The Jesuit dilemma in Asia: being a naked ascetic or a court literate?

Dress played a crucial role in 16th-century European missionary activity in China and India, a role that is somewhat neglected in traditional histories of the subject. In order to tone down their “foreignness”, appear non-threatening and fit into the social class to which they addressed themselves, certain Jesuit missionaries took the step of adapting their outer appearance. How this encounter occurred and the extent to which it was not always appreciated by those back home in Europe is briefly recounted here.