ACOSTA, Emanuel [with] MAFFEI, Giovan Pietro

£9,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of the first attempt to write a detailed history of the Jesuit missions in the East, especially in Japan, and one of the most important and diverse compilations of letters relating to the Jesuit mission in the Far East; prefaced by Acosta's important "Commentarius", the work includes some 39 letters dating from between 1548-1564, most of which relate to Japan. As early in the 1550 s influential Jesuits argued for an official synthesis of letters from the missions, motivated in part by the fear that someone else would do it for them, and in part to promote their enormous successes in the east. The text is based on a manuscript Historia dos missiones do Oriente at é o anno de 1568 written by the Portuguese, Manuel da Costa. Da Costa, a Jesuit missionary and bibliographer who taught at Coimbra where most Jesuit letters were available in uncensored form. His manuscript was sent to Rome, translated into Latin, and was given to the young novice Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1533-1603) to prepare for publication. Maffei added the De Japonicis rebus epistolarum containing abridged Latin translations of letters sent from the Jesuits working in Japan until the year 1564. In his introduction Maffei congratulates Da Costa on his effort in summarizing the contents of the letters together in the commentary. Maffei was later to write the hugely successful Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI , much praised for its excellent treatment of Japan. The letters begin with the Japanese con

• Binding: Hardcover

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