Jezuītu ordenis un renesanses laikmeta ideju ienākšana Baltijā
The Jesuit Order and Incoming of the Renaissance Ideas in the Baltics

Summary/Abstract: One is confronted in the historiography of Latvia and Estonia with extremely negative interpretations of the historical role of the Order of Jesuits. Such interpretations abound in the Lutheran orthodoxy (the sermons of Hermann Samson),the works of the Russian Orthodox authors, who speak of the spies of the Pope, etc. The meaning of the term `Jesuit` has often acquired negative connotations in the Russian and Latvian languages, describing such qualities as swindling, deceiving, performing clandestine political manoeuvres. During the twentieth and thirtieth of the 20th century public discussions were taking place encompassing the standpoint of the Lutheran orthodoxy and the 19th century hysterical Russificationism.The historiography of the soviet period added a measure of ideologized anti-Catholic propaganda. All these interpretations are nowadys sometimes to be met with in a single self-contradictory and yet mutually interdependent hotchpotch. As a kind of exception to this general trend one notices the works of the researchers of Latgale cultural heritage (M. Boiko, S. Kalvāne, P. Zeile, etc/) and art historians (K. Ogle and others). These scholars are accentuating the profound contribution of the Order of Jesuits to the formation of the cultural processes in Latvia and the whole Baltic region. It is a comparatively new trendency within the hisotoriography and the intellectual life in general.

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