Networked Narrative

The seventeenth-century Jesuit translator Franciscus de Smidt was based in Antwerp, part of the Spanish Netherlands (roughly, contemporary Belgium), a territory being transformed into a bastion of the Counter-Reformation. De Smidt translated mainly from Latin, French, and Spanish into Dutch. Between the mid-1620s and the end of the 1650s he produced nearly 30 translations, all of them devotional books. He also wrote some books of his own. De Smidt subscribed to the same Counter-Reformation agenda as his fellow Jesuits, and the authors he translated wrote in the same devotional genres and for the same Catholic readership as he did. But that is not the end of the story. De Smidt dedicated his books to local magistrates and prominent clergy as well as benefactors who supported the Antwerp Jesuits financially. Because he regularly signals friendship or gratitude beyond these formal ties, the dedications reveal a social network, an individual profile, and a personal narrative. This chapter is interested in the networked narrative that emerges from these dedications, and the extent to which they permit an account at an individual, an institutional, and an ideological level.