The dissemination of Jesuit military mathematics from the Collegio Romano to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, 1600-1750

Abstract

One remarkable characteristic of the Society of Jesus in the Baroque age was the involvement of many of its learned members in the dissemination of mathematical knowledge. This was inspired by St Ignatius of Loyola's belief that any acquisition of knowledge was a spiritually profitable exercise. In the context of the scientific revolution that was shaking sixteenth-century Europe, it was understandable that many Jesuit mathematicians would emerge in the forefront of a massive promotion exercise involving mathematical education in its wider and more practical sense of the word which contrasted sharply with the narrow interpretation of the subject today. This was a 'mathematical disciplines' approach which went far beyond the time-honoured study of Euclid; it incorporated a wide range of topics which included Euclidean and analytic geometry, geometry as applied to calculus, to astronomy and to mechanics, the art of measuring, the sphere, trigonometry, logarithms, navigation, gnomonics and horology, the calendar, civil and military architecture. At the dawn of the Baroque age, the promotion of such a wide spectrum of mathematical knowledge invested the Jesuit mathematicus with great credibility which, in perfect accord with Ignatius' strategy, was considered essential to elevate the status of his invention over that of the traditional Orders. As George Sarton wrote, 'One cannot really talk about mathematics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without seeing a Jesuit at every corner'.'