Casuistry in the Tropics: the moral-theological pragmatics of Francisco Rodrigues in Portuguese Asia (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)

Abstract

Starting in the 1550s, and especially after the Council of Trent, efforts to standardize liturgy, doctrine and dogma in the church were felt in the Portuguese empire and its neighboring areas through a growing concern with moral dilemmas. Theologians from the Society of Jesus in Goa had a central role in the resolution of these issues. Identifying the limits of European moral theology, this article analyses the legacy of one of these theologians, Francisco Rodrigues, establishing his influence and reach through a philological analysis of his writings. Thus, we propose the delimitation of a moral-theological casuistry of Goa as a category for classifying this textual corpus, defined by a moral theology unlinked from the European context, offering solutions for the moral cases of the region and favoring conversion and the maintenance of converted individuals.