Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu

The monumental Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu (Rome, 1650–1673), in 6 folio volumes by the Jesuit man of letters and historian Daniello Bartoli is the most extensive classic of Italian literature, over ten thousand pages long. It begins the centenary history of the Jesuits between 1540 and 1640 with an authoritative if somewhat ponderous biography of the founder Ignatius Loyola.

The first part of Bartoli's undertaking begins with an introduction to his general plan which after this biography extends to the four corners of the earth. In addition to the library of manuscripts in the Jesuit archives, Bartoli acknowledges the writings of his predecessors, Juan de Polanco, Loyola's secretary, and biographers Pedro de Ribadeneira, Giovanni Pietro Maffei and Niccolo Orlandini. The work is organized in five books, of which the third is a disquisition on the Jesuit Institutes and Constitution. Book 4 is dedicated to the virtues and the death of Ignatius. Book 5 is dedicated to the saint's miracles After the first edition Ignatio De Lazzeri brought out a second edition (Rome, 1659) with the programmatic frontispiece of the art of Jan Miel engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert. The perfectly rendered global quaternity shows the command of the Jesuits on questions of world geography, and their promotion of the shift from the designation of the New World as the Indies to that of America adopted by Bartoli. This theatrical Baroque engraving, which looks forward to the work of Andrea Pozzo is the perfect expression of Jesuit iconography. It shows St. Ignatius shedding a divine light from the order's emblem IHS (Giesu) on a correctly rendered globe surrounded by the symbolic female representations of the world in four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa, America, representing the global dimensions of Bartoli's ambitious historical project. From the clouds the founder holds a volume on which are inscribed the Jesuit motto Ad majorem Dei gloriam and the Regulae Societatis Jesu. It also heralds the Jesuit missions with a decorous classical quote from the Octavianus of Minucius Felix, "Coelo affixus sed terris omnibus sparsus".

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