The Christian Century

Due to a friend discussing the history of the Jesuits with us multiple times, we have endeavored to read about the order in various locales around the world. Although our original interest in the Jesuits derived from their history in Louisiana, Saint-Domingue and Ethiopia, our friend has sparked our interest in the Jesuit mission to Japan. Indeed, he actually proposed the idea of a comparative study of the Jesuit missions to Ethiopia and Japan, which prompted our reading of Boxer's The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650. Both offer an interesting cases of non-Western civilizations in which the Jesuits enjoyed some success before a brutal crackdown and expulsion. The two also raised tantalizing possibilities of early "westernization" of Japan and Ethiopia through religion and intellectual exchange at a moment of political turmoil or conflict. Furthermore, the two also closed off most contacts with Roman Catholic European powers while investing in ties with Protestant Europeans like the Dutch, albeit more successfully in the case of Japan than Ethiopia. Both cases culminated in the exile for those of Portuguese origins as well as prohibitions of Roman Catholicism although Catholic missionaries continued to secretly enter the two states. Last but certainly not least, the two missions included some rather remarkable Jesuits: Valignano, João Rodrigues Tçuzu and Pedro Páez who produced invaluable writings on the two regions.

The two obviously differ in some key ways, however. The Ethiopians were already Christians, albeit of an Orthodox persuasion. Moreover, the Portuguese enjoyed a very lucrative trade as an intermediary of Japan and China via Macao. The Red Sea, on the other hand, was not as economically vital to Portuguese interests and Jesuits often relied on Muslim and banyan traders and ships to reach Massawa. The Japanese were also, for a time, actively engaged in shipping and external trade through Red-Seal ships traveling across Southeast Asia (and even beyond). The Christian kingdom or empire of Ethiopia relied on Muslims for much of its international trade across the Red Sea or Indian Ocean. Another vast distinction can be seen in the success of the Jesuits in converting the most powerful personage of the Ethiopian government, Susenyos. The Jesuits in Japan enjoyed some success with Kyushu daimyo and were amicably received or tolerated by Oda Nobunaga and Hideyoshi but obviously never converted the heads of the central government. 

The two also differed in that the mendicant orders appear to have been a far more important factor in the intra-Christian squabbling in Japan than in Ethiopia. The missionaries in Japan also appear to have converted more natives, although the high estimate of around 300,000 cited by Boxer may be incorrect. Additionally, the Jesuits seem to have been more effective with seminaries in Japan, although relatively few Japanese were ordained as priests or became members of the Society. Perhaps the greater esteem the Jesuits had for the Japanese explained part of the difference, as they were contrasted favorably with the "blacks" of India by Valignano. One suspects the Jesuits may have also let their racial bias shape their perception of Ethiopians in a way that was not necessarily the case for the Japanese. 

Ultimately, as argued by Andreu Martínez d'Alòs-Moner, the Jesuit missions in Ethiopia, Japan and even Mughal India failed when local political conditions shifted and elites were no longer willing to support or tolerate them. According to Boxer, the Japanese were less dependent on the Portuguese for the trade in Chinese silks by the time of Ieyasu, while in Ethiopia local resistance to the Catholics and Susenyos led to his abdication and the restoration of the Orthodox Church by the next king. A shift in socio-political conditions or economic matters meant the flimsy foundations the Jesuits built could be eradicated or at least neutralized and gradually destroyed. From reading Boxer, one cannot help but think that a skillful combination of the proselytizing tactics of the mendicant orders and the Jesuits would have been necessary to ensure the survival of Catholicism. After all, the peasants and lower classes of the Japanese were the ones who persisted in their faith the longest after the strategy of converting daimyo and samurai failed. Perhaps had the Jesuits attempted more outreach among the peasantry and poor, they could have had lasted a little longer in Japan. As for their tactics in Ethiopia, they also appear to have mainly sought to work their way down from the elites but faced too mch resistance from the local clergy and monastic figures. The main pillar of support for the Jesuits there was the mixed-race Portuguese community, who after a few generations likely adhered to more Ethiopian traditions than those of Portugal. 

Boxer's account of the crypto-Christians, priests who entered as merchants after 1614, and the Shimabara Rebellion suggest that Christianity survived and even spread further across Japan after the 1614 edict. Nonetheless, without enough new Catholic clergy to guide them and the government's economic and political persecution of local Christians driving many to apostatize, the faith could not prosper or grow. In Ethiopia, the Ethio-Portuguese were eventually exiled without much of a legacy in Ethiopia besides the Indian and Indo-Portuguese influences in Gondarine architecture. It seeems to us that the "Christian Century" in Japan and the Jesuits in the land of Prester John represent a key moment in Portuguese/Iberian expansion of the 16th and 17th centuries as well as frustrated paths that could have drastically changed the trajectory of two regions in the early modern era.