Conversion of the Paravas and the Arrival of St. Francis Xavier

http://www.shanlaxjournals.com 67 £UP® Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities Conversion of the Paravas and the Arrival of St. Francis Xavier G. Maria Mercy [Reg. No : 2421210032001] Ph.D Research Scholar (Full Time) P.G & Research Department of History Kamaraj College (Autonomous), Thoothukudi (Affiliated to ManonmaniamSundaranar University, Tirunelveli) Dr. K. Samuel Thangaraj Kores Assistant Professor of History Nazareth Margoschis College , Pillaiyanmanai, Nazareth (Affiliated to ManonmaniamSundaranar University, Tirunelveli) Abstract This study examines the historical context and significance of the conversion of the Paravas, a fishing community in southern India, and the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in the 16th century. The Paravas, facing persecution and seeking production, converted to Christianity, and St. Francis Xavier played a crucial role in their spiritual guidance and community development. The paravas were a fishing community on India’s southeastern coast who sought the production of the Portuguese against their Muslim trading rivals, the Moors. In exchange for military aid, around 20,000 Paravas converted to Catholicism around 1535. However, the Portuguese provided little follow-up religious instruction leaving the new converts neglected. The arrival of the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier in 1542, sent by the Portuguese king, revitalized the community’s faith and deepened their religious instruction. Keywords: Christianity, St. Francis Xavier, Paravas, Portuguese, Thoothukudi, Catholicism, Missionary, Conversion, Muslims, Community, Pearl Fishery. Introduction According to historical evidences Catholicism was planted in Tamil Nadu only with the arrival of Portuguese in the 16th century. First the fisher men of the coromandel coast, who were known as paravas accepted Catholicism in Tamil Nadu. For the first time the Portuguese missionaries brought Christianity to Tuticorin. The representatives of the paravas made a request to the Governor of Cochin for the Portuguese help against the Muslims of Kayalpatnam. The Portuguese accepted their invitation and came to Tuticorin in 1532. Father Michael Vaz and his assistant priests baptized, 20,000 paravas, inhabitating thirty villages are said to have been converted between 1535 – 1537 of these villages Tuticorin was one, but it is uncertain when a regular settlements was formed there by the Portuguese. The paravas were converted to Christianity, the power of the Portuguese was establishment on the “Fishery Coast” and by 1543 at least, possibly earlier, Tuticorin was the seat of the Portuguese Governor. ©»º: 13 ]Ó¨¤uÌ: 2 ©õu®: ö\¨h®£º Á¸h®: 2025 P-ISSN: 2321-788X E-ISSN: 2582-0397 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.17310941 68 £UP® kupah fiy kw;Wk; mwptpay; (kfspu;) fy;Y}up> jpUney;Ntyp gz;ila tuyhWk; jkpou; gz;ghLk; The Conversion of Paravas to Christianity The Pearl fishery was a great source of income to the Paravas and this attracted rival regimes and middlemen The Moors had established a monopoly over the sea borne trade and total control over the Pearl fishery. The poor Parava were exploited and oppressed in various ways. They were reduced to slaves and day labourers. The Portuguese took control of the pearl fishery from the Muslims by military force in 1524. The conflicts between the Paravas and Muslims led the Paravas head-men to approach the Portuguese Captain Pero Vaz of Cochin and asked for his assistance against the Muslims. The Paravas agreed to become Christians with their people if the Portuguese iterated them from the clutches of the Muslims. Parava head –men were baptized at Cochin 1535 Captain Pero Vaz delivered the Paravas from the Muslims and consequently between 1535 and 1537 above 20,000 Paravas in 30 villages were baptized. Thus, the Paravas mass conversion under the Portuguese Padroado took place. Therefore, one can conclude that it was the tension among the Paravas and Muslims that seems to have brought Christianity to this region. The Paravas massthat it was the movement toward Christianity brought the Jesuit missions to India, such as Francis Xavier and Robert de Nobili. The Missionary Methods of Francis Xavier He was a Spaniard nobleman and from a royal family of Navarre and France. He Joined with Ignatius Loyola and five others to form a brotherhood known as the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus on 15th August 1534, which became an organized society in 1540 under the approval of the Pope. They committed their lives to totally serve the lord through a life of celibacy and poverty and to be readyto go wherever they are sent for the proclamation of the Gospel. Upon the request of the Portuguese King, Francis Xavier was sent to India along with another priest Paul de Camerino. It was under the Padroado that Xavier was appointed as Ambassador of the Pope and was sent to India in 1541. His voyage to India took 13 months. He landed Goa on 6th May 1542 he was already reputed as a saint. Christians were worldly and loose-living and the large number of Indo – Portuguese resulting from the mixed marriages and otherwise was ill instructed and ill-disciplined. Xavier was revolted by the immorality of many of his compatriots. He approached the people mainly through the children. He went about the streets ringing the bell and calling out “faithful Christians send your children”. He began by singing the lessons he had rhymed and then made the children sing them, so that they might become better fixed in their memory. Afterwards he explained each point in the simplest way. On October 1542 Francis Xavier landed at Manappad and the Pearl Fishery Cost. Till the end of 1544 taking with him 3 Indian Christian helpers from the Goa Seminary he visited the 30 villages between Kanyakumari and Thoothukudi who were Christians inname bur entirely ignorant of the faith and without church services of any kind. He began to baptize all the children who were born after the mass baptism of 1536-1537. His method was baptizing first then instructing. He started his work with Thoothukudi. He translated catechism into Tamil, with the help of his Indian seminarians. He also composed short talk on what it meant to be Christian, what heaven and hell are and who goes to the one and who goes to the other. He went through the whole village with a little bell and called together all men and the boys he could find and began to touch them twice a day the prayers, the creeds and the commandments. He uses one of his seminarians to repeat what he had said in order to make sure that the hearers really understood what he was saying. He asks his hearers to go home and teach others likewise. Xavier was thus very thorough in his missionary work, taking every little detail into care and consideration. He make regular tours among the Christian villages, by appointing in each place one of the intelligent members as Catechist and leaving copies of the course of instruction with them. The Catechist received a stipend from funds provided by the Portuguese government and administered by their agent of Thoothukudi. He was instrumental in starting St. Paul’s college at Goa for the higher education of local Christians and for the preparation of local clergy. http://www.shanlaxjournals.com 69 £UP® Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities Simple chapels of mud and thatch were built gathered the people for the daily prayers and lessons. He sent for the teacher of Catechism and examined the progress of the children. He employed harsh method to abolish immorality and idolatry. On the other hand, Xavier was a compassionate shepherd. When the Christians suffered ill-treatment under the unscrupulous Portuguese or were raided by the troops of warring Rajahs, he always comes to their aid. Xavier also baptized the fishery coast people of Travancore Coast, the Mukkuvas. It is said that within a month’s time, Xavier could baptize more than 10,000 people. In 1545 he went to Mylapore, Malacca and to Indonesian Islands. He returned to Goa and then to the South east coast. In 1549 he set out for Japan with the Japanese convert Anjiro and few Jesuits. After his ministry there he returned to India. After three months he went to China but on the way he died on 24 December 1552. His body was buried in Malacca temporarily and later it was taken to Goa. He was canonized as saint by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, Like Paul he is known especially through his letters, he has been criticized for hasty and superficial methods never stopping to learn languages or really getting to know the culture of the people, trusting to memory work and verbal expressions of belief and always readyto drop one piece of work and go in search of another. Revival of the Paravas Up to the year 1542 the paravas remained only as nominal Christians and continued their old life of way. The change came with the appearance of Francis Xavier. Francis Xavier was a Spaniard, belonging to a noble family of Navarre, a little kingdom near the Pyrenees, and related to the royal families of Navarre and France. St. Francis Xavier one of the out outstanding missionaries of all times, did the most effective work among the paravas during 1542-1544. Xavier was well known among the Roman Catholic Missionaries and a prominent person in the History of all missionaries. In the year 1543 A.D. this great saint St. Francis Xavier began to preach his gospel among the discontented paravas. His head quarters was at Tuticorin. His biographers represent him as being constantly on the move and devoting from one to three weeks to each village according to its population. By his patient working and his service among the people, he converted the entire parava community to the Christian religion. After this, the paravas remained sincere Christians and he had built many monasteries for them in the villages and towns. Tuticorin their chief town, was provided with an excellent hospital, church, and Schools. During the time of St. Francis Xavier, Christianity spread quickly due to the support of Portuguese. The marvellous conversion begun by Xavier had been continued for fifty three years by Father Henriques who died in 1600 A.D. leaving more than 1,35,000 converts. In 1552 Xavier returned to India and arrived at Goa. In 17th century, the prominence of Portuguese began to decline as the other people from Europe, particularly the Dutch, Came to Asia, in 1595, Java was taken off from the Portuguese. The Roman Catholic Attitude Toward Caste The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward caste problem was not an issue in the initial encounter. The Roman Catholic Church regarded the caste system as the cultural institution and encouraged the people to stay within their own castes. The problem of caste occurred mainly when a large number of Paravas became Christians between 1535 and 1537. This large number of Paravas converting to Christianity led to the identification of Christianity as a religion of the low caste, and they called Christianity a Paranghi religion. This led to the creation of division within the members of the Roman Catholic Church on caste basis. This was evident even with the missionary Robert De Nobili, who came to India in 1606 and established the Madurai mission, adopted his method of accommodation by cutting off all kinds of contact with his colleagues working among the low-castes. Nobili was challenged by the Roman. Conclusion Christianity came to Tuticorin in the 16th century with the arrival of the Portuguese. The greatest missionary St. Francis Xavier preached faith and 70 £UP® kupah fiy kw;Wk; mwptpay; (kfspu;) fy;Y}up> jpUney;Ntyp gz;ila tuyhWk; jkpou; gz;ghLk; made friendship with the paravars, the predominant local population of Thoothukudi. With the fall of the Portuguese power in 1658 and capture of Tuticorin by the Dutch, a favourable situation was set up for the planting of Protestanism in Thoothukudi and its surrounding areas. Then early Protestant missionaries tried to convert the catholic paravars to Protestantism but they failed inspite of their best effort as the paravars stood firm in their catholic faith. Thereafter the missionaries turned their attention to win over new souls for the vineyard of their lord from other communities in Thoothukudi. The Paravas mass conversion to Catholicism was initially a pragmatic move for production from Muslim competitors, but the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in Thoothukudi transformed it into a deep and enduring faith. Xavier’s missionary work gave the community spiritual guidance, cemented its Catholic identity, and established a religious legacy that continues to influence the Paravas and the region today. References 1. Lockman, J., Travels of the Jesuits into Various Parts of the World,Asian Educational Services, New Delhi,1995,p.376. 2. Firth, C.B., An Introduction to Indian Church History, Delhi, ISPCK, 2001, p.52 3. Henry James Coleridge, The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, Vol.I, Asian Education Services, New Delhi,2004,p.7. 4. Cyril Bruce Firth. An Introduction to Indian Church History, Madras, 1992,P.55. 5. George Muller, D.S. The Birth of a Bishopric,Palayamkottai, 1980.P.3. 6. Christadoss D.A. Indian Church History (Tamil) Vol. I, Palayamkottai, 1975, P.49. 7. Cyril Bruce Firth, Indian Church History (Tamil) Madurai, 1962, P.109. 8. Rowena and Sathianathan Clarke (ed.), Religious Conversion in India, Modes, Motivations and Meanings. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011.