L’altro martirio. Offerta di sé e edificazione fra i missionari interni dell’antica Compagnia di Gesù

In the climate of the Post-Tridentine church, the encouragement towards martyrdom was received not only by foreign missionaries but, in the context of the Society of Jesus, also by domestic missionaries, active in the catholic rural areas, even if their mission did not give them the chance to die in the name of their faith. The article examines the inner conflict present in these missionaries between the desire to sacrifice their lives in the attempt to convert people in non-catholic countries and the need, instead, to accomplish their duty educating the inhabitants of the most spiritually backward Italian areas. Based on sources, the investigation emphasizes how many of these missionaries swapped the ideal of dying as martyrs with very strict forms of renunciation: voluntary poverty, self-lowering, mortification of one’s self-love, accommodation to the simplest people. The offer of one’s life for the salvation of the souls thus transformed itself into an extreme austerity of behavior, work and preaching, an instrument of personal ascesis and in a spiritual and practical stimulus for others.