ABSTRACT

That the Jesuits were unusually conscious of their image is suggested by a publication of 1640. To celebrate their centenary in that year the order published a book in Antwerp with the title Imago Primi Seculi. This volume is an early example of the self-promotion of institutions in print as well as of the interest in centenaries. It may also have been an attempt to counter the unfavourable images of the order which had already been circulating for generations. The German Jesuit historian Bernhard Duhr, writing in the age of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf referred to these stories as ‘fables’ (Jesuiten-Fabeln). His study was followed by a French monograph entitled Les jesuites de la legende} Three recent studies of the Jesuit image, by a French, a British and an Italian historian, published at much the same time, all use the term ‘myth’.3