Theresa Matthews

The Jesuit Missionaries

            The Jesuit missionaries date back to the sixteenth century and hold a prominent place in history through their voluminous body of written works containing “travel reports, memoirs, letters, religious exhortation, ethnographic study, and general moralizing” (Ryan 797).  Jesuit missionaries were the first to accompany soldiers, merchants, and sailors on the great oceanic routes, and the first to travel in remote areas of the world that had not yet been traversed.  Their prime directives were to extend the ideals and beliefs of Christianity, to scientifically research and explore, and to satisfy the curiosity and attraction of the exotic. They were among the first cartographers of remote regions in conjunction with being the first to detail the life, customs, and beliefs of indigenes.   Linda Ledford-Miller exhorts, “The Jesuits’ [writings] and reports constitute an invaluable source for ethnologists, historians, and geographers” (656).

            The Eastern missions of the Jesuit narratives include regions of the steppes and prairies of the Indian subcontinent, the mountains of Tibet, the Nipponese islands, and the remotest cities of ancient China (Araujo 653).   The Jesuits recorded and detailed everything that appeared unusual and exotic in the region.  Some missionaries shed their cassocks and donned disguises to blend in with their environment in order to reach their objectives:  demystifying myths and legends that had circulated as truth in Europe. 

            The New World Jesuit narratives include the travels to the regions of the Americas: specifically, they detailed accounts in “New Spain – comprising present-day Mexico and the borderlands, Central America, and South America.  They were “integral to the French missions of New France (Canada), Maine, New York, and the Great Lakes (Wisconsin and Illinois), and Louisiana” (Araujo 655).  In New France, the Jesuits wrote about the life and customs of the indigenes before contact with the Europeans transformed and changed their customs and habits.  In Spanish South America, the missionaries played a central role in protecting the freedom of indigenous people from the colonists “who had formerly commanded them as free labor” (Ledford-Miller 657).  However, the Jesuits’ aide to the natives led to their expulsion by “royal decree” and left the natives “easy prey” to the colonists (657).

            “The single greatest resource of Jesuit mission narratives is undoubtedly the daunting 73-volume set of The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents.  These volumes were written in French, Italian, and Latin, and a smaller, limited edition has been translated into English by Edna Kenton.  This version contains “Jacques Marquette’s Journal describing his voyage with the explorer Louis Jolliet and their discovery of the Mississippi River” (Ledford-Miller 657).

            Finally, the historical impact of Jesuit missionaries is invaluable.  Through the voluminous written works, their “colorful and stirring reports help us to understand both the cultural and geographic contexts in which they took place and the motivations that underlay them” (Araujo 655).

Questions:

1. How do the Jesuit missionaries change, validate or nullify existing stereotypes  of “a missionary” and “the mission?”

2. The Jesuits’ writings are classified as travel writing.  How does their literature conform or abscond from our class  definition of travel literature?

                                                              i.      Obj. 2d Provisional distinctions of Exploration and Travel literature:  most travel literature visits and describes inhabited, “civilized” places that other travelers may have visited before.  Travel is usually not arduous, the traveler might casually encounter other tourists, and the reader might with to duplicate the writer’s experience.

Works Cited

Araujo, Horacio.  “Jesuit Narratives, Eastern Missions.”  Literature of Travel and Exploration:  An Encyclopedia.   Ed.  Jennifer Speake. New York:  Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003.  653-55.

Ledford-Miller, Linda.  “Jesuit Narratives, New World Missions.”  Literature of Travel and Exploration:  An Encyclopedia.   Ed.  Jennifer Speake. New York:  Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003.  655-57.

Ryan, Simon.  “Missionary Narratives.”  Literature of Travel and Exploration:  An Encyclopedia.   Ed.  Jennifer Speake.  New York:  Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003.  796-99.