ABSTRACT
As much as Jesuit institutional character was forged through the ‘heroic’ models offered by missionaries in the Indies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Jesuits’ self-consciously constructed collective identity was also articulated through the development of instructional manuals that served to train novices in the science of conducting missions and to publicize the order’s work to a broader public. The composition of these instructional documents facilitated the development of the Society’s distinctive missionary approach in Naples and throughout the global reach of the order. In order to understand the significance of the Jesuits’ broader approach to missionary methodology, and given the importance of the circulation of ideas and approaches to the Society of Jesus’ corporate identity, I offer a comparative analysis of instructional manuals in the Neapolitan Province and in other parts of Italy.
