The jesuits and their roots

Abstract

The Saint of Loyola dies at the age of 65. By then, the Society of Jesus was present on three continents with
almost a thousand members, a hundred residences and 50 schools. That enormous apostolic work was nothing
but the result of the creativity of the spiritual life of Ignatius, its founder. Among other creative enterprises,
educational centers and missions proved vital to the forging of the Jesuit identity. This process of identity was
accompanied, in the pedagogical and academic dynamics of the magis, by disciplines such as astronomy,
cartography, art, linguistics, ethnology and anthropology together with history and literature. These elements,
which surpassed themselves in the unique plan of God's greater glory, shaped the model of evangelization and
institutional education proposed by the Society of Jesus. It was there that its roots and its possibility of
persistence in time and history sank.