Creating a “New World” in Tranquebar (Missionaries and “Malabarians”)

Since the beginning of the 18th century, Danish Royal Mission has been working on the Coromandel coast of Hindustan in the city of Tranquebar (Dansborg fortress in 250 km from Madras). This mission, created on the initiative of King Frederick IV (1699–1730), consisted mainly of Germans, graduates of the University of the Saxon city of Halle. The first head of the mission (in 1706–1719) was Bartolomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1706). All the work was carried out under his leadership: Several schools were opened, Christian literature was translated into Portuguese and Tamil, a church was built, sermons were read, residents were baptized. Many materials survived from those years: Correspondence of those missionaries with their relatives, friends and colleagues, numerous reports, and diaries. These sources allow us not only to present the life and work of Lutheran priests in Southern India in detail, but also to understand the peculiarities of their worldview. Most of the missionaries who worked in Tranquebar, like their mentors at the University of Halle, were adherents of the teachings of pietism. The founder and main ideologist of this doctrine was Philip Jacob Spener (1635–1705). His main work “Pia desideria” (1675) put forward the idea of the need for a general renewal of the Church and personal piety. Spener’s doctrine became the ideological basis of all the work of Ziegenbalg and his colleagues in the Indian South. Their critical attitude towards European Christians determined the main goals of working with pagans. It was in the pagans that they saw the so-called “new Christians”, destined to form the «renewed Christian world».