Debating Obedience in Early Modern Context

Mostaccio, Silvia [UCL]

The generalate of Claudio Acquaviva can show us from a new focus point a crucial question in West European History in relation with the necessity of a renovated balance of powers. The Society’s conscience of the challenge, manifested by a copious literature, testifies the complexity of the Early Modern network of powers. In the framework of the institutional and pastoral reorganization of the Society of Jesus promoted by the general Claudio Acquaviva, obedience played a fundamental role. It was a central aspect of the identity of the Order and therefore a discussed point in relation with the Society’s Essentialia. At the same time, the Society’s internal cohesion around obedience engendered the suspicion of religious and political authorities in relation with the challenge of redefying a hierarchy of powers. Between 1581 and 1615, the Jesuits were subjects and objects of obedience and their debates cannot be understood just in an internal perspective. To investigate Early Modern Jesuit Obedience and its issues is a goal which is only realizable by means of the adoption of a multi-focus perspective. Inside and outside the Society of Jesus, obedience becomes a field of historical investigation, which enables us to follow complementary research into its political, spiritual, institutional and cultural involvements. This complexity is a richness and it is important to save this dimension without endorsing a single perspective simply in order to make possible a single, uniform narrative. In the reduced place of an article, I would like to show the multiple obedience historiographical potentialities by a double perspective: the facts and their interpretations. This is why I propose a sort of selected review of recent scholarship in link with the Obedience and the Society of Jesus, able to discuss some from the most relevant contributions on issues correlated with obedience and its theological, religious, political and cultural contexts