 Good evening everyone. Good evening. My name is Father Jerry Blaszczak. I'm the Director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality here at Fairfield University and it falls to me to have the great privilege of welcoming you all to this afternoon's lecture by my confrere and revered teacher Father John O'Malley. Father O'Malley has joined us at the invitation of the University Center for Ignatian Spirituality to offer the keynote lecture in the symposium organized in conjunction with the exhibit The Art of the Jesu, Bernini and His Age. This landmark exhibition containing masterpieces from the Jesu, the Mother Church of the Society of Jesus, many of them never seen in America as well as related materials drawn from major American museums and private collections was organized to commemorate this university's 75th anniversary. As honorary chair of the Exhibition Committee, Philippe de Montebello put it this way, short of boarding a flight to Rome and going to the Jesu itself, this is the closest one will ever come to experiencing and appreciating its artistic riches. This is a magisterial exhibition, the scope and quality of which is not likely to be equaled soon. I wish publicly to recognize those who made the exhibition and symposium possible. Dr. Linda Wolk Simon, the Frank and Clara Meditz Director and Chief Curator of Fairfield University's Art Museum and Curator of the Exhibition. Along with the members of her team, Michelle De Marceau, Cary Weaver and Lauren Williams, I would like to express the gratitude of all of us to the university's senior leadership team. With special appreciation to our President Emeritus Jeffrey Paul Fonarchs, it was under Father Fonarchs that the plan began to be conceived and the first machinations were put into place for us to be able to assemble this extraordinary collection. I would like to thank our present President, Dr. Mark Nemitz for his ongoing enthusiastic support. Profound thanks to the university's trustees, many of whom we have the pleasure of having with us this afternoon. Enduring gratitude to my friend and to our long-term long-serving trustee, John Meditz. And to where is John? He's hiding someplace. There you are, John. My bifocals, my trifocals are not working as well as they should, John. And to the other benefactors whose generous support has made the exhibition and symposium possible. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Father Joseph Chorpenig, editorial director and Mr. Carmen Croce, publisher of St. Joseph University which has published the art of the JZU, a companion volume to our exhibition. I had the effrontery to remove the gossip that was placed as a commercial, a copy of the book. The book is available for purchase at a modest price, an exceedingly modest price given the quality of what is presented in the book by our Fairfield University bookstore. It is now my great pleasure to introduce to you our president, Dr. Mark Nemick. Thank you, Father, and I just wanted to echo all the enormous gratitude and thanks that this institution has for the support of so many benefactors and the work of so many people to make this exhibit a reality. I just want to take one moment and place this exhibit in the context of the broader narrative of Fairfield University. As you may know, Fairfield just celebrated its 75th anniversary and this exhibit in many ways is the culmination of that anniversary. This exhibit also represents the best of Fairfield going forward. The idea that Fairfield has a unique opportunity to be a model of the modern Jesuit Catholic University and the three characteristics of that model are all embodied in this exhibit. It's a commitment to lifelong learning. The fact that on a sunny day like this, we can gather so many people to hear such words about such artifacts. It's a commitment to formation, holistic formation, realizing that education does not just happen in the classroom, but is a product of a commitment to formation of the mind, the body, and the spirit. And it's a commitment to partnership because this exhibit is not possible without an extensive network of partners. Yes, the Fairfield University Art Museum is hosting this exhibit, but this exhibit really belongs to all those benefactors and all those donors who have helped bring it together. And as we think about that exhibit, I believe you with one last thought, and this is what is most remarkable to me, is that the artifacts in the exhibit have never been before together and they will never, in all likelihood, be together again. It is very rare in one's life where one can experience such power, such majesty, and really say it is truly unique. And it is my great privilege to thank Linda and all of the team that have brought this together because this truly is a unique opportunity and one that is present at Fairfield, we are so honored to host. So with that, it's my great privilege to introduce the superior of the Jesuit community here at Fairfield University, Father Michael Tunney. Good evening, everyone. Father John William O'Malley of the Society of Jesus is university professor in the theology department at Georgetown University, a native of Ohio and member of the Midwest province of the Society of Jesus. John is a specialist in religious culture of early modern Europe, particularly Italy. John received his doctorate in history from Harvard University, which in time has published six of his books, each the recipient of numerous academic awards and translations into multiple languages. In addition to a fellowship, one among many from multiple prestigious institutions, Harvard awarded John its Lifetime Achievement Centennial Medal, the highest honor it bestows on individuals. This is but one lifetime achievement award among many others from learned national and international societies. John has published four works on the Jesuits through St. Joseph's University Press and Rowan and Littlefield. These works are also the recipient of numerous academic honors and multiple language editions. Do you see a pattern here? John lectures widely in North America and abroad on both professional and more popular topics. He is past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and of the Renaissance Society of America. He has been elected to and holds medals from national and international academic societies for his scholarship and his achievements. Those of us who have read even only a little way into the essays of the holy name, art of the Jezu, Bernini and his age will know that the wise Jesuit among us has observed the Society of Jesus has a singular mission lived in five fold dimensions. Pastoral, ecclesiastical, social, civic and cultural. Together, these create what Jesuits call our way of proceeding. It should come as no surprise then that John O'Malley's way of proceeding may plausibly be characterized as enlightened, engaging, scholarly, personal, sensitive and graceful. It is readily apparent in his speaking and suffused throughout his being. Here is a man whose life and laborers give God glory. Good women and gentlemen gathered here at Fairfield University's Egan Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola, please join me in welcoming to the podium Father John William O'Malley of the Society of Jesus. It's a pleasure to be here. We're considered in the full range of the entities that in some fashion comprised the Catholic Church, comprised it. The Catholic Church emerges as the single greatest patron of the arts in the early modern period. Within the Church, the Society of Jesus is the institution that made the most extensive and varied contributions to the phenomenon on a global scale. This evening, I will offer a woefully limited glimpse into the Jesuit contribution and will offer the most essential points for understanding how and why it happened. I developed these points more fully in my contribution to the magnificent volume that accompanies this exhibition and symposium. The 10 founders of the Society, led by Ignatius of Loyola, all held prestigious Master of Arts degrees from the University of Paris. Collectively, they were the best educated clerics of their day outside a university faculty. And for that reason alone, we might expect them to be appreciative of the arts and ready to act as patrons. Such an expectation, however, does not take account of the relentlessly bookish or text-driven character of the education they received at Paris. If we want to find the origins of the Jesuits' impressive engagement with the arts, we will not find them in the experience of the founders at Paris. Let's begin at the beginning. Let's begin with 1539, when these 10 men gathered in Rome to decide on their future together. They soon agreed that they wanted to institutionalize their friendship into a religious order. They composed a short document entitled, Formula We Wendy, Our Plan of Life. It accompanied their request to Pope Paul III for approval to inform him about the kind of order they wanted to found. Paul approved their request with the Bull Regimini Militantus Ecclesii, and into it he incorporated the formula, thereby making it the papal charter of the order. The formula is thus a crucially important document, the equivalent of the rule in the older orders. Even today, the Society of Jesus must operate within the boundaries stipulated in the formula. It is short and concise, as a charter should be, and it consists of only five sections. The whole document runs to about four pages. Despite its brevity, an entire section is taken up with the provision, radical for its day, that the members of the order would not chant the liturgical hours inquire. It reads in part, oops, what are we doing here? Here we are. All members who are in holy orders are obliged to recite the office according to the right of the church, but not inquire once again, from the beginning, da capo. All members who are not in holy orders are obliged to recite the office according to the right of the church, but not inquire, lest they be diverted from the works of charity to which they have dedicated themselves. Hence, too, they should use neither the organ nor singing in their masses and other religious ceremonies. Officials at the papal court insisted on the removal of this section, because it could be misconstrued by Protestants as a criticism of chant. Ignatius, elected Superior General in 1541 by the nine others, did his best to hold the line against music in the Society of Jesus. It was a losing battle. But it was the origin of the axiom, Jesuit non-contact, Jesuits don't sing. But if we fast forward to France or almost anywhere a century later, we find a completely changed situation. In 1658, the French Jesuit, Claude François Menestrier, sometimes referred to as the first historian of dance, published his landmark De Ballet en Aime d'Arne. Of the ten books on the history and theory of dance published in France between then and a century later, five were written by Jesuits, and four of the others were reviewed in the Jesuit's influential monthly journal Les Memoirs de Travaux. The full title of the memoir was, A Review Dedicated to the History of the Sciences and the Fine Arts. By then the Jesuits collated Louis Le Grand in Paris, was celebrated for its sophisticated production of Ballet, which featured both students and professional dancers. The Ballet were of course accompanied by music. From 1687 until 1698, Marc-Antoine Charpentier served there as master of music, after which he by royal appointment held the same position in the Saint-Chapelle. In Milan in 1722, the Jesuit Church of San Fadale sponsored the premiere of Ivaldi's last oratorio, The Adoration of the Magi. What had happened? In a few short years, the Jesuits, while remaining faithful to the pastoral goal they set for themselves in the formula, began to respond to events, opportunities and challenges in ways that could not, they could not foresee in 1540. In the process, they further defined themselves in ways that differed from the older orders. This was especially evident in their readiness to incorporate new cultural modes that were unprecedented for religious order. The process began remarkably early and developed without internal crisis, so that the society's basic profile was established at least in embryo before Ignatius died in 1556. The profile was notably distinctive, sometimes controversial, and had moved well beyond the bare bones of the formula. The mission of the 10 graduates of Paris foresaw for themselves in 1539, 1540, was dedicated expressly to pastoral activities such as a tenorant preaching and administration of the sacraments. Ten years later, the Jesuits asked the Holy See to accept the revision of the formula to bring it up to date in the light of their experience. The Holy See acquiesced, and Pope Julius III, that year, issued a second bull. Although the first version of the formula stipulated that the members of the order would dedicate themselves to works of charity, the 1550 version was more specific. Moreover, the society should show itself no less useful in reconciling the strange and devoutly assisting in serving those who are found at prisons or hospitals, and indeed, in performing other works of charity, according to what will seem expedient for the glory of God and the common good. Particularly notable is how the list of works of charity concluded by commending anything that contributed to the common good. Up to that point, everything mentioned in this section of the formula derived from the Bible or from traditional Christian usage. Common good derives not from those sources, but from philosophy. The expression suggests therefore a concern for this world and its betterment, a shift away from exclusively evangelical goals. The older orders doubtless had this concern and expressed it in various ways as their histories make clear, but the upfront commitment to it is new for religious order and helps explain a great deal of the order's subsequent history, including its commitment to the arts. Important though, the formula is for understanding the mission of the society of Jesus. It must be supplemented by the crucial decision Ignatius took to make formal schooling the premier ministry of the society. It is a ministry not mentioned in the formula, and it was far from being what the 10 founders had in mind in 1539. It turned out to be, however, the most important ministry of them all because it reacted upon the order itself and radically modified its identity. The formula described an essentially missionary order in which itinerant preaching was the principal ministry. But the schools committed the judgments to being resident school masters, which if it was not a blatant contradiction of their original mobile character, was at least a neat trick to pull off. Ignatius had clearly opted for the schools no later than 1553 and met no serious resistance. An indication that his decision was somehow congruous with the personalities and earlier cultural experiences of the society's members. The decision brought with it a relationship to cities and towns utterly new for religious order. The Jesuits, now managers of an important civic institution, had a new relationship to rulers and city officials. They had now also a new relationship to parents of the students in their schools. When trying to persuade rulers and other officials to sponsor a Jesuit school, they'll pause. When trying to persuade rulers and civic officials to sponsor a Jesuit school, Ignatius invariably argued that the school would benefit the city. The expression for the benefit of the city, Adchibi Tattisutili Tattim, occurs again and again in his correspondence. The schools would turn out good citizens, contributors to the well-being of the city, and if all went well, as leaders in pursuing that goal. The Jesuit mission thus took on a civic dimension new for religious orders, a new form of pursuing the common good. Although Ignatius surely had in mind the religious benefits a Jesuit school would bring, his argument was secular, borrowed from the program of Renaissance educators promoting the humanistic mode of schooling. Ignatius' argument that schools would be good for the city, betrays that the Jesuits had accepted the humanist arguments about the value of their education for producing upright citizens dedicated to the public wheel. It also betrays that the Jesuits were now committed to the student-centered orientation of the humanist program and to the literary curriculum that provided students with the skills needed for successful public life. So much for that. The Jesuits were retaining for their own members the standard clerical program of scholastic philosophy and theology now made an implicit but radical commitment to curriculum designed primary for young laymen, the center of which was pagan works of poetry, history, oratory, and drama, what today we call the humanities. Although this program of education was itself radically text-based, the Jesuits developed a pedagogy that opened it up to the arts. Basit to their pedagogy was a principle of active learning on the part of the student. Thus, it was not sufficient to read a play by Terence. The play had to be performed, which brought with it the introduction of music and dance, at least to fill in the intermissions. Sets had to be painted and costumes had to be sewn. In rather short order, the Jesuits mission had taken on a cultural mode. Even if the Jesuits' commitment to the humanistic program had profound repercussions for the relationship to the arts, that relationship also developed from other factors as well, not least of which was their pragmatism in finding and implementing means to make their ministries more effective. Music is a good example. Although the formula of 1539 exclude... Thanks for crying again. And then you could just put it on the chair behind you. That's good. Yeah, that's enough. Music is a good example. Although the formula of 1539 excluded music, it also committed the Jesuits to educating children and others in Christianity, that is, teaching them the ABCs of the Christian religion. The ink was hardly dry on the papal bull of 1540, before the Jesuits began teaching those ABCs by setting the lessons to simple tunes. Catechism lessons became fun for the children and helped fix the lessons in their memories. Thus the song Catechism became characteristic of the Jesuits. In 1574, Diego Ledezma, one of the leading Jesuits of the era, published his book on how to teach catechism, Motto Insignia, a third of which was devoted to music. The Jesuits entered Brazil in 1549. It was there that in these early years, the most dramatic change in Jesuit attitudes and practice regarding music took place. Hardly had they arrived when they became aware of the Amerindians' extraordinary musical talent. Very soon the Jesuits and the Indians joined together to launch an impressive musical tradition, dramatized in 1986 in the popular Hollywood film, The Mission. In Europe itself, pressure from the laity forced the Jesuits to modify their stance against using music in their religious services. As the Jesuits acquired churches of their own, the laity who frequented them demanded that masses be sung and that at least vespers be sung or chanted on Sunday evenings. Bit by bit, Jesuit churches introduced musical programs in ever more sophisticated and elaborate forms. A special note is how the Jesuits combined their commitment with civic commitment. The Giovanna Zanlonghi has shown from the 17th through the 18th century, the Jesuits at the Collegio di Brera in Milan were expected to design and orchestrate large, week-long spectacles for the city that made audible and visible the significance of important events such as the death of a monarch or the visit to the city of an important personage. These displays, which included processions, musical programs, elaborate decoration of public buildings, and production and staging of plays were designed to appeal to the whole population, the great and the lowly. The Jesuits' engagement with the arts cannot be reduced simply to pastoral pragmatism. Other factors were very much in play, including the Jesuits' personal or family backgrounds. The society attracted recruits from almost every station in life, but a remarkable proportion came from families in the upper stratum of society, where a certain skill in performing arts was expected of family members. Moreover, the social standing of these Jesuits gave them access to wealthy patrons who could finance the construction of new churches and pay for the works of art that enhanced them. When the late 1530s, the companions of Paris began arriving in Rome, their devout way of life and their Paris degrees attracted the attention and won the admiration of Pope Paul III Farnese. But it surely was Ignatius' credentials as a nobleman that from the moment he arrived in Rome allowed him to move in the highest circles there, including the household of Margaret of Austria, illegitimate daughter of Empress Charles V, and wife of Octavio Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III. The Habsburg-Farnese marriage was unhappy from the very first moment. At a certain point, the princess took Ignatius as her confessor. He was able to persuade her to consummate the marriage, and in 1545, Margaret gave birth to twin sons, assuming Ignatius baptized. She soon became an influential person in Rome, in her own right, and until her death remained devoted to the Jesuits and to their causes. Thus began the Jesuit relationship to the Farnese family that resulted most notably in the Church of the Jesu, whose construction, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and other Grandson of Pope Paul III, not only funded, but oversaw and determined. The Jesu was far from being an isolated instance of Jesuit church building, because as a new order, the Jesuits had to build new churches for themselves, wherever they were established in any numbers. In that regard, they had the good fortune to come into being in one of the most extraordinary periods of artistic and architectural achievement in history. This fact enabled them to build dignified and elegant churches, almost inevitably adapted to contemporary styles and tastes. In some places, their building program was aggressive. In Germany, for instance, between 1580 and 1650, they built 24 new churches, including the Dispunded Mikaelskirche in Munich, but they also pursued building programs elsewhere in every Catholic area of Europe, as exemplified by their church in Krakow. In Spanish America, their building program was, if possible, even more impressive. In 1554, Ignatius and other Jesuits in Rome thought that Michelangelo might agree to be the architect for the new church they hoped to build in the center of the city, precisely where the Jesu later rose. They were thinking big. The Jesu, in fact, turned out to be a magnificent edifice, generally considered the most important church building of the 16th century, except for the new St. Peter's. The society attracted to itself skilled professionals who became temporal co-ajuders, that is, members of the society who were not in holy orders. Such Jesuits often referred to as lay brothers. They were architect sculptors, painters, silversmiths, and other artisans responsible for the immense number of Jesuit churches, schools, and works of art around the world. Some idea of the magnitude of the temporal co-ajuders' contribution can be gathered from the initiatives in Chile of the talented German sculptor Johann Bitterich. He petitioned his Jesuit superiors in Europe to send him artists and craftsmen. In 1724, 15 architects, wood carvers, smelters, potters, silversmiths, carpenters, cabinet makers, blacksmiths, and weavers arrived, all of them Jesuits. In 1747 another 26 arrived, bringing with them 386 crates of materials and tools. A dozen more Jesuits arrived in 1754, among the Jesuits of Spanish America was the painter Bernardo Bitti. His Madonna is an example of the quality of the work these men produced. In the Japanese mission, in 1583, Giovanni Nicolò, a native of Nola in the Kingdom of Naples, founded a seminary of painters. He possessed a wide range of talents, which enabled him to bring together Japanese, Chinese, and Europeans in a workshop where they could learn oil painting on copper wood and probably canvas, as well as the more traditional water color. They may also learn engraving and printing. The result was often a blending of European and local techniques. The seminary produced art on a grand scale and supplied churches and missions in Japan, China, and the Philippines, and it possibly exported art also to Europe, New Spain, and the viceroy of Peru. The seminary lasted until the missionaries were expelled from Japan in the early 17th century. In Japan, the Jesuit's adoption and adaptation of local styles was even more marked in some of their churches, which they built in Japanese style. Wealthy Japanese Christians bore the costs. The most celebrated Jesuit artist in China was brother Giovanni Castiglione. He arrived in 1715 and never left until he died 53 years later. He was compelled by confrontation with Chinese painting to abandon his Baroque style and adapt to Chinese tastes. Castiglione had an extraordinary career during which he created a large number of paintings, engravings, architectural plans, and eugé d'art for the emperors. His most extravagant architectural project was the European Palace Pavilion. He designed for the emperor's summer residence near Beijing in 1729. Here are two examples of his paintings, the Chinese Man and Spring. Castiglione was, however, only one of a talented team of some 20 Jesuit sculptors and gravers, painters, cartographers, and hydraulic engineers in Beijing at the same time. They worked there after the Holy See had condemned Jesuit adaptations of certain confusion practices in the so-called Right's Controversy. The papal decision aroused the ire of the emperors who began expelling and persecuting European missionaries, actions that drove Christian missionaries out of China until the 19th century. The emperors made an exception for the Jesuits working in Beijing. The Jesuit artists there hoped to in vain to modify the emperors and thus affect a reversal of his anti- Christian policy. They thus became, we might say, informal diplomats through the medium of art. One aspect of philosophy that the Jesuits studied in the course of their own training appealed especially to their young lay students. This was so-called natural philosophy, works on the physical and observable phenomena. Natural philosophy was a seedbed of modern science. The Jesuits' training in such matters led them into teaching mathematics, astronomy, optics and physics, subjects that are also not part of the standard clerical education. The Jesuits' skill in such fields reached a certain culmination in China in the early 18th century, just a few years before Castiglione arrived there. The French Jesuits convinced Emperor Conchie of the usefulness of a full-scale map of his extensive domains. The project, which was in part an effort to influence the emperor's anti-Christian turn, became the largest cartographic endeavor based on exact measurements ever undertaken anywhere in the world. When the maths were later published in Europe, they created a sensation. St. Joseph's University Press did a volume on them, which is here illustrated. Thus, the Jesuits' overseas ventures turned out to be a two-way street in that they had considerable impact back in Europe. Jesuit missionaries sent home not only maps of virtually every place they worked, but also plants and artifacts, which gave the Jesuit schools a head start in teaching about distant and strange places. The trees and other plants made Jesuit gardens particularly exotic and interesting, a subject that is only now being explored by scholars. The Jesuits edited the letters from their brethren in distant lands and published them for a wide public. What the Europeans knew about China, for instance, they knew largely from the Jesuits. The European rage for chanwiserie was due in large measure to the letters of the Jesuits and to the porcelain objects they shipped back to their homelands. The letters fashioned the imagination even of Jesuits themselves in Europe, as was most strikingly obvious in the many dramas they wrote and produced about China and Japan. In Europe, the most important Jesuit artist by far was brother Andrei Andreiapotso. John Paolo Oliva, the superior general of the society, called him to Rome, where he executed his most ambitious and admired work, the vast ceiling of the church of San Ignacio, with his Trump-Doi dome. The church built as the college church for the Jesuit's premier school, the Roman College, had a Jesuit architect, Oratsu Grasi. In that same church, Potso also designed the beautiful and monumental altar of St. Aloysius, about which Andrei Horne will speak tomorrow. Some years later, Potso designed the elaborate and strikingly rich altar of St. Ignatius in the Jezu, under which the body of the saint rests. Potso taught for a while in Rome. Under his direction, students from all over Europe, including many Jesuits, learned a drawing, figurative painting, and the basics of architecture. A product of his experience was his two-volume work on perspective, Perspectiva Pictorum ed Edificiorum, published in Latin and Italian. Translated into several languages, it made a considerable impact. Castiglione oversaw the translation into Chinese, and Sir Christopher Wren wrote the introduction to the English translation. Potso spent the last years of his life in Vienna, where he was summoned by Emperor Joseph I himself. Daniel Seger, of a much older generation than Potso, probably began his initial training in Utrecht, but as a young man, he moved to Antwerp, where he studied on Young Broglie the Elder. He was an exclusively flower painter, but even with that narrow focus, his work was much admired by fellow artists, including Peter Paul Rubens, who was himself a citizen of Antwerp. The fruitful interaction of Jesuits with Flemish artists did not begin the Segers. Jerome Nadal, Ignatius Peripatetic agent in the field, composed before his death in 1580 his annotations and meditations on the Gospels, a project suggested to him by Ignatius himself. The book was published posthumously in Antwerp in 1595 and contained a series of 153 magnificent copper plate engravings depicting various episodes in the life of Christ, intended as an aid to meditation. It was the first such series of its size ever to appear. The annotations acted as a kind of handbook to accompany the spiritual exercises. In the exercises, Ignatius encourages those following its program to use their imagination to picture scenes from the Gospels when meditating upon them, hence the spiritual usefulness of the annotations. The pertinent passage from the Gospels quoted at length accompanied each image which was followed by considerations for meditating upon it. Here's a sample of the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. For the annotations, the Jesuits made strenuous efforts to hire the best Flemish and Dutch engravers and printers. By the beginning of the 17th century, therefore, the Jesuits had established an axis between the two most productive artistic centers in Europe in the early modern period, Italy and Flanders, or more specifically, Rome and Antwerp. The fact that these centers were firmly in Catholic hands by that time helps explains the great outpouring of religious art that characterizes early modern Catholicism and that in turn helps explain the Jesuits' role in that outpouring. The Society of Jesus flourished in both Rome and Antwerp. By far the most important Flemish artist of the period was Rubens and he happens to be the artist of stature with whom the Jesuits had the longest and closest relationship. Rubens came to Rome as a young man in 1605 and in that year was already at work on a painting of the circumcision for the high altar of the Jesuit church in Genoa. In Rome a few years later he executed for the Jesuits a pair of oil paintings of Ignatius and Francis Xavier with the former depicted not in a simple cassock as was until then had been the tradition, but for the first time in a chasable standing near an altar such an image was in part a ploy to promote Ignatius canonization. With only slight modifications Rubens over the course of the years repeated the painting of Ignatius so that it became the saint's canonical image. While first in Rome he collaborated with the Flemish engraver Jean-Baptiste Barbet in the production of a life of Ignatius that consisted of 81 copper plate engravings until then the largest and most elaborate exemplar of an illustrated life of the saint. To commemorate the 400th anniversary St. Joseph's University Press published this facsimile edition in 2009. Rubens most ambitious work for the Jesuits was his painting of the interior of their church at Antwerp. The church was designed by two Jesuit architects Francois de Aguillon and Peter Oismans and was one of the most important Catholic churches of the period north of the Alps. Its interior was made famous by the lavish display of polychrome Italian marbles and by Rubens' spectacular decorative program which tragically was destroyed by fire in 1718. The year Rubens died, 1640, the Jesuits of the Flemish province published their Imago primacycoli, a folio sized volume of 952 pages celebrating the centenary of the Society of Jesus, 1540 to 1640. This is the frontispiece. A product of the plantan press of Antwerp in his golden age under the direction of Valtes Armoratus, the Imago contains exquisite engravings by Cornelius Galdi Elder. Understudied and underappreciated, the Imago deserves to rank as one of the more important cultural monuments in book form of the first half of the 17th century. An image of the Jesuits first hundred years, it is also an image of Baroque literary, artistic and religious culture at its height. The Imago is an emblem book in that it contains, besides much else, 126 emblems. Emblem books were one of the most popular literary genre of the era. Emblems were on the one hand intellectual puzzles and the enjoyment came from solving the puzzle by figuring out the relationship among the three elements that made up an emblem, an image, a motto or axiom taken from popular literature, a poem. The image can be decoded or deciphered only by discovering the link between it and the apparently unrelated motto. The poem provided clues. At another level, emblems, especially religious emblems, were rhetorical pieces that aimed at touching the emotions. They generally wanted to arouse sentiments of love and admiration for the life-related, often paradoxical truths that a rightly conceived emblem sought to convey. Such were the emblems in the amago. Emblems brought together art, literature, and spirituality. Important though Antwerp was as a center of Jesuit artistic production and commitment, Rome remained primary for the members of the society. Their showpiece educational institution until at least the 18th century, remained the Roman College, founded by Ignatius himself in 1551-52. They're the Jesuits' characteristic synthesis of art and learning was on display in many forms, but especially on special occasions when the whole interior of the school was transformed into a festive space. But as Louise Rice has taught us, there were also other celebrations that occurred on a regular basis. With the culmination of their program, students might engage in a defense of a series of academic theses. And, if they were wealthy, the defense turned into an elaborately festive public occasion. Giuseppe Palucci's defense in 1654 for instance, there was music performed by eight choirs made up of the best voices in Rome and two orchestras, including four trumpets, that accompanied the organ. The spiritual heart of the Jesuits' many enterprises in the city, however, was their three magnificent churches, the Jésus completed in 1575, designed by the architect Giacobo Vignola, Saint Ignatius completed in 1650, whose architect was, as I mentioned, the Jesuit Orazio Grassi, and the exquisite Saint-Andréle Quirinale completed in 1671, whose architect was Gian Lorenzo Bernini. We thus arrived with the Jesuits' relationship to Bernini, a great and even more versatile artist in Rubens. In so doing, we arrived at Bernini's relationship to Father General Oliva, and then through the interior decoration of the Jésus by Giovanni Battista Galli, whom Bernini recommended to Oliva for the task. The most celebrated piece of Galli's work is the center-sealing triumph of the name of Jesus. I leave further words on the Jésus to my colleagues who will be speaking tomorrow, but not without projecting an image of the centerpiece of our exhibition, Bernini's magnificent bust of Saint Robert Bellarmine. Until quite recently, scholars ignored the Jesuits' contributions to the arts or else, viewed them with a condescension, sometimes bordering on contempt. The Jesuits were the shock troops of the counter-reformation. No more need be said about them and their art and the art for which they were responsible. In the past few decades, however, scholars have changed their earlier assessment, placed the Jesuits in the larger context of early modern Catholicism, and arrived at a much more expansive understanding of them and their doings, including their doings in the arts. The exhibition at Fairfield University reminds us that we are the beneficiaries of the new appreciation of the Jesuits. The exhibition is much more than a collection of beautiful objects. By focusing on the mother church of the society, it opens for us a vista that is almost breathtaking in its scope. It enabled us to reshape our collective memory by carrying us into a world and set of values different from our own, a world in which it was almost inevitable that the Jesuits give themselves to art and festive performance. The early modern period was an era mad for beauty and intent on celebrating it. In that period, as I hope I have at least suggested, the Jesuits were infected with that madness. Indeed, if truth be told, the Jesuits were as mad as mad could be. Thank you. A most heartfelt word of thanks to Father O'Malley, and I'm wondering Linda what we have to put together to lure John back for the next exhibit. Oh, she's not content with the few pieces we brought over. Linda has in mind to bring over the whole of the Jezu, which we'll construct where Linda. Thank you all very, very much for being with us again. Thank you to Father John O'Malley. One last note. This evening, we invite you to return to this Egon Chapel of St. Ignatius. At 730, there will be a concert of music that comes from the same period of Bernini. There will be three vocalists who will be presenting these works using our college organ. So please, if you can, come back and hear them. And if by chance you have not yet visited the exhibit by all means before May 8th, before May 19th, be sure to visit the College Museum to see the extraordinary works that are collected that show you exactly how mad the Jesuits were for beauty and for the beauty that they were convinced reflected the glory of God. Thank you very much.