Panel 13: Making the Missions Possible: Religious Agents, Exchanges, and Materialities on the Move (EN)

Chair: Isabel Murta Pina (Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau) & Maria João Pereira Coutinho (Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau & IHA-NOVA FCSH)

Part I: 16 April, 4:15 pm | Room D110

Entre a cruz e a espada: a atuação da Junta das Missões de Pernambuco nas guerras dos sertões das Capitanias do Norte (1712-1715)

Victor André Costa da Silva (Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Unicamp)

A Junta das Missões de Pernambuco foi criada em 1681, por D. Pedro II, e desenvolveu suas atividades entre 1692 e 1759. Subordinada à Junta das Missões do Reino, em Lisboa, o órgão deveria realizar reuniões periódicas, contando com a presença de autoridades seculares e religiosas locais. Os encontros eram feitos a fim de ponderar sobre a missionação dos povos indígenas da parte norte do estado do Brasil, incluindo deliberações em torno da guerra justa contra eles. Longe de ser um espaço de deliberação religiosa, a Junta assumiu funções no campo material e logístico das missões, envolvendo-se em questões como a regulação do trabalho indígena e a organização das campanhas militares nos sertões das Capitanias do Norte, entre 1680 e 1720. Através do “Livro dos assentos da Junta das Missões”, que contém atas, alvarás e cartas, de 1712 a 1715, propõe-se compreender a atuação da Junta entre o poder espiritual e os interesses coloniais. Através da análise dos documentos, este trabalho almeja refletir sobre os dilemas éticos enfrentados pela Junta, entre a defesa da conversão e a legitimação de guerras contra os indígenas dos sertões. Por fim, ao situar a Junta no contexto global, especialmente à luz dos conceitos jurídicos e teológico-políticos de ius belli e ius pacis, a comunicação contribuirá para a compreensão dos múltiplos papéis, religiosos e econômico-financeiros, que os missionários desempenharam; suas redes de apoio; e possíveis dinâmicas de poder.

Keywords: Junta das Missões de Pernambuco; Capitanias do Norte; guerra justa; povos indígenas.

"Send me some good Muscatel wine". Shopping Lists, Iberian Foodways and the Jesuits in Japan ca. 1580-1610

Simone Zirolia (European University Institute)

Two of the three most important tasks Father Superior Valignano and later Father Superior Pasio assigned to the father Procurator of Japan, the “financial officer” of the Jesuit mission in the archipelago, were regarded as everyday supplies, especially culinary necessities. In accordance with “his superiors”, the Procurator was then in charge of the provisioning of the missionaries in Japan, their “houses” and “churches”, as well as those fathers who were travelling to the archipelago. The transportation and preservation of the supplies during the travel was also the responsibility of the Procurator, who, according to Superior Pasio, had to guarantee the provisions’ “good quality”, their shipment and delivery timing, “bought and requested in advance”, as well as their travelling conditions “finely wrapped and stored”. Guided by a set of archival "shopping lists" and the missionaries’ "Regimentos" (statutes), my paper discusses the provisioning system of the Jesuit mission in Japan, disclosing the exact knowledge the Jesuits had about what could arrive in Japan, in what quantity and from where. In doing so, I discuss the tight relationship the missionaries had with the Portuguese merchants and with scattered Jesuit brothers in Macao and Goa, which allowed the movement of people, goods and foodstuffs throughout the Portuguese Estado da India towards Japan.

Keywords: Jesuits in Japan; foodways; provisioning; trade

The Jesuits' Engagement in Global Trade: Portuguese Institutional Adaptation in the Indian Ocean World (16th-17th centuries)

Mariana Boscariol (University of Manchester)

This paper seeks to examine the Jesuit missionaries’ relationship with Portuguese institutions and economic enterprises in Asia during the early modern period. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese Estado da India counted on the Jesuits for advice, mediation, and not uncommonly direct involvement in matters of commerce, diplomacy, and local governance. Within this scope and going beyond the order’s religious work and internal economic and financial activities, this paper aims to examine the Jesuits’ part in or contribution to the institutional changes of Portuguese trade in Asia. Combining Jesuit and official letters, royal decrees, and commercial records, this paper aims to contribute to our understanding of how Portuguese institutions changed to regulate, control, include, and integrate the Jesuits' participation in maritime trade throughout the period.

Keywords: religious agents; institutions; empire; trade; Asian missions

Part II: 16 April, 6:00 pm | Room D110

"Estos officios requieren hombres de diligencia, fidelidad y modo en el negocear". Regulations for the Mission Procurator and the Governance of Jesuit Global Operations

Diogo Reis Pereira (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau)

This paper proposal is based on the study of three sets of regulations concerning the Procurator of the Society of Jesus, established in Lisbon, and aims, through a comparative approach, to analyze the institutional evolution of this office, the ideal model defined by the Jesuit hierarchy, and the global administration of the missions. Created in 1573, the office of Mission Procurator was responsible for articulating the powers of the Society in the Portuguese kingdom and even across Europe with the provinces and vice-provinces of the Portuguese Assistancy, ensuring their material, human, and financial needs. In this context, it structured a network linking the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, constituting a fundamental axis of Jesuit governance. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, this study proposes to compare the earliest description of the office (1561) written by the first Procurator of Portugal, Francisco Henriques; the instructions accompanying the creation of the Procurator of the Missions in 1573, drafted by Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606); and those later revised by Francisco Martins and Gabriel Afonso under the order of Superior General Everard Mercurian (1514–1580). This analysis highlights the centrality of the Procurator in the reception and departure of missionaries, in the management of the global system of information and correspondence, and in financial administration, which ensured the subsistence of both provinces and missionaries. All these aspects, defined in the regulations, sought to control the office by clearly establishing its rules. Thus, this paper seeks to address gaps in the study of Jesuit mission administration, especially the Chinese and Japanese ones, by offering a comprehensive perspective on the Procurator as the key agent for the temporal dimension of the Society. It aims to define the model idealized by the Jesuit hierarchy, identify the different functions assumed by procurators, understand how they coordinated missionaries and related to superiors in Europe, assess their accounting and recordkeeping practices, and finally consider their dual religious and economic-financial role. Ultimately, it clarifies the resilience of this office in governing a global structure that connected the Portuguese Assistancy from Brazil to Japan.

Keywords: institutional history; early modern period; East Asian missions; Jesuit procurators; regulations

Missionaries and Wellness. Networks and Healing Practices in Early Modern South Asia

Chiara De Ninno (Sapienza University of Rome)

In the second half of the 17th century, the Catholic missions directed by the Discalced Carmelites in South Asia, particularly in the hodiern India, offer a significant case study for examining the intersections of religion, medicine, and the body. Among the most telling testimonies are those of some missionaries afflicted by illness and treated by the Venetian physician Niccolò Manucci, who resided at the Mughal Court and whose presence created new channels of interaction between European religious actors and local medical knowledge. This paper explores the encounters between sick Carmelites and Manucci during the final decades of the century, analysing how missionary clergy and medical practitioners negotiated authority over the body both during journeys and in the everyday unfolding of apostolic work. Previous scholarship has examined Manucci in connection with his travels and his role at the Mughal court (S. Subrahmanyam; M. Moneta; C. Petrolini; L. Clerici), while the historiography on global missions has focused on conversion processes, leaving the corporeality of missionaries aside (C. Windler; V. Lavenia; C. Petrolini, etc.). By centring on the missionaries’ sick bodies, this paper seeks to fill that gap and to highlight the body as a site of vulnerability and negotiation. Two questions guide the research: how did paradigms for evaluating illness shift in relation to travel and missionary settings? And how did missionaries position themselves in the care, management, and narration of their own bodies? The proposed response will be framed by the idea that the management of the individual missionary’s body constituted a material form of managing the mission as a whole. Attention will be given to the dual control exercised over the missionary body: by the physician on the one hand, and by Iberian political institutions responsible for the missions in India on the other. Elements of analysis include almsgiving, illness and medical assistance, available economic resources, and the self-narratives through which missionaries described their bodily condition.

Keywords: missions; bodies; medicine; missionary hierarchies; practices

“To seek the temporal remedy”: a prosopography of the Jesuit Procurators of China and Japan (17th-18th centuries)

Leonor Pratas (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau)

The spiritual survival of the East Asian Missions depended on the temporal administration led by the Jesuit Procurators. In Macau, these economic and financial agents managed available funds of the Province of Japan and the Vice-Province of China, prepared accounts and reports, provisioned missionaries’ travels, and ensured, through multiple channels, the circulation of money, goods, and knowledge. From the mid-seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, this office was held by different figures who form the focus of this paper. Initially dominated by temporal coadjutors and later increasingly entrusted to priests, the Procurature proved both demanding and ambiguous. Although powerful, the responsibilities they carried also made them controversial figures, frequently entangled in rivalries, ethical and moral dilemmas, corruption and mismanagement accusations, aspects which remain understudied. Since the Procurators’ decisions were shaped by the global dynamics of the Early Modern world, this paper seeks to reconstruct their profiles and trajectories and assess the wide-ranging consequences of their day-to-day lives. Using a global micro-historical approach, it highlights their decision-making processes, as well as the development of accounting and record-keeping practices, connecting them to the dynamics between Rome and local circumstances. Attention is also given to recruitment patterns and the support networks forged with the secular community of Macau, on which the Procurators heavily relied for their survival. Based on previously unseen sources, we intend to shed new light on the Procurators as seekers of the “temporal remedy”, contributing to broader discussions on their role within the history of the Society of Jesus and in the making of Catholic missions in Early Modern Asia.

Keywords: Jesuit procurators; Macau; East Asian missions; prosopography; networks; material culture