Glorifying Francis Xavier’s (1506–1552) Good Deeds or Miracles? The Negotiation of Sanctity in Daniello Bartoli’s Asia (1653)

1 Introduction

This essay focuses on Francis Xavier (1506–1552), the first saint of the Society of Jesus, who was canonised with the Society’s founder, Ignatius of Loyola, in 1622. It examines three different sources on Xavier’s sanctity in order to highlight all of the negotiations involved in sanctity, especially in such an important period for Catholicism in general, and for the Society of Jesus in particular.^[1] After the Council of Trent, which affirmed the central role of the Roman Church in many matters, including the canonisations,^[2] “there was nothing inevitable or inexorable about saint-making.”^[3] For a new-born order like the Society of Jesus, the sumptuous ceremonies of 1622 represented “a tremendous enhancement of its status in Rome and the universal church.”^[4]

Francis Xavier’s figure is emblematic of the rise of a new missionary church in the period that followed the discovery of the New World and the European expansion. The Navarrese Jesuit passed away in 1552, and his bull of canonisation is dated 1623.^[5] In about 70 years, a great deal happened and the path to sanctity profoundly changed.^[6] The king of Portugal, João III (1502–1557), was the one who had sent Xavier to the East Indies in 1540. After Xavier’s death, he immediately ordered his agents to collect material on every remarkable event that occurred during and after Xavier’s life.^[7] The Viceroy organised a thorough interrogation of witnesses in India during the years 1556–1557. João III was convinced of Xavier’s sanctity, and employed his political authority “in view of a future process of canonisation.”^[8] In 1588, Pope Sixtus V (1521–1590) created the Congregation of Rites to better control and regulate popular devotion and the path to sanctity.^[9] The official cause of Xavier’s beatification and canonisation was conducted with further processes in the 1610s, in Asia as before but also in Europe, at the orders of Paul V (1550–1621). The judges of the Roman Rota (the highest tribunal of the Catholic Church) collected new depositions (1613–1616) of Xavier’s deeds, and compared them to those earlier statements accumulated by the agents of the Portuguese king, creating the document known as Relatio Rotae – which served as a basis for Xavier’s canonisation.

The first document analysed in the present essay is a treatise written by the Jesuit Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) soon after Xavier’s death.^[10] This visitor to the East Indies complained that many of the testimonies about the future saint were exaggerated, and neither were they particularly edifying. According to him, a Jesuit had to emulate Xavier’s good deeds rather than trying to prophesise and perform miracles, over which the famed missionary’s devotees, both in Asia and Europe, seemed to obsess. The second text is the manuscript Relatio Rotae, an unedited report dated 1619, commissioned by Pope Paul V (r. 1605–1621) for Xavier’s canonisation, and signed by three members of the Roman Rota.^[11] The Relatio was thus not produced by the Society of Jesus, whose involvement was minimal in order to preserve its super partes “objectivity.” It contains many pages of testimony to the very miracles and prophecies that Valignano had criticised. The third and main source considered is the monumental treatise Asia, published in 1653 by Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685), and critically edited just a few years ago.^[12] The Ferrarese Jesuit dedicated the first half of his text to Xavier’s life and death, drawing from multiple sources and always conveying his pride in his historical detachment, sobriety, and discretion. Bartoli did not write just history, because his interest encompassed “hagiography […] geography, flora and fauna” – and even what we would now call “ethnography.”^[13]

After describing the content and the aims of these documents, the article analyses how Bartoli deployed his sources on Xavier’s fame and miracles. In focusing on the description of Xavier in the Relatio Rotae and in Asia, this essay demonstrates how his canonisation resulted from a new and in fieri idea of sanctity, with which the members of the Society of Jesus themselves had to struggle. Jesuits deployed different strategies that did not always satisfy all of them: Valignano and Bartoli, for instance, showed a certain embarrassment toward the popular obsession over Xavier’s miracles.

2 Alessandro Valignano and the Relatio Rotae

In the Christian tradition, sanctity was a feature of God, but it could also be extended to specific human beings who held a special relationship with him. The latter could become intermediaries between human and divine, and act as such through prophecies, visions, and miracles.^[14] Sanctity is not only and not simply a religious issue, nor was it ever fixed in time and space. What did it mean to be a saint for a Jesuit, before there were Jesuit saints? For the visitor of the Indies Alessandro Valignano, sanctity was a combination of “patience, virtue, being faithful and constant in suffering,” while “working hard to convert the souls of infidels and barbarians” of every part of the world.^[15] On the contrary, what should a pious Jesuit not do? Try to “prophesy or work wonders,” the author cautioned, “because sanctity does not lie in these graces, which are granted from Heaven simply for the sake of the people.”^[16]

Valignano used these words in his treatise about the first two decades (1542–1564) of the Jesuit endeavour in the East Indies.^[17] He wrote around the year 1580, when Xavier was not yet a saint but was commonly revered as such, and the visitor intentionally directed his criticism not at Xavier but at the widespread obsession surrounding him, especially in India, where his body was preserved.^[18] In the few pages of his History of the Principle and Progress of the Society of Jesus in the East Indies dedicated to Xavier’s remains,^[19] Valignano employs the terms “sancto,” “sanctificado,” and “sanctidad” a dozen times. Even to the critical author, there was no doubt that Xavier’s life and death were surrounded by holiness, but what the Italian Jesuit questioned was the propensity to dwell on miracles and prophecies with such excitement and gullibility.

Valignano is one of the first sources to describe the vicissitude of Xavier’s body.^[20] In a first phase, it was buried underground, because the climate and the humidity of Southeast Asia suggested this was the best way to preserve it. After a few days, the captain of Malacca and the most devout local people decided to unearth Xavier’s body in order to check its state of preservation. Everyone was astounded, because “the body was so fresh and well preserved […] it did not have any smell but a pleasant one […] it was a clear testimony of Xavier’s sanctity.”^[21] The body was then moved to Malacca, where Xavier’s cult was already well-established and its arrival galvanised these followers even more. The remains were buried once again, this time for five months, and in 1553, the Society planned to move them to Goa, where they have remained, in a luxurious silver coffin embellished with precious engravings.^[22] Once the body was unearthed, the status was unchanged, recorded Valignano: “not the quicklime with its heat, not the earth with its humidity, not the eight months of entombment were able to do anything against its incorruptibility.”^[23] Xavier’s body demonstrated “the sanctity of the Father,”^[24] the visitor continued, and the Jesuits charged with its transfer to India “set sail with that holy body.”^[25]

It was a perilous journey, and Valignano and others believed that it was only thanks to Xavier’s presence that the ship avoided danger and sinking. As soon as the remains arrived in Goa, all were keen to adore them: noblemen, religious authorities, and the local population. It was necessary to set up an exhibition, and the Jesuits had to carefully “defend” it, because everybody wanted not only to see the body, but also to touch it and take relics from it.^[26] Both the Relatio Rotae and Bartoli’s Asia described an episode which shows well the popular fixation on Xavier’s body.^[27] During a display of the remains, a young woman aimed at touching his feet and, instead of kissing his big toe, bit it – hoping to get away with such a precious relic. The problem was that Xavier’s body was as fresh as if he were alive, and immediately the blood started spurting out of the foot, and everyone noticed the deeply disturbing attempt of theft. Valignano was not very pleased with the unbridled enthusiasm of the people, and blamed Xavier’s fame as a prophet and miracle-maker for it.^[28]

At the end of the chapter, Valignano mentioned how the king of Portugal, João III, appointed his Viceroy in India in 1556 to collect testimonies, preliminary to the cause of canonisation he hoped the Roman authorities would have soon started. Many Goan “witnesses under oath” testified to Xavier’s “life and work,” and described “all the edifying and supernatural things God did through him while he was alive and after.”^[29] These actions included also “many occult and still to come things, which later happened in the same way the Father had predicted.”^[30] Valignano, however, did not seem particularly interested in scrutinising this source. He wrote the Historia just because he wanted to “give an account of the progress of the Society of Jesus in India [East Indies],” and in this context Xavier and other Jesuits were the best examples of “virtue and efforts.”^[31]

Chronologically placed between Valignano’s History (1580s) and Bartoli’s Asia (1650s), the Relatio Rotae gives a complete overview of the status quaestionis of Xavier’s case soon before the canonisation. This account is an unpublished, Latin manuscript of 179 pages. Dated 1619, it is a report compiled from the trials by the three senior judges of the highest court of the Roman Curia, the Rota. The three judges were Francesco Sagrati, Giovanni Battista Coccini, and Giovanni Battista Pamphilij – who in 1644 would have become pope as Innocent X (1574–1655). The goal of the Relatio was for the canonisation to be more easily considered by the members of the Congregation of Rites and Ceremonies, recently charged by Pope Paul V with reviewing such matters. The Relatio Rotae summarises the old and new depositions made by witnesses of Xavier’s life immediately after his death and in the six decades that followed.

After rhetorical formulae and a brief summary of the missionary endeavours of the Society of Jesus in the East – with Xavier as its pioneer^[32] – the Relatio Rotae stated how the cardinals of the Roman Congregation of Rites and Ceremonies were in need of information on the future saint’s sanctity, miracles, and the popular devotion surrounding his figure.^[33] The result was a “special inquisition,”^[34] and the Relatio Rotae recounted each phase of the various processes to that point, quoting the registers and the folia where these data were collected, translated, and preserved. In order to summarise and present the previous phases in the most useful way for the canonisation process, the Relatio Rotae was organised into three parts. The first dealt with the legality of the different processes, the second with Xavier’s holy life, and the last with the miracles he worked not only in life, but after.^[35]

The Relatio Rotae then outlined the different processes taking place from 1556.^[36] As for the first phase, the statements collected by King João’s agents were:^[37]

1. Goa, 1556–1557: 36 witnesses. None of them were religious, and there were no Jesuits because the investigation needed to be “impartial.”^[38] The majority of the witnesses were members of the Portuguese élite ruling in India;

2. Kochi, 1557: 13 witnesses, the majority of them being Portuguese noblemen;

3. Bassein, 1556–1557: eight witnesses, most of them belonging to the local nobility;

4. Malacca, 1556–1557: six witnesses, all of them Portuguese.

All of these witnesses lived during Xavier’s time and had fresh memories of the events.^[39] This does not mean, however, that their descriptions did not include mistakes and imprecisions. Often, as Valignano complained, some witnesses just “repeated what they heard from others, and others what they heard from the same Father.”^[40] As a result, he concluded that these witnesses portrayed a Xavier already “sanctified by the common voice of India.”^[41]

As for the second phase, ordered by the pope and executed by the judges of the Roman Rota in the 1610s, the witnesses’ memories were even less reliable. Sixty years had passed since Xavier’s ministries. Nevertheless, the interviews conducted were:^[42]

1. Rome, 1613: seven witnesses, who were remembering what the Jesuit Simão Rodrigues used to say about Xavier’s sanctity;^[43]

2. Pamplona, 1614: 15 witnesses, all of them related to Xavier’s first years, members of his family who did not know directly about him, but referred other people’s opinions;

3. Lisbon, 1614–1616: 45 witnesses, most of them being Jesuits who operated during Xavier’s times;

4. Goa, Damão e Thana, 1615: 56 witnesses (the twentieth-century scholar Schurhammer saw the original documents, but they are now lost);^[44]

5. Malacca, 1616: 27 witnesses (the original acts of this process were lost);^[45]

6. Kochi, Fishery Coast, Manâr, Travancore, and Quilon, 1614–1616: 138 witnesses. Different from in the previous phase, these testimonies also included religious (Dominicans and Jesuits) and the indigenous population (fishers, merchants, landlords), who in some locations (like in the case of the Fishery Coast) were the majority.

The Relatio Rotae did not have many reasons to be used or published after Xavier’s canonisation, because anything substantial to the case was simply included within the bull. Nonetheless, it remains historically significant as the only source that retains some parts of these processes that did not survive until today.

3 Daniello Bartoli’s Asia

There was, moreover, someone who relied on the Relatio Rotae to write his works: Daniello Bartoli. Born in Ferrara in 1608, he attended Jesuit schools as a lay person, joined the order in 1623, and continued with his studies.^[46] In 1636, he was ordained priest and started preaching in several Italian cities. He was also a good writer and, after some successful publications, the general superior called him to Rome and appointed him the official historian of the Society of Jesus a century after its foundation. Beside short breaks, Bartoli devoted the next 40 years to writing and publishing extensively on the most diverse array of topics: history, rhetoric, geography, even science (hearing, thunder, air pressure, and ice were among his favourite topics).

The Istorie della Compagnia di Giesù were printed over several decades: Asia from 1650 on (eight books, with the addition of The Mission to the Great Mogòr of Father Rodolfo Acquaviva in 1653), Japan in 1660 (five books), China in 1663 (four books), England in 1667 (six books) and Italy in 1673 (four books). His work required great effort also because, as a historian living in Rome, Bartoli had the special advantage – which some might see as a burden – of proximity to the immense quantity of sources present in the Jesuit archives.^[47] The Ferrarese read manuscript reports, letters, litterae annuae, canonisation trials, and the comments made to them by the various parties involved that the order’s leadership collected in Rome. Bartoli had carefully studied and excerpted all the sources available to him, adding to them also the periodic in-person accounts of confreres who travelled from the East and West Indies as procurators.^[48]

Bartoli began Asia from the very first years of the Society of Jesus in the East – even before the order was approved by Pope Paul III (1540), because Xavier left as soon as he was appointed to do so by his friend Ignatius and the aforementioned king of Portugal, João III. The first four books recounted events through Xavier’s death (1552), and the final part extended chronologically until 1570. Bartoli’s books were, first of all, read within the Society of Jesus. The Ferrarese author, however, did not limit his purpose only to a Jesuit readership, because his works were well known even amongst lay people, who in the Early Modern Period displayed a sustained interest in such exotic and edifying topics.^[49]

Bartoli was not the first Early Modern author interested in Xavier’s life. Hagiographies fulfilled a “double function, both edifying and pedagogic, for they spread […] role models for believers.”^[50] In the case of Xavier, it was calculated that from 1552 (year of his death) to 1619 (year of his beatification), at least sixteen biographies were printed. In 1622 (year of his canonisation), this number had more than doubled, and thirty-eight books celebrated Xavier’s successes.^[51] The biographies Bartoli used most were the ones written by the Jesuit preacher Francisco Pérez (1515–1578),^[52] Xavier’s colleague in the field Manuel Teixeira (†1590),^[53] the Italian Latinist Orazio Torsellini (1545–1599),^[54] and the Portuguese preacher João Lucena (1549–1600).^[55] Other more generic books explained the first years of the Society of Jesus in Asia, necessarily focusing on Xavier in many pages. Their authors were Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1533–1603),^[56] Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625),^[57] and Sebastião Gonçalves (ca. 1555–1619).^[58] Also non-Jesuits wrote about Xavier, because Maffei based his account on a manuscript copy of the Peregrinaçam by Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509–1583), a Portuguese traveller and sponsor of the Jesuit missions in the East whose book (novel or travelogue? It has never been established) was published only in 1614.^[59] There is no doubt that these remarkable numbers made a difference in promoting Xavier’s canonisation. Another final source which Bartoli widely employed was the Relatio Rotae, even if at his times parts of the process were already available in print, such as in the work by Giacomo Fuligatti (1577–1653).^[60]

4 Bartoli and His Sources

By the seventeenth century, Xavier’s story had reached a wide audience, and every author had recounted it with different styles and purposes. Concrete examples drawn from the Asian books help clarify Bartoli’s modus operandi, while also shedding light on his idea of sanctity – and more in general the concept of sanctity in the Early Modern Period. Through the comparison between Asia and the Relatio Rotae (and consequently the bull of canonisation), this article will reach the conclusions going back to the starting point, trying to identify the same criticism showed by Valignano also in Bartoli’s portrait of the first Jesuit saint.

As a scrupulous historian, if Bartoli could access the direct source of an event, he tried to do so. It is true that if he could do it in his native language (Italian) he chose this option,^[61] but he did not have any difficulty translating Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish material as well. In many sections of Asia, Bartoli drew with the utmost accuracy from the Relatio Rotae. For instance, he carefully transcribed and translated for Asia a whole chapter of the Relatio Rotae titled “the gift of tongues,” also known as glossolalia.^[62]

Some of the witnesses were none too reliable and showed confusion about dates and names. The old and new witnesses agreed, though, on Xavier’s gift of speaking different languages: as soon as he reached a new place, he was able to simultaneously speak in a different language, according to the people who were listening. Everyone was enthusiastic about Xavier’s linguistic accommodatio. Even his confreres were amazed to listen to him speaking in what seemed to them to be Portuguese but what was being understood as Japanese by the Japanese. This notwithstanding, Bartoli knew very well that Xavier himself claimed something very different in his letters, where he accounted for his frustration and labours in being comprehended. In his Asia Bartoli offered both perspectives, reporting Xavier’s letter in which he complained of feeling “like a statue, mute and deaf.”^[63] As John J. Renaldo noticed, Bartoli could not ignore such an important skill of Xavier’s sanctity, but what he could do was “to ignore the individual statements and […] draw directly from Xavier’s letters.”^[64]

The fact that Bartoli put glossolalia in a dubious light – and sometimes dared to show a certain puzzlement and reported dissenting notes on the most wondrous episodes – signified his professional standards as a historian. Even if Bartoli could not ignore the miracles testified in Xavier’s bull of canonisation, he generally tried not to over-emphasise the most impressive events. He rather focused on the moral virtues of his hero, because – as Valignano pointed out in his Historia – what was important for a saint was to be patient, perseverant, and always trusting of God.

The present essay focuses on the characteristics that made Xavier a saint as illustrated by Bartoli in the fourth book of Asia.^[65] Curiously, Bartoli chose to start the section with the narration of the “holy works” and “martyrdom”^[66] of Antonio Criminali (1520–1549), the “protomartyr” of the Society of Jesus – who was never recognised as either a saint or a martyr.^[67] Criminali was the first provincial father of the Indian mission on the Fishery Coast (South-East India), and the first missionary to be violently killed during the age of Early Modern Jesuit global evangelisation. He was beheaded during an attack by native soldiers, in an anti-Portuguese rather than anti-Christian raid. In the Catholic tradition, desiring martyrdom is permitted, and accepting death for Christ is fundamental. But actively seeking martyrdom, when other options are left, is a major reason why canon law does not always recognise a violent death as martyrdom. Criminali’s death raised many perplexities, for he had offered himself to the raiders three times, hoping to be killed, the first two attempts having left him unharmed.

At Bartoli’s time, Xavier was, de facto, a saint already, but no process for Criminali’s case had started. Nonetheless, Bartoli found it “very reasonable” to juxtapose and compare the “two great fathers of Indian Christianity, Francis Xavier and Antonio Criminali.”^[68] They were “the first two Jesuit models of apostolic life in one case, and death in the other.” Criminali’s death was very ambiguous, while no one could have dismissed the holiness of Xavier’s life; Bartoli’s chapter summarised the deeds and successes of the latter in the East and his attempt to relocate to the Ming Empire, which led to his death in 1552.

The narration was close to that found in Valignano’s Historia, with Bartoli accounting for the miracles related to Xavier’s body. Probably mindful of Valignano’s recommendation and as “professional” as usual, Bartoli alternates between the subject of “miracles” and “esteem” in characterising Xavier’s situation.^[69] As for the latter, he was appreciated “among the gentiles,”^[70] “the new Christians of India,”^[71] “the Portuguese of India,”^[72] and finally “the members of the Society.”^[73] After a detour on miracles worked after death by Xavier (through images and objects as well),^[74] Bartoli focuses again on his “sanctity,”^[75] “charity,”^[76] “application in preaching and being as one with God,”^[77] and “generosity and fearlessness.”^[78] Like Antonio Criminali, Xavier wanted to become a martyr, but was able to moderate this desire and more soberly follow God’s will.^[79]

Bartoli devoted an entire chapter of Asia to Xavier’s “charity and zeal in helping the souls.”^[80] The account starts with an analogy between Xavier and Paul: both successful apostles, both possessing the gift of tongues, both being the first ones to convert so many “gentiles.” Bartoli then made a very important statement about Xavier’s sanctity: what mattered and was really “supernatural” about him was not the supernatural events (especially the ones concerning resuscitations), but his “strength,” because “his biggest miracle was not to get consumed” after 12 years lived making such constant efforts and in commitment to other people’s salvation.^[81]

If this was not enough, Bartoli reported two final statements about Xavier’s sanctity focused not on his most visible miracles but rather on his virtues. The archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Meneses (1559–1617, r. 1595–1612), an Augustinian friar, asked to the Jesuits of Goa to inspect Xavier’s body with the aim of compiling an account for the pope.^[82] Meneses’ final words (which Bartoli reported in the original Latin) once again confirmed that Xavier’s “greatest miracle was to convert so many people, in such a short time and in such distant places.”^[83] Similarly, Melchior Nunez, a confrere of Xavier and superior of the Indian province, believed Xavier’s optimism, energy, and zeal to be his best qualities.^[84]

5 A Question of Numbers?

Bartoli wrote an account that followed Xavier’s pilgrimage through Asia in a geographical tour. He compiled long lists of the people he supposedly converted, including some the author was not able to place in space and time.^[85] He deployed as the main sources for these data both Xavier’s letters and the bull of canonisation.^[86] Bartoli claimed that, according to the most recent geographical measurements, Xavier travelled so much that the distance he covered was as long as the Earth’s circumference.^[87] This is certainly an exaggeration, since it is impossible that Xavier travelled 40 thousand kilometres, and it was just one of a few overstatements that appear in Asia.

Bartoli attempted to estimate the number of people converted by Xavier and concluded that the missionary reached “hundreds of thousands of souls.”^[88] The historian relied on the evaluation appearing in the bull of canonisation, which actually stated that Xavier “converted many hundreds of thousands of men, who wandered in the darkness” before knowing him.^[89] Who was the first one to guess at such a number, compared to the more probable number of less than 30 thousand converts?^[90] This hyperbole actually started with Xavier himself, who in a letter explicitly informed João III of Portugal that “last year we brought together with our Church many hundreds of thousands of men.”^[91] Bartoli did not say more about this number, but rather simply wondered how many more people Xavier could have converted if he had only lived longer – or could have practiced more frequently the very useful miracle of ubiquitousness.^[92]

After summarising Xavier’s conversions from a geographical point of view, Bartoli considered their “essence.” The future saint was seen as such also in life: evoking the Relatio Rotae’s chapter on “Xavier’s public fame of sanctity,”^[93] Bartoli noted how the missionary had “a reputation of holiness” in the East, where he worked, as well as in the West (Europe and the Americas), and not only after his death but while he was still alive.^[94] Everywhere he went, Xavier had become the object of a “great popular veneration” and was called “holy father.”^[95] Xavier could also involve not only many, but different kinds of people: “children, virgins, married women, widows, servants, slaves, and masters.”^[96] All of them did not simply receive the baptism, but were looked after in their following catechetical duties.^[97]

Some of these vocations were put at risk because of anti-Christian persecution. Bartoli stated that more than 700,000 of those converted by Xavier became martyrs, another dubious number.^[98] Bartoli conceded its scarce credibility, though he justified it with his source: “as for this number,” he wrote, “this is what the judges of the canonization claim […] but it is also true that the real number cannot be calculated, for it is impossible to do an exact sum, because we know that in one place he converted 12,000 people, in another 25,000, in another 40,000, and in another up to 100,000.”^[99] Aside from the 40,000, all of the other numbers appeared in two pages of the Relatio Rotae devoted “to the excellent sanctity of Xavier’s life,” Bartoli explained.^[100] The witnesses, too, were carefully listed and described as people who “saw it by themselves, or knew for sure about it.”^[101] Bartoli also tried to lean on Xavier’s authority, because the missionary himself was the first to claim that he was able “to convert an entire place in one day,”^[102] and that his “arms hurt because of all these baptisms.”^[103] Therefore, in the end, these exaggerations did not originate from the bull of canonisation nor even from the “unreliable” witnesses of the Relatio Rotae, but rather from Xavier himself. Bartoli did not but repeat – with a certain scepticism – such numbers.

Even if these claims were true, this was not what counted for Bartoli, who exclaimed with a sort of impatience: “who can really know their number?”^[104] He concluded the chapter by highlighting Xavier’s “incomparable charity, apostolic zeal, and great efforts which bore such a glory for the Church.”^[105] He corroborated this statement with the authority of the popes Gregory XV and Urban VIII and by citing the original Latin words of the bull of canonisation. Xavier’s “good deeds, his fame of sanctity in every part of the world, his constant efforts and fatigues, endured beyond every human toleration and just for God’s sake”:^[106] this is what Xavier had to be venerated for. There was no space for his renown and bombastic miracles here.

6 Conclusions

St. Francis Xavier represents a keystone in the history of Early Modern sanctity, and different sources (mainly, but not only Jesuit ones) interpreted his case in different ways. Valignano complained about the cult of Xavier if expressed in a “too popular” way. The canonisation bull and, soon before it, the Relatio Rotae, lent much space to the description of miracles and their verification by eyewitnesses. Bartoli’s interest in the supernatural, wonders, and miracles strike the reader as well.^[107] The Baroque writer looked for these elements not only in Xavier’s case, but throughout all of his treatises. Etymologically, “miracle” derives from Latin mirari, and describes events that awaken astonishment and amazement. Ubiquity, resuscitation, and healings are everywhere in Asia – as Bartoli’s readers expected them to be.

While Bartoli cannot be judged according to later standards of what makes for a “historian,” some of the pitfalls of his approach apparent to historians today could offer a balance to the positive points here demonstrated. In the case of the canonisation trials, for instance, Bartoli paid the greatest attention to them, consistent with his purpose to “draw our information from people who were not simply present at the events personally, but were actors and part of them.”^[108] These trials collected testimonies by witnesses who had been in direct contact with Xavier, and all of them were under oath. Some of these witnesses spoke a few years later (1556–1557), others 60 years later (1613–1616). Especially in the case of the latter, the witnesses were quite confused about places, dates, and names. Nonetheless, the Relatio Rotae and the other documents related to Xavier’s canonisation were fundamental to the success of his cause, and Bartoli had to manage them in an appropriate way. On the one hand, he could not ignore them: to do so was not acceptable as a religious person in general, and as the “official historian” of the Society of Jesus in particular. On the other hand, neither Bartoli could show scepticism toward what they proclaimed: most of these testimonies had been declared authentic by the witnesses themselves, the Rota, and the Roman authorities.

The canonisations of 1622 were a turning point for Early Modern history, but also for the Society of Jesus. They are like a glass through which we can look at the Church history not only from a religious, but also from a cultural and strategic point of view, in order to better understand the Early Modern idea of sanctity. Valignano’s critics date from the 1580s, a period in which the Society of Jesus did not lack vocations at all. The new-born (1540) order actually saw an explosion of its members during the first decades, and it was not a problem to find missionaries to “cultivate the Lord’s vineyard” in both the West and East Indies.

Some of the many sources demonstrating this are the Jesuit petitions now known as Litterae Indipetae, whose writers were Indias petentes (asking for a missionary appointment in the “Indies”). Their number is astounding: more than 20,000 Indipetae letters have been preserved from the 1580s, as well as those from after the 1814 Restoration of the Society of Jesus. The petitions have generated considerable interest from scholars in many fields, including cultural studies, religious history, history of emotions, and psychology.^[109] The potential problem was that, as Antonio Criminali’s case demonstrates, the ideal of martyrdom could become a dangerous magnet for missionaries. Such a desire to suffer and die could lead to premature departures of precious resources, fed and educated by the Society of Jesus to found and develop missions meant to last, not simply to arrive on unknown soil and violently die there.

The Society of Jesus needed men, and its missionary vocation was what attracted many of them. The two models of sanctity promoted by the Society of Jesus in 1622 were very different, but both aimed at recruiting the kinds of resources which were necessary for the most globally “successful” order, less than one century after its foundation. The two first typologies of Jesuit saints^[110] were Xavier and Ignatius. The latter was the “man at desk,” who taught, wrote, and carefully administrated the wide network of the order. In contrast to Ignatius, Xavier was the missionary who travelled, explored, and reached new horizons for the greater glory of God – and the glory of the religious order which proudly bore his son’s name. Xavier’s hagiographical model as it emerges from the sources considered in this article shapes and frames the rising of Early Modern sanctity.

In Xavier’s case, much attention was inevitably given to his miracles, but most of all to the good deeds a “missionary saint” should aim at. Were an emphatic death by martyrdom, pompous miracles, and their numbers and extent fundamental? No, because Xavier was remembered – and, contextually, immortalised – by Valignano, the Relatio Rotae (and consequently the canonisation’s bull), and Bartoli also as a tireless missionary, a humble and pious worker, whose traits were ultimately impeccable (also towards other religious orders’ critics). His miracles were fundamental and well-recounted in all of these sources, but what counted most was “not the number, but the virtue of a man.”^[111] Xavier was the one who “introduced the Society of Jesus to the Eastern kingdoms, and left a mark on a path that many men traversed after him.”^[112] Not “a travel guide,” but “the best example of those virtues, that such a high appointment requires:” this is what Xavier really was.^[113]