This book deals with the Portuguese missionary and its activities in the island in the heyday of Portuguese domination. Portuguese commentators have also described this process as the spiritual conquest. The theme of the book, therefore, is the Christianization of Ceylon that took place under the Portuguese.
The publication is divided into several parts. Part One deals with the ideology on which missionary activity was based. Part Two discusses the organization of such activity and deals with recruitment, training and remuneration of the missionary. Part Three deals with various characteristics the missionary displayed in the course of his apostolic mission. Parts Four and Five examine the nature of the conversions effected – their ostensible as well as real objectives and the methods employed. Part Six is a summing up.
This publication is a pioneering venture, in two ways. On the one hand this is the first attempt to examine a significant aspect of our history from a non-conquering, non-Catholic point of view. On the other, this is also the first attempt to view the Portuguese missionary enterprise in the island as a whole and not any particular feature in it.
This publication has been carefully researched and its conclusions are substantiated with the evidence of primary and secondary sources. Its objective, therefore, is to make a dispassionate and unbiased study of a sensitive subject.
The author who began his writing career with best-seller historical fiction such as ‘The Rebel of Kandy’, later drifted into history proper with his military history, ‘Kandy Fights the Portuguese’. While that dealt with the temporal conquest of the island, the present volume deals with its spiritual conquest. Together they are a present-day parallel to the Portuguese historian Queiros’ ‘The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon’.
This book was released last week. |
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