PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 An Ideal Jesuit’s Lives. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius M ARKUS F RIEDRICH (U NIVERSITÄT H AMBURG ) se tu studi i santi, tu studi la superstizione Miguel Batllori SJ, ca. 1995 1 Peter Canisius, often called the “first German Jesuit” (despite being Dutch by birth), was an influential figure during his lifetime. Born in 1521 in Nijmegen into a prosperous patrician family, he entered the Society of Jesus as the first “German” recruit in 1542 2 . He made a rapid career in the new order, which he helped to shape and spread in Central Europe through many decades of dedicated service. After a brief stint in Messina, where he participated in the founding of the ground-breaking first-ever Jesuit college, upon which the famous Jesuit educational network of later decades and centuries was modelled, he returned to Germany and was named to the position of “Provincial” - head of the regional organisation of the Jesuits. In that function, Canisius pushed forward the Catholic Church’s renewal and resurgence in the “heresy-ridden” territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Canisius initiated and provided guidance for numerous Jesuit activities, including the founding of new institutions. He attended many important ecclesiastic and political meetings, such as the Council of Trent and several Imperial Diets. After 1569, when he was relieved of his administrative duties, he became an author of theological and, towards the end of his life, inspirational literature. Being somewhat side-lined, he spent his final years in a peripheral institution, the newly founded Jesuit college in Fribourg, 1 As reported in Miguel Gotor, Santi stravaganti, Rome, Aracne, 2012, p. 182. 2 For biographical information, see the classic work by James Brodrick, Saint Peter Canisius, Chicago, Jesuit Way, reissued 1998. A very readable and up-to-date biography is now available in Mathias Moosbrugger, Petrus Canisius. Wanderer zwischen den Welten, Innsbruck, Tyrolia, 2021. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 138 Switzerland, where he died in 1597. Despite the vicissitudes of his career, he was certainly one of the most influential players in Central European religious history in the crucial decades after the Reformation. It was hardly surprising, then, that Canisius was not forgotten after his death in 1597. Quite to the contrary, his actions, way of life and character quickly became the subject of pious memory. Respect for the ageing Jesuit morphed seamlessly into post-mortem veneration. People flocked to his grave, considering him a saint, even though he was not, in the early modern period, beatified or canonised. His ability to work miracles assured widespread veneration among laypeople in Switzerland and beyond 3 . Inside the Jesuit Order, Canisius gained a lasting reputation also because he exemplified the “ideal” Jesuit. His life usefully illustrated how Jesuits should behave in political contexts, during pastoral work and when working as missionaries among Protestants. This intra-Jesuit dimension of Canisius’s memoria is the primary focus of this paper. It explores how Canisius’s life was used to shape (Central European) Jesuit identity in several published hagiographies, which started to appear very quickly after his death in 1597. Looking back to the early decades of the Jesuit order, the 17 th century Lives fashioned Canisius’s historical life into a role model for Jesuit behaviour. Hagiographic literature turned a life into an icon. In 1614, a first Vita of Canisius, written in Latin by Matthäus Rader, appeared in print 4 . Rader was a well-known Jesuit scholar from Bavaria, who worked on his biography for several years. Shortly thereafter, and in response, another Vita appeared in 1616, written by the eminent Roman Jesuit Francesco Sacchini, who was a prominent administrator in Rome and served at that time as official Roman historian of the order 5 . While agreeing on most facts and the overall importance of Canisius’s biography, Sacchini’s book differs in several points from Rader’s account - differences that reflect 3 On this, see e.g. Daniel Sidler, Heiligkeit aushandeln. Katholische Reform und lokale Glaubenspraxis in der Eidgenossenschaft, Frankfurt, Campus, 2017. 4 I used the identical second edition, Matthaeus Rader, De Vita Petri Canisii De Societate Jesu Sociorum e Germania primi libri tres, 2 nd ed., Munich, Berg, 1623. The only study of this text is Alois Schmid, “Die Vita Petri Canisii des P. Matthäus Rader SJ”, in Julius Oswald and Peter Rummel (eds.), Petrus Canisius, Reformer der Kirche. Festschrift zum 400. Todestag des zweiten Apostels Deutschlands, Augsburg, Sankt Ulrich, 1996, p. 223-243. 5 Francesco Sacchini, De vita et rebus gestis P. Petrii Canisii de societate Jesu commentarii, Ingolstadt, Angermaria, 1616. I explore the chaotic and uncoordinated gestation of Rader and Sacchini’s authoritative Lives more fully in Markus Friedrich, “Researching and Publishing Jesuit Hagiographies. The Case of two Early Lives of Peter Canisius”, Journal of Jesuit Studies (2023) (forthcoming). The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 139 a specific Roman perspective on the German territories and on Jesuit identity. Both Rader and Sacchini grounded their Lives in extensive research, including epistolary inquiries and the study of numerous archival documents 6 . Canisius had left a large number of writings, including hundreds of letters and many volumes of (still unedited) manuscripts 7 . Rader and Sacchini mined much of this material, often with the help of local Jesuit informants who knew about local caches of relevant documentation. Perhaps the most prominent original sources about Canisius were a number of auto-biographical - or, rather, auto-hagiographical - texts, penned by Canisius at various stages of his life, including his famous “Testament” and a set of “Confessions”. On top of this rich body of ego-documents, the two first biographers could rely on several secondary accounts produced by contemporaries, often in the immediate aftermath of Canisius’s death. Sebastianus Werro, from Switzerland, provided an influential account of Canisius’s later years in Fribourg, while the Jesuit Johannes Hasius from North-western Germany was a key source for Canisius’s family and early life. The Roman Jesuit Sebastianus Beretarius, meanwhile, emerged as a key informant for Rader’s knowledge about Canisius’s many sojourns in Rome. Rader and Sacchini cited all of these sources and frequently even quoted parts of them verbatim in their books. They also incorporated other relevant eyewitness testimonials, including a few letters from famous Jesuit contemporaries of Canisius, but also material from outside the Jesuit order, when it became available. Taken together, this rich body of original material, abundantly available to, and cited by the authors under consideration here, helped to ground the many Lives of Canisius empirically. As has been noted by several scholars already, post-Tridentine hagiography had become documentary in nature, appropriating contemporary standards of antiquarian and critical historiography 8 . The printed Lives of Peter Canisius exemplify this wider trend very well. With Rader and Sacchini, the official portrait of Canisius was largely in place. Later biographies mostly disseminated the standard narrative across Europe, including occasional updates of information and adjustments to 6 The following paragraph also summarizes Friedrich, “Researching and Publishing”. A few helpful remarks appear also in Schmid, “Die Vita”. 7 For the letters and much additional material, see Braunsberger, Epistolae et Acta, 8 vols. 8 Simon Ditchfield, “‘Historia magistra sanctitatis’? The Relationship between historiography and hagiography in Italy after the Council of Trent (1540-1742 ca.)”, in Massimo Firpo (ed.), Nunc alia tempora, alii mores. Storici e storia in età postridentina, Florence, L. S. Olschki, 2005, p. 3-23. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 140 changing times and contexts. The corpus of later biographies includes a German translation of Sacchini’s (but not of Rader’s) Vita 9 , an Italian biography by Giacomo Fuligatti SJ from 1649 10 , a Spanish book by the eminent spiritual writer Eusebio Nieremberg SJ and, in 1707, a French Vie by Jean Dorigny SJ 11 , followed by yet another Italian Vita by Longaro Degli Oddi in 1755. Additional literary formats, including abbreviated digests of these publications, further helped popularise Canisius’s image. A considerable amount of unpublished biographic material, especially from the years immediately after Canisius’s death, can be found as well 12 . A comparative reading of these texts allows us to appreciate how the Jesuit order succeeded in crafting and transmitting a coherent image of Petrus Canisius that continued to inspire subsequent generations and remained alive well into the 19 th century 13 . Nevertheless, several nuances of emphasis distinguish the texts as well, highlighting how the biography of Canisius was adapted to individual contexts through small and subtle changes. Scholars approach hagiographies today with a variety of questions. In the wake of Peter Burke’s seminal article from 1984, many researchers analyse such texts in the broader context of saintliness, seeing them as literary expressions of contemporary ideals of Christian behaviour 14 . Literary scholars highlight how hagiographies as literary texts may help us to appreciate the style and content of modern Christian spirituality, adding a crucial dimension to traditional Church history, which is often focused 9 Francesco Sacchini, Leben Deß Ehrwürdigen Patris Petri Canisii der Societet Jesu Theologen, Dillingen, Rem, 1621. For a specific detail concerning the translation, note how the German version uses the German terminus technicus “Freystellung” when discussing the events of the 1566 Imperial Diet, while the Latin original uses a more complex description of what was going on; compare Sacchini, Leben, p. 173 with id., De vita, p. 231. 10 Giacomo Fuligatti, Vita del P. Pietro Canisio della compagnia di Gesù, Rome, Manelfo Manelfi, 1649. 11 Jean Dorigny, La Vie Du Reverend Pere Pierre Canisius, De La Compagnie de Jesus, Paris, Giffart, 1707. 12 Friedrich Streicher, “Die ungedruckte Lebensbeschreibung des hl. Petrus Canisius von Jakob Keller SJ”, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 8 (1939), p. 257-314. Paul Begheyn, “Joannes Hasius S.J. en de eerste levensbeschrijving van Petrus Canisius“, Ons Geesteliijk Erf, 43 (1969), p. 381-429. 13 Patrizio Foresta, “Wie ein Apostel Deutschlands”. Apostolat, Obrigkeit und jesuitisches Selbstverständnis am Beispiel des Petrus Canisius, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. 14 I use the reprint Peter Burke, “How to be a Counter-Reformation Saint? ”, in id. (ed.), The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy. Essays on Perception and Communication, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 48-62. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 141 exclusively on institutional or political documents. 15 Such scholars interpret early modern hagiographies as expressions of a living culture of spirituality, highlighting, for instance, how such texts served as triggers or “sites” for meditation 16 . Others have conducted quantitative analyses of published hagiographies in order to investigate Christianity’s standing in the early modern public sphere 17 . This paper takes yet another approach, using the rich tradition of Canisius’s biographies as an expression of intra-Jesuit debates about Jesuit identity. Contrary to popular assumptions, the Society of Jesus was a “divided” institution, full of social friction, different interest groups and conflicting visions of Jesuit life 18 . This paper assumes that Jesuit hagiography, by presenting role models of behaviour, intervened into these internal debates. The description of saintly lives was an arena in which rival visions of the Order’s identity could be articulated or implied. 1 Rader and Sacchini: Canisius between Germany and Rome While Sacchini’s 1616 account rarely challenged Rader’s narrative from 1614 explicitly, it nevertheless placed a new emphasis on certain aspects. Four examples illustrate the difference in nuance between the texts from Rome and Germany. First, when Rader recounted the founding of the Jesuits’ College in Munich, he could not restrain himself from including an enthusiastic passage praising the recently erected Church of St. Michael and the city’s college 19 . This was a proudly local perspective - Rader may have experienced the construction of St. Michael personally and even have been involved in debates about the design of the complex. This passage, however, was considered superfluous from a Roman point of view. Sacchini’s text, while reporting the college’s foundation very positively, is free of extraordinary praise. From a Roman perspective, there was simply no need for such a strong and locally grounded emphasis. Sacchini’s picture of Canisius, while not devoid of regional contextualisation, had no interest in promoting 15 Gotor, Santi stravaganti, p. 182-184. 16 Martín M. Morales, “Il corpo frammentato: dalla Vita alla Biografia, il caso di Luigi Gonzaga”, in Anna Carfora and Sergio Tanzarella (eds.), “Come gli altri”. San Luigi Gonzaga (1568-1591) a 450 anni dalla nascita: Ricordarlo da Napoli e dal Mediterraneo, Trapani, Il Pozzo di Giaccobe, 2020, p. 39-63, p. 43. 17 Éric Suire, Sainteté et lumières. Hagiographie, spiritualité et propagande religieuse dans la France du XVIII e siècle, Paris, Champion, 2011. 18 Michela Catto, La compagnia divisa. Il dissenso nell’ordine gesuitico tra ‘500 e ‘600, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2009. 19 Rader, De Vita, p. 105-107. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 142 local pride. Even more than Rader’s version, the Roman Jesuit’s text aimed at a universally applicable role model. Second, Sacchini, the Roman executive, occasionally used his Vita to promote full compliance with the norms of Jesuit governance. He included explicit references to seemingly minor details of Canisius’s behaviour that had received little or no attention in Rader’s version but were crucial for the Order’s headquarters. Sacchini, for instance, used several episodes of Canisius’s life to emphasise how the Provincial had reminded his fellow Jesuits to publicly express gratitude to the founders and benefactors of Jesuit institutions 20 . Rader, by contrast, made no such comments when discussing the same events - certainly not as an indication of any opposition to the norms requiring such public displays of reverence, but rather as a sign of his relative inattention to such matters. The Roman author, a key figure in the Jesuits’ bureaucratic machinery and, hence, trained to monitor norm compliance, was more attentive to such details, however. He used the occasion of Canisius’s Life to promote central norms by portraying his subject as an ideal example. From an administrator’s perspective, Canisius’s thoughtful cultivation of social relations demanded full attention. Third, especially Italian writers close to the central Roman institutions of papal Catholicism focused on Canisius as a propagator of the Council of Trent’s Decrees in Germany. Sacchini and, even more prominently, Giacomo Fuligatti one generation later dwelled at length on Canisius’s role as a promoter of the decrees, a point largely overlooked by Rader. This is obvious, for instance, in their respective narratives of the events of 1565, when Canisius had travelled to Rome to take part in the second General Congregation of his order. For Canisius’s return journey, Pope Pius IV attached him to the Papal diplomatic mission to Germany in official capacity. Rader duly mentioned this fact and dwelled extensively on how Canisius worked as a Papal envoy to strengthen the German princes in their Catholic faith 21 . Sacchini, while recounting the same facts, added one important detail, namely that Canisius was sent back north “to bring [the Decrees of] the Council of Trent to the princes 22 ”. This may be only a brief remark, yet it makes explicit a point that was of great importance for Sacchini. Later authors followed this lead and corrected Rader’s oversight as well. Giacomo Fuligatti, for instance, emphasised this even further, using 20 Sacchini, De vita, p. 313. There follows the remark (p. 314) that Canisius also valued celestial support for the institution’s founding, a point similar to Jakob Keller’s usage of the letter; see Streicher, Lebensbeschreibung, p. 306. 21 Rader, De Vita, pp. 148f. Nor is there any mention of Trent in the pertinent section in Keller’s Vita; see Streicher, Lebensbeschreibung, p. 283f. 22 Sacchini, Leben, p. 165. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 143 the title of a distinct chapter to announce the fact that Canisius “made sure with all his power and many efforts that in Germany the Holy Council of Trent was accepted 23 ”. By the early 18 th century, after most princes had accepted the Council of Trent, even Jesuits from France - where the decrees had been officially accepted only with delay - could highlight Canisius’s dedication to the Council’s decrees 24 . Fourth, Sacchini was much more interested in discussing the crucial issue of Jesuit obedience than Rader. In one famous episode from 1567, Canisius and another Jesuit, Francesco Rocca, travelling through the Bavarian Alps in winter, encountered a violent storm. Canisius pressed forward despite the snow, trying to cross an ice-covered river, while Rocca feared for his life. The source for this episode was the account of Rocca himself, who claimed to have moved forward only because of his “duty to obey” a superior 25 . Both authors rely on, and paraphrase, Rocca’s original narrative, thus giving the episode an eye-witness’s flair. There is a remarkable difference in how Rader and Sacchini employ their common source, however. While Rader’s retelling of the story is entirely free of any reference to obedience, Sacchini took full advantage of Rocca’s original comments to highlight the topic. He was not content with simply citing Rocca’s already explicit words about obedience. In order to illuminate this virtue even more brightly, Sacchini took the poetic liberty of characterising Rocca’s state of mind in a particularly striking fashion: “Rocca was filled with horror” - a phrase that dramatised Rocca’s less sensational text, rendering the subsequent submission to obedience all the more impressive 26 . On other occasions, too, Sacchini mentioned this virtue explicitly. At one point, for instance, Sacchini learned about a controversy between Canisius and Otto Truchseß, Cardinal of Augsburg, a highly significant patron of the Jesuits. It seems as if Rader was unaware of the incident; Sacchini used Roman sources, unavailable to the German Jesuit, to reconstruct the episode 27 . In addition to enriching the factual account of Canisius’s life, 23 Fuligatti, Vita, p. 12, 103-110. 24 Dorigny, La Vie, p. 250. Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (1518- 1563), Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1997. 25 Rader and Sacchini had access to two slightly different versions of Rocca’s account. Both versions, however, contained prominent references to “obedience”, see Otto Braunsberger (ed.), Beati Petri Canisii, Societatis Iesu, Epistulae et acta. Volumen Sextum 1567-1572, Freiburg, Herder, 1913, p. 726. 26 Compare Rader, De Vita, p. 241 (no reference whatsoever to obedience) with Sacchini, De vita, p. 250 (“horror pervaserat Roccam”). 27 Sacchini, Leben, p. 162 is without parallel in Rader, De Vita, p. 137. Sacchini knew of the conflict from a letter written by Truchseß to Borja and preserved in Rome; Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 144 Sacchini once again used the new episode to highlight his protagonist’s obedient behaviour, as Canisius allegedly opposed the Cardinal out of deference to his Jesuit Superiors. All authors had to deal with the episode from 1569 when the provincial leadership of the German province passed from Canisius to Paulus Hoffaeus, with whom Canisius later engaged in a complicated conflict (a fact conveniently ignored by all authors). 28 Rader highlighted that Canisius had been very happy to cede the office of Provincial Superior, chafing as he did under the numerous challenging duties - “even the powers of Atlas or Hercules would have dwindled under such a burden” 29 . According to Rader, Father General Borja had actually read Canisius’s mind when relieving him of the “annoying and endless governing post” 30 . Instead of requiring him to leave, Borgia allowed Canisius to retire, in Rader’s telling 31 . Sacchini also stressed Canisius’s relief and willingness to step down. Yet again, the Roman Jesuit used the episode to evoke the crucial topic of obedience, this time in relation to Canisius himself. In his telling, Canisius exemplified the Jesuit ideal of swift or unhesitating, ‘blind’ compliance. Sacchini projected onto Canisius’s behaviour the typically Ignatian idea that the true Jesuit should anticipate his superior’s will and pre-emptively act accordingly 32 . A few pages later, Sacchini once more portrays Canisius as an icon of obedience, pointing out that the former superior now willingly and explicitly submitted himself to his successor’s authority 33 . On numerous occasions, therefore, Sacchini’s version expresses a concern with obedience that was much more muted in Rader’s account. Sacchini missed no opportunity to highlight Canisius’s obedience and the concomitant virtues of humility and modesty - defining dimensions of Jesuit identity, in Sacchini’s opinion 34 . see Sacchini, Leben, p. 163. Obedience in this context is also featured prominently in Dorigny, Vie, 1707, p. 250. 28 Burkhart Schneider, “Petrus Canisius und Paulus Hoffaeus“, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 79 (1957), p. 304-330. 29 Rader, De Vita, p. 167-169. Quotation ibid., p. 168: “Poterant Atlantis aut Herculis vires tantis laboribus debilitari”. 30 Ibid., p. 168: “Sed agnovit Franciscus Borgia […] Canisij occupationes, quibus ut illum ex parte levaret, praefectura […] tam diuturna & molesta”. 31 Ibid., p. 168: “permisit”. There is also no reference to obedience in Keller’s account of the change; Streicher, Lebensbeschreibung, p. 284. 32 Sacchini, De Vita, p. 262: “gnarus hoc in genere praeveniendos potius Rectorum nutus, quam lente sequendos”. 33 Ibid., p. 264. 34 On Sacchini’s shift from piety to humility, see Schmid, “Die Vita”, p. 241. Schmid does not connect “humilitas” to obedience as a special Roman focus, however. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 145 Such variations were indeed subtle and hardly indicative of any substantial differences or rival interpretations of Canisius. Nevertheless, nuances existed. Sacchini paid attention to several points of Jesuit behaviour that Rader certainly did not oppose, but that were not primarily on his mind when reviewing his confrere’s life. From the perspective of the Roman Jesuit headquarters, in contrast, questions of norm compliance were of great significance - even as local pride was considered a potential danger. When writing an ideal Jesuit’s Life, Sacchini looked for a universally applicable and fitting portrait, covering all standard topics. A biography such as Rader’s, while by no means expressing any opposition to or fundamental discord with the Roman understanding of Jesuit identity, was nevertheless found wanting by Sacchini - not so much for what it said, but for what it neglected to mention. 2 Canisius, Acquaviva and the fragile balance of vita activa and vita contemplativa The Lives of Canisius must also be seen as interventions in crucial debates about Jesuit spirituality. Among the many catchphrases that Jesuits used to describe their own spiritual framework is the prominent maxim that every member of the order should be “activus in contemplatione”. As the formula suggests, Jesuit spirituality relied on a complex balance of vita activa and vita contemplativa, the two traditional extremes of Christian religious life. How the balance should work in practice, however, was far from self-evident in the mere repetition of this well-known shorthand formula. In fact, different Jesuits interpreted the role of contemplation in the Society of Jesus quite differently. For most of the 16 th and 17 th century the Jesuit order was plagued by complex debates about the amount of contemplation and mysticism that could be tolerated 35 . By the time the first Lives of Canisius were being produced, Father General Claudio Acquaviva had implemented a preliminary consensus about these matters. Rader, Sacchini and the other 17 th and early 18 th century Jesuits approached Canisius based on that fragile consensus. They occasionally hinted at the possibility that there could potentially be a contradiction between Canisius’s “studies” and his life of 35 For a competent recent summary, see Facundo Sebastián Macías, “Hagiography as a Platform for Internal Catholic Debate in Early Modern Europe. Francisco de Ribera’s La Vida de la Madre Teresa de Iesus (1590) and the Defense of a Contemplative Way Inside the Jesuit Order”, Church History, 89 (2020), p. 288- 306. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 146 prayer 36 . Mostly, however, they insisted that Canisius exemplified the newfound balance between contemplation and activism. Canisius’s multi-faceted life was presented as a role model of that balance. All biographies highlighted both Canisius’s spiritual perfection and his unceasingly energetic activism. 2.1 Canisius and spiritual life All authors insisted on Canisius’s extraordinary piety and openly addressed his spiritual roots in late medieval Rhenish mysticism. Sacchini praised the religious climate of Cologne’s Carthusian circles, where Canisius had matured spiritually. An open and positive reference to the presence of “theologia mystica” in that group rounded out his assessment 37 . This was remarkable given the fact that “mystical theology” had been expressly criticised in the 1570s and would be once again strongly condemned in the later 1620s 38 . The Vitae furthermore reported episodes that presented Canisius in states of spiritual rapture. Sacchini and others recounted with admiration how at one point Canisius, down on his knees, was observed (or, rather, heard) engaging in a loud debate either with some angel or even God himself - another instance of explicit reliance on ‘credible’ testimonials 39 . Moments of ecstasy were crucial, and favourably portrayed, elements of Canisius’s contemplative life. In addition to the question of Canisius’s mystical inclinations, prayer was presented as a defining feature of the future saint’s spirituality. A controlled regime of mass and prayer structured the hero’s daily life. He dedicated hours every day to praying not just for his own soul and affairs, but also for those of numerous other individuals 40 . Later biographers such as Jean Dorigny developed their description of Canisius’s prayer into a saccharine, edificatory portrait 41 . Canisius’s dedication to prayer was so deep that no external diversion could distract him from it. It was hard to make him leave his state of contemplation. Dorigny praised Canisius for conversing “heart to heart [cœur-à-cœur]” with God. He received in prayer all the “joys of paradise [douceurs du Paradis]” and his entire demeanour 36 Sacchini, Leben, p. 272. 37 Ibid., p. 6. 38 Sophie Houdard, Les invasions mystiques. Spiritualités, hétérodoxies et censures au début de l’époque moderne, Paris, Belles Lettres, 2008. 39 Sacchini, Leben, p. 276. Dorigny, La Vie, p. 416f. 40 Rader, De Vita, p. 213f. 41 All the following quotations come from Dorigny, Vie, p. 414-417. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 147 was filled with “filial confidence [confiance filiale]” in God. Clearly, Dorigny claimed, Canisius’s external appearance mirrored his internal burning with the “flames of divine love [flammes de l’amour divin]”. In his prayers, Canisius pressed God with “saintly violence [sainte violence]”, especially when asking for the conversion of non-believers. In using these formulations and catchphrases of French spirituality, Dorigny appropriated Canisius for the French dévot style of piety. Indeed, he explicitly called the 16 th century Jesuit at least once a parallel to François de Sales 42 . The point about Canisius’s quasi-Salesian “ardeur”, “lumiere”, and “feu sacré”, was, in fact, so important for Dorigny that he explicitly supported it by mentioning explicitly that there was not just one, but two different witnesses for it. While not citing their testimonials verbatim, the Jesuit nevertheless mentioned his informants by name and, thus, made sure that his portrait of Canisius as an “ardent” soul was grounded in direct observation and widespread consensus 43 . 2.2 Canisius and active life The basic point of all hagiographers, however, was that despite his occasional contemplative seclusion from the world, Canisius’s piety not only did not contradict, but in fact enabled and supported his active life. Dorigny stressed that Canisius’s dedication to prayer allowed him to recover from the exhausting turmoil of worldly activity 44 . He also insisted that prayer, for Canisius, was not a secluded affair, confined to an anchorite’s isolated cell. Rather, Canisius prayed everywhere, including in open spaces and while travelling. Contemplative spirituality was embedded in an activist agenda. Anchored in a life spent in prayer and meditation and occasionally graced by episodes of spiritual rapture, Canisius, according to his biographers, remained a man of action. He was tirelessly hard-working; as Rader noted at one point, “no moment of quiet was granted to Canisius to recover” 45 . All hagiographies insisted on Canisius’s dealings with princes, officials and Church leaders. They also mention proudly his institutional achieve- 42 Ibid., p. 417f. 43 Dorigny, Vie, p. 417: “Celuy qui nous a donné l’abregé de la vie de Canisius, assure que le grand Prevôt de la même Eglise, fut témoin de cette merveille.” The person (“celuy”) is identified in a marginal annotation, connected to the main body with an asteriks (“*”), as: “On a l’obligation de cet abregé à Jean Ulric Schenk, Comte de Castel, grand Prevôt des Eglises d’Augsbourg & d’Aicstet.” 44 Ibid., p. 414. 45 Rader, De Vita, p. 135: “Nulla quies data respirandi Canisio”. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 148 ments, including the founding of numerous Jesuit colleges and the leadership of universities and other important posts. These texts also pointed out that a key aspect of Canisius’s activities was his work as an author and writer 46 . When discussing his literary output, most biographers covered Canisius’s oeuvre in all its variety. They also occasionally highlighted his acumen as a publication strategist in general, for instance when noting how Canisius courted positive relations with many printers in order to block access for his Protestant rivals 47 . Canisius’s three Catechisms, considered today by far his most important literary production, were mentioned favourably by all of his biographers, but were not necessarily the (sole) focus of their surveys of his works. In the biographies, a Counter-Reformation hero such as Canisius thus combined prudent institutional politics with feverish pastoral work and wide-reaching publications, all backed by a fervent interior life of prayer and illumination. Canisius’s life, in the increasingly standardised re-telling of the many Lives, came to exemplify the fragile consensus between active and contemplative traditions that eventually shaped mainstream Jesuit identity. Canisius was presented as a role model of an ideal Jesuit, balancing the two potentially contradictory impetuses that had threatened to tear apart the order in the later decades of the 16 th century. Based on this model, Dorigny later developed Canisius into a paragon of the strongly affective and interior-focused style and rhetoric of French piety. Hagiography was thus utilised as a tool for intervention into internal Catholic debates about spirituality. 48 3 Defining the Counter-Reformation’s anti-Protestant stance At least some of the Vitae portray the manifold activities of Canisius as part of a coherent anti-Protestant agenda. In Fuligatti’s mid-century narration, for instance, Canisius’s anti-Protestant work joined his many other pastoral activities under the abstract rubric of works dedicated to “stabilising the Catholic Religion [stabilire la Religione Christiana]”, as the title of his nineteenth chapter announced. 49 Anti-Protestant activity had become a Jesuit ministry, a “mission” in early modern Jesuit parlance. According to some authors, Canisius’s anti-Protestantism was providential. Canisius himself had connected his year of birth, 1521, to the early 46 See, e.g., Fuligatti, Vita, p. 114f. 47 Ibid., p. 113. 48 This is also the main point of Macías, “Hagiography”. 49 Fuligatti, Vita, p. 110. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 149 Reformation, if only vaguely 50 .While some of the earliest biographies do not contain any chronological symbolism, later authors connected Canisius’s birth not only to the Early Reformation, in particular to the Imperial Diet of Worms of 1521, but also to Ignatius of Loyola’s injury during the battle of Pamplona that same year, which set the Spaniard on the path to founding the Jesuit Order 51 . Canisius’s life, beginning with his birth, was portrayed as part of a wide-ranging providential anti-Protestant trajectory. Eventually, the providentialist argument became part of a master narrative of Jesuit historiography, as the order’s official self-perception highlighted its anti-Protestant agenda with increasing strength. Contrary to historical evidence - the Reformation played no significant role in Ignatius’s thinking up to 1541 - authors such as Pedro de Ribadeneira, Niccolò Orlandini and Francesco Sacchini now asserted with confidence that their order had been created by God specifically to fight the Protestants. The Jesuits thus began to view their own institution as a God-given anti- Protestant instrument 52 . Canisius, both in the official histories and in his Lives, quickly became a prime exhibit of this new understanding 53 . In Sacchini’s authoritative words, Canisius should be viewed as the major “column” of Catholicism in Northern Europe during “a time of utmost difficulties 54 ”. The Vitae of Canisius also explained that proper Jesuit anti-Protestantism was of a special kind. It needed to be an expression of Christian brotherly love, supported by charitable empathy towards those heretics who were unaware of the error of their beliefs. From early on, the biographies of Canisius helped to construct what Hilmar Pabel recently called “the myth of 50 Peter Canisius, Das Testament des Petrus Canisius. Vermächtnis und Auftrag, Rita Haub and Julius Oswald (eds.), Frankfurt am Main, Gruppe für Ignatianische Spiritualität, 1997, p. 28. 51 Fully developed, e.g., in Dorigny, La Vie, p. 2. The synchronicity of Loyola and Canisius appears, e.g. in Sacchini, De Vita, p. 7. Chronological speculation is still absent in the Vitae of Jakob Keller (Streicher, Lebensbeschreibung, p. 259) or Rader (Vita, p. 4). It is also absent in Fuligatti, Vita, p. 3f. 52 The role of instrumental thinking in the founding texts of the Society of Jesus is explored in Christopher van Ginhoven Rey, Instruments of the Divinity: Providence and Praxis in the Foundation of the Society of Jesus, Leiden, Brill, 2014. 53 I have explored Canisius’s role in this narrative more fully in Markus Friedrich, “Petrus Canisius und die frühe Gesellschaft Jesu zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne“, in Mathias Moosbrugger (ed.), Petrus Canisius (1521-1597). Zwischen alten Traditionen und neuen Zeiten, forthcoming (Münster, 2022). 54 Sacchini, De Vita, p. 7. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 150 Canisius’s mildness 55 ”. Significant numbers of 20 th century scholars viewed Canisius as an exponent of interconfessional moderation, occasionally even of ecumenism. As Pabel shows, these views are based on a one-sided selection of sources, basing their positive understanding on a few isolated passages from Canisius’s writings. However, this myth goes much further back than Pabel acknowledges in his important piece. Most early modern biographers, not unlike the scholars from the 1920s quoted by Pabel, paraphrased extensively the few passages in Canisius’s letters where he does sound moderate 56 . Some of the biographers, such as Sacchini, explained Canisius’s anti-Protestant polemics as a highly constructive stance, dedicated to helping souls. In such narratives, battling the Protestants was but one element of a broader pastoral agenda that included preaching, hearing confession and providing catechesis for Catholics 57 . It is thus obvious that all biographers, while pointing out Canisius’s firm stand against Protestantism, also took great care to present his anti-Protestantism as constructive, moderate, pastoral and supportive - while it was, at least on many occasions, in fact just as destructive, hateful, aggressive and uncompromising as that of his 16 th century peers. 4 Giving Canisius contemporary relevance: Jean Dorigny, 1707 Jean Dorigny, a prolific French Jesuit author, published his Vie of Canisius in 1707, having noticed that no biography was available in his native tongue. This new version, while largely relying on a well-established factual basis, clearly showed the signs of a new era. We have already noted how Dorigny presented Canisius in the language of French devout spirituality. In addition, his Vie also integrated Canisius into new epistemic and political contexts. Concerning politics, Dorigny used the prefatory letter in his book to the government of Fribourg to comment on the current events of the War of the Spanish Succession, which had been raging for six years already by the time the volume appeared. The 16 th century Jesuit now reappeared as a role model for Fribourg’s peacefulness in the war 58 . In Dorigny’s perspective, 55 Hilmar M. Pabel, “Peter Canisius and the Protestants”, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 1 (2014), p. 373-399, p. 390. 56 E.g. Fuligatti, Vita, pp. 114f. Sacchini, Leben, p. 280-282. 57 Sacchini treated Canisius’s anti-Protestant Catholic renewal as manifestation of his “burning desire to care for the house of God”. Sacchini, Leben, p. 273. 58 All of the following comes from the unpaginated dedication letter, see Dorigny, Vie, “[Épître] aux tres-illustres, tres-hauts, tres-puissants, et souverains seigneurs, The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 151 Fribourg’s politicians “followed up on the saintly intentions of that Pastor of the Believers [i.e. Canisius] in order to maintain peace, which so cruel a war has banished for so may years [seconder les saintes intentions du Pasteur des Fideles, pour procurer la paix, qu’un si cruelle guerre en a bannie depuis tant d’années]”. Fribourg’s policy of neutrality continued “the innocence and modesty that Canisius was fortunate to cultivate and promote in all Catholic Swiss cantons [cette innocence, cette modestie que Canisius a eu l’avantage de cultiver, de maintenir, et d’augmenter chez tous les Cantons Catholiques]”. In other words, early 18 th century Swiss politics maintained local piety, as shaped by the Jesuit. Canisius was transformed into a spiritual founder of contemporary politics and Swiss neutrality. Dorigny also updated his Vie in terms of epistemic principles. His version shared the early Enlightenment’s more analytical language of historical description. A growing focus on the causation of historical events by contemporary circumstances and human actions is evident. On many occasions, Dorigny presented historical events as shaped by social or political forces, contextual circumstances and cultural intentions. The author’s description of the Imperial Diet of 1566 is a case in point. The crucial meeting, which was attended by Canisius among other Papal emissaries, ultimately threatened to founder because Protestant hardliners used the imminent danger from Ottoman forces in Hungary to coax Emperor Maximilian II into accepting some of their religious propositions. All the relevant facts were already present in Sacchini’s Vita; yet Dorigny’s sober and almost cynical analysis of causes and consequences, which made the outcome appear like a contingent result of contemporary contexts, represented a new approach. If not the facts, then certainly their assessment and narrative framing, were of a new kind: “The Emperor, who needed to win over both sides [the Catholics and the Protestants], tried hard to accommodate both; this made him suspect to both, however, and he came close to being abandoned completely 59 .” This kind of realistic analysis of historical developments in their political and rhetorical contexts brought a new tone to well-established saintly narratives. It highlighted, in unprecedented ways, the social logic of human interactions, which also shaped a saint’s life. Part of this epistemic shift was Dorigny’s self-declared scepticism towards overblown miracle stories. In his second prefatory letter, “Au seigneurs advoiers, petit et grand conseil de la Ville & Republique de Fribourg en Suisse”. 59 Ibid., p. 273: “L’Empereur, qui avoit besoin de gagner les deux partis, s’efforçoit de ménager l’un et l’autre; mais devenu suspect à tout le deux, il se vit plus d’une fois à la veille d’en être abandonné […].” Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 152 Lecteur”, he not only expounded lengthily on the difficulties he encountered when writing the book, he also laid open his approach towards the many miracle stories associated with saintly biography. While the previous authors, too, had made clear that they had worked hard to avoid naïve credulity, Dorigny felt that he faced new challenges. He knew he wrote for a changing audience “in a century so enlightened and polished 60 ”. While building on previous biographies, he nevertheless opposed their “blind deference” to incredible miracle-stories 61 . Highlighting his new standards of critical scrutiny, Dorigny was prepared to “sacrifice” beloved anecdotes if he found them to be unsubstantiated by evidence 62 . In fact, however, Dorigny’s actual record concerning such matters is much more ambivalent than his self-confident assertions in the preface. On the one hand, Dorigny occasionally seems to know even more, not less about Canisius’s interior spiritual life than previous authors. According to a famous deathbed story, Canisius saw something supernatural shortly before passing away. No previous author had dared to pronounce on what - or, rather, whom - Canisius had seen in these last moments of his life. Dorigny, however, felt secure in suggesting that it must have been Mary, Mother of God, who appeared to the dying Canisius 63 . On the other hand, Dorigny, despite being much more specific concerning that vision’s content, insisted that he was not confirming that the vision had actually taken place 64 . At least on the level of rhetorics, Dorigny made sure to distance his narrative from popular credulity. Similar ambivalences also shaped the narrative of what took place immediately following the death of Canisius. All authors agreed on most of the factual details: there was significant popular mourning, with masses of people thronging to the coffin. In Dorigny’s version, these events are recounted in lively manner and with unprecedented richness of detail; yet his narrative also comes with a more outspoken, if still only moderate criticism of such popular behaviour. The author distinguished clearly between the local elite’s “moderate” and “respectful” piety and the raucous veneration of the pious “masses [le petit peuple]”, thus devaluing popular 60 Ibid., fol. e v (“Avertissement”): “dans un siecle aussi éclairé & aussi poli”. 61 Ibid., fol. i2 r : “déference aveugle”. 62 This concerned in particular the problematic issue of mystical “graces extraordinaires” that many pious biographers claimed for their heroes; see ibid., fol. i2 v . 63 Ibid., p. 397. No details, e.g., in Sacchini, Leben, p. 303. 64 For a parallel discussion of Dorigny’s scepticism, see David Aeby, La Compagnie de Jésus de part et d’autre de son temps de suppression. Les jésuites à Fribourg en Suisse aux XVIII e et XIX e siècles, Padova, Padova University Press, 2020, p. 345. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 153 forms of religious expression 65 . Other forms of late 16 th century popular piety, again reported in factual accordance with earlier Lives, were also criticised in light of the early Enlightenment’s more sober and rational version of Christianity. The widespread scramble for relics, for instance, did not at all find Dorigny’s favour 66 . Despite his prominent opening statements, however, Dorigny still recounted almost all the edifying episodes of Canisius’s post-mortem veneration that Sacchini had already described - there was no real trimming of the pious stories 67 . While Jean Dorigny clearly accommodated his version of Canisius somewhat to the ideas and cultural mores of the early 18 th century, this accommodation remained mostly superficial, it seems. Yet despite the fact that the bulk of the material and even some of the framing simply continued earlier traditions, the new tone of Dorigny’s book is nevertheless apparent. This shift in perspective was sometimes even more evident in later Lives. One telling example comes from the Latin translation of Dorigny’s Vie that the Swiss Jesuit Pierre Python published in 1710. The translator, catering even more strongly to new enlightened attitudes, cut the entire account of the “odor sanctitatis” that Canisius’s body reportedly exuded after his death. Mirroring the early 18 th century’s growing scepticism towards traditional signs of sainthood, Python preferred to keep silent about such increasingly contested issues 68 . These may appear to be minute observations, but they hint at a broader point. As conventional signs of saintliness, and their presentation in hagiographies, came increasingly under pressure from new medical, philosophical, and theological ideas, authors of saintly Lives were facing difficult choices about some of the material they inherited from earlier periods. Since no official consensus about the new perspectives on sainthood and miracles was available yet around 1700 - Prospero Lambertini’s pathbreaking On the Beatification of the Servants of God, and on the Canonization of the Blessed appeared only in the 1730s -, authors such as Dorigny or Python were left to their own devices when trying to attune their narratives to the changing intellectual climate. Different strategies for coping with changing standards of proof were available, including rhetorical gestures of distancing and outright silence on certain matters. More in general, the corpus of Canisius-Lives written around 1700 reveals the crucial fact that a 65 Dorigny, Vie, p. 402. 66 Ibid., p. 403. 67 Ibid., p. 463-466. 68 Aeby, La Compagnie, p. 344. On growing skepticism, see Fernando Vidal, “Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint-Making”, Science in Context 20 (2007), p. 481-508. Markus Friedrich PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 154 wide range of differing attitudes to traditional notions of saintliness, miracles and hagiography could still coexist quite easily at the same time. Saintly biography was a literary genre that mirrored contemporary debates about how to understand the sacred while, at the same time, forcefully intervening into such debates by presenting, in narrative detail, their authors’ individual approach to these matters. 69 5 Conclusion While sharing much in terms of empirical evidence, biographical detail and overall interpretation, the many Vitae of Petrus Canisius reveal subtle nuances in terms of emphasis, focus, narrative style and underlying subtexts. Although each biographer agreed that Canisius was a remarkable and exemplary figure, worthy of admiration and veneration, different authors writing at different times and in different locations still made sense of him in different ways. The framing of Canisius’s life changed significantly depending on whether one had a Roman or a local perspective, indicating that these works, too, reflected the tension inherent in early modern Catholicism between the vision of a universal and a regionally embedded Church. Given the shared basis of documentary sources and testimonies, the existence of such variety in the different Lives of Canisius provides tangible evidence of the diverse spiritual and social positions within the Society of Jesus, and in Catholic Christianity at large, in different times and locations in the Church’s history. 6 Bibliography 6.1 Sources Braunsberger, Otto (ed.). Beati Petri Canisii, Societatis Iesu, Epistulae et acta. Volumen Sextum 1567-1572, Freiburg, Herder, 1913. Canisius, Peter. Das Testament des Petrus Canisius. Vermächtnis und Auftrag, eds. Rita Haub and Julius Oswald, Frankfurt am Main, Gruppe für Ignatianische Spiritualität, 1997. Dorigny, Jean. La Vie Du Reverend Pere Pierre Canisius, De La Compagnie de Jesus, Paris, Giffart, 1707. Fuligatti, Giacomo. Vita del P. Pietro Canisio della compagnia di Gesù, Rome, Manelfo Manelfi, 1649. Rader, Matthaeus. De Vita Petri Canisii De Societate Jesu Sociorum e Germania primi libri tres, Munich, Berg, 1623. 69 Aeby, La Compagnie, p. 346. The Early Hagiographical Tradition of Peter Canisius PFSCL XLIX, 96 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2022-0007 155 Sacchini, Francesco. De vita et rebus gestis P. Petrii Canisii de societate Jesu commentarii, Ingolstadt, Angermaria, 1616. Sacchini, Francesco. Leben Deß Ehrwürdigen Patris Petri Canisii der Societet Jesu Theologen, Dillingen, Rem, 1621. Streicher, Friedrich. “Die ungedruckte Lebensbeschreibung des hl. Petrus Canisius von Jakob Keller SJ”, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 8 (1939), pp. 257- 314. 6.2 Studies Aeby, David. La Compagnie de Jésus de part et d’autre de son temps de suppression. 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Festschrift zum 400. Todestag des zweiten Apostels Deutschlands, Augsburg, Sankt Ulrich, 1996. Schneider, Burkhart. “Petrus Canisius und Paulus Hoffaeus”, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 79 (1957), p. 304-330. Sidler, Daniel. Heiligkeit aushandeln. Katholische Reform und lokale Glaubenspraxis in der Eidgenossenschaft, Frankfurt, Campus, 2017. Suire, Éric. Sainteté et lumières. Hagiographie, spiritualité et propagande religieuse dans la France du XVIII e siècle, Paris, Champion, 2011. Tallon, Alain. La France et le Concile de Trente (1518-1563), Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1997. Vidal, Fernando. “Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint- Making”, Science in Context 20 (2007), p. 481-508.