Preconditions for the Establishment of the Facility of the Society of Jesus in Lviv

Abstract

The article describes the preconditions for the establishment of the collegium of the Society of Jesus in Lviv in the second half of the 16th century. By analyzing the existing sources and studies on the history of the Jesuit order, it is relatively easy to notice a significant bias in favour of studying their educational activities. At the same time, almost no studies exist which could illustrate the development of the facility itself in the context of the events of those times. Hence, there is a great number of terminological and factual inconsistencies, as well as the interpretation of Jesuits’ activity only in terms of their educational work. In this regard, the aim of this article is to make an attempt to research the preconditions for the establishment of the facility of the Society of Jesus in Lviv as based on the existing sources. Moreover, the main goal of this article is to establish the objectives and plans of the order to establish a local facility in Lviv on the basis of the sources. The sources published by the order itself play a significant role in addressing the issue. Firstly, these are the statutory documents of the Jesuits — the Formulas of the Institute of the Society of Jesus (consist of apostolic letters issued by Pope Paul III and Pope Julius III) and the Constitution of the Society of Jesus. Due to these documents, certain terminological issues may be clarified in the first place, as well as the functioning mechanism of Jesuit facilities. The epistolary heritage of the order is of no less importance: in particular, the one where the ongoing cases of that time are addressed. After analyzing the already published documents, it can be noted that the order had completely separate plans to develop their network, and teaching different sciences to children was not their only aim. Instead, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was considered to be a territory for missionary work and further movement to the East. Furthermore, the plans to establish a facility of the order with a status of the college in Lviv can be traced long before the official invitation of the first monks to Lviv. Considerable attention is paid to the interpretation of the notion of “college,” which is important for understanding the motives of the establishment of the Society of Jesus facility in Lviv and explains its further activity. On the basis of the results obtained in the article, necessary conclusions are made in order to conduct further studies.