9 e 10 de abril - International Workshop «Narratives of Suffering, Persecution and Disappointment in the Early Modern Period. Giving Birth to New Martyrs»
9th and 10th April 2015
Lisbon, Catholic University of Portugal
Room: Exposições (Library Building - 2nd floor)
Presentation
Since the mid-sixteenth century, the figure of the Christian martyr became an institutional celebrity. As mobility increased among Jesuit missionaries to various regions of the known world, to countries such as Germany, England and other places with Protestant influence, the possibility of violent death became more real and tangible. This new situation led to the spread of literature exalting violent death as a Christian ideal. According to the theology of martyrdom, it was necessary to prove that the death was the result of doctrines of hate against the Christian faith, and, furthermore, voluntarily accepted. Those looking for candidates for martyrdom had to be fully convinced that the Catholics had indeed been killed in odium fidei, providing clear evidence, and addressing any concerns and objections that might have arisen. Post-Tridentine Catholicism repeatedly recognized the exaltation of martyrdom among the highest forms of imitatio Christii, and the most perfect embodiment of Christian virtue. Several decades earlier, the news of the martyrdom of Protestants and Catholics in England, and, later, of Catholics in the Netherlands, India, Japan and Ethiopia, reached different parts of Europe. It spread via eyewitnesses' oral testimony, as well as through epistolary material, in which Jesuit correspondence occupied a central role. Narratives exalting suffering appeared also among some New Christians in Portugal.
The present workshop, deals with the religious literature of those who experienced difficulties, suffering and persecution in various parts of the world. The purpose of the workshop is to generate a multi-disciplinary approach to such literary genre, bringing together researchers from diverse areas of studies such as history and literature, as well as specialists in different places and regions where the martyrdom took place. Global and comparative perspectives will be used to search for the common denominator of this vast body of material, in such different parts of the world as Japan, Ethiopia, India, America and Europe.
Organizer: Leonardo Cohen (CEHR)*
Participants:
- Ana Fernandes Pinto (CHAM – Portuguese Centre for Global History FCSH/NOVA-UAç)
- Camilla Russell (New Castle University, Australia)
- Carla Alferes Pinto (CHAM – Portuguese Centre for Global History FCSH/NOVA-UAç)
- Dann Cazés (Universidad Iberoamericana, México)
- Gai Roufe (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
- Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço (FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa and CEHR, Portugal)
- Pedro Lage Correia (Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau and CEHR, Portugal)
- Reinis Norkakis (University of Latvia)
- Robert Pietek (Siedlce University, Poland)
- Sabina Pavone (Università di Macerata, Italy)
- Sandra Heinen (Wuppertal University, Germany)
- Susana Bastos Mateus (CIDEHUS-UÉvora, CEHR and Cátedra "Alberto Benveniste"-Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Programme
9th April
9h30 - Panel 1 Welcome and Introduction
Paulo Fontes (Director of CEHR); Leonardo Cohen (CEHR)
The theme of martyrdom in Jesuit petitions for the "Indies", 1540-1640
Camilla Russell (New Castle University, Australia)
11h - Coffee-break
11h30 - Panel 2 Missionary Narrative on Japanese Martyrs: Doctrine, Devotion and Honour
Ana Fernandes Pinto (Associate Researcher CHAM - Portuguese Centre for Global History FCSH/NOVA-UAç)
The Society of Jesus and the Martyrdom of 1597 in Japan
Pedro Lage Correia (Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau and CEHR, Portugal)
13h - Lunch
14h30 - Panel 3 A Murder and its Reasons: Local Cultural Conceptualizations of the Martyrdom of Gonçalo da Silveira in 1561
Gai Roufe (Ben Gurion University, Israel)
European Missionaries in Kongo in the Early Modern Period
Robert Pietrek (Siedlce University, Poland)
16h - Coffee-break
16h30-18h - Panel 4 Narratives of Religious Martyrdom in the English Renaissance
Sandra Heinen (Wuppertal University, Germany)
Angelus homo: an image of a martyr on the frontier of the European Catholicism
Reinis Norkakis (University of Latvia)
10th April
9h30 - Panel 5 "Shaking the Dust from the Feed." Ritual and Testimony among Jesuits and Ethiopian Catholics (XVIIth Century)
Leonardo Cohen (CEHR)
Staging martyrdom on Golden Age Spain
Dann Cazés G. (Universidad Iberoamericana, México)
11h - Coffee-break
11h30 - Panel 6 The Agency of Salvation: Martyrdom, disappointment and the imagination of redemption regarding the mission of Japan (17th century)
Miguel Rodrigues Lourenço (FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa and CEHR, Portugal)
Between Martyrdom and Religious Ecstasy: The expression of Suffering in Indian Christian Art in the Early Modern Period
Carla Alferes Pinto (Associate Researcher CHAM - Portuguese Centre for Global History FCSH/NOVA-UAç)
13h - Lunch
14h30 - Panel 7 Jesuit emotions in the Portuguese empire at the end of the 18th century
Sabina Pavone (Università di Macerata, Italy)
The Martyrs of the Inquisition. Expectations and Disappointments of the Portuguese new Christians in the Sixteenth Century
Susana Bastos Mateus (CIDEHUS-UÉvora, CEHR and Cátedra "Alberto Benveniste"-Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
* Leonardo Cohen is researcher at CEHR, holding a post-doctoral Fellowship granted by FCT for his project: "Towards an Intellectual Biography of Patriarch Afonso Mendes" (ref. SFRH/BPD/72580/2010)
