Casting Their Nets: 1643–1660

Continuing from Chap. 4 , this chapter demonstrates how the Jesuit missionaries attempted to replicate the Society’s missionary experience within Europe as discussed in the second chapter, creating positive relationships with elites of Syrian society and European consuls and merchants, creating congregations for lay individuals, and establishing schools that demonstrate their flexibility in curriculum, the teaching of mathematics for example. It also explores the expansion of the missions to Sidon, Tripoli, and Antoura and points to the lack of conversions in the letters of the mission superiors in contradistinction to the annual reports and published works that tended to exaggerate conversions to Catholicism. As important, the chapter reveals the flexibility and plasticity of relationships, with the mending of ties between the Jesuits and Franciscans, it was with the latter’s assistance that the mission in Sidon was established. The chapter includes a narrative on the deaths of Jerome Queyrot and Jean Amieu, the mission superiors who were responsible for the founding and expansion of the missions, and the significant loss in experience and language skills within the Jesuit mission.