Forme e usi della memoria nel corpus gesuitico del XVII secolo. Fra istruzione, spiritualità, missione

The essay investigates uses and meanings of memory in a selection of texts produced by members of the Society of Jesus in the 17th century active in the territories of the Spanish Monarchy. In the first part, it examines the significance of this category in the apparatus of norms regulating daily life and especially the activity characterising the order, namely teaching. Memory is a practical faculty predisposing the individual to future action, and plays a key role in both pedagogy and in the discipline of teachers. Mission and confession, other operational cores of the order, are examined in the second part. The accounts of the Fathers produced while travelling through the territories of the Iberian Peninsula document those places and encounters, but above all the mentality of those who produced them.