1 Ines G. Županov, CEIAS (CNRS-EHESS), Paris Managing Sacred Relics in Jesuit Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) When Francis Xavier started on a journey from Rome to Goa in 1540 he had only one shirt, as Ignatius of Loyola discovered, quickly ordering some more clothes to be packed for this very first Jesuit missionary sent on a long tortuous journey without return. 1 Just a few years later, in 1544, Loyola himself faced a difficult decision concerning the role of poverty in the new religious order he was setting up and for which he was writing the Constitutions. 2 Should the Jesuits accept donations and endowments, or should they keep the virtue of poverty as a “strong wall of religion (murus religionis firmus)”? This question kept Ignatius in prayer night after night in front of a small portrait of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. 3 The problem with money and possession is a core predicament at the heart of all religious institutions. 4 As Peter Brown recently argued, the Christian Church invented a successful formula by siphoning off the ‘secular’ wealth into its coffers through the invention of a heavenly spiritual treasury for which the monetary down-payment started during one's earthly existence. That sin was a debt was an idea present from the beginning, in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and the monetary option became the only solution. On the wings of the burgeoning affective spirituality of the Catholic Reformation, Francis Xavier, just like Ignatius, despaired over money, which he perceived as dangerously enmeshed in 1 Schurhammer G., S.J., Francis Xavier, His Life, His Times, India (1506–45), trans J. Costelloe, S.J, vol. 1 (Rome: 1973) 555-556. 2 Mostaccio S., Early Modern Jesuits between Obedience and Conscience during the Generalate of Claudio Acquaviva (1581-1615) (Farnham: 2014) 70, 78. See also Pierre Antoine Fabre’s introduction in Loyola Ignace de, Journal des motions intérieures, ed. P.A. Fabre (Paris: 2007) 11. 3 Mostaccio, Early Modern Jesuits 70. 4 Bowersock G. W., “Money and Your Soul” (review of Peter Brown’s The Ransom of the Soul; Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity, Harvard University Press, 2015), The New York Review of Books LXII, 9 (2015) 928-30.
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1
Ines G. Županov, CEIAS (CNRS-EHESS), Paris
Managing Sacred Relics in Jesuit Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
When Francis Xavier started on a journey from Rome to Goa in 1540 he had only one
shirt, as Ignatius of Loyola discovered, quickly ordering some more clothes to be packed for this
very first Jesuit missionary sent on a long tortuous journey without return.1 Just a few years later,
in 1544, Loyola himself faced a difficult decision concerning the role of poverty in the new
religious order he was setting up and for which he was writing the Constitutions.2 Should the
Jesuits accept donations and endowments, or should they keep the virtue of poverty as a “strong
wall of religion (murus religionis firmus)”? This question kept Ignatius in prayer night after night
in front of a small portrait of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.3 The problem with money and
possession is a core predicament at the heart of all religious institutions.4 As Peter Brown
recently argued, the Christian Church invented a successful formula by siphoning off the
‘secular’ wealth into its coffers through the invention of a heavenly spiritual treasury for which
the monetary down-payment started during one's earthly existence. That sin was a debt was an
idea present from the beginning, in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and the monetary option
became the only solution.
On the wings of the burgeoning affective spirituality of the Catholic Reformation, Francis
Xavier, just like Ignatius, despaired over money, which he perceived as dangerously enmeshed in
1 Schurhammer G., S.J., Francis Xavier, His Life, His Times, India (1506–45), trans J.
Costelloe, S.J, vol. 1 (Rome: 1973) 555-556. 2 Mostaccio S., Early Modern Jesuits between Obedience and Conscience during the Generalate
of Claudio Acquaviva (1581-1615) (Farnham: 2014) 70, 78. See also Pierre Antoine Fabre’s
introduction in Loyola Ignace de, Journal des motions intérieures, ed. P.A. Fabre (Paris: 2007)
11. 3 Mostaccio, Early Modern Jesuits 70.
4 Bowersock G. W., “Money and Your Soul” (review of Peter Brown’s The Ransom of the Soul;
Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity, Harvard University Press, 2015), The New
York Review of Books LXII, 9 (2015) 928-30.
2
social obligations. “The one who takes [money], will be taken by the other.”5 The mission on
which he ideally embarked was to give and provide for the universal salvation of each and every
person, and to make individuals enrich the universal Catholic Church – all this ideally without
touching (temporal) money himself.
The story of how Xavier and his coreligionists - who succeeded in building a ‘spiritual’
empire that comprised not just the souls saved, but also colleges, churches, hospitals, libraries
and all kinds of valuables - might just as well be told from its ending, when the Society of Jesus
had been dismantled by the Catholic monarchies and the Pope, and their possessions in Portugal
and the Portuguese empire were auctioned off on the orders of the Marques de Pombal.6 A casual
glance at a rather dull list of objects enumerated in the inventory of the Basilica Bom Jesus and
the Casa Professa in Goa in 1935, only a fraction of the riches it contained in the middle of the
18th
century, reveals the vestiges of the former splendor of the gold and silver reliquaries,
candleholders, ciboriums and similar objects studded with precious stones.7
In fact, already in 1589, a concerned Jesuit named Lopo de Abreu warned the General of
the Order in Rome, Claudio Acquaviva, that the Professed House of Goa was excessively
decorated.8 In his response in 1595, the General recommended moderation, and in 1597, while
the cornerstone of the Jesuit basilica Bom Jesus was laid, Nicolau Pimenta, the Visitor, gave a
written order that the church should not be decorated with figures and gold.9
The opulence of Jesuit churches such as the Bom Jesus, which became a pilgrimage site
after it began to house the body of Francis Xavier within its walls, is obviously due to the
centripetal pull of gifts and endowments by the faithful, from the poorest of the poor to the
richest of the rich. It was through gifts of various objects --reliquaries, portraits, sculptures,
5 Xavier wrote to Gaspar Barzaeus before sending him to Hurmuz to proselytize among
Muslims. Xavier, F., Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta (1535–52),
Schurhammer G. - Wicki J. (eds.) vol. 2 (Rome: 1944. Reprint, 1996) [hereafter EX] 99. 6 Borges C. J., The Economics of the Goa Jesuits 1542-1759; An Explanation of their Rise and
Fall (New Delhi: 1994) 125-138. 7 Teles R. M., "Inventário da Casa Professa de Bom Jesus", Buletim do Instituto Vasco da Gama
Saints from the Catacombs (London: 2013). See also Carroll M. P., Veiled Threats: The Logic of
Popular Catholicism in Italy (Baltimore: 1996) 175-176. See also Antonio Bosio, Roma
soterranea, in Opera postuma (Rome, 1710).
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strategy: to obscure the fact that the Society of Jesus was a brand new religious order, and to
circumvent the tough and centralized post-Tridentine definition of martyrdom and sanctity.70
The figure of the martyr was important because it provided the missionaries with a wider
range of cultural repertoires to choose from and to transform any missionary failure into a
symbolic triumph.71
In addition, transformed into relic pieces, a martyr was provided with the
possibility of a very longue durée afterlife, and an extraordinary material and representational
mobility. In fact, even before becoming full-fledged Jesuits, the novices in the novitiate in Rome
already had an aura of future martyrs and “were revered as walking relics with the greeting ‘Hail
the Flowers of Martyrdom (Salvete Flores Martyrum)’.”72
As the number of their martyrs and saints grew, confirmed by the Church and those who
were still waiting to be officially recognized, the Jesuits used their administrative and literary
skills to keep them mobile, ‘alive’ and accounted for. In a series of famous martyrologies and
similar texts from the early seventeenth century onwards, Jesuit apologetic historiography
braided together and listed all the famous and less famous deceased Jesuits, and many of these
texts provided pictorial representation of the moment of their martyrdom or of their pious
portraits. The cycles of frescoes and paintings from the late sixteenth century on the walls of the
Roman churches opened a space for tranquil cohabitation of the early Christian martyrs and the
new Catholic martyrs of the religious wars and overseas missions. Richard Verstegan’s gory
pictorial compendium, Théâtre des cruautés des hérétiques de notre temps (Antwerpen, 1587)
had a similar mission of collapsing past and present (Catholic) martyrdom at the hands of
bloodthirsty Huguenot villains.73
It has been argued that the frescoes depicting violence in the
70
Pope Gregory XIII allowed, for the consecration of altars, the use of the relics of ‘new’
martyrs, such as those in England. See Diego de Yepes (Obispo de Tarazona), Historia
particular de la persecución de Inglaterra y de los martirios mas insignes que en ella ha habido
desde el año del Señor 157, lib. II, cap. V (Madrid, L. Sánchez: 1599) 50. 71
According to Brad S. Gregory, “as martyrs had helped convert ancient pagans in Europe, so
they would do for modern pagans throughout the world. The universal Church was going
global.” See Gregory B. S., Salvation at Stake (Cambridge: 1999) 251-252. 72
Bailey G. A., Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610 (Toronto:
2003) 156. 73
This was one of the responses to similar Protestant denunciations of Spanish cruelty in the
New World, such as Jacques de Miggrode’s publication in Antwerp (1579) of Tyrannies et
cruautés des Espagnols perpétrées ès Indes occidentales, qu’on dit le Nouveau Monde, a
translation in French of the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias by the Dominican
20
Churches of Santo Stefano Rotondo and San Tomasso di Canterbury differed from those in the
Théâtre des cruautés in that the Jesuits intended their pictorial propaganda to provoke
compassion for the martyrs, while Verstegan’s project was to incite revenge.74
A barely hidden truth was that the Jesuits and other missionary orders needed able-bodied
workers in the “Lord’s field,” and that martyrs were excessively expensive.75
Jesuit martyrs were
good to think, feel and meditate with by way of texts or images, such as those in Louis
Richeome’s masterpiece La peinture spirituelle or in Antonio Francisco Cardim’s Elogio e
ramalhetes de flores, but during their lifetime and even after death they created problems.76
The major problem in the life of a Jesuit martyr-to-be was, according to the
correspondence, an excess of fervor and capacity for disobedience. This is one of the reasons
why Ignatius of Loyola instituted a principle of obedience “as a corpse (ac cadaver).” The first
to disregard this principle was Francis Xavier. At the time Xavier died and his body became a
famous Asian relic, he was in fact ordered to come back to Europe. Not only did he antagonize
some Portuguese fidalgos by accusing them of corruption and rapacity, he was also severe with
Jesuits in India and proceeded rather quickly with dismissals. He may also have grown
personally disappointed with the slow pace of proselytism and the obstacles he had to face at
each and every step.
Bartolomé de las Casas. See Roger Chartier’s review of the new translations and editions of the
books by Las Casas and Verstegan (Paris: 1995), “La destruction des Indes et Le théâtre des
cruautés ; Violences par-delà, violence en deçà,” Le Monde, (8 Dec. 1995). 74
Frank Lestringant claims that the images of torture were intended to familiarize the Jesuit
novices with death and to make the audience feel compassion for the dead bodies. This attitude
went against Calvinist Ppuritan rejection of the body in all its forms of decomposition. See
Verstegan R., Le théâtre des cruautés, ed. F. Lestringant (Paris: 1995) 22-27. 75
Instead of getting themselves killed too early, the Jesuits were incited to endure instead a long
martyrdom, or to renounce martyrdom (which is a kind of a martyrdom, or as Pierre-Antoine
Fabre called it in personal communication, “a martyrdom of martyrdom”) for the sake of work
in the missionary field. This is the so-called white martyrdom (death by exhaustion), as opposed
to red martyrdom, which is the only canonical martyrdom. See chapter 4 (“The Art of Dying in
the Tropics: Jesuit Martyrs in India”) in Županov, Missionary Tropics 147-171. 76 Richeome Louis, S.J., La peinture spirituelle ou l’art d’admirer, aimer et louer Dieu en toutes
ses œuvres et de tirer de toutes profit salutere (Lyon, Pierre Rigaud : 1611). Cardim António
Francisco,S.J., Elogios, e ramalhete de flores borrifado com o sangue dos religiosos da
Companhia de Iesu, a quem os tyrannos do Imperio de Iappaõ tiraraõ as vidas... ; Com o
Catalogo de todos os religiosos, & seculares, que por odio da mesma Fè foraõ mortos naquelle
Imperio, atê o anno de 1640 (Lisbon, Manoel da Sylua : 1650).
21
The post-mortem problems are of a different nature. On the one hand, the religious order
had to skillfully orchestrate the biography of a martyr so that every one of his actions could
qualify for sanctity. Not just during his lifetime, but also in the afterlife, the saintly candidate’s
miracles had to be attested and recorded: by way of relics, appearances in dreams and
prophecies, and in the production of sacred objects and images.
One of the first rules for successful administration was to immobilize a martyr or a saint
in a tomb or a reliquary, and to prevent him from ever leaving the place. After the discovery of
the Roman catacombs, the Papacy was able to afford generosity and send off, as gifts, thousands
of relics, at times entire bodies, throughout the world, Goa included.77
Nonetheless, the tendency
not to dismember local Asian remains of martyrs and saints-to-be, and to protect them from both
popular devotion they spurred as well as from demands coming from Europe, is clearly visible in
the correspondences of their keepers.78
After the first public viewing and medical examination of
Francis Xavier’s dead body, it took half a century for the Jesuits to allow for the second
exposition in 1611, which went hand in hand with the demand from the headquarters to send
Xavier’s right arm for the chapel in the church of Gesù in Rome and to get the fast-track process
of canonization underway.79
The story of his bodily relics has been told many times over, and if their bits and pieces
travelled far and wide, and ended up enshrined in beautiful silver reliquaries such as the one in
the sacristy of the Cathedral in Salvador de Baía de Todos os Santos or in the St. Joseph
Seminary and Sacred Art Museum in Macau, Goa resisted both Roman and Portuguese demands
77
On the public display of the relics of B. Constancio in the shape of a body dressed in uniform,
see Saldanha M.J.G.de, História da Goa, vol. 2 (Nova Goa: 1926. Reprint New Delhi: 1990),
259. 78
From the report by Aires Brandão on the state of Xavier’s body after being exposed for the
first time in Goa upon arrival from Melaka in 1554, it is clear that the relic needed close
protection behind closed doors. See DI 3, 176. 79
In the wake of Schurhammer’s positivist and documentary articles on Xavier’s relic, a more
recent batch of historians tried out a more social and cultural history approach while mostly
ignoring (or choosing to ignore) each other’s work. See chapter 1 (“The Sacred Body: Francis
Xavier, the Apostle, the Pilgrim, the Relic”), in Županov, Missionary Tropics, 35-86; W. R.
Pinch, “The Corpse and Cult of Francis Xavier, 1552-1623”, in P. Gottschalk P. – Schmalz, M.
N. (eds.), Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances
(Albany: 2011), 113-132. Gupta, P., The relic state; St Francis Xavier and the politics of Ritual
in Portuguese India (Manchester: 2014); Brockey L., “The Cruelest Honor: The Relics of
Francis Xavier in Early-Modern Asia”, The Catholic Historical Review 101, 1 (2015) 41-64.
22
to send the body to Europe. One of the ways to make sure that it remain in Goa was to create an
appropriate tomb space and to promote popular devotion. The entire basilica of Bom Jesus in
Goa was transformed into a fortress of Xavier’s tomb, walled into a central part of the edifice,
almost reminiscent of the garbha gṛha of a Hindu temple. Another was to allow gifts of
materials and decorations, in marble and silver in particular. The whole funerary chapel is today
crammed with paintings, hardly visible from the outside, with a monumental carved marble
catafalque, a gift from the Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany, brought to and assembled in Goa
by Placido Francesco Ramponi in 1697.80
The body itself is in the silver casket, for which
another famous Jesuit, Marcello Mastrilli, engaged in fundraising from Naples to Goa from 1632
to 1637.81
Protected and rooted in the soil, the priceless relic of Xavier, surrounded by expensive
decorations and materials, spawned in the long run a variety of other miraculous objects in Goa.
They are today in the museum and sacristy of Bom Jesus, in the Museum of Sacred Art and in
other churches and private homes.
While Jesuit correspondence swarms with demands for relics, with descriptions of their
miraculous effects, the reliquaries made for them, the gifting that went on, and the travels they
undertook around the globe, Alessandro Valignano, who openly and quite spectacularly dared to
speak publicly about Jesuit economics and finances, advised in 1580 against both the import and
the reckless distribution of relics.
“People coming to these parts should not be allowed to bring so many relics... Such
action serves only to undermine the respect due to them... I would be glad if relics were reduced
to a minimum everywhere and if superiors and prelates were instructed to keep them in
reliquaries in their churches where they could be venerated with the proper respect.”82
In
particular, he claimed that all relics ex ossibus should be exposed for the veneration in large
80
Sodini C., I Medici e le Indie Orientali (Florence: 1996) and Dias P., Monumento Funerário
de São Francisco Xavier Na Casa Professa do Bom Jesus (Coimbra: 2010). 81
See Županov I.G., “Passage to India: Jesuit Spiritual Economy between Martyrdom and Profit
in the Seventeenth Century”, Journal of Early Modern History 16 (2012) 1-39. 82