"Jaenike gives the reader a real treat in this book. It's a tale well told in a book that's hard to put down. The author has the capacity to tell exactly the right story to bring home significant points, bringing into relief both saints and villains. He goes back and forth between what is happening in Paraguay between Jesuits and the Guarani on the one hand and, but just as importantly giving the story of the events in Europe that will ultimately lead not just to the demise of the Guarani missions but of the Jesuit order itself."
-William R. Burrows, PhD.
Managing Editor, Orbis Books and Research Professor of Missiology, New York Theological Seminary
“This remarkable story of the 17th and 18th century Jesuit missions in
-William T. Dentzer, Jr.
Former Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States
"Fascinating history that is as riveting as a thriller."
-Irene A. Gutheil
Professor, Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service
“The Jesuit reductions in Paraquaria were probably the most successful missionary enterprise in history, a fact still very present in the region. However, this success contributed to the downfall of the founders, and for the general reader this book impressively tells that story, little known to the English-speaking world.”
-W. Michael Mathes
Professor Emeritus,
”A fascinating pilgrimage through two violent centuries of colonial
-Charles B. McQuade
Retired President and CEO, SIAC
”This is a story that badly needs to be told."
-John W. O'Malley, S.J.
Georgetown University
"As an Asian-born American I was enlightened about an aspect of Western hemisphere history that I had no idea of. It was stimulating reading from cover to cover."
-N. Taskar
Consultant in Advanced Systems and Engineering
“This sweeping story of a barely known slice of history, solidly placed in the context of world events of the times, is well-researched and entertaining – replete with colorful background events involving missionaries struggling with cannibals, slavers, man-eating jaguars, fire-ants, plagues and the machinations of monarchs, politicians and prelates. I learned a lot – the primary purpose of good history.”
-Kenneth Veit
Chairman of the Phoenix Arizona History Book Club
Former President of Aetna International
"Those of you who follow Image journal...will probably have noticed the phrase "Christian Humanism" being used from time to time...If you're interested in this tradition and would like to study one chapter in its history in detail, you might want to read Black Robes in Paraguay by William Jaenike. A good way to prepare for reading this book would be to watch The Mission, a film about the Jesuit missions to the Guarani people of South America in the 18th century. In the face of enormous pressure from European colonial slave traders the Jesuits established a string of mission towns where the Guarani lived in security and produced a remarkable culture. The Jesuits were grounded in Renaissance Christian Humanism. Jaenike's book goes well beyond the story in The Mission. He provides fascinating information about the social and political forces behind both the establishment and the tragic end of the Jesuit missions to the Guarani. Detailed but accessible, Jaenike acknowledges many of the Jesuits' faults and some of the inherent problems of their paternalistic relationship to the Guarani. Nevertheless, he also shows (that the Jesuits helped bring about something ) beautiful and even humane. Which is what Christian Humanism is all about." Image Journal, October 6, 2008
"How could it be that a Roman Catholic order filled with extraordinarily gifted men who sacrificially extended the outreach of the church, literally to the ends of the earth, should eventually be dissolved on papal authority? Black Robes in Paraguay explains this enigma. The author, William F. Jaenike, shows that the very success of the Jesuits, particularly of their missions in Paraguay, contributed to jealousy and mistrust among other orders and clashed with the baser economic and exploitive elements of colonial Spain and Portugal in Latin America. Black Robes in Paraguay constitutes a much more detailed explanation of the conflict portrayed in the memorable 1986 film The Mission. The film depicted the historic accomplishments of Jesuit missionaries between 1587 and 1768 among the Guarani Indians along the border of Paraguay and Brazil above Iguazu Falls. The Jesuits opposed slave traders entering the area from Brazil to enslave the natives, whose amazing talent for building and art had been developed by the missionaries. Conflicting interests in Latin America, combined with a growing distrust of the Jesuits in Europe, led to the dissolution of the order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. This followed their expulsion from all Spanish domains, including Paraguay, by 1768. Jaenike, a retired business executive, felt compelled to investigate this tragic ending of a heroic missionary effort, but he admits that his work is for amateur historians more than for scholarly researchers. It is nevertheless a very readable and compelling account. The Jesuit order was reconstituted in 1814, too late to save the Guarani and restore the majestic but ruined missions of Paraguay. Michael Pocock is Department Chair and Senior Professor of World Missions and Intercultural Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas. Earlier he and his wife served in Venezuela with The Evangelical Alliance Mission. Pocock's review was published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research January 2009.
"For quite some time the Paraguay Jesuit missions have captivated the imagination of scholars and, especially after the movie The Mission (1987), the general public. But the Paraguay mission experiment is still relatively little known in the English-speaking world. William Jaenike's Black Robes in Paraguay bridges the gap between scholarly works written for the academic world and popularized versions geared for the general reading public. The author relies heavily on older classical authors such as Robert Southey and R.B. Cunninghame Graham (1901), as well as on more modern historians such as Philip Caraman to re-create the story of the missions. Although his major thesis - that the Paraguay missions hastened the expulsion and suppression of the Jesuits is open to debate, there is no question that the missions played a role in the downfall of the Jesuits. Jaenike provides an overview of the origins of the Jesuits and the Guarani missions, their economic success, and their defense against the Portuguese slave raiders. He fills in the international background with specific reference to tensions between Spain and Portugal and the Treaty of Madrid, which was the first step toward the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish America. The author also places this story in the larger context of the Enlightenment and anti-Jesuit sentiment in the Bourbon courts in Europe. His chapter on the Jesuits who lived in Prussia under Frederick the Great and in Russia under Catherine the Great is most interesting and well developed. Although the author is not a professional historian nor a specialist, he successfully weaves together a complex story that involves Jesuits, overbearing bishops, slave raiders, court conspirators, French deists, and enlightened despots. But he would have done well to consult standard Latin American histories to avoid a few glaring errors. He has Antonio de Montesinos delivering his famous sermon in Puerto Rico (it was Santo Domingo), and he refers to the eighteenth-century commoners' rebellions as "communist." These small details aside, Jaenike has produced a very enjoyable and easily readable account of the early Jesuits, the rise and fall of the Paraguay missions, as well as the aftermath and consequences."
Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J. of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Published in the Catholic Historical Review. April 2009.
-Jaenike wrote the following to Father Klaiber regarding the use of "communist" in describing the commoners' rebellions: "I took a bit of license with the term 'communist' based on O'Neill p179 where he wrote, We have spoken of the remarkable movement called the 'Communeros' and have said that it resembled more of a medieval 'jacquerie' than a modern Communist outbreak. Yet with it the words 'Commune' and 'Communists' as we now employ them, seem to have acquired their meaning. The supremacy of the common man...that was the inspiring idea. (O'Neill uses the term communist several times later in the chapter.) ...Charlevoix mentions communists."