Il ruolo delle ‘università’ nella strategia missionaria di Francesco Saverio per il Giappone

In his first descriptions of Japan, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier highlighted the existence of some institutions that he had identified as “universities,” which he had not been able to find in India. With this word, he actually meant different kinds of organizations, such as the Zen temples of the capital city, Miyako; or the great monastic complexes of mounts Hiei and Kōya; or the famous Confucian academy of Ashikaga, in the north of the country. From Xavier’s point of view, the most important and unifying characteristic of these universities was their ability to grant authority to Christian teachings. In a country politically fragmented by civil war, the Jesuit missionaries could gain status by debating with these institutions’ students, and converting them. In Xavier’s plans, therefore, Japan should have been evangelized by a team of selected missionaries, who had studied the local language and doctrines, and could prove the existence of God to the Japanese scholars

The Cape of the Devil: Salvation in the Japanese Jesuit Mission Under Francisco Cabral (1570-1579)

This dissertation sheds new light on the missionary policies implemented by the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Cabral (1533-1609) during his time as Superior of the Japanese mission (1570-79), by contextualising his actions and decisions within the framework of early-modern Catholicism and its extra-European missions. In this way, it refutes the image, produced by previous literature, of Cabral as the villain in the story of the Japanese mission, and as a deviation from the norm of the missionary spirit of the Society of Jesus. At the same time, this research disrupts the uniformity of the narrative that surrounds the Jesuit missions to Asia, which depicts them in a continuous evolution towards accommodation and repudiates the elements that do not easily fit into that narrative. Just as soteriology has been identified as one of the central preoccupations of early-modern Catholicism, behind Cabral’s policies for the Japanese mission it is possible to identify his own beliefs and apprehensions regarding salvation. He refused any justification, whether based on the Jesuit Constitutions or on Japanese customs, that supported the missionaries’ use of silk garments, and had the black cassock reinstated. In Cabral’s interpretation, these colourful garments were a “cape” used by the devil to hide his infiltration into the enterprise. By banning them, he gave precedence to the upholding of the vow of poverty, and faith in God. Facing the missionaries’ refusal to obey, Cabral then attempted to implement some solutions that would allow the restoration of what he identified as the correct Jesuit way of proceeding. In his intentions, the respect of the vows of poverty and obedience would attract God’s favour and therefore cause plenty of conversions among the Japanese. However, the lack of funds and the isolation of the mission aggravated this unsatisfactory situation. Cut off from the Jesuit chain of obedience, and reading negative signs in the progress of the conversions, Cabral assumed that God had abandoned the mission because of the sins of its members. If this were the case, no amount of good works would help the missionaries to save their souls. Overworked, demoralised, and burnt-out, by 1576 Cabral was beseeching the General to let him return to Europe, to illustrate to the Curia the situation of Japan in a more efficient manner than lettered governance. Cabral identified a source of personal disedification in the post of Superior of Japan itself. The impossibility of exercising holy obedience prevented him from using one of the most powerful tools of self-denial available to early-modern Jesuits. Fearing for his soul, and foreseeing a disastrous future for the mission, in 1580 Cabral was finally allowed to leave the enterprise and its corrupting influence behind. By refusing to follow the way of proceeding and its vows, the missionaries had irremediably compromised their salvation; for Cabral, missionary work, instead of being a way to work towards salvation, had become a veritable disguise for losing one’s way to temptation

The Cape of the Devil: Salvation in the Japanese Jesuit Mission Under Francisco Cabral (1570-1579)

This dissertation sheds new light on the missionary policies implemented by the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Cabral (1533-1609) during his time as Superior of the Japanese mission (1570-79), by contextualising his actions and decisions within the framework of early-modern Catholicism and its extra-European missions. In this way, it refutes the image, produced by previous literature, of Cabral as the villain in the story of the Japanese mission, and as a deviation from the norm of the missionary spirit of the Society of Jesus. At the same time, this research disrupts the uniformity of the narrative that surrounds the Jesuit missions to Asia, which depicts them in a continuous evolution towards accommodation and repudiates the elements that do not easily fit into that narrative. Just as soteriology has been identified as one of the central preoccupations of early-modern Catholicism, behind Cabral’s policies for the Japanese mission it is possible to identify his own beliefs and apprehensions regarding salvation. He refused any justification, whether based on the Jesuit Constitutions or on Japanese customs, that supported the missionaries’ use of silk garments, and had the black cassock reinstated. In Cabral’s interpretation, these colourful garments were a “cape” used by the devil to hide his infiltration into the enterprise. By banning them, he gave precedence to the upholding of the vow of poverty, and faith in God. Facing the missionaries’ refusal to obey, Cabral then attempted to implement some solutions that would allow the restoration of what he identified as the correct Jesuit way of proceeding. In his intentions, the respect of the vows of poverty and obedience would attract God’s favour and therefore cause plenty of conversions among the Japanese. However, the lack of funds and the isolation of the mission aggravated this unsatisfactory situation. Cut off from the Jesuit chain of obedience, and reading negative signs in the progress of the conversions, Cabral assumed that God had abandoned the mission because of the sins of its members. If this were the case, no amount of good works would help the missionaries to save their souls. Overworked, demoralised, and burnt-out, by 1576 Cabral was beseeching the General to let him return to Europe, to illustrate to the Curia the situation of Japan in a more efficient manner than lettered governance. Cabral identified a source of personal disedification in the post of Superior of Japan itself. The impossibility of exercising holy obedience prevented him from using one of the most powerful tools of self-denial available to early-modern Jesuits. Fearing for his soul, and foreseeing a disastrous future for the mission, in 1580 Cabral was finally allowed to leave the enterprise and its corrupting influence behind. By refusing to follow the way of proceeding and its vows, the missionaries had irremediably compromised their salvation; for Cabral, missionary work, instead of being a way to work towards salvation, had become a veritable disguise for losing one’s way to temptation

The Dress of Evangelization: Jesuit Garments, Liturgical Textiles, and the Senses in Early Modern Japan

The present article analyses the use of clothing in the Jesuit sixteenth-century mission in Japan by applying dress theory. It investigates Jesuit garments and other perceptible elements of dress by understanding them as nonverbal communication. Texts by missionaries such as Francis Xavier (1506–52), Francisco Cabral (1533–1609), Luís Fróis (1532–1597), and Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) are scrutinised to establish the content of the messages they meant to convey through Jesuit dress. The range of modifications that dress imposed on the bodies of the missionaries is examined to determine the limits within which the missionaries operated and how these boundaries came to be. Through an historical overview, the missionaries’ strategies are examined to show how such messages were fine-tuned through the manipulation of dress, and to what extent they represented responses to the specific context of Japan. Anti-Christian polemical texts supply information on the Japanese’s reception of these messages. The article explores Jesuit assumptions about the dress policies’ impact on their souls through the senses and on their work of evangelization as well