{ "book_metadata": { "book_name": "HISTORY OF THE MISSIONS", "book_author": "BERNARD DE VAULX", "publisher": "HAWTHORN BOOKS PUBLISHERS", "published_on": "2026" }, "chunks": [ { "chunk_index": 1, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 84, 85 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00088-6ddd87870ca40246b53a.webp", "raw\\pages\\00089-b9c8efb03619f50775bc.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Origins of Propaganda", "chunk_data": "CHAPTER VIII\nFROM THE\nESTABLISHMENT OF\nPROPAGANDA TO\nGREGORY XVI\nTHE BULL INSCRUTABILI DIVINAE AND THE\nINGOLI REPORTS\nThe idea of a Congregation of Propaganda seems first to have occurred to John of Vendeville, a jurist who had taken orders. In 1567, he sent his first memorandum to Rome. It urged the need to establish special seminaries for the formation of \"good workers\". St Francis Borgia, the General of the Jesuits, had also suggested the founding of an organization especially to deal with the missions. Hence Pius V appointed a commission composed of four cardinals (1568). Gregory XIII increased its numbers and founded many missionary seminaries and colleges. A further memorandum from Vendeville caused Clement VIII to decide that the initial commission should be developed, and it became the Congregation for matters concerning the Catholic faith and religion (1592). Vendeville died in the same year.\nThe next step towards the final organization was not possible until the arrival on the scene of another zealous supporter of the missions, the Carmelite Thomas of Jesus. A book which he published in 1613 dealt with \"all the works that are of use to a religious and apostolic man\". He suggested that on a given date a commission composed of eminent men should meet to study the problems raised by the apostolate to non-Christians. With its five secretaries covering the whole of the known world, it was the future Congregation in embryo. Yet it only came into existence on January 6th, 1622. It was given the name Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. The Bull Inscrutabili divinae of June 22nd in the same year gave it its official character.", "time": { "start_year": 1567, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1622, "end_month": 6, "end_date": 22, "time_display": "1567–1622" }, "meta": { "people": [ "John of Vendeville", "St Francis Borgia", "Pius V", "Gregory XIII", "Clement VIII", "Thomas of Jesus" ], "places": [ "Rome" ], "event": "The institutional development of the Congregation of Propaganda culminated in its creation in 1622 and official establishment by the Bull Inscrutabili divinae.", "tags": [ "Church", "Missions", "Politics" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 2, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 85, 86 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00089-b9c8efb03619f50775bc.webp", "raw\\pages\\00090-7774b166f459f3d68c49.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Ingoli Reports Missionary Reform", "chunk_data": "Six years later, a Bull of Urban VIII created the College of Propaganda, which was to undertake the \"choice of qualified ministers who were to go to those peoples in the bondage of spiritual blindness and to shine with the brightness of an upright and well-ordered life, inflamed with an ardent zeal for souls, standing on the mountains like lamps glowing with the light of the Gospel teaching, dissolving and scattering, as far as lay in their power, the darkness of infidelity and heresy\".\nThe new organization was fortunate to have as its first secretary a learned jurist, Mgr Ingoli. His priestly life was above reproach, and he was so insensitive to honours that he never wore the insignia of his prelacy. In addition, he was a tireless worker. It is not surprising that with a character such as this, he should have been a dyed in the wool authoritarian. He immediately inaugurated a general inquiry among the nuncios and the mission institutes and heads. It gave him more complete information concerning abuses and disorders which were already known in a broad sort of way. Missionaries were too few in number and their intellectual and moral quality was sometimes inadequate. Some engaged in trade, many did not know the native languages and showed little zeal in conferring Orders on native Christians whom they considered to be inferior beings. Divisions were rampant everywhere, regulars against seculars, Portuguese against Spaniards in the Far East, regulars against other regulars. The choice of agents by the Councils of the Indies left much to be desired and the less worthy among them often found the ecclesiastical authorities very accommodating. But the men from whom the reports came in and this was a good sign-expressed their wish that the newly constituted authority would speedily elaborate and impose reforms.\nMgr Ingoli laid the foundations of this reform in three reports, three documents of basic importance. In order to remedy the discord existing between missionaries and to put a stop to their trading activities, the 1625 report called for greater discrimination in the choice of subjects, advised against the intermingling of religious from different Orders or nations in the same diocese, and recommended that the bishops should preferably be chosen from among the seculars and that apostolic delegates should be appointed to supervise the missions. The report of 1628 attacked the widespread prejudice against the natives as incapable of receiving the fullness of the priesthood. It not only recommended that they should be raised to the priesthood, but also that they should not be kept on principle in subordinate posts. As soon as it became possible, episcopal sees, whose number should be increased, ought to be entrusted to them. This was the policy of Pius XI in embryo. Finally, the 1644 report denounced the inroads of the system of patronato and in particular the interference of royal officials of the Crown in the choice of bishops and the running of the missions.\nThese three reports, inspired by the desire of the Holy See to claim for itself as an inalienable right the spiritual direction of the missions, were to give rise to serious conflicts with the patronato system, especially in Asia.", "time": { "start_year": 1622, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1644, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1622–1644" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Urban VIII", "Mgr Ingoli", "Pius XI" ], "places": [ "Asia", "Far East" ], "event": "Mgr Ingoli investigated missionary abuses and proposed reforms concerning discipline, native clergy, episcopal appointments, and the patronato.", "tags": [ "Church", "Missions", "Reform" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 3, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 86, 87, 88 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00090-7774b166f459f3d68c49.webp", "raw\\pages\\00091-1f77ee003909c2ec76b5.webp", "raw\\pages\\00092-678570fe05e5367f4a0d.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Recollect Missions Reach Canada", "chunk_data": "FIRST MISSIONS SENT BY FRANCE TO CANADA, THE ORIENT AND MADAGASCAR\nA departure from the stipulations in the Bulls of Alexander VI appeared in the treaty of Vervins (1589) and made it possible for France to send her ships to the north of a line passing through the Canaries and for France's first missions to come into being in North America.\nWe can hardly give the name of missions to the outposts established in Nova Scotia by a few isolated persons-one of these was Lescarbot, a layman, who was followed by two Jesuits. In any case, a Welsh adventurer arrived as early as 1613 and made havoc of these settlements before their founders had time to organize them properly.\nOn the other hand, Champlain, a pioneer who was convinced of \"the need to propagate the faith among the infidels by bringing among them some good religious\" laid the foundations of genuine missions when in 1615 he put ashore at Quebec four Recollects who, as early as the second half of June, erected a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.\nTheir first investigations showed them that, apart from the Hurons, who were relatively stable-some of them knew how to cultivate the soil the peoples in these territories led completely nomadic lives. If they were to be evangelized, they had therefore to be made to settle down, to be prevented from wandering from place to place. Such a result might be achieved by giving Frenchmen, who were good agriculturists, the task of teaching them to turn the land to better account. In other words, a settlement had to be made. Champlain launched an appeal for volunteers but it was hardly heeded to begin with except by Louis Hébert. Yet surely no one was better qualified for this work than this apostle who, on his deathbed, offered his life for the conversion of the Indians. He had been driven out of Nova Scotia in 1613. He returned to the St Lawrence with his wife and children, married his daughter to a Norman, and the untold numbers of magistrates, officers, merchants and ecclesiastics who were the descendants of this marriage rightly earned for Hébert the title of \"the father of believers\", \"the colony's Abraham\".\nMeanwhile, at Tadoussac and Three Rivers, the first settlements founded by the Recollects, the Indians proved superstitious, inveterate polygamists and dominated by the spirit of revenge. All this was the very antithesis of Christianity. And their language, so lacking in abstract terms, was inadequate to convey to them the attributes of the Godhead. In these depressing circumstances the Recollects decided to call on the Jesuits for help.", "time": { "start_year": 1589, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1615, "end_month": 6, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1589–1615" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Champlain", "Lescarbot", "Louis Hébert" ], "places": [ "Nova Scotia", "Quebec", "Tadoussac", "Three Rivers", "St Lawrence" ], "event": "French and Recollect missionary activity began in North America, with Champlain establishing a mission at Quebec and Louis Hébert supporting settlement.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Canada", "Colonization" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 4, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 88, 89 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00092-678570fe05e5367f4a0d.webp", "raw\\pages\\00093-5d7aa52556e5e2e94146.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Jesuits Establish Canadian Missions", "chunk_data": "The first Jesuit mission, led by Fr Charles Lalemant, landed at Quebec in 1625. Two years later, Richelieu founded the Company of the Hundred Associates, who guaranteed to send to Canada from 1628 onwards two or three hundred Frenchmen and four thousand more during the next fifteen years, all of them Catholics. In Canada, the Edict of Nantes was no longer in force. The colonial settlement Champlain and the Recollects wished to see could now be founded. But, in the summer of 1628, England had no difficulty in taking possession of a Canada entirely without means of defence. The missionaries put to sea again and only the members of the nascent Hébert tribe remained.\nSince Champlain was able to prove that the capture of Quebec took place after the signing of the treaty of Suse, which had ended hostilities between England and France, a new mission, consisting entirely of Jesuits, arrived in Canada in 1632, under the direction of Fr Le Jeune. He tried to keep the children at the mission station, with the parents' consent, so as to teach them the catechism. The restraint imposed on them by a regular life seemed intolerable to these children of nature and they were soon back with their tribes. Fr Le Jeune tried the scheme again, this time with a better organization on the material side, at Notre-Dame des Anges, in a Quebec suburb. He also drew up a more liberal set of regulations. The little savages again found it too oppressive. Several of them died, one escaped. The only thing to be done was to close this embryo seminary.\nFr de Brébeuf, who had been received among the Hurons during his first stay in the country, returned to them in 1633 with two other Fathers. They went from hut to hut and undertook the task of catechizing children and adults. But the Indians' sorcerers persuaded them that the presence among them of the Fathers was the cause of bad weather, drought, epidemics and every kind of calamity. It was decided that they should be put to death. The Fathers showed remarkable pluck by inviting their judges to a farewell banquet, as was the custom. The massacre was cancelled.\nThe meagre results of these first contacts were a few children at Notre-Dame des Anges, a few dying people baptized and the apostasy of all the catechumens \"except one or two families who scarcely dared to hold up their heads\".\nThe Jesuits then decided to protect the catechumens against the immense power of sorcery by isolating them in Christian villages. Sillery, the first of these, grew up four miles from Quebec. It had a fort, a chapel, houses, a hospital, and a house for the Jesuit fathers.", "time": { "start_year": 1625, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1633, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1625–1633" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Fr Charles Lalemant", "Richelieu", "Champlain", "Fr Le Jeune", "Fr de Brébeuf" ], "places": [ "Quebec", "Notre-Dame des Anges", "Sillery", "Huron territory" ], "event": "Jesuits expanded French missions in Canada, attempted catechetical schooling, and founded the Christian village of Sillery.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Canada", "Jesuits" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 5, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 90 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00094-9d69f3de9a6381e037a7.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Iroquois Destroy Huron Missions", "chunk_data": "On the other hand, the Iroquois proved hostile and unyielding. In 1642, Fr Jogues had been horribly mutilated by them when, nobly sacrificing himself for his Huron converts, he had refused to leave them when they were carried off as captives into Iroquois territory. After living among them, he no longer doubted that they planned to exterminate the Huron race. Yet, when he was asked in 1646 to found a mission in Iroquois territory, he obeyed knowing well the fate that awaited him. He wrote to a brother Jesuit: Ibo et non redibo, \"I shall go but I shall not return.\" And the Iroquois put him to death on October 18th, 1649. In the years that followed, they relentlessly continued their war against the Hurons and the missions. In March 1649, they captured the villages of Saint-Ignace and Saint-Louis and martyred Frs de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant. Sainte-Marie had to be abandoned. A new attack in December brought about the martyrdom of Frs Charles Garnier and Noël Chabanel. What remained of the missions took refuge in Quebec. The situation was only restored in 1665 after the Carignan regiment had intervened. But the Huron people had been decimated and, as far as the Iroquois were concerned, the missionaries had completely failed.", "time": { "start_year": 1642, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1665, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1642–1665" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Fr Jogues", "Fr de Brébeuf", "Gabriel Lalemant", "Charles Garnier", "Noël Chabanel" ], "places": [ "Iroquois territory", "Saint-Ignace", "Saint-Louis", "Sainte-Marie", "Quebec" ], "event": "Iroquois warfare killed missionaries, destroyed Huron settlements, and forced the surviving missions to retreat to Quebec.", "tags": [ "War", "Missions", "Martyrdom" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 6, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 93, 94, 95 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00097-c570ced55aa32a815e79.webp", "raw\\pages\\00098-581619ebf0ca8dab61f5.webp", "raw\\pages\\00099-f357c928c3e149bfd526.webp" ], "chunk_title": "De Nobili Adapts Missionary Methods", "chunk_data": "FR DE NOBILI AT MADURA\nIn India, the caste system kept individuals enclosed in what we may call social prisons. To leave them was to become an \"outcaste\", to be dead as far as civil society was concerned. This system seemed incomprehensible to the Portuguese and so contrary to Christianity that they took no account of it in their relations with the native population. They had therefore invited all men to become Catholics, but because of an insufficient acquaintance with the language they couched their invitation in unsuitable terms. The question: \"Do you want to be a Christian?\" became \"Do you want to joint the Prangui cast?\" But Prangui was a word of contempt applied by the Moslems to all Christians since the time of the Crusades.\nThis had been the state of affairs at Madura previous to the arrival of an Italian Jesuit, Robert de Nobili. In 1607 he wrote to one of his relatives: \"In spite of twelve years of work, our Fathers have not been able to make a single convert. At the most, they have baptized in articulo mortis three or four sick people.\" He took careful note of this failure but did not give way to despair. He was looking for a different method of approach. It seemed to him that the secrets of Hinduism could only be penetrated from within. As he was descended from an illustrious Tuscan family, he protested that he was neither a Prangui nor a Portuguese. He introduced himself as a \"Roman rajah\" and so was able to put himself on the same level as the Sannyassi, upper class penitents who were respected by everyone. He built a church and presbytery on a site granted to him by a cousin of the king of Madura. All his servants were Brahmins, and he lived and dressed like the Sannyassi. A Brahmin had taught him Sanskrit and he was thus able to discover the secrets of Hinduism. Hence his expository work and his controversies with the distinguished visitors admitted to his company could, for the greater good of Christianity, be orientated towards the spiritual needs common to the faithful of both religions. At the same time, he had become convinced that the caste customs were not all to be condemned. Certain of these, whose character was purely civil and social, might be tolerated.\nBut some of his brethren were of the contrary opinion and they denounced him to Rome as causing scandal. This was the greatest trial of his life. A Bull of Gregory XV (1623) put an end to it by authorizing the Brahmins and other \"Gentiles\" to wear cordons and koudounis, the caste insignia, on condition that they were handed to them by a Catholic priest who would bless them by reciting prayers approved by the ordinary of the district.", "time": { "start_year": 1607, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1623, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1607–1623" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Robert de Nobili", "Gregory XV" ], "places": [ "Madura", "India" ], "event": "Robert de Nobili adopted Hindu cultural forms and caste conventions to make Christianity accessible to Indian society; Gregory XV authorized the practice in 1623.", "tags": [ "India", "Missions", "Religion" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 7, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00099-f357c928c3e149bfd526.webp", "raw\\pages\\00100-38202c76c50fcdf35142.webp", "raw\\pages\\00101-96b2ef85d1026809f63c.webp", "raw\\pages\\00102-21d12510d6ef1391e561.webp", "raw\\pages\\00103-f17c39f806ae7db012f1.webp", "raw\\pages\\00104-99c4ae76ce922ab0e94b.webp" ], "chunk_title": "De Rhodes Promotes Apostolic Vicars", "chunk_data": "FR DE RHODES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF VICARS APOSTOLIC IN THE FAR EAST\nAt the same time, Fr Alexander de Rhodes, also a Jesuit, born at Avignon in 1591, was conducting in Vietnam an experiment of great interest and whose results were to have considerable influence on the missions in the Far East.\nOne of a party sent to Cochin-China in 1623, he showed that he was able to adapt himself with amazing facility. He laid the foundations of Quoc-Ngu, a transcription of the Annamite characters into the Latin alphabet which generations of missionaries were to use. But in 1626, he was withdrawn from Cochin-China, apparently because of his excessive petulance in the face of the thousand and one difficulties put in the way of the Christians by the sovereign.\nIn the following year, he was sent to Tonkin. There he found out how popular was a certain piece of buffoonery which represented a Portuguese European with an enormous paunch, into which there entered and then re-emerged a tiny Vietnamese who had become Portuguese in the process. This parody of baptism, reduced to the status of a conjuring trick in which the Vietnamese was transformed into a Portuguese, showed well enough the need for the apostolate to be given a new form.\nFr de Rhodes took care to make sure of the good will of the chua by initiating him into the secret of the chiming clock and offering him a treatise on mathematics, and so was able to open a church at Hanoi and to preach there as frequently as six times a day. He appealed to the upper classes, in the hope that they would set an example to the others. His enormous success caused his downfall. The concubines or second wives, fearing that their convert husbands would repudiate them, spread calumnies about him and accused him of complicity with the rebels. They enlisted the help of sorcerers and witches and so succeeded in having him expelled. But 6,700 persons had been baptized before he left.\nIn his first report, Fr de Rhodes estimated the number of converts in Cochin-China and Tonkin at 300,000, and anticipated a regular flow of 15,000 conversions a year. To minister to these Christian communities at least three or even four hundred priests were needed. Where were they to be found? And supposing they were found, what a persecution would have to be expected with such an influx of foreigners! The example of Japan before him, Fr de Rhodes wrote pathetically: \"What would we not give to have many native priests in Japan today! But because, when times were in our favour, the necessary priests were not ordained, this Church is now in great distress!\"\nA year later, on August 1st, 1651, the Congregation suggested to the pope that a patriarch, two or three archbishops and twelve bishops should be sent out, all of them in partibus infidelium. On May 13th, 1658, the Congregation of Propaganda put forward the names of Fathers Pallu and Lambert de la Motte. A brief dated July 29th appointed them, one as bishop of Heliopolis, the other as bishop of Beryta. The former was given jurisdiction over Tonkin, the latter over Cochin-China, A little later, a third Frenchman was appointed to the vicariate of Nankin, Ignace Cotolendi. Each of them also was made responsible for the administration of provinces in China. In fact, several of these provinces became vicariates.\nCertain habits contrary to the evangelical spirit were severely condemned in the celebrated instructions drawn up in 1659 for the use of the new vicars apostolic, who were recommended not to interfere in national politics either directly or indirectly. In cases where they were absolutely obliged to give an opinion, they were to do so sub specie aeternitatis. They had to preach obedience to princes even to those of a religion opposed to Christianity. They were not to censure their conduct, but to wait patiently until Providence \"brings happier days\". They were not to urge peoples to change their manners, customs and rites, but on the contrary to respect them except when \"they were detestable\".", "time": { "start_year": 1591, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1659, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1591–1659" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Alexander de Rhodes", "Innocent X", "François Pallu", "Lambert de la Motte", "Ignace Cotolendi" ], "places": [ "Cochin-China", "Tonkin", "Hanoi", "China", "Japan" ], "event": "Alexander de Rhodes developed adaptive missionary methods and helped inspire the creation of French apostolic vicariates in the Far East.", "tags": [ "Vietnam", "China", "Missions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 8, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 99, 100 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00103-f17c39f806ae7db012f1.webp", "raw\\pages\\00104-99c4ae76ce922ab0e94b.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Foreign Missions Seminary Founded", "chunk_data": "At the same time, Pallu, Lambert de la Motte and their friends founded at Paris in the rue du Bac, the Seminary for the Foreign Missions. (It is still there today.)", "time": { "start_year": 1658, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1658, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1658" }, "meta": { "people": [ "François Pallu", "Lambert de la Motte" ], "places": [ "Paris", "rue du Bac" ], "event": "Pallu and Lambert de la Motte founded the Seminary for the Foreign Missions in Paris.", "tags": [ "France", "Missions", "Institutions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 9, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 103, 104, 105, 106 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00107-5ef641d6cbdcee91d75f.webp", "raw\\pages\\00108-1853f82caf6fe8d93cab.webp", "raw\\pages\\00109-376992e2a1339b5d9efe.webp", "raw\\pages\\00110-59c4a9845849271e7122.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Native Clergy Training Expands", "chunk_data": "The first missionaries had been ordered to inaugurate a Chinese clergy with all speed. Innocent X had told Mgr Pallu: \"I would rather see you consecrate one good bishop in these parts than convert 50,000 idolaters.\" The instructions of Propaganda to Mgr Pallu and Mgr Lambert de la Motte in 1689 gave them authority \"to oblige the vicars apostolic, under threat of canonical penalties, to educate and ordain clerics and priests and thus to open the way to the episcopate as quickly as possible to native priests\". An indult of Alexander VII was implemented and a beginning was made by ordaining to the priesthood middle-aged Chinamen, catechists of exemplary life, who were not required to know Latin, provided they pronounced it correctly and understood the sacramental formulas.\nThe first Chinese bishop, Mgr Lo or Lopez-it was the custom to Europeanize surnames-never left it. Fr Navarette had pointed him out to Mgr Pallu as a suitable candidate for the episcopate and he was consecrated in 1685. The second native bishop in the Far East, Francis Perez, was born at Tenasserim, the son of a Filipino father and a Siamese mother, and so was a half-caste. He was also one of the most devout and brilliant pupils of the Juthia seminary.\nHowever, the formation of a native clergy was not abandoned. All the missionaries, whatever their attitude in the struggle over the Chinese rites, wanted to work on its behalf. But agreement was impossible both as to the recruitment of this native clergy and its formation and deployment.\nHowever, the priests of the Paris Foreign Missions, by forming priests both on the spot and at the Juthia college, succeeded after the beginning of the eighteenth century in having several Chinese ordained. One of them, Andrew Ly, may be held up as an example to the Universal Church. The only priest in Szehwan in the mid-eighteenth century for several years after the death or banishment of the European missionaries, a perpetual traveller often obliged to disguise himself to escape from his persecutors, he would revive in one place a Christian community on the verge of flight, in another encourage the wavering; elsewhere he would solve cases of conscience.", "time": { "start_year": 1685, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1750, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1685–c. 1750" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Innocent X", "Mgr Pallu", "Lambert de la Motte", "Alexander VII", "Mgr Lo", "Francis Perez", "Andrew Ly" ], "places": [ "China", "Juthia", "Szehwan" ], "event": "Mission authorities promoted native clergy, consecrated Asian bishops, and trained Chinese priests despite persecution and institutional disagreement.", "tags": [ "China", "Clergy", "Missions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 10, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 107, 108, 109 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00111-b2cbb9eb9a5987e9d5a1.webp", "raw\\pages\\00112-f83711251cd8edd762d0.webp", "raw\\pages\\00113-41b97b5d875f5ae6f31d.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Christian Communities Survive Vietnam", "chunk_data": "When the vicar general appointed for Tonkin, Louis Deydier, entered the territory in 1666, the last priests had just been expelled. The little Christian community was under the direction of catechists who lived in hiding on a boat. This boat, which has remained celebrated in the history of the Tonkin missions, sheltered a seminary in which Deydier, after a stay of eighteen months, chose two candidates for the priesthood: Benedict Hien and John Hué. They were ordained in Siam and then returned at once to their own country. When Mgr de la Motte succeeded in landing, Deydier brought to him seven other candidates for ordination and forty-eight catechists to receive the tonsure and minor orders. Subsequently the vicar apostolic assembled the first synod of Tonkin. All his missionaries and nine native priests attended it.\nThese Far-Eastern Christian communities were seldom left at peace. They had to go underground for most of the time, yet such periods were succeeded by a few months of toleration during which public worship would come out into the open.\nThe greatest upheaval of the century was caused by the revolt of the Tay-Son. Their leader conquered the whole of Cochin-China, put the chua and his son to death, invaded Tonkin shortly afterwards and drove out the king who was the last of his line and had to take refuge in China. The heir to the kingdom of Cochin-China, Nguyen-Anh, a young man of seventeen and the nephew of the murdered chua, eluded the rebels by seeking asylum with the vicar apostolic, Mgr Pigneau de Béhaine.\nMgr Pineau de Béhaine next appealed for French volunteers: engineers and officers. These fitted out two ships at their own expense and armed a small expeditionary force whose intervention was enough to bring about the restoration of Nguyen-Anh. After 1802 he reigned under the name of Gia-Long, showed himself tolerant and remained on good terms with Mgr Pineau de Béhaine, but did not become a convert. However, when struck down by a serious illness, he asked for baptism and died a member of the Church.", "time": { "start_year": 1666, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1802, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1666–1802" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Louis Deydier", "Benedict Hien", "John Hué", "Nguyen-Anh", "Mgr Pigneau de Béhaine", "Gia-Long" ], "places": [ "Tonkin", "Siam", "Cochin-China", "China", "Vietnam" ], "event": "Vietnamese Christians maintained underground communities and native clergy, while Pigneau de Béhaine helped restore Nguyen-Anh, who became Gia-Long.", "tags": [ "Vietnam", "Politics", "Missions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 11, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 111, 112, 113 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00115-ef6ff7e7441ca5ae54f7.webp", "raw\\pages\\00116-3eaf4da03cf80acc9594.webp", "raw\\pages\\00117-be412da57d824ba166cd.webp" ], "chunk_title": "John de Britto Martyred", "chunk_data": "At Madura, the Jesuits, faithful to Fr de Nobili's methods, continued to base their apostolate on both Sanyassi and Pandara missionaries. They had little success among the Brahmins; among the other castes results were slightly less disappointing and year in, year out, about a thousand converts were baptized.\nJohn de Britto was in Madura again in 1691. He was offered but refused the archbishopric of Cranganore. Faithful to his vocation as a Pandara, he took up again the same insecure and apostolic life he had previously led.\nThe king of Marava was not the kind of man to listen to the complaints of any and everybody, but when one of his nieces came to tell him that a neighbouring prince, whose youngest wife she herself was, had repudiated her in order to obey the laws of Christ, he decided to put to death the man responsible for his conversion. He entrusted the task of execution to one of his brothers who cut John de Britto's throat with a blow from his scimitar. In the last fifteen months of his life John de Britto had baptized 8,000 people and the movement of conversion had continued after his death, so that the cause of his beatification was introduced immediately.\nAt Pondicherry he met Fr de Visdelou who had not been able to accept Fr Ricci's conclusions in the matter of the rites. In any case, on June 23rd, 1704, he signed a decree annulling the toleration granted to these rites by Gregory XV at the request of Fr de Nobili. This decree enjoined obedience under threat of excommunication. It divided the missionaries into two camps. It also caused John de Britto's cause to be abandoned. John de Britto was beatified in 1851 and canonized in 1941.", "time": { "start_year": 1691, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1941, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1691–1941" }, "meta": { "people": [ "John de Britto", "Gregory XV", "Fr de Visdelou", "Fr de Nobili" ], "places": [ "Madura", "Marava", "Pondicherry" ], "event": "John de Britto continued missionary work in Madura, was martyred by order of the king of Marava, and was later canonized.", "tags": [ "India", "Martyrdom", "Missions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 12, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 118, 119 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00122-ab5f7c6ac516eb6406c3.webp", "raw\\pages\\00123-8f721388a006e30ce823.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Jesuit Reductions Flourish", "chunk_data": "Loreto, the first community, founded in 1610 on the Parana, comprised two hundred families already baptized. As the Fathers guaranteed freedom, this initial nucleus attracted people living in nearby villages. This attraction continued to operate and the first Reduction was soon overpopulated. It split in two and so the Reduction of San Ignacio-Mini came into existence by the side of the original one, still on the Parana. This swarming process went on and all the more since the various freedoms granted by the Jesuits to the convert Guaranis had been sanctioned and codified by royal ordinances.\nAs time went on, the \"swarming\" was speeded up. The number of Reductions in the Guayra rose from thirteen in 1623 to twenty-four in 1630 with a population of 100,000 Guaranis. There were another half-dozen on the Parana and a dozen to the south-west of the Sierra del Tape. This incomparable success had not failed to give rise to calumnies nor had it escaped the slave raids organized by Spaniards and more often still by Portuguese. The permission given to Fr de Montoya to arm the Guaranis put an end to this. The Paulista marauders were defeated in 1640 and 1641. A relative peace was established but the loss of Guayra and Tape reduced the Republic of the Guaranis to the territory within the area round the spot where the courses of the Parana and the Uruguay are nearest to one another.\nThe downfall of the Reductions was not due to any internal weakness; it was caused first and foremost by the violent crisis that followed the cession of seven of them by Spain to Portugal, the calumnies spread abroad against the Jesuits by Plombal's agents and, finally, the suppression of the Society as a whole.", "time": { "start_year": 1610, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1773, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1610–1773" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Fr de Montoya" ], "places": [ "Parana", "Guayra", "Sierra del Tape", "Uruguay", "Paraguay" ], "event": "Jesuit Guarani Reductions expanded, resisted slave raids, and ultimately declined after territorial concessions, anti-Jesuit attacks, and suppression of the Society.", "tags": [ "South America", "Jesuits", "Colonialism" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 13, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 121, 122, 123 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00125-8a68f108d50cb7ffd574.webp", "raw\\pages\\00126-f4f9e7a10116cbe9ba8e.webp", "raw\\pages\\00127-bc591435630c92cf7eb8.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Borgia Reports Missionary Decline", "chunk_data": "MGR BORGIA'S INQUIRY REVEALS A GENERAL DECLINE: ITS CAUSES\nThe last few chapters suggest that there was a falling-off in missionary work. Its full extent became known when in 1773 Mgr Borgia presented to Clement XIV the general census on which he had been working since 1765. In China there were 125,000 Christians, in Tonkin 200,000, a few thousands in Cochin-China, Siam and Burma, perhaps 500,000 in India (225,000 of these were in Goa), 100,000 in Ceylon and 80,000 Syro-Chaldean Catholics; some tens of thousands in Africa; 100,000 in Canada and Nova Scotia; 25,000 in the Californian missions and 25,000 in Texas; 400,000 Negroes had been evangelized in the West Indies as well as a few hundred Caribs: 100,000 Indians in the Paraguay Reductions; and perhaps 100,000 in all the other missions of Portuguese and Spanish America: in all, a total of less than two million.\nBut the returns for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave the figures for Catholics in Spanish and Portuguese America as 15 to 20 million; 4 to 5 million in the Philippines; 600,000 to 700,000 Japanese. Even if we suppose that one of these lists of figures was drawn up too optimistically and the other too strictly or with insufficient data, the divergence is still too great to allow of any doubt as to the extent of the decline.\nTwo of the most active of these men, Pombal (1699-1782) at Lisbon, and Aranda (1718-99), a personal friend of Voltaire, at Madrid, with the support of all the courts of Europe succeeded in obtaining from a weak pope, Clement XIV, his signature to the brief Dominus ac Redemptor (1773) which suppressed the Society of Jesus.\nOnce the French Revolution had abolished the religious Orders, closed the seminaries, secularized the property of the clergy and confiscated the inheritance of \"émigrés\" and suspects, recruitment in France ceased altogether and the work of the missions lost a large section of its resources. Finally, for a quarter of a century the wars of the Revolution and the Empire made communications difficult between Europe and the missions.", "time": { "start_year": 1765, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1815, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1765–1815" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Mgr Borgia", "Clement XIV", "Pombal", "Aranda", "Voltaire" ], "places": [ "Europe", "China", "India", "Canada", "South America" ], "event": "Mgr Borgia's census documented a major decline in global Catholic missions, accelerated by European imperial conflict, the suppression of the Jesuits, and the French Revolution.", "tags": [ "Church", "Missions", "Decline" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 14, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 124, 125, 126 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00128-7f587873da51f16c0d3d.webp", "raw\\pages\\00129-1965a5b357c4add7dd94.webp", "raw\\pages\\00130-05dc48295aa7a89b9292.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Korean Church Grows Without Missionaries", "chunk_data": "FIRST SIGNS OF A RE-AWAKENING OF THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT\nAt the end of the seventeenth century, a light suddenly shone in Korea, a feeble light indeed, yet kindled in such a surprising fashion that it was sufficient to drive darkness and desolation from the land. It was not the work of any missionary. A treatise on the Catholic religion which had come from China together with various scientific works, fell into the hands of an educated man and made him a Catholic by desire. He shared his discovery with a friend about to leave for Pekin with the annual delegation and asked him to make contact with the Christians of the Chinese capital. The friend obtained an audience with the archbishop of Pekin, studied Catholic doctrine, was present at some of the ceremonies, was himself won over and asked for baptism. This he received and once back again in Seoul, loaded with books and pious objects, baptized the Catholic by desire. Between them, they converted a third scholar in their small circle. The three of them converted others and worked to such good effect that the first priest to enter Korea, James Tsiu, found there 4,000 Catholics who had remained steadfast under fierce persecution. This priest was beheaded in 1801 and with him several Koreans of high rank. The \"underground\" Church of Korea then numbered some 10,000 faithful and several martyrs. Yet no missionary had come to it. It was already so steeped in the spirit of Catholicism that it asked the pope to send a bishop and some priests. A new request in 1827 decided Leo XII to entrust Korea to the Paris Foreign Missions, but they were unable to send out missionaries until 1835.", "time": { "start_year": 1690, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1835, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "c. 1690–1835" }, "meta": { "people": [ "James Tsiu", "Leo XII" ], "places": [ "Korea", "China", "Pekin", "Seoul" ], "event": "Korean scholars introduced Catholicism independently of missionaries, creating an underground church that sought foreign clergy.", "tags": [ "Korea", "Religion", "Missions" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 15, "chapter_name": "From the Establishment of Propaganda to Gregory XVI", "page_numbers": [ 127, 128, 129 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00131-e1a8199213ef13d7d095.webp", "raw\\pages\\00132-752ac90396d6f4d7bf1c.webp", "raw\\pages\\00133-a5560972521a9d233c5c.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Missionary Revival Begins", "chunk_data": "A decree of March 23rd, 1805, therefore legalized the existence of the Society of the Foreign Missions, the Seminary of the Holy Spirit and the Vincentian Congregation. But fresh difficulties with the Holy See, caused by the unbridled Gallicanism of the emperor, brought in their train the revocation of these decrees of 1805 in Paris, and in Rome (soon after occupied by Miollis), the suppression of the Congregation of Propaganda, the seizure of its archives and the control of its finances by the imperial authority.\nAfter the collapse of the Empire, Pius VII reorganized the Congregation of Propaganda in 1817. In Paris, Louis XVIII re-established the Society of the Foreign Missions by the decree of March 2nd, 1815, the seminary of the Holy Spirit and the Vincentians by the decree of February 3rd, 1816.\nMoreover, this legal re-establishment was accompanied by a re-awakening of the missionary spirit. It was while listening to a commentary on the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses at a meeting of the association of prayer for the salvation of the infidels that a Lyonese woman of great piety, Pauline-Marie Jaricot, thought of the idea of making collections for the missions. It was from this initial effort that the work of the Propagation of the Faith was to emerge in 1822. In the same year, the Council of this Society began to publish extracts from missionaries' letters under the title of Nouvelles des Missions (\"News of the Missions\"), replaced in 1825 by Les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (\"Annals of the Propagation of the Faith\").\nFrom the ruins left by the Revolution and with the intention of rebuilding them, there came into being three new institutes whose chief object was the apostolate ad infideles: the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, approved in 1800 and better known as the Société de Picpus; the Society of Mary (Marists) founded by the Venerable Fr Colin and approved by Pius VII in 1822; the Congregations of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, established in 1816 by Mgr de Mazenod.", "time": { "start_year": 1800, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1825, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1800–1825" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Napoleon", "Pius VII", "Louis XVIII", "Pauline-Marie Jaricot", "Fr Colin", "Mgr de Mazenod" ], "places": [ "Paris", "Rome", "France" ], "event": "Missionary institutions were restored after the Revolution, and Pauline-Marie Jaricot's initiative helped establish the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.", "tags": [ "France", "Missions", "Revival" ] } } ] }