Explore the vast range of titles available.

Peter Canisius, often called the “first German Jesuit” (despite being Dutch by birth), was an influential figure during his lifetime. Born in 1521 in Nijmegen into a prosperous patrician family, he entered the Society of Jesus as the first “German” recruit in 1542. He made a rapid career in the new order, which he helped to shape and spread in Central Europe through many decades of dedicated service. After a brief stint in Messina, where he participated in the founding of the ground-breaking first-ever Jesuit college, upon which the famous Jesuit educational network of later decades and centuries was modelled, he returned to Germany and was named to the position of “Provincial” – head of the regional organisation of the Jesuits. In that function, Canisius pushed forward the Catholic Church’s renewal and resurgence in the “heresy-ridden” territories of the Holy Roman Empire.

Arguably the most influential theologian in the Latin West, Augustine of Hippo conventionally figures as the greatest ally, after the Bible, of Protestantism in Reformation Europe. Roman Catholics, however, also laid claim to Augustine as their chief witness—as the works of Peter Canisius (1521–1597), the most prominent catechist in the early Society of Jesus, attest. His Large Catechism adduces the authority of Augustine as “the truly Catholic doctor,” an authority Canisius repeatedly invokes to assert Catholic orthodoxy.