Prussia against Rome, 1724–1742: Mathurin Veyssière La Crozeʼs and Giuseppe Simone Assemaniʼs Mediterraneist views on the Nestorians in India*

Abstract

In 1740 the Roman Church – through its major expert on Oriental languages and regions, Giuseppe Simone Assemani – was censoring Mathurin Veyssière La Croze’s Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, his second work on Christians between the Mediterranean and Ethiopia. This article puts censorship of this book into a global political context: first, of the competition of European powers between Catholics and Protestants (Prussia, France, and Rome) and, second, of the entanglements of the Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, and German merchants, colonizers, and missionaries with Eastern Christianity and non-Christian cultures between the Mediterranean and India. Third, the censorship proves to have happened at a time when Rome wanted to resolve definitively the Malabar rites controversy. Conservative Christian-Mediterraneanist hermeneutics to perceive the global religious situation can be revealed, opposed to a Pietist scheme of four world religions coexisting.