I want to start today by putting you in a very
specific place. It's a place that smells of saltwater,
wet reeds, and just desperation. We're on Changchuan
Island, about 14 kilometers off the southern
coast of China. The date is December 3rd, 1552.
It is a bleak setting. And you have to remember,
this isn't some tropical paradise. It's a smuggling
outpost. It's winter. The wind is just cutting
through the walls of this tiny, hastily constructed
hut. And inside that hut, lying on a mat, is
a man who is, I mean, he's... arguably one of
the most famous figures in European history.
Yet he is dying in almost total obscurity. He's
46 years old. He's delirious with fever. And
he is staring out of the ocean waiting for a
boat that he must know, you know, deep down is
never going to come. That image strikes such
a chord because of the contrast. It's just so
powerful. You have this man, Francis Xavier,
who is known to history as the Apostle of the
Indies. He's a giant. He co -founded the Jesuits.
His name is on the front of universities in Ohio,
high schools in New York, cathedrals in Australia.
But in this moment, he's just a sick man in the
dirt, accompanied only by a Chinese interpreter
named Antonio and a servant from Malabar. It's
such a lonely end. But the journey to that hut
is what we are deep diving into today. Because
to get from a castle in Spain to a reed hut off
the coast of China, Francis Xavier had to live
about 10 different lives. And that is the key
theme for this discussion, I think. It's not
just a travelogue, you know, a list of places
he went. It is a case study in adaptability.
Francis Xavier was the ultimate improviser. He
was a man who constantly had to rewrite his own
operating manual. Every single time he thought
he had figured out how to be a missionary, he
would move to a new culture that just told him.
Everything you know is wrong. I love that framing.
It's all about the pivot. How do you go from
debating philosophy in Paris to ringing a bell
in the streets of India to, I mean, wearing silk
robes in Japan? And how do you do it all when
you were never even supposed to be the guy in
charge in the first place? Because that's the
twist we'll get to. Xavier was the backup plan.
The famous plan B. So, OK, let's rewind. We need
to understand the raw material before we see
how it was shaped. We're going back to 1506.
To the kingdom of Navarre. Yes. And we have to
be careful not to just say Spain. Navarre was
its own independent kingdom straddling the Pyrenees.
And Francis wasn't born Francisco Xavier. He
was born Francisco de Jasso y his piliqueta.
And he was not born in a hut. No, the source
material really emphasizes this. He was born
in the castle of Xavier. This is absolutely crucial
for his psychology. He was born into the high
nobility. I mean, his father, Juan de Jasso,
wasn't just some rich guy. He was a doctor of
law and the finance minister to the king of Navarre.
His mother was the sole heiress to the castle.
Wow. So Francis grew up surrounded by stone walls,
towers, servants, and a sense of, you know, invincibility.
He was a child of privilege. Absolute privilege,
but also military power. His family was deeply,
deeply involved in the defense of the realm.
But as so often happens in history, geography
is destiny. Navarre was just squeezed between
two giants, France and the rising power of Castile
and Aragon, what we now think of as Spain. And
the bubble bursts. Violently. In 1512, when Francis
is just six years old, Ferdinand of Aragon invades.
This is an annexation. It's a conquest. The Xavier
family naturally backs the legitimate king of
Navarre, which turns out to be the losing side.
So the war comes home. Literally. It destroys
the home. This is the first major trauma of his
life, no question. After a failed uprising in
1516, the Spanish governor, a man named Cardinal
Cisneros, decides to break the spirit of the
Navarrese nobility for good. He orders the sliding
of the castles. Sliding? That sounds so polite,
but it wasn't, was it? Not at all. It means military
castration. It's a brutal term. Soldiers arrived
at the castle of Xavier. They tore down the outer
defensive walls. They filled in the moat so it
couldn't be defended. They smashed the towers.
They literally lowered the height of the keep
by half. I'm just picturing a 10 -year -old France.
watching this, watching his family's symbol of
power and identity being dismantled stone by
stone. It turned a fortress into a farmhouse.
It was a calculated public humiliation. And right
in the middle of all this, his father dies. His
brothers are off fighting a guerrilla war in
the mountains. The family is stripped of its
military capability and its political future
is just gone. So if you're Francis and you're
growing up in the ruins of this castle, what
does that do to your ambition? You can't be a
general anymore. You can't be a finance minister
to a king who doesn't exist anymore. You look
for another ladder. And for a young nobleman
with no military future, the church was the traditional
path to power. And I mean power in the worldly
sense. You could become a bishop, a cardinal,
a diplomat. You could restore the family honor
through the ecclesiastical hierarchy. So he packs
his bags and heads to Paris. The University of
Paris, 1525. The intellectual center of the Western
world. And Francis completely reinvents himself.
He arrives at the College St. Barbe, and he is
just determined to succeed. But not as a saint.
Oh, definitely not. The accounts from this time
describe him as worldly. He was ambitious, very
proud of his noble lineage, and apparently quite
the athlete. An athlete. A high jumper. A high
jumper. You're kidding. It's a funny detail,
isn't it? But it fits the profile. He was physically
gifted, energetic, charismatic. He apparently
spent money he didn't really have just to keep
up appearances. He was trying to prove he was
still a somebody, despite what happened to his
castle. And the universe plays a joke on him.
It assigns him a roommate. Two roommates, actually.
He's sharing lodgings with his friend Pierre
Favre. And then a new student moves in, an older
man named Ignatius of Loyola. And this dynamic,
I mean, you couldn't write it. It's cinematic.
You have Francis, 23 years old, young, athletic,
arrogant, and then Ignatius. 38, limping from
an old war wound and completely utterly obsessed
with God. It was a clash of cultures, a total
clash. Ignatius had been a soldier, a real one.
He had his leg shattered by a cannonball at the
Battle of Pamplona. And during his long recovery,
he had this massive spiritual conversion. So
he came to Paris not to climb the ladder, but
to learn theology so he could serve souls. He
was intense. He was austere. And Francis hated
him. Oh, he couldn't stand him. The sources say
Francis actually regarded Ignatius as a joke.
He mocked him. He was sarcastic about Ignatius's
efforts to guide other students spiritually.
You can just hear the sneer in the history books.
Francis probably thought, who is this washed
up cripple trying to tell me how to live my life?
It's the classic cool guy versus the religious
nerd dynamic. Yeah. So how did Ignatius crack
the armor? Because Francis Xavier does not sound
like an easy sell. It was a war of attrition.
It definitely helped that their buffer, their
friend Pierre Favre, left for a while to visit
family. That left Francis alone with Ignatius.
Basically. And Ignatius was incredibly emotionally
intelligent. He didn't just come in preaching.
He saw that Francis was vain and needed validation.
So Ignatius praised him. He actually helped Francis
financially when Francis blew through his allowance.
He killed him with kindness. And then once the
defenses were down, he deployed the weapon. He
kept asking one question over and over again.
What will it profit a man? What will it profit
a man to gain the whole world and lose his own
soul? Which is such a direct attack on Francis's
entire project. Francis was there specifically
to gain the world. Yeah. To get that status back.
Exactly. Ignatius was holding up a mirror. He
was saying, OK, Francis, let's play this out.
Let's say you get the bishopric. Let's say you
store the castle. Yeah. Then you die. Then what?
It took time. But the logic and the sheer sincerity
of Ignatius' life eventually broke through. Francis
surrendered. The ambition didn't disappear. It
just changed targets. Instead of conquering the
world for the house of Xavier, he would conquer
it for Christ. And that leads to this incredible
scene in the crypt. August 15, 1534. The crypt
of Saint -Denis on Montmartre. This is the foundational
moment. Seven students. Ignatius, Francis, Pierre
Favre, and four others gather there in secret.
They take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
This is the nucleus of what becomes the Society
of Jesus, the Jesuits. But here's the thing that
always surprises me. They take these vows. They
form this brotherhood. Yeah. But they aren't
planning to go to India or Japan. Not even close.
No. If you had asked Francis Xavier in 1534 where
he would end up, he would have said Jerusalem.
The plan was to go to the Holy Land. They wanted
to convert the infidels on the ground where Jesus
walked. It was a very medieval, almost crusade
-like aspiration. So they weren't thinking globally
yet. Their vision was very narrow, very focused
on the Middle East. Correct. And they actually
tried to go. They all traveled to Venice, waiting
for a ship to take them. But a war broke out
between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, which
meant no ships were sailing. Oh, man. They waited
a year. Nothing. So they're stuck in a holding
pattern. And... This is the first great pivot
for the group. They couldn't go to Jerusalem,
so they went to Rome and offered their services
directly to the pope. They basically said, we
had a plan. It failed. Send us wherever you need
us. And in 1540, the pope says, OK, I approve
your order. And almost simultaneously, a letter
arrives from the king of Portugal. King John
III. He has this massive, sprawling maritime
empire in the east, but it has a spiritual problem.
He's hearing these reports that the Portuguese
settlers are living lives of absolute debauchery
and the work of evangelization is completely
stalled. He needs shock troops. He asks the pope
for missionaries. And the pope turns to Ignatius.
Now, Ignatius has his guys. Who does he pick?
He picks his best. He chooses Nicolas Bobadilla
and Simón Arbríguez. These are the guys for the
job. Tough, experienced. And Francis Xavier is
not on that list. He is not. Francis was serving
as the secretary for the new order. He was handling
the correspondence. He was the admin guy. He
was essential to the bureaucracy in Rome. So
the bags are packed. The Portuguese ambassador
is waiting. The whole mission is ready to go.
And then catastrophe. Nicolas Bobadilla gets
sick. very sick the sources are a bit vague but
he's totally dead ridden he absolutely cannot
endure a six -month sea voyage it would kill
him this is the moment The plan B moment. It
is. The ambassador is literally about to leave
Rome. Ignatius has no time to vet anyone else.
He calls Francis into his office. You can imagine
the heavy heart Ignatius loved Francis, and he
knew that sending him to India meant they would
never, ever see each other again. And he just
says, what, you're up? He simply said, Bobadilla
cannot go. You must go. And Francis. He reportedly
said, here I am. That's it. He patched his old
cassock, grabbed his breviary, a catechism, and
a single book of instructions, and he left the
next day. It gives you chills because if Bobadil
doesn't eat a bad shrimp or catch a fever, Francis
Xavier stays in Rome. We don't get the letters
from Japan. We don't get the global network.
The entire history of the Catholic Church in
Asia hinges on a stomachache. It's the ultimate
lesson in contingency. The greatest missionary
of the modern era was a substitute teacher. So
he goes. He travels overland to Lisbon, stays
there for a while, and finally departs on his
35th birthday, April 7th, 1541. He is now the
Apostolic Nuncio to the East. Which is a very
lofty title. It means he is the Pope's personal
representative in the entire East. But as he's
about to find out, titles don't stop scurvy,
and they certainly don't stop pirates. The journey
itself is a complete nightmare. It takes over
a year. He finally arrives in Goa in May 1542.
I want to unpack Goa. Yeah. Because when we say
missionary rise in India, we assume he starts
preaching to the locals. But that wasn't his
initial target at all, was it? No. His primary
mission, his first job, was to fix the Europeans.
We have to de -romanticize Portuguese India here.
This wasn't a colony of pious pilgrims. It was
a trading post staffed by what the contemporary
sources describe as riffraff. Riffraff. You had
convicts released from jail to serve in the army.
You had disaffected nobility trying to make a
quick fortune, adventurers, mercenaries. It was
like a Wild West boomtown. Exactly. The moral
situation was described as scandalous and undisciplined.
The Portuguese men were taking multiple local
women as concubines. They were enslaving people.
They were ignoring math. They were essentially
living as petty warlords. The king of Portugal
was deeply embarrassed. He sent Xavier to be
the sheriff. But Xavier shows up. He's just one
guy in a tattered robe. He can't arrest anyone.
So how do you clean up an entire city of rough
men like that? This is where we see his emotional
intelligence again. He doesn't start by screaming
from the pulpit and condemning everyone. He starts
with service. He moves into the royal hospital.
He spends his days washing the sores of lepers
and sick soldiers. He sleeps on the floor next
to the dying. He earns their respect through
pure grit. Precisely. It's very hard to mock
a man who is wiping up your vomit. And then once
he has their attention, he uses what we call
the bell ringer method. I love this detail. He
realized the adult men were cynical and hard
to reach. So he went for the next generation.
He would literally walk through the streets of
Goa ringing a handbell. The noise attracted the
children, the curious, and the servants. Once
he had a crowd, he'd lead them to the church
and teach them songs, prayers, and the catechism.
He weaponized the children. In a way, yes. These
kids would go home and sing the prayers at the
dinner table. They would ask their parents questions.
They would essentially shame their parents into
piety. It was a grassroots, bottom -up strategy.
And it actually worked. The atmosphere in Goa
began to shift. But Goa was just the headquarters.
The real frontier was south, wasn't it? The Pearl
Fishery Coast. Right, Cape Comorin. This is where
he encounters the Puravas. And this part of the
story requires some nuance because it touches
on the complex politics of conversion. Right.
Because the Puravas were already baptized when
Xavier arrived. Yes, about 20 ,000 of them, which
is a huge number. But it wasn't a sudden spiritual
awakening. About 10 years prior, the Puravas
were being decimated by Arab fleets and local
Hindu warlords who all wanted to control the
valuable pearl beds. They were getting crushed.
They were desperate. So they asked the Portuguese
for protection. And the Portuguese said, we will
bring the gunboats if you become Christians.
It was a transaction. Baptism for battleships.
That's a crude way to put it, but it's accurate.
The Paravas agreed. They got baptized en masse.
The Portuguese navy chased away the Arabs. But,
and here is the massive catch, nobody stayed
behind to teach them anything. So Xavier arrives
10 years later to find this huge population of
Christians who don't know who Jesus is, don't
know the creed, and are still practicing all
their traditional rituals. But his job wasn't
to convert them. It was to inform them. to actually
teach them what they'd signed up for. And it
was grueling, back -breaking work. He didn't
speak Tamil. He describes this agonizing process
of trying to translate the prayers with the help
of some locals who knew a tiny bit of Portuguese.
He would stand for hours and hours reciting,
baptizing new infants until his arm was physically
paralyzed from the repetition. And it wasn't
safe. I think people forget the physical danger
involved. It was incredibly dangerous. The local
Brahmins and the rulers who had lost control
of the pearl divers were furious. They saw Xavier
as an agent of Portuguese imperialism. which,
to be fair, he was. There were multiple attempts
on his life. His hut was burned down. There's
a famous account where he had to hide in the
branches of a large tree while armed men searched
the ground below for him. The warrior priest
imagery is strong here. Yeah. He's running, hiding,
preaching. And importantly, he was living with
the poor. Unlike later Jesuits who would focus
on the elites, Xavier was eating rice and water
with the pearl divers. He slept on the sand.
This gave him immense credibility with the lower
caste, but it also cemented... a certain image
of what a missionary was supposed to look like.
Poor, humble, suffering. Keep that image in mind,
the poor priest, because that is going to become
a huge problem for him later. But first he keeps
moving east. He's just restless. He had a divine
restlessness. In 1545, he heads to Malacca. This
is modern -day Malaysia. It was the great crossroads
of trade between India, China, and the Spice
Islands, a truly global city. And here we get
a glimpse of Xavier as a military asset. The
Pirate Battle. This feels like it belongs in
an action movie. It really does. In 1547, the
Essenese from Sumatra launched a surprise attack
on Malacca. It was a massive raid. The Portuguese
garrison was demoralized and heavily outnumbered.
They were ready to just hole up in the fortress
and wait it out. And Xavier intervenes. He went
to the church. preached this fiery sermon, and
essentially shamed and inspired the Portuguese
to go out and fight. He prophesied victory. He
rallied the troops. They sailed out to the Perlis
River and won a decisive, shocking victory against
the pirate fleet. So now he's a war hero too.
But Malacca is significant for another much bigger
reason. This is where the trajectory of his entire
life changes completely. He meets a man. December
1547, he meets Anjuru. Anjuru is Japanese. But
he's not a diplomat or a merchant. He's a fugitive.
He is on the run. The story is that Anjiro had
killed a man in Japan, possibly in a duel or
a feud, and had to flee to save his own life.
And he was just tortured by guilt. He had heard
these rumors of a holy man from the West who
could offer absolution. I find this so fascinating.
The door to Japan was opened by a murderer seeking
redemption. History loves irony, doesn't it?
Anjiro managed to communicate with Xavier, likely
using a mix of broken Portuguese and Malay. He
described his homeland, but he didn't describe
it as a land of savages or simple fisher folk.
He described a highly sophisticated, complex
society. What did he tell Xavier? What was the
pitch? He told him about the honor code, the
literacy, the universities run by monks, the
rule of law. Xavier was completely captivated.
He asked the Portuguese merchants about it, and
they confirmed it. They said the Japanese were
very reasonable people, and he would do great
service there. So he asks Anjuru the key question.
He asks, if I went to Japan, would the people
become Christians? And Anjuru's answer was very
specific, and it was a warning. It was. He said,
they will not become Christians immediately.
They are a people who ask questions. They will
look at your conduct. If your answers satisfy
their reason and your conduct matches your words,
then they will believe. That is a direct challenge.
He's saying, you can't just ring a bell here.
You have to win the debate. Exactly. Xavier realized
this was a different league entirely. India was
about charity and ritual. Japan would be about
intellect and philosophy. He decided he had to
go. He baptized Anjiru, who took the name Paulo
de Santa Fe, and used him as his guide and interpreter.
So, 1549, he lands in Kagoshima on the southern
island of Kyushu, the first Jesuit in Japan.
And this begins the most critical phase of his
adaptability because almost immediately everything
starts to go wrong. Let's talk about the language
because Xavier didn't speak Japanese and Anjuru
wasn't a theologian, was he? No, Anjuru was a
warrior and a merchant. A good man, but not a
scholar. He tried to translate Catholic concepts
into Japanese concepts, and this led to the famous
Dainichi disaster. Unpack that for us. What exactly
happened? Well, Xavier needed a word for God,
a singular, all -powerful creator. Anjiro, trying
to be helpful, suggested the word Dainichi. To
Xavier, it was just a word, so he started preaching
in the streets, crying out, Worship Dainichi.
The truth is in Dainichi. But to the Japanese,
Dainichi meant something very, very specific.
Oh, yeah. Dainichi is the central deity of Shingon
Buddhism, the Great Sun Buddha. It represents
the cosmic truth, the essence of the universe.
It is absolutely not a personal creator god who
judges sin. So when Xavier's yelling this, the
Buddhist monks aren't angry. They're happy. They
loved it. They welcomed Xavier into their temples.
They thought, look at this. A wise man from India,
which they saw as the birthplace of the Buddha,
has come to preach a new sect of Shingon. They
thought he was one of them. It's a total comedy
of errors. He thinks he's converting them. They
think he's agreeing with them. It took months
for Xavier to realize the misunderstanding. When
he finally figured out that Dainichi implied
a pantheistic universe rather than a Christian
creator, he was horrified. He had to pivot hard.
What did he do? He stopped using the word completely.
He switched to Durusu, which is just a Japanese
phonetic approximation of the Latin deus, and
he had to go back and explain, no, no, Dainichi
is not God. Dainichi is actually a deception.
Oof. That must have gone over well. It destroyed
his relationship with the monks. They felt trick,
betrayed. They went from being his hosts to his
bitter enemies. But it taught Xavier a valuable
lesson. You cannot just copy -paste concepts.
You have to understand the deep culture. But
language wasn't the only pivot. He also had to
change his wardrobe, right? This is the visual
pivot. Remember how in India his power came from
his poverty? He wore tattered robes. He walked
bare -fry. That was the sign of a holy man there.
But in feudal Japan. In feudal Japan, appearances
were rigidly codified. Poverty was associated
with impurity with the lower classes. When Xavier
arrived in his rags looking like a beggar, he
was treated with utter disdain. He tried to get
a meeting with the daimyo, the warlord of Satsuma,
but he was ignored. He looked like a vagrant.
So he realizes his brand is completely failing.
He reads the room. He realizes that to get respect,
he has to play by Japanese rules. So when he
travels to Yamaguchi to meet the ruler there,
he orchestrates a total transformation. A makeover.
It's a full makeover. He ditches the rags. He
puts on a fine cassock, a surplus, and a stole.
He gathers his attendants, about 30 of them,
and dresses them in their best clothes. He presents
himself not as a humble monk, but as the ambassador
of the great Portuguese empire. And he brings
gifts, too. High -tech gifts, a striking clock,
a musical instrument, eyeglasses, mirrors, things
the Japanese had never seen before. He was bringing
wonder. And the result. The doors flew open.
The daimyo was incredibly impressed. He granted
Xavier permission to preach. Xavier realized
that evangelical poverty was a cultural barrier
in Japan, so he just discarded it. That is the
definition of adaptability. He kept the core
message, but he completely changed the packaging.
But even with the fancy clothes, the intellectual
battle was tough. You mentioned Anjuru's warning
about questions. The Japanese bombarded him with
questions, and they weren't easy ones. They hit
him with the classic problem of evil. Which is?
They asked, if your God is good and all -powerful
and created everything, why did he create the
demons? Why did he create hell? If he's good,
why is there evil? I mean, that's a question
theologians still struggle with today. And they
asked a very personal one, one that really hit
home. If this truth is necessary for salvation,
Why did God leave our ancestors in darkness for
so long? Are our beloved ancestors in hell? Oof.
That's a deal breaker question, isn't it? Is
my grandmother in hell? And Xavier, bound by
the theology of the time, basically had to say
yes. The Japanese found this absolutely repulsive.
They said, what kind of cruel God would create
people just to damn them for ignorance? Xavier
wrote back to Rome saying that these people were
the delight of his heart because they were so
rational, but they completely exhausted him.
He couldn't rely on authority. He had to use
logic. He spends over two years in Japan. He
establishes communities in Hirado, Yamaguchi,
and Bungo. It's a success, but it's an unfinished
success. because he realizes something fundamental
about the Japanese worldview. He realizes that
Japan looks up to China. For them, China was
the big brother, the source of wisdom, writing,
and religion. So Xavier starts to think strategically.
He thought, if I can convert China, the Japanese
will say, well, if the wise Chinese are doing
it, it must be the right thing to do. The kingpin
strategy. Yeah. To win Japan, he has to win China
first. So the target shifts again. In 1552, he
leaves Japan and sets his sights on the Ming
Empire. But there's a problem. A big problem.
China is closed. Hermetically sealed. The Ming
dynasty had strictly forbidden foreigners from
entering the mainland. The penalty was imprisonment
or death. But Xavier loves a loophole. What was
his plan this time? He decided to go legal. He
would organize an official Portuguese embassy.
He enlisted his friend, a wealthy merchant named
Diogo Pereira. Pereira would be the ambassador,
bearing gifts and tribute for the emperor. Xavier
would go along as the apostolic nuncio. It was
a perfect cover. Legitimacy. Diplomacy. It should
have worked. It would have worked, but then human
nature got in the way. Just pure pettiness. We're
back in Malacca. They arrive in Malacca to refit
their ship, the Santa Cruz, and they run into
the captain of Malacca, a man named Alvaro de
Ati da Gama. Da Gama. That's a famous name. He
was the son of the legendary Vasco da Gama, but
he was not a hero. He was a small -minded bureaucrat
with a grudge. Apparently, he hated Diogo Pereira,
and when he saw Pereira arriving with this fancy
title of ambassador to China, he just got jealous.
So he pulls rank. He sabotaged the whole thing.
He seized the ship. He confiscated the gifts
that were meant for the emperor. He stripped
Pereira of his title. He forced the crew to resign.
It was pure, vindictive sabotage. That is devastating.
Sabotaged by your own countrymen out of nothing
but spite. Xavier was furious. He actually produced
his documents proving he was the papal nuncio
and threatened to excommunicate da Gama on the
spot. But da Gama didn't care. He had the guns.
So Xavier is left with nothing. No ambassador.
No gifts. No official. permit. But he wouldn't
give up. He took a skeleton crew and sailed to
Shangchuan Island, the smuggling outpost where
we started this whole story. He's desperate now.
He's looking for a coyote. He's trying to find
a Chinese smuggler who will hide him in a boat
and drop him on the mainland at night. He found
a man who agreed to do it for a massive amount
of pepper, which was worth a fortune. He was
willing to be smuggled in like contraband. He
waited in that hut. Days turned into weeks. The
smuggler never showed up. Maybe he was caught.
Maybe he just got scared and took the payment
and ran. We'll never know. And Xavier's health
just collapsed. The fever took over. And on December
3rd, 1552, Francis Xavier dies. He is 46 years
old. He is looking at the coast of China, but
he never touches it. It feels like a tragedy,
a total failure of the final mission. But this
is where the story takes a turn into the truly
bizarre. Because Xavier dies, but his body. His
body keeps traveling. This is section seven of
our outline, The Macabre Journey. And I have
to warn you, this gets a little graphic. It's
the 16th century. Things are different. So he
dies. They bury him on the beach. But because
they intend to eventually move his bones back
to India, they want the flesh to decompose quickly.
So they fill the coffin with quicklime. Quicklime.
Which is caustic. It eats organic matter. It's
designed to leave only bones. Right. They packed
him in lime, nailed the lid shut, and left him
there. Two and a half months later, a ship arrives
to collect the bones. They dig him up. And they
open the coffin, expecting a clean skeleton.
Instead, they find the body is whole. The lime
hasn't worked at all. The body is fresh. There
is no smell of decay. In fact, witnesses said
it smelled sweet. The incorrupt body. A classic
sign of sainthood. And to test this. And this
makes me wince every time I read it. The captain
actually took a tool and cut a slice of flesh
from the knee. He cut the body. To see if it
was just desiccated or mummified. It wasn't.
It bled. Fresh blood. They were completely astounded.
They realized they had a miracle on their hands.
They loaded the body onto the ship and took it
to Malacca. And in Malacca, the disrespect continues.
It's an absolute disaster. The clergy in Malacca
didn't really care that much. They dug a grave
near the church, but they didn't measure the
coffin properly. The hole was too small. Oh no.
You can see where this is going. Rather than
digging it wider, they forced the body in. They
shoved the head down so hard they broke his neck.
They tamped the dirt down, smashing his nose
flat against his face. That is just horrific.
It is. Later, the Jesuits finally got permission
to dig him up again and move him to Goa. They
found the body was still incorrupt, but now it
was physically damaged from that terrible burial.
So they finally get him to Goa in 1554. Yeah.
And the reception? is chaotic. It's a mob scene.
The viceroy, the nobles, thousands of people
are there, but the crowd is out of control. One
woman, in a frenzy of devotion, apparently bit
off the toe of the saint to keep as a relic.
She bit off his toe. History says yes. Because
a piece of a saint or relic was considered a
direct conduit of divine power. And this obsession
with relics leads to the official dismemberment
later on. Right. The church decides to share
the wealth. In 1614, the superior general of
the Jesuits in Rome decided he wanted a piece
of the founder. He specifically requested the
right arm. Why the right arm? Because that was
the arm that had baptized an estimated 30 ,000
people, it was seen as the instrument of salvation.
So in a secret ceremony in Goa, doctors surgically
amputated the arm at the elbow. And sent it to
Italy. It's in the Church of the Gesù in Rome
today, in a massive silver reliquary. But they
didn't stop there. They took the shoulder blade
for the Jesuit college in Macau. In 1620, they
removed the intestines and all the internal organs
to distribute to other Jesuit houses around the
world. They literally hollowed them out to send
them around the globe. It sounds gruesome to
us, and it is, but think of the symbolism. Xavier
wanted to go to all these places. He wanted to
be a global missionary. In death, he became one
physically. His body became a map of the Jesuit
empire. And today, the rest of him is still in
Goa. In the Basilica of Bom Jesus. He's in a
glass and silver casket. He doesn't look like
he did in 1553, though. He's mummified now. The
skein is like parchment. The features are drawn.
But he is still the center of a massive pilgrimage
every 10 years. Before we close, we do have to
touch on the controversial side. We can't talk
about Portuguese India in this period without
talking about the Inquisition. We must be objective
here. There is a letter that Xavier wrote in
1546 to King John III. In it, he explicitly asks
the king to establish the Inquisition in Goa.
Why? What was his reasoning? He was deeply concerned
about... what he saw as Judaizing and crypto
-Muslim practices among the new converts. He
felt the faith was being diluted, that people
were converting in name only. He wanted the state
to enforce purity of doctrine. And the Goa Inquisition,
when it finally came, was brutal. It was. It's
a very dark chapter of history. But we have to
get the timeline right. Xavier asked for it,
but he died in 1552. The Inquisition didn't actually
start in Goa until 1560. So Xavier never saw
a trial. He never burned a heretic. But he did
call for the— institution. It shows us he was
a man of his time capable of immense charity
towards the sick, but also holding the rigid
intolerance of 16th century dogmatism. It's the
complexity of history. You can't just put him
in a good or bad box. No. He was a deeply complex,
driven man. So let's wrap this up by looking
at the legacy. The numbers alone are staggering.
The best modern estimates are around 30 ,000
converts. That's one man walking and sailing
in 10 years. But the bigger legacy is the network.
The schools. The Jesuits became the educators
of the world. And Xavier is the patron saint
of that whole enterprise. But I want to go back
to that final image, the unfinished mission.
I know. He died staring at it. By all accounts,
a total failure. But here is the beautiful, ironic
part. His death on that island inspired a mania
in Europe. Young Jesuits heard the story of the
lonely, tragic death of Francis Xavier, and they
said, I want to finish what he started. It was
the ultimate recruitment poster. Exactly. A few
decades later, another Jesuit, Matteo Ricci,
managed to enter China. He learned the language.
He adopted the culture. He got to Beijing. He
fulfilled Xavier's dream. And he did it because
Xavier failed so dramatically and so poetically.
So what's the final takeaway for the listener,
for the person driving to work right now listening
to this? For me, it's the power of Plan B. You
have to remember, Francis Xavier was the backup.
He wasn't the first choice. He wasn't even the
second choice. He was the guy they grabbed at
the last minute because the other guy had a stomachache.
And yet, he defined the role. He took a second
string opportunity and played it like an absolute
star. He didn't have a rigid plan. He had a rigid
goal. But his methods were completely flexible.
If poverty doesn't work, wear silk. If India
is too chaotic, go to Japan. If Japan is too
hard, go to China. He never stopped moving. He
never stood still. He never stopped adapting.
And in doing so, he showed that sometimes the
path you're forced onto by accident is actually
the path to greatness. Maybe the detours are
the point. That is a fantastic place to leave
it. From a broken castle in Navarre to a silver
casket in Goa, the story of Francis Xavier is
the story of the ultimate pivot. Indeed, it's
an incredible life. Thanks for diving deep with
us today. We'll see you next time.