If the lives of the saints have inspired, fascinated, or horrified their readers since the earliest Christian centuries, hagiography as an intellectual field is fraught with difficulties of its own. Competing narrative traditions, artistic and textual developments, ecclesiastical regulation, reception, and many other issues stand behind the halos and holy cards. Imaging Jesuit Sanctity sheds much light on a watershed moment in the history of Catholic saint-making: the canonizations of Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, Teresa of Avila, and Isidore the Farmer that took place in 1622. These were the first faithful raised to the altars since the major reorganization of the canonization from the 1590s. Imaging, which is the fruit of a conference held in Canada in 2022, successfully explores manifold aspects of making saints in the seventeenth century.

Imaging consists of nine chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion. As its title suggests, the volume is attentive to the visual portrayal of saints in the Baroque period even more than to texts, and each chapter is punctuated with numerous attractive color plates. Pamela Jones shows how the Carmelites competed on behalf of Teresa of Avila with Francis Xavier for devotional space in Goa, whereas Andre Brouillette explores various figures, including Teresa herself and her Jesuit biographers, who shaped distinctive visions of female holiness. Thomas Santa Maria compares the respective images of Ignatius and Neri as founder saints, observing that early Oratorians paid more attention to the Society than vice versa. Whereas Jesuit hagiographers like Ribadeneyra said that Ignatius’s great achievement was the founding of the Society, Neri’s followers identified his establishment of a program of spiritual exercises for lay and religious alike, rather than founding the Congregation of the Oratory, as the basis of his sanctity. Rachel Miller chronicles Xavier’s gradual transformation during the seventeenth century into a plague saint, which eclipsed earlier attention to his care for lepers. This owed much to numerous outbreaks of plague long after Xavier’s death, highlighting the difference between the “real saint” and the “constructed saint.”

Alison Fleming presents a fascinating account of the visual construction of Ignatius’s vision at La Storta, which played a significant role in the promotion of his cause after 1600. Fleming identifies a strong resonance between these images and contemporary depictions of St. Peter’s “Quo vadis?” moment, a connection that owed something to Ignatius’s personal devotion to the Chief of the Apostles, as well as to broader Counter-Reformation priorities. Jonathan Greenwood explores the obstetric miracles attributed to Ignatius in Bavaria, which include the unusual practice of using an abridgment of the Constitutions as a relic. These chapters offer a wealth of information about the halting progress of Ignatius’s cult, especially the vexatious issue of his miracles … or lack thereof.

Other chapters move beyond the scope of the 1622 canonizations. Daniel MacLeod follows the long path to sanctity for the Scottish Jesuit John Ogilvie, whose canonization took place in the twentieth century, centuries after his martyrdom. Mary Dunn provides a fascinating comparative study of the lives of Catherine de Saint-Augustin and Kateri Tekakwitha as distinctly Jesuit portraits of colonial sanctity, ones that refracted their preoccupation with the legacy of mission violence that threatened to undo the progress of the faith in New France. Male hagiographers, Dunn says, gave clerical authorization to holy women, shaping unorthodox lives into familiar templates of sanctity. Finally, Emanuele Colombo discusses Jesuit remembrance of their martyrs in the seventeenth century, explaining how the ambiguous martyrdom of Rodolfo Acquaviva was eventually overshadowed by Marcello Mastrilli (of Silence fame). Colombo follows the complex negotiations between the papacy, the Inquisition, and the Society regarding the veneration of martyrs who had not been canonized, with the Society eager to promote them, and the Inquisition intent on restraining such efforts.

Thomas Worcester’s conclusion observes how the fortunes of holy Jesuits have varied across the ages. Aloysius Gonzaga (and, Worcester might have added, Stanislaus Kostka) was beatified in 1605, well before Ignatius or Xavier, and Francis Borgia was beatified already in 1624, yet they men would have to wait considerably longer for canonization. Worcester comments on the particular political circumstances of Pius XI’s reign (he was reliant upon members of the Society for many things) that led to numerous Jesuit beatifications and canonizations. There is also a discussion of the hagiographical priorities of the first Jesuit pope, Francis, who canonized Peter Faber, the first priest of the Society, in 2013.

Thanks in large measure to its clear and well-defined theme, as well as to the fine writing of its authors, Imaging is coherent and flows smoothly by the standards of conference proceedings. Besides the color plates, each chapter contains a robust set of endnotes, which will help novices and experts alike in the field of hagiography. The only significant drawback to this volume is its layout and production. The text on the page resembles a Word document, and the heavy, shiny stock paper may test the durability of the glue binding. Imaging is nevertheless an invaluable contribution to the study of sanctity in the seventeenth century and beyond.