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Download Download Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 26-54 ISSN 2414-8636 doi.org/10.36886/nidan.2020.5.1.3 Religious Entanglements and Shared Texts: The Western Syriac Revision and Reception of the Malabar Sermonary Radu Mustață Central European University, (Budapest/Vienna) [email protected] Abstract In the attempt to unravel the religious entanglements of the Syrian Christians from Malabar and the literary networks of this Christian community in the early modern times, the present article focuses: (1) on collections of Syriac Catholic sermons from Malabar composed by the Catholic missionaries in order to create a new Syriac Catholic literary culture since the second half of the sixteenth century; and (2) on the later Western Syriac redaction and reception of this corpus. Consisting both of putative translations/adaptations from Latin and original creations, the manuscript evidence of such literary compositions bears witness to several successive redactions of Syriac texts from Malabar in the early modern times. It shows how this type of theological compositions became a shared literary genre, being appropriated by two rival factions of the Malabar Syrian Christians, namely Paḻayakūṟ and Putaṉkūṟ, throughout their complicated ecclesiastical history, from the second half of the sixteenth century up to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and beyond. The study of these collections of sermons across confessional boundaries testifies to the religious entanglements between the two rival groups, and brings further evidence that the reorientation of the Putaṉkūṟ from the Syro-Catholic tradition from Malabar, based on both Eastern Syriac and European traditions and sources, towards the Western Syriac tradition was a gradual and slow process. Keywords: Syriac Catholic sermons from Malabar, textual accommodatio, Paḻayakūṟ, Putaṉkūṟ, Malabar Independent Syrian Chrurch 26 Mustață / Religious Entanglements and Shared Texts Introduction The Syriac heritage of the Malabar Christians – known as Saint Thomas Christians 1 and claiming Syrian identity – was transformed throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries from a collection of standard Syriac texts belonging to the theological and liturgical literary legacy of the Church of the East, to a new Catholic culture in Syriac, presenting an original synthesis of Syriac sources from Iraq, and of Latin and vernacular sources from Europe. As such, this new Catholic culture in Syriac, addressing the audience of the Malabar Christians, became an emblematic expression of the complex interactions of this Christian community with its Iraqi East Syrian prelates (both ‘Nestorian’ and, after 1552, Chaldean)2 and the Catholic missionaries present on the coastal regions of India, alongside with the consolidation of the Portuguese empire in Asia. Being a work of erudition and a reflection of the cross-cultural interaction between the local Christians, keen to preserve their Syriac rites and jurisdiction (see Perczel, 2013), and the missionary enterprise of Catholic Church in the age of the Council of Trent, this new Catholic Syriac literature also outlines the challenges of the early modern global Catholicism in a missionary context. As shown by pioneering studies of István Perczel, this Syriac culture illustrates how the Catholic missionaries, especially the Jesuits, had to accommodate Catholic doctrine to a Christian community which was perfectly integrated into the social and cultural structures of the local society from Malabar, while preserving the Syriac rites and language in worship as an essential part of its Christian identity (Perczel, 2009a, 2018). In a seminal study from 2005, Ines Županov has shown how in the second half of the sixteenth century the encounter of the Jesuit missionaries with the Saint Thomas Christians made the former distinguish between “civility” and “religion” (Županov, 2005: 324) and re- elaborate their missionary strategies in the context of “a late sixteenth century Palaeochristian Revival movement” (ibid.: 287) which favored “a creative re- interpretation of Christianity in order to accommodate it to non-Christian peoples and cultures” (ibid.: 284). According to Županov, “the controversial and notorious method of conversion called «accommodation» – employed in the Jesuit overseas missions among the “heathens”, has been first thought out and tested in their mission among the St. Thomas Christians in the late sixteenth century. It was by looking at the antique Christians, a strange kind of Christians who closely resembled their Hindu and Muslim neighbors in India (in customs, rituals, skin 1 Throughout this paper I am using the terms “Malabar Christians”, “Syrian Christians of Malabar” and “Saint Thomas Christians” interchangeably; again, when I refer to Malabar or Malankara, I envisage the whole territory of the current state of Kerala, where the Saint Thomas Christians live, and not only the Northern part of the state, as it is the case in modern times. 2 I am using here the term “Nestorian” referring to the Church of the East for the sake simplification and in order to avoid terminological confusion, since both Church of the East and the Chaldean Church belong to the East Syrian branch of Christianity; however, on the problems related to the term “Nestorian”, see Brock, 1996. 27 Nidān, Volume 5, No. 1, July 2020, pp. 26-54 ISSN 2414-8636 color, etc.), that the Portuguese and especially the Jesuit missionaries developed the idea that Christianity could accommodate non-European “social customs” without getting intrinsically corrupt as a religion.” (ibid.: 324). In the light of newly discovered manuscript material from the local archives in Kerala, István Perczel has developed further Županov’s hypothesis, by emphasizing the role played by the Syrian bishops from Iraq and the centrality of the Syriac language in the process of accommodatio among the Saint Thomas Christians, at that time. In this context, Perczel redefines accommodatio as an entangled joint enterprise involving the Syrian Christians from Malabar, their bishops from Iraq and the European missionaries (Perczel, 2018: 195-196). While for the European missionaries accommodatio meant distinguishing and negotiating the borders between social and religious practice, from the perspective of the local community of the Malabar Christians, it rather aimed at safeguarding the community’s Syrian identity, whose focal point was its Eastern Syriac rites and liturgy (ibid.: 196). Perczel illustrates how Syriac language and literacy was adopted by the Catholic missionaries (especially by the Jesuits), to make their missionary strategy efficient; he also points out how this type of linguistic accommodatio generated a “Chaldean rites controversy” predating the quarrel over the Malabar rites from Tamil Nadu (ibid.). As a clear expression of this missionary principle, a newly created Catholic missionary literature in Syriac was created (ibid.: 218-220). Thus, the dialectics between Catholic Christianity as a conversion religion and the multi-confessional entanglements between various Christian traditions, in a relation described as both “competitive and complementary” (ibid.), is the general setting from which this new literary canon of Syriac paideia emerged and developed. The importance of this kind of material in the field of intellectual history is manifold: its study opens up an unexplored chapter in the field of early modern global intellectual history, illustrating – through literary networks – the circulation of knowledge from both Europe and the Middle East to the Malabar Coast (see Perczel, 2014 and 2008). Beside connecting the Iraqi manuscript- based Syriac culture and the European printing culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is an important witness to transmission of theological and humanistic knowledge from the European Jesuit teachers to their Indian disciples from Malabar, as an expression of the Jesuit principle of accommodatio (Perczel, 2014; on one such peculiar case, see as well Mustaţă: forthcoming). Moreover, it is the vivid expression of the diversity of Syriac literature in the early modern times. 28 Mustață / Religious Entanglements and Shared Texts Historical context The political and ecclesiastical setting in which this kind of Syriac literature developed is a complex one and it requires a summary of its historical developments. Throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese Crown strengthened its position on the West coast of India3 by establishing a network of satellite-like settlements and strongholds, and by making alliances with the local rulers and kings, in order to consolidate and ensure its monopolistic trade system (Malekandathil, 2013: 63-82). As such this “new world system” controlled by the Portuguese and connecting the Indian Ocean world with that of Europe through the Atlantic Ocean, collided with an “old world system”4, which it tried to suppress and replace. The latter was dominated since medieval times by the Arab traders and it connected the Mediterranean world with the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea, going further to the East (ibid.: 83-109). Due to its strategic position in the context of navigation (by reason of the monsoon winds), and its rich potential for trade with spices and other goods, the Malabar Coast became one of the main focuses of contention and dispute between these two macro-systems of trade (ibid.). The Syrian Christians of Saint Thomas from Malabar were among the early allies
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