Joseph de Jouvancy, Historian of the Society of Jesus, on the Jesuit Mission to New France

In 1699, Jesuit Joseph de Jouvancy (1643-1719) was summoned from Paris to Rome by Superior General Tirso González de Santalla (1624-1705, in office 1687-1705) in order to continue the Historia Societatis Jesu (History of the Society of Jesus), which had been begun by Niccolò Orlandini (1553-1606) and Francesco Sacchini (1570-1625) and at the latter's death in 1625 had advanced only until the first half of part 5, published in 1661 with some additions by Pierre Poussines (1609-86), covering the first ten years of the generalship of Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615, in office 1581-1615) until the year 1590.This summons came quite unexpectedly for Jouvancy, who in the same year had just been charged with translating into Latin the most valuable Greek manuscripts in the possession of his Parisian college, the Collège Louis-le-Grand, formerly (until 1682) Collège de Clermont, 1 where Jouvancy, after earlier posts in Compiègne, Caen, Rouen, and La Flèche, had been a highly successful professor of rhetoric for twenty-two years since 1677.Born in Paris in 1643, Jouvancy (Juvencius in Latin), 2 entered the Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen in 1659 and made a quick career as a teacher and pedagogue.His pedagogical, rhetorical, and poetical writings became highly influential.3 He also maintained a close and mutually trustful relationship with King Louis XIV (1638-1715, r.1643-1715).4 His probably only extant portrait, an oil painting in the custody of the École Notre Dame de Mongré in Villefranche-sur-Saône in France, which was a Jesuit college until