In the language of the land: Native conversion in jesuit public letters from Brazil and India

Author's Department

History Department

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https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342379

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Journal of Early Modern History

Publication Date

12-1-2013

doi

10.1163/15700658-12342379

Abstract

This paper begins with a simple problem: given the implicit Ignatian model for conversion and of conversion narratives for those already within the Christian fold, how did Jesuit missionaries in the colonies represent native conversion? To what extent were these colonial conversion narratives responding to the demands of Jesuit representational norms and to what extent did they reflect local realities? To address this question, this paper will examine stories of conversions of natives in public letters sent from Bahía and Goa and their immediate environs during the first thirty years of the missions in Brazil and India-annual letters but also other letters which were published in popular collections such as the Nuovi Avisi delle Indie di Portogallo series printed in Venice. The public cartas particulares, as opposed to the private hijuelas, were meant to be carefully crafted, and were explicitly intended to give a good account of the mission to the public in Europe. Since the public letters considered here were guided by Ignatius' epistolary conventions and often placed into wide circulation, they provide an index of the rhetorical strategies and conversion narratives deemed successful by the Jesuit order in Europe in a period when Ignatius' influence was still strongly felt. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013.

First Page

505

Last Page

524

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