In November 1989, six members of the Jesuit community of the University of Central America in San Salvador, including the rector, Ignacio Ellacuria, were massacred by government troops. Twenty-five years later, this book provides the definitive account of the path led to that fateful day, focusing on the Jesuits' prophetic option for the poor, their role in the renewal of Salvadoran church and society, and the critical steps that caused them, as Archbishop Romero would put it, to "share the same fate as the poor." Drawing on newly available archival materials and extensive interviews, Robert Lassalle-Klein gives special attention to the theological contributions of Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino, who survived the massacre, and the emergence among the Jesuit community of a spirituality that recognized the risen Christ in what Ellacuria called "the crucified people of El Salvador." This insight led, in turn, to the development of the most important advance in the idea of a Christian university since the time of Cardinal Newman. Blood and Ink tells a vital story of a religious and university community's conversion and renewal that speaks to the ongoing challenge of discipleship today.

Louis IX, king of France from 1226 to 1270 and twice crusader, was canonized in 1297. He was the last king canonized during the medieval period, and was both one of the most important saints and one of the most important kings of the later Middle Ages. In Blessed Louis, the Most Glorious of Kings: Texts Relating to the Cult of Saint Louis of France, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin presents six previously untranslated texts that informed medieval views of St. Louis IX: two little-known but early and important vitae of Saint Louis; two unedited sermons by the Parisian preacher Jacob of Lausanne (d. 1322); and a liturgical office and proper mass in his honor-the most commonly used liturgical texts composed for Louis' feast day-which were widely copied, read, and disseminated in the Middle Ages. Gaposchkin's aim is to present to a diverse readership the Louis as he was known and experienced in the Middle Ages: a saint celebrated by the faithful for his virtue and his deeds. She offers for the first time to English readers a typical hagiographical view of Saint Louis, one in counterbalance to that set forth in Jean of Joinville's Life of Saint Louis. Although Joinville's Life has dominated our views of Louis, Joinville's famous account was virtually unknown beyond the French royal court in the Middle Ages and was not printed until the sixteenth century. His portrayal of Louis as an individual and deeply charismatic personality is remarkable, but it is fundamentally unrepresentative of the medieval understanding of Louis. The texts that Gaposchkin translates give immediate access to the reasons why medieval Christians took Louis to be a saint; the texts, and the image of Saint Louis presented in them, she argues, must be understood within the context of the developing history of sanctity and sainthood at the end of the Middle Ages.

The Society of Jesus began a tradition of collecting books and curating those collections at its foundation. These libraries were important to both their European sites and their missions; they helped build a global culture as part of early modern European evangelization. When the Society was suppressed, the Jesuits' possessions were seized and redistributed, by transfer to other religious orders, confiscation by governments, or sale to individuals. These possessions were rarely returned, and when, in 1814, the Society was restored, the Jesuits had to begin to build new libraries from scratch. Their practices of librarianship, though not their original libraries, left an intellectual legacy which still informs library science today. While there are few European Jesuit universities left, institutions of higher learning administered by the Society of Jesus remain important to the intellectual development of students and communities around the world, supported by large, rich library collections.