Writing Tamil Catholicism arises from Trento's dissertation at the University of Chicago, where she graduated in 2019. At its core is attention to the writings of Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi, SJ (1680–1747). Beschi is less well known than predecessors in India, such as Francis Xavier (1506–1552), martyrs Rudolf Acquaviva (1550–1583) and John de Brito (1647–1693), Thomas Stephens (1549–1619, author of a Maratha epic poem, the Krista Purana, and Roberto Nobili (1579–1657), the pioneering proponent of the adaptation of Christian faith to the Indian context who wrote extensively in Latin and Tamil. But without a doubt he was the most versatile, brilliant linguist and poet among the learned Jesuit scholar missionaries of the period before the expulsion of the Jesuits from India in the 1760s, and nearly universal suppression of the Society in 1773.

Beschi has of course not been entirely neglected. Some verses of Tēmpāvaṇi were translated by Francis Ellis in his early nineteenth century Translation of Tirukurral of Tiruvalluvar. In 1918, Leon Besse, SJ published Father Beschi of the Society of Jesus: His Times & His Writings, the standard reference work in English on Beschi until now. Recently, new works have appeared, including Trento's volume but also this reviewer's theologically-focused St. Joseph in South India: Poetry, Mission and Theology in Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi's Tēmpāvaṇi, also 2022. Fortunately the two books are complementary rather than repetitive. Beschi's own writings are now becoming available in translation. In 2021 A. Susaimani, OSM published Beschi's Mariology: Inculturation and the Creative Effort of Fr. Giuseppe Constantine Beschi; in it he includes translations of a number of Beschi's smaller works. Anand Amaladass, SJ, has published translations of three works, the Tirukkāvalūr Kalampakam (Gift of the Virgin Conch-Shell, 2018); Annai Aluṅkal Antāti (Mother Mary's Song of Affliction, 2019); and Kittēriyammāḷ Ammānai (The Ballad of St. Kittēri, 2022). Trento's volume and mine were largely finished before the appearance of the first full rendering in English of Beschi's epic, M. Dominic Raj's Thembavani: A Garland of Unfading Honey-sweet Verses; an Epic in Pure Tamil (2019).

In Trento's work as well as elsewhere, Beschi stands out as an inventive proponent of a Tamil Catholicism rich in hymns and images, and as an expert composer of catechetical writings, and steadfast defender of Roman Catholic theological views over against those of the Lutherans in Tranquebar. He authored a partial translation into Latin of the Tirukkuraḷ, the famed ethical text, decades before others in the West turned their attention to it. But Beschi is best known for his epic poem Tēmpāvaṇi, a large work of 36 chapters and nearly 4000 verses. It ambitions to recount and dramatize the entirety of the Bible (up to but not including the public ministry of Jesus, although Jesus's death, resurrection, and ascension figure in the epic) through a telling of the story of St. Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus.

Trento divides her study into three major parts. “Spiritual Institutions” (part I) examines Jesuit preaching, the kind of education received by Tamil Catholic catechists, and the practice of the giving of Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises both in Italy and, in various forms, in Tamil Nadu, particularly as pioneered by Carlo Michele Bertoldi (1662–1740). Trento examines Beschi's own catechetical manuals, locating them in the context of mission as a communal rather than solo enterprise, as the Jesuits worked closely with and in dependence on teams of catechists. Trento thus dispels the image of “Jesuit as lone ranger” by showing how from beginning to the end of his ministry Beschi's work was enabled by collaborations Christian and Hindu. Trento importantly notes the reception and afterlife of Tēmpāvaṇi, received and enacted in the Tamil Catholic community of later generations.

“Rhetorical Education” (part II) explores the literary production of the Jesuits, oral and written, in the context of Jesuit humanism, at the same time shedding light on Beschi's extraordinary attention to Tamil grammar. In chapter 5, Trento focuses on Tēmpāvaṇi itself, nicely situating Beschi is the Catholic cosmology of the time, including some attention to the reality of evil spirits. She points to influences such as Maria of Ágreda's Mystical City of God (a life of the Virgin Mary told to Ágreda by the Virgin herself), which Beschi says is a model for his epic, although his attention to Joseph is much richer than Ágreda's treatment of him in her writing.

“Catholic Poetry in a Tamil World” (part III) first of all contextualizes Tēmpāvaṇi and gives us an overview of the work, from prologue, description of Palestine and Jerusalem, all the way to the death of Joseph and his glorification in heaven. Unsurprisingly, Trento focuses on the key Tēmpāvaṇi chapters devoted to Joseph's ministry in Egypt: three dramatic conversion stories led up to by Joseph's unexpected eloquence – this man who says not a word in the Bible, after all – as he teaches and argues with learned Egyptians and individuals struggling with moral and spiritual crises. This Joseph, protector of Mary (who is silent in these key chapters) and a Jesus who is a quintessential “unknown Christ of Egypt” – and thus of Tamil Nadu too – is surely a model for Jesuits in a pagan land where Christ only slowly, without notice, becomes a major presence.

As mentioned, it is a primary virtue of Trento's work that Beschi is only part of the story. The final chapter notably treats the afterlife of Tēmpāvaṇi particularly in the eighteenth century, as it was transmitted in palm-leaf and thereafter printed forms, used in catechesis, and performed, in part at least, in Catholic circles, even in the post-Suppression era when the Jesuits were no longer leaders of the mission. Trento's strength lies in showing us the rich and broad context, literary and historical, of Tēmpāvaṇi. As she puts it, “the whole book can be read as a microhistory of the birth and early life of this text, of the relationships in which it was embedded, and the ones it helped to create” (41).

We benefit today from a variety of approaches to Beschi and his masterpiece, seen historically and in their larger social and cultural context, studied as an instance of high Tamil literature, or read in accord with theological principles of Jesuit spirituality and mission already prevalent before Beschi. Trento brilliantly juggles all three approaches. Yet of course much more can be said about the theological and missiological intentions of Beschi, his predecessors and successors, modes of thinking and working that have their own afterlives even today.