This is something that came up in Dr. Hall's class on Monday, though it has certainly appeared in other classes I've taken and is sometimes even directly brought to the fore in the literature: the concept of generational change among scholars, and how their collective life experiences lead them to frame and reframe certain concepts and even entire periods. The context in which it came up was Evonne Levy's book on propaganda and the Jesuits in the late 16th century. In her introduction, she noted that the scholars working after World War II were extremely uncomfortable with using the label "propaganda" to describe the ideological activities of the Jesuits, because they naturally associated the idea with the propaganda machine of the Nazis. It simply wasn't spoken of in those terms. Today, of course, we use propaganda constantly--the Augustus of Prima Porta was imperial propaganda; the commissions of the popes in Baroque Rome was papal propaganda, etc., etc. The scare factor of the term has waned.
It's really fascinating to see how historical context affects scholarly work. When we read Erwin Panofsky's monograph on Durer for Dr. West's class, the new introduction pointed out that one of the goals Panofsky was trying to accomplish in his book was to identify Durer as a true Renaissance man, a man who belonged to European culture and not just Germany alone. Why? Panofsky's book was published in 1943, right in the middle of the war. He was a German who had emigrated to the US in the 1930s rather than remain in Germany under the Nazis. One of the goal's of the Nazi cultural program was the identification of a pure Germanic art, and they used Albrecht Durer as one of the foremost examples. Panofsky wanted to overturn that isolationist viewpoint, so he played up Durer's international connections, his trips to Venice, and his interest in the work of Bellini and Leonardo. His work is still today the canonical text on Durer, of course, but it comes this particular spin. I think this phenomenon is a reminder that we are none of us without bias, though we think of the 20th century as the century of objectivity, as opposed to the often-subjective opinions of the 19th century art historians.
Levy also pointed out that one of the reasons that scholars have avoided looking at the propagandistic art of the Jesuits is that there was a sense that art and propaganda cannot coexist in the same artifact, and that somehow by studying these works, you ran the risk of being tricked by the propaganda itself. She used another Nazi example to explain this, saying that for a long time, no one wanted to admit that they found any aesthetic value in Albert Speer's architecture because there was a sense that by doing so you were somehow validating or implicitly accepting the ideology that was attached to those buildings. If the architecture is Nazism, then liking the architecture means you tacitly approve of the Nazis.
Her point, then, was that because the Jesuits earned a reputation for being fiercely dogmatic and ideological, and because they so readily employed art as a tool to spread and support that ideology, scholars shied away from studying it lest they be seen as tacitly supporting the Jesuit program.
It would help to know here that the Jesuits have a history unlike that of almost any other Catholic order. They started in 1540 with a group of seven or so men around Ignatius of Loyola and then grew both rapidly and exponentially. Their strictly hierarchical, corporation-like structure lent itself well to their far-flung international missions, ensuring a standard of discipline from China to Peru. It was in fact their very international presence that made them a threat, combined with their famous fourth vow of loyalty to the Pope himself (in addition to the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity that all orders take). Their supposedly divided loyalty made them suspect in whatever kingdom they inhabited--much like the prejudice that faced JFK as a Catholic president in a Protestant country; how could he acknowledge the pope's authority and be an independent leader? In fact they were so suspect that in 1773 the order was suppressed throughout Europe based on international pressure on the pope (though Catherine the Great flipped the pope the bird and maintained the Jesuit order within Russia). They were reinstated as an order in the beginning of the 19th century, but suspicion and distrust remained. Many Jesuits had gone underground during the suppression, operating under false identities, leading to their characterization as men who would do anything to accomplish their goals, even lie.
The negative connotations of Jesuits lasts today (at Fairfield we learned of the term "jesuitical," referring to someone who weasels around the rules), though it was amplified in the 20th century by the Jesuit support for liberation theology, particularly in South America (in short: Jesuits said yay to human rights and boo to capitalism; the Vatican said no, we're on the side of enterprise, so shut your yaps). Wikipedia informed me that upon taking the papal throne Benedict "encouraged" the order to renew their vow of loyalty to him, which they did.
Finally, I just have to say this: I like Albert Speer's architecture. Yes, I also liked the Vittorio Emmanuele monument in Rome, the so-called "Mussolini's typewriter." Does that make me a closet fascist? I hope not.
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