64 HK. D. Maclagan—Jeswit Missions to the Emperor Akbar. {No. 1, 
It was not long however before the Fathers actually did come 
back. The mission came somehow to an abrupt conclusion, but we 
have no further details regarding the time of, or the reason for, its 
sudden termination. ! 
Tue Tuirp Mission 1595-1605. 
There was obviously some disappointment at Goa, if not in Rome 
itself, at the break up of the Second Mission. It was still thought 
that Akbar was on the point of embracing Christianity. ‘ Venerunt filii 
usque ad partum,’ says the chronicler, ‘sed virtus non est parieudi.’ 
here was considerable joy therefore when a third embassy from Akbar 
arrived in 1594,? bearing letters to the Viceroy which requested the 
despatch of a further mission. The Provincial was urged to comply 
and at once did-so. The selection of a priest to conduct the mission 
was determined by lot and the lot fell on Jerome Xavier, a nephew of 
the great St. Francis, and at that time head of the Professorial House 
at Goa. With him were appointed Father Pinheiro and Brother 
Benedict de Goes; and the party, taking with them the ornaments and 
vessels necessary for church worship and accompanied by the Armenian 
interpreter who had been with Aquaviva, embarked on their journey on 
the 3rd December, 1594. 
[There can be little doubt that the members of the party were 
picked men. Jerome Xavier had entered the Society at Alcala twenty 
six years previously and had spent most of his service in India, firstly 
as Rector at Bassein, then at Cochin and finally at Goa. Without 
possessing the enthusiastic asceticism of Aquaviva, he was an earnest 
man of mature age who had spent most of his life in teaching and 
who had enjoyed positions of trust. For twenty three years he was to 
remain at the Mogul Court; sometimes in favour, sometimes in prison ; 
working sometimes for the spiritual conversion of Emperors, at other 
times for the material advancement of his compatriots: maintaining on 
the whole a prominent and honoured position, but like most of those 
who have striven with native courts, finding himself little more ad- 
vanced at the end than at the beginning. At last in 1617, he returned 
to Goa, and died there on the 17th June of that year, being at the 
time Archbishop elect of Cranganore. 
1 Possibly there was some difficulty about the mission accompanying Akbar 
‘to Kashmir whither he went in the spring of 1592. 
2 Karly in 1594 Akbar had issued a decree that if any of the infidels wished to 
build a church or synagogue or idol temple or fire temple, none were to prevent 
them. Bad. (Bib. Ind.), II, 392. 
3 See Biographie Universelle sv. and De Backer’s Bibliothéque des écrivains 
de la Compagnie de Jésus (Liége 1861) serie 7, sv. 
