1606

The mission that turned inland

For sixty years more the faith kept to the shore. Christianity, one historian wrote, lay entrenched without the walls of India. Then, on 10 November 1606, a small party rode out of Tuticorin for Madurai, and among them was a Roman nobleman's son named Roberto de Nobili. He found every door closed to him until he put off his European dress and took up the life of a sannyasi — one who resigns or abandons all. He learned Tamil and Sanskrit, ate once a day, and was let in. The inland mission he opened was passed down from one man to the next, and in 1683 it came into the hands of a Portuguese Jesuit of the royal household at Lisbon: John de Britto. From Madurai, de Britto came south.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 2 sources.
Cronin 1959p. 30
30 A PEARL TO INDIA Muslim north, another to Chandragiri, east-south-east from Goa. But both were accredited to a royal court, and the missionaries acted as unofficial ambassadors. Christianity lay entrenched without the walls of India. Within lay one hundred and forty million Indians. By his own efforts no Christian missionary had yet succeeded in scaling the walls. Nobili’s studies at the College of St Paul’s were interrupted— as a result of the change of climate—by a “terrible illness”. But he passed his examination in theology and by the end of 1605 was free to start his missionary work. In Rome he had met and favourably impressed an Italian named Alberto Laerzio, a missionary in India since 1579, and at that time on a recruiting tour. It seems likely that Laerzio had settled with the General at Rome that Nobili was to join his own province. A short voyage of eight to ten days down the coast brought Nobili to Cochin, headquarters of his new superior. Ralph Fitch, a Londoner who visited Cochin in 1583, had this to say: “All the inhabitants here have very little houses covered with the leaves of the coco-trees. ‘The men be of reasonable stature; the women little black, with a cloth bound about their middle hanging down to their hammes, all the rest of their body be naked; they have horrible great ears, with many rings set with pearls and stones in them.” Since Fitch’s day, the second largest Portuguese base in India had grown to include a cathedral, bishop’s palace, churches and monasterics, residential quarters for the Portuguese traders, and large warehouses to store pepper and cinnamon. In Cochin’s College of the Mother of God Nobili met his new superior. Laerzio was then forty-nine, twenty years Nobili’s senior, an energetic Italian from the Pennine Alps whose gentle manner hid a determined and daring spirit. Though he had his limitations as an administrator, few could match his missionary zeal. Above all he was broad-minded. These were qualities Nobili admired; and at once he and Laerzio were laying the foundations of a lifelong friendship. But the torrid heat of Cochin proved too much for Nobili and soon after his arrival he suffered a serious relapse. On 20th January 1606 he rallied enough to dictate a letter to Aquaviva:
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A Pearl to India: The Life of Roberto de NobiliLondon, 1959 — Vincent Cronin, d. 2011

Still in copyright. We quote a short passage with attribution, as the law allows, and do not reproduce the page.

What this source establishes

That before de Nobili, Christianity in India was held to the coast — "entrenched without the walls". Cronin is a modern biography, not a primary document, and he is still in copyright, so we quote him and do not reproduce his page.