Drugs, Health, Bodies and Souls in the Tropics ... - Ines G. Županov

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religious specialists, who all proposed or promised health and prosperity in exchange
for money, prestige, political authority, etc. 121
There is also ample evidence that Jesuit faith-healing techniques and
instruments intrigued and attracted non-Christian healers. The cross, the Bible or the
book of prayers, the holy water and the burning of oil in the church were all taken to
have curative qualities. Some of the native healers ultimately converted to
Christianity after having lost confidence in their own powers. Some, on the other
hand, probably converted partly for practical reasons, that is, to be able to keep their
jobs in Goa among the growing Christian population. Thus, Luís Fróis mentioned a
family of Muslim physicians in Goa, two brothers of which converted to Christianity
in 1560, while their father remained Muslim under pretext of not wanting to desert his
Muslim wife. 122 It is difficult to speculate what conversion actually meant to these
Muslim physicians. Whatever the case, they probably followed their sense of
pragmatic urgency rather than any fundamentalist or ideological inclination. When, in
spite of all display of Christian medical mystique, the native physicians did not show
any sign of losing their superstitious faith, there were other methods to be used.
Henrique Henriques's complained a few times in his letters about native non-Christian
physicians "who do not cure with remedies in which God deposited the [healing]
virtues", but with superstitious prayers to false pagan gods. 123 He repeated a similar
complaint from his mission on the island of Manar between the South Indian coast
and Sri Lanka,
"And because we know that the physicians who cure make war on us, because
many of them cure with words and other worse things […], we ordered them to
join us in the house every Saturday in which we tell them how to cure and other
things they need to know for their souls. After having done this for some weeks we
ordered them to come every fifteen days." 124
If grace was a necessary and indispensable chemical element that changed hearts, the
closely supervised use of time was probably as efficient. Strict time management
produced coherent routine, which then absorbed the sense of direction to otherwise
messy social realities. The famous and often-mentioned methodical approach of
Jesuits to social and natural phenomena is perfectly visible in their missionary field.
Nowhere could one observe better, as in some alchemist laboratory, the formulas of
social engineering and cultural transformation than in those clearly bounded mission
121 Although Jesuits did everything to combat and estrange these local healers, they were willing at times to test
their remedies. In 1561, Henrique Henriques, asked for permission to try out local medicine (mezinha) used by
jogues, because it was reputed to fortify the body, without mortification, against the "appetite coming from
sensuality". The then General of the Society of Jesus, Laínez, responded a year later from Trent – where he
participated in the closing sessions of the Church Council -, without offering any decision and leaving the whole
matter in hands of the Jesuit Provincial in India. With the election of Francisco de Borja to the office of the
General (1565-1572) and with the tightening of the post-Tridentine religious environment, using pagan medicine
became unimaginable. He stiffly ordered the Provincial in Goa, António de Quadros, to leave "the medicine for
chastity" to the "bonjes", obviously confounding the name used for the Japanese Buddhist priests with the jogues
from Henriques's letter. What the metropolitan injunction implicitly prohibited was any kind of comensurability
between a Jesuit body and that of a pagan religious specialist. Controlling one's sexual impulses was (and Borja
had in mind just that) the result of choice, will and grace, at least for those who sought membership in the Society
of Jesus.Henrique Henriques, to Diogo Laínez, Mannar, Dec. 19, 1561, ARSI, Goa 8 II, f 294r. Diogo
Laínez, to Henrique Henriques, Trent, 12 Dec., 1562, DI, V, p. 661. Franciso Borja, to António de
Quadros, A. de, Rome, 29 Nov., 1565, DI, VI, p. 526
122 Luís Fóis to a brothers in Coimbra, Goa, Dec. 1, 1560, Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisboa, Ulyssiponensis
2, f.210v
123 Henrique Henriques to the General in Rome, Manakkudi (near Kanniyakumari) , Jan. 13, 1558,
ARSI, Goa 8 I, ff.148v-149r
124 Henrique Henriques to Diogo Laínez (the General), Mannar, Dec. 24-Jan. 11, 1564, ARSI, Goa 8 II,
f.422v.
Ines G. Županov, CNRS, Paris