ABSTRACT
This essay charts the circulation of knowledge compiled and diffused through Jesuit global networks, at a moment in history when evangelization kept company with science. The story is now familiar: Jesuit missionaries like Matteo Ricci relied as much on the latest European scientific discoveries to impress the Chinese as they did Christian doctrine. Further, not only did Jesuits bring science overseas, but they assembled new bodies of knowledge out of their missionary experiences, for in order to better convert “pagan” communities, Jesuits compiled information ranging from language grammars to geographic descriptions. In the story I tell the components remain the same: Jesuits, faith, and science. Yet they materialize in a surprising mix, as the latest geographic discoveries were put to use by a Jesuit priest in New Spain-not in a scientific treatise or another description of geographic discoveries-but to meet the new demands for “evidence” in the increasingly rigorous standards of Catholic Reformation hagiography.
