ABSTRACT
This work analyzes the peculiar missionary project proposed by the Italian Jesuit Roberto de‘ Nobili, in Madurai, in South India, from the beginning of the 17th century and the resulting controversy that arose within the Society of Jesus, in addition to some authorities in Goa and with a part of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide from Rome. The de’ Nobili’s proposal is based on this controversial context and the echo of his brother’s reflection in the Jesuit order in Peru, José de Acosta. The two missionary spheres analyzed and linked to the strategies of “accommodation” and “reduction” intertwined with each other, establishing a dialectic that involved an echo and a typically orthopractic correspondence between rituals and sacraments in all their capacity to build a “Legal grid” of Christianization of the world: but observe carefully, as a specific form of “civilization”, legal and anthropological, built in the interior of the West.
Keywords
Roberto de’ Nobili; Jesuit mission; Madurai (India); missionary accommodation; José de Acosta