Were missionaries during the Age of Exploration and Medieval era fat and physically weak?

Griffith

Banned
One thing I notice popular media portrays missionaries They always portray them as physically low tier, often fat and rich, and sheltered from the hardships of the Medieval World. They are portrayed as such pampered people that when they move into unconverted areas that are being explored such as South America, they are offered the best living conditions under travel-they are given the best food, often given very fine tents, and they are always shown on donkeys safe from any dangers by Crusaders (or in the case of South America Conquistadors).

They are shown so pampered they have jewelry and fancy expensive Bibles,Rosaries,and beautiful Crucifixes and other religious items made out of the finest and most expensive materials such as Gold or the finest wood, and embedded with jewelries such as diamonds. If tough times come, such as food supplies running out, they are shown as the first ones to die out of the expeditionary force. Heck even when forced to face conditions that are more descent than that the Conquistadors and Crusaders faced like all the finest food running out and the fancy shelters being destroyed, the Missionaries are shown as whining how hard things are and moaning the "low standards of livings" they have to face (even though the Crusaders have sacrificed the finest foods,tent, and so on and given them to the missionaries).

Don't even get me started on how when Pagan Warriors come to fight the Christian missionary force such as the Aztec Warriors , Viking raiders, unconverted Germanic tribes in the Baltic, and Muslim Jihadists during the Crusades, the Missionaries are always shown as cowering and are particularly the first to get killed in the middle of a chaotic melee.

When Missionaries are doing work at home, they are shown living in very fine monasteries with the finest foods, fine bedding, and basically the highest standards of livings a person could dream of in the Middle Ages.

Excellent examples of this portrayal is in the game Age of Empires 2 were Missionaries are portrayed on Donkeys as healers for the Spanish faction.They are the weakest unit in the entire game after the Monk unit. They can't even fight to defend themselves under attacks, something even the lowly peasants can do.

Another example is most movie incarnations of Robin Hood where the Missionaries are portrayed as fat and pampered and often corrupt. They are portrayed as comic humor in the typical Robin Hood flick.Even Friar Tuck,one of the good guys, is often portrayed as this.

However I was told that in actuality Missionaries were physically strong, if not then at least used to facing physically hardships.According what I was told, they had to because the regions they were going to like South America were often dangerous. Prior to even going to such regions for seeking converts, Missionaries were expected to live an austere life in Catholic regions that was pretty Spartan even when compared to what hardships peasants in the time period typically face. Even in our modern world, Missionaries going to places like India are expected to be austere and mentally tough for the hardships they'll face.

Excellent example of this is in the novel Silence by Endo. The Missionaries, while having lived most of their life in Catholic Altair, were quite the mentally austere enough to have survived many of the hardships typical in Missionary Work such as hunger, passing through rough terrains such as mountains, and treachery.

I've read that in the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for Missionaries to maintain physical fitness and even practice some form of Medieval Wrestling and Weapon Fighting. Of course this didn't mean they were conditioned to fight professional soldiers like Knights, but they certainly had much more knowledge about self-defense and hand-to-hand than the average peasants of the Middle Ages and I actually even read of accounts were missionaries beaten well-trained knights in wrestling matches.

While I'm not sure if he was a missionary, in the older incarnations of the Robin Hood stories, Firar Tuck is also the epitome of how the missionary would have lived. In these incarnations, Tuck was a muscular man who was well-versed in swordsmanship and other fighting arts.

I read of so many of the things missionaries faced in South America were the worst hardships in Spanish exploration of the region. It was not uncommon for them to be captured, and they faced the most desperate of situations that would break even elite battle-hardened warriors like the Knights Templar and Viking Berserkers.

So what I read about Missionaries is that they were anything but fat and pampered. Their fortitude is on the same league , if not surpasses, those of Medieval Knights and while they were not trained for war, they were very fit for non-fighters and there is evidence of missionaries holding on their own against Knights in combat activities and even killing Warriors like Vikings in battles.

So I'm curious which view is correct and where did this stereotype come from?
 
Uh,on the top of my hand i can't think of instances of such portayal,to be honest...are you sure its such widespread?
 
There is some tendency to do this in traditional fiction, but the stereotype is more that of a monk/priest (mainly an anti-Catholic thrust) than specifically a missionary. A ot of the people displayed this way are not missionaries, but charged with the pastoral care or administrative oversight of the conquerors. The traditional missionary stereotype is rather different.

Obviously, given the job missionaries had to do, they had to be robust. Not necessarily physically strong - some were, some weren't - but healthy and able to bear hardship. Look at the rolls of the dead in any missionary order or society and you'll see why. I don't mean the occasional martyr (these were far rarer than fiction and historiography suggest), but the hundreds upon hundreds lost to disease, exhaustion and exposure. Missionary work rarely took place among wealthy, well-organised and stable societies, but on the fringes, either specifically among the poor or less technologically advanced groups. The missionaries rarely shared all the hardship - they had a supprot network to fall back on - but these were not comfortable places.

Miossionaries come in all shapes and sizes, of course. You get the mendicants who go out to spread love and the administrators who seek to organise conquest, the charitable who try to save lives as well as souls and the wild-eyed martyr candidates who would preach the Gospel from the Kaaba if they could. But if you want a generalised, broadly accurate impression of a missionary in historical time, envision a hairy, dirty, wiry and weatherbeaten guy who refuses to quit.
 
Bishops and abbots were rich and fat. And the friars in a heavily-entrenched semi-theocracy like the late Spanish East Indies were also rich and fat.

Missionaries, on the other hand, are something else. Remember, these are men who literally cross oceans to convert people to the One True Faith. These are men who carry the risk of horrible death for the sake of the Faith, men such as Fray de Urdaneta (a man who crossed two oceans and helped establish the Church in our country before returning to a monastery to live out the rest of his life) and Saint Lorenzo Ruiz (who was martyred by the Japanese). Basically, what this guy said:

But if you want a generalised, broadly accurate impression of a missionary in historical time, envision a hairy, dirty, wiry and weatherbeaten guy who refuses to quit.

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During the early days of the Cathar heresy the Church sent 3 members of the Cistercian Order to stem the tide against what was seen as the threat of growing Manicheanism. They were rather large, trained as lawyers and decked out in more gold than B A Baracus when they crossed the Rhone.

Naturally, the peasantry did not take well to being lectured by these Holy Men on humility, abstemiousness and due to the universal hatred that comes with being a lawyer. In comparison the visibly ascetic, pacifist Perfects of Catharism who were vegetarian and rarely owned much were far more popular.

Knights began to gather outside the churches the 3 men went to speak at and denounce the Perfects at every given opportunity. The knights banged their shields with their swords and drowned out their speeches until they left and declared the region rife with heresy.

One of these 3 Cistercians was Arnauld Amaury, who, years later, was approached while feasting during the siege of Beziers and asked by the Crusaders how they were supposed to tell the difference between Christians and heretics to which he gave the infamous reply "Kill them all. God will recognise his own."
 
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Regarding the missionaries moral standing, it depends where you look.

The accounts in Goa for example are pretty damning. Conversion was forced, and it was just knowing the lines without understanding. If younlook at other areas like Vietnam, they had to live hidden and in the bushes basically.

I think you'll find a big difference between the priesthood in colonies and the apostolic ones.

Then again, a lot of the stereotype of the fat priest is from Protestant propaganda. Monks in abbeys often had to work the land and would have been fit. However, life probably wasn't as hard as for a lowly peasant and they probably had better access to food.
 
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