From Goa to Global: Devotional Images and the Cult of Francis Xavier in the Seventeenth-Century World

Abstract

The scholarship on the cult of the Jesuit missionary of Asia, Francis Xavier (1506–1552), has focused primarily on India, Portugal, and the Italian Peninsula. Yet the veneration of Xavier through images was global in scope. This article assesses the full extent of his cult by considering the spaces and places of likenesses of Xavier first in Goa and then its worldwide expansion during and after his canonization cause. How and where did the devout interact with these images throughout the early modern world? The result reveals the broader geography of the cult of the new «Apostle of the East» in places overlooked in the field of research by examining the quotidian use of devotional objects that prefaces and postdates Xavier’s canonization in 1622.

Keywords

• francis xavier; devotional images; early modern world; cult of the saints; society of jesus