The Catholic Reformation, or Renewal began with the Council of Trent 1545 to 1563, and endeavoured to update the Catholic Church to an increasingly changing world, which included the establishment of colonial empires, economic expansion and the challenge posed by the Protestant Reformation.[1] One of the most significant achievements of the Catholic Renewal was the spread of Christianity outside of European borders, in Asia and the Americas, which started before 1545 due to the foundations of new religious orders and continued throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the end of the seventeenth century Catholicism was a truly global religion, but not in the form Rome wanted and certainly not as successful as the Catholic Reformation aimed. This was because of various reasons, such as evangelical methods of accommodation, particularly pursued by Jesuits, which led to syncretism; and urgency in baptising new converts coupled with a lack of education on Christianity. There is no denying that missionaries were successful in spreading Christianity to numerous communities throughout the world, from Mexico to China. But the factors mentioned above suggest that while traditional European Catholicism was not established globally, it was moulded by the customs of the host communities it reached and it’s these forms of the religion that remained significant globally.
Accommodation, or the adaption of the customs of host societies, was a vital strategy employed by religious orders such as the Jesuits in their missions. By engaging with foreign communities and adopting some of their customs, such as the way they dressed or the languages they spoke, missionaries reduced the sense of ‘otherness’ and thus created an environment in which Christianity was not seen as a foreign and unexplainable concept but instead a viable and beneficial option for the indigenous population that they were interacting with, enabling Catholicism to become a local reality. This is clearly seen in the Jesuit mission in Madurai, India 1606 which was led by Robert De Nobili, a pioneer of the accommodationist method. At that time, the non-Christian population perceived Christianity as an inept and low caste religious practice, indicating the lack of acceptance and desire for conversion.[2] This can be credited to Portuguese colonial expansion, as the introduction of a new and foreign authority displeased native communities. De Nobili saw the need to disassociate with the Portuguese and customise Catholicism to fit in with conventional Tamil ideas about personal holiness and Brahmanical normative precepts.[3] For example, he emphasised the similarities of precepts such as abstaining from stealing, lying and sexual misconduct with the Ten Commandments.[4] This was a method he used often, and it wasn’t limited to scriptures. De Nobili also dressed in Brahmin robes and wore the three-stringed thread that Tamil men often sported, interpreting it as a representation of the Holy Trinity.[5] This presentation of Christianity made it less unusual and more accessible, allowing it to gain support and therefore increase conversions because people did not have to give up their cultural roots or customs. The implementation of this method in numerous locations, such as China, succeeded in establishing Catholicism within different communities worldwide, making it a truly global religion. It is important to note that language was another accommodation technique that enabled Catholicism to take hold in populations. Mastering the vernacular, including Sanskrit and Tamil, enabled the Jesuits to gain a better understanding of indigenous beliefs and thereby more efficiently link it to their own and propagate it. The accommodationist principle was a means to weave Christian principles into local beliefs, allowing Catholicism, albeit in a slightly altered form, to become a global religion.
Another location where accommodation methods proved to be successful and emphasise the importance of these strategies in enabling Global Catholicism is China. The evangelist work of Ricci from 1583 onwards interlinked Catholicism with the native beliefs of the society, in this case, the teachings of ancient Chinese sages.[6] The Jesuits determinedly preached that Catholicism is the one true religion and that its morals align with traditional Chinese culture. By presenting the religion in this way alongside Ricci’s impressive knowledge of written classical Chinese and printed works, the missionaries attracted curiosity and gained respect for their social performance.[7] The outcome of this led to the number of converts increasing from 2,500 in 1610 to 40,000 in 1636.[8] However, due to the political instability in China, the Ming dynasty was toppled by uprisings, hampering conversions in the 1640s to 1660s. While it would be expected that the unsteadiness of the domestic situation would harm a minority religion, this seemed to have little effect on Catholicism in China because the Catholic Church remained stable with 60,000 to 80,000 members.[9] This highlights how despite domestic crises Christianity continued growing, accentuating the extent to which Catholicism was successfully embedded in China and reinforcing its position as a global religion.
A widely debated aspect of evangelism in the early modern period is the notion of syncretism, or the blend of religious beliefs. Due to the Jesuit’s use of strategies such as accommodation, it is no surprise that Catholicism in Asia or the Americas did not replicate Catholicism in Europe, specifically the Holy Roman Empire. A key challenge to the idea of Global Catholicism is that communities which adopted a mix of their own cultural beliefs with Christian ones were not ‘true converts’ and simply “Christians in name alone”, as MEP missionary Deydier referred to them in 1666.[10] This is reflected in the continuous conflicts between different religious orders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite attempting to put on a unified front, missionaries struggled with who they owed allegiance to and therefore, which authority’s methods they had to follow. As well as being a member of a specific religious order (Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians), they also had to keep their nation’s interest in mind, predominantly Portugal and Spain who were experiencing major imperial expansion. This meant that the Jesuits were often targeted by other religious orders for pushing the boundaries of religious beliefs too much, implying that the conversions they achieved were not valid due to the immense modification of Christian rituals to suit foreign customs. A key illustration of this is conversions in Japan. Between 1579 and 1582, missionaries under Valignano opened colleges in Japan to start training converts and used accommodationist principles, resulting in over 100,000 Roberto de Nobili converts.[11] This vast number has been credited to mass baptisms and Jesuits have been criticised for being quick at baptising but futile at indoctrination. After the 1614 edict banning Christians, an underground Christian sector called the Kakure Kirishitan (Secret Christians) was formed.[12] In 1865, French priest Petitjean assessed some of this sect’s key ideologies and believed that their religious ideas were Shinto rites wrapped up in distorted Catholic teachings, concluding that they weren’t really Catholics at all.[13] De Nobili presented a strong argument against this, maintaining that if certain pagan customs were allowed in Christian practices in earlier centuries, there is nothing wrong with foreign customs being allowed now. This is a compelling argument because it indicates how religion is continuously changing, principally significant during this period due to the Catholic Reformation’s aims to update the Church to the changing world. This non-Eurocentric approach suggests how Catholicism doesn’t need to follow the exact same outline as it does in Europe and that its just as valid adopted in another society, illustrating that it was indeed a global religion by the seventeenth century.
Mexico is another informative case study that displays both the conflict between religious orders and the spread of Catholics beliefs in the New World. The first missionaries in Mexico were Franciscans, whose evangelisation methods were based on the religious history of Spain. Specifically, the mass baptisms performed on Muslims of Granada during the Reconquest were repeated in Mexico as well. Fray Motolinia claimed that in 15 years, they had managed to baptise 9 million converts.[14] The reasons behind these urgent baptisms involved their beliefs that the natives were essential to the Second Coming of Christ. Due to this millenarian view, the hastiness of the baptisms caused minimal pre-baptismal instructions, a method that was criticised by Augustinians who took a more conservative approach to missionary work by focusing on spreading traditional Catholic practices.[15] Study of indigenous language sources, suggests that the Franciscan methods proved to be ineffective at establishing traditional Catholicism and instead, the Catholic Church was moulded by the local culture of Mexican natives.[16] The combination of pre-Columbian religious practices with core Christian beliefs about salvation proposes that Catholicism did achieve the position of a global religion. It is important to note that syncretism or adapted forms of the religion are not necessarily indicators of failure. As Clossey argues, while global Catholicism may be diverse in nature due to the engagement it had with foreign communities, it was united in its core beliefs, which involved a Christian God and its morals. This Global Salvific Catholicism may not be in the orthodox form practiced in Europe,[17] but the complex interactions between natives, missionaries and their evangelical strategies led to Catholicism being embraced in multiple foreign locations worldwide.
There are places where missionaries failed to achieve their evangelist aims. These provide insight into ineffective methods and the difference between localities, such as courts and countryside, and thus are important to discuss. A key example of this is Acquaviva’s evangelism in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court in the 1580s compared to the rural Salsette peninsula. Acquaviva’s strategy at court was to establish a personal friendship with Akbar and increase his attachment to the Jesuits, eventually leading to his conversion. What Acquaviva failed to notice was that Akbar’s intentions behind his friendly attitude towards the Jesuits was to launch his political ideology of sul-i-kul, or universal religious tolerance, thus explaining why Jesuits were sought after at his court.[18] A crucial lack of judgment from the Jesuits meant that they mistook this for a sign of early success, highlighted by Acquaviva’s letters sent back to the Society of Jesus. In these he mentioned his good relations with the King and stressed Akbar’s desire for churches to be built in his Kingdom. Although this suggested that Catholicism was gaining ground, Akbar actually stated that he wanted many religious institutes to be built, due to his tolerant attitude of all religious cults.[19] The Jesuit failure was even more present beyond the Mughal court, particularly in the rural region Salsette. De Souza suggests that the mob attack in 1583, that killed Acquaviva and other Jesuits, occurred because locals were angry at the threat that Christianisation posed to their economic circumstances.[20] Alongside this, Acquaviva focused on learning Persian to translate doctrines for the King and while this was useful at court, it neglected the majority of the population that did not speak Persian.[21] On their visit to Salsette, the Jesuit’s lack of knowledge about the local situation and the vernacular meant that they failed to establish Catholicism in this area. However, it is crucial to not conflate these instances to an outright failure of Catholicism as a global religion. While it was not welcomed and adopted in all communities, the overall increase of converts and Catholic communities in Asia or America highlight how missionary work was often successful.
Ultimately, Catholicism was a truly global religion by the end of the seventeenth century, but not in the form that Rome was intending. In order to increase the appeal of Christianity and gain converts, missionaries had to resort to methods that made the religion a more viable and desired option. This meant endorsing Catholicism as a religion that works in a non-European environment. Whether that occurred through taking quite extreme measures as De Nobili and Ricci did in Asian communities or even just learning the vernacular, it’s clear that the success of Catholicism in numerous locations was because of the interactions between missionaries and the host society. The various case studies discussed in this essay suggest that religious orders achieved a remarkable feat by cementing Catholicism in very different cultures that had rich histories and traditions for centuries. While this may have produced belief systems that weaved indigenous customs in with Christianity, it’s a form of Catholicism nonetheless. Essentially, local Catholic communities should be seen as specific expressions of Catholicism rather than a distorted version that doesn’t count as part of the global Catholic Church. Through colonisation as a trigger for evangelism, determined missionaries, diverse evangelist methods and the dialogue between religious orders and different localities, Catholicism achieved the position of a global religion by the end of the seventeenth century.
Tanya Singh has just completed her second year of a BA in History at the University of Cambridge (Murray Edwards College).
Full title when assigned: ‘By the end of the seventeenth century, Catholicism was a truly global religion.’ Discuss.
Notes: [1] Robert Bireley, ‘Redefining Catholicism: Trent and Beyond’, The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6 (2007), pp. 145-50. [2] I. G. Zupanov, ‘Compromise: India’, in Ronnie P. Hsia (ed.), A Companion to the Reformation World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 363. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid., p. 369. [6] R .P. Hsia, ‘Promise: China’, in Ronnie P. Hsia (ed.), A Companion to the Reformation World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 376. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid., p. 377. [10] T. Alberts, ‘Catholic Missions to Asia’, in Alex Bamji et al. (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation(Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 136. [11] H. V. Thanh, ‘Funding the mission’, in Bernard Heyberger et al. (eds.), Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia (Routledge, 2020), p. 113. [12] Ibid., p. 114. [13] Alberts, ‘Catholic Missions to Asia’, p. 127. [14] M. Christensen, ‘Missionizing Mexico: Ecclesiastics, Natives, and the Spread of Christianity’, in Ronnie P. Hsia (ed.), A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions. (Brill, 2018), p. 24. [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid., p. 20. [17] Alberts, ‘Catholic Missions to Asia’, p. 136 [18] I. G. Zupanov, ‘Between Mogor and Salsette’, in Bernard Heyberger et al. (eds.), Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia(Routledge, 2020), p. 56. [19] Ibid., p. 52. [20] Ibid., p. 60. [21] Ibid., p. 57.
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