A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

The Society of Jesus has long been recognized for its global contribution to the study, practice, and dissemination of European music in the early modern period, and especially for its interactions with non-European music cultures. In Europe, Jesuit colleges played a seminal role in music education and the development of music in drama, major sacred works were composed by or for Jesuits, and treatises on music were written by Jesuit theorists. In the Americas and on islands in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, music served as a device for evangelization and conversion of indigenous peoples; in some of the missions, European music was cultivated to a level reported as comparable with standards of cities in Europe. Meanwhile, elite Jesuit scholars who gained access to high courts in Asia engaged in dialogue with local scholars, impressing powerful potentates and distinguishing themselves through their talent in music and their skills in astronomy, mathematics, cartography, languages, and diplomacy. This chapter surveys and critiques the diverse role of music within the global missions of the early modern Society of Jesus, with case studies drawn from Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

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History of global Christianity, I: European and global Christianity, ca. 1500–1789. Edited by Jens Schjørring and Norman A. Hjelm (trans. David Orton). Pp. x + 457 incl. 9 maps. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2017. €180. 978 90 04 34192 0 - A companion to early modern Catholic global missions. By Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia. (Companions to the Christian Tradition, 80.) Pp. x + 488 incl. 1 fig. and 1 table. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018. €190. 978 90 04 34994 0; 1871 6377

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History ◽

10.1017/s0022046919000423 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 70 (2) ◽

pp. 363-365

Author(s):

David Onnekink

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Christian Tradition ◽

Global Missions ◽

Global Christianity ◽

History Of

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A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, edited by Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia

Journal of Jesuit Studies ◽

10.1163/22141332-00601012-07 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 166-169

Author(s):

Alexandra Curvelo

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Global Missions

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Missionary Men in the Early Modern World

10.5117/9789462986305 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ulrike Strasser

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Real Life ◽

Visual Media ◽

Modern World ◽

Central Importance ◽

Global Missions ◽

Jesuit Missions ◽

German Speaking ◽

National Boundaries

How did gender shape the expanding Jesuit enterprise in the early modern world? What did it take to become a missionary man? And how did missionary masculinity align itself with the European colonial project? This book highlights the central importance of male affective ties and masculine mimesis in the formation of the Jesuit missions, as well as the significance of patriarchal dynamics. Focusing on previously neglected German actors, Strasser shows how stories of exemplary male behavior circulated across national boundaries, directing the hearts and feet of men throughout Europe toward Jesuit missions in faraway lands. The sixteenth-century Iberian exemplars of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, disseminated in print and visual media, inspired late-seventeenth-century Jesuits from German-speaking lands to bring Catholicism and European gender norms to the Spanish-controlled Pacific. The age of global missions hinged on the reproduction of missionary manhood in print and real life.

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