ABSTRACT
Just as reconciliations formed a vital part of the ‘social drama’ of the Jesuit missions, both reinforcing notions of missionary heroism and functioning as an important means of resolving local disputes, so penitential practice came to be a defining feature of the Society of Jesus’ activities during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These ritualized acts of penitence were deftly woven into a sacred theater through which the Jesuits sought to promote an abhorrence of sinful behavior and a righteous fear of divine punishment. Paradoxically, the very dramatic nature of the Jesuits’ missionary theater, particularly the fevered pitch which penitential exercises often reached, became a source of controversy, both within the order and especially among a growing chorus of external critics. By the eighteenth century, the Society of Jesus found itself on the defensive, accused of indulging popular notions of religiosity out of step with a new ecclesiastical mood, and charged with unleashing passions that might threaten social order.
