Jesuit Dissenters: Celestial Novelties and Orthodoxy in Early Seventeenth-Century Ingolstadt

The 1610s were a critical decade for the Jesuit scholarly community in Ingolstadt. The observation of various celestial phenomena, from sunspots to comets, disrupted the traditional notion of the cosmos, creating profound anxiety not only among scholars but also among institutional authorities, who witnessed the emergence of theories that directly challenged the principle of doctrinal uniformity and solidity institutionalized in Jesuit colleges. Drawing on a range of sources – including private correspondence, lecture notes, academic dissertations, textbooks, and censorial reports – this essay analyzes the strategic processes by which the Jesuits active at the University of Ingolstadt in the early seventeenth century gained acceptance for the doctrine of celestial corruptibility, celestial fluidity, and the Tychonic system.