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In 1845, two Jesuits in Rome indepently wrote Jan Roothaan, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, each requesting that he be sent abroad as a missionary. Coincidentally, both men were astronomers, and both petitioned to be sent to the United States. One -- Angelo Secchi -- was reluctant about this possible assignment, because he thought he was not “adequate” for that important task; but he was, nonetheless, open to it, as a gesture of obedience to God and gratitude toward the Society of Jesus. The other writer -- Benedict Sestini -- argued that the general must send him to Maryland, where “the observatory lacks an astronomer and is in the midst of savage and ignorant people”. In the end, General Jan Roothaan chose to keep Secchi in Rome, where he directed the observatory of the Roman College for 28 years. But Roothaan chose to send Sestini to Maryland, where he worked at Georgetown College’s observatory before designing, and then living at, Woodstock College.
Secchi and Sestini, with their letters, were taking part in a tradition largely unique to the Society of Jesus by writing what are called “indipetae,” namely letters of people who petitioned for the Indies (in Latin: petebant Indias). Jesuits wrote thousands of indipetae from as early as the 1560s until as late as the 1960s.
These letters were their private appeals, often only to be read by the superior general himself. As such, a letter regularly contained personal statements by a Jesuit -- what drew him to the missions, why he was willing to give his life abroad, what saints inspired him, what special skills he might have to benefit the mission. Letters described dreams, calling them to serve abroad. And they also contained pragmatic concerns, like a desire to leave the boredom of teaching philosophy or theology. Largely, though, these were spiritual letters. To demonstrate their commitment, some men occasionally chose to sign or write an entire letter in blood.
An initiative of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, the Digital Indipetae Database provides free access to a growing collection of these indipetae petitions and, excepting the scanned images, is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial No-Derivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The database also hosts scans of the original letters that are housed at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu and other archives. The scans are published here with permission from the respective archive. Any requests regarding those images, including all requests for permission to republish, should be directed to those holding institutions.
The database allows users to search the letters by a number of facets -- the full text, or a sender’s name or location, or the date a letter was sent (with certain feast days being quite popular throughout Jesuit history), or the destination desired, among others. The terminology used in this database is explained as are the conventions adopted in the transcription of the letters.
The four centuries of indipetae have prompted a great deal of scholarship, especially in the 21st century. This database presents a bibliography of recent scholarship, citations for which appear on the Jesuit Online Bibliography. It is the hope of this project’s collaborators that the Digital Indipetae Database will foster further research in a variety of disciplines and will provide greater insight into the history of the Jesuits and the world in which they inhabited.
The Digital Indipetae Database is organized by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies in collaboration with the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. It was developed and is maintained in cooperation with Boston College Libraries. To learn how you can collaborate with this project, please visit https://indipetae.bc.edu/contributors.
The database's letters and metadata are all aggregated within the search capabilities of the Portal to Jesuit Studies.