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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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- Journal Article (2)