Missionaries in Persia

Christian Windler is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He specializes in the social and cultural history of diplomacy, religious practices, and global entanglements from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. His publications include La diplomatie comme expérience de l’Autre: Consuls français au Maghreb (1700-1840) (2002), a pioneering study in new diplomatic history.Since the early 2000s, he has broadened his interest in cultural intermediaries by focusing on missionaries as cultural brokers and “glocal” actors.He has been principal investigator on several externally funded projects in new diplomatic history and in the history of religious practices in Europe and beyond.

This is a landmark book which deftly probes the issue of commensurability in the intercultural encounter across continents in the newly globalizing world of the 17th century. Windler asks pertinent questions about the nature of confessionalism, a Christian-European concept, and how it fared in early modern Iran, a non-Western, Muslim society. The complex portrait he paints by way of answers should serve as a starting point for future studies about similar encounters elsewhere.

• List of Figures AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsGlossary of Latin termsIntroduction1. 1. The short arm of Rome: The Curia, superiors and missionariesThe Holy Office and the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide: Aspirations and obstacles to enforcing papal primacyThe Discalced Carmelites: Dysfunctional institutions and internalized disciplineMaintaining proximity from a distance“Stepmother” or protectress? Missionaries and the Propaganda Fide2. 2. In the shadow of the Shah: The Safavid Empire as an arena for Catholic missionThe European powers in the Safavid system of imperial ruleThe Safavid practice of power, between inclusiveness and orthodoxyGlobal actors: The Armenian merchants of New JulfaOmens of conversion or Machiavellianism?3. 3. Christian ‘ulama? Missionaries and MuslimsMissionaries at the Safavid courtMissionaries and Shi’a scholarsMedicine, the belief in miracles, and the administration of the sacramentsFrom social closeness to conversion to Islam4. 4. Among “brethren,” “schismatics” or “heretics”? Missionaries and ArmeniansGood correspondence and sacramental community with rediscovered “brethren”“We do not need you”: New practices of confessional disambiguationAccommodation and dissimulation5. 5. As Christians among Muslims: Missionaries and European laypeople of different confessionsEuropean laypeople in Isfahan and New JulfaMissionaries among themselvesTransconfessional “good friendship and correspondence”Shared religious practices in the diaspora6. 6. Local interconnections and observance: The missionaries in conflict with the norms of their orderThe Discalced Carmelites: Unsuited to mission?Local social integration and observanceAll-too worldly businessThe mission as a world turned upside down: Justification strategies and cultural relativization7. 7. Undesirable outcomes: From mission to Enlightenment?Doctrinal disambiguationTruth claims and limits to norm enforcement: The practice of avoiding decisionsNormative orders outside the ChurchConclusionSources and BibliographyIndex