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CHAPTER SEVEN JOSEPH BESSON, FRENCH NATIONALISM AND POSSESSING THE HOLY LAND: IN DEFENSE OF THE JESUIT MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE IN GREATER SYRIA, 1625–1660 Mazin Tadros They never show you things as they are, but bend and disguise them according to the way they have seen them; and to give credence to their judgment and attract you to it, they are prone to add something to their matter, to stretch it out and amplify it. –Michel de Montaigne1 Joseph Besson, a Jesuit missionary, arrived in Sidon in April of 1659 and immediately began to write about the experience of his fellow missionar- ies and the inhabitants of Syria. His efforts culminated in the publication of La Syrie Sainte, a two-volume work based on the letters and annual reports of his peers that had been written between 1625 and 1659. Its com- position was intended to secure material and financial support from the literate elite in French society, but the book is important for several rea- sons: it demonstrates the practice of propaganda, particularly the rhetori- cal methods that were employed by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century; and it reveals the difference in objectivity between the correspondences of his peers, who had lived among the indigenous population of Jews, Christians, and Muslims for many years, and Besson’s highly embellished portrayal of the history of the mission. And, specific to the theme of the present volume, the book is an example of how one Jesuit formed his vision of the Holy Land in the context of nascent French ‘nationalism’ and biblical heroism.2 1 Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals” in The Complete Works: Essay, Travel Journal, Letters, trans. Donald M. Frame (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 184. 2 This article is derived from the author’s unpublished dissertation “Fishers of Men, the Jesuits in Bilad al-Sham (1625–1660),” (Ph.D. diss. State University of New York at Albany, 2009). Under Ottoman rule, Greater Syria or Bilād al-Shām (in Ottoman parlance, Bādiyat al-Shām) can be described as the geographic area that consists of the present nation-states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and the western half of Jordan. See for example, ce Bosworth, ‘al-Sham,’ in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 12 vols (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960–2005), 126 mazin tadros La Syrie Sainte was published in July 1660. The draft of the work was submitted from Aleppo to the Provincial Superior in Paris sometime after 2 March 1660, as noted in the “Preface” of the work by Jean Peysonnel, the French doctor responsible for the welfare of the merchants and con- suls in Syria.3 Due to the short time span from his arrival in Sidon to the submission of the manuscript and his inability to comprehend any of the indigenous languages, Besson was not unlike the armchair travelers described by Samuel Chew in his survey of English travelers to the Islami- cate world. These writers did not set foot on Islamicate soil, but turned to accounts of actual travelers and infused them with exotic images and pre-conceived medieval notions about the ‘orient.’4 Even more, Besson deliberately misrepresented the letters and annual reports of his peers that were previously sent to the Jesuit leadership because he wanted to appeal to his coreligionists, who could contribute materially to the Jesuit missionaries in Syria. Besson showed the land to be filled with persecution and misery. This presentation of the land as a region of cruelty was primarily a rhetorical device to develop in his readers a sense of compassion for the heroes of the narrative – the Jesuits. At the same time, it was meant to provoke feelings of disdain for the people of the region.5 The combination of these vol. 9, 261–73. According to Kamal Salibi, the term ‘Bilād al-Shām’ was used by pre-Islamic Arabs to denote geographic Syria (Greater Syria) until the nineteenth century when the area was commonly referred to as ‘Syria’; Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 60–65. This article will use the terms ‘Syria’ and ‘Holy Land’ to denote this area. Besson’s demarcation of the Holy Land is synonymous with this geographic description of Syria in the seven- teenth century. 3 The original work was published in French; all translations into English are mine. 4 Chew, Samuel C. The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 22–30. The works of these ‘armchair’ travelers, pamphlets, travel guides, and histories rarely reflected the reality of the Islamicate world and contributed to the negative image of the other, specifically, the ‘Oriental.’ The term ‘Islamicate’ was first used by Marshall Hodgson in 1958 in order to distinguish the religious component of culture. Hodgson notes that the use of ‘Islamic’ emphasizes the ‘religious sense’ of the society, where ‘Islamicate’ refers to the “cultural complex historically associ- ated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when formed among non-Muslims.” The term ‘Islamicate’ includes the multiplicity of faiths and ethnici- ties that existed and participated in a society whose population was predominantly Mus- lim, sharing in the same food, language, and other components of culture. See Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, the Classical Age of Islam, 3 vols (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), vol. 1, 57–60. 5 In a few instances, Besson seemed to have empathy for non-Catholic Christians, but in others, he loathed ‘schismatics’ and ‘heretics’ for being as responsible as the Muslims for the ‘oppression’ experienced by the Jesuits..

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