Roberto de Nobili and the Myth of the Modern Conceptualization of Religion in Seventeenth-Century India

Leading scholars attribute extraordinary achievements to Roberto de Nobili, an Italian Jesuit who worked in a Catholic mission in South India in the seventeenth century. De Nobili is not only said to have enabled the “accommodation” of Indian and, by implication, Hindu social and cultural traditions in the community of converted Christians by distinguishing “religious” from “civil” practices and meanings in the lives of the so-called Gentiles. Through his engagement in the translation and hermeneutic mediation between European and Indian languages and religions, the missionary scholar is also celebrated today for having prepared the ground for the formation of a modern, that is, universalist and pluralistic, concept of religion. The article presents an in-depth reading of original writings of de Nobili and critically discusses modern historical and philological scholarship about his work. It questions the thesis that de Nobili was the harbinger of a groundbreaking new concept of religion. Critical propositions are the following: (1) de Nobili’s distinction between “religion” and “civility” was part of a strategic focus on the conversion of Brahmans in South India, not the theoretical vision of a new concept of religion. (2) Even if communicating between diverse cultures, the missionary translations embraced political contexts and scholarly paradigms that willfully invoked hostile tensions between their linguistic and cultural referents. (3) De Nobili’s redefinition of “idolatry” reveals an aggressive “semiotic ideology” that seriously undermines the argument of a friendly mediation between Christians and Gentiles.