Reform,’ both of which have been applied to the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He prefers the far less binding formula ‘Early Modern Catholicism.’ “It suggests,” he writes, “both change and continuity and leaves the chronological question open at both ends. It implicitly includes Catholic Reform, Counter-Reformation, and even Catholic Restoration as indispensable categories of analysis, while surren- dering the attempt to draw too firm a line of demarcation among them … Most important, it suggests that important influences on religious institutions and ‘mentalities’ were at work in ‘early modern society’ that had little to do with religion or ‘reform’ as such …” Another point with which O’Malley takes issue is the description of Loyola as a ‘church reformer.’ What, in the sixteenth century, did that mean? If we base ourselves on the Council of Trent, O’Malley points out, “reform of the church centered on offices in the church—papacy, episcopate, and pastorates—and hoped to accomplish its moral and pastoral goals principally through canoni- cal discipline.” Except for a very few cases, these were not problems with which the Jesuits were particularly concerned. They considered themselves, rather, in the service of the Church of Rome, and in this connection O’Malley dis- cusses at length the significance of the Jesuits’ fourth vow which has often been interpreted as a profession of blind obedience to the pope. In fact, as O’Malley shows, it was not a vow of loyalty to the papacy but a vow of readi- ness to be sent on a mission by the pope. It was also a claim to perpetual mobility, the refusal to be tied to a monastic or conventual establishment, stressed, in its turn, by the refusal of the Jesuits to chant the liturgical hours in choir. The ‘mission’ of the Jesuits was performed in various manners. O’Malley rightly emphasizes both the originality and the importance of their founda-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/18712428-09404022 564 book reviews tion of schools which turned out to be one of their most effective devices in winning Protestants back to Rome. The enterprise in itself was evidence of the ‘activism’ that distinguished the Society and the determination of the Jesuits to influence the secular world. Here O’Malley has an interesting comment on the importance of Cicero in the Jesuit curriculum and of a humanist tradi- tion, imbibed by Loyola and his early companions at the university of Paris, in which the pagan classics were put to the service of a civic education. Another means used by the Jesuits was the ‘lecture.’ Although the lectures were given in church, they were not sermons delivered from the pulpit, but were held in the body of the church, the lecturer seated on a chair and the auditors on benches. O’Malley pays special attention to the immense contribution to the devel- opment of the Society made by Jerónimo Nadal. Charged by Loyola with the promulgation of the Constitutions, not only did Nadal try to combine a taste for “affective and even mystical prayer” with the need for discipline and a mod- erate asceticism, but he also assisted in the promotion of the study of the Pauline Epistles so significant in the Jesuit tradition. Regarded as the most faithful interpreter of Loyola’s ideals, Nadal developed the doctrine known as ‘the grace of vocation’ or ‘the grace of the founder’ which meant that the call to any religious institute has a ‘specificity’ exemplified by Loyola him- self. In the last two pieces in Saints or Devils Incarnate? O’Malley discusses the Jesuits’ relationship with the arts. In the (illustrated) article entitled ‘Saint Ignatius and the Cultural Mission of the Society of Jesus’ we see how, after what would seem to have been an initial aversion to music, the Jesuits grad- ually accepted the singing of the catechism to popular tunes and, in some of their celebrations, particularly in America and Asia, were prepared to indulge the native taste for dancing and singing. O’Malley goes on to examine the Jesuit plays performed in their numerous schools, their study of the sciences, their employment of architects and painters, and, finally, their contribution to the diffusion of typography outside Europe. The last chapter of all, ‘The Many Lives of Ignatius of Loyola, Future Saint,’ also illustrated, deals with the biographies by Ribadeneyra, by Maffei, and by Lancicius and Rinaldi. The last was accom- panied by engravings executed by Jean-Baptiste Barbé very possibly in collab- oration with Rubens. Although O’Malley’s articles are on the early phases of the Society he rightly insists on the individuality which has always characterized its members. Already by the early seventeenth century more than one ‘general strain’ of Jesuit spirituality had emerged, and in the years to come a large spectrum of indi- vidual positions would come to the fore—a feature which the enemies of the

Church History and Religious Culture 94 (2014) 531–602