Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia

Patterns of Localization

Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, Christian Windler, Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, Christian Windler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367028817
• eBook ISBN: 9780429671500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Over recent decades, historians have become increasingly interested in early modern Catholic missions in Asia as laboratories of cultural contact. This book builds on recent ground-breaking research on early modern Catholic missions, which has shown that missionaries in Asia cooperated with and accommodated the needs of local agents rather than being uncompromising promoters of post-Tridentine doctrine and devotion.

Bringing together some of the most renowned and innovative researchers from Anglophone countries and continental Europe, this volume investigates how missionaries' entanglements with local societies across Asia contributed to processes of localization within the early modern Catholic church. The focus of the volume is on missionaries' adaptation to four ideal-typical social settings that played an eminent role in early modern Asian missions: (1) the symbolically loaded princely court; (2) the city as a space of especially dense communication; (3) the countryside, where missionary presence was only rarely permanent; (4) and the household – a central arena of conversion in early modern Asian societies.

Shining a fresh light onto the history of early modern Catholic missions and the early modern Eurasian cultural exchange, this will be an important book for any scholar of religious history, history of cultural contact/global history and early modern history in Asia.

Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Part I
Missionaries at princely courts

1
Between convent and court life

Missionaries in Isfahan and New Julfa

Christian Windler

At the end of his History of Shah ʿAbbās, Iskandar Bēg Munshī, a secretary at the court of the shah, included an obituary notice in which, to prove the ruler’s exceptional qualities, he pointed out that his “court was rarely without a foreign embassy.” The group of Muslim and non-Muslim rulers who, motivated by reports of the shah’s “just and beneficent rule,” sent their ambassadors to Persia included the Pope, “the greatest of the Christian rulers, the caliph of the Christians, and… the exemplar of all Christian sects.” As proof of the papacy’s ties to the shah, Iskandar Bēg Munshī reproduced verbatim the translation of a brief sent to ʿAbbās I by pope Urban VIII, “so that envious persons… realize that [he was] not guilty of artificial elaboration such as secretaries indulge in.” The breve had indeed been sent to ʿAbbās I in 1624; however, the Persian translation, which according to Iskandar Bēg Munshī had been prepared by foreigners living in Isfahan, differed significantly from the Latin original written in Rome. Whereas the Roman author described the “protection of the world and of mankind” as a distinctive mark of papal dignity, the authors of the “translation” reproduced by Iskandar Bēg Munshī turned the breve into an ode to the shah whom they described as “the refulgence of the infinite divine grace and the refuge of all mankind” and “the model and source of guidance for people throughout the world, and particularly for the Vicar of Christ Our Lord at Rome.” Since ʿAbbās I towered over other princes “in grandeur and majesty and dominion,” the pope supposedly argued, all mankind should pray for the perpetuity of his reign, which was why he, Urban VIII, considered it his duty to instruct everyone in his churches to pray that God would bless ʿAbbās I with a long life and his assistance.¹

It remains unclear whether Urban VIII’s breve had really been translated by Europeans residing in Isfahan in the exact form in which it was later quoted by Iskandar Bēg Munshī or whether the chronicler had doctored an existing translation before he included it in his treatise. Also, who exactly were the translators? Was the Discalced Carmelite Juan Thadeo de San Eliseo one of them? His role as an interpreter and translator of diplomatic correspondence from Europe to the Safavid court is well documented in other instances.² And if European missionaries possibly had a share in this translation, what does that tell us about Catholic missionaries’ position at the Safavid court? This article ventures to clarify this question by analyzing the missionaries’ integration into networks at the Safavid court of Persia.

It will likely never be possible to identify the translator of Urban VIII’s breve.³ The juxtaposition of the Latin original and the Persian “translation” nevertheless helps shed light on a number of aspects that are central to the history of Catholic missions to Persia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first point to note is that both the Latin original and the Persian version gave voice to conflicting claims to superiority; on the ground in Persia this contradiction was “overcome” thanks to the falsification of the papal breve. Meanwhile, the Persian version is evidence of an inclusive conception of dominion and religion that had been a prerequisite for the admission of Catholic clergymen to the Safavid court in the first place. On the one hand, the wording shows how the Safavids weaponized the reception of envoys from non-Muslim rulers to strengthen the dynasty’s claim to imperial superiority. On the other hand, the assumption that Christian prayers for ʿAbbās I could be effective attests to the belief that Christians, too, had received divine revelation, albeit in incomplete form. The cultivation of contacts between shah ʿAbbās I and Christian European courts in the early seventeenth century needs to be considered in the context of the shah’s imperial and religious ambitions. The consolidation of monarchical power over a socioculturally and religiously heterogeneous empire through the development of institutions and a mercenary army, as well as the integration of various sections of the population into the networks of the court, on the one hand, and the quest for allies against the Ottomans, on the other.⁴

During this period, news of the exploits of ʿAbbās I’s armies against the Ottomans reached European courts, reviving interest in an anti-Ottoman alliance with the shah. Beginning around 1600, the Safavid Empire became the focal point of a broad variety of expectations ranging from political, military, and commercial interests to the hopes of finally finding a Muslim population susceptible to the Christian gospel. At the court of Philip III, king of Castile and Portugal, and in the Roman Curia it was hoped that an alliance with Persia would help realize two dreams at once – military triumph over the Turks and the conversion of numerous Muslims to Christianity.⁵

These hopes led to the dispatch of Portuguese Augustinians from Goa and of Discalced Carmelites from Rome, who arrived in Isfahan in 1602 and 1607, respectively, armed with a double religious and diplomatic mandate. They were joined by a group of Capuchins from the province of Touraine who arrived in 1628 as part of a mission under the protection of the French crown which had previously been primarily interested in the Ottoman Empire. Whereas the political dimension of the pope’s instructions to the Discalced Carmelites quickly lost importance, the Augustinians in Isfahan maintained close ties to the viceroy of Portuguese India at Goa and to the court of Madrid (later Lisbon), so much so that the prior of the Augustinian convent in Isfahan acted as their permanent agent in the Safavid court. Up to 1700 the same was true of the guardian of the French Capuchins who had been instructed to defend the interests of his king at the Safavid court. Whereas the Augustinians, the Discalced Carmelites, and the Capuchins chose to settle in Isfahan, the Jesuits, who arrived in the 1660s, and the Dominicans, who followed them in the 1680s, took up residence in the Armenian suburb of New Julfa. This choice was in line with these two orders’ strategy that aimed at convincing the Armenian community to enter into union with Rome and at caring for the spiritual needs of the European diaspora who resided there, culminating in the establishment of a school run by the Jesuits. The Discalced Carmelites later also adopted this orientation when father Élie de Saint-Albert settled in New Julfa in 1679 and opened a second house of his order there.⁶

Their religious and diplomatic double mandate forced the Augustinians, the Capuchins, and, initially at least, the Discalced Carmelites to cultivate close ties to the court of the shah. The first part of this contribution compares and contrasts the role of one Augustinian (António de Jesus alias ʿAlī-Qulī Jadīd al-Islām), one Capuchin (Raphaël du Mans), and one Discalced Carmelite (Juan Thadeo de San Eliseo) at the Safavid court, pointing out their different patterns of integration into the local court society. The second part discusses the conflicts within the orders that arose from the missionaries’ ties to court society. Outsiders aside, the contradiction between the ideals of detachment from worldly affairs and the papal mandate sparked long and intense debates within the orders themselves, most notably among the Discalced Carmelites, for whom missionary work was sometimes viewed as incompatible with the order’s commitment to a contemplative lifestyle detached from the world. Fathers who cultivated ties to the court were accused by their brethren of not taking the norms of the orders seriously. The adoption of signs of social distinction that contravened the vocation of members of religious orders came under criticism. This contribution concludes by questioning this criticism from a local perspective using contemporary Protestant travel accounts.

1 Missionaries at the Safavid court

If the fathers who arrived in Persia starting in 1602 enjoyed direct access to the Safavid court, this can be attributed to a practice of conviviality that set the ceremonial at the Safavid court apart from that of its Ottoman counterpart. At the Safavid court the majesty of the ruler was visualized, among other things, through the invitation of foreign guests to feasts that were presided over by the shah. Unlike at the Ottoman court, Christian emissaries also interacted with the ruler in audiences.⁷ The accessibility of the ruler facilitated narrow contacts in the context of the missions of the early seventeenth century but also led to misunderstandings. The conversionary hopes which the Augustinians and Discalced Carmelites initially shared were fueled not least by the fact that the missionaries had been admitted to the ruler and had even been granted permission to argue their position before the assembled court.⁸

At the same time, the high visibility of court activities in Persia resulted in European rulers’ preferring to entrust diplomatic exchange with the Safavids to agents who, owing to their position outside the worldly status hierarchies or to their clearly inferior social status, would not be regarded as the alter ego of the sovereign by other members of the European society of princes. This was because emissaries to the Safavid court had to submit to the local ceremonial, which visualized the superiority of the shah. Whereas the Protestant States General and the king of England benefitted from the East India Companies as an exit strategy, Catholic courts entrusted members of religious orders with diplomatic missions. Since members of religious orders were barred from entering the worldly competition over status as a result of their commitment to humility and poverty, reliance on them as diplomatic actors freed European rulers from the burden of defending conflicting status claims. Rulers who dispatched members of religious orders as agents could forego the representational expenses incurred by secular envoys and still preserve their honor.⁹

Whereas, in the case of the Discalced Carmelites, the instruction to cultivate political ties to the Safavid court was of some importance only in the early years of the mission, it continued to be crucially important to the Portuguese Augustinians throughout the existence of their convent in Isfahan and to the French Capuchins up until the replacement of the fathers by secular envoys in the early eighteenth century. It is important to bear in mind that such individual missionaries’ ties to the local court were exceptions to the rule. However, just as it would be wrong to make sweeping generalizations about all missionaries on the basis of a limited number of well-documented cases, it would be equally misleading to underestimate the importance of individual missionaries with close ties at court to the survival of the convents as a whole. The central role of individual fathers in building rapport with members of the court was the result of their familiarity with the local language and customs and the relationships they formed during their stay in Persia, which in some cases lasted many years. In the case of the priors of the Augustinians, their role as intermediaries is confirmed by instructions to the commander of the Portuguese flotilla in the Persian Gulf and to secular emissaries who were occasionally dispatched to Persia.¹⁰ To European travelers, too, the prior of the Augustinians ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Localizing Catholic missions in Asia
• PART I Missionaries at princely courts
• PART II Missionaries in cities
• PART III Missionaries in the countryside
• PART IV Missionaries and households
• Afterwords
• List of Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index