Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540-1630

Abstract

THIS is a meticulously researched, scholarly work, written with suavity and flair, dealing carefully with much of the huge amount of material which awaits the researcher in this field: the Jesuits were, of course, prolific writers and justly feared in their own day for the level at which they wrote. The book divides into three. Chapters 1–4 set the ideas discussed later in the book in their institutional context, telling the story of the foundation, structure, rules and ethos of the Society of Jesus. Although Höpfl's previous work has largely been in the history of Calvinism, he is generally balanced in his judgements on the Society, and if he dwells on blind obedience, the spectacular growth of the order, its obsession with education, its addiction to controversy, its tendency to get involved with ‘princes’, and its denunciation of heresy, perhaps this is inevitable. What might be emphasised a little more is the Jesuits' pastoral and missionary work, both in Europe and beyond, the problem of the ‘Indies’ providing a vein of material which is not mined here. The second section of the book (Chs. 5–8) is perhaps the most important, and consists of a carefully argued discussion of Jesuit attitudes to ‘reason of state’. Starting with an analysis of the work of Giovanni Botero, Höpfl shows that attacks on Machiavelli were often combined with arguments which demonstrated a sympathy with the Renaissance concern to show what in practice was in the best interests of the state and its rulers. The key practical issue at stake in the context of the Wars of Religion was religious toleration, and Jesuits were forced to argue both for and against the politique case in favour of toleration, depending on the historical and geographic context in which they wrote. Höpfl concludes: ‘Jesuits, then, were capable of the most extensive asset-stripping of “reason of state”….’ (p. 140), in using at different times rhetoric which justified both persecution and toleration. Chapter 7 contains a subtle dissection of the relationship of casuistry to political theory in the matters of keeping faith with heretics and especially—and very usefully—on the sanctity of treaties like the Peace of Augsburg. The conclusion drawn is: ‘Jesuits, then, were willing and able to show flexibility in accommodating moral rules to the demands of the prince's role, and the more orthodox the prince, the more sympathetic he was likely to find them’ (p. 164). The final section of the book (Chs. 9–13) moves in historiographical terms away from what has recently become popular, cases of conscience and reason of state, and back to the standard fare of the historian of political thought in the age of J. Neville Figgis. Chapter 9 analyses Jesuit views on political authority, its origins and sanctions. This is followed by an exposition of the favourite themes of classical early-modern political thought in Chapter 10: the contract and state of nature. The notion of a pre-social state of nature did not feature strongly in Jesuit theory, nor did ideas of a social contract, until Suarez developed his views towards the end of the period under review. Nevertheless, although they wrote in the age of developing absolutism (especially among their strongest supporters), ‘in Jesuit political theory, then, legitimate government was limited government’ (p. 263). Good use is made here of A Conference about the next succession, by the English Jesuit, Robert Persons, who pointed to the royal coronation oath and the oaths of allegiance from subjects to their rulers as forms of ‘agreement and convention’ which constituted a sort of contract.