Between Atlantic and Pacific worlds: missionary return-travels and the making of global Roman Catholicism (1580-1670 (original) (raw)

The project sets out to investigate missionary return-paths to Europe as a sensitive arena of conflict and negotiation in the making of global Roman Catholicism between the 16 th and the 17 th century. In a time of competing imperial dynamics and strong Papal universalistic claims, missionary mobility towards Europe shaped polycentric and discontinuous configurations, spanning the Atlantic and Pacific areas, as well as involving courts in the Old world, especially that of Rome and Madrid. The project will address actors, textual and visual 'writings', as well as objects as travelling 'knowledge collectives' and explore their often controversial role as a communicative " bypass " between worlds. Missionary knowledge will emerge as a contrasted resource for claims and actions, both in face-to face interactions within Europe itself, as well as over distances. Shifting dynamics of centralities and de-centralities will be captured, connecting Rome and capitals in Europe, as well as other " world cities " , such as Lima and Manila. Within this complex framework, the project will aim at providing a major contribution to the rethinking of Papal universalism and its many actors, as well as the complex meanings of Rome as a hub of global knowledge While the missions to the new worlds were understood as one-way lifelong experiences, time-limited and purpose-oriented return-travels to Europe were not necessarily seen as extraordinary events, even though they proved to be highly differentiated in their circumstances, conditions and specific aims. Return-travels were undertaken by actors belonging to different religious orders with Franciscans and Dominicans playing as significant a role as the Jesuits, with whom they were in both competition and conflict. In the long and highly discontinuous process, leading up to the funding of the Propaganda Fide Papal Congregation (1622), and projecting itself even beyond the traditional watershed of the Westphalen peace-treaties (1648), travelling missionary knowledge was very much welcomed in colonial cities, as well as European courts, as potentially valuable resources for information. The epistemic value of this knowledge attracted institutional attention and triggered complex processes of translation and communicative interactions. This project will engage with the many different individual and collective interests, claims, projects and agencies which missionary knowledge gave rise to, supported and mediated. Asymmetric relationships will be explored in depth, as well as nodes of interconnections between global circulation and urban spaces. Missionary knowledge, as a resource embodied in actors, writings and things, circulated not only across vast distances but also within urban contexts, either within the colonial Empires or in Europe, whereby communicative density and multiple jurisdictions opened up further spaces for competition and conflict. Political fragmentations and plurality stimulated communication within the urban fabric but also somehow made more room for actors and agencies. Within these urban trans-local contexts, archives, such as the one of Propaganda Fide in Rome, should not be regarded as mere repositories of missionary knowledge and information. On the contrary, they will be