The Visitor: André Palmeiro and the Jesuits in Asia by Liam Matthew Brockey (review)

Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724, published in 2007, established Liam Brockey as among the most respected younger scholars of the Jesuits’ presence in early modern Asia. The Visitor, another remarkable book, accessibly and lucidly illumines early colonialism, recounts the struggles of European Catholics to establish solid ecclesial structures and successful missions, and, most remarkably, dissects in vivid detail the drama of the inner workings of the Society of Jesus in its first century in Asia. He does all this by telling the story of the Portuguese Jesuit André Palmeiro (1569–1635), who was for over twenty years the “Visitor,” or plenipotentiary, of the order’s Roman headquarters, invested with enormous authority over property, missions, and men, first in India and Sri Lanka, and then across vast reaches of Asia, even to Japan, Macau, and China. As Visitor, Palmeiro stood in for Rome in an age when travel was slow and dangerous and vital communications stretched out over years. Yet he remains obscure, appearing only marginally in studies of China’s Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and India’s Robert de Nobili (1577–1656). Substantive information about Palmeiro is available only in dusty archives in Rome and elsewhere; these Brockey has mastered brilliantly, composing a narrative that brings to life Palmeiro and his times. The Visitor may have been neglected also because he was no bold pioneer, such as Francis Xavier (1506–52), nor was he a brilliant innovator negotiating the margins between religious universes, such as Ricci or de Nobili. To study Palmeiro is rather to dwell on detailed negotiations and management crises that only after close study show their true import: holding together the widely scattered Jesuits; maintaining good relations with the Portuguese, local bishops, and members of other religious orders; and even calming rivalries between Portuguese and Italian Jesuits. Brockey demythologizes his Jesuits, dispels simplistic scenarios of hero and villain, and restores both the famous and the obscure to the proper social and political contexts of their era. The seventeenth-century Jesuit project of evangelization is thus brought down to earth, restored to its corporate, political, and European cultural contexts. However we estimate their missionary zeal, Brockey has immeasurably improved the likelihood that we will bestow our praise and blame on the early Jesuits more soberly and realistically.