In gaining greater awareness of contemporary situations, historians of the early modern period identify the extent to which missionary objectives, contexts, and methods—as well as the debates they sparked—are inscribed within the longue durée in accordance with models created in the sixteenth century.
The word “mission,” and the substantive “missionary” that accompanies it to refer to those sent and tasked with preaching the Gospel, only date back to the late sixteenth century. They come from Ignatius of Loyola, who in the basic rule of the Society of Jesus, asked the pope to send (mittere) among the Turks or some other people priests who would make themselves available for this purpose. It was also the founder of the Jesuits who, setting out from the passage in the Gospel of Matthew (10:1–41) in which Jesus dispenses advice to the apostles he is sending on missions, drafted the Constitutiones circa missiones in 1544–1545, offering a framework for the systematic organization of missionary activity. Previously, in Trinitarian theology, the missio dei referred to the Father sending the Son, and the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit.1 It should be noted that use of the word “catechism,” denoting the summary of Christian faith designed for a wide public, was made popular by Martin Luther’s Small Catechism (1536). The word “Propaganda” emerged somewhat later with the creation at the Vatican of the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide in 1622 to manage missions. Originally it was a verbal form, “to propagate,” which became a substantive in the modern sense of “propaganda” during the French Revolution as it gradually moved beyond the semantic repertory of the mission.
Naturally, the act of ‘sending’ was not new: this is quite simply what the Greek term “apostolate” means, and the apostles were literally sent by Jesus (Matthew 10). What was new about missions in the sixteenth century was that they emerged as an endeavor led by an institution, one that was more organized and conceived more collectively and institutionally than before. In fact, the first manuals for systematically conducting missions were published in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.2
Yet it was in the nineteenth century that “mission” and “missionaries” truly became familiar notions beyond Catholicism, with the rise of Pietist Protestant missionaries in the late eighteenth century,3 and then European expansion conceived of as “civilization” (simultaneously a state of cultural advancement and a movement to “civilize”). The Alliance Israélite Universelle was in keeping with this movement. It is therefore no surprise that Jews, who adopted the anthropological distance of the “missionary” with respect to their “field,” appropriated the terms “mission,” “missionary,” and “catechism” in the early twentieth century (Trevisan Semi).
“Preaching the Kingdom of God” and “healing the sick,” which appear in almost all missionary situations (Luke 9:1, Matthew 10:2–23), were part of missionary activity from the very beginning. However, it should be noted that preaching was not done openly when political authorities were hostile to it, or when, in countries where the Christian faith had hegemony or a monopoly, missionaries collided with diocesan Christian clergy (a very common situation). With respect to the power to heal the sick, there was a gradual transition beginning in the seventeenth century away from recourse to the supernatural toward scientific medicine, although acts of charity toward others in the field of health remain one of the primary sources of charisma for the missionary.
These passages from the Gospel also mention travel, and even wandering in a welcoming or hostile environment. Mobility is therefore part of the missionary’s duty to evangelize and spiritual quest. It can be expressed by going to foreign lands far from home, like the European and North American missionaries who left for Ethiopia in the nineteenth century or for Turkey in the late twentieth. It can also translate into micro-mobility, or short-distance travel from a fixed point for a limited amount of time, as was often the case for “apostolic tours” among Catholics and Protestants, as demonstrated by evangelicals in Istanbul (Aupiais). The “mission” can subsequently refer to the base and even the building from which missionaries set out. Proselytising operations consisting of a temporary occupation of a street or neighborhood, such as those conducted today by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement (Tank-Storper), were already being organized in Catholic states by Filippo Neri, François de Sales, and Jesuits at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
From the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses published by the Jesuits4 popularized the exotic geographies and distant adventures of missionaries among a European public. Chateaubriand, who was an avid reader and admirer of these Lettres édifiantes, and who penned exalted pages in his Génie du Christianisme5 on the Jesuit missions of the Ancien Régime, helped develop this European imaginary and give renewed momentum to the missionary revival of the nineteenth century. Since then, public opinion has imagined the missionary exclusively in an exotic and pagan environment, and has understood the conversion sought by missions only as that of the other, of the non-Christian.
In fact, from the late sixteenth century onward, missions were deployed in nearby lands to check the spread of the competing religion, and to mobilize the faithful in their own confession through education. The methods used to educate Catholics in French, Italian, and German provinces sometimes drew inspiration from the experience acquired “in the Indies,” the Far East, and America. However, two of the most famous Catholic missionaries, authors of manuals diffused throughout the world—Paolo Segneri (1624–1694) and Alfonso Di Liguori (1696–1787)—exerted their talent in the Italian countryside as part of travelling missions. Similar to what Sébastien Tank-Storper has explained with regard to Judaism, this involved remobilizing the faithful and clearly establishing the boundaries of faith in order to save the community from dissolution, namely by including the norms distinguishing Catholics from “heretics” or “pagans.” Beginning in the nineteenth century, multiple waves of Catholic and Protestant “internal missions” were deployed in Europe to target populations that were dechristianised or in the process of being so. It is also in this sense that Pope John Paul II relaunched and recentred missions after their decline due to decolonization. Recent decades have potentially brought an expansion of this missionary mobilization not only among Catholics, but among Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus as well.
Missions can take their place in different “systems of historicity.” Missionary time can be eschatological, part of preparations for the imminent end of times. It was in this atmosphere that what are commonly referred to as the “Major Discoveries” of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries occurred, in addition to the first wave of evangelization in America and Asia, conceived of as the fulfilment of the word of the Gospel: “And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). The publication of the first treatises on missiology and the creation of a special ministry for missions at the head of the Catholic Church (the Propaganda Fide) were in line with a critical phase and departure from this eschatological frenzy, one that adopted a missionary model with long-term objectives seeking to adapt the Christian message to newly discovered cultures.
Another eschatological wave affected late eighteenth-century Protestantism. It was within a millenarian atmosphere that the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (Trevisan Semi) was founded in 1809, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810.6 Samuel Gobat, the Swiss-born Anglican bishop of Jerusalem who played an important role beginning in 1846 in missions to Ethiopia (Trevisan Semi), was among those who believed that the conversion of the Jews and their settlement in Palestine would quickly fulfill Scripture, and hasten the coming of the Messiah’s next kingdom on Earth.7 It is ironic to find the same messianic accents and language in 2013 spoken by Joseph Sitruk, Chief Rabbi of the Israelite Central Consistory of France (Tank-Storper). The fact is that the Israeli right wing has established a political alliance with Evangelical Zionism.
Conversion is at the heart of missions. Today more than ever, it is central to discourses. Converts are simultaneously highlighted and scrutinized in both religion and the social sciences. While it is natural to think conversion as concerning the “others,” conversion means first and foremost a conversion of the self, of missionaries themselves. This is all the truer given that in Judaism and Protestantism, the universal vocation makes each believer (or convert) a missionary. This “conversion to God” is presented as a recasting, a renewal, a radical transformation, a change from one state to another. The reference is Saint Paul (see his conversion: Acts of the Apostles 9:3–10, and his definition of conversion: Epistle to the Colossians 3:9–10). This conversion is an inner transformation that gives life to another person, and presupposes a division within the personality, a conflict in convictions, and a discontinuity of choices and biographical background. The figure of the converted Jew as a Protestant missionary was fairly common in the nineteenth century (Trevisan Semi). We are familiar with the role played by conversion in the life and discourse of contemporary evangelicals (Aupiais). “The powerful conversionist tradition [of the United States], which is as vibrant today as it has ever been,”8 has diffused universally, potentially influencing Jewish conversion discourses (Tank-Storper). In the Catholic tradition, the major founders of missions (Ignatius of Loyola, François de Sales, Alfonso di Liguori, etc.) all experienced an intense moment of conversion.
The conversion of others depends on political circumstances. In a regime such as the Ethiopian Empire, which had an official religion (Coptic Miaphysite Christianity), or the Republic of Turkey, founded on an ethnoreligious nationalism that excludes non-Sunni Muslims, missionaries could hardly expect to convert members from the dominant confession. In Islamic countries, conversion to another religion—and Christianity in particular—is even to this day officially impossible, and considered apostasy. While today this “crime” leads only exceptionally to the death penalty, it demeans converts within society and deprives them of a certain number of rights. Since the experience of the Middle Ages, Christian missionaries have known that it is impossible and dangerous to address Muslims with a view to proselytism and have instead turned toward Christian or Jewish minorities to fulfil their vocation in Muslim countries. Similarly, Protestant missionaries in Ethiopia targeted the Beta Israel, as they could not address the Miaphysite Christian subjects of the Negus (Trevisan Semi). In Palestine and Mount Lebanon in the nineteenth century, after vainly addressing Jews, they quickly devoted themselves to proselytising among Christians.
Addressing a minority group suffering discrimination and living withdrawn into itself exposes missionaries to marginalizing themselves, and consequently not having a genuine impact on society (Trevisan Semi, Aupiais). Since Ignatius of Loyola’s Constitutiones circa missiones, it has been a common notion to target leaders and the elite, counting on their adherence to win over the rest of the country. In the absence of the freedom to publicly practice one’s religion and its teachings, holding important positions and enjoying prestige can be seen as groundwork for the country’s future conversion. This was the role played by French Jesuits at the court in China during the eighteenth century. This is also the idea that appears to be at work in the offer extended to the Negus, namely to bring qualified artisans in an effort to develop the country (Trevisan Semi).
The absence of support from political authorities also raises the question of the methods used to convert, in addition to the quality of the conversions obtained. This has been rightly perceived by the Catholic Church upon the founding of the Propaganda fide (1622), when the pope’s encyclical to the nuncios contrasted the coercion used in Catholic countries and “the gentle ways full of charity” needed in countries where those in power are hostile. Prudence and an absence of political support has led missionaries to adapt to and “accommodate” to the specific conditions of a society, thereby raising difficult questions regarding the terminology used, practices tolerated, and compromises made with local laws and customs. This also means that the religion of new converts is experienced in secret or a domestic setting, which does not exclude them from their community of origin, whose rites, rules, and social hierarchies they do not completely and openly reject. This is why, depending on the circumstances, a specific age group (the young), gender (women), social category, or profession may feel more attracted by missionaries.9 Recourse to “human means” to obtain conversions has long been the subject of discussion: it is generally the other that is accused of “corrupting” or “buying” the conscience of those torn away from a community. It is true that in colonial situations charitable activity, especially teaching and healthcare, have given missionaries great attractive power, one that has been backed by resources from their support in Europe or America, and sometimes the less respectable resources provided by colonial exploitation companies. The question of the sincerity of these conversions should concern missionaries more than researchers in the human sciences. Let us nevertheless make the argument that one can sincerely believe in a religion that provides physical health or material prosperity.
There subsequently arises the question of confessional boundaries, which the Beta Israel seem to move past with ease in frequenting Protestants. French Jews, who are subject to the consistory system and the civil code, have had to make a compromise regarding their practices and community-based laws, and have been unable to unify within a single form of Jewish identity. The current logic, with its desire to Judaicise French Jews further, naturally leads to their settlement in a “Jewish state,” in which the confessional boundary is clearer and less permeable.
Louis Châtellier, La religion des pauvres. Les sources du christianisme moderne XVIe–XIXe siècles (Paris: Aubier, 1993), 25–27. Jean-François Zorn, “Mission (Missio Dei),” in Ion Bria, Philippe Chanson, Jacques Gadille, Marc Spindler, Dictionnaire œcuménique de missiologie (Paris, Cerf / Geneva, Labor et Fides / Yaoundé: CLE, 2001), 216–218.
José de Acosta, De Procuranda indorum salute, Madrid, CSIC, t. I, 1984 and t. II, 1987 (first edition: 1588); Thomas a Jesu, De procuranda salute omnium gentium, Antwerp, 1613.
On the origin of the Protestant missionary idea, see Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East. American Millennialism and Mission to The Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 15–33.
Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des Missions étrangères, par quelques missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus (Paris: Nicolas Le Clerc, 1703). The work went through numerous editions under this title during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
François-René de Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, ou Beautés de la religion chrétienne (2nd edition, Paris, 1803). Multiple editions appeared during the nineteenth century.
Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East; Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven. American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008).
Concerning Samuel Gobat, and the role he played with respect to the Ethiopian presence in Jerusalem, see Stéphane Ancel, Magdalena Krzyżanowska, Vincent Lemire, Le moine sur le toit. Histoire d’un manuscrit éthiopien trouvé à Jérusalem (1904) (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020). On his role in the establishment of the first Protestant and millenarian colonists in Palestine, see Falestin Naïli, La Palestine entre patrimoine et providence: Régimes d’historicité et mémoire à Artâs aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris: Karthala, 2022), 87.
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Conversion,” in Dictionnaire des faits religieux, ed. Régine Azria, D. Hervieu-Léger, (Paris, PUF 2010), 191.
Nadine Amsler, Andreea Badea, Bernard Heyberger, Christian Windler (eds.), Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia. Patterns of Localization (London / New York: Routledge, 2020). Nadine Amsler, Jesuits and Matriarchs. Domestic Worship in Early Modern China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018).
Bibliography
Ancel, Stéphane, Krzyżanowska, Magdalena, and Lemire, Vincent. Le moine sur le toit. Histoire d’un manuscrit éthiopien trouvé à Jérusalem (1904). Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020.
Makdisi, Ussama. Artillery of Heaven. American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008.