La Compagnia divisa. Il dissenso nell’ordine gesuitico tra ‘500 e ‘600

The Society of Jesus was commonly viewed as a "monolithic body", a compact militia at the service of the Counter-Reformation, providing it with the sharpest strategists of the new political theology founded on papal primacy, with the most efficient troops in the Catholic reconquest of Northern Europe with controversy and pastoral; to control and discipline minds, especially through the education of the ruling classes as well as the missionary expansion in America, in Asia and the so-called inner “Indias” of the Old continent.
From the origins of the new religious order of St. Ignatius of Loyola to St. Robert Bellarmine's age, my research finds a period of great internal turmoil, of deep, bitter and divisive conflict accompanying a redefinition of the complex ideological and institutional legacy of the founding fathers.