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The article analyzes the tensions between the Society of Jesus, linked to the Portuguese Padroado, and the Leal Senado of Macau, taking as a case study the conflict involving Bento Pereira de Faria (1676). Situating the analysis within the political-religious framework of the post-Restoration period and the jurisdictional disputes between the Padroado and the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the author argues that municipal governance and missionary ambitions intersected around competences, patronage, and the control of religious practices, in a context marked by international competition and the redefinition of influences in the East. Methodologically, the study draws on the historical-documentary reconstruction of the episode, articulating the local analysis of Macau with the broader problematic of the mechanisms of presentation, financing, and missionary autonomy in Portuguese territories. The author demonstrates that, although the Padroado regime sought to delimit evangelizing action to areas under Portuguese political dominion, the presence and prestige of the Jesuits—particularly in the broader Asian sphere—intensified friction points with civil and religious authorities. The article concludes that the 1676 case reveals how the administration of Macau operated simultaneously as a space of mediation and a field of conflict, where the interests of the mission and public order did not always converge.
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The article investigates how the figure of St. Thomas of Mylapore (Mailapur) was constructed and narrated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources, both Portuguese and foreign, by articulating geographical location, circulation of information, and production of devotional knowledge. The analysis focuses on three main testimonies—Duarte Barbosa (c. 1516), Jan Huygen Linschoten (published in 1596), and António Bocarro (1635)—comparing how each author describes the city, its position on the Coromandel coast and its “Christian particularity,” as well as the versions of the legend associated with the apostle. Methodologically, a historiographical and intertextual reading is employed, privileging narrative divergences and strategies for legitimizing traditions: while Duarte Barbosa presents more succinct allusions, Bocarro offers a more explicit framework, with location and urban characteristics, and Linschoten reconfigures the devotional plot by introducing etiological episodes (river obstruction, intervention by means of elephants, Brahmanical opposition, and corporal punishments inflicted on descendants). It is concluded that the variations among the sources do not negate the persistence of the cult but reveal processes of adaptation of sacred memory to the objectives, presuppositions, and networks of each observer, offering relevant indicators for understanding the cultural transposition of Indo-Portuguese Christianity and the consolidation of a localized “St. Thomas.”
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The article provides a critical-documentary analysis of Manuel de Saldanha's embassy to Peking (1668–1670), drawing on an unprecedented collection of 52 letters preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa. The author argues that this corpus—comprising first-person writings, including appointments, instructions, directives, and orders issued by the ambassador himself—offers a more detailed account of the mission's internal dynamics and the political-institutional framework surrounding the diplomatic enterprise than other, then-scarce sources. Methodologically, the study systematically cross-references complementary accounts and testimonies, in particular: the itinerary of the Jesuit Francisco Pimentel, the tendentiously negative interpretative framing of Domingos Navarrete, the ambassador's letters to Jesuits linked to the Province of Japan, and the minutes of the Leal Senado of Macao. The analysis concludes that the embassy failed to gain credibility with the Mandarinate authority, suffered successive setbacks over the course of its two-and-a-half-year tenure, and did not achieve the objectives initially envisioned by the Leal Senado and the mercantile community of Macao, thereby contradicting any reading of presumed Sino-diplomatic understanding and acceptance. The text further relates the mission's outcome to the political and economic conjuncture of the Middle Kingdom, marked by dynastic instability and restrictive policies on coastal trade, which structurally undermined the viability of the Macanese settlement.
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- Journal Article (3)