Cloaked “Pagods”: Portuguese and “Heathen” Churches in Sixteenth-Century Malabar

Abstract

Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Malabar on 21 May 1498, would hasten an epoch of social and cultural transformation in Malabar’s history. This article examines one development of this transformative period. Namely, it seeks to understand how the arrival of a people who came in search of “Christians and spices” would result in lasting changes to the form and the style of Christian architecture in Malabar, in present-day Kerala (southwest India). It highlights the efforts of the Estado da Índia (Portuguese State of India) to reconcile concomitant political, religious, and economic ambitions in the region by broadly sketching interventions to the practice of Christianity and the architectural style of churches in sixteenth-century Malabar. The article further proposes the reading of Portuguese-style façades in churches that, to the Portuguese, recalled Hindu temples or “pagods” as an interventional program to hide or cloak the political, religious, and historical portent of the traditional Malabar church.

Keywords

• iconoclasm
• Malabar
• Saint Thomas
• Christians
• Portugal
• Padroado