Preservation of the Manuscripts of the Jaffna Bishop’s House (1775-1948) - Jaffna Bishop’s House Manuscript Collection

Endangered Archives Programme

This collection consists of documents and manuscripts (including some typed letters and some printed documents) dating from the period 1750 to 1950. They reflect the history of the Roman Catholic missions in Ceylon or describe the day to day administrative and managerial activities of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate missionaries (OMI). Succeeding to the Oratorian mission of Goa, the French congregation of the OMI was mandated by the British authorities in Sri Lanka, by mid nineteenth century, to reorganise the Catholic communities of the northern half of the island (the then Jaffna Diocese). Except the very few printed books, the other documents had been handwritten or typewritten by the Oblate Missionaries and their correspondents. Time to time some printed materials (paper-cuttings, circular letters...) are found. Many manuscripts were written in French and more and more in English with the time passing - but occasionally also in Latin, Portuguese, Tamil, and Sinhala. A big part of the collection considered in this EAP1222 project includes particularly (but not only) letters dating from the period 1930-1948 and addressed to Mgr. Guyomar OMI, the French Bishop of Jaffna, and to Fr. Emilianuspillai OMI, Vicar General and General Manager for the Roman Catholic Schools for the Jaffna Diocese of the time. Fr. Emilianuspilllai was to become after the Independance the first Ceylonese, and Tamil, Roman Catholic bishop of Jaffna in 1950. Custodial history: The totality of the archives has been the sole property of the Bishop's house, Jaffna Roman Catholic Diocese, represented by the current Roman Catholic Bishop of Jaffna. Arrangement: Registers excepted, the set of letters were classified during two different periods: 1) at the very beginning of the 20th century by Fr Batayron who also established a Table of Content for each set, completed by the binding of the set; 2) then, probably in the 1970s by Fr. N. Maria Saveri with the assistance of the last French OMI priests, sets of flying letters have been arranged (but with no binding) globally according to the subjects of the correspondence (e.g. school related letters; Mannar parishes related letters...), but not always, and kept in flat files: this preliminary classification has been preserved here, and the letters have been classified by date.