{ "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": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 65, 66 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00069-a0b05326399119162da9.webp", "raw\\pages\\00070-ce23f894daffd97e5f8d.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Partition of the New Countries", "chunk_data": "CHAPTER VII\nBEFORE THE\nESTABLISHMENT OF THE\nCONGREGATION OF\nPROPAGANDA\nTHE PARTITION OF THE NEW COUNTRIES\nAND THE INSTITUTION OF THE PATRONATO\nAt the end of the fifteenth century, the discovery of America\nand the East Indies proved that the Scholastic Doctors of the\nMiddle Ages, Alexander of Hales, St Thomas Aquinas and\nSt Albert the Great, had spoken rashly when they declared\nthere was no place in the world in which echoes of the Gospel,\nif not the preaching of missionaries, had not been heard. It\nwas not merely a few savages lost in the heart of the forest\nwho were ignorant of Revelation but a great number of\nnations scattered over immense areas.\nThe Bulls of Alexander VI divided these among the States\nwho had discovered them, that is, Spain and Portugal. The\nBull of 1493 placed the dividing line 100 miles west of the\nAzores and gave Spain all the territories to the west of it and\nPortugal all those to the east. In the following year, the Treaty\nof Tordesillas moved this line 370 miles further west so as to\ngive Brazil, discovered by Cabral, to Portugal. This division\nwas not contested in the West. In the East, on the contrary,\nwhile Lisbon claimed the right to draw the line from the\nwestern end of Japan as far as New Guinea, Spain moved it\na considerable distance to the west so as to include in her share\nthe Philippines, Indo-China and almost all the Sunda islands.\nSerious conflicts between missionaries from these two countries\narose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a result of\nthis disagreement.\nThe Spanish and Portuguese monarchies were given these\nterritories on condition that they spread the Faith in them, sent\nout missionaries and built churches. They undertook this\nspiritual mission with undeniable fervour, but it earned them\nspecial powers and privileges which were defined in the Bull\nUniversali Ecclesiae (1598). These were known as the\nPatronato, Padroado in Lisbon, Padrao in Madrid. In practice, the pope made over to the kings the government of and\nthe responsibility for the Church in the Indies. When the Holy\nSee later claimed its inalienable right to direct the apostolate\nad infideles, difficulties arose, as we shall see.\nTHE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE MISSIONS IN\nAMERICA, THE PHILIPPINES AND THE CONGO\nThe Spaniards first landed in the West Indies and the mis-\nsionaries came immediately after the discoverers. After a few\nfruitless efforts on the part of the Franciscans at Haiti and\nSt Domingo, a new Franciscan party, seventeen in all, arrived\nin 1502. In 1505, the Franciscan mission to the West Indies\nwas raised to the status of a province.\nThe Dominicans sent their first mission in 1510. From 1511\nonwards, the hierarchy was established in the West Indies and\nnumbered three sees. The bishop of St Domingo was a Fran-\nciscan, the bishop of Concepcion de la Vega, a Dominican,\nand shortly after a secular was appointed to Puerto Rico. In\n1513, a Franciscan was appointed to Panama and was the first\nbishop on the mainland. The moving spirit behind this magni-\nficent beginning was Ximenes de Cisneros (1436-1517).", "time": { "start_year": 1493, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1513, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1493–1513" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Alexander VI", "Alexander of Hales", "St Thomas Aquinas", "St Albert the Great", "Cabral", "Ximenes de Cisneros" ], "places": [ "America", "East Indies", "Azores", "Brazil", "Japan", "New Guinea", "Philippines", "Indo-China", "Sunda Islands", "West Indies", "Haiti", "St Domingo", "Puerto Rico", "Panama" ], "event": "European discoveries prompted papal partition of newly encountered territories and established the Spanish and Portuguese Patronato system.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Politics", "Colonialism" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 2, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 67 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00071-cec07fb7f9b9e9da498e.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Franciscan Missions in Mexico", "chunk_data": "BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 67\nSuch speedy work shows that Spain intended to combine spiritual with military conquest. Once Mexico had been conquered (1521), Cortes asked Charles V for sufficient men to begin a rapid and well-organized apostolate. In 1523, the first group of Franciscans landed under Peter of Ghent. This illegitimate son of a Habsburg, at a time when a fine future awaited those with the bar sinister, preferred the Lady Poverty to honours, imitated the holy founder of his Order by refusing the priesthood and devoted himself entirely to the conversion of the Indians. In 1524, the famous mission of the \"Twelve Apostles\" arrived. They were Franciscans. The first Dominicans landed in 1526 and the Augustinians in 1533. These three Orders were to be responsible for almost all of the work of evangelizing Mexico until the Jesuits landed in 1572.\nThe first Franciscan missions were to achieve distinction through one of their friars, Bernard de Sahagun, who was both an apostle and a man of learning. With the aid of a group of native scholars whose language he had learned and to whom he had taught his own as well as Latin, he conducted a monumental inquiry into the religions, customs, laws, fauna and flora of Mexico, on lines exactly similar to those of modern ethnology. It was published after his death with the title Historia general de las cosas de Nueve España. The missionaries did not wait for its publication but agreed to adopt the system of \"the clean sweep\", that is, they did not try to discover whether the religion of the natives might contain elements of truth. So lively was their horror of the human sacrifices practised in this religion that they insisted on their converts abandoning it entirely. In any case, Sahagun's work had led him to the same conclusions by the time he had completed it, and the reason why he had devoted so much care in bringing it to completion was that he might instruct his brethren and put them on their guard against any attempt at syncretism.\nAll said and done, these pioneers were a mere handful scattered over an immense area. Yet they made numerous converts, using methods that may seem obvious enough today,", "time": { "start_year": 1521, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1572, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1521–1572" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Hernán Cortés", "Charles V", "Peter of Ghent", "Bernard de Sahagun" ], "places": [ "Mexico" ], "event": "Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and later Jesuit missionaries organized evangelization in conquered Mexico.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Mexico", "Religion" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 3, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 68, 69 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00072-c885bd7c6382f5bb55f5.webp", "raw\\pages\\00073-100394e1c5780c2b3107.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Native Clergy Experiment in Mexico", "chunk_data": "68 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nbut the credit of initiating them at the time must go to the pioneers alone. They turned their attention first to the children so as to make apostles of them, small centres of shining faith and purity who were to radiate the light in their own homes. We know from Toribio de Motolinia's Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España that some of them even suffered martyrdom for their witness to their faith.\nIn the main, however, the natives of Mexico, apart from a few members of the old aristocracy, accepted the Spanish conquerors so passively that the missionaries interpreted what was doubtless merely a mask adopted from fear, distrust or even hostility, as a fundamental lack of maturity from both the political and spiritual standpoints. Some of the missionaries eventually wondered whether they were not in fact dealing with beings without the gift of reason.\nIt was common practice to administer only the sacraments of baptism, penance and matrimony. The missionaries also admitted a fairly large number of their converts to confirmation but were more cautious regarding extreme unction. Doubts arose, and these at times caused acute distress of mind, as to the Eucharist and the priesthood. There was no general rule for the first which was administered rarely in some places and more frequently in others. In regard to Orders, Indians were not allowed to receive them. This prohibition did not come into force at once, but only after a very interesting experiment had been tried.\nThe Franciscans, supported by the viceroy, D. Antonio de Mondoza, attempted from the beginning to recruit a native clergy. At the suggestion of Juan de Zumarraga, the bishop of Mexico, they founded the college of Tlaltelolco in a suburb of the capital. They were successful to the extent that their pupils were usually well gifted, and spoke Latin and Castilian. It was from among their number that Sahagun chose the collaborators he needed for his inquiry. But the seminary soon caused serious anxiety to its founders, who discovered that it was difficult to detach their pupils, even the best of them, from\nthe atmosphere of paganism and sensuality in which they had been born and brought up.\nThe opposite environment could hardly come into existence except in families which had been Christian for a long period and at the time when the representatives of the second or better still the third generation reached adult age. But the most determined advocates of a native clergy met with very strong opposition when the experiment had only just begun. And it came from the colonists and some of the Dominicans. They instanced the scandal caused by a former pupil who apostatized and became a preacher of apostasy. According to them, Tlaltelolco ran the risk of becoming a hot-bed of heresy.\nZumarraga was discouraged, and wrote in 1545 to Charles V: \"...as for the college of Santiago, we do not know how long it can last, since the Indian students, the best scholars, tendunt ad nuptias potiusquam ad continentiam\". It disappeared without producing one priest of Mexican blood. There was no subsequent rescinding of the decision to deny the priesthood to natives. The responsibility for the missions rested entirely on regulars and seculars, all Europeans, whose chief aim was to keep the converts under their protection in Christian villages away from their natural environment as well as from the bad example given by some of the Spaniards.\nIn South America apostolic work began a little later than in Mexico and developed at the same speed and by means of similar methods.\nThe Order of St Dominic was the first to arrive in Peru in 1531. As early as 1544, the Peruvian province of the Friars Preachers numbered fifty-five religious, stationed almost exclusively in various parts of the former Inca empire.\nThe Franciscans arrived in 1540 and founded three houses at Quito, Cuzco and Lima. They quickly spread further south to Potosi, La Paz, Tucuman and even to the River Plate, the region that was the scene of the amazing apostolate of a missionary who was also a musician, Francis of Solano.", "time": { "start_year": 1531, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1545, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1531–1545" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Toribio de Motolinia", "Antonio de Mondoza", "Juan de Zumarraga", "Bernard de Sahagun", "Charles V", "Francis of Solano" ], "places": [ "Mexico", "Tlaltelolco", "Peru", "Quito", "Cuzco", "Lima", "Potosi", "La Paz", "Tucuman", "River Plate" ], "event": "Missionaries established and then abandoned an experiment to train an indigenous Mexican clergy while expanding missions through Peru.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Education", "Indigenous Clergy" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 4, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 70, 71 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00074-d358cf56032fcddd10be.webp", "raw\\pages\\00075-91557ab4bf0cb1a2d881.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Ecclesiastical Organization in Peru", "chunk_data": "70 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nThe Augustinians established monasteries in Peru in 1551 and played a considerable part in the evangelization of the immense area extending from Popayan (Colombia) to Potosi (Bolivia). The Mercedarians, based also on Peru, advanced as far as the Argentine. Finally, the Jesuits, who landed in Peru in about the year 1568, shortly afterwards founded the provinces of Quito, New Granada, Paraguay and Chile.\nLima became the metropolitan see for all this territory. After 1575 its jurisdiction extended from Central America to South America (Brazil excluded, since it was a dependency of the Portuguese patronato). There were ten dioceses: Cuzco, Quito, Panama, Nicaragua, Popayan, Paraguay, Tucuman, Charcas or La Plata, Santiago de Chile and La Imperial (Chile).\nThe first Council met at Lima in 1552. Another in 1567 was concerned with securing for the Indians doctrina, that is the teaching of the catechism, public worship and the administration of the sacraments. It obliged parish priests to learn the language of the country and laid down penalties for those who refused to do so. It forbade confession through an interpreter. And the Crown ordered the establishment of chairs of quichua, the common language. Ten years after their arrival the Jesuits had already organized a system of language teaching, and there is the frequently quoted case of the illustrious bishop of Lima, Toribio of Mogrovejo, a great missionary of the period, who was able to address the Incas in their own official language.\nTo provide uniform catechetical teaching, the Council of 1583 arranged for the translation into the two principal languages of a catechism it had drawn up which comprised three stages: a simplified course, a course for the majority of children and adults, and a higher course for an élite. The Council also decided that there should be one priest for the doctrinas of from one to two thousand souls, and two for the doctrinas of more than two thousand. Villages of less than a thousand inhabitants were to be grouped. It is obvious that the doctrineros, the priests, had a heavy task. It was therefore arranged that they should be given lay auxiliaries chosen from among the Indians, the best of whom might become catechists. Two stewards were to be the custodians of the church and the sacred vessels and to keep the parish accounts. Finally, supervisors were to be given the duty of notifying the doctrineros of births and cases of sickness, so that the sacraments could be administered. They were also to report the drunkards and sorcerers and to keep order at Mass and during catechism sessions. In South America as in Mexico, the apostolate quickly moved towards a system which was already a precursor of the Reductions.\nWe observe the same similarity in regard to admission to the sacraments. Great caution was shown in allowing converts to approach the altar rails. Subsequently, this attitude became less strict but frequent communion was never the rule. The Council decided to refuse the priesthood to the Indians on the ground that they were unable to acquire a full understanding of the mysteries of the faith.\nThis vast programme did not remain a dead-letter. It came to life. The vigorous faith of large numbers of officials gave it inspiration and warmth. Many religious and seculars came out from Spain and, on the whole, accomplished their mission without failing in their duty. Before passing a severe judgement on them, as has been done, we ought to consider the difficulties they had to face.\nIn the first place, strict honesty obliges us not to view them in isolation from their times. The sixteenth century was in almost complete ignorance of civilizations other than that of Europe. The latter, so it believed, enjoyed an unquestionable superiority since it had sprung from Christianity and appeared to be the necessary means of propagating it.\nSeveral centuries elapsed before it was admitted that Christ's teaching could flourish as completely in the new as in the old world and, during these centuries, natives who had received baptism were not always able to remain faithful to those of their customs which were not incompatible with Christianity. Moreover, how could the missionaries at the period following", "time": { "start_year": 1551, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1583, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1551–1583" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Toribio de Mogrovejo" ], "places": [ "Peru", "Popayan", "Potosi", "Quito", "New Granada", "Paraguay", "Chile", "Lima", "Central America", "South America" ], "event": "Religious orders and councils organized dioceses, catechesis, language instruction, sacramental practice, and lay administration in South America.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Church Administration", "Education" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 5, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 72, 73 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00076-c37924df5807c9017d26.webp", "raw\\pages\\00077-cb4bc4b3cdb5f4f81189.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Obstacles to South American Missions", "chunk_data": "72 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nthe discovery of this new world have solved these difficult problems? If some national custom were to be deserving of toleration without any qualms of conscience whatsoever, they would have needed a profound knowledge of the civilizations and religions of the peoples to whom they were speaking.\nThere were other drawbacks, the climate, for instance, the area, the lie of the land. The dioceses were so huge and travel so difficult that pastoral rounds might last for years. The first two made by St Toribio of Mogrovejo took six and four years respectively. He died during his last one, in 1606.\nThe total number of religious and seculars, considerable though it is, when considered in isolation, looks paltry when we think that their ministry extended from Panama to Tucuman, a distance of more than 2,500 miles. The clergy were badly distributed. They were too numerous in the cities, whose population was composed almost solely of Spaniards, and far too few among the Indians scattered throughout the countryside and the sierras. Among the seculars, recruitment was not careful enough, and since discipline was not sufficiently strict among the Orders, rivalries weakened their apostolate.\nBut the chief obstacle was perhaps the régime under which the Indians were forced to live. The missionaries taught them the truths of Christianity and prepared them for baptism, but at the same time the colonists forced them to work for their benefit and used violence if they judged it necessary. Whether they were enrolled in the repartimientos or the encomiendas, Christianity in the temporal order, as far as they could see, meant loss of freedom. It is surely not surprising therefore that some converts openly stated that they did not want to go to Paradise for fear of meeting their oppressors there.\nNeither the campaigns undertaken by some of the missionaries, Las Casas and others, nor instructions from Rome and the kings, all of which drew attention to the fact that the natives were to be treated as free men, succeeded in making any real change in the régime forced on the natives by the colonists. The quality of the converts was bound to suffer. Paganism\n73 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nmight be renounced in word, but in fact it remained deep down and disguised under Christian ceremonies. It was therefore all the harder to unearth and to overcome.\nYet, as early as the sixteenth century, the Spanish missionaries had accomplished a noble apostolic work. We can accept the word of the great apostle Toribio de Mogrovejo when he says that he confirmed 500,000 people during his second pastoral round. The Church established in the new world was not merely a brilliant façade. The cathedrals, the more modest buildings, the numerous monasteries that they built, prove that the Spaniards wished to accomplish a work which would last.\nIn the Malayan archipelago of the Philippines, the Spanish had an outstanding success. Madrid questioned whether the literal interpretation of the treaty of Tordesillas (1493) brought the archipelago within the Portuguese domains, as Lisbon claimed. Since the Spice Islands had been assigned to Portugal, Spain laid claim to the Philippines and Spaniards landed there, unsuccessfully in 1542, and again in 1564, this time for good. They had come from Mexico, the terminus for Pacific trade of the galleons sailing from Asia and of the Indian Ocean and Cape route which depended on the Portuguese monopoly. A small band of Augustinians had gone with the expedition. Reinforcements reached the pioneers; Franciscans (1577), Jesuits (1581), and Dominicans were soon on the scene. Forty years later, the archipelago was Christian, Since there were no mines there, European colonists had not come. The Filipinos were able to maintain their agricultural and patriarchal economy and their status was not unlike that found in the Reductions.\nThe missionaries had no difficulty in winning them over from a religion which was no more than a rudimentary animism without any common practices or places of worship. In 1585, there were already 400,000 converts. There were two million in 1620 and the clergy who ministered to them, at least in the rural parishes, were Filipinos.", "time": { "start_year": 1542, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1620, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1542–1620" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Toribio de Mogrovejo", "Bartolomé de Las Casas" ], "places": [ "Panama", "Tucuman", "Philippines", "Mexico", "Asia", "Spice Islands" ], "event": "Missionary work faced geographic, institutional, and colonial abuses, while Spanish missions achieved extensive conversions in the Philippines.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Colonialism", "Philippines" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 6, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 74, 75 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00078-42546c5bb98bae28780b.webp", "raw\\pages\\00079-c7b2d6f5c5447b59fe89.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Jesuit Mission in Brazil", "chunk_data": "74 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nCatholicism was introduced into Brazil in the middle of the sixteenth century by the Jesuits with the help of the Portuguese Crown.\nThe first group landed at Bahia in 1549. It numbered six religious in all. In the same year, this handful of missionaries, under the direction, it is true, of a very great apostle, Fr de Nobrega, visited the areas around the old capital of Brazil and laid the foundations of a teaching system of which the first results were the confraternity and the college of Meninos de Jésus. Fr de Nobrega gathered there some young Indians together with orphans he had arranged to be sent out from Portugal. He hoped that as they studied their religion and their rudiments side by side, genuine friendship would spring up between them, and that the orphans would at the same time learn the Brazilian language and the little Indians Portuguese. The latter would then return home to their villages and spread the Good News. We cannot but admire such a bold project which was to prepare for the fusion of the races at the moral level within the framework of Christianity. But difficulties that arose in the application of the programme, due doubtless to insufficient knowledge of the character of the Indians, caused the confraternity scheme to be abandoned. Only the Jesus College survived. Its teaching began with reading and advanced as far as theology. It served as a seminary for the secular clergy, both Portuguese and Creole, and also as a house for the formation of the young religious of the Society.\nThe missionaries rapidly brought Christianity to the areas north and south of Bahia, to the south, as far as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, two cities founded by the Jesuits (and in particular by Fr de Nobrega) and to the north, as far as Pernambuco (Recife). Faced with a religion without external worship or a priesthood and with a political system without written laws or a hereditary authority, the Jesuits adopted the \"clean sweep\" method. The Indians were easily won over from their practices but their easy-going nature drew them back equally quickly if ever the careful watch on them was relaxed.\n75 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nIn order to instruct them and stiffen their characters, it was necessary to group them in Christian villages. But the Indians soon wanted their spiritual leaders to be their temporal leaders also, in recognition of the protection they were giving them. The General of the Jesuits considered it his duty to ask his religious not to follow this course but to avoid undertaking any political function. Then other difficulties arose. If the Fathers ceased to rule in the villages, the Indians would be afraid that once they were no longer under their care, they would be maltreated and so would run away to the forests and become inaccessible. Eventually things were left as they were so as not to compromise and perhaps ruin an apostolate which had been organized with so much labour.\nThe Fathers contrived to introduce forms of entertainment into the natives' disciplined and hardworking life. There were songs, dances, masquerades, processions, bull-fights and edifying comedies written by a Spanish Jesuit, Anchieta, \"the apostle of Brazil\".\nThe liturgy was surrounded with great pomp. Baptisms and weddings were celebrated with the splendour of feast days, and processions were on the scale of huge spectacular demonstrations to the glory of God.\nThe converts were admitted to all the sacraments, although Holy Communion was not given without strict preparation. The Indians were not admitted to Orders for the same reasons as in Peru but also for another which was peculiar to Brazil. The missionary zeal of the mother-country, great though it was, could not bridge the gap between its own territory and the immense size of the territories attached to the Crown. It was scarcely possible to evangelize more than the coasts and the Christian communities there were not sufficiently numerous to ensure the provision of a native clergy.\nIn the Congo, the missionaries who had accompanied Cao converted the king and queen. The sovereign subsequently apostatized. On the other hand, his son Alfonso was a man of", "time": { "start_year": 1549, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1560, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1549–1560" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Manuel da Nóbrega", "Anchieta", "Cao", "Alfonso" ], "places": [ "Brazil", "Bahia", "São Paulo", "Rio de Janeiro", "Pernambuco", "Congo" ], "event": "Jesuits founded educational and Christian communities in Brazil and extended missions along the coast.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Brazil", "Jesuits" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 7, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 76 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00080-7c14a6e7691522fad527.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Decline of the Congo Mission", "chunk_data": "76 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nfirm and active faith. In 1513, he sent an embassy to the pope to assure him of his loyalty. One of its members was his son Henry. He won great esteem in Portugal and in Rome both for his piety and intelligence and was consecrated a bishop in 1520. He returned to his country with several of his fellow countrymen who had been ordained priests in order to work there, with Alfonso's permission, for the preparation of a Congolese clergy. But the candidates who were sent to study in the mother-country did not persevere or were unable to withstand a climate so different from their own. After Alfonso's death in 1543—he had maintained his faith unshaken—the Congo mission gradually faded away. What then had happened?\nPortugal had neglected the African coastal territories and concentrated all its efforts on the East Indies, whose future seemed much more promising. The first nucleus of missionaries had not increased nor been renewed. In any case its members were of mediocre quality and had become insufficient for the exercise of the ministry among converts who had been too hastily baptized. Some of the religious had engaged in trade. Finally, the slave traffic brought complete discredit on Europeans and their religion.\nFrom 1560 onwards, there were missionaries at Mozambique. They had come since the news had reached them that the Negro king wished to become a convert. The three Jesuits in the first party found the chiefs and his subjects very docile and willing to be baptized en masse. But during the following year, the superior was murdered and a general apostasy followed. Subsequently, the Dominicans, in spite of all their efforts, could not win the natives from a kind of syncretism which included odds and ends of Islam mixed with their own tribal animism.\nIn Angola, the apostolate begun in 1560 by four Jesuits resulted at the end of the sixteenth century in the rise of a Christian community of 20,000 converts in Massangano, which became an episcopal see. But this centre did not develop and in this it was like all the African foundations of the period.", "time": { "start_year": 1513, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1600, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1513–c. 1600" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Alfonso I of Kongo", "Henry of Kongo" ], "places": [ "Congo", "Portugal", "Rome", "Mozambique", "Angola", "Massangano" ], "event": "The Congo mission attempted to form indigenous clergy but declined after royal succession, neglect, poor recruitment, commerce, and the slave trade.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Africa", "Colonialism" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 8, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 77, 78 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00081-08d1f5221e02aee6507d.webp", "raw\\pages\\00082-7d48bdb0493782093a52.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Francis Xavier Reforms Indian Missions", "chunk_data": "BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\n77\nST FRANCIS XAVIER IN INDIA AND JAPAN\nThe Portuguese had gone to India with the object of wresting the monopoly in spices from Venice and the Arabs. But there, as in Brazil, they by no means forgot their duties to Catholicism as these had been defined in the Bulls.\nIn the initial stages, they thought only of settling in with all their own institutions. The pagodas were destroyed and the pagan customs disregarded. The system of the \"clean sweep\" was vigorously applied and eventually led to the use in the religious sphere of the Compelle intrare the natives were made to become Portuguese. But not for long. The arrival of St Francis Xavier opened the way for a more apostolic method.\nThe life of this famous apostle, when purged of all its legendary accretions, recovers all its meaning and its value as an example. It is still the life of a saint, but this saint, instead of hovering in a world of marvels with no practical significance, is revealed as a forerunner of things to come.\nGoa—and it was here that he landed on May 6th, 1542—was scarcely more than an annexe of Portugal, but with the added and disheartening fact that dissolute living and the love of lucre, which had grown up because of the distance from the mother-country, were scandalously flaunted. However, he was in charge of the college that had just been founded there and could not set up his headquarters elsewhere. But as soon as he was able, he escaped to the Fishery coast, where his predecessors had founded an embryo Christian community but without any genuine preparation. Xavier hastened to instruct these people, to solemnize the marriages of the adults and to organize Christian groups. This was a task that had to be done before all else and it was made difficult by the climate, the almost complete absence of his brethren and his ignorance of the language. Legend says he enjoyed gifts like those the apostles received at Pentecost, but he himself never hid the fact that he was accompanied by interpreters and that an immense amount of work remained to be done. Henceforward, we see that he no longer shared all the positions taken up by the Portuguese. For him, indeed, there was no question of depriving the Indians of their nationality, it was Christianity that had to be solidly established.\nIt was in Japan that the great apostle showed the full measure of his powers. Thanks to the good offices of three Japanese he had known and baptized at Malacca, he succeeded in finding a junk which landed him together with two other Jesuits at Kagoshima in the southern part of the great island of Kyushu. It was August 15th, 1549, a date to be remembered, for he was the first missionary ever to enter Japan. He found the Japanese most interested in Western inventions but thought their political situation deplorable. The division of the land among numerous principalities perpetually at war with each other favoured a state of feudal anarchy which a purely nominal sovereign, the Mikado, living a cloistered and wretched life at Kyoto, was unable to bring to an end. St Francis Xavier considered there was no point in contacting this \"do-nothing king\" and decided to go to the daimyo of Yamaguchi. But for this visit he put aside the humble apparel which had hitherto ensured him a favourable reception throughout the Portuguese Orient. He had quickly learned from experience that this would not do. In Japan lack of display would only have discredited him. And so he appeared before the daimyo, clothed in silk, escorted by Portuguese merchants in similar array, and bearing rich presents. This was the right procedure, since he was allotted some land and given permission to preach. A daimyo on the east coast granted him the same facilities in his territory.\nThese first contacts revealed to him the existence of a numerous class of scholars, bonzes and lords, with subtle minds, full of curiosity, and formidable in argument. With people like this, it was essential to show that he too was learned and shrewd.\nXavier was now convinced that the system of the \"clean sweep\" would be fatal in Japan. Accompanied by Fr Cosmo de", "time": { "start_year": 1542, "start_month": 5, "start_date": 6, "end_year": 1549, "end_month": 8, "end_date": 15, "time_display": "1542–1549" }, "meta": { "people": [ "St Francis Xavier", "Cosmo de Torres" ], "places": [ "India", "Goa", "Fishery Coast", "Japan", "Malacca", "Kagoshima", "Kyushu", "Kyoto", "Yamaguchi" ], "event": "Francis Xavier replaced coercive Portuguese methods with instruction and cultural adaptation in India and Japan.", "tags": [ "Missions", "India", "Japan" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 9, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 79, 80 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00083-29f585e6d5e1b19b31f5.webp", "raw\\pages\\00084-ddb3919e496c01db5ef6.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Xavier’s Japanese Apostolate", "chunk_data": "BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 79\nTorres and Brother Juan Fernandez, who acted as interpreter, he began a controversy with these worthies and not without success. The important thing to remember is not so much the figure for the number of converts (there were not even a thousand in all when he left Japan in November 1551) but the experience he had acquired. It proved that if the apostolate was to be effective, especially among the upper classes, it would need to be based on a profound knowledge of the religion, laws and customs of the country.\nFrancis Xavier had also discovered in Japan the immense prestige enjoyed by the Chinese empire. If your religion were a good one, some of the Japanese had told him, China, a nation where wisdom flourishes, would already have adopted it. The great apostle had drawn the conclusion that the conversion of the Chinese empire to Christianity was a work of the first importance. He was about to undertake it when he died at Sanchoan, a small island in the bay of Canton, on December 3rd, 1552, not far from Macao where, twenty years later, Fr Ricci was to arrive and attempt in his turn to force the gates of China closed to Europeans since the end of the fourteenth century.\nWhen St Francis Xavier left Japan, he was by no means certain of the success of his work. The curiosity shown by his hearers had certainly seemed a good sign. In a letter from Cochin dated January 29th, 1552, he wrote \"... after the daimyo of Yamaguchi had authorized us to preach God's law, so many people came to ask us questions and to discuss things with us, that my joy and consolation were such that I think I am justified in saying that I had never experienced them to so great an extent during my whole life\".\nNevertheless, this curiosity was awakened at least as much by Western science and its applications, such as ships and canons, as by religious problems. In general Christianity was received as a kind of by-product, on the ground that the religion of such clever and industrious men must inevitably be a good\n80 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\none. We must bear in mind that the Japanese had adopted Buddhism for similar reasons in the seventh century.\nYet the fact remains that, in 1586, the Christian communities of Japan numbered 200,000 converts. By the end of the century, this figure had been increased by 100,000 further conversions. Such a beginning gave grounds for hope. But in 1638, Japan was to close its gates completely against Europe and Christianity for more than two centuries. We may well ask why and how this was done.\nThe Jesuits, the first missionaries to arrive and the only ones until 1590, had made their mark because of their knowledge and their moral qualities which contrasted sharply with the loose living found in the most recent Buddhist houses. They had all applied the method of adaptation. The visitor, Fr Valignano, had approved it. On the other hand, the \"clean sweep\" system prevailed in the Philippines which had passed over to the Spanish patronato. This variation in method was quite simply due to the difference between the level of intellectual development among the Manillans as compared with that of the Japanese. It was very desirable that this difference should be maintained; each of the two methods had proved its value in its own sphere.\nA Jesuit from Manila, Fr Sanchez, on his arrival in Japan, refused to use the method in force there. This refusal filled Fr Valignano with misgivings. However he succeeded in communicating them to the General of the Jesuits and to such good effect that the latter decided to keep all the fathers in the Spanish patronato away from Japan. But the prohibition was only valid for the Society of Jesus. If religious from another Order succeeded in entering the country, the unity of method would be destroyed. This in fact happened, as an indirect result of political events in Japan.\nFollowing upheavals in the country, a dictator, Hideyoshi, had seized power. He showed a tolerant attitude at first, but in 1587, in an outburst of temper for a reason unknown, he decreed the expulsion of all the Portuguese. Fr Valignano's", "time": { "start_year": 1549, "start_month": 8, "start_date": 15, "end_year": 1587, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1549–1587" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Francis Xavier", "Juan Fernandez", "Fr Valignano", "Fr Sanchez", "Hideyoshi", "Fr Ricci" ], "places": [ "Japan", "China", "Sanchoan", "Canton", "Macao", "Cochin", "Philippines", "Manila" ], "event": "Xavier developed an adaptive missionary method, while Japanese Christianity expanded before political conflict and competing methods destabilized the mission.", "tags": [ "Missions", "Japan", "Politics" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 10, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 81, 82 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00085-7a9c7ed60b3571c41e07.webp", "raw\\pages\\00086-18a3b169294d0a954743.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Persecution and Closure of Japan", "chunk_data": "BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 81\nskill succeeded in making the decree a dead letter and preaching could continue. However, the rivalries between Portugal and Spain, which soon came to the knowledge of Hideyoshi, induced him to turn them to his own profit. He approached, or rather sent messengers to, the Manila authorities. They listened to what he had to say and, for his information, sent two missions to the dictator, one under the direction of a Dominican, the other under a Franciscan. Hideyoshi chose the Franciscans and authorized them to preach Christianity in Japan. The newcomers certainly behaved as zealous apostles, but they used the \"clean sweep\" method. What Fr Valignano had feared had happened; unity no longer existed.\nFurther, the arrival of the Spaniards led to complications of a political nature. A galleon from Manila ran aground on the coast of Tosa to the south of the Japanese archipelago. It was seized by the Japanese authorities. The pilot threatened to appeal to his sovereign for reprisals to be taken. This and other incidents changed the atmosphere of relative tolerance which had been maintained after a fashion since the edict of 1587.\nThe edict had not been withdrawn and Hideyoshi used it to condemn to death six Franciscans accused of preaching openly against the religion of the land, together with seventeen of their converts and three Japanese Jesuit brothers. The twenty-six condemned men were put to death by crucifixion at Nagasaki on February 5th, 1597.\nIeyasu, Hideyoshi's successor, waged a still fiercer battle against Catholicism. He issued the edict of 1613 which ordered all the daimyo to expel Japanese and foreign preachers, to destroy all the churches and to force the converts to apostatize at once.\nWe know from the evidence of a Franciscan, Diego of St Francis, that, at the height of this persecution, some of the faithful at the risk of their lives welcomed him with \"indescribable joy\", and that he gave them the sacraments. After the year 1638, it was all but impossible for missionaries to enter the country even in disguise. Five Jesuits, one of them\n82 BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA\nFr Rubin, who had been appointed visitor for Japan, did succeed in landing in August 1642. They were discovered by the spy network operating throughout the islands and put to death after suffering atrocious torture.\nDuring the sixty or so years that had elapsed since the arrival of St Francis Xavier, no agreement had been reached on the subject of the establishment of a Japanese clergy. Fr Valignano had wanted this to be done. His colleague, Fr Cabral, remained hesitant for fear that \"Japanese pride\" would not accept obedience. This was also the opinion of the coadjutor bishop of Nagasaki, Don Luis de Cerqueira. He had however done work towards equipping a seminary. He wrote in 1603 to the pope: \"The exclusion of the natives from the ministry of the sacraments and the care of souls would have grave disadvantages; it would lead to jealousies, mistrust, suspicions, divisions.\" In the event, the persecution outstripped a project which would certainly have encountered reservations at least, if not open opposition. When the gates of Japan were finally closed, the Christians remained without priests for two centuries.\nFR RICCI AND THE INTRODUCTION OF\nCHRISTIANITY TO CHINA\nWhile Christianity was being expelled from Japan, a Jesuit, Fr Ricci, in 1583 began introducing it into China and used St Francis Xavier's second method with exemplary intelligence and zeal. While making no secret of the fact that he was a Catholic priest, he described himself as a scholar, a learned mathematician from the West desirous of establishing relations with his peers in the Far East. He became a good Sinologue and soon had conversations with some of the mandarins. He baptized several of them. Encouraged by their friendly support he succeeded in advancing to the interior of the empire, to Nantchag, Nankin and Pekin which he entered in 1601. He was able to acquire a piece of land there with the authorization of the emperor. It still exists and is known as the Nant'ang. He published some doctrinal works in 1604. The True Idea of the", "time": { "start_year": 1587, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1642, "end_month": 8, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1587–1642" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Hideyoshi", "Ieyasu", "Fr Valignano", "Diego of St Francis", "Fr Rubin", "Fr Cabral", "Don Luis de Cerqueira", "Fr Ricci" ], "places": [ "Japan", "Manila", "Tosa", "Nagasaki", "China", "Nantchag", "Nankin", "Pekin" ], "event": "Political rivalry and competing missionary methods contributed to persecution, crucifixions, expulsion, and Japan’s closure, while Ricci began an adaptive mission in China.", "tags": [ "Persecution", "Japan", "China" ] } }, { "chunk_index": 11, "chapter_name": "Before the Establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda", "page_numbers": [ 83 ], "image_paths": [ "raw\\pages\\00087-7cfaacb676fccc7e269d.webp" ], "chunk_title": "Ricci’s Chinese Mission", "chunk_data": "BEFORE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONGREGATION OF PROPAGANDA 83\nLord of Heaven, a dialogue between a Christian and a scholar in search of truth, and in the same year, Twenty-five Words, a little treatise on certain of man's duties, and again in 1607, Ten Paradoxes, a book containing clarifications, commentaries and explanations of the moral code and the principal articles of Christian belief. At the same time he published scientific works which established his reputation for learning. The considerable development of St Francis' second method at Fr Ricci's hands together with his tact, learning and virtues attracted adherents to Catholicism who formed an élite who were able with his help to see that it was possible to remain Chinese when one had entered the Mystical Body. At his death in 1610, the number of his converts stood at 2,000.\nFurther, after examining the traditional rites such as the honours paid to ancestors and to Confucius, he was certain that these were \"certainly not idolatrous and perhaps not superstitious\". The manner in which he had tolerated them with an easy conscience had been the reason for his success with the upper classes. But his tolerant attitude was soon criticized by other missionaries, and later gave rise to the formidable, interminable wrangle over the rites which was to be so detrimental to the work of the apostolate.", "time": { "start_year": 1583, "start_month": null, "start_date": null, "end_year": 1610, "end_month": null, "end_date": null, "time_display": "1583–1610" }, "meta": { "people": [ "Fr Ricci", "St Francis Xavier" ], "places": [ "China", "Pekin" ], "event": "Ricci used scholarship, scientific publishing, and accommodation of Chinese customs to attract an educated Catholic elite.", "tags": [ "Missions", "China", "Religion" ] } } ] }