, 22 (2010) 335-348. doi: 10.2143/ARAM.22.0.2131044

THE AUGUSTINIANS AND THE MANDAEANS IN 17TH C. MESOPOTAMIA1

Dr. JOHN FLANNERY (Heythrop College-University of London)

Abstract

The Dominican Ricoldo da Montecroce described meeting the Mandaeans during his stay in in the 13th century. They would be encountered again by Western Christians after the arrival of the Portuguese in India and the Gulf in the early 16th cen- tury, and Jesuit letters from Goa provide a hazy description of these ‘St John Chris- tians’. It would, however be members of the Augustinian Order who responded to an embassy in 1608 from Mubarak, ruler of Hawizah, now in southern . There the Mandaean religious leader offered his submission to the Augustinians, in exchange for material assistance, while clearly encouraging the misunderstanding that the Mandaeans were a Christian sect. Information provided by the returning ambassadors furnished the description of the Mandaeans and their customs published by António de Gouveia in 1611, including his own curious theory on their origins. Only in 1623 would both the Augustinians and establish missions in , where they only gradually realised that the Mandaeans were not and never had been Christians. A curious feature of these missions was their unsuccessful attempts to arrange the transmigration of large numbers of Mandaeans to territory directly under Portuguese control. The Augustinians had left Basra by 1653, and the Carmelites were soon forced to acknowledge that their Mandaean ‘converts’ were in fact still fully practising their own rites. With this realisation, proselytising ended, and this curious episode in mission history drew to a close.

Following the establishment of Portuguese presence in Goa in 1510, western Christianity again began to receive reports of the Mandaeans or , who had been described briefly by the Florentine Dominican, Ricoldo da Monte- croce during his stay in Baghdad in 12902.

1 On the topic see the magisterial work of the Spanish Augustinian historian Carlos Alonso Los Mandeos y las misiones católicas en la primera mitad del s. XVII (= Orientalia Christiana Analecta 179), Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, 1967, and Roberto Gulbenkian ‘Relações Politico-Religiosas entre os Portugueses e os Mandeus da Baixa Mesopotâmia e do Cuzistão na Primeira Metade do Século XVII’, in Estudos Históricos II, Relações entre Portugal, Irão e Médio Oriente, Academia Portuguesa da História, Lisbon, 1965, 324-420 I acknowledge my considerable indebtedness to both texts throughout this paper. 2 The region had become accessible to Christian as a result of the tolerant reli- gious policy of the Mongol Il-Khans.

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These ‘St. John Christians’ are mentioned in Jesuit letters from Goa in 1555, referring to the presence in Goa of a number of Mandaean children, who pro- vided a rather hazy description of the Mandaeans as ‘natives of a province in the region of Basra, where all observe Christianity, but to what extent is not known, only that they have , and among them are prelates of churches, and many ceremonies; they say that the blessed Apostle St John the Evangelist preached in that land, and converted the people there’. They are described as ‘…under the obedience of the Holy Roman Church, and with all her and rites. The Armenian sends them their . The land where they live is Basra. They are subjects of a Muslim King. This King allows them to have a church and to say ’3. At the third Provincial Council of Goa in 1585, mention was made of the ‘St John Christians’ as one of the many ‘Christian’ groups to be encountered there. Amongst these groups ‘the Abyssinians (os abexins)4, called the ‘St John Christians’ are those whose errors and customs are said to be most contrary to the Church of Rome. Ten years later, the Jesuit Provincial Visitor, Alexandre Valignano, also mentions the sabis (Sabians) ‘commonly called the St John Christians, who, they say are not baptised, or do not have true baptism.’5.

The Augustinians had arrived late in the Portuguese East, establishing them- selves at Goa in 1573, at Hormuz, in 1575, and in the Safavid capital of Isfahan in 1602. September 1595 had seen the arrival in Goa of a new , the energetic, ambitious, and well-connected Augustinian, Dom Frei Aleixo de Meneses, who, in 1599, would preside over the controversial of Diam- pur, at which the ‘St Thomas Christians’, or Syro-Malabar Christians, swore obedience to Rome6. Affairs of Church and State would frustrate Meneses’

3 There was a small Armenian community in Basra and this account may conflate the two groups, or represent difficulties in translation. A curious confusion between the Armenians of Basra and the Mandaeans is also apparent in a later letter of Philip IV to his viceroy in India. Boletim da filmoteca ultramarina português, no. 9, Lisbon, 330. 4 These are in fact earlier mentioned in the first two Councils of Goa as being among foreign Christians who visit Portuguese India, but without any identification of them as ‘St John Christians’. See J H Cunha Rivara (ed.) Archivo Português Oriental, 7 vols. Nova Goa, Imprensa Nacional, 1857-1876, fasc. 4, pp. 29-30, 99, 141, 143-144, cited in Gulbenkian Estudos Históricos II, p. 347- 347, notes 54 and 55. 5 Josef Wicki SJ (ed). O Livro do ‘Pai dos Cristãos’, Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultrama- rinos, Lisbon, 1969, 23. 6 The visit of Meneses to the Malabar coast is described in the celebrated Jornada of António de Gouveia published in Coimbra in 1606. The text of the Synod is included. The biography of Meneses; Carlos Alonso OSA, Aleixo de Meneses OSA, Arzobispo de Goa (1595-1612), Vallado- lid, Estudio Agustiniano, 1992, esp. 55-172, endeavours to set the Synod of Diampur in its his- torical context, and to rehabilitate his reputation in the eyes of those who see the Synod only as a disastrous and unwarranted interference by Rome in the affairs of another Church (as for example Jonas Thaliath The Synod of Diamper series: Orientalia Christiana Analecta 152 (1958), Rome, Pontifical Institute for Oriental Studies, where the canonical validity of the Synod’s decrees are

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desire to visit the Mandaeans in person, but members of his Order would be the first western missionaries to make significant contact with them. The circumstances which made this possible, are detailed in the 1611 account7 of the Augustinian chronicler António de Gouveia, who relates that the Man- daeans at the Persian court, impressed by the Augustinians’ efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Armenians deported there by ‘Abbas in 1604-1605, and by ‘how the Shah and his nobles deferred to their requests’, had petitioned the Augustinians at Isfahan and Hormuz for assistance, saying that the Mandaeans ‘were Christians, and perhaps the most oppressed by infidels in all the world, and no less needy than the Armenians’8. By the end of 1607 the archbishop of Goa had already decided to send missionaries to the Mandaeans9, although none travelled with the ships of 1608, probably delayed by Meneses’ own desire to accompany them. Coincidentally, in March of 1608, an embassy arrived in Goa from Said Mubarak, the Arab ruler of the city and kingdom of Hawizah, in what is now southern Iraq, seeking Portuguese assistance in taking the strategic port of Basra from the Ottomans. The ambassadors were a Muslim confidant10 of the king, and Gonçalo de Abreu, a convert to Christianity, who was a nephew of Simon, a religious leader of the Mandaeans11. Gouveia informs us that the Mandaeans were ‘very cruelly tyrannised’ under Mubarak: ‘The tributes they pay are exces- sive…. They work without payment on royal and public projects, on which they do most or all of the work’12 Delayed for some months in Goa, the ambassadors

called into question). The traditional europeanising and latinising approach favoured by the Padroado and supported by the Portuguese ecclesiastical and military establishment is contrasted with the methods of espoused by some Jesuit and Franciscan missionar- ies in João Teles e Cunha ‘De Diamper a Mattancherry: Caminhos e encruzilhadas da Igreja Malabar e Católica na Índia. Os Primeiros Tempos (1599-1624)’ Anais de História de Além-mar V (Lisbon), 2004, 283-386. 7 Relaçam em que se tratam as guerras e grandes victórias que alcançou o grande rey de Per- sia Xa ‘Abbas do grão Turco Mehemetto & seu filho Amethe as quaes resultarão das Embaxada que por mandado da Catholica Real Majestade de Rey D. Felippe II de Portugal fizerão alguns Religiosas da Ordem dos Ermitas de Santo Agostinho à Persia, Lisbon, 1611 (hereinafter Relaçam); French tr. by A. de Meneses Relation des grandes guerres …, Rouen, 1646. 8 Relaçam f. 188v. 9 As is clear from the letter of Giovanni Antica to the Propaganda dated 31st December 1607 (Arch. Vat. Borghese, vol. 86, fols. 251-252, given in Carlos Alonso ‘Documentación inédita para una biografía de Fr. Alejo de Meneses, OSA, Arzobispo de Goa’ Analecta Augustiniana 27 (1964), 263-333, see 314-315. Antica’s claim that the St John Christians had offered their obedi- ence ‘nuovamente’ to Rome would appear questionable, as Meneses in his report from Lisbon in November 1611 informs the that the missionaries visiting Hawizah had been unable to obtain the obedience ‘which they had formerly promised’ Bibl. Vat. Barb. lat. 8576, fols. 37-38, ibid., pp. 329. 10 Unnamed in Gouveia’s text. 11 A Mandaean convert to Christianity who had adopted a Portuguese ‘Christian’ name. He had spent some years in India in the service of the Portuguese, before returning via Hormuz to his homeland. 12 Relaçam f. 221v.

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became impatient, and Meneses was forced to choose two Augustinians to return with them, the Indian Francisco da Presentação and the Englishman Matías do Espírito Santo. After completing their political embassy they were to devote themselves to the Mandaeans – to learn their ‘errors’, to have them profess the faith and swear obedience to the pope, and to confirm the validity of their baptism. They were given copies of a profession of faith and an oath of obedience, they were to send Mandaean liturgical books back to Goa, as many children as possible were to be instructed in the Latin rite, and, finally, they were to make every effort to establish a base there. In view of later developments, it is interesting that Meneses also instructed that if Mubarak refused to give the Mandaeans the island of ‘Quexede’13, in which they could live ‘in the purity of their faith’, they should be transferred to Qeshm, an island near Hormuz, and under Portuguese control. Reaching Hawizah in September 1609, the embassy was warmly received, but the missionaries’ refusal to allow Mubarak to use the ship in which they had travelled to assist in his imminent attack on Basra soured relations. In fact, during his absence, the ship returned to India, depositing the missionaries at Hormuz, and carrying the letters to Meneses on which Gouveia would base his later account14. Some indication of their disillusionment can be gained from the ’ explanation for their early departure, ‘nothing can be done with him [Mubarak], nor in the matter of the St John Christians, since none of them will be baptised unless we give them something, and, as we have nothing to give them, no more will be baptised, and afterwards they do it again in their own manner’.15 A Spanish diplomat, who accompanied the embassy to Hawizah, reported that the Mandaeans numbered 19-20,000 souls, that they are prepared to accept obe- dience to Rome, and that already the missionaries had baptised over a hundred children16. Gouveia names the village of Daquá as the first place visited by the missionaries, noting that the ignorance of Christianity shown by the inhab- itants was astonishing, although matters were somewhat better in Hawizah, where the Mandaeans, including their ‘patriarch’ and ‘’ visited and wel- comed the missionaries.17 Through an interpreter, their leader stated that he would defer to the Archbishop of Goa ‘as of all Eastern Christians’

13 Alonso (Mandeos 15, n. 45), suggests that this is a reference to the island of Kharg, which hardly seems to fit its description in the letter as ‘in the middle of the ’. 14 Gouveia devotes Chapters XVII to XIX of Book III (fols. 211-224) of his Relaçam to the topic. 15 Raymundo António de Bulhão Pato (ed.). Documentos Remetidos da India, ou livros das Monções, Typografia da Academia Real das Sciências, Lisbon, vol II, p. 97. 16 Ibid. vol. I, p. 307. 17 Relaçam fols. 221v – 223r.

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and to the Augustinians as his representatives. They declared themselves dis- posed to follow their teaching about matters of salvation, to order their subjects to marry before them and, to bring their children for baptism. Enquiring about the Mandaean method of baptism, the missionaries were doubtful of its validity. The missionaries insisted on recognition of the pope as Supreme Pontiff of all Christians as a fundamental issue – without which they would be unable to provide any kind of assistance, spiritual or material. In support of their declared willingness to do exactly this, Gouveia reproduces a letter from the Mandaean leader to the Archbishop of Goa. Having reiterated his earlier statements to the Augustinians, Simon goes on to excuse his failure to sign the declaration of obedience, but it is the concluding part of the letter which reveals what is prob- ably his true motive for writing, seeking an improvement in the material condi- tion of the Mandaeans. By directly referring several times to the Mandaeans as ‘Christians’, the letter also encourages the assumptions held by the missionaries about these ‘St John Christians’. Meneses left Goa on the last day of 1610, and political circumstances in the Gulf would mean that it was only thirteen years later that an Augustinian mission to the Mandaeans was established. Since their first encounter had lasted only a month, it is perhaps not surprising that the missionaries failed to ascertain the true nature Mandaean beliefs. It would also seem clear that in order to alleviate their miserable condition the Mandaean leaders had made a conscious decision not to disabuse the friars of their belief that they were deal- ing with a Christian group of some kind. Before continuing, we may describe here Gouveia’s own account of the origins of the Mandaeans. Claiming to base it on information provided by the Mandaeans that they had formerly been subject to the Patriarch of Babylon in , he proposes, using the unfortunate terminology of the time, that they were a branch of the ‘Nestorian’ Church18 which had split from the Patriarch of Babylon some 150 years earlier. Curiously, ‘although full of error and igno- rance’, they appear to hold an orthodox Catholic Christology since, ‘they firmly believe that Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, is truly Mother of God, and that the divine Word took flesh in her womb, becoming true man and true God; and [they believe] other things which the Nestorians perfidiously deny’. In expla- nation, Gouveia puts forward his own theory: the Mandaeans, separated by schism from the Patriarch of Babylon of the Church of the East, later came into contact with the dissident group within that Church which in 1551 elected

18 Properly speaking the Church of the East. The Christology of the Church of the East is not ‘Nestorian’, and the term has never been used as a self-description by its members. See Sebastian P. Brock ‘The “Nestorian” Church: A Lamentable Misnomer’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 (1996) pp. 23-35, and the historic Common Christological Declaration between the and the Assyrian Church of the East, issued on 11th December 1994.

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a rival patriarch19, Yohanan Sulaqa20, who two years later submitted his obedi- ence to the pope in Rome and was ordained a Catholic patriarch. According to Gouveia’s theory, it was from the followers of Sulaqa and his successors that the Mandaeans had learnt those Catholic doctrines which they still held, albeit mixed with many errors21. Although an avowedly speculative explanation22, Gouveia’s theory regarding the origins of the Christian beliefs of the Mandaeans also appears forty years later in the text of the Ignátio de Jesus on the ‘St John Christians’23. The dependence of the Carmelite on the earlier writings of Gou- veia is abundantly clear from a comparison of the texts, although Ignátio makes no acknowledgment of the Augustinian’s contribution.

AUGUSTINIAN AND CARMELITE MISSIONS IN BASRA, 1623

The loss to the Portuguese of the strategic island of Hormuz in 1622 was a serious blow for the missionaries in Isfahan. The port of Basra, through which Portuguese trade was now diverted, was at this time under the rule of the Afrasiyab dynasty, Ottoman vassals, but effectively independent, and it appeared a logical site to establish new missions linking Persia and India, and as a source of eco- nomic support for the missions of Isfahan. The Augustinian of Isfahan had visited Basra in 1622, and on his return put plans in hand for a new foundation in Basra. However, he made the error of communicating these plans to his Car- melite counterpart, who surreptitiously, and in unseemly haste, despatched one of his own friars, Basílio de São Francisco, to Basra. So it was that when the

19 The origins in this split arose from continuing dissension within the Church of the East arising from the decree of Patriarch Mar Shimun IV Bassidi in c.1450 that his office could pass only to a member of his family, in practical terms to a nephew, in view of the Patriarchal vow of celibacy. Members of the new community in union with Rome would come to be referred to as ‘Chaldeans’, a term which Gouveia confusingly uses interchangeably with that of ‘St John Christians’. 20 Gouveia describes Sulaqa as ‘bishop of the illustrious city of Cara Amit’ close to Mosul. The city in question is the ancient Roman town of Amida, which was known in Turkish as Karâ Âmid, i.e. ‘Black’ Âmid, due to the colour of the basalt used in its walls, which extend to 5.5km. Known nowadays as Diyâr Bakr in , and as Diyarbakir in Turkish, and now in Turkey, its current name comes from the region, Diyarbakir, the “region where the Bakir/Bakr dwell”, from the tribe that lived there. 21 In fact, modern authors would generally agree that Christian elements incorporated into Mandaeaism are tardy and modest, largely limited to texts which relate to legends about Jesus, Mary, and . See Mandeos, 23, n. 63 where Alonso cites K. Rudolph Die Mandaer: I Prologomena: Das Mandaerproblem series: Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 75, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1960, 101. 22 Having offered his interpretation of events, Gouveia continues ‘whether it was in this way, or in some other unknown way, they hold this true teaching’, Relaçam f. 220v. 23 Narratio originis, rituum, et errorum Christianorum Sancti Ioannis, cui adiungitur Discursus per modum dialogi, in quo confutantur 33I errores eiusdem nationis, Rome, 1652.

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Augustinian Nicolau Perete arrived in Basra on July 2nd 1623, he found that the Carmelite had preceded him by only two weeks. Perete died after only four months in Basra, being replaced by two Augustinians from Goa in February 1624, while the Carmelite mission was reinforced by a group of Italian Carmelites sent at the beginning of the same year. Both Orders would work among the Mandaeans, although there were some differences in their approaches. Basílio sent news to Rome of the Carmelite mission in February 1624, describ- ing activities among the ‘St John Christians’. He doubts the validity of their baptism, although one of their ‘priests’ in Basra knew the correct form of words, likely taught him by António de Gouveia as he passed through the region on his final return to Europe in 1613. For Basílio, there are no Christians more ignorant of religion. They equate John the Baptist and Jesus, have no knowledge of the sacraments and little of the pope. They criticise Europeans for eating meat killed by Arabs24, and food prepared by black slaves. They also forbid black people from becoming Mandaeans, believing that black people are not the sons of and Eve but of . They also believe that no one circumcised can enter their religion, that it is forbidden to wear blue, or to pray towards the West, and have no knowledge of the Mass or of fasting25. The Carmelite ends by reporting that he has begun to work among the Mandaeans, teaching some of the children Arabic. Writing to Rome again in 162726 he provides his first systematic description of the Mandaeans. now noting that they call themselves ‘Mendaya’, who are said to speak a corrupt or dialect form of Chaldean27. He refers to their tradition that they originate from and , a land which he says they refer to as Gebel-al-Agdar, the green mountain. In support of this claim, Basílio puts

24 The comment in the same author’s letter of 1627 to the Prefect of the Propaganda that meat killed by Christians was also unacceptable, but somehow less so, is curious, since Mandaeans practice requires a special ritual for the sacrifice of those animals permitted for consumption. This task is undertaken by a priest or layman in a state of purity (a halala) who also justifies himself and the community for having taken the life of an innocent creature. See Edmondo Lupieri The Mandaeans: the last Gnostics, Grand Rapids MI. Eerdmans, 2001, 5. 25 Mandaeans do indeed believe that the black races originate from the intercourse of Noah with an evil spirit. Mandaeans pray towards the North, but the taboo over wearing blue men- tioned by Basílio and other travellers of the time is no longer observed. 26 The Italian text is given in Alonso Los Mandeos Appendix I, 241-246. 27 The classical Mandaean language of the sacred texts and rituals is a form of Eastern , with features similar to the language of the Babylonian , and showing signs of external influence, especially Persian. The spoken language, ratna, uses a simplified system and is, unsur- prisingly, substantially influenced by Arabic. Modern commentators record a revival of interest in the spoken language among Mandaeans in the diaspora, while Lupieri (The Mandaeans, pp. 53-54) refers to a school in for Mandaean children where the language has been in use for some time. The Mandaean alphabet, the abagada, is ascribed considerable religious significance, and even what Buckley sees as ‘a somewhat disturbing autonomy’. This theme is developed in Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley The Mandaeans, New York, University Press, 2002, see 144-152.

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forward a theory which appears entirely his own, stating that the Mandaeans were Christian converts baptised in the by the Baptist himself, thus explaining their devotion to him, and that the ‘green mountain’ is in fact Mount Lebanon. This leads him to suggest that the Mandaeans were once the same as the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, or had at least lived alongside them, and that temporal and geographical separation were responsible for the differences between them. He turns next to the question of Mandaean baptism and its validity, which had exercised him from his first days in Basra, having come to believe that Mandaean baptism was simply a cleansing ritual, similar to that used by Mus- lims. He recalls the practice of the Augustinian missionaries in 1609 who had baptised (albeit sub conditione) a number of Mandaeans during their stay, as was the usual practice in Goa. We are told that the Mandaeans live under Arab or Persian rule, having no lands of their own. He lists thirty-one Mandaean centres in addition to Basra and Hawizah, giving the curiously small total of 120028 families. They are entirely subject to the , with no civil government of their own29. There are three ranks in their religious hierarchy, and they currently have three ganzibras, their ‘bishops’, based in Hawizah. All the Mandaeans Basílio has encountered worked as carpenters, jewellers30, or blacksmiths. They are desperately poor, despised by both Muslims and Eastern Christians31, but they believe themselves to be the original and most ancient Christians. They are proud and do not mix, but generous. Although few in number, dispersed and maltreated, they have kept their language, books and beliefs, and very few of them have become Muslims. Basílio also relates that he has succeeded in obtaining a copy of one of the Mandaean sacred texts, the Sidra, which he not surprisingly attributes to John the Baptist.

28 Clearly intended to have been 12,000, as other accounts demonstrate. 29 This would suggest that the Mandaeans fell outside the Ottoman millet system which allowed minority confessional groups a considerable degree of autonomy under a ruler responsi- ble for them to the central government. It may be that the relatively small numbers of Mandaeans in Ottoman territory were considered as insignificant, or that they had not developed a code of ‘personal’ law (fiqh shakhsiyya) for their adherents similar to those developed by those Churches living under Ottoman rule. See Richard B. Rose ‘Islam and the Development of Personal Status Laws among the Christian Dhimmis: Motives, Sources, Consequences’ in The Muslim World, 72, nos. 3-4 (July-October 1982), 159-178. Without representation, the Mandaeans would indeed have been subject to the whims of local rulers, as Gouveia clearly indicates. 30 To this day some Mandaeans still work as goldsmiths. The practice may arise from the Islamic disapproval of men wearing, and presumably therefore, working in gold. 31 It would be interesting to know the view of on the Mandaeans and the Western identification of them as St John Christians. Did the view of the Eastern Christians in Basra who received instructions from Basílio influence his opinion on the validity of Mandaean baptism?

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In his report of September 1627 to Rome, the Carmelite Visitor to Basra cor- rects the number of Mandaean families to 12,000, and also judges Mandaean baptism as invalid due to its form, which he describes as consisting of taking water three times from a flowing river and using the formula ‘I baptise you with the baptism of John, son of Zacharias: do not steal, do not fornicate, do not lie, do not contradict your father and mother’.

In 1628 we first hear of plans for the emigration of a large group of Man- daeans from their homelands to territory under Portuguese control, where they would be free of Arab and Persian oppression and could be encouraged to embrace Catholicism, while for its part, the Portuguese Estado da India could be expected to benefit from Mandaean recruitment into its depleted military forces. Bahrain, and Duba on the Arab coast of the were suggested as possible destinations. Plans were delayed by warfare and plague in that region, and only in 1632, is the issue of the migration taken up again. Although the Augustinians had played a vital role in setting the scheme in motion, and in obtaining consent from the Pasha for the migration, it was the Carmelite prior who had begun to organise the assembly of Mandaeans at Basra in order to travel with the ships expected in the port in the summer of 1632. Seven hundred Mandaeans gathered at the Shatt-al-Arab under the protection of the Portuguese fleet, but a diplomatic incident between the Pasha and the Portu- guese authorities would put the lives of all the Catholic missionaries in Basra in danger. The waiting Mandaeans were caught up in the reprisals inflicted on the city by the Portuguese fleet, and their eventual departure for Muscat only intensified the resulting riots, during which the prior of the Augustinian convent died from a heart attack brought on by stress. After a short stay, during which they were spread out along the coast near Muscat, the Mandaeans soon realised that there was little alternative for the survivors but to return to Basra, although a group of ninety men travelled to Goa to clarify matters with the Viceroy. Fifty of these volunteered for service in the Portuguese military and were despatched to Bengal, Ceylon and Cochin, while the rest, confirmed in their grant of land at Duba by the Viceroy of India, returned to Muscat in December 1633, only to discover that the promised terri- tory had already been ceded to Arab rebels.

Information on the early years of the Augustinian mission is more scanty. Its main feature was the construction of a house for the religious, and a school where Mandaean children were taught to read and write in Arabic, and instructed in Christian doctrine. The primary focus of the Augustinians in Basra was the Mandaeans, particularly their reduction to Roman obedience, from which they were convinced that doctrinal error and physical distance had separated these ‘St John Christians’. In 1625, in the Augustinian chapel, twenty-five Mandaean

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leaders and priests signed a letter of obedience to the pope. Despite the rejoicing of the missionaries, however, the Mandaeans continued to practice their own rites. In 1628, the Augustinians in Basra were granted a firman which allowed the Mandaeans to visit them freely, and required them to do what the mission- aries asked of them. We have only indirect information regarding the period of tenure of the second of the Augustinians in Basra, António do Natal. He informed the Prop- aganda in Rome of the transfer of the Augustinian residence to the Mandaean district, of their among the Mandaeans, who brought their children for baptism, and of the progress of the Mandaean children in studying Christian doctrine and in serving Mass. The Augustinian foundation at Basra was elevated to the status of convent in December 1628, and José da Presentação, third superior of the mission, elected as its first prior properly so-called. His tenure was ephemeral, and a lack of documentation prevents us from reconstructing the situation at the convent between his departure and the appointment in 1631 of Manuel da Fonseca, who died in office in the following year, to be succeeded by António de S José, whose principal activity was the care of apostates who had returned to the faith, along with a small number of converts from Islam, all of whom he assisted with passage to India32. The account he wrote of his activities makes no mention of the Mandaeans, although we know that the school for Mandaean children was still functioning. In mid-1639, two French Capuchin priests passing through Basra referred to the activity of his successor. Visiting the Augustinian church, they saw a group of seventeen or eighteen Mandaean children being instructed to read and write in Arabic by a Mandaean teacher. The children were heard to recite the Pater Noster and Ave in Arabic, and to answer questions on Catholic doctrine. The last years of the Augustinian convent at Basra reflect the general decline of the Augustinian Order in India, and the fall of Muscat in 1649 accelerated Portuguese withdrawal from the Gulf. Augustinian chronicles note that José da Presentação was replaced as prior in December 1640 by Adeodato da Paixão. However, no record of his activity survives, nor for that of his successors, whose listing is incomplete33, although we are told that the convent was abandoned

32 These included some sent from the Augustinian convent at Isfahan, as related by José do Rosário of that convent, see Analecta Augustiniana 29, p. 275. A ‘Brief Account of the persons reconciled and converted to our holy faith by the labours of religious of St Augustine of the Province of East India, from October 1633 to 1638, during which time the of the said Order in that city were António de S. José and José da Presentação’, written by the latter in December 1638, relates in detail a number of individual cases, including a number ‘sent by reli- gious the same Order resident in Persia’. See Carlos Alonso ‘Miscellanea Missionaria Agostiniana (sec. XVII)’ in Analecta Augustiniana 34 (1971), 239-294, and 265-274. 33 António da Silva Rego (ed.), Documentação para a História das Missões do Padroado Português do Oriente, Agência Geral do Ultramar, Lisbon, 12 vols., 11, 219.

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in 1653, ‘due to the repeated efforts of the devil’34. Although nominations for prior to the convent of Basra were being made as late as 1668, this can represent no more than an attempt to revive the defunct mission, effectively leaderless since 165135, a fact corroborated by the accounts of travellers passing through Basra in the early 1650’s36.

This paucity of archival material from the Augustinian convent in Basra in this later period forces us to rely on Carmelite accounts for further details of the engagement between the Catholic missionaries and the Mandaeans. The earliest surviving letter of Ignátio de Jesus, prior from 1641, dates from 1643, and relates attempts to revive the plans for a Mandaean migration. We learn that he had in readiness a group of thirty Mandaean men planning to travel to India in order to explore territory in Ceylon offered them by the Portuguese. Resistance from the ruler of Basra resulted in only five of them leaving the city, and hopes for a large migration in the summer of 1643 were dashed by the non- arrival of the trading ships, and by political conflicts between the Pasha and the Portuguese. When the situation deteriorated to the extent that a Portuguese fleet was expected to attack the city, the missionaries were advised to leave. Although Ignátio elected to remain, any preparations for migration were put on hold. Re-appointed prior in 1646, he soon afterwards sent a letter to Rome which illustrates his doubts as to the validity of Mandaean baptism. A group of Man- daeans who had travelled to Rome complained of being ‘re-baptised’ in Basra. The missionary’s uncompromising response is that gratitude would be more appropriate, since the formula used by them was invalid, and transliterating the words used as follows ‘I baptise you in the name of the Eternal God, the great Creator, Father of all’37. Meanwhile, advance news of the arrival of a Portuguese trading fleet led to a revival of the migration plans, and twenty-four Mandaeans were sent to negotiate with the authorities in Goa. News of this advance mission is given in October 1647, with reports that the group had been sent on to Ceylon by the Viceroy, and that their return via Muscat was awaited, along with that of two ships to carry a large group of migrants. Preparations continued, with increas- ing numbers of Mandaeans coming to Basra and its environs, but a letter of August 1648 from Ignátio explains that it had been necessary to defer the trans- fer to Ceylon until the following year, since in view of an outbreak of hostilities between the ruler of Muscat and the Portuguese, it would be impossible to

34 Documentação vol. 11, 218. 35 Ibid. 514. 36 Alonso, Los Mandeos 186-187. 37 He will give a different description and account in his later printed work on the Mandaeans. Neither in fact resemble that given in the books of Mandaean ritual.

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send the promised ships38. Once again the planned migration had come to naught: a mere fifty Mandaean families would travel to Muscat and thence to Goa in 1649. The letters written by Ignátio in that year relate that he has obtained an illustrated Mandaean scroll, in fact the Diwan Abatur,39 and inform us that he has written a Latin text in the form of a dialogue, refuting the errors of the Mandaeans, and promising that Persian and Arabic translations will follow. He also lends his support to the establishment of a bishopric at Basra for the spiritual welfare of the ‘St John Christians’40. His text on the Mandaeans and their ‘errors’ saw the light of day in 165241. This Narratio is widely known and often quoted by scholars as being the first which provided Europe with news of the Mandaeans. While it is certainly the first book devoted entirely to the topic, it was, as we have seen, preceded by many years by the information given in Gouveia’s Relacam, which had circulated in Portuguese from 1612, and in French from 1646. In 1651, Ignátio gave notice of a new and even more implausible attempt to effect a mass migration of the Mandaeans. The king of the Maldive Isles, then in exile in Goa, and anxious to regain his kingdom after his subjects had rebelled, had sought the financial and military aid of the Mandaeans in this enterprise, promising them many rewards, including a gift of land where they could establish themselves free of the Arab yoke. It appears that the Carmelite Provincial in Goa had approved this bizarre enterprise, and he appointed three religious from Basra to assist if it should reach fruition. Ignátio was to lead the mission, assisted by Bernabé de San Carlos and Matteo de San José. The volatile Bernabé, already unhappy with his stay in the convent of Basra, sought to use the planned migration as a pretext to visit Hawizah, centre of the Man- daean religious establishment in the region, He marvels, not unreasonably, that this has not been done during the long years of the mission in Basra, although, to his disgust, neither of his associates agreed with his suggestion. The planned migration, which appears to have been little more than a pipe dream, had, in the meantime, once again come to nothing.

38 A bitter disappointment for the Carmelite, this must have been disastrous for those who had travelled to Basra leaving everything behind, and for those who had had their property confis- cated a result of their planned departure. 39 This is the copy of the Diwan Abatur now in the , and which has been reproduced with an English translation by Lady Drower, E. S. Drower Diwan Abatur, or pro- gress through the Purgatories text with translation, notes and appendices, Studi e testi no.151, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, , 1950. 40 With the death in April 1649 of Monsignor Ingoli, indefatigable servant of the Propaganda since its formal inception, this proposal receives no further mention. 41 See n. 23 supra.

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Despite, or perhaps because of this and later disagreements and clashes of personality at the Carmelite convent in Basra, both Ignátio de Jesus and Matteo de S José produced a substantial corpus of written work. In 1649, Ignátio de Jesus advised the Propaganda that he was working on the promised Persian and Arabic translations of his Narratio, together with a summary of the Diwan Abatur, and a Mandaean dictionary. As to Matteo de San José, he appears to have initially thrown himself with enormous enthusiasm into an apostolate among the Mandaeans, organising disputations, and conferences aimed at their conversion. His first literary work was an anti-Muslim polemic, but his next, which he modestly described as ‘the single most effective way of destroying, extirpating and annihilating that infidel sect known as the “St John Christians”’ bore the title The Roads to Perdition and Salvation. Reflecting on what he saw as Mandaean obstinacy, he surmised that their beliefs must be based in some way on the Qur’an, and his comparative study led him to claim that the three Mandaean texts The Book of John, The Book of Adam, and the Book of Zakharia are based on the Qur’an, while suggesting borrowings also from Christianity, Judaism, Persian religion, and Hinduism. Tellingly, he continues by saying ‘and if they say that they want to join with the Portuguese, this is only to free themselves from the tyranny of the Turks, and not in order to free themselves from their superstitions’. In what appears to be a new missionary approach to the Mandaeans, Matteo also pro- poses that his work in Arabic should be printed and distributed among them, in order for them to discover the errors in which their priests had ensnared them. By 1650, however, his letters clearly indicate that he no longer believes that anything can be done to convert the Mandaeans, and he has turned his attention to working among the Eastern Christians. He continued, however, to work on a Christian Doctrine for the St John Christians, and completed a Compendium of the rites and errors of the St John Christians, accompanied by a Description or depiction of their villages and number of their families. In his final year at Basra, he dedicated himself to the study of languages, on the basis that there was no other useful occupation, and in a letter of April 1651, announcing that he is sending a Doctrine in Arabic and Turkish, promises that this will be followed by a pentalingual dictionary in Mandaean, Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Latin42. Despite his earlier pessimism about the possible conversion of Mandaeans in Basra, Matteo’s opinion appears to have changed during the period when he himself returned to exercise the role of Carmelite superior in that city. His letters of 1655-1657 list fifty-five of Mandaeans, stating that ‘Every

42 The possibility that a manuscript pentalingual glossary in the library of the University of Leiden may be Matteo’s dictionary has been tentatively suggested in Roberta Borghero ‘A 17th cen- tury Glossary of Mandaic’ in ARAM vol. 11 no. 2 (1999), 311-319.

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day there are people coming over from St John to Christ by way of the water of baptism.’43. However, a Carmelite report of 1674 calls into account much of the missionary endeavours of that Order among the Mandaeans. While an examination of the books of the convent revealed the names of several hundred Mandaean con- verts recorded in the register of baptisms, on turning to the register of burials, not a single record was found of these ‘converts’ having been buried by the Carmelites, nor, with one dubious exception, had any of them been joined in matrimony. Together with the fact that few Mandaean converts frequented the church, it is perhaps not surprising that the writers of the report ‘were thrown into doubt and greatly marvelled’. They note that ‘some have said that it is easy to convert the Sabians and that they easily recant; but they might better have said that they are in no wise converted but easily dissemble’. The writer refers to the Mandaeans’ ‘erroneous opinion that the two or three drops of water of Christian baptism do not render invalid the immersion of the Sabians…. on the other hand [Christian] marriage and burial does conflict with their religion.’. The missionaries summoned those listed as baptised, insisting ‘that they should abandon their infidel creed and embrace the true faith’. In a few days the church was full of supposed ‘Christians’ and ‘catechumens’, ‘and there was not one among the Sabians who did not say that he wanted to be baptised; but when warned that it was first necessary to leave the terminus a quo and then to go the terminus ad quem, there was not one to be found willing to abandon the sect of the Sabians.’ The Mandaeans were summoned again to the Carmelite residence in 1679, and the true state of affairs became abundantly clear. When those who had been baptised were asked why they were not living a Christian life, they replied that they believed that it was sufficient for them to be baptised as Catholics, and that afterwards they could follow their own customs. Being told that it was essential to leave one’s old beliefs when accepting a new faith, they declared that if they had known that to be the case they would not have accepted Chris- tian baptism. Those baptised as infants declared that they had not known what they were doing, and had an absolute wish to live and die in the Mandaean fashion. From this time all attempts at proselytism by the Catholic missionaries of Basra among the Mandaeans ceased, and this curious of Catholic mission history drew to a close.

43 Anon (= Herbert Chick), A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Missions of the XVII and XVIII centuries, 2 vols, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1939, vol.1, 335.

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