The Jesuits: A History

University of Hamburg history professor Friedrich (The Birth of the Archive) delivers a fast-paced and richly researched history of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits. Starting with the founding of the order in 1540, Friedrich describes its growth, development, and expansion through its suppression due to political factors in 1773, its restoration in 1814, and its modern activities. Friedrich focuses on the role of scholastic engagement by young Jesuits in the society’s early years to prepare them for conversion missions across the globe, which led to the rapid spread of the Jesuits from western Europe to the Americas, Africa, the Near East, and Asia. Anti-Jesuit sentiment crested in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV suppressed the society, but fallout from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars led the Catholic church to change its disposition and restore the society in 1814. The society drifted toward conservatism during the 19th century, Friedrich explains, before Jesuits realigned with a more progressive worldview in the years after WWII. The author’s detailed research mostly impresses, but his cursory treatments of unethical behavior by Jesuits—for example, their history as slaveholders—gloss over weighty subjects that deserve deeper examination. Readers searching for a critical perspective may want to look elsewhere, but Friedrich’s sweeping chronicle has much to offer. (Feb.)