JESUIT SPIRITUALITY AS A KEY TO READING THE HISPANIC-AMERICAN BAROQUE

Abstract

Analyses of the Spanish-American Baroque often overlook the fact that several representatives of this movement were educated in the light of the spirituality of the Counter-Reformation, developed particularly by the Society of Jesus. The question that concerns us is to know if this spirituality only reacts «against» the Reformation and Modernity, or if it introduces novel inflections that allow us to understand it as the exercise of a committed action «with» an alternative modern project. Our hypothesis is that, as opposed to the spirit of reformist modernity, the Spanish-American Baroque, in competition with the «occasion», promotes a spirituality capable of creative and co-operative freedom. The article has two purposes: to identify Jesuit spirituality as a significant key to the reading of Baroque Modernity; and to characterize this spirituality in two different contexts: the Hispanic Baroque of Gracián; and the Jesuit Missions in Latin America. We consider that the counterpoint that the historical baroque brings into play can illuminate in an oblique way a «neo-baroque» spirituality capable of facing the crisis of the present.