The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France

In The Jesuit Mind, A. Lynn Martin delves into the mental worlds of the Jesuits involved in the Society of Jesus's French mission during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Drawing upon the extensive correspondence between Jesuits in France and the Society's generals in Rome, Martin seeks to determine what was distinctive about the Jesuit mentality in early modem France.

The first part of the book focuses on these Jesuits as a value-forming elite. In it Martin covers such topics as their strategy for the salvation and perfection of souls in France, their difficulties in dealing with the ideals established by Ignatius Loyola, their educational program, their hostility toward Protestants, and their reaction to the increasingly centralized Jesuit bureaucracy. The author then goes on in the book's second part to look at the Jesuits as members of
French society. Here we see these men coping with the perennial problems of shelter, death, and disease, and intimately involved with their own families amid the dangers of plague, famine, and religious war.