The Jesuitica Project: Twenty Years—Twenty Stories, edited by Yannick Van Loon, Rob Faesen, Wim François, and Ward De Pril

The Maurits Sabbe Bibliotheek at the University Library in Leuven (Belgium) contains one of the most important collections of Jesuit books in the world.It consists of more than 500,000 volumes from the Flemish Jesuits, to which 20,000 volumes from the Dutch Jesuit Province were added in 2006.To date, 70,000 Jesuitica have been catalogued; more than 650 early printed books have been digitized; and 26,000 references have been incorporated into the Jesuit Online Bibliography.Twenty years ago, the Jesuitica Project was founded.The present volume offers an overview of the work accomplished during the past two decades in twenty short essays.In the preface, the coordinator of the Jesuit project refers to the philosophate Berchmanianum in Nijmegen as a monastery-though he should know that Jesuits do not have monasteries, only houses, churches, and colleges!Three of the "stories" included have only tenuous connections to the Jesuits: a superfluous philosophical reflection (33-39); a tenth-century German illustrated manuscript (40-44) that was housed in the Jesuit parish of Nijmegen; and a Greek incunable printed in Venice (45-50).A useful and detailed chapter addresses the "Traces of Jesuit ownership and provenance at the Maurits Sabbe Library" (9-32).It contains three factual errors: the Bibliotheca Collegii Maximi S.J. Traiectensis (31) is not in Utrecht but in Maastricht; the Bibliotheek Huize Katwijk (31) is not in Zeist but in The Hague; and the unidentified Biblioth.dom.Prob.Monast.(32) refers to the novitiate in Mnster, Germany.A significant essay is dedicated to the Institutiones Taulerianae (51-58), the first German edition of which was published in Cologne in 1543 by Peter Canisius (1521-97)-almost a month before he entered the Society of Jesus in Mainz.His friend, the Carthusian Laurentius Surius (1523-78), published a Latin translation in 1548, also in Cologne.Both editions were highly influential among early Jesuits and Carthusians, and later among the Carmelites as well.The Flemish Jesuit Albert Ampe