In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid Empire, hosted Catholic missionaries of more diverse affiliations than most other cities in Asia. Attracted by the hope of converting the Shah, the missionaries acted as diplomatic agents for Catholic rulers, hosts to Protestant merchants, and healers of Armenians and Muslims. Through such niche activities they gained social acceptance locally. This book examines the activities of Discalced Carmelites and other missionaries, revealing the flexibility they demonstrated in dealing with cultural diversity, a common feature of missionary activity throughout emerging global Catholicism. While missions all over the world were central to the self-fashioning of the Counter-Reformation Church, clerics who set out to win over souls for the “true religion” turned into local actors who built reputations by defining their social roles in accordance with the expectations of their host society. Such practices fed controversies that were fought out in newly emerging public spaces. Responding to the threat this posed to its authority, the Roman Curia initiated a process of doctrinal disambiguation and centralization which culminated in the nineteenth century. Using the missions to Safavid Iran as a case study for “a global history on a small scale,” the book creates a new paradigm for the study of global Catholicism.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Glossary of Latin terms
Introduction
1. 1. The short arm of Rome: The Curia, superiors and missionaries
The Holy Office and the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide: Aspirations and obstacles to enforcing papal primacy
The Discalced Carmelites: Dysfunctional institutions and internalized discipline
Maintaining proximity from a distance
“Stepmother” or protectress? Missionaries and the Propaganda Fide
2. 2. In the shadow of the Shah: The Safavid Empire as an arena for Catholic mission
The European powers in the Safavid system of imperial rule
The Safavid practice of power, between inclusiveness and orthodoxy
Global actors: The Armenian merchants of New Julfa
Omens of conversion or Machiavellianism?
3. 3. Christian ‘ulama? Missionaries and Muslims
Missionaries at the Safavid court
Missionaries and Shi’a scholars
Medicine, the belief in miracles, and the administration of the sacraments
From social closeness to conversion to Islam
4. 4. Among “brethren,” “schismatics” or “heretics”? Missionaries and Armenians
Good correspondence and sacramental community with rediscovered “brethren”
“We do not need you”: New practices of confessional disambiguation
Accommodation and dissimulation
5. 5. As Christians among Muslims: Missionaries and European laypeople of different confessions
European laypeople in Isfahan and New Julfa
Missionaries among themselves
Transconfessional “good friendship and correspondence”
Shared religious practices in the diaspora
6. 6. Local interconnections and observance: The missionaries in conflict with the norms of their order
The Discalced Carmelites: Unsuited to mission?
Local social integration and observance
All-too worldly business
The mission as a world turned upside down: Justification strategies and cultural relativization
7. 7. Undesirable outcomes: From mission to Enlightenment?
Doctrinal disambiguation
Truth claims and limits to norm enforcement: The practice of avoiding decisions
Normative orders outside the Church
Conclusion
Sources and Bibliography
Index
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