Escrituras normativas no mostrables en el Paraguay jesuítico (siglos XVII y XVIII)
Escrituras normativas jesuítas
- Date: Oct 28, 2025
- Time: 01:00 PM - 02:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Fabian Vega
- Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) – Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín
- Location: mpilhlt & online
- Host: María del Pilar Mejía Quiroga
- Contact: mejia@lhlt.mpg.de
Internal Normative Writings in Jesuit Paraguay (17th–18th Centuries)
Among the many representations surrounding the Society of Jesus, one of the most widespread is that of the so-called “corpse-like obedience”: the supposed absolute loyalty of each Jesuit to the Superior General, and sometimes to the pope. In turn, this loyalty would reflect a highly vertical decision-making system. While this idea has a basis in Ignatius of Loyola’s foundational normative writings, it is worth asking what lesser-known normative texts from Jesuit provinces might reveal about how the order was actually governed. In this presentation, I examine precisely a corpus of internal normative writings produced by the Jesuits of the Province of Paraguay (South America) during the 17th and 18th centuries. This corpus, which circulated only within restricted circles, includes compilations of letters, books of orders, books of consultations, records of congregations, alphabetical lists, and various kinds of indexes. Throughout the presentation, I seek to identify some of the corpus’s distinctive features by attending to the materiality of the documents, the decision-making practices they reveal, and the forms of reading and usage that accompanied them. Taken together, rather than a rigid and hierarchical structure of governance, these documents display a flexible and pragmatic normativity, shaped by relatively decentralised mechanisms of decision-making and by practices of selection, translation, and adaptation of Jesuit norms.
Among the many representations surrounding the Society of Jesus, one of the most widespread is that of the so-called “corpse-like obedience”: the supposed absolute loyalty of each Jesuit to the Superior General, and sometimes to the pope. In turn, this loyalty would reflect a highly vertical decision-making system. While this idea has a basis in Ignatius of Loyola’s foundational normative writings, it is worth asking what lesser-known normative texts from Jesuit provinces might reveal about how the order was actually governed. In this presentation, I examine precisely a corpus of internal normative writings produced by the Jesuits of the Province of Paraguay (South America) during the 17th and 18th centuries. This corpus, which circulated only within restricted circles, includes compilations of letters, books of orders, books of consultations, records of congregations, alphabetical lists, and various kinds of indexes. Throughout the presentation, I seek to identify some of the corpus’s distinctive features by attending to the materiality of the documents, the decision-making practices they reveal, and the forms of reading and usage that accompanied them. Taken together, rather than a rigid and hierarchical structure of governance, these documents display a flexible and pragmatic normativity, shaped by relatively decentralised mechanisms of decision-making and by practices of selection, translation, and adaptation of Jesuit norms.