Elements of Ecumenical Dialogue in Roman Catholic Missions of the Early Modern Era: Example of the Capuchin Mission in Egypt in the Seventeenth Century

Today’s missionary practice of the Roman Catholic Church holds respect for the human person and takes into account the existence of different religious traditions. This is due to the promotion of interreligious and ecumenical dialogue at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The goal of missionaries since then is not to convert non-Christians and non-Catholics, but above all to witness to Christian love by the example of their lives and through dialogue.¹ However, before conciliar reform, the mission was different, tied as it often was to the political and colonialist aims of the European powers. In this respect, the missionary activity of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the early modern period stands out. Spain and Portugal, entrusted by Pope Alexander VI with the expansion of Christianity in 1493, conducted mission in their respective spheres of interest in the traditional spirit of the Reconquista and the associated militant expansion of Christianity.² Under royal patronage, preachers have spread the faith without regard for local religions and cultures, and often violently. Under pressure from both hegemons, the Church was in the grip of state control and had to work closely with the state to achieve secular goals.

The leadership of the Catholic Church in Rome could not approve of the organisation of missions in America, Asia, and Africa as a tool to extend the state power of European empires. The sixteenth century missions in the New World challenged the Church to reflect on the very meaning of its mission and examine its approach. Consequently, Pope Gregory XV in 1622 established the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (or simply De Propaganda Fide), a department of the Roman Curia, which had the purpose of separating the mission from its political abuse, especially from the control exercised by the Portuguese and Spaniards who eventually criticized the creation of the Propaganda.³ The creation of De Propaganda Fide marks a milestone in the history of Catholic missionary activity, since with the establishment of this Roman office the Church laid down fundamental guidelines for the propagation of the faith, like transformation of the missions from a colonial phenomenon into a movement uniquely ecclesiastical and spiritual, converting people to the faith with the pastoral method alone, without any semblance of compulsion.⁴ The method of missionary work under the control of De Propaganda Fide had henceforth to be performed with patience, good example, good works, and rational persuasion.

De Propaganda Fide formed missionaries in the modern sense of the word: individuals who are appointed to proclaim the faith in the world. Yet the idea of mission was not intended, as it is promoted today, to work for mutual understanding and promotion of social justice.⁵ The seventeenth century understanding of mission was based on the principles of the Tridentine Counter-Reformation which valued highly the total and universal primacy of the Roman pope with regard to non-Christians, non-Catholics, Jews and pagans.⁶ It is possible to claim that De Propaganda Fide, in its vision of missionary work, had already taken into account the importance of “inculturation”, the adaptation of faith to a non-Christian cultural background, but only with a view to successfully winning people to the religion, since the main goal of the mission was to convert them to the Catholic Church.

In practice, despite the clear instructions of the Propaganda, there were many violations of these instructions, as individual missionaries acted in accordance with the political and economic aims of the Western European countries. This was particularly evident in the Middle East, where the Propaganda sent its missionaries, as its action on a global scale was limited to areas where neither Spain nor Portugal had strong influence on missionary activity. There, unlike both countries, which spread the faith in their colonial territories among the representatives of primitive religions and Hindus, they targeted Orthodox Christians, who, notably among the Copts in Egypt, viewed Western missionaries with suspicion and saw their attempts to convert as theft of their believers.⁷ Despite the good intentions of Propaganda, the Catholic mission in Egypt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was generally seen as an affront to the Copts, who felt threatened by the European missionaries, since their individual actions, which will be presented below, showed disrespect for the Coptic culture and constituted an imposition of European civilisation and the Catholic faith.

Yet there were also missionaries who consistently fulfilled the spirit of Propaganda’s missionary vision, succeeding in preparing individuals to embrace the faith and the Roman Pontiff for the spiritual value in doing so. This paper presents the mission of the Capuchin friars in Egypt, a religious order that was especially active in mission work. In Egypt from the middle of the seventeenth century, one finds among the work of some Capuchin missionaries the true elements of contemporary Catholic ecumenism, which promotes encounters of an equal footing among different Christians.⁸ These missionaries of the Early Modern Era made a sincere effort to understand the people among whom they lived, and in some of their “ecumenical gestures” like mutual worship, respect for the Coptic traditions etc., they even went beyond their understanding of mission as conversion to Catholicism towards a modern ecumenical method of Christian life through the motto: “Unity in Diversity”.⁹

Perhaps the Capuchin mission in Egypt in the early modern period was not the most historically significant, as that of the Franciscan Order of Observants (further: Observants), whose mission in Upper Egypt bore rich fruit with the foundation of the Coptic Catholic Church in 1741. Though the Capuchin mission did not have the same results, their silent presence in Egypt exhibits more ecumenical dialogue than that of other contemporary missionaries. Order of Friars Minor Capuchin was a humble order that broke away from the Observants and began a reform movement which stressed the priority of contemplative prayer and a more rigorous austerity. They were recognized as an official, independent branch of the Observants in 1528 and were available for various forms of apostolic activity. After the foundation of De Propaganda Fide, the Capuchins became especially active in mission work.¹⁰

This paper will focus on the evaluation of the Capuchin mission in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, which represents the time of their first arrival in Egypt and the general beginning of the organisation of Catholic missions under the leadership of De Propaganda Fide. The chosen period also falls within the time of the Ottoman rule in Egypt (1517-1798), when in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was a flourishing of Catholic missions in the Middle East. By the mid-seventeenth century, the greatest mark among the Capuchins was made by Fr. Agathange de Vendôme (1598-1638), director of the Capuchin mission in Cairo, later a subordinate at the Capuchin mission in Upper Egypt and a martyr in Ethiopia, who will be mentioned as a representative of the dialogical mission in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The presence of Capuchins in Egypt is attested for the rest of the century. While the mission in Egypt was listed among the foreign missions of the Capuchin Order in 1662,¹¹ during that time, Capuchin missionaries Protais and Charles-François d’Orleans resided in Egypt and explored ancient sites in Luxor and its surroundings. In 1668, they visited the Coptic monasteries in the village of Bahjurah.¹² The Capuchins also had a school for boys in Old Cairo, where they opened a hospice in 1687, among others in Rosetta, Damietta, and Faiyum.¹³ In the eighteenth century, Capuchins were still found in the Egyptian territory, on mission to Ethiopia. Among them were the martyrs Liberato Weiss, Michele Pio da Zerbo and Samuele de Beano (1716), who were according to some sources, the Capuchin monks.¹⁴ The Capuchins gradually abandoned their mission in the Middle East after 1750, due to the reduced number of vocations in France, and the crisis among Catholic religious institutions brought on by the French Revolution.¹⁵

The presence of Western Christians in the Middle East dates back to the Crusades and the establishment of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century. Roman Catholics have had a continuous presence in the Holy Land since the founding of the Franciscan Province of the Custody of the Holy Land in the thirteenth century. Egypt was host to an occasional Franciscan presence from the time of the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221), when Francis of Assisi himself visited Damietta in Egypt in 1219. While the original plan of the Catholic missionaries to the East was to preach to the Muslims, due to their failure and the rigorous prohibition against conversion, they soon turned their attention to the “separated Christians”, including the Orthodox Copts.¹⁶ The unification of the Eastern Churches with the Roman Catholic Church had been an imperative of Catholic missionaries since the Crusades.¹⁷

The Observant Franciscans and Dominicans, who were in Alexandria in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tried to take advantage of the pressure of the Mamluk regime on the Coptic population and unite it with the Roman Church in order to protect them.¹⁸ Copts remained the target of Catholic missionary efforts even in Ottoman Egypt from the sixteenth century onwards, when openly proselytising among the Muslim population was forbidden.¹⁹ The situation for the mission was favourable in the time of Ottoman Egypt, as the Venetians and the French enjoyed many privileges, allowing missionaries to travel freely and to preach among Orthodox Christians.²⁰

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were several attempts at official unification between the Roman Catholic Church and the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, or the schismatic Church of Alexandria, with the first significant attempt occasioned by the Council of Florence in 1439. Despite the important differences of doctrine between the two Churches—papal supremacy, the filioque controversy, the question of purification, the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist— the council nevertheless aimed to eradicate the break between East and West. Though the Council of Florence, which was attended by Copts, in addition to representatives of other Orthodox Churches, reached agreement on theological issues and the proclamation of a union between the churches, the union never bore fruit since the Orthodox party renounced it shortly after arriving back home. In the sixteenth century, papal emissaries tried unsuccessfully to win the Coptic Patriarchs to the union, and correspondence between the Coptic Patriarchs and the Roman Pontiffs did not achieve far-reaching success.²¹ Two attempts by members of the Jesuit Society of Jesus, approved by the papacy in 1540 and devoted to the propagation of Catholicism throughout the world, were also disastrous. In 1561 and 1582 they travelled to Egypt and, in a second attempt, succeeded in meeting the Coptic Patriarch; however their encounter was upended by their own obstinacy, fanaticism and impatience, not to mention their rigid dogmatism. They knew no Arabic and were mainly engaged in writing attacks on the Copts.²²

The tactics used to convert the Copts had to be changed. In order to win the Coptic Church to join the See of Rome it was necessary to concentrate the mission on the monks in the desert monasteries, since the Copts chose their Church leaders from among the desert fathers. A new, more considerate missionary method, which means a turn from brief and controversial visits to Church leaders to a realisation of the importance of permanent coexistence with the Copts, can be seen in the work of the Observants and Capuchins in the seventeenth century.

Despite the failure of its previous missionary attempts, the Catholic Church continued its missionary work in Egypt in the seventeenth century. The creation of the Propaganda was a unification and systematisation of the missions under the auspices of the Roman administrative authority, which henceforth directly controlled missionary activities. The creation of the Propaganda also laid the foundations for a new phase of missionary work in the Middle East, which was important to custodianship and protection of the Holy Places. However, the main goal was to convert native Orthodox Christians and thus succeed where the Council of Florence had failed.²³

Shortly after the foundation of De Propaganda Fide, the Observants began to work in Egypt under its patronage (1630); by the end of the seventeenth century, they had established themselves in southern Egypt for the purpose of mission among the Christians in Ethiopia. They also opened houses in the north of the country under the auspices of the Custody of the Holy Land. In 1630, a Capuchin mission was also officially established in Cairo, which served as a base to penetrate the Coptic desert monasteries. Jesuits established a permanent centre in Cairo in 1697.

In the seventeenth century, Observants and Capuchins preparing for the Ethiopian mission often stayed in Coptic monasteries, where they learned Arabic and sometimes even preached in Coptic churches. De Propaganda Fide paid the monastery an annual sum for two or three friars to reside there.²⁴ It may seem strange that the Coptic monks accepted Western missionaries into their monastery, but they felt that the Catholic mission was too small and ineffective. In 1690, however, the Catholic Church acquired a Sultanic decree, which forbade government officials and members of the other Christian religious communities to interfere with Catholic missionaries teaching the principles of the Christian faith to Copts.²⁵

The politico-legal basis for the development of the mission in the Middle East was the system of Capitulations: diplomatic and commercial rights and privileges that the Ottoman imperial government granted to Europeans living and working in the empire. Already in the fifteenth century, the Venetian-Ottoman capitulations were concluded for the first time, in 1580 with England and in 1610 with the Dutch Republic. Particularly important were the capitulations agreed between France and the Ottoman Empire in 1604, which enabled the Catholic Church to send missionaries to the Ottoman lands.²⁶ As a result, the Capuchins in 1627 obtained official permission from the Ottoman Empire to establish their presence in its territory.²⁷ As France was the dominant European and Catholic power in the eastern Mediterranean, its position had grown during this period as Frenchmen came to monopolize the cloth trade and the Ottoman Empire aimed to encourage commercial exchange with French merchants.²⁸ The French were free to practice their religion in the Ottoman Empire and French Catholics were given custody of holy places. This also explains why the Capuchin missionaries in Egypt were mostly French.

Christians subordinated in the Ottoman Empire accepted Catholic missionary efforts with goodwill and even gratitude, since the missionaries helped them to achieve the revival of their faith and contributed to their intellectual growth. They also saw Catholic missionaries as providers of material gain. In this sense Christians in the Ottoman Empire were interested in some kind of Union of the Christendom, if not also expecting the political and military protection of Catholic powers.²⁹ On the other hand, Eastern Christians have reacted hostilely to the overly obvious intentions of Catholic proselytism.³⁰

The Copts in Egypt, however, did not see particular benefits in associating with Western missionaries. As they mostly lived in rural areas or worked in urban sectors outside trade, they did not see such benefits in adopting Catholicism. Moreover, the methods of forced conversions sometimes practised by the missionaries introduced many divisions between Copts and Catholics.

While this paper does not claim that only the Capuchin mission in Egypt had elements of dialogical proclamation of the faith, there is a general tendency that justifies the claim that the Capuchin mission stood out in this sense. The reasons for this are to be found mainly in two circumstances: the charism of their Order and the historical circumstances of tension between the various orders in the Egyptian mission.

To understand the personal zeal and attitude of the Capuchin missionaries it is important to know the position of their religious order within the family of Franciscan orders.⁴⁸ As noted before, the Capuchin order was a product of internal reforms within the Franciscan movement. In the early sixteenth century, the original Order of Friars Minor was officially split into the Order of Conventuals and the stricter Order of Observants – the latter have been supplying the Middle East for eight centuries and have been continuously present in Egypt since the early modern period. The Observants favoured missionary endeavours as they, unlike the Conventuals, did not seek a stable life in a monastery. The Capuchin Order, not without tensions, emerged from the Observant strain, following more closely St. Francis of Assisi’s ideal of living a poor and simple life.⁴⁹ Therefore, compared to the missionaries of other orders, like the Jesuits and Observants, the Capuchins in the Ottoman Levant were known as “simple missionaries.”⁵⁰ In this sense, humility, which knows no patronizing communication and respects the dignity of the other person, was built into the essence of their religious charism.

In general, the early examples of Catholic ecumenism and irenicism, found in some outlines in the Capuchin mission in Egypt, were, according to Howard Louthan, the result of religious mysticism and of the continuous humanist impulse in the seventeenth century.⁵¹ The mystics emphasized the existence of a spiritual Church that transcended the physical and immediate. It was the mystical component that was strongly evident among the sons of St. Francis and especially in the Capuchin Order, which wanted to strengthen fidelity to the fervour of its founder. The early Capuchins expected their missionaries to be motivated by perfect charity which was the consequence of an experience of unitive and mystical love.⁵² Moreover, Franciscan spirituality is characterised by developing the art of loving union with God, which includes self-sacrifice on the way to accessing the divine. The Capuchin ideals of fraternal life, poverty, humility, prayer and penance lead to this noble aim. In the early modern era, such mysticism certainly contributed to a profound Christian humanism among the Capuchins, who, following the example of the encounter between St. Francis and Sultan Malik al-Kamil in 1219, were able to accept everyone as an equal.

The specific nature of the Capuchin mission was also influenced by the historical circumstances of Roman Catholic missions in the Ottoman Empire and specifically in Egypt. As already mentioned, the Observants and Dominicans had already been missionaries among the Copts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, the sixteenth century was witness to unsuccessful attempts by the Jesuits. Until the arrival of the Capuchins, the Observants and the Jesuits, who had a long history of presence in Egypt and the wider region, were burdened by competition with each other to acquire Egypt as an area of interest and a mission base for Ethiopia. Conflicts between the missionaries of the various orders are evident in the Ottoman Empire, although they all worked in the name of De Propaganda Fide. The Italian Observants, who were linked to the Republic of Venice (the prefect of the Observant Franciscan mission in Egypt, Paolo da Lodi, even took up residence in the Venetian embassy in 1630), opposed the mission of the Jesuits and Capuchins, who were supported by France. The former, for example, had already been expelled from the Ottoman Empire (Aleppo) in 1625 and the Capuchins also encountered opposition from the Observants who saw in them strong rivals.⁵³ The Jesuits in Egypt were also critical of the Observants.⁵⁴

The Capuchins in Ottoman lands, at least at the beginning, were not burdened by such conflicts. They first settled in Egypt only as members of De Propaganda Fide (1630) and had no ambition to spread their own influence in the new environment, which the above-mentioned religious orders, especially the Observants, considered their sphere of action. The Capuchins were focused solely on missionary activity and were better trained for it than the Observants.⁵⁵ Prepared and sent to the mission by De Propaganda Fide, they also worked under the auspices of the inter-state agreements between the Ottomans and France, but there is no indication of them being caught up in international rivalry, as is evident in the case of the other two orders, which fought on the basis of national and political tensions. The Capuchins kept themselves apart from all political matters and dedicated themselves totally to preaching the faith.⁵⁶

Although the Capuchin mission to Egypt in the seventeenth century was part of a Catholic mission to convert its recipients to the Roman Catholic Church, there are elements of ecumenism in their mission. Of course, this was not yet ecumenical dialogue in the sense of modern theology which knows no proselytism. The whole Catholic and Capuchin mission was about “ecumenism of the return,” the conviction that the reunion of Christians could only be achieved by promoting the return to the one true Roman Catholic Church of those who had separated from her.⁷¹

Yet this paper intends to show that elements of ecumenical dialogue were already present in the Capuchin mission to Egypt in the early modern period. Missionaries were immersed in the study of Coptic language, culture, spirituality, and theology, albeit with a view to better persuading them to unite with the Roman Catholic Church. Still, in practice, a sincere respect for the Coptic religious tradition was also evident, and individual missionaries, in their desire to have good relations with the Copts, even departed from the basic task of conversion imposed on them by De Propaganda Fide. They recognised the Copts as brothers and respected their faith, in which they saw more than errors. In this, their mission had elements of a modern ecumenical dialogue, but at that time, because of the official understanding of mission as the winning of new believers, the “ecumenism of the return” could not yet become an “ecumenism of dialogue”.

The model of the Capuchin mission in Egypt presented here is of historical value because it shows the contribution of the Franciscan movement, inspired by the ever peace-minded and humble St. Francis of Assisi, to the development of Christian ecumenism. By inserting instructions on how to “go among the Saracens” into his religious Rule, St. Francis wanted to show first of all the relationship dimension of proclaiming the faith, even before that of martyrdom. His first aim was to meet the other person and to see him as a brother.⁷² Such an attitude prevents the missionary from acting in a patronising or superior way. And in this, the example of the Capuchin mission in Egypt is still relevant today.