Missionaries and Military in Spanish Europe: Cultural and Religious Issues from the Jesuit Mission in the Army of Flanders (1587–1659)

This article focuses on the Jesuits of the Missio castrensis (1587–1659), the military mission to the army of Flanders, the Spanish Catholic army that criss-crossed Europe between Flanders and Italy during the Eighty Years’ War and the Thirty Years’ War. A comparative analysis of unpublished sources allows us to trace the radical change in attitude of these men. These sources testify to a fundamental modification in the Jesuits’ pastoral and human priorities. If, at the beginning, the discourses and practices referred to the ‘holy war’ against the heretics, as the war continued, new attention was drawn to all bodies suffering from the war. This profound shift echoed a new attention to the poor, the sick and their needs. In the first part of the article, this alteration in the Jesuits’ priorities is contextualized by comparing it with the case of the Ministers of the Sick, founded in Rome in 1586 by Camillo de Lellis.