Jesuit Protestant Encounters in Asia and PDF

All rights reserved.
May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Copyright @ 2018. Brill.
EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 4/26/2019 1:52 PM via WASHINGTON UNIV
AN: 1913380 ; Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge, Maryks, Robert A., Hsia, R. Po-chia.; Encounters
Between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas
Account: s8997234.main.ehost
Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
AN: 1913380 ; Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge, Maryks, Robert A., Hsia, R. Po-chia.; Encounters Between
Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas
Jesuit Studies
Modernity through the Prism of Jesuit History
volume 14
The Boston College International

Symposia on Jesuit Studies
volume 3
Edited by
Robert Aleksander Maryks
Editorial Board
James Bernauer, S.J. (Boston College)

Louis Caruana, S.J. (Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome)
Emanuele Colombo (DePaul University)
Paul Grendler (University of Toronto, Emeritus)
Yasmin Haskell (University of Western Australia)
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Pennsylvania State University)
Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (Fordham University)
Mia Mochizuki (New York University Abu Dhabi and Institute of Fine Arts,
New York)
Sabina Pavone (Università degli Studi di Macerata)
Moshe Sluhovsky (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Jeffrey Chipps Smith (The University of Texas at Austin)
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/js
Encounters between
Jesuits and Protestants in Asia
and the Americas
Edited by
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
R.P. Hsia
Published for the Institute for Advanced Studies

at Boston College
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: Thomas Nast, “Fort Sumter,” Harper’s Weekly (March 19, 1870): 185.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018026296
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2214-3289
isbn 978-90-04-35768-6 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-37382-2 (e-book)
Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite
910, Danvers, MA 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction: Protestantism and Early Jesuits 1

Part 1
Asia
1 Introduction 11
R.P. Hsia
2 We are Not Jesuits: Reassessing Relations between Protestantism,

French Catholicism, and the Society of Jesus in Late Tokugawa to
Early Shōwa Japan 17
Makoto Harris Takao
3 Kirishitan Veneration of the Saints: Jesuit and Dutch

Witnesses 45
Haruko Nawata Ward
4 Jesuit and Protestant Use of Vernacular Chinese in Accommodation

Policy 73
Sophie Ling-chia Wei
5 Shaping the Anthropological Context of the “Salus populi Sinensis”

Madonna Icon in Xian, China 90
Hui-Hung Chen
6 Jesuit and Protestant Encounters in Jiangnan: Contest and

Cooperation in China’s Lower Yangzi Region 117
Steven Pieragastini
7 Protestant and Jesuit Encounters in India in the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Centuries 137
Délio Mendonça
vi Contents
8 Beyond Words: Missionary Grammars and the Construction of

Language in Tamil Country 159
Michelle Zaleski
Part 2
The Americas
9 Introduction: Jesuit Liminal Space in Liberal Protestant

Modernity 179
10 José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit–Protestant Author: Print Culture,

Contingency, and Deliberate Silence in the Making of the
Canon 185
11 Negotiating the Confessional Divide in Dutch Brazil and the Republic:

The Case of Manoel de Morães 228
Anne B. McGinness
12 A French Jesuit Parish, without the Jesuits: Grand Bay’s Catholic

Community and Institutional Durability in British Dominica 253
Steve Lenik
13 “Tis nothing but French Poison, all of it”: Jesuit and Calvinist Missions
on the New World Frontier 275
Catherine Ballériaux
14 “Americans, you are marked for their prey!” Jesuits and the
Nineteenth-Century Nativist Impulse 302
Robert Emmett Curran
15 Wars of Words: Catholic and Protestant Jesuitism in Nineteenth-

Century America 328
Steven Mailloux
Index 347
List of Illustrations
2.1 John Tenniel, “Jeddo and Belfast; Or, a Puzzle for Japan” (Punch, Au-
gust 31, 1872). 30
5.1 Madonna with Child, ink and color on paper, mounted on silk scroll,
found in Xian, China, The Field Museum, Chicago, US 91
5.2 Madonna with Child of St. Luke, Salus populi Romani icon, wooden
plate. 92
5.3 Signature of Tang Yin, Xian Madonna, The Field Museum, Chicago,
US 95
5.4 Tang Yin, Portrait of Flute Player, paper scroll, Anthropology Catalog
no. 70/11418. 96
5.5 (A, B) Two pages from Laufer’s field notebooks, nos. 2421, 2422, 503 on the
above all works of Tang Yin, no. 2422 is the note for the painting of Fig.
5.4. 97
5.6 File card for the Xian Madonna. 99
5.7 White-robed Guanyin, from Sancai tuhui yibailiu juan三才圖會一百
六卷, woodcut, original edition in 1609. 102
5.8 A leaf from the album Guanshiyin pusa sanshier yingshen 觀世音菩
薩三十二應身 (Thirty-two Manifestations of Guanyin), Xing cijing 刑
慈靜, painted in gold on paper, latter half of the sixteenth century, 28.
5*29.5 cm. 104
5.9 Guanyin/Madonna and Child, ink and colors on paper, inscription:
“Sutai Tang Yin jinghui”蘇台唐寅敬繪(Tang Ying from Suzhou paints
reverently), Qing Dynasty, 186*73 cm (image: 122.3*59 cm). 105
5.10 Timothy Richard Meeting with Buddhist Monks, woodcut from Dian-
shizhai huapao點石齋畫報(Illustration Reports of the Dianshizhai),
published in Shanghai, no. 48, for the years of 1895–1896. 109
5.11 Timothy Richard attired as the Chancellor of Shanxi University, from
William E. Soothill, Timothy Richard in China: Seer, Statesman, Mission-
ary and the Most Distinguished Adviser the Chinese Ever Had (London,
1924), 280. 111
5.12 Xian, Baoding, Shaanxi and Shanxi underlined. The map without
underlines is taken from Lian Xi, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular
Christianity in Modern China (New Heaven: Yale University, 2010), Map
1, Provinces of China. 112
10.1 Frontispiece of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History, translated into
Latin in Frankfurt by the printing house of the Dutch Calvinist Theo-
dore de Bry. Americae nona & postrema pars: Qva de ratione elemen-
torvm; De Novi Orbis natvra; De hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cultibus;
viii List of Illustrations
déq; forma politiae ac reipubl. ipsorum […] pertractatur (Frankfurt,

1602). 186
10.2 Frontispiece of de Bry’s Dutch edition of Acosta’s Natural and Moral
History. Neundter vnd letzter Theil Americæ, darin[n] gehandelt wird

von Gelegenheit der Elementen, Natur, Art und Eigenschafft der Newen
Welt (Frankfurt, 1601). 187
10.3 De Bry’s German edition of addendum of images for Acosta’s Moral
History (part of Americae, Part 9): Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß
neundten Theils Americae (Frankfurt, 1602). 188
10.4 Frontispiece of de Bry’s 1598 Latin edition of de las Casas’s Brevisima
(1552) and Aqui se contiene una disputa [Summary of the Valldoid
debate](1552) (Melchor Cano’s [c.1509–60] synthesis of the Valladolid
debate): Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam deuasta-
tarum verissima [A true account of the destruction of the Indies by the
Spaniards] (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Theodori de Bry, & Ioannis Saurii
typis, 1598). 192
10.5 Frontispiece of de Bry’s German 1599 edition of de las Casas’s Brevi-
sima (1552) and Aqui se contiene una disputa (1552) (Melchor Cano’s
synthesis of the Valladolid debate): Warhafftiger und gründtlicher Beri-
cht der Hispanier grewlichen und abschewlichen Tyranney von ihnen in
den West Indien, so die Neuwe Welt genennet wirt, begangen (Frankfurt
am Main: De Bry, 1599), lv. 193
10.6 Illustration of a Mexica priest and traditions of worship in book 5,
Chapter 14 of Acosta’s history; 1634 illustrated edition of Jan Huyghen
van Linschoten original Dutch translation of Acosta: Historie naturael
ende morael van de Westersche Indiën. 202
10.7 Illustration of Mexica worship of anthropomorphic images, book 5,
Chapter 9 of Acosta’s history; 1634 illustrated edition of Jan Huyghen
van Linschoten original Dutch translation of Acosta: Historie naturael
ende morael van de Westersche Indiën. 203
10.8 The foundation of Tenochtitlan on a lake; a history of Mexica exo-
dus. De Bry’s illustrated German synthesis of Acosta’s history. Ad-
ditamentum, Oder Anhang deß neundten Theils Americae (Frankfurt,
1602). 204
10.9 Mexica human sacrifice in de Bry’s illustrated German synthesis of
Acosta’s history. Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß neundten Theils
Americae (Frankfurt, 1602). 205

10.10 (A & B) Pages from Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para instruccion de los in-
dios (Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1584). The oration of the sign of the cross
(per signum Sanctae Crucis de inimicis nostris libera nos, Domine Deus
noster. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen), for example,
List of Illustrations ix
leaves the words Sancta, Crucis, Deus, Spiritus Sancto, Amen intact
both in Quechua and Aymara. 206–207
10.11 Frontispiece of John Eliot’s Algonquian Bible, Mamusse wunneet-
upanatamwe Up-Biblium God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk

Wusku Testament ne quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttinneumoh Christ noh
asoowesit (Cambridge, MA: Printeuoop nashpe Samuel Green kah
Marmaduke Johnson, 1663). Eliot, like Acosta, did not seek to translate
words such as Bible, God, Testament, Christ, and even “print.” 209
12.1 Baptism, Marriages, and Burials at the Grand Bay Parish,
1748–1755. 262
12.2 The Grand Bay Catholic church, completed in 1924. 270
Introduction: Protestantism and Early Jesuits
The five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517) provides

an opportunity to reflect in a new way on the relationship between the Prot-
estants and the Society of Jesus, which was founded twenty-three years later
(1540).* Before we discuss the Jesuit–Protestant encounter in Asia and the
Americas, which resulted from the colonial and imperial expansions of the
Catholic and Protestant European empires through the second half of the sec-
ond millennium, let us begin by providing the broader historical context of the
relationship of Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556) and the Society of Jesus, the
order he co-founded, to Protestantism.
It is a commonplace in current scholarship and popular literature that the
Jesuits were founded as a sort of papal troop to combat Protestantism. This
anachronism, however, does not find support in the original Jesuit sources—it
had been invented, interestingly enough, by Ignatius’s companions near and
after his death, and the myth then became part of both Protestant and Jesuit
historiographies, although they obviously employed different language to nar-
rate the Society’s origins and goals. The aim of this introductory essay is to
show the contrast between the early Jesuit documents and later Jesuit and
Protestant historiographies on the origins of the relationship between the So-
ciety of Jesus and Protestantism, with a special focus on Martin Luther (1483–
1546), often called a “heresiarch” in the Jesuit sources.
As David Myers explained well in his essay on Ignatius and Luther for Brill’s
Companion to Ignatius of Loyola (2014),
Ignatius and Luther never met, and though Ignatius knew something of
“Lutheranism,” Luther never heard of the Jesuits’ founder or of the Soci-
ety of Jesus itself. Nor is it at all clear that Ignatius intended his Society
to be a bulwark against the Protestant flood or that he was even a church
reformer in the first place. The historical literature comparing the two
men involves anachronism and stereotype rather than the details of their
lives. Historians who talk of Ignatius and Luther have really been referring
* An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in
Africa, ed. Robert A. Maryks and Festo Mkenda (Brill: Leiden, 2018), 3–10.
© koninklijke
EBSCO brill (EBSCOhost)
: eBook Collection nv, leiden,- ��8 | doi
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_002
4/26/2019 1:52 PM via WASHINGTON UNIV
2 Maryks
to Jesuits and Lutherans, as these groups crystallized in the half cen-

tury following the deaths of their founders, Luther in 1546 and Ignatius
in 1556.1
Indeed, the earliest Jesuit sources describing Ignatius’s life and the beginnings
of the Society rarely mention Luther or other Reformed leaders and Protes-
tantism more broadly.2 This is quite understandable for those documents nar-
rating the life of Ignatius in 1520s Spain, where Protestantism had very limited
impact and the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities, in particular the Inquisition,
were more concerned about the spread of the alumbrado movement.3 It is
striking, however, that the narratives of Ignatius’s permanence at the Univer-
sity of Paris between 1527 (just after John Calvin’s [1509–64] departure from
there)4 and 1535—including those by his first companions like Pierre Favre
(1506–46), Diego Laínez (1512–63), Simão Rodrigues (1510–79), or Nicolás Bo-
badilla (1511–90)—where disputes with Protestants, including the famous Af-
faire des placards (October 17, 1534),5 made much fuss, lack any significant
references to Luther or Protestantism.6 To be sure, the eyes of the first com-
panions were directed more to Jerusalem and its Muslim population as a
target of their proselytization than to Wittenberg, where Luther’s movement
symbolically began.
What is even more striking, these references are missing in the foundational
documents of the Society, such as the Formula Instituti (1539) and the Constitu-
tions (promulgated in 1558), in which the first Jesuits defined the identity of
their new religious order and its aim. True, the adjusted formula of 1550, five
years before the Peace of Augsburg,7 defines the Society’s additional goal as
1 William David Myers, “Ignatius Loyola and Martin Luther: A History and Basis of a Compari-
son,” in A Companion to Ignatius of Loyola: Life, Writings, Spirituality, and Influence, ed. Robert
A. Maryks (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 141–58, here 141.
2 See, for example, Jos E. Vercruysse, “‘Melanchthon, qui modestior videri voluit […]’: Die er-
sten Jesuiten und Melanchthon,” in Der Theologe Melanchthon, ed. Günter Frank (Stuttgart:
Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), 393–409, especially 393–94.
3 See Stefania Pastore, “Unwise Paths: Ignatius Loyola and the Years of Alcala de Henares,” in
Maryks, Companion to Ignatius of Loyola, 25–44.
4 See Carlos M. N. Eire, The Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2016), 289 and 450.
5 See, for example, Francis M. Higman, La diffusion de la Réforme en France: 1520–1565 (Geneva:
Labor et Fides, 1992) and Donald R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and So-
ciety in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

6 See Fabri monumenta, 490–697; Fontes narrativi, 2:127–40; 3:5–135; Bobadillae monumenta,
613–33.
7 See, for example, Paul Warmbrunn, Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt: Das Zusammenleben von
Katholiken und Protestanten in den paritätischen Reichstädten Augsburg, Biberach, Ravens-
burg und Dinkelsbühl (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983).
d efense of the faith, but there is no explicit mention of Protestantism. Hence

the Jesuits described therein cannot be defined as a Counter-Reformation
force, even if part of the Jesuit efforts in the Holy Roman Empire, including
those of Peter Canisius (1521–97), were indeed dedicated to countering the suc-
cess of Protestantism.
References to Ignatius’s relationship to Reformers and Protestantism are
also missing in his so-called autobiography,8 a narrative redacted by his close
collaborators, including Luís Gonçalves da Câmara (c.1520–75) and Jerónimo
Nadal (1507–80), to tell the story of Loyola’s religious vocation as a prototype
of Jesuit vocation. It circulated in manuscript after his death until it was with-
drawn by the third superior general of the Society Francisco de Borja (1510–72;
in office 1565–73) and replaced with Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s (1526–1611) official
biography (Latin edition in 1572 and the Castilian one in 1586). In this biog-
raphy, Ignatius’s preferred disciple highlighted the providential coincidence
between Luther’s summation by Emperor Charles v (1500–58, r.1519–56) to
Worms and Ignatius’s conversion in Manresa in 1521:
In 1521, driven by the Furies, [Luther] committed the high crime of open-
ly declaring war on the Catholic Church. That was the very year in which
God wounded Ignatius at the fort of Pamplona, to heal him and to make
a brave leader out of that lowly slave to worldly vanity, opposing him to
Luther as the fierce champion of his Church.9
The latter work reflects the new paradigm in Ignatian historiography that his
close collaborators, it seems, began to construe toward the end of Loyola’s life
and especially after his death in 1556. Indeed, various writings by Juan Alfonso
de Polanco (1517–76) and Nadal reveal the same historiographical shift. They
attempt to clear Ignatius and the still young Society (and perhaps themselves,
being of converso background) of any suspicion of heresy. Their way of doing
that was by highlighting the anti-Protestant character of the Jesuits.
In his defense of the Spiritual Exercises against the Dominican Tomás
Pedroche’s (d.1565) charges of heterodoxy from around 1556, Nadal wrote that
Ignatius conceived the Society’s entire institute against heretics, and especial-
ly “Lutherans.”10 This is how he intended the expression “defense of faith” in
Julius iii’s (r.1550–55) 1550 bull, which—as noted earlier—does not, however,
8 Fontes narrativi, 1:323–507.

9 Pedro de Ribadeneyra, The Life of Ignatius of Loyola, ed. Claude Pavur (St. Louis, mo: Insti-
tute of Jesuit Sources, 2014), 119.
10 Fontes narr., 1:319, 322. In his exhortation at Alcalá, Nadal suggested that the Society was
founded largely against the heretics of the time. See Nadal, Commentarii de instituto Soci-
etatis, 313–14.
4 Maryks
refer explicitly to Protestantism. In his literary dialogue composed between

1562 and 1565, Nadal parallels the origins of “Jesuitism” with the rise of Luther
and compares the two leaders to David and Goliath.11 In his exhortation to
the Jesuits in Cologne (1567), Nadal compares Ignatius to the role the founders
of the Dominicans and Franciscans had played in fighting against heresies of
their times and notes a parallelism between Ignatius’s conversion and Luther’s
“nefarious wedding,”12 which is imprecise, for Luther married Katharina von
Bora (1499–1552) only in 1525. In his exhortation in Alcalá (1576), he is more
precise in noting the synchrony between Ignatius’s conversion and Luther’s
summation to Worms.13
In his life of Ignatius written between his exile from Rome in 1573 and his
death in 1576, Polanco portrayed the co-founder of the Jesuits as a “new soldier of
Christ” who began to serve “the heavenly king” following his vigil of arms at the
Benedictine monastery in Montserrat toward the end of 1521, the year in which
Luther began to “throw his venom” against the Roman Apostolic See when
summoned to Worms by Charles v. In Polanco’s words, Ignatius’s and his com-
panions’ special obedience to the pope would become an antidote to Luther’s
inobedience.14 There is no such comparison in his earlier summaria of Ignatius’s
life composed in the early years (1547–51) of his tenure as the Society’s secretary.
It seems that Polanco, Nadal, and especially Ribadeneyra (whose biogra-
phy of Ignatius was actually printed and therefore had a wider circulation)
influenced the next generation of Jesuit history writers.15 In his life of Igna-
tius commissioned by the fourth superior general Everard Mercurian (in office
1573–80), the Italian Giampietro Maffei (1533–1603) highlights the importance
of the synchrony of the year 1521. Yet it must be said that “Lutheranism” is men-
tioned quite sparsely in his work.16 Similarly, in his history of the Society, the
Italian Niccolò Orlandini (1554–1606) compares the dates of birth of Ignatius
11 Nadal, Commentarii, 607.

12 Fontes narr., 2:403.
13 Nadal, Commentarii, 317.
14 Chronicon, 18 and Fontes narr., 2:522–23. The same parallelism had been used by Polanco
in his Informatio de instituto Societatis Iesu from 1564. See Fontes narr., 2:307.
15 Ribadeneyra’s agenda of portraying the Society as a providential force to combat Protes-

tantism was also expressed in his other publications, including his history of the “English
schism.” See Spencer J. Weinreich, Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Ecclesiastical History of the
Schism of the Kingdom of England: A Spanish Jesuit’s History of the English Reformation
(Leiden: Brill, 2017).
16 See Giampietro Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum, in Maffei, Opera omnia (Bergamo: Petrus
Lancellottus, 1747), 328, where bonsais are compared to Lutherans in “iniquity.”
and Luther and mentions the death of the latter, but references to “Luther’s
venom” are rather scarce.17
The Italian Daniello Bartoli (1608–85) appears to be more explicitly in line
with Polanco, Nadal, and Ribadeneyra in contrasting Ignatius and the Society
with Protestantism. He describes Ignatius as a “valiant soldier” who was
carried out from the secular militia, to become the chief of a new militia,
which, by means of other arms, and in a new species of warfare, was des-
tined at once to serve the Church by its labors, and to defend her against
the schism of Henry viii in England, the apostasy of Luther in Germany,
and the revolt of Calvin in France.18
Unlike his Jesuit predecessors, Bartoli contrasts Ignatius not just with Luther
but also with other leaders of Protestant groups and emphasizes the syn-
chrony of 1521 and 1534 in the lives of Ignatius and Henry viii (r.1509–47). He
continues:
Ignatius and Calvin were in Paris at the same time, and both made dis-
ciples in that city. The first attached to himself a great apostolic laborer,
whose life and doctrines were destined to crush heresy; while the sec-
ond found a powerful supporter for the mass of errors which he desired
to propagate. Finally Henry viii. king of England, who had acquired in
1521, the glorious title of Defender of the Faith, published an edict in
1534, whereby be condemned to death whosoever should not efface the
title of “Pope” from all the books or writings wherein it might happen to
be inserted. That very same year, Ignatius was at Montmartre, carrying
through the plan of an association destined especially for the defence of
the Church, and of the Sovereign Pontiff.19
Similarly, in his history of the Society, the French Jesuit Joseph de Jouvancy
(1643–1719) portrays Ignatius and the Society as the leader of a march against
Protestantism, and mentions Calvin next to Luther.20
17 Historia Societatis Iesu (Cologne: Hierat, 1615), 3, 47, 85, 106–8, 128, 133, 148–49, 183, 209,
543.
18 Daniello Bartoli, History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius de Loyola, Founder of the
Society of Jesus (New York: P.J. Kenedy, 1903), 15.
19 Ibid., 20. See also, for example, ibid., 77, 128, 192–93, 298.
20 Joseph de Jouvancy, Epitome historiae Societatis Jesu (Ghent: J. Poelman-De Pape,
1853), 62.
6 Maryks
In the eyes of the contemporary Protestant writers, the main protagonist of

this march was not Ignatius (who seemed to be unknown to Luther and other
Reformers) but Canisius, whose catechism was discussed in 1556 by Flacius
Illyricus (1520–75), a Lutheran Reformer from Istria. But the first Protestant, it
seems, to write more specifically on the Jesuits was the famous German Luther-
an theologian Martin Chemnitz (1522–86). In his Theologiae jesuitarum prae-
cipua capita (Main points of the Jesuit theology, 1562), he describes the Jesuits
as a papal offspring that invaded Germany, spreading their nests throughout.
Chemnitz’s historical reliability should, however, be questioned based on the
sheer fact that he made Cardinal Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul iv [r.1555–59])
the founder of the Society, whereas in reality he founded the Theatines and
was rather at odds with Ignatius and his Society.
Chemnitz’s anti-Jesuitism characterized the works of other Protestant writ-
ers at the beginning of the next century, including the Swiss Reformed theo-
logian Rudolf Hospinian (Rudolf Wirth [1547–1626])—who on more than four
hundred folio pages of his Historia jesuitica describes the Jesuits as deceitful
plotters against Protestants21—and the Protestant from Basel Ludwig Lucius
(or Luz [b.1577]).22 Interestingly enough, former Jesuits who turned Protes-
tants also became authors of anti-Jesuit works in this period, among them the
German Elias Hasenmüller (d.1587) who wrote a history of the Jesuit order
(Historia jesuitici ordinis) that was published posthumously by his Protestant
editor Polycarp Leyser ii (1586–1633) in 1593. It defines the goal of the Jesuit
foundation as resistance to heretics, especially the Lutherans.23
21 Rudolf Hospinian, Historia jesuitica de iesuitarum ordinis origine, nomine, regulis, officiis,
votis, privilegiis, regimine, doctrina, progressu, actibus ac facinoribus […] (Basel: Typis
Joh. Jacobi GenathI, 1627), available online at http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:99990 (accessed March 24,
2017). English translation: Rudolf Hospinian, The Jesuit’s Manner of Consecrating Both
the Persons and Weapons […] (Dublin, 1681). Available online: http://eebo.chadwyck.
com/home (accessed March 24, 2017). On Hospinian, see Martin Sallmann, “Hospinian
(Wirth), Rudolf,” in Religion Past and Present, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-5888_rpp_
SIM_10100 (accessed March 24, 2017). Admittedly, Hospinian had been influenced by the
work of Hasenmüller (see below).
22 Ludwig Lucius, Jesuiter-Histori von des Jesuiter-Ordens Ursprung, Namen, Regulen, Be-
ampten, Gelübden, Freyheiten Regiment Lehr, Fortpflantzung […] (Basel: Genath, 1626),
available online at https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_YO9VAAAAcAAJ (accessed March
24, 2017). Available online is also its Latin rendition, https://archive.org/details/bub_

gb_9yRUAAAAcAAJ (accessed March 24, 2017).
23 Elia Hasenmüller, Historia iesuitici ordinis […] (Frankfurt: Johannes Spies, 1593), 11. Repub-
lished together with Triumphus papalis in 1605. The German Jesuit Jakob Gretser (1562–
1625) responded to Hasenmüller’s publication with a long letter in which he defined his
By the mid-seventeenth century, this myth of the anti-Protestant origins of

the Society of Jesus seemed to have been well established, with the Flemish
Jesuit editors of the Imago primi saeculi (An image of the first century; Antwerp:
Moretus, 1640), for instance, explaining that one of the reasons the Jesuits were
founded was to defeat heretics, just as Francis (d.1226) and Dominic (d.1221)
had defeated the Albigensian heresy in the thirteenth century.24 This myth
traveled with European Jesuits and Protestants to the colonies they established
in Asia and the Americas, as the following chapters of this volume—most of
which were presented at the third Boston College Symposium on Jesuit Studies
in June 2017—testify.
Bibliography
Bartoli, Daniello. History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius de Loyola, Founder of the
Society of Jesus. New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1903.
Eire, Carlos M.N. The Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2016.
Gretser, Jakob. Epistola de historia ordinis iesuitici scripta ab Helia Hasenmüller. Dillin-
gen: Ioannes Mayer, 1594.
Hasenmüller, Elia. Historia iesuitici ordinis […]. Frankfurt: Johannes Spies, 1593.
Higman, Francis M. La diffusion de la Réforme en France: 1520–1565. Geneva: Labor et
Fides, 1992.
Hospinian, Rudolf. Historia jesuitica de iesuitarum ordinis origine, nomine, regulis, officiis,
votis, privilegiis, regimine, doctrina, progressu, actibus ac facinoribus […]. Basel: Typis
Joh. Jacobi GenathI, 1627. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88
-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:99990 (accessed March 24, 2017).
Hospinian, Rudolf. The Jesuit’s Manner of Consecrating Both the Persons and Weapons
[…]. Dublin, 1681. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home (accessed March 24, 2017).
Jouvancy, Joseph de. Epitome historiae Societatis Jesu. Ghent: J. Poelman-De Pape, 1853.
work as known for its dishonesty and ignorance. See Jakob Gretser, Epistola de historia
ordinis iesuitici scripta ab Helia Hasenmüller (Dillingen: Ioannes Mayer, 1594).

24 See Nienke Tjoelker, “Jesuit Image Rhetoric in Latin and the Vernacular: The Latin and
Dutch Emblems of the Imago primi saeculi,” Renæssanceforum 6 (2010): 97–118; and John
W. O’Malley, S.J., ed., Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits: The Imago primi saeculi (1640) (Phil-
adelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press), reviewed by Mia Mochizuki in the Journal of
Jesuit Studies 3, no. 3 (2016): 488–91 (doi: 10.1163/22141332-00303008-02).
8 Maryks
Kelley, Donald R. The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French
Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Lucius, Ludwig. Jesuiter-Histori von des Jesuiter-Ordens Ursprung, Namen, Regulen,
Beampten, Gelübden, Freyheiten Regiment Lehr, Fortpflantzung […]. Basel: Genath,

1626. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_YO9VAAAAcAAJ (accessed March 24,
2017).
Maffei, Giampietro. Opera omnia. Bergamo: Petrus Lancellottus, 1747.
Myers, William David. “Ignatius Loyola and Martin Luther: A History and Basis of a
Comparison.” In A Companion to Ignatius of Loyola: Life, Writings, Spirituality, and
Influence, edited by Robert A. Maryks, 141–58. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
O’Malley, John W., S.J., ed. Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits: The Imago primi saeculi
(1640). Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015.
Pastore, Stefania. “Unwise Paths: Ignatius Loyola and the Years of Alcala de Henares.”
In A Companion to Ignatius of Loyola: Life, Writings, Spirituality, and Influence, ed-
ited by Robert A. Maryks, 25–44. Leiden, Brill, 2014.
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. The Life of Ignatius of Loyola. Edited by Claude Pavur. St. Louis,
MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2014.
Tjoelker, Nienke. “Jesuit Image Rhetoric in Latin and the Vernacular: The Latin and
Dutch Emblems of the Imago primi saeculi.” Renæssanceforum 6 (2010): 97–118.
Vercruysse, Jos E. “‘Melanchthon, qui modestior videri voluit […]’: Die ersten Jesuiten
und Melanchthon.” In Der Theologe Melanchthon, edited by Günter Frank, 393–409.
Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000.
Warmbrunn, Paul. Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt: Das Zusammenleben von Katho-
liken und Protestanten in den paritätischen Reichstädten Augsburg, Biberach, Ravens-
burg und Dinkelsbühl. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983.
Weinreich, Spencer J. Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the
Kingdom of England: A Spanish Jesuit’s History of the English Reformation. Leiden:
Brill, 2017.
Part 1
Asia
∵
Chapter 1
Introduction
R.P. Hsia
In the 1920s, the Belgian Lazarist missionary Vincent Lebbe (1877–1940)

publicly opposed the superior of his order who was also his bishop in the
Chinese city of Tianxin. One of the treaty ports opened up by the “unequal
treaties” imposed upon China by the Western powers in the nineteenth century,
Tianxin was a city with large spatial concessions to Germany, France, Britain,
Italy, and Japan, whose consulates exercised extra-territorial jurisdiction in
their enclaves. The French concession was the largest. With the backing of
the French consul, the Catholic diocese of Tianxin, under the care of a French
bishop, contrived to extend ecclesiastical land holdings at the expense of civic
public space. This caused uproar among the Chinese community, including
a vocal Catholic minority. Among the Western missionaries, only Lebbe and
another of his Lazarist brethren expressed sympathy for the Chinese, for which
they would suffer sanctions from their ecclesiastical superiors. Forced to leave
his pastoral post in Tianxin, Lebbe was honored by the city’s Chinese Catholics
who lauded him as another “Matteo Ricci,” an ideal Jesuit missionary (1552–
1610) who understood Chinese culture as compatible with Christianity and the
Chinese people as equal to European Christians. Indeed, the Jesuit missionar-
ies who labored in early modern Asia cast a long shadow over their Catholic
and Protestant successors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Powerful as the legacy of the Jesuit mission was during the history of the
Old Society, it signified different things to the Christian missionaries of later
centuries, be they Catholic or Protestant. In South Asia, the Jesuit presence was
largely identified with the Portuguese Estado da Índia and colonialism until
the Portuguese regime came to an end with India’s liberation of Goa in 1954.
Including a significant minority of Italian, German, and Belgian Jesuits, the
Portuguese Jesuit provinces of Goa and Malabar were not exclusively Lusitan.
But the fate of the missions rose and fell with the fortunes of the Estado da Índia.
During the seventeenth century, Dutch incursions on the Malabar Coast and
the establishment of the British East India Company rolled back Portuguese
influences as well as the Jesuit missions. The Malabar mission was especially
vulnerable, although Goa remained firm as a bulwark of Lusitan identity. The
French Jesuit presence in India, likewise, depended on colonial ambitions;
they came much later than the Portuguese, and when the French armies were
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_003
12 Hsia
defeated by the British in the 1760s, the French Jesuit mission centered on
Pondicherry also suffered a major setback.
In Japan, the Jesuit mission was also identified with the Portuguese. The
Jesuits arrived on board Portuguese carracks sailing from Macao, and although
there was a smattering of Italians among the missionaries, it was largely a
Portuguese affair. The fortunes of the mission ebbed and flowed with the tide
of trade. After 1600, the new Tokugawa regime (1600–1868) in a unified Japan
adopted a policy of seclusion: foreign trade was conceded only to the Chinese
and Dutch, and confined to Nagasaki. This last group of intrepid Batavian sail-
ors from the far corners of northwestern Europe had replaced the Portuguese,
their archenemies in both God and Mammon. And when the ferocious anti-
Catholic campaign began in earnest in the 1620s, Haruko Nawata Ward dem-
onstrates how the Dutch were eyewitnesses to the violence and martyrdom,
from which they would benefit in this fiercely xenophobic society. Christianity
was silenced, but not destroyed, as Christian fishermen on islands off Kyushu
risked death to conceal their ancestral faith through an admixture of folk and
Christian rituals and beliefs. That too was a legacy of the Jesuits when the
“closed country” of Japan was forced open in 1853 by the gunboats of Com-
modore Matthew Perry (1794–1858). The first Catholic missionaries to return
to Japan in 1855, the French priests of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, found
to their surprise and edification the descendants of these seventeenth-century
Kirishitan. Over time, their admiration for these faithful folk would be tem-
pered by their disapproval of the adulterated Christian folk beliefs and rituals
that fell far short of the standards proclaimed by a reviving Catholicism in the
second half of the nineteenth century. The Protestants, meanwhile, were also
entering Japan in the wake of American and British diplomats and merchants.
The variety of their churches and teachings baffled the Japanese, who reduced
all Christians down to their “Jesuit essence,” enshrined in a hostile memory
that opposed Japanese national character to a foreign religion, as Makoto
Harris Takao clearly shows. That too was the shadow of the Jesuit mission over
the Protestants.
Only in China were the Jesuits remembered with fondness. After the sup-
pression of the Society in 1773, the ex-Jesuits remained in China under a new
corporate identity, but their flocks continued to think of them as Jesuits.
Chinese converts looked with a critical eye at the Lazarist fathers who were
assigned to take over the Jesuit enterprise and found them generally wanting.
It was not long after the death of the last Jesuit in Beijing and the restoration
of the Society in 1814 that the leaders of the Chinese Catholic communities
organized a petition to Rome: please send us fathers who would follow in the
footsteps of Ricci, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666),
Introduction 13
Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–88), and other Jesuits known and revered in their
Chinese names and for their culture, accomplishments, and respect for
Chinese civilization. Their memory was sustained by the hundreds of works
written in Chinese—on theology, ecclesiastical history, catechisms, science, lit-

erature, and a large variety of other subjects—that allowed the Chinese Chris-
tians to think of themselves as a community nurtured in faith and learning.
Therefore, the very first legacy faced by Protestant missionaries and return-
ing Western Catholics in the nineteenth century was the linguistic and textual
corpus of the Jesuit missions. This much is strongly argued in the contributions
by Delio de Mendonça and Michelle Zaleski in this volume. The first West-
ern study of an Indian language was a grammar of Tamil by the Portuguese
Jesuit Henrique Henriques (1520–1600). This work served as an indispensable
textbook for the first Protestant missionaries, who arrived in southern India
at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The German Pietist Bartholomäus
Ziegenbalg (1682–1719), one of the two Protestant pioneers and the most im-
portant scholar of Tamil, used Henriques’s Arte da lingua malabar (The art
of the Malabar language) to learn Tamil, even though he later criticized the
Jesuit’s grammatical system and his Tamil–Christian neologisms. In time,
Ziegenbalg became known as a great missionary linguist thanks to the fact
that he used his linguistic knowledge to translate the Bible and because Hen-
riques’s work remained only in manuscript. Indeed, a great deal of the earlier
Jesuit writings in Indian languages—such as the Christian Sanskrit poetry of
the Italian Roberto de’ Nobili ( 1577–1656), who dressed as a Brahminic guru
and devoted himself to Sanskrit studies, and the sermons in Konkani preached
to the converts in Goa—remained in manuscript. The weakness of the Jesuit
textual legacy is in large part due to the Lusophonic focus of the Jesuit mission
in the Estado da Índia. Despite prominent non-Portuguese members, the Jesuit
province of India constituted an integral part of the Portuguese colonial state,
whose aim was to convert the natives into good Christians who were simulta-
neously obedient and loyal subjects of the crown. It was far more common for
Goan converts to learn Portuguese than it was for European missionaries to
acquire Konkani. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Protestant mis-
sionaries—first German Pietists, then British Protestants—could overtake the
Jesuit legacy precisely because of the weakness of the inculturation of the ini-
tial Jesuit mission.
Japan was different. In the second half of the sixteenth century, under the
guidance of Visitor Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), the Jesuit mission ad-

opted a strategy of inculturation: Jesuits were enjoined to learn Japanese, live
and eat like the Japanese, and adapt to their feudal system. A press was estab-
lished to print Christian texts written in Japanese alphabets—Hiragana and
14 Hsia
Katakana—the first printing press to have produced non-Western Catholic

works outside Europe. In some four decades of rapid evangelization, the Jesuits
published a small body of Japanese Christian literature, including catechisms,
prayers, liturgical texts, and saints’ lives. All that, however, was destroyed by
the ferocious persecutions unleashed by the Tokugawa regime in the early
seventeenth century. Christianity survived, as we have seen, in the form of
the Kirishitan religion, practiced by illiterate fishermen in isolated islands off
the coast of Kyushu. When Catholic and Protestant missionaries returned to
Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century, they faced the shadow of
Jesuit martyrdom and Japanese xenophobia but were hardly able to inherit the
earlier Jesuit cultural legacy. The Protestants paved their own way by found-
ing schools and hospitals, and focused their work on the urban intelligentsia.
A renewed Catholic cultural presence was only felt with the visit to Japan of
the German Jesuit Joseph Dahlmann (1861–1930) in 1903 and the founding of
Sophia University in 1913 under German Jesuit direction. Even so, the Jesuit
mission, as with other Christian missions, had to contend with Japanese mili-
tarism and nationalism during the 1930s, leading to the eventual compromise
on the part of the Vatican over Christian visits to the Yasukuni Shrine for the
war dead. The legacy of the earlier Jesuit mission was not substantially recov-
ered until after 1945, when Japanese nationalism and xenophobia no longer
stood in the way of Christian evangelization.
It was in China that the Jesuit legacy found a continuous and long-lasting
memory. First, there was only a gap of two decades between the death of the
last ex-Jesuit in Beijing and the arrival of a new French Jesuit mission in the
1840s. Second, the historical memory of the Jesuit mission was strong and posi-
tive in the minds of the Chinese Catholic community, thanks in large part to
the re-printing of Chinese Christian texts written or translated by Jesuit mis-
sionaries. Some Chinese texts that had existed mostly in manuscripts, such as
the partial translation of Thomas Aquinas’s (c.1225–74) Summa theologica by
the Italian Jesuit Lodovico Buglio (1606–82), accomplished between 1676 and
1678, were only printed in full editions in 1932.
The first Protestant missionaries to China could not escape the Jesuits’ cul-
tural legacy. Working as a clerk for the British East India Company in Macao,
Robert Morrison (1782–1834), who arrived there in 1807, used Jesuit Christian
texts to advance his knowledge of Chinese, and William Milne (1785–1822),
who joined Morrison in 1813, gave credit to the earlier Jesuit enterprise in his
retrospective of the first ten years of the Protestant mission in China. Both
men, in their Chinese Christian writings, borrowed from the Jesuits’ vocabu-
lary and style, despite taking exception to the Catholic translations of Christian
concepts. Even in their literary forte, Bible studies and translation, Protestant
Introduction 15
missionaries relied (and not always acknowledged) their Jesuit predecessors.

In their Chinese Bible translation, Milne and Joshua Marshman (1768–1837),
for example, consulted the partial translation by the French Jesuit Louis de
Poirot (1735–1813), which was completed in the eighteenth century and never
saw print. In grammar, the great Protestant missionary and Sinologist James
Legge (1815–97) acknowledged his indebtedness to the Notitia linguae Sini-
cae (Notes on the Chinese language), a grammar written by the French Jesuit
Joseph Henri-Marie de Prémare (1666–1736), which remained in manuscript
until it was published by Morrison in 1831 at the Protestant college in Malacca.
The imitation of Jesuit literary models is best illustrated by the example of
Milne’s Zhang Yuan liang you xiang lun (The debate between two friends), a
dialogical text on Christian doctrines based on the model of Prémare’s Run jiao
xin (Trust and friendship with the Confucian literati). The Christian novella, as
Sophie Wei argues, first pioneered by eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries in
imitation of the Chinese novel, became a popular genre in modern Christian
publications, both among Protestants and Catholics.
Still another Christian cultural artefact from the Jesuit mission in China that
made a deep impression on the Protestant missionaries of the late nineteenth
century was Christian art produced by Chinese artists. Chen Hui-Hung has
given us a splendid example of the Madonna of Xian—excavated in 1910 and
probably dating from the seventeenth century—which contains iconographic
signs of both the Virgin Mary and the bodhisattva Guanyin. The Welsh Baptist
missionary Timothy Richard (1845–1919) wrote of his admiration for the Jesuit
mission’s visual legacy and affirmed the role of Marian devotion in sustaining
the local Catholic community even in the absence of a Western clergy.
And finally, unlike in Japan, where the government in the Meiji and early
Showa reigns (1868–1920s) acquired enough strength to keep Western pow-
ers at bay, the weakened regime of the Manchu Qing dynasty conceded to
France the right of patronage and protection over all Catholic missionaries in
the Chinese Empire. Initiated by Emperor Napoleon iii (r.1852–70) to court
Catholic support at home, the patronage of Catholicism in China became the
cornerstone of prestige and influence for subsequent republican and secular
governments in France. Ecclesiastical China, similar to the Qing Empire, was
divided into spheres of influence, with different provinces and dioceses as-
signed to different religious orders with their strong national affiliations. Thus,
the French Jesuits ended up creating a “Jesuit City of God,” to use the expres-
sion of Steven Pieragastini, in the Xujiahui (Zikawei) suburb of Shanghai, the

great Westernized metropole in modern China, where the French had also
succeeded in carving out their own concession alongside the international
concession.
16 Hsia
In this most Westernized enclave in China, Anglo-American Protestants col-

laborated with French Jesuits even better than their secular consular and com-
mercial counterparts. A major reason for the overcoming of denominational
divides was the common danger faced by both Protestant and Catholic mis-
sions, first in the 1900 Boxer Uprising that equated Christianity with foreign ag-
gression, then with the rising tide of nationalism in the Chinese Republic after
the 1911 revolution, and finally, in the face of Japanese invasion.
Here, in cosmopolitan Shanghai, where the French and British cooperated
to dominate the city on the Bund, Anglo-American and Catholic missionar-
ies also cooperated while maintaining a friendly rivalry. With debates and ar-
guments confined largely to print, the Protestant–Jesuit competition was far
from the sometimes rancorous and bitter rivalry in inland provinces or even
in isolated missionary stations in a coastal province such as Guangdong. Al-
though they might have been initially envious of the historical precedence
of the Jesuits, the Protestant mission rapidly closed the competitive distance
by opening up schools, universities, and hospitals, thereby closely identifying
their evangelical mission with modernization. This pace accelerated after 1911,
with more than a dozen Protestant universities operating in republican China
versus the sole Catholic university, the Jesuit Université de l’Aurore (Zhengdan)
in Shanghai. A second Catholic university was founded in 1925, Fu-jen Univer-
sity in Beiping (Beijing), but it was plagued by financial and administrative
difficulties and lacked far behind the prestige of Yanjing University founded by
American Protestants. Whereas the Protestant missions were known for com-
bating opium-smoking, polygyny, and foot-binding, practices also considered
by modern Chinese intellectuals to be feudal customs that kept their country
weak, the Catholic mission continued its special devotion to the care of aban-
doned orphans, a charity the Jesuits first undertook in the early eighteenth
century.
While only a beginning, the seven essays on Asia in this volume show the
strong impact of the early modern Jesuit missions on Christian evangelization
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially among the Protestants
in China. That this legacy is not widely known is due both to the diffidence on
the part of Protestant missionaries in acknowledging their indebtedness to the
Jesuit enterprise and to the dissipation of that earlier legacy through the dis-
solution of the Old Society of Jesus. Much more work awaits the attention of
scholars in the excavation of that relationship between the two great waves of
Christian evangelization in the early and modern periods.
Chapter 2
We Are Not Jesuits: Reassessing Relations between

Protestantism, French Catholicism, and the Society

of Jesus in Late Tokugawa to Early Shōwa Japan
Makoto Harris Takao
“I stated that it was my belief that the presence of the Jesuits in any country,
Catholic or Protestant, was likely to disturb the political and social peace of
that country. I maintain that opinion still, and I don’t shrink from its avowal.”1
Referring to the Sonderbund War of 1847,2 these words of Lord Palmerston
(1784–1865), delivered in the House of Commons, candidly express the in-
grained conflict that had existed between Protestants and the Society of Jesus
ever since the latter’s inception in 1540. Indeed, Palmerston’s anti-Jesuit senti-
ment speaks to the endurance of denominational stereotypes formed through
the schism between Protestantism and the Catholic Church, and grounded
in the very politics of the Reformation. Unlike Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556),
the teachings of Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–64), among
other key Reformist figures, did not invoke Christ’s command to spread the
Gospel to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19).3 Nonetheless, Protestant in-
volvement in foreign proselytization was greatly restricted by the dominance
of Catholic colonies and trading posts in Africa, Asia, and the Americas until
the establishment of the English and Dutch East India Companies in 1600 and
1602 respectively.4 By the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however,
1 The Protestant Magazine (London: Wertheim & MacIntosh, 1853), 15:70.

2 Following the short-lived civil war between Protestants and the Catholic separatist league
in Switzerland in 1847, the Society of Jesus was constitutionally prohibited from all clerical
and pedagogical activities within the recently formed state. See Wilhelm Oechsli, History of
Switzerland, 1499–1914, trans. Eden Paul and Cedar Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1922), 368–95; Hans Joachim Hahn, The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe
(New York: Routledge, 2001), 40–42.
3 Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993),
3-I:269–70.
4 For a discussion of Protestant missionary activity in Southeast Asia and the obstacles en-
countered due to previous Catholic influence in the region, see Lach, Asia in the Making of
Europe, 269–97. See also Glenn S. Sunshine, “Protestant Missions in the Sixteenth Century,”
in The Great Commission: Evangelicals and the History of World Missions, ed. Martin I. Klauber
and Scott M. Manetsch (Nashville: B&H, 2008), 12–22.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_004
18 Takao
it was Protestantism, in the midst of a Second Great Awakening, that led to

a significant boom in foreign missionary activity. As for the Society of Jesus,
which had dominated the foreign mission fields of the early modern period,
any sense of retaining a global vision was quashed by the order’s papal sup-
pression from 1773 until 1814. It was thus not until the early decades of the
nineteenth century that the “restoredc Society began to send new missionar-
ies to old stomping grounds. Although the Jesuits had resumed work in East
Asia through China and Indonesia, and had extended their influence as far as
Australia by 1848, they did not return to the contested soils of Japan until 1903.5
It was during Japan’s era of “free intercourse” that its first encounter with
Christianity occurred with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549. Spanning
nearly a century of intercultural exchange—from 1543 until the Japanese sev-
erance of trade relations with Spain and the Philippines in 1624–25, and the
decisive expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639—Francis Xavier (1506–52) and
the Jesuit missionaries who followed ushered in a first-wave Kirishitan jidai
(Christian era), known today as Japan’s “Christian Century” (1549–1639).6 In
this way, the history of Christianity in Japan is inextricably tied to matters of
foreign trade and shifting Japanese perceptions of seiyō-bunmei (Occidental-
ism). Japan’s experience of the denominationally diverse “second wave” of
Christian influence in the nineteenth century similarly reflects a conceptualiz-
ing of the West and, in turn, a delineating of the contours of Japanese identity
amid the second coming of the namban.7 Indeed, in 1908 eminent journalist
Tokutomi Sōhō (1863–1957) claimed that “the concept [of] ‘foreign nations’
[had] brought forth the concept [of a] ‘Japanese nation.’”8
5 See Paul Rule, “Restoration or New Creation? The Return of the Society of Jesus to China,” in
Jesuit Survival and Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, ed. Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan
Wright (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 261–77; Ursula M. L. Bygott, With Pen and Tongue: The Jesuits in
Australia, 1865–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1980).
6 For the classic study of Japan’s “Christian Century,” see Charles R. Boxer, The Christian Centu-
ry in Japan, 1549–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951). See also Ikuo Higashiba-
ba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (Leiden: Brill, 2001). The
word Kirishitan (a Japanese transliteration of Cristaõ in Portuguese, “Christian”) is a historio-
graphical term used as both an adjective and a singular/plural noun, designating the identity
and/or practice of Christianity as it was understood and expressed by its Japanese adherents
in the early modern period.
7 Namban literally means “Southern Barbarian.” This term was adopted from China during the
time of the Europeans’ first arrival in Japan. The idea of the “Southern Barbarian” originates
from the Confucian conceptualization of the Chinese Kingdom as the central figure around
which four sides were populated by so-called “barbarians.” The Portuguese and Spanish who
had reached China were therefore believed to have sailed from unknown lands in the south.
Grant K. Goodman, Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853 (London: Routledge, 2000), 5.
8 Cited in Masao Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974), 342.
Protestantism, French Catholicism, & the Society of Jesus 19
On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858) and a squadron

of four kurofune (black warships) entered the waters of Uraga Harbor, Edo
(part of present-day Yokosuka),9 carrying a letter in which President Millard
Fillmore (1800–74, in office 1850–53) set forth demands for diplomatic and
commercial dialogue with the United States. The consequent signing of a
complete commercial treaty in 1858 broke the sakoku silence of the Tokuga-
wa era (1603–1868) and opened Japanese borders for the first time since the
mid-1600s.10 Similar treaties were brokered with France, Britain, Russia, and
the Netherlands by the end of the same year. The following decade of Chris-
tian missionary presence in Japan was conducted in the shadow of the divided
Tokugawa bakufu (shogun-centered government), eventually leading to a con-
flict over national rule and the “restoration” of the imperial system in 1868.
With the sudden influx of British and American Protestants, French Catholics,
and Russian Orthodox Christians, the fledgling Meiji imperial government was
embroiled in a crisis of national identity in the face of perceived foreign threats
to its power. This volatile political space laid the foundations for social and
cultural landscapes across which opposing ideas of Japanese nationhood were
constructed and contested throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries. Both the first and second waves of Christianization in Japan can thus be
conceptualized as the ebb and flow of structural persecution and fluctuating
ideas of Japanese unity.
It is within this context of Japan’s post-sakoku growing pains that this es-
say explores the nation’s experience of “new” Christian denominations and
the complications that arose in distinguishing their identities. In reassessing
the relations between Protestants and Jesuits in the Meiji through to the early
Shōwa eras (1868–1912 and 1926–89), this essay approaches an understanding
of the ideological and apostolic foundations of the Society of Jesus’s second
mission to Japan. In so doing, it addresses the transformation of Japanese ex-
periences of the early modern Jesuit mission into collective memories articu-
lated across generations, and how the Protestant encounter with these “Jesuit
ghosts” posed complications for their missionary ventures. In this, the socially
9 Edo, renamed as Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”) in 1868, was the seat of power for the Tokugawa
shogunate until its dissolution.
10 Sakoku-rei (Closed-country edict) refers to the Tokugawa government’s enforcement of a
total ban on Catholicism as a dangerous and subversive ideology in 1635. It contained Jap-
anese subjects within the country, forbidding any outside travel and outlawing all contact
with Europe (apart from Dutch trade in Nagasaki) until 1853. Before the ratification of the
“Nichibei shūkō tsūshō jōyaku” (Treaty of amity and commerce) in 1858, the “Kanagawa
jōyaku” (Kanagawa treaty) was signed in 1854. Although it permitted the United States to
use the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate for docking and residence (American consuls), it
did not provide for trade relations.
20 Takao
constructed nature of memory speaks to the ways in which the Japanese dealt
with their Christian past, interpreted their present, and anticipated what the
second wave of Christianization would mean for their future. Approaches
to education and conversion within the united Protestant (from 1859) and
Jesuit (from 1908) missions will also be analyzed, highlighting tensions caused
by the Paris Foreign Missions Society (from 1855) for both denominations.11
In so doing, a context of Japanese national reform is outlined, looking to the
connections between sovereign and subject through the standardization and
secularization of public education. The outcome of such analysis is to demon-
strate the Jesuits’ acute awareness, in consideration of the previous Protestant
and Catholic efforts, of Japan’s state of rapid transformation, and their conse-
quent pursuit of a missionary venture that engaged in the spiritual dialogue of
modernity.
1 Jesuit Ghosts and Protestant Missionaries
1.1 Reverend Robert Philip’s Steam-Carriage of Faith (1841)
China or Japan, as new worlds to be re-conquered by the church, are now

brought before the Romish priesthood by the Vatican in forms of excit-
ing enterprise and glory […] One of the finest young minds I know has
just abandoned splendid mercantile prospects and a commanding posi-
tion in society, in order to re-act the part of Xavier in Japan, under the
direction of the General of the Jesuits at Rome, who, as he is the first
Dutchman that ever acquired that rank, has pledged himself to redeem
the character of the Dutch in Japan, by making the cross they trampled
on there triumphant again.12
Jan Roothaan (1785–1853), the then superior general of the Society of Jesus (in
office 1829–53), issued a call for missionary volunteers on December 3, 1833 as
part of a revival of the Jesuits’ overseas proselytizing activities.13 In the previous
11 From here onward referred to as the mep (Missions étrangères de Paris).

12 Robert Philip, “A Second Unofficial Missionary Tour on the Rhine,” in The Evangelical
Magazine and Missionary Chronicle (London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1841), 19:508–11, here
509.
13 See Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2005), 2:185;
Joseph A. Otto, Gründung der neuen Jesuitenmission durch General Pater Johann Philipp
Roothaan (Freiburg: Herder, 1939), 104–93.
year, leaders of the Beijing Christian community had written to Roothaan,

pleading for missionaries to be sent to them from the restored Society.14 How-
ever, with the outbreak of the First Opium War (1839–42), these missionaries
were kept from Chinese soil until 1842. In the article quoted above, published
in 1841 by The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, Congregational-
ist minister Robert Philip (1791–1858) identifies a young missionary-to-be, who,
under the direction of Roothaan, had intended on a grand retour to the Land of
the Rising Sun. While the article does not provide any further details about this
apparent revival of Jesuit interest in Japan, it does bring forth a number of key
issues for our consideration: the Protestant contribution to Catholic persecu-
tion in seventeenth-century Japan;15 a Christian “reconquering” of the nation
in the nineteenth century; and the role of historical memory in the formation
of new mission principles.
Despite the end of its formal Christian Century in 1639, the Jesuit province
of Japan continued to be administered from Macao until the eighteenth cen-
tury. During this time, a number of missionaries had vainly attempted to rejoin
their brothers in exile, while individuals such as João Rodrigues (1562–1633)
unsuccessfully petitioned the Society to return to Japan.16 Although the spirit
of Japan’s Christian Century lived on in European artistic and liturgical tra-
ditions throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the actual real-
ization of a new Jesuit mission to Japan was somewhat delayed. The Jesuits’
Twenty-Fifth General Congregation was convened at the Collegium Germani-
cum in Rome between September 1 and October 18, 1906, following the death
of Superior General Luis Martín García (1846–1906, in office 1892–1906). It was
here that Pope Pius x (r.1903–14) officially endorsed the commencement of a
new Japanese mission.17 Thus, in 1910, François Ligneul (1847–1922) and Justin
14 Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, “Jesuit Survival and Restoration in China,” in Maryks and Wright,
Jesuit Survival and Restoration, 245–60.
15 During the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38, some thirty-eight thousand people, many of
whom were Japanese Catholics, revolted against increased taxation and the abuses of lo-
cal officials in the Shimabara Peninsula and the Amakusa-rettō Islands. During this time,
Dutch traders (who professed that, as Protestants, their faith posed no risk to Japan’s se-
curity) were asked to prove their allegiance against the Catholics by lending Dutch ships,
weapons, and forces to bolster the shogun’s efforts in quashing the uprising. See Good-
man, Japan and the Dutch, 9–17.
16 See Boxer, Christian Century in Japan, 320–28; Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 173–74;
Johannes Laures, The Catholic Church in Japan (Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle, 1954), 164–67.
17 Klaus Schatz, “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu erheben:
P. Joseph Dahlmann und die Anfänge der Sophia-Universität, 1908–1914,” in Evange-
lium und Kultur: Begegnungen und Brüche, ed. Mariano Delgado and Hans Waldenfels
(Freiburg: Academic Press Fribourg Suisse, 2010), 566–86, here 566–67.
22 Takao
Balette (1852–1918) of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (Missions étrangères

de Paris [mep]) wrote of the arrival of the Jesuits as the awaited final piece in
the “universal character” of the Catholic Church in Japan.18 While it is com-
monly accepted that the initial idea of a new Jesuit mission was planted in
1903, the unnamed Jesuit missionary of 1841 calls into question the existence of
individual proponents of an earlier, though seemingly unfulfilled, effort.
The man at the center of this intriguing article, Reverend Robert Philip,
was a minister for the independent Maberly Chapel of Kingsland. Despite
the immense popularity of his published sermons and religious manuals in
nineteenth-century Britain and America, Philip, now emerging from the shad-
ows of obscurity, is mainly known in scholarly circles today as a biographer
of George Whitefield (1714–70) and John Bunyan (1628–88). Also a biogra-
pher of William Milne (1785–1822), a foundational member of the Protestant
Chinese mission, Philip has only been indirectly acknowledged for his interest
in the Asian region.19 Indeed, his familiarity with the Jesuits in sixteenth-century
Japan has seemingly gone unnoticed. Addressed to the editor of the Evan-
gelical Magazine, Reverend John Morison (1791–1859), Philip’s article is a self-
declaration of support for Protestant activity in China and Japan. Keeping in
mind that this was published twelve years before the arrival of Commodore
Perry, Philip gives us rare insight into Protestant–Jesuit relations before the
commencement of any formalized diplomatic, let alone missionary, activity in
Japan. Using the metaphor of a steam-carriage conversation with a stranger, he
acknowledges the utility of interdenominational dialogue:
All varieties of men are to be met with in travelling, and both steam-
packets and steam-carriages soon shake all classes together, and thus
bring the talkers into contact and fellowship, especially on the Continen-
tal rivers and railroads. Knowledge is elicited, in this way, which could
not be otherwise acquired, and intimacies formed which are useful to
both parties […]. Besides, things are said in these accidental discussions
of grave questions, which, however true, would not have been uttered
had the parties known each other.20
18 Justin Balette and François Ligneul, “Japan,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Charles
G. Herbermann et al. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910), 8:297–323, here 308.
19 See, for instance, Jonathan A. Seitz, “Is Conversion to Christianity Pantheon Theocide?
Fragility and Durability in Early Diasporic Chinese Protestantism,” in Asia in the Making
of Christianity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present, ed. Richard Fox
Young and Jonathan A. Seitz (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 163–88, here 168.
20 Philip, “Second Unofficial Missionary Tour on the Rhine,” 509.
In this vein, Philip goes on to justify an exchange he had with a number of

unnamed Jesuits. He tells us how he had gained their admiration through his
enthusiasm for Xavier and the Asian missions, and the bestowing of his own
knowledge about Xavier’s early years, about which these Jesuits had appar-
ently been ignorant. By this, Philip says, he “unconsciously, touched that chord
of their sympathies which was most susceptible just on the eve of Xavier’s
Octave.”21 Within the context of the developments in Japan, this dialogue be-
tween Protestants and Jesuits appears to be one of friendly competition rather
than an instance of conflict. His acknowledgment of German and Swiss pros-
elytizing interest in China thus relates more to a need for the British mission to
strengthen its global efforts than as an expression of confrontation. Moreover,
Philip displays a certain sense of light-hearted humor and rivalry in response
to the Jesuit intention to renew their mission in Japan:
I am not sure that I did not overstep my authority when I pledged our
churches to be soon at the heels of their General in Japan; but I did not
step out of my own sphere when I sent a challenge by one of them to
the Jesuit college at Rome […] to prepare to meet fairly an historical
proof that Xavier learnt all his piety from the Lutherans, whom Francis I.
brought from Germany to the University of Paris; and internal evidence,
from his meditations and prayers, that he never lost the spirit of justifica-
tion by faith.22
What this short article presents us with is a need to reassess our understand-
ing of the impetus for the Jesuits’ second mission to Japan. Aside from Philip’s
account, there does not appear to be any literature tying Roothaan’s 1833 call
to evangelical arms to a renewed interest in a Japanese mission. Philip thus
establishes a missing link between the Jesuits’ restoration in 1814 and the be-
ginning of Japan’s international relations between 1834 and 1858.23 As will be
discussed later, historians have conventionally attributed the birth of this mis-
sion to Joseph Dahlmann (1861–1930), who first arrived in Japan in 1903.24 Here,
too, the nature of Protestant–Jesuit relations as one of friendly competition
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 See William G. Beasley, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834–1858 (London: Luzac,
1951).
24 See, for instance, Schatz, “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu
erheben,” 573–74; Peter Milward, “The History of Sophia,” in The Future Image of Sophia
University: Looking Toward the 21st Century, ed. Mutsuo Yanase (Tokyo: Sophia University
Press, 1989), 55–75.
24 Takao
is a continued theme to be found. Despite the bitter history of these typically

opposing denominations, we see a seemingly parallel effort of both Protes-
tants and Jesuits transformed from resolute religious-centrism to necessary
socio-political adaptation by the end of the Taishō era (1912–26). However, the
most evident struggle between these denominations was to be found in the
Japanese (mis)conceptions of Christian identity. Fueled by an ingrained cul-
ture of anti-Christian sentiment, such aversion was formed by a collective con-
sciousness of the past, articulated and re-articulated from one generation to
another through each age’s present socio-political milieu.25 For the first Protes-
tant missionaries in Japan, an initial challenge was thus found in overcoming
a now two-hundred-year-old Tokugawa prejudice against Christians, particu-
larly the Jesuits, which had forced Japan’s surviving “converts” underground for
over two centuries.
1.2 We Are Not Jesuits

The second wave of Christianization in Japan began in 1859, six years after the
opening of its borders. American and British Protestant missionaries land-
ed for the first time upon Japanese soil, while Roman Catholicism returned
through the presence of the French missionaries of the mep. The first Prot-
estant convert in Japan, Yano Ryūsan (Yano Mototaka [d.1865]), was baptized
on November 5, 1865.26 It was not until eight years later that the first Japanese
church of this new era was erected in Yokohama by Japanese converts baptized
by Reverend James H. Ballagh (1832–1920). However, Christianity persisted as
an illegal faith for Japanese nationals, demonstrating its popular perception as
a heretical and deviant ideology. The following extract from the Episcopal mis-
sionaries’ experiences in Japan demonstrates the extent to which this percep-
tion endured in the nineteenth century:
The obstacles usually encountered in the presentation of Christian truth

to heathen nations were at first intensified by the hatred which the Japa-
nese entertained for all foreigners, and especially those who proclaimed
themselves the followers of Christ—a hatred engendered during the mis-
sionary operations of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, and transmit-
ted from generation to generation.27
25 Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950).

26 Yano was employed as Ballagh’s language teacher in November of 1861. Already gravely
ill at the time of his baptism, Yano soon died within a month. See Hamish Ion, American
Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859–73 (Vancouver: University of British Co-
lumbia Press, 2009), 47, 320.
27 A Historical Sketch of the Japan Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the u.s.a.
(New York: Foreign Committee, 1883), 3.
In this, the fostering of a politicized “memory regime,” centered on the cultiva-

tion of “religious hatred,” provided meaning and identity for many Japanese
nationals.28 Christian missionaries had arrived at a time when the Tokugawa
feudal order was collapsing and the subsequent Meiji government was in its
infancy. Their struggle to find an apostolic foothold was unavoidably tied up
with the endorsement of such anti-Christian memory regimes, and an ongo-
ing association of Christianization with colonial intent. Nevertheless, the is-
sue of religious proscription remained a sticking point for Japan’s new trading
partners, eventually leading to a lifting of the ban on Christianity in 1873.29
While this legal prejudice had been removed, social and cultural perceptions
of Christianity remained an impediment to be overcome by the Protestant
mission. John Liggins (1829–1912), who was the first Protestant to arrive in
Japan in 1859, provides us with some of the earliest insights into this challenge
of perception. Writing in 1861 amid the continued ban on Christian teaching,
Liggins provided a set of seven actions that Protestants could legally engage
in to improve their relations with the Japanese and gently guide them to an
understanding of the “true Christian faith.”30 An evident conflation of Protes-
tantism with Catholicism in the minds of the Japanese was a problem that con-
tinued throughout the nineteenth century, and was, for Liggins, to be solved
through education and charity:
They can by their Christian walk and conversation, by acts of benevolence

to the poor and afflicted, and by kindness and courtesy to all, weaken and
28 On “memory regimes,” see Eric Langenbacher, “Changing Memory Regimes in Contem-

porary Germany?,” German Politics & Society 21 (2003): 46–68; Langenbacher, “Twenty-
First Century Memory Regimes in Germany and Poland: An Analysis of Elite Discourses
and Public Opinion,” German Politics & Society 26 (2008): 50–81. On the history of anti-
Christian literature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan, see Jan C. Leuchten-
berger, Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in Early Modern
J apanese Literature (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan,
2013).
29 For an account of public protests in Brussels over the persecution of Japanese Christians
before 1873, see Francisque Marnas, La “Religion de Jésus” (Iaso Ja-kyo): Ressuscitée au
Japon dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: Delhomme et Briquet, 1896), 2:240–45.
30 The first six actions (seventh action cited in main text above) can be summarized as
follows: (1) learn the Japanese language; (2) prepare philological works to assist future
missionaries and work toward a Japanese translation of the holy scriptures; (3) assist
Japanese people with English tuition; (4) disseminate scientific works prepared by Prot-
estant missionaries in China; (5) sell scriptures and religious books that have been trans-
lated into Chinese; (6) use the sale of books as an opportunity to engage directly with
potential converts. John Liggins, “Letter from Rev. J Liggins,” in The Spirit of Missions [for
the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church] (New York: J.L. Powell, 1861),
26–27:184–85.
26 Takao
dispel the prejudices against them, and convince the observant Japanese
that true Christianity is something very different from what intriguing
Jesuits of former days […] would lead them to think it is.31
Not only did Liggins acknowledge the Japanese confusion over Protestant the-
ology; in doing so, he also established a key role in the first decades of their
mission in Japan: the shedding of their unwanted association with the Society
of Jesus through the unraveling of historical memory and the construction of
a distinctly Protestant identity among the Japanese. The latter was problem-
atic. From 1859 until the decriminalization of Christianity in 1873, a multitude
of Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, and Methodist missionaries
had traveled to Japan. Joseph Jennes (dates uncertain) of the Congregation of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary believed that the “doctrinal differences in the
teachings of these denominations could not but create a regrettable confusion
about Christianity in the minds of the Japanese people.”32 As early as 1872, a
joint conference was held with the American Reformed and Presbyterian mis-
sions with the aim of uniting all Protestant churches on the basis of a singular
Japanese identity.33 Due to irreconcilable differences, ecclesiastical harmony
as one unified church was not achieved until the eve of Japan’s war with the
United States and its allies in 1941.34 By the end of the first decade of the twen-
tieth century, however, Ballagh was satisfied that Protestantism, despite suffer-
ing the friendly fire of its failed union efforts, had rid itself of the ever-present
ghost of Japan’s Jesuit past. During a meeting in 1909 to commemorate fifty
years of missionary activity in Japan, he proclaimed that
the good seed of the Kingdom of God was being sown throughout this pe-
riod by education, medicine, Bible translation, liturgy, hymnology, study
of foreign languages, publication of dictionaries, printing of sermons and
books, lectures, and direct evangelism. Although I have just mentioned
direct evangelism last in the list, perhaps it is most important for having
31 Ibid., 185.
32 Joseph Jennes, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan from Its Beginnings to the Early
Meiji Era (1549–1873): A Short Handbook (Tokyo: Oriens Institute for Religious Research,
1973), 231. Jennes had initially published this in 1959 as a handbook for missionaries who
had recently arrived in Japan.
33 For discussion of the varied mergers of select Protestant missions in Japan, see Nozo-
mu Miyahira, “Japanese Protestantism to the Present Day,” in The Blackwell Companion

to Protestantism, ed. Alister E. McGrath and Darren C. Marks (Malden: Blackwell, 2004),
210–15.
34 See Mitsuo Miyata, Ken’i to fukujū: Kindai Nihon ni okeru Rōma-sho jūsanshō (Tokyo:
Shinkyō Shuppansha, 2003).
reduced the biased view of Christianity held for several centuries by Japa-
nese scholars, officials, and ordinary citizens. In a word, people now rec-
ognize that Protestant missionaries are not Jesuit missionaries.35
Thus it would appear that Liggins’s seven points of 1861 had been successfully
incorporated, especially during Japan’s brief period of seiyōsūhai (worship of
the West) in the 1880s.36 It can therefore be seen how the Society of Jesus, de-
spite its physical absence, unavoidably shaped the way Protestant missionaries
navigated secular space and their own sense of religious identity in nineteenth-
century Japan. The transformation of personally lived memories of the Jesuit
mission throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into a collec-
tive consciousness of the past among the Japanese thus represents a less tan-
gible, though nonetheless significant, encounter between Protestantism and
the historical Society of Jesus. As far as direct interdenominational conflict is
concerned, the Protestants’ primary struggle was to be found with the French
mep, whose mission had been concurrently established in the mid-nineteenth
century.
2 The Problem with the French
“I like the Protestants better than the Romanists, not that I have examined their
doctrine, but Protestant missionaries don’t look and act as if they were going to
swallow us up, country and all.”37 Recounting the words of a Japanese official
in 1883, Guido Verbeck (1830–98) of the Dutch Reformed Church highlighted
the general governmental distrust of French Roman Catholics. Japan had come
into view of the mep in 1832 when the Vatican added the Ryukyu Islands to
their web of influence in the Korean region.38 Bernard Petitjean (1829–84),
the first vicar apostolic of Japan, was accompanied by Louis-Théodore Furet
35 Cited in J. Nelson Jennings, Theology in Japan: Takakura Tokutaro, 1885–1932 (Lanham: Uni-
versity Press of America, 2005), 82–83.
36 The 1880s was a period of rapid growth among Protestant converts in Japan: 1,617 Protes-
tants in 1879 rose to roughly twenty-nine thousand in the space of a decade. A. Hamish
Ion, The Cross and the Rising Sun: The British Protestant Missionary Movement in Japan,
Korea and Taiwan, 1865–1945 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993), 2:32.
37 Proceedings of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries in Japan held at Osaka,
April, 1883 (Yokohama: R. Meiklejohn, 1883), 12.

38 The mep, established in 1658, had been granted exclusive right of missionary work in the
East by the papacy, with two apostolic vicars appointed to Japan. These figures, however,
never set foot on Japanese soil. Adrien Launay, Histoire générale de la Société des Missions
Étrangères (Paris: Téqui, 1894), 3:202.
28 Takao
( 1816–1900) in 1863 to construct a church in Nagasaki, dedicated to the Twenty-

Six Martyrs of Japan.39 In March 1865, Petitjean was approached by descen-
dants of the Jesuits’ seventeenth-century “converts.” These clandestine (kakure)
Christians had continued to practice a syncretic form of Catholicism, and their

discovery by the French was considered a “miracle of the Orient” by Pope Pius
ix (r.1846–78).40 Their mission was subsequently centered on offering pasto-
ral care to the fisherman and farmers of these old Christian communities of
southern Japan, while Protestant missionaries tended to move in circles of the
urban intelligentsia. The Protestant influence on Japan’s social democratic and
labor movements is perhaps explained by the more liberal approach taken
by American missionaries as contrasted with the rigid social conservatism of
French Catholics.41 The tenacious behavior of the mep was not only a point of
contention for Protestant missionaries but also for the development of French
diplomacy. From the very outset, the formation of French–Japanese relations
was defined by and conducted on secular grounds.42 It is therefore unsurpris-
ing that Meiji authorities were suspicious that Japanese Christians could also
be converts of national allegiance.43 Ironically, French Catholics themselves
accused Russo-Greek Orthodox missionaries in Japan of proselytizing under
a veil of Russian political ambition.44 Perceived as obstacles to the mep’s de-
velopment, Russians and Protestants were countered, among a n umber of
39 In 1597, twenty-six Christians (including three Japanese Jesuits) were martyred in Naga-
saki, later to be canonized by Pope Pius ix in 1862.
40 John Dougill, Japan’s Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival
(Tokyo: Tuttle, 2012), 184.
41 Jean-Pierre Lehmann, “French Catholic Missionaries in Japan in the Bakumatsu and Early
Meiji Periods,” Modern Asian Studies 13 (1979): 377–400, here 397; Ion, “Cross under an
Imperial Sun,” 73.
42 Léon Roches (1809–1901), the consul general of France based in Tokyo, had expressed to
Petitjean that he “and his colleagues would realize that were they to persist in their unre-
strained apostolic activity and interference in the internal affairs of Japan[,] bloodshed
would follow.” Letter written by Roches to Petitjean, September 1867, cited in Léon Pagès,
La persécution des chrétiens au Japon et l’ambassade japonaise en Europe (Paris: Georges
Chamerot, 1873), 9–10. Prudence Séraphin Barthélemy Girard (1821–67), superior of the
French mission, took an unmoving (and problematic) stance on the necessary consider-
ation of Christianity in diplomacy, urging France to lead by example in improving trade
and political influence through conversion of the Japanese people. See Lehmann, “French
Catholic Missionaries in Japan,” 382–83. For a history of French diplomatic relations with
Japan, see Richard Sims, French Policy towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan, 1854–95 (Rich-
mond: Curzon Press, 1998).

43 See Jean-Baptiste Piolet, La France au dehors: Les missions catholiques françaises au XIXe
siècle (Paris: A. Colin, 1902), 3:482–501.
44 Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protes-
tant Missions (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1976), 339.
practices, through the publication of Catholic propaganda. Seikyō bunpa ron

(A discussion of the divisions of Western religion), which exemplifies this
genre, characterizes Protestantism as a dangerous heresy:
Having already in the Second Volume investigated the origin of the Russo-
Greek Sect and shown its falsehood, evil, sin, and error, it is necessary in
this Third Volume to speak of the myriad sects of Protestantism so as to
show their falseness, stupidity, error, sin, and atrocious evil. Protestant-
ism had its origin in such great sins as uncleanness, licentiousness, rob-
bery, and tyranny. If I describe it, Japanese will look on it as so shameful
and unclean that they will not wish to listen to its teachings or give their
assent to it.45
This paints a more expected picture of Protestant–Catholic conflict. Indeed,

denominational variance (both inter- and intra-denominational distinctions)
had persisted as an issue from the very beginning of Christianization in early
modern Japan. The Jesuit coordination of four Japanese envoys to Europe in
1582, for instance, faced the problem of concealing the existence of Protestant-
ism and the state of theological disunity among Catholics in Italy, Spain, and
Portugal.46 Similarly, the ambassadors of the Iwakura Mission to Europe and
America in the 1870s unavoidably encountered the gulf between Protestants
and Catholics.47 A satirical cartoon by John Tenniel (1820–1914), published in
Punch magazine (Figure 2.1), depicts the arrival of these Japanese ambassadors
in Belfast in 1872 and mocks the state of religious turmoil in Ireland. Tenniel’s
observations, through his tongue-in-cheek humor, educed a very real irrec-
oncilability between the Meiji Empire on the one hand, and the empire of a
Christian God on the other.
In nineteenth-century Japan, French missionaries (including nuns of the
Dames de Saint-Maur from 1873 and Les Sœurs de Saint-Paul de Chartres from
45 Translated in ibid., 340.

46 See Michael Cooper, The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590: The Journey of Four Samu-
rai Boys through Portugal, Spain and Italy (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005).
47 The Iwakura Mission toured Europe and the United States between 1871 and 1873. Led
by Tomomi Iwakura (1825–83), and accompanied by numerous government experts and
students, the mission sought to learn about the latest technological and educational prac-
tices to be incorporated into the Meiji modernization machine. See Ian Nish, ed., The
Iwakura Mission to America and Europe: A New Assessment (London: Routledge, 2008);
Akira Tanaka, Meiji ishin to seiyo bummei: Iwakura Shisetsudan wa nani o mitaka (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1994); Minako Yamazaki, Iwakura Shisetsudan to shinkyō jiyū no
mondai (Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2006).
30 Takao
FIGURE 2.1 John Tenniel, “Jeddo and Belfast; Or, a Puzzle for Japan” (Punch, August 31, 1872).
Reproduced from author’s own collection.
1880) were the sole representatives of Roman Catholicism. This inevitably

made the association between evangelization and foreign nationalism all the
more acute in the case of the French. The mep’s unpopularity with the Meiji
government, in addition to the often confusing array of Protestant sects, con-
verged as a significant stumbling block for the proliferation of Christianity.
Joseph-Adam Sienkiewicz (b.1836), the French ambassador to Japan (1890–92),
acknowledged that the integral step to Christianization of the nation would
be the conversion of Emperor Meiji (1852–1912, r.1867–1912) as a Catholic, Prot-
estant, or Orthodox Christian.48 The diplomatic chief of the Russian mission
(possibly Mikhail A. Khitrovo [1837–96])49 had expressed to Sienkiewicz his
48 Lehmann, “French Catholic Missionaries in Japan,” 396.

49 Lehmann does not provide a name for this diplomat, nor does he provide the source of
his translation. However, it is likely he is referring to Sienkiewicz’s Russian counterpart.
Khitrovo was appointed as the Russian ambassador to Japan in 1892. See Susanna Soojung
Lim, China and Japan in the Russian Imagination, 1685–1922: To the Ends of the Orient (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 163.
belief that Emperor Meiji was fearful of Catholicism owing to the threat of “pa-
pist imperialism” together with his confusion over Protestantism’s mess of di-
visions.50 Despite the constitutional entrenchment of religious freedom from
1889, the formation of a national education system increasingly separated edu-

cation from religion.51 As such, the directives of the Monbushō (Ministry of
Education) ultimately reshaped the face of Christian missionary practice in
Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. In as far as the Protestant mission
was predicated on the unraveling of anti-Christian memory regimes and the
shedding of their unwanted association with the Jesuits, so too did the Society
of Jesus, in its second of wave of influence, need to establish mission principles
in distinct contrast to the mep while embracing Japan’s state of tennōsei (em-
peror system) and its manifestations in education.52
3 The Second Coming of the Jesuits
For historian Satoru Obara, Petitjean’s republication of Konchirisan no ryaku

(A brief summary of contrition), attributed to the Jesuit Luís de Cerqueira
(1552–1614), marked a “rebirth” of the Kirishitan spirit.53 However, this no-
tion of the mep as an agent of Kirishitan revivalism is somewhat problematic.
50 Lehmann, “French Catholic Missionaries in Japan,” 396.

51 See Benjamin Duke, The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National
School System, 1872–1890 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009). Article 28 of
the Meiji Constitution stipulated that “Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudi-
cial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of
religious belief.”
52 Under the previous feudal shogunate system, the emperor’s role was largely ceremonial
and lacked any real power. After the establishment of the Meiji Constitution in 1868, the
emperor was bestowed with absolute authority vis-à-vis the government, the military, and
formation of state religion. Thus notions of the emperor as a symbol of nation and em-
pire, and the endorsement of loyalty and patriotism as civil morals, were core elements
of tennōsei ideology. Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 40–41.
53 Satoru Obara, “Jesuit Education in the Kirishitan Period: Francis Xavier’s Longing for a
‘College in the Capital,’” in Mutsuo, Future Image of Sophia University, 25–54, here 31. Kon-
chirisan no ryaku was one of several old documents discovered among the Kakure Chris-
tians by the French. Petitjean reprinted the treatise in 1869 with a preface in which the
copying tradition of the Konchirisan no ryaku from generation to generation is described,

identifying it as a substitute for the absence of priests and sacraments over the last two
centuries. Marnas, La religion de Jésus, 1:514. On the notion of a Catholic “revival” in Japan,
see also Jean B. Chaillet, Mgr. Petitjean (1829–1884) et la résurrection catholique du Japon au
XIXe siècle (Montceau-les-mines: Chaimet, 1919).
32 Takao
espite the initial excitement over the discovery of the southern Japanese
D
kakure “Christians,” French missionaries were suddenly faced with the ques-
tion of whether these villagers were true adherents of Catholicism. As the
Jesuits’ initial teachings of Christianity had, in most instances, only lasted one
generation, the theological knowledge of their kakure descendants was rather
rudimentary. The consequent vacuum left by the absence of priests and proper
sacraments fostered the development of a unique set of practices developed
through hereditary priesthood, the syncretic observation of holy days, and the
administering of baptisms. Yet this integral use of native customs and beliefs
was the very issue that divided kakure adherents upon integration with French
Catholicism. The Chinese Rites Controversy of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries had resulted in Clement xi’s (r.1700–21) papal bull of 1715 that of-
ficially condemned the practice of Chinese rites and Confucian rituals by
Chinese Catholics.54 The implicit result of this was the complete intolerance
of any form of unorthodox Catholic syncretism. Diego Yuuki (1922–2008), a
Spanish Jesuit and founder of the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum in Nagasaki,
commented on this syncretism as “a melange [sic] of Buddhism, Shintoism, an-
imism and what Kakure think is Catholicism. They have no Bible. The meaning
of the Trinity has been lost on them.”55 These are the sempuku (hidden) “Chris-
tians,” who, to this day, continue to live by their syncretic traditions while the
hanare (separated) Christians abandoned these practices in conformity with
French Catholicism. Thus if we understand the Kirishitan spirit as something
uniquely fostered by Japan’s Christian Century (1549–1639), this period of
French influence represents not a rebirth, but rather a discovery of a “new” and
distinct set of religious practices with vaguely Jesuit origins. The importance
in this distinction lies in the identity of the second coming of the Jesuits in the
twentieth century and the objectives their mission would seek to fulfill.
Dahlmann, a Jesuit theologian and Indologist, is generally considered to be
the driving force behind the second wave of Jesuit influence in Japan. During his
first visit in 1903, he heard many requests from converts for the establishment
of a Catholic university to serve as a cultural base for the church in Japan.56
Following his audience with Pius x in 1905, Dahlmann formally asserted to the
54 Pope Benedict xiv (r.1740–58) reiterated this rule in 1742. See Colleen Kyle, “Should They
Stay or Should They Go? The Jesuits, the Qing, and the Chinese Rites Controversy,” World
History Bulletin 48 (2012): 69–71; George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its
Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985); David E. Mungello,
ed., The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal: Steiner Verlag, 1994).
55 “Japan’s Crypto-Christians,” Time Magazine 119 (January 11, 1982), 81.
56 Klaus Luhmer, “The Society of Jesus and the Founding of Sophia University,” Spirit
of Sophia; http://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/aboutsophia/history/spirit/spirit_02 (accessed
October 25, 2017).
Twenty-Fifth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus on August 30, 1906

that the Society should recommence “her former mission in Japan.”57 Much
like Obara’s notion of a Kirishitan rebirth or Philip’s description of the young
Jesuit’s desire to “re-act the part of Xavier in Japan,” this notion of a grand return
to the Land of the Rising Sun raised both practical and ideological questions
about the identity of a new Jesuit mission. Formally arriving in Japan in 1908,
the Jesuits had the benefit of witnessing some forty years of Protestant for-
mation of educational institutions and their friction with changing Japanese
governmental regulations.58 The emperor’s promulgation of the Meiji Consti-
tution (1889) and the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) had, by the turn of
the twentieth century, “enshrined the state’s definition of loyalty and national
unity.”59 These cornerstones of the modern Meiji education system were part
and parcel of the government’s fukoku kyōhei (Wealthy nation, strong military)
policy, which sought three key objectives: adoption of European civilization
(industry, technology, military affairs, education); promotion of capitalism;
and the founding of a nationalist culture.60 This policy, grounded in tennōsei
ideology, intersected with the need for Western knowledge through the slogan
wakon yōsai (Japanese spirit, Western learning). However, Protestant mission
schools, which had initially served as models for Meiji educational reform,
were soon divided between loyalty to their religious mission and compliance
with Japanese authority. The Monbushō kunrei dai jūni gō (Ministry of Educa-
tion’s directive number twelve) of 1899 enforced a rule of law in which “gen-
eral education [was to] be independent of religion” and in which “religious
instruction [could] not be given, or religious ceremonies performed.”61 Pres-
byterian missionary August Karl Reischauer (1879–1971) commented on the ef-
fect of this directive, claiming that those mission schools “that conformed to
the government requirements prospered outwardly, but for a while lost much
57 Milward, “History of Sophia,” 56.

58 See Thomas J. Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools and Churches in Light of Early
Mission Theory and History,” in Handbook of Christianity in Japan, ed. Mark R. Mullins
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 101–23; Mark R. Mullins, “The Struggle for Christian Higher Educa-
tion in Japan: A Case-Study of Meiji Gakuin University,” in Rethinking Secularization: Re-
formed Encounters with Modernity, ed. Gerard Dekker, Donald Luidens, and Rodger Rice
(New York: University Press of America, 1997), 123–36; Masao Katō, Meijiki Kirisutosha no
seishin to gendai: Kirisutokyōkei gakkō ga sōritsu (Tokyo: Kindai Bungeisha, 1996).
59 Emily Anderson, Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God (London:
Bloomsbury, 2014), 7.
60 Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools”; Kōichi Kobayashi, “Nihon no kyōiku to Kirisutokyō
kyōiku,” in Kirisutokyō kyōiku jiten, ed. Takeshi Takasaki et al. (Tokyo: Nihon Kirisutokyōdan
Shuppankyoku, 1969), 395–99.
61 Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools,” 114.
34 Takao
of their Christian character.”62 Facing drastically decreasing number of enrol-

ments, Protestant mission schools and Sunday schools were soon transformed
from tools of “evangelism and conversion to [centers] of moral education and
character building.”63 It was with knowledge of this contested state of educa-

tion that the Jesuits embarked on establishing a “magnam universitatem.”64
3.1 Sophia University and the Spirit of Modernity

During the meeting of the general congregation on January 31, 1906, the Jesuits
had established two characteristics that would come to define the early stages
of their new mission: restriction of activities to a specified region and empha-
sis on internationalization. Thus Jesuits from Britain, Spain, and Germany
were selected to be sent to Japan in favor of the government’s ongoing pursuit
of “knowledge […] throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundations of
imperial rule.”65 Furthermore, the allocation of a closed mission field was con-
ceived as a way of avoiding rivalry with the French missionaries of the mep.66
Scholars often regard the history of second-wave Catholic education in Japan
as one of relative inactivity until the arrival of the Society of Jesus in the twenti-
eth century.67 However, we should be wary of conflating the efforts of the mep
with the Jesuits as a linear progression of Catholic work in Japan, as this is to
deny the diametrically opposing approaches adopted by both religious orders.
Certainly, the initial steps taken by the “founding fathers” of the new Jesuit mis-
sion demonstrate an acute awareness of Japan’s movements toward modernity.
The Jesuits’ papal envoy to Japan, William O’Connell (1859–1944), had met with
Prime Minister Katsura Tarō (1848–1913, in office 1901–6) to discuss the idea of
a Catholic university in Tokyo as well as the relevant governmental policies
62 Karl A. Reischauer, The Task in Japan (New York: Revell, 1926), 181.
63 Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools,” 116. For the debate between Protestants and anti-
Christian nationalists over education, see Kiri Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in
Japan (New York: Routledge, 2009), 141–60; Hiromitsu Ando, “The Impact of Protestant
Christians upon Modern Education in Japan since the 19th Century,” in International
Handbook of Protestant Education, ed. William Jeynes and David W. Robinson (Heidel-
berg: Springer, 2012), 521–53; Nozomu Miyahira, “Christian Theology under Feudalism,
Nationalism and Democracy in Japan,” in Christian Theology in Asia, ed. Sebastian C.H.
Kim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 109–28.
64 “Habebitis collegium in Japonica, magnam universitatem” (You will have in Japan a col-
lege that is a great university). The words of Pius x as recounted by Joseph Dahlmann in
his memoirs. Luhmer, “Society of Jesus and the Founding of Sophia University.”
65 Emperor Meiji’s fifth clause of his Charter Oath of 1868. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol
Gluck, Donald Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2005), 2:672.
66 Schatz, “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu erheben,” 574.
67 See, for instance, Lehmann, “French Catholic Missionaries in Japan,” 394.
of the Monbushō that would affect them. It should be especially noted that
Katsura’s approval of this venture was on the precise condition that professors
and administrators were not to be exclusively French.68 In this sense, an initial
rivalry between French Catholics and Jesuits overshadowed any sense of con-
ventional animosity between the Jesuits and the existing Protestant mission-
aries in Japan. This early sense of enmity was exacerbated by the fact that the
Jesuit mission had only been discussed between the pope, the cardinal secre-
tary of state, and the Jesuit superior general. Neither Protestant nor Catholic
bishops in Japan had been consulted, leaving them to learn of the Society’s ar-
rival in the newspapers.69 Francisque Marnas (1859–1932) of the mep certainly
saw this as a cunning act: “This way of entering a mission, not by the doors, or
even through the windows, but by the roof—that is to say by passing over the
heads of the bishops—seems even more dangerous although novel.”70 These
initial tensions, however, were soon resolved after papal recognition of this
misguided exclusion.71 Five years later, in April of 1913, Jōchi Daigaku (Univer-
sity of higher wisdom), later renamed as Sophia University, opened its doors
with departments of philosophy, commerce, and German literature, headed
by Hermann Hoffmann (1864–1937) as its president. Whereas the MEP’s mono-
cultural identity and French nationalistic rhetoric had worked against itself,
the Jesuits’ internationalized structure served as a site for exchange of knowl-
edge between Europe, America, and Japan. As such, the enthusiasm for all
things German, bolstered by the particularly German flavor of the Jesuit mis-
sion, was carefully negotiated in light of tennōsei ideology. Dahlmann had ini-
tially suggested “Deutsches Institut” as a name for the university, only to be
later rejected on the grounds of it sounding “too nationalistic.”72 Moreover,
Franz Xavier Wernz (1842–1914), the then superior general (in office 1906–14),
had written a letter to Tokyo in 1912, warning the Jesuits that their role was
to offer higher education in a broader sense, and not simply the teaching of
German language and culture to the exclusion of all other subjects.73 As regards

69 Schatz, “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu erheben,” 575.
70 Marnas to Cardinal François-Désiré Mathieu (1839–1908): “Cette façon de pénétrer dans
une mission, non par les portes, ni même par les fenêtres, mais par le toit, c’est-à-dire en
passant par dessus la tête des évêques, me semble plus dangereuse encore que nouvelle.”
Cited in Schatz, “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu erhe-
ben,” 575. English translation is the author’s own.

71 Ibid.
72 Harald Fuess, “Deutsche Jesuiten in Japan,” in Deutschland in Japan, ed. Annette Schad-
Seifert and Gabriele Vogt (Munich: IUDICIUM, 2005): 83–108, here 87.
73 Theodore Geppert, The Early Years of Sophia University (Tokyo: n.p., 1993), 50–53.
36 Takao
the struggle between the apostolic and educational objectives of the mission,
Hoffmann had established from the very outset that Catholic teachings were
to be offered on a voluntary basis to students of the university, thus abiding
by the 1899 Monbushō directive.74 In striking a balance as a government-

approved institution, Sophia University demonstrated the adaptive approach
taken by Jesuits of the early twentieth century.75 Indeed, an article from the
Chuō Shinbun newspaper on October 27, 1908 referred to it as “a most perfect
Catholic University in Japan where Oriental and Occidental cultures meet.”76
3.2 The Yasukuni Jinja Controversy and Jesuit Concessions

It would be misleading to suggest that the Jesuits experienced immediate suc-
cess. The university initially attracted scant interest from Japanese students
and was beset by financial and political difficulties associated with the out-
break of the First World War only two years after its establishment. It was not
until the post-Second World War redevelopment of the institution as a shinsei
daigaku (new-type university) in 1948 that it experienced a truly steady pe-
riod of success.77 It is particularly during the time between these wars that
the Jesuits displayed a flexible approach to nationalist orthodoxy. Sophia Uni-
versity’s response to the Yasukuni Jinja controversy reflects this mentality as
part of a growing state of militarism in Japan. The controversy arose follow-
ing the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the assassination of Prime
Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai (1855–1932, in office 1931–32) by ultranationalists,
which struck a sour chord with some students of the university. Yasukuni Jinja
(Peaceful country shrine) is a Shinto site in Tokyo, founded by Emperor Meiji
to c ommemorate Japanese nationals who had died in service of the empire
74 Fuess, “Deutsche Jesuiten in Japan,” 88.

75 It should be noted that the government’s persecution of religious groups was not simply
restricted to Christianity. Hitonomichi Kyōan, Tenri Honmichi, and Ōmoto-kyō demon-
strate the extent to which authorities were willing to subdue religious associations whose
ideas were considered heretical. The accommodative approach was taken by Shrine Shin-
to, Sect Shinto, the majority of traditional Buddhist denominations, new religions, and
eventually most Protestant and Catholic denominations. See Tsuyoshi Nakano, “Religion
and State,” in Religion in Japanese Culture: Where Living Traditions Meet a Changing World,
ed. Noriyoshi Tamaru, David Reid, and Shigeru Matsumoto (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996),
115–36, here 116–19; Sheldon M. Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 70–87; Dorothea M. Filus, “Interreligious
Education and Dialogue in Japan,” in International Handbook of Inter-religious Education,

ed. Kath Engebretson, Marian de Souza, and Gloria Durka (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010),
2:779–804, here 779.
76 Translated in Milward, “History of Sophia,” 63.
77 Ibid., 70–71.
during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and later the Allied occupation of Japan
between 1945 and 1952.78 In 1932, three Catholic students of Sophia University
refused to pay homage to the war dead at the Yasukuni Jinja. At the time, the
Catholic Church had prohibited its Japanese adherents from participating in

such displays of reverence.79 The minister of war, Sadao Araki (1877–1966), con-
sequently labeled the university as a subversive institution that threatened the
basis of chūkun aikoku (loyalty [to the emperor] and patriotism) and the abso-
lutism of Meiji political values. Japan’s separation of state and religion, in line
with the “enlightenment” of Western modernity, saw a shift from the Shinto-
driven policy of national unification to indoctrination through a secular curric-
ulum enacted through the Imperial Rescript, the distribution of the emperor’s
photograph to schools (Goshinei no haifu), and the teaching of non-mythic his-
tory.80 Tension between Sophia University and the government persisted for
over a year due to media blowouts over the Jesuits’ perceived lack of loyalty
to the Japanese state. The religious politics of this controversy highlights the
post-1920s divide between “denominational Shinto” as privatized religion, and
“Shrine Shinto” as public national morality.81 The forging of “secular” shrines
divorced places such as the Yasukuni Jinja from practices that could have been
perceived as analogous to Buddhism or Christianity. In couching such acts of
reverence in terms of secular, rather than religious, morality, Catholic bishops
of Japan were encouraged to understand these practices as mere expressions
of patriotism permissible for adherents of the church to follow. By 1933, Sophia
University, having suffered a severe backlash, made a number of concessions:
78 Today, the Yasukuni Jinja honors nearly 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including, most
problematically, fourteen Class-A war criminals such as Prime Minister General Tōjō
Hideki who was executed for war crimes in 1948. For a discussion of the ongoing politi-
cal implications of the Yasukuni Jinja as a perceived site of war criminal veneration, see
Masaru Tamamoto, “A Land without Patriots: The Yasukuni Controversy and Japanese
Nationalism,” World Policy Journal 18 (2001): 33–40; Hong Kal, “The Aesthetic Construc-
tion of Ethnic Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in Korea and Japan,” in Rethink-
ing Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, ed.
Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang (New York: Routledge: 2007), 133–53;
Mong Cheung, Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan’s Relations with China (New York:
Routledge, 2017).
79 Jun’ichi Isomae, “The Formative Process of State Shinto in Relation to the Westernization
of Japan: The Concept of ‘Religion’ and ‘Shinto,’” in Religion and the Secular: Historical and
Colonial Formations, ed. Timothy Fitzgerald (New York: Routledge, 2007), 93–102.
80 Isomae, “Formative Process of State Shinto,” 96; Kōji Taki, Tennō no shōzō (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1988). For a study of the Meiji government’s “invention of tradition” through the
creation of national religion, see Helen Hardacre, Shinto and State: 1868–1988 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
81 Isomae, “Formative Process of State Shinto,” 95.
38 Takao
students were now required to attend the Yasukuni Jinja as a civic duty; Japa-
nese national holidays were to be sincerely celebrated by the university; classes
in ethics were to be taught by Japanese teachers; and the university was to
refrain from teaching religious propaganda.82 The need for religio-political ad-
aptation in the Taishō (1912–26) and early Shōwa (1926–89) eras nevertheless
demonstrates the Jesuits’ acute awareness of state morality and the supremacy
of political and military values in the first half of the twentieth century. The
initial spirit of this second mission of the Society of Jesus—one conceived
through a global outlook and enacted through international connections—is
an ideology retained to this day. Sophia University’s exchange program with
Georgetown University has a long history, beginning in 1935, and is currently
one of over two-hundred international partnerships based out of Tokyo. In
reflecting upon their centenary in 2013, Chancellor Toshiaki Koso stated that
“Sophia brings the world together.” In looking toward the institution’s next cen-
tury of work, Koso sees this spirit as inspired and reinforced by the deeds of
Francis Xavier who “aspired to greater heights by recognizing the diversity of
values, cultures, ideas, and languages.”83
4 Conclusion
Modern Japan has constantly been confronted with the dilemma of how
to take over the experience and skill of the West without going down be-
fore it. If she takes in beyond her capacity to assimilate, she perishes of
national indigestion; if she shuts herself off from the new, she perishes
from lack of nutrition.84
Looking to the West to ignite its path to modernity, the new empire of Japan
was faced with a need to strike a balance between internationalization and
the consolidation of its own national integrity. Thus, in reassessing relations
between Protestants, French Catholics, and Jesuits, we are able to observe the
ways in which Christianity attempted to establish its legitimacy in a nation oc-
cupied by scientific, military, and industrial development. Ethnologist Daniel

83 Toshiaki Koso, “Our Mission as a Catholic Institution of Higher Education for the Next 100
Years,” 2014, http://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/content/download/29675/282504/file/2014%20
Chancellor’s%20New%20Year%20Speech.pdf (accessed October 25, 2017).
84 Daniel C. Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism: A Study of Present-Day Trends in
Japanese Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), 68.
Holtom’s reflection of 1943, quoted above, illuminates this tension, which,

throughout this essay, has been cast between past and present, East and West,
Christian and non-Christian. Indeed, the struggle between these two empires
of Japan and of God inspired, and simultaneously threatened, the Meiji gov-
ernment’s rollout of official dogma through a state education system. It is in
light of such nationalist orthodoxy that the unique characteristic of each de-
nominational Christian mission has been assessed in this essay. For the var-
ied Protestant missionaries arriving in Japan throughout the mid-nineteenth
century, vestiges of the first Jesuits loomed large in the minds of the sovereign
and his subjects. Formed through politicized memory regimes, these persecu-
tory attitudes, articulated and re-articulated from one generation to another,
represented an integral encounter between Protestants and Jesuits that has
been largely overlooked for its role in missionary strategy. As such, it has been
argued that the unraveling of such regimes and countering the very ghosts of
Japan’s Jesuit past came to form the earliest proselytizing work of the Protes-
tants. We have also seen that the primary conflict of interest arose with the
establishment of French Catholicism in Japan. The very reasons for the French
missionaries’ unpopularity with the Japanese authorities also presented the
Jesuits with a blueprint for a new mission inspired by a spiritual dialogue of
modernity. In this way, the “second coming” of the Society of Jesus can be seen
as a missionary venture founded on the principles of internationalization and
socio-political adaptation. In looking to future research, this essay’s discovery
of Robert Philip’s article from 1841 brings into view an earlier drive by indi-
vidual Jesuits to return to the Land of the Rising Sun and, in so doing, calls us
to question the prevalent historical narrative. With the current lack of a name
for Philip’s Jesuit acquaintance, the field is opened up for new and rigorous
reconsiderations of a pre-twentieth-century history of Jesuit interest in Japan.
Bibliography
Anderson, Emily. Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God.
London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Ando, Hiromitsu. “The Impact of Protestant Christians upon Modern Education in
Japan since the 19th Century.” In International Handbook of Protestant Education,
edited by William Jeynes and David W. Robinson, 521–53. Heidelberg: Springer, 2012.
Balette, Justin, and Ligneul, François. “Japan.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by
Charles G. Herbermann et al., 297–323. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.
Bary, Wm. Theodore de, Carol Gluck, and Donald Keene, eds. Sources of Japanese Tradi-
tion. 2nd ed. Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
40 Takao
Beasley, William G. Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834–1858. London: Luzac,
1951.
Boxer, Charles R. The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1951.

Bygott, Ursula M.L. With Pen and Tongue: The Jesuits in Australia, 1865–1939. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1980.
Cary, Otis. A History of Christianity in Japan: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Prot-
estant Missions. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1976.
Chaillet, Jean B. Mgr. Petitjean (1829–1884) et la résurrection catholique du Japon au XIXe
siècle. Montceau-les-mines: Chaimet, 1919.
Cheung, Mong. Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan’s Relations with China. New
York: Routledge, 2017.
Cooper, Michael. The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590: The Journey of Four Samu-
rai Boys through Portugal, Spain and Italy. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005.
Dougill, John. Japan’s Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival.
Tokyo: Tuttle, 2012.
Duke, Benjamin. The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the Na-
tional School System, 1872–1890. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2009.
Episcopal Church, Board of Missions Foreign Committee. A Historical Sketch of the
Japan Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. New York: Foreign
Committee, 1883.
Filus, Dorothea M. “Interreligious Education and Dialogue in Japan.” In International
Handbook of Inter-religious Education, edited by Kath Engebretson, Marian de Sou-
za, and Gloria Durka, 2:779–804. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010.
Fuess, Harald. “Deutsche Jesuiten in Japan.” In Deutschland in Japan, edited by Annette
Schad-Seifert and Gabriele Vogt, 83–108. Munich: IUDICIUM, 2005.
Garon, Sheldon M. Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1997.
Geppert, Theodore. The Early Years of Sophia University. Tokyo: n.p., 1993.
Gluck, Carol. Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princ-
eton University Press, 1985.
Goodman, Grant K. Japan and the Dutch, 1600–1853. London: Routledge, 2000.
Hahn, Hans Joachim. The 1848 Revolutions in German-Speaking Europe. New York:
Routledge, 2001.
Halbwachs, Maurice. La mémoire collective. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1950.
Hardacre, Helen. Shinto and State: 1868–1988. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989.
Hastings, Thomas J. “Japan’s Protestant Schools and Churches in Light of Early Mission
Theory and History.” In Handbook of Christianity in Japan, edited by Mark R. Mul-
lins, 101–23. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Higashibaba, Ikuo. Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice.
Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Holtom, Daniel C. Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism: A Study of Present-Day Trends
in Japanese Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. “Jesuit Survival and Restoration in China.” In Jesuit Survival and
Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, edited by Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan
Wright, 245–60. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Ion, A. Hamish. The Cross and the Rising Sun: The British Protestant Missionary Move-
ment in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1865–1945. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University
Press, 1993.
Ion, A. Hamish. American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859–73. Vancou-
ver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009.
Isomae, Jun’ichi. “The Formative Process of State Shinto in Relation to the Westerniza-
tion of Japan: The Concept of ‘Religion’ and ‘Shinto.’” In Religion and the Secular:
Historical and Colonial Formations, edited by Timothy Fitzgerald, 93–102. New York:
Routledge, 2007.
Jennes, Joseph. A History of the Catholic Church in Japan from Its Beginnings to the Early
Meiji Era (1549–1873): A Short Handbook. Tokyo: Oriens Institute for Religious Re-
search, 1973.
Jennings, J. Nelson. Theology in Japan: Takakura Tokutaro, 1885–1932. Lanham: Univer-
sity Press of America, 2005.
Kal, Hong. “The Aesthetic Construction of Ethnic Nationalism: War Memorial Mu-
seums in Korea and Japan.” In Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in
Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, edited by Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park,
and Daqing Yang, 133–53. New York: Routledge: 2007.
Katō, Masao. Meijiki Kirisutosha no seishin to gendai: Kirisutokyōkei gakkō ga sōritsu.
Tokyo: Kindai Bungeisha, 1996.
Kobayashi, Kōichi. “Nihon no kyōiku to Kirisutokyō kyōiku.” In Kirisutokyō kyōiku jiten,
edited by Takeshi Takasaki et al., 395–99. Tokyo: Nihon Kirisutokyōdan Shuppan-
kyoku, 1969.
Kyle, Colleen. “Should They Stay or Should They Go? The Jesuits, the Qing, and the
Chinese Rites Controversy.” World History Bulletin 48 (2012): 69–71.
Lach, Donald F. Asia in the Making of Europe. Vol. 3:I Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993.
Langenbacher, Eric. “Changing Memory Regimes in Contemporary Germany?” Ger-
man Politics & Society 21 (2003): 46–68.
42 Takao
Langenbacher, Eric. “Twenty-First Century Memory Regimes in Germany and Poland:

An Analysis of Elite Discourses and Public Opinion.” German Politics & Society 26
(2008): 50–81.
Launay, Adrien. Histoire générale de la Société des Missions Étrangères. Paris: Téqui,
1894.
Laures, Johannes. The Catholic Church in Japan. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle, 1954.
Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. “French Catholic Missionaries in Japan in the Bakumatsu and
Early Meiji Periods.” Modern Asian Studies 13 (1979): 377–400.
Leuchtenberger, Jan C. Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan, and the World in
Early Modern Japanese Literature. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, Univer-
sity of Michigan, 2013.
Liggins, John. “Letter from Rev. J Liggins.” In The Spirit of Missions [for the Board of
Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church], 26–27: 184–85. New York: J.L. Powell,
1861.
Lim, Susanna Soojung. China and Japan in the Russian Imagination, 1685–1922: To the
Ends of the Orient. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Marnas, Francisque. La “Religion de Jésus” (Iaso Ja-kyo): Ressuscitée au Japon dans la
seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Paris: Delhomme et Briquet, 1896.
Maruyama, Masao. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974.
Milward, Peter. “The History of Sophia.” In The Future Image of Sophia University: Look-
ing Toward the 21st Century, edited by Mutsuo Yanase, 55–75. Tokyo: Sophia Univer-
sity Press, 1989.
Minamiki, George. The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginning to Modern Times.
Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985.
Miyahira, Nozomu. “Japanese Protestantism to the Present Day.” In The Blackwell Com-
panion to Protestantism, edited by Alister E. McGrath and Darren C. Marks, 210–15.
Malden: Blackwell, 2004.
Miyahira, Nozomu. “Christian Theology under Feudalism, Nationalism and Democ-
racy in Japan.” In Christian Theology in Asia, edited by Sebastian C.H. Kim, 109–28.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Miyata, Mitsuo. Ken’i to fukujū: Kindai Nihon ni okeru Rōma-sho jūsanshō. Tokyo:
Shinkyō Shuppansha, 2003.
Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2005.
Mullins, Mark R. “The Struggle for Christian Higher Education in Japan: A Case-Study
of Meiji Gakuin University.” In Rethinking Secularization: Reformed Encounters with
Modernity, edited by Gerard Dekker, Donald Luidens, and Rodger Rice, 123–36. New
York: University Press of America, 1997.
Mungello, David E., ed. The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning. Nettetal:
Steiner Verlag, 1994.
Nakano, Tsuyoshi. “Religion and State.” In Religion in Japanese Culture: Where Living
Traditions Meet a Changing World, edited by Noriyoshi Tamaru, David Reid, and
Shigeru Matsumoto, 115–36. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996.
Nish, Ian, ed. The Iwakura Mission to America and Europe: A New Assessment. London:
Routledge, 2008.
Obara, Satoru. “Jesuit Education in the Kirishitan Period: Francis Xavier’s Longing for
a ‘College in the Capital.’” In The Future Image of Sophia University: Looking Toward
the 21st Century, edited by Mutsuo Yanase, 25–54. Tokyo: Sophia University Press,
1989.
Oechsli, Wilhelm. History of Switzerland, 1499–1914. Translated by Eden Paul and Cedar
Paul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
Otto, Joseph A. Gründung der neuen Jesuitenmission durch General Pater Johann Philipp
Roothaan. Freiburg: Herder, 1939.
Pagès, Léon. La persécution des chrétiens au Japon et l’ambassade japonaise en Europe.
Paris: Georges Chamerot, 1873.
Paramore, Kiri. Ideology and Christianity in Japan. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Philip, Robert. “A Second Unofficial Missionary Tour on the Rhine.” In The Evangelical
Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 19:508–11. London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1841.
Piolet, Jean-Baptiste. La France au dehors: Les missions catholiques françaises au XIXe
siècle. Paris: A. Colin, 1902.
Publishing Committee of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries. Pro-
ceedings of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries in Japan held at
Osaka, April, 1883. Yokohama: R. Meiklejohn, 1883.
Reischauer, August K. The Task in Japan. New York: Revell, 1926.
Rule, Paul. “Restoration or New Creation? The Return of the Society of Jesus to China.”
In Jesuit Survival and Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, edited by Robert A.
Maryks and Jonathan Wright, 261–77. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Schatz, Klaus. “Japan helfen, sich auf eine Stufe mit den Völkern de Westens zu erhe-
ben: P. Joseph Dahlmann und die Anfänge der Sophia-Universität, 1908–1914.” In
Evangelium und Kultur: Begegnungen und Brüche, edited by Mariano Delgado and
Hans Waldenfels, 566–86. Freiburg: Academic Press Fribourg Suisse, 2010.
Seitz, Jonathan A. “Is Conversion to Christianity Pantheon Theocide? Fragility and Du-
rability in Early Diasporic Chinese Protestantism.” In Asia in the Making of Christi-
anity: Conversion, Agency, and Indigeneity, 1600s to the Present, edited by Richard Fox
Young and Jonathan A. Seitz, 163–88. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Sims, Richard. French Policy towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan, 1854–95. Richmond:
Curzon Press, 1998.

Sunshine, Glenn S. “Protestant Missions in the Sixteenth Century.” In The Great Com-
mission: Evangelicals and the History of World Missions, edited by Martin I. Klauber
and Scott M. Manetsch, 12–22. Nashville: B&H, 2008.
44 Takao
Taki, Kōji. Tennō no shōzō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988.

Tamamoto, Masaru. “A Land without Patriots: The Yasukuni Controversy and Japanese
Nationalism.” World Policy Journal 18 (2001): 33–40.
Tanaka, Akira. Meiji ishin to seiyo bummei: Iwakura Shisetsudan wa nani o mitaka.
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1994.
Yamazaki, Minako. Iwakura Shisetsudan to shinkyō jiyū no mondai. Kyoto: Shibunkaku
Shuppan, 2006.
Chapter 3
Kirishitan Veneration of the Saints: Jesuit and

Dutch Witnesses
Haruko Nawata Ward
The first encounter between Japan and the Western powers in the early mod-
ern period resulted in Japan’s violent rejection of Christianity. Japan reached
this resolution not because of direct confessional confrontations between the
Iberian Catholic missionaries and the Dutch merchants, because there were
none; nor did Japan reject Catholicism and Protestantism simply because they
were both religions of European colonial states. Instead, the Japanese rejection
of Christianity should be viewed as resulting, at least in part, from the Jesuits’
successful efforts at promoting Catholic devotion to the martyr saints in the
Japan mission. This devotion became deeply integrated into the spirituality of
their converts, creating a new religious identity that empowered the converts
to claim their religious freedom, which the Japanese authorities viewed as a
threat to their efforts to impose state Buddhism.
As we will see in this chapter, the Jesuits in the Japan mission (1549–1650)
seldom met the Protestant merchants of the Dutch United East India Compa-
ny (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or voc) face to face, and the urgency
of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch efforts to gain a trade monopoly with
Japan precluded any significant Catholic–Protestant doctrinal discussions.1
Whereas the Jesuits belonged to the Catholic clerical order working under
Portuguese patronage, the Dutch were secular employees of their state-run
company; as such, there was a stark difference of religious commitment be-
tween the two groups, and their relationships with the Japanese also differed
greatly. Throughout major regime changes, and despite never receiving official
1 A shorter version of this chapter was presented at the symposium, “Encounters between
Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas,” at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies,
Boston College, June 15, 2017. On the Dutch pursuit of economic profits in the East Indies, see
Charles Ralph Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire (New York: Penguin, 1990), 150; Jonathan I.
Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1601–1661 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982),
435; Leonard Blussé, “Divesting a Myth: Seventeenth-Century Dutch–Portuguese Rivalry in
the Far East,” in Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia, ed. Anthony Disney and
Emily Booth (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 387–402, here 391.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_005
46 Ward
permission to do so, the Jesuits were actively involved in the life of Kirishitans,2
integrating Japanese and Korean-born catechists into the ranks of the Society.
After their official expulsion in 1614, many Jesuits remained underground until
the 1640s, enduring harsh persecution and becoming martyrs or apostates. The
Dutch presence, on the other hand, was far longer-lasting. They first entered
Japan in 1600 and eventually obtained sole trading rights in 1640. The Dutch
were confined to their secluded compounds in Hirado (1609–41) and Deshima
(Dejima) (1641–1853), and their interactions with the Japanese were kept to
a minimum. The Dutch voc in Deshima remained religiously inactive, tak-
ing oaths to the Japanese authorities not to proselytize the Japanese to their
Protestantism and willingly supplied European scientific knowledge as the au-
thorities demanded.
During this period of rapidly shifting European–Japanese–East Asian rela-
tionships, religion was a central factor among many other complex issues that
prompted the Japanese government’s choice of the voc as its only European
contact when it issued the final Sakoku (closing nation) edict in 1640, severing
all ties with the Iberians. Historian Hirofumi Yamamoto compares the edict
with other isolation policies of early modern Asian nations and notes its ex-
treme anti-Catholic character.3 Yet this does not mean that the Dutch had con-
vinced the Japanese government of the superiority of their Reformed faith. On
the contrary, the voc’s lack of evangelical zeal and single-minded pursuit of
money in the East Indies has been criticized by Charles R. Boxer, prominent
historian of the Christian Century in Japan, who claims that the Dutch Prot-
estants pursued Mammon instead of God.4 By the mid-seventeenth century,
the voc had successfully replaced the Iberian trade monopoly in Asia and had
become “the greatest mercantile corporation in the world” thanks to record
2 The term Kirishitan derives from the Portuguese cristão (Christian). Sixteenth-century Japa-
nese rendered the sounds into Japanese phonetics キリシタン. In the modern Hepburn-
Romanization, these phonetics spell Ki-ri-shi-tan. The word Kirishitan as a noun is applied
to a person of Catholic religion of the early modern period. Japanese nouns do not distin-
guish singular and plural forms, but in English I am using the plural form Kirishitans to indi-
cate a group of individual Kirishitan persons. The word also functions as an adjective when
combined with things or phenomena peculiar to Catholicism of this period in Japanese
history.
3 See Hirofumi Yamamoto, Kan’ei jidai (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1989), 127.
4 Boxer, Dutch Seaborne Empire, 150, blatantly dismisses the quality of the work of the Dutch
Reformed mission in East India as “hardly inspiring.” On the wider discussion of Calvinist
religious activities in the Dutch East Indies, see Barbara Watson Andaya, “Between Empires
and Emporia: The Economics of Christianization in Early Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of
the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53 (2010): 357–92.
Kirishitan Veneration of the Saints 47
profits drawn from the Japan trade.5 To secure this trade, the Dutch in Deshi-
ma made every effort to convince the Japanese government that their type of
Christianity posed no threat as it was devoid of Catholic fanaticism. Leonard
Blussé, historian of Asian–European relations, attributes the Dutch success

in gaining Japanese trading rights solely to changes in the political power of
the Europeans and the Japanese.6 However, though it is true that European
religious confessions should not be regarded as the only cause to affect this
outcome, it is impossible to ignore the fact that religion clearly played an im-
portant role. Ultimately, the Tokugawa’s decision to grant the voc sole trading
rights was largely motivated by Japan’s rejection of Catholicism, which, Blussé
admits, “had indeed struck root in the hearts of the local population and could
not be easily extirpated.”7 It was this root that continued to supply energy to
the Kirishitans in taking a strong stand against the Tokugawa government’s
persecution of their religion.
The Jesuits’ historical records provide ample information on Kirishitan ad-
aptation of the Catholic veneration of the martyr saints. Although the voc
captains consciously limited references to the Catholics for fear of the Japa-
nese government’s suspicion about their relationships with the Catholics, their
records also attest that the veneration of the saints was a major part of Kirishi-
tan activities. These records show that Kirishitans continued to display reli-
gious images to express their deep religious commitment at the risk of arrest,
torture, and execution. The large-scale martyrdom of around forty thousand
Kirishitans, including hundreds of known women martyrs, in contrast to the
lack of any recorded conversions to Protestantism, is puzzling, and the Jesuits’
success in forming such a strong Kirishitan identity is clearly worthy of further
examination.
This chapter analyzes three Jesuit works of hagiography that epitomize the
Kirishitan veneration of saints and images. To counter Protestant criticisms of
idolatry, the Council of Trent (1545–63) clarified the church’s traditional teach-
ings on “Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images.”8
5 Charles R. Boxer, Dutch Merchants and Mariners in Asia 1602–1795 (London: Variorum, 1988),
vii. See also Om Prakash, On the Economic Encounter between Asia and Europe, 1500–1800
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), esp. iii, 138–41; and Femme S. Gaastra, “The Organization of the
voc,” in The Archives of the Dutch East India Company (voc) and the Local Institutions in
Batavia ( Jakarta), ed. Louisa Balk et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 13–27.
6 Blussé, “Divesting a Myth,” 391.

7 Ibid., 395.
8 See Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed
& Ward, 1990), 2:774–76; Hubert Jedin, Der Abschluss des Trienter Konzils, 1562/63 Ein
Rückblick Nach Vier Jahrhunderten, Katholisches Leben und Kämpfen im Zeitalter der
48 Ward
Interpretation of the council’s decrees relating to missions raised many cultur-

al questions; in Japan, “most talented and devout Catholics,” such as Alessan-
dro Valignano (1539–1606) and the Jesuits and Kirishitan thinkers, “often dealt
with issues of little concern to either Protestant theologians or Catholic con-

troversialists” in Reformation debates.9 Likewise, these hagiographical texts do
not address doctrinal issues of Protestant iconoclasm.10 Rather than contain-
ing anti-Protestant (i.e., anti-Dutch) rhetoric, these hagiographical works tar-
geted the Japanese authorities and their imposition of state Buddhism.11 The
hagiographic texts discussed herein give an important insight into the incul-
turation of the Catholic veneration of the saints among the Kirishitans and
the threat that the Japanese authorities believed this posed. As we will see, the
importance of these texts in shaping Kirishitan identity is corroborated by the
observations of a number of voc captains, who describe how the Kirishitans
would openly carry images of the saints, thereby disclosing their identity to the
Japanese authorities.
The severity of the Japanese persecution of the Kirishitans is well known,
although a definitive work in English is still lacking. After Francis Xavier (1505–
52) introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549, the Jesuit mission successfully
persuaded thousands of Shinto Buddhists to adopt the Kirishitan religion. In
response, the second unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98, r.1585–91) issued
but did not enforce an edict expelling the Jesuits in 1587.12 While the papal bull
Glaubensspaltung 21 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1963), 71–72, and John W. O’Malley, Trent:

What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 243–47.
9 John W. O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 102.
10 On the Protestant charges of Catholic idolatry in Europe, see Carol M.N. Eire, War against
the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986); also John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate: Sa-
doleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply, ed. John C. Olin (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2000).
11 See Masakazu Asami, Kirishitan jidai no gūzō reihai (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2009),
which discusses ethical and theological problems of Kirishitans engaging in Shinto Bud-
dhist rituals. See esp. 168–70 on the Kirishitan mob iconoclasm of Shinto Buddhist build-
ings and statues.
12 Between 1478 and 1573, as the Muromachi government of the Ashikaga shogunate (1336–
1573) weakened, the nation of Japan was divided into sixty-six fiefdoms ruled by daimyos
(lords). These lords and other warriors fought to expand their territories. Three military
strongmen eventually reunified Japan. The first unifier, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), was
successful in consolidating most of Japan under his power. After his assassination in 1582,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi took over and nearly completed the unification of Japan. He received
the title of kampaku (chief advisor to the emperor) in 1585, but did not become shogun and
died in 1598. The third unifier, Tokugawa Ieyasu, led a coalition army of warriors of the
Ex pastorali officio (1585) secured the Jesuit monopoly on missionary work in

Japan under the Portuguese padroado, Hideyoshi eventually grew suspicious
of the danger of Iberian colonialism13 and executed twenty-three Franciscans
and their catechists, together with three Japanese Jesuits, in 1597. In 1603, the
last unifier Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616, r.1603–5) established the dynastic
shogunate that lasted until 1868. In its early days, the shogunate adopted poli-
cies that were both anti-Iberian and anti-Christian. Meanwhile, the papal bull
Sedis apostolicae (1608) allowed the mendicants equal rights to work in Japan
alongside the Jesuits.
Despite these policies, the numbers of Kirishitans continued to grow.
In 1588, the Japanese church became the diocese of Funai, and Bishop Luís
Cerqueira (1552–1614), also a Jesuit, arrived in 1598 with the charge of imple-
menting Tridentine measures.14 He also ordained the first Japanese priests,
beginning in 1601. In response, the second shogun Hidetada (1579–1632, r.1605–
23) reissued the ban on Christianity in 1612 and expelled the Jesuits, Kirishitan
leaders, and mendicants to Manila and Macau in 1614. Arrests, interrogations,
torture, and executions of Kirishitans who aided the Jesuits and mendicants
accelerated in the 1620s and 1630s. After suppressing the Amakusa–Shimabara
rebellion in 1638,15 the third shogun, Iemitsu (1604–51, r.1623–51), severed all
ties with the Portuguese from Macau and issued the edict of Sakoku in 1640,
Eastern region and won the Battle of Sekigahara by defeating the army of the Western
region in 1600. He received the title shogun in 1603 and established the centralized gov-
ernment in Edo (Tokyo). The Tokugawa hegemony was finally achieved in 1615 when they
defeated the remnants of the Toyotomi clan in the Battles of Osaka (1614–15).
13 On the Spanish conquest of Manila in 1568, the arrival of the Dominicans, Franciscans,
and Augustinians to Japan from Spanish Manila, and the Jesuits’ criticism of the mendi-
cants’ open proselytization, which disregarded their cautious accommodation policy, and
Hideyoshi’s edict of expulsion in 1587, see Boxer, Christian Century in Japan, 137–87.
14 Bishop Luís Cerqueira authored such works as Manuale ad sacramenta ecclesiae minis-
tranda (Nagasaki, 1601). A manual of confession known as Konchirisan no ryaku (c.1603),
orally circulated by the hidden Kirishitan communities during the suppression years, is
also attributed to him. On his life and work, see Rumiko Kataoka, A vida e a acção pastoral
de D. Luís Cerqueira S.J., Bispo do Japão (1598–1614) (Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau,
1997).
15 Between 1637 and 1638, groups of oppressed Kirishitan peasants in villages in the Amaku-
sa islands and Shimabara peninsula rose in armed rebellion, demanding relief from heavy
taxes, forced labor, and freedom of religion. In 1637, thirty-seven thousand Kirishitan
men, women, and children laid siege to the Hara Castle in Shimabara. Led by Amakusa
Shirō Tokisada Jerónimo (c.1622–38), these peasants fought against a hundred thousand-
man army and eventually perished in 1638. For an analysis of this incident, including the
unsuccessful attempts to fire-bomb the castle from a voc ship at the order of the Japa-
nese government, see Toshio Toda, Amakusa Shimabara no ran: Hosokawa han shiryō ni
yoru (Tokyo: Shinjinbutsu Ōraisha, 1988).
50 Ward
which also banned contact with the Spanish from Manila. The last Jesuit, Koni-
shi Mancio (1600–44), was martyred in 1644, and the authorities continued to
persecute Kirishitans throughout the second half of the seventeenth century.
Hidden Kirishitan communities secretly circulated Kirishitan literature be-

fore resurfacing in the 1860s under the new Meiji imperial restoration govern-
ment. Not waiting for this reopening of Japan to the West, in the heyday of the
missionary movement, such Catholic orders as Missions Étrangères de Paris
(Paris Foreign Missions Society [mep]), and the Protestant denominations
such as the Dutch Reformed Church in America, sent missionaries to Japan.
Yet despite their protests, governmental persecutions of Kirishitans continued.
Japan finally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873. The Jesuits did not return to
the country until 1908.
With no religious influences from the Dutch Protestants, Kirishitans culti-
vated their religious identity in dialogue with traditional Buddhist teachings.
They developed a unique veneration of saints, which made use of both Cath-
olic and Buddhist symbols, while also acting as a voice of resistance against
state-imposed Buddhism. The following works of Jesuit–Kirishitan hagio-
graphic literature show examples of such devotion.
1 GoPassion and Women in Kirishitan Hagiography
The Jesuit hagiographic texts examined in this chapter are both prescriptive
and descriptive. The first two texts of Kirishitan hagiography, Stories of the
Saints and Meditation on the Rosary, show that the hagiographers consistently
taught that the cross, images, and relics of the saints were essential symbols of
goPassion (Christ’s passion), and that martyrdom is the ultimate path for the
followers of Christ and the saints. The paradoxical message of goPassion is that
God became a powerless human and was executed as a social outcast. Histori-
cal records detailing the readership of these texts indicate that the Kirishitans
knew the meaning of goPassion. The third text, History of Martyrs of Japan, also
shows that the Kirishitans read the hagiographic texts and used the venera-
tion of the saints as part of their own religious identity. These texts proclaim
Christ’s final liberation from evil and the power of injustice, and Kirishitans
used these as tools of resistance. The message of goPassion appealed to the
socially and religiously disenfranchised, especially Kirishitan women.
1.1 Stories of the Saints

The Jesuits promoted the veneration of the saints through stories of the saints,
which became one of the most popular genres of Kirishitan literature during
this period. As with all Kirishitan literature, teams of missionaries and native
catechists would produce the texts collaboratively; however, some individual
authors and translators are also named. The first Jesuit hagiographer of note
is Brother Vicente Tōin (1540–1609), who translated many of the stories. One
of the first publications in 1591 by the Jesuit press in Japan is entitled Sanctos
no gosagveo no vchi nvqigaqi (Excerpts from the Acts of the Saints) (Nvqigaqi
hereafter).16 Yōhō Paulo (1508–95) and Vicente Tōin, a father-and-son team
of Japanese Jesuit brothers, are named as its translators.17 Vicente translated
about eighty-five percent of the work, leaving only four chapters to Paulo.
Some of the stories of saints in Nvqigaqi overlap with those contained in Fides
no dōxi (Guide to the faith), another Jesuit publication from 1592, which is a
free translation of Sumario [or Quinta parte] de la introducción del símbolo de
la fe (A compendium [or Part 5] of the introduction to a symbol of faith) by
Luis de Granada (1504–88); its translator is the Spanish father Pedro Ramón
(1549–1611).18 Another early manuscript story of the saints, entitled Vidas glo-
riosas de algũns sanctos e sanctas (Glorious lives of some male and female
saints), is commonly called the Barreto manuscript (Barreto hereafter) after
Portuguese father Emmanuel Barreto (1564–1620), who practiced Japanese by
copying from the lost original around 1591.19 The stories of the saints contained
in Barreto also overlap with those in Nvqigaqi, and, while the work does not
bear the name of a translator, because its Japanese translation is very similar to
that of Nvqigaqi, it may be composed of earlier drafts by Vicente.20
16 The facsimile edition from a copy preserved in the Marciana Library is published as
Toshiaki Koso, ed., Sanctos no gosagveo go vchi nvqigaqi (Tokyo: Yūshodo, 2006). The por-
tion in modern critical rendition in Japanese characters is also found in Satoru Obara,
Santosu no gosagyō (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1996).
17 Vicente Tōin was also called Hōin or Vicente Vilela. See Josef Franz Schütte, ed., Monu-
menta historica Japoniae i: Textus catalogorum Japoniae aliaque de personis domibusque
S.J. in Japonia, informationes et relationes, 1549–1654, Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu
111 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1975) [indicated as mhj i], 1325. Vicente
and Paulo, both former medical doctors from Wakasa, joined the Society as brothers in
1580.
18 Facsimile of University of Leiden copy of Fides no dōxi is available as Hiroshi Suzuki,
Kirishitanban Hiidesu no dōshi (Osaka: Seibundō, 1985) [Fides in the following]. On Pedro
Ramón, see Josef Franz Schűtte, “Christliche Japanische Literatur, Bilder und Druckblȁtter
in einem unbekannten Japanischen Codex aus dem Jahre 1591,” Archivum historicum Soci-
etatis Iesu 9 (1940): 249–51.

19 Vidas gloriosas de algũns sanctos e sanctas is found in Codices Reginenses Latini 459, Vati-
can Apostolic Library. On Emmanuel Barreto, see mhj i, 1136.
20 See Kunimichi Fukushima, Kirishitan shiryō to Kokugo kenkyū (Tokyo: Kasama shoin,
1973), esp. 121–52.
52 Ward
Of the thirty-one chapters in Nvqigaqi, twenty-five are dedicated to male

saints and six to female saints. The male saints include Saints Peter and Paul,
twelve disciples, and Saints Ignatius of Antioch, Francis of Assisi, Barlaam and
Josaphat, and Eustachio in Part 1, and Saints Joseph, Sebastian, Alexo, Steven,
Lawrence, Clement, Agathangelo, Simeon, and Polycarp in Part 2. Female
saints’ stories in their own chapters, and within chapters on male saints, in-
clude Saints Febronia, Catherine, Eugenia, Olalha, Marina, Anastasia, Blondi-
na, and Euphemia. Barreto also has thirty-one chapters: twenty are devoted to
male saints with some variants, and eleven to female saints. Overall, these early
versions present twelve disciples as dominant exemplary saints, but full stories
and episodes of more than forty female saints are also prominent. A quote in
Fides no dōxi, Chapter 21, entitled “Because of the Co-suffering of the Martyrs,
Martyrdom Is an Excellent Proof of Faith,” summarizes well the Kirishitan
understanding of the importance of female martyr saints, according to which
Saints Prisca, Martina, Eulalia, Barbara, and Anastasia, who are young and per-
ceived to be “weak” virgins, are the supreme examples of these co-sufferers of
Christ’s goPassion, along with or even superior to the martyr bishops.21
It is significant that these early versions endured the test of time. And with
minor changes, stories of three of the most popular female saints from Nvqi-
gaqi, Fides, and Barreto became an independent booklet that circulated in the
underground church after 1614.22 This was the only collection of stories of the
saints that was among the hidden Kirishitans’ texts found in 1896. The survival
of these female saints’ stories suggests that female sanctity was of particular
interest to Kirishitan readers.
The stories of these favorite female saints, Catherine of Alexandria, Anas-
tasia, Marina, and Eugenia, reveal a contextualized Kirishitan understand-
ing of female martyrdom. As I have discussed elsewhere, these early church
stories, as with all other Jesuit transcultural translations, are translated as if
they take place in sixteenth-century Japan.23 Vicente, the original translator–
hagiographer, skillfully weaves two timelines to cast early church women saints
as Kirishitan saints. The persecuting Roman emperor becomes the current uni-
fier of Japan, referred to as tengu, a mythical demonic spirit. The emperor im-
poses his Roman religion and its pantheon on the inhabitants of his empire,
21 Fides, 287.
22 See Masaharu Anesaki, Kirishitan shūmon no hakugai to senpuku (Tokyo: Dōbunsha,
1930).
23 See Haruko Nawata Ward, “Images of the Incarnation in the Jesuit Japan Mission’s Kirishi-
tanban Story of Virgin Martyr St. Catherine of Alexandria,” in Image and Incarnation: The
Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image, ed. Walter S. Melion and Lee Palmer Wandel
(Leiden: Brill, 2015), 489–509.
just as the Japanese unifier forces Shinto Buddhism, with its many “idols,” on
the Japanese.
Gender discrimination permeates all four women’s stories. Saints Marina
and Eugenia cross-dress as men in order to become monks in male-only mon-

asteries, and both excel in their learning and devotion, passing as excellent
monks for a time. St. Marina is accused of impregnating a woman who is in-
fatuated with “Marino.” Marina does not reveal her sex, willingly accepts the
blame, and quietly dies of illness after harsh penance. Only after her death do
the monks preparing her for burial discover that she has a female body, and
they praise her virtues of humility and endurance. St. Eugenia, too, converts
to the monastic faith and abandons her status as a princess to live as a male
monk called “Eugenio.” The dying abbot recommends her as the next abbot,
and the monks also desire this, but she insists on serving the community as a
healer. She also faces the false accusation of making sexual advances toward a
woman who is attracted to Eugenio, but unlike Marina, Eugenia reveals herself
and reclaims her real female identity.
The stories of Saints Marina and Eugenia carry a double meaning. First, they
can be read as a Kirishitan protest against the Buddhist doctrine of nhonin
qeccai 女人結界 , which prohibits women from entering holy ground and
participating in sacred rituals. The famous Kōyasan monastery of Shingon
Buddhism, founded in the ninth century, kept this regulation until 1906.
Another misogynist Buddhist doctrine, fenjō nanxi 変成男子 , from the Lotus
Sutra and adopted by the Hokke school of Buddhism in 1253, teaches that a
woman can only achieve Enlightenment by turning into a man.24 The term
fenjō nanxi is literally cited in Eugenia’s story when it says she shaves her head
and “turns into a male body [nantai ni fenjite]” and “has the appearance of a
man [nanxi].”25 Thus, by weaving the Japanese notions of nhonin qeccai and
fenjō nanxi into his translation of these stories, Vicente makes female saints
and the Kirishitan community critical of Buddhism.
However, the flipside of this anti-Buddhist message was that gender seg-
regation also applied to the Jesuits and their treatment of Kirishitan women.
Because of its constitutional prohibition, the Society was and remains a male
clerical order. In Eugenia’s story, after reclaiming her identity as a woman, she
24 Nichiren (1222–82) founded the Hokke school of Buddhism in 1253 and taught that all ad-
herents must recite the Hokkekyō (Lotus Sutra) as the central teaching of Buddhism. The
twelfth chapter of the Lotus Sutra contains the doctrine of fenjō nanxi (modern spelling,
henjō nanshi). See Kazuhiko Yoshida, “The Enlightenment of the Dragon King’s Daughter
in Lotus Sutra,” trans. Margaret H. Childs in Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in
Premodern Japan, ed. Barbara Ruch (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002), 297–324.
25 Nvqigaqi, 2:114, 210.
54 Ward
moves from Alexandria to Rome and establishes a women’s monastic com-

munity and later becomes a martyr in the imperial persecution. As Kirishitan
women learned about these female Christian saints, they aspired to attain the
same status. Around 1600, Jesuits Gnecchi Soldo-Organtino (1533–1609) and

Pedro Morejón (c.1562–1639) allowed several women, including Naitō Julia
(c.1566–1627), a former abbess of Jōdo Buddhism, to take three vows and estab-
lish a society of active women catechists working closely with the Jesuits. This
provision allowed Kirishitan nuns (bicuni) to remain religious without “turn-
ing into men,” though the Society never recognized Julia’s community as an of-
ficial branch of the Jesuit order. Yet they were perceived as being affiliated with
the Society by the Japanese authorities, who deported Julia’s society together
with the Jesuits in 1614. The important point to make here is that Vicente high-
lighted Catholic female monastic sanctity in these stories; though Protestants
had abandoned the monastic tradition, it was immediately replicable to the
Kirishitan mission from its Buddhist surroundings.
Like St. Eugenia, Saints Anastasia and Catherine of Alexandria are also mar-
tyrs of the imperial persecution. They suffer tremendous physical torture, and
their bodies are humiliated when they refuse the emperor’s demands to give
up their Kirishitan faith and vows of virginity. Vicente uses poetic Japanese
expressions to describe these women’s female beauty and perceived fragility.
Their vow of perpetual virginity again underscores the Catholic option for
women to remain independent from marriages arranged for political reasons
by their family patriarchs. When Japanese unifiers began adopting Confu-
cian values, in which the place of women was restricted to their family and
class, and their duty was to produce male heirs and politically useful offspring,
Kirishitan women readers who followed these saints’ examples caused alarm
among their families and society. In these saints’ stories, when the family pa-
triarch and the emperor cannot make these virgins marry, they deliver them
to the most severe torture, as seen in St. Anastasia’s story. Divine interventions
often keep these women from bodily harm.
Although these stories contain supernatural elements and divine miracles
as is typical of the genre, Vicente also emphasizes the women’s superior rea-
soning and intellectual abilities over their virtues and ritual observance. The
most popular saint, Catherine, eagerly “mastered” the scriptures and had a
thorough knowledge of the philosophers and other important Catholic litera-
ture. Her oratorical skills are impressive, as when she quotes from authorities
in her debate with imperial scholars, deals with inquisitors and torturers, and
preaches at the time of her execution. Vicente and later minor editors make
no reference to Protestants as their enemies. Rather, these women’s rhetoric
remains focused on imperially imposed Japanese Buddhism.
These female saints’ stories must have equipped and sustained Kirishi-
tan women with scholarly knowledge and the ability to speak eloquently in
public—neither of which was viewed as important for women in Japan—as
they faced their own passion and martyrdom. Kirishitan survivors flocked to
their relics, as we will see in the examination of the third text.
1.2 Meditation on the Rosary

The second genre of hagiography relates closely to the Spiritual Exercises, one
of the distinct marks of the Jesuits. In 1607, the Jesuit press published Spiritval
xugvio no tameni […] (A manual of collected various meditations for spiritual
exercises) in Japanese, parts of which were originally intended for the religious,
but its later manuscript copies simply replace designations for the religious
with Kirishitans.26 Spiritval xugvio is an anthology in three parts. Parts 1 and 2
are translations of Meditations on the Rosary and Passion, written by Spanish
Jesuit Gaspar Loarte (c.1498–1578).27 The anonymous Japanese translators used
a Portuguese translation as its basis.28
Part 1 of Spiritval xugvio is entitled “Rosairo jŭgo no mysterio no meditaçam”
(Meditations on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary; Meditation hereafter).29
The fifteen mysteries are divided into three sections of Gospel narratives:
Christ’s life, passion, and resurrection. The three experiences of joy, sorrow,
and the glory of St. Mary Mother of Jesus correspond to these three sections.
Each meditation has the same format: the points (summary of meditation),
26 See Satoru Obara, Supiritsuaru shugyō (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1994), 506. The Jesuit press
published Ignatius of Loyola, Exercitia spiritualia (Amacusa, 1596) in Latin for the
religious.
27 On Gaspar Loarte, see Robert A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of
Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus, Studies in Medieval
and Reformation Traditions 146 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 80–85; and Diccionario histórico de la
Compañía de Jesús: Biográfico-temático, ed. Charles E. O’Neill and Joaquín M. Domínguez,
4 vols. (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2001) 3:2402–3 [hereafter dhcj].
Loarte originally published the meditations on the rosary and the passion in Italian in
Rome, separately in 1571 and 1573. The Portuguese translations, on which the Japanese
translations are based, were published around 1587.
28 Many Jesuit fathers and brothers edited and translated these meditations, as ordered by
Bishop Cerqueira. The members who were most learned in the Japanese language would
then proofread them, and the superiors would attest to their sound Catholic doctrine.
Part 3 of Spiritval xugvio is an original work by the Jesuits in Japan, including meditations
authored by Pedro Gómez (1535–1600).

29 I am using the facsimile of a copy preserved in the Augustinian monastery in Valladolid,
Spain, in Yukie Kojima, Kirishitan-ban “Supiritsuaru Shugyō” no kenkyū: “Rozairo no Kan-
nen”; Taiyaku no kokugogakuteki kenkyū; Shiryōhen ge, Kasama sōsho 214 (Tokyo: Kasama
Shobō, 1989). All English translations from Japanese are mine.
56 Ward
the interpretation of the points, and final colloquy (prayer).30 Below, I examine
the section entitled “On the Sorrows on goPassion,” in which the emotive effect
of the meditations is particularly noticeable. A later English recusant transla-
tion can be used for comparison.31

The meditations on the sorrows are further subdivided into five scenes of
goPassion. These five scenes are: (1) Gethsemane; (2) the scourging; (3) the
crown of thorns; (4) the way of the cross; and (5) the crucifixion. The medita-
tor, who imagines herself to be in each scene, looks at the sufferings of Christ
through the eyes of St. Mary Mother of Jesus, who is there among many other
female saints (jennhonin) and male saints (jennin). The central theological
meaning of the cross stands out in the first meditation at Gethsemane, with its
striking use of maternal imagery: “Like a woman [nhonin] giving birth, Christ
suffers the pain of contraction to the point of death before giving birth to us,
and in dying, to give new life to us, she forgets the birth pang once it passes.”32
The depictions of Jesus’s beating, torture, and humiliation in sorrow 2
(scourging) also use “feminine” images. The meditation on the scene of soldiers
stripping Jesus’s clothing and scourging him is particularly evocative as Jesus
feels his soft flesh (monoyauaracanaru gofinicu) tear.33 The Japanese transla-
tors ignore Loarte’s frequent references to the “Lamb” and the masculinity of
Jesus having a “sacred body, the most beautiful among all men,” and instead re-
fer to Jesus’s “virginal body” with “snow-white skin” (yuqi no vonfadaye).34 The
translators choose words that resonate with Kirishitans’ sensitivity toward the
shaming of their naked bodies (acano fadaca) and dishonor (membocu naqi),
and describe Jesus as a low-class criminal (guenin, zainin).35 As is the case in
Loarte’s original, the meditation bursts into a cry to the Lord, one’s soul, and
the Virgin Mary. The Kirishitan translation of this poetic expression is faith-
ful to the original, and also as in the original, it highlights the theology of the
30 Originally, a copper print accompanied each meditation of the Kirishitan Meditation on

the Rosary as in Loarte’s original, but these prints were destroyed.
31 English recusant literature translation is found in Gaspare [sic] Loarte, Instructions and
Advertisements: How to Meditate upon the Mysteries of Rosary of the Most Holy Virgin Mary
(Menston: Scolar Press, 1970 [1613]) [indicated as Instructions].
32 This notion of the divine travail, traditionally favored by mystic writers, is of biblical
origin (John 16:21). Such images of Jesus sweating blood (Luke 22:44) in great “pain” in
Gethsemane tie with the copious blood of women in childbirth. Meditation, 28v. See In-
structions, 83: “Oh, King of glorie, […] even to death, shal thy travail endure, wher-with
like a most loving mother, thou deliverest us […],” and note that the English translator
uses sorrow and heaviness instead of pain.
33 Meditation, 32v.
34 Ibid., 34v. Instructions, 93, 96, 98.
35 Meditation, 34.
incarnation of Jesus at the time of conception in Mary’s womb: that Christ’s

flesh (humanity) was woven in her womb, and that his clothing of “humanity”
is that which Mary as Mother of Jesus made for him.
In the meditation on the crown of thorns (sorrow 3), there is a reference

to Ecce homo (Behold the man), popular images of which were carried by
Kirishitans. The translation adds a lesson for the Kirishitans to Loarte’s short
reflection for “the Christian”: “Because you are a Kirishitan, keep this image in
front of your eyes, and be moved to pity and tears; consider that [Jesus] was
so humiliated and made to suffer so much for [God’s] precious love meant for
you [nangiiuo voboximesu gotaixet].”36 This Kirishitan neologism of divine love
(gotaixet) is often used to describe martyrs’ love as well.
The meditation on the way of the cross (sorrow 4) also invites Kirishitans to
think about Jesus’s special proclamation to the female saints (jennhonintachi),
including St. Mary. The Kirishitan translators’ expression for these jennhonin-
tachi who followed Jesus is von atouo xitai, the meaning of which conveys a
sense of their longing for Jesus.37 These women weep tears of sorrow, and Mary
also sheds tears. But Loarte sees Mary as more willing than Simon the Cyrene
to carry the cross for Jesus.38 The Kirishitan translators cite Mary’s physical
weakness, yet as if to rebut the doctrine of nhonin qeccai, they simply state:
“Even if her being is a woman, in order to take place of her Child’s sufferings,
she does not fall behind men’s power.”39
The meditation on the last sorrow of the crucifixion calls for the visual-
ization of Christ’s bodily wounds. These images echo those in the scourging
(sorrow 2), with the graphic emphases being on the painfully torn skin and
humiliation of nakedness. The Japanese translators translate the sentence
that describes the cruel “hangmen” (“violent warriors” [araqenaqi mononofu-
domo]) who “pluck” off Jesus’s clothes (rip off his “dress” [vonixō]) with parts of
his skin and flesh.40 They explain that the wounds from the beating (chōchacu)
had dried up and now cling to his clothing, causing his skin and pieces of flesh
to come off with it. The exaggeration of such cruel torture in this meditation
36 Ibid., 39v. Instructions, 110

37 Meditation, 43.
38 On the English translator’s depiction of this “Sovereign Lady,” see Instructions, 130: “How
much more willingly did Cyreneus did, wouldest thou performed his office, in carrying of
the Crosse, with the strength which thy tenderness and sorows denied thee, love did make
supply of, and the desire thou haddest to bear some part of the afflictions which without
al pity they gave unto the afflicted, and grieved thee no lette then they did him-selfe.”
39 Meditation, 47v: “Tatoi nhoninno vonminiteua maximasutomo, voncono gocuguenni cau-
ari tamauan vontameniua, nanxino chicaranimo votoritamō becarazu.” Emphasis added.
40 Instructions, 137. Meditation, 50v.
58 Ward
is typical of hagiographic literature. In Kirishitan stories of the saints, female

saints receive repeated beatings and are forced to suffer the humiliation of
public nakedness. In Nvqigaqi, for example, Vicente uses the same words for
“violent warriors” who rip off the “dress” of Saints Catherine and Anastasia and
“beat” their bodies until their skin tears and they are soaked with blood.
The wounds of the nails that pierced Jesus on the cross produce myrrh,
which cures other wounds better than the touch of the Spouses’ fingers (re-
ferring to Song of Songs 5:5), and this blood is the best medicine (rŏyacu) for
all kinds of illnesses (xobiŏ xitgio).41 The notion of blood’s healing power, cor-
responding to the shedding of a mother’s blood in childbirth, must have been
striking to Kirishitan women. During this period, when Buddhism condemned
women to a blood lake hell because of the impurity of bleeding during men-
struation and childbirth, the wounds to the souls of Japanese women were in-
deed deep and hopeless.42
The nails that pierced Jesus’s body also pierced St. Mary’s heart. The Kirishi-
tan translators powerfully and eloquently render Mary’s vision of the crucified
Jesus seen from the foot of the cross:
What did [St. Mary] ponder when she saw that his whole body was torn
without leaving any untouched spots; his hands and feet penetrated by
the iron nails; and rivers of blood stream out of his four wounds, greater
than the four rivers flowing out of the terrestrial paradise? How did she
feel in her heart when she saw his blood-stained jewel-face, which would
have made any sorrowful one joyous, with his head held by sharp thorns
not being able to rest it? Mother of the Nation of Heaven [ten no cuni
mo], when you saw this pitiful figure, were there any other sorrows com-
parable to what you experienced? Ah, then, the darkness of sorrows that
covered your heart was thicker than the darkness that covered the whole
world. Precious Virgin, with whom can I compare you, when you saw
that your lament was as bitter as the tides of the Great Ocean? When the
Angel made the annunciation, he said that you were filled with grace, but
now I say that you were filled with pain.43
41 Meditation, 51. The English translator notes that this blood also heals “spiritual infirmities”
(Instructions, 139).
42 On the Blood Bowl Sutra, which teaches that women must suffer in a blood lake hell due
to the impurity of their blood, see Barbara Ruch, “Woman to Woman: Kumano bikuni
Proselytizers in Medieval and Early Modern Japan,” in Engendering Faith, 537–80 (espe-
cially 567).
43 Meditation, 53–53v: “Gojentaiua suqimanaqu vchiyaburare, vonte, axiua canacuguinite
vchitouosare tamayeba, Paraiso Terrealyori nagare idexi yotçuno caua yorimo farucani
Thus, in these spiritual exercises, the Kirishitan meditators identify with the
five sorrows of St. Mary surrounding Christ’s goPassion as they experience suf-
ferings in torture and the execution of their loved ones and themselves. The
female symbols abound, but these are not only related to the femininity of St.
Mary but are also applied to that of God with regard to the incarnation, such
as conception, childbirth, Eucharistic body and blood as nurture and healing,
and laments over the Child’s pain. Kirishitan women, like St. Mary and other
female saints (jennhonin tachi) who walk the path alongside Christ in their
passion, must have found these sacramental female symbols as an affirmation
of their torn, pierced, and broken women’s bodies, which Buddhist society
viewed as unclean. The special devotion to St. Mary as the head of all saints
and the Eucharistic body and blood of Christ became firmly rooted among
Kirishitans.
Like the first example of Stories of the Saints, the Jesuit translators of Med-
itation on the Rosary make images of Catholic saints relevant to the Kirishi-
tans in a Buddhist environment by incorporating Buddhist symbols while at
other times criticizing Buddhism as a religion. Unlike the original written in
the Counter-Reformation context, these Kirishitan translators did not express
any concerns about defending St. Mary and other saints against Protestants
because there were no such debates between Catholics and the Protestants in
Japan at the time.
1.3 History of the Martyrs

Pedro Morejón, the third Jesuit hagiographer examined in this chapter, began
publishing several martyrdom accounts upon his exile from Japan in 1614.44
suguretaru vonchino cauano yotçuno vonqizuyori nagaretamŏuo goranjerarexi toqiua,

icaga voboximexitamŏbeqizo? Canaximi vreŏru monouo yorocobaxetamŏ guao cuganua
vonchini somi tamai, voncobeua surudonaru ibarani sayerare, cutçuroguitamŏbeqi
yŏmo naqi cotouo goranjerarexi toqino voncocoroua icaga maximasubeqizo? Icani
tenno cocumo cono auarenaru vonsugatauo mitamŏ toqi, voboyetamŏ voncanaximini
fitoxiqi canaimi mata yoni arubeqiya? Aa sonotoqi fencaini vouoitaru yamiyorimo von-
mino voncocorouo vouoi mŏxexi vreino yamiua nauo fucaqu maximasubexi. Icani tat-
toqi Virgem goxŭtanua daicaino vxiuono gotoqu nigaqu maximasuuo mitatematçureba,
tarenica vonmiuo tacurabe tatematçuru beqiya? Anjo vontçugueno toqiua von miuo
Graça michimichitamŏ to mosarexicadomo,imaua mata von itami michimichitamŏto
mŏxiaguerarubexi.”
44 On Pedro Morejón, see Josef Franz Schütte, Documentos sobre el Japón conservados en la
colección “Cortes” de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid: Maestre, 1961), 22–26; mhj
i, 1243–44; Juan Ruiz-de-Medina, “Laos,” and Yuuki Ryōgo, “Morejón, Pedro,” in dhcj,
2281, 2743; Francisco Zambrano, “Morejón, Pedro,” in Diccionario bio-bibliográfico de la
Compañía de Jesús en México, 16 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1961–77), 10:407–14; also
see Haruko Nawata Ward, “Women in the Eyes of a Jesuit between the East Indies, New
60 Ward
His three histories of persecutions in Japan between 1612 and 1626 were based
on his own experiences and other first-hand reports.45 The Sacred Congrega-
tion of the Rites recognized Morejón’s efforts in conveying accurate facts to
European readers and in 1630 appointed him as procurator for the examina-
tion of Japanese martyrs for potential canonization.
Morejón’s accounts show that by 1614 Jesuits were feeling that their years of
teachings on Christ’s goPassion and Christian martyrdom had formed a strong
religious identity among Kirishitans, enabling them to face the trials many of
them would suffer. His main enemy remains the Japanese political authori-
ties, which he views as demonic instruments of the devil who are reacting to
the increasing power of God manifest in the Kirishitan movement. He also re-
gards Shinto Buddhism as idolatry and its priests and monks as instruments of
the devil. Morejón makes only passing reference to the Protestants, as rebels
to the church’s true teaching and slanderous informants of Catholics to the
shogunate.
Morejón gives numerous examples of Kirishitan devotions to goPassion and
their use of visible symbols to publicly demonstrate their religious identity.
He notes that books informed the Kirishitan understanding of martyrdom. For
example, Arakawa Adan (martyred 1614), a leader in Higo for over thirty years,
favored Contemptus mundi.46 There is a record in 1615 by Father Jerónimo de
Ángelis (1567–1623), which Morejón cites, that in Fuximi in Ōxū, Hitomi Pedro
pastored a community and read devotional books, which Pedro wrote and
published, in their assembly.47 In the same year, in Suruga, Pedro Soquiu read
the chapters on the four last things (death, judgment, inferno, and paradise)
from Guia do peccador (Guide of a sinner) to encourage his five companions
Spain and Early Modern Europe,” in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age
(1522–1671), ed. Christina H. Lee (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 117–35.
45 These are Pedro Morejón, Relación de la persecución que uvo en la yglesia de Japón y de los
insignes martyres […] el año de 1614 y 1615 (Mexico: Juan Ruiz, 1616); Morejón, Historia y re-
lación de lo sucedido en los reinos del Japón y China […] desde el año de 1615 hasta el de 1619
(Lisbon: Juan Rodríguez, 1621). A fuller analysis of Pedro Morejón, Relación de los mártires
del Japón del año 1627 (Mexico: Juan Ruiz, 1631) is beyond the scope of this chapter.
46 Relación de la persecución, 79, 81. The Jesuits published translations of Contemptus mundi
(The imitation of Christ), including the surviving versions published at Amacusa in 1596
and Kyoto in 1610. On other examples of individual and communal reading of Kirishitan
literature throughout different parts of Japan, see Relación de la persecución, 12, 53, 54, 71,
85; Historia y relación, 99, 134.
47 Historia y relación, 52. On blessed martyr Jerónimo de Angelis (1568–1623), see mhj i, 1128;
Juan Ruiz-de-Medina, El martirologio del Japón, 1558–1873 (Rome: Institutum Historicum
Societatis Iesu, 1999) [hereafter MdJ], 481–82.
of Kirishitan lepers, who were imprisoned with him.48 In 1617, in the north-
ernmost wilderness of Tsugaru, Father Ángelis found that Kirishitans in exile
spent their evening hours discussing the Life of Christ and Stories of the Saints.49
Morejón also reports on Kirishitans practicing the spiritual exercises using

the Meditation on the Rosary. Domingo Enami, a local leader in Kuchinotsu,
prayed several mysteries of the rosary, perhaps based on the Meditation on the
Rosary, with his family before his arrest in 1614.50 In the same group was Mateo
Xinyemon, who described his house on the hill as the Garden of Gethsemane,
which he had read about in the Meditation on Rosary. In 1616, Luis Sotaro,
whose wife had been arrested in 1614, survived severe torture in Cusano. He
wrote down his ordeal at the order of his confessor. In it, he recalls that when
the torturers pierced his thighbones with a thin bamboo branch and he be-
came soaked with blood, he visualized the blood that Jesus sweated in the Gar-
den of Gethsemane in the Meditation on Rosary.51 When Guibe Gorozaemon
Juan was arrested in 1617 in Nagasaki, his elderly mother made a vow to pray
the fifteen mysteries of the rosary one thousand times in the hope that she and
her daughter-in-law, Rufina, would become martyrs with Juan.52
In these accounts, Morejón does not engage in any anti-Protestant debates
about Catholic views on the scripture and the sacraments, and his main reli-
gious opponents remain Buddhists. Morejón has no interest in rebutting the
Protestant slogan of sola scriptura. Instead, he simply repeats his disdain of
Buddhist scriptures.53
Kirishitan devotion to Catholic sacramental objects and rituals is pro-
nounced in Morejón’s descriptions. Devout Kirishitan groups (cumi) frequent-
ly practiced public prayer vigils, flagellation, and processions while singing
litanies in protest. The most visible were rosaries and images. Although rosary
prayers had a medieval Dominican origin, the Jesuits introduced the beads
(contas) early to the Kirishitans, and they shared their publication Meditation
on the Rosary with the late-arriving Dominicans. In ordinary times, Kirishitans
wore rosaries and agnus dei around their necks and openly displayed images
and statues of the saints.54 They demanded their rosaries back from the au-
thorities when they had been confiscated. There are numerous mentions of
48 Historia y relación, 54v. Guia do picador: Zainin uo jen ni michibicu no gui nari (Nagasaki,
1599) is a translation of Luis de Granada’s Guía de pecadores (Salamanca, 1567).
49 Historia y relación, 107v.
50 On Domingo, see Relación de la persecución, 2:63.

51 Relación de la persecución, 103.
53 Ibid., 43; see also Historia y relación, 86v.
54 Historia y relación, 45.
62 Ward
martyrs wearing rosary beads, giving them to their friends as relics, and praying
with them during inquisition, often in a dramatic gesture.55 Morejón tells the
story of Akashi Jirobyōe Juan,56 who was beheaded in his room in Chikuzen in
1617 while he took out his rosary to pray the litany in front of the holy image.
His “virile” wife Catherina then lifted his head up and gazed upon it, uttering
her own desire to be his spouse in martyrdom.
These rosaries were not only sacramental tools of Kirishitan devotion; they
also served as spiritual weapons of resistance. For the warrior class, becoming
a pacifist Kirishitan was a major decision. In 1613, when officials in Fukahori
demanded a rosary from Pedro, he also handed his sword over, saying that he
no longer needed it.57 In Akitsuki in 1613, soldiers came to take the rosary of a
Kirishitan referred to as Mathias, who described feeling as though his weapon
had been taken away. However, he regained his confidence and said: “Faith in
Christ does not reside in rosaries nor images; it is in my courage and sure heart,
which I will show before the inquisitor, by the grace of God.”58 When the in-
quisitor asked why Mathias had handed over his rosary and signed the paper
of recantation, he replied that the soldiers had forcefully taken his rosary away
and had forged his signature on the paper, adding that “although the rosary is
nothing to do with being Kirishitan, I wept with sadness.” At his beheading,
he remarked: “I am happy to die for my faith in Christ.” Morejón writes how
people saw his head call out for Christ three times.59 During the persecution of
Arima in 1614, numerous Kirishitans came out on the streets in support of the
arrested with rosaries rather than “any swords or weapons” in their hands.60
Catholic rosaries became a source of contention with the Buddhists, who
tried to force their prayer beads (juzu) on the Kirishitans as a form of persecu-
tion. Morejón notes that in Arima in 1613, women and children refused these
juzu and hit the Buddhist priest’s head with them to shame him.61 At other
times, authorities used Kirishitan images to mock them. In Suruga in 1614, one
man wore a mask on which the image of Ecce homo was attached and teased
the imprisoned Kirishitans, saying: “Think about what kind of God you wor-
ship. He got massacred and executed by his own people. You are deceived by
55 See Relación de la persecución, 21, 24, 28; Historia y relación, 37v, 47v. Historia y relación, 37v,
69v, 100.
56 Historia y relación, 72–73v.
58 Ibid., 66. See also 67v for remarks of Sugimoto Martin that they cannot take away faith by
taking away his rosary and images (martyred in Higo, 1618).
60 Ibid., 27.
61 Ibid., 23.
the foreign priests who came to Japan to escape their execution and make
money. For whom are you risking your honor, life, property, and family?”62
The desecration of holy images saddened Kirishitans. On Easter Vigil in 1616,
Morejón reports that a shining cross appeared on the sacred site called mount
“Calvary,” as if to console Kirishitans who had been mourning the cross erected
by Lord Kuroda Soyemon Miguel in Akitsuki, which the authorities had burnt
down two years earlier.63
Throughout his history, Morejón relates numerous accounts of Kirishitan
devotion to martyrs’ relics.64 Relic culture was not new in Japan, as every Bud-
dhist temple was said to have been built on a piece of bone of Shakyamuni
Buddha, and Buddhists had a funerary custom of relatives gathering the cre-
mated ashes and bones of the dead. In 1617, frenzied Kirishitans in Ōmura
rushed to the bodies of the beheaded Jesuit João Bautista Machado de Távora
(1580–1617) and Franciscan father Pedro de la Asunción (martyred 1617), while
Távora’s catechist Tanaca Leon dipped his clothes in his teacher’s blood.65 In
1618, Lord Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563–1646), husband of the famous Kirishitan
leader Hosokawa Tama Gracia (1563–1600), ordered the beheadings of six male
and female lay catechists and ordered for seven individuals in Bungo to be cru-
cified upside-down for becoming Kirishitan and assisting the Jesuit brothers
and preachers.66 Despite the public plaque stating that those who stole the
remains would be sentenced to death, Kirishitans managed to gather pieces
of the remains and sent them to Nagasaki. Morejón also expressed his amaze-
ment that Kirishitans gathered the mixed ashes of twelve bodies, including an
unborn fetus, executed in Nagasaki in 1619.67
The lengths to which Kirishitans would go to secure martyrs’ relics alarmed
the authorities, who resorted to hiding or burning the executed bodies and
throwing the ashes into the ocean.68 Yet Kirishitans would often find bits of re-
mains and carry them to Nagasaki, where the Jesuits maintained a burial place,
although all of the churches had been destroyed.69 Kirishitans in Nagasaki
guarded and venerated these holy martyrs’ relics. Nagasaki’s Kirishitan town
district representatives worried about excessive and open Kirishitan visits

63 Ibid., 41–41v. See other miraculous appearances of crosses on 86v.
64 See Relación de la persecución, 20, 29, 30; Historia y relación, 116a, 126v.
65 Historia y relación, 90. On Blessed Juan Bautista Machado de Távora and Blessed Pedro de
la Asunción, and Blessed Tanaka León, see MdJ, 367–69, and 370.
66 Historia y relación, 120r–v.
67 Ibid., 130v.
68 Relación de la persecución, 31–32; 56.
69 See ibid., 20, 30, 56, 60, 66, 68, 86; Historia y relación, 46, 30v–31, 73v, 77v, 100, 118v.
64 Ward
to the martyrs’ tombs as well as their search for the remains that had been
thrown into the ocean.70 Morejón was aware that the shogunate had issued
warnings saying that Kirishitans do not revere their lords but worship executed
criminals by wearing their body parts and clothing.71 Local officials also re-
ported to the shogun that Kirishitans were disobedient, stubborn, ready to rise
in resistance, and not afraid of dying with the name of criminals following
Christ the criminal.
The cross is the central symbol of goPassion, and Kirishitans display the cru-
cifix and banner marked with a cross to proclaim their identity. In one extreme
case, an unnamed Kirishitan in Higo in 1614 branded his forehead with a cross
using a hot iron in his kitchen.72 Ironically, in the same year, the shogun or-
dered the branding of several Kirishitans’ foreheads in Suruga with the cross,
saying that “they all desire to die on the cross anyway.”73 Other Kirishitans
would mark their foreheads with crosses in the blood of the martyrs.74
Finally, Morejón notes that Kirishitans revered St. Mary Mother of Jesus
and biblical and early church saints as intercessors in prayers, emulated the
behaviors of the saints, and used their images for exorcism.75 He also com-
pares individual Kirishitans to the saints. Morejón compares Naitō Julia, who
founded the society of Kirishitan women catechists under his supervision,
for example, to Lydia in the Acts, and Takayama Ucon Justo to Abraham, Job,
and Tobias.76 He names other Kirishitans who reminded him of Saints Adauc-
tus, Andrews, Laurence, Vincent, and Stephen. Morejón applies the term saint
to almost all these Kirishitan martyrs or confessors without waiting for their
canonization.77 Morejón says of the Kirishitans in Arima in 1614 that they
believe in the miraculous healings by the relics of their martyrs, and expect
the papal declaration of these martyrs as saints so that they can celebrate
70 See Historia y relación, 96v, 123v.

71 See ibid., 26v, 27v–28v.
75 See ibid., 59, 65 (emulating St. Peter); Historia y relación, 49 (agnus dei and image of
St. Ignatius of Loyola for exorcism). Also see Historia y relación, 30, 76v, 88.
76 Relación de la persecución, 1:39, 50, and 98 (Julia and Justo); 1:44 (Adauctus for anonymous
Kirishitan); 1:78 (Arakawa Adam to St. Andrews); Historia y relación, 109v (six Kirishitans
burnt at the stake in Tsugaru in 1618 as Saints Laurence and Vincent); 125v (Peter and Paul,
first Kirishitans to be stoned to death, as Stephen). See also Historia y relación, 67 (a con-
verted Buddhist ascetic monk who died as a Kirishitan martyr in Hizen in 1614 as a true
son of Abraham).
77 Historia y relación, 49, 50v.
them officially for the edification of the church in Japan where persecutions
rage.78
In pointing to these marks of the holiness of Kirishitan devotion, Morejón’s
hagiographic intentions are clear.79 Through the words of a martyr, Roman

Yozo, he testifies that the truth of God is revealed not to the wise and learned
but to the little people (Matthew 11:25).80 Throughout his representations of
Kirishitans, he notes his foundational martyr theology that the power of God
is manifest not only in adult men but more strongly in the “weak” women, chil-
dren, and especially young girls, who become martyrs.
In his report on the martyrs of 1626, Morejón again gives detailed accounts
of individual martyrs and pays special attention to women martyrs who were
severely tortured and individually executed. Matsuda-Yahagi Magdalena’s
martyrdom account represents his understanding of the message of goPassion
that a woman, who is perceived as weak and despised, represents Christ in her
martyrdom, and is a saint.81 In prison, Magdalena rejected officials’ demands
of recantation. Despite being displayed naked in public for several days (with
only a small cloth to cover her), and repeatedly being dipped in freezing water,
Magdalena did not apostatize. The officials put her naked on the cross in full
public view, and they brought her wavering husband Leonardo from a prison
to induce his recantation. She did not die, nor did Leonardo apostatize. They
finally sank her to the bottom of the ocean while she sang the psalm Laudate
Dominum. After her martyrdom, Leonardo, still in prison, had visions of his
“Saint” Magdalena, who encouraged him to have faith. Morejón records Leon-
ardo’s testimony that he decided to “follow the cross.” Magdalena’s tortured
and stripped body on the cross thus became a symbol of goPassion, more pow-
erful than sacred images, rosaries, or relics, for Morejón and those Kirishitans
who witnessed her ordeal.
2 voc Captains, Protestant Identity, and Kirishitan Veneration

of the Saints
voc captains’ diaries contain only scant information about Catholic–Protes-

tant interactions, which were relatively rare. For our purposes, evidence can
be gathered from the entries between 1641 and 1655 in Deshima from three
78 Ibid., 35.
79 Relación de la persecución, 11; 17; Historia y relación, 128v; 138v.
81 See Morejón, Relación de los mártires del Japón del año 1627, 234–36; and 240v–42v.
66 Ward
perspectives: (1) voc captains’ Protestant identity; (2) their attention to an

apostate Jesuit priest; and (3) their notes, which substantiate the prevalence
and persistence of Kirishitan practices with images.
As the voc captains were cautious not to discuss Christian matters in their
daily logs, these records contain very few religious statements, and as with
the Jesuit–Kirishitan literature, the entries are devoid of Catholic–Protestant
theological debates. Only on very limited occasions do some signs of the cap-
tains’ Christian identity appear, such as when Japanese officials would force
voc captains to defend their own Christian faith.82 On December 14, 1643, for
example, the voc’s third captain, Jan van Elseracq (in office 1641–42; 1643–44),
was grilled by Japanese officials on the Dutch and Iberian religions. He replied:
We do believe in the same one God as the Portuguese and the Spanish,
but between them and us, there is a huge difference like night and day. In
Holland, we are not allowed to have and publicly display images nor male
and female saints. Large cities maintain between six and eight teachers
and preachers, but they are married with children just like the merchants.
No one is forced to choose a religion, and anyone can read and have the
Bible and other godly books at home; while the Romanists forbid them in
their territories, we are free to read and carry them. In our country, we do
not have papists and such rogues.83
Among the numerous diary entries, this is the clearest statement of the voc
captains’ Protestant beliefs in contrast to the Catholic veneration of the saints.
The Dutch defended their iconoclasm not against the Jesuits but to avert the
incessant suspicion of the Japanese authorities while they continued to exter-
minate the Kirishitans.
The voc captains paid attention to the actions of an “apostate Jesuit
priest,” whom they called Padre João (Paep Juan), formerly Cristóvão Ferreira
82 See Diaries Kept by the Heads of the Dutch Factory in Japan: Dagregisters gehouden bij de
Opperhoofden van het [sic] Nederlandsche Factorij in Japan [Dagregisters in the following]
(Tokyo: Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo, 1993), 8:80–84.
83 Ibid., 8:57–58: “Wel in eenen Godt gelijck alle de Portugesen ende Castillianen gelooven,
maer daer soodanigen differentie tusschen beyden was als den dach ende duysternisse,
geenige, beelden, sancten, offte sanctinnen en werden bij de Hollanders aengebeden,
nochte zulx publijck te doen gedoocht; in groote steden waren boven ses à acht leeraers offte
predicanten niet, die alle haer vrouwen en kinders hadden, gelijck de coopluyden; niemant
en wierde in de consiëntie gedwongen, ijdereen mocht den bijbel, testament ende alle
andere goddelijcke boecken doorlesen ende in zijn huys hebben, ’twelck bij de Rooms-
gesinde (daer te gebieden hebben) verboden wert; papen off diergelijck gespuys hadden
noeyt in ons vaderlant gesien.”
(c.1580–1650), now going by the Japanese name Sawano Chūan, who was as-
sisting with the Kirishitan inquisition in Nagasaki. Although Chūan occasion-
ally served as an interpreter between the government officials and the Dutch,
there were very few occasions in which they interacted with each other. In
some accounts, the apostate Chūan is depicted as being more furiously
anti-Catholic than the quiet Dutch.84 The Dutch captains despised Chūan, but
they also benefited from his activities. For example, the fifth captain, Pieter
Anthonisz Overtwater (1610–82; in office, 1642–43; 1644–45), recorded an in-
cident on March 29, 1645 when the authorities confiscated a printed image
of the annunciation with a passage from Luke 1:28 in Dutch among the cargo.
Father João persuaded the inquisitor that it originated from Catholic Flanders,
a Spanish colony next to the Netherlands, and thus that it did not come from
the Dutch.85 While this incident led to the mass arrest of Kirishitans in Nagasaki,
Kyoto, and Hirado, Chūan’s information saved the Dutch from the accusation
of promoting Christianity.
The voc captains often recorded brief accounts of Kirishitan executions.86
Their observations indicate that, despite the ban, many Japanese, especially
women, continued to practice the Kirishitan religion. During his first proces-
sion to Edo on January 14, 1642, Captain Van Elseracq saw the bodies of five cru-
cified women on the roadside, “seduced by Japanese papists,” whose husbands
had alerted the authorities.87 He also noted that a young woman and five mem-
bers of her family had been sentenced to execution in Nagasaki on May 17. She
wore a rosary and declared that she was a Kirishitan when the authorities ar-
rested her. Captain Overtwater additionally noted that two elderly women had
been arrested for having baptized children, and that most of the ten arrested in
Nagasaki on June 8, 1645 were also elderly women.88 The assistant of Captain
Willem Verstegen (c.1612–59; in office 1646–47) entered just one line in his di-
ary on January 15, 1647, saying: “Today, they hanged four Kirishitan women by
84 After this interrogation, the authorities released the Dutch sailors, and tortured the
Jesuits. Hubert Cieslik, “In the Case of Cristóvão Ferreira,” Monumenta Nipponica 29, no. 1
(Spring 1974): 1–54, here 22–33. Cieslik uses Arnoldus Montanus, Atlas Japannensis: Being
Remarkable Addresses […] (London, 1670) as his main source.
85 Dagregisters, 9:46–7. See also 9:47–8, 9:50 (April 2 and May 11, 1645) on the executions of
Kirishitans in the aftermath of the discovery of the image of the annunciation.
86 See Dagregisters, 8:15 (November 30, 1643); 8:179–85; 201–5 (September 17, 25, 26, 28; Octo-
ber 24, 29; November 3, 1644); 10:154, 156 (May 29 and June 9, 1647), 11; 49 (August 22, 1648);
11:111 (January 5, 1649).
87 Dagregisters, 6:37; 80.
88 Ibid., 9:54. See also 9:41, 50–58 (February 14, 1643; May 11, 19, 24, 1643; June 8, 9, 13, 30, 1643;
July 15, 1645).
68 Ward
their feet.”89 On May 14, 1651, the twelfth captain, Pieter Sterthemius (1618–76;
in office, 1650–51), expressed compassion toward five famous noblepersons
from Higo, who were taken to inquisition and prayed: “May the almighty God
soften the stubborn hearts of the Japanese and help these poor souls.”90
3 Inquisition and Kirishitan Symbols
Ikuo Higashibaba, scholar of comparative religions, argues that Kirishitans ad-

opted the new Christian symbols as a more efficacious replacement for or ad-
dition to the familiar ones used to receive worldly benefits such as healing and
relief from pain and suffering.91 Yet he does not provide explanations of how,
in the later period, Kirishitans viewed these symbols of the cross, sacred im-
ages, rosaries, and relics, all symbols of pain and suffering, as symbols of their
power. Martyrs certainly did not expect relief from their pain and suffering. It
is true that many Japanese may only have had a superficial understanding of
Christian doctrine.92 However, the preceding examinations of the Jesuit hagio-
graphic literature give evidence for the deep conviction that the mysteries of
goPassion gave the converts the power to resist the unjust oppressors, one that
was not lost on women and children, whom Japanese society regarded as weak
and marginalized.
Both the Jesuit texts and voc captains’ diaries show that inquisitors knew
how important such objects as crosses, rosaries, reliquaries, and images were
for Kirishitan identity, and that they continued to confiscate these to weaken
the Kirishitan movement. Briefly, in conclusion, we can see the effect of thor-
ough Jesuit hagiographic education without Protestant challenges in the in-
quisitional method of efumi, or treading on holy images, made famous by The
Silence, the novel of Shusaku Endo (1923–96), and its recent film adaptation
by Martin Scorsese. These images of Christ, Pieta, and perhaps saints, were in-
deed powerful symbols for Kirishitans. The inquisitors cleverly used the sacred
to suppress the final resistance of the religious minority group. Higashibaba
notes a peculiarity in the women’s reactions to efumi, citing the inquisitor
Inoue Chikugo no Kami:
89 Ibid., 10:38. See also 10:154, 156; 11:49, 111 (May 29 and June 9, 1647; August 22, 1648; January
5, 1649).
90 Ibid., 12:158.
91 See Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. 24–49.
92 See Yoshitomo Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, trans. Robert K. Jones (New York:
Weatherhill, 1972), 77–78.
Old wives and women when made to tread upon the image of Deus get
agitated and red in the face; they cast off their headdress; their breath
comes in rough gasps; sweat pours from them. And, according to the indi-
vidual, there are reportedly women who venerate the fumie, but in a way
so as to remain unobserved.93
But he does not cite another peculiar note: “Korean Kirishitans, once convert-
ed, are deeply dedicated, the men and the women. Especially the women, once
persuaded, are deeply dedicated.”94 This may be further proof that Korean
hostage women, at their most socially marginalized existence, understood the
significance of goPassion and chose martyrdom over survival.95 The message
of goPasson of paradoxical liberation potentially could have led to a revolu-
tion, not with weapons but with rosaries, and the authorities felt an exigency
in exterminating all things and persons Kirishitan.
The fruit of the first encounters among the Jesuits, the Dutch voc, the
Japanese authorities, and the ordinary Japanese was bittersweet. Catholicism
seems to have won a spiritual battle as the Kirishitan veneration of the martyr
saints empowered the weaker members of society, such as women and war-
hostages, in their resistance against national religious oppression. Yet Catholi-
cism lost politically, as the Japanese authorities eliminated it, at least from the
surface of Japan, for over 250 years. The Dutch did not intend to win the souls
of the Japanese for Protestantism and succeeded in winning the commercial
favor of the Japanese authorities during the same period of time. Ultimately,
however, there was no religious competition nor any real encounters between
Catholics and the Protestants in early modern Japan.
Bibliography
Andaya, Barbara Watson “Between Empires and Emporia: The Economics of Christian-
ization in Early Modern Southeast Asia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History
of the Orient 53 (2010): 357–392.
93 Higashibaba, Christianity, 144–45; citing from George Elison’s translation in Deus De-
stroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1991), 206.
94 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 207.

95 Among other examples, see the poignant torture account of Isabel, native of Korea (mar-
tyred 1629), written by Ferreira in “Isabel Martyred at Unzen” in Juan Ruiz-de-Medina,
The Catholic Church in Korea: Its Origins 1566–1784, trans. John Bridges (Rome: Institutum
Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1991), 321–25.
70 Ward
Anesaki, Masaharu. Kirishitan shūmon no hakugai to senpuku. Tokyo: Dōbunsha, 1930.

Asami, Masakazu. Kirishitan jidai no gūzō reihai. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2009.
Blussé, Leonard. “Divesting a Myth: Seventeenth-Century Dutch–Portuguese Rivalry
in the Far East.” In Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia, edited by An-
thony Disney and Emily Booth, 387–402. New Delhi; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Boxer, Charles R. The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1951.
Boxer, Charles R. Dutch Merchants and Mariners in Asia 1602–1795. London, Variorum,
1988.
Boxer, Charles R. The Dutch Seaborne Empire. New York: Penguin, 1990.
Calvin, John, and Jacopo Sadoleto. A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Ge-
nevans and Calvin’s Reply. Edited by John C. Olin. New York: Fordham University
Press, 2000.
Cieslik, Hubert. “In the Case of Cristóvão Ferreira,” Monumenta Nipponica 29, no. 1
(Spring 1974): 1–54.
Eire, Carlos M.N. War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to
Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Elison, George. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Fukushima, Kunimichi. Kirishitan shiryō to Kokugo kenkyū. Tokyo: Kasama shoin, 1973.
Gaastra, Femme S. “The Organization of the VOC.” In The Archives of the Dutch East In-
dia Company (VOC) and the Local Institutions in Batavia ( Jakarta), edited by Louisa
Balk et al., 13–27. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Higashibaba, Ikuo. Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice.
Israel, Jonathan I. The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1601–1661. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1982.
Jedin, Hubert. Der Abschluss des Trienter Konzils, 1562/63 Ein Rückblick Nach Vier Jahr-
hunderten. Katholisches Leben und Kämpfen im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung 21.
Münster: Aschendorff, 1963.
Kataoka, Rumiko. A vida e a acção pastoral de D. Luís Cerqueira S.J., Bispo do Japão
(1598–1614). Macau: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1997.
Kojima, Yukie. Kirishitan-ban “Supiritsuaru Shugyō” no kenkyū: “Rozairo no Kannen”;
Taiyaku no kokugogakuteki kenkyū; Shiryōhen ge. Kasama sōsho 214. Tokyo: Kasama
Shobō, 1989.
Koso, Toshiaki, ed. Sanctos no gosagveo go vchi nvqigaqi. Tokyo: Yūshodo, 2006.
Lach, Donald F. Asia in the Making of Europe. 3 vols. in 9. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago, 1965.
Loarte, Gaspar. Instructions and Advertisements: How to Meditate upon the Mysteries of
Rosary of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. Menston: Scolar Press, 1970 [1613].
Maryks, Robert A. The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and
Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Studies in Medieval and Reforma-
tion Traditions 146. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Morejón, Pedro. Relación de la persecución que uvo en la yglesia de Japón y de los in-
signes martyres […] el año de 1614 y 1615. Mexico: Juan Ruiz, 1616.
Morejón, Pedro. Historia y relación de lo sucedido en los reinos del Japón y China […]
desde el año de 1615 hasta el de 1619. Lisbon: Juan Rodríguez, 1621.
Morejón, Pedro. Relación de los mártires del Japón del año 1627. Mexico: Juan Ruiz, 1631.
Obara, Satoru. Santosu no gosagyō. Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1996.
Obara, Satoru. Supiritsuaru shugyō. Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1994.
Okamoto, Yoshitomo. The Namban Art of Japan. Translated by Robert K. Jones. New
York: Weatherhill, 1972.
O’Malley, John W. Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit History. Leiden: Brill, 2013a.
O’Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2013b.
O’Neill, Charles E., and Joaquín M. Domínguez, eds. Diccionario histórico de la Com-
pañía de Jesús: Biográfico-temático. 4 vols. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis
Iesu, 2001.
Prakash, Om. On the Economic Encounter between Asia and Europe, 1500–1800. Farn-
ham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014.
Ruch, Barbara. “Woman to Woman: Kumano bikuni Proselytizers in Medieval and Ear-
ly Modern Japan.” In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan,
edited by Barbara Ruch, 537–80. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002.
Ruiz-de-Medina, Juan. The Catholic Church in Korea: Its Origins 1566–1784. Translated
by John Bridges. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1991.
Ruiz-de-Medina, Juan. El martirologio del Japón, 1558–1873. Rome: Institutum Histori-
cum Societatis Iesu, 1999.
Schütte, Josef Franz. “Christliche Japanische Literatur, Bilder und Druckblȁtter in ei-
nem unbekannten Japanischen Codex aus dem Jahre 1591.” Archivum historicum
Societatis Iesu 9 (1940): 249–51.
Schütte, Josef Franz. Documentos sobre el Japón conservados en la colección “Cortes” de
la Real Academia de la Historia. Madrid: Maestre, 1961.
Schütte, Josef Franz ed. Monumenta historica Japoniae I: Textus catalogorum Japoniae
aliaque de personis domibusque S.J. in Japonia, informationes et relationes, 1549–1654.
Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu 111. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis

Iesu, 1975.
Suzuki, Hiroshi. Kirishitanban Hiidesu no dōshi. Osaka: Seibundō, 1985.
72 Ward
Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London: Sheed &
Ward, 1990.
Toda, Toshio. Amakusa Shimabara no ran: Hosokawa han shiryō ni yoru. Tokyo: Shinjin-
butsu Ōraisha, 1988.

Tok̄yō Daigaku. Diaries Kept by the Heads of the Dutch Factory in Japan: Dagregisters
gehouden bij de Opperhoofden van het [sic] Nederlandsche Factorij in Japan. Tokyo:
Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo, 1993. 12 vols.
Ward, Haruko Nawata. “Images of the Incarnation in the Jesuit Japan Mission’s Kirishi-
tanban Story of Virgin Martyr St. Catherine of Alexandria.” In Image and Incarna-
tion: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image, edited by Walter S. Melion
and Lee Palmer Wandel, 489–509. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
Ward, Haruko Nawata. “Women in the Eyes of a Jesuit between the East Indies, New
Spain and Early Modern Europe.” In Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific
Age (1522–1671), edited by Christina H. Lee, 117–135. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012.
Yamamoto, Hirofumi. Kan’ei jidai. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1989.
Yoshida, Kazuhiko. “The Enlightenment of the Dragon King’s Daughter in Lotus Sutra,”
trans. Margret H. Childs. In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern
Japan, edited by Barbara Ruch, 297–324. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002.
Chapter 4
Jesuit and Protestant Use of Vernacular Chinese in

Accommodation Policy
Sophie Ling-chia Wei
1 Introduction
A period of 240 years elapsed in the period between Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)
entering China and the Protestants’ decision to send their own mission to Chi-
na. The Protestants eventually arrived in the early nineteenth century, after the
Jesuit order had been disbanded and nearly eighty years after the Yongzheng
Emperor (r.1722–35) had imposed a ban on Christian missionary work in 1723.
During that period, Jesuit missionary work was limited to proselytizing se-
cretly in the coastal cities of China. When the Protestant missionaries arrived,
they lived and traveled in the limited area of the Thirteen Factories in Canton
and Macau. As a result, the literature often assumes that the Jesuits had little
influence on the Protestants’ missionary work. However, as we will see in this
chapter, this is not necessarily true. By analyzing Protestant documentation
discussing past Catholic missions and their expectations for their mission to
China, including William Milne’s (1785–1822) A Retrospect of the First Ten Years
of the Protestant Mission to China, this chapter shows that Protestant mission-
aries, like their Jesuit counterparts, made use of vernacular Chinese and the
style of chapter-based novels as part of their efforts to convert the Chinese.1 By
comparing Joseph Prémare’s (1666–1736) Ru Jiao Xin 儒交信 (Discussions be-
tween a Confucianist and a believer) with Milne’s Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang
Lun 張遠兩友相論 (Discussion between Zhang and Yuan or two friends), this
chapter aims to highlight the similarities between these two generations of
missionaries in their use of a policy of accommodation: scholarly friendship
and the use of the vernacular and chapter-based novels, which were adopted
1 Chapter-based novels are a common form of Chinese fiction. Each chapter usually begins
with a chanted poem and is followed by a story. The writers of chapter-based novels often
employed this format to comment on social and political issues. Each chapter frequently
ends with the set phrase: “If you would like to know what happened thereafter, that will be
disclosed in the ensuing chapter” 欲知後事如何,且聽下回分解.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_006
74 Wei
into the catechism. I then attempt to bring to light the similarities in the lin-
guistic and literary devices used by the Jesuits and Protestant missionaries.
2 The Rise and Fall of the Jesuit Mission to China and the Protestants’
Memory of the Jesuits
The propagation of Christianity in China can be traced to the Tang dynasty

(618–907). The Nestorian Stele2 entitled 大秦景教流行中國碑 (Stele to the
propagation in China of the luminous religion of Daqin) records that Chris-
tians, led by a Persian missionary named Alopen (fl. seventh century), reached
the Tang dynasty capital Xi’an in 635 CE and were allowed to establish places of
worship and propagate their faith. With the aim of making Christianity more
acceptable to the Chinese, the Nestorian missionary Jingjing 景淨 (fl. eighth
century) used terminology from Daoism and Buddhism in stories written on
the stele about God and Jesus. Yet, by the sixteenth century, after hundreds of
years of illegal and underground activity, there is no reliable evidence of any
practicing Christians in China. The Jesuit arrival in China marked a new era
of exchange, not only between China and the West but also in the spread of
Christianity. The Jesuits introduced Western science and knowledge into Chi-
na, yet they also adapted themselves to the country’s customs and literary tra-
ditions. For they saw that, for the purposes of proselytization, they would need
to avoid inadvertently denouncing China’s long-held traditions. They needed
to let Christianity survive and co-exist with Confucianism, a tradition that was
especially revered by the highest classes of society, including the emperors and
the literati. The degree of the missionaries’ accommodation determined the
extent to which their efforts would be recognized and how successful their
proselytization among the Chinese would be.
Accordingly, when Ricci arrived in China in the late Ming dynasty (1368–
1644), he adopted an accommodationist approach: he not only studied the
Chinese classics but also aligned himself with the Confucianists and called
himself a Xiru 西儒 (a “Western Confucianist”). He also learned Chinese and
translated some of the Gospels. Ricci believed that monotheism was hid-
den in the ancient Chinese classics.3 However, in late seventeenth- and early
eighteenth-century China, the Jesuits found that accommodating themselves
2 The Nestorian Stele is a 279-centimeter tall limestone block with text documenting 150 years
of early Christianity in China. It was written in Chinese and Syriac and was erected in 781.
3 Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism are often referred to as the three main religions in
China. However Confucianism is closer to a school of philosophy than a religion.
Jesuit and Protestant Use of Vernacular Chinese 75
to the image of a “Confucianist” was insufficient for the needs of proselyti-

zation. In order to spread Christianity more widely and also more firmly, the
missionaries had to refute the accusation that Christianity was heretical. The
Jesuit missionaries’ dilemma was that, if they did not accept the essential ele-
ments of the classics, then they might be rejected as exotic or foreign; however,
if they accepted some principle or philosophy that contradicted Christian doc-
trine, their accommodation would be theologically invalid.
Such concessions led to internal strife among the many orders of the Roman
Catholic Church, eventually generating the Chinese Rites Controversy. From
the time the Jesuits entered China, they realized that worshipping heaven and
earth as well as ancestors had been part of Chinese ritual life from as early as
the Shang (c.1600 bce–c.1046 bce) and Zhou dynasties (1045 bce–256 bce).
If they were to stigmatize the Confucian worship of past ancestors as idola-
try, the missionaries would only force the Chinese people into a binary choice
of identity, either Catholic or traditional Chinese, but not both. As a result,
the Jesuits, and especially Ricci, tolerated and sought to accommodate this
worship ritual so that the Chinese Catholic converts would not have to sac-
rifice their faith or filial piety: they could sustain their religious faith in God
and maintain secular piety toward parents and ancestors. This enculturation
policy in the Jesuits’ proselytization efforts was successful in attracting the
Chinese literati and common people to the Christian faith; however, as men-
tioned, it also led to the Chinese Rites Controversy and conflicts between the
Jesuit order and the Roman Catholic Church during the early Qing dynasty
(1644–1912).
Thus the accommodation policy eventually led to a heated controversy, fol-
lowed by a ban on Christianity in China. On one side, the Kangxi Emperor
(r.1661–1722) decreed that unless the Catholic missionaries followed “the Ricci
method,” by which he meant accommodation, all proselytization of Catholi-
cism would be prohibited. On the other, in 1704, Pope Clement xi (r.1700–21)
sided with the Dominicans, who were opposed to ritual ancestor worship and
the use of such terms as Tian and Di to refer to God, and sent a legate to China
to inform the Chinese of the papal decision. The Kangxi Emperor then issued
imperial decrees banning Christianity and forbidding its teaching. After the
Yongzheng Emperor assumed power, he officially banned Catholicism and ex-
pelled the missionaries from China. The tug-of-war between the Qing court
and the Roman Catholic Church therefore resulted in the ensuing ban on Ca-
tholicism in China. The privileges the Jesuits had enjoyed and the controversy
they had caused gave rise to mixed feelings in the minds of the Protestant mis-
sionaries who came almost a century later; this was especially well document-
ed in their records of propagation.
76 Wei
Milne’s A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China
discusses the proselytization efforts of the Jesuits. He and his new wife, Ra-
chel Milne (1783–1819), arrived on the Chinese coast in 1813, joining Robert
Morrison (1782–1834), who had arrived in 1807. For the next nine years, Milne
learned the Chinese language while living in Canton, Java, Penang, and Ma-
lacca. Unlike Morrison, who was viewed as an imperial agent with colonial
interests, Milne was a cultural pioneer in this network of China-oriented posts
ranging from the Chinese coast to Southeast Asia. He helped Morrison write
his famous Bible and made a signal contribution to the beginnings of the writ-
ing, printing, and distribution of Chinese Christian literature in his own right.
Milne’s Retrospect not only depicted his life as a missionary but also recorded
his comments on and criticisms of the work of earlier Catholic missionaries in
the China mission.
Milne stated that the Jesuits enjoyed the freedom to do their missionary
work in China and were supported by the Kangxi Emperor; he also noted that
several Jesuits were distinguished by their knowledge of Chinese literature.4
However, he also pointed out that, in order to convert the Chinese people,
some Jesuits did not adhere to the principles of proselytization set by the Ro-
man Catholic Church: “There were among them [the Jesuits], some who were
tainted with skepticism and others who loved the honors of a Court more than
the labours of the Christian ministry.”5 Hence, in his opinion, during the period
of the Rites Controversy and before the ban on Catholicism, there were some
among the Jesuits who were more inclined to pander to the Qing emperor in
order to win the favor of the imperial court. This was also the dilemma for the
first batch of Protestant missionaries in China. On the one hand, the Protestant
missionaries inherited the foundations the Jesuits had laid. In fact, they made
use of the terminology the Jesuits had used in their translations of the Bible
and in their missionary work. They admired the impact the Jesuits had on the
literati and the imperial court, as well as their superb command of classical
and vernacular Chinese. However, on the other hand, Milne also states that he
wished the Chinese government and the people would be able to distinguish
the Protestants from the Jesuits and Catholic missionaries6 and soften their
oppression of the Protestants. Pressures stemming from the previous contro-
versy about ancestral worship and idolatry had passed down to the Protestant
missionaries. They faced the same problem: Should they accommodate to
4 William Milne, A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China (Malacca:
Anglo-Chinese Press, 1820), 10–11.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 232.
hinese ritual and identify Tian and Di with God? Or should they maintain a
C
hardline stance between Christian and Chinese beliefs? As Milne describes it,
the controversy was caused by the Jesuits’ adaptation of elements from Chi-
nese paganism and enigmatic texts, as well as the parallels they drew between
those texts and the Bible.
Milne explains that the Jesuits’ accommodation policy had given rise to
a want of confidence in the testimony of the Catholic missionaries, espe-

cially of the Jesuits […]. It had prevailed for a considerable time before
[…] their writings were considered as little better than a collection of
falsehoods. […] [However], there was no just ground for such a sweeping
charge against the Romish Missionaries.7
Milne goes on to explain the Jesuits’ work as a necessary evil. He reasoned that
they had intended to lead Chinese readers into seeing counterparts of the dei-
ties they were already worshipping in the ceremonies of the Church of Rome.8
The new batch of Protestant missionaries took inspiration from the Jesuits’
use of publications as a medium for proselytization and their use of vernacu-
lar Chinese. Catholic missionaries, including the Jesuits, had published books
more than one hundred years before the Protestant mission arrived. Ricci’s
first Chinese work, Jiaoyou Lun 交友論 (Discussion on friendship), for exam-
ple, was popular among the Chinese literati of the late Ming dynasty. In addi-
tion, later Jesuits, including Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), Johann Adam Schall von
Bell (1592–1666), Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), and even Nicolò Longobar-
do (1559–1654), left Chinese works for proselytization. Milne supported the
spread of Christianity in print. However, impediments arose from “the watch-
ful and persecuting jealousy of the Chinese government and from want of local
experience.”9 Printing Christian books thus became a dangerous and expen-
sive business: dangerous in view of the Chinese government’s oppression and
expensive given the lack of local printing experience. Therefore, when Milne,
the second member of the Chinese mission, arrived in July 1813 but was unable
to obtain permission to remain in Macao and Canton, he helped to open up
a second market for their printing products—in the Chinese settlements of
Southeast Asia. He initially intended to publish an English-language monthly
or quarterly to be circulated among the London Missionary Society (lms) mis-
sionaries in the East as a means of exchanging information as well as a medium
7 Ibid., 46–47.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 231.
78 Wei
for publishing their works. This plan then became broader in scope, evolving
to include a Chinese periodical that was “between a newspaper and The Evan-
gelical Magazine,” which would impart general knowledge together with the
Christian doctrine. Milne eventually began publishing periodicals when he re-

turned to Malacca, with the publication of a Chinese monthly, Tsăh She Sŭ Meh
Yuĕ Tung Ke Chuen 察世俗每月統記傳 (A general monthly record, containing
an investigation of the opinions and practices of society), the first modern Chi-
nese newspaper and magazine.10 On April 17, 1815, Milne left Canton with his
family, a language tutor, a printer, and paper. It was from this period that the
heart of the lms’s Chinese printing, along with the other work of the Chinese
mission, was transferred to Malacca, with Milne bearing the burden.11
In addition to the publication of Christian books, Morrison’s and Milne’s
translation projects were also influenced by the style of written Chinese that
the Jesuits had used. The first Chinese translation of the New Testament was
completed by Morrison in 1814, which was followed, after Milne had joined the
work, by the full Bible translation in 1819. The manuscripts were sent to Ma-
lacca for printing in 1823. It would appear that Joshua Marshman’s (1768–1837)
translation predated Morrison’s, though Morrison’s translation was completed
earlier (but printed later) and within the boundaries of China; thus it is gen-
erally agreed that Morrison’s version was the first full Chinese version of the
Bible.
One example of influence from the translation and written style of the Jesu-
its can be seen in the way the Protestants translated “τὰ πετεινὰ” (the birds).
Marshman translates this as ji 鷄 (fowl), instead of Jesuit Jean Basset’s (c.1645–
1715) and Morrison’s niao 鳥 (bird), because Marshman had relied on the trans-
lation in the King James Version (kjv). Morrison renders it tian zhi niao 天之
鳥 (birds of the sky), which is essentially the same as Basset’s 天鳥, save for the
addition of a superfluous particle (之). The original is τὰ πετεινὰ (the birds);
Basset’s translation localizes the Chinese expression, because two-character
terms are more common in the Chinese language, such as fei niao 飛鳥 (the
flying birds) or tian niao 天鳥 (the birds of the sky). Morrison’s choice of dic-
tion also imitated the collocation in Chinese and followed the same approach
used by the Jesuits.12
10 The Romanization used by Milne here is different from the current Romanization system.
11 Su Ching, “The Printing Press of the London Missionary Society among the Chinese” (PhD
diss., University College London, 1996), 58, 61.
12 Morrison in fact published a translation of the Acts of the Apostles in 1810, but it was just
a transcribed copy of the Acts he had obtained from the British Museum—a work done
by Jesuit priest Jean Basset more than a century earlier. See Clement Tsz Ming Tong, “The
James Legge (1815–97), another Protestant translator of the Chinese clas-

sics, also followed the Jesuits’ strategy in his attempts to locate the supposedly
monotheistic origins of Confucianism and link it with Christianity. After read-
ing the Confucian classics and performing detailed analyses, Ricci had identi-
fied the European Deus with Shangdi 上帝 (Lord above) from the Confucian
classics. Ricci cited examples from the classics, which he used in Tianzhu Shi
Yi 天主實義 to argue that Shangdi was the equivalent of the European Deus.
He claimed that, as the creator, the Christian God was in a position above that
of heaven. Therefore, Shangdi, “above heaven,” could be equated with Tianzhu
天主, “the Lord of Heaven.” In addition to Legge’s decision to translate Shangdi
上帝 in the Book of Documents, the Book of Songs, and other Chinese classics
as “God,” Walter Henry Medhurst (1796–1857), another Protestant missionary,
also collected a great amount of evidence and commentaries on Shen神 and
Shangdi from the Chinese classics.13
As well as the Jesuit influence in translation and written style, the Protes-
tant missionaries, including Milne, may also have been influenced by the Jesu-
its’ decision to write in vernacular Chinese, given that they adopted the same
style for their works. In his Retrospect, Milne pointed out that “[China’s] oral
dialects are very numerous and […] widely different from each other […].”14
In dispensing oral instruction, Morrison found the catechism and tracts com-
posed by Milne to be of great assistance. Written in a plain style, these tracts
were easily understood by Chinese people who had yet to convert. Thereafter, a
colloquial style was commonly adopted by the Protestant missionaries in their
proselytization.
The diversity of dialects and the major differences between dialects
and the koiné15 had also attracted the attention of the Jesuits, forcing them
to put more effort into learning Chinese and its sounds. Between 1584 and
1588, Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) and Ricci began learning the sounds and
characters of Chinese; they are believed to have compiled and co-edited the
first Portuguese–Chinese dictionary, the Dizionario portoghese–cinese. Later,
Protestant Missionaries as Bible Translators: Mission and Rivalry in China, 1807–1839”

(PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2016), 5.
13 Gong Daoyuan 龔道遠. Jinshi Jidujiao He Ru Jian De Jiechu 近世基督教和儒教的接觸
[The contacts between Christianity and Ruism in contemporary time] (Shanghai: Shang-
hai People’s Press, 2009), 139.
14 Milne, Retrospect of the First Ten Years, 153.
15 Koiné is a standard language for inter-dialectal communication. The early Ming dynasty
Mandarin was a koiné based on the Nanjing dialect; it later switched to the Beijing dialect.
80 Wei
in Qing China, Prémare, a Jesuit Figurist,16 focused on Chinese grammar and

identified specific vernacular usages from classical Chinese. Prémare’s efforts
focused primarily on two areas: applying Figurism to the Chinese classics and
researching the Chinese language.

Prémare studied the Chinese language during a trip to China; he later re-
solved to persevere in the study of Chinese and its writing system. His work on
the Chinese language, the Notitia linguae Sinicae, compiled important quotes
and sentences from the Chinese classics for the missionaries’ studies of the
language and its characters as well as the categorization of what he termed
“modern Chinese” and “ancient Chinese.” What he called modern Chinese was
what we might term vernacular Chinese. In his analysis of vernacular Chinese,
he quoted from the Yuanqu 元曲 and popular novels that used colloquial lan-
guage. Prémare also read and studied a great number of the Chinese classics.
These Jesuit Figurists digested the many sources and commentaries of the
Yijing and reproduced the ideas in works they wrote in Chinese, with the aim
of linking the Yijing with Christianity.
Having lived in local Chinese-speaking communities, Prémare focused on
learning the Chinese languages and writing in the most popular literary form
of the language from the Ming and Qing dynasties, that of the vernacular nov-
el. Prémare even drew parallels between the holy figures of Christianity and
the deities from Chinese folk religion in order to facilitate the conversion of
the Chinese middle class. The Figurists believed that if they were able to link
Christianity with Chinese customs and with one of the Chinese people’s great-
est hopes, that is, having a son, they could potentially persuade more Chinese
to convert. Thus Prémare’s Chinese translation of The Biography of St. Joseph
聖母淨配聖若瑟傳 transposes the image of St. Joseph, a patron saint protect-
ing his wife and son, to the image of a deity’s patron. This deity is named Zhu
Sheng Niang Niang 註生娘娘 and is in charge of facilitating birth. Prémare add-
ed in his translation that the people who worship St. Joseph give birth to boys
who would sustain the family’s name and blood. His experience in translating
biblical stories into novella form also extended his interest into the Chinese
vernacular novel. He assembled many lines and folk sayings from the scripts
of Yuanqu 元曲 and from popular novels, such as Yu Jiao Li 玉嬌梨 (The two
16 During the early Qing dynasty, the Jesuit Figurists, including Joachim Bouvet and Joseph
de Prémare, espoused the view that the symbols, figures, numbers, terms, and Chinese
characters in the classics proved that the Chinese people had believed in the God of
Christianity since antiquity.
fair cousins), Haoqiu Zhuan 好逑傳 (The fortunate union), and Shui Hu Zhuan
水滸傳 (Water margin).17
Prémare’s detailed research on classical and vernacular Chinese was dem-
onstrated in the Notitia linguae Sinicae as well as the Ru Jiao Xin, which may
have been the first attempt at mimicking traditional Chinese novels, since it
used the traditional method of heading each chapter with a couplet that gave
a synopsis of its contents. While Prémare’s Ru Jiao Xin and Milne’s Zhang Yuan
Liang You Xiang Lun were both written in the format of the chapter-based nov-
el and contain similar elements, such as vernacular Chinese, it is interesting to
compare the two works in order to explore how the Protestant missionaries,
including Milne, were influenced by the Jesuits’ accommodation policy.
3 Scholarly Friendship
One of the similarities in both works is the discussion that takes place between
two friends. The Confucian tradition encouraged scholarly friendship and in-
tellectual discussion; and the Christian catechism was also a form of discus-
sion. The novel Ru Jiao Xin depicts how a Chinese Catholic named Sima Shen
司馬慎 helped convert a Confucian scholar named Li Guang 李光. Making
friends based on trust and respect is a doctrine in Confucianism and hence lies
at the core of this novel, and Sima Shen uses this spirit of friendship to convert
Li to Catholicism. In this vernacular novel, the catechetical method serves as
a framework to a dialogue that is written in vernacular Chinese. Prémare em-
ployed the catechism not only because Catholics used this method in their
own religious instruction but also because it closely resembles the format of
the vernacular novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which frequently take a
critical stance with respect to society or are embedded with moral lessons. Nu-
merous commonalities exist between the two forms through which Prémare
could incorporate the catechisms into the vernacular novel.
The most widely circulated of Milne’s printed works was the Zhang Yuan
Liang You Xiang Lun. It was initially published in Tsăh She Sŭ Meh Yuĕ Tung
Ke Chuen over twelve consecutive issues. In 1819, Milne edited the articles and
published them in book form. From 1819 to the beginning of the twentieth
17 Yang Fu-main 楊福綿, “Luo Mingjian, Li Madou, pu han ci dian suo ji lu de ming dai
guan hua” 羅明堅、利瑪竇《葡漢辭典》所紀錄的明代官話 [The Ming Mandarin

recorded in Portuguese–Chinese dictionary by Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci], in Jin
Dai Xi Fang Han Yu Yan Jiu Lun Ji 近代西方漢語研究論集 [Collection of articles about
the Western research on Chinese languages in modern times], ed. Zhang Xiping 張西平
and Yang Huiling 楊慧玲 (Beijing: Commercial Press 商務印書館, 2013), 557.
82 Wei
century, sales of the Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun exceeded a million cop-
ies, possibly as many as two million.18 The novel’s two leading characters are
Zhang and Yuan; whereas Zhang is a devoted Christian, Yuan, his neighbor,
knows nothing about Christianity. During one encounter, they discuss Christi-
anity. Yuan then visits Zhang frequently to ask questions. The twelve chapters
of catechism and dialogues touch on issues such as the principles and features
of Christianity, evangelization, repentance, the features of Jesus, prayers, the
resurrection, and the last judgment. The reason why this Chinese Christian
novel was so widely circulated is because of its vernacular style—a subject
elaborated on in the next section—and Milne’s accommodation to both Chi-
nese literary and Confucian traditions.
For thousands of years, Chinese literature had been characterized by a
question-and-answer format and collections of sayings. The catechism, which
also followed a question-and-answer format, was employed in the instruction
of children and was adopted by the various Protestant confessions from near
the beginning of the Reformation. Since the catechism had a close analogue in
the Chinese tradition, the format would have been familiar to Chinese readers.
Milne also paid attention to the details of scholarly friendship. In Chapter 4
of Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun, for example, Milne describes Zhang and
Yuan as they “meet and greet with courtesy and serve tea”;19 in Chapter 5, Zhang
and Yuan bid each other farewell by “saluting with both hands”;20 in Chapter
8, Milne depicts the festivity and celebration of the Lantern Festival, includ-
ing the dragon dance, fireworks, and firecrackers.21 From time to time, Milne
also introduces ancient popular sayings, such as “if one lapses for even a day
in doing good deeds, myriads of evils will be born” 一日不念善,諸惡悉皆生.
By adopting the theme of scholarly friendship from Confucianism, as well as
its written format, the missionaries could present themselves as less foreign,
enabling them to draw more Chinese people and converts closer to Christian-
ity. That both works employ the same element, scholarly friendship, also dem-
onstrates that it was imperative to accommodate to the Chinese literary and
Confucian traditions in order to penetrate the minds of the Chinese readers.
18 Daniel H. Bays, “Christian Tracts: The Two Friends,” in Christianity in China: Early Protes-
tant Missionary Writings, ed. S.W. [Suzanne Wilson] Barnett and J.K. [John King] Fairbank
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 23.
19 敘禮奉茶. See William Milne, Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun 張遠兩友相論 [Discus-
sion between Zhang and Yuan or two friends], in Wan qing jidujiao xushi wenxue xuan cui
晚清基督教敘事文學選粹 [A selection of Christian narrative literature in the late Qing
dynasty], ed. Lei Tsz Pang John 黎子鵬 (Taipei: CCLM Publishing Group, 2012), 16–21.
20 拱手而別. Ibid., 21–23.
21 Ibid., 29–32.
4 Vernacular Chinese as a Means of Reaching a Larger Group

of Readers
As indicated earlier, the Jesuits were intensely interested in the Chinese lan-
guage, including its characters, sounds, and dialects. The Jesuit Figurists, es-
pecially Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730) and Prémare, devoted themselves to
deciphering words and characters and categorizing phrases in the Chinese
language. The Yijing became the most compelling source of evidence in their
argument that Chinese characters have a hidden message of monotheism and
are linked with Christianity. Prémare’s Notitia linguae Sinicae made an unprec-
edented breakthrough in this regard by collecting hundreds of phrases and
sentences from the Chinese classics and popular novels to form a framework of
Chinese grammar. Bouvet collected different registers of usage for describing
God and folk activities in the Tianxue Benyi 天學本義 (The essential meaning
of the study of God) and Gu Jin Jing Tian Jian 古今敬天鑒 (The mirror of pay-
ing homage to God in the ancient times and at present). Bouvet and Prémare
shared the same interest in colloquial Chinese.
At the end of Tianxue Benyi and Gu Jin Jing Tian Jian, there is a section
entitled “Ji Jing Wen Su Yu Zhu Ju Yin Fu Xiang Dui Faming Tian Xue Ben Yi”
集經文俗語諸句印符相對發明天學本義 (Collection of words and phrases
from classics and folk sayings by which, after corresponding and comparing
with each other, the essential meaning of the study of God was thus estab-
lished). The collection of entries includes specific religious terms, phrases, and
sentences that could be used for proselytization.22
This collection of entries can be divided into four categories. First are the
terms or sentences that could be used to describe God (called Tian Ye 天爺 or
Shangtian 上天in Chinese). For example, one phrase, wu suo bu zhi 無所不知
(not having that which is not known; knowing all), is used to describe God as
omniscient. Under this entry, three different registers of the phrase are given
in Chinese: Minsu民俗 (sayings of the folk), Shisu 士俗 (sayings of the literati),
and Jingwen 經文 (quotations from the classics).23
Minsu民俗: What you have done secretly will be known by Tian Ye 天爺

(Father in heaven).24
22 Sophie Ling-chia Wei, “Trans-textual Dialogue in the Jesuit Missionary Intra-lingual

Translation of the Yijing” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2015).
23 Ibid., 20–21.
24 In Chinese, 你在暗地裡做的事天爺都知道.
84 Wei
Shisu 士俗: As soon as one thought appears, Shangtian 上天knows it.25

Jingwen 經文: There is Tian 天—that knows me!26 (From the Confucian
Analects.)
The collection not only includes assorted descriptions for God but also the
rituals for the worship of God, phrases for folk activities, and words of admo-
nition for educating the Chinese. As for the rituals and worship of God, one
of the entries, Jing Zhu Li Yi 敬主禮儀, was also divided into three registers of
Chinese sayings:
Minsu 民俗: Burn the incense; kowtow and worship Lao Tian Ye 老天爺
(Old Father in heaven).27
Shisu 士俗: Burn the incense and worship Tian 天.28
Jingwen 經文: To sacrifice to Di 帝in the suburb of their metropolis (From
the Book of Rites).29
In the Ru Jiao Xin, Prémare, following in the footsteps of Bouvet, also used ver-
nacular Chinese to attract a larger Chinese readership. In this novel, he applied
his proselytization to a dialogue between two scholars, one who believes in
Christianity and the other who believes in Confucianism. Prémare describes
how:30
Catholicism speaks about Tianzhu while our Confucianists talk about

Shangdi. According to the Western Confucianists, Tianzhu has no begin-
ning or end; he is self-contained and self-sufficient; he is omnipotent,
omniscient, and the ultimate good; he is the ultimate supreme with no
comparison; he is the ultimate fairness and selflessness […] However,
in the six Confucian classics, Shangtian, Shentian, Shangdi, and Huang-
tian Shangdi are no different from the Tianzhu indicated by the Western
Confucianists.
25 In Chinese, 你舉念上天便知.
26 This is the English translation of James Legge. In Chinese, 知我者其天乎.
27 In Chinese, 燒香叩拜老天爺.
28 In Chinese, 焚香拜天.
29 In Chinese, 祀帝于郊.
30 Wei, “Trans-textual Dialogue,” 92–93.
天教言天主,吾儒言上帝,據西儒說,天主就是無始無終,自有自足,全能全
知全善,至尊無對,至公無私。[…] 然據儒教的六經,然上天、神天、上
帝、皇天上帝,其與西儒言天主,一些也不差。)31
Though this book was composed in the form of a dialogue and used the ver-
nacular form of the Chinese language to describe God, Prémare also employed
the terms Shangtian 上天, Shangdi 上帝, and Huangtian Shangdi 皇天上帝in
the dialogues of these literati. In this vernacular novel, Prémare uses names
for God that he had learned from the Chinese classics; these were used in
the dialogues to convince the Chinese literati that the monotheistic God of
Christianity had already existed in the Chinese classics for thousands of years
and that he was identical to the Tian or Di that the literati referred to in daily
conversation.
Prémare also used the vernacular for terms of address. He commonly uses
xiong zhang 兄長 (brother) and ren xiong 仁兄 (benevolent brother), as well
as the term of self-address xiao di 小弟 (little brother). In addition, Prémare
frequently employs folk sayings and expressions, which further demonstrates
his proficiency in vernacular Chinese. For example, he uses the phrase “兄長恁
的著嚇,”32 which in Chinese means “Brother, you don’t have to be frightened.”
These terms and expressions are not common in the Mandarin Chinese of to-
day; however, Ren恁 (You) is a very common term in many dialects, while zhex-
ia 著嚇 (to be frightened) was often used colloquially. Another example lies in
the following sentence: “虧你是個伶俐的人,聽那些沒巴鼻的夢話.”33 The sen-
tence was uttered by a juren 舉人 (a successful candidate in the imperial exam-
inations at the provincial level during the Ming and Qing dynasties) to explain
that Christianity is not a heresy. Ba bi 巴鼻 is not a common term today but was
commonly used in folk sayings at the time. Wei Xiang Cong Tan 委巷叢談 (Mis-
cellaneous sayings of the small valleys), which is volume 25 of the Xihu Youlan
Zhiyu 西湖遊覽志餘 (Notes on travel around west lake) by Tian Rucheng 田汝
成 (1503–57), contains the sentence “when one is irresponsible for the things
he has done, he could be called mei diao dang 沒雕當 or mei ba bi 沒巴鼻.”34
31 Joseph de Prémare, Ru Jiao Xin 儒交信 [Discussions between a Confucianist and a be-
liever], MS no. Chinois 7166, 21–22, stored in Bibliothèque nationale de France. Author’s
translation.
32 Ibid., 3.
33 In English: “I thought you were smart, but you still count on those words without solid
foundation.” Ibid., 4–5.
34 明.田汝成.西湖遊覽志餘.卷二十五.委巷叢談:「言人作事無據者曰沒雕當,
又曰沒巴鼻。」.
86 Wei
The above examples show that Prémare’s efforts to learn the C hinese language
and its dialects contributed to his novel and that he must have exhaustively
studied colloquial Chinese in order to write a novel with such an extensive use
of the vernacular.
Milne’s Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun demonstrates a similar use of ver-
nacular Chinese. First, Milne, like Prémare, also paid attention to terms of
address. Figures in the novel always call the other characters zun jia 尊駕 (liter-
ally, your honored carriage) and refer to themselves as yu di 愚弟 (your stupid
brother). It is very common for the common people to address each other’s
vehicles instead of addressing each other directly in order to show due respect.
Furthermore, Milne also attached much importance to dialect use, such as
xiang hao 相好 (to be intimate with each other) and xiang jiang 相講 (talk to
each other), which were then still very common in some dialects in China. In
addition, it is also very common to find colloquial terms that often appear in
the vernacular fiction novels of the Ming dynasty. For example, bu zhong yi 不
中意 (not satisfying) and wan qian 贃錢 (making money) were employed by
Milne, though they appeared earlier in Chuke Pai’an Jingqi 初刻拍案驚奇 (First
strike the table in surprise)35 by Mengchu Ling 凌濛初 (1580–1644) of the Ming
dynasty and Qui Shen Zhuan 鬼神傳 (Legends of ghosts and deities)36 from the
Qing dynasty. From the above examples, it is clear that Milne also employed
vernacular Chinese to reach a wider audience of potential Chinese converts.
More importantly, the dialectal terms they employed also left traces of the
missionaries’ travels. Wan qian 贃錢 (making money) is a dialectal term from
Canton, and Milne’s use of it reveals his tracks through Canton and Macau.
5 Chapter-Based Novels
Prémare and Milne both adopted the format of the chapter-based novel for
their two works. Prémare used the format of previous vernacular novels to
make Christianity more acceptable to the Chinese. He started each chapter
with Chinese poetry written by himself and left each chapter unfinished, wait-
ing to be continued in the next chapter. This format followed the storytelling
tradition of hua ben 話本 (a form of Song and Yuan folk literature). The tone
and story described in hua ben is such that the storyteller seems to be directly
in front of the reader. The Chinese Catholic Sima Shen was actually modeled on
35 初刻拍案驚奇 .卷三 :「老身虛心冷氣 ,看他眉頭眼後 ,常是不中意 ,
受他凌辱的。」.
36 《鬼神傳》: 「況你丈夫不日登山伐木,亦贃些餘財。」.
Prémare himself. However, in the novel, he is not a foreign missionary dressed

like a member of the Chinese literati, but rather a true Chinese literatus who
uses solid evidence to convert his friends. To convert more Chinese people, Li
Guang, the main character, breaks Buddhist statues into pieces. His wife ini-
tially cries out loud on seeing the broken statues, but later converts. Li’s entire
family thus enjoys the blessings of God. Then Prémare writes a tragic ending,
which can be seen as a warning to middle-class readers and commoners that
only those who believe in God will receive good things and blessings.
Morrison and Milne similarly adopted the format used in Chinese fiction.
In his Retrospect, Milne lists the three registers of Chinese literature. He notes
that the Four Books and Five Classics are remarkably concise and considered
highly classical, that most works of fiction were written in a perfectly collo-
quial style, and that imperial work 聖諭 was designed to be read twice a month
in the public halls of the different provinces for the instruction of the people.37
Among these, Milne thought that the style of the San Kuo 三國 (The three
kingdoms) was the best choice of persuasive style.
The San Kuo Milne refers to here is actually the San Kuo Yanyi 三國演義
(Romance of the three kingdoms), one of the most influential chapter-style
novels from Ming and Qing China. It is not surprising that Milne continued to
use this format for his Christian novel after his analysis of Chinese literature.
In order to cater to Chinese readers, Milne intentionally imitated those
chapter-style novels and published the twelve chapters in his Retrospect over
twelve issues. At the end of each chapter, like Prémare, Milne used the set
phrase: “If you would like to know what happened thereafter, that will be dis-
closed in the ensuing chapter” 欲知後事如何,且聽下回分解. The literary de-
vices and colloquial style sated the appetites of Chinese readers and kept them
in suspense, waiting for the next chapter to reveal more. That may be the rea-
son why this work circulated so widely in late Qing China.
6 Conclusion
Though Prémare’s Ru Jiao Xin was not published in early Qing China, the man-
uscripts of his work, the Notitia linguae Sinicae, were later obtained by Morri-
son and published in Malacca in 1831. Based on the relationship and friendship
between Morrison and Milne, it may seem a little premature to conclude that
Milne’s literary and linguistic thought was influenced by Prémare. However,

after investigating the Protestant missionaries’ documents and analyzing the
two works Ru Jiao Xin and Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun, it seems likely that
37 Milne, Retrospect of the First Ten Years, 89.
88 Wei
Milne chose to adopt the same elements that Prémare had used—scholarly
friendship, vernacular Chinese, and the chapter-style novel—as part of an ac-
commodation strategy in their missionary work. Though Prémare used a more
elegant style in his work, Milne’s work eventually reached out to a broader au-
dience in breadth and depth. Foreign missionaries acquired this work to learn
colloquial Chinese, while local printers rewrote the book in local dialects. In
the tenth year of the Tongzhi Reign (1871), Jia Yi Liang You Lun Shu 甲乙兩友
論述 (Discussion and elaboration between friends A and B), a book rewritten
in local dialects, was published by the Gospel Hall of Taiping Street, Foochow
(Fuzhou) (福州太平街福音堂).
In summary, it is possible to argue that the Jesuits had a greater influence
on the work of the Protestant missionaries than is often assumed. Despite the
restraints and the ban on missionary works imposed by the imperial court, the
Protestants’ memory of the Jesuits and the impact of the Jesuit missionaries on
China helped this new batch of Protestant missionary–translators to embark
on their missions with a similar approach in their method of accommodation.
Bibliography
Bays, Daniel H. “Christian Tracts: The Two Friends.” In Christianity in China: Early Prot-
estant Missionary Writings, edited by S.W. [Suzanne Wilson] Barnett and J.K. [John
King] Fairbank. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Gong Daoyuan 龔道遠 . Jinshi Jidujiao He Ru Jian De Jiechu 近世基督教和儒教的接
觸 [The contacts between Christianity and Ruism in contemporary time]. Shang-
hai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2009.
Milne, William. A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China.
Malacca: Anglo-Chinese Press, 1820.
Milne, William. Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun 張遠兩友相論 [Discussion between
Zhang and Yuan or two friends], in Wan qing jidujiao xushi wenxue xuan cui 晚清基
督教敘事文學選粹 [A selection of Christian narrative literature in the late Qing
dynasty], edited by Lei Tsz Pang John 黎子鵬 . Taipei: CCLM Publishing Group,
2012.
Prémare, Joseph de. Ru Jiao Xin 儒交信 [Discussions between a Confucianist and a
believer], MS no. Chinois 7166, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Su Ching. “The Printing Press of the London Missionary Society among the Chinese.”
PhD diss., University College London, 1996.

Tong, Clement Tsz Ming. “The Protestant Missionaries as Bible Translators: Mission
and Rivalry in China, 1807–1839.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2016.
Wei, Sophie Ling-chia. “Trans-textual Dialogue in the Jesuit Missionary Intra-lingual

Translation of the Yijing.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2015.
Yang Fu-main 楊福綿 . “Luo Mingjian, Li Madou, pu han ci dian suo ji lu de ming dai
guan hua” 羅明堅、利瑪竇《葡漢辭典》所紀錄的明代官話 [The Ming Man-

darin recorded in Portuguese–Chinese dictionary by Michele Ruggieri and Matteo
Ricci]. In Jin Dai Xi Fang Han Yu Yan Jiu Lun Ji 近代西方漢語研究論集 [Collection
of articles about the Western research on Chinese languages in modern times], ed-
ited by Zhang Xiping 張西平 and Yang Huiling 楊慧玲 . Beijing: Commercial Press
商務印書館 , 2013.
Chapter 5
Shaping the Anthropological Context of the

“Salus populi Sinensis” Madonna Icon in

Xian, China
Hui-Hung Chen
1 Background
The Jesuits were the devout patrons of the cult of the Holy Mother. In most
of the surviving records written by the Chinese literati and officials who had
befriended or were aware of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the Virgin Mary was fre-
quently remarked upon in terms of the Christian image. Thanks to the Jesuits’
introduction of the Marian devotion, the faith and image of the Holy Mother
developed into a powerful symbol of identity for local Chinese communities,
one that helped them to survive the persecution of Christianity; the role of the
cult in the survival of these communities accordingly offers fertile ground for
exploring the attitudes of the Protestant missionaries toward the Jesuit legacy
when they first arrived in China in the nineteenth century.1
In order to explore the encounter between Protestantism and Catholicism
in China, this chapter begins by discussing a well-known Chinese Marian im-
age with an unknown past, namely the Chinese-style copy of the Madonna
icon of the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, housed in the Field Museum of
Chicago in the United States (figs. 5.1, 5.2).
A visual comparison indicates that it is related to the Roman icon the Jesuits
brought to China in the late sixteenth century.2 Given the similarities between
the two, one scholar even goes so far as to claim that the Chinese icon deserves
the name “Salus populi Sinensis” (Salvation of the Chinese people), equal to
1 See Lance Gabriel Lazar, “Confraternities” and “Marian Congregations,” in The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2017), 188–90, 501–2.

2 The Xian painting was used as the frontispiece of an interdisciplinary work by various Jesuit
and Western scholars, where it was explicitly dated as being of the “late sixteenth to early
seventeenth century.” See John W. O’Malley, S.J. et al., eds., The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and
the Arts 1540–1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_007
Shaping the Anthropological Context 91
Figure 5.1 Madonna with Child, ink and color on paper,

mounted on silk scroll, found in Xian, China,
The Field Museum, Chicago, US
© The Field Museum, Image No.
A114604_02d, Cat. No. 116027, Photogra-
pher John Weinstein.
92 Chen
Figure 5.2 Madonna with Child of St. Luke, Salus populi Romani
icon, wooden plate, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome.
the title “Salus populi Romani” of the Roman icon, to indicate the Marian role
as the protector of the Chinese and Roman people.3
The painting was discovered by anthropologist Berthold Laufer (1874–1934)
in Xian西安 , Shaanxi province 陝西省 , in 1910. From a historical and anthro-
pological perspective, it is unclear what a Chinese duplicate with the visual
3 G. Anichini, “La ‘Madre di Dio’ di S. Maria Maggiore riprodotta nell’antica arte Cinese,”
L’illustrazione vaticana 3, no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 37–38.
characteristics not only of the Roman icon but also of the Buddhist white-
robed Guanyin would have meant to the Chinese in the chaotic period when
it was originally discovered. As we will see, the Xian painting highlights a
longer tradition among the local Catholic communities who preserved the
Marian cult. This tradition contrasts with the situation when Christianity was
re-introduced to China in the nineteenth century, as the new Catholic mis-
sionaries tended to avoid pursuing a strategy of cultural accommodation and
syncretism, reflecting the detrimental and lasting effect of the Chinese Rites
Controversy.4 For a similar reason, there were often conflicts between local lay
leaders and the new missionaries, as the latter seemed to be seeking to gain
control over the local communities, whereas the local lay leaders managed the
communities in their own customary ways.5 As a result of this broader trend, it
is likely that the inculturation apparent in the Xian Madonna was also rare in
the eyes of contemporary Chinese, revealing a past history of Catholicism from
which the new missionaries’ strategies diverged.
Given its significance in late imperial society and its role in forming and
sustaining local Catholic communities, the Marian cult and its evolution in
China needs to be examined in order to establish the broader context un-
derlying the evangelization work of the Protestants and the Catholics when
missionaries returned to the country in the nineteenth century. When Laufer
acquired the Xian Madonna in the early twentieth century, north China was
the site of encounters between the Protestant missionaries and the Catholic
communities the Jesuits had helped to establish a number of centuries ear-
lier. One of the most well-known Protestant missionaries active in the north,
the Welsh Baptist Timothy Richard (1845–1919), admired many aspects of the
Jesuits’ previous work, including their strategy of cultural accommodation.
By re-contextualizing the Xian Madonna in the modern period, this chapter
consequently seeks to highlight the Protestant encounter with an important
aspect of the Jesuit legacy.
2 The Xian Madonna and Its Iconography
Laufer found the Xian Madonna painting in a non-Christian official’s house in

Xian, or Xianfu西安府 (“Si-ngan fu,” in Laufer’s article), as it was known in the
4 Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 2013), 60–69.
5 Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012),
73; David E. Mungello, The Catholic Invasion of China: Remaking Chinese Christianity (Lan-
ham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 15–45.
94 Chen
Qing period (1644–1912). In Laufer’s view, the signature of a famous Chinese

painter of the Ming dynasty, Tang Yin 唐寅 (1470–1524), should be viewed as a
later addition, since Jesuit missionaries had yet to appear in the country at the
time of Tang’s death (fig. 5.3).

According to this interpretation, the original signature may have been
erased and replaced with the forged signature of Tang, as possibly indicated
by a white scratch that is still visible against the plain dark background of the
painting. The official from whom Laufer acquired this painting assured him
that his family had owned it for “at least five or six generations,” which would
suggest that it had been in the family since the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Tang’s signature may have been added in the Yongzheng雍正 period
(1723–35), when anti-foreign and anti-Christian attitudes became dominant at
court and in wider society, with the aim of preventing the image’s destruction.
In Laufer’s words, the painting’s owners “substituted the magic name of T’ang-
yin for whom all Chinese evince such a deep reverence that it acted sufficiently
as a protecting talisman. And it is due to this wonder only that the painting has
been preserved to the present day.”6 Laufer’s collection, which is currently on-
line on the website of the American Museum of Natural History, contains over
6,500 objects he gathered in China, and Tang is among the few prominent Chi-
nese painters whose names appear in this collection and Laufer’s reports (figs.
5.4, 5.5).7 Hence Laufer’s dating was based on his knowledge of Tang’s original
signature and other works.8 There were also two records in the Field Museum
describing the painting as a work from the eighteenth century (fig. 5.6).
Laufer presented the painting to the Franciscan missions in Xian and their
bishop Auguste-Jean-Gabriel Maurice (in office 1911–16). Maurice greatly ad-
mired the painting, stating that he had “never seen a similar one during his
lifelong residence of this city.” Maurice then summoned some Chinese priests
who concluded that the work “was executed by a Chinese” in the Wanli period
(1572–1620), when Ricci first entered China. Moreover, Laufer also states that
the painting had been re-mounted on silk around a year before he acquired it,
thereby replacing the original silk, which, he claims to have been told, dated
to the Ming period (1368–1644). Thus, in Laufer’s view, Tang’s signature was a
forgery, and the original painting would have been produced in the late Ming
period.9
6 Berthold Laufer, “The Chinese Madonna in the Field Museum,” Open Court (January 1912):
1–6, here 5–6.

7 Five of Tang’s paintings were found in this collection; the call numbers are 70/4548, 70/9942,
70/11417, 70/11418, and 70/11977. For details of Laufer’s expedition, see Bennet Bronson, “Ber-
thold Laufer,” Fieldiana: Anthropology, n.s. 36 (September 2003): 117–26, here 118–19.
8 Laufer, “Chinese Madonna,” 3–4.
9 Ibid., 3.
Figure 5.3 Signature of Tang Yin, Xian Madonna, The Field Museum,
Chicago, US
© The Field Museum, Image No. A114604_02d,
Cat. No. 116027, Photographer John Weinstein.
96 Chen
Figure 5.4 Tang Yin, Portrait of Flute Player, paper

scroll, Anthropology Catalog no. 70/11418.
Courtesy of the Division of An-
thropology, American Museum of
Natural History, New York, US
Figure 5.5(a, b) Two pages from Laufer’s field notebooks, nos. 2421, 2422,
503 on the above all works of Tang Yin, no. 2422 is the
note for the painting of Fig. 5.4.
Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History,
New York, US
98 Chen
The Xian reproduction was made with ink and color pigments mounted on
a silk scroll. The bright red of the Madonna’s halo and the boy’s Chinese gar-
ment attracts the viewer into the mystery of the image, which is mingled with
the vivid Chinese pictorial style and format. The central figure of the Madonna
wears a long white garment, holding a Chinese boy in her left arm. When com-
paring this image with the Roman Madonna, it is clear that the poses and hand
gestures of the Madonna and her child are the same as those of the original.
However, the Chinese boy no longer has a halo. The linear expression of the
Madonna’s drapery in the scroll belongs to Chinese pictorial traditions, but
the shading appears to emulate European chiaroscuro techniques. The hair
and dress of the little boy is depicted in a way that is conssistent with Chinese
tradition. He also holds a Chinese-bound book in his left hand. In terms of
the representation of the subject, the image is in all likelihood a Chinese ver-
sion of the Roman icon, although there is no direct evidence to connect its
mother version to the Jesuit mission. Its visual qualities consequently serve as
compelling evidence of the Roman icon’s appearance in China.
The Roman icon is believed to have entered China in Ricci’s period.10 Ricci’s
personal account repeatedly specifies the presence of the Madonna icon of St.
Luke from Santa Maria Maggiore, and he presented a painting of the Virgin
Mary by St. Luke to the Chinese emperor Wanli萬曆 (r.1572–1620) in 1601. Ricci
describes the painting as “a very large image in the form of St. Maria Maggiore,
brought from Rome and well painted” (una immagine molto grande della forma
di S. Maria Maggiore, venuta di Roma et assai ben pinta).11 Unfortunately, nei-
ther this painting, nor any other duplicate, survives today. Additionally, a panel
with oil paintings of “the Virgin Mary and Child” on the two sides, apparently
duplications also of the Roman icon, was found in Macao.12 In 2010, the Xian
10 I discuss the Xian Madonna and its iconography in Hui-Hung Chen, “Liangfu yesuhuishi
de shengmu shengxiang: Jianlun mingmo tianzhujiao de zongjiao” 兩幅耶穌會士的聖
母聖像:兼論明末天主教的「宗教」[Two Jesuit Madonna icons: Religious dimen-
sions of Catholicism in late Ming China], Taida lishi xuebao 臺大歷史學報 [Historical
inquiry] 59 (June 2017): 49–118, here 53–63.
11 Pasquale M. D’Elia, Fonti ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci a la storia
delle prime relazioni tra l’Europa e la Cina (1579–1615); Storia dell’ introduzione del Cris-
tianesimo in Cina scritta da Matteo Ricci, 3 vols. (Rome: La libreria dello Stato, 1942–49),
1:cvii, 2:91 (quotation), 2:123–25, 2:334, 2:506; D’Elia, Le origini dell’arte Cristiana Cinese
(1583–1640) (Rome: Reale Accademia d’Italia, 1939), 31–32.
12 See a register in the following inventory: Inventário fotográfico de objectos de arte sacra
existentes nas igejas de Macau: Escultura e pintura (Macao: Direcção dos Serviços de
Educação e Cultura, 1981), no. P-24.
Figure 5.6 File card for the Xian Madonna.

© The Field Museum, Image No. A114604_02d,
Cat. No. 116027, P hotographer John Weinstein.
Madonna was displayed in the Vatican’s exhibition commemorating the four-

hundredth anniversary of Ricci’s death.13
This Roman icon was especially associated with the Jesuits. According to art
historian Gauvin Bailey, the Jesuits “perpetuated the early medieval devotion
to the miraculous image,” and Madonna icons and cults were disseminated
to the wider world from Europe, such as the Madonna of Santa Maria Mag-
giore in Rome, the Madonna del Popolo in Rome, and the Virgin of Loreto.14
The Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome was particularly associated
with the Jesuits’ missions to China and Japan. In 1569, the superior general of
the Society of Jesus, Francisco de Borja (in office 1565–72), petitioned Pope
Pius v (r.1566–72) for permission to make a replica of the Salus populi Romani
icon in the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. This icon was believed to be an
authentic portrait of Mary, painted in person by St. Luke, according to an-
cient Catholic tradition. It was believed to be an acheiropoieton (something
not made by hand), or a miraculous image, that bore the exact likeness of the
13 The first exhibition of the Xian Madonna in the Vatican, which opened in 2009 and was
extended to 2010, was entitled “Al crinali della storia: Fr. Matteo Ricci [1552–1610], fra
Roma e Pechino.” See Sarah Delaney, “Vatican Honors Jesuit Missionary to China: Father
Matteo Ricci,” Jesuits: National Jesuit News (October 30, 2009).
14 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America 1542–1773
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 8–9.
100 Chen
Virgin’s face.15 Around the same year of 1569, Ricci, the Italian Jesuit who would
later become the most prominent Jesuit missionary in China in the early stage,
joined the recently founded Marian Congregation of Rome.16 Superior General
Borja’s r equest was granted, and additional copies of the icon were produced
to accompany the Jesuits’ missions around the world.17 The Roman icon was
a particularly effective choice for use in missionary work, as it was celebrated
as a sacred image and as a symbolic relic of the Virgin Mary, thus bearing dual
features of representation and true presence.
Laufer claimed that the painting was popularly identified in Xian with Tian-
zhu shengmu (“T’ien-chu shêng mu”). In other words, the local people in Xian
identified the female figure as the Christian Holy Mother rather than mistak-
ing the subject for a native deity, such as “Kuan-yin.”18 Tianzhu shengmu was
literally translated as the Holy Mother of the Lord of Heaven, an appellation
already settled in the late Ming period for the Virgin Mary. Ricci used the two
Chinese characters Tianzhu, meaning “Lord of Heaven,” to translate “Dio”; thus
the Holy Mother, as “Signora Madre di Dio,” was translated in Chinese as Tian-
zhu shengmu.19 Tianzhu and Tianzhu shengmu have been standardized in the
following years. If the local context of the Xian Madonna had known the title
Tianzhu shengmu for long, or people had recognized it with the Jesuit appel-
lation, it could mean that this Madonna would have in all likelihood been con-
sidered from the Jesuit missions.
Despite being an intentional copy of the Roman icon, with which it shares
many similarities, there are also five noticeable changes from the original, the
first of which is the color of the Madonna’s robe. In the Western tradition, the
Madonna is never depicted wearing white, yet this is not the case with the
Xian Madonna, whose white robe is clearly similar to depictions of the white-
robed Guanyin. Second, the Chinese Madonna is painted in full-length rather
than in the half-length type of the original, so that her two feet are depicted
15 Steven Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: The Sistine and Pauline
Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 120–22;
Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans.
Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 31–77, 478–90; G. Anichini,
“La ‘Mater Dei Dignissima’ di S. Maria Maggiore,” L’illustrazione vaticana 2, no. 15 (August
1931): 22–26.
16 D’Elia, Fonti ricciane, 2:552; Jonathan Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New
York: Penguin, 1985), 239–40.
17 For a history of the reproduction and distribution of this Marian icon from Europe to the
rest of the world, see Pasquale M. D’Elia, “La prima diffusione nel mondo dell’imagine di
Maria Salus populi Romani,” Fede e arte (October 1954): 1–11.
18 Laufer, “Chinese Madonna,” 4.
19 D’Elia, Fonti ricciane, 1:193.
and rendered barefoot. This style is identical to the way Guanyin was depicted
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the goddess never being por-
trayed in half-length (fig. 5.7) as this would have been deemed inappropriate
by the Chinese.20
The third difference between the painting and the original icon is the disap-
pearance of the cross on the garment at the front of the Madonna’s forehead.
The fourth is that the child has no halo, in strong contrast to the bright red
halo of the Madonna—who thus appears to be the only divine figure in the
painting—which conforms to the iconography used to depict Guanyin, where
the focus of divinity lies in the main female figure. The fifth and final change
concerns the technical and stylistic methods used in its composition, such as
the imitation of the drapery. It is unknown which exact model, supposedly
a replica in painting or print functioning as a medium agent in this Chinese
translation, was used by the Chinese maker.
Hence the Chinese would have been attracted to the image’s depiction of “a
woman holding a child,” with the divinity of this sacred image deriving from
it being based on the female figure. Both the iconographical type of “a woman
holding a child” and the divinity of the female figure could have been derived
from the indigenous Guanyin cult. This iconography, nevertheless, completely
diverged from the theological meaning of the image of Madonna with Child
and would also have been in conflict with the meaning of the Virgin Mary
that the missionaries tried to convey in their texts. The Xian Madonna repre-
sents the Roman icon through Chinese stylistic characteristics while retaining
almost every fundamental feature of the original icon. Although it is a copy of
the Madonna icon, the image is also an image of Guanyin.
Guanyin, the deity of mercy or goddess of compassion, is the Chinese name
for the Buddhist bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara, one of the most significant Bud-
dhist cults in China. One of the most common representations was the image
of the feminine white-robed Guanyin 白衣觀音 . Chinese Buddhists associ-
ated this cult with fertility and would petition the white-robed Guanyin for a
male child, thus giving Guanyin the name “the Bestower of Sons” 送子觀音 or
“Child-Giving Guanyin.” The white-robed Guanyin derives from a goddess in
esoteric Buddhism, and the white color of her mantle symbolizes the deity’s
20 Charbo F. Hartman suggested that the Chinese portraiture of ancestors and divinities
did not depict a half-length figure, which might be considered mutilated somehow or
deemed inappropriate, see his letter of June 15, 1966, to Kenneth Starr, the curator of the
Field Museum, which is housed in the Field Museum’s archive.
102 Chen
Figure 5.7 White-robed Guanyin, from Sancai tuhui yibailiu

juan三才圖會一百六卷 , woodcut, original edition in 1609.

© National Central Library, Taipei, Taiwan,
call number 309 08059.
maternity for all of the heavenly deities, buddhas and bodhisattvas. However,
as historian Chün-fang Yü has stated, the white-robed Guanyin is “a fertility
goddess who nevertheless is devoid of sexuality. She gives children to others,
but she is never a mother […]; she is thus a figure of motherliness, but not of
motherhood.”21 According to canonical descriptions, Guanyin was a bodhisat-
tva with multiple and expedient variants in Buddhist doctrine; therefore, even
though feminine Guanyin imagery predominated during the Ming period,
Guanyin was usually portrayed as an androgynous figure, and thus in a way
that clearly differs from the Christian notion of the Holy Mother.22
One of Guanyin’s legendary acolytes, present within sixteenth-century ico-
nography and folklore, was Sudhana, a young pilgrim who became a legendary
devotee and attendant of Guanyin. Sudhana was usually depicted as a child
and positioned beside Guanyin (fig. 5.8). As a result, images of Guanyin often
contain a child who is either Sudhana or a symbol of the child-giving power of
Guanyin. Consequently, the child depicted in Guanyin imagery was never used
to represent the divinity. Instead, the child was usually depicted paying rever-
ence to the central figure, Guanyin. Thus, although the Xian Madonna can be
seen as an image of Guanyin, it is either a visual appropriation or combination
of the two religions. Alternatively, the blending of Christian and Chinese picto-
rial styles in the Xian Madonna may have been a localized effort to conceal an
overtly Christian message. Another picture with the dual subject identification
of the Guanyin/Madonna, along with the similar style and tradition to the Xian
painting, also bears the signature of Tang (fig. 5.9). Tang’s attribution in such
dual iconography or any relevant traditions requires further investigation.
3 The Long Century of Christian Persecution
This Madonna/Guanyin image survived the persecution of Christianity in Chi-

na. Christians had been persecuted in China since the late Yongzheng period,
21 Chün-fang Yü, “Guanyin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara,” in Weidner,

Latter Days of the Law, 151–81, here 172. A more comprehensive discussion of Guanyin in
China can be found in Yü’s book: Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 407–48. For the maternal nature of the Holy
Mother, see Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary
(New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 177–331.
22 Lee Yu-min李玉珉, Guanyin tezhan觀音特展: Visions of Compassion; Images of Kuan-yin
in Chinese Art (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2000), 38–39.
104 Chen
Figure 5.8 A leaf from the album Guanshiyin pusa sanshier yingshen 觀世音菩薩三十
二應身 (Thirty-two Manifestations of Guanyin), Xing cijing 刑慈靜 , painted
in gold on paper, latter half of the sixteenth century, 28. 5*29.5 cm.
© National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.
yet it was from the 1740s onward that they began to face severe repression. The
historical evidence suggests that the religious persecution was primarily led by
local authorities, who harbored a much stronger hatred of Catholicism than
the imperial court in Beijing.23
23 The official Chinese documents containing requests to supervise local Catholic commu-
nities belong to the imperial court archives, now housed in the First Historical Archives
of China, Beijing. A total of 669 documents have now been published; see Zhongguo diyi
lishi danganguan中國第一歷史檔案館 [The First Historical Archives of China], ed.,
Qing zhongqianqi xiyang tianzhujiao zaihua huodong dangan shiliao清中前期西洋天主
教在華活動檔案史料 [Archival sources of Western Catholicism in China in the early
and middle Qing periods], 4 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju中華書局, 2003).
Figure 5.9 Guanyin/Madonna and child, ink and colors on

paper, inscription: “Sutai Tang Yin jinghui”蘇台唐
寅敬繪 (Tang Ying from Suzhou paints reverently),
Qing Dynasty, 186*73 cm (image: 122.3*59 cm).
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
By the 1700s, there were around two hundred thousand Christians in China,
and the missionaries included the Jesuits, who were the majority, as well as
the Franciscans and Dominicans.24 However, the Jesuit population declined
after 1720 due to the Chinese Rites controversy. In the period between 1720 and
1842, when the missionaries were in exile, the Chinese clergy and the faithful
24 Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One (635–1800) (Leiden:
Brill, 2001), 382–86.
106 Chen
sustained the Christian c ommunities and their religious life.25 The Xian Ma-
donna is one of the few Christian objects to have survived this period, and its
association with the Salus populi Romani icon and the Jesuits means that it is
extremely rare.
The Jesuit missions to the two adjacent provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi
started in the 1620s. Alfonso Vagnoni (1568–1640), who may have been the first
Jesuit to enter Shaanxi, translated the first Chinese hagiography of the Virgin
Mary, written around 1624–29 and published in Shanxi. In 1633, he founded the
Madonna congregation there. Another Jesuit, Etienne Faber (1597–1657), went
to Xian at some stage after 1635 and founded the Madonna congregation in
Shaanxi. In the early Jesuit period, Shanxi and Shaanxi were supported by the
Beijing residence (fig. 5.12). The Madonna congregations in these northwestern
areas would thus have served as the basis for a local tradition of Marian faith.26
The missionaries were officially readmitted to the mainland after 1842;
however, anti-Christian sentiment continued to persist in Chinese society. In
addition to the local authorities’ opposition to Christianity, historian Paul Co-
hen argues that the local gentry advocated orthodoxy and condemned heresy
from Confucian perspectives as a way to defend their cultural traditions and
social standing.27 The missionaries were provided political protection because
of the treaties, but this very political implication tended to become the reason
for Chinese opposition to the religious intention of the missionaries.
During this period of repression, the presence of Catholic books and images,
as well as rosaries and crucifixes, was frequently used as evidence of C
atholicism
among the faithful who were practicing their religion underground:
[They] learned from the Catholic Church in the capital [Beijing] and
were also baptized […]. In addition, according to reports from Xianxian
25 Huang Yilong黃一農, Liangtou she: Mingmo qingchu de diyidai tianzhujiaotu 兩頭蛇:明

末清初的第一代天主教徒 [Double heads of snake: The first generation of Catholics in
the late Ming and early Qing periods] (Hsinchu, Taiwan: Guoli qinghua daxue chubanshe
國立清華大學出版社 [National Tsinghua University Press], 2005), 472–78.
26 Fortunato Margiotti, “Congregazioni mariane della antica missione cinese,” Sonderdruck
aus das Laienapostolat in den Missionen (1961): 134–35. For Faber, see Louis Pfister, Notices
biographiques et bibliographiques sur les jesuites de l’ancienne mission de Chine, 1552–1773,
vol. 1 (Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1932), 202–7.
27 Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chi-
nese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). Also
see R.G. [Rolf Gerhard] Tiedemann, “Conversion Patterns in North China: Sociological
Profiles of Chinese Christians, 1860–1912,” in Authentic Chinese Christianity: Preludes to Its
Development (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), ed. Ku Wei-ying and Koen de Ridder
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 107–33; Bays, New History of Christianity in China,
41–91.
of the Hejian prefect, a villager was identified, Zhou Shijun, whose family
had housed Catholic paintings, scriptures, and crosses for generations.
He had stated that those objects had been brought back by his father
from the capital, and so on […].
在京師天主堂傳習入教[…]又據河間府獻縣稟報,訪有村民周士
俊,周宗家藏天主教畫像,經文十字架,訊係周宗故父在京帶回各
等情 […]。
(1746, prefect of Hejian河間府 , 直隸 Zhili)
I requested the local officials to thoroughly interrogate and investigate;

moreover, they presented me with the case of Yan Deng and asked me
to confront him in person. Although Yan’s house did not hide a foreigner
named Bali [from Manila] or contain illegal communications, Yan pos-
sessed several Catholic images and books on rituals and feasts. Thus, it
was clear that he had not yet repented.28
臣等督飭布按兩司嚴加究審,轉解臣等親訊嚴登,家內雖無藏匿
吧黎及潛通信息情事,但仍行收藏天主各像及禮拜日期書冊,其
未悔改,已有明徵。
(1750, prefect of Zhangzhou漳州府 , province of Fujian 福建省 )
In the two cases above, the objects—images and books—were indicators of

Catholicism. In other words, from the perspectives of Chinese officialdom,
the objects were sufficient evidence to convict Chinese Christians of having
“heretical beliefs.” Two other lists of objects confiscated from the houses of
“Catholic heretics” comprised many Catholic images, including those of the
Madonna, and prayer books for Christ and the Virgin Mary.29 Thus, as histo-
rian Lars Laamann argues, “a distinct form of ‘Chinese Christianity’ emerged,”
which interacted with popular Chinese religions and enabled this “popular
Christianity” to survive. Consequently, most of the references to Christian
heretics and their encounters with heterodox religious traditions are found
in northern China.30 Given this geographical and historical context, in which
28 Qing zhongqianqi xiyang tianzhujiao, 1:95, 171.

29 Wu Min 吳旻, and Han Qi 韓琦 eds., Ouzhou suocang yongzheng qianlongchao tianzhu-
jiao wenxian huibian 歐洲所藏雍正乾隆朝天主教文獻匯編 [Collection of Catholic

sources and literature from the dynasties of Yongzheng and Qianlong housed in Europe]
(Shanghai: Shanghai remin chubanshe上海人民出版社, 2008), 155–56 (1747, Fujian);
Qing zhongqianqi xiyang tianzhujiao, 2:529–30 (1784, Province of Hunan湖南省).
30 Lars P. Laamann, Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China: Christian Inculturation and
State Control, 1720–1850 (London: Routledge, 2006), 9.
108 Chen
idden communities would have had more interactions with local traditions,
h
that the Xian Madonna was able to survive the persecutions may be linked to
this kind of Catholic community.
4 Timothy Richard
From a long-term perspective, the Marian cult further infiltrated Chinese soci-
ety at large and even coalesced with the local belief in Guanyin. More recent
studies have also emphasized the significance of the Marian cult in late impe-
rial Chinese society and its specific role in the formation of Catholic commu-
nities.31 It was these communities that would serve as the site of the Protestant
encounter with the Jesuit legacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
One of the most well-known Protestant missionaries active in North China was
the Welsh Baptist Timothy Richard, who admired the Jesuits and their strategy
of cultural accommodation.
Richard arrived in China in 1870, first in Chefoo芝罘 (煙台 ), Shangdong 山
東 . He eventually traveled inland and settled in Chingzhou prefecture 青州府 ,
located at the easternmost border prefecture, next to Xianxian 獻縣 , next to
Baoding prefecture 保定府 , in Zhili, where the Jesuit mission was founded in
1857.. In his memoirs, Richard states that he began studying the local Chinese
religions to gain a better understanding of Chinese religious terminology after
reading James Legge’s (1815–97) books on Confucianism.32
Between 1876 and 1878, the northern Chinese provinces were devastated by
famine, centering on the south of Shanxi province and extending to the a reas
of Shangdong, south Zhili, and Shaanxi, where Xian was located. Richard’s help
in responding to the famine earned him a favorable reputation, leading to con-
versions in Shangdong and Shanxi provinces; he visited Shanxi in 1876–81 and
1902–4. In his memoirs, Richard states that this extensive area comprised large
groups of Christians, and their circle of interrelationships extended to the
31 Jeremy Clarke, The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities; Clarke, “Our Lady of China: Mar-
ian Devotion and the Jesuits,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 41, no. 3 (Autumn 2009):
ix–47. See also Jean-Paul Wiest, “Marian Devotion and the Development of a Chinese
Christian Art during the Last 150 Years,” in Jidu zoongjiao yu jindai zhongguo 基督宗教
與近代中國 [From Antoine Thomas, S.J., to Celso Costantini: Multi-aspect studies on
Christianity in modern China], ed. Ku Weiying and Zhao Xiaoyang (Beijing: Shehui kexue
wenxian chubanshe社會科學文獻出版社, 2011), 187–221.

32 Timothy Richard, Forty-Five Years in China: Reminiscences by Timothy Richard, D.D., Litt.D.
(New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1916), 86; a Chinese annotated and translated edition
was also consulted: Qinli wanqing sishiwu nian liti motai zaihua huiyilu親歷晚清四十
五年—李提摩太在華回憶錄 (1845–1919), trans. Li Xiantang 李憲堂and Hou Linli 侯
林莉 (Tianjin 天津: Tianjin remin chubanshe 天津人民出版社, 2005), 68.
Figure 5.10 Timothy Richard meeting with Buddhist monks, woodcut from Dianshizhai
huapao點石齋畫報 (Illustration Reports of the Dianshizhai), published in
Shanghai, no. 48, for the years of 1895–1896.
© National Central Library, Taipei, Taiwan, call number P 808
0001.
southwest to Xian and to the east to Henan province 河南省 .33 Thus, Richard
confirmed that these extensive areas were populated by and interlinked with
Christian communities.
Richard’s engagement in famine relief brought him closer to local cul-
ture. He studied Buddhism and Daoism and claimed that both faiths taught
valuable lessons (fig. 5.10).34 This corresponds to his proposal to indigenize
Christianity—“the best way to make Christianity indigenous was to adopt
Chinese methods of propagation,” namely “the natives were to take the lead
33 Richard, Forty-Five Years in China, 147.

34 Jean-Pierre Charbonnier, Christians in China: A.D. 600 to 2000, trans. M. [Maurice] N.L.
Couve de Murville (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 361–62.
110 Chen
rather than the foreign missionary”35—which is why his method has been
seen as similar to the Jesuit strategy of accommodation. When he first arrived
in Shanxi province, he was asked to contact a Catholic bishop to learn of the
situation with regard to Christianity. At that time, there were no Protestant

missionaries in Shanxi province; however, two bishops and twelve clerics con-
tinued to sustain the religion the Jesuits had introduced two hundred years
earlier. Richard began his missionary activities in the north by obtaining Chi-
nese books on Catholicism written by the Jesuits in previous centuries as he
believed that the Christian precepts they contained could still be used for the
purposes of proselytization. R ichard even gave Roman Catholic publications
as gifts to Chinese intellectuals, thereby demonstrating his admiration of the
early Jesuits such as Ricci, Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666), and Ferdinand
Verbiest (1623–1687), and their translations of Christian doctrines and Euro-
pean knowledge.36 His admiration of the previous Catholic missionaries also
extended to the organization of the missions themselves, as he sought to emu-
late the organization of the Catholic missions in China, with different orders
being assigned to different places – at that time, there had been no consensus
among Protestant organizations over geographical assignments, and different
Protestant organizations would often compete with each other in the same
city or location.37 His intellectual concern propelled him to establish a West-
ern university in Taiyuan City太原市 , Shanxi, in 1901, with a missionary and
scholar based in Shaanxi province, Moir Duncan, serving as the university’s
chancellor (fig. 5.11).38
5 Conclusion
The Xian Madonna is a rare object testifying to the persistence of the Jesuit
heritage in northern China. Its rarity also lies in its strangeness—the discovery
of 1910 happened in a milieu when “Europeans were attempting to reverse a
process of inculturation […] that had already occurred in the Chinese Church.
35 Richard, Forty-Five Years in China, 86, 106–7 (quotations), 147–49, 205.

36 Ibid., 127, 144–45. See also the earliest single biography of Richard: William E. Soothill,
Timothy Richard in China: Seer, Statesman, Missionary and the Most Disinterested Adviser
the Chinese Ever Had (London: Seeley, 1924), 99–102, 109–14, 120–23; a Chinese annotated
and translated edition is also available: Liti motai zai zhongguo 李提摩太在中國 (Gui-
lin 桂林, China: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe 廣西師範大學出版社, 2007), 90–95,
100–5, 112–15.
37 Richard, Forty-Five Years in China, 157, 145, 173–76; Soothill, Timothy Richard in China,
120–22.
38 Richard, Forty-Five Years in China, 165, 299–301.
Figure 5.11 Timothy Richard attired as the Chancellor of Shanxi

University, from William E. Soothill, Timothy Richard
in China: Seer, Statesman, Missionary and the Most
Distinguished Adviser the Chinese Ever Had (London, 1924), p. 280.
The Chinese Catholics vehemently resisted this reversal.”39 From an anthro-

pological and historical perspective, the Madonna’s survival resulted from the
efforts of unknown Catholic or Jesuit communities. When the Protestant mis-
sionaries arrived in China, the icon served as evidence of the Jesuit heritage and
a representation of Catholic identity. The Guanyin iconography and the local
features corroborate its localization when the Chinese became the agent in the
underground church during the long period of persecution. However, whether
it was localized as a hybrid kind of Madonna/Guanyin, or i ntentionally created

as a talisman for the Catholic Madonna, is unknown. As a product of incultura-
tion, the Chinese authorities may have seen it as a heretical object of popular
39 Mungello, Catholic Invasion of China, 16.
112 Chen
Christianity. Its inculturation could also indicate what the returning Catholic
missionaries in the nineteenth century had criticized, “accustomed activities
of the Christian Virgins,” that is, the missionaries were concerned about “local
Catholic communities behaving in unorthodox ways of worship.”40 This Ma-

donna/Guanyin image reveals the long-term Jesuit heritage sustained by the
faithful, yet it also testifies to the tension between church officials and local
communities in the nineteenth-century missionary context.
Timothy Richard thus encountered Catholics and Catholicism in a context
where the Marian cult remained energetic in “popular Christianity,” and in
Figure 5.12 Xian, Baoding, Shaanxi and Shanxi underlined. The map without underlines
is taken from Lian Xi, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in
Modern China (New Heaven: Yale University, 2010), Map 1, Provinces of China.
© Yale University Press.
40 Bays, New History of Christianity in China, 52; see also Robert E. Entenmann, “Christian Vir-
gins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan,” in Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth C entury
to the Present, ed. Daniel H. Bays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 180–93.
which the Protestants had to face the existence of Catholic communities. To

date, only limited research has been carried out on Richard’s evangelization
work in China. Although he does not appear to have commented directly on
the Marian cult, he clearly admired the Jesuit legacy, and we could wonder he
saw the Marian devotion in sustaining local Catholic communities in his en-
gagements with ordinary people.41 Further work on this encounter between a
Jesuit tradition and the Protestant missionaries of the n
ineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries would therefore deepen our understanding of local Catholicism
and the complexity of Chinese Christianity as a whole.
Bibliography
Anichini, G. “La ‘Mater Dei Dignissima’ di S. Maria Maggiore.” L’illustrazione vaticana

2, no. 15 (August 1931): 22–26.
Anichini, G. “La ‘Madre di Dio’ di S. Maria Maggiore riprodotta nell’antica arte Cinese.”
L’illustrazione vaticana 3, no. 1 (January 1, 1932): 37–38.
Arnold, Lauren. Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and
Its Influence on the Art of the West 1250–1350. San Francisco: Desiderata Press, 1999.
Arnold, Lauren. “Folk Goddess or Madonna? Early Missionary Encounters with the
Image of Guanyin.” In Encounters and Dialogues: Changing Perspectives on Chinese–
Western Exchanges from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Barbara
Hoster and Roman Malek, 227–38. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica,
2005a.
Arnold, Lauren. “The Franciscan Origin of the Image of the Child-Giving Guanyin.”
Ricci Institute Public Lecture Series (February 16, 2005b): 1–6.
Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America 1542–1773.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Bays, Daniel H. A New History of Christianity in China. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2012.
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Trans-
lated by Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Brockey, Liam M. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Bronson, Bennet. “Berthold Laufer.” Fieldiana: Anthropology, n.s. 36 (September 2003):
117–26.
41 I would like to express my particular gratitude to Prof. Jeffrey Muller, Brown University, for
his advice on the consideration of the possible Baptist view of the Marian cult and image.
114 Chen
Chün-fang Yü. “Guanyin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara.” In Latter

Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850–1850, edited by Marsha Weidner,
151–81. Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art and the University of Kansas, 1994.
Chün-fang Yü. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2001.
Clarke, Jeremy. “Our Lady of China: Marian Devotion and the Jesuits.” Studies in the
Spirituality of Jesuits 41, no. 3 (Autumn 2009): 9–47.
Clarke, Jeremy. The Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
Cohen, Paul A. China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of
Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
D’Elia, Pasquale M. Le origini dell’arte Cristiana Cinese (1583–1640). Rome: Reale Acca-
demia d’Italia, 1939.
D’Elia, Pasquale M. Fonti ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci a la sto-
ria delle prime relazioni tra l’Europa e la Cina (1579–1615); Storia dell’ introduzione del
Cristianesimo in Cina scritta da Matteo Ricci. 3 vols. Rome: La libreria dello Stato,
1942–49.
D’Elia, Pasquale M. “La prima diffusione nel mondo dell’imagine di Maria ‘Salus Populi
Romani.’” Fede e arte (October 1954): 1–11.
Entenmann, Robert E “Christian Virgins in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan.” In Christian-
ity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, edited by Daniel H. Bays,
180–93. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. “Jesuit Survival and Restoration in China.” In Jesuit Survival and
Restoration: A Global History, 1773–1900, edited by Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan
Wright, 245–60. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
Huang Yilong 黃一農 . Liangtou she: mingmo qingchu de diyidai tianzhujiaotu 兩頭蛇 :
明末清初的第一代天主教徒 [Double heads of snake: The first generation of
Catholics in the late Ming and early Qing periods]. Hsinchu, Taiwan: Guoli qinghua
daxue chubanshe 國立清華大學出版社 [National Tsinghua University Press],
2005.
Hui-Hung Chen. “A European Distinction of Chinese Characteristics: A Style Question
in Seventeenth-Century Jesuit China Missions.” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies
臺灣東亞文明研究學刊 5, no. 1 (June 2008): 1–32.
Hui-Hung Chen. “Liangfu yesuhuishi de shengmu shengxiang: Jianlun mingmo tian-
zhujiao de zongjiao” 兩幅耶穌會士的聖母聖像 : 兼論明末天主教的「宗教」
[Two Jesuit Madonna icons: religious dimensions of Catholicism in late-Ming
China]. Taida lishi xuebao 臺大歷史學報 [Historical Inquiry] 59 (June 2017):

49–118.
Laamann, Lars P. Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China: Christian Inculturation and
State Control, 1720–1850. London: Routledge, 2006.
Lambek, Michael, ed. A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2002.
Laufer, Berthold. “The Chinese Madonna in the Field Museum.” Open Court (January
1912): 1–6.
Lü Shiqiang 呂實強 . Zhongguo guanshen fanjiao de yuanyin (1860–1874) 中國官紳反敎
的原因 ﹙一八六 ○–一八七四 ﹚[Reasons for anti-Christianity of Chinese officials
and gentry (1860–1874)]. Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo 中央研
究院近代史研究所 [Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica], 1966.
Malatesta, Edward J., S.J. The Society of Jesus in China: A Historical–Theological Essay. St.
Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1997.
Margiotti, Fortunato. “Congregazioni mariane della antica missione cinese.” Sonder-
druck aus das Laienapostolat in den Missionen (1961): 134–35.
Menegon, Eugenio. Ancestors, Virgins & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late
Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
O’Malley, John W., S.J., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy,
eds. The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540–1773. Toronto: University of To-
ronto Press, 1999.
O’Malley, John W., and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, eds. The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540–1773.
Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005.
Ostrow, Steven. Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: The Sistine and
Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
Pfister, Louis. Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les jésuites de l’ancienne
mission de Chine, 1552–1773. Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1932.
Richard, Timothy. “The Political Status of Missionaries and Native Christians in China.”
Chinese Recorder 16 (1885): 96–110.
Richard, Timothy. Forty-Five Years in China: Reminiscences by Timothy Richard, D.D.,
Litt.D. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Publishers, 1916.
Song, Zhiqing 宋稚青 . Zhonghua shengmu jingli shihua 中華聖母敬禮史話 [History
of the Holy Mother of China]. Tainan, Taiwan: Wendao chubanshe 聞道出版社 ,
2005.
Soothill, William E. Timothy Richard in China: Seer, Statesman, Missionary and the Most
Disinterested Adviser the Chinese Ever Had. London: Seeley, 1924.
Spence, Jonathan. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Standaert, Nicolas, ed. Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One (635–1800).
Tiedemann, R.G. [Rolf Gerhard]. “Conversion Patterns in North China: Sociological

Profiles of Chinese Christians, 1860–1912.” In Authentic Chinese Christianity: Preludes
to Its Development (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), edited by Ku Wei-ying and
Koen de Ridder, 107–33. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001.
116 Chen
Waley-Cohen, Joanna. The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History. New
York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. New
York: Vintage Books, 1976.

Weidner, Marsha, ed. Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850–1850.
Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art and the University of Kansas, 1994.
Wiest, Jean-Paul. “Marian Devotion and the Development of a Chinese Christian Art
during the Last 150 Years.” In Jidu zoongjiao yu jindai zhongguo 基督宗教與近代
中國 [From Antoine Thomas, S.J., to Celso Costantini: Multi-aspect studies on
Christianity in modern China], edited by Ku Weiying and Zhao Xiaoyang, 187–221.
Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe 社會科學文獻出版社 , 2011.
Wong, Stephanie Mary. “A Society Apart: Rural Chinese Catholics and the Historiogra-
phy of ‘Otherness’.” Studies in World Christianity 22, no. 2 (2016): 86–104.
Wu Min 吳旻 and Han Qi 韓琦 , eds. Ouzhou suocang yongzheng qianlongchao tian-
zhujiao wenxian huibian 歐洲所藏雍正乾隆朝天主教文獻匯編 [Collection
of Catholic sources and literature from the dynasties of Yongzheng and Qianlong
housed in Europe]. Shanghai: Shanghai remin chubanshe 上海人民出版社 , 2008.
Xiao Qinghe 肖清和 . “Mingqing tianzhujiaotu zongtu shenghuo yu zuzhi xingtai
chutan” 明清天主教徒宗徒生活與組織形式初探 [A preliminary exploration of
the religious life and organizing form of the Ming and Qing Catholic Christians].
Guoxue yu xixue 國學與西學 [International journal of Sino-Western studies] 1
(2011): 98–107.
Xiao-qing Wang. “How Has a Chinese Village Remained Catholic? Catholicism and Lo-
cal Culture in a Northern Chinese Village.” Journal of Contemporary China 15, no. 49
(2006): 687–704.
Zhuang Jifa 莊吉發 . “Qingchao zhengfu dui tianzhujiao cong rongjiao zhengce dao
jinjiao zhengce de zhuanbian” 清朝政府對天主教從容教政策到禁教政策的轉
變 [The evolution of the attitude to Catholicism of the Qing government: From
toleration to banishment]. In Qingshi lunji 清史論集 [Anthology of Qing history],
4: 145–81. Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe 文史哲出版社 , 1997.
Zhuang Jifa 莊吉發 . Qingshi jiangyi 清史講議 [Discussion of Qing history]. Taipei:
Shixueshe chubanshe 實學社出版社 , 2002.
Chapter 6
Jesuit and Protestant Encounters in Jiangnan:

Contest and Cooperation in China’s Lower

Yangzi Region
Steven Pieragastini
1 Introduction
In the nineteenth century, Catholic missionaries capitalized on a tide of im-

perialistic ventures launched by Western powers to develop a well-financed
and wide-ranging missionary enterprise in China. One of the most successful
regions for the Catholic evangelical effort in China was led by the French Jesu-
its of the Paris province who operated the Mission du Kiangnan in Shanghai
and its hinterland (Jiangnan) from the 1840s until the indigenization of the
Catholic hierarchy in China in 1946, and effectively until the expulsion of for-
eign missionaries in the first years of the People’s Republic. From their base
in Shanghai, which became the financial and administrative center not only
of the Jesuit mission but indeed all foreign missionaries operating in central
China, the Jesuits struggled against innumerable difficulties in the effort to win
converts. Most of these problems arose from cultural opposition to a “foreign
religion,” political entanglements with the French, Chinese, and other states,
and disagreement with Rome and other mission orders on the direction of the
church in China. But the Jesuits were also in close contact and competition
with Protestant missionaries, who, starting from a basis of having a minimal
presence in the Chinese interior before the First Opium War (1839–1842), ar-
rived in ever-greater numbers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century.
Aside from the competition for souls, Catholic and Protestant missionaries
carried many of their mutual dislikes from the West with them into China,
which were not only confessional but also national in nature, as French mis-
sionaries, money, and political influence dominated Catholic missions, and
British and American missionaries likewise were preponderant among Prot-
estant missions. These national and confessional rivalries were passed on to

Chinese converts, perhaps exacerbating already extant rifts in the local com-
munity, and they produced such bitter mistrust that in some places Chinese
Catholics and Protestants fought pitched battles against each other around
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_008
118 Pieragastini
the turn of the twentieth century.1 Nevertheless, despite their best wishes, the
fates of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in China were intertwined. The
“most favored nation” clauses in treaties between foreign powers and the Chi-
nese government meant that whatever rights were granted to missionaries of

one nationality were ostensibly available to those of all nationalities whose
governments had such treaty clauses with China. There was also a continuous
intellectual exchange between Catholics and Protestants, carried out in mis-
sionary journals, newspapers, and in face-to-face meetings. Early Protestant
missionaries to China admired and relied heavily upon the linguistic work and
missiological experience of Jesuit missionaries in China dating back to the late
sixteenth century. Likewise, Catholic missionaries in the early twentieth cen-
tury, having lost a substantial early advantage, increasingly looked to the most
effective methods of Protestant missions in mobilizing the faithful, especially
women and youth, through lay social and charitable organizations. Further-
more, the animosity between Catholic missionaries and their Protestant coun-
terparts peaked in the late nineteenth century and improved thereafter as both
groups faced shared threats from Chinese nationalism, Japanese imperialism,
and ultimately, Communist revolution. As the foreign missionaries’ position in
China became more precarious, there was a convergence in terms of mutual
respect and shared outlook across denominations.
While the preceding paragraph would be an accurate picture of Protestant–
Catholic interactions in China generally, the particular context of Shanghai,
as the headquarters of missionary activity in China during the Treaty Port Era
(1842–1943), produced exceptional levels of cooperation and mutual respect
among Catholic and Protestant missionaries. This did not necessarily extend
to the countryside of Jiangnan, the remote areas of which saw the same sorts
of rivalries and schadenfreude between Catholics and Protestants witnessed in
other provinces of China. Nor was this spirit of cooperation and camaraderie
entirely unique to Shanghai, though it began early and was sustained through-
out the Treaty Port Era and beyond. While both sides engaged in frequent snip-
ing at each other in newspapers and publications, the press in Shanghai was
simultaneously raucous and respectful, in that those criticized or their defend-
ers could publish rebuttals in running debates. Also, Protestants and Catholics
in Shanghai offered mutual diplomatic and financial support and coordinated
their charitable efforts, particularly in the face of humanitarian or existential
crises, which were distressingly common during the period in question.
1 Described most thoroughly in Ernest P. Young, Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church
and the French Religious Protectorate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 5,
“The Complexities of Jiao’an in the Early Twentieth Century: Sichuan and Jiangxi,” 97–120.
Jesuit and Protestant Encounters in Jiangnan 119
2 Early Protestant Missions and Relations with Catholics
As a subset of the stream of European intellectual life, European Protestants

were aware of the early modern Jesuit missions to Asia. However, Protestant
missionaries first encountered China on very different terms from their Catho-
lic predecessors. Despite some limited efforts in the sixteenth to eighteenth
centuries, the focus of Protestant nations was primarily directed toward com-
mercial enterprises, which allowed limited space for religious proselytization.
When Protestant missionaries were able to settle on the Chinese periphery
long enough to study Chinese, they were reliant on the early modern Jesuits
as well as contemporary Catholics. Robert Morrison (1782–1834), the first Prot-
estant missionary to work extensively in China, was initially forced to reside
primarily in Portuguese Macao, where he incurred a succession of roadblocks
and restrictions thrown up by Catholic missionaries and Portuguese admin-
istrators.2 Morrison’s attitudes toward Catholic missionaries, and the Jesuits
in particular, were shared by Karl Gützlaff (1803–51), the German adventurer
who traveled much more extensively than Morrison, and other early Protes-
tant missionaries to China, along the Chinese coast.3
On the one hand, Protestants admired the Jesuits, especially the first genera-
tion of Jesuit missionaries to China, for their intelligence and acumen in intro-
ducing Christianity to China (actually reintroducing, as an earlier Christian
presence dating from the Tang dynasty [618–907] had apparently died out by
the sixteenth century). Protestant missionaries also relied on their Jesuit pre-
decessors and contemporaries for their linguistic and cartographic work and
depended on the Catholic information chain in Macao as the primary source of
news about conditions in the Chinese interior. At the same time, once Protes-
tant missionaries themselves became adept in the Chinese language, they took
exception to the Catholics’ translation of certain Christian concepts, which
they felt watered down Christianity to make it more compatible with Chinese
culture.4 Protestants also carried much of the anti-Catholic preconceptions of
their home countries with them. For their part, the Jesuits’ attacks on Freema-
sons and Protestants in their sermons while in Jiangnan were seemingly aimed
at “Anglo-Saxons” but also reflected an odd transmission of domestic French
2 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1967), 211–12.
3 Jessie Lutz, Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827–1852 (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 134.
4 Ibid., 217.
120 Pieragastini
political battles.5 However, the specific criticisms leveled by both groups were
usually determined by the Chinese context. For example, Protestants were
quick to point out “idolatry” and “superstition” among Chinese Catholic con-
verts, terms derived from a European context but applied to Chinese ancestor
worship and other popular religious practices, which church doctrine opposed
but which were common in everyday religious practice.6
The Jesuits in particular were criticized, as ever, for being too wealthy and
involved in politics, and Catholic missionaries as a whole were condemned
for their methods of self-financing through real estate that was, in the Prot-
estants’ telling, acquired through dubious means. Catholic missionaries were
also condemned for their connections with the French consular and military
authorities in China by way of the so-called Religious Protectorate, an arrange-
ment meant to guarantee the safety of French Catholic missionaries in China
but which morphed over time into a much broader effort to spread French
cultural and imperial influence in China by way of the church. Protestants
railed against certain methods of proselytization employed by Catholic mis-
sionaries, including providing pro bono legal services to suspected criminals in
order to entice conversion, as well as a willingness to overlook their converts’
superficial understanding of Christianity and to ignore cases of apostasy to
inflate the numbers of Catholics in China (it is worth pointing out that Catho-
lics levied many of the very same charges at Protestants).7 While there is cer-
tainly some truth to these claims, there can also be no doubt that Protestant
criticisms were motivated in part by jealousy toward Catholics’ early financial
and organizational advantages.8 Moreover, Protestants tended to overempha-
size the unity of Catholic mission orders and the Catholic Church in general,
whether sincerely or for rhetorical effect, alluding to international conspira-
cies emanating from Rome. Eventually, Protestants were themselves skilled
at building communication channels across most of the various denomina-
tions through a series of conferences and agreements in the late nineteenth
5 Joseph de la Servière, S.J., Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan: Jésuites de la province de France

(Paris) 1840–1899, tome ii (Zi-ka-wei [Shanghai]: Impr. de l’Orphelinat de Tóu-sè-wè, 1914),
264.
6 Robert Morrison and Eliza Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison
(London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1839), 235. Also, for example, “Ro-
manist Missions in China,” North China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (Janu-
ary 24, 1879), 73, on attitudes toward claims of miraculous healings by the Virgin Mary that
circulated in the Catholic missionary press.

7 Latourette, History of Christian Missions in China, 306–313.
8 Joseph de la Servière, S.J., Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan: Jésuites de la province de France
(Paris) 1840–1899, tome i (Zi-ka-wei [Shanghai]: Impr. de l’Orphelinat de Tóu-sè-wè, 1914),
334–35.
and e arly twentieth century, including, ultimately, the interdenominational

National Christian Council of China, founded in 1922. Meanwhile, while there
had been several regional and de facto synods of Catholic bishops in China, a
true national synod was not organized until 1924 in Shanghai.9

As Catholic missionaries had a significant head start on Protestants in work-
ing in the Chinese interior, including an already extant Catholic community
in many cases, Protestant missionaries were often confused for Catholics, a
fact that greatly irritated them, especially as the recent arrival or re-arrival of
Catholic missionaries usually attracted the antagonism of local government
officials and elites.10 The two groups were also divided on what they saw as
the greatest social ills in China to be corrected: Protestants focused on opium,
polygamy, and foot-binding, whereas Catholics devoted their attention to or-
phanages. Finally, in the early twentieth century, Catholics and Protestants
largely diverged on the issue of indigenization, as Protestant missions were
generally more willing to hand leadership of the church over to native Chinese.
3 The Late Qing Period (c.1842–1911)
If the above is an accurate characterization of Catholic–Protestant relations

throughout China, the situation in Jiangnan was somewhat different because
of the particular history of that region in the late Qing period: namely the ef-
fects of Shanghai’s opening as a treaty port and ascendance as the gateway
to central China. Within Shanghai, relations between Catholic and Protestant
missionaries, as well as between the Jesuits and the broader foreign commu-
nity and Chinese elites, were positive and respectful. In the years immediately
after Shanghai was opened as a treaty port, the French Jesuits managing the
Jiangnan mission composed virtually the entirety of the French population of
the city. They had worked quickly to acquire extensive property holdings in
the area, and, because they were familiar with the region, were often literate in
Chinese, and could speak the local dialect, foreigners of all nationalities great-
ly respected the Jesuits and relied on them as intermediaries with local Chi-
nese officials and elites.11 Conversely, while the French legation did establish
9 Paul Jiyou Wang, Le premier concile plénier chinois: 1924 droit canonique missionnaire forgé
en Chine (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010), 149–52.
10 “Miscellaneous: Proposed Regulations Respecting Missions in China Explanatory,” North

China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (August 11, 1871), 608.
11 An early, positive account of the Jesuit mission in Jiangnan is provided in “What I Have
Seen in Shanghai: Missions of the Romish Church […],” Chinese Repository (November 1,
1849), 574.
122 Pieragastini
a consulate in Shanghai, there were periods when the consul was not present
or when the situation at hand exceeded the experience and knowledge of the
French legation. In such cases, the Jesuits would rely on the British consulate
in Shanghai, which, for example, dispatched a contingent of British troops to

defend a Catholic church near Shanghai in 1854.12 This mutual trust developed
after some initial dispute, as the Jesuits felt the British were too close with local
Chinese officials, especially the daotai 道臺 , who was tasked with managing
customs duties and, in effect, all affairs pertaining to foreigners in Shanghai.
Soon, however, the Jesuits would themselves come to see the daotai as ready
and reliable allies, a reflection of the “Shanghai exception,” in which elites of
various nationalities colluded to manage the city even when their governments
were at war.13 The Jesuits were also esteemed for their scientific work, which in
Shanghai included astronomical, meteorological, and seismological research.
But this early fellowship was marred by two series of events. The first was
the delineation of the French Concession in 1849 and the French Concessions
split from the British and American Settlements in 1862. Though the French
community outside of the Jesuits was still minimal, and while their relation-
ship with the foreign community as a whole remained positive, there were
deep divisions on the basis of nationality between the non-religieux French
and the “Anglo-Saxons” in Shanghai. These became especially pronounced
during the second and more important event leading to mutual mistrust, the
crisis of the Taiping Civil War (1850–64). The Taiping were led by Hong Xiu-
quan (1814–64), a failed imperial degree candidate from southern China who
had been indirectly influenced by Protestant missionaries in Hong Kong and
Canton. Because of the self-proclaimed Christianity of the Taiping, and the
relationship between Hong’s cousin, Hong Rengan (1822–64), and Protestant
missionaries in Hong Kong, Protestant missionaries and the broader Anglo-
American community in China were initially well-disposed toward them.
Though the fighting was originally confined to southern China, in early
September 1853 the Taiping-affiliated Small Swords secret society overtook
the walled city in Shanghai, where the bulk of the city’s Chinese residents
lived, and threatened the foreign settlements. At first, the British and Ameri-
cans were ambivalent about the Small Swords; though they were associated
with the Taiping and opposed to the Qing, they were not outwardly Chris-
tian and were motivated primarily by anti-Qing sentiment, including a sense
12 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang–nan, tome i, 282.

13 Louis Tsing-sing Wei, La politique missionnaire de la France en Chine, 1842–1856: L’ouverture
de cinq ports chinois au commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions
Latines, 1961), 193.
that the Qing had caved in too easily to foreign powers. The French, however,
were opposed to the Small Swords immediately, not least because they were
concerned about the security of church property.14 The Jesuits advocated for
strong intervention on the side of the Qing government and actively aided a
combined French–Qing force in storming the Chinese walled city in 1855, and
again participated in a Qing–French campaign in 1860–62. Because of their
familiarity with the region and linguistic skills, the Jesuits probably provided
intelligence and translation services for the French military, and there were ru-
mors in the Anglo-American community of priests scaling the city walls with
French attackers. The second campaign, against the forces of Taiping general
Li Xiucheng (1823–64), led to a clash within the foreign community. Li’s forces
approached Shanghai with the hope of gaining the support of the foreign com-
munity but were ejected by what many interpreted as an unprovoked surprise
attack by foreign troops. In the course of the battle, French troops were ac-
cused of committing atrocities and burning many of the buildings surrounding
the walled city for the purpose, it was rumored, of handing the underlying land
over to the Jesuits to construct a church.15
Although the British community in Shanghai eventually came to support
the Qing against the Taiping as strongly as the French, distrust remained in the
following decades, which was apparent when missionaries and Chinese Chris-
tians came under threat beginning in the late 1860s, as Catholic and Protestant
missionaries extended their presence into the interior regions of Jiangnan.16
Christians were seen as subversive and foreign and were suspected of being af-
filiated with the White Lotus Society, a millenarian religious movement often
conflated with Christianity, leading to a series of anti-Christian disturbances
in Anhui that were instigated by occupying Qing troops.17 In 1869, anti-foreign
riots broke out immediately after the missions of both the Jesuits and the
Protestant China Inland Mission (cim) established a presence in Anqing, An-
hui, though no deaths resulted.18 Throughout inland Jiangnan, rumors were
14 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome i, 270, 292, 304–10, 355.

15 Stephen R. Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (New York: Knopf, 2012), 92–94, 152.
16 “Correspondence: The Position of Missionaries,” North China Herald and Supreme Court &
Consular Gazette (November 29, 1871), 921.
17 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome ii, 209–12, 219–24. Also, Centre des Ar-
chives Diplomatiques de Nantes [hereafter cadn] Pékin A-31, “Destruction des chrétien-
tés du gnien koui fou, kienpin hsien, et autres localités,” August 10, 1876, Joseph Seckinger,
S.J. [in Nanjing] to consul-general, Shanghai.
18 These disturbances coincided with the 1870 Tianjin Massacre, in which several dozen
Catholic missionaries and converts were killed by a mob after the French consul tried to
disperse an angry crowd surrounding the cathedral there with his pistol.
124 Pieragastini
rampant of mysterious creatures cutting off men’s queues and removing wom-
en’s foot binding (politically and socially subversive acts, respectively), leaving
the population very agitated.19 Accusations fell on local Christians, including
refugees who had fled the Qing–Taiping fighting, who were distrusted by the
locals. While the secular English-language press in Shanghai sought to blame
the disturbances on the actions of Catholic missionaries, Protestant missionar-
ies sent their Jesuit counterparts messages of sympathy and support.20 More
serious attacks on both Catholics and Protestants occurred in 1888–91, when
the cities of Jiangnan were rocked by anti-foreign riots that grew out of dis-
putes surrounding missionaries.21 Both religious and secular manifestations
of the foreign presence in inland Jiangsu and Anhui were damaged by mobs,
and a number of structures were set on fire, including the British consulate in
Zhenjiang, the Jesuit mission compound in Wuhu, Jesuit and Wesleyan mis-
sions in Wuxue, and all the foreign-owned properties in Yichang.22
The end of the nineteenth century was the high point of Western imperial-
ism in China, as a series of new unequal treaties and territorial concessions
were wrenched from the Qing dynasty. Following the defeat of the Qing at
the hands of the Japanese in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), other for-
eign powers rushed to claim additional rights, including a Sino-French agree-
ment to expand the rights of missionaries to purchase property in the Chinese
interior.23 Throughout 1898–99, there was anti-Christian unrest in Jiangnan
that was connected to the early stages of the Boxer Uprising, though the main
19 The queue was the distinctive haircut imposed by the Manchus on the male Han Chinese
during and after the Qing conquest of northern China. Cutting one’s queue was an act of
political disobedience and therefore a capital offense. Foot-binding, on the other hand,
was a custom indigenous to the Han Chinese, both an expression of Confucian morality
and an initially elite practice that trickled down to the lower classes because it enhanced
a daughter’s marriage prospects. The Manchus did not bind their women’s feet and briefly
tried to outlaw the practice in the seventeenth century but relented in the face of intense
opposition.
20 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome ii, 176–78. In July 1876, a spate of anti-
Christian riots that targeted Catholics erupted in Anhui province. Joseph de la Servière
(1866–1937) claimed that, unlike 1870, in this case Protestant missionaries did not side
with their Catholic counterparts. Ibid, 209–10, 226.
21 No author given [William V. Drummond], The Anti-foreign Riots of 1891 (Shanghai: North
China Daily News, 1892), 196.
22 Ibid, 40–41, 102–3, 183. The Jesuit perspective on the events of 1891 is given in Auguste
Colombel, S.J. [and Joseph de la Servière], “Histoire de la mission du Kiang–nan, IIIeˋme

partie: L’épiscopat de Mgr. Garnier, 1879–1898” (manuscript—no publication information
given), 98. My thanks to the staff of the University of San Francisco Ricci Institute for
Chinese–Western Cultural History for providing me with a copy of this rare source.
23 Young, Ecclesiastical Colony, 33.
motivation of the attackers was most likely to seize the grain stores of mission
stations, a reflection of dire famine conditions prevailing at the time.24 Though
these instances of anti-Christian violence on the fringes of the Jiangnan mis-
sion did occur, the wave of violence that undulated throughout northern Chi-
na during the Boxer Uprising did not directly affect Jiangnan.
In the course of these anti-Christian disturbances and across the late nine-
teenth century, relations between Catholic and Protestant missionaries wors-
ened as they often competed with each other directly in the Chinese interior,
away from the treaty ports.25 At times, competition on the local level could
devolve into interdenominational conflict (though this was rare in Jiangnan).
However, Protestant missionary publications in Shanghai tended to be more
sympathetic toward the Jesuits and Chinese Catholics, particularly during
times of heightened insecurity, than the secular Anglo-American press, namely
the North China Herald and North China Daily News, which reflected the opin-
ions of the city’s Anglo-American commercial elite.26 This was in part because
Protestants were generally targeted alongside Catholics, but also because Prot-
estant missionaries identified with their Catholic counterparts.27 In any event,
despite some continued Catholic–Protestant conflict far in the Chinese inte-
rior until the very end of the Qing period, the Boxer Uprising—a large uprising
against foreign influences and Christianity that killed dozens of missionaries
and thousands of Chinese Christians in rural north China at the turn of the
24 Zhang Li and Liu Jiantang, 张力 ,刘鉴唐 , Zhongguo jiao'an shi (Chengdu: Sichuan sheng
shehui kexue yuan) (中国教案史 ﹙ 成都 :四川省社会科学院出版社 ) [History
of missionary cases in China] (Chengdu: Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1987),
510–11. Also in cadn Pékin A-31 “Troubles dans le Kiang–sou Nord,” Consulate General of
France in Shanghai to M. Pichon, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of
the French Republic, etc. in Peking, August 11, 1898. Some local anti-Christian sentiment
near Xuzhou carried through the height of the Boxer Uprising, but, while Christians had
their homes burned and grain stolen, none were killed. Henri Havret, La mission du Ki-
angnan, les trois dernières années (1899–1901) (Zikawei [Shanghai]: Imprimerie de la Mis-
sion Catholique, Orphelinat de T’ou-se-we, 1902), 13.
25 A few examples: D.T. Huntington, “A Protestant Objection,” North China Herald (April 10,
1899), 633; W.E. Soothill, “The Official Status of Missionaries,” North China Herald (Sep-
tember 18, 1899), 579; “The Methods of the Romish Church,” North China Herald (January
22, 1904), 115.
26 A summary of criticisms of Catholics can be found in “The Sources of the Anti-foreign
Disturbances in China,” North China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette (April
14, 1893), 538, as well as the earlier but more extensive publication The Anti-foreign Riots
of 1891, though the latter publication did include Catholic responses to the criticisms.
27 For example, “The Tientsin Massacre,” Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal (January
1, 1871), 207, blamed Chinese officials, including Zeng Guofan (1811–72), hero of the war
against the Taiping, for stoking the violence against foreigners and Chinese Christians.
126 Pieragastini
century—had the effect of improving relations between the Jesuits and other
Catholics and Protestants in Jiangnan. It helped that both Catholics and Prot-
estants saw a tide of conversions in the years after the Boxer Uprising, the most
successful period of mission work, driven by a flood of cash from indemnities

and the more effective courting of elites. It is also true that the post-Boxer pe-
riod saw a flurry of reforms in the Qing administrative system that aided in
the protection of missions and their converts. Furthermore, it is possible that
Christianity came to be accepted as an enduring and legitimate religion among
the non-Christian population, though this varied widely by locality.28
4 The Jesuits’ “City of God”
Given the complex and divided jurisdiction over Shanghai and the surround-
ing countryside during the Treaty Port Era, as well as the deliberately light ad-
ministration of the Qing bureaucracy, non-state bodies such as native place
associations took on many of the basic functions of the modern state, such
as arranging employment and guaranteeing both physical and social security.
Similarly, in the absence of a unified administration, or an administration ca-
pable of or concerned with providing a basic social safety net, religious and
charitable organizations attempted to fill the void to serve the ill, destitute,
and homeless of the metropolis. Protestant missionaries in China have gener-
ally been seen as adopting more innovative and effective techniques in their
missions than Catholics, including secondary and higher education, medical
missionary work, and lay charitable and social organizations. Catholics, on the
other hand, focused on primary education, catechism, and conversion of the
poorest classes of rural society. There is no question that this generalization
is accurate for most of China, at least until the 1920s, when Catholic missions
began to focus more on higher education and lay organizations. But in the
unique environment of Shanghai, the Jesuits were ahead of their Protestant
counterparts in employing these methods. The Jesuits’ political connections
and extensive financial advantages, as well as a relative lack of anti-Christian
sentiment in Shanghai, allowed them to quickly establish a series of concen-
tric institutions—orphanages, schools, lay charitable organizations, medical
dispensaries, and hospitals—that would guide Chinese Catholics and converts
from the cradle to the grave. The institutional architecture of Catholic life was
28 Rev. C.A. Stanley, “The New Conditions in China,” Chinese Recorder and Missionary Jour-
nal (June 1, 1904), 287.
reinforced by sacraments as well as more banal activities such as retreats, pil-

grimages, and, of course, regular church attendance.
This veritable “City of God” arranged around Catholic neighborhoods and
churches worked to further reinforce the strong communal and kinship ties of
Jiangnan Catholics, contributing to the community’s internal strength, which
was the source of its endurance (and, arguably, its suppression) during the
Maoist era (1949–76).29 For example, the Jesuits and nuns of several Catholic
orders were instrumental in founding the earliest hospitals in Shanghai, most
notably the Shanghai General Hospital, which was established in 1864 as a joint
effort by the Jesuits and the municipal council of the International Settlement,
and staffed largely by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and the
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. However, the success of the General Hospital
and other Catholic missionary works in Shanghai led to tensions with the Brit-
ish consulate, which disliked the proselytization that occurred at the hospital,
particularly conversion in articulo mortis. In 1875, the British consul (against
the wishes of the mostly British municipal council) attempted to restructure
the hospital’s administration to reduce the influence of Catholic missionaries.
This was largely unsuccessful, but it did lead to the oversight of a committee
of trustees less friendly toward the Catholics, as well as a war of words in the
Shanghai newspapers over the Catholic mission’s influence.30 A similar col-
laboration between the Jesuits and a group of prominent British merchants
(“nearly all Protestants”) was the establishment of St. Joseph’s Hospice 新普
育堂 in 1913.31 Such collaborations across national and denominational lines
29 Henrietta Harrison, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood Associa-
tion in China, 1843–1951,” American Historical Review (February 2008): 72–92. Har Angela Ki
Che Leung, “Relief Institutions for Children in Nineteenth-Century China,” in Chinese Views
of Childhood, ed. Anne Behnke Kinney (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 251–78.
30 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome ii, 266–67; A Guide to Catholic Shang-
hai (Shanghai: T’ou-sè-wè Press, 1937), 12. As it was located in the International Settle-
ment and not intended to be a missionary hospital (at least by the municipal council),
unlike many of the other Catholic charitable institutions in Shanghai, the General Hospi-
tal received fairly limited yet consistent financial support from the French Concession’s
Conseil Municipale. Shanghai Municipal Archives [hereafter sma], U38-1-128, Shanghai
fazujie gongdongju dui gonggong jiuji guangci yiyuan buzhu de wenjian (“上海法租界
公董局对公共救济广慈医院补助的文件 ”) [Documents on the Shanghai French
Concession Conseil Municipale’s public relief subsidies for l’Hôpital Sainte Marie], 177.
31 The hospice was located in Nanshi, which was part of the Chinese-administered section
of Shanghai but beyond the city walls and abutting the French Concession; in practice,
this neighborhood was often treated as an extension of the French Concession. Servière,
Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome ii, 87–88. sma U38-1-138, Shanghai fazujie gong-
dongju guanyu Nanshi xinpuyu tang de wenjian (“上海法租界公董局关于南市新
普育堂的文件 ”) [Documents of the French Concession Conseil Municipale concern-
ing the St. Joseph’s Hospice], “Assistance Publique, Subventions Municipales.”
128 Pieragastini
were not unique to Anglo-American merchants: the French Concession’s

Conseil Municipale often gave small subventions to British and American Prot-
estant (as well as Russian Orthodox and Buddhist) churches and charitable
organizations in Shanghai, though this was motivated by a somewhat farcical

attempt to uphold laïcité and avoid the charge of favoritism toward the Catho-
lic missions, to which the council devoted hundreds of thousands of francs
annually by the 1920s.32
Though driven in part by competition with early Protestant missionary ef-
forts in Shanghai, the Jesuits were inspired more by the social and cultural
context in which they operated. The unsettled social situation in late imperial
Jiangnan caused a great strain on society, which in lieu of effective govern-
ment relief programs necessitated a response from society itself. Studies have
cataloged the spread of the foundling homes and other poverty-relief institu-
tions dating to the early Qing period that laid the groundwork for later efforts
into the twentieth century, both religious and secular.33 Jiangnan elites in par-
ticular engaged in philanthropic activity to offset the social conditions that
demanded such services, and in doing so influenced the Jesuits and other mis-
sionaries aiming to care for orphans and foundlings.34 Catholic missionaries in
the Jiangnan mission therefore borrowed from an established local means of
addressing key social problems to develop their own orphanages and related
institutions.35
Similarly, the Jesuits were influenced by the Chinese educational tradition,
including the academies so admired by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), and estab-
lished a series of elite schools in Shanghai that aimed to combine both Chi-
nese and Western education. Though Chinese educators, including the Jesuit
Ma Xiangbo (1840–1939), would criticize the Jesuits for downplaying and even
belittling Chinese culture in their curriculum, the Jesuit-run academies in
32 sma U38-1-207, Shanghai fazujie gongdongju guanyu sheng ruose jiaoxue de wenjian
(“上海法租界公董局关于圣若瑟教学的文件 ”) [Documents of the French Con-
cession Conseil Municipale concerning the église St. Joseph], “Subventions et Alloca-
tions: Etablissements des cultes (1930–1943).” The Protestant church that benefited most
consistently from these subventions was the “American Church” (Community Church) on
Avenue Petain (nowadays Hengshan Road).
33 David E. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide since 1650 (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 7. Janet Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China,
1950–1953 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
34 Leung argues that their “the idea of the child as a social being” also changed in this period.
The ability of foreign missionaries to provide these services also embarrassed the local
gentry who felt their institutions were inadequate. Leung, “Relief Institutions for Children
in Nineteenth-Century China,” 251, 256. William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great
Qing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 119–21.
35 Harrison, “‘Penny for the Little Chinese,’” 78–79.
Shanghai, particularly St. Ignatius College, were venerated for their quality and
later served as feeder schools for the Jesuits’ university in Shanghai, Zhendan
(Université l’Aurore). The French government’s considerable financial support
for Zhendan in the early twentieth century, which helped it develop into one
of the largest and most prestigious universities in Shanghai, was largely moti-
vated by a desire to compete with Protestant missionary universities.36
5 The Republican Era (1912–49): Nationalism, Anti-imperialism,

and War
For as much as missionaries often criticized and even detested the Qing dynas-
ty, the fall of the imperial system heralded a period of greater uncertainty, civil
war, and a strident nationalism that sought to overturn the treaty privileges
that had greatly aided missionaries in the late Qing period. On the one hand,
the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries were generally well disposed to-
ward the Beiyang government of Yuan Shikai (1859–1916) that emerged out of
the political wrangling of the early republic. Yuan was seen as a “moderate” high
Qing official who had worked to suppress the Boxers, even after the Qing court
had sided with the rebels, while he was governor of Shandong. On the other
hand, Christians were concerned about how the new republic would approach
religion in public life, and were especially worried about a powerful Confucian
revivalist movement that had gained traction in the waning days of the Qing,
represented by the Confucian Society (Kongjiaohui). In the end, Catholics and
Protestants successfully lobbied, along with Buddhists, Daoists, and Muslims,
to have religious freedom enshrined in the republic’s constitution.37
The transition from the imperial system to a disunited republic led by region-
al military figures in many ways led to a more dangerous situation in the coun-
tryside missions and Christian communities than had existed before. Whereas
previously anti-Christian violence could be aided or inhibited by local officials
36 Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan, tome i, 249–51. Similar concerns among the
missionaries led to the creation of China’s two other Catholic universities: Furen in Bei-
jing (managed by the American Benedictines and later German missionaries of the Soci-
ety of the Divine Word) and the Tianjin Industrial and Commercial Academy (managed
by French Jesuits of the Champagne province rather than the Paris province Jesuits in
Jiangnan). Richard Madsen, “Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin’s Gong Shang College

as a Model for Catholic Community in North China,” in Becoming Chinese: Passages to
Modernity and Beyond, ed. Yen-Hsin Weh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000),
161–90, here 167.
37 “La nouvelle Chine et le culte de Confucius,” Relations de Chine 6 (January–April 1918):
3–17, here 3.
130 Pieragastini
who were part of a national hierarchy, now local brigands and secret societies
with indirect or no affiliation with a chain of command could raid, kidnap, and
kill at random.38 Such was the case in northern Jiangsu, where Christian and
non-Christian villages alike were barricaded and effectively turned into for-
tresses to defend against brigands.39 Such difficult and dangerous conditions
worked to foster a greater sense of camaraderie and mutual assistance among
missionaries of various denominations, especially those working in the coun-
tryside far from the treaty ports.
Similarly, Catholic and Protestant missions in China were both deeply af-
fected by the First World War. This was perhaps more severe in the Catholic
case because many of the countries that suffered worst in the war (France,
Germany, Belgium, Austria) were also major suppliers of missionaries and
money for the apostolate. Catholic missions were also less indigenized than
their Protestant counterparts, meaning that the return of missionaries to serve
as chaplains in Europe and the lack of new arrivals left vicariates shorthanded.
For both Catholic and Protestant missions, the war opened the door for greater
American involvement, to the point that the French Jesuits and other Euro-
pean Catholic missionaries feared the domination of the China mission by
Americans. For example, from 1922 to 1932, of the roughly $23 million contrib-
uted by Catholics to missions worldwide, the largest share (forty-two percent)
came from the United States, a number that only grew in subsequent years.40
American Catholic missionaries also established a presence in Shanghai dur-
ing this period, with American Jesuits of the California province managing the
Gonzaga High School and the large Sacred Heart parish in Shanghai, as well as
the Ricci High School in Nanjing, the city where the early modern Jesuits had
gained converts but which at the time was under the “preponderant, nearly
exclusive, influence” of American Protestants.41 The French Jesuits were also
wary of Rome’s push toward indigenization and “Protestant methods” begin-
ning in the early 1920s, embodied in the efforts of the apostolic delegate to
38 These groups’ origins lie in late Qing local self-defense forces such as the Big Swords Soci-
ety (Dadaohui, 大刀會 ) and secret societies with an anti-foreign element like the Elder
Brothers Society (Gelaohui, 哥老會 ), itself an outgrowth of Zeng Guofan’s anti-Taiping
forces.
39 “Quelques épisodes de la révolution dans le Kiang-Nan,” Relations de Chine 5 (April 1914):
385–403, here 391–92. Still, most bandit groups went out of their way not to attack mis-
sionaries, knowing the serious repercussions that could result. Furthermore, missionaries
were an asset as they could be called upon as a third party to negotiate settlements with
government troops or rival brigands.
40 Peter Fleming, “Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928–1957:
A Case Study in Mission and Culture” (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1987), 147.
41 “Sympathies françaises à Nankin” Relations de Chine 5 (April 1921): 496–99, here 496.
China Celso Costantini (1876–1958), and associated with increased American

Catholic influence.42
In fact, the indigenization issue became conflated with a struggle over Chi-
nese nationalism and anti-imperialism, a struggle that came to a head in mis-

sionary schools in the form of the “Anti-Christian Movement.” By 1920, China
had over a dozen religiously affiliated universities and colleges with ties to
foreign missionaries, including Zhendan University. Following the May Fourth
(1919) Movement, nationalists, including students at missionary universities,
increasingly demanded that the universities serve the best interests of China,
not their own missionary enterprise. The result was a series of intense politi-
cal movements centered on missionary university campuses that displayed an
enthusiasm for science and, in some cases, Marxist materialism. Christianity
was criticized not only for being the handmaiden of imperialism and capital-
ism but also for being “superstitious.” In Catholic institutions in Shanghai, the
situation was relatively subdued compared with Protestant schools, but there
still were disturbances connected to the Anti-Christian Movement. However,
unlike dozens of other schools in Shanghai, Zhendan did not close down in
1919, and the Jesuits maintained a critical stance toward Protestant missionar-
ies whom they saw as naively supporting social disorder by “confusing anarchy
for democracy.”43
In the end, the Anti-Christian Movement was only a forerunner to the
much more threatening Northern Expedition, a joint Guomindang (gmd, also
known as the Nationalists)–Chinese Communist Party (ccp) effort launched
from Guangdong in 1926 to defeat the regional warlords and unify the coun-
try under a single national government. The connections of Chiang Kai-shek
(1887–1975) with the Soviet Union were well known to politically aware mis-
sionaries and Chinese Christians. Though these ties began to fray before the
Northern Expedition even began, Chinese nationalism detached from Bolshe-
vism was still a concern for both Catholics and Protestants. Chiang split with
the Communists violently in April 1927, and the regime he created in Nanjing
included a high proportion of Christians, including most of Chiang’s inner
circle and ostensibly Chiang himself, but his was still a political movement
committed to anti-imperialism, including the revocation of the unequal trea-
ties. These efforts allowed for agents of the new gmd party-state to push more
42 cadn, Shanghai A-32 (noire), “M.A. Wilden, consul-général de France à Changhai, à Son
Excellence Monsieur De Fleuriau, ministre plénipotentiaire de la République en Chine à

Pékin,” December 26, 1922.
43 Bake zhong zhi Zhendan xueyuan (“罷課中之震旦學院 ,”)《申報》 1919年 5月 27日
[Zhendan University during the student strike, Shenbao, (May 27, 1919)]: 11. “La Chine et le
traité de paix,” Relations de Chine 5 (July–October 1919): 212.
132 Pieragastini
assertively at all levels against the rights and privileges that foreigners and re-
ligious organizations had been permitted to exercise since the late Qing. For
example, a new set of regulations on education that would have made prosely-
tization in schools nearly impossible was promulgated in 1928. Both Catholics

and Protestants worried about the new regulations, but Catholics were much
more adamant in opposing them, with the Jesuits criticizing the Protestants’
adoption of the “Chinese trait” of “always seeking the middle way” (a veiled
criticism of Protestant churches’ greater level of indigenization).44 In the end,
the debate was a moot point, as the regulations were modified in 1931 after re-
peated appeals from Catholics and Protestants during the consultation process
in writing a new constitution for the republic.45
But the arc of the Nanjing Decade (1927–37) also demonstrates the chang-
ing priorities of Chiang’s government; when conflict with Japan loomed, an
alliance with both Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries was pursued to
serve the more immediate goals of the gmd. Following the Japanese invasion
of Manchuria in September 1931 and the subsequent battle fought in Shanghai
in early 1932, and again with the full-scale Japanese invasion of eastern China
in 1937, Catholics and Protestants successfully organized large-scale relief ser-
vices to alleviate the throng of refugees seeking sanctuary in the relative safety
of the foreign concessions, including temporary “safety zones” that were off
limits to military activity. Christians, both foreign and Chinese, were also in-
volved in the war effort in a more active and controversial way, with the bish-
op Yu Bin (1901–78) and the Belgian-born Lazarist Vincent Lebbe (1870–1940)
being strong supporters of Chiang despite the Vatican’s official position of
neutrality in the conflict, and Protestant missionaries acting as important
fundraisers and cheerleaders for the Nationalists in their home countries. Per-
haps the most important of this latter group was Henry Luce (1898–1967), the
founder of Time and Life magazines, who had been born in China to Protestant
missionary parents. Luce was a staunch supporter of Chiang, and included a
steady stream of stories of churches being bombed and missionaries harassed
by Japanese troops in his publications, at a time when most Americans were
uninterested and uninformed about the conflict in Asia.
Nevertheless, some of the old divisions and misunderstandings between
Catholics and Protestants continued throughout the war period. As the Sino-
Japanese conflict devolved into a grinding stalemate by 1940, the Anglophone
press in Shanghai, reflecting a detached and perhaps callous attitude of
44 “La politique religieuse du gouvernement de Nankin,” Relations de Chine 28, no. 4 (Octo-
ber 1930): 221–30, here 221.
45 “L’année apostolique, 1930–1931,” Relations de Chine 30, no. 1 (January 1932): 61.
foreigners living in the treaty ports toward the rest of China, featured a se-
ries of theological debates, including on biblical literalism and papal infallibil-
ity, that were sharply critical of Catholicism.46 As always, disputes between
Catholic and Protestant missionaries also derived from nationality, especially

once the war in Europe began, with Catholics being criticized for the church’s
neutral position. These views were impelled and exacerbated by the fact that
many of the Catholic missionaries in China were nationals of countries that
were aligned with fascism (Germany, Italy, Vichy France, Spain) or under oc-
cupation by the summer of 1940. Even Chinese Catholics were characterized
as being more willing to collaborate with the Japanese, due to a shared opposi-
tion to Communism.47 These divisions became even more pronounced after
Pearl Harbor, when the foreign concessions were occupied and many Protes-
tant missionaries were rounded up by Japanese occupation forces in Shanghai
on account of their British, American, and Dutch nationality, whereas Jesuits
of all nationalities were spared internment following negotiations between the
leaders of the Jiangnan mission and the Japanese military.48 In fact, most Prot-
estant missionaries had left China and returned to their home countries be-
fore Pearl Harbor, and few returned after the war, due to the Chinese Civil War
(1946–49) as well as the greatly reduced need for mission work, since the war
had been a major catalyst for indigenization in both the Catholic and Protes-
tant churches. As the Catholic Church began the formal process of indigeniza-
tion after the war, critical self-assessments of mission work advocated copying
the best practices of the Protestants, particularly in organizing youth organiza-
tions and engaging the laity through social services.49
6 Conclusion
After the Communists assumed power in October 1949, both Catholic and
Protestant missionaries remaining in China found themselves in a perilous
position, especially after China’s entry into the Korean War (1950–53) in late
1950. In the minds of ccp cadres assigned to religious and cultural work, the
Catholic Church and the various Protestant denominations were often spoken
46 “St. Peter’s Role: Writings of Early Fathers,” North China Herald (July 30, 1941), 185; “The
Roman Complaint,” North China Herald (August 6, 1941), 225.
47 “Religious Neutrality,” North China Herald (August 27, 1941), 323.

48 Jin Luxian, The Memoirs of Jin Luxian, Vol. 1: Learning and Relearning, 1916–1982, trans. Wil-
liam Hanbury-Tenison (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 73–74.
49 Maryknoll Mission Archives, James E. Walsh Papers: Series 11; Visitation Reports and Dia-
ries, Folder 9; China Report, 1945.
134 Pieragastini
of in the same breath: both were directly tied to the history of imperialism in
China and were seen as politically unreliable. However, there were important
distinctions as well. It was recognized that although Protestants were more
likely to be associated with the United States, China’s enemy in Korea, they
also had taken much greater steps toward indigenization. In fact, the rheto-
ric of the “Three Self” or “Three Autonomies” (self-governance, self-financing,
and self-propagating), which the ccp promoted heavily, was initially a pre-
1949 Protestant slogan advocating the indigenization of Christianity, and the
government-affiliated Three Self Patriotic Movement was based on the ear-
lier National Christian Council. The Communists also accurately recognized
the Protestant focus on cities, youth work, and higher education, whereas the
Catholic Church was distinguished by its extensive landholdings and complex
international structure, both of which were noted as likely obstacles to “politi-
cal reform,” a euphemism for accepting ccp control of religious activity.50
Soon after taking power in 1949, the ccp began building connections with
prominent Chinese Protestant leaders. In a series of meetings in Beijing in the
spring and summer of 1950, Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) worked with Protestant
leaders to outline a shared vision for an autonomous church, completely free
of financial and cultural ties to imperialist countries. Wu Yaozong (1893–1979),
the president of the Chinese ymca, became the public face of the Three Self
Movement, publishing and promoting a “manifesto” on the movement’s prin-
ciples that eventually garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures in Three
Self-aligned churches.51 At the same time, the Party launched a similar Catho-
lic Reform Movement (天主教革新运动 , also known as the Catholic Patri-
otic Movement 天主教爱国运动 ), but met with very limited success, instead
encountering steadfast opposition from Chinese Catholics, nowhere more so
than in Shanghai. In any event, a blanket system of anti-religious policies was
instituted beginning in 1957 (the same year that the semi-schismatic Chinese
Catholic Patriotic Association, or ccpa, was founded), devolving into intense
anti-religious violence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76).
50 “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu tianzhujiao, jidujiao wenti de zhishi” (“中共中央关

于天主教、基督教问题的指示 ,”﹙一九五 ○年八月十九日 ﹚) [Chinese Com-
munist Party Central Committee directive concerning Catholic and Protestant questions,
August 19, 1950], “Database of Chinese Political Campaigns in the 1950s: From Land Re-
form to State–Private Partnership, 1949–1956” (Chinese University of Hong Kong Univer-
sities Services Centre).

51 Paul Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shang-
hai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 41–42, 55. It is important to note
that there were Protestants who refused to join the Three-Self Movement for political or
theological reasons, and some of these groups maintained adamant resistance to govern-
ment policies similar to the Shanghainese Catholics. Two notable cases from the 1950s are
the pastors Ni Tuosheng (1903–72) and Wang Mingdao (1900–91).
Though religious activity rebounded following the death of Mao Zedong

(1893–1976), and while Catholic and Protestants today have a largely shared ex-
perience of church–state relations, there are still important, historically rooted
distinctions between their activities and perceptions in Chinese society. Prot-

estants have been much more successful than Catholics in gaining new adher-
ents, especially among educated, young professionals in China’s major cities
(Shanghai chief among them), in effect the same constituency they had ap-
pealed to in the early twentieth century. In fact, efforts at Sino-Vatican recon-
ciliation are driven in large part by a fear that the Catholic Church in China has
become a minor and purely hereditary religion that will be swamped by Prot-
estants. Despite apparent political disagreements, the Vatican and Chinese
bishops enrolled in the ccpa have a shared interest in gaining new converts
(and retaining baptized Catholics), particularly among the same constituen-
cies with which Protestant missionaries have had so much success. In doing so,
they have sought to emulate the most effective methods of Protestant church-
es in China, such as employment of social media and social activities to draw
in active, young members. Though employing twenty-first-century technology,
and doing so under the watchful eye of the ccp’s religious affairs bureaucracy,
these techniques fit an established pattern of Catholics and Protestants debat-
ing, discussing, and borrowing concepts and practices from each other.
Bibliography
Chen, Janet. Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1950–1953. Princeton: Princ-
eton University Press, 2012.
Cohen, Paul A. China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chi-
nese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870. Taipei: Rainbow Bridge Book Co., 1972.
De la Servière, Joseph, S.J. Histoire de la mission du Kiang-nan: Jésuites de la province
de France (Paris) 1840–1899, tome I. Zi-ka-wei [Shanghai]: Impr. de l’Orphelinat de
Tóu-sè-wè, 1914.
[Drummond, William V.]. The Anti-foreign Riots of 1891. Shanghai: North China Daily
News, 1892.
Fleming, Peter. “Chosen for China: The California Province Jesuits in China, 1928–1957:
A Case Study in Mission and Culture.” PhD Diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1987.
A Guide to Catholic Shanghai. Shanghai: T’ou-sè-wè Press, 1937.
Har Angela Ki Che Leung. “Relief Institutions for Children in Nineteenth-Century

China.” In Chinese Views of Childhood, ed. Anne Behnke Kinney, 251–78. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
Harrison, Henrietta. “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood As-
sociation in China, 1843–1951.” American Historical Review (February 2008): 72–92.
136 Pieragastini
Havret, Henri. La mission du Kiangnan, les trois dernières années (1899–1901). Zikawei
[Shanghai]: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, Orphelinat de T’ou-se-we, 1902.
Jin Luxian. The Memoirs of Jin Luxian, Vol. 1: Learning and Relearning, 1916–1982. Trans-
lated by William Hanbury-Tenison. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christian Missions in China. New York: Russell
and Russell, 1967.
Lutz, Jessie. Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827–1852.
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008.
Madsen, Richard. “Hierarchical Modernization: Tianjin’s Gong Shang College as a
Model for Catholic Community in North China.” In Becoming Chinese: Passages to
Modernity and Beyond, edited by Yen-Hsin Weh, 161–90. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2000.
Mariani, Paul. Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist
Shanghai. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Morrison, Robert, and Eliza Morrison. Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Mor-
rison. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1839.
Mungello, David E. Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide since 1650. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
Platt, Stephen R. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom. New York: Knopf, 2012.
Rowe, William T. China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2009.
Wang, Paul Jiyou. Le premier concile plénier chinois, 1924 droit canonique missionnaire
forgé en Chine. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010.
Wei, Louis Tsing-sing. La politique missionnaire de la France en Chine, 1842–1856:
L’ouverture de cinq ports chinois au commerce étranger et la liberté religieuse. Paris:
Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1961.
Young, Ernest P. Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious
Protectorate. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Zhang Li and Liu Jiantang. 张力刘鉴唐中国教案史 ﹙ 成都 :四川省社会科学院
出版社 [History of missionary cases in China]. Chengdu: Sichuan Academy of So-
cial Sciences Press, 1987.
Chapter 7
Protestant and Jesuit Encounters in India

in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Délio Mendonça
1 Missionary Efforts to Reshape the Oriental Field
This essay discusses the work of Protestant and Jesuit missionaries in India,
as well as the narratives they scripted about themselves and each other in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As we will see, the images the missionar-
ies constructed about each other were often defined by the hostility between
the two missionary groups, which stemmed from their doctrinal differences as
well as their respective national allegiances, ultimately creating an acrimoni-
ous missionary context. Indeed, the Protestants and the Jesuits never engaged
in face-to-face debates; rather, they met through the medium of print.1
The Protestants and the Jesuits repeatedly faulted each other’s work and
criticized each other’s methods of conversion when boasting of their mission-
ary achievements back home. When the Lutherans denounced the Catholic
Church, Constantine Joseph Beschi (1680–1742), an Italian Jesuit and Tamil
scholar in south India, used satire in his folktale writings to ridicule and de-
nounce the Lutherans as fake gurus; he also used abusive language when re-
ferring to the differences between Catholics and Protestants.2 The Lutherans
repaid the insult in books and pamphlets printed at their own press in India.3
After the restoration, the Protestants continued to target the Jesuits on the
grounds that “they practiced deceit and hypocrisy. They lied in word, and they
lied in action.”4 The Jesuits also stood accused of following the un-Christian
practices of their predecessors, such as permitting the continuation of unjust
1 I am grateful to my colleagues James Corkery, S.J., and Rolphy Pinto, S.J., for going through the
essay and offering invaluable suggestions for improvement. Kaliappa Meenakshisundaram,
The Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil (Madras: Madras University, 1974), 75; www
.tamilvu.org/library/lA479/html/lA479ind.htm (accessed November 3, 2017).

2 Ibid., 284.
3 Their works were printed in the Tamil language; see Stuart Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and
Nationalism in Colonial South India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006).
4 John William Kaye, Christianity in India (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1859), 31.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_009
138 Mendonça
caste divisions among converts with the aim of impressing members of the
higher castes and encouraging them to convert.5
The Jesuits tried to convince the local people and rulers that their doctrines
and religion were superior to those of the Protestants,6 while the Protestants,
for their part, accused the Catholics of deceiving and bribing Protestant con-
verts to cross over, particularly in times of adversity.7 In fact, the absence of
Catholic priests or schools in the villages often led Catholic families to move
voluntarily to the Protestant side when they were offered such services,8 and
an increasing number of Catholics would later convert to Protestantism after
the Society’s suppression in 1773.9 In the same vein, the Jesuits complained
that the Protestants would use financial incentives to encourage Hindus to
convert.10
The Protestant missionaries described the oriental character as full of vices,
faults, deficiencies, untruthfulness, avarice, dishonesty, and as being in a per-
manent state of melancholy.11 Generally, both the Protestant and Jesuit mis-
sionaries entertained doubts about the motives of the low-caste converts, but
such was not the case for the converts from the higher castes, and for obvi-
ous reasons—the former were poor and underprivileged, and their conversion
appeared to be motivated by material interests.12 However, only a few Brah-
mins—which the missionaries viewed as the most intelligent and intriguing
race in India—actually became Christians.13
2 The Rise of the Jesuits
The Jesuits arrived in India long before the Protestant missionaries. In 1541,
just a year after the establishment of the Society of Jesus, King John iii of Por-
tugal (r.1521–57) invited the Jesuits to convert the lands of Portugal’s overseas
empire, leading the Society to turn its gaze and resources toward India, thus
5 Ibid., 37.
6 William Strickland, The Jesuits in India: Addressed to All Who Are Interested in Foreign Mis-
sions (London: Burns & Lambert, 1852), 60.
7 Louis George Mylne, Missions to Hindus: A Contribution to the Study of Missionary Meth-
ods (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 161.
8 Matthew A. Sherring, The History of the Protestant Missions in India: From their Com-
mencement in 1706 to 1881 (London: Religious Tract Society, 1884), 14, 70.
9 Strickland, Jesuits in India, 125.

10 Ibid., 102.
11 Mylne, Missions to Hindus, 163–64.
12 Kaye, Christianity in India, 350.
Protestant and Jesuit Encounters in India 139
making it the first Jesuit enterprise outside of Europe. The king thus encour-
aged the Society to abandon its limited continental vision in favor of winning
millions of souls for his newly acquired seaborne empire.
The Society of Jesus had been approved just two decades after the rise of
Protestantism, at a time when the Counter-Reformation was the order of the
day in Europe, although there was no mention of Protestantism in the Jesuit
foundation documents. Even if it was not their primary activity, by 1556, the
Jesuits, under the Roman pontiff, were actively involved in combating Protes-
tantism in various parts of Europe, with a special focus on German-speaking
lands. This political and religious struggle against Protestantism extended to
India and beyond to keep the Protestants away from the political and com-
mercial interests of Catholic Portugal, the Jesuits’ supporter and benefactor in
the East.
In the sixteenth century, the evangelistic enterprise in the East was carried
out exclusively by Portugal, despite its scant human and financial resources.
Under Portuguese patronage (padroado), the Society received extensive finan-
cial support owing to the order’s success in making converts and its loyalty to
Portugal, with successive Lusitanian monarchs sustaining and offering gener-
ous help to expand Christendom with revenues accruing from overseas com-
mercial gains. And as the Jesuits received the lion’s share of those revenues,
many other missionary groups and civilians began to envy them. Yet despite
such generous assistance, the Jesuits found themselves at the mercy of the Por-
tuguese viceroys of India, who accused them of insubordination and of taking
advantage of Portugal’s perilous condition in India to enhance their own eco-
nomic status and the Society’s network.14
Many new Christian communities had emerged around the Portuguese
forts and storehouses as well as in coastal towns where the Portuguese lived.
The Jesuit presence was conspicuous in Goa, Chaul, Bombay, Salsette, Bassein,
Tana, Bandora, Daman, Diu, Agra (Jesuit Goa province), and in Cochin, Quilon,
Madurai, Manapad, Nagapattinam, Mylapore, and Bengal (Jesuit Malabar
province). Missionary work was more intense along the Malabar Coast in the
southwest and in the Fishery Coast in the southeastern parts of India, where
a large number of fishermen had converted. However, the conversion of the
Indian rulers and members of the high castes that the Jesuits so eagerly sought
remained an illusion.
The Jesuits invested their resources in educational and evangelistic projects,
the number of which increased dramatically in the seventeenth century. They
14 Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and
Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 171.
140 Mendonça
converted large numbers of people from the lower castes, particularly in south
India, which would later provoke criticisms from the Protestants who claimed
that the Jesuits made conversions “just by sprinkling some water and uttering
a certain formula.”15 Indeed, it is true to say that the converts were not always
made by Christian means; and it is equally true that the Jesuits had supplanted
the Franciscans from their missions and that their dealings with them were
not always friendly16—thus Jesuit activism was not only unorthodox and dar-
ing but also objectionable to other Catholic missionaries and Protestants alike.
Their methods of generating funding to sustain their ever-growing enterprise
were equally daring and often not beyond reproach, as the Portuguese viceroys
alleged.
At the turn of the sixteenth century, two Protestant nations, the English
and the Dutch, arrived in the East to trade and began to challenge Portugal’s
commercial monopoly, power, and prestige, as well as the Jesuit enterprise.
Portugal, with lesser human and material resources to hold on to its seaborne
empire, quickly fell prey to the Dutch and English contenders as the newcom-
ers appropriated much of Portugal’s glory, accrued via the eastern revenues
from the spice, cloth, and gem trade, the profits from which had in turn con-
tributed to the expansion of Catholic activities in the Orient. The Protestant
Dutch took control of many Portuguese trading posts and factories along the
Fishery and Malabar Coasts and deprived the Jesuits of their spiritual outposts,
which had been established by Francis Xavier (1506–52) and his successors
from 1542 onward.
Over the course of time, the Protestants outlawed Catholic worship and
converted many of the Jesuit converts to Protestantism.17 As Portuguese pow-
er in India waned and its funds diminished, so too did Jesuit activism in the
East. The Jesuits blamed the Protestants for this state of affairs, whereas the
Protestants claimed that “the ruin of the Jesuit missions in Southern India was
accomplished […] by a natural internal process rather than by any outward
violence.”18
The oriental context, so different from the Occidental one, required a more
inclusive approach. But rather than leaving their Western religious prejudices
behind, the India-bound Jesuits brought them to the East. Thus the Jesuits
and Protestants engaged in the same doctrinal conflicts as they had in Europe
and constructed their imaginary identities by misrepresenting the other, the

16 Ibid., 30.
17 Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India, 47.
riental included. But the difference between these two rival groups lies in the
O
fact that the Jesuits had been on the Indian stage several decades before the
arrival of their Protestant challengers, during which time they had learned that
compromise with local customs was a prerequisite for success. Moreover, the
advantage the Jesuits enjoyed when the Protestants arrived extended to more
than one field, as they had already mastered the local languages, producing lo-
cal grammars, dictionaries, and literary texts, though they had never translated
the complete version of the New Testament in any Indian language. From the
sixteenth through the late eighteenth century, the Society played a significant
role in bringing European arts and sciences to India, particularly by way of
education and print. Some Jesuits also became influential diplomatic agents
and served as brokers for the local rulers.
3 The Newcomers: The Dutch and the English in India
The Portuguese trade monopoly ended in 1599 when the Dutch and the Eng-
lish established trading ports in India, and the Portuguese forts and factories
fell to those rival powers. Hence the lucrative overseas trade that Portugal had
enjoyed throughout the sixteenth century changed hands; and this intrusion
also shattered Portugal’s spiritual gains.19 The survival of the Society’s enter-
prise would henceforth depend on the extent to which the Jesuits would be
able to arrest the Protestant onslaught. For a time, the Dutch and the English
had allied together to attack the Portuguese, but this changed when the alli-
ance turned sour due to disputes over trade in 1623.
In 1611, the Dutch East India Company built factories (commercial agencies
or storehouses) at Masulipatnam and Pulicat, two important ports on the Cor-
omandel Coast in southeast India where the Jesuits had mission outposts. In
1617, the company established another factory in the port of Surat, not far from
several Jesuit locations along the northwest coast.20 The first trading ship from
England arrived in Surat in 1608, and for the next quarter century the Portu-
guese authorities in Goa, aided by the handful of Jesuits settled at the Mughal
court since 1580, tried to malign any English delegation to the Mughal court
and made every effort to exclude them from trading in the Mughal Empire.21
19 Alden, Making of an Enterprise, 159.

20 Ibid., 161.
21 Surat town was part of the Mughal Empire; ibid., 163. Leonard Fernando and George
Gispert-Sauch, Christianity in India: Two Thousand Years of Faith (Mumbai: Penguin
Books India, 2004), 157. In 1580, there were three Jesuit missions; the Jesuits resided in the
142 Mendonça
The Jesuits and the Protestants would often seek to discredit each other be-
fore the local rulers with the aim of gaining diplomatic and commercial ad-
vantages for their respective nations. Whereas the Jesuits accused the English
of being pirates, and complained to the Mughals that the English and Dutch
had a hidden agenda of territorial conquest, the English retorted that the Je-
suits were masters of deceit.22 However, since the Jesuits knew the local lan-
guage well, they were better placed to defend their own interests at the Mughal
court. Yet Emperor Akbar (r.1556–1605) was not interested in the petty quarrels
between the Jesuits and the Protestants; rather, without a navy, the Mughals
looked to the Portuguese to protect their ships as Muslims traveled for their
annual pilgrimage to Mecca. With the decline of Portuguese influence, these
services were eventually provided by the English, who were in turn rewarded
with an increase in trade in the Mughal ports.
In 1636, the Dutch fleet blockaded Goa, the headquarters of the Portuguese
in the East and the hub of Christendom, as part of the religious war between
Catholics and Protestants that would become known as the Thirty Years’
War (1618–48). The siege lasted until 1644, choking the city of supplies from
Europe as well as its dependencies between Cochin and Cambay and beyond.23
The obstruction of Portugal’s overseas territories also affected the country’s
income from the pepper ports in Malabar, with the trade passing to the Eng-
lish and Dutch. Not satisfied with the eastern siege, the Dutch also blockad-
ed Lisbon.24 Departures were delayed, and the Jesuits destined for the East
remained grounded. The blockade also disrupted Jesuit communication be-
tween Lisbon, Rome, and Goa, making it more difficult for men and supplies
to reach India.25 Even the 1640 restoration of Portugal’s independence from
Spain, the real enemy of the Dutch, and the Luso-Dutch truce, did not bring
peace in the East or better times for the Jesuits.
Throughout the seventeenth century, the principal object of the English and
Dutch Protestants in India was to obtain protection and profits for their East
India Companies. Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch Protestants did not have
any missionary program. In the words of historian Charles R. Boxer: “It was
not Calvinism which was the driving force behind the Dutch expansion over-
seas, but a combination of ‘love of gain’ among the merchants with the threat
of unemployment and starvation for many of the seafaring communities at
ughal imperial court at the personal invitation of Emperor Akbar and they served as his
M
political ambassadors and theologians.

23 Ibid., 175.
24 Ibid., 161.
25 Ibid., 175–76.
home.”26 Hence commerce and eliminating their religious enemies were the
main concerns of the Dutch as they went about dismantling several Catholic
mission centers, whereas the English almost always followed a neutral or am-
biguous religious policy in India.

The Dutch conquest of Nagapattinam, Tuticorin, and Mannar, Portugal’s
southern coastal positions, also brought an end to the Jesuit mission houses
there. Only Mylapore, on the east coast, where the Jesuits had a college, re-
mained under Portuguese control. After striking on the Coromandel Coast,
the Dutch moved westward to target the Portuguese positions on the Malabar
Coast. Cochin, where the headquarters of the Jesuit province of Malabar was
located, and Kodungallur (Cranganore), the last Portuguese centers, eventually
surrendered.27 The capture of Cochin and Cranganore by the Dutch in 1663
forced many Jesuits to leave their missions in Malabar and join the Goa prov-
ince, which had remained almost intact during the seventeenth century.28 The
Jesuits who chose to remain in Malabar “had to go about in disguise as Francis-
cans. Indeed, the Jesuits’ survival in the shattered province depended entirely
upon the protection of sympathetic rajas, and the fathers risked death when
they moved beyond their protectors’ zone of influence.”29 The Dutch Protes-
tants demonstrated their opposition to the Catholics by razing monasteries,
colleges, thirteen churches and chapels, the bishop’s palace, and two hospitals;
the cathedral was turned into a Dutch warehouse. The Dutch also destroyed
the Jesuit libraries at Ambalakad and other places in south India.30 The Jesuits,
whom a Dutch general called “the devil’s blood,”31 saw their missions on the
Coromandel and Malabar Coasts disappear one after the other.
The Jesuits of the Goa province were one of the principal landowners in In-
dia. Bombay, a Portuguese territory with a vast amount of Jesuit property, was
permanently transferred to the English in 1661. Overall, however, this province
suffered less than the Malabar province in the south.32 Manpower in the Mala-
bar province had peaked with 180 Jesuits in 1632; at the turn of the century,
there were only forty-two. And though the numbers in the Goa province had
peaked at 304 in 1627, by 1666 it counted only 258 members, despite the exodus
26 Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965),
115.
28 Ibid., 204.
29 Ibid., 205.
30 Édouard René Hambye, History of Christianity in India: Eighteenth Century (Bangalore:
Church History Association of India, 1997), 3:4.
32 Ibid., 179.
144 Mendonça
from the Malabar province.33 Yet notwithstanding this further decline in hu-
man resources and economic power, the Society continued to remain the most
conspicuous missionary order in the country, so much so that when the Prot-
estant missionaries arrived at the beginning of the eighteenth century they

were unable to ignore the Jesuit presence, as well as their work and influence.
The principal aim of the Dutch was to create a rival empire to the Luso-
Spanish Empire in the East and to damage the enemy on all fronts, particularly
trade and religion.34 However, whenever they could, they would also convert
the Catholics to Protestantism. Although they did not oppress the Christians,
John W. Kaye (1814–76), a Protestant historian, wrote: “The Dutch, entirely de-
voted to commercial pursuits, are said to have totally neglected them [Malabar
Christians]. But if they did not encourage the Christians, they sheltered them
against the rapacity of the Jesuits.”35
Throughout the eighteenth century, the British did not permit proselytism
among the local population and only allowed chaplains to come to India to
serve the needs of the British residents.36 But the behavior of the first British
residents in India scandalized the locals, leading Kaye to say: “Perhaps in no
place in the world is bad example more pernicious than in India.”37 As a result,
the locals began to look at Christianity as a religion of barbarians.38 The inter-
ests of the British East India Company—a trading company with mercantile
and political privileges—as well as the wars with the Dutch, French, and native
rulers, occupied much time as well as the company’s funds.39
4 The Early Protestant Missions
Protestantism was securely established at home when the first Protestant mis-
sionaries arrived in India in the early eighteenth century, or two hundred years
after the arrival of the first Catholic missionaries. By then, England had already
taken control of the resource-rich Indian subcontinent. Surprisingly, the Prot-
estant Danes had preceded the English in evangelizing work, when the Danish
33 Ibid., 80, 179, 203–4.

34 Ibid., 160.
35 Kaye, Christianity in India, 35, 36.
36 Henriette Bugge, “Christian and Caste in xixth-Century South India: The Different Social
Policies of British and Non-British Christian Missions,” Archives de sciences sociales des
religions 103, no. 1 (1998): 87–97, here 87.
38 Ibid., 99. Sherring, History of the Protestant Missions, 55.
government took the initiative of sending missionaries to Tranquebar in 1705.

Denmark had occupied a very small region in Tranquebar, a trading post in
the state of Tamil Nadu on the southeast coast of India, and in 1620 the Danish
East India Company set up a trading factory there. Tranquebar was destined to
become the seat of the first Lutheran Protestant mission in India, from where
Protestantism spread to other parts in the south.40
Initially, Protestant evangelism was confined to Tranquebar and a few set-
tlements of the English residents in south India where the Jesuits were also ac-
tive, particularly in their Madurai mission. What attracted the attention of the
Protestants was the method the Jesuits used to convert the high castes, which
appeared to them rather “alarming and arrogant.”41 According to the Lutheran
missionaries, all of the Jesuits, other than Francis Xavier, were but “mounte-
banks and impostors.”42 This century was characterized by Protestant–Jesuit
polemics, and such diatribes went on until the suppression of the Society of
Jesus in 1773, to restart yet again with the Society’s restoration.43
From Tranquebar, Protestantism spread and created Christian communi-
ties in Tinnevelly, Trichinopoly, Palamcottah, Tanjore, Cuddalore, and Madras,
where two centuries earlier Xavier had converted thousands of fishermen.44
Between 1728 and 1729, a terrible famine broke out in Madurai, Tanjore, and
the fertile Cauvery delta, during which many Catholics converted to Protes-
tantism.45 Likewise, in 1876–79, a terrible famine devastated the districts of
Tinnevelly and Ramnad, after which thousands received baptism.46
The Protestants tried to spread their version of Christianity among the Cath-
olics by using different methods from those of the Jesuits, particularly by print-
ing and distributing the Bible in local languages. Ziegenbalg set up a printing
40 The harbor at Tranquebar was ceded by the Tanjore king to the Danish East India Compa-
ny, along with a few villages and the town. Meenakshisundaram, Contribution of European
Scholars to Tamil, 69.
41 Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India.
42 Kaye, Christianity in India, 18, 23, 213. Ines G. Županov, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experi-
ments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999).
43 The suppression did not mean the immediate cessation of Jesuit activity, but the decline
was dramatic. Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism, 57.
44 Ibid., 49.
45 Meenakshisundaram, Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil, 31. James Hough, A Re-
ply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois on the State of Christianity in India (London: L.B. See-
ley, 1824), 195.
46 Missionary Council of the Church Assembly, The Call from India (Westminster: Church
House, 1926), 41. The label “rice Christians” was used by the missionaries for those who
appeared to convert mainly to receive material benefits.
146 Mendonça
press at Tranquebar and became the first to translate the Bible into an Indian
language—the Tamil Bible, in 1728. He had already translated and printed the
New Testament in Tamil in 1711.47 The distribution of the Bible in the local lan-
guages was crucial for spreading Christianity.48 Just as the Jesuits had earlier
done, the Protestants also produced a vast amount of literature to refute Hin-
duism.49 Yet the Hindu newspapers in the vernacular did not remain reticent
and published articles opposed to Christianity. To arrest such diatribes, the
British government prohibited the circulation of inflammatory literature from
the missionary press against the Hindus, as well as disrespectful public preach-
ing in Calcutta, the seat of British power.50 Print, as much as preaching, played
a key part in Protestant expansion during the eighteenth century.51
The printing press was introduced in several provinces of India, first by the
Jesuits in the sixteenth century, and then by the Protestant missionaries in the
eighteenth century.52 Although printing in the Tamil language had been intro-
duced by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, by the eighteenth century the
situation had changed. The Jesuits had no press when the Protestants arrived,
and so the domain of print in India passed into the hands of their rivals from
the Tranquebar mission.53 Hence the Jesuits lost the advantage they had en-
joyed since the sixteenth century.
The Jesuits resorted to controversial tracts against the Protestant missionar-
ies who sought to gain a foothold in what was supposedly their Madurai mis-
sion. Some of those tracts held the Protestants in contempt; others criticized
Hindu beliefs and practices. Similarly, the Protestants produced writings ridi-
culing Catholic practices.54 In the nineteenth century, James Hough slighted
the Jesuits, saying that they might be masters of a flowery high language full of
literary conceits, but the Protestants wrote in the simple language that the peo-
ple used and were able to understand.55 The missionaries sought assistance
from Indian scholars and poets to write in the local languages. Throughout
the first half of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits and the Lutherans, located

49 Sherring, History of the Protestant Missions, 1.
50 Ibid., 62, 69.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 114. Meenakshisundaram, Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil, 87. Anant Kak-
ba Priolkar, The Printing Press in India: Its Beginnings and Early Development (Bombay:
Marathi Samshodhana Mandala, 1958).

53 Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India.
55 John C.B. Webster, Historiography of Christianity in India (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 22.
barely seventy-five kilometers apart in south India, engaged in many theo-

logical disputes arising from their differing interpretations of the Christian
scriptures and missionary approaches.56 Thus it was through print that the
Protestants and Jesuits “met” each other and fought many religious battles un-
til the suppression of the Jesuits, to restart all over again by the middle of the
nineteenth century, when the Jesuits returned to India.
When the Lutherans published the New Testament in Tamil in 1711, and the
entire Bible in 1728, the Jesuits accused the Protestants of making errors in
the translation, thus distorting the true faith.57 Yet the Protestants themselves
never claimed to have produced perfect translations and wondered what had
prevented the Jesuits from performing such a task if it was a matter of such
concern to them.58 Rather than giving the people the Bible, the Protestants
said that the Jesuits preferred to leave them to their old customs59 and made
no attempts to improve the character of their converts, since they were not
asked to renounce their superstitious beliefs.60
When the Protestants distributed copies of the Bible to Catholics and Hin-
dus, the Jesuits were concerned that they could be put to wrong use.61 Catho-
lic theology insisted on iconography or holy images as the appropriate books
for the illiterate, but the Protestants took that for Catholic arrogance, claiming
that the locals had as much intelligence to understand the Bible in their ver-
nacular as any person belonging to the same class in Europe.62 By 1712, the
Lutherans had written thirty-three works in the Tamil language, including a
dictionary.63 They viewed the distribution and use of the Bible in the native
languages as being the most effective method for spreading Christianity.64
The Jesuit and Protestant missionaries quickly learned that successful con-
versions would require mastering the local languages.65 Accordingly, many
56 Blackburn, Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India, 44.

57 Ibid., 54. Meenakshisundaram, Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil, 292.
58 Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois, 143. But there was also no agreement
among the Protestant missionaries themselves on the first translation of the Bible. Meen-
akshisundaram, Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil, 76.
59 Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois, 150.
60 Ibid., 66, 83.
61 Hough, History of Christianity in India, ix; Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois,
98.
62 Ibid., 100, 124.

65 Henrique Henriques (1520–1600), Antão de Proença (1624–?), Roberto de’ Nobili (1577–
1656), Joseph Beschi (1680–1747), all great Jesuit writers, revolutionized the study of the
Tamil language and produced several grammars, dictionaries, lexicons, manuals for
148 Mendonça
Protestant missionaries spent a great deal of time studying the oriental lan-
guages.66 Although the Jesuits were already noted for producing literature in
local languages with works on poetry, prose, folklore, religious topics, major
grammars, and dictionaries, the Protestant missionaries also published didac-

tic books as well as translations of the Bible in several Indian languages over
the course of their fifty-year stay in India.67 The writing and publishing activi-
ties of both the Protestants and Jesuits contributed not only to proselytism but
also to the development of local literature and the diffusion of secular knowl-
edge. Liberal Indians who had availed of secular education became social re-
formers and used print in English and Bengali to attack social and religious
superstitions.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the East India Company and the Brit-
ish government opposed the conversion of the locals. The government itself
remained neutral to, or tolerant of, every religious practice in the country; the
state policy was rather ambiguous toward Christianity and allowed idolatry
and superstitions to coexist.68 One of the reasons for this was that the British
believed that it was important to avoid the appearance of any relationship be-
tween the government and the missionaries, as such a perception would harm
the interests of the state. Yet the policy of indifference, the Protestants argued,
was synonymous with rapprochement between the state and idolatry. The
British authorities feared that missionary excesses could interfere with their
interests, and Christianity was thought of as promoting anarchy and confu-
sion. There was also little enthusiasm in the Church of England for mission-
ary work.69 Nevertheless, Protestantism continued to expand in south India
through the efforts of individual missionaries.
The Protestants and their missions were simply tolerated, rather than ac-
tively supported, by the British government, and the missionaries fought both
at home and in India for government recognition of their missions. Before the
eighteenth century, the achievements were solely those of individual men
c atechism, ascetical books, and doctrinal instructions for the use of the local catechists.
In the absence of a press, many manuscripts remained unpublished, but they were still
widely used, even by the Protestants. The grammar work, “Koduntamil,” was the only
book that was printed during Beschi’s lifetime, and surprisingly enough it was published
by the Tranquebar Mission Press in 1738. But they received no permission to print his lexi-
con Tamil–Tamil Catur-Akarati, which was only printed much later, in 1824. Blackburn,
Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism, 32, 40, 60. John Correia-Afonso, The Jesuits in India
1542–1773 (Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1997).

67 Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois, 195.
unsupported by the British government; indeed, at times their work was de-
liberately obstructed by British officials. Nevertheless, Louis George Mylne
(1843–1921), an English Protestant bishop of Bombay (1876–97), could say: “The
influence of the English Raj is all on the side of what is elevating,” adding, “even
though this Raj may be neutral or even adverse to evangelisation, the British
officialdom cannot be regarded as not adverse to evangelisation even though it
professes to elevate India morally.”70
There were a large number of disagreements between the British Parliament
and the East India Company over the resolution of issues relating to the ad-
vancement of Christian values and religion in India. The East India Company
was against such a resolution and cared little about the expansion of Christian-
ity and missionary work in what it considered its dominions.71 This changed to
some extent with the company’s Charter of 1813, which inaugurated a new page
for Christianity and education in India by officially permitting the diffusion of
Christianity, although the government refrained from interfering with the local
religions for fear of disastrous consequences.72 The government consequently
remained aloof from conversion efforts and continued to protect the religious
institutions of the country, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth
century—when the British crown had taken over India—that the presence of
the Anglican missions began to be felt in costal Andhra Pradesh. When there
were no more risks of persecution and wars, many British and American mis-
sionary societies came to India, but they never presented a united front.
5 The Modern Protestant Missions
The nineteenth century witnessed the expansion of Protestantism in India,

particularly after the renewal of the East India Company’s Charter in 1813 and
the dispatch of 1833, which granted missionaries the freedom to preach in India,
as well as freedom for all religions.73 The country was thrown open to mis-
sionaries, and mission societies were allowed to operate freely in British terri-
tory.74 Missionaries from diverse denominations, nationalities, and missionary
societies arrived in Bengal and spread to north India. The Anglican Church
began working in India in 1815. The restored Society of Jesus returned in 1837.75
70 Mylne, Missions to Hindus, 152–53.


72 Ibid., 266.
74 Webster, Historiography of Christianity in India, 13.
150 Mendonça
A new chapter in proselytism began, with each group trying to correct what
were perceived to be the mistakes of the others, attacking their doctrines and
methods.
The aftermath of the French Revolution ushered in political convulsions in

Europe as well as suspicions over whether the revolution’s ideals could offer
stability. The result brought to power rulers who, although more conservative,
were not always sympathetic to Christianity. The Occident was turning to secu-
larism.76 But this was not necessarily the case in the East. With the European
scramble for territorial control culminating in the Berlin Conference (1884–
85), the world witnessed an unprecedented phase of Western dominance over,
and exploitation of, Africa and Asia; and the colonial governments employed
and empowered their missionaries to represent their empires’ interests. The
power of the clergy over the governments in Europe was on the decline, but it
was not so in the colonies.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the British East India Company had ex-
tended its sway over the Indian subcontinent, only for the British government
to take over the company’s control of India’s resources. From 1857 onward, Brit-
ain permitted missionary societies to join its imperial mission, and by the end
of the nineteenth century, there were over 122 Protestant missionary societies
at work in India.77 However, it was only from 1913 that they began to cooper-
ate, and with the formation of the National Missionary Council for All India,
the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Wesleyans finally came
together.78
Previously, the East India Company and the British government had seen
little benefit in educating the Indians, with only the Christian Knowledge So-
ciety coming forward in support of the Protestant education program. The Je-
suits also responded to the new political opportunities, as demonstrated by
the large number of schools, colleges, and seminaries they established during
the second half of the nineteenth century.79 Bengal, being the center of Brit-
ish power in India, attracted a great deal of Protestant material and human
resources for their schools and colleges. That region had been part of the Jesuit
Malabar province, but historically their presence was hardly felt there, unlike
in the south. Now, the Jesuits were no match for the Protestants.80

77 Missionary Council of the Church Assembly, Call from India, 22.
78 Ibid., 71.
80 John Wilson, The Evangelization of India (Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co., 1849), 78.
William Carey (1761–1834), an English Baptist missionary, played an impor-

tant part in education, first in Serampore and then in Bengal.81 The missionar-
ies in Serampore were pioneers in the field of education82 who concluded that
most of the social evils in the country resulted from ignorance or improper
education. In 1830, ninety-two percent of the population in Bengal was illiter-
ate. Up to that point, education had been confined to oriental languages and
to classic theology for the upper castes.83 In 1829, Carey established the famous
Serampore College to provide higher education in arts, science, history, phi-
losophy, medicine, and theology for Christians and non-Christians.84 But the
real breakthrough in education occurred with the arrival of Alexander Duff
(1806–78), a Scottish Presbyterian missionary, in Calcutta in 1830, who insisted
on the importance of Western education.
Confronted with the same highly sensitive and problematic issues over cul-
tural adaptation, translation, and writing in the local languages to win the high
castes to Catholicism as the other missionaries had faced in the Madurai mis-
sion, Duff spared no efforts to find the best means to attract and win over the
learned or high-caste Indians to Christianity.85 The elite would supposedly lead
the masses to conversion. In order to win the respect and confidence of the
Brahmins, some of the Jesuits experimented with Christianity, “Brahminizing”
themselves, albeit with only meagre success.86 Caste was a sign of Hinduism
for Protestants, but Duff took a different route.87 He understood that the Hin-
dus valued learning greatly and would send their children wherever it could
be obtained. The eagerness of the middle and upper classes for English educa-
tion led Duff to champion education in the English language.88 Moreover, he
81 Calcutta had become the hub of the British East India Company, and although the com-
pany officially discouraged conversions, missionary activity was not totally absent. In
1858, Bengal became the headquarters of the British government in India, which favored
the establishment of several Protestant denominations in India.
82 Serampore was a Danish settlement territory fifteen miles north of Calcutta, but it went
to the British in 1801.
83 Mylne, Missions to Hindus, 132.
84 Md. Shaikh Farid, “Historical Sketch of the Christian Tradition in Bengal,” Bangladesh e-
Journal of Sociology 8, no. 1 (2011): 72–75, here 74. By 1830, the Serampore press had trans-
lated and printed the entire Bible in five languages and the New Testament in fifteen
others. They also translated and published religious literature and grammars in several
languages for use in schools. The works on oriental literature published at the Serampore
press or Hindu literature helped Europeans in the study of languages, religion, and cus-
toms of the country. Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois, 155.
87 Bugge, “Christian and Caste,” 90.
88 Missionary Council of the Church Assembly, Call from India, 20, 30.
152 Mendonça
also believed that only through English would it be possible to impart higher
knowledge and bring about modernization, and so he initiated English educa-
tion in Calcutta and reproduced it in other places. But since English education,
although instrumental in introducing Western ideas, would affect only a frac-

tion of the population, preaching was equally emphasized to implant Christi-
anity in the villages. Undeniably, education in the English language introduced
ground-breaking changes in certain population groups, as well as visible social
and political transformations.89
The Protestants admired the Jesuits’ educational network, particularly the
historically prestigious College of St. Paul in Goa, established in 1549. These in-
stitutions were designed to form candidates for the priesthood and for secular
offices, but particularly to extend the Society’s presence in India, even though
the required manpower was never sufficient.90 On seeing how such institu-
tions had helped to diffuse the Catholic religion in many regions, the Protes-
tants followed suit, but with some basic differences.91
The Jesuits asserted that the high-caste Hindus preferred to send their sons
to Catholic schools rather than to Protestant ones because of the lifestyle of
the Catholic missionaries, particularly celibacy. More importantly, the Catho-
lic schools endorsed caste customs, which they said had no connection what-
soever with Hinduism or religion.92 In 1845, the Jesuit college of Nagapattinam
accepted youth of high caste, though very little was done to admit students
from other castes.93 The Jesuits also introduced caste distinctions in their
churches, where different castes sat apart.94
The most important difference between the Catholic and Protestant mis-
sionaries from the very beginning of the century was that the former had a fine
grasp of the Indian social system based on castes and used this knowledge to
strengthen their position in south India.95 Respect for caste laws was a precon-
dition for the conversion of Brahmins and other high castes, the Jesuits argued,
although this changed from the 1890s onward, when they began to view the
caste system as socially unjust.96 The Protestants criticized the Christianity of
the Jesuits in the Madurai mission as nothing other than “idolatry in disguise”
89 Ibid., 35.
91 Hough, History of Christianity in India, 42.
93 Ibid., 125.
94 Kenneth Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism in India 1789–1914 (New York: Curzon
Press, 1998), 113.
95 Bugge, “Christian and Caste,” 89.
and suggested that the lack of conversions was only natural.97 In fact, the Jesu-
its preferred to leave the low castes to the Protestants. Furthermore, the Protes-
tants remarked that the Jesuit method of attracting Brahmins had been carried
“far beyond the bounds of truth and brotherly love.”98 The Protestants called
the Jesuits “Western Brahmins” for following Brahmin superstitions.99
Protestant women missionaries introduced female education in the early
nineteenth century. Indian women were largely inaccessible to male mission-
aries or to their schools, and women missionaries came to fill that lacuna in the
missions. Protestant women were sent out to prevent Protestants from mar-
rying Catholic women who then converted their husbands and brought their
children up in the same faith. Strange though it may sound, the government
and the missionaries also attempted to prevent mixed marriages between
Catholics and Protestants in India,100 and schools for girls were established to
help Protestant men find educated wives. These schools imparted liberal prin-
ciples, whereas the Jesuits found schooling for women impractical since the
Society’s educational institutions only admitted males. Initially, only girls from
the lower-class families went to school.101 Female education and Christian in-
fluence contributed much to the abolition of sati (the Hindu practice of burn-
ing widows), polygamy, and female infanticide,102 and it had important results
in destroying superstitions and idolatry in Indian society.103 Christian schools
and colleges preached not merely truths and the superiority of its religion but
the greatness of Western nations.104
The missionaries were certainly not under the illusion that they could con-
vert the Indian subcontinent purely by themselves. It was expected that the In-
dian churches and its local evangelists and clergy would follow in the footsteps
of the missionaries to win India for Christ.105 But in pre-independence India,
the missionaries judged that the missions and churches could not be fully
97 Ibid., 33. Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois, 82.
98 Missionary Council of the Church Assembly, Call from India, 18, 19.
99 Kaye, Christianity in India, 31. Ballhatchet, Caste, Class and Catholicism in India, 113.
100 Ibid., 103.
102 Farid, “Historical Sketch,” 75.
103 Sherring, History of the Protestant Missions, 116, 119.
104 Kavalam Madhava Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama
Epoch of Asian History, 1498–1945 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954), 430. Arun Shou-
rie, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas (New Delhi: asa Publications,
1994). Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin,
1995), 117.
154 Mendonça
entrusted into native hands without European supervision.106 There was an ac-
knowledgment on the part of the Protestants that the exclusion of locals from
ordained ministry and offices of leadership had been an error; fortunately, the
situation began to change just before the independence of India in 1947.107
6 Protestant Pietism in India
Pietism played a role in defining the identity of the Lutherans and other Prot-
estants, and it became an important marker to identify Protestantism.108 The
first Protestant missionaries to India were products of the Lutheran University
of Halle, the cradle of the Lutheran Pietist movement. European Protestant
Pietism reached its zenith in the mid-eighteenth century, before acquiring
different shades and declining in the nineteenth century when Protestantism
was gaining roots in India. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Heinrich
Plütschau (1677–1752), the first Lutheran missionaries to arrive in India in 1706,
were educated at Halle, and their Pietism would influence the Protestant mis-
sions in India for the next two centuries. Around fifty Protestant missionaries
who came to India during the eighteenth century had been formed at Halle.109
At that time, Christianity had no governmental recognition in India, which
accounts for the insignificant number of Protestant missionaries and the indi-
vidualistic character of Pietism. However, just like the Pietists in Europe, the
missionaries in India emphasized Bible-reading in native languages, training
Christians to lead local congregations, and insisted on personal conversion
rather than reaching out to large groups through the local elites.110
The diversity of the oriental context and its hostility to conversions led the
Protestant missionaries to make adjustments—and another version of Pietism
emerged in India. A Pietist impulse that meant more than just the negation of
utterances of traditional religious formulae—sophistry in preaching, pleasing

108 Pietism was a seventeenth-century movement in the Lutheran Protestant Church that
stressed the study of the Bible as well as personal and devotional religious experience and
practices.
109 Just fifty missionaries were sent out in the eighteenth century, and no more than ten were
in the field at any one time. Sherring, History of the Protestant Missions, 49.
110 Christian T. Collins, Christopher Gehrz, G. William Carlson, and Eric Holst, eds., The
Pietist Impulse in Christianity (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2011). See also “The Pi-
etist Impulse: Missions,” August 16, 2011, and April 7, 2012; http://pietistschoolman.
com/2011/08/16/the-pietist-impulse-missions (accessed November 3, 2017).
rhetoric, divine services, morning and evening prayers—made its way to India.
The missionaries had to fashion this new version of Pietism since the West-
erners who professed themselves Christians had caused the locals to deride
them, saying in their broken English: “Christian religion, devil religion; Chris-
tian much drunk; Christian much do wrong; much beat, much abuse others.”111
The missionaries soon understood that, to win Indian souls for Christ, Pietism
would need to be translated into philanthropy.112
The oriental cultural provinces unleashed insurmountable obstacles, ag-
gressive participants, and a host of questions for which the Pietists did not
have ready-made answers. The missionaries had to reckon with several diffi-
cult challenges in their campaign, such as the caste system, “idolatry,” super-
stitions, the maltreatment of women, Brahminism, Islam, the multiplicity of
religions, and not least the Romanists (Catholics) and Jesuits.
The Protestants evolved their activism within the framework of social Pi-
etism and British imperial hegemony. They had concluded that most of the
social evils in the country, the result of ignorance and illiteracy, could be over-
come by the spread of secular knowledge in general and Christian knowledge
in particular. But only from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
British public attention awoke to its obligation of spreading religion in India,
could the Protestant missionaries move faster with their social programs.113
And even after Christianity became a state-endorsed religion, excessive Pi-
etism that could incite aggressive evangelism or proselytism was always re-
strained by the government on the grounds that it posed a danger to public
order and threatened British interests.
Due to the difficulties involved in proselytization work during this period,
the Protestants concentrated on Bible-reading and studying the local languag-
es. The result was a keen Protestant interest in local cultures. The Bible was
translated in a number of major Indian languages and dialects, and biblical
commentaries were prepared, and dissemination of that material was facilitat-
ed by their own printing press; the printed material was distributed not only to
the Protestants but also Hindus and Catholics.114 The free distribution of count-
less copies of the Bible in native languages was the best method for spread-
ing Christianity, according to the Pietist movement.115 Furthermore, instead

114 Hough, History of Christianity in India, ix. Hough, Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois,
98.
156 Mendonça
of bitter attacks on the Catholics and others, Pietism advocated treating them
more sympathetically, and by the end of the nineteenth century, the Protes-
tants had abandoned their aggressive attitude toward Hinduism and Islam.
Pietism, as synonymous with maintaining spiritual fervor and improving

its members’ quality of life, did not permit Christians to participate in non-
Christian festivals. But since it was impossible to wipe the oriental context
clean from non-Christian elements, the presence of Christians in the social
and religious festivals of others had to be tolerated.116 As a result, the mission-
aries tolerated some local practices deemed unchristian, and thus a new orien-
tal Pietist paradigm was born that would not have been approved in Europe.117
The missionaries condemned the inhuman aspects of the caste system and
held the Brahmins accountable for enslaving the low castes and outcastes. The
Brahmins, the leaders of the people, prevented conversions and evangelism.118
The caste virus infected the Protestant churches too, almost irreversibly divid-
ing the Christian community. Caste discrimination continued, but with the in-
troduction of Western schooling and ideas, and the spread of female education
as well as societies for charitable services, the Pietists expected to eliminate or
mitigate the caste system.119 In doing so, the missionaries were able to prepare
society for the reception of the Christian faith.120
In 1830, the Protestants took up Duff’s vision for higher education in the
English language. The Jesuits had introduced Western education back in 1550,
but it was limited in scope and scale. Duff’s program of education had a multi-
plier effect, as seen by its acceptance among the Hindus. When the Protestants
started establishing schools and colleges, illiteracy was high in the country for
several reasons.121 One of these was that the East India Company officials, be-
side showing no interest in education, began imposing heavy taxation on the
local rulers, depriving them of their traditional incomes for financing village
education.122 The Protestants went on to establish schools for women to im-
part liberal values, a pioneering venture. When the missionaries began with
female education, there was not a single indigenous female school in the coun-
try, which explains some of the initial aversion to the idea.123

117 “Pietist Impulse: Missions.”
118 Wilson, Evangelization of India, 65, 70. Kaye, Christianity in India, 350.

120 Wilson, Evangelization of India, 78.
122 Hough, History of Christianity in India, 42.
123 Wilson, Evangelization of India, 421, 434. Sherring, History of the Protestant Missions, 109.
Educational, medical, pharmaceutical, and other philanthropic services

became robust expressions of Protestant Pietism.124 The Pietist impulse re-
sponded to some of the corporeal and social needs of their target groups, but
the goal was always the same—conversions, which in many cases offered the
converts social liberation. Many Indian intellectuals and social reformers eu-
logized these corporeal and social features, and some of them felt attracted to
Protestantism.125 Protestant Pietism in India assumed a profile of “maternal
activism”—but always within the womb of “British hegemony,” not very much
different from the Jesuit approach.
Bibliography
Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire,
and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Ballhatchet, Kenneth. Caste, Class and Catholicism in India 1789–1914. New York: Curzon
Press, 1998.
Blackburn, Stuart. Printing, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India. Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2006.
Boxer, Charles R. The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1965.
Bugge, Henriette. “Christian and Caste in XIXth-Century South India: The Different
Social Policies of British and Non-British Christian Missions.” Archives de sciences
sociales des religions 103, no. 1 (1998): 87–97.
Collins, Christian T., Christopher Gehrz, G. William Carlson, and Eric Holst, eds., The
Pietist Impulse in Christianity. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2011.
Correia-Afonso, John. The Jesuits in India 1542–1773. Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash,
1997.
Farid, Md. Shaikh. “Historical Sketch of the Christian Tradition in Bengal.” Bangladesh
e-Journal of Sociology 8, no. 1 (2011): 72–75.
Fernando, Leonard, and George Gispert-Sauch. Christianity in India: Two Thousand
Years of Faith. Mumbai: Penguin Books India, 2004.
Hambye, Édouard René. History of Christianity in India: Eighteenth Century. Bangalore:
Church History Association of India, 1997.
Hough, James. A Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois on the State of Christianity in
India. London: L.B. Seeley, 1824.
124 “Pietist Impulse: Missions”; Webster, Historiography of Christianity in India, 117.

125 Farid, “Historical Sketch,” 72.
158 Mendonça
Hough, James. The History of Christianity in India: From the Commencement of the
Christian Era. London: Church Missionary House, 1860.
Kaye, John William. Christianity in India. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1859.
Kumari, V. Santha. “Church Missionary Society in Coastal Andhra, 1850–1950: Mediat-

ing Change among the Malas.” Indian Church History Review (June 2014): 27.
Meenakshisundaram, Kaliappa. The Contribution of European Scholars to Tamil. Ma-
dras: Madras University, 1974. www.tamilvu.org/library/lA479/html/lA479ind.htm
(accessed July 13, 2017).
Missionary Council of the Church Assembly. The Call from India. Westminster: Church
House, 1926.
Mylne, Louis George. Missions to Hindus: A Contribution to the Study of Missionary
Methods. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908.
Panikkar, Kavalam Madhava. Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da
Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498–1945. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1954.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, 1995.
Sherring, Matthew A. The History of the Protestant Missions in India: From their Com-
mencement in 1706 to 1881. London: Religious Tract Society, 1884.
Shourie, Arun. Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. New Delhi: ASA
Publications, 1994.
Strickland, William. The Jesuits in India: Addressed to All Who Are Interested in Foreign
Missions. London: Burns & Lambert, 1852.
Webster, John C.B. Historiography of Christianity in India. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2012.
Wilson, John. The Evangelization of India. Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co., 1849.
Županov, Ines G. Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in
Seventeenth-Century India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Chapter 8
Beyond Words: Missionary Grammars and the

Construction of Language in Tamil Country
Michelle Zaleski
When the Pietist missionaries arrived in India in 1706, they were quick to de-
nounce the local literary tradition. “I am all Amazement when I see your Blind-
ness in not discerning spiritual Things,” Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719)
explained to a local Brahman, “as if you had sworn Eternal Allegiance to the
Dictates and Poetical Fictions of Lying Bards; who riding upon the Ridges of
Metaphors and Allegories, have rhymed you into the Belief of lying incom-
prehensible Perplexities.”1 Ziegenbalg’s distrust of Tamil poetry mirrored a
broader Protestant distrust of their rival Jesuit missionaries and their ways
with words. In an introduction to the 1844 edition of Jesuit Costanzo Beschi’s
(1680–1747) work, Beschi was accused of “adapting his discourses to the taste
of his hearers and readers and of becoming all things to all men.”2 What had
otherwise defined the success of the Jesuit mission—their rhetorical dexteri-
ty—was seen as excessive, extravagant, and even inaccurate. Due to these early
dismissals, Jesuit contributions to the study of Indian languages were either
ignored or dismissed for much of the eighteenth century up to their recovery
in the late twentieth century. The secular attitude of orientalists only furthered
this perspective on the Jesuits. While the empirical work of “early” orientalists
like William Jones (1746–94) and Franz Bopp (1791–1867) prepared Europe for
the rise of language as a nationalist yet scientific enterprise, earlier work by
Jesuits like Henrique Henriques (1520–1600), Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656),
and Beschi have yet to contribute to the history of colonial cross-language re-
lations in India.
This chapter begins by examining the linguistic turn in Jesuit missionary
work in India. In contrast to the embodied Christian rhetoric introduced by
Francis Xavier (1506–52) and practiced by the earliest missionaries to India, Je-
suits of the later generation used language as a means of conversion, beginning
with the work of Henriques and his Arte da lingua malabar (Art of the Malabar
1 Stuart H. Blackburn, Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India (Delhi: Perma-
nent Black, 2003), 53.
2 Ibid., 49.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_010
160 Zaleski
language), the first European grammar of Tamil, drafted in 1549. Scholars have
suggested that this work made a unique contribution to missionary linguistics,
but they usually focus on its religious content rather than its peculiar theory
of language. Accordingly, this chapter begins by interrogating the relationship

between the Jesuits’ theorization of language and their practice of Ignatian
spirituality.
In Henriques’s linguistic work, language-learning is presented as a funda-
mental precursor to Christian conversion. The work further demonstrates
the translingual possibility of Ignatian spirituality at the level of language. By
using the word “translingual,” I am building on the work of compositionists
Suresh Canagarajah as well as Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner, among others.3
And in aligning this text with translingualism, I mean to suggest that the text
represents language as negotiated (i.e., co-constructed in time and space). The
text presents language as performed and emergent rather than predetermined.
Ziegenbalg’s grammar, on the other hand, represents a view of language that
still predominates today, which “focuses on individuals [language-learners]
located on a fixed scale of competence toward ‘mastery’ of a reified ‘target’
language,” or what has been termed a “monolingual ideology.”4 Monolingual
ideology relies on grammar to define the boundaries of one language in re-
lation to another and measures fluency against this standardized norm.5 As
Canagarajah has demonstrated, this approach originated with the European
Enlightenment, romanticism, the rise of the nation state, and the expansion of
colonization and imperialism during the modern period.6 Locating the differ-
ences within grammars emerging out of colonization at different points during
the spread of Christianity, however, reveals the mechanisms that help main-
tain this dominant ideology and their connection to the Christian mission.
This chapter explores the intersection between language-learning and
Christian practice in order to better understand the extent to which spiritual-
ity can dictate grammatical content and linguistic form. Taking a close look
at Henriques’s grammar and comparing it with Ziegenbalg’s later attempt at
crafting an eighteenth-century Pietist grammar of Tamil, the chapter outlines
3 A. Suresh Canagarajah, Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations

(New York: Routledge, 2013); Bruce Horner et al., “Language Difference in Writing: Toward a
Translingual Approach,” College English 73, no. 3 (2011): 299–317.
4 Bruce Horner, Samantha NeCamp, and Christiane Donahue, “Toward a Multilingual Com-
position Scholarship: From English Only to a Translingual Norm,” College Composition and
Communication 63, no. 2 (December 2011): 269–300.
5 Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner, “Translingual Literacy, Language Difference, and Matters of
Agency,” College English 75, no. 6 (July 2013): 582–607, here 583.
6 Canagarajah, Translingual Practice, 20.
Beyond Words 161
the imprint that religion made on language-learning in South India. Both gram-
marians used their beliefs to write grammars that would preserve the Christian
message. However, while Ziegenbalg’s work reveals an inherent distrust of the
local language’s ability to communicate truth, Henriques’s work demonstrates

a greater faith in meaning-making that existed beyond grammar and its lin-
guistic codes. His work recovers all the imprecision of language-learning and
provides new possibilities for the teaching of grammar. While language is pre-
served through rules in later European grammars of Tamil, Henriques captures
the movement of language through the context of its practice.
1 Henrique Henriques’s Early Tamil Grammar
At the start of his mission, Xavier used João de Barros’s (1496–1570) Gramática
as the basis for teaching language and Christian doctrine. Printed in Lisbon
between 1539 and 1540, Barros’s grammar included a basic literacy primer
as well as a short catechism and ode to the Portuguese language. The gram-
mar imagined the Portuguese language as a tool for creating the Christian
subject at home and abroad; it was intended to be an Art, or Arte. In learn-
ing the language, children and foreigners would also be learning Christian
ethics. However, in making his move to the Coromandel Coast, Xavier left
this view of Portuguese linguistic sovereignty behind, and new missionaries
were encouraged to learn the local languages in addition to Portuguese. In
1549, Henriques drafted a grammar of the Parava dialect found on this fishing
coast, the first European grammar of an Indian language. Henriques’s Arte
da lingua malabar followed the form of Barros’s grammar but contradicted
Barros’s conception of grammar as a nationalistic enterprise. The text was
formed out of a context defined by stark cross-cultural exchange, or what
literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt calls a “contact zone.”7 As a textual art of
the contact zone, Henriques’s grammar represented language as a mode of
expression yet admitted the instability and inherent mutability of grammar.
The text’s incomplete nature, reinforced by its tentative approach to linguis-
tics, provided a way for language to overcome form while still acknowledging
the importance of grammar.
The manuscript that survives of Henriques’s Arte da lingua malabar con-
tains 144 folios, recto and verso.8 The text moves from a description of the
7 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91 (1991): 33–40.
8 Most of this analysis is based on Jeanne Hein and V.S. Rajam’s English translation of Hen-
riques’s manuscript (The Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil: Fr. Henriques’ Arte da lingua
162 Zaleski
Tamil alphabet and pronunciation to a description of nouns, noun declension,

adjectives, pronouns, and participles. The remainder of the text is devoted to
verbs, first presenting nine different verbal conjugations, broken down into the
present, past, future, imperative, negative future, and infinitive tenses, and
then presenting impersonal verbs, passive verbs, and the verb “to be.” The
text then ends abruptly with a short explanation of Tamil sentence construc-
tion. The sole surviving manuscript is clearly incomplete, resembling a collec-
tion of notes more than a full-fledged textbook. This is in part due to the fact
that the manuscript was never printed. But it also underscores Henriques’s
continual plea for more time to work on the text. Even though Henriques went
on to complete more works in Tamil, including the Flos sanctorum (Lives of
the saints) and Confesionario (A guide to confession), his letters continued
to insist that his grammar was incomplete. When Henriques sent a draft to
Ignatius of Loyola (c.1491–1556), he explained there are still things to be added
to it.9 His grammar, in this respect, demonstrates how Henriques was con-
tinually working to learn the language throughout his life. As such, the gram-
mar remained in process, as unfinished as his ever-evolving knowledge of the
language.
Henriques’s grammar depended on the grammars of three languages:
Latin, Portuguese, and Tamil. The grammar mixed Portuguese and Latin as it
explained Tamil and juxtaposed the Roman alphabet with Tamil script. The
grammar focused on a description of the Tamil language, yet Henriques mis-
labeled it “Malabar.” Small mistakes like this demonstrate the peculiar nature
of the grammar. This was a grammar that was representative of the oral dialect
spoken by those living on the Fishery Coast rather than the written Centamil,
or high Tamil, preserved in traditional Tamil grammars like Tolkāppiyam. This
mixing of languages and the focus on new linguistic registers ultimately resist-
ed the structure inherent in traditional grammars, both European and Indian,
giving rise to an approach to language based on usage.
Like Barros and others who were building early European vernacular gram-
mars, Henriques used Latin as the model for outlining the linguistic struc-
tures that would determine fluency in Tamil. Written on the first pages of
Henriques’s grammar are the following instructions: “To understand this Arte
more easily one should have a knowledge of the rudiments of Latin. Those who
do not know Latin should read through the Portuguese grammar composed
Malabar: Translation, History and Analysis [Cambridge, MA: Department of South Asian
Studies, Harvard University/Harvard University Press, 2013]). The original manuscript can be
found in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.
9 Letter from Henriques, Punnaikayal, November 21, 1549. Documenta Indica 1:582.
Beyond Words 163
by João de Barros.”10 These grammatical structures were familiar to him and

would also be familiar to his readers. He explained the process of writing the
grammar in a letter:
I had a sort of grammar to learn it, because just as in Latin we learn con-
jugations, I made an effort to learn this language, [and] I conjugated the
verbs; and to arrange preterits, futures, infinitive, subjunctive, etc., cost me
great work; also to learn accusative, genitive, dative, and other cases; and
as well to learn what comes first, the verb or a number of pronoun, etc.11
These three languages worked together at the structural level and in the way
that the Tamil language was presented and imagined. While this meant that
most of the grammar’s structure was already determined, beginning with these
familiar languages allowed Henriques to access the workings of a language
that was new and foreign to him.
In practice, this meant that Latin grammar was remade in its application
to and explication of Tamil. That is, the text’s multilingual structure became
a translingual form, a form that negotiated the very shape of grammar. As he
built competency in the language, Henriques identified familiar Latin patterns
and then worked toward an understanding of their use within Tamil. This pro-
cess revealed his hesitations just as much as his grammatical conclusions. His
description of the cases is just one place that demonstrates how these lan-
guages came together. In his “General Rules for Declining Easily,” Henriques
introduces noun declension by first presenting each of the ends for the voca-
tive, ablative, nominative, genitive, and accusative cases. He then explains that
the accusative builds on the nominative by adding the ending “that is, -aei.”12
However, from here, he takes a step back. He reveals that the “vocative plural is
little used” and that, in fact, even though it might be possible to speak correctly
using the plural, “I notice how customary it is to speak in the singular, as I have
said.”13 Henriques then qualifies the accusative, explaining:
Likewise, when they should use nouns in the accusative plural, often they
speak in the following manner:
“Take away these ten hats” inda patu topi còdupoo […].
10 Hein and Rajam, Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil, 38.

11 Letter from Henriques, Vembar, October 31, 1548, Documenta Indica 1:285 (Županov’s
translation).
12 Hein and Rajam, Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil, 61.
13 Ibid., 62–63.
164 Zaleski
They should have said:

imda patu topigaLæi còdupoo […].
But, as was mentioned, they are accustomed to say through the nomina-
tive singular what ought to be said in the accusative plural. The above
examples show how nouns are declined in all or in almost all instances.14
In building up knowledge based on observation but qualified by Latin con-

structs, Henriques ended up repeating himself, taking steps back, and ending
where he started. Grafted on to his explanation of noun declension were all
of the exceptions and actual practices of the language. As he builds an un-
derstanding of Tamil from Latin, Latin grammar undoes itself. The rules are
remade—renegotiated—by practice.
Henriques’s presentation of Tamil through Latin and Portuguese involved
gaps and allowed for mistakes. In juxtaposing these grammars, he revealed the
contradictions inherent in approaching language solely as a linguistic form. In-
stead, he admitted the conflict between languages at the level of grammar—no
language could represent a direct translation of the other via grammar alone.
Henriques’s grammatical rules are consequently presented as possibilities
rather than precepts, and his grammar invokes the translingual skills—a skill
based on the negotiation of linguistic form through social practice—needed to
transcend grammatical structures. Henriques does acknowledge grammar as
a way in, but he also foregrounds multilingualism as a way to access and then
work across and between multiple grammars. In this translingual crossing,
he shows how new linguistic knowledge evolves out of prior knowledge. He
demonstrates how the structures of these different languages are interwoven,
impossible to separate yet still distinct. Rather than being preserved as a static,
discrete, and defined object of study governed by rule-specific grammatical
forms, language and language boundaries are represented as fluctuating and
in constant revision.
Behind much of the shape of Henriques’s text is the simple fact that it
bears witness to an act of learning. Henriques foregrounds this process. Rather
than representing the Tamil language as a strict code bound by its grammati-
cal rules, Henriques represents grammar as a language-learning process. It is
in his presentation of rules and the reproduction of his inductive display of
grammatical reasoning that Henriques created a rhetorical grammar, a gram-
mar that moved the reader as well. His explanation of verb conjugation is just
one example of how he reinvents grammar as not only translingual but also
rhetorical.
14 Ibid.
Beyond Words 165
The section on verbs is based on verb usage, presenting an entirely novel

picture of Tamil that focuses on contextual meaning rather than the rote
memorization of paradigms. Specifically, by creating “sub-tenses” he is able to
generate tenses within tenses to emphasize each tense’s multiple applications.

His sub-tenses are usually created by drawing attention to specific markers that
can change the inflection of a specific tense. For instance, in the presentation
of the sub-tense vichuvadiquira vagu epirhi, which he translates as “how one
has to believe,” he builds on the base tense vichuvadiquira and then explains
the addition of -vagu as a marker that means “with certainty” and “-[e]pirhi”
as a marker that means “how.”15 In this case, he also provides a comparison
with Portuguese, explaining: “Altogether it means ‘it is certainly to be believed’
as we say in our Romance [Portuguese]. ‘How one has to believe.’ ‘How they
must go to Punnaikayal […]’ punicayluqu poRRa vagu epirhi.”16 With this one
sub-tense, Henriques’s novel creation of a sub-structure is able to introduce
new vocabulary while also allowing the reader to develop a broader linguistic
repertoire, and his rhetorical approach to these grammatical structures fore-
grounds the act of meaning-making as play. Henriques suggests that, rather
than the mere memorization of rules, it is in experimenting, practicing, and
playing with language that one develops fluency. As Lu and Horner suggest,
this kind of translingual orientation to language depends on a radical reori-
entation of language pedagogy, from one that is focused on transmission and
preservation to one that encourages openness and creativity.17
This approach to explaining grammar through context becomes even more
intricate in the next several sub-tenses, where he builds on the verb form
vichuvadiquiradæi, translated as “what ye believe.” In this case, it is with the
addition of -quathi that Henriques creates a new sub-tense, vichuvadiquiradæi-
quathi. Like many of the sub-tenses that follow, Henriques only provides a
definition through example. His definition, is as follows: “In order to know
the meaning of this tense this example is given: ‘Ye rejoice more to believe
in idols than in God’ tambiranæi vichuvadiquiradæi quathi pagavadiæi vichu-
vadiquiradu ungaLucu pirizâôundu.”18 Through example, Henriques is able to
show the nuances in meaning achieved in different contexts and provides the
reader with some dexterity in the language. This is similarly apparent with his
definition of the structure vichuvaditu iruca chole, which is reduced to: “‘Hav-
ing believed in Jesus Christ, he turns back to believing in idols’ tambiran Iesu
15 Ibid., 86.
16 Ibid.
17 Lu and Horner, “Translingual Literacy,” 586.
18 Hein and Rajam, Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil, 1:86.
166 Zaleski
xpî vichuvaditu iruca chole iRRamdavadu pagodiæi vichuvadiquiran. ‘Someone

having defended him already, nevertheless he does what he wishes’ vilagui
iruca chole apoodû anda cariam cheiyran.”19 Rather than giving a rule for the
formation of this sub-tense, or even explaining the tense’s basic meaning, Hen-
riques instead provides two sentences. It is only through these examples that
the structure gains any resonance. The phrase’s meaning, something along the
lines of “having believed,” only creeps into the picture. Instead, what is stressed
is how these verbs can be used to create new meaning. These examples invite
readers into the process of using grammar rhetorically. They invite readers to
use the language and make their own meaning. Readers are subtly led into
the language play that leads toward the creation of new meaning by seeing
Henriques’s inductive language-learning process on display. Rather than ask-
ing its readers to memorize rules, the grammar asks readers to develop skills
in recognizing linguistic patterns and encourages them to apply these patterns
in new ways.
Henriques redefined grammar as rhetorical by taking the reader out of
the memorization of grammatical form and into the creation of new mean-
ing. The grammar aimed at function rather than pure form. It was practical,
with the goal of providing readers with the capacity to communicate with lo-
cals. By presenting grammar as an inductive method, he pushes his readers
to develop their own rhetorical capacity for language-learning and use. This
rhetorical capacity reflected the nature of the Jesuit mission and its model of
Christian conversion within language itself.
Henriques’s translingual approach to cross-language relations was based
on a philosophy of language that was not just rhetorical but theo-rhetorical.
Henriques mixed the rules of different languages, and he mixed the languages
themselves. While, on a practical level, this means that Latin can be found
mixed into his Portuguese expressions and that Henriques worked from both
familiar Latin and Portuguese linguistic structures to explain Tamil grammar,
it also represented a broader view of language that understood border-crossing
as generative. He makes this clear on the last page of the text by writing:
[dum] mea puppis erat valida fundata carina

qui mecum velles currere primus eras
ardua morus erat gelido contermina fonti
domine
non sum dignus ut intres, etc.
19 Ibid., 92.
Beyond Words 167
[While] my ship was laid on a strong keel, you were the first who wished
to go with me
the mulberry tree next to the cool spring was tall
Lord I am not worthy that you should enter, etc.20
This graph combines two lines taken from Ovid’s (43 bce–17 CE) letter Amico
instabili (To an unstable friend), line 90 of Ovid’s fourth metamorphosis, and
the story of the centurion from the Gospel of Matthew. The juxtaposition of
these three texts, all in Latin, readily assumed that the reader was familiar
with the Latin language, the Latin literary tradition, and Christian scriptures.
Each passage depends on the inherent beauty of the language and the unique
complexity of its grammar to create depth in meaning. At the same time, its
poetry suggests the value of language beyond the mere function of its gram-
mar, the juxtaposition of these three competing stories even creating new po-
etic possibilities. The beauty of the Latin language is on display. Yet, these are
still three stories forced out of their original context. And this incongruity fuels
a deeper layer of meaning that whispers; beauty is not an end in itself. That is,
language cannot be reduced to aesthetics alone.
The graph brings together three different stories: a letter about friendships
broken, the fatal love story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and a Bible story in which
the words of Jesus heal a centurion’s servant based on faith alone. Each story
brings together words and actions, showing the difference between communi-
cation and miscommunication. Ovid’s letter is the result of a friend’s betrayal
that recounts unfaithfulness. The tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe displays an
instance in which communication is stifled. Their love ends in death after
an accumulation of misread signs and misplaced faith. In contrast, faith gives
words the power to heal through the intervention of the divine in Matthew.
The Bible verse in full reads: “Lord, I am not worthy to enter under this roof,
but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” These three accounts
weave together a powerful story about language and reveal the perceived dif-
ference between Christian rhetoric and its secular tradition. They demonstrate
the difference between mere words and the Word. It is Jesus’s words that have
20 Ibid., 230. Henriques’s text as preserved by Hein and Rajam reads: “Mea pupis erat validea
fundata carina / quimecù vellis currere primus cras / Ardua morus erat gellido contermi-
na fonti / Domine / non sum dignus ut intres etc. / [My ship was strong as founded on keel /
If you want to run with me you will be the first tomorrow; / Tall was the mulberry tree, as
it was near to a gelid fountain. / Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter, and so on....”
Above, I have corrected the text for clarity upon comparison with its Latin sources.
168 Zaleski
healing power, but it is not the words that have power; rather, this power comes
from God alone.
In writing this in Latin, Henriques demonstrates a deep awareness of the
power of linguistic codes to craft messages of beauty. The passage subtly ac-
knowledges that this beauty and these codes are not the end but are only the
beginning. While the words in the first two instances are unable to bridge
the gap between interlocutors, it is faith that is able to close the gap and pro-
vide meaning in the third, residing within but also beyond words. In repeat-
ing these words as he closes his grammar, Henriques puts his grammar into
the hands of God rather than his own. Henriques’s grammar was not an intel-
lectual exercise but was motivated by good will. The grammar was not just a
form, but a living tool with the sole purpose of enabling more people to hear
the Word of God. Henriques’s belief in God and the importance of action did
not negate the real need for missionaries to learn the local language. Yet his
grammar emphasized the importance of understanding language as a tool to
be used rather than a pure form. As such, it reminds readers that it is the will
behind that form that matters most.
From 1565, the Jesuit Roman Curia actively encouraged missionaries not
only to learn local languages but to write grammars and dictionaries to send
back to Europe. Under the supervision of Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606),
foreign languages became the divina voluntad (divine will) of Jesuit missionar-
ies. Henriques’s grammar became part of the fabric of language-learning in
the Indian mission. His grammar is referenced alongside the course of study
used at St. Paul’s College in Goa and mentioned throughout Jesuit letters from
the mission. An early letter from a Jesuit in Goa explains that it is because of
the grammar that they now know the language: “All of the brothers learn the
language, and we wait on God for everything that is to come of this, for the
ones to learn, for the path has already been opened, and there is a great differ-
ence between knowing the language well and speaking through a translator.”21
The grammar was not used alone but rather marked the introduction to the
Malabar dialect for Jesuit missionaries and prefaced further study and practice
within local villages. Henriques himself writes in a letter that practice with
locals was also necessary for better understanding local belief and increasing
the faith of the Christians.22 He emphasized that they could not rely on the
grammar or his Malabar vocabulary alone. Henriques’s grammar represented
a rhetorical approach to language-learning and teaching that characterized Je-
suit missions abroad.
21 Letter from Ambrosius Nunes, Punnaikayal, June 19, 1549. Documenta Indica 1:489.
22 Letter from Henriques, Punnaikayal, November 6, 1552. Documenta Indica 2:396.
Beyond Words 169
2 Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Eighteenth-Century Grammar
In the eighteenth century, Ziegenbalg was able to find his way to India un-
der the auspices of the Danish crown. A devout German Pietist, Ziegenbalg’s
early work provided a strong foothold for the other Protestant missions that
followed, most notably the work of the British Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge (spck). Ziegenbalg’s mission indirectly built on the work of the
Jesuit missionaries who came before him and worked alongside him. Pietists
depended upon a longer history of Jesuit linguistic work with Tamil to commu-
nicate with locals even as they reinvented the rules of grammar. Ziegenbalg’s
Grammatica Damulica provides a useful counterpoint to Henriques’s Arte.
Written more than a century later, Ziegenbalg’s text demonstrates the new role
that foreign grammars began to play as cultural artifacts within the European
context. Grammar, in this sense, underwent a subtle change between the six-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. No longer just a tool, grammar became more
important for providing a way into foreign cultures by presenting language as
a cultural proxy.
Ziegenbalg first learned Portuguese when he arrived at the Danish fort of
Tranquebar (Tharangambadi) on the eastern coast of India.23 Portuguese had
become the language of commerce in India, but Ziegenbalg soon decided he
would also need to learn Tamil. Tamil would allow him to reach beyond lo-
cal civic authorities and, more importantly, form a better understanding of
local culture. As historian Will Sweetman points out, Ziegenbalg’s Tamil writ-
ing depended upon the intricacies of translation.24 At the heart of his tract
Akkiyānam (The abomination of paganism), he used a close analysis of Tamil
terminology to explain the difference between “heathenism” and the truth of
Christianity. This defense, on the one hand, demonstrates the way in which
Ziegenbalg’s work depended on sympathy for local traditions. His exposition
of Hinduism reveals his own serious engagement with the culture through
dialogue and constant reading. In contrast to his Tamil writings, Ziegenbalg’s
grammar was crafted for a European audience.
23 Stefan Pfänder and Alessandra Castilho Ferreira da Costa, “Linguistic Variation in Every-
day Life: Language in the Protestant Mission of Eighteenth-Century South East India,” in
Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India Part VIII: Correspondence and
Publications, ed. Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and Heike Liebau (Halle: Verlag
Der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006), 1155–63.
24 Will Sweetman, “Heathenism, Idolatry and Rational Monotheism among the Hindus:
Ziegenbalg’s Akkiyānam (1713) and other Works Addressed to Tamil Hindus,” in Gross, Ku-
maradoss, and Liebau, Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, 1249–77.
170 Zaleski
Ziegenbalg drafted his grammar en route back to Europe. In the text, he ex-
plained his rationale for learning Tamil and his hopes for the grammar. Ziegen-
balg explained that, as opposed to learning the Portuguese language, learning
the Tamil language would help the Pietists gain more souls, “leading them from
the worship of images to a purer form of worship.”25 The language itself func-
tioned as an entry point for understanding the local “worship of images,” its
“secret places,” and “deeper concepts.”26 The language was the bearer of this
culture and was distinctly defined by these superstitious practices; further-
more, Ziegenbalg argued that ancient Tamil was useful only for the worship of
images.27 Language was thus a means into superstition and local knowledge, a
taking on of the local mindset in order to destroy it. Ziegenbalg began learning
the language by reading, re-reading, and making excerpts of literary works in
Tamil, consulting interpreters when necessary. He became familiar with both
the content and form of Tamil works. He explained this process in detail at the
start of his grammar:
Whatever I learnt from the speech and phrase, especially of the more
outstanding men, I noted and arranged in specific notebooks. From
these I wrote a considerable lexicon. But the forest, so to speak, was im-
penetrable; it was a labyrinth requiring the thread of Ariadne, that is, a
grammatical tool for the skill of those who want to be guided without the
weariness and digressions in the knowledge of the Indian language. So I
tried to organize that language into more grammatical rules and with this
record more exactly experience with its nature once more. My attempts
succeeded very well. I wrote first a Tamil grammar, but intermixed with
German translation. And I translated it into Dutch so that it might be
printed in Tamil characters cast in bronze among the Germans.28
Ziegenbalg characterized Tamils and their writing as “fashionable” and “civi-

lized”; yet he characterized Tamil as filled with “inexplicable labyrinths […]
woven into the irrational fables such that exist in the dreams of a sick man.”29
In contrast to his more dialogic writing to local Tamil audiences, his efforts to
write a grammar served as a way to turn the local language into a purer form
that was intelligible for European audiences. He was especially wary of the
25 Daniel Jeyaraj, trans., Tamil Language for Europeans: Ziegenbalg’s Grammatica Damulica
(1716) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 30.

26 Ibid., 30.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 32.
29 Ibid.
Beyond Words 171
Tamil superstition that he saw as characterizing the language, and its prefer-
ence for poetry. This was part of his deliberate departure from famous Tamil
grammars, like Tolkāppiyam, which relied on verse and poetic devices to relay
grammatical constructs. This move away from poetry also marked his depar-
ture from Catholic grammars, like that of Henriques.
This difference is reflected in the grammar’s long lists of Tamil words with
translations. The grammar, in this respect, functions more as a catalog than
as a text that bears the marks of language-learning and practice. Beyond the
lists of declined nouns and conjugated verbs that make up most of the text
and demonstrate an overt visual departure from Henriques’s grammar, the
presentation of these models is also markedly different. For example, unlike
Henriques, Ziegenbalg presents noun declension in a straightforward manner:
“All of the nouns in this language are declined and inflected in the same way
as in Latin. As regards the case endings this language has only one declension
in which all nouns can be declined.”30 He only amends these opening state-
ments by adding that “the Nominative has some variation in the singular and
the plural from which the Genitive must be formed” and “the Ablative is also
threefold, Ablative of place, of instrument, and of accompaniment.”31 Nowhere
does Ziegenbalg admit asymmetry or incongruence between these rules and
practice, nor does he suggest any greater meaning beyond the rules presented.
His structure of parsing noun declension in Tamil is similar to Henriques but
more rigid and less overtly pliable. The remaining part of the section on noun
declension is devoted to several examples of the different declensions and cor-
responding lists of the nouns that belong to each declension according to their
ending. The only additional notes in this section denote the specific endings in
Tamil, demonstrating an attempt to present the language as simply as possible.
Similarly, the section that follows on verbs is structured into tenses and
moods with very few hints as to the greater complexity of Tamil verb conjuga-
tion. This section best demonstrates the process that Ziegenbalg used to write
the grammar. Large sections of the book follow Baltasar da Costa’s (1627–73)
Arte tamulica (Art of Tamil), a Portuguese Tamil grammar from the late sev-
enteenth century. The rules and tables for this section on verbs, in fact, are
identical to Costa’s, according to Daniel Jeyaraj, the translator.32 Ziegenbalg
used pre-existing European grammars of Tamil to create his comprehensive
treatment of the language. His approach was not meant to be original but as
30 Ibid., 50.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid. Jeyaraj discusses Ziegenbalg’s use of Costa’s grammar at greater length in his intro-
duction, see 2–26.
172 Zaleski
simple as possible. Therefore, he reproduces what he knows has worked be-

fore. Similarly, his presentation maintains simplicity. He opens the section on
verbs with a comparison to nouns: “Just as the nouns recognise only one de-
clension, so also the verbs of this language, with only certain exceptions, can
be conjugated conveniently, according to one conjugation in all moods and
tenses.”33 The rest of the section focuses on basic tenses, adding only small
variations to demonstrate tenses that do not naturally occur in Tamil. His pre-
sentation of verbs focuses on listing the conjugated verb with its translation,
with each tense broken down into the singular, honorific singular, and plu-
ral. Full sentences appear only when necessary to distinguish a certain tense,
such as the imperfect. Yet, Ziegenbalg does correctly identify how tenses can
be constructed using participles and adverbs. He does not use the sub-tense
construct and instead presents ways to construct variations on a particular
tense by adding short sections that follow each major tense, modeling how to
use participles and adverbs to change the verb’s meaning. He does this early by
explaining that while there is no past imperfect in Tamil, “it is possible for it to
be formed if the syllable is added to the present and the past and the adverb
(then) is added.”34 He then provides several sample conjugations that range
from past imperfect to the future with their translation. Ziegenbalg presents
his exceptions up front but does not linger on their distinctiveness. Instead, he
creates a catalog or reference of verb conjugations for his readers.
Unlike Henriques’s text, rules are simply presented as just that, rules. Rather
than playing with the syntax of the language, Ziegenbalg fixes the language in
place through his own declarative statements. His final chapter on syntax best
represents the difference in perspective:
There are not many rules of syntax in this language. Indeed anyone can
adequately see the whole business of construction from what has been
explained in previous chapters. But lest anything which is required by
grammarians be lacking, in this chapter some advice about the construc-
tion of this language will be offered.35
He then begins by explaining gender with the declarative statement: “All names
of Gods and men are without exception of the masculine gender,” followed by
two examples.36 In explaining adjectives, he goes on to assert that “adjectives
33 Ibid., 91.
34 Ibid., 92.
35 Ibid., 151.
36 Ibid.
Beyond Words 173
recognize no distinction of gender and are not declined with nouns.”37 Soon
after, he moves on to verbs: “Verbs are never placed at the beginning or middle,
but always at the end of a phrase,” supplementing the rule with an example.38
Ziegenbalg’s grammar becomes a definitive statement on the Tamil language.

Tamil is simplified, the complexity of the language as preserved in its poetry
and long tradition of grammar ignored. This would seem to make the act of
learning the language easier, but it also subtly removed the complexity of
translation and the real difficulties of learning new languages, the grammar
becoming a replacement for linguistic play.
Yet, in some places, Ziegenbalg does structure his grammar in a way that
seems to encourage usage. In his section on the past perfect tense, he also pro-
vides structures that can create a pluperfect despite the fact that it does not
exist in Tamil. As an alternative to the future affirmative tense, he goes on to
create another alternative future tense that can be created by adding the verb
“to go” to the infinitive absolute. This style of presenting alternative tenses is
also repeated later for the optative mood. To conclude the text, he writes: “The
remaining rules of construction and elegance can easily be learned from prac-
tice,” adding, “Let every tongue [i.e., every people] praise God!”39 Ziegenbalg
attempted to present Tamil as simply and as accurately as possible. Practice,
while noted here as important, is separated from the work of this grammar.
Ziegenbalg built on over a century of European linguistic practice with Tamil
and adopted what he saw as the best of that tradition for his grammar. This
resulted in a grammar that restricted itself to the cataloging of rules and struc-
tures rather than descriptive examples or an extensive treatment of usage.
Compared with his contemporary Beschi’s and his two grammars of Tamil,
Ziegenbalg’s grammar avoided dealing directly with Tamil culture and beliefs.
He provided basic nouns and basic verbs and, unlike Beschi, made no attempt
to provide details or vocabulary specific to Tamil social relations or practice.
Ziegenbalg’s final words stand in stark contrast to the poem that closes Hen-
riques’s text. While he does indicate that this is a grammar motivated by his
belief, he avoids aesthetics. He makes no direct appeal to the relationship
between words and faith. Language is merely a means toward allowing more
people to know God.
In this sense, the difference between Ziegenbalg and Henriques can be de-
fined through context. Henriques’s text was always meant to supplement the
immersion of new missionaries within the language. Ziegenbalg’s grammar, on
37 Ibid., 152.
38 Ibid., 153.
39 Ibid., 158.
174 Zaleski
the other hand, was meant for the European university. His linguistic work be-
trays a Protestant preference for simplicity and a move away from the Jesuits’
more syncretic preservation—in both words and actions—of the local idiom.
Beschi, a contemporary of Ziegenbalg, saw Ziegenbalg’s work as laughable; it

held no reverence for the Tamil language or Christian scripture. He saw the
Protestant translation of the Bible as “a gem thrown in the mud.” While Beschi
preferred to use the poetry of high Tamil as a tool for conversion, Ziegenbalg
rejected this language as itself idolatrous. The differences between the Jesu-
its and their new Protestant counterparts, however, were defined as much by
changing perspectives on language and culture in Europe as they were by the
real politics of translation in India.
3 Conclusion
As grammarians were codifying the national languages of Europe and solidi-

fying national identity along with it, Henriques was rewriting the codes of
grammar from the periphery. Henriques demonstrates that it is not linguistic
knowledge alone that marks a savvy language-user. Instead, his grammar sug-
gests that it is familiarity and dexterity with language—as created between
and within—that allows one to develop the confidence to learn new languag-
es. During the age of exploration, Jesuits like Henriques were practicing the lit-
erate arts of the contact zone and inventing a new grammar for c ross-cultural
exchange in India. Grammar, in this sense, was defined by expansion, recogni-
tion, and expression rather than compression, conformity, and rules. The Jesu-
its, of course, were only part of the picture.
In the eighteenth century, as more European powers began to compete for
Indian territory, Protestant missionaries began to arrive with a desire to write
their own grammars. These grammars evolved out of an initial realization of
the incompatibility between Jesuit and Protestant perspectives not only on re-
ligious dogma but also on language. These later efforts, as demonstrated by
the work of Ziegenbalg, capture a shifting attitude toward language and the
role of grammars. Due to differences in audience and a need to relay language
systematically for instruction back in Europe, later Protestant grammars lost
Henriques’s initial sense of linguistic play. Instead of using grammar rhetori-
cally to move learners to understand language as contextual, negotiated, and
even imperfect, Ziegenbalg’s grammar confined language through rules that

were easy to understand.
In looking at Henriques’s Art of the Malabar Language and understand-
ing it as representative of the act of learning a language, this analysis has
Beyond Words 175
demonstrated that grammar can be responsible for teaching language aware-

ness while still teaching readers how to adapt to multilingual contexts. Ziegen-
balg’s work, conversely, demonstrates how grammar can just as easily be used
to demarcate boundaries between languages in an adherence to form over

function. In this sense, it is important for those working with languages to ask
how grammar is being defined and to what ends. Grammars can inscribe both
the limits and possibility of language in choosing to adhere either to form or
function. These inscriptions not only determine language use but can also de-
termine cross-cultural relations.
Bibliography
Blackburn, Stuart H. Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India. Delhi: Per-
manent Black, 2003.
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Rela-
tions. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Hein, Jeanne, and V.S. Rajam, trans. The Earliest Missionary Grammar of Tamil: Fr. Hen-
riques’ Arte da lingua Malabar: Translation, History and Analysis. Cambridge, MA:
Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University/Harvard University Press,
2013.
Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, Jacqueline Jones Royster, John Trimbur. “Language Differ-
ence in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach.” College English 73, no. 3 (January
2011a): 299–317.
Horner, Bruce, Samantha NeCamp, and Christiane Donahue. “Toward a Multilingual
Composition Scholarship: From English Only to a Translingual Norm.” College Com-
position and Communication 63, no. 2 (December 2011b): 269–300.
Jeyaraj, Daniel, trans. Tamil Language for Europeans: Ziegenbalg’s Grammatica Damu-
lica (1716). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010.
Lu, Min-Zhan, and Bruce Horner. “Translingual Literacy, Language Difference, and
Matters of Agency.” College English 75, no. 6 (July 2013): 582–607.
Pfänder, Stefan, and Alessandra Castilho Ferreira da Costa. “Linguistic Variation in Ev-
eryday Life: Language in the Protestant Mission of Eighteenth-Century South East
India.” In Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India Part VIII: Cor-
respondence and Publications, edited by Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and
Heike Liebau, 1155–63. Halle: Verlag Der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 91 (1991): 33–40.
Sweetman, Will. “Heathenism, Idolatry and Rational Monotheism among the Hindus:
Ziegenbalg’s Akkiyānam (1713) and other Works Addressed to Tamil Hindus.” In Hal-
le and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India Part VIII: Correspondence and
176 Zaleski
Publications, edited by Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and Heike Liebau,

1249–77. Halle: Verlag Der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006.
Županov, Ines. “Twisting a Pagan Tongue: Tamil Grammars, Catechisms, Confession
Manuals and Lives of Saints (16th–17th Century).” In Conversion: Old Worlds and
New, edited by Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton, 109–139. Rochester, NY: Roch-
ester University Press, 2003.
Part 2
The Americas
∵
Chapter 9
Introduction: Jesuit Liminal Space in Liberal

Protestant Modernity
Deeply ingrained in the historiography on the origins of “Western” modernity

is the assumption that the Renaissance led to print culture, which in turn cre-
ated new forms of sociability, including coffeehouses, science, and the pub-
lic sphere. These trends ultimately culminated in the Enlightenment, which,
among other things, led to the emergence of liberalism and the liberal regime,
one characterized by laissez-faire economic policies, an emphasis on individ-
ual rights, new notions of popular sovereignty, and the separation of state and
religion. This narrative explains how a medieval ancien régime finally gave way
to the modern nation state. Another, parallel narrative, however, competes
with this tale of origins. It finds in the excesses of early modern colonialism the
origins of globalization and capitalism. According to this alternative narrative,
the “discovery” of America created the conditions for Europe to “industrial-
ize” and re-center the world away from China and India. These parallel tales of
modernity inhabit two different historiographies that rarely meet, largely as a
result of the Reformation.
The early modern story of the origins of science, entrepreneurship, free-
doms, and liberties belongs firmly to the Protestant North Atlantic. The story
of colonialist excesses, on the other hand, belongs mostly to the Iberian Catho-
lic South. How did the Reformation accomplish such a narrative feat? English,
French, and Dutch Calvinists joined forces against Spain to check Iberian im-
perial power. The Calvinist international countered Iberian colonial expansion
in Africa, Asia, and the Americas with a global piracy campaign that raided
Iberian colonies in order to build its own. It also deployed a decentralized print
culture that vociferously denounced the Iberian massacre of Protestants and
Indians. The Black Legend firmly tied a plundering Catholic Iberia to violence
and intolerance of New World colonialism. This same Protestant print culture,
on the other hand, created a narrative in which science, entrepreneurship, and
commercial freedoms were viewed as a form of liberation from the oppression

of late medieval Iberian Catholicism. The Ying and Yang of early modernity
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_011
180 Cañizares-Esguerra
thus came to be associated with different geographies and different religious

denominations.
The Jesuits dwell in the margins of these parallel historiographies. The histo-
riography acknowledges that the Jesuits actively participated in print culture,

the Republic of Letters, and the creation of the new sciences of astronomy and
natural history. Moreover, in their missions in China and India, they invented
new philosophies and epistemologies of religious accommodation that pre-
figured Enlightenment doctrines of religious toleration and deism. Yet despite
their acknowledged role in the creation of liberal institutions, the Jesuits can
also be seen as being largely responsible for the creation of the baroque, a form
of art, scholarship, and piety at odds with the alleged liberal breakthroughs of
the Reformation. The Jesuit “baroque” was “medieval” in its emphasis on the
corporate and luminous materiality of bodies, images, and rituals. Yet it was
also “modern” in its mastery of sophisticated techniques of social engineering
and self-fashioning. To be sure, the Jesuits were hardly the only Catholic reli-
gious order that participated in the creation of these early modern global cul-
tures. Franciscans, Dominicans, Capuchins, Carmelites, and Augustinians did
very similar things. Yet the historiography continuously casts the non-Jesuit
orders as medieval throwbacks. The Jesuits have become the only Catholic or-
der against which Protestants have articulated their views of liberal modernity.
The contributions in this book on Jesuit–Protestant interactions in Asia and
the Americas highlight many of the paradoxes of these twin narratives of early
modernity. The first chapter, written by the present author, takes the case of
one Jesuit in Peru and Spain, José de Acosta (1540–1600), to probe how Protes-
tant print culture set the rules of memorialization even within the Jesuit order.
Acosta was an extraordinarily complex figure who produced treatises on epis-
temology, biblical criticism, theology, ethnography, political philosophy, and
cosmography. Acosta, however, is remembered today mostly for his writings
on Aztec and Inca ethno-history and on evolutionary theories of literacy and
cultural hierarchies.
The printing history of the editions and translations of Acosta’s many works
in the Catholic and Protestant worlds reveals something very odd. Protestant
printers repeatedly issued translations of Acosta’s cosmography and ethno-
history in several European languages. Protestants, strangely, focused on
Acosta as an interpreter of New World phenomena and peoples without pay-
ing much attention to his political treatises that sought to justify draconian
reforms in the Peruvian mines. For obvious reasons, Protestant printers did not
divulge any of Acosta’s other theological and hermeneutical treatises. Catho-
lic printers, on the other hand, stopped reissuing Acosta’s works on prophecy,
biblical criticism, epistemology, political philosophy, and natural history early
Jesuit Liminal Space in Liberal Protestant Modernity 181
in the seventeenth century. In fact, Acosta has disappeared from early Jesuit
official histories of the order in Peru even though he acted as local superior for
many years. In the late sixteenth-century battle for control of the order, Acosta
became one of the leaders of the losing party, and the Jesuits consequently
excised him from the order’s official memory. Acosta was soon forgotten in
Spain. It was Benito Feijóo (1676–1764), a leading member of the Spanish En-
lightenment, who rescued Acosta from oblivion. Yet the Acosta that became
available to late eighteenth-century Spanish printers was the one Protestant
printers had originally selected, namely Acosta the natural historian. The case
of Acosta highlights how Protestant dominance in print culture has framed
most of our historiography on early modernity and modernity.
The geographically and denominationally segregated narratives of the ori-
gins of modernity are so entrenched because they have deeply penetrated the
scholarship produced in the global South. Protestant print culture became the
foundation upon which nation states in Iberian America built their histori-
ographies. The Protestant Black Legend rendered Iberian colonialism as the
dark side of globalization and capitalism. It produced a teleological narrative
of the “liberating” aspects of modernity as the exclusive commodity of the
global North. This narrative arrived in Iberian America from London during
the Wars of Independence. Ever since, Iberian American historiographies have
remembered the early modern Spanish and Iberian polities as the source of
contemporary national underdevelopment and anti-democratic cultures. Yet
the history of the Jesuits in the Americas challenges these facile dichotomous
genealogies of modernity.
Anne B. McGinness’s chapter on the mameluco Jesuit Manoel de Morães
(b. c.1596) in mid-seventeenth-century Pernambuco reveals the deep continu-
ities between Portuguese and Dutch colonialism, not only in Brazil but also
in Africa and Asia. Morães was originally a mestizo trained in Jesuit local col-
leges and sent to lead one of the many Tupi–Guaraní aldeias the Jesuits had
administered on behalf of the Portuguese crown since the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury. These aldeias were new polities created to “protect” the natives from the
booming Indian slave trade in the cities and sugar plantations. Aldeias also
hosted militias to fight the continuous presence of French traders of brazil-
wood and bird feathers. These indigenous militias–aldeias also fought against
the Dutch when they arrived in Brazil. Morães became a military leader against
the Calvinist Dutch but soon switched sides. The Jesuit then apostatized and
moved to the Low Countries where he served the Dutch West India Compa-
ny as a learned informant; he also became a lecturer in theology in Leiden.
With the Braganza Restoration of 1640, Morães published books of millenar-
ian prophecy, celebrating the new Portuguese dynasty. Bolstered by the alleged
potential of the restored kingdom, Morães returned to Brazil where he helped

defeat the Dutch.
This Jesuit-turned-Calvinist-turned-Brazilian-patriot shows that the bound-
aries between Catholic and Calvinist colonialism were wafer-thin. The Dutch
colonial global empire was built upon Portuguese networks, capital, and insti-
tutions. Morães embodies these continuities. People like Morães allowed the
Dutch to gain footholds within the Portuguese Empire. Without this support,
the Dutch had no choice but to withdraw.
Morães’s story is also revealing of early modern resemblances in conversion
policies. Catherine Ballériaux’s chapter, entitled “Jesuit and Calvinist Missions
on the New World Frontier,” shows that English Calvinists in New England
and the Jesuits in New France did not differ much with respect to their un-
derstandings of native converts. Both parties sought to isolate natives from
settlers, whom missionaries of both denominations considered predatory. Na-
tives were like orphans and widows who could easily be abused. They therefore
needed protection. Calvinists and Jesuits set up missions to segregate the two
communities and promote the use of native languages. In short, Calvinist and
Catholics understood polities as composite and legally plural, made up of com-
munities entitled to their own local languages and laws. These ideas entered
into conflict with eighteenth-century imperial policies that strove to assimilate
natives into French and English regalist laws and linguistic norms. In Brazil,
however, the Jesuits not only organized the natives into separate towns; they
also administered the access of settlers to indigenous labor. From Maranhão
to São Paulo, Jesuits mediated the access of planters to Indian labor and there-
fore wielded enormous political power. Labor-hungry settlers deeply resented
Jesuit control and often revolted, expelling Jesuits from towns or entire regions
over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The explicit political (and military) role of the Jesuits in Brazil should
surprise no one. It is, however, something of a surprise to find a Jesuit in Marti-
nique, Antoine de La Valette (1708–67), spearheading the colonization of Dom-
inica with African slaves in 1747. La Valette did not go to Dominica to convert
the Caribs who had long controlled the island. He crossed the channel to set up
a slave plantation. His objective was to create a commercial empire to finance
the Jesuit provinces of the Caribbean, New France, and Louisiana. As Steve
Lenik shows in his chapter, “A French Jesuit Parish without Jesuits,” La Valette
gathered a party of a twenty-two settler planters, five of whom were free blacks,
to set up an export-oriented enclave. This community, with some 250 slaves,

was eventually broken up as La Valette overextended his commercial empire
and a hurricane damaged the plantation in 1755. The fall of La Valette became a
scandal that served to accelerate the process leading to the order’s dissolution
Jesuit Liminal Space in Liberal Protestant Modernity 183
in France in 1761. The Jesuit Dominica’s enclave was taken by creditors; slaves
were sold and scattered.
To guarantee local financing of colleges and houses, the Jesuits constant-
ly sought to engage in commerce and trade. In America and Southeast Asia,

Jesuits managed workshops (obrajes), haciendas, and plantations built on
indigenous forced labor and African slaves. The Jesuit order was a decentral-
ized network of local chapters that spread globally through the commercial
initiative of figures like La Valette. All colleges, houses, and missions were au-
tonomous and financially self-sufficient. To finance the provinces of China
and Cochinchina, for example, the Jesuits in Macao and Vietnam got papal
dispensations to command their own commercial fleets. The Jesuits, in short,
operated like any large decentralized Protestant trading company. Indian and
African slave trades were central to the development of both. Catholic or Prot-
estant, capitalist modernity was firmly connected to plantation slavery.
As the case of La Valette’s plantation empire demonstrates, there were no
differences between early modern Catholic and Protestant entrepreneurship,
only entanglements. La Valette’s main creditors were English merchants. By
the early 1760s, Britain controlled Dominica itself. Within two decades, the
enclave-parish the French Jesuits had created came to be controlled by English
Methodists and, eventually, by the Anglican Church. Things did not change
much for the descendants of Caribs, maroons, and slaves, however, who re-
mained impoverished and marginalized.
This world of Catholic–Protestant entanglements, resemblances, and conti-
nuities has been concealed by a rhetorical emphasis on difference. The last two
chapters in this book explore how the arrival of millions of Irish and German
Catholics in the emergent United States generated a vast literature on Jesuits
as the engineers of an aristocratic, hierarchical, Catholic monarchical conspir-
acy, the antithesis itself of an elect Protestant republic. This literature pitted
the accomplishments of burgeoning liberal Protestant modernity against the
Jesuits, the leading promoters of theocratic, authoritarian regimes poised to
gut the Republic from within.
In “Jesuits and the Nineteenth-Century Nativist Impulse,” Robert Em-
mett Curran meticulously traces the growth of nativist Protestant currents
that sought to exclude millions of Catholic immigrants from the rights of
citizenship. Protestant intellectuals accused Catholics of promoting extrater-
ritorial, theocratic loyalties, namely obeisance to monarchical, hierarchical
European polities and values. Most Jesuits who came to the United States in
the nineteenth century were indeed exiles of European republican revolu-
tions, and they explicitly and implicitly criticized the democratic ethos of the
new Republic. US-born Jesuits, however, struggled to present themselves as
staunch defenders of the nation and the Republic. In Maryland, for example,
the Jesuits transformed the Pilgrim past into a Catholic past as well.
Jesuits enjoined the battle over the meaning of republicanism during the
debates over public schooling. Protestants forced all public schools to use
the King James Bible, generating legal battles that Catholics lost. Catholics,
therefore, created their own separate educational network that became even
more non-ecumenical after the Civil War (1861–65), heightening the percep-
tion of alien cultural-enclaves within a republican, Protestant culture. Jesuits
took a neutral stance in the Civil War, but in practice they promoted the South
(most of those involved in Lincoln’s murder had connections to Jesuits and to
Georgetown). Republicanism, the spread of public education, and the debate
over slavery and the Civil War led to a sharpening in the perceptions of differ-
ence among US Protestants and Catholics in the late nineteenth century.
In the last chapter, “Wars of Words: Catholic and Protestant Jesuitism in
Nineteenth-Century America,” Steven Mailloux also describes the deepening
chasm separating Protestants from Catholics. Nineteenth-century Protestant
intellectuals in the United States set out to denounce the Jesuits as a threat to
the values of public education, the nation, and republicanism. Protestants drew
on the critiques of secular European republicans such as Karl Marx (1818–83),
Jules Michelet (1798–1874), and Edgar Quinet (1803–75) who presented the
Jesuits as an expression of bureaucratic modernity. According to these intel-
lectuals, the Jesuits investigated the mechanics of the self to enslave the self.
Secular European republicans and US Protestants were puzzled by a large
organization built on myriads of autonomous, enterprising individuals who
nevertheless used their skills to allegedly create authoritarian b ureaucracies
designed to stifle individuality. Protestants created an ideology that positioned
the Jesuits in a liminal space: within yet outside modernity.
As things have changed, so they have remained the same. The Jesuits still
occupy a liminal position in our narratives of liberal, Protestant modernity.
Paradoxically, that is why they attract so much attention in liberal academia,
often to the exclusion of any other global Catholic religious order.
Chapter 10
José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit–Protestant Author:

Print Culture, Contingency, and Deliberate Silence

in the Making of the Canon
José de Acosta (1539/40–1600) needs no introduction.1 His Natural and Moral

History of the Indies, first published in Spanish in 1590, remains one of the most
cited sixteenth-century texts on the natural history and antiquities of the New
World.2 By 1608, the book had been translated into Latin, German (several edi-
tions), Dutch (several editions), Flemish, French (several editions), English,
and Italian.3 Most of these translations were done by Anglican and Calvinist
1 The bibliography on Acosta is large. I have found the following studies of his work and life the
most useful: León Lopetegui, El padre José de Acosta, S.I., y las misiones (Madrid: csic, 1942);
Claudio M. Burgaleta, José de Acosta, S.J., 1540–1600: His Life and Thought (Chicago: Jesuit Way,
1999); Miguel de la Pinta Llorente, Actividades diplomáticas del P. José de Acosta: Entorno a
una política, y a un sentimiento religioso (Madrid: csic, 1952); Francisco Mateos, “Estudio pre-
liminar,” in Obras del P. José de Acosta (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1954).
2 Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en que se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos,
metales, plantas, y animales dellas, y los ritos, y ceremonias, leyes, y gouierno, y guerras de los
Indios (Seville, 1590). The book was reissued in Barcelona in 1591 and in Madrid in 1608.
3 The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies: Intreating of the Remarkable
Things of Heaven, of the Elements, Mettalls, Plants and Beasts Which Are Proper to That Coun-
try; Together with the Manners, Ceremonies, Lawes, Governments, and Warres of the Indians,
Translated by Edward Grimeston (London, 1604); Historia naturale, e morale delle Indie, scritta
dal r.p. Gioseffo di Acosta della Compagnia del Giesù: Nella quale si trattano le cose notabili
del cielo, & de gli elementi […] di quelle; I suoriti, & ceremonie […] & guerre de gli Indiani;
Nouamente tradotta della lingua Spagnuola nella Italiana da Gio. Paolo Galucci (Venice, 1596);
Histoire naturelle et moralle des Indes, tant Orientalles qu’ Occidentalles, où, Il est traicté des
choses remarquables du ciel, des elemens, metaux, plantes & animaux qui sont propres de ces
païs: Ensemble des moeurs, ceremonies, loix, gouvernemens & guerres des mesmes Indiens, ed.
Robert Regnault Cauxois (Paris, 1598; reissued 1600 and 1616); Americae nona & postrema
pars: Qva de ratione elementorvm; De Novi Orbis natvra; De hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cul-
tibus; Déq; Forma politiae ac reipubl. ipsorum […] pertractatur (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry,
1602); Geographische vnd historische Beschreibung der uberauss grosser Landtschafft America:
Welche auch West Jndia, vnd jhrer grösse halben die New Welt genennet wirt (German trans-
lation of the first two books, along with twenty maps of the Indies) (Cologne and Berlin,
1598); New Welt, das ist: Volkommen Beschreibung von Natur, Art vnd Gelegenheit der Newer
Welt, die man sonst America oder West-Jndien nennet; In zwey Theil abgetheilt (German trans-
lation of the first two books of Acosta’s Historia) (Cologne and Berlin, 1600); Neundter vnd
© koninklijke
EBSCO brill(EBSCOhost)
: eBook Collection nv, leiden,- ��8 | doi 10.1163/9789004373822_012
printed on 4/26/2019 1:53 PM via WASHINGTON UNIV
Figure 10.1 Frontispiece of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History, translated into Latin
in Frankfurt by the printing house of the Dutch Calvinist Theodore de Bry.

Americae nona & postrema pars: Qva de ratione elementorvm; De Novi Orbis
natvra; De hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cultibus; déq; forma politiae ac reipubl.
ipsorum […] pertractatur (Frankfurt, 1602).
José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit–Protestant Author 187
Figure 10.2 Frontispiece of de Bry’s Dutch edition of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History.
Neundter vnd letzter Theil Americæ, darin[n] gehandelt wird von Gelegenheit
der Elementen, Natur, Art und Eigenschafft der Newen Welt (Frankfurt, 1601).
Figure 10.3 De Bry’s German edition of addendum of images for Acosta’s Moral
History (part of Americae, Part 9): Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß
neundten Theils Americae (Frankfurt, 1602).
printers, including the translation into Dutch, German, and Latin by the print-
ing house Theodore de Bry (1528–98) had established together with his sons
(see Figs. 10.1 to 10.3).4
In an age of bitter religious disputes, Acosta quickly became part of the Prot-
estant canon. Acosta’s history was one of the few Spanish texts on the history
of the Aztecs and the Incas to be used by the Enlightenment philosophes; no
other Spanish chronicler of the Indies enjoyed Acosta’s credibility in an age of
ferocious Enlightenment skepticism, an age that dismissed anything written
by Jesuits or Spaniards as utterly unreliable.5
Yet, for all his popularity and credibility in early modern non-Catholic Euro-
pean circles, there is something strange about this reception. Acosta published
many other works that could have been translated and used in contempora-
neous epistemological, religious, and political polemics. Protestant printers,
however, were uninterested in these works. Moreover, of the only work Protes-
tants chose to translate, they focused on only one aspect of it, namely Acosta’s
history of the Aztecs and Incas. Part 1 of Acosta’s history, a Ptolemaic, Aristote-
lian physics of the new earth, never became truly influential. This partial read-
ing of Acosta’s work explains the scholarship on Acosta today, which is large
yet narrowly focused on Acosta’s demonological histories of ancient Peru and
Mexico.6 The very few studies of Acosta’s contributions to the epistemology of
sciences and natural philosophy have been drowned by the hundreds of writ-
ings on Acosta’s contributions to ethnography and anthropology.7
letzter Theil Americæ, darin[n] gehandelt wird von Gelegenheit der Elementen, Natur, Art und
Eigenschafft der Newen Welt (Dutch edition, Theodore de Bry) (Frankfurt, 1601; reissued 1602);
Historie naturael en morael van de Westersche Indien: Waer inne ghehandelt wort van de mer-
ckelijckste dinghen des hemels, elementen, metalen, planten ende gedierten van dien; Als oock
de manieren, ceremonien, wetten, regeeringen ende oorlogen der Indianen (Dutch edition, Jan
Huygen van Linschoten) (Amsterdam, 1598; reissued in 1624); Ontdekking van West-Indien,
vlijtig ondersogt, en naauw-keurig aangeteekend, door Joseph d’Acosta, Soc. Jesu, op sijn reys-
togt, derwaarts gedaan anno 1592 (Leiden, 1706); America, oder wie mans zu teutsch nennet die
Neuwe Welt, oder West Jndia (Flemish translation) (Ursel, Flanders, 1605).
4 See figs. 1–3.
5 See Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemolo-
gies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2001), passim; for examples, see 43, 58, 262.
6 See, for example, Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the
Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Sabine
MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991); Fermín del Pino, “La Historia Natural y Moral de las Indi-
as como género: Orden y génesis literaria de la obra de Acosta,” Histórica 24, no. 2 (2000):
295–326,
7 See, for example, Andrés I. Prieto, Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South
America, 1570–1810 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011); Miguel de Asúa and Roger K.
French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America
This essay seeks to explain how this peculiar reading of Acosta’s oeuvre
came into being. It argues that the Protestant reception of his work wholly
framed Acosta’s afterlife as an author. By elucidating the political and local
context in which his vast theological, biblical, legal, anthropological, and natu-
ral philosophical corpus emerged, the essay seeks to explain why Acosta was
not enthusiastically embraced by his own Jesuit order. By the mid-seventeenth
century, Acosta’s larger theological and legal corpus had ceased to circulate,
and Acosta the scholar and provincial of Peru had dropped out of most printed
histories of the Jesuit order in general and the Peruvian province in particu-
lar. Acosta the biblicist and exegete did not resurface until the mid-nineteenth
century when the entrepreneurial Jacques-Paul Migne (1800–75) rescued him
from oblivion through his cheap editions of late antique, medieval, and early
modern Catholic theologians. The Catholic hierarchy promptly shut down
Migne’s bold use of the printing press for the education of secular priests, and
Acosta the biblicist disappeared once again.8 The scholarship on Acosta today,
therefore, has been framed by the peculiar choices of late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century Protestant printers who privileged one narrow aspect of
Acosta’s enormous scholarly output.
1 On Acosta’s Vast Printed Output
It is not particularly surprising that Protestant authors overlooked some of

Acosta’s publications, such as the three volumes of his sermons for Lent, Easter,
and Pentecost, printed in Salamanca between 1596 and 1599, which would have
been of little interest to Protestant readers.9 However, there is no reason why
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Miguel de Asúa, Science in the Vanished Arcadia: Knowledge of
Nature in the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and Río de la Plata (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
8 In 1837, Jacques-Paul Migne included selections of Acosta’s De Christo revelato (1590) in vol-
ume two of his twenty-eight-volume paperback edition of classics of biblical interpretation,
Scripturae sacrae cursus completus (Paris, 1837–41). Volume 2 was devoted to typology and
the “analogies” between the Old and New Testament. Along with selections of Acosta’s De
Christo, Migne also included selections by the bishop-cum-natural-philosopher Pierre Dan-
iel Huet (1630–1721), the late sixteenth-century Flemish Jesuit Martin Becanus (1563–1624),
and the late seventeenth-century French Scotist and Immaculist, the Franciscan Claude Fra-
ssen (1620–1711).
9 Conciones in Quadragesimam: Quarum in singulas Ferias numerum & locum index initio
praefixus ostendit (Salamanca: Apud Ioannem & Andreã Renaut, fratres, 1596); Concio-
nes de Adventv: Id est de onmibus Dominicis & festis diebus à Dominica vigesimaquarta post
Pentecosten vsque ad Quadragesimam (Salamanca: Apud Ioannem, & Andreã Renaut,
1597); Tomus tertius Concionum Iosephi Acostae è Societate Iesu quo continentur omnes
Protestant printers should have only paid attention to Acosta’s history, for the
first shortened version of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History actually came out
in Salamanca in 1589 along with Acosta’s De procuranda Indorum salute (Striv-
ing for the salvation of the Indian).10 Any reader of Latin should have therefore
first encountered Acosta’s natural history of the Americas via De procuranda.
De procuranda covered themes that should have engaged printers like de Bry,
then busy translating Bartolomé de las Casas’s (1484–1566) Brevísima relación
de la destrucción de las Indias (Brief account of the destruction of the Indies
[1552]), with chilling illustrations of Spanish brutality, and Girolamo Benzoni’s
(c.1519–after 1572) La historia del mundo nuovo (The history of the New World
[1565]) (see Figs. 10.4–10.5).11
Dominici & festi dies mobiles ab octaua Paschae vsque ad Aduentum: Res verò quae in hoc
opere continentusr & praecipuos Scripturae locos tractatos duo Indices ad finem affixi os-
tendunt (Salamanca: Excudebat Andreas Renaut, 1599). The three volumes came out at
the same time in Venice in 1599, under the editorial mark of Giovanni Battista Ciotti
(c.1562–c.1627), and in Cologne in 1601, with Hierat.
10 De Natura Novi Orbis libri ii, et de promulgatione Evangelii apud barbaros, sive de pro-
curanda Indorum salute, libri vi, auctore Josepho Acosta (Salamanca: Apud G. Foquel,
1589).
11 Bartolomé de las Casas, Warhafftiger und gründtlicher Bericht der Hispanier grewlichen
und abschewlichen Tyranney von ihnen in den West Indien, so die Neuwe Welt genennet wirt,
begangen (Frankfurt am Main: De Bry, 1599); de las Casas, Narratio regionum Indicarum
per Hispanos quosdam deuastatarum verissima (Frankfurt: Sumptibus Theodori de Bry,
& Ioannis Saurii typis, 1598). This edition also included one other of the nine books that
came out in Seville in 1552 along with Brevisima, Melchor Cano’s (1509–60) synthesis of
the Sepulveda–de las Casas’s debate in Valladolid: Aqui se Aqui se cotĩ enẽ vnos auisos y
reglas para los confessores oyeren confessiones delos Españoles que son o han sido en cago a
los Indios delas Indias del mar Oceano (Seville: En casa de Sebastian Trugillo, 1552). There
were numerous pirated editions of de Bry’s illustrations of de las Casas’s Brevísima by
other printers, including Den spieghel vande Spaensche tyrannie beeldelijcken afgemaelt
(Amsterdam: Gedr. by Cornelis Claesz, 1609). There was also the “mirror of tyrannies”
that used illustrations to compare the brutality of the conquest of the Netherlands by the
duke of Alva and that of Spain in the indies: Oorsprong en voortgang der Nederlandtscher
beroerten (Amsterdam, 1619); Le miroir de la cruelle, & horrible tyrannie espagnole perpetree
au Pays Bas, par le tyran duc de Albe (Amsterdam, 1620). De Bry also was largely responsi-
ble for introducing northern Calvinist Europe to Girolamo Benzoni. Americae pars q varta:
Sive Insignis & admiranda historia de reperta primùm Occidentali India à Christophoro
Colombo anno M. ccccxcii Scripta ab Hieronymo Benzono mediolanense, aui istic a[n]
nis xiiii. versatus, dilige[n]ter omnia observa vit (Frankfurt am Main: Theodore de Bry,
1594); Girolamo Benzoni, Americæ pars quinta. Nobilis […] Hieronymi Bezoni secundæ sec-
tionis Hispanorum, tùm in nigrittas […] tùm in Indos crudelitatem, Gallorumque piratarū
de Hispanis toties reportata spolia: Adventū item Hispanorū in Novam Indiæ continentis
Hispaniam, eorumque contra incolas eius regionis sævitiam explicans […] Omnia figuris in
æs incisis expressa à Theodore de Bry (Frankfurt am Main: Theodore de Bry, 1595); Ben-
zoni, Americae pars sexta, sive, Historiae ab Hieronymo Be[n]zono Mediolane[n]se scriptae,
Figure 10.4 Frontispiece of de Bry’s 1598 Latin edition of de las Casas’s Brevisima (1552)
and Aqui se contiene una disputa [Summary of the Valldoid debate](1552)
(Melchor Cano’s [c.1509–60] synthesis of the Valladolid debate): Narratio
regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam deuastatarum verissima [A true ac-
count of the destruction of the Indies by the Spaniards] (Frankfurt: Sumptibus
Theodori de Bry, & Ioannis Saurii typis, 1598).
sectio tertia, res no[n] minus nobiles & admiratione plenas continens, quàm praecedentes
duae: In hac enim reperies, qua ratione Hispani opule[n]tissimas illas Peruäni regni provin-
cias occuparint, capto Rege Atabaliba, dei[n]de orta inter ipsos Hispanos in eo regno civilia
Figure 10.5 Frontispiece of de Bry’s German 1599 edition of de las Casas’s Brevisima (1552)
and Aqui se contiene una disputa (1552) (Melchor Cano’s synthesis of the Val-
ladolid debate): Warhafftiger und gründtlicher Bericht der Hispanier grewlichen
und abschewlichen Tyranney von ihnen in den West Indien, so die Neuwe Welt
genennet wirt, begangen (Frankfurt am Main: De Bry, 1599), lv.
bella (Frankfurt am Main: Theodore de Bry, 1596). Bensoni’s three-volume Latin edition
came out with a parallel German edition: Das vierdte Buch von der Neuwen Welt [America
vol. 4] Oder, Neuwe Vnd Gründtliche Historien, Von Dem Nidergängischen Indien, so Von
Christophoro Columbo Im Jar 1492 (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1594); Americæ das fünffte
Buch [America vol. 5], vol schöner vnerhörter Historien, auss dem andern Theil Ioannis
Like Brevísima, De procuranda discusses the temporal and spiritual foun-

dations of Spanish colonization and evangelization, and it also offers lengthy
discussion on the legality of the various labor regimes in Peru, including slav-
ery and forced labor systems in mines. Although de Bry was more preoccupied
with business than religious partisanship (and thus modified his translations
to fit Catholic and Protestant tastes), he nevertheless was largely responsible
for the popularization of the Black Legend. After he fled Liege and Antwerp, de
Bry settled in Frankfurt where he had the two works on Spanish barbarism in
the Indies translated. He could have chosen to translate many sections of the
De procuranda.
De procuranda gave answers to many of the dilemmas faced by Calvinist set-
tlers in seventeenth-century North America, as the work dealt with the legality
of expansion and possession in lands that originally belonged to native rules
and polities. It also discussed the biblical foundations for the use of violence in
conversion among idolaters, an old debate harking back to the sermons of the
Dominican Antonio de Montesinos (c.1475–1545) in Santo Domingo in 1511.12
Finally, De procuranda reviewed the Old and New Testament basis of slavery
and forced labor systems among individuals who should otherwise have been
considered free. Anyone interested in documenting theories of violence in
Catholic evangelization could have easily encountered a vast encyclopedia
in Acosta’s treatise. It is therefore surprising that seventeenth-century Protes-
tants and eighteenth-century philosophes did not read De procuranda.13
Benzonis gezogen (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1595); Das sechste Theil der neuwen Welt
[America vol. 6], oder Der Historien Hieron. Benzo von Meylandt, Das dritte Buch, Darinnen
warhafftig erzehlet wirdt, wie die Spanier die Goldreiche Landschafften deß Peruanischen
Königreichs eyngenommen, den König gefangen und getödtet (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry,
1597).
12 See, for example, Cristóbal Cabrera’s (1513–98) De solicitanda infidelium conversione
(Rome, 1567), which was based on the clerical resistance to slavery in the Mexican Bajio
led by Bishop Vasco de Quiroga (1470–1565); and Juan Focher’s (1497–1572) Itinerarium
Catholicum (1574), which summarized decades of Franciscan debates in the Chichimeca
frontier. See Juan Focher and Diego Valadés, Itinerarium catholicum profiscentium ad infi-
deles co[n]uertendos (Seville: Apud Alfonsum Scribanum, 1574) and Cristóbal de Cabrera,
La coacción de infieles a la fe según Cristóbal de Cabrera: Estudio y edición del ms. Vat. Lat.
5026, trans. and ed. Eduardo Martín Ortiz (Seville: n.p., 1974).
13 On Calvinist uses of other Spanish authors and traditions of justifying possession, in-
cluding Francisco de Vitoria’s (1492–1546) scriptural natural law traditions of just war,
de las Casas’s scriptural tradition of the separation of temporal and spiritual powers,
and Hernán Cortés’s and López de Gómara’s tradition of translatio imperii, see Jorge
Cañizares-Esguerra, “The ‘Iberian’ Justifications of Territorial Possession by Pilgrims and
Puritans in the Colonization of America,” in Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian At-
In the same way that De procuranda did not register in the Protestant lit-
erature on colonization, Acosta’s Natural and Moral History did not register in
most early modern debates over natural philosophy and epistemology. Acos-
ta’s history is an impressive volume divided into two separate treatises: one is
a physics of the new earth and the other an analysis of Aztec and Inca history
and religion. The physics of the New World, in turn, is divided into four “books.”
In book 1, Acosta develops an epistemological critique of the relationship be-
tween evidence, imagination, and reason as he seeks to explain why Aristotle
and the church fathers got their generalization about the tropics and the antip-
odes wrong. In books 2 and 3, Acosta seeks to explain the many alternative sys-
tems of circulation of wind, earth, and water that had paradoxically rendered
the Torrid Zone into the most temperate inhabited “climate” in the Indies, the
opposite of Eurasia. In book 4, Acosta offers a comprehensive overview of the
unique mineral, botanical, and animal resources of the land. In his Natural
and Moral History, Acosta presented the New World as a circulatory machine
of water, fire, and air to explain paradoxical New World phenomena, includ-
ing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mineralogical peculiarities, hurricanes, and
rain seasons that seemed to be the inverted mirror-image of those of Eurasia.14
According to Acosta, the New World challenged the tendency of ancients like
Aristotle to draw false conclusions out of right premises. Not only was the Torrid
Zone in the West Indies inhabited but it was the part of the world that was
most densely inhabited. Ironically, in the Americas it was the Temperate Zone
that had the least settlers. The New World literally inverted what was known
about the Old. To explain these seeming inversions in knowledge, Acosta also
offered a profound critique of how the imagination operates by forcing the
mind to draw wrong conclusions. In Acosta’s model, the New World allowed
for a deeper reflection on the nature of evidence, empiricism, and reason.15 He
was not a naive Baconian empiricist, nor was he a Cartesian rationalist.
The year his Natural and Moral History came out, Acosta also had two oth-
er volumes published in Latin: De Christo revelato (On Christ revealed; Rome
[1590]) and De temporibus novissimis (On the end of time; Rome [1590]).16
De Christo was a Christological reading of the Old Testament in light of the
lantic 1500–1820, ed. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2017), 161–77.
14 Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590).
15 Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590).

16 De Christo revelato libri novem (Rome: Apud Iacobum Ruffinellium, 1590); De tempori-
bus novissimis libri quatuor (Rome: Ex Typographia Iacobi Tornerij, 1590). De Christo and
De temporibus were printed together in Lyon in 1592 as De Christo reuelato libri nouem
simulque De temporibus nouissimis libri quatuor (Lyon: Lugduni apud Ioannem Baptistam
re-foundation of the apostolic church in new lands; De temporibus was a man-

ual on how to interpret biblical texts on the apocalypse in light of the very late
Christian discovery of new peoples. Both De Christo revelato and De temporibus
were as enmeshed in the theological significance of the “discovery” of the New

World as was Acosta’s Natural History, yet Protestant theologians did not pay
heed to any of them, even though Calvinists and Anglicans in the Americas
were then dealing with very similar queries and quandaries.
Acosta’s innovations in biblical hermeneutics are also largely unknown.
Both his De temporibus and De Christo revelatio were last reprinted in 1592 in
Lyon, two years after their original publication in Rome.17 They have received
little attention ever since. A serious study of Acosta as a biblicist—he also
left a massive manuscript of commentary on the Psalms, now at the library
of the University of Salamanca—has yet to appear.18 Acosta’s De temporibus
n ovissimis was a tour de force on biblical hermeneutics. According to Acosta,
the New World exposed the weaknesses of biblical interpretations on all books
of prophecy in the Old and New Testaments. Clearly, the Bible indicated that
the end of times would only come about after all peoples on earth had been
exposed to the Gospel, and the opening of the West Indies indicated that hosts
of peoples had not yet been exposed. It was clear that the opening of the South
Seas would reveal even more. From the interior of Africa and the Americas
to the new likely continents of the southern hemisphere, lying west of Cape
Horn, most peoples on earth had yet to hear the Christian Gospels. Why, then,
had theologians of the stature of Augustine (354–430), whom Acosta most ad-
mired, been so quick to misread biblical prophecies? The explanation lay in the
tendency of the mind to generalize when drawing on scant empirical evidence.
Buysson, 1592). Jacques-Paul Migne included book 1 (out of nine) of Acosta’s De Christo in
volume 2 (1837) of his Scripturae sacrae cursus completus, 28 vols. (Paris, 1837–41).
17 See footnote 000.
18 Acosta’s incomplete study of the Psalms (it reaches to the first hundred) has been mis-
takenly cataloged as the work of the Jesuit biblicist Francisco de Ribera (1537–91), whose
manuscripts on commentaries on Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews Acosta received when he
was rector of the Jesuit college of Salamanca in the late 1590s. Acosta completed R ibera’s
Commentary and had it published in 1598. See Francisco de Ribera [José de Acosta],
Epistolam B. Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos commentarij: Cum quinque indicibus, quorum
primus continet quaestiones scripturae, secundus regulas, tertius eiusdem scripturae locos
explicatos, quartus, est rerum atque verborum, quintus Euangeliorum totius anni, in vsum
concionatorum (Salamanca: Excudebat Petrus Lassus, 1598). See In Psalmos Davidis com-
mentarii historici selecti (1598), MS 659, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Salamanca. On
the attribution of the manuscript to Acosta, see León Lopetegui, “Notas sobre la actividad
teológica del P. José de Acosta S.I.: Estudios, profesorado, consultas, escritos,” Gregoria-
num 21 (1940): 527–63, here 559–60.
Yet, according to Acosta, the answer also lay in the difficulty of discerning the
two different discourses of time structuring prophecy in scripture. Prophets,
Christ, and the apostles did not make clear whether they were referring to im-
mediate historical processes unfolding in the very literal meaning of the text
or the actual apocalypse. Interpreters often confused the two. Of all exegetes,
Acosta reserved his wrath for Greek neo-Platonists like Origen (185–254) who
had reduced scripture to vapid metaphors. Acosta did not shun from the elu-
cidation of all the events that according to scripture would lead to the end of
times. He offered a detailed description of the signs leading to the rise of the
Antichrist and eve of the physical processes of earth’s obliteration through fire.
Acosta nevertheless was clear: the apocalypse was far from happening.19
2 The Political and Local Context of Acosta’s Work
To understand Acosta’s interpretation of the apocalypse, it is important to un-

derstand the context in which it emerged. De temporibus was written largely
in Peru in the wake of the first official Inquisitorial trials that targeted leading
figures of the Dominican and Jesuit orders in Peru, including Jerónimo Ruiz del
Portillo (1532–89), the first Jesuit provincial.
A number of Dominicans and Jesuits had been charged and sanctioned by
the Inquisition for heresies surrounding the interpretation of visions by María
Pizarro (d.1572), a creole relative of Francisco Pizarro (c.1471–1541).20 María was
a disturbed young woman possessed by demons. After visiting María in Lima,
a group of leading Dominicans not only claimed to have exorcised demons out
19 De temporibus (Rome, 1790). In book 1, Acosta develops his epistemological critique of

previous readings of prophecies and apocalypse in relation to cosmographic discoveries
of new continents and peoples. Book 2 offers a detailed analysis of the deeds of the Anti-
christ. Book 3 is mostly devoted to the return of Elijah and Enoch during the trying times
of the Antichrist. Finally, book 4 is an analysis of the final judgment and Christ’s second
coming.
20 The following account of Pizarro’s exorcism and the politics of Peru is based on An-
drew Redden, “The Possession of María Pizarro,” in Redden, Diabolism in Colonial Peru,
1560–1750 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 37–66; José Toribio Medina, Historia del
Tribunal de la Inquisición de Lima (1569–1820), 2 vols. (Santiago de Chile: Fondo Histórico
y Bibliográfico J.T. Medina, 1956), 1:63–114; René Millar Carvacho, “Entre ángeles y demo-
nios: María Pizarro y la Inquisición de Lima 1550–1573,” Historia 40 (2007): 379–417; Jean-
Pierre Tardieu, Le nouveau David et la réforme du Pérou: L’affaire Maria Pizarro–Francisco

de la Cruz (1571–1596) (Bordeaux: Maison des Pays Ibériques, 1992). The Inquisition tried
several individuals separately. The files of the trial of Francisco Cruz have been published
in three volumes; see Vidal Abril Castelló, Francisco de la Cruz, Inquisición, Actas i y ii
(Madrid: csic, 1992 and 1996).
of her body but also to have contacted the archangel Gabriel and St. Diony-
sius the Areopagite. The archangel, St. Dionysus, and other saints continued to
communicate with the clique of Dominicans through María. The theologian
Francisco de la Cruz (1509–78), trained in Atocha and Valladolid by Francisco

de Vitoria (1492–1546), Cano, and Bartolomé Carranza (1503–76), proved to be
the best interpreter of the archangel.
While in Lima, de la Cruz entered into a relationship with a married creole
woman, Leonor de Valenzuela, whom he would visit each day as her confes-
sor, together with her four sisters (Beatriz, Isabel, María, and Ana) and mother
(Elvira Dávalos). Leonora eventually gave birth in secrecy, and the five women
and de la Cruz began to worship the boy, for the archangel Gabriel had told
them that the child was destined to do great things for Peru. The women and
de la Cruz christened the boy Gabrelico as commanded by the archangel who
claimed that the child would grow to be a new John the Baptist. A secret so-
dality emerged connecting the visions of María to the female household of
Elvira and a clique of four powerful Dominicans, two of whom moved to Quito
and Cusco to spread the cult and the sodality. The sodality was also organized
around sacred objects, stoles and corporals (linen underneath the chalice),
given by the archangel to de la Cruz, for those who possessed these sacred ob-
jects were said to be protected from sin. De la Cruz also carried an astrological
gold ring with secret inscriptions to summon the archangel at will. Soon, the
Jesuit provincial Ruiz del Portillo and one of the most distinguished theolo-
gians of the first generation of Jesuits sent by Francisco de Borja (1510–72, in
office 1565–72) to Peru, Luis López (1536–99), were invited by the Dominicans
to exorcise María (whose brother Martín was a Jesuit novice). Like many in
the group around Borja in the college of Gandía and later in Rome, López was
a Joachimite and an alumbrado.21 He quickly persuaded María to have sexual
relations, and the young woman had two pregnancies and two abortions. The
Inquisition identified the cell of the Dominicans. It soon became clear that the
visions were connected to the momentous political transformations of Peru
that Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1515–82) had initiated.
The Dominican de la Cruz radicalized while in the secret jails of the Inquisi-
tion with a messianic discourse announcing the creation of a new church in
the Indies. The Indians, whom de la Cruz considered incapable of understand-
ing Christian theology and as being fit only to labor in encomiendas and mines,
21 Stefania Pastore, “Mozas Criollas and New Government: Francis Borgia, Prophetism, and
the Spiritual Exercises in Spain and Peru,” in Visions, Prophecies and Divinations: Early
Modern Messianism and Millenarianism in Iberian America, Spain and Portugal, ed. Luís
Filipe Silvério Lima and Ana Paula Torres Megiani (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 59–73.
would not have to comply with the sacraments to be saved. De la Cruz also
promised a church in which the clergy could marry. He declared himself future
Samuel and David of the New World, both pope and king who would preside
over the Indies before the end of times. Pedro de Toro, another Dominican
caught by the Inquisition, and María Pizarro died in prison. De la Cruz was
burnt at the stake in 1578.22
López was caught later. The Inquisition found Lascasian documents stowed
in López’s cell calling into question the right of the king to rule the Indies as
well as detailed critiques of dozens of immoral institutions and laws promot-
ed by both viceroy and the church aimed at exploiting the natives.23 In 1584,
López was eventually sent back to Seville where he remained a prominent Je-
suit until his death. López was part of a larger group of Jesuits sent by Borja
to Peru with chiliastic views. They understood the brutality of the conquest as
the transitional violent stage prophesized by Joachim di Fiore (1135–1202) an-
nouncing the change from the fifth to the sixth ages, a monumental epochal
shift away from the second era of the Son into the third and final era of the
Spirit. These Joachimites considered the Jesuits destined to witness the change
of time in the Indies as well as to bring about the era of spiritual reformation
via Ignatius of Loyola’s (c.1491–1556) new and powerful Spiritual Exercises. The
spiritual era was to be democratic and affect everyone, not just monks as Fran-
ciscans and Dominican Joachimites had long believed.24
Acosta’s De temporibus acknowledged the importance of the Indies to es-
chatology, but only to dismiss figures like de la Cruz as demonic false prophets.
Acosta’s De Christo revelato was clearly written to dismiss the likes of López
and followers of Borja and the Joachimite tradition. For Acosta, both past and
future belonged to Christ, not the Father or the Holy Spirit.
In the same way that there is no scholarship on Acosta’s De temporibus and
De Christo, there is little on his De procuranda. The literature insists on portray-
ing it as a manual of conversion.25 De procuranda, in fact, was a treatise seeking
solutions to every aspect of the temporal and spiritual politics of Peru in the
22 Vidal Abril Castelló, “Francisco de la Cruz, la utopía lascasista y la Contrarreforma

v irreinal-inquisitorial, Lima 1572–1573,” Cuadernos para la historia de la evangelización en
América Latina 3 (1988): 9–67.
23 Fernando Armas Asín, “Los comienzos de la Compañía de Jesús en el Perú y su contexto
político y religioso: La figura de Luis López,” Hispania sacra 51 (1999): 573–609.
24 Simone Pastore, “Mozas criollas”; Alain Milhou, “La tentación joaquinita en los principios
de Ia Compañía de Jesús: El caso de Francisco de Borja y Andrés de Oviedo,” Florensia:
Bollettino del Centro internazionale di studi gioachimiti 8, no. 9 (1994/95): 193–241.
25 Gregory J. Shepherd, José de Acosta’s De procuranda Indorum salute: A Call for Evangelical
Reforms in Colonial Peru (New York: Peter Lang, 2014).
1570s, a decade that witnessed turmoil and major economic and sociopoliti-
cal transformations. The crux of the change had to do with the reorganiza-
tion of authority in Peru and the defeat of a native–clerical alliance that linked
Lascasian bishops with Inca-resisting elites. The alliance justified indigenous

armed resistance as well as the restitution of authority back into a neo-Inca
state perched in Vilcabamba. This alliance had taken power away from enco-
menderos, namely conquistadors and their mestizo heirs. After a succession of
four civil wars and rebellions, the encomendero party had lost control.
Changes in the 1570s sought to recover control of Peru away from the new
threat: the consolidation of the clerical Lascacian–neo-Inca alliance. The ini-
tiative for reform came from high up, with a plan drafted by an assembly of
men drawn from every council, the Junta Magna, the execution of which was
delegated to the newly appointed viceroy Toledo.26 Toledo introduced a new
system of governance and justice led by corregidores (local governors) who
wrestled temporal power away from bishops. Toledo also introduced the reduc-
ciones, a massive campaign of resettlement and urbanization of indigenous
rural communities that drew on Andean ethnographic patterns of settlement
and migration. Finally, Toledo restructured the production of silver, shifting
production from smelting to amalgamation and from individuals to the state.
The state controlled the mines by gaining control over all things underneath
the earth and by leasing them in usufruct. The crown also secured a monopoly
over both mercury and Indian labor.27
Toledo defeated the neo-Inca state in Vilcabamba and launched raids
against bellicose Indian polities on the eastern frontiers.28 The viceroy un-
dermined the claims of Inca elites by transforming the historiography of the
Andes and presenting the Inca as tyrants, not rightful local lords.29 Toledo then
26 Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “Acerca del cambio en la naturaleza del dominio sobre las
Indias: La mita minera del virrey Toledo, documentos de 1568–1571,” Anuario de estudios
hispanoamericanos 46 (1989): 3–70.
27 On Toledo and the many changes the crown introduced through the viceroy, see Jeremy
Ravi Mumford, Vertical Empire: The General Resettlement of Indians in the Colonial An-
des (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Manfredi Merluzzi, Politica e governo nel
Nuovo Mondo: Francisco de Toledo viceré del Perù (1569–1581) (Rome: Carocci, 2003). On the
Junta Magna that met in Madrid to sanction the temporal and spiritual reorganization of
Peru, see Demetrio Ramos Pérez, “La crisis indiana y la Junta Magna de 1568,” Jahrbuch für
Geschichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de historia de América Latina 23 (1986): 1–61.
28 On the campaign against the Chiriguano, see Archivo General de Indias (agi). Guerra
contra los chiriguanaes. Año 1573. Patronato 235, Ramo 2. See also Catherine Julien, “Colo-
nial Perspectives on the Chiriguana (1528–1574),” in Resistencia y adaptación nativas en las
tierras bajas latinoamericanas, ed. Maria Susana Cipolletti (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1997), 17–76.
29 Lewis Hanke, “Viceroy Francisco de Toledo and the Just Titles of Spain to the Inca Em-
pire,” Americas 3, no. 1 (1946): 3–19; David A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Mon-
archy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
subordinated all bishops and mendicants to a Tridentine secular church un-

der the sole authority of the crown, not Rome, via the patronato real30 and
the Spanish Inquisition, which had recently opened a branch in Lima.31 Fran-
ciscans and Dominicans were removed from control of all Indian parishes in
and around mercury and silver mines.32 For the global monarchy to succeed,
spread the Gospel, and defeat the dual challenges posed by the Ottomans and
Protestants, Peruvian Indians were summoned to build new urban infrastruc-
ture, roads, and mines against their will, via the imposition of regimes of trib-
ute and forced labor that were better suited for slaves, not free vassals of the
crown. The Jesuits arrived to help manage these changes, and Acosta’s theo-
logical skills and leadership as provincial from 1576 to 1581 helped facilitate
them. Acosta’s De procuranda was an effort to make sense of these changes
and to offer theological justifications to Machiavellian pragmatism over moral
concerns regarding the well-being of Indians.33
3 Protestant Reception and Acosta’s Demonology
Why was the Acosta of De procuranda not read with scorn by Protestants? And
why, therefore, did Protestants not entirely shun him as an author? It is para-
doxical that the same Calvinist printers who translated Acosta’s History were
also busy translating de las Casas’s Brevísima relación. The answer lies partly
in the complexities of Procuranda. Procuranda was (and remains) a most de-
manding text, and it is perhaps for this reason that Protestant printers ignored
Acosta’s obvious pro-Spanish imperial dimension and only embraced his Nat-
ural and Moral History.
Press, 1991), 128–47; Manfredi Merluzzi, Memoria histórica y gobierno imperial: Las infor-
maciones sobre el origen y descendencia del gobierno de los Incas (Rosario: Prohistoria Edi-
ciones, 2008).
30 The patronato delegated papal control of the church in conquered territories to the Cath-
olic monarchs. The crown was therefore the patron of the church of both Granada and
the Indies, with control over appointments, salaries, legislation, and buildings.
31 Francisco Leonardo Lisi, El tercer concilio limense y la aculturación de los indigenas Su-
damericanos: Estudio crítico, traducción y comentario de las actas del concilio provincial
celebrado en Lima entre 1582 y 1583 (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1990).
32 On the removal of Dominicans and Franciscans from Indian parishes in Alto Peru, see
Isacio Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas en el Perú: El espíritu lascasiano en la prim-
era evangelización del Imperio Incaico (1531–1573) (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Rurales An-
dinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1988).
33 These were Machiavellian, pragmatic decisions that explicitly weighed the immorality
of labor reforms against the global interests of the monarchy. On Acosta’s pragmatic in-
strumentalism, see Orlando Bentancor, The Matter of Empire: Metaphysics and Mining in
Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), 151–216.
Figure 10.6 Illustration of a Mexica priest and traditions of worship in book 5, Chapter 14
of Acosta’s history; 1634 illustrated edition of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten
original Dutch translation of Acosta: Historie naturael ende morael van de

Westersche Indiën.
Figure 10.7 Illustration of Mexica worship of anthropomorphic images, book 5, Chapter 9

of Acosta’s history; 1634 illustrated edition of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten
original Dutch translation of Acosta: Historie naturael ende morael van de
Westersche Indiën.
Figure 10.8 The foundation of Tenochtitlan on a lake; a history of Mexica exodus. De Bry’s
illustrated German synthesis of Acosta’s history. Additamentum, Oder Anhang
deß neundten Theils Americae (Frankfurt, 1602).
Figure 10.9 Mexica human sacrifice in de Bry’s illustrated German synthesis of

Acosta’s history. Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß neundten Theils
Americae (Frankfurt, 1602).
Figure 10.10 a Pages from Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para instruccion de los indios
(Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1584). The oration of the sign of the cross (per
signum Sanctae Crucis de inimicis nostris libera nos, Domine Deus noster.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen), for example, leaves the
words Sancta, Crucis, Deus, Spiritus Sancto, Amen intact both in Quechua
and Aymara.
Figure 10.10 b (cont.)

Of all the possible readings of Acosta’s history, Protestants chose to empha-

size his anthropology, namely books 5, 6, and 7, that is, the history of Peruvian
and Mexican polities as demonological inversions of Christian typology.
According to Acosta, the Aztecs were Satan’s elect. Through omens, e xiles,
migrations to a promised land, Satan built with the Mexicans a mockery of
the Christian sacraments. Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism became
a demonic inversion of the Eucharist. The Inca also developed mockeries of
nunneries, penitence, confession, and the cult of relics. Their saints were not
Christian but Inca mummies.34
An analysis of the first editions of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History in Cal-
vinist Amsterdam indicates that the Dutch were fascinated by Acosta’s demo-
nological interpretation of the history of the peoples of the Americas. The two
most authoritative translations of his work were those of Jan Huyghen van Lin-
schoten (1563–1611) (Dutch, 1598) and Theodore de Bry (Latin, 1601).35 When
Linschoten translated Acosta’s History, he had recently completed the publica-
tion of a three-volume Itinerario (Itinerary [1596]), which offered a compre-
hensive, illustrated account of the Portuguese global empire in Africa and Asia
as a manifesto for the Dutch to create charter commercial companies (the West
and the East Indian Companies) to compete with the Iberian global empire.36
Both de Bry’s and Linschoten’s edition would eventually add illustrations to
their original translations. In 1602, de Bry issued an appendix in German with
nine illustrations (see examples Figs. 10.8–10.9), and Linschoten’s 1624 edition
34 On demonology and typology (including Acosta’s), see Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan

Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2006).
35 Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, ed., Historie naturael ende morael van de Westersche Indiën:
Waer inne ghehandelt wordt van de merckelijckste dinghen des hemels, elementen, metalen,
planten ende ghedierten van dien; Als oock de manieren, ceremoniën, wetten, regeeringen
ende oorloghen der indianen (Amsterdam: Jacob Lenaertsz. Meyn, 1598); Theodore de Bry,
ed., Americae nona & postrema pars: Qva de ratione elementorvm; De Novi Orbis natvra; De
hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cultibus; Déq; Forma politiae ac reipubl. ipsorum […] pertrac-
tatur (Frankfurt, 1602).
36 Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert, van Ian Huygen van Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels
Indien, inhoudende een corte beschryvinghe der selver landen ende zee-custen, 3 vols.
(Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, 1596). On Linschoten and the rise of the Dutch global
commercial empire, see Charles McKew Parr, Jan Van Linschoten, the Dutch Marco Polo:
Sixteenth-Century Adventurer Whose Writings Opened the Fabled East to the Dutch and the
English (New York: Crowell, 1964). On the connection to the rise of the Dutch Atlantic, see
Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–
1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment:
War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2016).
Figure 10.11 Frontispiece of John Eliot’s Algonquian Bible, Mamusse wunneetupanatamwe

Up-Biblium God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament ne
quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wuttinneumoh Christ noh asoowesit (Cambridge,
MA: Printeuoop nashpe Samuel Green kah Marmaduke Johnson, 1663). Eliot,
like Acosta, did not seek to translate words such as Bible, God, Testament,
Christ, and even “print.”
came out with thirteen illustrations (see examples Figs. 10.6–10.7).37 With the
exception of those having to do with precious natural resources (silver, bezoar
stones, Potosí mining) and curious indigenous technologies and animals (fish-
ing and hunting techniques, Inca woven bridges, armadillos, and llamas), most
of these twenty-two illustrations focused on devil worship, warfare and ritual
cannibalism, Aztec satanic histories of exodus and a promised land, and Inca
apotheosis as ideological deception (see figs. 10.6–10.9).
Hence Acosta’s satanic anthropology placed him closer to Dutch Calvinism,
and he also shared the Calvinists’ opposition to the Jesuits’ missionary policy in
Japan and China, which sought accommodation with eastern cultural religious
ideas as prefigurations of Christianity. Unlike Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) in China
and Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) in Japan, Acosta fought against the in-
corporation of native clergy and the use of native religious terms in transla-
tions of Christian dogma.38 After his stint as provincial came to an end in 1581,
Acosta was delegated as the main theological councilor of the new Tridentine
archbishop of Peru Toribio de Mogrovejo (1538–1606), charged with establish-
ing crown control over the church. Acosta wrote the main theoretical texts of
the Third Council of Lima (1582–83),39 and he also coordinated the drafting
of the main trilingual catechism and sermons for conversion. His catechism
and sermons in Spanish were translated into Quechua and Aymara.40 These
37 Theodore de Bry, ed., Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß neundten Theils Americae (Frank-
furt, 1602); Historie naturael en morael van de Westersche Indien: Waer inne ghehandelt
wort van de merckelijckste dinghen des hemels […] als oock de manieren […] der Indianen
(Amsterdam: Voor Hendrick Laurensz, 1624).
38 The literature on Ricci and Valignano is large. My analysis has been shaped by Jonathan
D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984); Ronnie
Po-chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2010); Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China,
1579–1724 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Adolfo Tamburello, M. Antoni
J. Üçerler, and Marisa Di Russo, eds., Alessandro Valignano S.I.: Uomo del Rinascimento,
ponte tra Oriente e Occidente (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2008); Au-
gusto Luca, Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606): La missione come dialogo con i popoli e le
culture (Bologna: emi, 2005). For a broad analysis that combines all Jesuit missions in
Asia, see Liam Matthew Brockey, The Visitor: André Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
39 José de Acosta and Pedro Madrigal, Concilium Limense: Celebratum anno 1583 sub Gregorio
xiii Sum. Pont. auctoritate Sixti Quinti Pont. Max. approbatum (Madrid: Ex officina Petri
Madrigalis typographi, 1591).
40 Confessionario para los curas de Indios: Con la instrucion contra sus ritos: Y exhortacion
para Ayudar a bien morir; Y summa de sus priuilegios; Y forma de impedimentos del matri-
monio (Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1585); Tercero cathecismo y exposicion de la doctrina chris-
tiana, por sermones: Para que los curas y otros ministros prediquen y enseñen a los Yndios y
a las demas personas (Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1585); Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para
documents reveal the debates in Peru over how to integrate indigenous reli-
gions. The printed sermons and catechism in Quechua and Aymara dismissed
the ideas of mestizo Jesuits like Blas Valera (1545–97) (tasked with the transla-
tion of Acosta’s sermons into Quechua and Aymara). Like Ricci and Valignano,
Valera insisted that the church should use indigenous religious terms, particu-
larly in Quechua, to refer to God and Christ.41 According to the neo-Platonist
Valera, the Inca had developed concepts of God and Christ on their own, a
single omniscient creator, Pachacamac, and his incarnated son, Viracocha. As a
native-speaker, Valera the translator wanted the sermons and catechism to use
Pachacama for God and Viracocha for Christ.42 Acosta dismissed these ideas.
The catechism and sermons used Hispanicized terms to refer to complicated
theological terms such as God and Christ and Mary (see Fig. 10.10A and 10.10B).
The council dismissed all forms of indigenous religious manifestations as idol-
atrous. Acosta did not seek accommodation but extirpation.43
Acosta consequently fitted Calvinist sensibilities toward indigenous reli-
gions better than did Ricci or Valignano. For the Calvinists, indigenous religions
were also manifestations of demonology, not natural religion, as the classical
tradition of Marcus Terentius Varro (116 bce–27 bce) suggested. Like Acosta,
Calvinists were not interested in religious cultural–linguistic accommoda-
tions. Calvinist philologists in the Indian missions of Massachusetts like John
Eliot (1604–90) did not incorporate indigenous terms for the sacred into the
vernacular translations of the Bible. Eliot used such anglicized terms as God
and Testament on the very frontispiece of his Algonquian Bible (see Fig. 10.11).
4 Jesuit Forgetting and Secular Recovery
A Catholic counterpoint to the lopsided and narrow Protestant reading of

Acosta never emerged. Acosta never became a canonical figure in the Catholic
instruccion de los indios, y de las de mas personas, que han de ser enseñadas en nuestra
sancta fé: Con vn confessionario, y otras cosas necessarias para los que doctrinan, que se
contienen en la pagina siguiente (Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1584).
41 On the mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera as the Quechua and Aymara equivalent of Valignano in
Japan, see Sabine Hyland, The Jesuit and the Incas: The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas
Valera, S.J. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). In China, the debate was
originally won by Ricci who had a Chinese word Shangdi stand for God. In 1629, the Jesuit
visitor André Palmeiro (1569–1635) reversed the translation back to Deus. On the “terms
Controversy” and the accommodation controversy among early modern Jesuits in Asia
(from India to Japan to China), see Brockey, Visitor, 278–325.
42 Hyland, Jesuit and the Incas, 122–69.
43 Ibid., 169–82.
world. Take, for example, the case of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s (1595–1658)
four-volume and Alonso de Andrade’s (1590–1672) two-volume hagiographies of
sixteenth-century Jesuits, mostly Jesuits of Iberian descent.44 From 1643 to 1667,
Nieremberg and Andrade included the lives of some forty sixteenth-century

Jesuits in Peru. Acosta never appeared except as the compiler of somebody
else’s life, namely the biography of Jesuit Bartolomé Lorenzo, a lay coadjutor
who after leaving Spain endured shipwrecks, pirate raids, marronage, solitary
peregrination, and captivity for seven years until Lorenzo reached Lima in 1577
to enroll as humble servant in the newly established Jesuit order. As provincial
superior, Acosta took notes on the life of Lorenzo that were later to appear in
print.45 Acosta’s absence in the six volumes is even more jarring if one pays
attention to the Jesuits Nieremberg chose to eulogize among the sixteenth-
century Iberian missionaries in Peru.
Nieremberg, for example, included the life of Miguel de Fuentes, who was
one of the first Jesuits to arrive in Lima in 1567. In 1585, he was convicted by the
Inquisition for a series of sexual encounters with numerous married women in
the confessional. Fuentes’s dalliances went beyond sexual indiscretions and so-
licitation. He was clearly part of the alumbrado heresy, which held that w omen
and men could find God not through heterosexual touching and c aresses but
actual sexual intercourse. Fuentes was expelled forthwith from Peru and sent
back to his native Valencia.46 Nieremberg overlooked these delicate subjects
44 Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Ideas de virtud en algunos claros varones de la Compañia de

Iesus: Para los religiosos della (Madrid: Por Maria de Quiñones, 1643); Nieremberg, Fir-
mamento religioso de luzidos astros, en algunos claros varones de la Compañia de Iesus:
Cumplense en este tomo y en el antecedente una centuria entera (Madrid: Por Maria de
Quiñones, 1644); Nieremberg, Honor del gran patriarca San Ignacio de Loyola, fundador de
la Compañia de Iesus, en que se propone su vida, y la de su dicipulo el Apostol de las Indias
S. Francisco Xavier: Con la milagrosa historia del admirable padre Marcelo Mastrilli, y las
noticias de gran multitud de hijos del mismo S. Ignacio, varones clarissimos en santidad,
doctrina, trabajos, y obras marauillosas en seruicio de la Iglesia (Madrid: María de Quiño-
nes, 1645); Nieremberg, Vidas exemplares y venerables memorias de algunos claros varones
de la Compañia de Iesus, de los quales es este tomo quarto (Madrid: Alonso de Paredes,
1647). These four volumes were followed by two additional ones by Andrade. Alonso de
Andrade, Varones ilustres en santidad, letras y zelo de las almas de la Compañia de Iesus:
Tomo quinto a los quatro que saco a luz […] Iuan Eusebio Nieremberg de la Compañia de Ie-
sus (Madrid: Ioseph Fernandez de Buendia, 1666); Andrade, Varones ilustres en santidad,
letras y zelo de las almas de la Compañia de Iesus: Tomo sexto (Madrid: Ioseph Fernandez
de Buendia, 1667).
45 “Hermano Bartolomé Lorenzo y sus peregrinaciones,” in Andrade, Varones ilustres en san-
tidad, letras y zelo (1666), 759–84.
46 Maurice Birckel, “Le P. Miguel de Fuentes, S.J., et l’Inquisition de Lima,” Bulletin hispan-
ique 71 (1969): 31–139.
and praised Fuentes for his piety and even his prowess at avoiding seduction by
naked temptresses, indigenous women in the missions of Peru.47 There were
no comparable moral stains in Acosta’s life except the scattered complaints
that he demanded more than his share of food and assistance from servants
to move around. Like the great theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), Acosta
happened to be overweight and rotund.48
For their sprawling Jesuit hagiographies, Nieremberg and Andrade also re-
lied on histories of colleges, residences, and provinces then circulating as man-
uscripts in Madrid as a result of Superior General Claudio Acquaviva’s (in office
1581–1615) order for every college, residence, and province to submit accounts
to Rome, organized as annals, to create an archive for an official history.49 Most
of the local histories used to assemble the annals never made it into print.50
One exception was a selection of lives in the province of Peru compiled by
the Neapolitan Jesuit Giovanni Anello Oliva (1574–1642), whose hagiographies
were sent to Madrid with the creole Jesuit Alonso Messia, elected as procurator
by the province of Peru. In 1633, Messia published Anello Oliva’s hagiographies
under his own name, without the approval of the order in Madrid or Rome.51
47 “En la castidad se esmero tanto, que aun andando en las Indias, y solo entre mujeres des-
nudas, coma la bárbara costumbre que aquell gente permite, ni aun pensamiento menos
honesto admitió en su alma.” See “Vida del Padre Miguel de Fuentes,” in Nieremberg, Vi-
das exemplares y venerables memorias (1647), 251.
48 On complaints about Acosta’s excessive demands, see Claudio M. Burgaleta, José de Acos-
ta, S.J.
49 Dante A. Alcántara Bojorge, “El proyecto historiográfico de Claudio Aquaviva y la con-
strucción de la Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Nueva España a principios del siglo
xvii,” Estudios de historia novohispana 40 (2007): 57–80.
50 The official history began to appear in 1615, the year Acquaviva died. Yet the official His-
toria Societatis Iesu was destined never to be completed. The last volume reached only
to the year 1585 and came out in 1661. The other four volumes covered the order under
Loyola (Rome, 1615), Diego Laínez (in office 1558–65) (Rome, 1620), Borja (Rome, 1649),
and Everard Mercurian (in office 1573–80) (Rome, 1652). See Niccolò Orlandini, Historiae
Societatis Iesu prima pars (Rome: Bartholomaeum Zannetum, 1615); Francesco Sacchini,
Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars secunda, siue Lainius (Rome: Zannetum, 1620); Sacchini, His-
toriæ Societatis Iesu pars tertia siue Borgia (Rome: Typis Manelfi Manelfij, 1649); Sacchini,
Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quarta siue Euerardus (Rome: Typis Dominici Manelphij,
1652); Francesco Sacchini and Pierre Poussines, Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta siue
Claudius tomus prior (Rome: Ex Typographia Varesij, 1661).
51 On the history of Oliva’s manuscripts of the order’s history, including a multi-volume his-
tory of individuals, missions, and colleges, as well as Messia’s plagiarism and u
nauthorized
edition of Oliva’s work, see Giovanni Anello Oliva, Historia del reino y provincias del Perú
y vidas de los varones insignes de la Compañía de Jesús, ed. Carlos M. Gálvez Peña (Lima:
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1998).
Oliva–Messia’s short list of illustrious sixteenth-century Jesuits in Peru is

indicative of the degree to which Acosta had been forgotten or marginalized
in Jesuit provincial accounts. The list includes the lives of the first, third, and
fourth provincials: Geronimo Ruiz del Portillo, Baltasar Piñas (1528–1611), and
Juan de Atienza (b.1546). Yet the second provincial, José de Acosta, is nowhere
to be seen.52 This systematic erasure of Acosta also surfaces in the officially
sanctioned Historia Societatis Iesu, the fourth and fifth volumes of which cover
the decades from 1570 to 1590. The two volumes make only passing mention of
Acosta as provincial in Peru (1576–81) and as Philip ii’s (1527–98) and Acqua-
viva’s official visitador of the Spanish Jesuit province in Andalucía and Aragon
in the mid-1580s.53
Why was Acosta so un-solemnly dumped from the Jesuit historical archive
beginning with the earliest printed histories of the order in the early and mid-
seventeenth century? One of the reasons is that Acosta was among the lead-
ers of the failed memorialista coup against Acquaviva in the early 1590s. He
arrived in Madrid in the late 1580s as the procurator of the Peruvian church to
secure the acceptance of the proceedings of the Third Council by the crown in
Madrid and the pope in Rome. Local Lascasian bishops in Peru, who refused
to surrender quietly, loudly challenged the proceedings. These local churches
sent legal representatives to Madrid and Rome to block the approval of the
documents by the Council of the Indies and the pope. While Acosta came to
Madrid to represent the new Peruvian Tridentine church before the Council
of the Indies, he struck a friendship with Philip ii, to whose daughter, Isabella
Clara Eugenia of Austria (1566–1633), he dedicated the Historia natural y moral
de las Indias.54
Philip ii was opposed to the alliance that the Italians and Portuguese had
struck to keep the Spanish province from controlling the order.55 The first
52 Alonso Mesía, Catalogo de algunos varones insignes en Santidad de la provincia del Peru
de la Compañia de Iesus hecho por orden de la congregacion provincial que se celebro en el
Colegio de S. Pablo de Lima, año de mdcxxx (Seville: Francisco de Lyra Barreto, 1633), 2, 15,
21.
53 Francesco Sacchini, Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quarta siue Euerardus (Rome: Typis Do-
minici Manelphij, 1652), 67; Sacchini and Poussines, Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta,
65–66, 455–57.
54 For Acosta’s role in the memorialista controversy that pitted Acquaviva against Philip ii
and leading members of the Spanish province, see Miguel de la Pinta Llorente, Activi-
dades diplomáticas del P. José de Acosta: En torno a una política, y a un sentimiento religioso
(Madrid: csic, 1952).
55 Ricardo García Cárcel, “La crisis de la Compañía de Jesús en los últimos años del reinado
de Felipe ii (1585–1598),” in La monarquía de Felipe ii a debate (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal
para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe ii y Carlos v, 2000), 383–404; Javier
three superiors of the order had been Spaniards. After the alliance, only Italian
superiors were appointed. Acquaviva was a very young, impetuous Neapolitan
boss who exiled all Spanish old hands from Rome in order to weaken the pow-
erful Spanish province and changed many of the order’s original rules, leading
to further centralization. In response, the Spaniards began to call for a Fifth
Congregation to remove Acquaviva from his position. Acosta led the charge.
With the help of Philip ii and the Spanish ambassador in Rome, Acosta cir-
cumvented Acquaviva and forced the pope to convene the Fifth Congregation
in 1593–94. Acquaviva was chastened and his centralizing efforts weakened,
but he did not lose his position as superior general. Acosta had failed; he was
thereafter assigned to the college of Salamanca where he lived until his death
in 1600.56
In addition to his role in the memorialista controversy, Acosta also par-
ticipated in the Ratio studiorum controversy and the Dominican–Jesuit de-
bate over the role of free will and God’s Grace in the 1590s.57 Acosta called
for the Castilian Thomistic traditions of Salamanca to be maintained against
the pedagogical innovations of Acquaviva’s Ratio. Some Spanish Jesuits, par-
ticularly those who were not from the provinces of Castile and Toledo, had
begun implementing changes in the curriculum in Salamanca that embraced
many of the novelties of Acquaviva’s vision, Francisco Suárez (1548–1617)
being one of them. Upon arrival in Salamanca, Acosta joined forces with
Castilian Thomist Miguel Marcos, a leading professor of theology, and the two
men forced Suárez out. Suárez moved to Coimbra in 1597. Acosta also sided
against the innovations of other Jesuits like Luis de Molina (1535–1600), whose
works on free will reignited a dispute with the Castilian Dominicans in the
Burrieza Sánchez, “La Compañía de Jesús y la defensa de la monarquía Hispánica,” His-

pania sacra 60 (2008): 181–229.
56 On Acosta and the Fifth Congregation, see also Antonio Astrain, Historia de la Compa-
ñía de Jesús en la Asistencia de España, tomo iii, Mercuriano Acquaviva (primera parte)
1573–1615 (Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1909), 476–531.
57 Historian José Martínez Millán has correctly moved the discussion of the Spanish ver-
sus Italian–Portuguese–Roman alliance away from the converso interpretation that has
dominated the historiography. The memorialistas supported a Castilian vision of univer-
sal monarchy at odds with the Holy Roman imperial one promoted by the Luso-Italian
alliance. The Castilians rejected the Ratio and Molinism and imposed on the order the
“estatuto de limpieza de sangre,” regardless of whether many of them were conversos. See
Martinez Millán “El problema Judeo-converso en la Compañía de Jesús,” Chronica nova:

Revista de historia moderna de la Universidad de Granada 42 (2016): 19–50. For an alterna-
tive vision centered on the Jesuit crisis as a Luso-Italian rejection of the converso roots of
the Spanish province, see Robert A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits
of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
De auxiliis controversy. Like a good memorialist who took the side of the pro-
Castilian party supporting Philip ii against the new Italian–Portuguese Jesuit
alliance with Rome (which advocated a different political and philosophical
understanding of a universal monarchy centered on the Holy Roman Empire),

Acosta took the side of the Dominicans. Marcos and Acosta supported the
Dominicans (highlighting the absolute and unpredictable power of God) who
considered Molinism (which emphasizes God’s binding contract with the in-
dividual to be let free to choose his or her own salvation) heretical. Acquaviva
sternly warned Acosta not to pursue any writing on this topic. Acosta could
only compile and publish his Peruvian sermons, not write theology.58
Given the marginalization, it should surprise no one that Acosta quickly be-
gan to fade from the Jesuit archive. The last time his works were reprinted in
Jesuit presses in Venice, Lyon, Salamanca, or Cologne was 1610. By 1633, Messia
could simply overlook Acosta in his list of illustrious Jesuits in Peru.
Acosta’s prestige survived largely due to the Protestant reception of his nat-
ural and moral history. We can see this in the history of the publications of his
history in Spain. Between 1722 and 1749, Andrés González de Barcia (1673–1743)
issued new editions of almost every printed sixteenth-century Spanish book,
with the sole exception being anything by Acosta.59 Barcia published Inca Gar-
cilaso de la Vega’s (1539–1616) Comentarios reales (Commentaries on Inca royal
history [1722]), Historia del Perú (History of Peru [1722], and La Florida del Inca
(History of Florida [1722]); Antonio de Herrera’s (1549–1626) Historia general
de los hechos de los castellanos (General history of the Castilian conquest of
the Indies [1726–28]; Gregorio García’s [1556–1627]) Origen de los Indios (On
the origin of the Indians [1729]); Juan de Torquemada’s (1557–1624) Monarquía
I ndiana (Indian monarchies [1723]); Antonio de León Pinelo’s (1589–1660)
Epítome (Bibliography of manuscripts and prints on the Indies [1737]); A lonso
de Ercilla’s (1533–94) La Araucana (1733–35); Hernán Cortés’s (1485–1547)
Cartas de relación (Letters [1749]); Fernando Colón’s (1488–1539) Vida de Colón
(Columbus’s life [1749]); Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s (1490–1559) Relación de
58 On Acquaviva’s warnings to Acosta not to write theology to defend Aquinas’s metaphys-

ics, see León Lopetegui, “Notas sobre la actividad teológica del P. José de Acosta S. I. Es-
tudios Profesorado–Consultas: Escritos” Gregorianum 21 (1940): 547–58. On the De auxilis
controversy in Spain, see Beltrán de Vicente Heredia, Domingo Báñez y las controversias
sobre la gracia: Textos y documentos; Introducción histórica y ordenación del texto (Madrid:
csic, 1968).
59 On González de Barcia’s editorial project, see Jonathan Earl Carlyon, Andrés González de
Barcia and the Creation of the Colonial Spanish American Library (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2005).
naufragios and Comentarios (Account of shipwreck and Commentaries on the

conquest of the River Plate [1749]; Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s (1478–1557)
Sumario de la historia natural de las Indias (Summary of the natural history
of the Indies [1749]; Francisco López de Gómara’s (1511–66) Historia general

(General History of the Indies [1749]) and the Conquista de México y Perú (Con-
quest of Mexico and Peru [1749]; Francisco de Xerez’s (1495–1565) Verdadera
relación de la conquista del Perú (True account of the conquest of Peru [1749];
and Agustín de Zárate’s (1514–60) Historia de la conquista del Perú (History of
the conquest of Peru [1749]. In short, González de Barcia reissued every pub-
lished sixteenth-century chronicle except Acosta’s.60
It was only in 1792 that a new edition of Acosta’s Historia appeared in print
in Spain. Curiously, it was an edition sponsored by the Spanish Royal Acad-
emy of Language that decreed the Historia a classic to be incorporated into the
Dictionary of Authorities. The author of the 1792 edition, one D.A.V.C, bitterly
complained how Acosta had been forgotten in Spain. The introduction em-
phasized that Acosta’s Historia had become a rarity.61 Why did the academy
60 Garcilaso de la Vega, Historia general del Perù: Trata, el descubrimiento, de el, y como lo
ganaron, los Españoles: Las guerras civiles, que huvo entre Pizarros, y Almagros, sobre la
partija de la tierra; Castigo, y levantamiento de tyranos, y otros sucesos particulares, que en
la Historia se contienen (Madrid: En la Oficina Real, y à costa de Nicolas Rodriguez Franco,
impresor de libros, se hallarà en su casa, 1722); Garcilaso de la Vega, Primera parte de los
Commentarios reales: que tratan, de el origen de los Incas, reies, qve fveron del Perù, de sv
idolatria, leies, y govierno, en paz, y en guerra: De svs vidas, y conquistas, y de todo lo que fue
aquel imperio, y su republica, antes que los Españoles pasaran, à èl ( Madrid: En la Oficina
real, 1722); Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca: Historia del adelantado, Hernando de
Soto, governador, y capitan general del Reino de la Florida; Y de otros heroicos caballeros,
españoles, é indios (Madrid: En la Oficina Real, 1723); Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas,
Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar océano,
8 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta Real de Nicolas Rodriguez Franco, 1726–28); Gregorio García,
Origen de los Indios de el Nuevo mundo, e Indias Occidentales (Madrid: En la imprenta de F.
Martínez Abad, 1729); Juan de Torquemada, Primera [segunda, tercera] parte de los veinte
i vn libros rituales i monarchia indiana, con el origen y guerras, de los Indios Occidentales,
de sus poblaçones descubrimiento, conquista, conuersion, y otras cosas marauillosas de la
mesma tierra (Madrid: N. Rodríguez Franco, 1723); Antonio de León Pinelo, Epitome de
la Bibliotheca oriental, y occidental, nautica, y geografica de Don Antonio de Leon Pinelo, del
Consejo de Su Mag. en la Casa de la Contratacion de Sevilla, y coronista maior de las Indias:
Añadido, y enmendado nuevamente (Madrid: Francisco Martínez Abad, 1737); Alonso de
Ercilla y Zúñiga, La Aravcana: Primera, segunda, y tercera [-quinta] parte, 2 vols. (Madrid:
Francisco Martínez Abad, 1733–35); Historiadores primitivos de las Indias Occidentales:

Que juntò, traduxo en parte, y sacò à luz, ilustrados con erudìtas notas, y copiosos índices
(Madrid: n.p., 1749).
61 José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Madrid: Pantaleon Aznar 1792). The
introduction to the volume is written by one D.A.V.C.
decide in 1792 to finally acknowledge the Jesuit Acosta, a member of an order

recently dismantled, as the author of a classic of the Spanish language? An
answer to the paradox can be found in the pages of Theatro crítico universal
(Criticism on all subjects) by the foremost author of the Spanish Enlighten-

ment, the Benedictine Benito Feijoó (1676–1764). In the essay Glorias de Es-
paña (Glories of Spain) (discourse 14 of volume 4), Feijoó made an argument
for the recovery of Acosta as one of the most important European natural his-
torians, a superior to Pliny (23–79), for Acosta, unlike Pliny, did not rely on a
large library of texts but drew directly from nature. Feijoó discovered Acosta
as a Spanish glory not because Acosta had long been deemed so in Spain, but
because Acosta was constantly cited outside Spain as an authority.62 Feijoó’s
Glorias de España sought to highlight the accomplishments of Spain to many
early modern disciplines and fields of knowledge: jurisprudence, moral theol-
ogy, physics, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, botany, chemistry, anatomy,
moral philosophy, geography, agriculture, rhetoric, poetry, history, humane let-
ters, literary criticism, sacred letters, mystic theology, erudition, and techno-
logical innovation. Had Feijoó read Acosta in areas other than natural history,
he would have been forced to acknowledge that Acosta contributed to many
other areas of knowledge as well. Had Feijoó known Acosta’s De Christo and De
temporibus, he would have had to grapple with Acosta’s innovations in biblical
hermeneutics and epistemology. Feijoó could not think of Acosta as anything
other than a naturalist and anthropologist. Acosta’s new physics of the earth
did not register with Feijoó. The Benedictine could have added Acosta to the
sections on physics and geography. As he rescued Acosta from Jesuit oblivion,
Feijoó recovered the Jesuit in the terms Protestants had long established: as a
historian of the peoples of Mexico and Peru and, tangentially, as a naturalist.
Acosta the theoretician of late sixteenth-century empire in Peru, Acosta the ar-
chitect of a Tridentine church in the Indies subordinated to the crown via both
the patronato real and the Inquisition, Acosta the eschatologist and daring
interpreter of the book of prophecies and the Psalms, Acosta the Christologi-
cal exegete of the Old Testament and the Act of the Apostles, and Acosta the
superb epistemologist of nature and biblical hermeneutics remained hidden.
And this is still the case today. Protestants partially allowed Acosta to continue
to speak to readers. The Jesuits kept him buried away from sight.
62 Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, Theatro crítico universal: Ó discursos varios en todo género de
materias, para desengaño de errores comunes (Madrid: Joachin Ibarra, 1769), discurso 14,
4:380–81.
5 Conclusions
Whoever controls print controls memory. The case of Acosta is significant be-
cause it makes transparent the immense power of the printing press in the con-
stitution of the Western canon. It determined how authors were remembered
and read. It also highlights the importance of serendipity and contingency.
There were many aspects of Acosta’s work that Protestants could have incor-
porated in addition to Acosta’s account of the Amerindian past, yet Calvinist
printers overlooked his contributions to eschatology and biblical hermeneu-
tics. The reputation Acosta accrued with Protestants could have been s everely
undermined had Calvinist printers paid attention to his De procuranda. In De
procuranda, Acosta clearly privileged the geopolitical and economic needs of
the global monarchy over morality. Acosta justified forced systems of labor
as natural so as not to interrupt the flow of silver and mercury from Andean
mines. Acosta’s reputation and afterlife as an author was also shaped by the
deliberate silence of the Jesuits. The Jesuits did not remove Acosta from librar-
ies, nor did they pursue the banning of any of his works. Yet, the Jesuits chose
not to promote his memory and his works, and Acosta’s presence in Jesuit his-
toriography was thinned to such an extent as to become almost invisible. There
was no alternative reading of Acosta to counter the lopsided Protestant one.
The canon, it turns out, is as profoundly shaped by contingent choices of po-
tential opponents as by the deliberate silences of potential allies.
Bibliography
Acosta, José de. Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para instruccion de los indios, y de las
de mas personas, que han de ser enseñadas en nuestra sancta fé: Con vn confession-
ario, y otras cosas necessarias para los que doctrinan, que se contienen en la pagina
siguiente. Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1584.
Acosta, José de. Tercero cathecismo y exposicion de la doctrina christiana, por sermones:
Para que los curas y otros ministros prediquen y enseñen a los Yndios y a las demas
personas. Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1585a.
Acosta, José de. Confessionario para los curas de Indios: Con la instrucion contra sus
ritos: Y exhortacion para Ayudar a bien morir; Y summa de sus priuilegios; Y forma de
impedimentos del matrimonio. Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1585b.
Acosta, José de. De Natura Novi Orbis libri II, et de promulgatione Evangelii apud bar-
baros, sive de procuranda Indorum salute, libri VI, auctore Josepho Acosta. Salaman-
ca: Apud G. Foquel, 1589.
Acosta, José de. De Christo revelato libri novem. Rome: Apud Iacobum Ruffinellium,
1590a.
Acosta, José de. De temporibus novissimis libri quatuor. Rome: Ex Typographia Iacobi
Tornerij, 1590b.
Acosta, José de. Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en que se tratan las cosas notables
del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas, y los ritos, y ceremonias,
leyes, y gouierno, y guerras de los Indios. Seville, 1590c.
Acosta, José de. De Christo reuelato libri nouem simulque De temporibus nouissimis libri
quatuor. Lyon: Lugduni apud Ioannem Baptistam Buysson, 1592.
Acosta, José de. Conciones in Quadragesimam: Quarum in singulas Ferias numerum &
locum index initio praefixus ostendit. Salamanca: Apud Ioannem & Andreã Renaut,
fratres, 1596a.
Acosta, José de. Historia naturale, e morale delle Indie, scritta dal r.p. Gioseffo di Acosta
della Compagnia del Giesù: Nellaquale si trattano le cose notabili del cielo, & de gli
elementi […] di quelle; I suoriti, & ceremonie […] & guerre de gli Indiani; Nouamente
tradotta della lingua Spagnuola nella Italiana da Gio. Paolo Galucci. Venice, 1596b.
Acosta, José de. Conciones de Adventv: Id est de onmibus Dominicis & festis diebus à
Dominica vigesimaquarta post Pentecosten vsque ad Quadragesimam. Salamanca:
Apud Ioannem, & Andreã Renaut, 1597.
Acosta, José de. Geographische vnd historische Beschreibung der uberauss grosser
Landtschafft America: Welche auch West Jndia, vnd jhrer grösse halben die New Welt
genennet wirt. Cölln-Berlin, 1598a.
Acosta, José de. Histoire naturelle et moralle des Indes, tant Orientalles qu’ Occidentalles,
où, Il est traicté des choses remarquables du ciel, des elemens, metaux, plantes & ani-
maux qui sont propres de ces païs: Ensemble des moeurs, ceremonies, loix, gouver-
nemens & guerres des mesmes Indiens. Edited by Robert Regnault Cauxois. Paris,
1598b; reissued 1600 and 1616.
Acosta, José de. Historie naturael en morael van de Westersche Indien: Waer inne ghe-
handelt wort van de merckelijckste dinghen des hemels, elementen, metalen, planten
ende gedierten van dien; Als oock de manieren, ceremonien, wetten, regeeringen ende
oorlogen der Indianen. Amsterdam: Jan Huygen van Linschoten, 1598c; reissued in
1624.
Acosta, José de. Tomus tertius Concionum Iosephi Acostae è Societate Iesu quo continen-
tur omnes Dominici & festi dies mobiles ab octaua Paschae vsque ad Aduentum: Res
verò quae in hoc opere continentur & praecipuos Scripturae locos tractatos duo Indi-
ces ad finem affixi ostendunt. Salamanca: Excudebat Andreas Renaut, 1599.
Acosta, José de. New Welt, das ist: Volkommen Beschreibung voWn Natur, Art vnd Gelege-
nheit der Newer Welt, die man sonst America oder West-Jndien nennet; In zwey Theil
abgetheilt. Cölln-Berlin, 1600.
Acosta, José de. Neundter vnd letzter Theil Americæ, darin[n] gehandelt wird von Gele-
genheit der Elementen, Natur, Art und Eigenschafft der Newen Welt. Frankfurt: Theo-
dore de Bry, 1601; reissued 1602.
Acosta, José de. Americae nona & postrema pars: Qva de ratione elementorvm; De Novi
Orbis natvra; De hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cultibus; Déq; Forma politiae ac reipubl.
ipsorum […] pertractatur. Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1602.
Acosta, José de. The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies: Intreat-
ing of the Remarkable Things of Heaven, of the Elements, Mettalls, Plants and Beasts
Which Are Proper to That Country; Together with the Manners, Ceremonies, Lawes,
Governments, and Warres of the Indians, Translated by Edward Grimeston. London,
1604.
Acosta, José de. America, oder wie mans zu teutsch nennet die Neuwe Welt, oder West
Jndia. Ursel, Flanders, 1605.
Acosta, José de. Ontdekking van West-Indien, vlijtig ondersogt, en naauw-keurig aange-
teekend, door Joseph d’Acosta, Soc. Jesu, op sijn reys-togt, derwaarts gedaan anno 1592.
Leiden, 1706.
Acosta, José de. Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Madrid: Pantaleon Aznar 1792.
Acosta, José de, and Pedro Madrigal. Concilium Limense: Celebratum anno 1583 sub Gre-
gorio XIII Sum. Pont. auctoritate Sixti Quinti Pont. Max. approbatum. Madrid: Ex of-
ficina Petri Madrigalis typographi, 1591.
Alcántara Bojorge, Dante A. “El proyecto historiográfico de Claudio Aquaviva y la con-
strucción de la Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Nueva España a principios del
siglo XVII.” Estudios de historia novohispana 40 (2007): 57–80.
Andrade, Alonso de. Varones ilustres en santidad, letras y zelo de las almas de la Compa-
ñia de Iesus: Tomo quinto a los quatro que saco a luz […] Iuan Eusebio Nieremberg de
la Compañia de Iesus. Madrid: Ioseph Fernandez de Buendia, 1666.
Andrade, Alonso de. Varones ilustres en santidad, letras y zelo de las almas de la Compa-
ñia de Iesus: Tomo sexto. Madrid: Ioseph Fernandez de Buendia, 1667.
Armas Asín, Fernando. “Los comienzos de la Compañía de Jesús en el Perú y su con-
texto político y religioso: La figura de Luis López.” Hispania sacra 51 (1999): 573–609.
Assadourian, Carlos Sempat. “Acerca del cambio en la naturaleza del dominio sobre
las Indias: La mita minera del virrey Toledo, documentos de 1568–1571.” Anuario de
estudios hispanoamericanos 46 (1989): 3–70.
Astrain, Antonio. Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Asistencia de España, tomo III,
Mercuriano Acquaviva (primera parte) 1573–1615. Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1909.
Asúa, Miguel de. Science in the Vanished Arcadia: Knowledge of Nature in the Jesuit Mis-
sions of Paraguay and Río de la Plata. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Asúa, Miguel de, and Roger K. French. A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europe-
ans on the Creatures of Iberian America. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
Bentancor, Orlando. The Matter of Empire: Metaphysics and Mining in Colonial Peru.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Americae pars qvarta: Sive Insignis & admiranda historia de reperta
primùm Occidentali India à Christophoro Colombo anno M. CCCCXCII Scripta ab Hi-

eronymo Benzono mediolanense, aui istic a[n]nis XIIII. versatus, dilige[n]ter omnia
observa vit. Frankfurt am Main: Theodore de Bry, 1594a.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Das Vierdte Buch Von Der Neuwen Welt [America v. 4]Oder, Neuwe
Vnd Gründtliche Historien, Von Dem Nidergängischen Indien, so Von Christophoro Co-
lumbo Im Jar 1492. Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1594b.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Americæ das fünffte Buch [America v. 5], vol schöner vnerhörter His-
torien, auss dem andern Theil Ioannis Benzonis gezogen. Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry,
1595a.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Americæ pars quinta. Nobilis […] Hieronymi Bezoni secundæ sec-
tionis Hispanorum, tùm in nigrittas […] tùm in Indos crudelitatem, Gallorumque
piratarū de Hispanis toties reportata spolia: Adventū item Hispanorū in Novam Indiæ
continentis Hispaniam, eorumque contra incolas eius regionis sævitiam explicans.
[…]. Frankfurt am Main: Theodore de Bry, 1595b.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Americae pars sexta, sive, Historiae ab Hieronymo Be[n]zono
Mediolane[n]se scriptae, sectio tertia, res no[n] minus nobiles & admiratione ple-
nas continens, quàm praecedentes duae: In hac enim reperies, qua ratione Hispani
opule[n]tissimas illas Peruäni regni provincias occuparint, capto Rege Atabaliba,
dei[n]de orta inter ipsos Hispanos in eo regno civilia bella. Frankfurt am Main: Theo-
dore de Bry, 1596.
Benzoni, Girolamo. Das sechste Theil der neuwen Welt [America v. 6], oder Der Historien
Hieron. Benzo von Meylandt, Das dritte Buch, Darinnen warhafftig erzehlet wirdt, wie
die Spanier die Goldreiche Landschafften deß Peruanischen Königreichs eyngenom-
men, den König gefangen und getödtet. Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1597.
Birckel, Maurice. “Le P. Miguel de Fuentes, S.J., et l’Inquisition de Lima.” Bulletin hispa-
nique 71 (1969): 31–139.
Brading, David A. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the
Liberal State 1492–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Brockey, Liam Matthew. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cam-
Brockey, Liam Matthew. The Visitor: André Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Burgaleta, Claudio M. José de Acosta, S.J., 1540–1600: His Life and Thought. Chicago:
Jesuit Way, 1999.

Cabrera, Cristóbal de. De solicitanda infidelium conversione. Rome, 1567.
Cabrera, Cristóbal de. La coacción de infieles a la fe según Cristóbal de Cabrera: Estudio y
edición del ms. Vat. Lat. 5026. Translated and edited by Eduardo Martín Ortiz. Seville:
n.p., 1974.
Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Episte-
mologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2001.
Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. “The ‘Iberian’ Justifications of Territorial Possession by
Pilgrims and Puritans in the Colonization of America.” In Entangled Empires: The
Anglo-Iberian Atlantic 1500–1820, edited by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, 161–77. Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Carballido y Zúñiga, Andrés González de Barcía. Historiadores primitivos de las Indias
Occidentales: Que juntò, traduxo en parte, y sacò à luz, ilustrados con erudìtas notas,
y copiosos índices. Madrid: n.p., 1749.
Carlyon, Jonathan Earl. Andrés González de Barcia and the Creation of the Colonial
Spanish American Library. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Castelló, Vidal Abril. “Francisco de la Cruz, la utopía lascasista y la Contrarreforma vir-
reinal-inquisitorial, Lima 1572–1573.” Cuadernos para la historia de la evangelización
en América Latina 3 (1988): 9–67.
Castelló, Vidal Abril. Francisco de la Cruz, Inquisición, Actas I y II. Madrid: CSIC, 1992
and 1996.
De Bry, Theodore, ed. Additamentum, Oder Anhang deß neundten Theils Americae
(Frankfurt, 1602a).
De Bry, Theodore, ed. Americae nona & postrema pars: Qva de ratione elementorvm; De
Novi Orbis natvra; De hvivs incolarvm svperstitiosis cultibus; Déq; Forma politiae ac
reipubl. ipsorum […] pertractatur. Frankfurt, 1602b.
De la Vega, Inca Garcilaso. Primera parte de los Commentarios reales: que tratan, de el
origen de los Incas, reies, qve fveron del Perù, de sv idolatria, leies, y govierno, en paz, y
en guerra: De svs vidas, y conquistas, y de todo lo que fue aquel imperio, y su republica,
antes que los Españoles pasaran, à èl. Madrid: En la Oficina real, 1722.
De la Vega, Inca Garcilaso. La Florida del Inca: Historia del adelantado, Hernando de
Soto, governador, y capitan general del Reino de la Florida; Y de otros heroicos cabal-
leros, españoles, é indios. Madrid: En la Oficina Real, 1723.
De las Casas, Bartolomé. Aqui se Aqui se cotĩ enẽ vnos auisos y reglas para los confessores
oyeren confessiones delos Españoles que son o han sido en cago a los Indios delas In-
dias del mar Oceano. Seville: En casa de Sebastian Trugillo, 1552.
De las Casas, Bartolomé. Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam deuast
atarum verissima. Frankfurt: Sumptibus Theodori de Bry, & Ioannis Saurii typis, 1598.
De las Casas, Bartolomé. Warhafftiger und gründtlicher Bericht der Hispanier grewli-
chen und abschewlichen Tyranney von ihnen in den West Indien, so die Neuwe Welt
genennet wirt, begangen. Frankfurt am Main: De Bry, 1599.
Del Pino, Fermín. “La Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias como género: Orden y géne-
sis literaria de la obra de Acosta.” Histórica 24, no. 2 (2000): 295–326.
Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de. La Aravcana: Primera, segunda, y tercera [-quinta] parte. 2
vols. Madrid: Francisco Martínez Abad, 1733–35.
Feijoó, Benito Jerónimo. Theatro critico universal: Ó discursos varios en todo género de
materias, para desengaño de errores comunes. Madrid: Joachin Ibarra, 1769.

Fernández, Isacio Pérez. Bartolomé de las Casas en el Perú: El espíritu lascasiano en la
primera evangelización del Imperio Incaico (1531–1573). Cusco: Centro de Estudios
Rurales Andinos “Bartolomé de las Casas,” 1988.
Focher, Juan, and Diego Valadés. Itinerarium catholicum profiscentium ad infideles
co[n]uertendos. Seville: Apud Alfonsum Scribanum, 1574.
García Cárcel, Ricardo. “La crisis de la Compañía de Jesús en los últimos años del rei-
nado de Felipe II (1585–1598).” In La monarquía de Felipe II a debate, 383–404. Ma-
drid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y
Carlos V, 2000.
García, Gregorio. Origen de los Indios de el Nuevo mundo, e Indias Occidentales. Madrid:
En la imprenta de F. Martínez Abad, 1729.
Hanke, Lewis. “Viceroy Francisco de Toledo and the Just Titles of Spain to the Inca
Empire.” Americas 3, no. 1 (1946): 3–19.
Heredia, Beltrán de Vicente. Domingo Báñez y las controversias sobre la gracia: Textos y
documentos; Introducción histórica y ordenación del texto. Madrid: CSIC, 1968.
Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de. Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las
islas i tierra firme del mar océano. 8 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Real de Nicolas Rodri-
guez Franco, 1726–28.
Hsia, Ronnie Po-chia. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2010.
Hyland, Sabine. The Jesuit and the Incas: The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas Valera, S.J.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Julien, Catherine. “Colonial Perspectives on the Chiriguana (1528–1574).” In Resistencia
y adaptación nativas en las tierras bajas latinoamericanas, edited by Maria Susana
Cipolletti, 17–76. Quito: Abya-Yala, 1997.
Klooster, Wim. The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the S eventeenth-Century
Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016.
Lisi, Francisco Leonardo. El tercer concilio limense y la aculturación de los indigenas Su-
damericanos: Estudio crítico, traducción y comentario de las actas del concilio provin-
cial celebrado en Lima entre 1582 y 1583. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1990.
Llorente, Miguel de la Pinta. Actividades diplomáticas del P. José de Acosta: Entorno a
una política, y a un sentimiento religioso. Madrid: CSIC, 1952.
Lopetegui, León. “Notas sobre la actividad teológica del P. José de Acosta S.I.: Estudios,
profesorado, consultas, escritos.” Gregorianum 21 (1940): 527–63.
Lopetegui, León. El padre José de Acosta, S.I., y las misiones. Madrid: CSIC, 1942.
Luca, Augusto. Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606): La missione come dialogo con i popoli
e le culture. Bologna: EMI, 2005.
MacCormack, Sabine. Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial
Peru. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Martínez Millán, José. “El problema Judeo-converso en la Compañía de Jesús.” Chroni-
ca nova: Revista de historia moderna de la Universidad de Granada 42 (2016): 19–50.
Maryks, Robert A. The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and
Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Mateos, Francisco. “Estudio preliminar.” In Obras del P. José de Acosta. Madrid: Edicio-
nes Atlas, 1954.
Medina, José Toribio. Historia del Tribunal de la Inquisición de Lima (1569–1820). 2 vols.
Santiago de Chile: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico J.T. Medina, 1956.
Merluzzi, Manfredi. Politica e governo nel Nuovo Mondo: Francisco de Toledo viceré del
Perù (1569–1581). Rome: Carocci, 2003.
Merluzzi, Manfredi. Memoria histórica y gobierno imperial: Las informaciones sobre el
origen y descendencia del gobierno de los Incas. Rosario: Prohistoria Ediciones, 2008.
Mesía, Alonso. Catalogo de algunos varones insignes en Santidad de la provincia del Peru
de la Compañia de Iesus hecho por orden de la congregacion provincial que se celebro
en el Colegio de S. Pablo de Lima, año de MDCXXX. Seville: Francisco de Lyra Bar-
reto, 1633.
Migne, Jacques-Paul. Scripturae sacrae cursus completus. 28 vols. Paris, 1837–41.
Milhou, Alain. “La tentación joaquinita en los principios de Ia Compañía de Jesús: El
caso de Francisco de Borja y Andrés de Oviedo.” Florensia: Bollettino del Centro inter-
nazionale di studi gioachimiti 8, no. 9 (1994/95): 193–241.
Millar Carvacho, René. “Entre ángeles y demonios: María Pizarro y la Inquisición de
Lima 1550–1573.” Historia 40 (2007): 379–417.
Mumford, Jeremy Ravi. Vertical Empire: The General Resettlement of Indians in the Colo-
nial Andes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio. Ideas de virtud en algunos claros varones de la Compañia de
Iesus: Para los religiosos della. Madrid: Por Maria de Quiñones, 1643.
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio. Firmamento religioso de luzidos astros, en algunos claros
varones de la Compañia de Iesus: Cumplense en este tomo y en el antecedente una
centuria entera. Madrid: Por Maria de Quiñones, 1644.
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio. Honor del gran patriarca San Ignacio de Loyola, fundador
de la Compañia de Iesus, en que se propone su vida, y la de su dicipulo el Apostol de
las Indias S. Francisco Xavier: Con la milagrosa historia del admirable padre Marcelo
Mastrilli, y las noticias de gran multitud de hijos del mismo S. Ignacio, varones claris-
simos en santidad, doctrina, trabajos, y obras marauillosas en seruicio de la Iglesia.
Madrid: María de Quiñones, 1645.
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio. Vidas exemplares y venerables memorias de algunos claros

varones de la Compañia de Iesus, de los quales es este tomo quarto. Madrid: Alonso
de Paredes, 1647.
Oliva, Giovanni Anello. Historia del reino y provincias del Perú y vidas de los varones
insignes de la Compañía de Jesús. Edited by Carlos M. Gálvez Peña. Lima: Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú, 1998.
Orlandini, Niccolò. Historiae Societatis Iesu prima pars. Rome: Bartholomaeum Zan-
netum, 1615.
Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Com-
parative Ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Parr, Charles McKew. Jan Van Linschoten, the Dutch Marco Polo: Sixteenth-Century Ad-
venturer Whose Writings Opened the Fabled East to the Dutch and the English. New
York: Crowell, 1964.
Pastore, Stefania. “Mozas Criollas and New Government: Francis Borgia, Prophetism,
and the Spiritual Exercises in Spain and Peru.” In Visions, Prophecies and Divina-
tions: Early Modern Messianism and Millenarianism in Iberian America, Spain and
Portugal, edited by Luís Filipe Silvério Lima and Ana Paula Torres Megiani, 59–73.
Pinelo, Antonio de León. Epitome de la Bibliotheca oriental, y occidental, nautica, y
geografica de Don Antonio de Leon Pinelo, del Consejo de Su Mag. en la Casa de la
Contratacion de Sevilla, y coronista maior de las Indias: Añadido, y enmendado nue-
vamente. Madrid: Francisco Martínez Abad, 1737.
Prieto, Andrés I. Missionary Scientists: Jesuit Science in Spanish South America,
1570–1810. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011.
Ramos Pérez, Demetrio. “La crisis indiana y la Junta Magna de 1568,” Jahrbuch für Ge-
schichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de historia de América Latina 23 (1986): 1–61.
Redden, Andrew. Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1560–1750. London: Pickering & Chatto,
2008.
Ribera, Francisco de [José de Acosta]. Epistolam B. Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos com-
mentarij: Cum quinque indicibus, quorum primus continet quaestiones scripturae, se-
cundus regulas, tertius eiusdem scripturae locos explicatos, quartus, est rerum atque
verborum, quintus Euangeliorum totius anni, in vsum concionatorum. Salamanca:
Excudebat Petrus Lassus, 1598.
Sacchini, Francesco. Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars secunda, siue Lainius. Rome: Zan-
netum, 1620.
Sacchini, Francesco. Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars tertia siue Borgia. Rome: Typis Manelfi
Manelfij, 1649.
Sacchini, Francesco. Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quarta siue Euerardus. Rome: Typis
Dominici Manelphij, 1652.
Sacchini, Francesco, and Pierre Poussines. Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta siue
Claudius tomus prior. Rome: Ex Typographia Varesij, 1661.
Sánchez, Javier Burrieza. “La Compañía de Jesús y la defensa de la monarquía His-
pánica.” Hispania sacra 60 (2008): 181–229.

Schmidt, Benjamin. Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World,
1570–1670. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Shepherd, Gregory J. José de Acosta’s De procuranda Indorum salute: A Call for Evan-
gelical Reforms in Colonial Peru. New York: Peter Lang, 2014.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Viking Penguin,
1984.
Tamburello, Adolfo, M. Antoni J. Üçerler, and Marisa Di Russo, eds. Alessandro Valig-
nano S.I.: Uomo del Rinascimento, ponte tra Oriente e Occidente. Rome: Institutum
Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2008.
Tardieu, Jean-Pierre. Le nouveau David et la réforme du Pérou: L’affaire Maria Pizarro–
Francisco de la Cruz (1571–1596). Bordeaux: Maison des Pays Ibériques, 1992.
Torquemada, Juan de. Primera [segunda, tercera] parte de los veinte i vn libros rituales
i monarchia indiana, con el origen y guerras, de los Indios Occidentales, de sus pobla-
çones descubrimiento, conquista, conuersion, y otras cosas marauillosas de la mesma
tierra. Madrid: N. Rodríguez Franco, 1723.
Van Linschoten, Jan Huyghen. Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert, van Ian Huygen van
Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien, inhoudende een corte beschryvinghe der
selver landen ende zee-custen. 3 vols. Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, 1596.
Van Linschoten, Jan Huyghen, ed. Historie naturael ende morael van de Westersche In-
diën: Waer inne ghehandelt wordt van de merckelijckste dinghen des hemels, elementen,
metalen, planten ende ghedierten van dien; Als oock de manieren, ceremoniën, wetten,
regeeringen ende oorloghen der indianen. Amsterdam: Jacob Lenaertsz. Meyn, 1598.
Vega, Inca Garcilaso de la. Historia general del Perù: Trata, el descubrimiento, de el, y
como lo ganaron, los Españoles: Las guerras civiles, que huvo entre Pizarros, y Al-
magros, sobre la partija de la tierra; Castigo, y levantamiento de tyranos, y otros
sucesos particulares, que en la Historia se contienen. Madrid: En la Oficina Real, y
à costa de Nicolas Rodriguez Franco, impresor de libros, se hallarà en su casa, 1722.
Chapter 11
Negotiating the Confessional Divide in Dutch Brazil

and the Republic: The Case of Manoel de Morães
Anne B. McGinness
In 1630, the Brazilian Jesuit Manoel de Morães (b. c.1596) led a group of
indigenous soldiers on a counter-campaign against the mercenaries of the
West India Company, who were in the process of conquering the Portuguese
sugar-producing region of northeast Brazil. Yet, in the final days of December
1634, as Paraíba was falling to the Dutch, Morães unexpectedly switched affilia-
tion, taking his indigenous soldiers with him. Manoel Dias de Carvalho, a Cath-
olic priest in Dutch Brazil, reported to the Holy Office that “it was well known
[…] that he [Morães] was an apostate and left our holy faith and became Cal-
vinist publicly, and let his beard grow and changed clothes and summoned
the Indians, and made them switch to the side of the enemy, and take up arms
against us.”1 A gain for the Dutch West India Company was a devastating loss
for the Society of Jesus and for the Portuguese troops and enterprise. However,
even though Morães spent the next nine years in the Dutch Republic, he would
not remain a Dutch supporter for the rest of his life. In 1643, he abandoned
the Reformed religion and his family in the Dutch Republic to return to his
Catholic faith and to Brazil. Two years later, he severed his ties to the West
India Company and once again aided Luso-Brazilian forces in battle against
the Dutch. What caused Morães to switch his imperial allegiance and religious
conviction twice, and what do his reversals say about society at the time?
Historiographical trends espouse a view of relatively peaceful coexistence
in Dutch Brazil, especially under Governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen
1 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo de Manoel de Morães, sacerdote e theologo,

natural da villa de S. Paulo, estado do Brasil, residente que foi nas partes do norte, preso nos
carceres da Inquisição de Lisbõa (1647),” ed. Eduardo Prado, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico
Brasileiro 70 (1908): 1–165, here 16. Original in Arquivo Nacional Torre de Tombo: Estante 6,
maço 27n4: “Que o dito Morães, perdido o arraial e campanha, apostatara e deixara nossa
Santa Fé e se fizera calvino publico, e deixara crescer a barba e mudara vestido e convocara
os indios e os fizer pôr de parte do inimigo contro nós, e tomar as armas outrosim contra nós
[…].”
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_013
Confessional Divide in Dutch Brazil and the Republic 229
(in office 1637–44).2 Scholarship on coexistence also centers on places in

Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where effectively enforced
conversions and migrations divided communities or juxtaposed rival congre-
gations.3 The age of the Reformations, however, also allowed for opportunists.
The presence of multiple confessions and European powers in the colonial
sphere provided a chance for some to get ahead through strategic conversions
and alliances with the reigning European power. Historian Ronaldo Vainfas has
already provided a helpful account of Morães’s intriguing life; here, I aim to
use Morães’s case not to focus on how he was guilty of treason, as Vainfas has,
but to uncover his motives to shed light on how confessional allegiances could
play out in a world of shifting European powers.4 Morães provides an interest-
ing case to study these dynamics as he straddled learned and popular culture,
was intimately familiar with both European powers, lived in Brazil, the Dutch
Republic, and Portugal, at various times professed both Catholicism and Cal-
vinism, and thought and wrote about regime change.
Information on Morães comes from his Inquisition trials and his own writ-
ings. Though the Inquisition of Lisbon did not make official visits to colonial
Brazil during the years of Portuguese–Dutch conflict, many inquisitorial in-
vestigations were carried out to learn more about wayward individuals such
as Morães.5 Before the arrival of the Dutch governor Maurits van Nassau-Sie-
gen, rumors of Catholic clergy collaborating with the Dutch in Paraíba were
so widespread that the bishop of Salvador, Dom Pedro da Silva (1572–1649, in
office 1633–49), ordered an investigation in 1635–37.6 Morães’s activities are
documented in two trials. At the first, Morães, unaware he was being tried,
was found guilty and burned in effigy in April 1642 at the main square in
Lisbon, Terreiro do Paço. At the second, in 1646, Morães was present, defended
2 Jonathan I. Israel and Stuart B. Schwartz, The Expansion of Tolerance: Religion in Dutch Brazil
(1624–1654) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007).
3 For France, see Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early
Modern France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). Also see Ben-
jamin J. Kaplan, Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, 1570–
1720 (New York: MacMillan, 2009); Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice
of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2007).
4 Ronaldo Vainfas, Traição: Uma jesuíta a serviço do Brasil holandês processado pela Inquisição
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008).
5 See José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, Tempo dos flamengos: Influência da ocupação holande-
sa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil, 4th. ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2001), 41; Ronaldo
Vainfas, Traição, 95–101.
6 Anita Novinsky, “Uma devassa do Bispo Dom Pedro da Silva, 1635–1637,” Museu Paulista 22
(1968): 217–85.
230 McGinness
imself, and was found guilty of heresy and apostasy to the Calvinist sect, but
h
was spared the death sentence. His first book, Particularidades da fertilidade e
sitio do Brasil (The particularities of the fertility and place of Brazil), which is
no longer extant, was cited by several respected authors at the time.7 He also
began a Historia do Brasil (History of Brazil), which contained information on
the indigenous peoples, but unfortunately was never finished or published.
Morães did write his Pronostyco e respuesta (Prediction and response) and Re-
sposta que Deu (The response that Morães gave [to the Dutch]), both of which
will be discussed shortly.
1 Personal Incentives for Conversion and Dutch Allegiance
Born around 1596 in the village of São Paulo in the captaincy of São Vicente,
Morães grew up among Portuguese and Tupi and spoke both languages fluent-
ly.8 His parents were Francisco Velho and Anna Morães. Manoel’s mother, born
in São Paulo, was of a prominent Portuguese family.9 His father was a mamelu-
co, of a Portuguese father and Indian mother.10 Scholars claim that Morães de-
rived his native appearance from his paternal grandmother, for those who met
him described him as tall, “thin, and of a tan color.”11 As a baptized Christian
in São Paulo, he came to know intimately the Jesuit villages, and as a mam-
eluco, he was acquainted with the sertão, or inland wilderness. As a young boy,
Manoel went to the church of the Society of Jesus, where he served as a sacris-
tan before training to become a priest.12 At the age of seventeen, he entered the
Society of Jesus and studied philosophy and moral theology at the college of
Bahia. Because the college did not have the official status of university, he was
never granted an academic title, but he was, nevertheless, well trained. In 1623,
he was ordained, but he was never permitted to take the fourth vow of obedi-
ence to the pope, as this vow was reserved for the elites within the Society.
7 Afonso de Taunay, “Padre Manuel de Morães,” Anais do Museu Paulista 1 (1925): 7–49, here
16; Vainfas, Traição, 142–43.
8 His date of birth is unknown. I have calculated it based on the chronology Morães dic-
tated to the Inquisition. Others have calculated his birth as much as ten years earlier. See
Taunay, “Padre Manuel de Morães,” here 8.
9 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 61; Taunay, “Padre Manuel de Morães,” 9.
10 Vainfas, Traição, 17.

11 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 5. “Poucos carnes e moreno de cor.” “O
dito padre Morães, e que é de boa estatura magro e moreno […],” 7.
12 Ibid., 62. “Antes sendo de muito pouca edade assistiu sempre na egreja dos padres da
Companhia, onde fez o officio de sacristão, antes de ser religioso.”
Jesuits promoted the growth of an indigenous clergy in seventeenth-centu-

ry Brazil, but not without some apprehension. In the sixteenth century, Catho-
lic priests in Latin America at first forbade a native priesthood because they
doubted the indigenous peoples’ capacity to reason and to live celibate lives.13
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, after observing the success of
the native priesthood in the Asian missions, Jesuits began allowing indigenous
young men of Brazil to study for the priesthood.14 It is estimated that, by 1623,
around twenty percent of the Jesuits in Brazil were born there.15 In theory, a
native priesthood would lead to the conversion of a larger population because
a native clergy, with their understanding of the culture and their ability to
preach well in the indigenous languages, would have more credibility with the
people.16
Morães seemed to be an obedient member of the order when the Jesuit pro-
vincial, Domingos Coelho (1564–1639), assigned him to São Miguel de Muçui,
in the captaincy of Pernambuco. There, in 1630, he was appointed superior of
the aldeia (a village established by the Jesuits to convert the native peoples)
with some three hundred to six hundred indigenous people, both Tabajaras
and Potiguars.17 Morães converted the natives there. After the fall of Olinda on
February 16, 1630, he presented himself to the leader of the Portuguese resis-
tance and governor of Brazil, Matias de Albuquerque (1580–1647).18 Albuquer-
que ordered Morães to lead a group of Tabajaras and Potiguars, working also
as an interpreter, as they moved through forests to secure the roads leading to
Olinda.19 Morães served in the war with one of his own neophytes, Felipe Ca-
marão (1580–1648). Both bore the rank of captain of indigenous troops (capitão
13 Stafford Poole, “Church Law on the Ordination of Indians and Castas in New Spain,” His-
panic American Historical Review 61 (1981): 637–50, here 647–48.
14 Gauvin A. Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999), 32–33, 62–63.
16 More research needs to be done to ascertain the composition of the native priesthood in
colonial Brazil in terms of how many were Indians, mamelucos, creoles, etc. For the case
of the New Kingdom of Granada, see Juan Cobo Betancourt, Mestizos heraldos de Dios:
La ordenación de sacerdotes descendientes de Españoles e indígenas en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada y la racialización de la diferencia, c.1573–1590 (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología e Historia, 2012).
17 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 125; Vainfas, Traição, 31.

18 Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, História geral do Brasil antes de sua separação e inde-
pendência de Portugal, 3rd ed. (São Paulo: Companhia melhoramentos de São Paulo,
1927), 2:344.
19 Ibid.
232 McGinness
do gentio).20 Morães and his troops would fight the Dutch for nearly five years
(February 1630 to December 1634). Yet, despite their efforts, Portuguese forces
could not withstand the attacks, and the towns along the northeastern coast of
Brazil eventually fell to Dutch forces.

According to the Jesuit Salvador da Silva, the Jesuits were one of the great
pillars of defense (magnum belli columen extitere Nostri) in the war against the
Dutch in Pernambuco.21 In his annual letter of 1629–31, Silva gave an account
of the Jesuits’ activities inside the Portuguese stronghold, the Arraial Velho do
Bom Jesus, where they served as spiritual assistants in the struggle. They bap-
tized and catechized the Indians of Ceará who had come to fight, indoctri-
nated a few Dutch in the arraial, and gave Communion to the dying.22 They
sought alms for the poor and sick and set up a hospital in São Miguel. They also
went into combat to attend to the wounded, motivate troops in battle, preach,
and administer the sacraments.
There were, however, problems with Morães’s involvement in the war, as
clergymen could not be combatants. Jesuit superiors grew apprehensive of
Morães fighting alongside the natives and insisted that his position as captain
of the indigenous people was not suitable for a priest. Another Jesuit in Brazil,
Domingos Velho, testified to the Holy Office in Lisbon in 1635 that the Society
“tried to remove Morães from the arraial and from his office as captain of the
indigenous people, saying it was not proper for a priest to hold the position of
captain and that the office should be given to a lay person.”23 In an effort to ap-
pease the Jesuits, Albuquerque gave Morães the new title and rank of “general
captain of the Indians of the arraial” and transferred him first to Itamaracá in
1633 and then to Rio Grande in 1634, where he essentially performed the same
duties.24 The change of title and location, however, did not resolve the problem.
One could conjecture that, for Morães, his indigenous roots were stronger than
his Jesuit ones. Warfare was essential to Tupi culture. It was a rite of passage
into manhood, and great warriors were believed to go to heaven and escape
20 Diogo Lopes de Santiago, História da guerra de Pernambuco: E feitos memoráveis do mestre

de campo João Fernandes Vieira, herói digno de eterna memória, primeiro aclamador da
guerra (Recife: Governo de Pernambuco, 2004), 43.
21 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (arsi), Bras. 8, 419v. Translation from Serafim Leite,
História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (Lisbon: Livraria Portugália, 1938), 5:351–52.
22 Ibid., 351.
23 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 11. “Trataram os religiosos da Companhia
de tirar do arraial e do officio que ahi tinha de capitão do gentio, dizendo que não era
decente que um religioso fizesse aquelle officio, e de feito se deu a um homem leigo […].”
24 Ibid., 55.
death.25 Indeed, another Jesuit on the battlefields of Brazil, Manoel Fernandes,

explained in a letter from Pernambuco in October of 1633 how valuable the
indigenous peoples were in the war. He described how they would collect
the fallen bodies and bring them back to camp so the Portuguese could prop-
erly respect the dead with a Mass.26
Another source of tension between Morães and the priesthood was c elibacy.
The accusations leveled against Morães’s alleged licentiousness offer clues
about how he might have viewed Roman Catholic religious obligations. Ac-
cording to several witnesses, Morães was not faithful to his vow of chastity.
There were reports that he was involved with indigenous women in the back-
woods when he entered the war under Albuquerque’s command. Domingos
Coelho, the provincial in Brazil, asked his superior in Rome if Morães could
be dismissed for the bad reputation he had earned in breaking the sixth com-
mandment.27 Morães’s behavior suggests that he possibly desired a life free
from the constraints of the Society of Jesus (or that he occasionally slipped in
morals). It also implies that Tupi warrior culture was very much a part of his
life and consciousness. To abandon native rites of manhood—war and sex—
meant the loss of his identity and his place among the people. Thus, in times of
crisis, Morães’s alliances were more with his people than with Roman Catholi-
cism and the Jesuit way of life.
In December 1634, soldiers of the West India Company conquered Paraí-
ba, the last Portuguese stronghold in the region. The Portuguese presence in
northeast Brazil was dramatically reduced, and Morães was left with few op-
tions. When Dutch soldiers captured him and his indigenous troops on De-
cember 30, 1634, he surrendered to the West India Company. It is difficult to
understand Morães’s decision to surrender. Did he see that further fighting was
senseless? Did the Dutch offer him favorable terms, ones that would have given
his people peace and freedom? Perhaps he preferred the freedom offered to
him and his people within the West India Company to a life of a priest dis-
missed from the Society of Jesus, removed from the clergy, tried by the Inquisi-
tion, imprisoned, and possibly sent to the stake for heresy and treason.
25 Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity
in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
26 arsi, Bras. 8-II, fol. 425v.
27 Letter from Domingos Coelho to Muzio Vitelleschi, superior general of the Society of Je-
sus. August 28, 1635, Bahia. arsi, Bras, 8-II, 476: “Antes de ser tomado dos Olandeses o
padre Manuel de Morães tinha escrito por vias a Vpe comparecer de todos os Consulares
da provincia que elle não era para a Compania pella rumifama que delle corria em mate-
rial dos sexto […].”
234 McGinness
2 Protestant Freedoms in Recife
At the beginning of 1635, Morães traveled with the West India Company from
Paraíba to Recife, where he enjoyed new liberties. In Recife, Morães’s outward

appearance and actions suggested that he was no longer a Jesuit or a Roman
Catholic. Raphael Cardoso, the Jesuit procurator in Bahia, testified that “there
[in Recife] he changed clothes and went around as a secular with trancellim
[fabric with embroidery] and a hat, [acting] as if he was not a religious.”28
Many witnesses cited Morães’s clothing as a sign that he was no longer Catho-
lic. Their remarks demonstrate how people at the time associated political alle-
giance and clothing with religious conversion and affiliation. Faith and empire
were synonymous for most Luso-Brazilians. Morães, we might imagine, saw
things differently, for he later told the Inquisition that he remained a faithful
Catholic even though he was in an area controlled by the Dutch West India
Company.
Other signs seemed to advance the opinion that Morães had gone over to
the Calvinist confession. He was accused of dressing in military garb, read-
ing anti-Catholic material, and eating meat on Friday in Holy Week.29 Re-
ports abounded that he freely pursued women and dressed as he wished. The
most telling sign of his conversion was that he waged war on the Catholics.
The most famous chronicler of the war, and also a donatory captain of Per-
nambuco, Albuquerque Coello, reported that Morães took up arms against the
28 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 8. “Disse que o dito padre Morães, haverá
cinco ou seis annos, foi captivo pelos Hollandezes junto a Parahyba donde o levaram ao
Recife de Pernambuco, e estando ahi soube o padre Domingos Coelho, provincial do Bra-
zil, que o dito padre Manoel de Morães mudara o traje da Companhia, e andava no Recife
vestido de secular com trancellim e chapéu, como se não fosse religioso, pelo que o dito
provincial o houve logo por despedido da Companhia e procurou tanto que se lhe noti-
ficasse a dita expulsão […].”
29 Ibid., 6. “E alguns Hollandezes predicantes lhe disseram na dita cidade de Parahyba a elle
denunciante que o dito livre tinha cousas contra a nossa santa fe catholica, de que não
duvido porque já na mesma cidade em quinta-feira de Endoenças do anno em que os
Hollandezes tomaram a mesma cidade, estando jantado elle denunciante com muitos
portugezes, leigos, em casa do governador Carpintel com elle e com o dito padre Ma-
noel de Morães e com alguns vinte Hollandezes se poz a comer carne o dito Manoel de
Morães e reprehendendo-o Duarte Gomes da Silveira por ser homem de oitenta anos e
dos Principaes da Parahyba, dizendo-lhe que pois elle comia queijo e azeitonas e os mais
portugezes, que não desse mão exemplo de si que ató os Hollandezes o haviam de calum-
niar ao que respondeu o dito padre Morães que o deixasse, que queria viver com aquelles
homens […].”
Portuguese.30 Belchior dos Reis, the bishop of Brazil, claimed that “after the
heretics took Paraíba, he [Morães] went with them, and it is public that he
walked around in lay clothing with sword against the Catholics, as the Dutch
did, gave signs [that he was a] heretic, and confessed to be vassal of the Prince
of Orange.”31 Another witness, a new Christian, João Fernandes, admitted that
Morães persecuted Catholics fighting in the Dutch war.32 Captain João de Sotto
also affirmed this.33 Morães corralled his indigenous allies to join him in war.
As previously mentioned, the secular priest from Pernambuco, Manoel Dias
de Carvalho, said that Morães “summoned the Indians, and made them switch
to the side of the enemy, and take up arms against us.”34 Even though Morães
denied all accusations that he made war against the Catholics, numerous other
witness testimonies confirmed Carvalho’s testimony.35 Many considered the
damage credited to Morães’s conversion as significant and lasting. Both the
Dutch and the Portuguese knew that success in battle depended largely upon
the assistance of indigenous troops.
As Morães would later have us believe, accommodating to the West India
Company did not mean he was Calvinist. He lived divided between faith and
country in Recife. The freedoms of a Calvinist regime may have enticed him
to see the world differently and to find ways to accommodate his religious be-
liefs with his indigenous cultural traditions and values. Or perhaps, after being
forced to surrender to the Dutch, religion became a secondary issue, especially
when brighter economic prospects awaited him in the Dutch Republic.
30 Albuquerque Coello, Memorias diarias de la guerra del Brasil, por discurso de nueve años
[…] (Madrid: Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1654), 168v–69.
31 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 14. “Que o padre Manoel de Morães, pré-
gador da Companhia, sacerdote que no Rio Grande dizem andou por cabo de indios, e
agora depois que os herejes tomaram a Parahyba se metteu com elles e é publico anda
em trage de leigo com espada contra os catholicos, como os mesmos Hollandezes fazem,
e dá mostras de hereje, e confessa ser vassallo do principe de Orange, o que sabe por ser
notario e muito escandaloso […].”
32 Ibid., 5. “Haver sido religioso da Companhia de Jesus, e ter-se passado aos Hollandezes no
estado do Brazil, fazendo algumas cousas em utilidade sua e prejuizo dos catholicos pela
qual razão lhe dava a companhia dos Hollandezes que sustenta a guerra no Brazil uma
carta ordinario de que elle se sustentava.”
33 Ibid., 15. “Era publico em Pernmabuco que Manoel de Morães, sacerdote da Companhia,
e assistia, na guerra contra nós, e agora está em Hollanda […].”
34 Ibid., 16.
35 Ibid., 139.
236 McGinness
3 Economic Incentives in the Dutch Republic
In April 1635, after waiting a few months in Recife, the Dutch West India Com-
pany took Morães to Amsterdam where, in June 1635, he revealed to the Irish-
man, Bernard O’Brien del Carpio, some of the additional influences that had
motivated him to leave Brazil and forsake the Luso-Brazilian army. In 1621, at
the age of seventeen, O’Brien had traveled to the Amazon with Francis Drake
(1540–96) and Walter Raleigh (1552–1618). He left the expedition and remained
in the Amazon, where he learned Tupi.36 Some years later, O’Brien landed in
Amsterdam, accompanied by a Tupi Indian from Pará. On August 9, 1636, Don
Fernando Ruiz de Contreras recorded O’Brien’s report (memorial) of “the suc-
cesses and services he did for the Catholic Church and the king” in the New
World.37 According to Ruiz’s report, when Morães saw the Tupi native with
O’Brien, he approached them and began to speak in Tupi.38 As it was Sunday,
O’Brien asked Morães if he wished to go to Mass. Morães responded that he no
longer went to church and that he would never say Mass again.39 O’Brien, try-
ing to ascertain Morães’s character, asked him some more questions. O’Brien
reported Morães’s motives for alienation: Governor Albuquerque insulted
Morães and owed him money for his services in the war. Because of these
36 A summary of this document is found in Varnhagen, Historia geral do Brasil, 2:271–72.

37 Archivo General de Indias: Indiferente, 1872. No page numbers at the beginning of the
document [6]. “El Cap.’n General Don Bernardo O’Brian del Carpio Irlandes dice, que jun-
tamente con este memorial da a V. Ex.’a la relaçion de sus successos, y serviçios hechos, y
que pretende hacer a la Iglesia Catholica, y esta Corona, dexando a los Holandeses, y Ing-
leses. Y porque a ello vino a esta corte confiado en el amparo, y grandeza de V. Ex.’a y hasta
ahora se le soccorre en su possada por orden o D. S. Don Fernando Ruys de Contreras solo
a razon de a cinco reales al dia para pagar la possada, y haçer el plato, que para ello no
llega, ni para los demas gastos neçessarios, a V. Ex.’a supp.’a se sirva de mandar soccorrer le
con lo neçessario hasta que V. Ex.’a le despache, pues en Inglaterra la compania de guiana
le soccorria con veynte escudos cada semana, y recivira mrd. De V. Ex.’a.”
38 Ibid., 13. “Fue a Amasterdama, donde un hombre llegando al muchacho indio del supp.’te
le pregunto cuyo era, el muchcho dixo, que de B.’do del Carprio. Luego el hombre vino
haçia el supp.’te y le dio un abrazo hablandole en Indio, y llamandole B.’do del Carpio, e
deziendo, que se holgava mucho de verle en aquella tierra. El supp.’te tambien en indio le
pregunto, quien era el que le llamava assi, o porque causa. El dixo, que era el Padre Moraes
de la comp.’a de Jesus, que avia sido lengua mayor del Brasil, y procuradorde los Indios.”
39 Ibid. “Como era Domingo, el supp.’te le pregunto, si avia dicho missa aquel dia, porque
sino el la queria o ir. El sorreyendo se dixo, que esse tiempo era passado, y el no diria mas
missas.”
issues, Morães went to the Netherlands, accepted the religion of the Dutch,
and served as a guide so that the Dutch could seize Pernambuco and Paraíba.40
O’Brien’s report also revealed the economic ambitions that caused Morães
to switch sides. A few days after O’Brien and Morães spoke, O’Brien was put
in jail in Amsterdam. Morães tried to save him, claiming that O’Brien could
greatly aid in the conquests of Maranhão, Grão Pará, and Rio das Amazonas
as he was a great guide and linguist and esteemed by the Indians.41 Morães
offered to join him on this conquest, declaring that “Pernambuco and all of
Brazil would be small in comparison to the new conquest that we both would
do in the areas I just referred to.”42 Morães’s statement suggests that he had big
ambitions within the West India Company. His desire to conquer northeast
Brazil, however, never came to fruition. Morães would learn the harsh lesson
of being caught in the middle of two major European powers in their contest
for empire.
Morães’s failing health in Amsterdam caused him to settle down in the small
town of Harderwijk, where the weather was thought to be more favorable, so
he relinquished his entrepreneurial dreams. In Harderwijk, Morães claimed
that he first received notice that he had been dismissed from the Society of
Jesus. Simão Alvares, provincial of the Jesuits in Brazil, asserted that Morães
had been dismissed long before he went over to the Dutch and before he con-
fessed Protestantism.43 Morães either did not receive the previous notice from
the Society of Jesus, or he ignored it. Morães reported that he did not know
why he was dismissed and said that he was still keeping his faith, not yet having
40 Ibid., 13–14. “El supp.’te hechando de ver, que era renegado, dissimulo, preguntando, que
successo le traxo a Holanda. El dixo, que en Pernambuco volviendo el por un Indio, Math-
ias de Alburquerque gov.’or de alli le llamo Indio, y el fue a Portugal a pedir justicia contra
el a los ministros de V. Mag.d, y no se la guardaron, ny se le volvio te honra, ni tampoco fue
galardonado lo mucho, que sirvio, ni se le pago el dinero, que se le devia, y el por vengarse
de todo fue a Holanda, hiço se de su religion de los Holandeses, y los guio, y conduçio para
tomar a Pernambuco, y Parayba, y por su parezer se governavan los Holandeses en lo, que
tocava al Brasil, y tratava de casarse con hermana del gov.’or Holandes del Brasil.”
41 Ibid., 14. “Pues era gran piloto, lengua, y bien quiso de los Indios […].”
42 Ibid., 15. “Y el mismo iria con el a la jornanda, y Pernambuco y todo el Brasil era poco en
comparacion de la nueva conquista, que los dos harian en las partes referidas.”
43 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 35. “E porque o dito Manoel de Morães
esteve algum tempo na Companhia e della foi despidido por suas faltas antes que se pas-
sasse aos Hollandezes, e muito antes que professasse outra lei, e nunca na Companhia
fez votos solemnes, sinao os votos simplices, acabados os dous annos de noviciado; e pela
expulsao, que a Companhia delle fez, ficou livre, e desobrigado, dos votos da religiao […]
e nao se pode chamar religioso, nem dizer-se que so é conforme as consititucoes da com-
panhia, […] o que pode resultar em grande decredito da Companhia.”
238 McGinness
married.44 In Harderwijk, however, he came to terms with his departure from

the Society.
Once dismissed from the Society of Jesus, Morães had the option either
to remain Catholic and celibate, become a lay Catholic and worship under-
ground, or become a professed Calvinist and enjoy more of the temporal (and
spiritual) benefits in the West India Company. Morães married Margarida
van Dehait in a Calvinist church ceremony in 1636. In the Inquisitors’ minds,
Morães’s marriage in the Calvinist rite was the most important sign of his apos-
tasy to Calvinism. The couple lived together for two years and had one child,
Francisco, before Margarida died while giving birth. (Morães would marry a
second time.) By this point, anyone who met him had to assume he was Cal-
vinist. Though Morães never abjured Catholicism, the West India Company
assumed he had. (While Dutch Catholics married in Calvinist churches and
then later solemnized their marriages privately, Morães’s employment in the
West India Company, with Johannes de Laet (1581–1649) and then at the Uni-
versity of Leiden, as we will see, suggests that the company believed he was
Calvinist.45) His marriage as a Calvinist offered a sign of his conversion. Not
only was it incompatible with his clerical status and promise of celibacy, but
marriage within the Calvinist faith was not considered to be a sacrament. For
the Inquisition, too, the definitive moment of Morães’s conversion was his
marriage. By participating in the Calvinist rite, Morães showed contempt for
the Catholic sacrament of marriage. Even if Morães, in his heart, had already
converted to Calvinism, or never converted at all, as far as the church hierar-
chy was concerned, his violation of the sacrament of marriage was enough to
establish his conversion to the Calvinist sect and his apostasy from the Ro-
man Catholic faith. Only under the threat of torture did Morães ultimately
admit to the Inquisition that he started following the sect of Calvin in 1637 in
Harderwijk.
The context and objectively verifiable events of Morães’s life in Holland help
to resolve the contradictions of the testimony. Morães’s career in the Republic
began modestly when he secured a small stipend working for famous historian
Johannes de Laet, who was also the director of the West India Company. De
Laet ordered Morães to write a glossary of the Tupi language and a natural his-
tory of Brazil. His Tupi dictionary was published in book 8 of H istoria naturalis
44 Ibid., 8, 61.
45 Charles H. Parker, Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 61–62.
Brasiliae (Natural history of Brazil [1648]).46 The dictionary also circulated in

several other works of the time.47 De Laet kept Morães busy. He used Morães’s
knowledge of the villages of Brazil for his Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van
de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie (History of the

true story of the acts of the authorized Dutch West India Company [1644]).48
De Laet also commissioned Morães to help revise the Latin edition of Niewe
Werldt.49
The benefits of living in the Dutch Republic only increased when, in 1638
or 1639, de Laet appointed Morães professor of theology at the University of
Leiden, one of the most famous Protestant universities of the time.50 The uni-
versity granted him the academic prestige not afforded by the Society of Jesus’s
college in Bahia, which was not authorized to grant degrees. After a short time
at Leiden, Morães received the degree of licentiate.
In Leiden, Morães demonstrated his exceptional qualities of erudition. Mar-
riage, money, and prestige may have been some of the personal reasons that
motivated Morães to convert. His case is clearly a complicated one, as Morães
was not doctrinally motivated. He seems to have enjoyed the social milieu and
the material benefits of the West India Company. His second conversion, to
which we will turn shortly, was more for political reasons.
4 The Dream of Cooperating Empires
From 1580 to 1640, the Iberian kingdoms were united under the crown of Cas-
tile with their center in Madrid. At the same time, the Portuguese Empire was
in decline around the globe. In 1640, however, despite the silver gained in the
46 Joannes de Laet, Willem Piso, and Georg Marggraf, Historia naturalis Brasiliae: Auspicio et
beneficio illustriss. I. Mauriti Com. Nassau illius provinciae et maris summi praefecti ador-
nata: in qua non tantum plantae et animalia, sed et indigenarum morbi, ingenia et mores
describuntur et iconibus supra quingentas illustrantur (Leiden: Apud Franciscum Hacki-
um, et Amstelodami, apud Lud. Elzevirium, 1648), book 8, 276–77.
47 For books that included Morães’s Tupi grammar, see Taunay, “Padre Manuel de Morães,”
42–43; Afonso de Taunay, “Addenda á biographia de Manuel de Morães,” Anais do Museu
Paulista 1 (1925): 275–92, here 283.
48 Joannes de Laet, Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde
West-Indische compagnie, zedert haer begin, tot het eynde van’t jaer sesthien-hondert
ses-endertich; begrepen in derthien boecken, ende met verscheyden koperen platen erciert
(Leiden: Bonaventuer ende Abraham Elsevier, 1644), 443, 452, 454.
49 Joannes de Laet, Novus orbis, seu, descriptiones Indiæ Occidentalis libri xviii (Leiden: Elze-
virios, 1633); Vainfas, Traição, 123–25.
240 McGinness
New World, Spain was weakened by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), the Cata-
lan revolt of 1640, plague mortality, and trade depression, among other things.51
These challenges of Castile led the Portuguese to revolt against the crown on
December 1, 1640. On December 2, João, duke of Bragança (1543–83), assumed

the throne and declared Portugal’s independence, but the crown of Castile did
not recognize João iv as king. For the next twenty-eight years, the Portuguese
and Castilians would contend for the Portuguese crown, and Spanish mon-
archs would continue to have a large influence over Portugal. Furthermore,
the Inquisition had aligned with the Habsburgs in 1640.52 The papacy did not
recognize the crown of Bragança until Spain did in 1668.53 Also complicating
the problem was the pro-Spanish faction of the nobility in Portugal.
In 1641, Portugal was compelled to negotiate with the Dutch Republic be-
cause the Portuguese, who were now fighting against the Castilians, lacked suf-
ficient manpower to defend Brazil and their other colonies overseas. In these
circumstances, João iv sent an ambassador, Tristão de Mendonça Furtado, to
the Dutch Republic in 1641 to negotiate a truce with the United Provinces for
ten years.54 Because the Dutch and Portuguese agreed that Spain was a mutual
enemy, João iv was optimistic that the Dutch Republic might cede some of the
territories they had captured from the Portuguese in return for payment. The
Luso-Dutch treaty was signed on June 12, 1641, stating the terms of peace be-
tween the two parties in Europe, at sea, and in overseas territories for a period
of ten years.55 Mendonça, however, did not succeed in recovering the Portu-
guese territories lost to the Dutch. The agreement was effectively an armistice,
51 John H. Elliott, “The Decline of Spain,” Past & Present 20 (1961): 52–75; Elliott, The Revolt of
the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1963); Henry Kamen, “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Past & Present 81
(1978): 24–50; Jonathan I. Israel, “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Past & Present
91 (1981): 170–80.
52 Ronaldo Vainfas, “Guerra declarada e paz fingida na Restauração Portuguesa,” Tempo 14
(2009): 82–100, here 86.
53 Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O negócio do Brasil: Portugal os Países Baixos e o Nordeste 1641–
1669 (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1998), 30.
54 For more on the context of this treaty and the ambassador, see ibid., 31–35.
55 José Ferreira Borges de Castro, ed., Collecção dos tratados, convenções, contratos e actos
publicos celebrados entre a coroa de Portugal e as mais potencias desde 1640 até ao presente
(Lisbon: Imprensa nacional, 1856), 24–49, here 29. Article 1 states, “Primeiramente foi as-
sentado, verdadeiro, firme puro, e inviolavel concerto de tregoas, e suspensação de todo

o acto de hostelidade, entre o dito Rey, e as Ordens Géraes, assi por mar, e todas as mais
agoas, como por terra […] por tempo de dez annos, o qual contracto de tregoas, e suspen-
sação de todo o acto de hostelidade, nos lugares de Europa, ou em qualquer outra parte,
cituados […].”
where each party maintained possession of the territories it had at the time
the treaty was signed.
By 1641, Morães, still in Leiden, underwent a significant shift of allegianc-
es—suddenly, in his pamphlet Pronostyco y respuesta, he openly professed his

allegiance to the Portuguese crown. Morães, it seems, came to adopt his new
position after observing the Portuguese–Dutch peace negotiations in the same
year.56 The prospects of a treaty of peace and cooperation between the Dutch
and the Portuguese may have allowed Morães the chance to reconstruct his
uprooted life, amend his irregular religious predicament, and mend his broken
associations. In short, it may have offered him a way of piecing together the
fragmented pieces of life that he had lost in the political and religious turmoil
of the previous decade.
Morães arranged for the publication of his pamphlet to coincide with the
visit of Mendonça to The Hague to sign the Luso-Dutch treaty.57 Morães com-
posed Pronostyco y respuesta a una pregunta de un Cavallero mui illustre, sobre
las cosas de Portugal (Prediction and answer to a very illustrious knight’s ques-
tion about things concerning Portugal, 1641) both in response to the politics
surrounding the Restoration of the Portuguese crown and as a precautionary
measure to protect himself from the Inquisition.58 Morães most likely wrote in
Spanish to address his main audience. The pamphlet responded (respuesta) to
those who thought Castile had authority to reign in Portugal. He spoke of the
“love he has for his nation” and cheered “Viva, viva, viva, Don Juan quarto!”59
There is no other evidence that Morães’s anti-Castilian views were anything
other than expedient—he had not shown any such attitudes while in Brazil.
In arguing that João iv of Portugal (r.1640–56) was the legitimate monarch,
Morães addressed three points.
First, Morães argued that Portugal could wage war against Castile: “It ap-
pears to me that the most Serene King of Portugal, Dom João iv, can make war,
not only defensively but also offensively, against the King of Castile.”60 Even
56 Vainfas, “Guerra declarada,” 86.

58 Manoel de Morães, “Pronostyco e Respuesta a una pregunta de un cavallero mui illustre,
sobre las cosas de Portugal,” in Laurentius Banck, Bizzarrie politiche: Over, raccolta, delle
più notabili prattiche di stato, nella Christianità (n.p.: D’Arcerio, 1658).
59 Ibid., 1. “Y amor que tengo a mi nacion.” “Viva, viva, viva, don Juan quatro deste nobre, Rey
de Portugal, Pio, Clemente, Padre dela Patria.”
60 Ibid., 1–2. “Digo pues que ami parece, que el Serenissimo Rey de Portugal. D. Iuan. 4. del
nombre puede hazer la guerra no solamente defensiva contro el Rey de castila, mas aun
la offensiva […].”
242 McGinness
though Spain was Catholic, all of Europe conspired against her.61 He believed
that Portugal would have the help of the States General of the United Prov-
inces, not only in case of an invasion but also to gain back the territory lost to
Spain, if João iv desired to take it back.62 He listed the reasons for his opinion:
Portugal was stronger and had more capability (commodidad) for war than
Castile; Portuguese soldiers were better than Castilian ones; and Portuguese
cities were walled and fortified while Castile was open to attack. Morães also
claimed that the Portuguese loved their king like a father, whereas the Cas-
tilians served their king in fear.63 The queen of Castile, Isabel i (r.1474–1504),
affirmed this sentiment, according to Morães.64 Everyone in the kingdom of
Portugal, Morães wagered, would fight for the king—clerics, monks, possibly
even some women—while this would not be the case in Spain.
Second, Morães argued in a prophetic mode that the name João was “a
fatal name to the Castilians,” a good omen and prediction (pronostyco) that
the king of Portugal would be victorious, as all Joãos before him had been.65
Morães recounted the history of Dom João i (r.1385–1433), ii (r.1477–95), and
iii (r.1521–57) and the history of Portugal and Spain from the Middle Ages to
the seventeenth century. In praising João’s name as an omen of good fortune,
Morães inserted himself into the political literature of Sebastianism.66 Even
though King Sebastião of Portugal (r.1557–1578) never returned from battle in
Morocco, the Portuguese did not lose hope. They believed that he could re-
sume the throne from his uncle, Philip ii of Castile (r.1556–98), who had taken
61 Ibid., 10. “Al contrario ninguna nacio queire bien al Castellano, todos le desean mal, y si
alguna le mostra buena cara, se peude creer no es de coraçon, sino o por fuerça, por mas
no poder, o apoder de dineros, con que les gana los exteriores, mas no los coraçones.”
62 Ibid., 34–35. “Otra cosa quiero añadir por remate deste mi breve razonamiento, y Pro-
nostico; y es que si el Serenissimo Rey de Portugal, tiene socorros de los muy altos, y
poderosos señores, Estados Generales destas provincias unidas, y de algun otro Principe
amigo, que no solo podra defender se en su Reyno, mas que aun podra ganar mucha parte
de los Reynos de España que estan en poder de sus enemigos, y deste parecer, son muchas
personas, que tienen conocimiento de las cosas de España.”
63 Ibid., 8. “Los Portugueses tienen a sus Reyes por Padres […] y de aqui viene, que pelean
por sus Reyes com amor de hijos, sin recelar peligros, ni afanes, por grandes, por muchos
que sean: Y al contrario los Castellanos sirven a sus Reyes, con temor de siervos, y no con
amora filial.”
64 Ibid., 7–8. “A esto replico la prudente Reyna, esto, que dezis, es verdad, pero estes porcos
Portuguezes pelean por su Rey como hijos, y los nuestros pelean como esclavos.”
65 Ibid., 29. “Y assi como el Serenissimo Principe Don Juan vencio a vuestros antepassados,
assi vença el Serenissimo Rey Dom Juan quatro de Portugal, a todos vuestros exercitos
Castelanos, y con grande gloria, y honrra triumphe de toda vuestra nacion, como todos
dezeamos.”
over Portugal upon hearing that Sebastião was probably dead. Morães stated
that, at one time, Portugal was not able to defend itself against Castile but
“that was in the time that all of Portugal was filled with tears and weeping for
the route that in Africa took her king Don Sebastião.”67 Morães linked the loss
of King Sebastião to the depopulation and decline of Portugal. Another line
of prophecy from around 1540 glorified a king by the name of João. Manoel
might have read some of the prophetic books, such as the famous As trovas do
Bandarra (Bandarra’s prophecies), which glorified Sebastião, but then applied
Bandarra’s prophecies to João iv.68 This book acquired a great deal of credibil-
ity, for As trovas do Bandarra would later inspire the millenarian thought of the
famous Jesuit António Vieira (1608–97).69
Morães’s third argument speaks to the relationship of religion and empire,
recalling the views of Christian writers of the past such as Eusebius, Paulus
Orosius, and many others inspired by various works of the Bible from the book
of Daniel to the book of Revelation. Morães understood empires as controlled
by divine providence, the hand of God directly shaping history. He began with
a simple syllogism: because Portugal was just, and God favors justice, heaven
must favor Portugal. Morães added that “the Portuguese […] believed more
in heaven than in strength.”70 Because God was benevolent, he would make
Portugal rich: “Finally, one is not lacking in money, gold, or silver, which are the
spoils of war. All these things are promised to us, through the favor of heaven.”71
He continued, “God and his Angels favor the election of the most Serene King
of Portugal.”72 God’s powerful hand in the world brought justice.
Among Morães’s sources is a certain Fr. Mariana, presumed to be Juan de
Mariana (1536–1624), “the learned author of the things of Spain.” Though Mari-
ana was Spanish, he wrote lengthy passages about the role of the Portuguese in
67 Morães, “Pronostyco,” 33. “Fue en tiempo que todo Portugal estava lleno de lagrimas, y
llanto, por la rota que en Africa tuvo su Rey Don Sebastião.”
68 Vainfas, Traição, 192–93.
69 Thomas M. Cohen, The Fire of Tongues: António Vieira and the Missionary Church in Brazil
and Portugal (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 122–32.
70 Morães, “Pronostyco,” 16. “Los Portuguezes tambien eran llegados con su campo, a tomar
resueltos de arrissar se, y provar ventura, mas confiados en el favor del cielo, que en sus
fuerças, muy disiguales alas del enemigo […].”
71 Ibid., 34. “Finalmente ne carece de dineros, Oro, ni plata, que son los nervios de la guerra.
Todas estas cosas nos promoten, mediante el favor del Cielo, que el Serenissimo Rey de
Portugal Dom Iuan el quatro, deste nombre, se conservara en el Reyno que por derecho de
Padres, y abuelos le pertenece, y que rebatera las fuerças de sus enemigos.”
72 Ibid., 35. “Pero yo agora digo, que no las estrellas, ni los Planetas, que esto es cosa vana sino
que el mismo Dios, y sus Angeles favorecen la eleccion del Serenissimo Rey de Portugal
[…].”
244 McGinness
carrying out Jesus’s command to his apostles: Go forth and make disciples of
all nations (Matthew 28:19–20). The Portuguese had demonstrated their moral
goodness and fidelity to the faith of Christ by placing their empire in the ser-
vice of religion:
With incredible effort and good luck, [the Portuguese] opened a road to
pass to all parts of the world, to conquer Africa and many kings in Asia,
and to make them tributaries of their empire: they took with them the
true religion and the Gospel and showed it among the very remote and
barbarous nations and peoples: great glory of her nation, and a growth in
the Christian religion.73
While Morães himself did not speak specifically about Roman Catholicism,
by using Mariana’s words he strongly conveyed a belief that Catholicism was
the true religion. Morães understood that the Portuguese and Dutch empires,
while cooperating with each other, were completely at odds in matters of the
Christian religion. Morães was not a relativist; he understood the gravity of his
earlier decisions and knew that the Portuguese Inquisition was bearing down
on him. We might infer that his maneuvers after 1641 were intended to prove
to the Holy Office of the Inquisition that he stood firm in the Roman Catholic
faith, though he had erred in marriage and had compromised his moral integ-
rity by cooperating with the Dutch against the Portuguese. Still, he had not
made any statements contradicting the doctrine of the Roman Catholic faith,
as far as we know, and he had not abjured Catholicism. He may have had no
moral qualms about benefiting from a Calvinist government, but taking money
from the Dutch or even collaborating with them under duress should not be
construed as a sign of heterodoxy. Morães later claimed to the Inquisition that
he had always remained true to the Roman faith, despite the regrettable moral
lapses. Once again, as his time as a Jesuit had demonstrated, religion would as-
sume a prominent place in his life.
Although Morães’s complicated personality often seems to defy attempts to
assess his motivations, some of the more apparent contradictions and tensions
in his life come to resolution in the Pronostyco, where he enters publicly into
the political arena as a champion of Portugal and its Roman Catholic faith.
73 Morães, “Pronostyco,” 6–7. “Que con yncreible es fueço y buena dicha abrieron camino
para passar a todas las partes del mundo, y sugetar en la Africa, y en la Asia muchos Reyes,
y hazellas tributarias a su imperio: la verdadera religion, y del Evangelio la llevaron, y la
mostraron entre naciones y gentes muy apartadas, y barbaras: gran gloria de su nacio, y
acrescentamiento de la religion Christiana.”
Morães could see new possibilities for his future and reconciliation with the
Portuguese and his own people. With the possibility of cooperation between
the Dutch Republic and the Portuguese crown, he envisioned a new era when
Portugal and the Dutch Republic could unite and work together in opposing
the might of imperial Spain. Even though the Dutch still waged war in Bra-
zil, Morães’s years in Europe had shown him a different side to these empires.
Change was possible, Morães believed. Time, economics, and the harsh reali-
ties of imperial politics, however, would prove Morães to be more of a dreamer
than analyst of international relations.
5 In the Aftermath of Morães’s Predictions
Morães’s hopes were quickly dashed because, shortly after Portugal and the
Dutch Republic signed the treaty of 1641, the two empires clashed. The Dutch
East India Company did not abide by the treaty of 1641 and swiftly seized the
Moluccas and Ceylon; nor did the West India Company with its capture of
Maranhão, Luanda, Benguela, and the satellite ports of Sao Tomé.74 From this
point on, Portugal’s relations with the Dutch Republic only deteriorated the
more they violated the terms of the treaty.
Not long after finishing his Prediction, Morães did two things that signaled
his wish to return to the Roman Catholic faith and to Brazil. First, he left Adri-
ana Smetz, the second woman he had married in Leiden shortly after the
death of his first wife, Margarida. As in the first wedding, they were married
in a Calvinist church, and they lived together in Leiden for two years. Second,
Morães visited the Portuguese ambassador to the Dutch Republic, Tristão de
Mendonça Furtado, and told him of his desire to return to Portugal and meet
with the Inquisition.
Morães had come to learn that the Inquisition had tried him and burned
him in effigy at the auto-de-fé in Lisbon on April 6, 1642. His motivation to re-
turn to Roman Catholicism, therefore, can be called into question. Did he wish
to save his life? This would appear highly unlikely. Morães could have lived the
rest of his life in the Dutch Republic, unperturbed by the Inquisition. Yet he
persisted in his desire to be accepted back into the Catholic fold. From Leiden,
Morães moved to Amsterdam, where he stayed with friends or in temporary
housing until he received permission from the West India Company to trade
brazilwood in Pernambuco. His decision to return to Brazil coincided with his

conversion back to Catholicism.
74 Vainfas, “Guerra declarada,” 87.
246 McGinness
Morães adjusted, yet again, to his changing circumstances and found that
regime and religion were no longer compatible in his life. Why might Morães
have left the more tolerant society of the Dutch to return to the Roman Cath-
olic faith, a decision that was fraught with considerable dangers? Morães’s
second conversion (or reconversion, or, if we believe his version of events, re-
newed commitment to a faith he had never fully abjured) can be explained,
not in terms of economic and cultural benefits, as with his first conversion, but
in terms of the changed politics in Brazil and Portugal.
6 The Politics of Conversion
The Luso-Brazilians and Portuguese had become active in a political and

armed revolt against the Dutch that would change the religious fate of B razil
forever. Luso-Brazilian plantation owners, upset about the mounting debts
they owed the West India Company when the price of sugar dropped and ex-
ports decreased in the previous three years, rose up to reclaim Brazil. With
Nassau-Siegen gone and Dutch troops and garrisons reduced, João Fernandes
Vieira (c.1613–81)—a man quite like Morães in his split allegiances—arose as
leader of the insurrection.75
The uprising, which came to be called the War of Restoration in Pernam-
buco, or the War of Divine Liberty (1645–49), was closely linked to political
events in Europe. As historian Evaldo Cabral de Mello comments, if it were
not for the Portuguese Restoration, there would not have been a Pernambucan
Restoration, and Spain would have ceded de facto the northeast of Brazil to the
Low Countries, as the Treaty of Münster stipulated.76 By the 1640s, the Dutch
Reformed Church had gained many adherents in Brazil, making it likely that
a Protestant Reformation could have succeeded in the northeast had Portugal
not regained its independence from Spain.
Morães would not stay long enough in Brazil to see the Luso-Brazilians win
the war. The Inquisition could wait no longer. Morães was seized during battle
and sent to the Holy Office in Lisbon, where he was imprisoned in November
1645.77 Morães later testified:
And because Martim Soares Moreno [an indigenous troop leader] was
against me he ordered that I be imprisoned because of his own particular
75 Schwartz, All Can Be Saved, 195.

76 Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O negócio do Brasil, 15.
passions, and that the auditor send me to the holy tribunal. I always in-
tended to go alone, and I was animated finally to go, as the dignified peo-
ples of faith who came with me reported.78
Morães claimed he was preparing to go on his own accord to the Inquisition

and therefore had given away his slaves and livestock before his departure
and collected papers for his defense at trial. Whatever truth there might be to
Morães’s account, he faced the tribunal. For all the moments of disjunction,
uncertainty, and ambiguity in his life, Morães was left with a single goal: to con-
vince the Inquisition that, despite appearances to the contrary, he had never
wavered from his allegiance to the church of Rome.
7 The Politics of Regime Change: The Battle of Empires and

Morães’s Resposta que Deu
In the 1640s, the Portuguese king and subjects of the crown debated the ruler
and, consequently, the religion of Brazil. The context for Morães’s pamphlet
(1648–50), immediately after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia/Osnabrück
in October 1648, allows us to view the many ways in which people tried to in-
fluence the monarch. The subjects of the crown debated the fate of Brazil be-
cause the political situation between Portugal and the United Provinces had
become increasingly intense. The Dutch Republic wielded a powerful influ-
ence toward the end of the peace negotiations in Westphalia, while Portugal’s
position was weak.79 João iv’s envoys, Luís Pereira de Castro (1582–1649) and
Francisco Andrade Leitão (1585–1655), failed to gain recognition in the peace
process at Münster, and the Portuguese, therefore, were excluded from the
Treaty of Westphalia.
At the same time, the Pernambucan Restoration was a hot topic in Portugal.
King João iv asked for people with experience in Dutch politics to give opin-
ions on whether Portugal should cede northeast Brazil, with the exception of
78 Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa, “Processo,” 19. “Tratei logo de me apresentar a este
santo tribunal, com beneplacito de uns mestres de campo que governavam; e porque o
terceiro que é Martim Soares Moreno estava contra mim me mandou prender por paixões
suas particulares, e preso me mandou remetter a este santo tribunal pelo auditor, sendo
que solto andei sempre, e me animava já para ir, como constará de pessoas dignas de fe
que commigo vieiram.”
79 Pedro Cardim, “‘Portuguese Rebels’ at Münster: The Diplomatic Self-fashioning in Mid-
17th-Century European Politics,” Historische Zeitschrift 26 (1998): 293–333, here 311.
248 McGinness
Bahia, to the United Provinces in exchange for peace.80 The Portuguese were
of two factions. The valentões (as António Vieira named them) aligned with
the pro-Spanish nobility and wanted no territorial concessions given to the
States General even if that meant an overseas war.81 The second group con-
tained those, like Vieira, at the king’s court, who believed it was impossible for
Portugal to fight Spain and the Dutch Republic simultaneously and wished to
cede Pernambuco.82 Even though Luso-Brazilian residents were on the win-
ning side of the war in Brazil, João iv was more concerned with peace with the
United Provinces, recognition in the peace settlement at Westphalia, and with
his other colonies in the East. João worried that a war in Brazil would escalate
war with the Dutch on other fronts.
Amid this turmoil, Morães wrote his pamphlet Resposta que deu […] aos Hol-
andeses in Lisbon after his Inquisition trial.83 It is unknown exactly when the
pamphlet was written, but it was probably in October 1648.84 The pamphlet
circulated in manuscript form and was only published in 1922. Morães rejected
claims that Portugal needed to make peace with the Dutch Republic.85 He ar-
gued, to the contrary, that the Portuguese should wage war for both political
and religious reasons. He refused peace because “all peace must be with people
who esteem it and guard its laws.”86 Morães was further of the opinion that “it
was better to have declared war than to simulate peace.”87 The Luso-Brazil-
ians were capable of war. After all, only a few Portuguese expelled the Dutch
from Maranhão.88 Though the West India Company had more ships, Morães
believed that Portuguese ships were stronger because they were made out of
better materials.89
80 Vainfas, “Guerra Declarada,” 83.

81 Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O negócio do Brasil, 35–36.
82 Vainfas, Traição, 319; Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O negócio do Brasil.
83 Manoel de Morães, “Resposta que deu o Licenciado Manoel de Morães a dizerem os Hol-
andeses que a paz era a todos útil, mas a Portugal necessária, quando por parte deste
Reino se lhes ofereceu uma proposta para a paz,” ed. Afonso de Taunay, Anais do Museu
Paulista 1 (1922): 119–33.
84 Vainfas dates it October 1648 in “Guerra declarada,” 83.
85 Morães, “Resposta aos Holandeses,” 125. “Pois cuidarem que nos he necessario a pas com
elles, porque não poderemos resistir as suas armas he engano notavel […].”
86 Ibid., 123. “Com tudo a pas ha de ser com gente que a estime, e guarde as Leis della; e como
os Olandezes são variaveis inquietos e mal intencionados.”
87 Ibid. “Que he melhor ter com elles guerra declarada que pas fingida.”
88 Ibid., 126. “A facilidade com que foram lansados do Maranhão por poucos portuguezes
[…].”
89 Ibid., 127. “Mas nego qué as nossas poucas não possão rezistir as muitas suas, porque as
nossas são muito fortes, e as suas muito fracas, porque as madeiras de Portugal são mel-
hores que as do norte[...].”
Vieira wrote his famous Papel forte in response to this debate only a few
months after Morães’s pamphlet. In it, he urged King João iv to purchase the
sugar captaincies in Brazil and parts of Africa from the Dutch.90 The idea had
merit but, because Portugal was fighting Spain in the war of Portuguese Res-
toration, there were not sufficient resources to make this purchase possible.91
King João, therefore, first thought to secure peace with the Republic in order to
win the war against Spain and then to reacquire the lost territories overseas.92
Morães argued to the contrary: while this might be a good idea for European
relations, any peace of this nature would not work in Brazil.
The Dutch attacks against the Catholic faith provided another reason why
João iv should not cede the territory. Concluding, he said: “We hope that it
always goes well, and better, until the triumph over all your enemies, for the
increase of our holy Catholic faith, and support of your vassals.”93 His mes-
sage leaves us with the impression that he was a changed man, that his indis-
cretions and infidelities of the past were long behind him. This pamphlet, or
rather the reasons why Morães wrote it, invites us to take another look at his
many-faceted career.
Morães wrote passionately about the Catholic ruler and faith that prevailed
in Brazil. He was firmly committed to his faith and Luso-Brazilian heritage,
blanketing over the many years he lived as an agent of the West India Com-
pany and adherent to the Calvinist confession. Morães’s position could not
have been more forcefully stated. He had reversed the opinion given in his
previous pamphlet where he argued that the Dutch and the Portuguese could
collaborate in war. This, of course, had its justifications because, as he saw it,
the Dutch had repeatedly violated the treaty of 1641, and the Luso-Brazilians
had been gaining strength in their resistance. Whatever might have been his
true motives for writing this pamphlet, his sense of the change in the political
fortunes of the Dutch would later be seen as accurate.
The story of Manoel de Morães shows how it was possible to reap the ad-
vantages both empires had to offer, all the while being alert to the dangers of
acting recklessly and without networks of support. Amid powerful antagonis-
tic forces and intricate cultural ambiguities, Morães emerged as an ambitious,
90 António Vieira, Escritos históricos e políticos, ed. Alcir Pécora, Coleção Clássicos (São Pau-
lo: Martins Fontes, 1995), 347. “A condição de lhes pagarmos seiscentos mil cruzados, ou
dex mil caixas de açúcar, meio branco, e meio mascavo, em tempo de dez anos, é a mais
favorável para nós que se podia imaginar […].”

92 Ibid.
93 Morães, “Resposta,” 133. “E esperamos vá sempre de bem, em milhor, athé triunfar de to-
dos seus Inimgos, para aumento da sant fé Catholica, e amparo dos seus Vassallos.”
250 McGinness
complex, self-seeking individual, who provides us with what we might call a

model of conversion for personal convenience, especially when we compare
him with the zealots and martyrs who populate the hagiography of the time.
He stands out as a crafty, intelligent, and daring opportunist who could see
the advantages the Roman Catholic religion offered but who could change al-
legiance when the Calvinist persuasion promised to open new doors to eco-
nomic opportunity, social prestige, and adventure. The differences between
confessions that others were willing to die for as martyrs could be conveniently
abandoned for the sake of a better, more comfortable life. Though we have no
privileged access to Morães’s conscience or true motives, the facts we know
give evidence of an individual who got ahead and forestalled possible dangers.
In the heyday of the Dutch Republic, for those like Morães with good skills,
keen intelligence, and the willingness to compromise their beliefs, the chance
to ascend the social hierarchy must have been almost irresistibly attractive. We
might wonder how many more men and women like Morães there were in this
age of confessional competition in the Atlantic when survival and advance-
ment in the world were purchased by accommodation to the changing politi-
cal and economic environment.
Morães’s story also demonstrates how the religious fate and government of
colonial Brazil was negotiated and contested and how matters of religion and
government could be determined by far-off political settlements and shifting
alliances. In the 1640s, many Portuguese were uncertain whether they should
maintain possession of Brazil, while Luso-Brazilians took up arms against the
Dutch, even with no promise of assistance from the motherland. When the
Portuguese crown finally won Brazil, the Catholic missions returned, and
the Protestant Reformation in Brazil came to an end. Catholic colonial Brazil,
was, after all, part of the larger history of Christendom in the seventeenth
century where the principle cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion)
reigned and would continue to do so for centuries to come.
Bibliography
Adolfo de Varnhagen, Francisco. História geral do Brasil antes de sua separação e inde-
pendência de Portugal. 3rd ed. São Paulo: Companhia melhoramentos de São Paulo,
1927.
Bailey, Gauvin A. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Batalha Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and
Divinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Betancourt, Juan Cobo. Mestizos heraldos de Dios: La ordenación de sacerdotes descen-

dientes de Españoles e indígenas en el Nuevo Reino de Granada y la racialización de
la diferencia, c.1573–1590. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia,
2012.
Cabral de Mello, Evaldo. O negócio do Brasil: Portugal os Países Baixos e o Nordeste 1641–
1669. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1998.
Cardim, Pedro. “‘Portuguese Rebels’ at Münster: The Diplomatic Self-fashioning in
Mid-17th-Century European Politics.” Historische Zeitschrift 26 (1998): 293–333.
Coello, Albuquerque. Memorias diarias de la guerra del Brasil, por discurso de nueve
años […]. Madrid: Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1654.
Cohen, Thomas M. The Fire of Tongues: António Vieira and the Missionary Church in
Brazil and Portugal. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Elliott, John H. “The Decline of Spain.” Past & Present 20 (1961): 52–75.
Elliott, John H. The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598–1640.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
Ferreira Borges de Castro, José, ed. Collecção dos tratados, convenções, contratos e actos
publicos celebrados entre a coroa de Portugal e as mais potencias desde 1640 até ao
presente. Lisbon: Imprensa nacional, 1856.
Gonsalves de Mello, José Antônio. Tempo dos flamengos: Influência da ocupação holan-
desa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil. 4th. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2001.
Israel, Jonathan I. “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Past & Present 91 (1981):
170–80.
Israel, Jonathan I., and Stuart B. Schwartz. The Expansion of Tolerance: Religion in Dutch
Brazil (1624–1654). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
Kamen, Henry. “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Past & Present 81 (1978):
24–50.
Kaplan, Benjamin J. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in
Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2007.
Kaplan, Benjamin J. Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Nether-
lands, 1570–1720. New York: MacMillan, 2009.
Laet, Joannes. Novus orbis, seu, descriptiones Indiæ Occidentalis libri XVIII. Leiden: El-
zevirios, 1633.
Laet, Joannes de. Historie ofte Iaerlijck verhael van de verrichtinghen der Geoctroyeerde
West-Indische compagnie, zedert haer begin, tot het eynde van’t jaer sesthien-hondert
ses-endertich; begrepen in derthien boecken, ende met verscheyden koperen platen er-
ciert. Leiden: Bonaventuer ende Abraham Elsevier, 1644.

Laet, Joannes, Willem Piso, and Georg Marggraf. Historia naturalis Brasiliae: Auspicio et
beneficio illustriss. I. Mauriti Com. Nassau illius provinciae et maris summi praefecti
adornata: in qua non tantum plantae et animalia, sed et indigenarum morbi, ingenia
252 McGinness
et mores describuntur et iconibus supra quingentas illustrantur. Leiden: Apud Fran-

ciscum Hackium, et Amstelodami, apud Lud. Elzevirium, 1648.
Leite, Serafim. História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil. Lisbon: Livraria Portugália,
1938.
Lopes de Santiago, Diogo. História da guerra de Pernambuco: E feitos memoráveis do
mestre de campo João Fernandes Vieira, herói digno de eterna memória, primeiro
aclamador da guerra. Recife: Governo de Pernambuco, 2004.
Luria, Keith P. Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern
France. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005.
Morães, Manoel de. “Pronostyco e Respuesta a una pregunta de un cavallero mui il-
lustre, sobre las cosas de Portugal.” In Laurentius Banck, Bizzarrie politiche: Over,
raccolta, delle più notabili prattiche di stato, nella Christianità. n.p.: D’Arcerio, 1658.
Novinsky, Anita. “Uma devassa do Bispo Dom Pedro da Silva, 1635–1637.” Museu Pau-
lista 22 (1968): 217–85.
Parker, Charles H. Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden
Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Poole, Stafford. “Church Law on the Ordination of Indians and Castas in New Spain,”
Hispanic American Historical Review 61 (1981): 637–50.
Santo Ofício da Inquisição de Lisboa. “Processo de Manoel de Morães, sacerdote e the-
ologo, natural da villa de S. Paulo, estado do Brasil, residente que foi nas partes do
norte, preso nos carceres da Inquisição de Lisbõa (1647).” Edited by Prado, Eduardo.
Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 70 (1908): 1–165.
Taunay, Afonso de. “Addenda á biographia de Manuel de Morães.” Anais do Museu Pau-
lista 1 (1925): 275–92.
Taunay, Afonso de. “Padre Manuel de Morães.” Anais do Museu Paulista 1 (1925): 7–49.
Vainfas, Ronaldo. Traição: Uma jesuíta a serviço do Brasil holandês processado pela In-
quisição. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008.
Vainfas, Ronaldo. “Guerra declarada e paz fingida na Restauração Portuguesa.” Tempo
14 (2009): 82–100.
Vieira, António. Escritos históricos e políticos. Edited by Alcir Pécora. Coleção Clássicos.
São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1995.
Chapter 12
A French Jesuit Parish, without the Jesuits: Grand

Bay’s Catholic Community and Institutional

Durability in British Dominica
Steve Lenik
In eighteenth-century Caribbean colonies and frontiers, the primary means

by which French Jesuit missionaries contributed to building communities of
free and enslaved African populations was the parish as a unit of ecclesiasti-
cal administration. The Catholic communities in these parishes remained after
the Society of Jesus was dissolved in the 1760s, even as access to priests was
intermittent and church buildings deteriorated. The parish examined in this
chapter, at Grand Bay in the Neutral Island of Dominica, was established in
1747 by the Jesuit Antoine de La Valette (1708–67), and the parish continued
to exist after the island became a formal British colony in 1763 under the pur-
view of the Anglican Church. This chapter traces the durability of the parish
at Grand Bay as an institution in colonial and independent Dominica after the
removal of the Jesuits, as it formed lasting social linkages against anti-Catholic
political sentiments and maintained a material presence via churches, a cross,
and cemeteries. Thinking about Catholic–Protestant interactions at the scale
of institutions like the parish reveals the resiliency of Jesuit missions in places
that were subject to competing colonial programs, as French Catholics and
Africans in Dominica have continued to maintain strong attachments to their
faith up to the present day.
The Society of Jesus was suppressed by order of Pope Clement xiv (r.1769–74)
in 1773 after a sustained period of attacks against the Jesuits beginning in
the 1750s. This painful period saw the destruction of the order in Europe and
abroad as its properties were confiscated or destroyed, and its membership
was persecuted and forced to disband. Yet this did not eliminate the parish
communities, indigenous populations, or enslaved and free Africans in the
Americas who chose to remain Catholic. Nor did it erase the Jesuits’ material
presence in the churches, schools, plantations, and other properties that had
new owners. Scholarship examining this period of Jesuit history often seeks to
explain the many reasons for the suppression.1 Other works mine the records
1 Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright, eds., The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes,
Events, and Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Robert E. Scully,
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_014
254 Lenik
that were produced as properties were seized and sold to assess the state and
condition of Jesuit properties, or to examine the populations on missions or
plantations.2 Some parishes in the Americas that the Society had previously
administered shifted to secular priests or other Catholic missionaries to fill the

vacuum, whereas other parishes came into close contact with Protestants as
Britain and France resolved territorial disputes at the end of the Seven Years’
War (1756–63) in 1763.3 The end of the war coincided with the dissolution of
the Jesuit order in French Catholic domains, and some of these, like the east-
ern Caribbean island of Dominica, abruptly entered a Protestant British Em-
pire that had to engage with Catholic populations and former Jesuit properties.
In French Caribbean colonies before the suppression, including St.
Domingue, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, as well as
in Louisiana, Jesuits concentrated their mission work on the enslaved Africans
who made up most of the colonial population. This included several planta-
tions that the Society owned and operated.4 Among the lands changing hands
with the 1763 Treaty of Paris was Dominica, nominally a neutral territory be-
fore the war that was left for the indigenous Carib, or Kalinago, but in practice
a French-dominated island surrounded by the French colonies of Guadeloupe,
Marie-Galante, and Martinique. The parish community and the Catholic
Church property at Grand Bay, where the Jesuits had founded a parish in 1747,
became part of Protestant Britain’s empire as a formal colony. Accompanying
this shift in political power were Anglicans, Methodists, and other Protestants
who brought in their own religious programs alongside Britain’s political and
economic dominance. These Protestants became entangled with an existing
majority Catholic population composed of descendants of French settlers
who had come before 1763, and the African population, most of whom were
enslaved as laborers, who were also Catholic because of this French influence.
“The Suppression of the Society of Jesus: A Perfect Storm in the Age of the ‘Enlightenment,’”
Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 45, no. 2 (2013): 1–42; Sydney F. Smith, S.J., The Suppression
of the Society of Jesus (Leominster: Gracewing, 2004).
2 For example: Eduardo Cavieres F., “Los jesuitas expulsos: La comunidad y los individuos; La
provincia de Chile,” Cuadernos de historia 38 (2013): 7–38; Jean-Pierre Tardieu, “Los esclavos
de los jesuitas del Perú en la época de la expulsión (1767),” Caravelle 81 (2003): 61–109; D. Gil-
lian Thompson, “French Jesuit Wealth on the Eve of the Eighteenth-Century Suppression,” in
The Church and Wealth, ed. W. [William] J. Sheils and Diana Wood (New York: Basil Blackwell,
1987), 307–19.
3 Edward F. Beckett, S.J. “Listening to Our History: Inculturation and Jesuit Slaveholding,” Stud-
ies in Spirituality of Jesuits 28 (1996): 1–48; Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies
1739–1763 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 179–85.
4 Stephan Lenik, “Mission Plantations, Space, and Social Control: Jesuits as Planters in French
Caribbean Colonies and Frontiers,” Journal of Social Archaeology 12, no. 1 (2012): 41–61.
A French Jesuit Parish, without the Jesuits 255
The political and religious situation in Dominica leads to the question in-
vestigated in this chapter: What happened to the former Jesuit parishes that
became entangled in Protestant imperial regimes? In Dominica, the Jesuit
settlement was a mission outpost composed of a parish founded by French

Jesuits, paired with a plantation and enslaved African laborers who belonged
to that parish and were left largely on their own after 1763. In other words, as
the essay’s title suggests, this was a Jesuit parish without any Jesuits, one that
continues to exist to the present day.5 The answer to the above question must
consider the people who made up the parish community and its material ele-
ments, in the form of the church, cross, cemetery, presbytery, and the property.
This chapter examines the parish at Grand Bay in southeast Dominica, since
it was established among an existing Francophone Catholic community by Je-
suit priest La Valette, and traces its continuance through the British colonial
period from 1763 to 1978, and after the latter date the independent Common-
wealth of Dominica.6 Typically, this parish features in scholarship about the
Jesuits only in passing, as a side note to La Valette’s commercial empire, which
contributed to the Society’s downfall in France.7 Local histories of Dominica
note that the Jesuits once had a mission in Grand Bay, but these have not been
integrated into the historiography of the La Valette affair.8 My archaeological
investigation uncovered the buried remains of the church and some planta-
tion buildings in the mission’s main compound.9 Piecing together the ar-
chaeological and historical evidence reveals some of the ways that this parish
operated as an interface between the Jesuits and Protestants in the context of
colonial Dominica in the Protestant British Empire. In this colony, the Church
5 Beckett, “Inculturation and Jesuit Slaveholding,” considers a similar idea, “Jesuit mission
without Jesuits.”
6 The French retook the island from the British, occupying it from 1778 to 1784.
7 D. Gillian Thompson, “The Lavalette Affair and the Jesuit Superiors,” French History 10, no.
2 (1996): 206–39; Thompson, “The Fate of the French Jesuits’ Creditors under the Ancien
Régime,” English Historical Review 91, no. 359 (1976): 255–77; Père Camille de Rochemonteix,
Antoine Lavalette à La Martinique: D’après beaucoup de documents inédits (Paris: Librairie Al-
phonse Picard et Fils, 1907); Dale K. van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits
from France 1757–1765 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
8 Joseph A. Boromé, “The French and Dominica, 1699–1763,” Jamaican Historical Review 7, no.
1/2 (1967): 9–39, here 10; Helen Cameron Gordon, West Indian Scenes (London: Robert Hale,
1942), 79–80; Bishop James C. Moris, “Religious History of Dominica” (Bishop’s House, Ro-
seau: Unpublished manuscript 1950), 187; Moris, “Short History of the Diocese: Parish of St.
Patrick, Grand Bay,” Diocese of Roseau Ecclesiastical Bulletin 19, no. 7 (1926a): 186–89.
9 Stephan Lenik, “Frontier Landscapes, Missions, and Power: A French Jesuit Plantation and
Church at Grand Bay, Dominica (1747–1763)” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 2010); Lenik,
“Mission Plantations”; Lenik, Plantation and Parish: Frontiers and French Jesuits in Dominica,
West Indies (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press; forthcoming).
256 Lenik
of England had a difficult time sustaining a presence, as it did elsewhere, and

other groups like the Methodists slowly gained a following.10 Catholicism had
established a firm hold in the de facto French period before 1763, and many
enslaved and free Africans remained Catholic throughout the period of slav-
ery and after Emancipation.11 It was not until the twentieth century that
Seventh-day Adventists, Pentecostals, and other evangelists gained a foothold
in Dominica, as was the case elsewhere in the Caribbean.12 Parish boundaries
established under de facto French rule were mostly retained under the British,
and Catholic churches and chapels still stood, intermittently visited by priests
even after the diocese of Roseau was founded on April 30, 1850.13 Many of the
small French plantations also remained, as settlers were permitted to remain
under the British as long as they paid rent for the land and satisfied other con-
ditions.14 Hence the Protestantism that arrived along with British governance,
including Protestant clergy and administrative procedures, had to accommo-
date to what was essentially a French Catholic landscape with a population
composed of free and enslaved. In the area surrounding Grand Bay, the former
Jesuit mission shaped encounters among Catholics and Protestants, as this
chapter demonstrates.
This Caribbean example speaks to a larger point about parishes as units of
analysis for understanding the encounters between Jesuits and Protestants. In
a broader sense, this study demonstrates how parishes, as they were deployed
as colonial institutions in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean
islands, formed lasting sets of social linkages. The resulting Catholic commu-
nities are what articulated with the cultural and religious conditions as they
fluctuated over time, including the arrival of Protestantism in frontiers and
colonies that the British colonized. The Grand Bay parish founded by the Jesu-
its built a socio-spatially transcendent network of relations that predates for-
mal colonization. This highlights the durability of the institutions introduced
by Jesuits, as this parish was sustained alongside or despite Protestant influenc-
es. Defining the institution at an analytical scale helps to broaden the inquiry
by focusing on the material aspects of parishes, some of which are accessible
only via archaeology, since many of the above-ground remains have faded or
10 Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic
World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 1–14.
11 Lennox Honychurch, The Dominica Story: A History of the Island (London: MacMillan,
1995), 173–84.
12 Ibid., 183–84.
13 Ibid., 174.
14 Thomas Atwood, The History of the Island of Dominica (London: Frank Cass, 1971 [1791]),
3–5; Honychurch, Dominica Story, 73–75.
disappeared. These include the church buildings and their architectural ele-
ments, a stone cross erected on the coast at Grand Bay that was later moved
inland, and cemeteries, all of which continued to define Catholic space.
The chapter begins by examining how and why Britain and France used
parishes as a means of effecting permanent colonization in the eastern Carib-
bean islands from the early seventeenth century onward. The following section
pieces together the historical trajectory of this parish in Dominica as part of a
broader inquiry in the concluding section into how Jesuit–Protestant interac-
tions in the Americas may be approached at the scale of the parish.
1 Parishes in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Eastern

Caribbean
In Europe, the parish is the Catholic Church’s principal ecclesiastical unit and
“an institution of unusual longevity and durability” for places that remained
predominantly Catholic.15 Whether Catholic or Protestant, European coloniz-
ers in the Americas brought a deeply rooted parish tradition that blended civil
and ecclesiastical functions. Alongside the religious practice and community
that formed under a priest or minister, these parishes also relied on material
manifestations in the church buildings, cemeteries, and lands. In the seven-
teenth century, when England and France began founding permanent colonies
in the eastern Caribbean, the parish was a means of facilitating governance
under the crown or chartered companies while advancing Christianity to jus-
tify a colony’s existence. Unlike Spain, which established dioceses in its Carib-
bean colonies to attempt to secure a local bishop, France and England adopted
preliminary forms including militia divisions, quarters, and precincts, with the
intended result being parishes in formal colonies that were intended to extract
wealth via plantations reliant upon enslaved or indentured labor.16
In Anglophone Caribbean colonies, the parish emerged as the “basic unit of
ecclesiastical and civil administration.”17 Creating parishes was fairly straight-
forward if no indigenous population was present, with the process being
facilitated by formal efforts to map the islands and a topography delineating
15 Robert M. Kingdon, “Protestant Parishes in the Old World and the New: The Cases of Ge-
neva and Boston,” Church History 48, no. 3 (1979): 290–304, here 290–91.
16 Johannes Meier, “The Beginnings of the Catholic Church in the Caribbean,” in Christianity
in the Caribbean: Essays on Church History, ed. Armando Lampe (Kingston: University of
the West Indies Press, 2001), 1–85.
17 Ibid., 87.
258 Lenik
the natural boundaries.18 This occurred with neither a local bishop nor a glebe
to provide income, so that “English religious culture was selectively trans-
lated” without the associated power structures to back Anglican ministers.19
Even so, clergy and government officials wanted to dictate colonists’ conduct,
to “legislate people into religious living.”20 The process was more complex in
the Leeward Islands, with real or imagined threats from the Kalinago and the
French.21 Here, the first step was the creation of military units called divisions,
or precincts in Montserrat’s case, with each island’s trajectory varying, but
these ultimately transitioned to parishes at a later date, and boundaries would
be adjusted if needed.22 For the English, without local bishops or religious or-
ders like the Spanish and French, it was hard to maintain sufficient numbers
of clergy, and visiting ministers and officials often lamented the churches’ poor
condition and low attendance.23 Until the nineteenth century, British parishes
were intended for white colonists, since planters were reluctant to provide re-
ligious instruction for slaves.24
In the French Caribbean colonies, the Catholic parish traditions from the
metropole were continued by the trading companies to which the crown
granted economic monopolies. The companies and the crown assigned re-
ligious orders, including Dominicans, Jesuits, Capuchins, and Carmelites, to
parish jurisdictions where missionaries served as priests, creating competition
among religious orders to be assigned to the parishes.25 The French divided
each island into districts called quartiers that were “coterminous with church
parishes” and also functioned as militia districts.26 In French colonies, par-
ishes theoretically guaranteed access to thousands of enslaved Africans with
the 1685 “Code noir” that was meant to require the enslaved to be instructed
18 Charles S.S. Higham, “The Early Days of the Church in the West Indies,” Church Quarterly
Review 92 (1921): 107.
19 Nicholas M. Beasley, Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650–1780,
Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 2–5.
20 Arthur Charles Dayfoot, The Shaping of the West Indian Church 1492–1962 (Mona: Univer-
sity of the West Indies Press, 1999), 63.
21 Higham, “Early Days,” 107.
22 Keith Hunte, “Protestantism and Slavery in the British Caribbean,” in Christianity in the
Caribbean: Essays on Church History, ed. Armando Lampe (Kingston: University of the
West Indies Press, 2001), 86–125, here 87.
23 Beasley, Christian Ritual, 1–2; Natalie A. Zacek, Settler Society in the English Leeward Is-
lands, 1670–1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124–31.

24 Zacek, Settler Society, 131.
25 Philip P. Boucher, France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent? (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 75–77.
26 Ibid., 140.
in Roman Catholicism. Such provisions added a large enslaved populace to be

administered, and to oversee this, the Jesuits assigned a curé des nègres, liter-
ally “priest of the blacks,” to work among the enslaved Africans.27
These administrative precedents shaped Dominica’s social relations and

cultural geography as the island transitioned from quarters, militia divisions,
and Catholic parishes under French dominance to a British colony with the
Anglican Church and parishes as units of civil administration while retaining
Catholic parishes. The British installed ten parishes that generally equated
with the previously established French quarters. On December 4, 1765, Gover-
nor Robert Melvill (1723–1809) issued a proclamation, published on February
3, 1766, that formally renamed the French quarters, with seven leeward and
three windward parishes.28 Thus Grand Bay Quarter became St. Patrick’s par-
ish. British correspondence attributes these ten pre-existing districts to Sir
George Rodney (1718–1792).29 Yet maps and other sources clearly indicate that
these represent the French parishes upon which a British system was imposed.
The detailed examination of the Grand Bay parish that follows illustrates the
operation of a Jesuit parish as Dominica changed to an island governed by the
Protestant British who tolerated the continued presence of Catholics.
2 A Jesuit Parish at Grand Bay, 1747–63
In 1747, La Valette left the Jesuit mission north of St. Pierre in the French colony
of Martinique aboard a small boat. He traveled north across the ocean pas-
sage to Dominica, one of four Neutral Islands, the others being St. Lucia, St.
Vincent, and Tobago. Officially, these islands were left to the indigenous Carib
per agreement between France and Britain. Priests and missionaries had fre-
quented these islands to proselytize among the Kalinago, but without success,
and other interlopers illegally built small settlements. After serving for three
years as a parish priest in Martinique, La Valette had been promoted to mis-
sion procurator, or financial manager. He went to Dominica at the invitation
of Jeannot Rolle (d.1752), a free person of color originally from Martinique who
settled at Grand Bay in 1691. Rolle, a Catholic, clashed with the Kalinago over
the display of wooden crosses, until a carved stone cross he erected in 1692
27 Ibid., 283–84; Susan Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’: Catholic Missions to Slaves in the
French Antilles, 1635–1800,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 1 (2002): 53–90, here 61–62.
28 Leeward: St. Mark’s, St. Luke’s, St. George’s, St. Paul’s, St. Joseph’s, St. Peter’s, St. John’s;
Windward: St. Andrew’s, St. David’s, St. Patrick’s. British Library (BL) 1865.c.7.22.
29 D. [David] L. Niddrie, “Eighteenth-Century Settlement in the British Caribbean,” Transac-
tions of the Institute of British Geographers 40 (1966): 67–80, here 71.
260 Lenik
caused the Kalinago to flee. More Francophone Catholics joined Rolle and his
family in the southeastern part of the island.30
La Valette did two things when he reached Grand Bay. The first was to add
this frontier to the Roman Catholic Church as he blessed Rolle’s stone cross
and founded a parish to serve the French settlers and their enslaved Africans.
He secured the Cordeliers, as the Franciscan order was known in France, to
serve as parish priests, and arranged for the construction of a church along
with a bay front for the new parish.
La Valette then obtained land for a plantation via a purchase and donations
from local residents, where he built a state-of-the-art factory building to pro-
cess multiple crops, and bought several hundred enslaved Africans, which he
sent to Dominica. This plantation was his true interest in Dominica, and it is
for this reason that La Valette’s name typically appears in Jesuit historiography.
This plantation, along with a second in Martinique, added to his commercial
empire, as did a lucrative currency exchange scheme and a contract to provide
wood for the navy, further supported by extensive borrowing. The proceeds
repaid old and new debts. But he had to navigate carefully because Jesuits were
prohibited from certain forms of commerce, as canon law forbade negotiatio,
or, essentially, “excessive” profits. Disaster struck in 1755 as a hurricane dam-
aged the Dominica plantation and disease killed some of the laborers. Even
worse, a shipment of products was captured at sea by the British, and the loss
caused the bankruptcy of La Valette’s agent in Marseille. Creditors began seek-
ing repayment, and eventually the many lawsuits brought against the Society
reached the Parlement of Paris. A decision allowed one year for the Jesuits to
settle their debts of 6.2 million livres, which they could not do, and a series
of subsequent decisions ultimately led to the dismantling of the Society in
France, beginning in 1761.31 In this manner, the Grand Bay mission contrib-
uted to the downfall of the French Jesuits. The plantation is known for its role
in La Valette’s commercial activities, but it was a short-lived enterprise that
collapsed once the Society was dissolved.
The mission’s lasting result is the parish, and the Catholic Francophone
community in southeastern Dominica that joined Rolle, the settler whose
stone cross stood on the shoreline in Grand Bay, was essential to its success
and durability. A clear picture of this community emerges only with a 1748–55
30 Gordon, West Indian Scenes, 77–80; Lenik, Frontier Landscapes; Moris, “Short History”
(1926a); James C. Moris, “Short History of the Diocese: Parish of St. Patrick, Grand Bay,”
Diocese of Roseau Ecclesiastical Bulletin 19, no. 8 (1926b): 219–23.
31 De Rochemonteix, Antoine Lavalette; Thompson “Fate of the French Jesuits”; Thompson,
“Lavalette Affair.”
portion of the parish register, which Father Raymond Proesmans (1905–78)

transcribed from manuscripts in the Roseau Cathedral.32 The 146 entries cap-
ture the parish’s growth over its first seven years and reflect the geographical
range of the multiple settlements it united.33 Perhaps the most striking feature
of the 291 persons mentioned is the preponderance of enslaved Africans, mak-
ing up 250 (eighty-six percent) of the sample (fifty-three percent female; forty-
four percent male; three percent undetermined).34 This is not unprecedented
in the French colonies. In 1684, slaves in a Jesuit parish in Guadeloupe orga-
nized themselves into a congregation directed by two elders.35 In Grand Bay,
there were also thirty-two free people and nine godparents whose status can-
not be determined. Of the 234 enslaved who can be associated with an owner,
109 can be linked to the Jesuits, the highest number traced to any owner, with
forty-five men (41.3 percent), fifty-eight women (53.2 percent), and six unde-
termined (5.5 percent). For the other twenty-two owners, the second highest
total is forty-one for Pierre Joseph Botro (dates unknown), with the remainder
owning sixteen or fewer slaves. When an owner’s place of residence is listed,
eleven lived in Dominica and two were from Martinique. Five are listed as “free
coloured” or “free negro.”36
The parish’s growth can be traced by plotting the frequency of the 129
baptisms, seventeen marriages, and fifty-five burials by year (fig. 12.1).37 Bap-
tisms and marriages peaked in 1753, and burials peaked in the following year.
Both baptisms and marriages declined until the record ends in 1755, perhaps
because most eligible persons had been baptized or married. Of the seventeen
32 R. [Raymond] Proesmans, “The Slaves of the French Were Also Catholic and French,”
Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 83 (1943a): 7; Proesmans, “The Slaves of the French Were Also
Catholic and French,” Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 84 (1943b): 7; Proesmans, “The Slaves of
the French Were Also Catholic and French,” Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 85 (1943c): 7. Here-
after cited as Grand Bay Parish Register (gbpr), 1748–55. Proesmans also published in the
Dominica Chronicle part of the Book of the Cathedral in Roseau from 1753 to 1760, and
the 1780–82 Grand Bay Parish Register, from the period when France briefly recaptured
Dominica.
33 Stephan Lenik, “A Jesuit Plantation and Church in the Caribbean Frontier: Grand Bay,
Dominica, (1748–1763),” in Proceedings of the xxiii Congress of the International Associa-
tion for Caribbean Archaeology, June 29–July 3, 2009, Antigua, ed. Samantha A. Rebovich
(English Harbour, Antigua: Dockyard Museum, 2011), 147–59.
34 gbpr, 1748–55.
35 Mary Turner, “Religious Beliefs,” in General History of the Caribbean: Volume iii, the Slave
Societies of the Caribbean, ed. Franklin W. Knight (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999),
287–321, here 308.
36 gbpr, 1748–55.
37 Included in these totals are twenty-six individuals marked by the abbreviation b.a.m.,
likely Baptisé avant le mort, i.e., baptized before they died.
262 Lenik
Sacraments in Grand Bay Parish, 1748 – 1755

50
45
40
Number of Individuals
35
30
Baptisms
25
Burials
20
Marriages
15
10
5
0 Source:
gbpr1748–1755, in
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
Proesmans 1943b
Figure 12.1 Baptism, Marriages, and Burials at the Grand Bay Parish, 1748–1755.
marriages listed, eleven are among the Jesuits’ slaves. Twelve of the couples
were baptized and married on the same day. The parish register also hints at
the depth of social bonds. One or two godparents are listed for 37.2 percent of
baptisms, with at least thirty-seven different godfathers and thirty-one god-
mothers, which includes enslaved, colored, and white landowners. Connec-
tions related to god-parentage appear more broadly among the Jesuits. In the
South American reductions, god-parentage among the Guaraní, or compadraz-
go in the Hispanic tradition, reflects the crossing of social and class boundaries
even after the suppression, as the Guaraní maintained these relationships.38
For the frontier period, the Grand Bay mission featured a Cordelier parish
priest and a Jesuit plantation manager, with intermittent visits from Jesuits
including La Valette himself. After the Society’s dissolution in France in the
1760s, former Jesuits had few refuges, and the third Jesuit known to have been
stationed at Grand Bay, Nicolas Marie Le Vasseur (1700–77), stayed in Dom-
inica. Born in Canada in 1700, Le Vasseur became a Jesuit in France in 1721.
After completing his novitiate, he was assigned to St. Pierre as a lay brother.
Le Vasseur first appears in the register on November 2, 1752, and he probably
remained in Grand Bay until the property was sold in 1765. He moved to the
capital, Roseau, and lived near the cathedral until his death in 1777, when he
38 Barbara Ganson, The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003), 133–35.
was buried in the cathedral’s grounds.39 The nature of any connections to the
Grand Bay parish that Le Vasseur retained during the British colonial period is
unknown, but it worth noting that he remained in Dominica.
3 Materiality of the Jesuit Parish
The parish center was on the bay front near Rolle’s stone cross, a burial ground,
and the church, which was built parallel to the beachfront on land donated by
Rolle. Construction was overseen by a settler named Etienne Picot (d.1768);
the building was finished in 1749 and consecrated by a Cordelier priest.40 Ar-
chaeological excavations reveal a rectangular floor plan with a slight bulge in
the longer axis, suggesting an alcove or reduced cruciform plan, measuring 14.5
meters long by seven to eight meters wide. A stone-and-mortar floor indicates
an altar in the east end, and a compact surface faces the central court between
the plantation factory and manager’s residence. With a wooden frame atop a
stone-and-mortar foundation, the church had a ceramic tile roof, and some
floor surfaces are covered in plain ceramic tile, with small amounts of green
and yellow glazed tiles. The only known illustration is a 1764 map showing a
tall rectangular structure with a peaked roof. Clergy were buried around the
church and cross.
Other French Caribbean mission outposts reveal consistent material aspects
of infrastructure and layout, suggesting that the Grand Bay parish adhered to
established regional patterns as it served the free and enslaved populations
in the surrounding parish. In Martinique, excavations of a private Jesuit cha-
pel and a parish church in St. Pierre have recorded small rectangular build-
ings perpendicular to the sea with altars in the east.41 At Habitation Loyola in
Guiana, archaeologists uncovered a rectangular private chapel attached to the
estate house in the central compound. Archaeologists recovered fragments of
39 Presumably, he did his scholastic period and took his final vows in the Caribbean. He may
also have been a priest. gbpr, 1748–55; Bernard David, Dictionnaire biographique de la
Martinique 1635–1848: Le clergé, 1716–1789, tome ii (Fort-de-France: Société d’Histoire de la
Martinique, 1984), 176; Moris, “Short History” (1926b): 220–21; Moris, Religious History, 190;
de Rochemonteix, Antoine Lavalette, 255.
40 Moris, “Short History” (1926b): 221.
41 Étienne Poncelet, Martinique, Saint-Pierre, Cimetière du Fort, etude préalable (Saint-Pierre:
Service du Patrimoine, Martinique, 1996); Serge Veuve, “Cimetière du Fort, Saint-Pierre de

la Martinique: Rapport de fouille archéologie 1996” (Fort-de-France: Service Régional de
l’Archéologie, 1996); Serge Veuve, “Habitation Perrinelle: Ancienne maison des jésuites,
Saint-Pierre de la Martinique, 97225 002 Ah. Rapport de la fouille archéologique 01/07–
14/10/1997” (Fort-de-France: Service Régional de l’Archéologie, 1997).
264 Lenik
ceramic roofing tiles and glazed and unglazed floor tiles from the churches at
Grand Bay, the St. Pierre habitation, the St. Pierre parish church, and the Loyola
habitation, where tiles were manufactured on site.42 Tiles contributed to the
physical appearance of the Grand Bay church and the adjacent plantation
buildings, establishing the mission’s presence framed against Dominica’s lush
green backdrop. By the eighteenth century, many Jesuit and Catholic churches
in the Americas and Western Europe exhibit cruciform or cross-shaped floor
plans, with the facades distinctive of Jesuit churches.43 Comparatively, these
French Caribbean examples are small with simple floor plans, featuring tiled
floors and roofs. The Grand Bay church, which was built with input from
frontier settlers and Jesuits, and possibly Cordeliers, combined locally made
and imported building materials. It resembled the other missions, but it is in
a flat coastal zone near good agricultural land away from towns. That these
churches are smaller and less ornate can probably be attributed to limited
funding and small congregations in a region threatened by natural disasters
that could destroy any investments. In Caribbean frontiers and colonies, in-
cluding Grand Bay and Caribbean port towns like St. Pierre, Basse-Terre, Cap
Français, and Cayenne, the Society sought to project its prestige by securing
prominent coastal locations that were visible to parishioners and outsiders.
Examining Jesuit mission plantations in Dominica, Martinique, and Guiana,
each has a core compound placing religious, domestic, and industrial features
in close proximity. These mission plantations deviate from secular, privately
owned plantations, as the Jesuits manipulated architecture and monuments
to display their proselytizing efforts, and did not efficiently organize space or
engage in direct surveillance of industrial facilities and laborers, as the secular
plantations did.44
42 Alison Bain, Réginald Auger, and Yannick Le Roux, “Archaeological Research at the Loyola
Habitation, French Guiana,” in French Colonial Archaeology in the Southeast and Carib-
bean, ed. Kenneth G. Kelly and Meredith D. Hardy (Gainesville, FL: University Press of
Florida, 2011), 206–24; Yannick Le Roux, Réginald Auger, and Nathalie Cazelles, Les jésuites
et l’esclavage: Loyola, l’habitation des jésuites de Rémire en Guyane française (Québec:
Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2009), 209; Poncelet, Martinique, Saint-Pierre; Veuve,
“Cimetière du Fort”; Veuve, “Habitation Perrinelle.”
43 A rectangular exterior may conceal the interior’s cruciform appearance, as chapels next
to the altar would form the arms of the cross. See Felipe González Mora, “Arquitectura
del templo misionero en las reducciones jesuíticas del Casanare, Meta y Orinoco: Siglos
xvii y xviii,” Apuntes: Revista de estudios sobre patrimonio cultural/Journal of Cultural

Heritage Studies 20, no. 1 (2007): 34–49; Jeanne Halgren Kilde, Sacred Power, Sacred Space:
An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008), 105–7; Thomas M. Lucas, S.J., “The Brick Chapel at St. Mary’s City: A Catholic Per-
spective” (St. Mary’s City: Report on file at Historic Archaeology Laboratory, 1997); John W.
O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 356–57.
44 Lenik, Mission Plantations.
The parish that the Jesuits established in Grand Bay was founded upon a
base of Francophone Catholic settlers like Rolle who exploited Dominica’s
neutrality, as La Valette did later in the eighteenth century. This all occurred
with limited formal governance in the island, which was restricted mainly to a
few bays on the leeward coast. These conditions shaped later interactions with
Protestants once this community became part of a British colony, ushering in
speculators and new colonists under a state church, along with thousands of
new enslaved Africans imported as laborers for the plantations.
4 A Parish without Jesuits: Institutional and Community Durability

in British Dominica
The Anglicans and Methodists were the first Protestant churches to arrive in
the late eighteenth century as Britain developed its new colony. The first rec-
tor of the Church of England, Henry McLeane (dates unknown), reached the
island on July 1, 1764. A wooden church built in the capital Roseau was in poor
condition in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and services
took place in the courthouse when the white colonist congregation did meet.
It was difficult to maintain a rector in Dominica, and in 1820 St. George’s Angli-
can Church was built in Roseau, which still stands today, with small churches
added in Portsmouth and Marigot; only the former survives. The Anglican con-
gregation finally began growing in the late nineteenth century, when the Brit-
ish population rose.45
Methodists began working in Dominica in January 1787, when four Method-
ist preachers including Dr. Thomas Coke (1747–1814) spent a few days there.46
In 1788, the Methodists formally established a mission station in Dominica,
at the same time as Barbados, Nevis, Tortola, and Jamaica.47 Methodists were
opposed to the toleration of Catholicism in Dominica, and while this position
had limited effect, the congregation reached about seven hundred members
in 1803, with preachers stationed in Roseau and Portsmouth. After Emancipa-
tion, the Methodists had further gains, as they were active in some of the more
remote villages, especially in the north, where laborers from Antigua had mi-
grated. Some prominent mulatto families also converted to Methodism in the
late nineteenth century.48
45 Honychurch, Dominica Story, 179–81.

46 Ibid., 181.
47 Kenneth Cracknell and Susan J. White, An Introduction to World Methodism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 70.
48 Honychurch, Dominica Story, 182–83.
266 Lenik
With the influx of Protestant sects, the Grand Bay parish’s records are lim-
ited, but it is still possible to trace the parish community and church prop-
erty on the basis of the available evidence. British records provide information
about the fate of the former slaves of the Jesuits. Historian Thomas Atwood
(d.1793) reports that some former slaves of the Jesuits escaped to join the
Maroons, which he attributes to their attachments to their previous masters or
displeasure with their new British owners.49 While there is no further evidence
beyond Atwood’s reference, at least some members of this parish chose to re-
move themselves from the Protestant sphere of influence, at times violently
resisting British colonizers, especially in the 1790s and 1810s. Among those
who did not leave the Grand Bay plantation were enslaved Africans who were
among property sold by the syndic Pierce Bryan (dates unknown), who was
sent from England to reimburse creditors of the Jesuits in that country after
the English province had lent money to La Valette.50 Upon arriving in Domi-
nica to claim Jesuit assets, he suspected something was amiss and appealed to
the British commander, who ordered a survey in Grand Bay. This recorded 612
quarré of land cultivated in coffee and manioc,51 proving that the figures on
the deed of sale produced by the Jesuits were greatly underestimated.52 Bryan
was involved in two transactions in July 1765 that include 224 enslaved Afri-
cans. While neither source explicitly states that they had once belonged to the
Jesuits, a preponderance of evidence suggests this was the case.53 A group of
166 enslaved was sold to Sir George Colebrooke (1729–1809), Sir James Cock-
burn (1729–1804), John Nelson (dates unknown), and Archibald Stewart (dates
unknown), with an indenture signed on July 25, 1765 for £8,000.54 This lists
161 named slaves plus five “infant negro children whose names are unknown,”
and other property on the estate “lying and being in Grand Bay” in the Island
of Dominica.55 For this group, eighty-four are male (50.6 percent), sixty-nine
(41.6 percent) are female, and thirteen are undetermined (7.8 percent).56
A second group of fifty-eight enslaved was sold to Jacques Vanden Branden
49 Atwood, History of the Island of Dominica, 226–27.

50 tna T1/424/277–78; Geoffrey Holt, “The Fatal Mortgage: The English Province and Pere La
Valette,” Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 38 (1969): 464–78.
51 One quarré equals 3.3 acres.
52 tna T1/424/277–78.
53 Dominica National Archive (dna), Deed Book B1.
54 dna Deed Book D1. Nelson and Stewart had purchased three hundred acre plots of the
Jesuits’ former lands on June 27, 1765 (bna CO 106/9, 37).

55 dna Deed Book B1.
56 It is impossible to confirm, since only first names appear and at least a decade sepa-
rates the two records, but the names of ten females (Agathe, Cécile, Eulalie, Magdeleine,
Marthe, Martine, Monique, Rachel, Séraphine, Victoire) and eleven males (François,
(dates unknown), captain general of the Grand Bay militia district, with an
August 6, 1765 indenture for a one-time payment of £1,000 for fifty-eight en-
slaved, followed by a yearly bond of £500 paid from 1767 to 1785.57 This popula-
tion seems to have been relocated to St. Patrick’s parish. In a register of French
leases from February, 1766, Philip Vanden Branden (d.1772), possibly a brother
or son of Jacques, is listed for thirty-two cleared and nineteen uncleared acres
in Ouayanari Quarter for a term of fourteen years.58 This name appears in the
1776 Byres map in Lot 13 of St. Patrick’s parish on the windward coast.59 If all
224 slaves were originally from the Jesuit plantation, there were 101 males (45.1
percent), 107 females (47.8 percent), and sixteen undetermined (7.1 percent).60
More accounts of the parish appear intermittently in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, as Catholic priests visited occasionally. The former
mission continued to be used as a cemetery, but the church building slowly fell
apart after a 1765 hurricane damaged it to such an extent that it was beyond
repair.61 British troops occupied the church, probably around the period when
France recaptured the island, and the presbytery on the hill was converted to a
battery.62 When France regained possession of Dominica, a Franciscan priest
was stationed at the Grand Bay parish in early 1780. In July of that year, he
returned to Martinique due in part to “the dilapidated state of the church and
presbytery.”63 The 1780–82 register preserved by Proesmans lists twenty-seven
French surnames, including seven that appear in frontier period records, and
five English names that indicate the parish’s continued function.64 Another
priest’s account from May 1790 says the church was still standing, but soon
onzague, Jacques, Jean, Jean Baptiste, Melquior, Michel, Pierre, Radegonde, Stanislaus,
G
Victor) appear in both this list and the parish register.
57 dna Deed Books B1, Boromé 1967:26n45. Though it cannot be confirmed that these are
the same individuals, ten names from the 1748–55 register include children (Cecile, Eu-
lalie, Ignace, Jean, Susanne), men (Christophe, Pierre), and women (Elisabet, Genevieve,
Magdeleine), with four duplicates from the Nelson et al. list.
58 The National Archives, London (tna) T 1/453, 155.
59 dna, Byres 1776.
60 In light of Atwood’s report, these lists may omit those who had fled, or may refer to per-
sons who would soon leave.
62 Moris, “Short History” (1926c): 283–84.
64 James C. Moris, “The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and
English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French,” Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 86
(1943d): 7; Moris, “The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and
English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French,” Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 87
(1943e): 5–6.
268 Lenik
after, “for want of repairs, it collapsed and was not restored.”65 Clearly, the
church buildings were in disrepair, a problem all Christian churches faced in
Dominica until the twentieth century, but these sources nevertheless suggest
the continuance of the parishioners themselves.

The continuance of the Grand Bay parish appears later in records of the
Census Riots, or Guerre nègre, which began in three areas of Dominica, includ-
ing Grand Bay, on Monday, June 3, 1844.66 Dominicans attacked and threat-
ened enumerators and stipendiary magistrates conducting a census to comply
with the Imperial Census Act, responding to rumors that it would lead to re-
enslavement. In response, martial law was declared, the militia was recalled,
and officials released a proclamation dismissing the rumor.67 Further clashes
occurred when the militia and army marched to curtail opposition in the af-
fected areas, with hostilities ending by June 7. In July, ninety-four prisoners
were put on trial and punished, and later that year the census was completed.
While the rumor of re-enslavement seems to have been the immediate cause,
reports from Grand Bay reveal more localized circumstances.68 Geneva Es-
tate, Grand Bay’s main plantation, was located inland from the original Jesuit
mission, and its laborers disliked Charles Leathem (1803–67), the attorney for
Berricoa and Geneva, and William Johnstone (dates unknown), manager of
these same plantations. People in Grand Bay were angry at Leathem because
of statements he had made that were supportive of slavery, reports that he had
flogged two women, and his order to close the “Catholic chapel” at Geneva.69
While the Census Riots were a complex occurrence that British investigations
could not fully reconstruct, the closure of the chapel in Grand Bay indicates
that the material manifestations of this parish centered in Grand Bay featured
in conflicts among the laborer and planter classes.70
The Catholic Church maintained its connections to the former Jesuit mis-
sion a century later to defend a land ownership claim against the planter class,
as shown by documentation associated with a dispute with Geneva Estate’s
65 Moris, “Short History” (1926c): 284.

66 Russell E. Chace, “Protest in Post-Emancipation Dominica: The ‘Guerre Negre’ of 1844,”
Journal of Caribbean History 23, no. 2 (1989): 118–41; Stephan Lenik, “Plantation Labourer
Rebellions, Material Culture and Events: Historical Archaeology at Geneva Estate, Grand
Bay, Commonwealth of Dominica,” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave
Studies 35, no. 3 (2014): 508–26.
tna CO 71/106, “Copies or Extracts of Correspondence Relative to the Late Disturbances
among the Negroes in the Island of Dominica.”

67 “Copies or Extracts,” 7, CO 71/106.
68 Lenik, “Plantation Labourer Rebellions.”
69 “Copies or Extracts,” 13, CO 71/106.
70 Lenik, “Plantation Labourer Rebellions.”
owners, who were accused of encroaching on church land. This episode is re-
corded in a July 27, 1866 letter from Bishop René-Marie-Charles Poirier (1802–
78) that upholds the church’s claim by relating a history of Grand Bay since the
time of Rolle and the Jesuits, and an accompanying map of church property.71
On this map, the easternmost of three plots shown is a “lot part of the Jesuits
land whereon was the Jesuit church and cemetery.” East of a ravine passing
through the lot is written “Jesuit habitation/old cemetery for Jesuits estab-
lished there,” indicating the church consecrated in 1749, and a tomb that may
be the grave of Jesuit Jean Catherinne (d.1769).72 A caption describes Rolle’s
cross from 1692. The location of the church used at the time is unclear, with
both a “church in decay” and a “church contemplated” on the map.
The Census Riots and the land dispute capture the tensions among the
planter class aligned with Protestantism on one side, versus the African Do-
minican population, many of whom were Catholic because of the Jesuit mis-
sion that had ended a century earlier, and Catholic Church leaders who had
a limited role until a diocese was founded in 1850. Throughout this period,
the maintenance of the parish church continued to be a struggle. In the mid-
nineteenth century, a new church, presbytery, and related outbuildings were
built on the hill near the present church, away from the coast where it was orig-
inally planned. With these new facilities, priests visited with greater frequency,
and yet again a priest arriving in 1880 found the church in “utter ruin.” A new
church foundation was laid in 1882, but the next year a hurricane damaged the
structure. This was rebuilt and opened in 1886, with a bell tower added later,
but it was not consecrated by a bishop until 1905. By the late 1910s, damage to
the roof and a growing congregation required yet another new building. Con-
struction of what is now the main parish church (see fig. 12.2) began in 1921,
which today has the date of January 25, 1924 inscribed below the cross on the
roof, and a presbytery built in 1922–23.73
5 Conclusions: An Institutional Perspective of Jesuit–Protestant

Entanglement
Assembling a narrative history of the Grand Bay parish by piecing together

the evidence illustrates how it proved to be the most durable remnant of the
relatively short-lived Jesuit mission. As this chapter has shown, the Jesuits
71 Anonymous, Bishop’s House, Roseau, Dominica.

73 Moris, “Short History” (1926c, 1926e).
270 Lenik
Figure 12.2 The Grand Bay Catholic church, completed in 1924.

photograph by the author.
t hemselves do not necessarily have to feature in interactions with Protestants.

This chapter has traced the resiliency of this parish community, even as the
Society was dissolved, the island was ceded to Britain, and Protestant churches
came in with the support of colonial governance. In Dominica, French
Catholics, which included many enslaved Africans whose descendants re-
mained Catholic after Emancipation in a British colony, maintained strong
attachments to their faith, as the parish has existed ever since. Building and
maintaining a church and a full-time priest was a constant struggle until the
early twentieth century, but the parishioners, with the aid of church leaders,
eventually succeeded.
Thinking about Jesuit–Protestant interactions at the scale of institutions
like parishes reveals the resiliency of Jesuit missions in contexts that were sub-
ject to competing colonial programs. Such an approach also connects to the
daily regimen of people who experienced these parishes, in the actual spaces
that were brought within the global reach of the Jesuits by way of the colonial
institutions they deployed. In Dominica, these were parishes and plantations,
but looking more broadly, the Jesuits adopted a variety of forms, including
manors, ranches, farms, haciendas, and colleges. These institutions represent
one mode of articulation between the Society’s global hierarchical structure

and the rest of the world. Focusing on these institutions can also help explain
how Jesuits went about the process of accommodating to the contingencies
and idiosyncrasies of local contexts. Colonial institutions offered ready-made

ordering regimes that were malleable or adaptable to local conditions. Insti-
tutions worked in the local contexts into which Jesuits could integrate them-
selves, to adapt to the environmental zones, political regimes, and economic
networks that they encountered. Typically, these institutions have material
correlates, such as their buildings, architectural features, religious objects, and
lands, which may be recorded archaeologically. In the case of parishes, the
priests and their parishioners engaged with these material elements, and
written records were dictated by the demands of this institution, one that
spans multiple generations and encounters with many outsiders, including
Protestants.
Bibliography
Atwood, Thomas. The History of the Island of Dominica. London: Frank Cass, 1971 [1791].
Bain, Alison, Réginald Auger, and Yannick Le Roux. “Archaeological Research at the
Loyola Habitation, French Guiana.” In French Colonial Archaeology in the Southeast
and Caribbean, ed. Kenneth G. Kelly and Meredith D. Hardy, 206–24. Gainesville,
FL: University Press of Florida, 2011.
Beasley, Nicholas M. Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650–
1780. Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900. Athens: University of Georgia Press,
2009.
Beckett, Edward F., S.J. “Listening to Our History: Inculturation and Jesuit Slavehold-
ing.” Studies in Spirituality of Jesuits 28 (1996): 1–48.
Boromé, Joseph A. “The French and Dominica, 1699–1763.” Jamaican Historical Review
7, no. 1/2 (1967): 9–39.
Boucher, Philip P. France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent? Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
Burson, Jeffrey D., and Jonathan Wright, eds. The Jesuit Suppression in Global Con-
text: Causes, Events, and Consequences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015.
Chace, Russell E. “Protest in Post-Emancipation Dominica: The ‘Guerre Negre’ of 1844.”
Journal of Caribbean History 23, no. 2 (1989): 118–41.

Cracknell, Kenneth, and Susan J. White. An Introduction to World Methodism. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
David, Bernard. Dictionnaire biographique de la Martinique 1635–1848: Le clergé, 1716–
1789, tome II. Fort-de-France: Société d’Histoire de la Martinique, 1984.
272 Lenik
Dayfoot, Arthur Charles. The Shaping of the West Indian Church 1492–1962. Mona: Uni-
versity of the West Indies Press, 1999.
Figueroa, Eduardo Cavieres. “Los jesuitas expulsos: La comunidad y los individuos:
La provincia de Chile.” Cuadernos de historia 38 (2013): 7–38.

Ganson, Barbara. The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 2003.
Gordon, Helen Cameron. West Indian Scenes. London: Robert Hale, 1942.
Higham, Charles S.S. “The Early Days of the Church in the West Indies.” Church Quar-
terly Review 92 (1921): 107.
Holt, Geoffrey. “The Fatal Mortgage: The English Province and Pere La Valette.” Archi-
vum historicum Societatis Iesu 38 (1969): 464–78.
Honychurch, Lennox. The Dominica Story: A History of the Island. London: MacMillan,
1995.
Hunte, Keith. “Protestantism and Slavery in the British Caribbean.” In Christianity in
the Caribbean: Essays on Church History, edited by Armando Lampe, 86–125. Kings-
ton: University of the West Indies Press, 2001.
Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Archi-
tecture and Worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Kingdon, Robert M. “Protestant Parishes in the Old World and the New: The Cases of
Geneva and Boston.” Church History 48, no. 3 (1979): 290–304.
Kley, Dale K. van. The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France 1757–1765.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
Lenik, Stephan. “Frontier Landscapes, Missions, and Power: A French Jesuit Plantation
and Church at Grand Bay, Dominica (1747–1763).” PhD diss., Syracuse University,
2010.
Lenik, Stephan. “A Jesuit Plantation and Church in the Caribbean Frontier: Grand
Bay, Dominica, (1748–1763).” In Proceedings of the XXIII Congress of the Interna-
tional Association for Caribbean Archaeology, June 29–July 3, 2009, Antigua, edited
by Samantha A. Rebovich, 147–59. English Harbour, Antigua: Dockyard Museum,
2011.
Lenik, Stephan. “Mission Plantations, Space, and Social Control: Jesuits as Planters in
French Caribbean Colonies and Frontiers.” Journal of Social Archaeology 12, no. 1
(2012): 41–61.
Lenik, Stephan. “Plantation Labourer Rebellions, Material Culture and Events: Histori-
cal Archaeology at Geneva Estate, Grand Bay, Commonwealth of Dominica.” Slavery
and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave Studies 35, no. 3 (2014): 508–26.
Lenik, Stephan. Plantation and Parish: Frontiers and French Jesuits in Dominica, West
Indies. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press; forthcoming.
Lucas, Thomas M., S.J. “The Brick Chapel at St. Mary’s City: A Catholic Perspective.” St.
Mary’s City: Report on file at Historic Archaeology Laboratory, 1997.
Meier, Johannes. “The Beginnings of the Catholic Church in the Caribbean.” In Chris-
tianity in the Caribbean: Essays on Church History, edited by Armando Lampe, 1–85.
Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2001.
Mora, Felipe González. “Arquitectura del templo misionero en las reducciones jesuíti-
cas del Casanare, Meta y Orinoco: Siglos XVII y XVIII.” Apuntes: Revista de estudios
sobre patrimonio cultural/Journal of Cultural Heritage Studies 20, no. 1 (2007): 34–49.
Moris, James C. “Short History of the Diocese: Parish of St. Patrick, Grand Bay.” Diocese
of Roseau Ecclesiastical Bulletin 19, no. 7 (1926a): 187.
Moris, James C. “Short History of the Diocese: Parish of St. Patrick, Grand Bay.” Diocese
of Roseau Ecclesiastical Bulletin 19, no. 8 (1926b): 219–23.
Moris, James C. “The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and
English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French.” Dominica Chronicle 25, no.
86 (1943a): 7.
Moris, James C. “The Slaves of the French Continue to Be or to Become Catholic and
English Planters Seem to Follow the Lead of the French.” Dominica Chronicle 25, no.
87 (1943b): 5–6.
Moris, James C. “Religious History of Dominica.” Bishop’s House, Roseau: Unpublished
manuscript 1950.
Niddrie, D. [David] L. “Eighteenth-Century Settlement in the British Caribbean.” Trans-
actions of the Institute of British Geographers 40 (1966): 67–80.
O’Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Pares, Richard. War and Trade in the West Indies 1739–1763. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1936.
Peabody, Susan. “‘A Dangerous Zeal’: Catholic Missions to Slaves in the French Antilles,
1635–1800.” French Historical Studies 25, no. 1 (2002): 53–90.
Pestana, Carla Gardina. Protestant Empire Religion and the Making of the British Atlan-
tic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
Poncelet, Étienne. Martinique, Saint-Pierre, Cimetière du Fort, etude préalable. Saint-
Pierre: Service du Patrimoine, Martinique, 1996.
Proesmans, R. [Raymond]. “The Slaves of the French Were Also Catholic and French.”
Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 83 (1943a): 7.
Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 84 (1943b): 7.
Dominica Chronicle 25, no. 85 (1943c): 7.
Rochemonteix, Père Camille de. Antoine Lavalette à La Martinique: D’après beaucoup
de documents inédits. Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1907.

Roux, Yannick, Réginald Auger, and Nathalie Cazelles, Les jésuites et l’esclavage:
Loyola, l’habitation des jésuites de Rémire en Guyane française. Québec: Presses de
l’Université du Québec, 2009.
274 Lenik
Scully, Robert E. “The Suppression of the Society of Jesus: A Perfect Storm in the Age of
the ‘Enlightenment.’” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 45, no. 2 (2013): 1–42.
Smith, Sydney F., S.J. The Suppression of the Society of Jesus. Leominster: Gracewing,
2004.
Tardieu, Jean-Pierre. “Los esclavos de los jesuitas del Perú en la época de la expulsión
(1767),” Caravelle 81 (2003): 61–109.
Thompson, D. Gillian. “The Fate of the French Jesuits’ Creditors under the Ancien
Régime.” English Historical Review 91, no. 359 (1976): 255–77.
Thompson, D. Gillian. “French Jesuit Wealth on the Eve of the Eighteenth-Century
Suppression.” In The Church and Wealth, edited by W. [William] J. Sheils and Diana
Wood, 307–19. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Thompson, D. Gillian. “The Lavalette Affair and the Jesuit Superiors.” French History 10,
no. 2 (1996): 206–39.
Turner, Mary. “Religious Beliefs.” In General History of the Caribbean: Volume III, the
Slave Societies of the Caribbean, edited by Franklin W. Knight, 287–321. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Veuve, Serge. “Cimetière du Fort, Saint-Pierre de la Martinique: Rapport de fouille ar-
chéologie 1996.” Fort-de-France: Service Régional de l’Archéologie, 1996.
Veuve, Serge. “Habitation Perrinelle: Ancienne maison des jésuites, Saint-Pierre de la
Martinique, 97225 002 Ah. Rapport de la fouille archéologique 01/07–14/10/1997.”
Fort-de-France: Service Régional de l’Archéologie, 1997.
Zacek, Natalie A. Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands, 1670–1776. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Chapter 13
“Tis nothing but French Poison, all of it”: Jesuit and

Calvinist Missions on the New World Frontier
Catherine Ballériaux
Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, New France and
New England saw the emergence of two distinct types of missionary strate-
gies that were associated with specific ideals about conversion. The first, as-
similation, was tied to imperial goals and colonial wars. It was also shaped by
interactions between Catholics and Protestants on the frontier. The second,
segregation, reflected the Jesuits’ and Puritans’ deep engagement with the
idea of a reformation of manners and the common Christian humanist roots
of their interest in practical Christianity. Comparing missionary strategies and
contacts across territories is essential for the study not only of the common
roots of Jesuit and Puritan soteriologies but also of the ways in which imperial
authorities instrumentalized religion in a contested space.
In the late seventeenth century, the French and English monarchies at-
tempted to increase their hold over their colonies and reinforce the presence
of state agents on the frontier. Many of the desired reforms promoted more
autocratic and “pragmatic” ways of thinking about colonial worlds and their
material and human resources. At the same time, frontiers continued to ex-
pand, and missionaries were omnipresent in these areas, which were often
the central stage for intercolonial conflicts. The natives played pivotal roles in
these wars, and soldiers progressively encroached on territories that had thus
far been the preserve of missionaries. The colonial wars as well as the greater
involvement of the monarchies in the colonial world had an enormous impact
on the practices of both French and English missionaries.
1 Assimilation: A New Colonial Policy on the Frontier
In this period of intense imperial competition, colonial authorities tended to

insist on the assimilation of the natives to settler populations. This policy was
based on the idea that absorbing native populations into the settlers’ commu-
nities would somehow make the problematic risk of resistance disappear. Most
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_015
276 Ballériaux
importantly, it could also help guarantee the fidelity of native groups against
neighboring colonial powers. Given the central position of missionaries in key
frontier areas, religion was perceived as an essential tool to convey this policy
of assimilation, and missionaries were increasingly expected to make the na-

tives not only Christian but most of all French or English.
In New France, assimilation was favored as early as 1663, when the colony
was put under royal administration.1 Indeed, Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619–83)
hoped that, by “mixing” the natives with the French, and teaching them the
language, “over time, having but one law and one master, they will thus be-
come one people and one blood.”2 Louis xiv (r.1643–1715) himself made his
imperial designs very clear in the instructions given to the successive gover-
nors and intendants. The natives’ assimilation went hand in hand with their
submission to the crown: the natives’ only option was to convert and become
subjects of the king, working for the growth of his colonies. But Louis also
stipulated that those who refused to submit (in particular the Iroquois) and
who “prevented the peopling of the land” were to be “entirely exterminated.”3
This inclusive conception thus involved a necessary submission, and colonial
authorities tended to be wary of the great ascendency that the Jesuits had
gained on the frontier. Indeed, Colbert rejected the policy of the Jesuits, claim-
ing that they believed “they could uphold with more purity the principles and
sanctity of our religion by maintaining the way of life of the converted savages
rather than by bringing them together with the French,” something that they
should have implemented through education, resettlement, and mixed mar-
riages. For Colbert, this principle of segregation was “far removed from any
good policy, as much for religion as for the State.” Governor Louis de Buade de
Frontenac (1622–98), always very critical of the Jesuits, saw religion as an es-
sential tool to secure the natives’ fidelity, and claimed that the Jesuits should
have thought “when making the savages subjects of Jesus Christ, to also make
them subjects of the King,” a process that among other things required that
the natives be taught the French language.4 The increasing authority of the
crown over colonial matters was accompanied by a—Bodinian—tendency
1 See Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris: Flammarion, 2008),
100–2, 161–63.
2 “Lettre de Colbert à Talon, 5 avril 1667,” Archives nationales d’outre-mer, France (hereafter
anom), col C11A 2, fol. 297r. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
3 Jean Blanchet, ed., Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres documents
historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle-France (Québec: A. Coté et Cie, 1883), 1:175, 178.
4 “Instructions pour M. de Bouteroue, s’en allant intendant de la justice, police et finances
en Canada, 5 avril 1668,” in Jean Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Col-
bert, publiés d’après les ordres de l’empereur, ed. Pierre Clément, 7 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie
“Tis nothing but French Poison, all of it” 277
to unify the disparate elements composing the monarchy and to consider the
natives as obedient subjects, assimilated to French subjects in the service of
the monarchy.5 Jacques Duchesneau (c.1631–96), intendant of New France,
claimed in 1681 that crown officials should make sure to render the natives
completely dependent on the French and “to make them aware that all their
happiness consists in being linked to the French.”6 This would allow the French
to endorse the role of protectors and become the great arbitrators between
various native groups.7
Such emphasis on assimilation also progressively arose in New England be-
tween the 1680s and 1690s. It was following the Glorious Revolution (1688–89)
and the accession of William and Mary (r.1689–94/1702), who were staunch
Protestants, to the throne of England, as well as because of repeated conflicts
with France, that New Englanders, as historian Owen Stanwood suggests, start-
ed to embrace “their identity as subjects of a powerful English monarch.” For
Stanwood, the idea of a British empire only truly emerged when the various
territories started to define themselves based on their common Protestantism,
their opposition to Catholic France, and their “allegiance to an English, Prot-
estant monarch.”8 This change of political climate had a great impact on the
Impériale, 1865), 3:2, 404; “Lettre de Frontenac au ministre, 2 novembre 1672,” anom, col
C11A 3, fols. 246v, 247r.
5 Jean Bodin (1530–96) claimed that, despite the great diversity of the French kingdom, all its
members had one thing in common: they were under the authority of the same king. This
definition of citizenship downplayed the political role of the subject in the commonwealth.
See Keechang Kim, “L’étranger chez Jean Bodin, l’étranger chez nous,” Revue historique de
droit français et étranger 76, no. 1 (1998): 75–92.
6 “Mémoire de Duchesneau au ministre, 13 novembre 1681,” anom, col C11A 5, fol. 308r–v.
See Gilles Havard, “‘Les forcer à devenir cytoyens’: État, sauvages et citoyenneté en Nouvelle-
France (xviie–xviiie siècle),” Annales histoire sciences sociales 5 (2009): 985–1018, here
992–93; Saliha Belmessous, “Être français en Nouvelle-France: Identité française et identité
coloniale aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles,” French Historical Studies 27, no. 3 (2004):
507–40, here 510–11.
7 On this, see Gilles Havard, “‘Protection’ and ‘Unequal Alliance’: The French Conception of
Sovereignty over Indians in New France,” in French and Indians in the Heart of North America,
1630–1815, ed. Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale (East Lansing: Michigan State Uni-
versity Press, 2013), 113–37.
8 Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 20; The Answer of the House of Repre-
sentatives, to His Excellency the Earl of Bellomont’s Speech (Boston: Bartholomew Green and
John Allen, 1699); Owen Stanwood, “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of
1688–1689, and the Making of an Anglo-American Empire,” Journal of British Studies 46, no. 3
(2007): 481–508, here 481; Cotton Mather, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated (Bos-
ton: S. Green, 1690), 38. See also Thomas S. Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England after
Puritanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
278 Ballériaux
relationships with the natives, particularly on the frontier. At the beginning

of King William’s War (1688–97), the representatives of New England clearly
informed their allies the Five Nations (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Ca-
yuga, and Seneca nations) that “the Late king James being a Papist and a great
Frinde of the French […] is Removed from the Throne.” The new rulers were
“Protestants and Professed Enemies to the french Intrest,” and the natives were
warned: “So long as the French king and the Jesuits have the Command at Can-
ida You can never Expect to live in Peace.”9 The successive governors also put
a new emphasis on the necessary submission of the natives to the king. It was
essential to “reduce them to obedience” and ensure “that they would daily see
their dependence” on the English.10 Moreover, the impossibility of making “a
Distinction visible, betwixt our Friends the Christian Indians, and our Enemies
the Heathens” in times of war led to a new emphasis on the necessity to as-
similate the natives.11 Thus, by 1710, Cotton Mather (1663–1728), who had previ-
ously praised other Puritans’ efforts to translate the Bible into the Algonquian
language, claimed that
the best thing we can do for our Indians is to Anglicise them in all agree-
able Instances; and in that of Language, as well as others. They can
scarce retain their Language, without a Tincture of other Salvage Incli-
nations […]. Though some of their aged men are tenacious enough of
Indianisme […], Other of them as earnestly wish that their people may
be made English as fast as they can.12
2 Religion on the Frontier: The Role of Missions in Colonial Policies
For the civil authorities in both areas, the emphasis on assimilation was in-
trinsically linked to the process of conversion. At a time when contacts and
conflicts between the two empires were more and more frequent, all actors
involved were aware of the instrumentality of religion in the competition be-
tween empires and of the crucial role that it would play in securing the n
atives’
9 Lawrence H. Leder, ed., The Livingston Indian Records, 1666–1723 (Gettysburg: Pennsylva-
nia Historical Association, 1956), 151.
10 James Phinney Baxter, ed., Documentary History of the State of Maine (hereafter dhm), 24
vols. (Portland: Bailey and Noyes et al., 1869–1916), 10:223, 254.

11 Nathaniel Saltonstall, A Continuation of the State of New England; Being a Farther Account
of the Indian Warr (London: T.M. for Dorman Newman, 1676), 3.
12 Copy of a letter by Cotton Mather, 1710, ‘Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall,’ Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th series, 1 (1886): 401.
fidelity. Despite reservations about their methods, the colonial authorities

still considered the Jesuits to be the central actors on the frontier. During the
French and Indian Wars (1688–97, 1702–13, 1744–48, 1754–63), religious affilia-
tion and nationality were increasingly associated in official writings. Already

by the late seventeenth century, the governor general of New France, the Mar-
quis de Denonville (1637–1710), knew the crucial role that religion played in
colonial relationships: according to him, the English perceived “all our Mis-
sionaries as their most bitter enemies, whom they will not tolerate amongst
the Indians within their reach.” He continued:
Even if the interests of the gospel did not engage us to keep missionar-
ies in all the savages’ villages, Iroquois and others, the Interest of Civil
Government for the advantage of Trade must induce us so to manage
as always to have some there; for these savage tribes can never govern
themselves except by those Missionaries, who alone, are able to maintain
them in our interests and to prevent their revolting against us every day.
I am convinced by experience that the Jesuits are the most capable of
Governing the spirit of all the savage tribes […].13
English officers also knew that the Jesuits were crucial for French colonial poli-
cies in times of conflict. As one of them explained during the last French and
Indian War (1754–63):
A considerable Number of the Indians are attached to the Interest of the

French by the Ties of Religion only; and this to such a Degree, that they
are themselves Missionaries amongst other Indians. These Papist Indians
have catched the persecuting and intolerant Spirit of Popery, and wage
War against the English upon the inveterate Principles of that blood-
shedding Persuasion, which is kept up and heightened by the infernal
Applause of their Priests.
The success of French missionaries was so great, claimed the officer, that po-
litical negotiation would no longer be sufficient, and only the “absolute Con-
quest” of New France could protect British possessions.14 Over the course of
the eighteenth century, the terms “popefied Indians” or “Jesuited Indians”
13 “Mémoire de Denonville à Seignelay, Janvier, 1690,” anom, col C11A 11, fol. 185r.
14 “Letter from an Officer in North-America […] December 1758,” in John Brown, On Reli-
gious Liberty: A Sermon, Preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral (London: Davis and Reymers,
1763), vii–viii, here vii.
280 Ballériaux
were increasingly common, and “papist” and “frenchifyed” came to be used as

synonyms.15
British government officials dreaded the work of the Jesuits on the fron-
tier. The earl of Bellomont (1636–1701), governor of the provinces of New York,
New Hampshire, and Massachusetts Bay in the late seventeenth century, was
“against all manner of correspondence and commerce between the French
and those Nations […] a great many Missionaries […] are at this time among
our five Nations and practising to alienate them totally from their obedience to
His Majesty.” His wish was to send “those Vermin [the Jesuits] to England, there
to be punished as they deserve.”16
For Bellomont, the only way to counter the Jesuits’ influence was to send
Protestant ministers to the natives and “secure their affection to us.” Although
he maintained in his correspondence with the French authorities that the na-
tives wished “to have some of our Protestant ministers among them instead
of your Missionaries,” in reality, he was, as he informed the Lords of Trade, “in
great fear our Sloath and neglect of those Indians all this time, will be the losse
of them.”17 Missions were essential to secure the natives’ obedience and make
good subjects out of them. It was crucial to promote and finance missionary
work, as religious instruction would “oblige them to the interest of the Crown
of England as well as save their souls.”18 During the first half of the eighteenth
century, the link between religious affiliation and empire became increasingly
salient, and British official Francis Ayscough (1701–63) assured missionary John
Sergeant (1710–49) in 1748 that, by converting the natives, he also provided new
15 See for example: dhm, 5:420; E.B. [Edmund Bailey] O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Rela-
tive to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (hereafter: dhny), 15 vols. (Albany:
Weed, Parson and Co., 1853–87), 4:653; Benjamin Colman, letters of November 14, 1732
(http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/digitized/fa0288/b1-f19-i8#1), and Decem-
ber 25, 1733 (http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/digitized/fa0288/b1-f20-i10#1),
Benjamin Colman Papers (accessed November 1, 2017) and “Letter to Robert June, 1723,”
in “Some Unpublished Letters of Benjamin Colman, 1717–1725,” ed. Niel Caplan, Proceed-
ings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, 77 (1965): 101–42, here 161; Cotton
Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England (Lon-
don: Thomas Parkhurst, 1702), 91.
16 dhny, 4:607, 610. See also 735–36, and dhm, 10:58, 68, 72, seq. A law was passed outlaw-
ing the presence of Jesuits on English territories in 1700: Robert Howard, History of the
Archdiocese of Boston in the Various Stages of Its Development, 1604 to 1943, 3 vols. (New
York: Sheed & Ward, 1944), 1:74–76. For an earlier law against the Jesuits in Massachusetts
(1647), see Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Mas-
sachusetts Bay in New England, 5 vols. (Boston: W. White, 1853–54), 2:193.
17 dhm, 10:70; dhny, 9:692. See also dhny, 4:608. For similar fears, see also dhny, 4:608–10,
648, 688, 717–18, 748.
18 dhny, 4:334.
subjects who were “brought over to the British Interest.” Ayscough insisted
that, in that regard, the British should follow the example of the French, who
were taking great pains to “make Papists of the Indians.”19
Religious allegiance was thus consistently addressed during negotiations

with native nations, and Bellomont insisted, for example, that the Five Nations
expel all Jesuits from their territories, since they had come to “deceive and de-
lude you with their false doctrines and principles.”20 The Jesuits were indeed
frequently accused by New Englanders of “buying” conversions, and, as Bello-
mont superciliously told the Five Nations,
tho’ it is the Jesuites custome by bribes and rewardes to purchase

proselites, it is not the practise or method us’d by Protestants; for we hold
that those only are good Christians who profess Christianity out of faith
and a good conscience and not upon the score of worldly interest.21
The Jesuits were also repeatedly accused of being greedy: according to New
York colonial official Robert Livingston (1654–1728), the Jesuits obtained their
share of the natives’ hunts by claiming that the Virgin Mary would then not
only remit their sins but also give “her prayers to the bargain for good luck
when they go out a hunting next time.” Puzzled, he went on: “It’s strange to
think what authority these priests have over their Indian proselytes […].”22
Despite their criticisms, Protestant officials knew that Catholicism could be
powerfully attractive. As Huguenot minister Jacques Laborie explained, the
natives themselves claimed that the Catholic religion “was prettier than ours,
[…] the French gave them silver crosses to wear on their necks.”23 Such was the
influence of the Jesuits that there were even plans in the 1690s to use Huguenot
ministers to instruct natives converted to Calvinism in the French language
and send them to attract Catholic natives to their side.24
The French Jesuits themselves did not hesitate to acknowledge their crucial
role in securing the natives’ allegiance to national interests. As Joseph Aubery
(1673–1755) expressed in a report to his superior: “Religion has so far been the
19 Samuel Hopkins, Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatonic Indians (Boston: S. Knee-
land, 1753), 140.
20 dhny, 4:739. See also 499.
21 Ibid., 4:727.
22 Ibid., 4:649.
23 Ibid., 10:59–60.
24 Evan Haefeli and Owen Stanwood, “Jesuits, Huguenots, and the Apocalypse: The Origins
of America’s First French Book,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 116, no. 1
(2006): 59–119, here 78–79.
282 Ballériaux
only reason that has made the Abenakis french, and as soon as there are no
more Missionaries they will become english and will be capable by themselves
of putting the english in possession of the whole country at the first war.”25
According to Puritan leaders, the Jesuits did not hesitate to use religion to in-
fluence their converts’ political allegiances: during an interview with fervent
Puritan Cotton Mather, jailed sachem Bommasseen supposedly reported that
the French had
taught ’em, that the Lord Jesus Christ was of the French Nation; that His
Mother, the Virgin Mary, was a French Lady; That they were the English
who had Murdered him; and That whereas He Rose from the Dead, and
went up to the Heavens, all that would Recommend themselves unto His
Favour, must Revenge His Quarrel upon the English, as far as they can.
Mather retorted that all this was “nothing but French Poison, all of it.”26
3 Puritan Anxieties: Jesuit and Protestant Missionary Strategies
Puritan writers usually manifested a deep anxiety about the success of Catholi-
cism, and this obsession with the “popish threat” was not limited to frontier
areas. Mather, Bommaseen’s interviewer, is a case in point. For Mather, the
French priests had clearly brought the natives over to the interests “(not of our
Saviour so much as) of Canada.”27 But he was also obsessed with the work of the
Jesuits and readily acknowledged their superiority in matters of conversion.28
He considered this to be the main reason why the Puritans had been defeated
in King William’s War (1688–97). If they had been careful to convert the natives
as the “French Papists have done,” they would have acted as a buffer against
France rather than being a constant threat. For Mather, what the Jesuits taught
25 “Extraits de lettres diverses: lettre du jésuite Duparc, 29 Avril 1727,” anom, col C11A,
fols.576v–577r.
26 Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum: An History of Remarkable Occurrences, in the Long
War which NEW-ENGLAND Hath Had with the Indian Salvages (Boston: B. Green, and J. Al-
len, for Samuel Phillips, 1699), 127–28, 130. See also “Thomas Coram to Benjamin Colman,
April 30, 1734,” Benjamin Colman Papers; http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/digi-
tized/fa0288/b1-f21-i9#1 (accessed November 1, 2017).
27 Mather, Magnalia Christi, 204.

28 Ezechiel Carré, Echantillon de la doctrine que les jésuites ensegnent aus sauvages du Nou-
veau Monde, pour les convertir tirée de leurs propres Manuscrits […] (Boston: Samuel Green,
1690), fol. A2r–A3r, translated in Haefeli and Stanwood, “Jesuits, Huguenots,” 107–19. This
paragraph is based on the article. See also dhny, 4:209.
to the natives could hardly be called Christian, but, he continued, the Puritans
themselves were not innocent, as “if the Salvages had been Enlightened with
The Christian Faith, from us, the French Papists could never have instill’d into
them those French Poisons, that have made such Raging Devils of them.” On the
other hand, he admitted that the Jesuit missions might have “prepared the way
for some Thing more sincere and salutary.”29 Even if the Puritans were quick to
criticize the Jesuits’ methods, in particular their neglect of the Bible, they were
nevertheless aware that they could learn from their neighbors’ experience with
conversion. John Minot (1690–1764), for example, claimed from his observa-
tions that the Jesuits’ best tool for conversion was “their blamless watchfull car-
rage to [the natives],” rather than “any other of their artfull methods.” This, he
claimed, should be followed by Puritans: “If the Government would give those
that have the caire of those houses some rules and methods to use with them,”
he claimed, this would greatly help the work of conversion, although the na-
tives’ attachment to Catholicism would be hard to overcome.30
The Jesuits, for their part, recognized the greater efforts at conversion on the
part of Puritans compared with other Protestant (English and Dutch) colonies.
In 1683, the Jesuit Thierry Beschefer (1630–1711) related the baptism of several
“praying Indians,” converts of John Eliot (c.1604–90), the most active mission-
ary in New England, who were captives among the Iroquois. These natives, said
Beschefer, had been “taught the principal articles of our faith by some english-
men, who are very different from those of Orange, and from the other heretics
of America.” As for other Englishmen, according to Beschefer, “those heretics
do not take care of [the natives’] salvation, saying that they look upon Them
only As beasts; and that Paradise is not for that sort of people.”31
Mather was convinced that the conversion of the natives had an interna-
tional significance. In order to promote the Calvinist doctrine on an interna-
tional scale, aside from publishing multiple pamphlets for the propagation of
the Gospel among the natives, Mather set himself the task of learning both
French and Spanish and wrote Calvinist catechisms and pamphlets in those
29 Mather, Decennium, 215–16; Haefeli and Stanwood, “Jesuits, Huguenots,” appendix, 109.
See also Cotton Mather, Another Tongue Brought In, to Confess the Great Saviour of the
World: Or, Some Communications of Christianity, Put into a Tongue Used among the Iroquois
Indians in America (Boston: B. Green, 1707), 1–3; Solomon Stoddard, Question, Whether
God Is Not Angry with the Country for Doing so Little towards the Conversion of the Indians?
(Boston: B. Green, 1723), 10.
30 dhm, 10:346. For a criticism of the Jesuits’ methods, see, for example, dhm, 9:378.
31 Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (hereafter JR), 73
vols. (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co., 1896–1901), 62:242, 208.
284 Ballériaux
two languages to be distributed in French and Spanish America, as well as in

Europe.32 Mather envisioned his efforts on a truly global scale. He believed that
a glorious Reformation is near to the English Nation. And more than so;
that the Light of the Gospel of my Lord Jesus Christ, shall bee carried into
the Spanish Indies; and, that my Composures, my Endeavoures, will bee
used, in irradiating the Dark Recesses of America, with the Knowledge
of the Glorious Lord. Yea, more than this; That I shall shortly see some
Harvest of my Prayers and Pains, for the Jewish Nation also.33
Convinced that, as the book of Revelations showed, “the whole Papal

Empire […] is very near its End,” he even entertained hopes of converting the
Jesuit Sébastien Rasles (1657–1724), who was working among the Wabanaki on
the frontier of Maine by writing an essay in Latin for him, which would be a
patriotic as well as a religious victory and “would be a wonderful Service to the
Countrey.”34 The Jesuits themselves sometimes attempted to convince Protes-
tant ministers of the errors of their ways.35
The Puritans’ anxiety was also related to a clear difference between English
and French missionaries: whereas the Jesuits were constantly presented as a
threat in English writings, English missionaries were presented as much less
of a threat in French official writings and in Jesuit accounts. Indeed, the Jesu-
its were not only more numerous but also more mobile. The Society of Jesus
favored a rather flexible definition of the church. Against the emphasis on
residency and territoriality, Diego Laínez (in office 1558–65), the successor of
Ignatius of Loyola (in office 1540–56) as the Society’s superior general, had ad-
vocated the church’s missionary duties, thus insisting on the role and a ctivities
32 See, for example: Cotton Mather, The Triumphs of the Reformed Religion in AMERICA (Bos-
ton: Benjamin Harris and John Allen, 1691) and India Christiana: A Discourse Delivered
unto the Commissioners, for the Propagation of the Gospel among the American Indians
(Boston: B. Green, 1721). Mather was responsible for the publication of the French cat-
echism ABC des Chrétiens (Boston, 1711), and wrote two pamphlets in French: Le vrai pa-
tron des saines paroles (Boston: T. Green?, 1704), and Une grande voix du ciel a la France
(Boston: B. Green?, 1725). See also his La fe del Christiano: En veyntequatro articulos de la
institucion de CHRISTO (Boston, 1699).
33 Cotton Mather, “Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1708,” Collections of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society, 7th series, 7 (Boston, 1911): 302. See his The Faith of the Fathers […] Chiefly,
to Engage the Jewish Nation, unto the Religion of Their Patriarchs (Boston: B. Green and
J. Allen, 1699), and Haefeli and Stanwood, “Jesuits, Huguenots,” 88–97.
34 Mather, “Diary,” Part 2, 554, and Souldiers Counselled and Comforted (Boston: Samuel
Green, 1689), 37.
35 dhm, 5:455–63.
of the priesthood more than on their geographical situation. For Jerónimo

Nadal (1507–80), mobility was an essential aspect of the Jesuits’ understanding
of their calling: “They consider that they are in their most peaceful and pleas-
ant house when they are constantly on the move, when they travel throughout
the earth, when they have no place to call their own.”36 The Puritans reacted
to the mobility of the Jesuits and their presence on the frontier by claiming
that their missions in specific areas were indeed a way for the French to “make
religion a stalking horse to there pretence,” but that this certainly did not give
France any “right or title” to the land.37 Indeed, this very mobility was seen as
threatening, and Puritan missionaries could not react in kind, as they were
usually in charge of an English congregation in addition to their missionary
duties. Attempts to recruit ministers to work exclusively with the natives were
rarely successful.38
Although the Jesuits occasionally complained that the English attempted to
“steal” their converts “by offering them ministers to instruct them in their her-
esies,” the fears they expressed were usually much more related to the English
colonies’ advantageous trade deals than to missionary threats.39 The inability
of the French crown to protect its allies during conflicts with New England was
also considered problematic for conversion. As Étienne de Carheil (1633–1726)
explained in 1689, for example, the Iroquois were unsatisfied because
the protection of the frenchman, beyond being useless to them because

of his powerlessness, is even harmful to them, for Commerce as well as
for war, for commerce, because it takes away from them, against their
will, the trade of the english, which was incomparably more advanta-
geous to them, in order to keep them bound to him [the Frenchman].40
36 Jerónimo Nadal, “Dialogus ii, [188]” (c.1565), quoted and translated in John W. O’Malley,
“To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit Vocation,” Studies in
the Spirituality of Jesuits 16, no. 2 (1984): 1–20, here 9; H. Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the
Counter-Reformation: The Birkbeck Lectures in Ecclesiastical History Given in the University
of Cambridge in May 1951, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),
135–37, 140.
37 dhny, 3:511, 452.
38 James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 249, 254.

39 “Mémoire de Denonville,” fol. 186r; “Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 novembre 1686,”
anom, col C11A 8, fol. 157r; JR, 66:202. See also JR, 65:95; 66:203; 67:96, 98.
40 Étienne de Carheil, “Copie de la lettre écrite par le révérend père Carheil […] À monsieur
le gouverneur general […] 17 septembre 1690,” anom, col C11E 4, fol. 6v.
286 Ballériaux
The Jesuits knew there were advantages for the natives in trading with the
English, but they were confident that the faith could overcome economic
interests. Rasles, for example, claimed that the natives knew that if they made
an alliance with the English, they would be “without Missionary, without the
Sacrament, without the Sacrifice, almost without any exercise of Religion,” and
would never accept this. Rasles was nevertheless concerned by the English at-
tempts to attract his brethren and to discredit the Catholic faith.41 The French
authorities also tended to be confident in this regard and even occasionally
recommended “leaving these Indians [in this case the Iroquois] at liberty in
Spiritualities, as we are assured they will select our Missionaries in preference
to English ministers.”42 But, ultimately, for the French colonial and religious
authorities, as well as for the Puritans, these attempts to manipulate reli-
gious allegiances were not unidirectional.
4 Native Perspectives: Religious and Political Identities

on the Frontier
Indeed, the natives themselves understood very well the political dimension of
religious conversion, and they were not easily tricked into adopting one creed
or the other. As de Carheil explained, “our savages are much more enlightened
than one thinks, and it is hard to conceal from their penetration anything in
the course of affairs that may injure or serve their interests.”43
Even if the natives did occasionally agree in various negotiations with the
English not to accept any Jesuit among them, they did tend to favor the Black
Robes.44 Although, on the Puritan side, Mather was quick to point out that
“tis a Specimen of the Popish Avarice that their Missionaries are very rarely
employ’d but where Bever and Silver and vast Riches are to be thereby gained,”
in their criticisms or declarations of fidelity, the natives usually tended to em-
phasize English rather than Jesuit greed.45 During a negotiation with the east-
ern Indians in 1701, the English offered to send them missionaries of the “true
faith.” The natives, in the English transcript, sounded surprised that anything
like this would be suggested, given, they claimed, that the English had never
41 Sébastien Rasles, “Lettre du Pere Sébastien Rasles […] À Monsieurs on neveu, 15 octobre
1722,” in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses […] Mémoires d’Amérique (Paris: J.G. Mérigot, 1781),
6:135–36. See also JR, 65:97.

42 dhny, 9:713.
43 Carheil, “Copie de la lettre écrite,” fol. 7v.
44 See, for example, Leder, Livingston Indian Records, 180, 192; dhny, 4:373.
45 Mather, Magnalia Christi, 204.
demonstrated any interest in their conversion, and replied that if the English
had taught them their own religion previously, “we should have embraced it
and detested the Religion which we now profess, but now being instructed by
the French we have promised to be true to God in our Religion, and it is this we
profess to stand by.”46
The natives tended to be skeptical of the English offers to send missionar-
ies. In 1700, for example, the Mohawks claimed that they “would be glad to see
some ministers come to instruct them,” but pointed out, as the commissioner
noted, that they
do admire that the English cannot as well send a Minister to instruct

them in the Christian Faith as the French do so many Jesuits among
their Indians; by which they do not only gain the reputation of mak-
ing their Indians, praying Indians, but keeps their Indians firm to them
and draw ours from us.47
Indeed, even the Mohawks who had previously been taught the principles of
the Protestant faith noted that the “weake and faint setting forward of that
greate worke hitherto among us, has occasioned our Brethren to be drawn
out of our Country to the French by their Preists.”48 The Catholic Mohawks,
for their part, invited by their countrymen to return to the Albany area in the
1690s, were clear in their demands. The priest there should teach them the
following principles:
1. forgiving of sins By the preist. 2. prayers for the dead. 3. That the mother
of Christ must be worshiped. 4. That the signe of the Crosse must be Used.
5. That the pope alone is ord[a]ined to speak with god. 6. That prayers
must be used befor the Images.49
Such statements clearly reflected their attachment to the doctrines of Ca-

tholicism, and it seems that the Jesuits were indeed very careful to warn their
brethren on the frontier about doctrinal differences. After the Dummer’s war
(1722–25), during a negotiation with the natives who had been instructed in
the Catholic faith by Rasles, a Wabanaki explained that the Jesuits had warned
46 dhm, 10:94, and Sébastien Rasles, “Lettre du Pere Sebastien Rasles […] À Monsieur son
frère, 12 Octobre 1723,” in Lettres édifiantes, 211–12.
47 dhny, 4:657. See also 747.
48 dhny, 3:771; Axtell, Invasion, 257.
49 Quoted in Axtell, Invasion, 256.
288 Ballériaux
them that the English would “compell us to Pray as the English Do, and not to
be aloude to use the Cross.” To this, Captain John Gyles (c.1680–1755) replied
that, contrary to the French, “they Compel non, but Parswad & Invite Ani that
will Com and Pray as we Do.”50 The natives were also frequently suspicious
of the Jesuits’ motives and even theology. Bommasseen, Mather’s interviewee,
had supposedly requested an interview with a Protestant minister because he
believed that the French “in the Christian Religion, which they taught the Indi-
ans, had Abused them.”51 But it seems that, as a general rule, the fact that the
Jesuits knew the language and lived on a daily basis in native villages secured
them more affection from the natives.
The natives were thus well aware of the confessional divide and of the cru-
cial role religion played in intercolonial conflicts. As a matter of fact, they knew
how much religion was linked to imperial goals, and they could not be eas-
ily manipulated. During a negotiation in 1701, for example, Onondaga Sachem
Dekanissore, explaining that the French and English “both make us madd wee
know not what side to choose” when it came to religion, arrived at the conclu-
sion that “those that sells their goods cheapest” would be allowed to send a
minister to instruct them.52 In 1702, the Mohawks agreed to receive a Protes-
tant minister rather than Jesuits, but only “as soon as the goods are cheaper
here […] for then we can afford to buy a good honest Coat to go to Church with-
all, which we cannot now, for it would be scandalous to come to Church with a
Bear Skinn on our backs.”53
The natives, if they were well aware of the complex frontier situation and
could use religious instruction to their advantage, were also able to reject it
altogether when they felt too much pressure. Ultimately, when negotiations
from both sides became too intense, they rejected both Catholic and Protes-
tant missionaries. The Onondaga justified such a decision to the English en-
voys two months after their last meeting, claiming that they did not want any
missionary since “you both have made us drunk withall your noise of pray-
ing wee must first come to our selves again.”54 The natives usually understood
that the colonial authorities’ insistence that they should receive missionaries
among them was an attempt at political domination.
50 dhm, 10:384.
51 Mather, Decennium, 127. See also Benjamin Colman, “Draft Letter to the President of the
Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, November 14, 1732,” Benjamin Col-
man Papers; http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/digitized/fa0288/b1-f19-i8#1 (ac-

cessed November 1, 2017).
52 dhny, 4:893–94.
53 Ibid., 4:987.
54 Ibid., 4:920.
But the natives’ reaction to religious demands during political negotia-

tions did not necessarily correspond to the realities of their contacts with the
missionaries on the frontier, whose work often took place in isolation from the
rest of colonial society.
5 Settlers and Missionaries: Segregation as a Missionary Strategy
Even if official strategies increasingly emphasized assimilation, that is, the link
between religious and national identities, and if missionaries became more
and more instrumental in enforcing these policies, they remained, as they
had been throughout the seventeenth century, highly critical of settlers and
crown officials. This means that, even when they actively participated in the
Anglicization or Francization of the natives with their missionary strategies,
they remained devoted to the ideal of segregation. For missionaries in general,
the natives could embrace Christianity or even the French or English identity
without necessarily having to be assimilated into the colonial community. This
is possibly where the most significant connection between Jesuits and Cal-
vinist missionaries lies. For both groups, conversion—or even a ssimilation—
was not about creating obedient colonial subjects, but about building godly
commonwealths. A focus on practical Christianity, piety, and exemplarity
was at the center of both Catholic and Calvinist missionaries’ vision of this
commonwealth.
Despite the incendiary rhetoric constantly used by Calvinist and Catholic
missionaries against one another, they shared many ideals and often used
similar strategies of conversion, based on the principles of segregation, pro-
gressive habituation into Christian morals, and good example. These analo-
gous methods illustrate their common indebtedness to Christian humanism
and the idea of practical Christianity. Missions were perfect grounds to put
these ideals into practice and allowed for broad-scale experimentations with
the Erasmian idea of a reformation of manners. Competition and debate were
omnipresent between the two confessions, but the comparison of their work
reveals clear similarities in their understanding of conversion and their rela-
tionship with European settlers and colonial authorities.
Missionaries in both areas relentlessly complained about the bad influ-
ence of European settlers. The recriminations against their own settlers were
very similar to the ones they voiced against other colonists. In New France,
Father Claude Chauchetière (1645–1709), for example, frequently complained
of the settlers’ “licentiousness” and their sale of alcohol to the natives, which
“destroy[ed] the missionaries’ work.” Missionaries from both colonies insisted
290 Ballériaux
that drunkenness among the natives was caused by the greed of European trad-
ers, who made sure to get the natives intoxicated in order to obtain better deals.
Alcohol was such an issue that, according to Chauchetière, the fathers desired
“to see ourselves so far away from the French with our beloved savages that we
may no longer have such stumbling-blocks.”55 French missionaries were also
extremely vocal against the coureurs de bois. These were men who, rather than
waiting for the natives to come and trade in European settlements, ventured
into the forests in order to get more advantageous bargains for furs, without a
permit from the government, thus encroaching on the J esuits’ territory. For the
Jesuit Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682–1761), the youth of the coun-
try, by going to trade with the natives (être en courses), became accustomed
to “debauchery” and was thus “unable to bear any constraints.” The Jesuits
greatly resented these traders, who were often the only French people in mis-
sion territories. The coureurs intoxicated and robbed the natives repeatedly,
and for this reason the natives took revenge i ndiscriminately on the French on
every occasion. Soldiers only made the situation worse, as they p articipated
in the debauchery. The Jesuit Claude Dablon (1619–97), on a visit to Green
Bay, Wisconsin (Baie des Puans), reported that the natives were “ill-treated
by the French […] & especially the Soldiers, by whom they claimed to have
been wronged and insulted.”56 As unregulated traders, soldiers sent to frontier
areas to take care of the Iroquois problem could prove difficult to control. They
traded directly with the natives (in exchange for liquor), escaped the control of
the authorities, and were considered by the Jesuits to have a detrimental effect
on the natives.
As missionaries in French possessions, many Puritans quickly realized that
cohabitation between settlers and converts had its problems. Eliot, the most
prominent Puritan missionary, decided to settle the natives in places “some
what remote from the English.” In 1657, Eliot lamented about these problem-
atic settlers: “Our poor Indians are much molested in most places, in their pro-
ceedings in way of civility.”57 Eliot, who during the establishment of his first
55 Claude Chauchetière, in JR, 64:144–46.

56 Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle France:
Avec le journal historique d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique Septentrionnale,
6 vols. (Paris: Chez Pierre-François Giffart, 1744), 5:132; “Mémoire (d’un missionnaire)
pour le maintien intégral des ordres du roi prohibant la traite dans les bois,” 1697, anom,
col C11A 15, fols. 265, 268, 271; Claude Dablon, Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remar-
quable aux missions des peres de la Compagnie de Jesus en la Nouvelle France, les années
1670. & 1671 (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1672), 160 (incorrectly paginated as 158).
57 John Eliot, The Glorious Progress of the Gospel, amongst the Indians in New England, ed.
Edward Winslow (London: Printed for Hannah Allen, 1649) 6–7; Eliot, “Letter to His Much
“praying town,” Natick, came into conflict with the neighboring town of Ded-
ham, requested to the United Colonies “that in all your respective Colonies you
would take care that due Accommodation of Lands and Waters may be allowed
them […] and suffer not the English to strip them of all their Lands.” According
to the missionary, the settlers’ aggressive quest for land had caused the natives
to become distrustful of Christianity. In his series of dialogues, “partly Histori-
cal […] and partly Instructive,” between native proselytizers and unconverted
natives, Eliot depicted a skeptical kinsman reacting to Christian notions of sin,
heaven, and hell, suggesting that “English men have invented these Stories to
amaze and scare us out of our old Customes, and bring us to stand in awe of
them, that they might wipe us of our Lands, and places too.”58 Eliot fought
aggressively for the natives’ rights. In his defense of the Natick settlement, he
furiously claimed that the settlers’ encroachments were detrimental to conver-
sion: “These actings of the English doe make the prophane Indians laugh at the
praying Indians, & at praying to God […] to Natike they dare not come because
of Dedhams actings.”59 As in New France, the sale of liquor was also believed
to be an important problem, although responses changed over time. Drunken-
ness was often caused, according to the general court, “by some such of the
traders as too much affect & regard their owne profitt.”60
The idea of the “bad example” of European settlers on native neophytes,
which was a recurring theme in missionary writings, resulted in the missionar-
ies’ insistence that it was necessary to separate the two groups and establish
Honoured and Respected Friend, Major ATHERTON […] This 4th of the 4th, 57,” Collec-
tions of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1st series, 2 (Boston, 1793): 9. See also Edward
Winslow, Good Nevves from New-England: Or a True Relation of Things Very Remarkable at
the Plantation of Plimoth in Nevv-England (London: I.D. for William Bladen and John Bel-
lamie, 1624), fol. A3v; Increase Mather, An Earnest Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-
England, to Hearken to the Voice of God in This Late and Present DISPENSATIONS (Boston:
John Foster, 1676), 16.
58 John Eliot, Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in That Great Service of Christ, in Call-
ing Home Their Country-Men to the Knowledge of GOD, and of Themselves, and of IESUS
CHRIST (Cambridge, MA, 1671), fol. A2v, 1, 7.
59 Don Gleason Hill, ed., The Early Records of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1659–1673
(Dedham: Office of the Dedham Transcript, 1894), 4:260.
60 Shurtleff, Records of the Governor, 3:369. See also: 1:106; 2:85, 258; 3:425–26; 4.2:297, 564;
John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New England (London: Printed for G. Wid-
dowes, 1675), 138–39; William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-
England (Boston: John Foster, 1677), 77; Daniel Gookin, The Historical Collections of the
Indians in New England (Boston: Belknap and Hall, 1792), 11; John Eliot, A Brief Narrative
of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England (London: Printed for
John Allen, 1671), 8; Eliot, “Rev. John Eliot’s Records of the First Church in Roxbury, Mass.”
(1677), New England Historical and Genealogical Register 33 (1879): 415.
292 Ballériaux
isolated villages for their converts, where they could be taught progressively
in the ways of the Gospel by imitation and good example. Missionaries identi-
fied different issues in their particular contexts, yet they all related these issues
to one common problem: greed. This criticism was reiterated over and over
again. What was expected from settlers, as well as from natives, were behav-
ioral changes and the adoption of Christianity as the practice of virtue.
6 The Christian Community: Jesuit and Puritan Political Thought
From this perspective, both Jesuit and Calvinist missionaries considered that
what mattered most was not the inclusion of the natives into the French or
English colonial worlds, but the creation of truly Christian communities. The
bad behavior of European settlers, both from their own nation and others, was
constantly pointed out as a hindrance to the creation of these communities,
and missionaries from both sides either organized their converts in segregated
“praying towns” or settled in native villages, where they adopted their way of
life.
The notion of a truly Christian community was expressed in Jesuit writings
through the idea of adoption, which described both their own admittance into
native tribes and the acceptance of converts into the Christian community.
The concept of adoption, which featured prominently in Jesuit writings, did
not rely on national, but on religious allegiances. Jesuit superior Paul le Jeune
(1591–1664) had already made this clear in 1639, when he related the declara-
tions of Algonquian convert Ignace Amiskouapeou:
Some of my people accuse me of becoming French, of abandoning my

nation, & I answer, that I am not French, nor savage, but that I want to be
God’s child. All the French or their Captains could not save my soul, I do
not believe in them, but in the one who created them.61
The French Jesuits combined their own integration in native communities

with the inclusion of the natives in the Catholic Church. This system was re-
ciprocal. As Beschefer explained about his arrival in a Huron village, his own
“baptism,” meaning his incorporation into the native community, during which
missionaries were given a new name, occurred after he himself “baptized two
61 Paul Le Jeune, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1639 (Paris:
Sébastien Cramoisy, 1640), 93–94.
savages.”62 This process meant that the bonds that tied missionaries to their
converts did not rely on national values, but on a combination of Catholic
and native traditions. While French authorities wanted to make “one people
and one blood” of the natives and French, for the Jesuits, the real ties of kinship
lay in the Christian, rather than the French, community. As Huron converts
claimed in Sainte-Marie, “the Name of Christian is a stronger tie than the bonds
of Nature.”63 Whereas the absolutist and imperial design of the French crown
favored national assimilation, for the Jesuits, incorporation into the Christian
community did not necessarily imply assimilation in the French community
and could also allow for the preservation of certain native customs.
In Massachusetts, what constituted real belonging in the community for
Puritans was the creation of a civil and religious covenant through which the
members would independently manage their political, ecclesiastical, and judi-
cial affairs. The heart of both religious and political life was the congregation,
and this applied to converted natives as well. Thus, when Natick was founded,
the natives entered “into a Covenant with God, and each other, to be the Lords
people, and to be governed by the word of the Lord in all things.”64 Admis-
sion to freemanship in the colony, which was dependent on admission into
a church, both for natives and Europeans, was much more relevant in terms
of political power and participation than the king’s approval.65 If, by treaties,
the natives were never really integrated into the fabric of New England’s po-
litical life, the settlers differentiated between “domiciled” and other natives.
Domiciled natives were considered to have willingly submitted to the colo-
nies’ government and laws.66 Domiciled natives would be allowed to settle a
town and a church, and this is what really constituted the creation of a human
community for the leaders of the Bay. This congregational vision of a godly
62 JR, 50:170.
63 Jérôme Lalemant, Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1642, ed.
Barthélemy Vimont (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1643), 20.
64 John Eliot, Strength out of Weakness: Or a Glorious Manifestation of the Further Progress
of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England, ed. Henry Whitfield (London: M. Sim-
mons, 1652), 10.
65 James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1978), 65–105.
66 James H. Merrell, “‘The Customes of Our Countrey’: Indians and Colonists in Early
America,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, ed.
Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1991), 117–56, here 119, and Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King
Philip’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 224. For New France, see
Maurice Ratelle, L’application des lois et règlements français chez les Autochtones de 1627 à
1760 (Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, 1991), 22 and Havard, “Les forcer,” 987.
294 Ballériaux
commonwealth, which applied to both settler and native converted communi-

ties, was starkly contrasted to monarchical understandings of the place of the
colonies within the body politic and emphasized not political subjection, but
active participation in the religious and civil community.67

If missionaries were indeed perfect instruments to support national inter-
ests in frontier areas, their relationship with representatives of the crown, es-
pecially soldiers, was often complicated, as they did not always agree on the
best way to deal with the natives. During King Philip’s war (1675–78), Eliot
complained of the influence of soldiers on converted natives, as they “made
them drink, & bred thereby such an habit to love strong drink, that it proved
an horrible snare unto us.” Eliot claimed that the natives became so addicted
to alcohol that they would spend all their wages on it, and that “quarreling &
fighting were the sad effects of strong drink.”68
In New France, commandants of the garrisons posted in frontier areas,
who represented the authority of the king, had the power to deal with indig-
enous populations in his name, and their vision of colonial society was often
in contradiction with that of the Jesuits.69 Members of the order frequently
complained about the presence of soldiers in frontier areas, whose sole oc-
cupations, according to de Carheil, were drinking, trading, whoring, and gam-
bling. “If you want to keep us among [the natives], and to keep and support
us there as missionaries,” said de Carheil, “[…] we must be delivered from the
Commandants and from their garrisons, which, far from being necessary, are,
on the contrary, so pernicious that we can truly say that they are the greatest
scourge of our missions.” De Carheil complained that soldiers and traders con-
spired against the Jesuits and made sure they were disliked by all the people,
so that “the missionaries are reduced to Silence, to inaction, to impotence, and
to general deprivation of all authority.”70 These dissentions reflect the tensions
created by the coexistence of two different understandings of conversion in
the early colonies.
7 Conclusion
If we take their religious motives seriously, strong correlations appear in the

work of Catholic and Calvinist missionaries. Because the Christian polity was
67 See Michael P. Winship, Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
68 Eliot, “Rev. John Eliot’s Records,” 415.
69 Denys Delâge, “Modèles coloniaux, métaphores familiales et changements de régime en
Amérique du Nord, xviie–xviiie siècles,” Les cahiers des dix 60 (2006): 19–78, here 27.
70 JR, 65:194, 202 (trans. 195, 203).
their main concern, their missions sometimes displayed striking similarities,

and their—frequently tense—relationship with other imperial practices was
also informed by comparable anxieties. Remarkably, missionaries and their
converts all over America were faced with hostility not only from unconverted
natives but also from settlers who rejected their ideal of segregation and pro-
tection of the natives. The insistence of all missionaries on segregation illus-
trates their belief in the possibility of elaborating a Christian polity outside of
what they perceived as the decadent influences of European society. Through
this process, they all uttered harsh criticisms of the settlers’ behavior. Promi-
nent among these criticisms were greed and pride, themes that were central to
the political and religious criticisms of the avant-garde of the Protestant and
Catholic Reformations in Europe. Such comments were part of a long intellec-
tual tradition of social commentary condemning immoral European behavior.
Reproaches were not only targeted at sinful individuals but also at common
practices that were believed to perpetuate these traits, such as uncontrolled
trade in New France or the indiscriminate purchase of land and settlement
in New England. Lack of charity toward native converts was a common trope.
These similarities demonstrate that missionary writings should be considered
as a specific genre, a genre that was strongly influenced by a European tradition
of social commentary and distinguished them from official writings on the col-
onies or from other settlers’ writings. But missionary accounts also show how
these European concepts were deployed and transformed in the New World.
Missionary writings touched upon human nature and the ways to cultivate
its most virtuous aspects. Frequent contrasts between the natives’ simple life-
style on the missions and European excesses highlighted the missionaries’ in-
sistence that Europe bred greed, luxury, idleness, and pride. This admiration
for simplicity relied on an understanding of Christian piety that had its roots
in late medieval Christianity and the humanist tradition. Both Jesuits and Cal-
vinists manifested a clear Christocentrism (in the necessity to follow the ex-
ample of Christ and to surrender to his power), as well as primitive ideals (in
the necessity to return to the purity of the primitive church), which were influ-
enced by the Devotio Moderna and Thomas à Kempis’s (c.1380–1471) Imitation
of Christ (c.1418–27).71
As historian John van Engen has shown, the Devotio Moderna focused on
the “methodical remaking of the self” and had a particularly strong influence
71 For Puritans, see Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimen
sion in Puritanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 52; Patrick
Collinson, The Reformation: A History (New York: Random House, 2006), 22–23. For the
Society of Jesus, see John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1993), 264–66.
296 Ballériaux
on John Calvin (1509–64) and Ignatius of Loyola.72 The obsession with self-
examination and piety that can be found in the writings of the Devotio Mod-
erna is also a typical feature of Puritan and Jesuit missiologies. Although the
influence of humanism and Erasmianism on the Society of Jesus was complex

and ambiguous, humanist motives recurred in both Catholic and Calvinist
missionaries’ understanding of piety.73 Both Puritans and Jesuits addressed
themes such as the importance of piety in daily life, of pastoral care, of educa-
tion, and of the active, rather than contemplative, dimension of the faith.74
These ideas were indeed present in missionary writings of both confessions
and translated into the ideas of civility or political life. By the seventeenth cen-
tury, these terms meant the good order and administration observed in a com-
monwealth, but they could also mean good manners at the individual level and
applied to order in family life as well. As historian Anthony Pagden has shown,
both terms, civil and politic, were used synonymously and were antonyms of
the term barbarian.75 As Pagden explains, the term civility “indicate[s] those
values associated with the life lived in cities, in ordered communities with
recognized social structures and fixed locations, lives which, to use the corre-
sponding set of Greek derivatives, were also ‘politic.’”76 Early conversion strat-
egies emphasized the process of making virtuous and active citizens living in
regulated communities.
By contrast, state policies insisted on assimilation and subjection. The lan-
guage of paternalism was prominent, and absolutist ideals were increasingly
conceived as the only way to properly govern composite monarchies, a theme
that was particularly important for the colonial world. According to absolut-
ist theories, “agreement between people was possible only if they submitted
to a single government which united them all.”77 Man, because he was fallen,
72 John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio moderna and the
World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 303,
315–19.
73 O’Malley, First Jesuits, 253–64; Robert A. Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence
of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
74 John W. O’Malley, “Introduction,” Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of To-
ronto Press, 1988), 66:ix–li, here xxi–xxxiii; Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Pu-
ritan Social Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Evennett, Spirit of the
Counter-Reformation.
75 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Com-
parative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 15.
76 Anthony Pagden, “The ‘Defence of Civilization’ in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory,” His-

tory of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (1988): 33–45, here 33.
77 Johann P. Sommerville, “Absolutism and Royalism,” in The Cambridge History of Politi-
cal Thought 1450–1700, ed. J.H. [James Henderson] Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 347–73, here 351.
required a coercive power to control his nature, and the absolute sovereign
was the great unifier capable of leading the mystic body of the monarchy. This
theory was in sharp contrast with the type of self-government established on
the early missions of both Calvinist and Catholic missionaries in frontier areas.
This perspective from the New World complicates the idea of the instru-
mentality of religion in the birth of the modern state.78 Indeed, the most fer-
vent missionaries of both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations closely
associated civility with the practice of Christianity and developed relatively
independent political communities of converted natives, which were in many
respects in contradiction with the development of the absolutist state. But the
study of the evolution and entanglements of Christian missions with colonial
authorities, settlers, and other colonies also illuminates the shared characteris-
tics of empire-building and highlights the prominent and crucial role religion
played in the dynamics and conceptualization of empire. These entanglements
illustrate the complexity of political, religious, and intellectual interactions in
the New World and the fact that missions among the natives at the margins
of empire were a space where European thought could be and was, in fact,
enacted and crystallized, but also transformed.
Bibliography
Axtell, James. The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Baxter, James Phinney, ed. Documentary History of the State of Maine. 24 vols. Portland:
Bailey and Noyes et al., 1869–1916.
Belmessous, Saliha. “Être français en Nouvelle-France: Identité française et identité co-
loniale aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles.” French Historical Studies 27, no. 3
(2004): 507–40.
Blanchet, Jean, ed. Collection de manuscrits contenant lettres, mémoires, et autres docu-
ments historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle-France. Québec: A. Côté et Cie, 1883.
Bozeman, Theodore Dwight. To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritan-
ism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Brown, John. On Religious Liberty: A Sermon, Preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral. London:
Davis and Reymers, 1763.
78 See, for example, Wolfgang Reinhard, “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegom-

ena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68
(1977): 226–52; Heinz Schilling, Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung (Gütersloh: Güter-
sloher Verlagshaus, 1981).
298 Ballériaux
Carré, Ezechiel. Echantillon de la doctrine que les jésuites ensegnent aus sauvages du
Nouveau Monde, pour les convertir tirée de leurs propres Manuscrits […]. Boston:
Samuel Green, 1690.
Cogley, Richard W. John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War. Cam-
Colbert, Jean Baptiste. Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, publiés d’après les
ordres de l’empereur. Edited by Pierre Clément. 7 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale,
1865.
Collinson, Patrick. The Reformation: A History. New York: Random House, 2006.
Dablon, Claude. Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable aux missions des peres
de la Compagnie de Jesus en la Nouvelle France, les années 1670. & 1671, Paris: Sébas-
tien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1672.
De Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier. Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle
France: Avec le journal historique d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique
Septentrionnale. 6 vols. Paris: Chez Pierre-François Giffart, 1744.
Delâge, Denys. “Modèles coloniaux, métaphores familiales et changements de régime
en Amérique du Nord, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles.” Les cahiers des dix 60 (2006): 19–78.
Eliot, John. The Glorious Progress of the Gospel, amongst the Indians in New England.
Edited by Edward Winslow. London: Printed for Hannah Allen, 1649.
Eliot, John. Strength out of Weakness: Or a Glorious Manifestation of the Further Prog-
ress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-England. Edited by Henry Whitfield.
London: M. Simmons, 1652.
Eliot, John. A Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New-
England. London: Printed for John Allen, 1671a.
Eliot, John. Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in That Great Service of Christ, in Call-
ing Home Their Country-Men to the Knowledge of GOD, and of Themselves, and of
IESUS CHRIST. Cambridge, MA, 1671b.
Engen, John Van. Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio moderna and the
World of the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Evennett, H. Outram. The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation: The Birkbeck Lectures in
Ecclesiastical History Given in the University of Cambridge in May 1951. Edited by John
Bossy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Gookin, Daniel. The Historical Collections of the Indians in New England. Boston:
Belknap and Hall, 1792.
Haefeli, Evan, and Owen Stanwood. “Jesuits, Huguenots, and the Apocalypse: The Ori-
gins of America’s First French Book.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Soci-
ety 116, no. 1 (2006): 59–119.

Havard, Gilles. “‘Les forcer à devenir cytoyens’: État, sauvages et citoyenneté en
Nouvelle-France (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle).” Annales histoire sciences sociales 5 (2009):
985–1018.
Havard, Gilles. “‘Protection’ and ‘Unequal Alliance’: The French Conception of Sov-
ereignty over Indians in New France.” In French and Indians in the Heart of North
America, 1630–1815, edited by Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale, 113–37. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013.

Havard, Gilles, and Cécile Vidal. Histoire de l’Amérique française. Paris: Flammarion,
2008.
Hill, Don Gleason, ed. The Early Records of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1659–
1673. Dedham: Office of the Dedham Transcript, 1894.
Hopkins, Samuel. Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatonic Indians. Boston: S.
Kneeland, 1753.
Howard, Robert. History of the Archdiocese of Boston in the Various Stages of Its Develop-
ment, 1604 to 1943. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944.
Hubbard, William. A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England. Boston:
John Foster, 1677.
Josselyn, John. An Account of Two Voyages to New England. London: Printed for G. Wid-
dowes, 1675.
Kettner, James H. The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870. Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1978.
Kidd, Thomas S. The Protestant Interest: New England after Puritanism. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2004.
Kim, Keechang. “L’étranger chez Jean Bodin, l’étranger chez nous.” Revue historique de
droit français et étranger 76, no. 1 (1998): 75–92.
Lalemant, Jérôme. Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1642.
Edited by Barthélemy Vimont. Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1643.
Leder, Lawrence H., ed. The Livingston Indian Records, 1666–1723. Gettysburg: Pennsyl-
vania Historical Association, 1956.
Le Jeune, Paul. Relation de ce qui s’est passé en la Nouvelle France en l’année 1639. Paris:
Sébastien Cramoisy, 1640.
Maryks, Robert A. Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the
Adoption of Moral Probabilism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
Mather, Increase. An Earnest Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-England, to Hearken
to the Voice of God in This Late and Present DISPENSATIONS. Boston: John Foster,
1676.
Mather, Cotton. The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated. Boston: S. Green,
1690.
Mather, Cotton. The Triumphs of the Reformed Religion in AMERICA. Boston: Benja-
min Harris and John Allen, 1691.

Mather, Cotton. Decennium Luctuosum: An History of Remarkable Occurrences, in the
Long War which NEW-ENGLAND Hath Had with the Indian Salvages. Boston: B.
Green, and J. Allen, for Samuel Phillips, 1699a.
300 Ballériaux
Mather, Cotton. The Faith of the Fathers […] Chiefly, to Engage the Jewish Nation, unto
the Religion of Their Patriarchs. Boston: B. Green and J. Allen, 1699b.
Mather, Cotton. La fe del Christiano: En veyntequatro articulos de la institucion de
CHRISTO. Boston, 1699c.

Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the Ecclesiastical History of
N
ew-England. London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1702.
Mather, Cotton. Another Tongue Brought In, to Confess the Great Saviour of the World:
Or, Some Communications of Christianity, Put into a Tongue Used among the Iroquois
Indians in America. Boston: B. Green, 1707.
Mather, Cotton. India Christiana: A Discourse Delivered unto the Commissioners, for the
Propagation of the Gospel among the American Indians. Boston: B. Green, 1721.
Merrell, James H. “‘The Customes of Our Countrey’: Indians and Colonists in Early
America.” In Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire,
edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, 117–56. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1991.
O’Callaghan, E.B. [Edmund Bailey], ed. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the
State of New-York. 15 vols. Albany: Weed, Parson and Co., 1853–87.
O’Malley, John W. “To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jerónimo Nadal and the Jesuit
Vocation.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 16, no. 2 (1984): 1–20.
O’Malley, John W. “Introduction.” In Collected Works of Erasmus, 66:ix–li. Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1988.
Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Com-
parative Ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Pagden, Anthony. “The ‘Defence of Civilization’ in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory.”
History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (1988): 33–45.
Ratelle, Maurice. L’application des lois et règlements français chez les Autochtones de
1627 à 1760. Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, 1991.
Reinhard, Wolfgang. “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu einer
Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977):
226–52.
Saltonstall, Nathaniel. A Continuation of the State of New England; Being a Farther Ac-
count of the Indian Warr. London: T.M. for Dorman Newman, 1676.
Schilling, Heinz. Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag-
shaus, 1981.
Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., ed. Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts
Bay in New England. 5 vols. Boston: W. White, 1853–54.

Sommerville, Johann P. “Absolutism and Royalism.” In The Cambridge History of Po-
litical Thought 1450–1700, edited by J.H. [James Henderson] Burns and Mark Goldie,
347–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Stanwood, Owen. “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688–1689,

and the Making of an Anglo-American Empire.” Journal of British Studies 46, no. 3
(2007): 481–508.
Stanwood, Owen. The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revo-
lution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Stoddard, Solomon. Question, Whether God Is Not Angry with the Country for Doing so
Little towards the Conversion of the Indians? Boston: B. Green, 1723.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. 73 vols. Cleve-
land: Burrows Bros. Co., 1896–1901.
Todd, Margo. Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
Winship, Michael P. Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill. Cam-
Winslow, Edward. Good Nevves from New-England: Or a True Relation of Things Very
Remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in Nevv-England. London: I.D. for William
Bladen and John Bellamie, 1624.
Chapter 14
“Americans, you are marked for their prey!” Jesuits

and the Nineteenth-century Nativist Impulse
Robert Emmett Curran
1 Plus le change, plus le meme
In February 2017, the New York Times ran a piece on the strange alignment
of President Donald Trump’s (in office 2017–) former chief strategist, Steve
Bannon (b.1953), with certain Vatican officials opposed to the progressive
policies of Pope Francis (r.2013–). The author noted that among the convic-
tions Bannon and this Vatican bloc share is the belief that the modern age
is witnessing a fundamental clash of civilizations—Muslim East versus the
Judeo-Christian West. Bannon, of course, has a long history of promoting
white identity and Islamophobic politics. It is the height of irony that a Catho-
lic, as Bannon identifies himself, should be a major player in this new nativism,
when one considers how much Catholics were portrayed by the old nativists
of the nineteenth century as the major threat to the United States, with Jesuits
at the core of the Catholic threat. Now there are neo-nativists, a fair number of
them Catholics, fixated on another religion, Islam, as the new subversive ele-
ment in US politics, and one of the Muslim world’s chief allies, so these new
conspiracy-mongers posit, is the Jesuit pope. Plus le change, plus le meme.1
2 Citizenship in the Colonial Era
From our colonial era to the present day, nativism has been a particularly vir-
ulent force in American life. As John Higham defined it in his classic study,
Strangers in the Land (1955), nativism denotes “intense opposition to an in-
ternal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e. ‘un-American’) connections.”
Higham noted that anti-Catholicism is the oldest form of this xenophobia, but
that the linkage held up only where Catholics were seen to be agents of foreign
1 Jason Horowitz, “Steve Bannon Carries Battles to Another Influential Hub: The Vatican,” New
York Times (February 7, 2017), A1.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_016
“Americans, you are marked for their prey!” 303
interests bent on undermining, if not destroying, this republic.2 More times

than not, it was the Jesuits who provided the foreign connection as the surrep-
titious agents of the pope and other despotic Catholic rulers in Europe, using
their influence to undermine the great experiment in democracy. The Jesuit,

after all, was the epitome of what it meant to be un-American.
That Jesuit status as the nucleus of the Catholic threat to the Protestant
enterprise in the United States goes back to the beginnings of the Catholic
experience in British America. Once George Calvert (1579/80–1632) brought in
Andrew White (1579–1656) to assist him in planning for his American colony in
the Chesapeake area in 1630, the Society became the public face of Catholicism
in Britain’s North American colonies, a position it held until the suppression of
the Society of Jesus in 1773. Uprisings against Catholic rulers in Maryland and
New York in the seventeenth century inevitably included Jesuits among their
targets, with tragic results in some instances.
In the aftermath of the 1689 revolutions in New York and Maryland, the long
Penal Era in British America began for Catholics, a nearly ninety-year stretch
in which Catholics were put under the same penal laws that they had, at least
in part, fled England to escape. They did not, however, go quietly into the night,
and Jesuits were in the middle of the resistance. In 1720, for instance, Peter
Attwood (1682–1734), the superior of the Jesuit mission in Maryland, wrote a
paper as the representative of the Catholic minority that systematically de-
stroyed the argument that Catholics could not qualify for citizenship since
Catholics were not true Englishmen, not being able or willing to take the neces-
sary oaths of loyalty to their monarch as king and head of the church. Attwood
used Maryland’s own history to demonstrate that, from the colony’s beginning,
its charter and legislation had guaranteed to Catholics all the rights and liber-
ties enjoyed by British citizens both at home and in the colonies, rights and
liberties that had been unjustly denied them since 1689.
Despite Attwood’s polemics, Catholics remained an outcast minority
through the colonial period. In the 1750s, there was a sharp increase of anti-
Catholicism in Maryland that anticipated an epidemic of nativism a century
later. Then, as in its later manifestation, nativism was driven by a surge of Cath-
olic immigration, plus groundless fears of native Catholics conspiring with the
encroaching French and their Indian allies. Among the punitive legislation
passed by the Maryland Assembly in the mid-1750s was a bill authorizing the
seizure of Jesuit property. Authorities had convinced themselves that the Jesu-
its were the head and soul of the Maryland Catholic community. To force them
2 John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992
[1955]), 4.
304 Curran
out of Maryland by seizing the property they depended on to support their

ministry was to render any Catholic threat impotent. Guarding against just
such a turn, the Jesuits had already put their lands into trust some years earlier.
Two decades later, Maryland, along with twelve other colonies in British
America, was at war with Mother England. In the revolution, American Catho-
lics, especially in the Catholic heartland of Maryland, proved remarkably loyal,
despite their marginalized status. Indeed, the Catholic community, including
some ex-Jesuits, constituting barely one percent of the population, made dis-
proportionate contributions to the success of that revolution. In the winning
of the war, no factor loomed larger than the alliance the colonies struck with
Catholic France in 1778. So in the peace that followed five years later, the new
nation honored that Catholic service. Among the fundamental changes in-
troduced was the recognition of the freedom to practice the religion of one’s
choice as a common right. No longer was there a correlation between the Prot-
estant religion and citizenship. In the new republic, what mattered was not
what religion you professed but whether you were a good citizen committed
to promoting the common good. Catholics were at last no longer strangers in
an alien land but, as John Carroll (1735–1815) put it in 1791, “in a country now
become our own.”3
3 Jesuit Refugees and an Educational Empire
For nearly the first three decades of the United States, there were no Jesuits
present. Then, in 1805, Pope Pius vii (r.1800–23) granted five former Jesuits per-
mission to rejoin the remnant of the Society in White Russia, which, thanks to
Catherine the Great (r.1762–96), had survived the suppression. Then, in 1814,
the pope universally restored the Society of Jesus. That prompted John Adams
(1735–1826) to inform Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) that the Jesuit presence in
the United States was “more numerous than everybody knows. Shall we not
have swarms of them here, in as many shapes and disguises as ever a king of
the gypsies […] himself assumed?” But, if the rhetoric was alarmist, Adams
respected the principle of religious liberty that had been one of the fruits of
the American Revolution and understood that it was the legacy of Catholics
as much as anyone else’s. Still, Adams wondered what these enemies of re-
publicanism would do to undermine the principles upon which this republic
3 John Carroll Sermon, May 1791, in American Catholic Sermon Collection, Georgetown Uni-
versity Library Booth Family Center for Special Collections.
had been founded.4 Jefferson, whose opinion of Jesuits was even worse than
Adams’s, was more optimistic about republicanism’s strength in combatting
any Jesuit invasion. “Education and free discussion” were, to Jefferson, the “an-
tidotes” to any anti-republican schemes the Jesuits might unleash.5

By 1816, when Adams and Jefferson exchanged their sentiments about the
Jesuits, the revived Maryland mission had been quietly growing for over a de-
cade. There were now forty-five Jesuits, hardly a swarm. More troubling was
their foreign origin: Ireland, the Southern Netherlands, the German states,
France. That pattern would remain through the 1820s. Then, as the new Je-
suit colleges in the states increasingly generated vocations to the Society, the
number of native-born Jesuits steadily surpassed the foreigners. But in the late
1840s came a new wave from Italy, Switzerland, and the German states, one
unprecedented in its size as scores fled the revolutions rocking Europe, seeking
sanctuary in Jesuit provinces and missions across the United States. Around
seventy found refuge in the Maryland province alone. By 1851, they made up
about a third of the membership in the province. This new manpower allowed
a major expansion of Jesuit colleges across the United States; in the course of
the century, no fewer than twenty-five Jesuit colleges were founded, all but two
by immigrant Jesuits.6
When most of the displaced Jesuits returned to Europe after the old political
order was restored, many of the best and the brightest of the asylum-seekers
were allowed to remain in the United States. That cadre formed an intellec-
tual critical mass that set the direction and character of the Maryland province
over the next half century. The same pattern prevailed elsewhere, from Mis-
souri to California.
4 Catholic Growth Menaces Manifest Destiny
Jesuit growth in the first half of the nineteenth century was a microcosm of the
Catholic community in general. As late as the century’s second decade, Catho-
lics were still a very insignificant presence in the United States, numbering but
one of every sixty-five Americans. By the eve of the Civil War (1861–65), Catho-
lics had become one-seventh of the population. Catholicism was suddenly the
4 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Quincy, May 6, 1816, in The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles
Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), 10:219.
5 Jefferson to Adams, Monticello, August 1, 1816, in Adams, Works, 10:223.
6 John T. McGreevy, American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made
Modern Catholicism Global (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 153.
306 Curran
largest of the Christian denominations. Conversions, territorial acquisitions,

and immigration were the major causes of this seismic change in the religious
demographics.7
Of these, the chief engine of growth for the Catholic Church in America
was immigration. Between 1830 and 1860, nearly three million people entered
the United States, more than the country had known during its entire previous
two and a quarter centuries. Of this tidal wave, mostly from Ireland and the
German states, Catholics constituted about ninety-five percent of the Irish and
at least a third of the Germans. And since an overwhelming majority of them
concentrated their settlements in urban areas in the northeast, the center of
Catholic America changed dramatically, from the largely rural enclaves on the
upper rim of the South, to a heavily urban arc stretching northeast from Cin-
cinnati to Boston. Not only were there suddenly a great many more Catholics;
they were much more visible than they had ever been, a development that
many Americans found very troubling.
The major resistance to this Catholic influx came from the Protestant
evangelical community, a community that itself was experiencing enormous
growth, generated by the Second Great Awakening, the religious revival that
spread like wildfire across the United States. One of the consequences of the
Awakening was a renewal of the Puritan conviction that the United States
was an elect nation, one with the special responsibility of establishing the
“Protestant Empire” that would harness the agencies founded by evangelical
Christians, ranging from the American Bible Society to the common school
movement, all nurturing the culture that would finally make Americans a
chosen people. But by the 1830s, a floodtide of immigrants was challenging
the realization of that empire, immigrants whose Catholic background made
them utterly unfit to qualify as citizens but very susceptible to authoritarians
committed to undermining the United States.
5 The Protestant Counter-Attack: Nativism
The thirty years leading to the Civil War saw an unprecedented profusion of
anti-Catholic activity, including a cottage industry of publications sounding
7 In the fifteen years before the Civil War, there were perhaps as many as sixty thousand con-
verts. To the public eye, there were a disproportionate number from the middle to upper
rungs of American society, especially among the Episcopalians, converts like Elizabeth Ann
Seton (1774–1821), or the Barber or Connelly families. Territorial acquisitions of the Catholic-
rich areas of California and New Mexico brought another sixty thousand or so.
the alarm of Rome’s crusade to destroy US democracy, assaults on churches

and convents, street brawls that became bloodier as Catholic immigration be-
came heavier, and a national anti-Catholic political party. In a republic that
based its national identity not on blood but on a set of principles, how could it
integrate a group distinguished by apparently alien values? The nativists had
rather a firm opinion about that issue, one in which the Jesuits occupied a very
prominent place.8
In his 1832 encyclical Mirari vos, Pope Gregory xvi (r.1831–46) had given
Americans what seemed to be convincing proof of Catholic hostility to Amer-
ica’s core values. In the wake of yet another revolution in France that brought
mass killings and terrorizing of priests, nuns, and royalists in general, Gregory
admonished the “shameless lovers of liberty” for placing ideals like freedom
of speech, conscience, and the press above civil order and religious truth. The
pontiff’s anathemas would provide fodder for nativists for decades to come.
The first Protestant leader to sound the alarm of a Roman conspiracy was
Lyman Beecher (1775–1863), one of the chief progenitors of the Second Great
Awakening and patriarch of arguably the most important evangelical family in
nineteenth-century America. For Beecher, the Catholic threat was particularly
to be found on the frontier of the expanding nation.9 In 1835, he published a
long tract entitled A Plea for the West, in which he contended that “the religious
and political destiny of our nation was to be decided in the West,” soon to be
the country’s demographic, economic, and political center.
To meet the critical challenges brought on by Catholicism’s pernicious
spread, according to Beecher, two issues needed the country’s immediate
attention: immigration and education. It was nigh time, he wrote, that the fed-
eral government regulated immigration, particularly the naturalization pro-
cess by which immigrants became citizens, since the current immigrants were
overwhelmingly illiterate and Catholic.
The second vital need facing the nation was that of universal education.
As Beecher looked across the American landscape, he saw a proliferation of
Catholic institutions: colleges, convents, free schools, hospitals, orphanages, all
heavily funded by Catholic monarchs, and with far too many Protestant chil-
dren. Only by providing the public common schools and trained teachers to
staff them could Protestant parents be prevented from heedlessly entrusting
8 Donald F. Crosby, “Jesuits Go Home: The Anti-Jesuit Movement in the United States, 1830–
1860,” Woodstock Letters 97 (Spring 1968): 225–26; Jon Gjerde, Catholicism and the Shaping of
Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 47–60.
9 Among his children were Edward Beecher (1803–95), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), Catha-
rine Beecher (1800–78), and Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87).
308 Curran
their offspring to priests and religious, thereby betraying both their religion
and their nation.10
In the same year that Beecher published A Plea for the West, there appeared
another work on the Catholic threat that became the second largest seller
in the anti-Catholic book industry in the antebellum period (Maria Monk’s
[1816–49] “memoir” being the top seller).11 Foreign Conspiracy against the Lib-
erties of the United States was the work of the son of another key evangelist
in the Second Great Awakening, Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826), pastor of the
Congregational Church in Charlestown, Massachusetts.12 His polymath son,
Samuel (1791–1872), achieved even greater prominence as an artist, inven-
tor, and polemicist. In Foreign Conspiracy, as well as in a follow-up pamphlet
in 1836 entitled Imminent Danger to the Free Institutions of the United States
through Foreign Immigration, Morse developed in much greater and more dra-
matic detail than Beecher the basic conspiracy upon which the Roman Catho-
lic Church had embarked against the republic of the United States.
“There is a war going on,” Morse wrote, “between despotism on one side,
and liberty on the other. […] Popery, from its very nature, favoring despotism,
and Protestantism, from its very nature, favoring liberty.”13 That was the global
truth for Morse. In the guise of an investigative reporter, Morse purported to
10 Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835), 10–11, 13, 43,
52–54, 105. 116, 118, 120, 167. Beecher’s concern had led him to move to Cincinnati, to head
up Lane Theological Seminary, a position that would best enable him to save the region
from the inroads of Catholicism. He ended up not being able to save his own school.
The great threat to his mission proved not to be Catholics, but his own Lane students,
most of whom abandoned the seminary over the slavery controversy. Eventually, rejecting
Beecher’s conservative approach of supporting colonization as the answer to America’s
racial dilemma, they established Oberlin College as a center for their abolition efforts.
11 Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in Montreal (1836).
12 Jedidiah Morse was also a founder of Andover Seminary, which became known as the
“West Point of Orthodoxy.”
13 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (New York:
Leavitt, Lord & Co. 1835; originally published under name of “Brutus” in the New York
Observer, 1834), 16, 56. Morse’s bedrock antipathy to all things Roman Catholic seemed
to date from the time he had spent in Rome during his period abroad in 1830–31. In the
appendix to Foreign Conspiracy, he recounted coming upon a procession on the feast of
Corpus Christi. As the procession approached, at the center of which was a tabernacle
with the Sacred Host carried by a priest, Morse, ignorant of this ancient custom of the
church, turned his back on the procession in order to make some notes in his tablet. Sud-
denly, he was struck on the head by the bayoneted rifle of a Swiss guard. Upon recovering
from the shock, he found himself the recipient of a stream of oaths by the guard as he
kept his bayonet against Morse’s chest. When Morse pressed him to say why he had struck
him, the guard only increased his unintelligible cursing, before rejoining the procession
amid the guard of honor. For Morse, it was an epiphany of the brutal, suppressive power
be merely presenting the facts he had gathered from various sources about
this deadly conspiracy to eliminate America as the inspiration of the uprisings
against despotic Europe.
The major funder of the conspiracy was the Leopoldine Foundation, recent-
ly established in Austria to support missionaries working in North America.
And the central figures actually engaged in the work of making the conspiracy
succeed were, according to Morse, Jesuits, the vast majority of whom had been
sent to the United States from Europe for just this mission. To a republic com-
mitted to openness, Jesuits posed a particular danger, having no normal bonds
of family, community, or country. What they did have was a life-long, slave-
like obedience to the pontiff, at whose command they were prepared to go
anywhere.14
Morse made the Jesuits in the United States virtually ubiquitous by conflat-
ing them with the Catholic clergy and hierarchy in general. This tendency to
apply the Jesuit label to all clerical activity in the United States extended far
beyond Morse and persisted through the antebellum period. The result was
an unrelenting tale of Jesuit subversion at work everywhere and in all possible
forms.
The establishment of the Leopoldine Foundation at precisely the time
America was experiencing a huge spike in Catholic immigration, was, to
Morse, no coincidence but evidence of Rome’s hand behind it all, even to the
point of selecting the places of settlement. Once here, these largely illiterate
newcomers, with no grounding in republican ways, were the perfect tools
whose votes Jesuits could manipulate to advance the fortunes of the Demo-
cratic Party. “They obey their priests as demi-gods,” Morse insisted. As a proof
of this magical power the Jesuits exerted over immigrants, Morse cited Father
John McElroy’s (1782–1877) uncanny influence over the Irish laborers digging
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in western Maryland by having them sign a
treaty of peace. That sort of power, Morse asserted, the Jesuits regularly em-
ployed in controlling the outcome of elections.15
What could “the true American” do to resist this conspiracy? Morse, in his
two publications, had four major recommendations. First, on the polemical
level, one could expose the Jesuits’ claims to be promoters of civil and religious
liberty, a claim contradicted by the church’s own teaching. A related matter
concerned allegiance. For Morse, the international character of the church was
of Roman Catholicism that shaped his outlook on the church for the rest of his life. It was
the perfect metaphor for what the church had in store for the United States.
14 Imminent Dangers, 9–11.
15 Foreign Conspiracy, 12–13, 86–88.
310 Curran
a red flag that raised suspicions about Catholic loyalty. In Morse’s world, there
could be no division of allegiance between the political and religious spheres.
To ensure against any such segmentation, he proposed an oath of loyalty as a
prerequisite for citizenship.

Third, to combat the ignorance that popery preys upon, Protestants had
to utilize to the fullest their own constellation of educational and evangelical
instruments—from the Bible and the religious press to the common school
and sectarian college—to battle for the mind and soul of America.16 Most im-
portant of all, they had to change the laws governing the admission as well as
the assimilation of immigrants. Naturalization was the key to preserving US
democracy. While Morse was vague about the details of the reforms he was
proposing, he made clear that any effective naturalization would orient the
immigrant to identify totally with their adopted country and to shed the lin-
guistic, cultural, and religious folkways they brought with them. Nonetheless,
even such total assimilation would not qualify immigrants for full citizenship.
A draconian policy, no doubt, but one that Morse found appropriate for an im-
migrant population that was overwhelmingly Catholic.
His coda in Imminent Dangers could not have been more alarmist:
Americans, you are marked for their prey, not by foreign bayonets, but by
weapons surer of effecting the conquest of Liberty than all the munitions of
physical combat in the military or naval storehouses of Europe. Will you
not awake to the apprehension to the reality and extent of your danger?17
In the nativist crusade before the 1850s, most of the attacks, like Morse’s, were
rhetorical. Occasionally, rhetoric produced violence, such as what the Ursuline
community experienced at Charlestown in 1834. Beecher’s incendiary talks
in the town incited the ransacking and burning of the Ursuline convent and
destroyed in a night the ecumenical relations that the Jesuit bishop Benedict
Fenwick (1782–1846) had so carefully built over the past decade. To Fenwick’s
dismay, the town authorities not only failed miserably in providing any protec-
tion but failed as well in securing any justice for the nuns, then added the in-
sult of acquitting virtually all the perpetrators. For their part, the nuns received
no indemnification for their loss. They did, two months after the fire, get their
annual property assessment. Bishop Fenwick had been considering establish-
ing a college in Boston; indeed, he had even purchased property to do so. The
16 To Morse, this is “Protestant Patriotism” at its finest. It is also dangerously close to consti-
tuting a confessional state. Foreign Conspiracy, 102–20.
17 Imminent Dangers, 25.
Charlestown burning and shameful aftermath may well have been a factor in
its not being built. Benedict had written his brother George a few years after
the event that “I shall erect a College into which no Protestant shall ever set
foot.”18 In the event, when Fenwick did found Holy Cross College in 1843, ad-
mission was restricted to Catholics only.
6 A Jesuit Cultural War
Morse had seized upon naturalization as the key to preserving America for
“true Americans,” those who had been here before the beginning of the re-
public. In May 1842, James Ryder (1800–60), the immigrant Jesuit president
of Georgetown College, felt it was time to remind the nation just how long
Catholics had been part of the American experience. So began the celebra-
tion of “Pilgrim’s Day,” Maryland style. Around seven hundred persons made
the ninety-mile trip from Baltimore and Washington by the Potomac and the
Chesapeake to St. Inigoes, the first plantation that the Jesuits had established
in the 1630s near the tip of southern Maryland. The overriding theme of the
day was the American Catholic heritage, one that went back nearly as far as the
oldest settlement in British America, just in case it had slipped the memory of
those disconcerted by immigration trends.
Commemorations were one way of asserting one’s Americanness in the
face of attacks that depicted the Catholic clergy, especially Jesuits, as fanati-
cal agents of Rome’s assault on the republic. Had Beecher and Morse been
privy to the correspondence between the superior general of the Society of
Jesus in Rome and the superior of the Maryland province during these years
they would have been shocked to discover that, far from being the robotic in-
struments of Rome’s evil designs upon America, the American Jesuits were
continually getting into hot water with the general for adapting too much to
American ways, becoming too much the children of their host culture. There
certainly was something of a cultural war going on in the United States that
involved Jesuits, but it was primarily an internal war, between the native-born
majority and the immigrant minority.
Many, if not most of the immigrant Jesuits carried in their cultural bag-
gage horror stories of the French Revolution or their own uprooted experi-
ence of later revolutions. Understandably, European refugees from r epublican
18 November 29, 1838, quoted in James W. Sanders, “19th-Century Boston Catholics and the
School Question,” Working Papers Series: Center for the Study of American Catholicism
(Fall 1977): 3–4.
312 Curran
revolutions were wary of the republican ideals they found in the United
States, if not outright hostile to them. They were appalled, for instance, at the
gusto with which American Jesuits celebrated the two great civic holy days
of the nineteenth century, Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. To

the Europeans, the Americans made much too much of liberty and indepen-
dence. A good number of the immigrants never shook their hierarchical bias.
A German Jesuit explained in 1823 to a newly arrived Polish Jesuit why he never
wanted to see a Society of Jesus with too many Americans in it: “They have
curious principles: they wish for revolutions, adopt the condemned propo-
sition: ‘that Sovereignty resides essentially in the people.’ They [hate] […]
Monarchies.”19 Morse could not have asked for better evidence of Jesuit hatred
for American ideals. Such an attitude provided grist for positing the Society of
Jesus as the eminent foe of democracy.20
7 The Struggle over the Common School
Beginning in the 1840s, one of the bulwarks of that democracy, the common
school, became a contentious issue between nativists and Catholics. The
Charlestown burning had badly disturbed Horace Mann (1796–1859), the father
of public education in Massachusetts. It reinforced his determination to estab-
lish public schools that could teach those fundamental truths, including those
of Christianity, necessary for the formation of an educated citizenry concerned
for the public good, to serve as the bedrock of a functioning republic. But where
Mann and others talked of teaching Christianity in its general principles with
which any sincere Christian should have no quarrel, Catholics smelled some
generic form of Protestantism, which made it unacceptable to them. Insisting
on the use of the King James Bible, for instance, for the mandated daily Bible-
reading, showed clearly enough, from the Catholic perspective, the intent to
teach the Protestant religion under the guise of some one-size-fits-all Christi-
anity. That conclusion led Catholic prelates in many dioceses, from New York
19 William Beschter to Francis Dzierozynski, Baltimore, December 17, 1823, 206 R 22, Mary-
land Province Archives.
20 May 25, 1857, quoted in Ellen Skerrett, Born in Chicago: A History of Chicago’s Jesuit Uni-
versity (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008), 12. Such scorn for American values was the catalyst
for an article in the Freeman’s Journal in 1849 that charged the Jesuits with being monar-
chophiles. That brought a reply from James Ryder, an Irish Jesuit who had been president
of both Georgetown and Holy Cross. Ryder rightly argued that, far from being supporters
of monarchy, Jesuits in the United States were not monarchical, particularly given the
republican character of their grand charter, the Institute.
to Philadelphia to Cincinnati, to attempt to secure public funds for their own

schools. In general, their efforts failed. The more persistent consequence of
Catholic campaigns for sharing public education funds was to force a certain
secularization of the common school. Nativists read this as further evidence of

Catholicism’s determination to destroy the common school as the irreplace-
able cornerstone of US democracy.
In eastern Maine, a Swiss Jesuit, Johannes Bapst (1815–87), discovered just
how traumatic a backlash anti-republican comments and the Bible-reading is-
sue could generate. Bapst made no effort to hide from his Protestant neighbors
his contempt for American values like religious liberty. He failed in his effort
to obtain state funding for the parochial school he had started. He lost another
fight to have his Catholic students excused from reading the King James Bible
in public school, whereupon Bapst orchestrated the withdrawal of Catholic
children from the school. All this generated a controversy about the church
and education that spread far beyond Ellsworth. Feelings grew more and more
explosive. During the summer of 1854, two Catholic churches in the area went
up in flames. Superiors, concerned for Bapst’s safety, removed him to Bangor.
Then, the following October, Bapst foolishly returned to Ellsworth. The news
quickly spread. A mob surrounded the house where the Jesuit was staying,
dragged him out, applied tar and feathers to his body, and paraded him on a
plank around the streets of Ellsworth for some hours.
Like Charlestown, no one in Ellsworth was indicted, much less convicted
for the assault on Bapst. Reading of the King James Bible continued to be en-
forced. The ordeal left the priest with lifetime psychiatric scars that eventually
brought him to a mental asylum outside of Baltimore where he spent his final
tortured days.21
Five years later, a Bible-reading controversy in Boston’s North End had more
far-reaching consequences. In March 1859, a teacher demanded that a Catholic
student, Thomas Whall, recite the Ten Commandments according to the ver-
sion in the King James Bible. Whall, a member of St. Mary’s Church, had been
instructed by his Jesuit pastor, Father Bernardine Wiget (1821–83), that it was
an act of heresy to recite Protestant prayers. So Thomas refused his teacher’s
demand, as he did a second one a week later. At that, a school official stepped
in to beat Whall on his hands with a rattan stick for a half hour, more than
21 The Chicago Tribune, for instance, when rumors circulated about Jesuit plans to build a
college in the city, editorialized: “The Society of Jesus is the most virulent and relentless
enemy of the Protestant faith and Democratic government”; McGreevy, American Jesuits,
26–55; Robert Emmett Curran, Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York,
1805–1915 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 140–44.
314 Curran
long enough to draw blood. Finally, the school principal announced that all
those who were unwilling to recite the Commandments in the proper manner
should leave. About a hundred students did so. Most returned the following
day with copies of the Commandments as found in the Douay Bible, the of-
ficial Catholic version. The school’s response was to dismiss them once again.
Whall’s father subsequently sued the school’s principal for violating his son’s
religious liberty. He got as much satisfaction from the court as the Ursuline
nuns had a quarter century earlier in seeking compensation for the burning
of their convent and academy. The court ruled that for a student to refuse to
read from the Bible was to undermine, in the court’s words, “the granite foun-
dation on which our republican form of government rests.” A few weeks after
the controversy, Wiget began his own school, St. Mary’s Institute. A year later,
it had an enrollment of well over a thousand students. Wiget’s school marked
the emergence of the separate Catholic educational ghetto, not only at the pa-
rochial level but at the collegiate as well, where the newly established Jesuit
schools of higher education, such as Holy Cross or St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia
or the college in Boston that McElroy would open a few years later, had virtu-
ally exclusive Catholic enrollments rather than the ecumenical ones that had
earlier characterized Jesuit educational institutions in the United States.22
8 War as Vindicator of Nativism
The war that the US Congress declared on Mexico in May 1846 provided
evangelicals with new proof of the providential expansion of the “Protestant
Empire” at the cost of a corrupt and benighted Catholic power. That was pre-
cisely not the meaning of the war that President James Polk (in office 1845–49)
wanted to convey, since nearly half of the American expeditionary force were
Catholics, most of them recent immigrants. So he had his secretary of state,
James Buchanan (1791–1868), consult several Catholic prelates about the pos-
sibility of securing some Catholic chaplains to accompany American forces
into Mexico. The Maryland provincial, a Belgian, leapt at the opportunity to
do so. It would destroy, he thought, the calumnies that Catholics, especially
its clergy, opposed republican government.23 The provincial chose two other
immigrants, McElroy from Ireland and Anthony Rey (d.1847) from Switzerland.
22 John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W.W. Norton,
2003), 7–18.
23 Verhaegen to Roothaan, Worcester, June 5, 1846, MD 8-I-17, Archivum Romanum Societa-
tis Iesu (hereafter arsi).
McElroy and Rey spent the next year ministering to the Catholic soldiers in the
army of General Zachary Taylor (1784–1850). Rey won particular recognition
for his heroic ministry during the Battle of Monterrey (September 21–24, 1846).
Then, in January 1847, he was killed by bandits on his way to visit McElroy.
“What a great calamity for each Republic,” the provincial summed up the war
for the superior general.24
But for nativists, the conquest of Mexico was a confidence-booster in the
struggle against the subversive forces of Catholicism at home. What the victory
against Mexico did not do was to popularize nativism as a political movement.
Nativist politics remained local and decentralized into the 1850s.
9 A New Political Force: The American Party
That all changed in the mid-1850s. The mercurial rise of the American Party as
a national political force was the result of several converging developments.
The immigration tsunami that hit the country during the decade from 1845
to 1855 produced record-breaking numbers that no previous ten-year period
approached. By the late 1850s, immigrants comprised nearly fifteen percent
of the population, a demographic proportion far above anything the nation
had seen before. And given the urban concentration of the immigrants, that
proportion seemed even greater than it was. Most importantly, this one was
heavily Catholic in its makeup. Never before had the Catholic threat seemed as
menacing as it now appeared to many Americans.
A second factor was temperance. The crusade against the evils of the “Alco-
holic Republic” increasingly focused its attention on immigrants as the worst
abusers, as well as on the politicians who manipulated them to stay in power.
The American Party promised to attack this perennial plague by drastically
curbing the immigrant vote and thereby drastically weakening the power of
the politicians who depended on immigrants to stay in power.
And finally there was the slavery issue. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
that had settled the Mexican–American War had reopened the issue of the ex-
pansion of slavery by the creation of new territories. The Compromise of 1850
basically kicked the can down the road by leaving the settlement of the ques-
tion to sometime in the future. Four years later, that sometime arrived when
Stephen Douglas (1813–61) introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Act, a clever ploy
meant to relieve Congress of the responsibility of deciding whether a state was

to be free or open to slavery by putting the responsibility on the people of the
24 Peter Verhaegen to Jan Roothaan, Georgetown, October 28, 1847, MD 8-I-28, arsi.
316 Curran
territory itself. Popular sovereignty, as it was called. Anti-slavery people saw

it as a clever mechanism for the expansion of slavery. The Whig Party, essen-
tially blind-sided by the legislation, could never formulate a position satisfac-
tory to the slavery views of its members both North and South. Within a year,
the Whig Party was essentially dead. And into that political void stepped the
American Party. Its anti-popery message resonated with many abolitionists be-
cause of the association of the Catholic Church with the defense of slavery. The
most prominent members of the church, the Irish, were particularly notorious
for their racism and as enforcers in the North of the Fugitive Slave Act. In a six-
month stretch from May to October 1854, American Party membership soared
from fifty thousand to a million and beyond.
For evangelical Protestants, the American Party functioned as a “denomina-
tional melting pot,” in historian Richard Carwardine’s words.25 Those compris-
ing the soul of evangelical America—Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists,
Presbyterians—were especially drawn to the new party and formed perhaps
its most important cohort, seeing in it the force needed to check the astound-
ing demographic and institutional growth of Catholicism. Then there was the
political power that the Catholic community seemed to be accruing, epito-
mized by the appointment of the first Catholic to a cabinet position, James
Campbell (1812–93) as postmaster general in the Franklin Pierce administra-
tion (in office 1853–57), a position that controlled more patronage than any
other in the cabinet.26
The Catholic Church in America seemed to flaunt its growing power when
the prelates and other clergy gathered in Baltimore for their first Plenary Coun-
cil in 1852 and paraded with all possible pomp through the city streets, not
something, a New York journalist noted, that people in a republic were accus-
tomed to seeing.27 Then there was the spectacle of the papal nuncio, Gaetano
Bedini (1806–64), sent by the pope primarily to settle some parish disputes
about the extent of the authority of trustees. Bedini, however, was surely not
25 Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville: Univer-

sity of Tennessee Press, 1997), 223–25.
26 It must have alarmed more than a few when the funeral for the archbishop of Baltimore
took place in Washington from the Georgetown Visitation Convent (where the archbish-
op had gone to recuperate). It seemed a living metaphor for a union of church and state,
with the Marine Band leading the procession, followed by the uniformed Georgetown
students, then a cross-bearer, the clergy, and hearse, a caravan of carriages carrying the
president of the United States, members of his cabinet, and the mayors of Washington
City and Georgetown. Behind them on foot came representatives of the various Catholic
societies (mpa, 219 T9, Alexius Jamison to Samuel Barber, April 25, 1851).
27 New York Observer, cited in Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdio-
cese of Baltimore, 1789–1989 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 155.
the best representative of the Holy See that Rome could have sent, given the
role he had played in suppressing the revolt in the Papal States in 1848. Dubbed
the “Butcher of Bologna,” Bedini drew hostile crowds throughout his six-month
tour of the United States. His visit cut short by the violent opposition, church
officials had to sneak him on board a ship to return him to Europe.
All these shifting demographics and marks of Catholic assertiveness point-
ed to the real possibility of a time not far distant when, as occasionally some
ultra-orthodox American members of the church foolishly predicted, Catho-
lics would become the majority in the United States and impose Catholicism
as the religion of the land, the pope as temporal and spiritual head, and Amer-
ican liberties would be a quaint memory. The assumption by ultramontane
Catholics that papal infallibility was settled doctrine further convinced Prot-
estants that Rome’s claim to absolute power knew no territorial boundaries.
The key to resisting the Catholic demographic tide, as Beecher and Morse
had proposed, was to control the gateway to citizenship. So the party pushed
to extend the naturalization waiting period to twenty-one years, the exact time
it took for the native-born to achieve the vote by reaching maturity. And to en-
sure that only the best governed, they excluded the foreign-born from holding
any office, à la Morse. The goal clearly was to limit full citizenship to Protes-
tants, to take the country back to its colonial penal age.
The American Party reached its political pinnacle in 1854. The party was
particularly successful in New England and Maryland: by the end of 1854, the
American Party had established itself as a major force, being the dominant
party in half the states of the North and taking over municipal governments
in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and New York.28 Wherever
there was a city in which immigrants made up at least a strong minority, politi-
cal nativism flourished. Unlike later manifestations of nativism, the one in the
1850s was essentially an urban phenomenon. By 1855, there were at least 121
Know-Nothing members of Congress, nine states had American Party gover-
nors, and the party controlled twelve legislatures.29 They seemed to have all
the political tailwinds.
Shocking violence more often than not marked the nativist party’s tri-
umphs: most occurred in Louisiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, that is, the
old heartland of Catholic America. Seventeen died during one bloody election
day in Baltimore; twenty-two in Louisville on another. “[We] are in a crisis,”
28 In Baltimore, for instance, the 1850 census showed that twenty percent of the population
was foreign-born.
29 Jean H. Baker, Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 3.
318 Curran
the Maryland provincial, Charles Stonestreet (1813–85), wrote the superior

general of the order in 1856 about the coming to power of the anti-Catholic,
anti-foreign movement in Maryland. “In such a situation prudence seems very
much in order for us.”30 That had not been his disposition a year earlier when
he was moved to write a letter to The Metropolitan, a Baltimore magazine, to re-
spond to the hoary charge that Jesuits took an oath to overthrow non-Catholic
rulers, a variant on the typical conspiracy theories involving Jesuits. “I am hu-
miliated as a Marylander,” he wrote,
to […] repel the charge of more than latent treason! The Western shore
of Maryland, the home of my childhood, has ever been […] cherished in
my heart with patriotic pride. There are the remains of my grandfather,
a revolutionary soldier, and there, in an adjoining county, is the landing
place of “The Pilgrims of St. Mary’s,” whose brightest scenes and best
memories are imperishably connected with the Jesuits’ name. […] I can-
not help seeing in this, an effort to render me and my brethren in religion,
aliens at home and strangers by our own fireplace.31
Stonestreet’s public defense of his order was an exception to the general si-
lence that characterized the Jesuits’ response to the persistent attacks against
them, a departure from the tradition of public engagement that Jesuits like
Attwood and John Carroll had earlier established. Stonestreet, from an ancient
Maryland family, was invoking his ancestors to stake his claim to be treated as
any other native-born, to vouch for his loyalty to a country that those ancestors
had helped to make the great republic now envied by the world. The prob-
lem for Stonestreet and the Jesuits in the United States was that the patriotic
capital earned by ancestors could not dissipate the fear and opprobrium that
immigrant Jesuits were stirring among nativists. The Maryland Jesuit who best
rebutted the nativist charges by his words and deeds was James Ryder, an Irish
immigrant and twice president of Georgetown College who came to champion
republican values and congruity between the Roman Catholic religion and re-
publicanism. Ryder became the premier Jesuit lecturer and polemicist in the
East during the antebellum era. During the nativist crisis in the spring and
30 As one “prudent” effort to defuse the nativist threat, the province resorted to strategic
name-changing. Not, as one might expect, German or Italian names, but the Irish. In the
province catalog for 1856, Irish surnames were uniformly Anglicized: so “O’Hagan” be-
came “Hegan,” “O’Donoghue” “Donoghue,” “O’Callaghan” “Calligan,” and “Bauermeister”
“Barrister.” Where there had been seven priests and scholastics indexed under O’ in 1854,
suddenly there were none in 1858.
31 Woodstock Letters 31 (1902): 221–22.
summer of 1844, he gave a series of three lectures a week for several weeks in
Washington, trying to present to a Protestant society a picture of Catholicism
and the “Catholic establishment” that would deflate the wild charges being lev-
elled against the church and the Society. His civic involvement was exemplary,
from becoming one of the first persons to be elected a resident member of the
Smithsonian Institution, to having his Georgetown students participate in the
quadrennial inauguration parades to having Holy Trinity, the church adjoining
the college in Georgetown, built in neoclassical style to reflect the compatibil-
ity between Catholicism and republicanism, to developing a warm friendship
with President John Tyler (in office 1841–45).
Unfortunately, most immigrant Jesuits were not Ryders. They were more
like Stephen Dubuisson (1786–1864), an ultramontanist who tended to con-
sider monarchy as the ideal in both the temporal and spiritual spheres. Much
about America, from its republicanism to its egalitarianism, he felt repelled by.
Dealing with church–state relations could be a paralyzing experience for him.
When President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, Dubuisson was at sixes
and sevens over whether it would be proper to pray for the deceased Protes-
tant. It was the foreign Jesuits like Dubuisson, not the native born, who were
drawing the fire of nativists, particularly the Germans and Italians.
10 Nativist Voices in the 1850s
Two voices of nativism stand out in this decade in which political nativism
reached its apogee: Edward Beecher and Anna Carroll (1815–94). The elder son
of Lyman Beecher, Edward followed his father into the Congregational minis-
try. Like his father two decades earlier, Beecher was deeply disturbed by the
growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to a position of
power that his father had warned was all too likely to happen should American
Protestants not adopt the positions he was urging. So the younger Beecher also
took up the pen to make his case about the Roman Catholic Church and its
chief order, the Society of Jesus. In The Papal Conspiracy Exposed and Protes-
tantism Defended, in the Court of Reason, History, and Scripture (1855), Beecher
set out to perform an intellectual biopsy on the Roman Catholic Church, or
rather its hierarchy, including its head, the pope.32 With the church viewed
as a “corporation,” there is a certain logic in focusing on its chief executives.
Beecher saw the church as a business, not an authentic religion, one bent on
32 Edward Beecher, The Papal Conspiracy Exposed and Protestantism Defended, in the Court
of Reason, History, and Scripture (Boston: Stearns & Co., 1855).
320 Curran
obtaining a monopoly on nations across the globe. Once attained, their driven
objective was nothing short of destroying republican government wherever
they found it.
The premier exemplar of republican government, of course, is the providen-

tially found United States of America, which has, from its foundation, a divine
mission to establish a society committed to civil and religious liberty. Beecher
reminded his readers, if they needed any reminding, that God “has assigned
to us the sublime mission” of spreading the American gospel to the world. A
global manifest destiny. That destiny was under assault by the Roman counter-
attack, which had resulted in the phenomenal growth of Catholicism in this
bastion of republicanism. Like his father and Morse, Beecher saw the Society
of Jesus as the most powerful weapon the Catholic church had in fulfilling its
goal of bringing down republicanism, one too powerful for the pope to have
allowed the order to be suppressed for any long period.
Edward Beecher’s volume was a selective survey of the dogma of Roman
Catholicism in order to delegitimize it, at least in the eyes of his fellow Protes-
tants. Once the rotten, intellectually hollow core of Catholicism was exposed,
its days would be numbered. In the interim, there were practical steps to take
to minimize the impact of any conspiracy, particularly the holding of prop-
erty by Catholics. Reaching back a century to appropriate measures that Mary-
land Protestants had adopted for dealing with the Catholic threat within that
colony, Beecher proposed the passage of legislation that would prohibit the
pope and “his agents” (chief of whom being Jesuits) from acquiring property
in the United States. That is, reinstate the law of mortmain. To reinforce this
prohibition, Beecher added that lay trustees be the only bodies to hold church
property. But his major message for all those interested in the preservation of
the republic was to value unity and the spiritual foundation of that unity: the
unmediated bible that has inspired that republic and the exceptional culture
it has nurtured.
If Beecher was the voice giving intellectual coherence to the American
Party, Anna Carroll was its chief propagandist. Ironically a descendant of the
iconic Maryland family whose members had done so much to make Catholics
acceptable in the new republic, Anna Carroll was an anti-papist warrior.33 Like
her party, Carroll proudly held up America as not only a Protestant nation but
33 The daughter of a former governor of Maryland, the Protestant-raised Carroll professed

to be proud of her distinguished ancestors, both Catholic and Protestant branches. But
she apparently had little knowledge of her Catholic branch, confusing Archbishop John
Carroll with his cousin, Charles (1737–1832), in identifying the former as the signer of the
Declaration of Independence.
an Anglo-Saxon one, its core being the descendants of the largely Anglo-Saxon
settlers of the colonial period.34 Immigration was a mortal threat to national
identity, inasmuch as it had become overwhelmingly other than Anglo-Saxon,
mostly Germans and Irish with ties to Rome. She rehearsed much of Morse’s
tale of papal conspiracy, Austrian financing, and Jesuit manipulation of igno-
rant immigrants to wage this crusade to undo the God-ordained American
Revolution. “The American Party has come out to meet them in this combat,”
she wrote in her book, aptly titled The Great American Battle.35
34 “On America’s great baptismal day,” she wrote, apparently in reference to the Fourth of
July, “the Spirit of God moved like a wave over the whole nation; it was Protestant Amer-
ica, and the Bible was the cornerstone on which the mighty structure rested […]”; Anna
Ella Carroll, The Great American Battle, or the Contest between Christianity and Political
Romanism (New York: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1856), 20.
35 In the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans, Catholics were waging the war on
two fronts, according to Carroll. In the common school, their major goal was to eliminate
the Bible from the curriculum, thus removing one of the paramount sources for the incul-
cation of republican values, especially those related to liberty. In their own growing net-
work of schools, they were luring more and more Protestant children to be indoctrinated
into popery’s and the Jesuits’ false vision of the world; to be brainwashed into internal-
izing their false values.
In Carroll’s reading, the alien forces of the Jesuits, socialists, and free-thinkers have
made common cause to pervert the democratic process to put into all the branches and
departments of government those who will advance their devious interests. None is more
powerful and oppressive than the “Company of Jesus […] at the disposal of the Pope […]
mysterious and demonical, defying our science, and weaving its malice over the bright-
est hopes of the world.” In the template of the Declaration of Independence, she does an
amazing riff indicting the Jesuit-controlled immigrants: “Let a consideration of facts be
submitted to the candid judgment of the American people. Foreigners have trampled into
dust the naturalization laws, and destroyed the purity of the elective franchise. They have
demanded that their children be taught in a tongue foreign to our own. They have orga-
nized military companies, anti-American not only in language, spirit, and political as-
sociation, but have required our laws to be printed in their respective foreign tongues, for
their especial use! In all our elections, they acted as foreigners. They have intrigued with
politicians […], by selling their votes for the highest offices of trust, honor, or profit in our
country. They have violated American nationality and law, by insisting on a recognition of
their own, as separate and distinct. They have upheld a foreign hierarchy, controlled by an
impudent ecclesiastic, called a Pope […] [who] fearlessly asserts that he is the Sovereign
Lord of these United States by Divine right! And, through the ballot-box, they have made
a union b/t Church & State, by striking at our dearest institutions, and by their efforts to
destroy the public and free schools of our country. They have taxed our poor and filled
our almshouses. They have increased crime an hundred fold, as the prison statistics show,
in comparison with criminals born upon the soil. They have demanded, as a right, the
public offices of the country, and now occupy a majority of these, to the exclusion of na-
tive citizens. […] Our society, our schools, our religion, our constitutional liberty, and our
great nationality have been black-balled upon their own race-ground […]” (300). In brief,
322 Curran
Carroll proposed four reforms that would enable America to survive the cri-
sis it found itself in. Three had roots deep in colonial America. One was to put
a head tax on immigrants; another brought back the law banning Catholics
from office; a third called for the drastic action of expelling all members of the
Society of Jesus. The United States could no longer afford to tolerate the kind of
divided loyalty to pope and country that Jesuits represented. Her final reform
was to require immigrants to spend twenty-one years in the country before
becoming eligible for citizenship. Achieving those reforms would constitute a
Second American Revolution to recover the living principles that the founders
had risked their lives for in order to make them the cornerstone of the republic.
Unfortunately for Carroll and her fellow nativists, as meteor-like was the
American Party’s rise, so was its fall. As with the Whig Party, it simply could
not keep its members North and South together over the slavery issue. The
party fragmented, its northern members finding compatibility in the equally
new Republican Party, its southern ones becoming Democrats and ultimately
reluctant secessionists.
11 Jesuit Policy in the Civil War: Neutrality
As the nation prepared in the autumn of 1860 for the presidential election that
would very likely decide whether the Union would survive or fragment, the
superior general of the Jesuits forbade his subjects in the United States from
participating in the crucial event.36 Jesuit superiors, both abroad and at home,
knew that nativists were an important part of the coalition that the Republican
Party had put together to secure an insurmountable advantage in the Electoral
College against the divided Democrats. They had seen, during the campaign,
how the Republicans had exploited animosity toward the Catholic Church
over its refusal to condemn slavery.37 There was legitimate fear that, once in
power, the Lincoln administration would renew the attacks of the American
Party upon the church. In this context, the superior general of the Society of
Jesus, Peter Jan Beckx (in office 1853–87), at the outbreak of war, imposed the
most rigid neutrality upon Jesuits in the once United States, one that he hoped
the political influence of Rome extends through the Jesuits from immigrants to the White
House itself, particularly in a Democratic administration.
36 To cast a vote in nineteenth-century elections required stating one’s political choice in

public (this being the pre-secret ballot era).
37 It had also not escaped their attention how much the “Wide Awake” political clubs of
the Republican Party resembled the Know-Nothing lodges in their fraternal organization
with their elaborate initiation rites, secrecy, etc.
would give neither the Union nor the Confederacy any cause to take offense.
As the regional superior of the East Coast Jesuits expressed it, they were to
distance themselves “from every spirit of party.”38
That policy was better honored in the northern and border regions of the
country than in its southern one.39 The “gag rule” that superiors had effectively
imposed upon most Jesuits in the divided country left little room for them to
give any expression of their loyalty. Fortunately, the Jesuits in the North and
border areas (where the vast majority of them were) faced little pressure to do
so. The Confederates’ bombardment of Fort Sumter was a powerful clarifier
in most sections of the North as to whether popery or the slaveocracy was the
greater threat to the republic. In a unified North bent on preserving the Union,
Catholicism and the Society of Jesus no longer had much cachet as public en-
emies. Then too the Society did more than its share within the Catholic com-
munity, both North and South, in providing chaplains for the armies involved
in the conflict, whose service through the course of the war was a powerful
antidote to the nativist critique.
Unfortunately, as Catholic opposition to the war grew in the North, in the
form of high desertion rates and resistance to the draft, the more the Jesuits’
allegiance came under attack; the less truly American they were seen to be, the
more the Roman connection was revived. By 1864, even the most prominent
Catholic layman, Orestes Brownson (1803–76), had become so disillusioned
with the Jesuits’ “neutrality” that he accused them of being, “to a man,” secret
supporters of the Confederacy, “not because they love negro slavery, but be-
cause they hate the republic […].”40 Brownson, typically, was exaggerating.
But the truth was that most Jesuits, particularly in Maryland, the District, and
Missouri, were southern sympathizers.
Lincoln’s assassination was a nightmare fulfilled for those Jesuits who had
feared that the war’s events could bring trouble anew for the church and the
Society. Five of the eight persons indicted for their involvement in the con-
spiracy to kidnap and then kill the president had Jesuit connections. Three had
been students at Georgetown College; the other two, Mary Surratt (1823–1865)
and her son John (1844–1916), had long-standing relations with Jesuits, in-
cluding Bernardine Wiget, previously pastor of St. Mary’s, Boston, who was
38 Angelo Paresce to Beckx, Frederick, April 22, 1861, MD 8-V-1, arsi.

39 For John Early (1814–73), the president of Georgetown, that meant that he and every
member of the Georgetown College community would have no contact with the Sixty-
Ninth New York Volunteers, who occupied the college in the first month of the war, even
though the Sixty-Ninth was an Irish Catholic regiment.
40 Brownson’s Quarterly Review 1 (July 1864): 311, quoted in McGreevy, American Jesuits,
92–93.
324 Curran
Mrs. Surratt’s confessor, testified on her behalf at her trial, and accompanied

her to the scaffold. Fortunately for the Jesuits, the connections largely went
unnoticed and Georgetown and the Society escaped any stigma related to the
national tragedy.
12 The War as Watershed for Jesuit Civic Involvement
Nonetheless, the war had consequences for the Jesuits, as it did for Catholics
in general. As historian William Kurtz points out in his book, Excommuni-
cated from the Union (2016), the war played a pivotal role in accelerating the
antebellum trend in American Catholicism toward isolation and separat-
ism.41 It certainly worked to that effect at Georgetown. And I would suggest
that Georgetown’s experience was hardly unique for the Society of Jesus in
the reunited states.42 During the college’s first seven decades, the Jesuits nur-
tured a tradition of civic involvement with government and community. Fed-
eral officials were frequent guests at the college and enrolled their children
as students. The war changed that profoundly. Republican rule, as well as the
demographic transformation of the District of Columbia during the conflict
(blacks had tripled their numbers to become nearly one-third of the popula-
tion), tended to alienate the college from its surrounding society. By 1875, an
editorial in the college journal was advocating the retrocession of Georgetown
to Maryland, as a sanctuary from the social engineering of Reconstruction that
had found its chief laboratory within the district. Georgetown increasingly be-
came an island unto itself, isolated from government and city; an arm’s-length
relationship with government, at best, tended to mark Jesuit–state relations
for the rest of the century and well into the next. At Woodstock College, the
theologate that became the American intellectual center of ultramontane
Catholicism, the émigré faculty barred celebration of the patriotic holidays
(Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July) and allowed neither faculty nor
students to vote.
When Rome fell to the armies of the Risorgimento in 1870, provincial su-
perior Joseph Keller (1827–86) sent monies to Superior General Beckx for his
support and an offer to any Jesuits seeking sanctuary. “America is open to you,”
he wrote, “perhaps the only home left us in this world.”43 A few additional Ital-
ians joined the province, but a larger consequence of the fall of the pope’s last
41 William Kurtz, Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate
Catholic America (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016).
42 Ibid., 8.
43 Keller to Beckx, Baltimore, May 21, 1871, MD 10-II-17, arsi.
vestige of temporal power may have been attitudinal. “The afflictions of the
Holy Father have made ultramontanes of all of us here who have any good
within,” Keller reported to Beckx in December 1870.44 The European refugees,
of whom Keller was one, undoubtedly set the intellectual life of the Society of
Jesus in the United States in a much more conservative direction, much-more
Rome-oriented, much-more committed defenders of the pope’s spiritual and
temporal powers, in particular papal infallibility.
13 Modern Nativism and a Jesuit Pope
As the Society became more ultramontane and anti-republican in its world-

view, it left itself much more open to the critiques that nativists had been
raising since the early part of the century. Nativism continued to assert itself
periodically in response to immigration surges until achieving its greatest vic-
tory in the 1920s, with the racially based restrictionist legislation that finally
ended the nation’s open-door immigration policy. But the National Origins Act
as well as its related legislation was not specifically anti-Catholic, much less
anti-Jesuit. The Jesuits never again figured in as central a position as they had
in the antebellum era. Not even in 1928 when the first Catholic presidential
candidate gave nativist forces a new call to arms. Nor when, thirty years later,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (in office 1961–63) succeeded Al Smith (1873–1944)
as the second Catholic to run for president. The religious question, however,
was raised against John Kennedy as it was for Smith. Kennedy handled it far
better than Smith had, and became the only Catholic president the country
has known. It was fitting that the Catholic Kennedy laid the groundwork, dur-
ing his short presidency, for the subsequent immigration reform legislation of
1965.
Although not the intention of that legislation, beginning in the 1970s there
was a radical change in the demographics of immigration, both within the law
and outside it, with Hispanics and Asians now dominant. US policy in Latin
America and the Middle East generated millions of refugees, many of whom
sought sanctuary in the United States. Many came undocumented. This radical
change in immigration patterns gave new life to nativism in the United States.
And finally, a prodigious demagogue effectively exploited these currents all too
well to help forge his extremely improbable victory in the presidential election
of 2016.
A year before that election, Pope Francis addressed a joint session of the
Congress, a congress that was more nativist than any since the 1920s, perhaps
44 Keller to Beckx, Baltimore, December 23, 1870, MD 10-II-14, arsi.
326 Curran
since the 1850s when the American Party was at its height. What is not in doubt
is that the pope’s appearance before the two houses of the United States legis-
lative branch was the ultimate nativist’s nightmare. Morse had warned darkly
of Jesuits surreptitiously stalking the halls of Congress. Not even he, I dare say,
could have imagined that a Jesuit would, 180 years hence, no longer simply be
the diabolical agent advancing in this republic the seditious designs of a far-
distant pontiff. No, the agent had become the pontiff. And, thanks to an invita-
tion extended by the Catholic speaker of the House of Representatives, this
Jesuit pope was suddenly in the country’s most important chamber to deliver
an address. And deliver he did. His remarks were an endearing but challenging
appeal to the better angels of our collective nature, not the last such appeal
that would be made, sadly in vain, during that fateful campaign. More impor-
tantly, he did not hesitate to give what many, no doubt, took to be an audacious
tutorial on the very nature of government: its principal functions, its goals. As
for the practice of government, Francis disarmed his audience by having re-
course to a term—vocation—much used in discourse associated with the reli-
gious life, but here was the Roman Catholic pontiff offering it precisely as the
very nature of public service, carrying with it fundamental responsibilities: to
protect people’s rights, to provide a wide range of opportunities to pursue one’s
dreams, to maintain and advance the common good.45 That other-centered
vision was, in its way, a wedding of the Ignatian way and the republican ideal.
It represented a Jesuit’s capturing of a social democratic vision that would
both respect tradition and seek progress through the pursuit of biblical justice.
Morse had warned of the ubiquitous Jesuits wielding weapons more capable
of snuffing out liberty than all the armaments of Europe. In the pope’s message
was the very weapon to destroy the faux liberty that Morse and his successors
have hawked over the centuries in increasingly extreme fashion in order to
preserve a tribal America that has no room for the stranger, for the other. And
for much of that history, no one has better filled that role of the threatening
other than has the Jesuit.
Bibliography
Adams, Charles Francis, ed. The Works of John Adams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1856.
Baker, Jean H. Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland. Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Beecher, Lyman. A Plea for the West. Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835.
45 See time.com/4048176/pope-francis-us-visit-congress-transcript (accessed October 24,

2017).
Beecher, Edward. The Papal Conspiracy Exposed and Protestantism Defended, in the
Court of Reason, History, and Scripture. Boston: Stearns & Co., 1855.
Carroll, Anna Ella. The Great American Battle, or the Contest between Christianity and
Political Romanism. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1856.
Carwardine, Richard. Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America. Knoxville: Uni-
versity of Tennessee Press, 1997.
Crosby, Donald F. “Jesuits Go Home: The Anti-Jesuit Movement in the United States,
1830–1860.” Woodstock Letters 97 (Spring 1968): 225–26.
Curran, Robert Emmett. Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York,
1805–1915. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
Gjerde, Jon. Catholicism and the Shaping of Nineteenth-Century America. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Higham, John. Strangers in the Land. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992
[1955].
Kurtz, William. Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate
Catholic America. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016.
McGreevy, John T. Catholicism and American Freedom: A History. New York and Lon-
don: W.W. Norton, 2003.
McGreevy, John T. American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Or-
der Made Modern Catholicism Global. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2016.
Morse, Samuel. Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States. New York:
Leavitt, Lord & Co. 1835.
Sanders, James W. “19th-Century Boston Catholics and the School Question.” Working
Papers Series: Center for the Study of American Catholicism (Fall 1977): 3–4.
Skerrett, Ellen. Born in Chicago: A History of Chicago’s Jesuit University. Chicago: Loyola
Press, 2008.
Spalding, Thomas W. The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore,
1789–1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Chapter 15
Wars of Words: Catholic and Protestant Jesuitism in

Nineteenth-Century America
Steven Mailloux
“Jesuits will never cease to plot against protestants; to rebel against protestant
governments, and to convulse and if possible, overthrow every republican
institution.”1 This prediction from Intrigues of Jesuitism in the United States of
America is typical of anti-Catholic polemics during the “new confessional age”
of the nineteenth century.2 Catholics aggressively responded in kind to these
Protestant attacks on popery and Romanism. The present essay examines the
war of words over Jesuitism as an ideological concept and strategic term serving
the political–theological interests of multiple Protestant and Catholic actors,
especially those in the United States before and after the Civil War (1861–65).
My initial focus will be the polemical attacks on Jesuit ministries of the Word
and then on Jesuit responses through those same ministries. Condemnation of
the Jesuits often targeted their rhetorical paths of thought, both their rhetori-
cal thinking (the way they used words) and their thinking about rhetoric (their
theories of how to use words in practices such as teaching, preaching, casu-
istry, and spiritual exercises).3 But it was through those same rhetorical paths
of thought that Catholics responded to Protestant attacks and sometimes Prot-
estants themselves took to task their fellows in faith.
1 L. [Luigi] Giustiniani, Intrigues of Jesuitism in the United States of America, 7th ed. (New York:
R. Craighead, 1846), 45.
2 John T. McGreevy, American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made
Modern Catholicism Global (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 4.
3 See Steven Mailloux, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism: Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics (University
Park: Penn State University Press, 2017). I am stretching the phrase “ministries of the Word” to
include all the Jesuit ministries in which the use of words plays an especially prominent role;
see the narrower meaning expressed in the 1540 and 1550 “Formulas of the Institute of the
Society of Jesus,” in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms,
trans. George E. Ganss, S.J., et al. (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 4; and discussed
in John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993),
84–90.
© koninklijke
printed on 10.1163/9789004373822_017
Wars of Words 329
1 Jesuitism
“Ah, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you all that? But it’s lies, casuist, lies, lies,
lies.” In The Brothers Karamazov, Jesuits become rhetorical figures for those
who falsely represent the truth, brilliant liars and deceivers who manipulate
general principles to justify anything they like in specific situations. They are
advocates only for themselves even though they claim to be advocating for
others and ultimately for and before the absolute Other:
They’re simply a Roman army, for a future universal earthly kingdom,

with the emperor—the pontiff of Rome—at their head […] that’s their
ideal, but without any mysteries or lofty sadness […]. Simply the lust for
power, for filthy earthly lucre, enslavement […] a sort of future serfdom
with them as the landowners […] that’s all they have. Maybe they don’t
even believe in God.4
While writing his novel in the late 1870s, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) ex-
pressed his anti-Jesuitism even more directly in the monthly journal he edited
and published, A Writer’s Diary. Speaking of the “Jesuit revolutionaries” who
“cannot act lawfully” only “singularly,” Dostoevsky exclaims:
This black army stands outside of humanity, outside of citizenship, out-

side of civilization; they derive exclusively from themselves. This is a sta-
tus in statu, this is the army of the pope; it needs nothing more than the
triumph of its own idea—and then, let everything blocking its way per-
ish; let all the other forces wither and perish; let everything that does not
agree with them die—civilization, society, science!5
Before and after Dostoevsky’s attacks, the term Jesuitism circulated widely as a
specific characterization of a dangerous religious order and, more generally, as
an available trope for other perceived threats both to established society and
to its progressive reform. Dostoevsky used the term to describe a quality he
often found in his contemporaries: there is “some inner Jesuitism that lies hid-
den inside us,” which often makes us ignore uncomfortable truths out of pride
4 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), 130, 260. The first outburst comes from the detest-
able patriarch of the Karamazov family, Fyodor Pavlovich, but the second is that of the admi-
rable youngest son, Alyosha, in response to his brother Ivan’s story of the Grand Inquisitor.
5 Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, 1877–1881, trans. Kenneth Lantz (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1994), 1017.
330 Mailloux
“raised to a point where it becomes indistinguishable from vanity.”6 Writing in

the 1840s, Karl Marx (1818–83) argued that “the bureaucratic mind is through
and through a Jesuitical, theological mind. The bureaucrats are the Jesuits and
theologians of the state.” Marx’s bureaucrats functioned with the recognized

skill of obedient Jesuit deceivers:
The general spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved
inwardly by means of the hierarchy and externally as a closed corpora-
tion. […] Accordingly authority is the principle of its knowledge and be-
ing, and the deification of authority is its mentality. But at the very heart
of the bureaucracy this spiritualism turns into a crass materialism, the
materialism of passive obedience, of trust in authority, the mechanism
of an ossified and formalistic behavior, of fixed principles, conceptions,
and traditions.7
In 1843, only a few months before Marx wrote his then unpublished Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Jules Michelet (1798–1874) and Edgar Quinet
(1803–75) gave their controversial series of lectures at the Collège de France.
Later published as Des jésuites, the lectures were soon translated into English
as Jesuits and Jesuitism.8 In presenting the order’s history, Quinet illustrates
the fundamentally duplicitous nature of Jesuitism by arguing that Ignatius of
Loyola (c.1491–1556), the order’s co-founder, was a paradoxical combination
of “a hermit and a politician” and that this “duality of piety and Machiavelism”
was reproduced generally in all Jesuit ministries, including theology, educa-
tion, and missionary work. He explains further that this same duality can be
specifically found in the historical details of Jesuit deceptive practices, for ex-
ample, during the Counter-Reformation when Jesuits “surpassed Machiavel in
policy” through a “master-stroke” of enslaving “the human mind in the name
of liberty.”9
6 David Magarshack, ed. and trans., Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1997), 57.
7 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 46–47. Marx goes on to claim that in the
state bureaucracy, “imaginary knowledge and life pass for what is real and essential. Thus the
bureaucrat must use the real state Jesuitically, no matter whether this Jesuitism be conscious
or unconscious. But given that his antithesis is knowledge, it is inevitable that he likewise
attain to self-consciousness and, at that moment, deliberate Jesuitism” (47).
8 J. [Jules] Michelet and E. [Edgar] Quinet, Jesuits and Jesuitism, trans. G.H. Smith (London:
Whittaker, 1846).
9 Ibid., 52–53.
Wars of Words 331
In his lectures, Michelet similarly condemns the “equivocating language” of

Jesuit rhetoric, claiming that “in the morning [Jesuits] are for liberty; in the
evening, for authority.”10 Michelet and Quinet also agree on the Jesuits’ most
effective strategy for enslaving their followers: the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.
Quinet explains in detail that the Exercises form all retreatants into the same
obedient, unthinking machine—a “Christian automaton”—by focusing on the
materiality of the senses. He argues that the exercises emphasize the physiol-
ogy of the body (in directing its physical movements while meditating) and
stress material impressions of things over the intellectual comprehension of
doctrine (in the imagined compositions of place). But in the Gospels, Quinet
asserts, “the doctrine alone speaks, not things. The Gospel repeats the word,
and surrounding objects are illuminated. Loyola does just the contrary. As he
himself well expresses it, it is by the help of the senses, and of material objects,
that he wishes to reach the spirit.” Loyola cleverly proceeds in this way in or-
der to mold the retreatant into an unquestioning machine: “He employs the
sensations as a trap to catch souls, scattering thus the seed of those ambiguous
doctrines, which grew afterwards so abundantly.” Whereas “Christianity made
apostles,” Quinet concludes, “Jesuitism makes instruments.”11
In his own lecture on Jesuitism as a form of “moral mechanism,” Michelet
draws on the tradition of military metaphors characterizing the Jesuits when
he notes that Loyola “looked upon religion itself as a warlike machine” and “on
morality as capable of mechanical regulation.” The Spiritual Exercises “consti-
tute a manual of religious tactics, by which the monastic militia are drilled into
certain movements. [Loyola] sets down material means of producing those
impulses of the heart, which had ever been left to unfettered inspiration. In
such an hour you pray, then meditate, then weep, &c.” Michelet asks, “What
is the Jesuit’s nature?” and answers with Quinet: “He has none. He is equally
ready for all things. He is a machine, a mere instrument to be put in motion,
without any individual will.”12
In the battle over the control of souls, the Jesuit military machine uses
every means to achieve its ends. Not only spiritual exercises but other ways
with words in private and public are employed to conquer hearts and minds.
Whether among academic elites or in popular culture, Jesuitism is represented
as a danger to be guarded against at all costs. In Le juif errant (The wandering
Jew), a novel translated and read worldwide, Eugène Sue (1804–57) expresses
his wish to join Michelet and Quinet in building defenses “against the inroads
10 Ibid., 8.
11 Ibid., 35.
12 Ibid., 7–8.
332 Mailloux
of this impure and formidable stream.” His description of the villainous Jesuit,
Father Rodin, epitomizes with melodramatic intensity the fears the author
hopes to instill in his readers:
The cadaverous countenance of M. Rodin, his almost invisible lips, his

little reptile eyes, half concealed by their flabby lids, and the sordid style
of his dress, rendered his general aspect far from prepossessing; yet this
man knew how, when it was necessary, to affect, with diabolical art, so
much sincerity and good-nature—his words were so affectionate and
subtly penetrating—that the disagreeable feeling of repugnance, which
the first sight of him generally inspired, wore off little by little, and he
almost always finished by involving his dupe or victim in the tortuous
windings of an eloquence as pliant as it was honeyed and perfidious.
The “diabolical art” of the Jesuit’s “eloquence,” so “honeyed and perfidious,” il-
lustrates the rhetorical capacity of Jesuitism to capture its victims with words
“affectionate and subtly penetrating.”13
2 Circulating Anti-Jesuitism
The English translations of Michelet, Quinet, and Sue formed a notable part
of the global circulation of anti-Jesuitism throughout the nineteenth century.
It is to the American participation in that circulation that I now turn. Tradi-
tional accounts often begin with John Adams’s (1735–1826) famous comment
to Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) after the official restoration of the Jesuit order
in 1814:
I do not like the late Resurrection of the Jesuits. […] Shall We not have
Swarms of them here? In as many shapes and disguises as ever a King of
the Gypsies […] assumed? […] Our System however of Religious Liberty
must afford them an Asylum. But if they do not put the Purity of our Elec-
tions to a severe Tryal, it will be a Wonder.14
13 Eugène Sue, The Wandering Jew (London: Chapman, 1846), 155. Before its English transla-
tion, Sue’s Le juif errant appeared originally as a serial novel in 1844–45.
14 Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams–Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between
Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1959), 474.
Wars of Words 333
Though apparently more favorable toward the Jesuits than his father, John
Quincy Adams (1767–1848) was not immune to the popular anti-Jesuitism of
the time. When he lectured as Harvard’s first Boylston professor of rhetoric
and oratory, he rejected Quintilian’s definition of the perfect orator as the good
person speaking well, a definition that was frequently promoted by Jesuit rhet-
oricians.15 Instead, Adams declares that the Roman’s arguments, “in support
of his favorite position, are not all worthy of his cause. They do not glow with
that open, honest eloquence, which they seem to recommend; but sometimes
resemble the quibbling of a pettifogger, and sometimes the fraudulent moral-
ity of a Jesuit.”16 The Jesuits’ devious rhetoric and their dubious ethics often be-
came targets in the politicized anti-Jesuitism in the United States throughout
the nineteenth century.
According to Richard Hofstadter’s (1916–70) classic description of the
“paranoid style” in US politics, “the central image is that of a vast and sinister
conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to
undermine and destroy a way of life.” The political rhetor of the paranoid style
presents “conspiracy as the motive force in historical events.” Indeed, “history is
a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power,
and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political
give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.” Hofstadter describes the paranoid style
as “apocalyptic” and explicitly compares the paranoid public mood to that of
religious millenarians. The paranoid spokesman “traffics in the birth and death
of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. […]
It is now or never in organizing resistance to conspiracy. Time is forever just
running out.”17
Given this religious figuration of the paranoid mood, it is perhaps not sur-
prising that the Jesuits serve as one of Hofstadter’s prime historical exam-
ples of targets of such conspiracy-mongering. Hofstadter quotes Samuel F.B.
Morse’s (1791–1872) Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States
(1835): “A conspiracy exists” and “its plans are already in operation […]; we are
attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by our ships, our
15 On “vir bonus dicendi peritus,” see Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 12.1.1; Prentice A. Meador
Jr., “Quintilian’s ‘Vir Bonus,’” Western Speech 34, no. 3 (1970): 162–69; and Steven Mailloux,
“Rhetorical Ways of Proceeding: Eloquentia perfecta in US Jesuit Colleges,” in Traditions of
Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies, ed. Cinthia Gannett and John Brere-
ton (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 162–74.

16 John Quincy Adams, Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory (Cambridge: Hilliard and Metcalf,
1810), 1:157.
17 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 29–30.
334 Mailloux
forts, or our armies.”18 The primary agents of this Catholic conspiracy are the
Jesuits, “an ecclesiastical order, proverbial through the world for cunning, du-
plicity, and total want of moral principle.” This order, “skilled in all the arts of
deception,” carries out their nefarious designs through every private and pub-
lic means.19 In private, they manipulate souls in the confines of the confession-
al; in public, they are arch-sophists taking advantage of every division among
their opponents. “We are attacked in vulnerable points by foreign enemies to
all liberty.” Morse declares: “This war is the war of principles; it is on the open
field of free discussion; and the victory is to be won by the exercise of moral
energy, by the force of Religious and Political Truth.” In this battle, the Jesuits
work first “upon the youthful mind […] to teach that lesson of old school soph-
istry, which distorts it forever, and binds it through life in bonds of error.”20
Morse’s connection of Jesuitism with sophistry is repeated again and again
by other critics in both Britain and America. Indeed, the Jesuits and the soph-
ists function as interchangeable tropes for all the dishonest and dangerous
ways of using words in religion, ethics, and politics throughout the nineteenth
century. Associations of Jesuit casuistic rhetoric with sophistic practice are
sometimes made only briefly—“We do not say that the Sophists were as bad
as the Jesuits”—but at other times such comparisons appear in much more
detail.21 In his extended comparison of Puritan and Jesuit educational systems,
the Congregationalist minister and Yale professor of moral philosophy, Noah
Porter (1811–92), wrote: “[The Puritan system] will train its pupils to investigate
Truth” while the Jesuit system
assumes the position that certain opinions are true, that they are not to
be examined for inquiry, but only for defense. It will render its pupils
acute logicians, able and adroit reasoners, skilful debaters, and it may be,
puzzling sophists, but it will guard them from a too thorough scrutiny of
the facts and premises on which the superstructure is reared.22
Other examinations of Jesuit education were dramatically more negative,

such as the criticisms in “Pedagogics as a System,” the English title of an 1848
18 S.F.B. [Samuel Finley Breese] Morse, Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United
States (New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1835), 14; quoted in Hofstadter, Paranoid Style, 19.
19 Morse, Foreign Conspiracy, 47.
20 Ibid., 99–101.
21 “Review of Curtius’s Griechische Geschichte and Grote’s History of Greece,” London Quar-
terly Review 28 (April 1867): 43.
22 N. [Noah] Porter, The Educational Systems of the Puritans and Jesuits Compared (New York:
M.W. Dodd, 1851), 63.
Wars of Words 335
German treatise translated and published in the American Journal of Specula-

tive Philosophy in 1874. Echoing Michelet and Quinet, the author declares that
“Jesuitism would make machines of man” and goes on to explain the intimate
relation of Jesuit use of words and a complex moral depravity:
Jesuitism had not only an interest in the material profit, which, when it
had corrupted souls, fell to its share, but it also had an interest in the pro-
cess of corruption. With absolute indifference as to the idea of morality,
and absolute indifference as to the moral quality of the means used to at-
tain its end, it rejoiced in the superiority of secrecy, of the accomplished
and calculating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by means
of its graceful, seemingly-perfect, moral language.23
A widely adopted college textbook provides a related example of how

anti-Jesuitism concentrated on the dangers of Jesuit ministries of the Word.24
A footnote in Richard Whately’s (1787–1863) Elements of Rhetoric vividly illus-
trates how critics viewed the intricate (and iniquitous) relationship between
Jesuit rhetoric and the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. In explaining how certain
persuasive appeals to the passions are improper, the Anglican author quotes
the Edinburgh Review of April 1845:
[Loyola] fixes on a particular defect in human nature as a means of gov-

ernment, and consequently as something to be encouraged and cultivat-
ed. He would have obedience, as far as possible, comprehend the acts of
the judgment, as well as the acts of the will. He would have men strive to
give a false bias to their minds; to stifle the light within them. He is not
content with knowing that they will do so, and availing himself of the
weakness; he would implant it in them as a principle.
Whately continues the quotation:
It would take but a short process to show that it is this fatal notion of
governing men by their failings which has led, in the main, to all the
perverse and irreligious portions of the developments of Jesuitism; to
23 Karl Rosenkranz, “Pedagogics as a System,” trans. Anna C. Brackett, Journal of Speculative

Philosophy 8 (January 1874): 5–148, here 65–66.
24 On the circulation and influence of Whately’s text, see Nan Johnson, Nineteenth-Century
Rhetoric in North America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991).
336 Mailloux
c ondescensions to every weakness, apologies for every crime, and serious

defenses of every unnatural absurdity.25
Here, Whately seems to endorse the connections made by the Edinburgh Re-
view among the various uses of words by Jesuits, their rhetorical acts of per-
suasion, their deceptive reasoning, and their insidious control of their victims’
subjectivities. Jesuits prey upon human weakness, rhetorically “governing men
by their failings,” casuistically justifying “every crime,” and sophistically de-
fending “every unnatural absurdity.”
Sensationalist narrative fictions of mid-nineteenth-century America rein-
forced fears about the role of Jesuit rhetoric as part of a vast Catholic conspir-
acy to take over the United States. Published in London and New York in the
1850s, Catherine Sinclair’s (1800–64) Beatrice warns against the “imperceptible
expansion of the Jesuits around us” and their “masquerading manœuvres” and
has a Protestant bishop declare the Jesuits “the Thugs of Christendom” who
“murder the soul.”26 In Rosamond; Or, a Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings
of an American Female under the Popish Priests, in the Island of Cuba, Ameri-
can audiences read about “the Jesuits, that horde of spiritual highway-robbers,
those restive arch-politicians, whose intrigues have convulsed the strongest
monarchies of Europe.” They have fled to the United States, and here “the soft
persuasion of their eloquence drops like honey on the carnal heart, and many
are the victims, […] who are caught in the snare of these arch-fowlers.”27 From
religious tracts and newspaper articles to rhetorical textbooks and sensational-
ist novels, the portrait of the wily, deceptive Jesuit rhetor formed a significant
part of a transatlantic anti-Jesuitism that permeated the US political land-
scape throughout the nineteenth century.28
25 Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, ed. Douglas Ehninger (Carbondale: Southern Il-
linois University Press, 1963 [1828]), 178n.
26 Catherine Sinclair, Beatrice; Or, the Unknown Relatives (London: Richard Bentley, 1852),
2:39, 43. As literary historian Susan Griffin notes, calling Jesuits “Thugs” is not intended to
characterize the order simply as a bunch of “common or even criminal louts” but rather
to suggest that they are “the European equivalent of an Asiatic death cult.” Here, Beatrice
is following Sue’s Wandering Jew in making this association of Jesuits with the reported
secret Hindu cult of Thuggee. Susan M. Griffin, Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century
Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 135–36.
27 Samuel B. Smith, “Introduction,” Rosamond (New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1836), 3–21, here 9.
28 For the more general anti-Catholic context of anti-Jesuitism in the popular culture of
the United States, besides Griffin’s Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, see
Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Timothy Verhoeven, Transatlantic Anti-
Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave,
Wars of Words 337
But in these varied rhetorical genres, Protestants went well beyond the sim-
ple caricatures I have been emphasizing. Often, they thought deeply with not
just against the Jesuitism they rejected. Sometimes, they adapted versions of
the term to criticize their fellow Protestants, as in Calvin Colton’s (1789–1857)

book Protestant Jesuitism and its attacks on contemporary reform societies.
Colton defines “the genius of Jesuitism” to be embodied in “a religious soci-
ety governed by principles of human policy for worldly ends.”29 Though the
papacy is “the High School of Jesuitism,”30 Loyola himself was not guilty of
the charge;31 while the support of Protestant divines for “arrant fictions” like
Rosamond is clearly guilty of the same. “Can a sober man lay his hand upon
his conscience and say there is no Jesuitism at the bottom of all this?—that
the Protestants of this land, in their crusade against Popery, have not taken the
weapons of their adversaries to fight them with?”32 Colton saves most of his
pages for a detailed condemnation of the Protestant temperance movement as
the worst current form of Jesuitism.
Fellow Protestants found still other ways to think with Jesuitism, especially
concerning the rhetorical effects of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. This text
played a key role in the wars of words between Catholics and Protestants. In
its review of Michelet and Quinet’s Des jésuites, the North American Review
claimed that “Jesuitism is spreading, and silently acquiring strength, in the
United States; for good or for evil, it is gaining ground among us; and many,
whose eyes are open to the fact, see in our future history auto-da-fes and in-
quisitions, and Protestantism destroyed by a new St. Bartholomew.”33 How is
such a future to be prevented? In answer, the reviewer goes beyond the more
popular Protestant diatribes of his contemporaries and delves into the specific
strengths and weaknesses of the co-founder of the Jesuit order:
To form any just opinion of what [Loyola] was […] we should study his
“Spiritual Exercises.” […] In them shines forth the most marvelous com-
pound of extravagance and good sense, of the wildest enthusiasm and
the calmest wisdom, of intense, heart-rending passion, and deliberate
meditation. His life was a similar compound. He united then, in a m
anner
2010); and Elizabeth Fenton, Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicism and Liberal Democracy
in Nineteenth-Century US Literature and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
29 Protestant Jesuitism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836), 46. The book originally ap-
peared anonymously, written by “A Protestant.”

30 Ibid., 44.
31 Ibid., 25.
32 Ibid., 34–35.
33 North American Review 59 (October 1844): 412.
338 Mailloux
which has characterized his order to this day, overwhelming impulses

with the coolest judgment, manifested in adapting means to ends.34
The Spiritual Exercises became a crucial part of Loyola’s way of forming men
who were “at once perfectly obedient and perfectly self-sustaining.” Varying a
trope in Michelet and Quinet, the reviewer explained that Jesuits
were not to be machines, but men—and yet men acting with the unity,
the regularity, the unconsciousness, of the various parts of a machine.
They were to give up every thing to the great purposes of the order. […]
They were to annihilate themselves, and yet develope [sic] every faculty
and taste to the utmost.
To accomplish this result,
exercises were contrived which caused each member to learn his own
resources and rely upon them,—to cultivate and know every power he
possessed. The Jesuits were like an army drilled to the last degree in unity
of action, and yet so that every man among them could sustain the duties
of a partisan warrior.35
The reviewer concludes with the observation that though he thinks Loyola’s
Catholicism was “but gross superstition,” his admirable purpose of sanctifying
the human race and spreading Christianity cannot be denied, nor can the ef-
ficiency of his successful means to achieve this end. So, he asks, “what may be
done by Protestants in this country to stop the growth of Jesuitism?” And he an-
swers that they must “found better schools” and “seek out more s elf-sacrificing
laborers, more earnest missionaries, more persuasive preachers.” In this way,
“let Protestantism quit scolding, and live out a better Christianity than Roman-
ism and Jesuitism, and these latter cannot succeed.”36
3 Jesuit Responses
Long before these Protestant attacks on a restored Jesuitism appeared in

nineteenth-century America, the Society of Jesus developed its own unique
34 Ibid., 420.
35 Ibid., 430.
36 Ibid., 434.
Wars of Words 339
rhetorical way of proceeding, which also became the basis of direct and indi-
rect responses to criticisms of the order. Developed over many years, the Je-
suit way included an effective theorhetoric: a speaking to, for, and about God.
Among Jesuits, the French rhetorician and confessor to Louis xiii (r.1610–43),
Nicolas Caussin (1583–1651), was probably the first to adopt this Greek term
to describe an ideal of rhetorical action. In the baroque style of his 1619 Of Sa-
cred and Profane Eloquence, Caussin vividly describes St. Paul defending him-
self against attacks: “In this incident appears how weak and meager is human
eloquence, compared with the divine; here the theorhetor Paul demolished
the machinations of [the opposing] rhetorician with a crushing blow of the
spirit.”37 Jesuit theorhetoric became a powerful form of advocacy, a specific way
of proceeding in the world with and for others. It also became a useful resource
for the Jesuits’ response to anti-Jesuitism after their restoration.
In the United States, Jesuits and their allies vigorously defended the order
against their critics’ attacks by repudiating the charges of anti-Jesuitism in a
variety of public forums and in an array of different media, fictional and non-
fictional. Sometimes, the responses were direct, as Jesuits participated in de-
bates over theology and public policy, and sometimes more indirect, as Jesuits
simply went about their business of establishing an effective school system
or providing counter-examples to anti-Jesuit models in US literary culture.38
In what follows, I will aim my analysis at a moderately abstract level as I de-
scribe two very different rhetorical strategies Jesuits employed in their defense
against anti-Jesuitism and the sources of those strategies in the Jesuit intel-
lectual and spiritual traditions. One strategy can be characterized as a negative
counter-offensive, the other as a positive redeployment.
37 Nicolas Caussin, Eloquentia sacrae et humanae parallela (Paris, 1619), 6 (my translation).
On Jesuit theorhetoric, see Marc Fumaroli, “The Fertility and the Shortcomings of Renais-
sance Rhetoric: The Jesuit Case,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Science, and the Arts, 1540–1773,
ed. John W. O’Malley et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 90–106, here 101.
I again thank Daniel Gross for first introducing me to Caussin’s use of the term theo-
rhetor—see Daniel Gross, “Caussin’s Passion and the New History of Rhetoric,” Rhetorica
21, no. 2 (2003): 89–112.
38 See, for a sampling of examples, William V. Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus, rev. ed.
(St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986), 478–96; Raymond A. Schroth, The American
Jesuits: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 58–111; Cornelius Michael
Buckley, When Jesuits Were Giants: Louis-Marie Ruellan, S.J. (1846–1885) and Contempo-
raries (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Gerald McKevitt, Brokers of Culture: Italian Je-
suits in the American West, 1848–1919 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Kathleen
A. Mahoney, Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America: The Jesuits and Harvard in
the Age of the University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
340 Mailloux
Jesuit theorhetoric often presented a near mirror-image of the us-versus-

them, friend/enemy style of their adversaries.39 This rhetorical path of thought
can be traced back to the central text of the Jesuit tradition, the Spiritual Exer-
cises. As a set of directions to a retreatant and his or her director, the exercises
aim to help the retreatant “overcome oneself” and “order one’s life” so that the
retreatant can reach a decision about his or her life’s vocation “without reach-
ing a decision through some disordered affection.”40 As a series of meditations,
contemplations, and examinations of conscience, the exercises embody a the-
orhetoric that depends upon a political theology not completely unlike that
of their detractors. This enemy/friend antithesis is perhaps most explicit in a
meditation in the second week, the “Meditation on Two Standards,” in which
one banner is that “of Christ, our Supreme Commander and Lord, the other of
Lucifer, the mortal enemy of our human nature.” Just as the enemies of the Je-
suits attack the order’s deceptive rhetoric, the “Meditation on Two Standards”
asks the retreatant to consider “the deceits of the evil leader,” who in turn
urges his followers “to set up snares and chains” tempting people with riches,
honor, and pride to “entice them” on to “other vices.” Thus the theorhetoric of
this meditation asks the retreatant to “consider how Christ calls and desires all
persons to come under his standard and how Lucifer in opposition calls them
under his.”41 The military figuration of this political theology matches that of
the Jesuits’ opponents.
The rhetorical power of the “Two Standards” meditation did not go unre-
marked by Protestant critics accusing Roman Catholicism of anti-democratic
despotism and calculated blindness to truth. A writer for the Christian Obser-
vatory noted that the Jesuits were an “auxiliary of the Romish church […] in her
wars against freedom of inquiry” and claimed that the Spiritual Exercises was
Loyola’s effective means for conquering the “will and conscience” of novitiates.
Through the exercises, the young retreatant “contemplates the life of Christ in
a military parable. Two companies, two standards, two chiefs, two armies, two
spirits, are drawn out before his excited imagination.” After vivid descriptions
of Jesus and Satan in the Two Standards meditation, “the trembling pupil is
called to choose; yet, into which so much has been thrown that is imposing
39 On the friend/enemy distinction as defining the political, see Carl Schmitt, The Concept of
the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 26.
40 Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. George E. Ganss, S.J.
(Chicago: Loyola Press, 1992), 31.
41 Ibid., 65–66.
Wars of Words 341
and dazzling […] as to leave him almost without the power of free choice.” The
retreatant’s “last act of freedom is his choice of perpetual slavery.”42
Unsurprisingly, Jesuits themselves claimed other results from meditating
on the Two Standards, using the exercise as a hermeneutic frame to interpret

both their private spiritual lives and the public history of their order in the
nineteenth century. For example, in his spiritual diary for 1870, Rudolph Meyer
(1841–1912), provincial of the Missouri province and a leader in Jesuit educa-
tion, describes the Two Standards meditation as giving “a general view […] of
the war to be carried on by the heavenly commander & of the conditions re-
quired in His followers.” Here, one’s soul, having “been strengthened in her love
for Christ” through the earlier exercises, “is now made to see the army of her
leader in actual conflict with the enemy. The design and means of the enemy
are clearly stated as well as the design and means of Christ.” If the soul, Meyer
continues, “does not wish to prove a traitor & abandon her ranks, she must
resolve that, however hard the sacrifice required of her, she is bound to make
it and to oppose the world & the spirit of the world (which is also the spirit of
the evil leader).” Meyer applies this meditation and its conspiratorial battle
analogy to his own personal situation: “The devil had his ministers working at
me, through spiritual riches & human applause.” Then he (or his director) also
applies the meditation’s analogy to the history of the Jesuits: “The Company of
Jesus under the Standard of Christ […] was at one time forced to retire, for a
while, from the field—but retire more honorably, namely through obedience
to command. It soon reappeared however, to protect & assist that very hand,
which had smitten it.”43 In this way, the Ignatian version of the Christian trope
of good-versus-evil is employed by Meyer not only to make sense of his own
private spiritual struggles but also to interpret the public history of the Jesuit
order.
But there was also a contrasting mode of Jesuit response to the nineteenth-
century general conspiracy theories about their Society and specific attacks on
their traditions of formation and education. This second response was simply
a continuation and intensification of well-established pedagogical practices
of the Jesuits in their various ministries of the Word. The theorhetoric of this
second response focuses on care of the self in forming men and women for in-
stead of against others. Rather than us-versus-them, the guiding trope was an
42 “Freedom of Inquiry, and Romanism,” Christian Observatory (April 1849): 4. On the de-
bates over Catholicism, slavery, and abolition in the 1850s, see John T. McGreevy, Catholi-
cism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), 43–67.
43 Rudolph J. Meyer, “Spiritual Diary,” Bin 5.0087, Rudolph J. Meyer Papers, Jesuit Archives:
Central United States, St. Louis, Missouri; also see the later discussion in R. [Rudolph] J.
Meyer, The Science of the Saints (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1919), 2:395–407.
342 Mailloux
expansion of the “we.”44 My claim here depends on characterizing the Spiritual

Exercises as a specific technology of the self, as defined in Michel Foucault’s
(1926–84) final lectures, including those at the Collège de France, the same in-
stitution at which Michelet and Quinet gave their notorious lectures attacking
the Jesuits over a century earlier.45
Ignatian spiritual exercises are designed to relate self to self in an aesthetics
of experience that is also an ethics tied to a politics: an ordering of existence
to serve God through intentions, operations, and actions forming the self as
a being for others. These exercises are technologies of the self that shape ex-
perience; they are forms of askesis that invoke embodied emotions through
imaginative reenactment of biblical narratives. Using such “compositions of
place,” the retreatant prepares for an election to a new vocation or the renewal
of a previous decision to be part of God’s plan. The exercises give practice in
discernment through rhetorical deliberation—motivating subjects to take a
stand on their own being, reorganizing their background practices and fore-
grounded dispositions, combining self-reformation with political–theological
action.46
Whereas Foucault contrasts philosophical Hellenistic/Roman spiritual exer-
cises and their aesthetics of existence with Christian spiritual exercises charac-
terized as a hermeneutics of the self, in fact Ignatian spiritual exercises c ombine
both: a hermeneutics of the self that is an aesthetics of existence. These exer-
cises do not separate private and public, individual ethics and collective poli-
tics, but unite them as self-technologies attempting to produce a being for and
with others. Being for and with includes speaking toward and alongside others.
That is, the Jesuit way of rhetorically proceeding links formation to proclama-
tion, askesis to parrhesia, a theorhetoric of truth-telling in spreading the Good
News as lessons imaginatively experienced during the exercises.
Soon after the formal establishment of the Society, rhetoric was placed at
the very center of the developing Jesuit educational system. This eloquentia
perfecta shared the Renaissance Quintillianic ideal of creating good persons
speaking well for the public good. The “good” was defined as a self-conscious
44 Cf. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 189–98.
45 See Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1981–1982, trans. Graham Burchell, ed. Frédéric Gros (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005); Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, eds., Technologies of the
Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988).
46 This existential description of the Spiritual Exercises derives from the rhetorical herme-
neutics I develop in my “Notes on Prayerful Rhetoric with Divinities,” Philosophy and
Rhetoric 41, no. 4 (2014): 419–33. Cf. Karl Rahner, Spiritual Exercises, trans. Kenneth Baker
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1965).
Wars of Words 343
commitment to the Christian ideal of love of God and neighbor, as Jesuits com-
bined eloquence and critical thinking with moral discernment. Integrated into
this Jesuit pedagogy of rhetorical education was a particular political theology:
an ideologically Christian religious orientation shaping an individual self that

is collectively engaged with other communities. One version of this private/
public imbrication can be seen in the Jesuit’s 1599 Ratio studiorum, a document
collectively written over many years that served as the educational guide for the
development of one of Europe’s most successful college systems. The Ratio di-
rected Jesuit education in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas for over three
centuries. Its “Rules for the Professors of Rhetoric” give “perfect eloquence” as
the pedagogical goal to be attained by combining erudition with language arts
training. The rules pointedly describe erudition as including church doctrine
and the “study of the history and customs of nations.”47 That is, at the core of
Jesuit rhetorical training from the first was a politico-theological combination
of religious belief and multicultural practice.
This combination formed a Jesuit theorhetoric that attempted to speak for
God in a way that accommodated itself to the various audiences engaged in
Jesuit ministries of the Word. This famous (or infamous) Jesuit strategy started
with the recognition of the otherness of the audience, adjusted itself to their
abilities and practices, and only then directly attempted to achieve Jesuit
politico-theological goals. This “rhetorical accommodationism” forms part of
giving the Spiritual Exercises, in which the director adjusts the exercises to the
individual retreatant’s strengths and weaknesses.48 It appears in the casuistic
practices of the Jesuits administering the sacrament of confession and in the
Ignatian pedagogy of the Jesuit classroom. It also, and most controversially,
can be seen in the missionary work of the European Jesuits, where speaking
for God became a speaking with and in targeted native cultures throughout the
world. Jesuit rhetorical and other practices began with a strategic appropria-
tion of the missionary audience’s culture, learning the native language and re-
ligious rituals and then incorporating them into Christian evangelization. As a
result, Jesuits were criticized by Protestants and some of their fellow Catholics
for casuistically transforming the Christian message and losing its essence.49
47 “The Ratio studiorum of 1599,” trans. A.R. Ball, in St. Ignatius and the Ratio studiorum, ed.
Edward A. Fitzpatrick (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), 119–254, here 208–9.
48 On rhetorical accommodationism, see O’Malley, First Jesuits, 255–56; Robert Aleksander
Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of
Moral Probabilism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 79–82; and Stephen Schloesser, “Accommo-
dation as a Rhetorical Principle,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 1, no. 3 (2014): 347–72.
49 For a comparative rhetoric discussion of this history of cross-cultural contact, see Mail-
loux, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism, 57–89.
344 Mailloux
However one views Jesuit missionary accommodationism, it appears histori-

cally as a concrete case in which a speaking for God becomes a speaking to
and for others, and a speaking for others simultaneously becomes a speaking
before God. Such a claim is the most positive response that Jesuits and their
allies made to critiques of Jesuitism.
4 Conclusion
In nineteenth-century America, rhetorical aspects of a Jesuit imaginary func-

tioned as the background against which various wars of words took place
among Catholics and Protestants. In this essay, I have described how this back-
ground provided a network of interlocking tropes, arguments, and narratives
associated with the concept and term Jesuitism. This rhetoric circulated within
transatlantic culture from academic treatises to the popular press, from public
speeches to private diaries, from specialized theological polemics to general
political debates. Its creative fictional forms were often taken as seriously as
the most literal religious genres claiming historical and metaphysical truth. All
sides in the controversies rhetorically appealed to the imaginations of their au-
diences, imaginations in which the Jesuit as rhetor appeared again and again as
a powerful figure, whether for good or ill, throughout the nineteenth century.
Bibliography
Adams, John Quincy. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. Cambridge: Hilliard and Met-
calf, 1810.
Bangert, William V. A History of the Society of Jesus. Rev. ed. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 1986.
Buckley, Cornelius Michael. When Jesuits Were Giants: Louis-Marie Ruellan, S.J. (1846–
1885) and Contemporaries. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.
Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams–Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence be-
tween Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1959.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, 1877–1881. Translated by Kenneth Lantz.

Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994.
Fenton, Elizabeth. Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicism and Liberal Democracy in
N
ineteenth-Century US Literature and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Wars of Words 345
Fitzpatrick, Edward A., ed. St. Ignatius and the Ratio studiorum. New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1933.
Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France,
1981–1982. Translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Frédéric Gros. New York: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2005.
Franchot, Jenny. Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Fumaroli, Marc. “The Fertility and the Shortcomings of Renaissance Rhetoric: The
Jesit Case.” In The Jesuits: Cultures, Science, and the Arts, 1540–1773, edited by John W.
O’Malley, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, 90–106.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Ganss, George, E., S.J., et al., trans. The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their
Complementary Norms. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.
Giustiniani, L. Intrigues of Jesuitism in the United States of America. 7th ed. New York:
R. Craighead, 1946.
Griffin, Susan M. Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004.
Gross, Daniel. “Caussin’s Passion and the New History of Rhetoric.” Rhetorica 21, no. 2
(2003): 89–112.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Cam-
Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Translated by George E.
Ganss, S.J. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1992.
Johnson, Nan. Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in North America. Carbondale: Southern Il-
linois University Press, 1991.
Magarshack, David, ed. and trans. Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings. Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1967.
Mahoney, Kathleen A. Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America: The Jesuits
and Harvard in the Age of the University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003.
Mailloux, Steven. “Notes on Prayerful Rhetoric with Divinities.” Philosophy and Rheto-
ric 41, no. 4 (2014): 419–33.
Mailloux, Steven. “Rhetorical Ways of Proceeding: Eloquentia perfecta in US Jesuit Col-
leges.” In Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies, edited
by Cinthia Gannett and John Brereton, 162–74. New York: Fordham University Press,
2016.
Mailloux, Steven. Rhetoric’s Pragmatism: Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics. University

Park: Penn State University Press, 2017.
Martin, Luther H., Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, eds. Technologies of the Self:
A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.
346 Mailloux
Marx, Karl. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Translated by Annette Jolin and Jo-
seph O’Malley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Maryks, Robert Aleksander. Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts
on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008.

McGreevy, John T. Catholicism and American Freedom: A History. New York: W.W. Nor-
ton, 2003.
McGreevy, John T. American Jesuits and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order
Made Modern Catholicism Global. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.
McKevitt, Gerald. Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848–1919.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Meador, Prentice A., Jr. “Quintilian’s ‘Vir Bonus.’” Western Speech 34, no. 3 (1970): 162–69.
Meyer, R. [Rudolph] J. The Science of the Saints. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1919.
Michelet, J. [Jules], and E. [Edgar] Quinet. Jesuits and Jesuitism. Translated by G.H.
Smith. London: Whittaker, 1846.
Morse, S.F.B. [Samuel Finley Breese]. Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the
United States. New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1835.
Porter, N. [Noah]. The Educational Systems of the Puritans and Jesuits Compared. New
York: M.W. Dodd, 1851.
Protestant Jesuitism. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836.
Rahner, Karl. Spiritual Exercises. Translated by Kenneth Baker. New York: Herder and
Herder, 1965.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.
Rosenkranz, Karl. “Pedagogics as a System.” Translated by Anna C. Brackett. Journal of
Speculative Philosophy 8 (January 1874): 5–148.
Schloesser, Stephen. “Accommodation as a Rhetorical Principle.” Journal of Jesuit Stud-
ies 1, no. 3 (2014): 347–72.
Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1996.
Schroth, Raymond A. The American Jesuits: A History. New York: New York University
Press, 2007.
Sinclair, Catherine. Beatrice; Or, the Unknown Relatives. London: Richard Bentley, 1852.
Sue, Eugène. The Wandering Jew. London: Chapman, 1846.
Verhoeven, Timothy. Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the
Nineteenth Century. New York: Palgrave, 2010.
Whately, Richard. Elements of Rhetoric. Edited by Douglas Ehninger. Carbondale:

Southern Illinois University Press, 1963 [1828].
Index
accommodation 49, 73–75, 77, 81–82, 88, 93, Alopen, Persian missionary 74

108–9, 180, 210–11 alumbrados 2, 198, 212
accommodationism 343–44 Alvares, Simão 237
Acosta, José de 180–81, 185–91, 193–97, 199, Amakusa–Shimabara rebellion 49
201–5, 207–19 Amakusa islands 21n15, 49n15, 60n46
Acquaviva, Claudio and 213–16 American Bible Society 306
Concilium Limense 210n39 American Catholic missionaries 130
De Christo revelato 190n8, 195, 196, 199, American Jesuits 130, 311–12
218 American missionaries 28, 117
De procuranda 191, 194–95, 199, 201, 219 American Party 315–17, 320–22, 326
De temporibus 195–97, 199, 218 American Protestants 16, 19, 130, 319
Feijoó, Benito on 181, 218 American Reformed and Presbyterian
Fifth Congregation and 215 missions 26
González de Barcia, Andrés and 216–17 Amerindians 219. See also Algonquin
Jesuit accommodation and 180 Amiskouapeou, Ignace 292
Jesuit archives and marginalization of Amsterdam, The Netherlands 208, 229,
216 236–37, 245
memorialistas controversy and 214n54 ancien régime 179, 255n7
memorialistas coup against Claudio Andrade Leitão, Francisco 247
Acquaviva and 214 Andrade, Alonso de 212–13
Migne, Jacques-Paul and 190, 196n16 Varones ilustres en santidad 212n44
Molinism and 215–16 Anglican Church, Anglicans 26, 149, 183,
Natural and Moral History of the 185, 253, 258–59, 265, 335. See also
Indies 185 Methodists
Philip ii and 214–16 Anglican missions 149
Protestant printers and 180–81, 189, Anhui province, China 123–24
190–91, 201 anti-Catholicism 302–3. See also nativism
satanic anthropology and 210 and Jesuitism
Acquaviva, Claudio 213–16 Anti-Christian Movement 131
Adams, John 304–5, 332–33 Antigua 265
Adams, John Quincy 333 anti-imperialism 129, 131
Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory 333n16 anti-Jesuitism 6, 329, 332–33, 335–36, 339.
Affaire des placards 2 See also Jesuitism
Agra, India 139 Antwerp 6, 194
Akashi Jirobyōe Juan 62 Aquinas, Thomas 14, 213, 216n58
Akbar (emperor) 142 Summa theologica 14
Albigensian heresy 7 Arakawa Adam 60. See also Kirishitans
Albuquerque, Matias de 231–33, 236 araqunaqi mononofudomo 57
Albuquerque, Coello 234, 235n30 Araucana, La (Ercilla) 216
aldeia 181, 231 art 15, 107n29, 159, 161, 171, 180
Aleni, Giulio 12, 77 Arte da lingua malabar (Henriques) 13, 159,

Algonquian Bible 209f10.11, 211 161
Algonquian 278, 292 Ashikaga shogunate 48n12
348 Index
Asunción, Pedro de la 63 Beiyang government 129

Atienza, Juan de 214 Bellomont, Earl of 277, 280–81
Attwood, Peter 303, 318 Benedictines 4, 129n36, 218
Atwood, Thomas 256n14, 266, 267n60 Bengal 139, 149–51
Aubery, Joseph 218 Berlin Conference 150

Augustine, Saint 196 Beschefer, Thierry 283, 292
Augustinians 49n13, 180 Beschi, Constantine Joseph 137, 147n65,
Australia 18 148n65, 159, 173–74
Austria 130, 214, 309 bicuni 54
Avalokiteśvara 101, 103. See also Guanyin Big Swords Society (Dadaohui, 大刀會)
Aymara Indians and language 206f10.10a, 130n38
210–11. See also Quechua Black Legend 179, 181, 194
Ayscough, Francis 280–81 Blood Bowl Sutra 58n42
Aztecs 180, 189, 195, 208, 210 Bobadilla, Nicolás 2
Bolshevism 131
bakufu 19 Bombay, India 139, 143, 149
Balette, Justin 22 Bommasseen, Indian chief 282, 288
Ballagh, James 24, 26 Borja, Francisco de 3, 99–100, 198–99, 213,
Baltimore, Maryland 311, 313, 316–18, 225
324n43, 325n44 Boston, Massachusetts 306, 310, 311n18,
Bandora, India 139 313–14, 317, 323
Bapst, Johannes 313 Bouvet, Joachim 80, 83–84
Baptist 15, 26, 93, 108, 316 Tianxue Benyi 天學本義 83
Barbados 265 Boxer Uprising 16, 124–26, 129
baroque 180, 339 Boxer, Charles 142, 143n26
Barreto, Emmanuel Braganza Restoration 181
Vidas gloriosas de algũns sanctos e Brahminism 155
sanctas 51–52 Brahmins 138, 151–53, 156
Barros, João de 161–63 Brazil 181–82, 228–41, 243, 245–50
Gramática 161 Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las
Bartoli, Daniello Indias (de las Casas) 191, 201
History of the Life and Institute of St. Igna- Britain 11, 19, 22, 34, 150, 183, 254, 257, 259,
tius de Loyola 5n18 265, 270, 303, 334
Bassein, India 139 British consulate (Shanghai) 122,
Basset, Jean 78 124, 127
Bautista, João 63 British East India Company 11, 14, 144,
Beatrice (Sinclair) 336 148–49, 150, 151n81
Becanus, Martin 190n8 British empire 254
Beckx, Peter Jan 322, 323n38, 324–25 British parliament 22
Bedini, Gaetano 316–17 British Society for Promoting Christian
Beecher, Edward 307n9, 319–20 Knowledge (spck) 169
The Papal Conspiracy Exposed and Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky) 329
P rotestantism Defended 319 Brownson, Orestes 323
Beecher, Lyman 311, 317, 319. See also Ameri- Quarterly Review 323n40
can Party Bryan, Pierce 266

A Plea for the West 307, 308 Buchanan, James 314
Beijing, China 12, 14, 16, 21, 79n15, 103, Buddhism 32, 37, 45, 48, 50, 53–54, 58–60,
104n23, 106, 129n36, 134 74, 103, 108
Index 349
Buglio, Lodovico 14 Caussin, Nicolas 339

Bunyan, John 22 Eloquentia sacrae et humanae
parallela 339n37
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez 216 Census Riots 268–69
Calcutta, India 146, 151–52 Cerqueira, Luís de 31, 49, 55n28

California, United States 130, 305, 306n7 Konchirisan no ryaku 31, 49n14
Calvert, George 303 Manuale ad sacramenta ecclesiae
Calvin, John 2, 5, 17, 48n10, 238, 296, 337 ministranda 49n14
Calvinism 142, 210, 229, 238, 281 Charles V (emperor) 3, 4
Calvinist missionaries 289, 292, 294, 296 Charlestown, Massachusetts 308, 310–13
Camarão, Felipe 231 Chauchetière, Claude 289–90
Campbell, James 316 Chaul, India 139
Canada 262, 282 Chemnitz, Martin 6
Canisius, Peter 3, 5 Theologiae jesuitarum praecipua capita 6
Cano, Melchor 192f10.4, 193f10.5, 198 Chiang Kai-shek 131–32
Canton, China 73, 76–78, 86, 122 Chikuzen, Japan 62
capitalism 33, 131, 179, 181 China 11–12, 14–16, 18, 20–23, 25, 30,
Capuchins 180, 258 37, 40–43, 60, 71, 73–76, 78–80, 82,
Carafa, Pietro 6. See also Paul iv (pope) 86–88, 90–91, 93–94, 98–101, 103–4,
Cardoso, Raphael 234 106–36, 179–80, 183, 210–11, 222
Carey, William 151 See also de Prémare and Milne
Carmelites 180, 258 Catholic and Protestant cooperation
Carranza, Bartolomé 198 during Japanese invasion 16, 132
Carroll, Anna 319–20, 321n35, 322. See also Qing’s fall and missionaries in 121
nativism three main religions in 74n3
The Great American Battle… 321 China Inland Mission (cim) 123
Carroll, John 304, 318 Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association
Cartas de relación (Cortés) 216 (ccpa) 134–35
caste system 138, 151–52, 155, 156 Chinese Communist Party (ccp) 131, 133–35
Catálogo de algunos varones insignes... Chinese Republic 16
(Mesía) 214n52 Chinese Rites Controversy 32, 75–76, 93–94,
Catholic missionaries 12, 15, 16, 45, 75, 104
76–77, 111, 117–21, 123n18, 124, 127–30, Christian Knowledge Society 150
133, 140, 144, 152, 254, 289, 297 Christian Observatory 340, 341n42
Catholic Patriotic Movement (天主教爱 Chuke Pai’an Jingqi 初刻拍案驚奇 86
国运动) 134 chūkun aikoku 37
Catholic Reform Movement (天主教革 Chuō Shinbun 36
新运动) 134 Cincinnati, United States 306, 308n10, 313
Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reforma- Civil War, American 184, 305–6, 322, 328
tion) 3, 59, 139, 330 Civil War, Chinese 122, 129, 133
Catholicism 12, 15, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 32, 39, Clement xi (pope) 32, 75
45, 46n2, 47, 69, 75–76, 81, 84, 90, 93, Clement xiv (pope) 253
98n10, 103, 106, 109, 112–13, 133, 151, 179, Cochin, India 139, 142–43
229, 233, 238, 244–45, 256, 259, 265, Cochinchina 183
281, 282, 283, 287, 303, 305, 308n10, Code noir 258

309n13, 315–17, 319–20, 323, 324, 338, Coelho, Domingos 231, 233–34
340, 341n42 Colbert, Jean Baptiste 276, 298
Catholic–Protestant conflict 125 Collège de France 330, 342
350 Index
College of St. Paul, Goa 152 Daoism 74, 108

Collegium Germanicum 21 Dávalos, Elvira 198
Colón, Fernando de Ángelis, Jerónimo 60–61
Vida de Colón 216 De auxiliis controversy 216
colonialism 11, 49, 179, 181–82 de Bry, Theodore 185n3, 186f10.1, 189, 191,

Colton, Calvin 192f10.4, 193f10.5, 194, 208, 210n37
Protestant Jesuitism 184 de Buade de Frontenac, Louis de Buade
Comentarios reales (Garcilaso de la Vega) 276
216 de Carheil, Étienne 285–86, 294
Commentarii de instituto Societatis (Nadal) de Charlevoix, Pierre-François-Xavier 290
3n10, 4n11, 4n13 De Christo revelato (Acosta) 190n8, 195, 196,
Communism 133 199, 218
compadrazgo 262 de la Cruz, Francisco 197n20, 198–99
Confederacy States 323 De Laet, Johannes 238–39
Confesionario 162 de las Casas, Bartolomé 191–94, 201,
Confucian revivalist movement 129 223–24
Confucian Society (Kongjiaohui) 129 Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las
Confucianism 74, 79, 81–82, 84, 108 Indias 191, 192f10.4, 193f10.5
Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Warhafftiger und gründtlicher Bericht der
Mary 26 Hispanier 191n11
Congregationalists 150, 316 De procuranda (Acosta) 191, 194–95, 199,
Conquista de Mexico y Peru (López de 201, 219
Gómara) 217 De temporibus (Acosta) 195–97, 199, 218
Constitutions, Jesuit 2, 328n3 de’ Nobili, Roberto 13, 147n65, 159
Contemptus mundi 60 Decennium (Mather) 282n26, 283n29,
conversos 3, 215n57, 225 288n51
Cordeliers 260, 262–64 de Denonville, Marquis 279
Coromandel Coast 141, 143, 161 Dedham, Massachusetts 291, 299
Cortés, Hernán Democrats 322
Cartas de relación 216 demonology 208, 211
Costa, Baltasar da 169, 171 Denmark 145
Arte tamulica (Art of Tamil) 171 de Prémare, Joseph Henri-Marie 15, 73,
Costantini, Celso 107n29, 131 80–81, 83–88
Counter-Reformation 3, 59, 139, 330 Notitia linguae Sinicae 15, 80, 81, 83, 87
coureurs de bois 290 Ru Jiao Xin 儒交信 73, 81, 84, 85n31, 87
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right The Biography of St. Joseph 聖母淨配聖
(Marx) 330 若瑟傳 80
crucifixes 106 Des jésuites (Michelet and Quinet) 330, 337
curé des nègres 259 Deshima (Dejima), Japan 46–47, 65
Cusano, Japan 61 Devotio Moderna 295–96
Dias de Carvalho, Manoel 228, 235
Dablon, Claude 290 Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint 198
Dahlmann, Joseph 14, 21n17, 23, 32, Diu, India 139
34n64, 35 Dizionario portoghese–cinese 79
daimyos 48n12 Dominica 182–83, 253–57, 259–70

Daman, India 139 Anglican congregation in 265
Dames de Saint-Maur 29 Anglicans and Methodists arrival to 256
Danish East India Company 145 Methodists congregation at 265
Index 351
Dominicans, inhabitants of Elder Brothers Society (Gelaohui, 哥老會)

Dominica 268–69 130n38
Dominicans, religious order 4, 49, 61, 75, Eliot, John 209f10.11, 211, 283, 290–91, 293–94
104, 180, 197–98, 201, 215–16, 258 Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. See also Jesuitism That Great Service of Christ 291n58

Brothers Karamazov 329 Ellsworth, United States 313
Writer’s Diary 329n5 eloquentia perfecta 342
Douay Bible 314. See also King James Enami, Domingo 61
Bible encomiendas 198
Douglas, Stephen 315 England 4–5, 8, 141, 144, 148, 182, 256–57,
Drake, Francis 236 265–66, 275, 277–78, 280, 283, 285,
Dubuisson, Stephen 319 290–91, 293, 295, 298–301, 303–4,
Duchesneau, Jacques 277 317
Duff, Alexander 151, 156 England, Church of 148, 265. See also
Dummer’s war 287 Anglicans
Dutch colonial empire 182 Enlightenment 53, 160, 179–81, 189, 218, 254,
Dutch East India Company 141, 245 274
Dutch Protestants 46, 50, 142–43 Episcopalian 26
Dutch Reformed Church 27, 246 Epistola de historia ordinis Iesuitici scripta ab
Dutch Reformed Church in America 50 Helia Hasenmüller (Gretser) 6n23
Dutch Republic 228–29, 235–36, 239–40, Epitome (Pinelo) 216
245, 247–48, 250 Epitome historiae Societatis Jesu
Dutch United East India Company. See also (Jouvancy) 5n20
Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie Ercilla, Alonso de
(voc) 45–48, 49n15, 65–69 La Araucana 216
Dutch West India Company 181, 228, 234, Estado da Índia 11, 13
236, 239 Evangelical Magazine and Missionary
Chronicle 20n12, 21
Early, John 323n39 Ex pastorali officio (Gregory xiii) 49
Edinburgh Review 335–36
Edo, Japan 19, 49n12, 67 Faber, Etienne 106
education 20, 25–26, 31, 33–35, 39, 68, 111, Favre, Pierre 2
126, 128, 132, 134, 141, 148–53, 156, 184, Feijoó, Benito 181, 218
190, 276, 296, 307, 312–14, 330, 334, 341, Theatro crítico universal 218
343 female 51–59, 63, 66, 100–1, 153, 156, 198,
Catholic in United States 314 261, 266
female 153, 156 education 153, 156
Jesuitism and 334 saints 51–53, 55–59, 66
Protestant 150 slavery 261
public 20, 184, 312–13 fenjō nanxi, 変成男子 53
Two Standards meditation in 340–41 Fenwick, Benedict 310–11
Western 128, 151, 156 Fernandes, João 235
Zhendan University 129, 131 Fernandes, Manoel 233
efumi 68 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo
egalitarianism 319 Sumario de la historia natural de las

eighteenth century 111, 113–14, 137, 143, 157, Indias 217
169, 175, 189, 223, 254, 257, 259, 273–74, Ferreira, Cristóvão 66, 67n84, 240n55
296, 300 Fides no dōxi (Guide to the faith) 51–52
352 Index
Fifth Congregation (Jesuit General) 215 García, Gregorio 217n60

Figurism 80 García, Luis Martín 21
Fillmore, Millard 19 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca
Firmamento religioso de luzidos astros… Comentarios reales 216
(Nieremberg) 212n44 Historia del Peru 217n60

First Plenary Council, Baltimore 316 General Congregation, Twenty-Fifth 21, 33
First Sino-Japanese War 124 Georgetown College 311, 318, 323
First World War 36, 130 Georgetown University 38
Fishery Coast 139, 162 Germany 5–6, 11, 23, 25n28, 34, 130, 133
Five Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Giustiniani, Luigi
Cayuga, and Seneca) 278, 280–81 Intrigues of Jesuitism in the United States of
Flacius Illyricus 5 America 328
Florida del Inca, La (Garcilaso de la globalization 179, 181
Vega) 216, 217n60 Glorias de España 218
Flos sanctorum 162 Glorious Revolution 217
foot binding 16, 121, 124 Goa, India 11, 13, 139, 141–43, 152, 168, 175
Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties Gómez, Pedro 55
of the United States (Morse) 308, Gonçalves da Câmara, Luís 3
309n15, 310n16 González de Barcia, Andrés 216–17
Formula Instituti 2 goPassion 50, 52, 56, 59–60, 64–65, 68–69
Forty-Five Years in China (Richard) 108n30– Goshinei no haifu 37
108n31, 109n33, 111n35, 111n36 Gramática (Barros) 161
France 5, 11, 15, 19, 24, 28n42, 130–31, 133, Granada, Luis de 51
135–36, 252, 254–55, 257–62, 263n41, Guía de pecadores 61n48
267, 277, 282, 284–85, 304–5, 307, 342 Grand Bay parish, Dominica 256, 259,
French and Indian Wars 279 261n32, 262–63, 267–69
French Catholic missionaries 120 Great American Battle, or the Contest between
French Concession (Shanghai) 11, 122, Christianity and Political Romanism,
127n30, 127n31, 128n32 The (Carroll) 321
French Jesuits 15, 16, 17, 121, 129n36, 130, Gregory xvi (pope) 307
183, 255, 260, 281, 292 Gretser, Jakob 6–7
French legation 121–22 Epistola de historia ordinis Iesuitici scripta
French missionaries 24, 29, 32, 34, 39, ab Helia Hasenmüller 6n23
117, 279, 284, 290 Triumphus papalis 6n23
French Revolution 150, 311 Gu Jin Jing Tian Jian 古今敬天鑒
Francis I (pope) 23 (Bouvet) 83
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary 127 Guadeloupe 254, 261
Franciscans 4, 49, 104, 140, 143, 180, 199, 201 Guangdong, China 16, 131
Frankfurt, Germany 6–7, 185–89, 191–94, Guanyin 15, 93, 100–5, 107, 111, 113
204–5, 208, 210, 221–24 Guaraní, Indians 181, 262, 272
Frassen, Claude 190n8 Guerre nègre 268
Freemasons 119 Guia do peccador 60
Fuentes, Miguel de 212–13 Guiana 254, 263–64
Fu-jen University 16 Guibe Gorozaemon Juan 61
fukoku kyōhei 33 Guomindang (gmd/ Nationalists) 131

Furet, Louis-Théodore 27 Gützlaff, Karl 119
Furtado, Tristão de Mendonça 240, 245 Gyles, John 288
Index 353
Halle, University of 255, 272 63n69, 64n70, 64n73, 64n75–64n77,

hanare 32 65n79–65n80
Haoqiu Zhuan 好逑傳 81 Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quarta siue
Hasenmüller, Elia 6–7 Euerardus (Sacchini) 213n50, 214n53
Historia iesuitici ordinis … 6n23 Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta siue
Hebei, China 108 Claudius tomus prior (Sacchini and
Henriques, Henrique 13, 147n65, 159–69, Poussines) 213n50
171–74 Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars tertia siue Borgia
Arte da lingua malabar 13, 159, 161 (Sacchini) 213n50
grammar, rhetorical 164 Historiae Societatis Iesu prima pars
grammar through context and 165 (Orlandini) 213n50
Latin grammar and Tamil History of Martyrs of Japan 50
language 165–66 History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius
Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus and text de Loyola (Bartoli) 5n18
of 169, 171–74 Hitomi Pedro 60
Henry viii (king) 5 Hoffmann, Hermann 35–36
heretics 3, 6–7, 107, 235, 283 Hofstadter, Richard 333
Herrera, Antonio de 217n60 The Paranoid Style in American Politics and
Higo, Japan 60, 62, 64, 68 Other Essays 334n18
Hinduism 146, 151–52, 156, 169 Hokke school of Buddhism 53
Hindus 138, 146–47, 149, 151–52, 154–56, 158, Holy Cross College 311
169, 176 Holy Roman Empire 3, 216
Hirado, Japan 46, 67 Holy See 317
Hiragana 13 Hong Kong, China 122
Hirofumi Yamamoto 46 Hong Xiuquan 122
Historia de la conquista del Perú (Zarate) Honor del gran patriarca San Ignacio de
217 Loyola (Nieremberg) 212n44
Historia del mundo nuovo, La (Benzoni) Hosokawa Tadaoki 63
191 Hosokawa Tama Gracia 63
Historia del reino y provincias del Perú… Hospinian, Rudolf (Rudolf Wirth) 6
(Oliva) 213n51 Historia jesuitica de iesuitarum ordinis
História do Brasil (Morães) 230 origine … 6n21
Historia general (López de Gómara) 217 hospitals 14, 16, 126–27, 143, 232, 307
Historia general de los hechos de los hua ben 話本 86
c astellanos (Herrera) 216 Huet, Pierre Daniel 190n8
Historia general del Perú (Garcilaso de la Huguenots 281
Vega) 217 Hurons 292–93
Historia iesuitici ordinis...
(Hasenmüller) 6n23 Ideas de virtud en algunos claros varones
Historia jesuitica de iesuitarum ordinis (Nieremberg) 212n44
origine... (Hospinian) 6n21 Imago primi saeculi 6
Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Acosta) immigration 303, 306–7, 309, 311, 315, 321,
185n2, 195n14–15, 214, 217 325
Historia Societatis Iesu 4n17, 213n50, 214 Imperial Census Act 268
Historia y relación... (Morejón) 60n45– Imperial Rescript on Education 33

60n47, 61n48–61n49, 61n52–61n54, Incas 180, 195, 200n29, 208, 210–11, 216
62n55–62n56, 63n62, 63n64–63n66, inculturation 13, 48, 111, 114, 254
354 Index
India 11, 13–14, 17, 70, 137–57, 159, 161, 169, Protestant mission schools in 33–34
174, 179–80 Protestantism in (John Liggins) 17–18,
British East India Company 11, 14, 144, 25–27, 29, 45–47, 69
148–49, 150, 151n81 Russian mission to 30
caste system in 138, 151–52, 155, 156 second wave of Christianization in 18,
Danish East India Company 145 20, 24, 32, 34
Dutch United East India Company. See Java, Indonesia 76
also Verenigde Oost-Indische Compag- Jefferson, Thomas 304–5
nie (voc) 45–48, 49n15, 65–69 Jennes, Joseph 26
Dutch West India Company 181, 228, 234, jennhonin 56, 59
236, 239 jennhonintachi 57
education and rivalry between Protestants jennin 56
and Jesuits in 148–53, 156 Jerusalem 2
Estado da Índia 11, 13 Jesuit Figurists 80, 83. See also Bouvet,
Pietism and Protestant missions in Joachim and de Prémare, Joseph
154–57 Henri-Marie
Protestant and Jesuit missionaries in Jesuiter-Histori von des Jesuiter-Ordens
144–56 Ursprung... (Ludwig) 6n22
Indian Dialogues, for Their Instruction in That Jesuitism 4, 328–32. See also anti-Jesuitism
Great Service of Christ (Eliot) 291n58 Brothers Karamazov and 329
indigenization 117, 121, 130–34 definition of 329
Indonesia 18 Dostoevsky on 329
Informatio de instituto Societatis Iesu Ignatius of Loyola and 330
(Polanco) 4n14 Jesuit responses to 338–40
Inoue Chikugo no Kami 68 Marx, Karl and 330
Inquisition 2, 68, 197–99, 201, 212, 218, 222, Morse, Samuel F. B. on 333–34
229–30, 233–34, 238, 240–41, 244–48 North American Review on 337
Intrigues of Jesuitism in the United States of Protestant Jesuitism (Colton) and 337
America (Giustiniani) 328n1 Quinet, Edgar and Michelet, Jules on
Ireland 29, 305–6, 314 330–32, 335
Iroquois, Indians 276, 279, 283, 285–86, 290, rhetoric and 333, 335, 344
300 Rosamond (Smith) and 337
Isabel I (queen) 242 sophistry and 334
Islam 155–56, 302 Spiritual Exercises and 335, 337–38
Italy 11, 29, 40, 133, 305 Theorhetoric and 329
Iwakura Mission 29 Whateley, Richard on 335–36
Jesuits
Jamaica 265 accommodation 49n13, 73–75, 77, 81–82,
Japan 11–15, 17–39, 45–52, 55, 58n42, 59–60, 88, 343
63, 65, 68–69, 99, 132, 210, 211n41 Acosta, José de and 180–81, 185, 190, 216,
Dutch presence in 46 219
internationalization and national advantages enjoyed against Protestants in
integrity 38 India 142
invasion of Manchuria and Yasukuni Jinja Albuquerque, Matias de and 231
controversy 36, 38 anti-Catholicism in United States

Japanese imperialism 118 and 303
Jesuit mission to 45 anti-Protestant origins myth of 6–7
Missions étrangères de Paris (mep) in areas of cooperation with Protestants in
12, 22, 50 Shanghai 118
Index 355
army and machines, compared to 338 French Caribbean colonies and 254

Beatrice (Sinclair) on 336 French colonial policies and 279
Beecher, Edward on 307–8, 311 French Jesuits (Dominica) 281
Bellomont, Earl of and 280–81 French Revolution and 311
Bommasseen on 282 goPassion and 50, 52, 56, 59–60, 64–65,

Brahmins and 138, 151, 152 68–69
British government in New England and Grand Bay mission of 260, 262
280 Grand Bay parish and 256, 259, 261n32
Calvinist missionaries and 289 India and arrival of 138–39
Carroll, Anna on 320, 321n35 Indian natives trading with English 17
caste distinctions in India and 152 Indian suspicions on 287
Chicago Tribune on plans for college in indigenization in Brazil and 231
Chicago by 313n21 Inquisition and 197, 212, 233
Chinese diversity of dialects and 79 institutional architecture of Catholic life
Chinese educational tradition and 128 in Shanghai 126
Chinese Rites Controversy and 32, 75, Japan mission 21, 45
93, 105 Jesuitism. See Jesuitism
Christian novella and Chinese novels 15 Joachimites and 199
Christocentrism 295 John iii and 138
Civil War, American and 304–5, 322, 324 Japanese nationalism and religious
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 276 hatred of 25
colonial America and missions of 322 Kirishitan and veneration of saints in
colonial competition and resiliency of Japan 47
missions created by 253 Kirishitan hagiography and 50
colonial institutions and 256 La Valette, Antoine de and 182
colonial policies and role of missions of liberal institutions creation and 180
278–79 Liggins, John on 25
commerce, profits and 260, 280 linguistic and textual corpus in China 13
contribution to India 141 Livingston, Robert on 281
coureurs de bois and 290 Luso-Dutch truce and 142
criticism by Protestants in Jiangnan 132 Lutheran criticism in India 145
Devotio Moderna and 295–96 Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore
dissolution/suppression and of 182, in Rome and Chinese/Japanese
253–54, 262 missions of 99
duality of 330 Marian cult and Christianity in China
Dutch colonial expansion and 11, 12, 17, 108, 112–13
45–47, 143 Marian devotion in China and 15, 90
Dutch East India Company (voc) and Maryland mission 305
141 mendicant orders proselytization in
Dutch West India Company and 181 Japan and 49n13
education in India and 150, 152 Milne, William on 76
educational network of 152 mission plantations 264
English capture of Bombay and 143 mobility and missionary duties of 284
expulsion from Japan 48 Mohawks and 287–88
foundling homes and other poverty-relief Morães, Manoel de and 228–50

institutions in Jiangnan 128 Morejón, Pedro’s accounts and 54, 59, 60
Francis I as Jesuit pontiff 23 Morse, Jedidiah and 309–10
free will and God’s grace debate with Mughal empire and 141
Dominicans 215 nativism and 302, 325
356 Index
Jesuits (cont.) Whately, Richard on 335

neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba 200 women’s education in India and 153
nhonin qeccai and fenjō nanxi 53 Jesuits and Jesuitism (Michelet and
North American Review on 337 Quinet) 330
of liberal, Protestant modernity and 184 Jia Yi Liang You Lun Shu 甲乙兩友論述 88
padroado and 139 Jiangnan, China 117–19, 121, 123–29, 131, 133,
Portuguese power in India and 140 135
Portuguese-Dutch conflict and (great pil- Jiangsu province, China 124, 130
lars of defense) 232 Jiaoyou Lun 交友論 (Ricci) 77
printing press in India and 14 Jingjing 景淨 74
Protestant admiration for 15, 23, 110 Joachimites 198–99
Protestant evangelism in Tranquebar, João iv (king) 240–43, 247–49
India and 145 Jōchi Daigaku 35. See also Sophia University
Protestant ministers and 280 Jōdo Buddhism 54
Protestant missionaries in India methods John iii (king) 138
of proselytizing of 120 John the Baptist 198
Protestant missionaries to China and Jones, William 159
73–77, 79, 81, 87, 121–26, 131–33, 135 Jouvancy, Joseph de 5, 7
Protestantism’s rise and 4, 139 Epitome historiae Societatis Jesu 5n20
public schooling in United States and Juif errant, Le (Sue) 331, 332n13
184 Julius iii 3
Puritans and 275, 282–85 Junta Magna 200
restoration in 1814 12, 23, 145, 332, 339 juzu 62
return to India 147
return to Japan 12 kakure 28, 31n53, 32
Rome and ways of American 311 Kalinago 254, 258–60
seiyōsūhai period in Japan and 27 kampaku 48n12
slave trade and aldeias 181 Kanagawa treaty 19n10
slavery in Caribbean and 266 Kangxi Emperor 75–76
Sophia University’s establishment and Kansas–Nebraska Act 315
14 Katakana 14
Spiritval xugvio and 55 Katsura Tarō 34–35
Stonestreet, Charles defense of 318 Keller, Joseph 324–25
suppression of 182, 253–54, 262 Kentucky, United States 317
Switzerland in 1847 and 17n2 Khitrovo, Mikhail A. 30
Taiping rebellion and 122–24 King James Bible (kjv) 78, 184, 312–13. See
Tamil grammar and 161. See also Hen- also Douay Bible
riques, Henrique King Philip’s war 294
Tamil language translations and King William’s war 278, 282
literature 163–64 Kirishitan 12, 14, 18, 25, 31–33, 41–43, 45–71
Tamil translation and distribution of Bible Amakusa and Shimabara rebellion and
by Protestants and 146 21n15, 49
textual legacy in India of 13 cross as central symbol for 64
theorhetoric and 339 divine love (gotaixet) 57
Thirty Years’ War and 142 Dutch records of executions of 47

translation projects of written Chinese female Christian saints in hagiography of
78 52, 54, 58
Two Standards meditation 340 female martyrdom for 52
vernacular Chinese used by 73 governmental persecutions of 50
Index 357
hagiography in 47, 50, 55, 58 Leyser ii, Polycarp 6

literature and 50, 54 Li Guang 李光 81, 87
Loarte, Gaspar’s work and translation in Li Xiucheng 123
55n27, 57 liberalism 179
Meditation on the Rosary and Liege, Belgium 194

persecution of 50, 55 Life of Ignatius (Ribadeneyra) 2, 3n9
nhonin qeccai 女人結界 and 53, 57 Liggins, John 25–26
origin of term 46n2 seven actions to improve relations with
relics of martyrs and 55, 62–63 Japanese and Protestants 25
reverence for St. Mary, mother of Jesus seven points of 1861 (seven actions) 27
64 Ligneul, François 21–22
rosary and 50, 55, 59, 61–62, 67 Lima, Peru 197–98, 201, 210, 212
suppression of communities of 49n14 Lima, Third Council of 210
symbols used by 50, 59, 60, 68 Lincoln, Abraham 184, 322–23
women and 50, 52–55, 57–58, 58n42, 59, Lisbon, Portugal 142, 161, 229, 232, 245–46,
62, 65, 67–69 248
Kirishitan identity 47, 68 Livingston, Robert 281
Kirishitan jidai 48n11 Loarte, Gaspar 55–57
Kirishitan religion 14, 48, 67 London Missionary Society (lms) 77
Kirishitan revivalism 31 Longobardo, Niccolò 77
Kirishitan spirit 31–32 López de Gómara, Francisco 194n13
Know-Nothing Party 317, 322n37 Historia general 217
Kodungallur (Cranganore), India 143 López, Luis 198
koiné 79 Lorenzo, Bartolomé 212
Konchirisan no ryaku (Cerqueira) 31, 49n14 Lotus Sutra 53
Konishi Mancio 50 Louis xiv (king) 276
Konkani language 13 Louisiana, United States 182, 254, 317
Korean Kirishitans 69 Louisville, Kentucky 317
Korean War 133 Low Countries. See also Dutch Republic 181,
Kōyasan monastery 53 246
Kuchinotsu, Japan 61 Loyola, Ignatius of 1–3, 17, 64n75, 162, 199,
Kuroda Soyemon Miguel 63 213n50, 263–64, 284, 296, 330–31, 335,
Kyoto, Japan 60n46, 67 337–38, 340. See also Jesuits
Kyushu 12, 14 Luce, Henry 48
Lucius, Ludwig 6
La Valette, Antoine de 182–83, 253, 255, Jesuiter-Histori von des Jesuiter-Ordens
259–60, 262, 265–66 Ursprung … 6n22
Laborie, Jacques 281 Luther, Martin 1–5, 17, 342, 345
Laínez, Diego 2, 213n50, 284 Lutheran missionaries 145, 154
Laufer, Berthold 92–94, 97f5.5, 100 Lutheranism 1, 4
Lazarist fathers 11–12, 132 Lutherans 2–4, 6, 23, 137, 146–47, 154
Le Jeune, Paul 292
Leathem, Charles 268 Ma Xiangbo 128
Lebbe, Vincent 11, 132 Macao/Macau, China 12, 14, 21, 49, 70, 73, 77,
Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory (Adams) 86, 98, 119, 183

333n16 Machado de Távora, João Bautista 63
Legge, James 15, 79, 84n26, 108 Madonna/Marian cult 90, 108, 112–13, 198
Leon, Tanaca 63 Madonna icon of St. Luke 90, 98
Leopoldine Foundation 309 Madonna icons 98n10, 99
358 Index
Madonna of Xian 101 Mathieu, François-Désiré Cardinal 35n70

Madrigal, Pedro Matsuda-Yahagi Magdalena 66
Concilium Limense 210n39 Maurice, Auguste-Jean-Gabriel 94
Madurai, India 139, 145–46, 151–52 May Fourth (1919) Movement 131
Maffei, Giampietro 4, 8 McElroy, John 309, 314–15

Historiarum Indicarum 4n16 McLean, Henry 265
Magnalia Christi (Mather) 280n15, 282n27, Medhurst, Walter Henry 79
286n45 Meditation on the Rosary 50, 55–56, 59, 61
Malabar 11, 13, 139–40, 142–44, 150, 159, 162, Meiji 15, 19, 25–26, 28–31, 33–34, 36–37,
168, 174–75 39–44, 50
dialect 168 Constitution 31n51–31n52, 33
mission 11 emperor 30–31, 36
province 139, 143 empire 26
Malacca 15, 76, 78, 87–88 government 25, 30
mameluco 181, 230 imperial government 19
Manapad, India 139 Restoration 37
Manchuria, China 36, 132 Melvill, Robert 259
Manila, Philippines 49–50, 107 memorialistas controversy 214n54, 215n57
Mannar, India 143 Mendonça, Tristão de 240–41, 245
Mao Zedong 135 Mengchu Ling 凌濛初 86
Maoist era 127 Mercurian, Everard 4, 213n50
Maranhão, Brazil 182, 237, 245, 248 Mesía, Alonso
Marcos, Manuel 215–16 Catalogo de algunos varones
Marian Congregation of Rome 100 insignes… 214n52
Marian cult 90, 108, 112–13, 198 Messia, Alonso 213, 214n52, 216
Marian devotion 15, 90, 113 Methodism 265
Marie-Galante 254 Methodist 26, 183, 254, 256, 265, 316
Marnas, Francisque 25, 31, 35, 42 Metropolitan 318
Marshman, Joshua 15, 78 Mexican–American War 315
Martinique 182, 254–55, 259–61, 263–64, Mexico 189, 217–18, 306n7, 314–15
267, 271, 273–74 Meyer, Rudolph 175
martyrdom 12, 14, 47, 50, 52, 55, 59–60, 62, Michelet, Jules 184, 330–32, 335, 337–38,
65, 69 342. See also Jesuitism
Marx, Karl 184, 330 Des jésuites 330, 337
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Jesuits and Jesuitism 330
Right 330 Migne, Jacques-Pau 190, 196, 225
Marxist materialism 131 Milne, Rachel 76
Maryland, United States 184, 303–5, 309, Milne, William 14–15, 22, 73, 76–79, 81–82,
311–14, 317–18, 320, 323–24, 326–27 86. See also de Prémare, Joseph Henri
Massachusetts, United States 211, 293, 308, Marie
312 A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the
Massachusetts Bay 280 Protestant Mission to China 73, 76,
Mather, Cotton 277–78, 280, 282–84, 286 79n14, 87n37
Decennium 282n26, 283n29, 288n51 San Kuo Yanyi 三國演義 and 87
Magnalia Christi Americana 280n15, Tsăh She Sŭ Meh Yuĕ Tung Ke Chuen 察世

282n27, 286n45 俗每月統記傳 78
Triumphs of the Reformed Religion in Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun 張遠兩
america 284n32 友相論 81–82, 86–87
Wonderful Works of God Ming dynasty 74, 77, 79n15, 86, 94
Commemorated 277n8 Ming period 94, 100, 103
Index 359
Minot, John 283 Muslim 2, 302

Mirari vos (Gregory xvi) 307 Mylapore, India 139, 143
Mission du Kiangnan 117 Mylne, Louis George 149
mission plantations 264 Missions to Hindus 138n7, 138n11, 149n70,
Missions Étrangères de Paris (mep) 12, 151n83, 154n106, 156n116, 156n119,

20n11, 22, 24, 27–28, 31, 34–35, 50. See 156n121
also Paris Foreign Missions Society
Missions to Hindus (Mylne) 138n7, 138n11, Nadal, Jerónimo 3–5, 285
149n70, 151n83, 154n106, 156n116, Commentarii de instituto Societatis 3n10,
156n119, 156n121 4n11, 4n13
Missouri, United States 305, 317, 323, 341 Nagapattinam, India 139, 143, 152
Mogrovejo, Toribio de 210 Nagasaki, Japan 12, 19, 28, 32, 49, 61, 63, 67
Mohawks 287–88 Nagapattinam, Jesuit college of 152
Molina, Luis de 215 Naitō Julia 54, 64
Molinism 215n57, 216 namban 18
Monarquia Indiana (Torquemada) 216 nangiiuo voboximesu gotaixet 57
Monbushō 31, 33, 35–36 Nanjing Decade 132
Monbushō kunrei daijūnigo 33 Napoleon iii (emperor) 15
monolingual ideology 160 Nassau-Siegen, Johan Maurits van
Monterrey, Battle of 315 228–29, 246
Montesinos, Antonio de 194 Natick 291, 293
Montserrat 4, 258 National Christian Council 121, 134
Morães, Manoel de 181–82, 228–39, 241–50 National Missionary Council for All India
Niewe Werldt 239 150
História do Brasil 230 National Origins Act 325
Pronostyco y respuesta 230, 241n58 nationalism 14, 16, 30, 118, 129, 131
Sebastianism and 242 nativism 302–3, 306, 314–15, 317, 319, 325
Morejón, Pedro 54, 59–65, 71 Natural and Moral History of the Indies
goPassion and Kirihistan devotion 50, (Acosta) 185
52, 56, 59–60, 64–65, 68–69 naturalization 307, 310–11, 317, 321n35
Historia y relación de lo sucedido en los Nestorian Stele 74n2
reinos del Japón y China 60n45 Netherlands 19, 67, 191, 237, 305
Relación de la persecución que uvo en la Neutral Islands 259
yglesia de Japón… 60n45, 60n46, Nevis 265
61n50, 61n51, 62n55, 62n57, 62n59, New England 182, 275, 277–78, 283, 285,
63n64, 63n68, 64n72, 64n74, 64n76, 295, 317
65n79 New France 182, 275–77, 279, 289, 291,
Relación de los mártires 60n45, 65n81 293n66, 294–95
Morrison, Robert 14–15, 76, 78–79, 87, New Orleans, Louisiana 317
119–20 New World 179–80, 182, 185, 191, 195–96, 199,
Morse, Jedidiah 308–12, 317, 320–21, 326–27, 236, 240, 275, 295, 297
333–34 New York, United States 280–81, 283, 303,
Imminent Danger to the Free Institutions of 312, 316–17, 336
the United States… 308 New York Times 302
Morse, S. F. B. [Samuel Finley nhonin qeccai 53, 57

Breese] 334n18 Ni Tuosheng 134n51
Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of Nichibei shūkō tsūshō jōyaku 19n10
the United States 308n13, 318, 334n18 Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio 212–13
Mughal court 141–42 Firmamento religioso de luzidos astros
Mughal Empire 141 212n44
360 Index
Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio (cont.) Paris Foreign Missions Society 20, 22, 50.
Ideas de virtud en algunos claros See also Missions Étrangères de Paris
varones 212n44 Particularidades da fertilidade e sitio do Brasil
Vidas exemplares y venerables (Morães) 230
memorias… 212n44 patronato real 218

North American Review 337 Paul iv (pope) 6
North China Daily News 125 Peace of Westphalia 247
North China Herald 120n6, 121n10, 123n16, Pedroche, Tomás 3
125, 133n46 Penang, Malaysia 76
Northern Expedition 131 Pentecostals 256
Notitia linguae Sinicae (de Prémare) 15, 80, People’s Republic of China 117
81, 83, 87 Pereira de Castro, Luís 247
Nvqigaqi (Excerpts from the Acts of the Pernambucan Restoration 246–47
Saints) 51–53, 58 Pernambuco, Brazil 181, 231–35, 237, 245–46,
248
O’Brien, Bernard 236–37 Perry, Matthew 12, 19, 22
Oda Nobunaga 48n12 Peru 180–81, 189–90, 194, 197–201, 210–14,
Of Sacred and Profane Eloquence 216–18, 221, 225–27
(Caussin) 339 Petitjean, Bernard 27–28, 31, 40
Old Society of Jesus 16 Konchirisan no ryaku 31
Oliva, Giovanni Anello 213–14 Philadelphia, United States 7–8, 115, 195,
Historia del reino y provincias del 223, 256, 273, 277, 296, 298, 301, 313–14,
Perú 213n51 317
Onondaga, Indians 278, 288 Philip ii (king) 214–16, 242
Opera omnia (Maffei) 4n16 Philip, Robert 20n12, 21, 22
Opium War, First 21, 117 Philippines 18
Origen 197 Picot, Etienne 263
Origen de los Indios (García) 216, 217n60 Pierce, Franklin 316
Orlandini, Niccolò Pietism 154–57
Historiae Societatis Iesu prima Piñas, Baltasar 214
pars 213n50 Pinelo, Antonio de León
Orthodox missionaries 28 Epitome 216, 217n60
Osaka, Battles of 49n12 Pius V (pope) 99
Ottomans 201 Pius ix (pope) 28
Overtwater, Pieter Anthonisz 67 Pius vii (pope) 304
Ovid Pius X (pope) 21, 32
Amico instabili 167 Pizarro, Francisco 197
Pizarro, María 197, 199
Pachacamac 211 plantations 181, 183, 253–54, 256–57, 264–65,
padroado 49, 139 268, 270
Palmeiro, André 211n41, 222 Plea for the West, A (Beecher) 307, 308
Palmerston, (Henry John Temple) 17 Pliny 218
Papal Conspiracy Exposed and Protestantism Plütschau, Heinrich 154
Defended... (Beecher) 319 Poirier, René-Marie-Charles 269
Papal States 317 Poirot, Louis de 15

papist imperialism 31 Polanco, Juan Alfonso de 3–5
Paraíba, Brazil 228–29, 233–35, 237 Informatio de instituto Societatis
Paranoid Style in American Politics and Iesu 4n14
Other Essays, The (Hofstadter) 333n17, Polk, James 314
334n18 polygamy 121, 153
Index 361
Pondicherry, India 12 124–27, 129–35, 137–43, 145–48, 150–56,

Porter, Noah 334 179–80, 184, 189, 194, 201, 208, 218–19,
Portsmouth, Dominica 265 254–56, 265, 270–71, 275, 277–78,
Portugal 29, 40, 138–43, 157, 162, 198, 226, 281, 310, 316–17, 319–20, 328, 337–38,
229, 231, 237, 240–52 343–44

Portuguese–Dutch conflict 229, 241 Acosta, José de and 180, 185, 189
Poussines, Pierre Anglicans and Methodists in
Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta siue Dominica 265
Claudius tomus prior 213n50 British government and tolerance in
Presbyterians 26, 33, 150–51, 316 India for 146, 148
printing press 14, 146 China mission and modernization 16
Proesmans, Raymond 261–62 Chinese Rites controversy and 32, 93
Pronostyco e respuesta (Morães) 230, 241n58 Christians in China and Richard,
Protestant Chinese mission 22 Timothy 93
Protestant Jesuitism (Colton) 337 condemnation of Catholic missionaries |
Protestant missionaries 13–16, 20, 24, 27–28, in Jiangnan, China 32, 120. See also
35, 39, 73–77, 79, 81, 87, 88, 90, 93, 108, Jesuitism
110–13, 117–19, 121–26, 131–33, 135, 138, Duff, Alexander and education in
144, 146–48, 152, 154–55, 174, 288. See India 151
also Jesuits education in India and 149
India, arrival to 13 Emancipation and Caribbean colo-
interdenominational conflict and rivalry nies 256, 265
with Catholic missionaries in female education and 153, 156
Jiangnan 27 focus in China of 119
Jesuit accommodation policy and 77, 81. interdenominational National Christian
See also Milne, William Council of China and 121
Jesuit linguistic and cartographic work Jesuit activism in India and 140
and 119 Jesuit translation projects of written
oriental character for 138 Chinese and 78
Pietism in India and 154 Jesuitism and 337
printing press in India and 146, 155 mission to China and 73–74
publications in Shanghai 125 Tamil grammar and 137n3, 147. See also
Qing-Taiping fighting and Jesuits relations Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus
with 124–25 theorhetoric and 340, 341
Tamil language translations and 137n3, vernacular Chinese used by 73, 77, 81
147. See also Pietism and Ziegenbalg, B. Puritans 194, 208, 223, 275, 278, 282, 285–86,
vernacular Chinese writing and 73, 77, 290, 292–96, 306
79
Protestant missions 16, 26n23, 117–19, 121, Qing dynasty 15, 75, 80n16, 82, 86, 105, 124,
130, 144, 149, 154, 169 129
Protestant Reformation 1, 246, 250 Qing Empire 15
Protestant universities 16, 239 Qing period 94, 106n26, 121, 125, 128, 129
Protestantism 1–5, 7, 17–19, 21–23, 25, 27, Qing–French campaign 123
29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41–43, 45, 69, 90, Qing–Taiping fighting 124
138–40, 144–45, 148–49, 154, 157, 237, Quechua 37, n41, 38

256, 258, 269, 272, 277, 308, 312, 319, 327, Quilon, India 206f10.10A
337–38 Quinet, Edgar 184, 330–32, 335, 337–38,
Protestants 1–2, 6–7, 12–17, 19, 21, 23–25, 342
27–29, 34, 38–39, 46, 50, 54, 59–60, Des jésuites 330, 337
69, 73–74, 76, 78, 88, 93, 108–12, 117–21, Jesuits and Jesuitism 330
362 Index
Ramón, Pedro 51 Roseau, Dominica 255–56, 260–62, 265,

Rasles, Sébastien 284, 286–87 269, 273
Ratio studiorum 215, 343 Ruiz de Contreras, Fernando 236
Recife, Brazil 232, 234–36, 252 Ru Jiao Xin 儒交信 (de Prémare) 73, 81, 84,
Reformation. See Catholic Reformation and 85n31, 87

Protestant Reformation Ruggieri, Michele 79, 81n17, 89
Reischauer, August Karl 33–34, 43 Ruiz del Portillo, Jerónimo 197, 198, 214
Relación de la persecución... (Morejón) Russia 19, 304
60n45, 60n46, 61n50, 61n51, 62n55, Russian mission 30
62n57, 62n59, 63n64, 63n68, 64n72, Ryder, James 311, 312n20, 318
64n74, 64n76, 65n79 Ryukyu Islands 27
Relación de los mártires... (Morejón) 60n45,
65n81 Sacchini, Francesco
Relación de naufragios and comentarios Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quarta siue
(Cabeza de Vaca) 216–17 Euerardus 213n50
relics 50, 55, 62–65, 68, 208 Historiae Societatis Iesu pars quinta siue
Religious Protectorate 120 Claudius tomus prior 213n50
Renaissance 179, 339, 342 Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars
Republican Party 322 secunda… 213n50
republicanism 184, 304–5, 318–20. See also Historiæ Societatis Iesu pars tertia siue
nativism Borgia 213n50
Resposta que deu (Morães) 230, 247–49 Sachem Dekanissore 288
Retrospect of the First Ten Years of Sacred Congregation of the Rites 60
the Protestant Mission to China Sadao Araki 37
(Milne) 73, 76, 79n14, 87n37 Sakoku edict 19n10, 46, 49
Rey, Anthony 240–43, 314–15 Salsette, India 139
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de 3–5, 8 Salus populi Romani 92f5.2, 99, 100n17,
The Life of Ignatius 3n9 106
Ricci, Matteo 11–12, 73–75, 77, 79, 81, 89–90, Salus populi Sinensis 90
94, 98–100, 110, 113–15, 124, 128, 130, Sanctos no gosagveo no vchi nvqigaqi 51
210–11, 224, 227 São Paulo, Brazil 182, 230
Jiaoyou Lun 交友論 77 sati 153
Tianzhu Shi Yi 天主實義 79 Sawano Chūan 67
Virgin Mary by St. Luke and 98 Second Great Awakening 18, 306–8
Richard, Timothy 10, 4, 16, 20, 93 Second World War 36
Forty-Five Years in China 108n30, 108n31, secret societies 130
109n33, 111n35, 111n36 Sedis apostolicae (Paul V) 49
Risorgimento 324 Seikyō bunpa ron 219
Rodney, George 259 seiyō-bunmei 18
Rodrigues, João 21 seiyōsūhai 27
Rodrigues, Simão 2 Sekigahara, Battle of 49n12
Rolle, Jeannot 259–60, 263, 265, 269 sempuku 32
Romanism 321, 327–28, 338, 341 Serampore College 151
romanticism 160 Sergeant, John 280
Roothaan, Jan 20–21, 23, 43, 314–15 sertão 230

“Rosairo jŭgo no mysterio no Seven Years’ War 254
meditaçam” 55–59 Seventh-day Adventists 256
Rosamond (Smith) 336–37 Seville, Spain 185, 191, 194–95, 199, 214, 220,
rosary 50, 55–56, 59, 61–62, 65, 68–69, 106 223–25
Index 363
Shaanxi province, China 92, 106, 108, 110, Spiritual Exercises (Loyola) 33, 55, 59,
112f5.12 61, 198n21, 199, 331, 335, 337–38, 340,
Shanxi province, China 106, 108, 110–11, 342–43
112f5.12 Spiritval xugvio no tameni 55
Shang dynasty 75 St. Ignatius College, Shanghai 128

Shangdi 上帝 79, 84–85, 211 St. Joseph’s Hospice 127
Shanghai, China 15–16, 79, 88, 106, 109, St. Mary’s Institute 314
115–18, 120–36 St. Paul’s College 168
Shanghai General Hospital 127 St. Pierre parish 259, 262–64
Shimabara Rebellion 21n15 Sterthemius, Pieter 68
Shingon Buddhism 53 Stonestreet, Charles 318
shinsei daigaku 36 Stories of the Saints 50–52, 58–59, 61
Shinto Buddhism 48, 53, 60 Suárez, Francisco 215
Shōwa 15 Sue, Eugène
Shui Hu Zhuan 水滸傳 81 Le juif errant 331, 332n13
Shusaku Endo 68 The Wandering Jew 331, 332n13
Sienkiewicz, Joseph-Adam 30 Sumario de la historia natural de las Indias
Silva, Salvador da 229, 232, 252 (Oviedo) 217
Sima Shen 司馬慎 81, 86 Summa theologica (Aquinas) 14
Simon the Cyrene 57 Surratt, Mary 323–24
Sinclair, Catherine Suruga, Japan 60, 62, 64
Beatrice 336 Switzerland 17n2, 305, 314
Sino-Japanese War 124, 132 syncretism 32, 93. See also kakure,
Sino-Vatican reconciliation 135 Kirishitan
Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent
de Paul 127 Taiping 88, 122–25, 130
Sixty-Ninth New York Volunteers Taiping Civil War 122
323n39 Taishō 24, 38
slave trade 181, 183 Taiyuan City, China 111
slavery 183–84, 194, 253–63, 265–68, 270, Takayama Ucon Justo 64
308, 315–16, 322–23, 341 Tamil 13, 137, 145–48, 158–66, 169–76
Small Swords secret society 122 Tamil culture 173
social services. See also education Tamil language 137n3, 146, 147, 162–64, 170,
hospitals 14, 16, 126–27, 143, 232, 307 173–74
orphanages and foundling homes 121, Tamil Nadu, India 145
126, 128, 307 Tamil poetry 159
Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Tana, India 139
Sœurs de Saint-Paul de Chartres 29 Tang dynasty 74, 119
Soldo-Organtino, Gnecchi 54 Tang Yin 唐寅 94, 95f5.3, 96f5.4, 97f5.5, 103,
Sonderbund War 17 1055.9
Sophia University 34–37 Taylor, Zachary 315
Soquiu, Pedro 60 ten no cuni mo 58
Sotaro, Luis 61 Tenniel, John 29–30
Sotto, João de 235 tennōsei 31, 33, 35
Southeast Asia 17n4, 76, 77, 183 The Hague, Netherlands 241

Spain 2, 18, 29, 34, 40, 55, 60, 72, 133, 142, Theatines 6
179–81, 191, 198, 200, 212, 216–18, 224, Theatro crítico universal (Feijoó) 218
226, 231, 240, 242–43, 245–46, 248–49, Theodore de Bry, printing house 189,
251–52, 257 208
364 Index
Theologiae jesuitarum praecipua capita ultramontanism 317, 319, 324–25

(Chemnitz) 6 unequal treaties 11, 124, 131
theorhetoric 339–43 Union 130–31, 135, 322–24, 327
Thirteen Factories, Canton 73 United Colonies (North America) 291
Thirty Years’ War 142, 243 United Provinces 240, 242, 247

Three Self Movement 134 United Provinces 248. See also Dutch
Tian Rucheng 田汝成 85 Republic
Tianjin Massacre 123n18 United States 130, 134, 302, 304–7, 312, 322,
Tianxin, China 11 336, 339
Tianxue Benyi 天學本義 (Bouvet) 83 Université de l’Aurore (Zhengdan) 16
Tianzhu shengmu 100. See also Xian
Madonna Vagnoni, Alfonso 106
Tianzhu Shi Yi 天主實義 (Ricci) 79 Valenzuela, Leonor de 198
Tōin, Vicente 51 Valera, Blas 211, 224
Tokutomi Sōhō 18 Valignano, Alessandro 13, 48, 168, 210–11,
Tokugawa Ieyasu 48n12, 49 225, 227
Tokugawa shogunate 19n9, 31n52, 49, 60, 64 van Elseracq, Jan 66–67
Tokyo, Japan 19, 23, 26, 28–29, 33–38, 40–44, van Linschoten, Jan Huyghen 189n3, 202–3,
46, 48–49, 51–52, 55, 66, 70–72 208, 220
Toledo, Francisco de 198, 200, 215, 221, Varones ilustres en santidad
224–25 (Andrade) 212n44
Tolkāppiyam 162, 171 Varro, Marcus Terentius 211
Tongzhi Emperor 88 Velho, Domingos 230, 232
Torquemada, Juan de 217n60 Verbeck, Guido 27
Tortola 265 Verbiest, Ferdinand 13, 77, 110
Toshiaki Koso 38 Verdadera relación de la conquista del Perú
Sanctos no gosagveo go vchi (Xerez) 217
nvqigaqi 51n16 Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
Toyotomi clan 49n12 (voc) 45–49, 65–69, 70
Toyotomi Hideyoshi 48 Vichy France 133
Tranquebar, India 145–46, 169 Vida de Colón (Colón) 216
translingualism 160 Vidas exemplares y venerables memorias…
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 315 (Nieremberg) 212n44, 213n47
Treaty of Münster 246 Vidas gloriosas de algũns sanctos e sanctas
Treaty of Paris 254 (Barreto) 51
Treaty of Westphalia 247 Vieira, António 232, 243, 248–49, 251–52
Treaty Port Era 118, 126 As trovas do Bandarra 243
Trent, Council of 47 Vieira, João Fernandes 246
Triumphs of the Reformed Religion in Vietnam 183
(Mather) 284n32 Vilcabamba, Peru 200
Triumphus papalis (Gretser) 6n23 Viracocha 211
Tsăh She Sŭ Meh Yuĕ Tung Ke Chuen 78, 81 Vitoria, Francisco de 194, 198
Tsuyoshi Inukai 36 von atouo xitai 57
Tupi 181, 230, 232–33, 236, 238–39 von Bell, Adam Schall 12, 77, 110
Tupi–Guaraní 181 von Bora, Katharina 4

Tuticorin, India 143
Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum 28 Wabanaki Indians 284, 287
Tyler, John 319 wakon yōsai 33
Index 365
Wandering Jew, The (Sue) 331, 332n13, Xiru 西儒 74

336n26 Xujiahui (Zikawei) 15
Wang Mingdao 134n51
War of Restoration (Pernambuco, Yanjing University 16
Brazil) 246 Yano Ryūsan (Yano Mototaka) 24

Wernz, Franz Xavier 35 Yasukuni Jinja controversy 36
West India Company. See Dutch West India Yasukuni Shrine 14
Company Yijing 80, 83
West Indies 195, 196 Yōhō Paulo 51
Western imperialism 124 Yokohama, Japan 24, 27, 43
Whall, Thomas 313–14 Yongzheng Emperor 73, 75
Whately, Richard 335–36 Yongzheng period 103
Elements of Rhetoric 335 Yozo, Roman 65
Whig Party 316, 322 Yu Bin 132
White Lotus Society 123 Yu Jiao Li 玉嬌梨 80
White, Andrew 303 Yuan Shika 129
Whitefield, George 22 Yuanqu 元曲 80
Wiget, Bernardine 313–14, 323 Yuuki, Diego 32, 59n44
William and Mary 277
Wittenberg 2 Zárate, Agustín de
women 47, 49–50, 52–59, 62, 64–65, 67–69, Historia de la conquista del Perú 217
118, 124, 153, 155–56, 198, 212–13, 233–34, Zeng Guofan 125n27
242, 250, 261, 267–68, 341 Zhang Yuan Liang You Xiang Lun 張遠兩友
Protestant missionaries in India 153 相論 (Milne) 81–82, 86–87
female education 153, 156 Zhendan (Université l’Aurore) 129, 131
female infanticide 153 Zhenjiang, China 124
martyrs 47, 65 Zhou dynasty 75, 107, 134
Woodstock College 324 Zhou Enlai 134
Worms 3–4 Zhu Sheng Niang Niang 註生娘娘 80
Wu Yaozong 134 Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus 13, 145, 154,
159–61, 169–76
Xavier, Francis 18, 20, 23, 31, 33, 35, 38, 43, 48, Akkiyānam 169
140, 145, 159, 161, 212, 226, 290, 298 Arte da lingua malabar of Henriques
Xerez, Francisco de 13
Verdadera relación de la conquista del Arte tamulica of Costa, Baltasar da
Perú 217 and 171
Xian Madonna 15, 91f5.1, 93, 95f5.3, 98–99, Beschi, Constantine Joseph and 173
99f5.6, 99n13, 100–1, 103, 106, 108, 110 Grammatica Damulica 169
Xian, China 92–93, 100, 103, 106, 108–9, Henriques, Henrique text and 169,
112f5.12 171–74
Xinyemon, Mateo 61 Tamil grammar and 169

Jesuit Protestant Encounters in Asia and PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Jesuit Protestant Encounters in Asia and PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jesuit Protestant Encounters in Asia and PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

All rights reserved.

The Boston College International

Robert Aleksander Maryks

James Bernauer, S.J. (Boston College)

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/js

and the Americas

Published for the Institute for Advanced Studies

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Introduction: Protestantism and Early Jesuits 1

2 We are Not Jesuits: Reassessing Relations between Protestantism,

3 Kirishitan Veneration of the Saints: Jesuit and Dutch

4 Jesuit and Protestant Use of Vernacular Chinese in Accommodation

5 Shaping the Anthropological Context of the “Salus populi Sinensis”

6 Jesuit and Protestant Encounters in Jiangnan: Contest and

7 Protestant and Jesuit Encounters in India in the Eighteenth and

8 Beyond Words: Missionary Grammars and the Construction of

9 Introduction: Jesuit Liminal Space in Liberal Protestant

10 José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit–Protestant Author: Print Culture,

11 Negotiating the Confessional Divide in Dutch Brazil and the Republic:

12 A French Jesuit Parish, without the Jesuits: Grand Bay’s Catholic

15 Wars of Words: Catholic and Protestant Jesuitism in Nineteenth-

déq; forma politiae ac reipubl. ipsorum […] pertractatur (Frankfurt,

History. Neundter vnd letzter Theil Americæ, darin[n] gehandelt wird

Americae (Frankfurt, 1602). 205

upanatamwe Up-Biblium God naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk

The five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517) provides

to Jesuits and Lutherans, as these groups crystallized in the half cen-

ciety in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

d­ efense of the faith, but there is no explicit mention of Protestantism. Hence

8 Fontes narrativi, 1:323–507.

refer explicitly to Protestantism. In his literary dialogue composed between

11 Nadal, Commentarii, 607.

15 Ribadeneyra’s agenda of portraying the Society as a providential force to combat Protes-

In the eyes of the contemporary Protestant writers, the main protagonist of

24, 2017). Available online is also its Latin rendition, https://archive.org/details/bub_

By the mid-seventeenth century, this myth of the anti-Protestant origins of

ordinis iesuitici scripta ab Helia Hasenmüller (Dillingen: Ioannes Mayer, 1594).

Beampten, Gelübden, Freyheiten Regiment Lehr, Fortpflantzung […]. Basel: Genath,

In the 1920s, the Belgian Lazarist missionary Vincent Lebbe (1877–1940)

written in Chinese—on theology, ecclesiastical history, catechisms, science, lit-

guidance of Visitor Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), the Jesuit mission ad-

Katakana—the first printing press to have produced non-Western Catholic

missionaries relied (and not always acknowledged) their Jesuit predecessors.

sion of Steven Pieragastini, in the Xujiahui (Zikawei) suburb of Shanghai, the

In this most Westernized enclave in China, Anglo-American Protestants col-

Christian evangelization in the early and modern periods.

We Are Not Jesuits: Reassessing Relations between

Protestantism, French Catholicism, and the Society

1 The Protestant Magazine (London: Wertheim & MacIntosh, 1853), 15:70.

it was Protestantism, in the midst of a Second Great Awakening, that led to

On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858) and a squadron

1 Jesuit Ghosts and Protestant Missionaries

1.1 Reverend Robert Philip’s Steam-Carriage of Faith (1841)

China or Japan, as new worlds to be re-conquered by the church, are now

11 From here onward referred to as the mep (Missions étrangères de Paris).

year, leaders of the Beijing Christian community had written to Roothaan,

d efense of the faith, but there is no explicit mention of Protestantism. Hence

( 1816–1900) in 1863 to construct a church in Nagasaki, dedicated to the Twenty-

practices, through the publication of Catholic propaganda. Seikyō bunpa ron