Public Rituals with the Intervention of Juan de Albuquerque, First Bishop of Goa Resident in Asia. Languages of Transference or Accommodation?

Abstract

One of the strategies adopted by the Franciscan Juan de Albuquerque, the first bishop of India to live in Asia, when he landed in Goa in 1538, was to perform and intervene in public rituals, such as the sacredness of the cathedral, the baptisms of important local figures, the blessing of the Portuguese armies leaving for war, the enthronement of governors or viceroys and the practices of ecclesiastical justice. This article offers the mapping and reconstitution of these events based on a large array of primary and secondary sources. We argue that the models that conformed these ceremonies had a pattern that replicated in Asia the European rituals. In this study we will evaluate how those rituals conformed to the world that, for the Portuguese settled there, was new and different: Goa in the 40s-50s of the sixteenth century.