ABSTRACT

A 1695 epigram described the threats that pirates posed to the fleet that was returning the arm of St. Francis Xavier to Europe from the Far East, via Goa, India. Through the epigram, we catch a glimpse of the functional agreements and practices between military men, merchants, and missionaries during the age of exploration. This essay examines the testimony about relics in counter-Reformation canonization proceedings, how sacred objects were protected from pirates in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the role the ship's chaplain played in this specific defensive mission, and whether the rhetoric about the threat of pirates paralleled the rhetoric about the danger of Protestants.

Keywords: Cross-cultural engagements, cultural translations, pirates, relics, canonization, missions, Saint Francis Xavier, Jesuits

IN 1695, AN Italian Jesuit published a book, Tria Fortium David, Hoc Est Jesu Christi. In it, Antonio Barone included an epigram describing the threats that pirates posed to the fleet that was returning the arm of St. Francis Xavier to Europe from Goa, India. The voyage of the relic had occurred eight decades earlier, between 1617 and 1618, and neither the beautification documents of 1619 nor the canonization documents of 1622 emphasized the dangers of pirates when they discuss the translation of the saint's bones. The epigram itself is quite short: fourteen lines celebrating the sanctified victory of Francis Xavier's mortal remains over the barbarous threat of infidels during transit from the Indies.

As Peter Burke has argued, most “students of the saints have assumed that they are witnesses to the age in which they lived. For a historian of mentalities, however, they have to be treated as witnesses to the age in which they were canonised.” Through Barone's epigram, St. Francis Xavier also serves as a witness to the decades after his canonization, as the age of exploration was entering its third century. The epigram serves as yet another reminder of the divisive forces of war and religion, an idea that is not restricted to the seventeenth century. Through this epigram, we catch a glimpse of the functional agreements and practices that developed between military men, merchants, and missionaries during the age.