Abstract

A study of the dynamics of understanding that operated in the Jesuit mission praxis of accommodatio in India and in its 18th-century offshoot, known as the Malabar rites, involves entangled complexities and subtleties. A close look into some ins and outs of accommodatio is an attempt to approach these complexities with a view to comprehending the two-tiered levels of understanding that arose in this controversial mission praxis. Although the accommodatio of «entering by their door and coming out by ours» and the role of understanding in it tend to elude a simple and realistic explanation, it becomes clear in the end that it was an attempt at understanding “the realµ in order to present “the trueµ and at reinterpreting the acceptable in order to reduce the other.