Dettaglio Scheda - "Apologia Societatis Iesu in Gallia, ad christianissimum Galliae et Nauarrae regem Henricum 4. ..."

\\7!, 120, \\1! p. ; 8º

Cors.; gr. ; rom
Segn.: A-H⁸
Le c. A²,³, segnate \\ast!²,³
Iniziali e fregi xil

Vignetta xil. con l'insegna dei Gesuiti sul front.

Tit. orig.: Tres humble remonstrance et requeste des religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus, au tres chrestien roy de France et Navarre, Henry IIII
Il nome dell'A. appare nella prefazione
Per il trad., Jakob Gretser cfr. Sommervoegel III, 1572.

Difesa dei gesuiti dalle accuse di essere “hispanos”, “hostes regni & reipublicae”, istigatori di “parricidium” (da intendere qui come “regicidio”).

…Aquaviva’s Instructions for Confessors of Princes, after conventionally demanding abstention from ‘external and political mattersì, continue…: ‘The Prince must hear patiently and dispassionately whatever the Confessor shall think it right to propound him at the suggestion of  [the Confessor’s] conscience…; it is right that he should have the liberty of a [spiritual] Father to declare what he judges to be his and the prince’s duty to God’… But talk about ‘no meddling in politics’ often incorporated qualifications which in effect acknowledged that the issue was not conceptually straightforward at all. Richeome, in the Apology for the Society of Jesus in France…was not as insouciant as he appeared. He admitted that ‘sometimes some of our Society take on work on behalf of the commonwealth and invest much effort in it’. He even claimed crdit for the fact, giving the examples of Possevino in Poland and Russia and Toledo’s activities to have Henry IV’s excommunication lifted. Here Jesuits were acting ‘with a good and praiseworthy end in view, and at the behest of princes, who are entitled to command us to do such things’. Then indeed ‘we do take up and carry out business that pertain the civil state’. ‘In these disturbed times’, the zeal of some Jesuits had certainly outrun their prudence, but the blame did not lie with the Society’s rules, their Superior, or the instruction of the Fifth General Congregation. This put a decent and broadly accurate construction of the matter, but did not alter the fact that, by his own admission, Jesuits sometimes did concern themselves with matters pertaining the secular state. No doubt Aquaviva and his predecessors meant to keep thei men out of the courts and political entanglements of all kind, and so did the provincial and general congregations that agonized on this subject. But Aquaviva had the Spanish empresa, the French religion wars, and the possible succession of a relapsed heretic to the throne of France to consider; the Guise (who were involved in all this) were noted patrons of the Society and harboured many of its colleges. And provincial and general congregations had to retain the benevolence of their secular patrons.
Cfr.: H. Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought. The Society  of Jesus and the State, c. 1540 – 1630,  Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 60-61.

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