cover image GOD'S SOLDIERS: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power—A History of the Jesuits

GOD'S SOLDIERS: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power—A History of the Jesuits

Jonathan Wright, . . Doubleday, $27.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-385-50078-4

They numbered 20,408 at the start of the 21st century, and their 400-year history is marked by crisis, accomplishment and persecution. They are the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1534; and Wright, a British historian, tells their amazing story in this thoroughly documented account. Given the scope of his subject, Wright's was no small task and he has neatly compressed the four-century Jesuit saga into a reasonably concise and balanced history. Along the way, he does not shrink from the darker side of that history, whether he is addressing the hatred the order engendered among its detractors or describing the failings of individual members and methods. But he is largely forgiving, allowing for human frailty as an explanation for times when the order's history was marred by less than exemplary behavior. Although Wright acknowledges there have been "Jesuit villains, Jesuits possessed of unseemly ambition, [and] Jesuits who preferred politicking to preaching," he believes the order as a whole has not deserved to be painted with a negative broad brush. Besides recounting the facts of Jesuit history, Wright's chronicle also sheds light on the roots of tensions between Catholics and Protestants that still simmer and even flare up today despite the new spirit of ecumenism fostered by the 1960s Second Vatican Council. Given the Jesuits' missionary spirit and their wide reach in the worlds of education, science and religion, a large and diverse audience should find this book to be of interest. (May 18)