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Geography in the service of faith: A Jesuit geographical textbook in early modern Croatia

The Jesuit Catholic Order was one of the key cultural mediators in the early modern world: the Jesuits mediated between secular and ecclesiastical politics, between Catholics and non-Catholics, and ultimately between the Old and New World. As missionaries, they were able to travel around the world and create global scientific knowledge in passing. This knowledge was subsequently distributed and disseminated to Jesuit colleges and universities as their local branches throughout Catholic Europe. According to Christian humanism, promoted by the Jesuits, the path to love and knowledge of God was action, not contemplation. Thus, practical knowledge became relevant, and geographical culture began to play a prominent role. Geographical textbooks dealt with both "old" and "new" geography, which was considered a companion to history in the course of Jesuit rhetoric. In this paper, the first Croatian geographical textbook "Veteris & novae geographiae compendiosa congeries" (1714), compiled in the Zagreb Jesuit College, is presented. The Jesuits were among the first to pass on the knowledge of the New World to Croatian students. Ancient writers ceased to be the main authorities in the creation of geographical knowledge, and modern geographers came to the fore in modern descriptive geography.

Jesuits, geography textbooks

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