As the previous chapter suggested, the Society of Jesus struggled to overcome the obstacles that their global and globalizing intentions created. The next trilogy of chapters pursues the ideal of global mission from its visual representation, to its internalization, and finally to its manifestation in the form of aspiration to missionary work.

Realizing the Global World

We can safely view the articulation of this global network at a remove of centuries. Such developments also impressed observant people of the time, and their responses give us a sense of their worldviews. Christian thinkers raided their traditions for the necessary metaphors, ideas, and justifications for comprehending the New World and the new age issued in by early-modern European expansion.

Writers signalled the importance of the discovery of America by locating it in the course of sacred history. In the dedication to his Historia general de las Indias [General History of the Indies] (1552), Francisco López de Gómara called it “the greatest thing after the creation of the world (excepting the incarnation and death of its creator).” Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's praise for the circumnavigation of the globe exceeded this, for he ranked it the “greatest and most original event” after Creation.