- Title
- Imagining the 'Indies': Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
- Creator
- Russell, Camilla
- Relation
- L'Europa Divisa e i Nuovi Mondi: Per Adriano Prosperi Vol. II p. 179-189
- Publisher
- Scuola Normale Superiore
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century was awash with accounts from the Jesuit missions in the ‘Indies’, while young Jesuits in colleges and novitiates eagerly sought a place on the missions, especially in the East. The phenomenon of mass, collective overseas vocations is recorded in the remarkable letters of petition, known as the Litterae indipetae, written by aspiring missionaries to the Superior General, and preserved at the Jesuit Archive in Rome. This essay uses the Italian Jesuit petitions for the Indies between 1590 and 1615 to explore how candidates for the missions enlisted certain methods of communication to articulate their vocation, as well as to conceptualise the Indies more broadly: from the famous missionary accounts, to more ephemeral verbal and interpersonal exchanges, to visual sources, as well as dreams and visions. By tracing the process by which Jesuit candidates for the missions expressed their vocation, this essay seeks to provide a window onto the sources and attitudes that shaped European views about the East in the formative period of sustained European-Asian contact.
- Subject
- Italian Jesuits; Jesuit missions; Europe; religion
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1325298
- Identifier
- uon:25234
- Identifier
- ISBN:9788876424243
- Language
- eng
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