ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of penitential practice and sacred theatre in the Jesuits' popular (or, internal) missions in southern Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It begins with a consideration of theatricality in the Jesuit missions. In staging their missions, the Jesuits were mindful of the importance of winning over missionary subjects. One primary goal of these penitential rituals conforms to conventional notions of missionary activity: the meaningful conversion of recalcitrant sinners by encouraging confession and the taking of communion. The so-called ‘Schools of Mortification’ were a series of penitential activities associated with the climax of the missionary endeavour, which included collective acts of physical mortification modeled by one of the missionaries and intended for emulation by male parishioners. With the missionary leading the way, a community might participate in a violent re-enactment of Christ’s suffering, thus making itself worthy of the oft-promised redemption.
