Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India: Francisco Ros SJ in Malabar (16th-17th Centuries). By Antony Mecherry, SJ. Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu. Volume 79. Rome, 2019. l + 494 pp. ISBN: 978 88 7041 379 3. Price: €

Abstract

Antony Mecherry, SJ is a professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute (Scienze ecclesiastiche orientale) in Rome, a rising scholar who promises to be for decades to come one of the leading historians of the Society of Jesus in India. Impressively detailed scholarship underlies the book, a mastery of sources in the required Western and Indian languages, including archival materials, letters and texts that have never been printed. It is a paradigm of meticulous scholarship, valuable even for its bibliography, which runs to thirty pages. The book makes a fresh contribution to familiar and much discussed issues with respect to Christianity in Asia. Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation is highly recommended for readers interested in nuancing the story of the arrival of Western Christianity in India, and in seeing the complexities of what the missionaries were up to.