A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits' Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (review)

Several years ago, Jennifer Selwyn published an article that introduced the themes of her research on the Jesuit missions in the early modern Kingdom of Naples. Now the results of her work appear greatly expanded in book form. Through an examination of the Jesuits' mission work in southern Italy, Professor Selwyn discusses two important interconnected topics: the Society of Jesus itself, the development of its methods and ideas, and especially the growth of a Jesuit sense of collective identity, on the one hand; on the other, how learned or official ideas of religious, moral, and cultural reform played out in the encounter with urban and rural poverty, social disorder, and popular religious beliefs in one of western Europe's marginal areas. Selwyn wisely places this encounter also within the context of early modern Europeans' experiences in the colonial world.

After a thematic and historiographic introduction, the book is divided into six chapters. In the first, Selwyn examines the image of southern Italy in European culture, as a land of fabled beauty but also of ignorance, violence, and superstition; the Jesuits endorsed this image to heighten both the need for their work in the region and its appeal to their own members. The chapter also provides an overview of Neapolitan history. In the second chapter Selwyn discusses the early Jesuits' role in the South of Italy. Three of Loyola's first six successors as Superior General of the order came from southern Italy, and southern Jesuits contributed much to developing both the Society's activities and its theories. In particular, urban and rural missions to downtrodden groups gained a crucial place within the order's active ministry. The Jesuits always perceived their work among the southern population as a civilizing effort.

In chapter 3 Selwyn develops the parallels between mission work in Catholic Europe and in Asia or America. In particular, through an analysis of the letters young Jesuits wrote to their superiors requesting mission work outside of Europe, Selwyn is able to examine the emergence of a heroic model of the missionary that became central to the Jesuit identity. The same rhetoric of barbarity and ignorance that applied to the Indies served to approach also the southern regions of Italy.

In the last three chapters Selwyn examines specific aspects of the missions: the particular advice contained in mission reports, letters, and instructional manuals, which displays the Jesuits' effective combination of core values and ideas with flexible accommodation to local realities; the focus on conflict mediation, which grew to be central to Jesuit missions, and which Selwyn argues became ever more urgent after the Neapolitan revolt of 1647–48; and the theatrical elements of Jesuit mission work, as shown both in parallels to the sacred theater the Jesuits employed in their colleges and in the dramatic penitential rituals that concluded many missions. Paradoxically, the Jesuits' emphasis on dramatic rituals blurred their own civilizational rhetoric, which focused on the elimination of "superstitious" popular practices, and by the eighteenth century became one of the factors in the Jesuits' declining fortunes. In a brief conclusion, Selwyn sketches the process that led to the Jesuits' expulsion from Naples in 1767 and then to the order's suppression in 1773.

Throughout the book Selwyn effectively combines prescriptive and descriptive sources. Her primary sources are all from Jesuit and Vatican archives, and this at times leads to confusion in the discussion of Neapolitan details: e.g., "Elector of the People" is rather unhelpful to describe the representative of non-noble elites in the Naples city government. The book also would have benefited from more careful copy-editing (there are several typos in Italian terms and repetitions of details), and from a better index: to give one random example, of seven individuals named and discussed on p. 240, three did not make it into the index. But overall this book is an intelligent and...