ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a later stage in the Mariana Islands mission and on Father Augustinus Strobach, another purported avatar of Francis Xavier. Inspired by the Spanish ‘Xavier,’ Diego de Sanvitores, Strobach journeyed from Bohemia to the Marianas to suffer martyrdom and help plant the seeds of Christ among the Chamorro. His story underscores that Jesuit self-fashioning was bound up with imposing patriarchal norms and controlling the sexuality of converts, especially women. Matrilineal traditions in the islands became a chief point of friction while also paving the way for the Cult of the Virgin championed by Jesuits like Strobach. Marian devotion became an avenue for indigenous women, as it had long been for European women, to claim influence and agency within patriarchal Christianity.
