Catholicism beyond Europe














It is important to question the received geographies of world religions and to
problematize the connection between Europe and Christianity before we begin.
Ideas and mythologies about the presence of Christianity beyond Europe have
played an important role within European histories and European imaginations of the
world. For example, think of the long history of the legend of Prester John.
The Virgen de Candalaria, often depicted as a black Madonna. According to the
sixteenth century Spanish historian Alonso de Espinosa (1594), a statue of the virgin
Mary, holding a baby and a candle stand, was washed up on a beach in the Canary
Islands before the time of the Castilian conquest, legend has it that the statue
seemed to have miraculous powers and so was kept in high esteem by the
indigenous Guanche of Tenerife. It was kept in the cave of Chinguaro. It became the
object of local veneration and the patron saint of the Canary Islands. As Canary
Islanders migrated to the Americas in the Early Modern period, so too did the cult of
the Virgen de Candalaria.
The shape of the Spanish empire is important to the global history of Catholicism.
Religion and empire were heavily entangled in the Early Modern period. The papal
bull Inter Caetera, which effectively granted the Americas to Spain, added that this
was for the purposes of conversion, so religion justified empire.
Religion was important to the ritualistic construction of the spaces of empire.
Missionaries played a complex role in global history. The first missionaries in the
Americas were the Franciscans. They impacted on the physical landscapes, and on
spiritual and social landscapes as they played a role in conversion.
Debates over baptismal practices raged in the Americas, the implications of adult
baptism, and the question of mass conversions were all discussed, and can be seen
as a continuation of the debates of the European catholic reformation
Missionaries could also be violent, and introduced inquisitorial practices before the
official establishment of the Mexican Holy Office.
The Franciscan Zumarraga is thought to have overseen the destruction of
Amerindian archive of Texcoco (1530s), and there are other examples of
Franciscans overseeing the destruction of Amerindian documents. Diego Muñoz
Camargo’s Historia de Tlaxcala depicts the Franciscan destruction of Amerindian
traditional books and clothes.
It is important to try to understand the pre-existing cultures and religion that the
Europeans encountered, to understand the processes not only of conversion but the
multidirectional processes of adaptation, assimilation, and acculturation.
Acculturation is the process of transformation that takes place at the interface of
different cultures.
Missions were not only sites for conversion, but also acculturation. So we see
evidence of pre-Columbian religious ideas in post-conquest material culture.
According to New Mission history, missions were not simply spaces of conversion,
for people to receive a European religion, but the missions became spaces of
adaptation. The perspectives of new mission history remind historians of the
importance of indigenous interpretations and uses of missionaries.
The Jesuits developed a global presence from their establishment in 1540, they
arrived late in the Americas, in the 1570s, but then gained power quickly as they had





a mandate from the Spanish crown to establish Jesuit reductions (until they
developed too much power, were expelled from the Americas in 1767 and indeed
were suppressed in 1773).
Locals also developed their own form of Catholicism, and there are many examples
of Latin American catholic cults. Most famously, perhaps is the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The story of Juan Catarina is another good example. She was an Asian slave who
converted to Catholicism as she was caught up in the Manilla Galleon Trade and
taken from the Spanish port of Manilla to Mexico. It was reported that she embraced
Catholicism so quickly and easily that the Church leaders in Puebla wanted to see
her canonised. She became known as China Poblana, or the Asian woman of
Puebla, since in colonial Mexico the word China referred to anyone or anything from
Asia in general. The story reminds us of the global flows of Catholicism and the
emergence of indigenous saints.
The history of global Catholicism is not just the history of empire. Missionaries tried to
spread Catholicism to parts of the world that were not colonies. Global Catholicism
was not confined to the Spanish Empire.
The Jesuits were also particularly active in the Far East throughout the Early Modern
period. There they engaged in assimilation, learning Confucian dress and customs.
In Conclusion, it is important to disrupt some of the familiar geographies of
Catholicism, and to remember that Catholicism was outside Europe from the
beginning, and that the global context has impacted upon European Catholicism.
When we think about conversion, we should remember to analyse the processes of
adaptation, acculturation or appropriation. We can turn to material culture and art for
this to look for signs of hybridity in symbols and transcultural processes of
production.