Narratives of Adversity

In an early modern universe ‘where the will of God was evident everywhere’ (p. 3) it was necessary to conceptualise both success and failure as proof of divine approval. Jesuits were very good at turning disaster and adversity to advantage: the more martyrs the merrier, and the more tests of faith, the better. The eastern Habsburg lands—stretching as far as Moldavia, Ukraine, Serbia and Wallachia—did not disappoint in this regard. As Paul Shore’s well-researched volume demonstrates, the region was unusually perilous. Local populations were often Protestant-minded or set on challenging Habsburg overlordship (or, frequently, both), and the size of the region left many Jesuits isolated: the post-Tridentine goal of stable parochial life remained a pipe-dream. There were various infamous events (the murder of Jesuits at the hands of Calvinist soldiers in 1619, for instance, or the death of three Jesuits during the Ottoman recapturing of Belgrade in 1690) but day-to-day challenges and inconveniences were equally important in cultivating a Jesuit sense of battling nobly in a hostile environment. Responding to disease, polemical outbursts, the mischief of errant ex-Jesuits, and the lawsuits launched by jealous neighbours all played their part. When reading Jesuit accounts it is sometimes hard to distinguish between historical truth and pious fiction, but the result was a cohesive, morale-boosting narrative. The reports of adversity sometimes ‘betray a tendency to group a wide range of experiences into rigid, predetermined’ categories ‘that answered to the objectives of the mission’ (p. 70), but this is only to be expected

Archaeology · Art · Courage · Faith · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Theology · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies