“Today a flight from Prague to Guam covers an aerial distance of over 7,100 miles and takes about 15 hours. The journey may seem far, long, and cumbersome to many travelers. Yet today’s challenges pale when compared to those faced in 1678 by Augustinus Strobach…”
So begins today’s story from Dr. Ulrike Strasser.
For further reading:
Missionary Men in the Early Modern World: German Jesuits and Pacific Journeys by Ulrike Strasser (Amsterdam University Press, 2020). Read it now for free via Open Access here.
90 Second Narratives
Season 9: “Friendship”
Episode 8: “Posthumous Friendships between Jesuit Brothers”
Sky Michael Johnston:
Welcome 90 Second Narratives. I’m Sky Michael Johnston and this is a very special episode for me. I’m thrilled to share with you the voice and the research of a good friend of mine, Dr. Ulrike Strasser, my doctoral advisor. It’s fun that she is joining the show for our season on the theme of friendship. Dr. Strasser is a Professor of History at the University of California San Diego. Her story tells of a unique form of friendship. Here she is with the story, “Posthumous Friendships between Jesuit Brothers.”
Ulrike Strasser:
Today a flight from Prague to Guam covers an aerial distance of over 7,100 miles and takes about 15 hours. The journey may seem far, long, and cumbersome to many travelers. Yet today’s challenges pale when compared to those faced in 1678 by Augustinus Strobach, a Jesuit from Bohemia. Strobach journeyed to Guam on land and sea routes via Spain and the Americas across some 15,000 miles, over half of the earth’s circumference. In 1682 or four years later, he finally arrived in Guam.
What made this man from Central Europe undertake such an arduous journey to the Pacific in the late seventeenth century? There was no shortage of other missionary opportunities, some of them much closer to home. The Jesuit order commanded the largest transnational network at the time, more extensive than that of any empire. So what set the Bohemian on his course to a remote island on the other side of the world?
Two Jesuits brethren he never met in the flesh, but befriended in spirit. Most immediately, there was a Spanish Jesuit named Diego de Sanvitores. Sanvitores had founded the Guam mission back in 1668 and was killed for the faith in 1671. Catholics around the Pacific and in Europe hailed him as a martyr. Augustinus Strobach in Bohemia was deeply moved by Sanvitores’s fate – and fame – to go evangelize in Guam.
If the Spanish Sanvitores inspired the Bohemian Strobach, yet another man, from yet another place, and dead even longer, deeply inspired both Jesuits. A year after the order’s founding, in 1541 Francis Xavier from Portugal became the first Jesuit missionary ever to venture beyond Europe. He made converts in India, Japan, and today’s Indonesia. Xavier’s big dream of bringing the faith to China, however, ended abruptly in 1552 as he died on an island near the Chinese coast.
Generations of Jesuits adored and longed to be like Xavier – the way a good friend can bring out the best versions of oneself. Over a century after his death, the Spaniard Sanvitores and the Bohemian Strobach in Guam imitated Xavier daily in action, speech, and mannerisms, so much so that contemporaries dubbed each one of them a ‘second Xavier.’ Homo-social affection thus connected men across time and space. Spiritual friendship enabled the Jesuits’ phenomenal global expansion. Again and again, affective ties among men – living and dead – generated in individuals a desire to seek “the sacred” in faraway places. Sometimes as far away as Guam from Prague.
Sky Michael Johnston:
Dr. Strasser’s story is drawn from the extensive research behind her 2020 book, Missionary Men in the Early Modern World: German Jesuits and Pacific Journeys. It was published by Amsterdam University Press and recently won the 2021 Book Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women & Gender (SSEMWG).
And this is great news, you can read Missionary Men in the Early Modern World for free today via Open Access online. Click on the link in the episode description or the episode transcript to access the full book.
Thank you for listening today. Please come back next week for 90 Second Narratives’ ninth Season of Stories episode on the podcast that brings you “little stories with BIG historical significance.”