Jesuit historiography in Lithuania since 1990: proximity and distance along world routes

Research into Jesuit history in Lithuania since the restitution of the independent state in 1990 may be regarded perhaps as the most fruitful period in this field during the last century. The history of the Society of Jesus certainly was not a favoured subject of study during the period between 1918 and 1940, which saw the dynamic development of the modern Lithuanian state but limited scholarly interest in religious historical topics. During the five decades of Soviet rule (1940–90), Jesuit history could be studied only in a fragmentary fashion, but the circumstances of that period were such that they have shaped the state of contemporary Lithuanian Jesuit studies both positively and negatively ever since. Today Jesuit history, while not a large area of research, occupies an important place on the scholarly landscape in Lithuania. In order to understand the reasons for this, it is useful to look as far back as the last years of St Ignatius’s life