Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of SOCIETÀ E STORIA (134/2011)

The Society of Jesus in the late eighteenth century: an overview

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Niccolò Guasti
In the last few decades the general outlook concerning the Society of Jesus in the early modern period has dramatically changed. The old liberal cliché, which held the Jesuits responsible for thwarting the rise of free thought and of modern scientific culture, has been replaced by a renewed attention to the Society’s complex strategy in dealing with the Enlightenment. During the 18th century two different reactions can be singled out: a conservative attitude, engaged in an intransigent defense of catholic orthodoxy against heretics and free-thinkers, and a more open-minded approach, whi- ch strove to absorb philosophical, theological and epistemological novelties into the main stream of the catholic tradition. This effort to christianize the Enlightenment, partly by sharing the century’s sociable tendencies, survived even after the suppression of the Jesuit Order by the Pope in 1773. The long interval between this event and the Society’s restoration (1793-1814) and the subsequent debate over the nature of the new Society as compared to the old, clearly reflected the political and cultural challenge posed by the French revolution and the Napoleonic régimes.

Platonism in Peramás’ Commentarius (1793)

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Fabrizio Melai
In his work De vita et moribus tredecim virorum Paraguaycorum (1795), former Paraguayan jesuit Josè Manuel Peramás included a Commentarius which drew a comparison between the famous Reductions of Paraguay and Plato’s Utopian State. Such inclusion greatly contributed to the fame of Peramás’ work and its fortune in recent years. With this essay, the author demonstrates that the Commentarius joined in an Italian context that was experiencing a revamped interest for Plato’s political works, which Peramàs studied at the Univesity of Cervera, Spain, at the school of thought of the humanist Finestres. In examining Commentarius’s content, the author stresses the apologetic aspects, which refer to Domingo Muriel’s works, last Provincial of Paraguay. In fact, Peramás meant to contrast the political model of Paraguayan missions to the achievements of the French Revolution, this by using Platonic’s Utopia to reaffirm a classical politology, strongly tied with Second Scholasticism, particularly Francisco Suárez.

Education to Tradition. Jesuits and School between suppression and restoration

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Paolo Bianchini
This essay investigates the role played by the Society of Jesus in school teaching and pedagogical thought after its suppression in 1773, with a view to achieving a better understanding of their cultural and religious strategies. The focus is on French Jesuits, expelled from Louis XV’s kingdom between 1762 and 1767, and on their continuing activities as teachers in French colleges and as authors of pedagogical treatises and school textbooks. After the demise of the Order, they placed their special skills at the disposal of schools of all kinds and met with a wide appreciation, which goes far to explain their resurrection in 1814.

Traces of resistance

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

M. Martìn Morales
In view of the paucity of information available on the reducciones in the old province of Paraguay, the “Book of orders” represents a privileged observation point to study the complexity of the Jesuits’ missionary experience among the Guaranì people. The juridical bias of the Book reflect the persistence of the casuistic pattern. As facts and circumstances are at the origin of legislation, dealing with the law implies the study of what produced it. The insistence on prescriptions throughout the Book is evidence of their frequent violation and of the resistance they met with. The Book enables us to reconstruct the Jesuits’ missionary strategy, viewed as a power structure, and to realize its limitations, which explain the resort to tactics. The “Book of Orders” is a text capable of “upsetting” the historian’s outlook and to confront him with new questions and interpretations.

Conclusive remarks

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Girolamo Imbruglia
The common feature of the essays by Morales, Melai and Bianchini, presented at the seminar La Compaˇnia de Jesús y la cultura del siglo XVIII (Instituto Internacional Xavier Maria de Munibe, Azkoitia, 26-27 June 2009) is their focus on the history of the Jesuit Order in the late eighteenth century, before and after its suppression. The analysis is centred on three significant aspects: the missionary strategy in the Reducciones of Paraguay, described in a contemporary text, the teaching experiences of former jesuits in France and the defense of the Society’s evangelizing practice in Spanish America. The debate on the Society of Jesus was one ot the main topics discussed by the Enlightenment culture. This debate, apart from its polemical purposes, touched on a more general subject, the nature of the early moderna State. The three essays printed here show that monarchical absolutism reflected a strong limk between religion and politics.

Banche miste e ciclo immobiliare. L’esperienza di Comit e Credit (1918- 1934)

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Enrico Berbenni
This research investigates the role played by the two major Italian universal banks during the growth of the building and real estate sector in the twentiesof the XXth century. It also focuses on how they reacted to the next crisis, highlighting the differences between the two institutions in the way they operated on the market. These banks had already invested in this sector but it was in the twenties that their intervention was structured in a more comprehensive way. Hence, they were able to take advantage of the opportunities induced by a growing market, even if they were subsequently forced by the changed economic framework to reorganize their portfolio of real estate shareholdings. The financial support granted during the economic crisis seems to suggest that Comit and Credit adopted a counter-cyclical behaviour, which however did not prove su- stainable in the longer term due to the broader banking crisis and to the following advent of Iri.

The Beauharnais Collection at Princeton: a half-forgotten source for the military history of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814)

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Silvia Bobbi
This article aims at a description of the Beauharnais papers preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in the Firestone Library of Princeton University. They include both governmental and private documents belonging to Prince Eugene Beaharnais, viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy and commander- in-chief of the Italian army, at the time when he left Milan for Bavaria, early in 1814. Most of this material is of military interest, and it has been seldom used by historians (particularly European ones) of the Napoleonic period. Its potential value is here illustrated by means of a few examples chosen on the basis of direct consultation. Besides showing what were the priorities of the Italian government, it is also instrumental to the reconstruction or reinterpretation of important historiographic questions.

Internet and the public use of history. From Nicola Gallerano’s remarks to Antonino Criscione’s surveys of web sites

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Antonio Prampolini
Anyone who wants to deal with the issue of “the public use of history” in the last twenty years should take as his/her starting point the fundamental remarks of Nicola Gallerano on the relationship between history, memory and society. The advent of Internet has had a significant bearing on the public use of history, as Antonino Criscione’s recent surveys have shown. The distinctive contributions of Gallerano and Criscione are discussed in this essay. Both scholars share a critical but positive approach to the public use of history, which cannot be confined to msitifying or apologetic revisionism. This applies especially to Internet, where many webs devoted to contemporary history present themselves as “deposits of memory” or “community networks”.

Abstracs

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Schede

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Libri ricevuti

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Hanno collaborato a questo fascicolo / Hanno collaborato in qualità di referees nell'annata 2011

Thu, 15 Feb 2012 8:00:00 GMT