Publisher's Synopsis
"The Society of Jesus is one of the most storied and controversial religious organizations in history. Its legacy is traceable largely to a single idea that was elaborated by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Society: The Greater Glory of God. Far from a rhetorical battle cry of vague meaning, the greater glory of God was the Society's very reason for being. Ignatius made it the criterion by which members of the Society, called "Jesuits," were to choose their ministries in the service of God. It determined all of the Society's internal structures and way of proceeding. Perhaps most significantly, it permeated Ignatius's spiritual doctrine as a whole: how he understood everything from prayer and discernment to magnanimity, indifference, evangelical poverty, and what it means to be spiritually free. Nowhere is all this more clear than in the original Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, a book that Ignatius composed fo
