On the character of Wilfrid Voynich

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The situation of the Jesuits in Italy at that time is hard to describe. While they were catholics, they were seen as a 'different type' of catholics, and viewed with extreme suspicion.

Maybe it did not go so far as seeing them as sort of heretics, but there was strong dispute between them and other orders for control of the Church and its politics.  Much of the resentment seems to have been because, being more educated and open-minded than the other orders, they usually got more access and influence to kings and nobles than the other orders, disproportionately to their numbers.  And often espoused views that were more open than the rest of the Church was ready to accept.

For instance, when Jesuit Matteo Ricci started his quest to convert China to Christianity, he thought the task would be easier if the Church accepted the Confucian cult of the ancestors as a mere cultural tradition, not a religion.  And he even wrote a pamplet arguing that point.  

But the Dominicans, the most powerful rival order at the time, strongly disagreed.  In their view, the cult of the ancestors was paganism, and the Church should declare it so, forbidding converts to engage in it.  The dispute went on internally for decades, and in the end the Dominican view prevailed. 

More recently, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and even from their Jesuit superiors, when they publicly stated that Darwin's theory of evolution was not incompatible with the Bible.  It took many decades for the Church, grudgingly, to accept that view too.

All the best, --stolfi