How to Become a Missionary in the Orient?

Abstract

In the Early Modern Period, many a Jesuit sought a place on the overseas missions. The litterae indipetae – the petitions sent by the candidates to the General – provide evidence of the collective phenomenon of mass vocations among the members of the order. The present article pro- vides an analysis of the requests sent by Polish-Lithuanian Jesuits for the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire and Persia in the period between 1610s–1720s. It aims to understand how the candidates conceptualised these territories, and what knowledge about the dreamed destination they decided to reveal in the petitions. It also explores how they explained their inclination towards serving in the Muslim Orient and the religiously ambiguous Circassia. While many of the Polish-Lithuanian Jesuits followed the standard procedure of seeking the General’s consent for a mission abroad, only a few received his permission. Most probably, the real need of priestly ministry in Poland-Lithuania itself, played an important role in the superior’s indifference to the poignant descriptions of the suffering captives and their unbaptized children, as well as to a tempting picture of supposedly Christian inhabitants of the Northern Caucasus, who could be easily won for the Catholic faith. It deserves attention that numerous Polish-Lithuanian Jesuits, who spent some time preaching God’s Word in the Orient, did not send petitions before reaching their missionary destinations. Many of them traveled eastwards as the chaplains of the Polish-Lithuanian envoys. Those of the missionaries, who decided to stay abroad for a longer period, usually made an effort to receive post factum the General’s approval. Finally, we find one more group among the Polish- Lithuanian Jesuits serving in Persia and Northern Caucasus namely the supplicants for China, who failed to reach the Far-East and settled for less prestigious missionary posts.