Heroic Leadership Read online

  Not only was de Nobili the first European to consult the sacred Vedas with any thoroughness, but he also became the first European to master Sanskrit, the classical language of Hindu India and the language of the Vedas.

  Alarm bells went off in Rome when word arrived that the onetime count of Civitella had become a Hindu and was worshiping idols. For not every Jesuit-in Rome or even in Madurai, for that matter-was of one mind on just how to interpret "use all the means you can" in a tricky, unfamiliar world. Some in Rome were dithering over far more pedestrian squabbles. Not long after word of de Nobili's activities reached Rome, Jesuit bureaucrats were fussily debating whether nonordained Jesuits should be entitled to wear the distinctive black beret that was becoming de rigueur Jesuit haberdashery; what in the world did they think upon learning that de Nobili had shaved his head and was suiting up in red ocher?

  These early reports to Rome weren't positive; nor were they framed in sympathetic terms. It wasn't de Nobili himself sharing the news but his colleague Goncalo Fernandes. Working alone in Madurai for eleven years before de Nobili's arrival, Fernandes had managed to attract exactly no one to Christianity. With a flock of none, he presumably had plenty of time to write Rome accusing de Nobili of engaging in superstitious practices. The bureaucrats in Rome were surely scandalized by the reports from India, especially as it became clear that Fernandes wasn't the only unhappy one. The bishop of de Nobili's diocese in India was also complaining about the wayward Jesuit.

  CULTURAL PRACTICES VERSUS RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION

  Most large, multinational companies deal regularly with analogous crises: low-level employee in remote, relatively unimportant market exceeds authority and strays so far out on a limb that the company's reputation is threatened. And most large, multinational companies have a well-honed, sensitive policy for handling such situations: saw off the limb, and fast. What support in Rome could the upstart de Nobili count on as he sat half-naked halfway around the world? Lucky for de Nobili, the Jesuit general at the time, Claudio Acquaviva, left the saw in the toolshed and instead solicited de Nobili's input on his missionary methods and Indian culture.

  Like de Nobili, Acquaviva was of Italian nobility, the duke of Atri's son. And just as the thirty-year-old de Nobili challenged the tactics of much older, more experienced, and inevitably irritated Jesuit colleagues in India, Acquaviva was something of a prodigy himself. Joining the Jesuits after a meteoric ascent through Vatican ranks, Acquaviva was eventually elected the Jesuits' youngest general ever at age thirty-seven. When Jesuit delegates informed Pope Gregory XIII of their choice, the stunned, seventy-nine-year-old pontiff blurted out a less than hearty endorsement: "Good heavens. You have chosen as your ruler a young man who isn't even forty years old!"22

  But Acquaviva's stake in the India controversy might have been still more poignant and personal than superficial similarities between his background and de Nobili's. When Acquaviva first became a Jesuit it was largely assumed in nepotistic church circles that his nephew Rodolfo would simply slide into Acquaviva's vacated slot in the Vatican bureaucracy. But Rodolfo had different ideas. Over family objections he announced his own intention to join the Jesuits. It was not an attempt to seek his well-placed uncle's patronage and secure a cushy assignment; Rodolfo instead signed up for the miserable yearlong ocean voyage to India, a place where the noble Acquaviva name didn't count for much.

  If he hoped to set aside the trappings of nobility for a life of humbler service, he experienced an ironic twist of fate. While Claudio was steadily rising through Jesuit ranks in Italy, word arrived that Rodolfo had been invited to live and work at the royal court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He remained there for nearly four years, founding the Jesuit embassy that Benedetto de Goes would take up some twenty years later.

  Not long after Claudio became Jesuit general, the Acquavivas experienced another ironic twist, this one bitter. As Jesuit general it would have fallen to Claudio to write the formal sympathy letter to his brother: Rodolfo Acquaviva had been murdered in India along with three Jesuit colleagues. Sketchy, delayed reports suggested that the murderers were venting long-nursed outrage over the indiscriminate leveling of Hindu shrines that had punctuated Portuguese subjugation of Goa. Rodolfo and his companions had done nothing particularly wrong; they were merely symbols of a broader-and just-grievance.

  Perhaps because his nephew's death left the Jesuit general Acquaviva feeling a personal stake in India, he took the impolitic course, trying to understand de Nobili's approach rather than summarily sanctioning him. If this was the time for de Nobili to eat humble pie and temper his radicalism to save his career, no one told him so. He might have devoted the previous years to studying Sanskrit classics and drafting treatises in Tamil, but de Nobili still remembered how to whip up convincing arguments in church Latin. Neither Acquaviva nor his theological advisers-nor anyone else in Europe, for that matter-had ever seen anything like de Nobili's 175-page "Informatio de Quibusdam Moribus Nationis Indicae" ("Report on Certain Customs of the Indian Nation"). His readers must have wondered if he had somehow sneaked back to the Collegio Romano library to marshal arguments rich in ammunition from sources spanning everything from Roman mythology to Jesus Christ to St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to the Hindu Laws of Manu. De Nobili's obscure references likely sent leading theologians scurrying to their concordances in befuddlement: "Take for instance the testimony of Bardeseres the Babylonian, a writer highly commended by Eusebuis in the 6th Book on his Propagation of the Gospel."23

  If his references were at times obscure, his central argument was straightforward. Unlike many of his detractors, de Nobili had troubled himself not only to understand Indian culture but to grasp thorny distinctions between religious faith and its cultural trappings. He systematically dissected and adopted the cultural practices of Brahminism: the kutumi (a tuft of hair on an otherwise shaven head), the tilakam (sandalwood paste), and so on. He pored over Hindu classics and consulted Brahmin experts to unlock the origins and received meaning of these practices. While many Europeans ignorantly assumed unfamiliar practices to be superstitious and associated with idol worship, de Nobili demonstrated that many such practices were traditional ways of identifying civil status or adorning oneself and conveyed no religious significance. De Nobili argued that he had instructed his converts to forgo overtly superstitious and traditional Hindu religious practices, but he himself had adopted and had allowed his Brahmin converts to retain purely civil-status signs and nonreligious cultural practices.

  He then turned full-bore on his detractors who systematically forced prospective converts to adopt European names, don European dress, and otherwise abandon all signs of status within Indian society. De Nobili accused these detractors of cruelly and needlessly condemning converts to surrender respectability in their society. Non-Christian Indians saw the converts "as degenerates, in reality cut off from their former grade and-.-.-. deprived of every civil advantage.-.-.-. [Non-Christians] could not understand why we made it a strict condition for following the law of Christ that one should lower one's civil status and deny oneself all human dignity and every human benefit."24

  After all, de Nobili pointed out, "as for cosmetics and perfumes [like the sandal-paste mark reserved for high-caste Indians],-.-.-. Christ himself, the master of preachers, allowed himself the use of such things."25 De Nobili closed his tour de force with a testimonial from "108 Brahmins with the Degree of Doctor in their Several Branches of Learning" that there was indeed no overtly religious symbolism in the practices de Nobili had allowed his converts to retain. He pointed out that these doctors were "neither Christians nor Catechumens,-.-.-. nor a single one of them has received either money or any other gift."26 And he assured his Jesuit superiors that he had saved each doctor's signature, "written on Indian palm leaves," should it ever become necessary to verify their testimony.

  Not even de Nobili's most erudite critics could counter with a commensurately well-informed response. Not only was the breadth and depth of his
western theological knowledge extraordinary, but the 108 Brahmins he consulted equaled just about 108 more expert sources than most of his critics had ever consulted. None of his critics were fluent in Sanskrit; the Hindu classics he quoted were closed books to them.

  Still, the issues de Nobili agonized over were and are profoundly complicated. Cultural practice and religious expression can't be untangled into two neatly distinct strands, as de Nobili tried to prove. And embedded in his missionary approach were other controversial strategic considerations. He had noted, for example, that his beef-eating, leather-wearing, ritually unclean (by Indian standards) missionary predecessors had rendered themselves "untouchable" to high-caste Hindus. De Nobili's adoption of Brahmin status and its complicated cultural regimen was part of a carefully plotted top-down strategy to appeal first to high-caste Indians, betting that the lower castes would follow their lead. But the strategy enmeshed de Nobili in practices he would have rather not appeared to endorse: for example, preventing low-caste Hindus from even touching his person or preparing his food. Finally, no matter how remarkable de Nobili's cultural sensitivity was in its seventeenth-century context, his work spotlights a question that vexes even twenty-first-century missionary experts: where does one draw the line between interfaith dialogue and aggressive pros- elytization?27

  It's safe to say that de Nobili's seventeenth-century critics were not preoccupied with such complicated issues. Instead, they attacked him and other Jesuits across Asia with arguments that seem in retrospect only to confirm the advanced sensibilities of the Jesuits. For example, one non-Jesuit missionary in China dashed off a scandalized report to Rome because Jesus wore shoes in a Jesuit-commissioned painting of the Last Supper. The charge was taken seriously enough that the Jesuits actually had to waste time responding. Their defense was simple. The Chinese considered it unsanitary to go barefoot. How could prospective Chinese converts be expected to respect the so-called Son of God if he lacked elementary manners?

  Other missionaries in China attacked the Jesuits for straying from the church's formal baptismal rites: "The Fathers [i.e., the Jesuits] in baptizing women fail to apply saliva to their ears, salt to their mouths, and oil to their breast and head."28 Guilty as charged. The Jesuit superior in China explained: "Among the Chinese it is highly irregular and indecent to expose a woman's breast, to touch her hands and her mouth. If it is necessary everywhere for ministers of the Gospel to observe circumspection in their conduct with women, it is certainly far more necessary in China."29 The Jesuits had departed from what they considered nonessential traditional aspects of the European baptismal rite in deference to what they deemed important cultural mores in China.

  Acquaviva died years before the matter of de Nobili's methods was resolved. Although the general had tentatively ruled in support of de Nobili's fundamental approach, his hands had been tied from offering blanket approval. For de Nobili's doings in a hut near the equator had eventually attracted the attention of a higher authority than a mere Jesuit general. The Vatican itself had become involved, ultimately impaneling a theological commission to conduct a thorough investigation. It would have been little solace to de Nobili that his colleagues in China were also being pilloried for their inculturation strategies. What mattered to the Italian sannyasi was that he was prohibited from accepting converts while investigation of his methods lurched along at a bureaucratic pace. Daunting though the investigation must have seemed to de Nobili, there could have been worse alternatives. The Portuguese archbishop de Sae Lisboa of Goa, primate of all the Indies, his knickers well and truly twisted over the Italian Jesuit troublemaker in his jurisdiction, had invited the grand inquisitor of Portugal to have a go at de Nobili. But the Inquisition authorities ruled they had no right to intervene in a matter actively under Vatican review. Lucky for de Nobili.

  But not completely lucky. The president of the theological troika investigating de Nobili was the seventy-year-old archbishop Peter Lombard. The Irishman had participated in a previous papal investigation of another controversial Italian, and that process hadn't turned out very well for its subject, a Mr. Galileo. At least Galileo had been offered the chance to participate in his own inquiry. De Nobili, far away in India, wasn't interviewed by the commission, asked for his input, or made privy to the report.

  Too bad he never had the chance to read it. If he had, he would have been pleasantly surprised to read Archbishop Lombard's citation from St. Augustine's City of God: "It is a matter of no moment in the city of God whether he who adopts the faith that brings men to God, adopts it in one dress and manner of life or another, so long as he lives in conformity with the commandments of God."30 While the commission's report was confidential, Pope Gregory XV's ruling was announced to the world in the 1623 bull Romanae Sedis Antistes, although it took a while for the bull to reach Goa on the slow boat from Lisbon: "We grant by the present letters, in virtue of the Apostolic authority, to the Brahmins and other gentiles who have been and will be converted to the Faith permission to take and wear the thread and [grow] the kudumi as distinctive signs of their social status, nobility and of other offices."31

  A vindicated de Nobili went back to work. Years later, at age sixty-eight and nearly blind, it was well past time to retire. For most people, that is. For de Nobili it was time to start another career. He shipped across the Palk Strait to the Jaffna peninsula in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). After having dazzled the Brahmin with his Tamil treatises and wowed the papal theologians with his Latin polemics, de Nobili put his literary talents to use for a no less discerning but more readily responsive audience, writing stories for children.

  The former count of Civitella died in the Indian city of Madras at age seventy-nine not long after the fiftieth anniversary of his arrival in India.

  THE ADVANTAGE OF OBEDIENCE

  The creative, freewheeling likes of de Nobili suggest that Jesuits were ever poised to pounce innovatively on unfolding opportunities. But there was a flip side to this innovation and daring. The Jesuits vowed obedience to God, as represented by their Jesuit bosses and the pope as well. The ideal obedient Jesuit, according to the Constitutions, behaved "as if he were a lifeless body which allows itself to be carried to any place and to be treated in any manner desired, or as if he were an old man's staff which serves in any place and in any manner whatsoever in which the holder wishes to use it."32

  "Lifeless body" and "old man's staff"? What invigorating imagery! It doesn't exactly seem the stuff of ingenuity and crea-tivity. How does one reconcile even the idea of obedience with ingenuity and creativity? After all, a "lifeless body" or an "old man's staff" isn't very flexible, strategically or literally. Whatever attributes one associates with obedience, ingenuity surely falls pretty far down on the list.

  But in Loyola's mind, obedience was entirely consistent with ingenuity. Most of the innovators profiled thus far-Goes, Ricci, Clavius, Xavier, and de Nobili-performed their most creative heroics as order takers, on the short end of that old man's staff, so to speak.

  Strict obedience and ingenuity: opposites perhaps, but not to those schooled in the Jesuit modo de proceder. With his simple "Good enough. I'm ready," Xavier packed up his life on short notice and headed to Asia as the ultimate "old man's staff' and exemplar of Jesuit obedience. Yet once there he was an "independent entrepreneur," resourceful and confident enough to set strategy for a continent without guidance from headquarters: Oh, did I tell you that I've committed us to a new country I found called Japan? Or that I've committed us to a new line of business-running schools?

  Recall the punch line of the meditation concerning the three men and the ten thousand ducats: the ideal response was not to rid oneself of the money but to rid oneself of the attachment, "in such a way that there remains no inclination either to keep the acquired money or to dispose of it." In other words, be free to do whatever the situation calls for-in the case of the Jesuit innovators, to be flexible enough to give an order, take an order, or plot one's own course. The spirit of indifference cast obedience
in an entirely new light. It was not about who got to give orders and who had to take them; in one way or another, most early Jesuits-and most everyone-usually did both, even in the course of a day. The focus was on cultivating the freedom-the indifference-to do either and to do either well in order to deliver results. Jesuits didn't manage to exempt themselves totally from the human condition; few things make the head swell like giving orders, and plenty of Jesuits liked the feeling when it came their way. But at their best they avoided crippling, ego-drenched tugs of war in order to focus instead on a common goal: making and implementing well-informed decisions that would "help souls."

  The spirit of indifference cast obedience in an entirely new light. It was not about who got to give orders and who had to take them; the focus was on cultivating the freedom to do either in order to deliver results.

  Obedience conferred speed on the Jesuit enterprise, allowing managers to recognize and respond to opportunities aggressively. And rapid response was clearly on Loyola's mind when he drafted this choice nugget from the Constitutions: obedient Jesuits "should be ready to leave unfinished any letter or anything else of ours which has been begun and to apply our whole mind and all the energy we have [to the task requested by a supe- rior]."33 Lest there be doubt about his meaning, he didn't instruct Jesuits to leave unfinished the three-page letter (la carta) home to Mom; he exhorted them to leave unfinished the letter (la tetra) M in the letter home to Mom. Granted, no modern corporation is going to elicit a vow of obedience from staff members, no matter how attractive the pay package and perks. But anyone in today's fast-moving, competitive business environment will immediately recognize the power of having team members who can take orders, give them, plot their own course-.-.-. and do all these quickly.