Staged Chastity

Sexual Transgressions of Early Modern Jesuits
Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-0-19-780890-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 235 mm

Staged Chastity offers a rare in-depth historical investigation of sexual violence in the early modern period, focusing on the Society of Jesus in German-speaking lands. Drawing on extensive archival research, it examines sexual offenses committed by Jesuits against schoolboys, penitents, and fellow members of the order.

The book argues that a "staged chastity," both a performance and a claim to moral authority, was crucial to the order's identity and its efforts to secure the Church's authority. This left the Jesuits especially vulnerable to scandal, since misconduct cases threatened the Society's reputation and undermined the Catholic ideal of the priesthood. As a result, such cases were usually handled internally and in secret, since protecting that reputation took priority over punishing perpetrators.

The book shows that sexual violence was embedded in structures of authority, discipline, and symbolic power. It challenges the view that clerical abuse is mainly modern, placing it within long-standing institutional and theological frameworks. Staged Chastity lays the groundwork for a broader history of sexual violence and the management of scandal in religious settings.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lehner, Ulrich L.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: The Vulnerability of Early Modern Catholicism

- 1: The Priest and His Symbolic Capital

- 2: Sexual Violence and Sexual Deviance

- 3: Ecclesiastical Punishment for Sexual Offenses

- 4: The Dismissal from the Society of Jesus

- 5: Toward a Hermeneutic of Anti-Jesuit Polemics

- 6: The Sexual Jesuit: Chastity, Secrecy, and the Struggle for Moral Discipline

- 7: Geographical Case Studies of Sexual Violence from Jesuit Schools

- 8: Sexual Abuse in Mexico and Mainz: The Case of Maximilian Gill SJ

- 9: Outlook Toward the Present

Über Autor(innen)

Ulrich L. Lehner is the William K. Warren Chair at the University of Notre Dame and a specialist in religious history of the Early Modern period. He has written fifteen books and edited many more. He has been recognized and honored with several prestigious fellowships at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, the Humboldt Foundation, and most recently the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).