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Duke University History Colloquium and 2016 Annual Lecture in Comparative World History: Managing Sacred Relics in Jesuit Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)

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Monday, October 17, 2016
3:00 pm
Professor Ines Zupanov

Among sacred objects Jesuit missionaries imported, created, exported, and filliped into circulation in Asia and around the globe, relics of saints and martyrs were probably the most valuable of all. Wherever the relics travelled, they were intended to foster and fuel Jesuit networks, and to shore up Christian affects and communities. Encased in their reliquaries, often made of precious materials and masterpieces of local craftsmanship, these sacred objects were 'spiritual currency' in the Christian empire the Jesuits worked to establish under the Portuguese royal padroado. By looking into only a sample of documents from the Jesuit archives and during the first missionary century, I follow the movement of these objects (in texts, in time and in space), and I argue that between the early 16th century and the early 17th century, the Jesuits not only quickened the flow of these objects, they also managed its quantity and quality, and modulated the publicity accorded to them in the apologetic texts. Most importantly, from around the middle of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits, often torn between service to a community and demands from metropoles such as Lisbon and Rome, tried to put a lid on the important relics and preserve them in one place.

Reception to follow.