Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Charts
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Organizing the Society of Jesus
- 3 Decentralizing the Society of Jesus
- 4 Imagining Global Mission
- 5 Space, Time, and Truth in the Jesuit Psychology
- 6 The Missionary Motivation
- 7 The Jesuit Missionary Network
- 8 The Jesuit Financial Network
- 9 The Jesuit Information Network
- 10 The Jesuit Sacred Economy
- 11 An Edifying End: Global Salvific Catholicism
- Appendix A Abbreviations for Document Sources
- Appendix B Chronological Tables (1540–1722)
- Appendix C Principal Prosographical Information
- Appendix D Monetary Systems
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - The Missionary Motivation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Charts
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Organizing the Society of Jesus
- 3 Decentralizing the Society of Jesus
- 4 Imagining Global Mission
- 5 Space, Time, and Truth in the Jesuit Psychology
- 6 The Missionary Motivation
- 7 The Jesuit Missionary Network
- 8 The Jesuit Financial Network
- 9 The Jesuit Information Network
- 10 The Jesuit Sacred Economy
- 11 An Edifying End: Global Salvific Catholicism
- Appendix A Abbreviations for Document Sources
- Appendix B Chronological Tables (1540–1722)
- Appendix C Principal Prosographical Information
- Appendix D Monetary Systems
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
“Do you remember that passage in which [Rousseau] asks the reader what he would do if he could become wealthy by killing an old Chinese mandarin, without leaving Paris, just by an act of will?”
“Yes.”
“Well then?”
“Oh, I'm on my thirty-third mandarin.”
– Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot (1835)Originating with Denis Diderot, popularized and misattributed to Henri Rousseau by François-Auguste-René Chateaubriand, this tale of a perfect crime, which robs a Chinese mandarin of life and fortune by the magic of hypothesis, throws the ideas of morality and distance into tension. Would you sacrifice a man on the other side of the globe in order to acquire his wealth? With the early-modern expansion of Europe, thousands of prospective missionaries faced a parallel question: Would you sacrifice yourself to secure the salvation of someone on the other side of the globe? Both questions weigh the value of a distant soul against that of a near life. In his 1809 Génie du Christianisme [Genius of Christianity], Chateaubriand uses his own response to demonstrate the reality of the conscience. This chapter examines the response of the early-modern Catholic missionaries to demonstrate the reality of a new global perspective in Christianity.
This fundamental question in the description of this global religion is one of motivation. Why did so many Jesuits, along with religious of other orders, experience the desire to win the souls of those far away?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions , pp. 114 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008