ABSTRACT
On 16 January 1651, two Portuguese adventurers disembarked at Malacca from a ship that had carried them from Macau on a secret mission. eir sea passage had taken them from the relative security of the colonial settlement on the China coast into enemy territory-the former Portuguese city of Malacca had been besieged and captured by the Dutch a decade previously. It was the task of Pêro de Mesquita and Manuel Henriques to survey the ruins of this once-thriving settlement and to offer succor to the Portuguese who held on under ‘the tyranny of the heretics.’ e two men had adopted a disguise designed to make them blend in with their compatriots, a group of merchants bound for Cochin on the Malabar Coast of India. Embarking ‘with swords at the waist, hair and beards fully grown,’ they were able to pass the rigorous inspection carried out by the Dutch officials intent on blocking the entry of Catholic clergy. So these two undercover Jesuit priests passed unnoticed into Malacca, parting ways and renting living quarters on either end of town. Once they settled down, acknowledged as itinerant merchants, Mesquita and Henriques began to make inquiries among the remaining CatholicsPortuguese, French, Spanish, Italian, Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and even Dutch-about the spiritual state of the city.1
