BAROQUE AROUND THE CLOCK: DANIELLO BARTOLI SJ (1608–1685) AND THE USES OF GLOBAL HISTORY

ABSTRACTRight from its foundation in 1540, the Society of Jesus recognised the value and role of visual description (ekphrasis) in the persuasive rhetoric of Jesuit missionary accounts. Over a century later, when Jesuit missions were to be found on all the inhabited continents of the world then known to Europeans, descriptions of the new-found lands were being read for the entertainment as well as the edification of their Old World audiences. The first official history of the Society's missions in the vernacular, the volumes authored by Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685), played an important role in communicating a sense of the distinctiveness of the order's global mission. Referred to by Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) as the ‘Dante of baroque prose’, Bartoli developed a particularly variegated and intensely visual idiom to meet the challenge of describing parts of the world which the majority of his readers, including himself, would never visit.

Mission as conversion

This is a reflection on my experience of being an expatriate Jesuit missionary to Zambia from 1972 to 2005. It traces the development of the notion of mission as it shifts from a narrow denominational conception of conversion to being more ecumenical and inclusive of other religious viewpoints. In reviewing this, the ideal of conversion was seen to mean colonization of the other. To counteract this, another understanding of conversion is proposed where the integrity and distinctiveness of those converted are acknowledged, as is the impartiality of the missionary. This places mission as conversion in a new key and enables the missionary to face today’s multifaith world, rooted in his/her worldview, yet open to the other.

The Missionary in the World: The Invention of the Soul of Saint Francis Xavier in an Anonymous Sermon: The East, Quito and Rome, 18th Century

The discovery of an anonymous Quito Sermon dating back to 1741 in the Fondo Curia 2223 in the Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome dealing with the historical and metaphorical transit between Rome and the “Orient” of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier (1506–52), suggests links between the universalist vocation of the Catholic mission, and the local American missionary experiences which the text omits. This article argues that the sermon has a universal resonance that invokes the East in America (as it is written to be read in public); it is a sensory experience that can be adapted to different realities (the trips, relics, and missions of Francis Xavier), but also noted is the omission of local missionary practices (i.e., the sermon is presented as produced in a place unmentioned in the text). It is above all, a reformulation of the “missionary in the world” of Western philosophical commentaries and texts that look toward the East but are enunciated in America.

To Walk with Slaves: Jesuit Contexts and the Atlantic World in the Cartagena Mission to Enslaved Africans, 1605–1654

The Jesuit mission to enslaved Africans founded in 1605 in Cartagena de las Indias is amongst the most extraordinary religious developments of early colonial Latin America. By the time Alonso de Sandoval, S.J. and Pedro Claver, S.J. began their work to baptize and catechize the thousands of slaves who passed through Cartagena’s port each year, the Society of Jesus had already established a global missionary enterprise, including an extensive network of communication amongst its missionaries and colleges. Amidst this intramissionary context, Sandoval wrote De instauranda Aethiopum salute—a treatise informed largely by these annual letters, personal correspondences, and interactions with the diverse multitudes of people who could be encountered in this early colonial cosmopolitan city—aimed at promoting the necessity of African salvation. From East Asia to Latin America, Jesuits followed the example of their apostolic missionary, Francis Xavier, to bring the Catholic faith to non-Christian peoples. Through De instauranda and the Catholic Church’s collected testimony for the sainthood of Claver, we see how Sandoval and Claver, like other Jesuits of the time, arose as innovative and unique missionaries, adapting to their context while attempting to model the Jesuit missionary spirit. In doing so, this article posits, the historical-religious context of the early modern Atlantic world and global Jesuit missions influenced Sandoval and Claver to accompany enslaved Africans as a missionary theology.

Gathering

This brief interlude sets the stage for the action of the book to come by imagining a fictional dinner to which the main figures of the book have been invited, and briefly introducing them in turn: Women La the Siamese interpreter; Wang Zilong and Qoninci the Mongolian-language translators; Ferdinand Verbiest the Jesuit missionary; Uge the Manchu language teacher; and Qing Manchu poet Jakdan.

António Vieira: A Jesuit Missionary to the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam

Between the years 1646 and 1648, António Vieira maintained close contact with the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam, in particular with Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi of Portuguese-converso origin. Under interrogation by the Inquisition, Vieira characterized this period of his life as the one in which he began to elaborate his messianic thesis of the so-called Fifth Empire. Unlike ben Israel, however, Vieira maintained that the Fifth Empire would arrive when the Jews recognized Christ as the messiah. Moreover, commanded by a Portuguese emperor-king, these Fifth Empire Christianized Jews would have their own political state, king, and cultural ceremonies. Always a missionary, Vieira argued that Jews would convert to the Catholic faith without the use of force as long as their idiosyncratic expectations were accepted, much like the Asian peoples and Indians of the New World, who, despite having been converted by the Jesuits, maintained some of their customs, beliefs, and institutions.

God in All Things?

A set of notarial documents from colonial New Spain (Mexico) offers a view of the long-distance Jesuit missionary network as anchored in a dense local network of intimate relationships. Following the arrest of members of the Society of Jesus in 1767 at the Colegio Espíritu Santo in Puebla de los Ángeles, a scribe is tasked with noting Jesuit belongings. He records unique objects held in safekeeping for local people in Puebla. Using the lens of a theopolitical anthropology, we see how the idea of a God-present in the Eucharist is central not only to the way that the Spanish Crown was prevented from taking the silver items from the chapel, but also to how these sacramental logics account for the accrual of disparate items in each Jesuit’s room.

‘Intoxicated, we listened to warblers and swallows chattering in the spring wind’

The affinity between the landscape painter Wu Li and François de Rougemont, a Jesuit missionary based in Changshu, is a rare example of friendship between a Chinese and a European in the seventeenth century. Their encounter, which seemingly resulted in the first Chinese painting partly dedicated to a European, evidences the role of the visual arts as a social lubricant. These arts included engravings imported from the Netherlands, works produced in China, and Sino-European co-productions. Aspects of patronage of Christian art in provincial China of the early Qing period come into closer view as well as, conversely, the Chinese view towards European art. Both men studied each other’s ideological background (respectively Confucianism and Catholicism) and their careful exchange oscillated between transactional strategy, cross-cultural curiosity, and, perhaps, affection.