The Pacific Journeys of the South Asian Martyr Saint Gonçalo Garcia: India, Japan & Brazil

When Gonçalo Garcia joined the group of Franciscan friars martyred by Japanese rulers at Nagasaki in 1597, little note was made of his ethnic and geographic origins. The Japanese Christians martyred generated much interest by historians and hagiographers, while Garcia’s backstory as a product of a Portuguese father and a South Asian mother were little remarked. Yet his backstory reveals significant Pacific entanglements: He began his adult life as a merchant, leveraging his position as a bridge between two cultural worlds to expand his market throughout the Pacific. His later life as a Franciscan friar brought him again to Japan to meet his death.  As part of the group martyrdom, Garcia’s own cult remained obscure until it surfaced dramatically a century and a half later as patron to a confraternity devoted to mixed-race people in Brazil.

This talk analyzes Gonçalo Garcia’s life and afterlife as a global microhistory, illuminating the complex movement of global sanctity between Portuguese colonial territories.

A Q&A session will follow.  Light refreshments will be served.

Dr. Rowe will be delivering this talk as part of the History Department Colloquium Lecture Series.  For information on our upcoming talks, visit https://history.wustl.edu/events.