Trust and mission: seventeenth-century Lazarist missionaries in North Africa
The missionaries sent to the North African cities of Tunis and Algiers in the midseventeenth century faced difficult conditions. Their work among the thousands of Christian slaves who were imprisoned there was under pressure from the sometimes hostile attitude of the Islamic rulers and the plague ep...
| Summary: | The missionaries sent to the North African cities of Tunis and Algiers in the midseventeenth century faced difficult conditions. Their work among the thousands of Christian slaves who were imprisoned there was under pressure from the sometimes hostile attitude of the Islamic rulers and the plague epidemic that struck many of them down. A good relationship with the home front was essential in such circumstances, certainly because communication possibilities were limited. Trust played an important role in the communication between the missionaries and their superiors in Europe and thus in the success of the mission. The two case studies in this article provide insight into the way missionaries tried to maintain the trust of their superiors and into the attempts of superiors to verify whether their trust in certain missionaries was well-founded. The episodes discussed not only show which factors influenced the relationship of trust, but also show that both superiors and missionaries were aware of the importance of such a relationship of trust. |
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| ISSN: | 2665-9484 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Trajecta
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