Saints or Devils Incarnate?: Studies in Jesuit History

Almost from the moment the Jesuits were founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and his companions they suffered from misunderstanding, some positive, much of it negative. Myth and misinformation abounded. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits’ official name, was a society of saints or of devils incarnate. Not until the mid-twentieth century did historians begin to dispel some of the myths, but only with John O'Malley’s The First Jesuits (1993) did a new era open in the study of the Society. Since then the Jesuits have attracted great attention from scholars of all disciplines on an international basis. O'Malley has continued to write about Saint Ignatius and the subsequent history of the Jesuits. This volume contains a number of such studies and presses forward the trajectory he launched two decades ago with his book.