A dissertation submitted at the Pontifical Gregorian University, this work represents a classic missiological study: drawing from ecclesiastical archives, it focuses on the work of one Jesuit missionary, the Catalan Francisco Ros, and on one missiological theme, namely the encounter between Roman Catholic missionaries and Malabar Christians who practised Syrian rites. Mecherry's contention is that Ros has been overlooked in Jesuit historiography; in fact, he argues, the Catalan was the pioneer in developing an accommodationist method during his decades of work among Thomas Christians of the Malabar coast, initially as the first Jesuit to learn Syriac, the liturgical language of the Thomas Christians, and later as the first Latin bishop of the archdiocese of Angamaly, one of the two centres of Thomas Christian communities. The significance of Ros for the history of missions, in Mecherry's estimation, is on a par with that of Alessandro Valignano, Matteo Ricci and Roberto Nobili.

After a long introduction in which the author discusses his research questions, sources and methods, he proceeds to present a more-or-less chronological picture of the Jesuit mission in Malabar from 1542 to the 1630s, both before and beyond the timespan of Ros's own missionary work in India. Chapter i, ‘From Francis Xavier to Francisco Ros: a contextual analysis of the Jesuit mission in Malabar (1542–83)’, focuses on four themes: the first generation of Jesuits in Malabar; their relationship with Mar Abraham, the bishop sent by the East Syrian Church and leader of the Thomas Christian communities; the views of the Jesuit Visitor Alessandro Valignano regarding the ‘reduction’ of Thomas Christians to the Latin Church; and the consolidation of mission methods. Chapter ii describes the early work of Ros in Malabar between the years 1584 and 1598. Selected as the first missionary to study Syriac by Valignano, Ros fulfilled his task by composing De erroribus Nestorianorum (1587). This work, based on a reading of the Syriac manuscripts in the possession of Mar Abraham, was meant to identify and refute the heretical doctrines held by Thomas Christians as alleged by Valignano and the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Portuguese India. If language study represented a method of accommodation, it was, in the case of Malabar, a highly ambivalent enterprise: it was the means to the end of ultimately uniting the Thomas Christians to Roman Catholicism by suppressing their ancestral customs and liturgy, to eliminate a historic and traditional identity by incorporating them as subjects to the Portuguese Padroado and, by extension, to Latin Christianity. The complicated and less than edifying manoeuvres to bar Syrian missionaries, the efforts to label Mar Abraham a heretic and the jostling for ecclesiastical authority are laid out in this chapter as well. A turning point was reached with the death of Mar Abraham and the appointment of Ros as the first Latin archbishop of Angamaly, which leads into chapter iii.

While carrying forward the narrative to 1609, Ros repeats many of the themes already stated: the conflict over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, between the metropolitans of Goa and Angamaly, between Angamaly and Cochin, between the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and between the Portuguese Padroado and the papacy. There are detailed summaries of ecclesiastical legislation, of the various synods and provincial councils, of statutes, protestations and revisions, making this chapter perhaps the dullest for readers.

Chapter iv, ‘Rosian accommodation, 1610–1624’, is really the heart of the author's analysis. These decades represented the height of Ros's activities in Malabar, when he fiercely defended his ecclesiastical turf as archbishop of Angamaly against encroachments from Goa and Crangalore, and continued to argue for the necessity of training the clergy in Syriac as well as Latin, and of respecting Syriac rites against arguments for the complete Latinisation of Thomas Christian communities. In this fight, his was a powerful but minority voice both within his order and his Church, the archbishop of Goa and the Jesuit Provincial in India both being fierce critics. No doubt due to these pressures, Ros employed increasingly coercive measures. In Mecherry's words: ‘he [Ros] often lost sight of the basic praxis of the principle of accommodation that required him to embrace a gentle way to resolve crises’ (p. 349). Here is the paradox: the most eminent Syriac scholar among the Jesuits in India, who confined some Syriac texts to the fire; a bishop who loved his flock and respected their social, linguistic and ritual traditions, but whose ultimate intention was to assimilate Thomas Christians into the universal Roman Catholic fold. To the extent that accommodation worked partially under Ros, the project came to a standstill because no Syriac-speaking Jesuit could be found to replace him. Eventually, in the later seventeenth century, a part of the Thomas Christian community would break with Rome and revert to its ancient traditions.

If there was a major contribution to accommodation on Ros's part, it was his unflinching support of the Italian Jesuit Roberto Nobili, who ‘went native’ in the inland Madurai mission, dressing as a Brahmin and permitting high-caste converts to Christianity to retain their Brahminic symbols of social status. Although we know this story in much greater detail from the superb analysis of Ines Županov (Disputed mission: Jesuit experiments and Brahmanical knowledge in seventeenth-century India, New Delhi 1999), Mecherry has added new information by documenting the strong defence and support that he provided for the beleaguered Jesuit-guru. The support of Ros most certainly contributed to the approval of the Madurai Mission by the papacy in 1615, despite the unrelenting hostility of almost all Portuguese Jesuits.

Testing ground is less a biography than a missiological study. As an individual, Ros does not really come alive in these pages, unlike portraits that we have of Valignano, Ricci and Nobili. In part this is due to the limitations of the sources, the greatest part of which concern questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and doctrine. There is considerable repetition in the writing as Mecherry scrupulously sticks to his sources and takes care to analyse all of his documents, sacrificing readability in the process. Ultimately, Ros was working in a mission subject partially to the military and political influence of Portuguese India, unlike the territories where Ricci and Nobili would labour. This salient historical fact would explain the differences in accommodation and inculturation between these missions and help the reader in evaluating the historical significance of this Catalan Jesuit.