WAS FRANCIS XAVIER A MODEL JESUIT?
The Jesuit Jubilee Year was launched in Britain on 3rd December 2005 with a lecture at Heythrop College, London by Professor Hughes Didier. Michael Barnes SJ helped to organise the event and reports on what was said.
The year of the Jesuit anniversaries began with a lecture hosted by the Centre for Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue at Heythrop College, University of London. It was given by the distinguished French historian, Hughes Didier, who took as his theme the inspiration behind this first and greatest of Jesuit missionaries.
In one way, suggested Didier, this extraordinary man, considered almost the co-founder of the Jesuits, was not a model Jesuit. Unlike so many of the nascent Society, Francis was not influenced by the Humanist movement. While the Jesuits as a body would come to express the new spring of Catholicism ushered in by the Council of Trent, his theology remained largely pre-Tridentine, sharing with Luther and Calvin a restricted Augustinian pessimism. In Didier’s opinion, Francis’s friendship with Ignatius may well have been providential in preventing him from following a Calvinist path.
Xavier’s letters, especially those to Ignatius, make it clear that he was, above all, a man of deep feelings, truly deserving the title ‘saint of friendship’. Here is a man utterly convinced that his every action is supported by the saints who pray for him and by the intimate friends and Jesuit companions, alive and dead, with whom he shares a life totally taken up with the Mystery of Christ’s love for humankind.
This was what motivated him throughout his short restless life. Sent to India under the Padroado - the system which gave the Portuguese crown control of ecclesiastical affairs in India, China and Japan - Xavier quickly came up against the corruption and greed of Europeans stationed overseas. Scandalised by what he found in Portuguese Goa, he dreamed of a social utopia, such as would later be practised by Jesuits in the South American ‘Reductions’. In a letter to the King of Portugal, he complains of the situation in India, but admits that he does not believe that reform is possible, and indicates his intention to leave for Japan, where there are no Portuguese to scandalise his converts.
In his journeys through the Indian Ocean, he was surprised by the ambiguity of the environment in which the Portuguese operated, negotiating treaties and alliances with Muslim rulers. Encountering members of the Church of the East on the island of Socotra, he risked upsetting the delicate balance between Muslims and the Christian minority by baptising infants, regardless of whether they were the children of Muslim or Christian fathers.
In Indonesia, more clearly than in India, Catholic missions were in competition with their Muslim counterparts. Xavier realised that it was only at the fringes of Muslim expansion that fertile mission fields could be established. It was not just his disillusionment with Portuguese rule which made him think of turning towards Japan, but a recognition of the ‘Muslim obstacle’ so apparent in at least part of Malaya.
In Japan he found a very different religious world. After three years it became clear to him that he would make no headway without first Christianising what he saw as the source of Far Eastern civilisation. Fascinated by the cultural unity of the Sino-Japanese world, he determined to enter China, whatever the cost.
His efforts in Japan produced a number of small and dedicated Christian communities. But what for Xavier was no more than an intuition, laid the foundations of Jesuit missionary practice. His measures led Alessandro Valignano, Apostolic Visitor to Japan in 1577 - 1581, to give a theoretical basis to what had been an incipient practice in Xavier’s later life, saying ‘If the universal message of the Christian faith is to be accepted by the Chinese and Japanese, the secondary aspects that that religion has acquired during its long period of development in the West must be abandoned or modified, in such a way as to adapt to the temperament and traditions of peoples who have lived completely isolated from Western thought patterns.
Xavier had, almost unwittingly, laid the foundations of religious inculturation, so important to the missionary work of the next generations of Jesuit missionaries to the East, notably Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India.
The year of the Jesuit anniversaries began with a lecture hosted by the Centre for Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue at Heythrop College, University of London. It was given by the distinguished French historian, Hughes Didier, who took as his theme the inspiration behind this first and greatest of Jesuit missionaries.
In one way, suggested Didier, this extraordinary man, considered almost the co-founder of the Jesuits, was not a model Jesuit. Unlike so many of the nascent Society, Francis was not influenced by the Humanist movement. While the Jesuits as a body would come to express the new spring of Catholicism ushered in by the Council of Trent, his theology remained largely pre-Tridentine, sharing with Luther and Calvin a restricted Augustinian pessimism. In Didier’s opinion, Francis’s friendship with Ignatius may well have been providential in preventing him from following a Calvinist path.
Xavier’s letters, especially those to Ignatius, make it clear that he was, above all, a man of deep feelings, truly deserving the title ‘saint of friendship’. Here is a man utterly convinced that his every action is supported by the saints who pray for him and by the intimate friends and Jesuit companions, alive and dead, with whom he shares a life totally taken up with the Mystery of Christ’s love for humankind.
This was what motivated him throughout his short restless life. Sent to India under the Padroado - the system which gave the Portuguese crown control of ecclesiastical affairs in India, China and Japan - Xavier quickly came up against the corruption and greed of Europeans stationed overseas. Scandalised by what he found in Portuguese Goa, he dreamed of a social utopia, such as would later be practised by Jesuits in the South American ‘Reductions’. In a letter to the King of Portugal, he complains of the situation in India, but admits that he does not believe that reform is possible, and indicates his intention to leave for Japan, where there are no Portuguese to scandalise his converts.
In his journeys through the Indian Ocean, he was surprised by the ambiguity of the environment in which the Portuguese operated, negotiating treaties and alliances with Muslim rulers. Encountering members of the Church of the East on the island of Socotra, he risked upsetting the delicate balance between Muslims and the Christian minority by baptising infants, regardless of whether they were the children of Muslim or Christian fathers.
In Indonesia, more clearly than in India, Catholic missions were in competition with their Muslim counterparts. Xavier realised that it was only at the fringes of Muslim expansion that fertile mission fields could be established. It was not just his disillusionment with Portuguese rule which made him think of turning towards Japan, but a recognition of the ‘Muslim obstacle’ so apparent in at least part of Malaya.
In Japan he found a very different religious world. After three years it became clear to him that he would make no headway without first Christianising what he saw as the source of Far Eastern civilisation. Fascinated by the cultural unity of the Sino-Japanese world, he determined to enter China, whatever the cost.
His efforts in Japan produced a number of small and dedicated Christian communities. But what for Xavier was no more than an intuition, laid the foundations of Jesuit missionary practice. His measures led Alessandro Valignano, Apostolic Visitor to Japan in 1577 - 1581, to give a theoretical basis to what had been an incipient practice in Xavier’s later life, saying ‘If the universal message of the Christian faith is to be accepted by the Chinese and Japanese, the secondary aspects that that religion has acquired during its long period of development in the West must be abandoned or modified, in such a way as to adapt to the temperament and traditions of peoples who have lived completely isolated from Western thought patterns.
Xavier had, almost unwittingly, laid the foundations of religious inculturation, so important to the missionary work of the next generations of Jesuit missionaries to the East, notably Matteo Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India.