Fr. Queyroz Manuscript(3) , Fr. S.G. Perera S. J. & Controversies Part 3
Fr. Queyroz Manuscript(3) , Fr. S.G. Perera S. J.
& Controversies
Part 3
Bouquets
& Brickbats
Summary of
the Conversion Controversy
Conclusion
Bouquets)
Rt. Revd. Bishop Edmund Peiris
Then, Bishop of Chilaw
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“As
a historian, Fr. Perera, was learned, laborious and critical. On the one hand,
he avoided the dramatic school of literary historians, although when he gives
the reins to his imagination he commands an impressive diction; on the other,
he does not belong to the modern type of researchers in archives who are not
ashamed of the dryasdust method. Although he had an admirable grasp of the
whole range of Ceylon history and every aspect of it, he was strongest on the
Portuguese period and the history of the Catholic Church in the Island, and
weakest on the pre-Portuguese period, probably owing to the difficulty of
studying the subject from documents written in the Oriental languages. Unlike
many another historian, ancient and modern, he makes history tell its own tale,
with great effect and without the wonted trimmings and exaggerations. This led
him to deal out praise and blame with an even hand, to friend and foe alike,
according to their deserts. His services to the study of the history of his own
country are, indeed, so consider able that they are worthy of being recorded
and gratefully remembered.”
Fr.
Perera’s contribution to Ceylon History outlined by Rt. Revd. Bishop Edmund
Peiris, then Bishop of Chilaw can be read in full at the link given at the end.
Dr. G. C. Mendis, B.A., Ph.D.,
D. Litt. (Lond.)
(Ex-Reader in History at the University of Ceylon.)
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Review of the book Historical Sketches in
1962
"No comments of mine are necessary to commend
this work of Father S. G. Perera to the public of Ceylon. As a student of
Ceylon history there are few to equal him.
As
a scholar his thoroughness in sifting fact from fiction is evident in all his
writings. He will always be remembered on account of his translation of the
three large volumes of the Conquista from Portuguese into English, his other
works, and the numerous articles he wrote to various journals. He is still the
best authority on the Portuguese Period and on the history of the Roman
Catholic Church in Ceylon.
Father
Perera's Historical Sketches is a valuable supplement to his works on the
history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon.
As they are written from the standpoint of the Roman Catholic Church for Roman
Catholics, those outside may not at times agree with his interpretation of the
facts which he so carefully assembles.
But there is no question as to its value as a contribution to the understanding
of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon and of the history of
Ceylon in general."
Prof. T. B.
H. Abeysinghe
In the
course of his PhD thesis Prof. Abeysinghe makes the following general
observation:
"Even a nodding acquaintance with these
chronicles and histories should serve to dispel a fear that is sometimes
expressed (particularly in Ceylon) that to base a history of the Portuguese in
Ceylon on their own writings will necessarily lead to glossing over their many
acts of barbarity and their callous disregard for human life, especially
Sinhalese. That fear is completely baseless. Most of these authors did not
write to comfort their readers, but rather to shock them. At least one
writer, Queiroz, seems to have painted the misdeeds of his countrymen in the
darkest possible colours in order to induce them to sit down in sackcloth and
ashes. It can be said without fear of contradiction that of the three
European powers who ruled Ceylon, the Portuguese were unique in having produced
chroniclers and writers who were the first and the severest critics of their
own countrymen. This is all the more commendable when one remembers that many
of these chroniclers and writers held official positions and enjoyed royal
patronage'."
Prof. C. R. De Silva
In the course of his PhD thesis Prof. De Silva' makes the following
general observations :
(a) that it is a tribute to Fr. Queyroz's skill in assimilating
evidence that an examination of contemporary records leaves his narrative
(though bereft of the miracles he describes) more or less intact.
(b) that “Fr.
S.G.Perera's shorter review of the whole Portuguese period may be considered a
sound work of historical scholarship;
(c) that future
historians however will be indebted for Fr. Perera’s work in publishing much of
the material in the Vatican Archives relating to Ceylon.”
Brickbats
Prof. C. R. Boxer
.Prof. Boxer, who had on previous occasions stated that conversions were
not carried out at the point of the sword, raised the matter in a
different form in an article in the Ceylon Historical Journal of 1960/61,
directly targetting Fr. S. G. Perera S. J., who had passed away eleven years
earlier..
Based on "a photostat copy of pages 168-200 of an unspecified and
undated Ceylon Magazine of an article titled "Portuguese Missionary
Methods" by S. G. Perera S.J. sent to him by Prof. K. Gunewardena,
some years earlier," Prof. Boxer published an article
titled “ “A.
Note on Portuguese Missionary Methods in the East, 16th -18th centuries”,in
the Ceylon Historical Journal, Volume 10, July1960-April
1961), 77-90. (CHJ). The article can be read in full at the link given
at the end
However, it would be useful to read portions of this document at this stage for a better understanding of the distinguished Professor's views & these are reproduced below:
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As stated in the footnote this is a response to the article titled Portuguese Missionary Methods “in
the publication Historical Sketches, referred to earlier. This matter had
originally cropped up in the mid 1930s when Fr. Perera contested the the claim that Portuguese conversions were
carried out at the point of the sword.
Prof.
Boxer begins his article by quoting the response of Fr. Perera to the
claims made by Dr. Malalasekera & Prof Hussey on the policy of the
Portuguese regarding conversions ie. “conversion at the point of the sword.” .
However, instead of dealing with the issue of ‘conversion at the point of the sword’, Prof. Boxer prepares a fresh ground by raising two questions:
1.
Did they use force & if so, to what extent.
2.
How far was temporal & spiritual power separated in theory & in fact ?
He answers the 2nd question & states that both Barros & Couto, the official chroniclers were of the view that they were entitled to act both as temporal & spiritual conquistadores. However, while stating that both did not advocate the use of force, he claims that the emphasis on both temporal & spiritual powers, required the priests to seek secular help when required & that this is what happened in practice.
Comment
Obviously , this was not the issue Fr. Perera was dealing with then. Prof.
Boxer had earlier agreed with Fr. Perera’s contention that "conversions
were not not made at the point of the sword , but coercive &
discriminatory legislation was used."
In his search for the
"theoretical standpoint of the church in the Eastern mission field," once
again, Prof. Boxer prepares a fresh ground & refers to :
a) a vice regal decree of 4
December, 1567, on the manner in which complaints by unbelievers should be
dealt with, which shows that force was in fact used;
b) the Portuguese practice of
bringing up orphans as Christians against their wishes is "using force
& violence";
c) the Portuguese practice of
depriving Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists etc of their places of worship, spiritual
teachers & leaders etc. is " tantamount to making Christians by the
use of force, whatever some
casuists may have argued to the contrary."
Regarding (a) & (b) Fr. Perera was not responding to
any of these issues in his article. Besides, Prof. Boxer does not refer to
any such instances in Ceylon.
Regarding (c), this was not the issue raised then. Is it likely that local Buddhists etc. converted under such circumstances, as it would have caused them severe mental agony?
Was Prof.
Boxer referring to Fr. Perera as a casuist for the following statement he made
in connection with the allegation about conversions at the point of the
sword?
"I only say that I never found any proof of force, and that I very much doubt whether any of those who so pompously and emphatically and in such round terms asserted that the Portuguese converted this Island by force and violence has the faintest proof to put forward".
Later, Prof. Boxer makes another reference to Fr. Perera as follows:
Prof. Boxer concludes his references to Fr. Perera as follows
(i) Fr.
Perera's "emphatic denial" that he did not
find any references in the contemporary Portuguese documents on the use of
force , requires "considerable modification," & suggests that
Fr. Perera had not seen the decree.
(ii) though he has "demolished" Fr. Perera's " thesis", religious persecution & intolerance was not limited to the Portuguese alone & that the basic principle was that the ruler & the ruled should profess the same faith.
Comment
Re (i) Fr. Perera clearly
states in his response to Dr. Malalasekera & Prof. Hussey &
in his article on Portuguese Missionary Methods , “that he did not find any
references in the contemporary Portuguese documents on the use of force”,
in relation to Ceylon. The decree has no
relevance to Ceylon, because Prof. Boxer has not provided evidence of
"complaints by unbelievers " or "raising of orphans as
christians" in Ceylon.
Re (ii) Fr. Perera denied
that ‘conversion at the point of the sword’ occurred in Ceylon as claimed by
Prof. Hussey & Prof. Boxer agreed. Therefore "demolition "
of Fr. Perera's "thesis" does not arise.
Readers of Prof. Boxer's article
in the CHJ (1960/61) would have accepted what he stated about Fr. Perera
, at face value, as he was then a reputed historian. No one would
have remembered exactly what Fr. Perera had said over 20 years
earlier.
One reader who would have been surprised is Bishop Edmund Peiris, also a
historian & a great admirer of Fr. Perera, because he too had
contributed an article to the same CHJ (1960/61) & would have read Prof.
Boxer's article. If he remembered Fr. Perera's article in 1940 on the
Portuguese Missionary Methods in the publication "Historical Sketches
", he would definitely have raised the matter.
It is also surprising that Prof.
Boxer makes no reference at all in the CHJ (1960/61) article to Prof. David
Hussey, who started it all by stating that conversions took place at the point
of the sword in Ceylon, which was vehemently denied by Fr. Perera, on the basis
that there was no proof or evidence to arrive at such a conclusion.
It almost appears as if Prof. Boxer had moved the goal posts in his own mind & scored a goal to "demolish Fr. Perera's thesis." The only explanation one can think of is that the photostat copies he received from Ceylon did not contain the paragraph where Fr. Perera says he is speaking of Ceylon only & not about what the Portuguese may have done elsewhere. Moreover, Prof. boxer's article is titled " A Note on Portuguese Missionary Methods in the East", 16th - 18th Centuries."
Prof. C. R. De Silva (1967)
Prof. de Silva makes the following
observations in his PhD thesis:
(a) "Queyroz wrote his work with a purpose-
that of inspiring the Portuguese to reconquer Ceylon - and to drive
home his arguments he did not at times scruple to twist historical facts.
(b) Fr. Perera’s qualities as a
critical historian fail him only where his religion is involved.
Comment
Unfortunately,
Prof. De Silva does not give examples of the "twisting of historical
facts" & "failure as critical historian due to his
religion" , for any one to make a judgement.
Prof. De
Silva also makes the following observation :
“Queyroz's study however is uneven in depth and treatment. The whole
period 1612-1618 is dismissed in two pages. The political developments of the
next twelve years are described in a hundred pages while the period 1630-1638
receives a comparatively scanty thirty pages. "
Prof. C. R. De Silva (2007)
He makes
the following observations:
1) "Religion has also had its impact
on the evaluation of the Portuguese impact on Sri Lanka. As I have pointed out
in an earlier publication Christian converts have had a much more
sympathetic view of Portuguese influence than Buddhist (or indeed Hindu and
Muslim) writers. "
That
was the classic contrast between the Kustantinu Hatana, a poem written by a
convert in praise of Constantino de Sá de Noronha and the other hatan kavyas
that depict the Portuguese as destructive and cruel.
Comment
Alagiyawanna Mukaveti's
(1552-1625) Kustantinu Hatana in praise of the Portuguese General shows that
even an intelligent person like him, who was a Buddhist for the better part of
his life would have been a voluntary convert, possibly in anticipation of some
reward. He could not have been unaware of the atrocities alleged to have been
committed by the Portuguese.
This
debate had been continued in the twentieth century between the Jesuit scholar
Simon Gregory Perera and the nationalist Paul E. Pieris. By the mid-twentieth
century, despite the popularity of Pieris’s Ceylon: The Portuguese Era, the
adoption of S. G. Perera’s History of Ceylon as a school text had ensured that
most Sri Lankans grew up with a more favorable view of the Portuguese impact
than the nationalist popular legends suggested.
Comment
An example to illustrate
"the nationalist view" of Prof. Peiris & the "favourable view"
projected by Fr. Perera would have been useful.
Prof. K. W. Goonewardena
Prof. Goonewardena had challenged some of the perspectives presented by
Fr. Perera , in the 1950s & 1960s, but had not published his views &
instead passed them on to a new generation of Sri Lankan scholars .(de Silva,
2007).
Comment
Prof. Goonewardena was an old Aloysian in the 1940s & would have known Fr. Perera well. His reluctance to publish his views can be understood. Moreover his area of expertise was a part of the Dutch Period & he may have thought that he did not possess the in-depth knowledge of the Portuguese Period to challenge "the perspectives" of Fr. Perera in print.
Prof. K. M. De Silva
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Prof.
De Silva wrote the foreword to the book by C. Gaston Perera on "The
Portuguese Missionary in 16th and 17th Century Ceylon" (2009).
His
view is that the book is essentially a “necessary corrective” to a number of
older, “soft-pedalling” Catholic accounts of the Sri Lankan mission"
Comment
It
is clear that distinguished local historians have held the view that religion
has influenced some of the accounts by Catholic writers of the Portuguese
period. Catholic Accounts that have received prominence are mainly those of Fr.
Queyroz & Fr. Perera. However, Prof. Abeysinghe praises Fr. Queyroz &
other Portuguese chroniclers for presenting the facts relating to that period.
Fr. Perera in his response to Dr. Malalasekera & Prof. Hussey clearly says
that he is contesting only the claim that the Portuguese "converted at the
point of the sword in Ceylon", & nothing else that the Portuguese
may have done. It would appear that Fr. Perera was defending the
missionaries but not the civilian authorities & armed forces.
A feature of the brickbats
thrown at Fr. Perera by modern day historians & others is that they are
couched in somewhat general terms. Had they taken up a contentious issue &
showed why a claim is made that the Catholic account favours the Portuguese,
their views would have carried more weight.
Summing up of the Conversion
Controversy
The controversy began when Dr.
Malalasekera quoted (1928) in his book on the Pali Literature of Ceylon"
(PhD Thesis), the following line in Fari Y Souza's book, Portuguese Asia: Their instructions were
“to begin by preaching, but, that failing, to proceed to the decision
of the sword.”1 He did not however claim that conversions in Ceylon were carried out
"at the point of the sword."
It was Professor David Hussey
who made this claim in his book, Ceylon & World History in the 1930s.
Fr. S. G. Perera refuted this
claim, on the ground that there was no evidence or proof of such conversions in
Ceylon.
Prof. Boxer, also an authority
on Portuguese rule, on the three occasions mentioned earlier, where he wrote
about Portuguese rule in Ceylon, obviously held the same view as Fr. Perera,
that there were no conversions at the point of the sword by the Portuguese. He
also seems to have been aware of the views held by certain politicians here.
However, in the article published in the
Ceylon Historical Journal (CHJ, 1960/61) Professor Boxer quotes :
a) a) instances where complaints were made to the Portuguese authorities
about alleged forced conversions,
b) b) instances where orphans were converted by force,
c) instances where force was used on temples, preachers etc of other faiths, & concludes that this was tantamount to the use of force to make christians.
Comment
Re a) & b), he provides no evidence that these things happened in Ceylon.
Re c) ,, these were not the issues raised by Dr. Malalsekera & Prof. Hussey.
Prof. Boxer also refers to Fr. Perera's emphatic denial that "the contemporary documents published from time to time in Portugal or Goa or England of Ceylon, speak of any single person forcibly converted, nor suggest that any ever were" (op. cit., p. 182), would hardly have been made had he read passage about forced conversions & forced conversion of orphans, in the viceregal decree of 4th December, 1567.
Comment
Prof. Boxer ignores the fact that Fr. Perera emphatically commented that he was speaking
about Ceylon only.
An obvious question that arises is why Prof. Boxer made use of the CHJ (1960/61) to raise some doubts about a local historian & a member of the Catholic clergy, on a matter that does not appear to concern Ceylon, 11 years after his death. Besides, Fr. Perera confined his studies to Portuguese Rule & the Catholic Church in Ceylon, & whatever he wrote 20 years prior to his death applied to Ceylon only.
Prof. Boxer is challenging in 1960/61 what Fr. Perera wrote in the early 1930s.
Perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye. it is not
immediately clear whether anyone responded to this article on behalf of Fr.
Perera, at the time.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article is:
(i) to highlight the role played by Aloysians in bringing to light the Conquista,
(ii) to respond to Prof. Boxer's Note on Portuguese Missionary Methods in the East published in the CHJ (1960/61), as it appears to target Fr. Perera unfairly,
References
Abeysinghe T, PhD thesis /book "Portuguese in
Ceylon , 1594-1612".1966.
https://noolaham.org/wiki/index.php/Portuguese_Rule_in_Ceylon_1594-1612
Biedermann Z. Dr. Book
Review, C. Gaston Perera, The Portuguese Missionary in 16th and 17th Century Ceylon. The
Spiritual Conquest, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2009. ISBN
978-955-665-046-6
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Portuguese_Brazilian_Studies/ejph/html/issue15/html/v8n1a07.html
Boxer C. R.
Book Review, Abeysinghe T., "Portuguese in Ceylon, 1594-1612," Ceylon
Journal of Historical & Social Studies, Vol 9 No 1, Jan to Jun 1966, p. 89
Boxer, C.
R. Note on Portuguese Missionary Methods in the East
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dgAfLvpxIumcIBvtok2sLQZXy4lXbTFf/view?usp=sharing
De Silva C. R. (1967), “The
Portuguese in Ceylon, 1617-1638” ( Thesis presented for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London, December 1967
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/33808/1/11010598.pdf
Goonewardena K. Dr. Eminent
Aloysian Historian
https://drkwgoonewardena.blogspot.com/2024/12/eminent-aloysian-historians-3-prof-k-w.html
Mendis G.
C. Dr. , Review
of the book Historical Sketches in 1962
https://noolaham.org/wiki/index.php/Historical_Sketches
Peiris E.
Rt. Rev. Dr. , Fr. S. G. Perera’s contribution to Ceylon History ,
https://zenodo.org/records/3778925
Peiris, A.
Rev. Fr. Dr. Eminent Aloysian Theologian, . Tulana Research Centre for
Encounter & Dialogue, Kelaniya,
https://sacgallepriests.blogspot.com/2024/12/rev-fr-aloysius-peiris-s-j-by-sr.html
Perera, S. G. Rev. Fr. Portuguese
Missionary Methods
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fkQUUWSeEXPer6zMh9GKQzqA41zTX5Tx/view?usp=sharing
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