RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE RITES OF MALABAR (seventeenth century): DIFFERENTIAL INTERPRETATIONS OF JESUITIC MISSION IN INDIA AND THE EAST

• Main Author: Adone Agnolin
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco 2009-06-01
• Series: Clio: Revista de Pesquisa Histórica
• Subjects: Jesuits in Asia; Roberto de’Nobili; Rituals of Malabar
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/revistaclio/article/view/24163/19605

Considering the matter of jesuit evangelization in asian context, we intend to excel some details concerning the polemics and the different interpretation of (indian) Rituals of Malabar. Following the perspective of previous purposes like the ones of Alessandro Valignano in Japan and of Matteo Ricci in China, the jesuit mission in India, according to policy prepared and defended by another indian priest, Roberto de’ Nobili, will also bring a great controversion both in asian context and in the Congregation of Propaganda Fide. In Madurai, the italian jesuit tried to match hiduism ans christianism, presenting the jesuits as western brahmins. Opposite to what happened in China, nevertheless, the tensions about this strategy grew here, at first, inside indian jesuit missions. Similar to that concerning the chinese rituals, this confrontation about the rituals of Malabar also took place from the clash among missionaries around the opportunity of allowing the newly-converted to keep on practicing some rituals form their country’s tradition. The conflict was being stablished and growing around a disagreement in the interpretation of those rituals: were they civil or religious rituals? The different answers bring along realy important interests and implications inside the jesuit missionary project. It was, at last, in the different interpretation of sannyasi brahmins’ symbols, hich inspired the adaptation praxis stablished by de’Nobili’s missionary purpose that the confrontation about the rituals broke out.