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A Paradise Inhabited by Devils. The Jesuits' Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples. By Jennifer D. Selwyn. (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., and Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu. 2004. Pp. xiv, 278. $89.95.)
Several years ago, Jennifer Selwyn published an article that introduced the themes of her research on the Jesuit missions in the early modern Kingdom of Naples. Now the results of her work appear greatly expanded in book form. Through an examination of the Jesuits' mission work in southern Italy, Professor Selwyn discusses two important interconnected topics: the Society of Jesus itself, the development of its methods and ideas, and especially the growth of a Jesuit sense of collective identity, on the one hand; on the other, how learned or official ideas of religious, moral, and cultural reform played out in the encounter with urban and rural poverty, social disorder, and popular religious beliefs in one of western Europe's marginal areas. Selwyn wisely places this encounter also within the context of early modern Europeans' experiences in the colonial world.
After a thematic and historiographic introduction,...