When we look at Goan history, the role of religion in shaping Goan identity as we know it today, cannot be ignored. The long dominion of the Portuguese in the state also witnessed the emergence of many religious orders who all contributed in the shaping of history. However, while much is known of the Jesuit order and the works they did, the same is not the case with the Franciscan order, according to Dr Angela Barreto Xavier, researcher of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, who now seeks to bring the Franciscan order into the limelight when she delivers her lecture on ‘Why Franciscans matter for Goan history and identity' on September 6 at Camoes, Panaji.
This lecture is part of the short term course that she is conducting on ‘Goa in the making of the Portuguese empire (16-18 century)' under the J H Cunha Rivara Chair, Visiting Research Professor Programme organised by the Department of Portuguese, Goa University. Xavier holds a PhD in History & Civilisation from the European University Institute and has published quite a few books which provide an insight into culture and history.
"While one of my parents hailed from Bardez, the other was from Salcette. Now, the Franciscan missionaries were present in Bardez while the Jesuits were concentrated in Salcette. My parents often used to note how different they were from each other, so when I began looking into religious orders and conversions, it was natural for me to look at both these orders. However while I found a big amount of work on Jesuits, there was very little on Franciscans," says Xavier. But if you do research on these times, she states, the Franciscans were pretty active at that time too.
"Many scholarships tended to concentrate on the Jesuit presence in Goa. And St Francis Xavier himself was a Jesuit and is very much loved in Goa. This all promoted the image of Goa as a Jesuit place. But if you think demographically, there were just as many Franciscans as there were Jesuits in Goa," she states. Also, the earliest conversions in Goa were done by Franciscans. "The Jesuits didn't exist in Goa when the conversions began. The Jesuit order started in Goa in 1634, while conversions in Goa began in 1630," she further observes.
The reasons for this bias, she explains, were many. "Historians tend to rely a lot on written documents for their work and the Jesuits used to write a lot. They not only produced written but also many printed documents, making it easier for historians to work with these," she says. This bias, she points out was not just in Goan history, but also in Portuguese history. "While there were a lot of Franciscans in Goa , there were a lot more in Portugal, yet this difference prevailed," she says. Another reason for the Jesuits acquiring prominence was the beginning of secularisation which led to the Jesuits being expelled from the Portuguese empire. "While other religious orders also left, the Jesuits were the first and this led to a focus on the study of the Jesuits," she says. The Jesuits also settled down in towns in Portugal and started a lot of educational institutions and were generally perceived to be more modern at that time.
To try and get a better look into the Franciscan order, Dr Xavier decided to conduct an experiment. " I read as much on Franciscans as I did on Jesuits. This of course was challenging and took a while. But I was determined that there shouldn't be any bias. I paid more attention to the sources than to the actual scholars themselves," she shares.
What she discovered was that the Franciscans had done a lot of work. " The first two bishops in Goa - Don Juan de Albuquerque and Gaspar de Leao Geddes belonged to the Franciscan order and they had done some important work but there is no systematic documentation of this," she says. She also looked at the lay people in religion as the way that they influenced and shaped people's minds was also of much value. " My mission has always been to make a history that is fair to all the people who are involved in it and this is what I aim to do here," she says.
(‘Why Franciscans matter for Goan history and identity', a public lecture by Angela Barreto Xavier will be conducted on September 6, 5.30 pm at Institute Camoes, Panaji)
