The Rise of Jesuit Scholastic Theology

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The foundation of the Society of Jesus in 1540, and its subsequent involvement in higher education, had a profound impact on European thought. It is no coincidence that a considerable number of the greatest thinkers of the last quarter of the sixteenth century were Jesuits: Toledo, Molina, Bellarmine, Mariana, Perera, Maldonado, Fonseca, Sánchez, Valencia, Vázquez and Suárez, to name but a few. These men taught at various learning centres across Europe, from Coimbra and Évora to Ingolstadt and Vienne, and from Rome and Paris to Leuven and Alcalá. Their ideas circulated extensively through these centres, even in manuscript form.

The Jesuits closed ranks at the end of the sixteenth century when the De auxiliis controversy emerged. Nevertheless, they profoundly disagreed with each other in many other issues before and after the controversy. Despite this, it is possible to find shared views among the Jesuits, partly because they shared the same starting point for theology: Aquinas' Summa Theologiae.

Although Jesuit thought has been widely studied, it remains to be determined whether a distinct Jesuit theological tradition can be identified from the outset, and if so, to what extent. This is exactly the aim of this conference: to bring together specialists in various subfields of Scholasticism to investigate the emergence of a particular Jesuit theological tradition, and to ascertain whether it arose prior to or independently of the De auxiliis controversy.