CARDIM, António Francisco

by António Francisco Cardim

£4,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

First uncommon edition of an early account of the Jesuit mission in Japan, established by St. Francis Xavier in the mid-sixteenth century, and other Christian outposts in Southern Asia. The original Portuguese text was never printed, while this Italian translation was probably accomplished by the Jesuit Giacomo Diacetto. A rare and partial French version was published the following year. António Francisco Cardim (1596-1659) was a leading Jesuit missionary in the Far East, spending many years converting locals and organising Christian communities in the ancient kingdoms of Ayutthaya, Lan Xang and Tonkin. Back in Rome and later in Portugal, he supervised the large ecclesiastical province of Japan, which included also Macau and the Siamese area, and wrote several works related to those regions; most famously, he thoroughly recorded the persecutions of the Japanese Christians from 1597 to 1640 and published one of the earliest detailed map of Japan. His Relatione, dedicated to Pope Innocent X, narrates the troubled life of the Jesuit Company in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, as well as Macau and the island of Hainan, dwelling from time to time on interesting linguistic problems in transposing Christian dogmas into the Oriental languages and cultures. This copy was bought by Bellisario Bulgarini (died 1660), nephew of the renowned bibliophile and scholar of Siena Bellisario Bulgarini (1539-1620). Bellisario the Younger records in the inscription at the end of the boo

• Binding: Hardcover

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