Between duty of intelligence and duty of orthodoxy: to the origins of the Jesuit Catholic science

Based on the consolidated bibliography, the essay focuses on the very moment - corresponding to the generalate of Claudio Acquaviva - when the Company of Jesus shaped its identity as a militant order in the area of science. The process of defining the intellectual profile of the Society was con-temporary to, and complementary with, the definition of its doctrinal orthodoxy and can ultimately be viewed as the product of the internal tension between the “duty of intelligence” and the “duty of orthodoxy”.