Jesuit Arrival in India

After returning to Rome in January 1604, Strachan met with Claudio Aquaviva (Chapter 3). At considerable cost to himself, he had fulfilled his commission to deliver the Jesuit general's letter to Fr Robert Abercrombie. Divorced from his family and permanently exiled from his homeland, Strachan was at a critical point in his career. His discussions with Aquaviva must have touched on his future but, even although he was by then in his early thirties, he remained undecided about becoming a Jesuit. Abercrombie had informed the general that Strachan wanted to enter the Society, and Aquaviva may have tried to persuade the young man with accounts of the heroic challenges offered by the Jesuit mission. Twenty years earlier his nephew, Rodolfo Aquaviva, had led the first mission to the court of the Great Moghul, Akbar, and, shortly afterwards, along with four Jesuit companions had been murdered by Hindus. This event may not have featured in the two men's conversation but Strachan would have been fully aware of the martyrdom. The details had been widely circulated in publications throughout Catholic Europe (Hebermann et al. 1913: ‘Martyrs of Cuncolim’). It may have been the recollection of this conversation that caused Strachan to mention in his letter to the governor of the East India Company that he was travelling to the court of the Great Moghul ‘with good recommendations and faire expectations’. Given his earlier dealings with the Society at the highest level, he would have felt sure of being welcomed by the Jesuits in Goa, and through them of being introduced to the Moghul court.

Jesuits were making their greatest contribution to the work of the Church through higher education but, when Ignatius Loyola and his companions first banded together as a society in 1539, their presentation to Pope Paul III for recognition was to be sent as missionaries to the East, particularly the Holy Land. The pope did not see this as a priority. Eastern Christians, for the most part, were able to survive and even flourish under Ottoman rule, although they were subjected to heavier taxation than Muslims. The aga of Jerusalem tolerated both Christian pilgrims and the Franciscan friars who ministered to them from their convent of St Saviour, for the excellent reason that they were the city's principal source of income.