In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions
  • Eric Nelson
Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. By Luke Clossey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii plus 327 pp. $99.00).

This study is in many ways a product of our increasingly globalized world. In the process of researching this volume Clossey visited a dozen countries across the [End Page 602] globe to consult documents in some three dozen archives written in languages including Chinese, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Latin and Portuguese. It seems appropriate then that the subject of his study are the careers of 53 Jesuits who were global travelers from an earlier era, being active in at least two of the three regions of Germany, China and Mexico between 1582 and 1701. Clossey describes this work as one of historical 'dromography', by which he means the study of geography and history, along with the logistics of trade, movement, transportation and communication. In one sense this is the case, but at every turn this book is more than it at first appears. It engages with topics in world history, missionary studies, early modern Catholicism, Jesuit studies, and several national histories with admirable skill and economy, making this an important book for scholars in many fields.

Clossey breaks with earlier studies of missionaries, which had a tendency to study specific missions or specific types of missions, instead emphasizing the extent to which missions were experienced as a single global phenomena by those who participated in them. In a series of thematic chapters Clossey maps out a general Jesuit missionary culture. After a broad ranging opening chapter that defines the study's scope and approach serving the function of a conclusion, Chapter two provides a useful and concise explanation of the institutional structures of the Jesuit order and the three missions that are the focus of this study. Chapter three examines the realities of running Jesuit missions, emphasizing how geographic distances, difficulties in communication, and national sentiments amongst other challenges led to a more decentralized Jesuit order than their constitutions, formal organization, and reputation would indicate.

Chapters four through six all explore the global mission as an idea or ideal. Chapter four pursues this theme by exploring how Jesuits visually represented their global mission through cartography and painting by drawing on both medieval ideas of universal mission and the new imagery of the globe that emerged following the European discovery of the Americas. Chapter five explores missionary conceptions of time and space to show how Jesuits conceptualized early modern missions as a global effort to strengthen the church. Chapter six examines the motivations that inspired individual Jesuits to undertake missions, arguing that only a relative few expressed strong desires for missionary work in distant lands or martyrdom. Instead most viewed missionary work in distant lands as a path to their own salvation.

Chapters seven and eight examine the logistics of sending missionaries from Germany to Mexico and China. Chapter seven focuses on the routes that missionaries took to arrive at these missions and the efforts of colonial powers to regulate the number and origins of foreign missionaries in their territories. Chapter eight examines the Jesuit financial network and fundraising operations, uncovering significant German contributions to both the Chinese and Mexican missions.

Chapters nine and ten focus on the dissemination of information and spiritual rewards from the missions. Chapter nine explores the Jesuit information network and its roles in promoting the missions, securing patronage, and disseminating information about distant lands. In chapter ten the Jesuit sacred economy —including prayers, relics and the saved souls of converts—are the topic of study as Clossey argues that these products provided the "glue and goal" of the missions [End Page 603] and must be viewed alongside finance and information as a product that moved along the Jesuit global network.

The final chapter, in keeping with the ambitious scope of this book, seeks through this study of missionaries to reconsider how historians understand early modern Catholicism in the context of globalization, putting forth the argument that what really separated early modern Catholicism from that of other periods is that it was the era of Global Salvific Catholicism—more global than the medieval...

pdf

Share