When I began researching this project, one expert on the Jesuits recommended that I read the Society's Constitutions, which he called the “Jesuit bible.” Although he drew this metaphor to impress upon me the Constitutions' importance, we can strengthen the comparison by emphasizing rather the complex relationship between Christians and their Bibles, which they have interpreted and then followed, adapted, or ignored in accordance with circumstance and tradition.

Jesuit ambition was global, but it ran ahead of the globalizing possibilities of the early-modern world. Many months and many miles separated missionaries from authority in Rome. Friction from the realities of communications and transportation slowed and sometimes broke – and sometimes even promoted – the global network they were building. Disagreements regarding how best to pursue the all-important mission separated Jesuits from other religious orders, and from each other.

The Difficulties of Distance

In the pre-modern world, information was less likely than other commodities to travel great distances intact. Thus Chinese silk reached the Mediterranean by at least 150 b.c., while Pliny's Natural History (a.d. 70) still described blue-eyed Chinese harvesting silk from trees. Even in the early-modern period, information remained in short supply. For news on the New World, the Roman Curia depended largely on the Spanish ambassador or on the cardinal in the consistory who cared for imperial interests.