ABSTRACT
Investing in a personal, affective relationship with Akbar required learning vernacular languages. Like most of the “foreign” Jesuits working under the Portuguese padroado, Acquaviva had to learn Portuguese first and then whatever language was necessary for the particular mission. In 1574 the population of Salsete was 80,000, with only 4,000 to 5,000 Christians, all of them converted by the Jesuits who lived and worked as parish priests in the six churches. In 1591, Antoni de Monserrat, a Catalan Jesuit, completed a massive manuscript in which he provided a portrait of the Neapolitan Jesuit Rodolfo Acquaviva, his companion at the Mughal court of the Emperor Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri between 1580 and 1583. Acquaviva’s error was simple carelessness and failure to inform himself and to understand the sociopolitical and economic situation in the Salsete region. Earlier Acquaviva had focused exclusively on building a personal and affective relationship with Akbar.
