Missionaries in Persia

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.>

Taking as a starting point a tiny observatory studied with a high intensity, the master work of Christian Windler approaches most of the key issues which concern today the historians of the "first globalisation". Missionaries appear there as actors in a field in tensions between different norm systems: that of Western Europe versus that of Safavid Persia, but not only: each side appears featured by a pluralism of contradictory and competing norms.

Auteur
Christian Windler is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Bern (Switzerland). He specializes in the social and cultural history of diplomacy, religious practices, and global entanglements from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. His publications include La diplomatie comme expérience de l'Autre: Consuls français au Maghreb (1700-1840) (2002), a pioneering study in new diplomatic history. Since the early 2000s, he has broadened his interest in cultural intermediaries by focusing on missionaries as cultural brokers and glocal actors. He has been principal investigator on several externally funded projects in new diplomatic history and in the history of religious practices in Europe and beyond.

Contenu
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