Paolo Aranha
paolo.aranha(at)sas.ac.uk
Marie Curie Fellow
Paolo Aranha, an Italian of Indian origin, studied Political Science and International Relations at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. His “laurea” thesis, defended in 2004, was a synthesis on the history of the Catholic missions in India during the Sixteenth century. A revision of this work, Il Cristianesimo Latino in India nel XVI secolo was published by Franco Angeli (Milan) in 2006.
In 2005 Aranha worked as an analyst for Caritas Italiana in the humanitarian assistance to the South Indian population affected by the tsunami.
In that same year he was admitted to the doctoral programme of the European University Institute in Florence. At the Department of History and Civilization he worked at a dissertation (to be defended shortly) on the conflict on missionary adaptation known as the “Malabar Rites controversy”. In order to understand that historical problem he undertook extensive archival researches in Europe, Asia and America.
Paolo Aranha was awarded fellowships by the Fondazione Luigi Salvatorelli, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and the Centro Universitario Cattolico.
In 2009 he was an Albin Salton short term fellow at the Warburg Institute, where he came again in January 2011 for a two-year Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship on the early modern Catholic representations of Hinduism. This project challenges the usual association of indology with the British colonial period, suggesting instead that already between the 16th and the 18th centuries Catholic missionaries of various orders and nationalities had developed different epistemological strategies in order to make sense of the Indian religious complexity.
Aranha has published articles in Italian and English on the history of the Madurai mission as well as on the racial, political and economical aspects of the Catholic missions to India during the 16th - 18th centuries.
He is currently engaged also in a study on the repression of the Indian Christians by the Goa Inquisition during the early modern age.
Publications
“Les meilleures Causes embarassent les Juges, si elles manquent de bonnes preuves: Père Norbert’s Militant Historiography on the Malabar Rites Controversy” in Thomas Wallnig, Ines Peper, Thomas Stockinger, Patrick Fiska (eds.), Europäische Geschichtskulturen um 1700 zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, Politik und Konfession (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012): 239- 268
“From Meliapor to Mylapore, 1662-1749: The Portuguese presence in São Tomé between the Quṭb Shāhī conquest and its incorporation in British Madras” in Laura Pang (ed.), Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011): 70-87
“Sacramenti o saṃskārāḥ? L'illusione dell'accommodatio nella controversia dei riti malabarici”, in Cristianesimo nella Storia 31 (2010): 621- 646 (special issue edited by Maria Teresa Fattori)
“«Glocal» conflicts: missionary controversies on the Coromandel coast between the XVII and the XVIII Centuries”, in Michela Catto, Guido Mongini, Silvia Mostaccio (eds.), Evangelizzazione e Globalizzazione: Le missioni gesuitiche nell'età moderna tra storia e storiografia, Biblioteca della “Nuova Rivista Storica” n. 42 (Città di Castello: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, 2010), pp. 79-104.
“La formazione del giovane Roberto Nobili” in Matteo Sanfilippo, Carlo Prezzolini (eds.), Roberto De Nobili (1577-1656): Missionario gesuita poliziano: Atti del convegno Montepuciano 20 ottobre 2007 (Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, 2008): 31-44
“Roberto Nobili e il dialogo interreligioso?” in Roberto De Nobili (1577-1656): Missionario gesuita poliziano, pp. 137- 150
“Gerarchie razziali e adattamento culturale: La «Ipotesi Valignano»”, in Adolfo Tamburello, M. Antoni J. Üçerler SJ, Marisa Di Russo (eds.), Alessandro Valignano S.I., uomo del Rinascimento: ponte tra Oriente ed Occidente (Roma: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2008): 76-98
"Nicodemism and Cultural Adaptation: The Disguised Conversion of the Rāja of Tanor, a Precedent for Roberto Nobili's missionary method", in C. Joe Arun SJ (ed.), Interculturation of Religion: Critical Perspectives on Robert de Nobili's Mission in India (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2007): 105-144
Il Cristianesimo latino in India nel XVI secolo, Franco Angeli, Milano 2006, pp. 272
Review of Gabriella Cotta, La nascita dell'individualismo politico. Lutero e la politica della modernità, Bologna, il Mulino, 2002, in Bollettino telematico di filosofia politica, bfp.sp.unipi.it/rec/cotta.htm
“Magna latrocinia. Considerazioni sui concetti di “res publica” e “iustitia” ne La Città di Dio”, in Il Margine 4/XXI (2001): 14-21