The Jesuits, Goa and the Arts

From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, the Jesuit missionary enterprise in Goa not only propagated a faith but also contributed to a Catholic imagination that while being universal was also characteristically Goan. The flourish of Jesuit-inspired art and architecture that continues to dot the Goan landscape today, bears testimony to the cultural encounter between diverse religious and social spheres within Goa. Whereas its original impetus might have been European, its artistic production was shaped through a collaboration between European Jesuits and the Goan populace and its craftsmen who accommodated Jesuit art and architecture to their own cultural sensibilities. What resulted was an evocative new style, the Modo Goano.

The Jesuits, Goa and the Arts focuses on the artistic and cultural production of Jesuit-inspired art and architecture in Goa. Along with brilliant photography that brings to life the artistic milieu of the sixteenth-eighteenth century Jesuit presence in Goa, the contributions in the book draw on historical scholarship which highlight the varied contexts that shaped the Jesuits, Goa and the arts. The volume commemorates the twin jubilees of the canonisation of Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) and Francis Xavier (1506-1552) who greatly influenced the global mission of the Society of Jesus.