Jesuits And Fortifications

This book sheds light on the role of Jesuit mathematicians in the widespread dissemination of ideas about military architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by means of teaching, writings and consultancy activities aimed at assisting Catholic leaders in their wars against protestants and infidels.

This book sets out to explore the contribution of the Society of Jesus to the dissemination of knowledge about military architecture in the Baroque age. It shows how the Jesuits developed a militant form of religious expression targeted at protestants and infidels and how many Jesuit mathematicians assisted Catholic leaders by using the mathematical faculties attached to many colleges and seminaries for nobles to provide classroom and private teaching, publications and even consultancies concerning fortification theory, then considered to form part of the 'mathematical disciplines'. This book reveals that the involvement of many Jesuits in 'de re militari' was widespread, sometimes leading to criticism, internal controversies and crises of conscience. The interest of Jesuits in fortifications was discontinued after the 1773-1814 suppression period.

This book sheds light on the role of Jesuit mathematicians in the widespread dissemination of ideas about military architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by means of teaching, writings and consultancy activities aimed at assisting Catholic leaders in their wars against protestants and infidels.

The forty-one years between the Society of Jesus’s papal suppression in 1773 and its eventual restoration in 1814 remain controversial, with new research and interpretations continually appearing. Shore’s narrative approaches these years, and the period preceding the suppression, from a new perspective that covers individuals not usually discussed in works dealing with this topic. As well as examining the contributions of former Jesuits to fields as diverse as ethnology—a term and concept pioneered by an ex-Jesuit—and library science, where Jesuits and ex-Jesuits laid the groundwork for the great advances of the nineteenth century, the essay also explores the period the exiled Society spent in the Russian Empire. It concludes with a discussion of the Society’s restoration in the broader context of world history.

Establishment of Jesuit missions: Abenaki ; Quebec ; Montreal ; Huron ; Iroquois ; Ottawa ; and Lousiana.