The quantity of literature on the Jesuits is overwhelming. Although earlier writings about them often still have merit, most are marred by either apologetic or polemical concerns. About the middle of the last century that situation began gradually to change, but only in the past twenty years have studies of the Jesuits for the most part altogether shaken off those prejudices and in other ways entered an entirely new phase. The Jesuits currently excite more interest among scholars of almost every discipline than ever before, and they do so on an international basis. I limit myself here to a highly selective sampling of works written in English.
Arrupe, Pedro. One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey: Autobiographical Conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986.
An important testimony from one of the Society’s most important superiors general.
Bangert, William V. A History of the Society of Jesus. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972.
Although somewhat outdated, the most thorough and reliable treatment.
Lacouture, Jean. Jesuits: A Multibiography. Trans. Jeremy Leggatt. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995.
A lively but selective account by a leading French journalist and biographer.
Padberg, John W. The General Congregations of the Society of Jesus: A Brief Survey of Their History. Saint Louis, MO: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 1974.
The best account of the central component of Jesuit governance, to be complemented by Padberg’s later study of the recent Congregations.
O’Malley, John W., et al., eds. The Jesuits; Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Together with a further volume published in 2006, impressive studies on a wide range of topics related to the Jesuits and cultural issues.
Worcester, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This volume complements the Toronto volumes with topics more related to the institutional history of the order. It includes a bibliography.
Brodrick, James. Saint Peter Canisius. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1962.
Originally published in 1935, this biography of one of the order’s most important members is outdated and hagiographical but still basic and unsurpassed.
Dalmases, Cándido de. Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Life and Work. Trans. Jerome Aixalá. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985.
On the pious side, but impeccably reliable in factual details.
Lazar, Lance Gabriel. Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
A careful study of a generally unrecognized but important enterprise of Ignatius and the other Jesuits of that generation.
O’Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
The standard work on the first generation of Jesuits.
Tellechea Idígoras, José Ignacio. Ignatius of Loyola, the Pilgrim Saint. Trans. Cornelius Michael Buckley. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1994. A lively, somewhat romantic biography by a distinguished Spanish historian.
Burke, Peter. “The Black Legend of the Jesuits: An Essay in the History of Historical Stereotypes.” In Simon Ditchfield, ed., Christianity and Community in the West: Essays for John Bossy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, 165–82.
An overview of the problem by a distinguished historian.
Maryks, Robert Aleksander. Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. An interesting study of this important aspect of the culture of the Society of Jesus, which concludes with a chapter on the Jansenist offensive against probabilism.
Pavone, Sabina. The Wiley Jesuits and the Monita Secreta: The Forged Secret Instructions of the Jesuits: Myth and Reality. Trans. John P. Murphy. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2004.
The standard study of one of the most damaging and long-lived attacks on the Jesuits, which includes an English version of the original text.
Bireley, Robert. The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A masterly study of one of the most contentious aspects of Jesuit history, Jesuit confessors to kings.
Nelson, Eric. The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France (1590–1615). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
The story of the difficult time the Jesuits had in establishing themselves in France.
Shore, Paul. Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Culture, Politics and Religion, 1693–1773. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
A wide-ranging study of the Jesuits in a complex sector of the Habsburg empire.
Van Kley, Dale. The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–1765. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. Still the best study of the pivotal event in the history of the Jesuits.
Alden, Daurel. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
A sweeping account of the Jesuits’ relationship to their most important patron nation.
Brockey, Liam Matthew. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Award-winning study of the Jesuits not in Beijing but out in the field.
Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Presents the missions not as a disjointed collection of individual entities but as a single, world-encompassing instance of religious globalization.
Cushner, Nicholas P. Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the Evangelization of Native America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Covers the Jesuits’ efforts with the native peoples from Canada to Paraguay.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
A readable account of this legendary figure and a good introduction to the Beijing mission.
Klaiber, Jeffrey. The Jesuits In Latin America, 1549–2000: 450 Years of Inculturation, Defense of Human Rights, and Prophetic Witness. St Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009.
The basic story from beginning to the present, told with a specific focus.
Mkenda, Festo. Mission for Everyone: A Story of the Jesuits in Eastern Africa (1555–2012). Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013.
The only comprehensive account in English of the Jesuits in any region of Africa.
Curran, Robert Emmett. The Maryland Jesuits, 1634–1833. Baltimore: The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen, Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, 1976.
An account of the first Jesuits to make a permanent settlement in what would become the United States.
McCoog, Thomas M. “And Touching our Society”: Fashioning Jesuit Identity in Elizabethan England. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013.
The latest book by the expert on the Jesuits in the British Isles.
McKevitt, Gerald. Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848–1919. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Fascinating story of the first Jesuits in the far west.
Schroth, Raymond A. The American Jesuits: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
An accessible account of the Society in the United States.
Curran, Robert Emmett. A History of Georgetown University. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.
A detailed account of the first Catholic school on American soil.
Grendler, Paul F. The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
The only in-depth study in English of a Jesuit pre-suppression school, by the expert on schooling in early modern Italy.
Padberg, John W. Colleges in Controversy: The Jesuit Schools in France from Revival to Suppression, 1815–1880. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
The best account of schools on the continent after the restoration of the Society.
Feingold, Modechai, ed. Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
An impressive collection of articles about the Jesuits’ contributions to science.
Findlen, Paula. Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. London: Routledge, 2004.
The story of the famous Jesuit eccentric and his accomplishments.
Helyer, Marcus. Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
The story of how the Jesuits came to adopt modern methods in science.
Wallace, William. Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. How the Jesuits influenced Galileo, told by an eminent historian of science.
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Award-winning account that begins in Europe and sweeps through the rest of the world.
Celenza, Anna Harwell, and Anthony R. DelDonna, eds. Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America. Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2014.
A window into the world of Jesuit music production, practices, and patronage.
McCabe, William. An Introduction to the Jesuit Theater. Ed. Louis Oldani. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985.
This posthumous work is somewhat outdated but still the best general work on the subject in English.
O’Malley, John W., and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, eds. The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540–1773. Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005.
A sumptuously produced volume covering Jesuit artistic enterprises worldwide.
Rock, Judith. Terpsichore at Louis-le-Grand: Baroque Dance and the Jesuit Stage in Paris. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.
The best introduction in English to the history of Jesuit dance.