Margherita Trento
I am a historian of early modern South India, working at the intersection of social, religious and literary history. Since 2022, I am associate professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), affiliated to the Centre d'études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes (CESAH) in Paris.
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The paper investigates the different phases of the Madurai mission controversy, which concerned the method of accommodatio adopted by the Jesuit Roberto Nobili (1577-1656). The controversy began in 1610, when Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso (1541-1619) wrote a letter to his superiors condemining Nobili’s missionary method. Its culmination and partial resolution occurred in 1619, when an assembly of theologians and inquisiotors held in Goa allowed Nobili to continue using the method of accommodatio. This paper argues that, while Roberto Nobili and Gonçalo Fernandes held contrasting opinions regarding Tamil culture and religion, and consequently on the role of the missionaries within Tamil society, they relied on unexpectedely similar sources to support their opposite claims. By means of a close analysis of the letters and inquisitorial sources on the Madurai mission produced between 1610 and 1619, the paper demonstrates how both Nobili and Fernandes depended on the same informant, the Brahmin Śivadharma, who provided both of them with the Sanskrit textual evidence they used to support their opposite claims. By unveiling the crucial role of Śivadhama/Bonifacio in the development of the Madurai mission controversy, the paper shows how the controversy involved multiple actors, Indian and European, who contributed to the intellectual and practical development of Jesuit accommodatio in South India.
Jesuit Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1747) composed a number of literary works in Tamil that gained wide recognition and are nowadays included in the standard Tamil literary histories. How did Beschi become a canonical Tamil author? In this paper, we follow Beschi’s career from Italy to South India in order to understand Beschi’s journey from being a missionary to also becoming a scholar-cum-poet known in Tamil as pulavar. We believe that Beschi acquired recognition as a poet in two different phases. First, he consciously attempted to become part of the literary ecology of Nāyaka-period Tamil Nadu by composing works that would establish his reputation as a poet, among them his masterpiece, the epic poem Tēmpāvaṇi. The refined language of his works is in itself a testimony of this effort of being recognized as a “traditional” scholarly authority. Second, during the nineteenth century, colonial administrators, missionaries and Tamil Christian intellectuals in South India “rediscovered” Beschi, collected manuscripts of his poems and produced printed editions of most of Beschi’s works.
The essay begins by discussing Beschi’s education in Italy. We then map the stages of his career in South India, showing how he developed his literary portfolio, by writing grammars, dictionaries, and sophisticated prabandhas. We further examine closely some stanzas from the Tēmpāvaṇi to show how he negotiated his double role as a missionary and as a pulavar through language and literature. The final section of the paper focuses on the nineteenth century and the rediscovery of Beschi’s works by British and French colonial administrators and orientalists, discussing in particular the manuscript copies of the Tēmpāvaṇi collected at that time.
Conference Presentations
The Neapolitan Jesuit Giacomo Tommaso de’ Rossi (1701-1774) worked as a missionary in South India for four decades in the mid-eighteenth century, mainly in the village of Sarugani and the surrounding Maravar region. In Sarugani, De Rossi followed the typically Jesuit strategy of accommodation. He also became a prolific and extremely popular writer in Tamil, so much that the lives of the saints and the sermons he composed are still in print today. This paper analyzes the sermons De Rossi wrote for weekly devotions, and especially the sermons for the Tuesday devotion to the angels. While by the eighteenth century both this theme and the literary genre had a global diffusion in Europe as well as in mission territories, my presentation argues that in the Tamil inland this genre served as a bridge between missionary cultural and literary activities and popular Tamil culture. More specifically, the stress on the theme of the angels fighting the demons (pēys), as it is represented in De Rossi’s sermons as well as in the façade of the church he built in Sarugani, needs to be read vis-à-vis the (angels and) devils that populate folk Catholic songs, plays and ballads of the same period. Focusing on the Rossi and his work in this context shows the Jesuit Madurai mission as a contact zone where different types but also different levels of culture — Jesuit ‘high’ humanistic culture and Tamil folklore — became visible as they met and grappled with each other.
Courses taught
Nel corso della prima lezione sarà fornito un panorama storico-letterario e un’introduzione all’alfabeto e al sistema di scrittura usato per il Tamil moderno. Le successive sei lezioni saranno strutturate in modo da alternare un’ora di studio del Tamil parlato a mezz’ora di studio del Tamil scritto, enfatizzando le connessioni tra i due registri. A tal fine, si utilizzeranno testi facili composti appositamente, ma quando possibile verranno anche introdotti brevi excerpta letterari.
In occasione dell’ottava e ultima lezione, saranno presentate alcune poesie in originale e in traduzione, da leggere con gli studenti, che avranno per allora una familiarità almeno basilare con la lingua scritta. L’ultima lezione sarà seguita da una breve verifica delle competenze acquisite, essenziale per il rilascio del certificato di frequenza e dei crediti formativi. La frequenza alle lezioni è obbligatoria, e sarà registrata ogni volta; salvo casi gravi e documentati, gli studenti che intendano acquisire i due crediti formativi avranno diritto a un’unica assenza. Agli studenti sarà richiesta una partecipazione attiva alle lezioni, e lo svolgimento di esercitazioni in preparazione alle diverse lezioni; sebbene non sia richiesta alcuna propedeuticità, si darà tuttavia per scontato una buona padronanza delle categorie grammaticali, nonché l’attitudine allo studio e all’apprendimento linguistico.
I materiali del corso saranno forniti dalla docente.
Per informazioni e richieste: fdesimini@unior.it
Conference organized
This international conference aims to bring together researchers around the issue of “religion” to reflect on the practice and development of the social sciences: the disciplinary status of academic approaches to religion, the institutions within which they are embedded, the global circulation of these discourses, and their social function.
Perhaps more than ever in recent decades, the issue of religion arises across all areas of social life, from the private sphere to public forums, as well as within academic discourses dedicated to its analysis. This “renewal” in the study of religion challenges the founding paradigms of the social sciences and invites us to rethink the ways in which “religion”, as an object of study, continuously shapes our disciplines. To address these questions, we propose to establish a dialogue between researchers of diverse disciplines and institutional, cultural and socio-political contexts, with a view to provide detailed insights grounded in the longue durée and in comparative perspective.
We propose to approach religion trough three major themes: 1. Spaces and places of knowledge production; 2. Translations and circulations of concepts, categories and objects; 3. Ethics, politics and the city.
Colloque international. Construire, déconstruire, reconstruire les sciences sociales : Réfléchir les défis du religieux (REFLEX)
Ce colloque a l’ambition de réunir des chercheurs et chercheuses à l’échelle nationale et internationale autour de la « question religieuse » comme levier de réflexion sur la pratique et le développement des sciences sociales, à partir d’un questionnement sur la situation disciplinaire des sciences sociales du religieux, sur les institutions qui leur donnent site, sur la cartographie mondiale de ces sciences dans la dynamique de leur circulation, et sur leur fonction sociale.
Aujourd’hui, peut-être plus que jamais au cours des dernières décennies, la question du religieux traverse tous les domaines de la vie sociale, de la sphère intime à la tribune publique, ainsi que les discours scientifiques qui tentent de les appréhender. Ce « renouveau » de la question religieuse bouscule les paradigmes à partir desquels les sciences sociales se sont construites et invite à repenser la manière dont l’objet « religion » ne cesse de travailler nos disciplines. L’exigence d’une telle réflexion nous a imposé le projet d’un dialogue entre des acteurs de toutes disciplines, issus de divers cadres institutionnels et contextes socio-politiques et culturels, pour apporter des éclairages circonstanciés, dans une perspective de longue durée et dans un espace culturel élargi.
Dans cette perspective, « la question religieuse » semble réfléchir les défis de plusieurs ordres que l’on peut regrouper sous trois thèmes majeurs autour desquels ce colloque international s’organisera : 1. Espaces et lieux de production des savoirs ; 2. Traductions et circulations des concepts, des catégories et des objets ; 3. Éthique, politique et la cité.
The paper investigates the different phases of the Madurai mission controversy, which concerned the method of accommodatio adopted by the Jesuit Roberto Nobili (1577-1656). The controversy began in 1610, when Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso (1541-1619) wrote a letter to his superiors condemining Nobili’s missionary method. Its culmination and partial resolution occurred in 1619, when an assembly of theologians and inquisiotors held in Goa allowed Nobili to continue using the method of accommodatio. This paper argues that, while Roberto Nobili and Gonçalo Fernandes held contrasting opinions regarding Tamil culture and religion, and consequently on the role of the missionaries within Tamil society, they relied on unexpectedely similar sources to support their opposite claims. By means of a close analysis of the letters and inquisitorial sources on the Madurai mission produced between 1610 and 1619, the paper demonstrates how both Nobili and Fernandes depended on the same informant, the Brahmin Śivadharma, who provided both of them with the Sanskrit textual evidence they used to support their opposite claims. By unveiling the crucial role of Śivadhama/Bonifacio in the development of the Madurai mission controversy, the paper shows how the controversy involved multiple actors, Indian and European, who contributed to the intellectual and practical development of Jesuit accommodatio in South India.
Jesuit Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1747) composed a number of literary works in Tamil that gained wide recognition and are nowadays included in the standard Tamil literary histories. How did Beschi become a canonical Tamil author? In this paper, we follow Beschi’s career from Italy to South India in order to understand Beschi’s journey from being a missionary to also becoming a scholar-cum-poet known in Tamil as pulavar. We believe that Beschi acquired recognition as a poet in two different phases. First, he consciously attempted to become part of the literary ecology of Nāyaka-period Tamil Nadu by composing works that would establish his reputation as a poet, among them his masterpiece, the epic poem Tēmpāvaṇi. The refined language of his works is in itself a testimony of this effort of being recognized as a “traditional” scholarly authority. Second, during the nineteenth century, colonial administrators, missionaries and Tamil Christian intellectuals in South India “rediscovered” Beschi, collected manuscripts of his poems and produced printed editions of most of Beschi’s works.
The essay begins by discussing Beschi’s education in Italy. We then map the stages of his career in South India, showing how he developed his literary portfolio, by writing grammars, dictionaries, and sophisticated prabandhas. We further examine closely some stanzas from the Tēmpāvaṇi to show how he negotiated his double role as a missionary and as a pulavar through language and literature. The final section of the paper focuses on the nineteenth century and the rediscovery of Beschi’s works by British and French colonial administrators and orientalists, discussing in particular the manuscript copies of the Tēmpāvaṇi collected at that time.
The Neapolitan Jesuit Giacomo Tommaso de’ Rossi (1701-1774) worked as a missionary in South India for four decades in the mid-eighteenth century, mainly in the village of Sarugani and the surrounding Maravar region. In Sarugani, De Rossi followed the typically Jesuit strategy of accommodation. He also became a prolific and extremely popular writer in Tamil, so much that the lives of the saints and the sermons he composed are still in print today. This paper analyzes the sermons De Rossi wrote for weekly devotions, and especially the sermons for the Tuesday devotion to the angels. While by the eighteenth century both this theme and the literary genre had a global diffusion in Europe as well as in mission territories, my presentation argues that in the Tamil inland this genre served as a bridge between missionary cultural and literary activities and popular Tamil culture. More specifically, the stress on the theme of the angels fighting the demons (pēys), as it is represented in De Rossi’s sermons as well as in the façade of the church he built in Sarugani, needs to be read vis-à-vis the (angels and) devils that populate folk Catholic songs, plays and ballads of the same period. Focusing on the Rossi and his work in this context shows the Jesuit Madurai mission as a contact zone where different types but also different levels of culture — Jesuit ‘high’ humanistic culture and Tamil folklore — became visible as they met and grappled with each other.
Nel corso della prima lezione sarà fornito un panorama storico-letterario e un’introduzione all’alfabeto e al sistema di scrittura usato per il Tamil moderno. Le successive sei lezioni saranno strutturate in modo da alternare un’ora di studio del Tamil parlato a mezz’ora di studio del Tamil scritto, enfatizzando le connessioni tra i due registri. A tal fine, si utilizzeranno testi facili composti appositamente, ma quando possibile verranno anche introdotti brevi excerpta letterari.
In occasione dell’ottava e ultima lezione, saranno presentate alcune poesie in originale e in traduzione, da leggere con gli studenti, che avranno per allora una familiarità almeno basilare con la lingua scritta. L’ultima lezione sarà seguita da una breve verifica delle competenze acquisite, essenziale per il rilascio del certificato di frequenza e dei crediti formativi. La frequenza alle lezioni è obbligatoria, e sarà registrata ogni volta; salvo casi gravi e documentati, gli studenti che intendano acquisire i due crediti formativi avranno diritto a un’unica assenza. Agli studenti sarà richiesta una partecipazione attiva alle lezioni, e lo svolgimento di esercitazioni in preparazione alle diverse lezioni; sebbene non sia richiesta alcuna propedeuticità, si darà tuttavia per scontato una buona padronanza delle categorie grammaticali, nonché l’attitudine allo studio e all’apprendimento linguistico.
I materiali del corso saranno forniti dalla docente.
Per informazioni e richieste: fdesimini@unior.it
This international conference aims to bring together researchers around the issue of “religion” to reflect on the practice and development of the social sciences: the disciplinary status of academic approaches to religion, the institutions within which they are embedded, the global circulation of these discourses, and their social function.
Perhaps more than ever in recent decades, the issue of religion arises across all areas of social life, from the private sphere to public forums, as well as within academic discourses dedicated to its analysis. This “renewal” in the study of religion challenges the founding paradigms of the social sciences and invites us to rethink the ways in which “religion”, as an object of study, continuously shapes our disciplines. To address these questions, we propose to establish a dialogue between researchers of diverse disciplines and institutional, cultural and socio-political contexts, with a view to provide detailed insights grounded in the longue durée and in comparative perspective.
We propose to approach religion trough three major themes: 1. Spaces and places of knowledge production; 2. Translations and circulations of concepts, categories and objects; 3. Ethics, politics and the city.
Colloque international. Construire, déconstruire, reconstruire les sciences sociales : Réfléchir les défis du religieux (REFLEX)
Ce colloque a l’ambition de réunir des chercheurs et chercheuses à l’échelle nationale et internationale autour de la « question religieuse » comme levier de réflexion sur la pratique et le développement des sciences sociales, à partir d’un questionnement sur la situation disciplinaire des sciences sociales du religieux, sur les institutions qui leur donnent site, sur la cartographie mondiale de ces sciences dans la dynamique de leur circulation, et sur leur fonction sociale.
Aujourd’hui, peut-être plus que jamais au cours des dernières décennies, la question du religieux traverse tous les domaines de la vie sociale, de la sphère intime à la tribune publique, ainsi que les discours scientifiques qui tentent de les appréhender. Ce « renouveau » de la question religieuse bouscule les paradigmes à partir desquels les sciences sociales se sont construites et invite à repenser la manière dont l’objet « religion » ne cesse de travailler nos disciplines. L’exigence d’une telle réflexion nous a imposé le projet d’un dialogue entre des acteurs de toutes disciplines, issus de divers cadres institutionnels et contextes socio-politiques et culturels, pour apporter des éclairages circonstanciés, dans une perspective de longue durée et dans un espace culturel élargi.
Dans cette perspective, « la question religieuse » semble réfléchir les défis de plusieurs ordres que l’on peut regrouper sous trois thèmes majeurs autour desquels ce colloque international s’organisera : 1. Espaces et lieux de production des savoirs ; 2. Traductions et circulations des concepts, des catégories et des objets ; 3. Éthique, politique et la cité.