Oeconomia Jesuitica

The Baroque buildings, most of which were erected under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, are still dominant architectural monuments of our towns in Central Europe. The Catholic monarchs of the early modern Habsburg Monarchy as well as most of its ecclesiastical and secular elites generously supported the religious orders. The medieval monastic and mendicant orders were renewed after the Council of Trent, and among the newly established orders, the Society of Jesus stood out for its socio-cultural influence. The Austrian Jesuit Province (15631773) covered most of the former Austrian hereditary lands and the entire Kingdom of Hungary (thus consisted of present-day Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia and parts of Serbia, Romania and Ukraine). The province maintained 35 large religious houses (one professed house in Vienna and 34 colleges) and about twice as many smaller residences and mission stations. The Jesuits free schools educated tens of thousands of pupils annually. In addition, the Jesuits were very influential in pastoral care and missions, and also maintained presses, pharmacies, convicts, and orphanages. Although the Jesuit architecture continues to play an important role in Baroque art historical research, the financing of the buildings and the activities of the Society of Jesus have received little attention. Jesuit financial management followed the pattern of both mendicant and monastic, i.e. founded orders. On the one hand, the Jesuit colleges possessed vast estates and huge capitals: conscious management of their assets was essential to their success. The Viennese professed house and the missions, on the other hand, were mainly financed by voluntary donations and alms. The aim of the project is to produce a model study on early modern religious economy using the example of the Society of Jesus in the Austrian Province. The research will be carried out on two levels. 1) The economic reports of the so-called triennial catalogues kept in the Jesuit Central Archives in Rome will be completely processed and published in an online database (in cooperation with the Boston College in the USA and the Hungarian Jesuit Archives in Budapest). 2) Through primer archival research in present-day Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia, case studies will be produced that shed light on the everyday life of the Jesuit economy.