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Vocatio ad socium Jesu or how Kristián Rudolff became Christianus Rudolphi

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the biography of the Jesuit Christianus Rudolphi and to present the exceptional texts that were used to reconstruct it. First of all, it is a text called vocatio, in which novices described the motivations and situations that led them to join the Society of Jesus (here in a critical edition and Czech translation), a short ego-document from the end of his life as a Jesuit and finally a eulogy written after his death.

The article shows the possibilities of exploring the ego-documents stored in the Jesuit archives, which - although they are preserved only rarely and fragmentarily - can be contextualized thanks to the reconstruction of careers and the analysis of the official eulogy.