Studies in History-2011-Malekandathil-251-67.pdf

7/25/2019 Studies in History-2011-Malekandathil-251-67.pdf

1/18

Revaluation of Tradition in the Ideology of the Radical AdivasiResistance 251

Cross, Sword and

Conflicts: A Study of thePolitical Meanings of

the Struggle between the

Padroado Realand the

Propaganda Fide

Pius MalekandathilCentre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Abstract

Geographical explorations and the subsequent intensification of external

commerce made many political actors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-

ries ADdrag in religion and its various institutions as pliable devices for strength-

ening their claims of monopoly and control over the political and commerciallife of the newly discovered regions. In the midst of these developments, the

pre-colonial struggles for appropriating surplus from the European possessions

in Asia were at times in the form of struggles between different religious institu-

tions and administrative machineries within the same belief system professed

by the various European powers. These conflicts often arose when some of the

religious institutions, which were devised at different points of time in history to

transmit various types of spiritual experiences to the believers, were appropri-

ated by power-mongers for realizing their political and economic agenda. One

of the religious institutions that were often utilized for political purposes during

the early modern period was the church administrative system of patronage or

the Patronatothat the Spaniards introduced in America and the PadroadoReal that

the Portuguese set up in Asia. As per the right of patronage that the Pope con-

ceded in AD1455, the Portuguese Crown became the sole authority that could

send missionaries to the lands controlled by the Lusitanians, which eventually

created a certain type of monopoly for them in matters of Christianity in areas

under their influence and kept missionaries of other nationalities out of Asian

and Brazilian soil. When the religious issues in Asia began to get increasingly

embroiled in the politics of the times, thanks to the dominance of Lusitanian

interests in the Padroado system, Pope Gregory XV devised the Propaganda Fidein AD1622 as an alternative church administrative system for Asia, which in fact

was meant to provide opportunities basically for non-Portuguese people, both

Indians and Europeans, for missionary work in Asia. However, this led to a chain

Article

Studies in History27(2) 251267

2011 Jawaharlal Nehru UniversitySAGE PublicationsLos Angeles, London,

New Delhi, Singapore,Washington DC

DOI: 10.1177/0257643012459418http://sih.sagepub.com

at UB Heidelberg on June 20, 2016sih.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://sih.sagepub.com/http://sih.sagepub.com/http://sih.sagepub.com/http://sih.sagepub.com/


2/18

Studies in History, 27, 2 (2011): 251267

252 Pius Malekandathil

of conflicts between the ecclesiastical administrative institutions of the Padroado

Realand those of the Propaganda Fide, in Asia in general and India in particular,

where the core issues of contestation began to revolve around matters of poli-tics and the exercise of power. The central purpose of this article is to examine

the nuanced nature of the conflicts that arose between the church administrative

systems of the Padroadoand the Propagandaat different points in time and also

to see how the religious conflicts were appropriated and politicized by the vari-

ous European colonial powers to further their politico-economic agenda in India.

Keywords

Padroado Real, Propaganda Fide, religion and politics, ethnic mutation of Luso-

Indians, changing colonial trajectories

Evolution of the Padroado Real

The establishment of thePadroado Realin Asia, Africa and Brazil was a uniqueexperiment in the Catholic Church, which developed it as an institutional arrange-ment to do evangelization work in the newly discovered territories of thePortuguese in the three continents.1 The beginnings of the Padroado Real aretraced back to the papal bullRomanus Pontifexof AD1455, when the Pope, besideslegitimizing the Portuguese discoveries and their claim of domination over thenewly discovered territories, handed over the spiritual jurisdiction of these places,including missionary work, to the patronage of the Portuguese Crown.2The king

1C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Sea-borne Empire, 14151825(London: Hutchinson of London, 1969),22829. See Antonio Da Silva Rego, Le Patronage Portugais de lOrient, un aperu Historique(Lisbon: Agencia Geral do Ultramar, 1957); Fortunato de Almeida,Historia da Igreja em Portugal,vols 14 (Porto: Imprensa Academica, 196771); Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri (eds),Historia da Expanso Portuguesa,vol. I (Lisbon: Crculo de Leitores, 1998), 36986; Isabel DosGuimares Sa, Ecclesiastical Structures and Religious Action, in Portuguese Oceanic Expansion,14001800, ed. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2007), 25582.2In fact, the Padroadorights and duties were initially given to the Order of Christ, which was oneamong the four military religious orders (Santiago, Avis, Hospital and Christ) of Portugal involved inthe fight against Islam in the context of the Crusades. The Order of Christ, which was founded by KingDinis in AD1319 to replace the Order of the Knights of Templars after its suppression by the Pope, hadchannelized a great amount of the wealth of the Templars for sponsoring the Portuguese voyages ofgeographical discovery in the Atlantic. Since the time of Prince Henry the Navigator, who was theGrand Master of the Order of Christ, voyages leading to geographical discoveries became an impor-tant activity of the Order of Christ, which was eventually given by the Pope the spiritual jurisdictionover the lands, islands and places hitherto discovered or yet to be discovered by the Portuguese. After

the death of Henry, the headship Order of Christ was incorporated in the Portuguese Crown. SeeBoxer, The Portuguese Sea-borne Empire, 229; Dos Guimares Sa, Ecclesiastical Structures, 258.A series of papal bulls likeDum Diversus (AD1452),Romanus Pontifex (AD1455) andInter Caetera(AD1456) were issued to the Portuguese rulers, handing over to them spiritual authority in the newlydiscovered areas.

http://sih.sagepub.com/http://sih.sagepub.com/http://sih.sagepub.com/


3/18


Cross, Sword and Conflicts 253

of Portugal could propose the creation of new bishoprics and nominate bishopsfor the newly discovered territories, and for all practical purposes it meant rights

to rule over their spiritual matters as patron of the missions and to set up dioceses,religious institutions as well as houses in such territories, where they also held theright of presenting prelates and office holders to vacant sees, religious houses andother ecclesiastical institutions. The responsibility that fell upon the Portugueserulers, in return for it, was that they should provide for the material needs of thechurch and clerics appointed by them in such territories.3The patronage rightsmade the Portuguese Crown virtually the sole power that could send missionariesto Asia, Africa and Brazil, where the temporal and the spiritual domains weremade to merge together so as to augment the weight of the Lusitanian power in

their enclaves.Though the amount of evangelization work carried out by thePadroadosys-tem cannot be underestimated, the political uses to which this institution wassubjugated by the national monarch of Portugal cannot be altogether ignored,either. Very often, the functioning of the Padroado was made to encompassactivities leading not only to the extension of Gods glory but also the extensionof the glory of Portugal; not only to the proclamation of the Gospel but also theempowerment of the Portuguese Crown.4In the Crown of Portugal, as king andGrand Master of the Order of Christ, both the temporal and spiritual powerswere combined, where religious activities were not restricted to the spiritual realm

alone, but were extended to the farthest possible temporal realms; and the tem-poral activities were not confined to the secular realm alone, but were stretchedto the farthest possible religious spheres to empower the national monarch.5Thepolitical overtones that the system carried with it are evident in the writings ofsome of thePadroadopriests like Pe. Antonio Vieira (AD160897), who, whileworking in Brazil, used to argue that the kingdom of Portugal and the Portuguesewere entrusted with the task of establishing the kingdom of God on earth andthat the Second Coming of Christ would be realized only with the establish-ment of Portuguese rule on earth.6These arguments gave sufficient justification

for the Portuguese to combine matters of religion with polity while flourishingoutside Europe.

3 Thomas Pallippurathukkunnel, A Double Regime in the Malabar Church (Alwaye: PontificalInstitute, 1982), 34.4Pius Malekandathil (ed.), Jornada of D. Alexis Menezes: A Portuguese Account of the SixteenthCentury Malabar(Cochin: LRC Publications, 2003), LIVLV.5This central idea is highlighted later in the works of Pe.Antonio Vieira (AD160897). According tohim, the prophecies of the Bible are to be fulfilled through the kingdom of Portugal and the Portuguesewere entrusted with the task of establishing the kingdom of God on earth. He even goes to the extent

of equating the Second Coming of Christ with the establishment of Portuguese rule on earth (the fifthuniversal monarchy), which ensures civilization process and conversion of people to Christianity. Fora detailed study on the ideas of Antonio Vieira, see Raymond Cantel, Prophetisme et Messianismedans loeuvre dAntonio Vieira(Paris: diciones Hispano-Americanas, 1960).6Ibid.



4/18



The Padroadoand the Spice-producingSt Thomas Christians

In India, thePadroadohad three levels of functions to perform, of which the mostimportant were the religious and spiritual; however, the economic and politicalsignificance of some of these functions cannot be ignored. On the one hand, it hadto cater to the spiritual needs of the Portuguese settlers in their various enclavesscattered along coastal India. On the other hand, it was required to undertake mis-sionary work in the vast terrains of Asia, alongside their Hindu collaborators andneighbours in India. These two functions necessitated the introduction of the vari-ous institutions and devices of Padroado administration in India as early as

AD1514, when the spiritual care of all the Portuguese possessions in India wasbrought under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Funchal located inthe Atlantic.7However, the missionary work of thePadroadogot accelerated onlywith the establishment of the diocese of Goa in AD15338and the arrival of theJesuits in Goa and Cochin in AD1542.9Large-scale conversion activities startedfrom the 1540s onwards, and thousands of people were converted all over Asia byzealous missionaries, including St Francis Xavier.10The increase in the spiritualfunctions in various Portuguese pockets and missions, besides the growing impe-tus for evangelization work, necessitated the elevation of Goa into an archdiocesein AD1558, with Cochin as well as Malacca as its suffragan dioceses.11Mylaporewas elevated to the category of suffragan diocese later, in AD1606.12The majorreligious orders of the JesuitsFranciscans, Dominicans and Augustiniansoperating under the Padroadohad grown enough to have provincial houses foreach in Goa and regional houses in Cochin, Bassein, Bengal, Nagapattinam and

7Joo de Barros, Asia. Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no Descobrimento e Conquista dosMares e Terras do Oriente,Decada I, livro 1 (Lisboa: Rgia Officina Typografica, 177778); MariaLevy Jordo (ed.), Bullaruium Patronatus Portugaliae Regum in Ecclesiis Africae, Asiae atqueOceaniae, tom.I (Olisipone, 1868), 170. Till the erection of the Funchal diocese, all the Christians in

the newly discovered territories were directly catered to by the Order of Christ.8 Casimiro Christovo De Nazareth, Mitras Lusitanas no Oriente (Lisboa, 1894), 1618; Jordo,Bullaruium Patronatus, 148. Angra in Azores, Santiago in Cape Verde, So Tome in Africa, and Goain India were created almost simultaneously (AD153334), to cater spiritually to the growing Christiancommunities in the continents of Africa and Asia.9De Almeida, Historia da Igreja, 169; Gervasis J. Mulakara, History of the Diocese of Cochin:European Missionaries in Cochin, 12921558, vol. I (Rome: Casa degli Scrittori S. Pietro Canisio,1986), 9091; Josef Wicki, The Portuguese Padroado in India in the Sixteenth Century and FrancisXavier, in Christianity in India, ed. E.R. Hambye and H.C. Perumalil (Alleppey: PrakashamPublications, 1972), 4664; 9495.10For more details, see Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier:His Life and Times, vols IIV, trans.

M. Joseph Costelloe (Rome: The Jesuit Historical Institute, 1973).11BNL, Fundo Geral, Codex 737l, Ereco da villa em cidade (de Cochim), creao do bispado apedido de d. Sebastio, 1557, fols. 2714; De Almeida, Historia da Igreja, 25; Jordo, BullaruiumPatronatus, 191, 193, 196.12Jordo,Bullaruium Patronatus, 4; De Nazareth,Mitras Lusitanas, 95.



5/18



Mylapore.13In most places, such as Goa, the conquests made by the sword werefollowed by cultural homogenization by missionaries, principally by the Jesuits in

Salcete and the Franciscans in Bardez.14Concomitantly, dialogues of a differentnature were also held with the power centres and prominent political actors ofdifferent regions through the medium of thePadroado missionaries, which wereoften sequels or parallel processes to political dialogues and economic partner-ships. Thus, the Franciscans were involved in a chain of dialogues with the kingof Tanur in Kerala (1540s),15and Dharmapala of Kotte in Ceylon (1550s)16; theJesuits with the Mughal rulers from AD1580 to 175917; and the Augustinians withShah Abbas of Iran in the first decades of the seventeenth century AD.18Most ofthese interactions were religious in nature, but they also helped to create a climate

conducive for protecting the economic interests of the Portuguese state in therespective regions on a long-term basis.In the administration of spiritual duties, the Padroadoauthorities were often

made to keep an eye on all the realms that would strengthen the Portuguese state,which would mean that thePadroadowas considerably used as a handmaiden ofthe Portuguese state.19The smooth combining of the domains of spirituality and

13De Nazareth,Mitras Lusitanas.14 For the purpose of evangelization, Salcete region of Goa was earmarked for the Jesuits, whileBardez was given to the Franciscans and Tiswadi region was entrusted to the Dominicans and theAugustinians. For details, see Joseph Thekkedath,History of Christianity in India, vol. II (Bangalore:The Church History Association of India, 1988), 31063.15ANTT, Corpo Cronologico, I, Mao 87, doc. 50; Antonio Da Silva Rego (ed.), Documentaopara a Historia das Misses,vol. IV (Lisboa: Agencia Geral das Colonias, 1948), 34950, 56768;D. Ferroli, The Jesuits in Malabar, vol. I (Bangalore: Bangalore Press, 1939), 13037.16P.E. Pieris, Ceylon: The Portuguese Era, vol. I (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1913), 12023;Ferno De Qeyroz, The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, vol. I, trans. Fr S.G. Perera(Colombo: Asian Educational Service, 1992), 299305; Georg Schurhammer and F.A. Voretzch,Ceylon, vol. I (Leipzig: Verlag der Asia Major, 1928), 58384; P.E. Pieris and M.A.H. Fitzler, Ceylonand Portugal, Part I (Leipzig: Verlag der Asia Major, 1927), 25758. On embracing Christianity,Dharmapala (AD155197) confiscated the temple property and gifted them to the Franciscans in 1557.

De Queyroz, Temporal and Spiritual Conquest, 33931.17Edward MacLagan, The Jesuits and the Great Mogul (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne,1932); See also Sanjay Subrahmanyam, A Matter of Alignment: Mughal Gujarat and the IberianWorld in the Transition of 158081,Mare Liberumno. 9 (1995): 46179; 467.18 For details, see Malekandathil, Jornada of D. Alexis Menezes, 55391; De Nazareth, MitrasLusitanas, 95; Antonio De Gouveia,Relaes da Persia e do Oriente(Lisboa, 1609).19However, it should also be mentioned that the relationship between the Portuguese officials and themissionaries was not always cordial. Sometimes, the missionaries had serious clashes with royal rep-resentatives and officials in Asia. But generally speaking they acted in unison. Later developmentstook such a drastic political turn that the non-Portuguese European missionaries who did not take anoath of loyalty to the king of Portugal were not allowed to work in India. One of the striking cases is

that of the Carmelites, who had to leave Goa because of their refusal to take the oath of fidelity to thePortuguese Crown. In AD1649, Fr Ephrem OFM (Cap.) was brought to the trial of inquisition for hav-ing done Christianization work in Madras, independently of Goa. For details, see O.C.D. Dominic,The Latin Missions under the Jurisdiction of Propaganda (16371838), in Christianity in India, ed.H.C. Perumalil and E.R. Hambye (Alleppey: Prakasham Publications, 1972), 10228; 1078.



6/18



materiality was also realized by the frequent appointment of the bishops of thePadroadodioceses as viceroys, governors and other top temporal officials of the

Portuguese state of India, as in the case of Dom Alexis Menezes, Dom Francisde Martyres and Dom Antonio Brando, who were archbishops of Goa and latermade governors of Portuguese state in India.20

The third function that the Padroadowas made to perform in India was tobring the spice-producing group of St Thomas Christians under its jurisdiction,for the purpose of keeping the latter manoeuverable to realize the trading interestsof the Portuguese. It was believed that the Padroado jurisdiction would facili-tate the Portuguese to penetrate into the otherwise impregnable pockets of spice-production in central Kerala. The St Thomas Christians, who trace their origins

to the apostle St Thomas,21

formed the most important spice-producing group incentral Kerala,22with a population of about 100,000 in AD1568.23They had theirown diocese at Angamaly24 and were spiritually administered to by their own

20In AD1627, the Augustinian bishop Lewis de Britto, the bishop of Mylapore and later bishop-electof Cochin, was made the acting governor of Portuguese India. Earlier he had served twice as the gov-ernor of the Portuguese settlements of the Coromandel Coast. In AD1651, the Archbishop of Goa,Dom Francis de Martyres, took charge as the acting governor of the Portuguese possessions in India.Later Dom Antonio Brando, the archbishop of Goa, administered Portuguese territories jointly with

Antonio Paes de Saude (AD1678). We find several instances of archbishops of Goa or the bishop ofCochin sharing the temporal powers and ruling as governor of Portuguese India. For details, see DenisL. Cottineau De Kloguen,An Historical Sketch of Goa(New Delhi: Asian Educational Society, 2005),2529. Alexis de Menezes, who was the archbishop of Goa from AD 1595 onwards, was also thegovernor of Estado da Indiafrom AD16079 and later viceroy of Portugal from AD1614 to 1615.See Malekandathil,Jornada of D. Alexis Menezes, XXIIXXIII.21For details on the origin of Indian Christians, see Mathias Mundadan, Sixteenth Century TraditionsofSt Thomas Christians(Bangalore: The Church History Association of India, 1970), 3867; JosephC. Panjikaran, Christianity in Malabar with Special Reference to the St Thomas Christians of theSyro-Malabar Rite, OrientaliaChristianaVI, Pontifical Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, Rome,no. 23 (1926): 10017; Jonas Thaliath, The Synod of Diamper (Orientalia Christiana Analecta,

152) (Rome: Pontifical Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1958); Fr Bernard, The History of theSt Thomas Christians(Pala, 1916); Placid J. Podippara, The Thomas Christians(Bombay: St PaulPublications, 1970).22St Thomas Christians were described in the Portuguese documents as the major cultivators of pepperin central Kerala. See ANTT, Cartas dos Vice-Reis da

India, doc. 95; Antonio da Silva RegoDocumentao para a Historia das Misses, vol. II (Lisboa: Agencia Geral das Colonias, 1948),17576. See also E.R. Hambye, Medieval Christianity in India: The Eastern Church, in Christianityin India, ed. E.R. Hambye and H.C. Perumalil (Alleppey: Prakasham Publications, 1972), 3037; 34;Samuel Matteer, The Land of Charity:A Descriptive Account of Travancore and Its People (NewDelhi: Asian Educational Service, 1991), 23738.23 Josef Wicki (ed.), Documenta Indica, vol. VII (Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, Roma,1948/1950), 475; Joo Teles e Cunha, De Diamper a Mattancherry: Caminhos e Encruzilhadas daIgreja Malabar e Catolica na India: Os Primeiros Tempos (15991624),Anais de Historia de Alem-MarV (2004); 283368; 289.24Malekandathil,Jornada of D. Alexis Menezes, 4649, 5257, 15660.



7/18



bishops who came from West Asia.25The various indigenous customs and ritualpractices that these Christians developed among themselves over the centuries

and their long association with the East Syrian bishops from Babylon, who cateredto their spiritual needs, apparently stood as stumbling blocks that prevented thePortuguese from penetrating into the affairs of the spice-producing Christians.Against this backdrop, thePadroadoauthorities started resorting to the rhetoricof heresy to interfere in the matters of indigenous Christians, whose ritual tradi-tions, customs and practices were increasingly held to smack of Nestorian heresyby the Padroadoauthorities, while their bishops, for example, Mar Joseph andMar Abraham, were arrested on allegations of perpetuating heresy among thebelievers.26Mar Joseph was arrested in Kerala and sent to Lisbon and then to

Rome, where the church authorities gave him a clean chit for his orthodoxy;however, the moment he returned to India he was again arrested on charges ofheresy and deported to Rome, where he died in AD1567.27The next bishop MarAbraham, even though he had a valid episcopal ordination from the patriarchof Venice himself, was jailed in Goa in AD1582, again on charges of Nestorianheresy.28However, he managed to escape from there and fled to Kerala, where hewas ably protected by the St Thomas Christians.29

The chain of arrests of bishops from West Asia and their deportation toPortugal and Rome was followed by Portuguese patrolling arrangements toprevent any other West Asian bishop from entering India. The fact that Bishop

Mar Joseph was sent by a Catholic patriarch,30with his orthodoxy being testifiedto by Roman authorities, and that Mar Abraham was consecrated by the Catholicpatriarch of Venice, shows that they were already Catholics and the allegationsof heresy and arrests were not for the sake of faith and orthodoxy but some-thing else. In fact, the intimidations in the form of arrests and deportations that

25Pius Malekandathil, The Sassanids and the Maritime Trade of India during the Early MedievalPeriod,Proceedings of the Indian History Congress(63rd Session, Amritsar 2002) (Kolkata: Indian

History Congress, 2003), 15766; Pius Malekandathil,Maritime India: Trade, Religion and Polity inthe Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2010), 210.26 For details of heretical accusations, see Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa, Os Portugueses e aCristandade Siro-Malabar (14981530), Studia no. 52 (1994): 12178; 14567; Luis Filipe F.R.Thomaz, Were Saint Thomas Christians Looked upon as Heretics?, in The Portuguese and theSocio-cultural Changes in India, 15001800, ed. K. S. Mathew, Teotonio R. de Souza and PiusMalekandathil (Fundao Oriente, Lisboa/IRISH,Tellicherry, 2001), 2791; Eugene Tisserant,EasternChristianity in India (trans. by E. R. Hambye) (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1957); Podipara, TheThomas Christians.27Giuseppe Beltrami, La Chiesa Caldea nel Secolo dellUnione,Orientalia Christiana29 (1933),4047.28The letter of Fr Dionysius S. J., AD1578, in Wicki,Documenta Indica, vol. XI, 62; 65.29Antonio da Silva Rego, Documentao para a Historia das Misses,vol. XII (Lisboa: AgenciaGeral das Colonias, 1948), 32122, 41112; Thekkedath,History of Christianity, 4755.30Ibid., 40.



8/18



the Portuguese resorted to are to be seen as a part of the Portuguese attempts tokeep the West Asian bishops away from the resourceful indigenous Christians of

India. The allegations of Nestorian heresy among the spice-producing Christiancommunity provided the Portuguese authorities sufficient justification to inter-fere in their affairs through the medium of the Padroado. Finally, the Synodof Diamper (AD1599) offered the Padroadoauthorities ample scope to replacethe customs and practices of the indigenous Christians with Lusitanian customsand ritual practices, and to wield sufficient power and control over the spice-producing Christian community.31In this process, the spice-producing Christianswere made to become an ecclesiastical appendage of the Portuguese Padroado,which was meant sequentially to facilitate their conversion into an economic

appendage of the Portuguese commercial system. Obviously, here the Padroadowas conveniently used as a tool to integrate the spice-producing Christians withthe mercantilist world of the Portuguesean attempt to get the spice produc-ers perpetually linked with the traders of Iberia through the commonality ofreligionand to enhance Portuguese power and influence in areas where in thenormal course of action the power of weapons would not succeed.32

Establishment of the PropagandaFideand thePolitical Scenario

In the seventeenth century AD, realizing that the Padroadoexperiments in Asia,Africa and America had failed, the Church authorities wanted to set up an alterna-tive arrangement for Church administration and evangelization in thesecontinents directly under the Pope, without giving the Portuguese the chance tointerfere. This led to the establishment of the Congregation for the Propagationof Faith, often called the Propaganda Fide, in AD1622 by Pope Gregory XV.33The reasons given for the establishment of the Propaganda Fidewas that thePortuguese patronage was unable to carry out the missionary commitments

entrusted upon it because of the vastness of the area. On the one hand, by the1580s, when Portugal passed into the hands of Spanish rulers, it was difficult forit to raise sufficient money to meet the increasing expenses of the missionary

31For details on the Synod of Diamper, see Thaliath, The Synod of Diamper; Malekandathil,Jornadaof D. Alexis Menezes;Teotonio R. De Souza, The Indian Christians of St Thomas and the PortuguesePadroado: Rape after a Century-long Courtship (14981599), in Christen und Gewrze, ed. KlausKoschorke (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 3142.32 However, the move of the Padroado authorities to Lusitanize the St Thomas Christians didnot produce the integration that they dreamt of; instead, it only intensified the conflicts between

them and the Portuguese, and the former increasingly began to divert spices from their productioncentres to the Coromandel ports through the Ghat routes as a part of their attempts to ventilate theiranger and resistance to the Lusitanians. For details, see Malekandathil,Jornada of D. Alexis Menezes,LXIILXIII.33Dominic, The Latin Missions, 102.



9/18



establishments.34On the other hand,

with the increasing occupation of Indian ter-ritories by the Dutch and the English who were Protestant and the political ene-

mies of the Spaniards in Europe, the Padroado clergy in India with the Spanishking as the virtual patron was banned from working in areas controlled by theProtestant powers. ThePadroadopriests were looked upon by them as enemiesand a source of threat to their political domination, as a result of which thePadroadocould not do any evangelization work in the vast terrains of Asia lyingoutside the limited zone of influence maintained by the Portuguese state.35

One of the first steps that the Propaganda took in Rome after its establish-ment was to send to Asia priests and bishops directly from Rome, bypassing theLisbonGoa route, contrary to the usual practice followed under the Padroado.

In AD 1637, the first diocese (known as apostolic vicariate) in Asia under thePropagandawas established at Bijapur. Matheus de Castro, a Goan Brahmin whobecame a priest in AD1630 in Rome, was made the bishop or vicar apostolic forthe vicariate of Bijapur. However, he had to face strong opposition from the arch-bishop of Goa, who was not ready to accept a church administrative system inIndia operating independently of thePadroado.36The Portuguese maintained thatthePropagandamissionaries were intruders, while the PropagandaFide wasviewed as an encroachment upon thePadroadorights enjoyed by the Portuguesekings for centuries. It was held that these rights once conceded to them by theearly Popes could not be revoked arbitrarily by a later Pope.37

The political advantages of the conflict between the Padroado and thePropaganda were soon realized by the Dutch and the various regional rulers,who earnestly came forward to support the Propaganda priests in their fight

34For details on the passage of Portugal into the control of the Spaniards, see Joaquim VerissimoSerro,Historia de Portugal, vol. III(Lisboa: Verbo, 1978), 8590 and vol. IV, 1415. For details onthe financial problems, see Pius Malekandathil, The Germans, the Portuguese and India(Mnster:LIT Verlag, 1999), 7596.35The Italian priest Fr Francesco Ingoli, who was also the first secretary of the Propaganda Fide,maintaining an anti-Portuguese position listed the following as the major problems with thePadroado:

equation of Portuguese royal ordinances with the apostolic briefs of the Pope; not providing enoughfund to maintain the churches; not appointing bishops in time; refusal from the Portuguese bishopsto ordain Asians as priests despite having all necessary qualifications; conversion and baptism ofAsians by force and reluctance of the Jesuits to cooperate with other religious Orders. These allega-tions were based mostly on the information that he gathered from the Goan priest Pe. Matheus Castro,who was later made the first vicar apostolic of Bijapur. For details, see Boxer, The PortugueseSea-borne Empire, 235.36Theodore Ghesquiere,Mathieu de Castro, Premier vicaire apostolique aux Indes(Louvain: Bureauxde la Revue, 1937); Thekkedath,History of Christianity in India, vol. II, 41720.37 During the period between AD 1514 and 1605, there were over sixteen bulls issued to thePortuguese by different Popes, strengthening the spiritual rights of the Padrado. Cosme Jose Costa,

A Missiological Conflict between Padroado nad Propaganda in the East, in Indian Christianity,vol. VII, Part 6:History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, ed. A.V. Afonso(New Delhi: Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, Centre for Studies inCivilizations, 2009), 123140; 125. In AD1672, the king of Portugal asked the viceroy to capturebishops and missionaries sent by thePropagandaand transport them to Portugal.Ibid., 128.



10/18



against the Portuguese. The Adil Shahi sultan of Bijapur received Dom Matheusde Castro, thePropagandaprelate, in his capital city, where he gave permission for

him to erect a church and to recruit priests from Goa. Meanwhile, the Dutch andthe Adil Shahis who had initiated joint military operations against the Portuguesefrom AD1638, ensured the support of Dom Matheus de Castro for their politicalmoves against the Portuguese in Goa. ThePropagandaprelate in his turn shiftedhis seat to Bicholim on the border between Goa and Bijapur, and began to criticizethe Portuguese for not giving due recognition and respect to the indigenous clergyin Goa. In his letters addressed to the Christian Brahmins of Goa, he invited themto work together to oust the Portuguese from Indian soil.38The bitter anger againstthePadroadomade Dom Matheus de Castro travel all the way to Agra to fight

with the Jesuits residing in that city. From Agra he went to Delhi and then trav-elled to the emperors court in Kashmir, taking over there the complaints againstthePadroadoJesuits and accusing them of being Portuguese spies in the impe-rial city. He also accused the Jesuits of having hindered the recruitment of Dutchgunners for the Mughal army. In fact, the journey undertaken by thePropagandadelegate with allegations against the PadroadoJesuits reflected the intensity ofconflict between thePadroadoand thePropaganda Fideinstitutions and person-alities at this point of time and the entire purpose behind this move was to makethe Padroado Jesuits unacceptable before the Mughal ruler. The strategy reallyworked and the Jesuit priest Father Buys was arrested by the Mughals on the

charges put forward by Matheus de Castro.39Meanwhile, the monopoly of the Portuguese Padroado in the matters of

Christian religion in India was challenged by the French in their territories, partic-ularly Pondicherry, where they tried to transplant a French version of the patron-age within the framework of a nationalistic Gallican Church. As the CapuchinFathers wrote in AD1725, though the French settlers were under the diocese ofMylapore, which was under the Portuguese Padroado, they followed the cus-toms of the Gallican Church, and the appointments and the material sustenanceof the missionaries in the French territory of Karaikkal were done by the con-

seil suprieur, the main governing body of the French East India Company inPondicherry.40

38Ghesquiere,Mathieu de Castro, 8092: Thekkedath,History of Christianity,419; D. Ferroli, TheJesuits in Malabar, vol. II, Bangalore, 1951, 17482. With his death, probably in AD1658, the con-flicts did not subside but were continued by his successors Custodio de Pinho and Thomas de Castro.The latter who was the nephew of Matheus de Castro was made the apostolic vicar of Canara inAD1674 and he kept his residences in Bangalore and Calicut, very often engaging in conflicts with thePadroado missionaries, including Blessed Joseph Vaz.39Nicolo Manucci,Mogul India (Storia do Mogor), vols I and II,trans. William Irvine (New Delhi:

Low Price Publications, 2005), 20304; Thekkedath, History of Christianity, 419, 434; see alsoMaclagan, The Jesuits, 11113; D. Ferroli, The Jesuits in Malabar, vol. II, 182.40E.R. Hambye,History of Christianity in India, vol. III (Bangalore: The Church History Associationof India, 1997), 17879, fns 3940. The conseil superieurforbade the publication of papal documentsfrom Rome without its permission.



11/18



However, the Protestant European powers like the English and the Dutch,who did not have a nationalistic Catholic Church framework, had to depend

initially on the French, and later on the Italian, Irish and French missionariesoperating under the Propaganda, to fight the hold of the Portuguese Padroadoover their territories. The English in Bombay as well as Madras, and the Dutchin Cochin, feared that the large number of descendants of the Portuguese, cou-pled with the continued presence of the Padroado priests as church authori-ties in their territories, would be a potential source of political threat to them.As a result, they banned thePadroadopriests and allowed only thePropagandamissionaries to work in their enclaves in India. Thus, a French Capuchin, FatherEphrem, on his way to Pegu, was asked by the British to remain in Madras so that

the Portuguese Catholic descendants of the city might not go to the Padroadochurch of Mylapore.41He began to serve as the prefect apostolic for the emergingEnglish town of Madras in AD1642 under the Propaganda, although there wasalready a diocese at Mylapore under thePadroado.42The king of Portugal imme-diately responded to this by forbidding the entry of non-Portuguese missionariesin India in AD1642. Moreover, in AD1649 the Portuguese authorities arrestedFather Ephrem, who was later imprisoned in Goa for twenty-two months and putto inquisitorial trial for having done evangelization work in Madras, indepen-dently of thePadroado.43

In the midst of frequent conflicts among the various European powers andwith the increasing use of thePadroadoand thePropaganda administrative sys-tems for political purposes by the early colonial powers, the Portuguese royalcourt decided in AD 1672 that all priests and bishops who had entered Indiabypassing Lisbon should be arrested and taken by the Portuguese viceroy toGoa.44Moreover, the king also realized that the Propagandamissionaries werenot supportive of the political and economic claims of the Portuguese in India,which made him issue an order demanding that all missionaries working in Indiashould take an oath of loyalty to him as the patron of the Padroadosystem. ThePortuguese suspected that the presence of non-Portuguese missionaries would

41Thekkedath, History of Christianity, 206.42George M. Moraes, The Catholic Church under the Portuguese Patronage in the 18th and 20thCenturies, in Christianity in India, ed. H. C. Perumalil and E. R. Hambye (Alleppey: PrakashamPublications, 1972), 154.43Dominic, The Latin Missions, 107, 117. The Pope on hearing about it lamented over the excessesof inquisition and declared that the vicars apostolic and missionaries of the Propaganda were totallyimmune to the inquisition of Goa. Costa, A Missiological Conflict, 129. Later Fr Ephrem wasreleased by the Goan authorities under pressure from the French king, after having served an imprison-

ment period of twenty-two days: See Valentine Ball (ed.), Taverniers Travels in India, 16401676(New Delhi: Asian Educational Society, 2007), 13233, 168, 17686.44Thekkedath,History of Christianity, 416. Pope Clement X finally released the vicars apostolic andmissionaries of the Propaganda working in non-Portuguese territories from the jurisdiction of thePadroadoprelates and took them under his protection; ibid., 416.



12/18



help the other European powers that were then fast expanding in India and causingsevere damage to the economic and political interests of the Lusitanians. Against

this backdrop, the Italian Carmelites, who refused to take the oath of loyalty to thePortuguese king for carrying out missionary work, were viewed as their enemiesand expelled from Goa in AD1709 and from Diu in AD1710. Eventually, they hadto move over to Karwar in Karnataka.45

The various non-Portuguese European powers expanding into the coastalregions of India made use of the administrative framework of the Propagandato undermine the hold of the Padroado over the descendants of the Portuguesein their enclaves, whom they were fast assimilating as their trade collaboratorsand fighting forces. Thus, the English made use of the service of thePropaganda

priests, particularly the French priests, in Madras and Bombay to wean thedescendants of the Portuguese settlers away from the Padroado. The prefer-ence for the French missionaries continued till the political conflicts betweenthe French and the English reached a climax in the 1740s. Meanwhile, theother Protestant power, the Dutch, made use of Propagandamissionaries fromBelgium, Germany, Austria and Italy to wean the Catholic settlers of Cochinand its vicinity away from the Padroado.46With increasing support from them,the Propaganda missionaries found the English and the Dutch enclaves to bemuch safer places for their residence and missionary work, as compared to thePortuguese settlements. The Italian Carmelite Father Peter Paul, a nephew of

Pope Innocent XII, who was appointed as the vicar apostolic for Bijapur, soughtpermission from the Dutch government in Amsterdam to reside in the Dutch ter-ritories in India. On reaching India in AD1697, he took his seat at Surat, wherethe Dutch wielded greater influence, and extended the jurisdiction of his vicariateto Golkonda and the Mughal Empire, thus laying the foundation for almost allthe later dioceses of North India and the Deccan.47Meanwhile, the vicariate ofBijapur began to be called the vicariate of the Great Mughals with the transferof the Mughal seat of power from Delhi and Agra to Aurangabad (AD 1683)48

45Dominic, The Latin Missions, 108. As early as AD1682, the king of Portugal had ordered that allthe missionaries working in India should take a vow of fidelity and loyalty to the king of Portugal. DeNazareth,Mitras Lusitanas, 193. See also D. Ferroli, The Jesuits in Malabar, vol. II, 171.46The Dutch did not allow the Portuguese priests of thePadroadoto stay in the city of Cochin and intheir stead from AD1676 onwards the Dutch permitted the Carmelite missionaries of thePropagandafrom Italy, Belgium, Germany and Austria to stay and work in Verapoly and Cochin. Dominic, TheLatin Missions, 112.47Ibid., 10708.48In fact, the beginnings of urban life in this place (originally a village by name Kharki) began withMalik Ambar, the prime minister of Murtaza Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, who converted it into his

capital in AD1610. The name of Kharki was later changed into Fatehnagar, when Fateh Khan, the sonof Malik Ambar succeeded him in AD1626. Later in AD1653 when Aurangzeb was made the viceroyof the Deccan for the second time, he made Fatehnagar his capital and converted its name intoAurangabad. From AD1683 onwards, with Emperor Aurangazeb settling down in the city, Aurangabadbecame the capital of the imperial Mughals.



13/18



in the Deccan and with the defeat of the Bijapuris by the Mughal forces ofAurangzeb in AD1686.49

Politicization of the Conflict between thePadroadoand the Propaganda

The intensity of conflicts between thePadroadoand thePropagandawas felt inBombay where there were a lot of Portuguese descendants and Christian converts,whose spiritual care for almost one and a half centuries was undertaken by thePadroadopriests sent from Goa.50Bombay was initially a Lusitanian enclave,

which the Portuguese king gave in AD1661 to the English as a part of the dowryfor his daughter Catherine of Braganza who married Charles II of England, whoin turn handed it over to the English East India Company.51In the beginning of theeighteenth century AD, the English authorities sensed a serious political threatin the large number of Catholics in Bombay (around 11,000 in AD1713)52whosespiritual needs were being catered to by thePadroadopriests. The English foundthat the best way to avoid this possible threat was to transfer the jurisdictionalauthority over the churches of Bombay from the Padroado to the PropagandaFide, that is, from the archbishop of Goa to the vicar apostolic, in preparationfor which negotiations had already started in Rome and London as early asAD 1716.53 In the midst of these discussions, the apostolic vicar of the GreatMughals, Monsignor Maurice of St Teresa, shifted his residence from Karwar toBombay in AD1717 so that the spiritual jurisdiction over the Catholics of Bombaymight be immediately taken over from thePadroadopriests.54The culmination ofthis process was in AD1720, when the British governor Charles Boone expelledall the Portuguese priests from Bombay and handed over their four principalchurches to the Propaganda jurisdiction.55Though the Goan priests, however,could remain in Bombay, they were not allowed by the English to work under the

49 John F. Richards, The Mughal Empire(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 21725;Glenn J. Ames, The Salsette Campaign of 16581659: Issues of War and Peace in BijapuriPortugueseRelations during the Mid-17th Century, in The Portuguese, Indian Ocean and European Bridgehead:Festschrift in Honour of Prof. K.S. Mathew, ed. Pius Malekandathil and Jamal Mohammed (FundaoOriente, Lisbon/IRISH, Tellicherry, 2001), 223240; 236.50Thekkedath,History of Christianity, 36591.51Ibid., 382; Achilles Meersman, The Ancient Franciscan Provinces in India, 15001835(Bangalore:CLS Press, 1971), 22428; M.D. David, History of Bombay, 16611708 (Bombay: University ofBombay, 1973).52This figure is based on the Franciscan statistics of AD1713. See Meersman, The Ancient Franciscan

Provinces, 23233.53Dominic, The Latin Missions, 108.54Ibid.; R. Hull,Bombay Mission History with a Special Study of the Padroado Question,Vols I andII (Bombay: Examiner Press, 1927),2830.55Hambye,History of Christianity, 38283; Dominic, The Latin Missions, 108.



14/18



Padroadojurisdiction of Goa; instead they were to work under the jurisdiction ofthe vicar apostolic of thePropagandaresiding in Bombay. Obviously, the king of

Portugal and the Goan archbishop seriously objected to these changes on thegrounds that they were infringements upon the privileges that the earlier papaldocuments had bestowed upon the Portuguese. However, the reply of Rome thatthePropagandajurisdiction of vicar apostolic over Bombay became necessary asthe English were not ready to allow thePadroadopriests to work in the city didnot satisfy the Catholic population of Bombay, majority of whom were descen-dants of the Portuguese whose spiritual attachment to the Padroado spannedtwo centuries.56

The situation became intense as the Catholic population of Bombay turned

against thePropaganda, indicating their reluctance to break off with thePadroado.Consequently, the churches of the city, instead of becoming an instrument forintegrating the urban population in favour of the English as had been the plan,became platforms for conflict and tension. Indeed, the Portuguese were trying tocontinue their domination over Bombay through the ecclesiastical framework ofthePadroado, while the English were using the Propagandato undermine thismove. However, when the conflicts began to affect the peaceful life of the city,the English had to find a way of reconciliation, which was done principally byallocating two major churches to the Padroado and two to the Propaganda inAD1794.57

In the new turn of events following the political peripheralization of thePortuguese in the eighteenth century AD, the Padroado authorities struggledhard to retain their hold over the erstwhile Portuguese possessions through theirdioceses of Goa, Mylapore and Cochin; however, in AD1838, Rome restrictedthe jurisdiction of thePadroadoto Goa alone and created different vicariates andlater dioceses under the Propaganda Fidefor the rest of India, where predomi-nantly non-Portuguese bishops, acceptable to the politically expanding Englishpower, were put in charge.58Carving out immense territories from thePadroadojurisdiction and reducing its control and influence, vicariates (for all practical

purposes they stood for dioceses) were erected in the English presidencies ofBombay, Madras and Calcutta under thePropaganda. ThePropagandavicariateof Bombay, which was established in AD1832, took away the spiritual authority

56Dominic, The Latin Missions, 109.57Ibid. Hambye, History of Christianity, 38386; Costa, A Missiological Conflict, 12930. Thisdecision was taken by the English under pressure from the landlords and wealthy citizens of Bombay.However, the English also did not allow the vicar apostolic Peter de Alcantara to leave Bombay, sur-rendering everything into the hands of the Padroado, as that would result in the re-introduction of

Portuguese influence and power into the area. For details, see Hull,Bombay Mission History, 6870;J.H. Gense, The Church at the Gate of India (Bombay: St Xaviers College, 1960), 7093.58For nuances of these developments, see Da Silva Rego, Le Patronage Portugais, 12442; Moraes,The Catholic Church, 15758.



15/18



and influence of the Padroado archbishop of Goa over the settlers of thepresidency town of Bombay, while the vicariates of Madras (AD1832) and Bengal

(AD 1834) de-linked the hold of the Padroado diocese of Mylapore over theurban dwellers of the presidency towns of Madras and Calcutta, respectively.59According to the papal briefMulta Praeclareof AD1838 by which these changeswere brought out, the Padroado right was allowed to be exercised only in theterritories of the archdiocese of Goa. The territories of the other Portuguese dio-ceses were to be handed over to the newly established apostolic vicariates ofBombay, Madras and Bengal. In fact, the Pope took such a step to clip the wingsof the Portuguese Padroado, as the liberal government that came to power inPortugal following the civil war in AD1833 was anti-religious and anti-clerical,

intent on suppressing the various religious orders and monasteries of Portugaland the Portuguese enclaves of India. Instead of being a patron of Catholicism,the new Portuguese government under the influence of the anti-religious ideals ofFrench Revolution, stopped all the Christianization work being carried out by thevarious religious and monastic orders in India and other Portuguese colonies andbegan to deport religious members from AD1835. Consequently, appointmentsto many ecclesiastical posts, including bishoprics under the Padroado adminis-tration, remained unfilled for years. The new Portuguese government imposedits men as administrators for the archdiocese of Goa and diocese of Mylapore,without getting them ratified by the Pope. Against this backdrop, Rome felt that

the Portuguese rulers were taking undue advantage of the Padroadoprivileges,without carrying out the responsibilities that went along with these privileges.60The Portuguese opposed the expansion of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of thePropaganda Fide, whose missionaries they viewed as insolent intruders, whilethe Propaganda authorities viewed the Padroado priests, who challenged thepapal decision for the next fifty years almost, as schismatics and dissidents.Though thePadroadosystem was terminated officially only in 1953, it was weak-ened by the 1830s and became a marginal ecclesiastical administrative institutionin India.

While the Propaganda Fide priests saw to it that the Luso-Indians or thedescendants of the Portuguese living in the towns of Bombay, Madras and Calcuttawere taken out of the ecclesiastical jurisdictional framework of thePadroado, theEnglish drew out of them commercial intermediaries for their enterprise, wivesfor their men and fighting forces for their wars of expansion, making the Luso-Indian segment of the population integral to their political processes in India. Inother words, the job of the Propaganda to dissociate the Luso-Indians from thejurisdictional framework of thePadroadowas followed by the colonial manipu-lation and transformation of this social segment by the English so as to create

59See Moraes, The Catholic Church, 157.60Da Silva Rego,Le Patronage Portugais, 12442.



16/18



a major supportive population in these cities. In this process, the Luso-Indianswere denied their original identity and made to merge with the Anglo-Indians.61

One of the principal ways by which this transformation and redefinition happenedwas through marriages conducted between the English soldiers and the girls ofPortuguese descent. Mixed marriages became common in these settlements in theeighteenth century AD.62Though the clauses of transfer of Bombay to the Englishin AD 1661 had stipulated that the inhabitants of the island of Bombay wouldcontinue to enjoy the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion as earlier, thiswas seldom followed. Eventually with the increasing practise of taking economicand military collaborators from the Luso-Indians and of the English marrying thePortuguese descendants of these cities, their children were brought up according

to English ways, Anglo-Saxon customs and, at times, Protestant faith, causing asizeable Anglo-Indian community to emerge in Bombay, Madras and Calcuttaout of the Luso-Indians. The construction of the Anglo-Indian category out of theLuso-Indians was a colonial exigency for the English, and their efforts ensured thecessation of the linkages of the former with their Portuguese past and thus reducedthe chances for the Portuguese Padroado missionaries to intervene in Englishsettlements in the name of their spiritual administration.

The conflict between the Padroado and the Propaganda was inevitable inthe course of the process of redefining the Catholic Church from within and inshaping its functioning outside Europe against the background of geographi-

cal discoveries and the dynamics of colonialism. These conflicts paved the wayfor the Catholic Church to move away from the medieval notion of functioningunder strict nationalistic political patronage and become a pan-world religiousinstitution that learned to collaborate with its European enemythe Protestantpowersfor carrying out its administrative and evangelization work amongmulticultural people. Probably the erasure of the various European powers fromthe political scene of India and the domination of English colonialism facilitatedthe success of the Propaganda model against the nationalistic ecclesiasticalmodel of the Padroado. The French who had experimented with the national-

istic ecclesiastical model of the Gallican Church in their possessions in India inthe late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries ADhad long back given it up,paving the way for the Propaganda. The popes realized that the notion of the

61It is interesting to note here that the Anglicization process among this community got all the moreaugmented with the increase of power and authority of the English in India. For details on the earlyinstances of Anglicization of this community, see Achilles Meersman, The Ancient FranciscanProvinces in India, 15001835, 23739.62The marriage between British company servants and Luso-Indians became so frequent in Calcutta

that even Company officials began to object to it, probably fearing an increase of Catholic influencein their power base. See Hambye,History of Christianity in India, vol. III, 461; Pius Malekandathil,Economic Processes, Ruralisation and Ethnic Mutation: A Study on the Changing Meanings ofLusitanian Space in India, 17801840,Itinerario xxxv, no. 2 (2011): 4559; 5456.



17/18



Catholic Church as a collection of different nationalistic churches had to be doneaway with in its process of growth, for which the ecclesiastical framework of

thePropagandawith a large number of missionaries collected from all over theChristian world appeared to be the best device, fitting in well with the policy ofexpansion. The result of this conflict was that the monopoly and domination ofthe Portuguese in church matters of Asia was shattered and the Church began toevolve into an accommodative institution with personnel recruited increasinglyfrom India as well as other parts of the world.



18/18

Documents

Studies in History-2011-Malekandathil-251-67.pdf