Jesuit Political Thought
The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540–1630

Pioneering study of Jesuit thinking exploring the society's position on key questions of political thought.

Harro Höpfl (Author)

9780521066754, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 June 2008

428 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.63 kg

Review of the hardback: '… meticulously researched, scholarly work, written with suavity and flair, dealing carefully with much of the huge amount of material which awaits the researcher in this field.' English Historical Review

Harro Höpfl presents here a full-length study of the single most influential organized group of scholars and pamphleteers in early modern Europe (1540–1630), namely the Jesuits. He explores the academic and political controversies in which they were engaged in and their contribution to academic discourse around ideas of 'the state' and 'politics'. He pays particular attention to their actual teaching concerning doctrines for whose menacing practical implications Jesuits generally were vilified: notably tyrannicide, the papal power to depose rulers, the legitimacy of 'Machiavellian' policies in dealing with heretics and the justifiability of breaking faith with heretics. Höpfl further explores the paradox of the Jesuits' political activities being at once the subject of conspiratorial fantasies but at the same time being widely acknowledged as among the foremost intellects of their time, with their thought freely cited and appropriated. This is an important work of scholarship.

Introduction
1. The character and work of the society of Jesus
2. The society's organizational ideas
3. The church, the society and heresy
4. Jesuit reason of state and religious uniformity
5. Jesuit reason of state and Fides
6. Reason of state, prudence and the academic curriculum
7. The theory of political authority
8. Limited government, compacts and the states of nature
9. The theory of law
10. The common good and individual rights
11. Tyrannicide, the oath of allegiance controversy and the assassination of Henri IV
12. The Papal Potestas Indirecta.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], History of religion [HRAX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]