The Jesuit Order as a synagogue of Jews : Jesuits of Jewish ancestry and purity-of-blood laws in the early Society of Jesus / by Robert Aleksander Maryks.
The Society of Jesus was formed in 1540, at the peak of the anti-Converso hysteria in Spain. It was in 1555-56 that both King Philip II and Pope Paul IV ratified the statute of "purity of blood" issued by the Archbishop of Toledo and Inquisitor General of Spain, Juan Martínez Guijarro (bet...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Ebook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Leiden ; Boston :
Brill,
2010.
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| Series: | Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions ;
v. 146. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | JSTOR Open Access |
| Summary: | The Society of Jesus was formed in 1540, at the peak of the anti-Converso hysteria in Spain. It was in 1555-56 that both King Philip II and Pope Paul IV ratified the statute of "purity of blood" issued by the Archbishop of Toledo and Inquisitor General of Spain, Juan Martínez Guijarro (better known as Silíceo), thus in fact abrogating Pope Nicholas V's bull of 1449 against such statutes. Initially, the Society admitted Conversos freely, in line with the views of the founder of the Society, Ignatius Loyola. Converso Jesuits were among the best leaders, scholars, missionaries (in Asia and America), and diplomats of the Order. The anti-discrimination policy of the early Jesuit leadership was an act of bold resistance against the Iberian "Zeitgeist". However, in 1573 the newly elected superior general of the Order, Everard Mercurian, began to cleanse the Jesuit administration of the Spanish Conversos, and in 1593 the rigid "purity of blood" decree was introduced at the 5th Jesuit General Congregation. The new decree caused opposition within the Order; the 6th General Congregation in 1608 mitigated the decree, barring admittance to the Society for anyone who had Jewish ancestors to the fifth generation. This racist decree was abrogated only in 1946, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Appendix I (pp. 219-256) contains Benedetto Palmio's anti-Converso memorial (in the original Italian), written by this Jesuit superior general's assistant for Italy in the late 1590s. Appendix II (pp. 257-260) contains the Latin text of Pope Nicholas V's bull "Humani generis inimicus" (1449) against the Toledo "purity of blood" statute of the same year. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xxxii, 281 pages) : illustrations, map, portraits. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 900417981X 9789004179813 |