MONUMENTA HISTORICA SOCIETATIS IESU. — A publication of documents for the history of the Society of Jesus, begun in Madrid in 1894 and continued in Rome since 1929, edited under the auspices of the Historical Institute of the Society of Jesus, attached to the General Curia of the Order. Up to 1951, it had issued 73 volumes in octavo.
The project was conceived by its founder, Giuseppe Maria Vélez (1843–1902), and his early collaborators, with strong support from the Generals Antonio Maria Anderleyd (d. 1892) and Ludovico Martin (d. 1906), with the aim of assembling in a coherent corpus the principal documents relating to the origins and early development of the Order. As this project nears completion, the M.H.S.I. has, for several years, devoted its main efforts to the history of the ancient missions in the Monumenta Missionum S.I. section, subdivided into two parts: Missiones orientales and Missiones occidentales. At present, the missions of India, the Moluccas, China, and Japan are under study in the first subsection, while those of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil are the focus of the second.
To date, the following have been published: Monumenta Ignatiana (21 vols., in 4 series), Rerum S.I. Historia (the so-called Chronicon of Fr. Polanco, 6 vols.), Monumenta Xaveriana (2 vols.), Fabri monumenta (1 vol.), Launii monumenta (8 vols.), Epistolae p. Alphonsi Salmeronis (2 vols.), Epistolae pp. Broët, Fajii, Codurii, Rodericii (1 vol.), Bobadillae monumenta (1 vol.), S. Franciscus Borgia (5 vols.), Polanci complementa (2 vols.), Epistolae p. Hieronymi Nadal (4 vols.), Ribadeneira (2 vols.), Monumenta paedagogica S.I. (1 vol.), Epistolae mixtae ex variis Europae locis ab anno 1537 ad 1556 scriptae (5 vols.), Litterae quadrimestres (7 vols.). In the new Monumenta Missionum S.I. section, the following have appeared up to 1951: Epistolae s. Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta (2 vols.), Monumenta antiquae Floridae (1 vol.), Documenta Indica (2 vols.).
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