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Arch Sci

DOI 10.1007/s10502-010-9125-y

ORIGINAL PAPER

Archives as networks: the geography of record-keeping


in the Society of Jesus (1540–1773)

Markus Friedrich

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This paper examines the archives of a major Catholic order, the Society
of Jesus. The quality and amount of Jesuit sources allows a very detailed recon-
struction not only of how the archives were meant to function, but also of how they
were used in daily life. While the Jesuits and their archives resemble many other
early modern institutions, the wealth of documentation nevertheless makes them
particularly suitable for a case study of early modern archival practice. The paper
argues that the order consciously developed a network of archives that closely
mirrored the institutional framework of the Jesuit bureaucracy. Ideally, smooth and
swift movement of papers within this network was meant to provide easy access to
relevant documents for users at all hierarchical levels. In reality, however, Jesuit
record keeping remained far from this ideal. Papers were misplaced or simply got
lost in the maze of archives.

Keywords Jesuits  Bureaucracy  Catholic Church  Geography of knowledge 


Networks  Inventories  Archives  Germany  Bohemia  Rome

I wish to thank the participants at ‘‘In and Out of the Archive’’ for their helpful comments. I greatly
appreciate the efforts of Zita Worley and Randolph C. Head in helping with my English. Two
anonymous reviewers of Archival Science provided crucial hints and I gratefully borrow a sentence from
one of them. I use the following abbreviations: ARSI: Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. ÖNB:
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien. clm: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich, codices latini
monacienses. RAA: Rijksarchief Antwerp. BHStA: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich. SdtA MZ:
Stadtarchiv Mainz. LHA KO: Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz.

M. Friedrich (&)
Goethe-University, Historisches Seminar, Grüneburgplatz 1, 60323 Frankfurt/Main, Germany
e-mail: Friedrich@em.uni-frankfurt.de

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In 1649, the geographer Berhard Varenius published two small volumes about Japan
and the Japanese religion (Varenius 1649a, b). His Description of the Kingdom of
Japan made a major contribution to Europe’s knowledge about the Far East in
general, while his Treatise on the Religion of Japan discussed indigenous beliefs
and European missionary successes in more detail. Varenius had never been to
Japan himself, but he did an excellent job of compiling many first-hand accounts of
missionaries, merchants, and mariners. He also presented a lengthy list of sources
that he had been able to consult (discussed in Reichert 2007). Yet, while rightly
proud about his achievements, Varenius also recognized his own shortcomings. He
lamented that other travelogues and reports had been unavailable to him. In
particular, he said, he would have liked to read more Jesuit texts, which were,
however, presumably ‘‘stored in Rome and hidden away in some library of the
Society of Jesus’’ (Varenius 1649a: ***7r). He was right and wrong at the same
time. To be sure, much more missionary material existed than Varenius had been
able to read. The largest repository of missionary material in Jesuit Rome, however,
was probably not in any library, but in the order’s archive.
For an outsider like Varenius, the Jesuit records were exciting and frustrating at
the same time. The Roman repositories, whether archives or libraries, were
considered to be a huge, yet unknown or even willfully hidden treasure trove,
inaccessible to outsiders. Jesuit authors, of course, were potentially in a much better
position to use this valuable information. In fact, Jesuit writers produced a constant
stream of works based on archival material that often made explicit reference to the
order’s archives. Antonio Possevino, in his famous catalogue raisonne´e of approved
Catholic reading material, the Bibliotheca Selecta of 1593, praised his fellow Jesuit
Pietro Maffei for writing a history of missionary activities out of the ‘‘internal
Archives (ex interioribus Archivis)’’ (Possevino 1603a: 339). And a little less than
100 years after Varenius, Jean-Baptiste du Halde, in his Description of China
(1735), relied equally heavily on Jesuit manuscripts about the Far East (e.g. Du
Halde 1735: III 66).
The Protestant Varenius and the Jesuits Maffei and Du Halde obviously were in
very different positions regarding access to the order’s manuscripts. But for
Protestant and Catholic scholars alike, the libraries and archives of the Society of
Jesus were important beacons in the landscape of great European repositories of
documents. Others were also well aware of the Jesuits’ Roman archive: Sir Horace
Mann for instance, in a letter to Horace Walpole in London that described the
seizure of Jesuit property in Rome on August 24, 1773, following the order’s
suppression, opened his account with the closing of the archive, before turning his
attention to the fate of the Jesuit churches (Lewis et al. 1967: 506f). Like Varenius,
Mann was especially fascinated with the Roman archive of the Society of Jesus. Yet,
as this article argues, the famous Roman archive can only be understood properly if
it is related to the myriad local and regional Jesuit archives. After all, the Roman
archive of the Jesuits was the archive of the order’s central government, not the
order’s central archive. Indeed, no such universal repository was ever envisioned.
Quite to the contrary: the Society of Jesus normally stored its papers in different
storage facilities at different locations. That is to say, the Society of Jesus organized
record-keeping by relying on a network of coordinated and subsidary archives.

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According to a definition proposed by José Luis Rodrı́guez de Diego, an ‘archival


network’ presupposes a geographical organization of administration based, in turn,
on a hierarchy of interdependent and subordinated institutions with clearly specified
areas of responsibility (Rodrı́guez de Diego 1989: 44). The Jesuits intended to
create precisely such a network, and sought a careful balance between centralizing
and decentralizing documents, even if they did not entirely succeed in implementing
this idea.
Understanding (Jesuit) archives as a network draws on the idea that knowledge
has a strong geographical dimension. As David Livingstone has argued, knowledge
and information are shaped by and shape the places in which they are created,
stored, and managed (Livingstone 1984, 2003). Taking into account the ‘geography
of knowledge’ is important in order to avoid decontextualizing books, ideas, and
archives. Rather, these are closely connected to specific locations and local
circumstances (for a Jesuit case study see van Damme 2004). Most importantly for
this essay, taking the ‘geography of knowledge’ into account means appreciating the
fact that knowledge is not only localized, but also spread out geographically.
Accordingly, the successful management of knowledge depends on a mastery of the
spaces between the multiple sites where knowledge is produced, stored, and applied.
Steven Harris has demonstrated how both the geographical separation and the local
context of the Jesuit colleges shaped the order’s ability to produce scientific
knowledge (Harris 2000). A similar claim can be made for administrative
knowledge and its most important repositories: the archives.
In the Jesuit archival network, the distribution of administrative knowledge to
specific locations, often spread out over vast geographical regions, occured quite
consciously and relied on careful planning. Ideally, it was meant to follow the
order’s institutional blueprint. What was to be stored where was determined by who
produced it for what purposes, and to which office the documents pertained. The
distribution of papers to different archives was not an obvious or self-evident affair,
but rather actively mapped an institutional hierarchy onto space. Repositories were
mandated for every organizational level of the order: each individual establishment,
each province, and the Roman Curia should have an archive.1 Rules existed to
indicate what should be housed where. The storing of documents thus mirrored
institutional hierarchies. Figuring out where to store a document thus often meant
figuring out which office-holder it belonged to. Determining what to store where,
however, was sometimes complicated. Rereading the geographical map of Jesuit
archives for its institutional logic could be difficult, even for contemporaries. The
Belgian provincial Ludovico de Camargo, for instance, had to determine personally
in 1683 where and how to keep one certificate of debt.2 Talking about the
‘geography of record-keeping’ in the Jesuit case thus not only implies talking about
how documents were actually housed and used in individual locations or how they
physically moved from archive to archive through geographical space, but also, in a
1
The creation of ‘provinces’ as regional administrative entities harks back to the Franciscans and
Dominicans of the later Middle Ages (Schmidt 1999; Tugwell 2005). Often, though not everywhere,
provincial headquarters became sufficiently institutionalized to require distinct archives. The Augustin-
ians of Styria, for example, created provincial archives in 1606, see ÖNB cod 5811, fol. 21r.
2
RAA Jes 908, unpag. (8.11., Ruraemont, de Camargo to Oosterlinck).

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more metaphorical way, how they were attributed to different institutional ‘sites’
according to an organizational logic.
Jesuit archives have so far received relatively little attention (Schurhammer 1943;
Lamalle 1981; Rurale 2007). In fact, it is fair to say that until recently, monastic
archives were often overlooked even by specialists in archival history. This is
illustrated nicely by a volume published in Rome in 1994, documenting a conference
on ‘‘Archivi e Archivistica’’ in Rome since Italian unification (Lume 1994). This
brilliant publication collected many useful papers on the history and holdings of
multiple Roman archives, private and public, secular and religious, yet no archives of
monastic orders and regular clerics were discussed. While no single volume could
cover all Roman repositories, the neglect of monastic collections is nevertheless
significant. Only recently have things started to change. In the wake of a renewed
interest in the history of religion in general and Catholic orders in particular,
monastic record-keeping also attracted a new generation of researchers. This turn has
been further kindled by recent research into the use of writing and paper for
pragmatic and administrative purposes since the High Middle Ages—a process
triggered at least partially by the Church and its institutions. Not surprisingly,
therefore, monographs, volumes of collected essays, and individual papers have
begun investigating monastic administration, records and archives, giving them their
due attention (Schoebel 1996; Goez 2003; Barret 2004; Giannini and Sanfilippo
2007; Fritsch 2006; monastic archives explicitly excluded in Clanchy 1993).
It is generally agreed in the historiography that the Jesuits produced more
documents than most other orders and stored them with exceptional rigor. This
richness of sources continues to make them particularly attractive for scholars.
Several reasons can explain this fact. It is obvious, for instance, that the Jesuits from
very early on understood and employed the power of historiography for purposes of
identity-building and propaganda, and that they grounded the resulting works on
vast quantities of documents mined in an ‘empirical,’ if not impartial way. From the
very beginnings of Jesuit record-keeping, the historiographical use of manuscripts
had been a major goal (Mongini 2005; on resistance, Turtas 1992: 181–184). Juan
de Polanco, a key figure for the early development of both Jesuit administration
(and, thus, the production of documents) and Jesuit historiography, was also the first
organizer of the order’s central Roman archive (Schurhammer 1943; Orlandini
1615: ?2r-v). Under the fifth General Superior, Claudio Acquaviva (gov.
1583–1615), the project of a History of the Society of Jesus was started. The office
of official Jesuit ‘‘historian’’ was institutionalized and was assisted by a growing
staff; occasionally there were even two such historians in Rome.3 Before the
suppression in 1773, five volumes of the Historia Societatis Iesu appeared—all of
them relying strongly on the order’s archives and their records. Francesco Sacchini,
editor of the first volume and author of the second, insisted that only ‘‘letters provide
a secure and faithful custody’’ for history, whereas oral reports and human memory
‘‘slowly accumulate many meaningless falsehoods’’ (Orlandini 1615: ?2v). The
official Jesuit historian in Rome therefore usually had a selection of manuscripts in

3
See ARSI Rom 78 II-III, 80, 78c; and Orlandini 1615: ?2v.

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his room (Friedrich 2008: 389f).4 Checking information very carefully against
manuscript sources was a basic routine (Friedrich 2008: 381–383).5
Even more important was the Jesuits’ enthusiastic employment of written
communication for administrative purposes. Scholars usually agree that the Jesuit
founding fathers provided their order with a particularly well-developed institu-
tional framework. Governance and administration were high up on Ignatius’ and
Polanco’s agenda while drafting the Constitutions, the basic charter of the order. By
no means should this be taken to mean that Ignatius founded a secular organization.
Rather, it seems that he believed that efficient religious work could not be done
without carefully crafted institutions and administrative routines. Starting with
Ignatius, paper-based administration became a pillar of Jesuit governance. As the
Society began to spread all over the globe, moreover, social cohesion became a
major issue. Constant letter-writing was seen as an effective means to balance
‘‘decentering’’ tendencies, and was accordingly highly regulated and controlled
(Clossey 2008). Since Rome continued to claim supreme authority in many fields,
communication was also crucial to uphold central power. Critical voices deplored
the customary reliance of Jesuit administration on papers and letters, and
occasionally presented alternative possibilities. Yet, important as these skeptical
voices were, they ultimately failed to shatter the Jesuits’ trust in a centralized and
paper-based style of government. Accordingly, archives came to play a major role in
both the theory and practice of Jesuit governance.
Transforming institutional hierarchies into a network of archives had several
consequences. Above all, it necessitated the constant exchange of papers. For
practical reasons, documents were lent and borrowed among Jesuit establishments
or individual office-holders, and notebooks were kept to track the checked-out
records.6 As was the case with so many early modern archives, however, much of
the material sent away was never returned.7 Relocating documents often also meant
moving them up a step in the institutional hierarchy—from the local to the
provincial level or from there onwards to Rome. For example, it was mandatory to
forward to Rome authentic copies of all contracts and all documents regarding the
foundation of Jesuit houses.8 The provincial Archives could also become
repositories for important original documents. At least after 1680, for instance,
the college of Brünn in Bohemia seems to have regularly sent such papers to the
provincial archive in Prague.9 Many provincial archives, as will be seen shortly,

4
At least one manuscript ‘owned’ by Niccolò Orlandini, author of the first volume of Historia Societatis
Iesu, can be found in ARSI Fondo Gesuitico 695, file ‘‘B’’: a printed document is endorsed as belonging
to him.
5
ARSI Hist Soc 169 has a collection of excerpts of Jesuit archival material (mostly litterae annuae)
compiled by Francesco Sacchini, the first ‘official’ historiographer. Wherever possible, he checked
printed versions against handwritten originals, see e.g. 32v, 33r (lack of manuscript noted), 47v, 187r (lack
of manuscripts) etc.
6
BHStA Jesuitica 1067, fol. 26v. ÖNB cod 12025, fol. 163f.
7
See e.g. SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 3.
8
E.g. clm 26490, cap 19, nr 3.
9
ÖNB cod 11948: 56a (1680), 67r (1684). From then on, a reference to the Archivum provinciale in
Prague is always present.

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contained huge collections of such originals. Occasionally, provincial archives were


brought up to date by sweeping and most likely orchestrated relocations of
documents. The Upper Rhenish provincial archive in Mainz acquired many
documents from various locations in 1727. This ‘‘sending in’’ of papers rounded off
existing collections, and increased the provincial holdings considerably.10 Yet
archival information did not flow only upwards. On several occasions, records
missing on the local level were substituted by similar material available from the
provincial or even Roman archives (see Friedrich 2008: 399–403). Lending and
borrowing clearly worked both ways.
Such a system of archives required huge maintenance efforts. The meta-
knowledge of what was actually kept where needed to be available on all levels.
Often, material was only forwarded to other archives after copies had been made.
Since the repositories in Brünn and Prague belonged to interlocking and cooperating
institutions, it was only appropriate that Brünn should also possess inventories of the
Prague holdings, just as authenticated copies of all papers sent to Prague were also
kept in Brünn. In many cases, such copying was actually mandatory. At times, the
Jesuits even thought it necessary to store three copies of the same piece: one on the
local level, another with the provincial, a third one in Rome.11 The network
structure tended to create a redundant multitude of papers. The Jesuit case thus
induces us to rethink the role of redundancy in early modern information systems.
While ‘‘information overload’’ clearly was a major concern on many occasions, the
Jesuits at other times consciously produced and stored redundant information.
Without doubt, at least in certain cases, they saw great merit in possessing multiple
versions of the same document.
The sources allow us to understand in some detail how papers were actually stored
in archives on all three levels. In the Roman Curia, documents were housed in several
locations and formed distinctive collections. As Georg Schurhammer demonstrated
in 1943, Jesuit record keeping began with several ledgers kept by the various
secretaries (Schurhammer 1943; Friedrich 2008: 383–392). Around 1553, Juan de
Polanco started the use of separate registers that were organized more strictly. It was
only after Polanco’s tenure ended that Antonio Possevino, who took over the office of
secretary for 4 years in 1573, came up with the organizing principle still familiar to
modern users: distinct registers for each type of document (letters, vows, catalogues
etc.) for each province. From the perspective of record-keeping, Possevino’s
secretaryship was of crucial importance. While secretary, Possevino also made good
use of the Roman archives for his own publications, among them the famous
bibliographical works Bibliotheca selecta and Apparatus Sacer (Possevino 1603a I:
n.p., marginal gloss to section ‘‘Causae, Occasiones, et Idea Operis’’). In fact,
Possevino was well acquainted not only with the archive of his own order but also

10
SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 19 (material from Heidelberg), 21 (from Heiligenstadt), 23 (from Würzburg), 37
(from Worms, unclear if material did actually arrive), 41 (from Bockenheim/Frankfurt). The process was
called ‘‘einlieferung’’ (p. 19) or ‘‘einschickung’’ (p. 21). There is no positive evidence that this was in fact
a coordinated action, but the assumption that all these depositions were accidentally made at the same
time seems improbable.
11
E.g. ÖNB cod 12025, p. 164.

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with those of other religious congregations.12 While not much is known about
Possevino’s time as secretary of the Society of Jesus, it seems obvious that
organizing and using the repositories went hand in hand during his tenure.
It needs to be stressed that the order’s central headquarters always had more than
just one repository. ‘The’ Roman Jesuit Archive was not one coherent entity, but
consisted in reality of different sections, or, rather, collections. The many papers sent
to Rome were likely divided between the General Superior (and his archivist) and the
General Procurator, each of which operated his own archive. Both collections were
covered by an inventory from 1656.13 Later in the century, serious infighting
occurred between the head archivist and the General Procurator about who should
oversee which archival material. Perhaps as a result of this battle, some of the
Procurator’s material was incorporated into the General’s archive.14 This archival
battle around 1690 related to a broader conflict between the two offices: throughout
the 17th century, the General Procurator had suffered setbacks as more and more of
his work was given away to other office-holders in Rome. The archival dispute with
the order’s archivist (and with the secretary) was part of a last stand that General
Procurator Giovanni Battista Tolommei (1688–1691) made against the diminishing
role of his office. Institutional competition clearly translated into archival rivalries.
Yet infighting such as this was not only about practical questions of who stored what.
Besides administrative expediency, symbolic issues were at stake. Documents and
archives became a battleground for institutional self-positioning. Control of records
could turn into a marker indicating one’s position in an organization’s bureaucratic
hierarchy. Power over archives became a symbol for institutional power.
By 1656/8 at the latest, a ‘‘general’’15 and a ‘‘secret’’16 part coexisted in the
central (the General’s) administrative archive (see also Friedrich 2008). The 1670s
saw a major reconstruction of the Roman archive(s) and, probably as a result,
materials were redistributed and recatalogued. Among the most venerable items of
the former ‘‘secret’’ archive were the writings of Ignatius and his early companions,
as well as the most important early records. These documents were explicitly
thought to ‘‘belong … to the entire Society of Jesus.’’17 This collection of
‘universal’ documents came to be deposited in six armoires—or, maybe, in one
armoire with six parts18—that were kept in the rooms of the Secretary.19 To some

12
At least three times, he quotes material from the Augustinians’ Archive, see Possevino 1603a: 75, 105,
186. Not surprisingly, he also knew the holdings of the Vatican archives and libraries well; in fact, his
Apparatus Sacer occasionally served as a guide for others who tried to find materials there. See Grafinger
1993: 181; Possevino 1603b: 296.
13
ARSI Misc 1.
14
For this and the following see ARSI Inst 244, n.p.
15
ARSI Misc 1. The date is 1656.
16
ARSI Misc 3. The date is 1658. Similarly clm 1972, fol. 73v.
17
ARSI Misc 6, unfol. (no. 3 of the opening text). A similar attempt can be seen in no. 7, which
distinguishes between letters referring to individual colleges and letters referring to entire provinces.
18
ARSI Misc 7 described the state of this piece in 1716 (the date is taken from ARSI Misc 3, fol. 1r
which is assumed to refer to ARSI Misc 7).
19
Described in the first part of ARSI Misc 8 and of ARSI FG 222. ARSI Misc 6, unpag. no. 3, mentioned
that the archivist was responsible for these papers. A ‘‘second room’’ is described in detail in ARSI Misc

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extent, relevance and physical location of individual manuscripts were matched: a


major criterion for organizing papers was the ‘‘dignity of materials and their natural
order,’’ according to which the most important items ‘‘were placed in a higher
location than the others.’’20 The ‘‘general’’ archive, in contrast, contained the
materials that individual establishments had to send to Rome, such as founding
charters, sales contracts and other legally relevant documents. These papers were
arranged in a geographical order. In order to find, say, a contract pertaining to the
college of Mainz all that was needed—in theory—was the knowledge that Mainz
belonged to the province of Rhenana Superior, which in turn was part of the
German Assistancy. Within each province, the alphabetical order of place-names
structured all documents.
If we take archival organization to be an indicator of how organizations imagine
themselves, an obvious conclusion follows: in some sections of the Roman archives,
the Society of Jesus was hardly more than simply the sum of individual houses and
colleges, ordered alphabetically within each province. Other sections, however,
were organized in a way indicating that ‘the order’ was more than just the sum total
of individual establishments. Many documents related to the entire order, or relied
on a functional instead of geographical logic. The Roman archive therefore parallels
a basic feature of Jesuit self-perception and, indeed, of all institutions in general—
organizations are at the same time highly local and universal, they are constituted by
individuals and yet acquire a life independent of individual participants. The Jesuits’
institutional imagination had to balance these two different approaches all the time.
Their archive illustrates this perfectly: the alphabetical lists of individual
establishments and the ‘universal’ approach each represented the same social body,
albeit in different ways.
Let us now take a quick look at the provincial and local archives. The evidence in
this paper comes mostly from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Belgium, yet similar
information is available for many other regions, including outside of Europe
(Restrepo Zea 1997). Important rules from 1595 specified that each archive should
house several specific ‘‘books’’ (libri) (Ordinationes 1595: 32). Distinct yet partially
overlapping sets of volumes had to be available in the provincial and local
repositories. Among other things, important correspondence and instructions from
superiors and the names of beneficiaries should be recorded in these books. These
norms were reiterated time and again.21 The rules were not everywhere kept
perfectly, yet there are enough examples of these libri to illustrate that the Roman
norms did often have a strong impact on the local organization of papers and
knowledge.22

Footnote 19 continued
6; maybe the ‘‘capsulae’’ L-S of this latter order contained the material from ‘‘pars tertia’’ of Armoir ‘‘A’’
mentioned in ARSI Misc 3. There was certainly some material of ARSI Misc 8 and FG 222 (first parts)
stored in this room, although most of it was in the second room described in ARSI Misc 7.
20
ARSI Misc 6, unpag.
21
BHStA Jesuitica 84, unpag. (1658, no. 8). RAA Jes 250, pt. I no. 4, pt. II no. 23 (1651).
22
E.g. clm 24076, 24077 (Upper Germany).

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But there was much more to provincial archives than these libri. Let us look at
one particular case. Around 1730 the provincial archive in Mainz was surveyed. The
inventory produced on this occasion allows us to understand the structure of a major
early modern Catholic administrative archive.23 The materials were distributed in
two sections on the left and right of the entrance to the storage room. The papers
likely lay in compartments (Fächer) or maybe movable boxes (arcae ductiles). At
least some of these containers could be locked with a key that remained with Father
Provincial.24 At the wall on the left stood containers 1–64, on the right-hand side
numbers 65–104. About two fifth of the boxes on the left were still empty (1–16,
52–64); the archive was thus ready to expand. Since the wall on the left housed the
major legal documents pertaining to all Jesuit establishments within the province, a
geographical order was followed (boxes 17–43). Again, the archive was consciously
organized in anticipation of future expansion, since box number 44 was reserved for
materials about establishments ‘‘yet to be founded.’’ But only a minority of holdings
was organized geographically. More important were administrative criteria. Most
other chests contained specific and distinct types of documents, e.g. the famous
personnel catalogues (numbers 59, 75–77), the equally famous yearly edifying
news-letters (litterae annuae), or the regular historical notes (historiae; 71–72,
81–82).
For each chest or box, the inventory listed all papers within it. For the boxes
containing letters, litterae annuae, catalogues, etc., no additional information was
necessary to direct potential users, since these papers were customarily bound
together in chronological order. But a more detailed catalogue was needed (and
provided) for the boxes dedicated to individual colleges (17–43) on the left. For
each establishment, the available papers were carefully listed. Each time, the
documents were divided in two groups. Latin capital letters identified the ‘‘major
writs’’ (Hauptbriefe), while Greek minuscules referred to ‘‘particular writings’’
(Particular-Briefe). It seems as if these categories differentiated charters from files
(Urkunden from Akten), although not always in an entirely consistent form.
Nevertheless, the ‘‘particular writings’’ usually were papers without legal force,
such as account-books or letters, whereas papal bulls, deeds, and contracts were
considered ‘‘major writs.’’
The inventory from Mainz allows us also to evaluate the completeness of a
provincial archive. Clearly, a wealth of information about individual establishments,
the province, and Roman affairs was available. At least some of the province’s
houses were quite well represented. Occasionally, so many ‘‘major writs’’ were
present that the inventory ran out of space.25 Other sections of the archive, however,
were in less exemplary condition. Some chests contained surprisingly few
documents. Box 68, for instance, dedicated to the ‘‘notes and manuscripts regarding
the laws of the Order (Institutum),’’ contained only an unimpressive handful of
23
SdtA MZ 15/576. The terminus post quam is 1727 (see above), the terminus ante quem is probably
1735 (p. 35). Shortly after the expulsion of the Society of Jesus (1773) in 1778, the archive was once more
inventoried. SdtA MZ 15/579. While a huge portion of the material can be traced from the first to the
second inventory, the archive had a somewhat different order in 1778.
24
SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 59 and the title of the inventory (n.p., before p. 1).
25
E.g. SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 11 (Ettlinga).

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texts. Other material was available only in fragments. Generally speaking, the
Thirty Years’ War seems to have taken a huge toll. The personnel catalogues or the
account-books start to appear in a more predictable way only after 1648.26 The
litterae annuae were even more scattered. Only after 1681 were they available more
or less completely. For the 140 or so years before, only individual pieces were
mentioned in the inventory.27 Some types of documents, for instance the annual
account-books of the colleges, had received a specific chest, yet no document at all
was available. Provincial archives were evidently laid out according to a fairly
standard template based on the order’s administrative system, regardless of what
was actually available at Mainz. These empty chests are a powerful image of the gap
between the Jesuits’ hopes for a well-organized archive and the administrative
realities.
Records and archives were often in bad shape in other places, too. The Jesuit
college of Koblenz, for instance, had ‘‘not yet organized’’ its local archive in 1706.
A brief, but very specific list details all the missing documents: original contracts,
account books, and legal material were either absent or not maintained in the proper
way. This sorry state obviously caused embarrassment among local superiors, yet
improvement came only slowly. In 1723, the archive was ‘‘still not organized,’’
even though preliminary initiatives could be reported. Especially the local
procurator seemed to have been uninterested in his archive, for he was asked
several times throughout the 18th century to be more orderly with his papers. Only
in 1733 could the archive be called ‘‘well organized,’’ even though some
authenticated copies (of papers presumably sent to the provincial headquarters)
were still not available.28 This example from Koblenz should be a powerful
reminder to not take for granted the implementation of the Jesuits’ archival
blueprints. Shortcomings were common, either because of external reasons (such as
the Thirty Years’ War in the case of Mainz) or because of an individual’s lack of
care (the procurator of Koblenz).
As in Koblenz, documents elsewhere were also often divided among different
office-holders and their rooms. Brünn reported, for instance, in 1652, that their
archive
remains untouched and orderly. Father Rector has his files [including some of
the libri!] in his room in an armoire. In this place are also kept the historiae,
fully finished. The inventories of domestic tools are kept by Fr. Minister. The
inventories of holy things are kept with the Prefect of the Church. The Urbars
and all inventories regarding economic affairs remain with Fr. Procurator.29

26
SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 68f., 70.
27
SdtA MZ 15/576, p. 71f.
28
LHA KO 117/419, no pages. This is the standardized final report every provincial had to provide his
successor after the end of a 3-year period of office-holding. The Latin reads in each case ‘‘[necdum] in
ordinem redactum.’’
29
ÖNB cod 11948, fol. 9vf. (1652). In Upper Germany, however, it was said that the aerarium and the
archive were the only ‘‘locked’’ spaces that a procurator could have, BHStA Jesuitica 84, n.p. (1636).

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This implied at least a rudimentary functional differentiation of material. Three


years later, we learn that Brünn now officially distinguished a ‘‘new’’ and an ‘‘old’’
repository.30 The files of the Rectors constituted the ‘‘new’’ repository, which, as we
also learn, was housed in the third of his several rooms. All these depositories had to
be surveyed frequently, maybe yearly; the new inventories, moreover, were not
supposed to be simply copied from earlier versions, but rather be compiled each
time from scratch.31 Obviously, as this mandate implies, the duty of inventorying
was either not fulfilled at all, or only in a sloppy and less time-consuming fashion.
Careful inventorying did of course occur, at times. The novitiate of Mainz, for
instance, produced a thorough survey of extant documents around 1764 (or shortly
afterward).32 Differing from the inventory of the provincial archive discussed
above, this substantial quarto book not only listed the documents and their call
numbers, but also functioned as a sort of register or copy-book, providing lengthy
excerpts of the inventoried documents. At least for daily usage, the inventory-
register therefore made extensive reading of the originals in the archive
unnecessary. The holdings were divided into two sections (tituli), with all materials
also identified by running Roman numerals. Each number seems to have designated
a distinct group of papers, maybe drawers or files or even volumes (though none of
these terms appears). Individual documents within each group were addressed by
additional Arabic numerals. The archive so inventoried was, in the first titulus,
ordered mostly according to subject matter, in the second titulus geographically
according to the locations where the novitiate held possessions. A large number of
documents were concerned with the legal rights and jurisdictions pertaining to the
novitiate and its estates. Jesuit archives on all levels thus usually merged a
geographical organization with a topical structure that followed administrative
procedure. While legal documents dominated in the first area, the material in the
second section was, broadly speaking, more bureaucratic in nature.
Snippets of evidence allow us some insight into daily administrative usage of the
local archives. Jesuits regularly ‘went to the archive’ when making decisions. On
February 16, 1736, for instance, such an action was noted in the Bohemian College
of Hradistiense. On September 13, 1737, the Jesuits reassured themselves again by
looking up some legal documents in their archive. Such a routine recourse to
archival material can be documented for all levels of Jesuit governance. More
interesting, perhaps, are the events that took place on March 27, 1736. One Jesuit
had gotten into trouble with the Inquisition since he had misbehaved against the
secular clergy, citing the fact that his church was not under the bishop’s jurisdiction.
Clarifying the point meant checking the original license to build the church. But the
local Jesuits apparently lacked such a document, since they suggested looking it up
in the chapter’s archive in Ostrow.33 The Jesuit archives were meant to be consulted

30
ÖNB cod 11948, fol. 13v.
31
BHStA Jesuitica 85, fol. 46v, 48v (1749).
32
SdtA MZ 15/577. After 1773, this archive was most likely reinventoried; the result of this process is
probably extant in SdtA MZ 15/578.
33
ÖNB cod. 11950, fol. 107r (16.2.1736), 107v (27.3.1736), 110r (13.9.1737).

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Arch Sci

directly in the process of decision-making, but in this case, they could not live up to
expectations.
Finding relevant documents also proved to be difficult in other cases. Using
archives was made even more complicated because it was often unclear which
archive was actually meant to house which paper. Consider, for instance, an almost
comical story from the Dutch mission in 1674. One superior wrote to another:
You surely recall, your Reverence, that I had asked you to check in our archive
in Antwerp if the papers relating to the purchase of this house might be found
there […]. In Amsterdam they could not be found. You responded that they
were also not in Antwerp. But since it has been suggested that the papers
might be in the archives of Brussels, you promised, time permitting, to have
these archives searched as well.34
It is unclear if Fr. Veer, the writer, ever found his document. This is only one
example among many showing that the planned distribution of papers throughout a
complex network of storage units in the Jesuit system did not always function
properly. In fact, it seems that the sharing of responsibilities and the moving back
and forth of papers were often counterproductive. Finding the right documents was
certainly not always the easy and speedy process that Jesuit bureaucrats imagined.
Another complicating aspect of Jesuit archival practice, especially on the
provincial level, was the constant mobility of the provincials. While the provinces’
major archives were, of course, meant to have a stable location, the provincials
themselves were constantly on the move touring their provinces. Differing both
from the local superiors and from Father General in Rome, the provincials were by
definition itinerant office holders. Visiting each Jesuit establishment every year was
mandatory for them and, as far as we know, they tried very hard to fulfill this task
even if their provinces were huge (like Austria) or difficult for travelers (like the
Swiss regions of Germania Superior). Visitation meant that provincials were on the
road for the better part of their time. While traveling, they occasionally carried some
papers with them, but were necessarily disconnected from the rest of the provincial
archives. They tried, however, to maintain access to their central repository through
correspondence. Papers flowed constantly to and from the archive as a way to
overcome the administrative shortcomings of an itinerant office. Often the
provincials asked for papers to be checked, copied, or forwarded to where they
were at the moment. In late 1684, for instance, the Belgian provincial Aegidius
Estreix asked his aide in Brussels to ‘‘search for a pile of papers in the room of my
associate.’’ The aide, however, was at first sick, unable to do so, and later was
unable to find the materials needed.35 This example reveals not only the structural
problems inherent in the juxtaposition of stable archives and itinerant users. It also
illustrates the efforts made to overcome these problems, as well as the Jesuits’
ultimate failure to do so.
Even if the storage of documents did not always function properly, there can still
be no doubt about the extraordinary importance that record-keeping had for the

34
RAA Jes 2828, unfol. (Joannes Veer to Laurentius van Schoone, 21.10.1674).
35
RAA Jes 65, unfol. (Oosterlinck to Estreix, 8.12.1684). Estreix’ order dated from 3.12.

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Arch Sci

Society of Jesus. The sheer amount and, generally speaking, the high degree of
internal organization of Jesuit records is astonishing. For better or worse, the order
sought to organize document storage through a complex network of interlocking
archives that were intended to support one another. Lower institutions were
subsidiary to higher ones; different office-holders oversaw different papers. With
this outlook, the Jesuit archives thus seem to resemble the administrative structure
of the order in general. While the Jesuit Generals had unrivalled powers, this was
not meant to deny local agency. In fact, regional and local superiors played an
important, albeit mostly subsidiary, role when it came to distributing power within
the order. This structure was replicated by the network of archives. Analyzing Jesuit
archival culture, therefore, reveals that the Society of Jesus organized its archives by
relying on and consciously creating a ‘geography of record-keeping’ that attempted
to translate institutional hierarchy into spatial relationships. Record-keeping was not
a procedure confined to just one location, but rather implied the distribution and
movement of papers over extended spaces. Strictly centralized archiving was very
rare in Early Modern Europe, and most states and organizations relied on a plurality
of archives, either grown historically or constructed intentionally in order to fulfill
administrative functions. The Jesuit case illustrates nicely the opportunities, but also
the challenges that came with a reliance on multiple archives spread out over space
and differentiated according to institutional hierarchies and functions.

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Author Biography

Markus Friedrich was educated at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, where he received his


M.A. in 1998 and his Ph.D. in 2002. Since then he has worked and researched at Duke University, Boston
College and, from 2005, at Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main, where he completed his Habilitation
in 2010. His research concentrations have included early modern Lutheranism, the Society of Jesus and
the history of knowledge and information.

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