The Jesuits and the Thirty Years' War: Kings, Courts and Confessors

Abstract

Professor Robert Bireley SJ in his study The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts, and Confessors proposes to answer three closely interrelated questions. First, what influence Jesuits and Jesuit confessors in particular had on the policies of war at the courts of Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Madrid during the period of tangled conflicts commonly labelled the ‘Thirty Years War’ (1618-1648); secondly, whether or not there was a united ‘Jesuit policy’ concerning the war as well as a joint Jesuit stance on the relationship between religion and politics; finally, what principles and policies Jesuit superiors general employed guiding Jesuits confessors at courts often openly hostile to one another during decades of war.