Luis Dias
Jerome Xavier (born Jerónimo de Ezpeleta y Goni 1549 – June 27, 1617) was our Goencho Saib Saint Francis Xavier’s grand-nephew, so perhaps it is not so surprising that he followed in his illustrious predecessor’s footsteps and joined the Jesuit order at the age of nineteen.
He arrived in Goa in 1581 a little the worse for wear “as a consequence of the difficult sea-voyage and the troubles of acclimatisation”. After a series of posts in other Portuguese holdings, Bassein (1584) and Cochin (1585-1592), he was appointed Superior of the Professed House of Goa, an uneasy post because of his Spanish background, in charge in a Portuguese territory due to the Iberian Union between the crowns of Spain and Portugal in 1580.
His dispatch “by popular election” as head of the third Jesuit mission to the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542-1605, r 1556-1605) in Lahore, where he arrived on May 5, 1595, may well have been a relief to everyone, not least to him himself.
Fr Xavier and his companions, Fr Emmanuel Pinheiro and Brother Bento de Góis were accorded lavish hospitality by the Emperor, who lodged them in his own palace. He immediately set about learning Persian, the court language, upon the Emperor’s advice.
Fr Xavier became Emperor Akbar’s close companion, even accompanying him on excursions to Kashmir, military expeditions through the Deccan plateau, and when Akbar shifted his capital back to Agra in 1599. The relative stability here allowed him to “devote much of his time to the creation of a Christian religious literature written in the Persian tongue” at the Emperor’s request.
The result was Mirat al-Quds (Mirror of Holiness), a rare manuscript based on the life of Jesus Christ, also known as Dastan-i Masiḥ (Deeds of the Messiah). Nineteen copies of the original survive, three of which are illustrated.
The miniatures incorporate both Mughal and European styles. The miniaturist for the manuscript copy in the Lahore Museum could have been Basavan, ranked fourth among 17 finest painters in Akbar’s reign, according to Abu’l Fazl in his Ain-i-Akbari. The miniaturist for the copy in the possession of the Cleveland Museum of Art was Muhammad Sharif (d 1612), with one miniature actually bearing his signature,
a rare feature.
Mirat al-Quds was originally written in Portuguese and later translated into Persian. A note written in Latin in the copy held by the British Museum states this: ‘Liber dictus Dastan Masih ie Historia Christi, primum Lusitanice composite a Patre Hieronymo Xavero’ (the book called Dastan-i Masiḥ, that is, History of Christ, originally written in Portuguese by Fr Jerome Xavier).
It was submitted to the emperor in the capital of Agra on May 5 of “the year one thousand six hundred and two after the birth of our Lord Jesus.” (1602)
Almost a quarter-century earlier, in 1578, Akbar wrote to the Jesuits in Goa asking for “the foremost books of the Law and the Gospels”, revealing a long fascination with Christian texts, and triggering profound but misplaced hopes (that persisted even into the reign of Akbar’s son Jahangir, r 1605-27, whom Fr Xavier also served) that the Mughal dynasty would embrace Christianity.
In 1582, Akbar had written to Philip II of Spain (now also Philip I of Portugal under the Iberian Union): “It has been brought to our notice that the revealed books, such as the Pentateuch, the Gospels, and the Psalms, have been translated into Arabic and Persian. Should these books—which are profitable to all whether translated or not—be procurable in your country, send them.”
Fr Xavier spent several years learning Persian before he embarked upon Mirat al-Quds, a work that can be seen as his magnum opus, followed perhaps by his translation into Portuguese (the first such translation until then) of the Holy Qur’an. Nevertheless, the flow of the Persian is stilted and often translates texts word-for-word, in the process losing grammatical sense due to jumbling of the word order. As Pedro Moura Carvalho, chief curator of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore, in a 2012 publication ‘A Commentary on Father Jerome Xavier’s Text and the Miniatures of Cleveland Museum of Art’ puts it, “Father Jerome’s Persian style is certainly not highly literary, and in fact, it could be characterised as bad IndoPersian, but it is perfectly understandable.”
Another hurdle faced by Fr Xavier was the difficulty in finding Persian vocabulary for specifically Christian concepts, for example, baptism. There is no such thing as baptism in Islam, and therefore there is no Persian word for it. The solution was to coin new Persian words to describe such concepts, adding borrowings from Arabic and Cyriac to Persian to achieve this objective.
The Persian text is written in the Nasta’liq style on Samarqand paper. The calligraphy of the manuscript copy in the Lahore museum is by Mahram Koka, foster brother of Mirza Kamran, who was half-brother to Emperor Humayun.
The Mirat al-Quds has a Preamble, after which the book is divided into four parts. Part one describes Christ’s childhood, while parts two, three and four are devoted respectively to His miracles and teachings; His trials, tribulations, and death; and His Resurrection from the grave and Ascension into heaven.
Fr Jerome departed from the Gospels as his exclusive source for his text, and used apocryphal stories and texts from other sources and medieval accretions to Christ’s life story (such as Veronica’s veil) as well, making him a target of much Protestant criticism.
The accompanying picture is ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’ from the catalogue of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The corresponding text it is meant to illustrate is: “they went in haste and saw Mary and Joseph and found the babe in the manger. Seeing him, they realised that he was the Messiah, and they understood that he was the one of whom the angel had spoken.”
The miniaturist gives prominence to the Madonna and Child. Mary’s figure is considerably exaggerated in stature compared to the four men in the picture (is one of them Saint Joseph, or are they all shepherds and has he been omitted completely?). The opulence of the ‘stable’ and ‘manger’, the shepherds’ attire and headwear demonstrate considerable artistic license. Perhaps the artist was so instructed, or perhaps he felt that the new-born baby Jesus, future ‘King of Kings’, founder of Christianity and prophet of Islam should merit a suitable birthplace and even visiting shepherds needed to be attired accordingly. Nevertheless, it offers an insight into sartorial styles adopted by Westerners in the Mughal court.
The diaphanous cloth covering an earthenware water-pot on a charpoy at the bottom right is a nice indigenous detail.
Mother Mary is given a yellow robe instead of the usual rose-pink, although her blue mantle still follows standard iconography.
Books were common features in Mughal depictions of the Western world and Christianity, a reference to the Scriptures, the common book of the three Abrahamic faiths or the ‘People’s Book’.
Tell-tale signs like the unfinished foot of the lower-most shepherd, the unornamented black carpet in the background suggest the miniature was abruptly abandoned for whatever reason.
This Christmas, more than ever, we need (in Fr Xavier’s words) “the Messiah, the font of mercy who remedies the needs of the needy and heals the sick.” A merry, healthy, blessed, peaceful
Christmas to us all.
