Untitled

L’Europa divisa
e i nuovi mondi
Per Adriano Prosperi
vol. II
a cura di
Massimo Donattini
Giuseppe Marcocci
Stefania Pastore
EDIZIONI
DELLA
NORMALE
Questo volume è stato
stampato con il contributo di
e con il patrocinio di
© 2011 Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa
isbn 978-88-7642-424-3
Indice
La complessità del mondo: sguardi europei
Machiavelli e gli antiquari
Carlo Ginzburg3
Aporìe dell’universalismo
Gian Mario Cazzaniga9
Sull’Itinerario di Ludovico di Varthema
Carla Forti21
Ombre imperiali. Le Navigationi et viaggi di G.B. Ramusio
e l’immagine di Venezia
Massimo Donattini33
Guillaume Postel cosmografo: qualche nota sulla carta polare del 1578
Marica Grendi Milanesi45
Il «teatro» del mondo. Giuseppe Rosaccio (1530 ca.-1620 ca.)
tra Firenze e Bologna
Elide Casali55
Relativismo culturale e «armonia del mondo»:
l’enciclopedia etnografica di Johannes Boemus
Diego Pirillo67
L’ordine cristiano e il mondo. Francisco de Támara
traduttore di Hans Böhm
Giuseppe Marcocci79
Osservando il nemico. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli e il mondo turco
Andrea Gardi93
Ethnographies of Error
James Amelang105
Lodovico di Borbone, aristocratico «cultor prestante de’ naturali e
chimici studj» alla fine dell’Antico regime
Giuseppe Olmi117
Le frontiere della fede
Kolonialismus als Kulturkampf?
Wolfgang Reinhard137
vi Indice
Language Acquisition and Missionary Strategies in China, 1580-1760
Ronnie Po-chia Hsia147
L’expérience de la mission et la carte européenne des savoirs sur le
monde à la Renaissance: Antonio Possevino et José de Acosta
Antonella Romano159
¿Una mirada de Acosta a los orígenes de la Compañía?
Especulaciones en torno a la Peregrinación de Bartolomé Lorenzo
Claudio Rolle171
Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas
missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
Camilla Russell179
Autobiografia e vocazione in una littera indipeta inedita del gesuita
Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, missionario in Canada (1637)
Giovanni Pizzorusso191
Propaganda, diffamazione e opinione pubblica:
i gesuiti e la querelle sui riti malabarici
Sabina Pavone203
Le Lettere provinciali e la critica di Pascal all’idolatria gesuita.
Tra propaganda e opinione pubblica
Girolamo Imbruglia217
Come catechizzare il ‘turco’: Tyrso Gonçalez de Santalla
Giovanna Fiume227
Fonti europee e cultura arabo-islamica di fronte ai balli africani:
missionari, viaggiatori, trattatisti
Alessandro Arcangeli241
Erasmo in convento: lo statuto per il beaterio di Nuestra Señora
de la Piedad di Brianda de Mendoza (1524-34)
Maria Laura Giordano253
Missionari dell’Anticristo. Ginevra e la difesa della frontiera spirituale
tra Cinque e Seicento
Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci265
Politica, religione e confronti tra culture
Roots and Branches: Ibero-British Threads across Overseas Empires
Anthony Pagden, Sanjay Subrahmanyam279
El cardenal Portocarrero y la cultura española de la transiciÓn
de los siglos XVII al XVIII
Ricardo GarcÍa CÁrcel303
vii Indice
Iglesia y Estado en la carrera política del cardenal Giulio Alberoni
Rosa M. Alabrús Iglesias313
L’appello ai turchi nell’Italia del Rinascimento
(ancora sullo «scontro delle civiltà»)
Giovanni Ricci323
Entre intransigeance confessionnelle et casuistique diplomatique:
pratiques de la diplomatie pontificale
à la cour de France du XVIe siècle
Alain Tallon333
Il caso di Martino Becano tra l’Inghilterra e l’Europa
Stefania Tutino343
Strategie politiche e trame occulte nell’Europa del Seicento:
le ‘relazioni del cappuccino’, Valeriano Magni
e Albrecht von Wallenstein
Alessandro Catalano357
Gli studenti tedeschi a Bologna nella seconda metà
del Cinquecento fra conflittualità e convivenza.
Carla Penuti367
Un progetto di ricerca progressivo per lo studio
della ‘geografia umana’ delle università
Gian Paolo Brizzi379
Un giornale cattolico degli Stati Uniti durante la prima guerra
mondiale: «The Pilot» di Boston
Umberto Mazzone387
L’Africa in Europa: Spagna, storia e memoria
da Unamuno alla Seconda Repubblica
Stefania Pastore399
Illustrazioni409
Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas
missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century was
awash with accounts from the Jesuit missions in the
‘Indies’1, while young Jesuits in colleges and novitiates
eagerly sought a place on the missions, especially in the
East2. The phenomenon of mass, collective overseas vocations is recorded in the remarkable letters of petition,
known as the Litterae indipetae, written by aspiring missionaries to the Superior General, and preserved at the
Jesuit Archive in Rome3.
This essay uses the Italian Jesuit petitions for the Indies between 1590 and 1615 to explore how candidates
for the missions enlisted certain methods of communication to articulate their vocation, as well as to conceptualise the Indies more broadly: from the famous
missionary accounts, to more ephemeral verbal and
interpersonal exchanges, to visual sources, as well as
dreams and visions4. By tracing the process by which
Jesuit candidates for the missions expressed their vocation, this essay seeks to provide a window onto the
sources and attitudes that shaped European views about
the East in the formative period of sustained EuropeanAsian contact5.
1. Italian Jesuit petitioners at the turn of the seventeenth
century begged to be considered for an appointment to
the Indies, which, more than any specific geographical
location, often signified in the missionary context those
regions in need of conversion to the Catholic faith 6. In a
geographical sense, the term ‘Indies’ might refer to lands
lying to Europe’s west, such as Peru or Brazil, or else to
the east, such as Japan, China, and the Spice Islands. A
request for the Indies sometimes also included Africa,
or those parts of Eastern Europe that were succumbing
to Ottoman expansion, or even to Protestant Northern
Europe. Jesuits also adopted the term «our Indies» (le
nostre Indie) to describe the regions within Catholic
Europe considered to be in need of renewed evangelisation7. Despite the term’s many possible meanings, the
majority of Italian applicants specified the East Indies as
their preferred destination, especially Japan and China.
One supplicant exemplified this general inclination towards Asia when he wrote that he was prepared to travel
«to the East, or West, or else among the Turks», adding,
«I believe I have a particular calling to China, or else to
Japan»8.
It was to Asia that one of the founding members of the
Society of Jesus, Francis Xavier and his three companions, travelled in 1541, shortly after the Society’s official
establishment in 15409. The Jesuit missionary enterprise
in Asia got under way at the same time as the order itself was expanding, arriving in Goa in 1542, in Malacca
in 1545, and the Moluccas in 1547; they followed Portuguese trade routes to Japan in 1549, to Portuguese Macao
in 1563, entering China proper in 158010. The speed of
Jesuit movement through Asia is brought into relief if
we consider that, in Naples, the first Jesuit college was
set up in 1552, a full ten years after Xavier’s arrival in
Goa, while the order’s legal entrance into French territories was as late as 1562. The Jesuits arrived in Portuguese Brazil in 1549 and in the rest of the Americas
not until the 1560s. But it was in Asia that they dominated: unlike the much older missionary enterprise in
the Americas — which hosted all of the preaching orders
— the Jesuits still held a near-monopoly in the East at
the turn of the seventeenth century, thanks to the patronage and protection they enjoyed under the Portuguese crown’s overseas empire, the Estado da Índia11.
Japan and China represented the most prestigious
appointments to the overseas missions: since Xavier’s
launch of the Japan mission in 1549, Christianity had
enjoyed remarkable success, so that by the turn of the
seventeenth century, there were an estimated 250,000300,000 Japanese converts12. In Europe, too, the mid1580s saw a sensational and much-publicised tour by
Japanese noble converts under close Jesuit supervision
(even choreography)13. While Christian persecution had
already begun by 1587 under the emperor Hideyoshi, Japan still represented an appealing choice for missionary
candidates, to which could be added the potential prize
of martyrdom.
180 Camilla Russell
China was a later addition to the Jesuit enterprise, with
missionary pioneers Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci
establishing the first missions there in 158314. Like Japan,
China represented a prestigious appointment; it was
widely viewed as a respected and sophisticated civilization apparently ripe for conversion. In reality, the decades immediately after the mission’s founding saw low
numbers of converts that nevertheless were compensated by high-level support at the Imperial court. The troubles of the mid-seventeenth-century and beyond had
not yet engulfed the mission, which saw a new precariousness under the Qing Dynasty, and internal bickering
among rival orders and Propaganda Fide, culminating
in the notorious Chinese rites controversy. At the turn
of the seventeenth century, however, an appointment to
the Chinese mission, along with that of Japan, was the
most coveted prize for European missionary candidates.
Yet the practical execution of overseas missionary
work held innumerable challenges for the young Jesuit
order. Logistical and financial considerations, as well as
the Society’s commitments to its European operations,
ensured that a low number would travel to the Asian
missions. At the beginning of the seventeenth century
the Society had 8,500 members, of which in 1601 only
276 were to be found in the Portuguese East Indies15. Although this number significantly increased by the end of
the decade, with 559 members in Asia recorded in 1607,
the number of missionaries remained relatively low
compared with their geographical reach and the much
larger European Jesuit population. These conditions of
a geographically expanding missionary field on the one
hand, and the inhibiting problems of manning and financing this field on the other hand, were the context in
which our Italian candidates wrote their petitions.
The system of soliciting (then collating and preserving)
letters of petition for the missions was introduced on the
recommendation of Alessandro Valignano, appointed
Visitor to the Indies in 157316. Known as the Litterae
indipetae (a Latin contraction of ‘Petitions for the Indies’), this collection of correspondence constitutes over
14,000 letters sent from every province in the Society,
spanning the late-sixteenth century to just before the society’s suppression in the late-eighteenth century17. The
sample under consideration here is drawn from roughly
800 petitions from the Italian province over a twentyfive year period between 1590 – when the letters began
to be collected systematically and preserved chronologically – and 1615, the year of the death of Claudio Acqua­
viva, Superior General from 1581 and overseer of a key
period of the Jesuit overseas missionary enterprise18.
During this period Italian candidates were receiving
particular attention from the Jesuit hierarchy: the Society continued to resist allowing Asian-born Europeans
and indigenous men to become fully professed members
of the Society (despite efforts to the contrary from some
quarters), so that reinforcements were required from
Europe19. At the same time, the much larger Portuguese
cohort could not keep up with demand for personnel for
an ever-expanding missionary field. Also, Italians were
considered to be a good choice in mitigating the perpetual mutual animosity of the Portuguese and Spaniards
(further exacerbated by the Spanish assumption of the
Portuguese crown in 1581, when Spanish recruitment to
the overseas missions practically ceased). Italians, too,
were not implicated in the dubious Iberian track record
of imperial expansion, conquest and forced conversion
in which missionaries were so often implicated, and
which, as Valignano argued, was inappropriate for the
sensitive political context of the East, especially in the
new and promising fields of Japan and China, where Europeans held no political power20.
During Claudio Acquaviva’s long thirty-four year
generalate, almost four times as many Italians – 111 –
travelled east, compared with the forty-year period of
missionary operations prior to 1581, when only 32 Italians travelled east21. In comparison, the Iberians only
doubled in number in the same period, although they
still held the large majority of 282 missionaries who
were sent east between 1581 and 1615. In the years covered by the Litterae indipetae between 1590 and 1615,
ninety-two Italians travelled east, with 23 letters of petition surviving from successful applicants22. While most
petitioners therefore were unsuccessful in their bids,
their letters provide an intriguing record of how they
conceived of their vocation to the Indies, as well as the
lands they wished to travel to, offering unique access to a
group that imagined the East without ever encountering
it in person.
2. Most aspiring missionaries wrote their letters of petition in their early- to mid- twenties, in the final stages
of their long novitiate after they had completed the bulk
of their studies, and during a period of fieldwork, usually
teaching23. Many letters are formulaic, following clearly
delineated Jesuit epistolary conventions24; most clearly
reflect the youth of the writers; several are also deeply
personal, and sometimes surprisingly informal25. One
feature of the petitions is that a vocation to the Indies
often was expressed with a breathless urgency: Alonso
di Cordova explained that he had a «grande desiderio,
grande grande»26. Another 20-year-old emphasised his
181 Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
desire to travel to the Indies «molto molto»27. Others,
however, were more pedestrian in their motivations for
desiring the Indies: as one missionary hopeful wrote, he
wanted: «to leave this kingdom on account of the troubles I have with my relatives», adding disconsolately «of
which I have many»28.
A large number of petitioners were careful to demonstrate their vocation in terms of the Jesuit ethos of discernment, indifference, and obedience29. The successful
petitioner, Francesco Corsi (who left for Goa in 1599)
wrote from the Collegio Romano in 1590 that: «the Lord
has given me the desire to go to spend my strength and
my life for his glory, to assist the souls of Japan». Critically, he added that he placed himself «in the hands of
Your Paternity». He continued: «I remain indifferent
and obedient to everything that Your Paternity judges to
be for [God’s] greater glory»30.
Vespasiano Bonamici was another successful candidate who also emphasised consultation with and obedience to his superiors; he left for the East in 1602 and in
his 1598 letter he described how a few years previously:
I found myself at Sant’Andrea [the novitiate in Rome] to undertake the spiritual exercises [… in the course of which] I had
the thought to depart for the Indies […] I then spoke with the
Rector of the college, saying to him that it was perfectly sound
that I had this desire to go to the Indies and that, to do so, I
must study very diligently in order to be able to help those
poor souls31.
Unlike Corsi, however, Bonamici struggled to maintain his composure: «I have never written before to your
Paternity, but necessity inspires me [to do so now]».
Over several pages of closely written prose he describes
his «tears and sobs», and hours spent on his knees pining for the Indies: «I have been in the Society for eleven
years, and with ease, eating well and dressing well, and
comfortable everywhere, and I will finish my life in a
bed: is that possible? That my life ends in a bed while
Christ died on the cross?»32. Such histrionics (and distinct lack of «indifference» – in one part of the letter he
wrote «I must die»33 for the missionary cause) did not
prevent Bonamici from being chosen for the missions.
If a vocation to the missions was articulated in a variety of ways, the petitioners also used a fascinating selection of sources to present their request for a missionary
appointment. The first of these sources, which requires
some extended consideration, was the published missionary accounts. Beginning with Xavier, reports about
the missions were sent back to Rome with the roughly
annually departing ships for Europe34. The production
of the letters reflected Jesuit operational procedure,
which used regular correspondence to centralise operations, provide spiritual edification, and attract patronage35. Many of the reports immediately began circulating
in Europe in manuscript, then in published form, some
with permission and some without. Xavier’s letters were
the first to appear in print as early as 1545; they were
reprinted for the first time in a book format in 1552 and
regularly after that in subsequent decades36.
The unsystematic way in which reports were collected, edited, translated, and published on arrival in Europe, produced a river of information flowing from the
East that was extremely piecemeal and unreliable. For
example, letters from the 1540s appeared in supposedly
«annual» collections of later decades, while letters from
the Indian subcontinent were published inside collections named «Letters from Japan», and many mission
communities were left out altogether from printed collections. The letters were not representative of the personnel present on the missions either, and they passed
through many (often inventive) editorial hands, both in
the field and back in Europe, before appearing in print.
If information from the missions remained unreliable,
much of it also was unavailable. For example, China’s
most famous missionary, Matteo Ricci (in China 15821610), only had a handful of letters appear in print during his lifetime, and his journals were collated and published only in 1615 by his successor Nicholas Trigault37.
This informational tangle emanating from Asia in the
first half-century of operations, produced unease among
the Jesuit hierarchy, which recognised that the conflicting and contradictory published accounts circulating in
Europe potentially undermined the Jesuit enterprise.
Also, in one letter describing the lamentable morale
in Goa in 1575, the Visitor to the Indies, Alessandro
Valigna­no, blamed the Jesuit letters arriving in Europe
from the East for the unrealistic expectations with which
new missionaries arrived in Asia: «in Europe, many impressions are formed about what it is like here [in Goa],
on the basis of the letters that are sent from here, so that,
on arrival in these parts, their vocation goes cold»38.
In response, Valignano tried to improve on the existing Nuovi avisi or Avisi particolari, by insisting on the
production of officially sanctioned, centrally compiled
collections of reports from the East by reliable and qualified editors39. These editions of «true» annual letters,
the so-called Litterae annuae, first appeared in 1581,
and were published on a semi-regular basis until 1619.
Also, a decade earlier, in 1571, a new genre appeared, the
histories and biographies, which consisted of accounts
from and about the missions and their leaders, based
182 Camilla Russell
largely on the letters, producing more cohesive, if still
flawed (and often much-criticised) accounts about Jesuit
activities in the East40.
In his 1597 letter from Japan (published in 1599), Luís
Frois set a new high standard by providing detailed and
accurate information about Japan: in the chapter concerning the execution of 26 Christians in 1597, he writes:
«In the following account, I only write that which I have
heard from people […] of good faith who, both verbally
and by letter, have provided certain facts and information about all that has happened»41. Even in this account,
however, the objective remains fixed, to describe the
«great consolation and edification, which have resulted
from this persecution»42. In a similar vein to the Frois
letter, Niccolò Longobardo’s 1598 account from China
(published in 1601), goes to some lengths to describe
«this immensely vast kingdom of China», where the land
is fertile and arable like in Europe43. He wrote: «the people are very industrious and consequently wealthier, so
that their standard of living is very high»44. The motive
for such a glowing report, however, was to secure the
future work of the mission by reassuring his European
readers that the China mission could flourish «without
troubling Christians from other nations, as happens for
love of [the] Japan [mission], where there is such great
poverty»45.
3. Hearing the letters from the missions read out at
mealtimes, and reading the published accounts during
their studies in the Jesuit colleges, the authors of the
Litterae indipetae certainly were leading consumers of
the vast Jesuit literature produced from and about the
East46. Yet, surprisingly, the published accounts from the
missions are mentioned rarely, and only Xavier’s letters
are nominated, although very seldom47. One exception
is Cesare Spario who wrote in his 1606 petition that his
vocation would not have been formed: «if I had not read
about the Indian enterprise in a letter from Our Colonel,
Blessed Father Xavier»48. Another allusion to the reports
from the Indies appears in the petition of the successful
candidate Francesco Buzomo, who wrote in 1595: «I was
struck with a great deal of emotion on hearing the latest
letters from Japan»49.
Gregorio Poggio’s 1599 letter is more representative
of the petitioners’ style when he eschews Xavier’s letters
and simply states that he felt called to the Indies «in imitation of the example of our Father Xavier»50. Also, despite his not yet having been beatified, most petitioners
refer to Xavier as «blessed», and some letters were sent
on the auspicious 3 December, even though the date had
not yet been allocated as his official feast day51. Refer-
ences to Xavier indeed are legion: he regularly appears
in the petitions as a spiritual intercessor, and, as we shall
see, as the subject in a painting and the protagonist of a
dream, but, with very few exceptions, he fails to appear
as a correspondent.
Other contemporary missionary accounts are absent
from the petitions as well. For example, in the same
1552 Roman edition of Avisi in which Xavier’s letters
appear, there is a colourful account of the death of the
Society’s first martyr in the East in 1549, the Indian
Fishery Coast’s Superior, Antonio Criminale; yet the
incident remains curiously absent from the petitions52,
as do the sensational accounts of Japanese martyrdoms
published in 1599, despite many declared vocations to
martyrdom. The example of Christ and early Christian
martyrs are nominated instead as ideal missionary models53. One young candidate from Milan wrote in 1596
that he wanted to imitate Christ by offering his life in the
Indies: «to attend to the help of those souls for whom
Christ […] did not simply leave one country to travel
to another, but came from Heaven to earth, and in addition after expending all of his efforts, spilt all of His
precious blood»54. In his petition, Marc Antonio D’Isola
echoed Tertullian’s late-second-century pronouncement when he wrote of how he wanted to spill his blood
in the missions in his efforts to secure new Christians to
the Church: «like the blood of the ancient martyrs sewed
the seed for new Christians»55.
This preference for ancient sources over contemporary
ones fits neatly with the Counter-Reformation policy to
establish authority through tradition, especially heartfelt
among the newly-established Jesuits whose lack of institutional history constituted a disadvantage56. In addition, if we recall the dubious reliability, and contradictory and confused contents of the published reports from
the missions, perhaps the petitioners did well to avoid
reference to the letter books. Whatever the reason, the
letters appear not to have been deemed suitable for citation among our petitioners, despite the fact that these
candidates for the missions presumably were among the
genre’s most avid consumers. This contrasts, significantly, with the Italian petitions of the eighteenth century,
when hopeful candidates cite the earlier accounts from
the first decades of the China mission, suggesting that
the reports gradually acquired the status of historically
valuable artefacts of a glorious past57.
The young petitioners were far from operating in an
informational vacuum, however, and in making their
case for selection, they drew on a wide variety of nontextual sources to frame their vocation. For example,
one petitioner wrote about «a dream that happened yes-
183 Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
terday morning»: he dreamt he was helping Xavier when
«it was declared to me that with divine grace I am to help
convert those poor souls in India to Our Lord»58. Another candidate described his vocation in the following
spiritual terms: «once the flame is lit, it is no longer possible to contain it within its boundaries». He continued
in his letter that he ‘saw’ the Indies, as in a vision, rather
than imagined them or read about them: «on seeing the
multitudes in the Indies that, because of a dearth of labourers, so to speak, are cast out of heaven into the darkness of hell; I cannot but be deeply moved, for which
reason I dissolve into tears and sighs»59.
One petitioner shifted the theme from the realm of the
vision to that of the visual arts: «one day, upon seeing
two paintings, one of our Blessed Father Ignatius and the
other of Blessed Francis Xavier, the sight of which penetrated inside my heart and lit in me the desire to suffer
and to die for Christ»60. By making reference to a portrait
of two non-martyrs, Ignatius and Xavier, even this vocation to martyrdom in the Indies seemed to be invested
with more gravitas than any reference to the many textual accounts of contemporary martyrs might have done61.
Of course, the Litterae indipetae were written to convince
the candidates’ superiors of their vocation according to
the guidance of interior spiritual revelation, and not to
show how well they had read the reports from the missions; yet, it is notable that within the specific rhetorical
conventions they were expected to employ, dreams and
visual aids evidently were deemed more suitable sources
than textual accounts.
When Francesco Buzomo did refer to the Japan letters, it was on hearing the latest letters from Japan that
he felt such great emotion62. This reference to the oral
transmission of information, rather than the reading
of texts, sets the tone for many of the letters of petition.
For example, one source of information that is particularly privileged as the inspiration for many vocations
is that of the personal testimony. A common subject
in the petitions from Naples is the visit to the Neapolitan province in 1590 by the Jesuit missionary to China,
Michele Ruggieri, who had established the China mission with Matteo Ricci in 1583, and returned to Europe
indefinitely in 1588 after ten years in Asia63. In Alonso di
Cordova’s 1590 petition, he describes the arrival of «father Michele Ruggiero in these parts of Italy, to whom I
introduced myself and discovered my intense desire [for
the Indies]»64.
The importance of the personal interaction and the
verbal exchange is emphasised not only as a source of information about the Indies, but also as a method used by
the petitioners themselves in mounting a case for their
suitability for overseas missionary work. The twentyyear-old Francesco Pavone of Naples, who went on to a
distinguished career in that province sought in his 1590
letter to use the authority of Ruggieri to build his case:
«everyone thinks I should go, principally Father Michele
[Ruggieri], who, having been informed of everything,
and seeing my age, which is 20 this year, it seemed to
him that I should go in any case, having at this age, time
to learn the language». He concluded his petition thus:
«What I desire is to join Father Michele on his return to
China, or else I could go on ahead before him, since I
very much want to go to China and it would be very useful to me to learn the language en route»65.
Many petitioners downplay the importance of their
own letters, placing their trust instead in the spoken testimonies of their superiors. As one petitioner wrote, he
wanted the rector of his college – in addition to delivering his letter in person to the Superior General – to provide verbal testimony about him: «in travelling to Rome,
I begged the rector, not only to present this letter of mine
to you, but also to introduce me to you verbally»66. Another petitioner wrote: «I have communicated this desire
[to go to the Indies] to you more than once, both verbally and by letter». The same petitioner goes on to offer
«the present memorial, which I hope will function as if
I were there in person»67. Seen in this light, the repeated
phrases addressed to the Superior General throughout
the petitions – «I kneel on the ground before you»68, «I
throw myself once more […] at your feet»69 – might be
understood, less as mere figures of speech, as much as
an attempt by the petitioners to lessen the disadvantage
of having to commit their vocation to paper rather than
articulate it in person.
The letter alone, it seems, did not hold the same status as the letter transformed – into the viva voce of the
petitioner, or the personal (rather than written) recommendation of a superior. The fact that only twenty-three
of the petitioners in the period surveyed here were chosen for the missions (with ninety-two Italians being sent
altogether) suggests that the letters by no means were
the sole means of securing a missionary appointment.
Many petitioners consequently knew better than to rely
on their letters alone, instead preferring to revert to the
systems by which missionaries were most likely chosen,
through a combination of patronage networks in the
colleges, the provincial authorities, and the procurators
whose task it was to recommend candidates for selection70.
The unease with which the candidates viewed their
own written petitions – the successful candidate, Giulio
Aleni added to his long list of reasons for seeking a mis-
184 Camilla Russell
sionary appointment that there were «other reasons that
I cannot explain on paper»71 – would seem to point to a
general anxiety concerning the efficacy of written, textual forms of communication, which may well be reflected
in the petitioners’ reluctance to refer to the letter books
from the East72. Yet this apparent preference for the spoken word over the written word, and the authority of the
early church, and – at the very most, the Jesuit founders – over contemporary events and protagonists, points
to a larger problem: the nascent globalising process, in
the fields of mission, diplomacy and trade, necessitated
an unprecedented reliance on the written word alone as
the primary source of information about distant lands73.
Such reliance, and the suspicion with which written accounts from the East appear to have been viewed, may
have had a bearing on Asia breaking into the consciousness, not just of our young Jesuits, but also of Europeans
more broadly.
4. In considering the Jesuit petitions for the missions,
it is immediately clear that most candidates wanted to be
sent to Asia, but almost none seemed to provide any impression of what he might find when he arrived. While
these same petitioners were at pains to demonstrate their
awareness of the attributes they were expected to possess
for a missionary appointment — appropriate age, physical health, language proficiency, stage of study74 — it is
clear that it was not deemed necessary to know about the
East in order to be sent there, or in order to convince the
superiors of the quality of their vocation.
Yet, while the Indies tended to be lumped together,
the broad geography seems to have been understood, at
least in the most basic terms: one petitioner wrote that,
«by day and by night I feel called to those parts, whether
oriental or occidental, whether to Japan, or to Mexico,
China or Peru»75. Indeed, the general term «Indies» was
used, not because the petitioners were unaware how to
distinguish the different regions, but because all of these
vast and varied lands had one, unifying feature: the need
to be converted to Christianity, including «our Indies»76.
In this way, regional distinctions were subordinated to
evangelical ambition in conceptualising these lands, including Europe77.
The general preference for the Oriental Indies, in favour of the Occidental Indies, nevertheless reflected a
specific understanding of the two regions according to
early-modern sensibilities and prejudices. The petitions
contained certain vocabulary depending on which races
were being described: one petitioner remarked on his
desire to go among the «gentili», limiting his list (and
significantly excluding the Americas) to those lands
where he believed he would find them, «in China, Japan, India, Ethiopia»78. When a petitioner wrote to his
Provincial (rather than the Superior General) in 1599 of
his desire to convert and add souls to God’s kingdom, he
made it clear that he was open to all categories: «either to
barbarians, heretics, or others — I am ready!»79.
On the address page of one petition, where commonly
notes about the candidates were jotted down by superiors, it was remarked that Antonio Capece’s «vocation
and desire is to defend the honour of God particularly
among the heretics [presumably of northern Europe]»80.
In contrast, when Cesare Spario wrote of Xavier’s
«e­sercitio Indiano» in the East, the imperative to defend
God’s honour was replaced with the much more sympathetic need to provide «help to that blind people»81.
Here, we can see that the petitions reflected contemporary attitudes towards the East, especially China and
Japan, viewing their peoples as new «gentiles», and worthy successors to the Greeks and Romans of the Ancient
world to whom the first followers of Christ preached82.
Accordingly, these Asian pagan souls are described by
the petitioners in sympathetic (if patronising) terms,
and referred to variously as «that poor and abandoned
people», and as «those poor little souls»83.
It seems from the petitions that the East was viewed as
an important, if secondary, backdrop to the more critical spiritual drama in which the would-be missionaries
hoped to take part84. Bartolomeo Bianchi wrote in his
1608 petition that he wanted to work among the people
of the Indies: «saving their souls with His divine grace,
as well as my own soul, so that I may ascend to heaven in
the company of a multitude of souls»85. Similarly, while
Francesco Corsi’s vocation to Japan (he was destined for
Mogul India instead) almost certainly would have been
influenced by the Japan letters, in his petition he preferred to write about the interior call that he has been
hearing for three years «with increasing frequency, inside my soul»86. In this way, a journey to the Indies becomes, as one petitioner wrote, «this holy journey»87,
while in another, the beginning of the journey marks
the point at which he expects to «die to this world»88.
In Giovanni Giorgio Reviglione’s letter, the threat of
death in the Indies becomes an opportunity to «obtain
a very great grace»89. The «discomfort of these places»
mentioned by Angelo Rossi becomes in the same letter
the chance to find salvation, both for the author himself,
and the occasion for Japan’s «vast house» to secure «innumerable souls to our Lord»90.
We might reflect from these quotes that our petitioners reduced Asia to a flat surface, to a two-dimensional
opportunity for salvation, and this would seem to be
185 Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
so. But this fact does not lessen the Orient’s status; it
raises it. Asia is ranked above the Americas, unsurprisingly, because its populations were considered superior
to Amerindians, but it is also ranked above «le nostre
Indie» of Europe, since the opportunities for salvation
were so much more abundant in Asia than in Europe.
As one petitioner wrote in 1608: «I feel that the promise of divine grace will bear more fruit in those parts
[the Indies] than it will in these»91. Even the chance to
work among Europeans located in Asia is ranked lower
than missionizing among the native populations there:
one petitioner expressed doubt about his worthiness to
work at the frontier of the missions, and that if this were
deemed to be the case, he asked instead to be sent among
«simple [European] soldiers»92.
It seems that if we want to know what Europeans
thought of Asia in this period, it is important to identify
the frameworks within which the viewing took place.
This is not easy, since the early-modern European view
is enveloped in religious zeal that can be confounding
to modern observers, as well as giving the (mistaken)
impression of being empty of substance. Instead, while
the letters of petition make almost no reference to the
written reports from the East, the Asia of these petitions
reveals a certain tenuous engagement with the region on
the part of the petitioners, an engagement that was conditioned by the kinds of information that was flowing
to Europe – and by the ways in which this information
was used (and not used) – which contained, quite surprisingly, a large amount of sympathetic feeling, largely
devoid of imperialistic overtones or militaristic vocabulary, and rich with spiritual imagery93.
Indeed, a common feature shared by both the published reports and the petitions for the missions, is that
Asia appears predominantly in spiritual terms. Compounded by the fact that the petitioners privileged
non-textual sources and mystical inspiration over the
published missionary accounts to build their case for
an appointment, these candidates’ conceptions of Asia
remained removed from geographical and temporal
considerations.
Through an analysis of the Italian petitions for the Indies at the turn of the seventeenth century, it appears
that early-modern methods of communication and the
limited authority attributed to contemporary written,
textual narrative in particular, may have informed, and
even reduced, the extent to which information about
Asia was absorbed. While we might have expected to see
more weight given to the published reports from Asia in
the petitions – well over a century after the invention of
the printing press – and less weight afforded the verbal,
oral, visual, spiritual, and personal modes of communication usually associated with an earlier age, it is precisely these non-textual forms of communication that
our candidates more readily use. This is remarkable for
an order – the Jesuits – that prided itself on record keeping (especially important in the absence of a long institutional history)94, an attribute that has been celebrated
ever since by scholars grateful to find so much written
documentation in its archives95.
The reluctance on the part of our petitioners to draw
on the missionary accounts, in favour of a highly spiritualised worldview – including of the East – may provide some insights into the features of European perceptions of the East at the turn of the seventeenth century.
In this way, it is hoped that this discussion of the Jesuit
petitioning process may help shed light on some of the
key features of, and conditions for, the encounter of the
early-modern European mind with the East.
Camilla Russell
1 D.F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Chicago 1965-93, 1 and
3.
I would like to acknowledge Adriano Prosperi for his generous
and valuable advice concerning the direction of my research, not only
for this project, but also in the course of my scholarly pursuits since
1994/95, when I spent a most enriching year at Pisa under his supervision.
3 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu [ARSI], Fondo Gesuitico
[F.G.] 732-59. I am grateful to the staff at ARSI, especially Fr José
Antonio Yoldi, SJ, and Mauro Brunello, for their generous and expert assistance with my research for this paper. For a discussion of
the source, see E. Lamalle, L’Archivio di un grande ordine religioso.
L’Archivio Generale della Compagnia di Gesù, «Archiva Ecclesiae»
24-25, 1981-82, pp. 89-120. Studies of the Litterae Indipetae include:
A. Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari, Torino 1996, pp. 586-99; A. Guerra, Per un’archeologia della
strategia missionaria dei Gesuiti: le Indipetae e il sacrificio nella ‘vigna
del Signore’, «Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà» 13, 2000, pp.
109-92; G.C. Roscioni, Il desiderio delle Indie. Storie, sogni e fughe
di giovani gesuiti italiani, Torino 2001; M. Massimi, Um incendido
desejo das índias…, São Paulo 2002; P.-A. Fabre, B. Vincent (edd.),
Missions Religieuses Modernes: «Notre Lieu Est Le Monde», Roma
2007, pt. 1.
4 The Italian petitions are located at ARSI, F.G. 732-59, and those
from 1590 to 1615 can be found in folders 732 (contains undated
petitions), 733, 734. ARSI holds two indexes of the Litterae indipetae,
one chronological (petitions from all Provinces), and one alphabetical, according to author (Italian petitions only).
2 186 Camilla Russell
For the European encounter with Asia in the early-modern period, see, B.B. Kling, M.N. Pearson (edd.), The Age of Partnership:
Europeans in Asia before Dominion, Honolulu 1979; G.C. Gunn,
First Globalisation: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800, Lanham
(MD) 2003. My approach follows that advocated by P.-A. Fabre, A.
Romano, Présentation/Introduction: Les jésuites dans le monde moderne. Nouvelle approches, «Revue de Synthèse», 120, 1999, pp. 247-60,
in which there is a désenclavement (opening up) of the Jesuits as a
topic of research, to explore their interactions and intersections with
the early-modern world, which they so fully reflected.
6 For a discussion of the various sources, uses and conceptions of
the term ‘Indies’, especially in the Jesuit context, and its application to
Catholic Europe, see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 551-99.
7 Ibid., pp. 554-61.
8 Petition of Giovanni Rho, Como, 10 January 1607: «di andare
all’orientali, come occidentali, come anche fra Turchi […] però parmi d’esser ciamato particolarmente alla China, over al Giappone»,
in ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 7. All calligraphic abbreviations in the petitions have been expanded; other abbreviations have been left in the
original.
9 For a history of Jesuit Portuguese operations, including in the
East Indies, see D. Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of
Jesus in Portugal, its Empire and Beyond, 1540-1750, Stanford 1996.
For the early decades of the Jesuit order, see J. O’Malley, The First
Jesuits, Cambridge (Mass.) 1993; for a history of the Jesuits prior to
their suppression, see S. Pavone, I gesuiti: dalle origini alla soppressione, 1540-1773, Roma 2004, and including the missionary enterprise, T. Worcester (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits,
Cambridge 2008.
10 Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 1, pp. 281-6.
11 For the Christian missions, see R.W. Hefner (ed.), Conversion
to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great
Transformation, Berkeley 1993; A. Prosperi, L’Europa cristiana e il
mondo: alle origini dell’idea di missione, in R. Zorzi (ed.), L’Epopea
delle scoperte, Firenze 1994, pp. 327-58; J.S. Cummings (ed.), Christianity and Missions, 1450-1800, Aldershot, 1997, and for the missions in Asia, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal
1540-1770, Cambridge 1998, pp. 178-93. For the critical relationship
between the Portuguese crown and the missionary enterprise, see
for example: F. Bethencourt, D. Ramada Curto (edd.), Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800, Cambridge-New York 2007;
L.M. Brockey (ed.), Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern
World, Farnham-Burlington (VT) 2008.
12 Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, p. 131. For the Jesuit mission in Japan, see C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 15491650, Berkeley 1967; A.C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742, Edinburgh 1994.
13 J.C. Brown, Courtiers and Christians: The First Japanese Emissaries to Europe, «Renaissance Quarterly», 47, 1994, pp. 872-906.
14 See C.E. Ronan, B.B.C. Oh (edd.), East Meets West: The Jesuits
in China, 1582-1773/ Tung hsi chiao liu: yeh-su hui shih tsai Chung5 kuo, hsi chi 1582 nien-1773 nien, Chicago 1988; L.M. Brockey,
Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724, Cambridge (MA) 2006.
15 Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, p. 46.
16 A. Tamburello, La presenza portoghese in Asia e le missioni.
La questione del patronato nei secoli XVI-XVII, in L. Vaccaro (ed.),
L’Europa e l’evangelizzazione delle Indie Orientali, Milano 2005, pp.
23-50: 31. Valignano’s appointment represented the gradual separation of the Iberian colonial agenda from the Jesuit missionary enterprise, the latter managing to expand beyond the limits of European
dominion, while at the same time requiring a new approach of adaptation to the politically dominant local populations, to which policy
the Jesuit central hierarchy was committed, and which required a
distancing of the Jesuit evangelical project from the Iberian imperial
one.
17 See above, fn. 4.
18 See P. Broggio et al. (edd.), I gesuiti ai tempi di Claudio Acquaviva: strategie politiche, religiose e culturali tra Cinque e Seicento,
Brescia 2007. For the importance of Acquaviva’s predecessor, Everard Mercurian (Superior General 1573-1580), in overseas mission
policy, including the appointment in 1573 of Alessandro Valignano
as Visitor of the East Indies, see J.W. Witek, Everard Mercurian and
the Entry of Jesuits into China, in T.M. McCoog (ed.), The Mercurian
Project: Forming Jesuit Culture 1573-1580, Rome-St Louis 2004, pp.
815-29.
19 For the following points, see Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, pp. 258-66.
20 Ibid., pp. 267-70; Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 1, pp. 258,
293-302.
21 For the sixteenth century, see M.I. Gramazio, Gesuiti italiani
missionari in Oriente nel XVI secolo, «Archivum historicum Societatus Iesu», 66, 1997, pp. 275-300.
22 J. Wicki, Liste der Jesuiten-Indienfahrer 1541-1758, «Aufsätze zur Portugiesischen Kulturgeschichte», 7, 1967, pp. 252-450:
279-87.
23 Brockey, Journey to the East, pp. 213, 222.
24 M. Friedrich, Circulating and Compiling the Litterae Annuae.
Towards a History of the Jesuit System of Communication, «Archivum
Historicum Societatis Iesu» 77, 2008, pp. 3-39: 3-14.
25 On the anthropology of early-modern letters of supplication,
especially in the Roman curial context, see I. Fosi, Rituali della parola: supplicare, raccomandare e raccomandarsi a Roma nel
Seicento, in C. Nubola, A. Würgler (edd.), Forme della comunicazione politica in Europa nei secoli XV-XVIII: suppliche, gravamina, lettere, Bologna 2001, pp. 329-49.
26 Petition of Alonso di Cordova, Naples, 22 June 1590, ARSI, F.G.
733, fol. 11.
27 Petition of Nando di Bari, Naples, 30 June 1590, ibid., fol.13.
28 Petition of Niccolò Mastrilli, Naples 23 June 1590: «uscir dal
regno per i fastidi de’ parenti, de quali né ho molti», ibid., fol. 11/1.
29 In many senses, the petitions need to be seen as personal affir-
187 Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
mations of Jesuit, indeed Ignatian, spirituality, as much as actual
petitions for the Indies, on which see, P.-A. Fabre, Un désir antérieur. Les premiers jésuites des Philippines et leurs Indipetae (15801605), and A.R. Capoccia, Le destin des indipetae (1580-1605)
au-delà du XVIe siècle, both in Fabre, Vincent (edd.), Missions
Religieuses Modernes, pp. 71-88; and 89-110.
30 Petition of Francesco Corsi, Collegio Romano, 2 February 1590:
«il Signore mi ha dato desiderio d’andar a spendere le forze, e la vita,
per gloria sua, in aiuto dell’anime al Giappone […] mi offerisco hoggi
con Giesù Cristo Benedetto a S.D.M. nelle mani di V.P. pronto a fare
la sua santissima volontà, et per questo stando indifferente ad obedire
a tutto quello che V.P. giudicherà esser maggior gloria sua», in ARSI,
F.G. 733, fol. 68.
31 Petition of Vespasiano Bonamici, S. Andrea, Rome, 23 September 1598: «ritrovandomi a Sant’ Andrea a fare gli esercitii spirituali,
[…] hebbi un pensiero d’andare all’Indie […]. Hora parlavo con il
Rettore del Collegio dicendoli che era bene, che havendo io desiderio
d’andare all’Indie, che io studiasse con gran diligenza per poter’ aiutare quell’anime», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 77.
32 Petition of Vespasiano Bonamici: «Io non ho mai scritto à sua
Paternità, la necessità m’hà spinto»; «le lagrime et li singhiozzi»; «undici anni sono stato nella compagnia, et sempre in aggi, mangiato
bene, vestito bene, et commodo per tutti i luoghi, et finirò la vita mia
in un letto; è possibile? io finire la vita in un letto, et Christo in croce?», ibid., fol. 77rv.
33 Petition of Vespasiano Bonamici: «Io devo morire», ibid., fol. 77.
34 For the following points, see Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 1, pp. 314-31; 429-30.
35 See O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 62 for Jesuit epistolary practices; and Friedrich, Circulating and Compiling the Litterae Annuae,
pp. 3-39, for discussion of the procedures, conventions and circulation methods of the European annual letters, relevant also to the
letters from the Indies.
36 For example, the Rome edition: Copia de alcune littere del padre
maestro Francesco Xavier e altri padri…, in Avisi particolari delle Indie di Portogallo, ricevuti in questi doi anni del 1551 & 1552…, Rome,
Valerio Dorico & Luigi Fratelli Bressani,1552, pp. 297-309, on which
see, Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 1, pp. 316-8.
37 J.P. Donnelly (ed.), Jesuit Writings from the Early Modern Period, 1540-1640, Indianapolis 2006, p. 89.
38 Alessandro Valignano to Everard Mercurian, 4 December 1575:
«in Europa si formano, per le lettere che da chi [i.e. qui] vanno, concetti molto differenti da quello che si ritrova, onde nasce che si raffreddano quando se veggono in queste parti», quoted in Roscioni, Il
desiderio delle Indie, p. 98. On the common problem of Portuguese
candidates not having the correct vocation, or skills, for the overseas
missions, see C. De Castelnau L’Estoile, Élection et vocation: le
choix de la mission dans la province jésuite du Portugal à la fin du
XVIe siècle, in Fabre, Vincent (edd.), Missions Religieuses Modernes, pp. 21-43.
39 Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, 1, pp. 261, 430.
Ibid., pp. 323-8.
L. Frois, Relatione della gloriosa morte di XXVI. posti in croce per commandamento del Re di Giappone, alli 5 di Febraio 1597…
Mandata dal P. Luigi Frois alli 15 Marzo al R. P. Claudio Acquaviva
Generale…, Bologna, per gli Her. di Gio. Rossi, 1599, p. 7: «solamente
scriverò quello che ho saputo da persone […] degne di fede, che à
bocca, & per lettere ne hanno data certa, & distinta informatione di
tutto quello, che qui dirò».
42 «gran consolatione, & edificatione, avvenuti in questa persecutione», ibid.
43 N. Longobardo, Copia d’una lettera del P. Nicolò Longobardi,
scritta nel 1598, dalla Cina…, in F. Pasio, Copia d’una breve relatione della Christianità di Giappone…, In Venetia, appresso Giovanni
Battista Giotti Sanese, 1601, pp. 39-72: «questo vastissimo regno della
Cina» (p. 39).
44 «Sono gli huomini molto industriosi e conseguentemente per lo
più ricchi, e così anche il vivere a molto buon mercato», ibid., p. 49.
45 «senza dar fastidio à Christiani d’altre nationi, come si fa’ per
amore di Giappone, dove è così grande la povertà», ibid.
46 O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 63; Lach, Asia in the Making of
Europe, 2, 480-1.
47 In analysing the petitioners’ response to the Jesuit mission literature, we are taking up Lach’s challenge: Asia in the Making of
Europe, 1, p. 331, that «it is practically impossible to determine just
how much impact the circulation of these unpublished [and indeed
published] writings had upon the European public».
48 Petition of Cesare Spario, Messina, 29 June 1606: «se io non havesse letto in una lettera dal Nostro B.P. Xaverio collonello dell’esercito indiano», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 395.
49 Petition of Francesco Buzomo, Naples, 6 July 1595: «senti appresso tanta motione nel’udir l’ultime lettere del Giappone», ibid.,
fol. 46.
50 Petition of Gregorio Poggio, Collegio Romano, 28 January 1599:
«imitatomi con l’esempio del P.N. Xaverio», ibid., fol. 83.
51 For example, see the petitions of successful candidate, Giulio
Aleni, Collegio Romano, 3 December 1607 («il giorno del B. Fran­
cesco Xaverio»), and Francesco Cagnola, Rome, 6 January 1608, in
which he uses the common title for Xavier: «B. Francesco Xaverio»,
in ARSI, F.G. 734, fols. 53, 71. Xavier was beatified in 1619 and canonised in1622. On the common Jesuit tendency to treat Xavier as
beatified well before the Church’s official acknowledgment of his
status, see G.A.H. Vlam, The Portrait of S. Francis Xavier in Kobe,
«Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte», 42, 1979, pp. 48-60: 57-8.
52 Copia de un capitolo dove si tratta del martirio del padre Antonio
Criminale, in Avisi particolari, pp. 240-4.
53 «La “missione” moderna nasce dunque sotto il segno del ritorno
dell’antico; è la continuazione e il compimento dell’opera degli apostoli» (Prosperi, L’Europa cristiana e il mondo, p. 339).
54 Petition of Giulio Cesare Isnardi, Milan, 16 August 1596: «attendere all’aiuto dell’anime per le quali Christo figliuolo di Dio non
solamente lasciò un paese per un altro; ma venne dal Cielo in terra,
40 41 188 Camilla Russell
et doppo infinite fatiche sparse anco tutto il suo pretioso sangue», in
ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 52.
55 Petition of Marc’Antonio D’Isola, no date or place: «come il
sangue degl’antichi martiri era seme di nuovi Cristiani», in ARSI,
F.G. 732, fol. 210v; Tertullian, Apologeticus, ch. 50.
56 See S. Ditchfield, Innovation and its Limits: The Case of Italy
(ca.1512-ca.1572), in P. Benedict, S. Seidel Menchi, A. Tallon
(edd.), La Reforme en France et Italie: contacts, comparaisons et contrastes, Roma 2007, pp. 145-60.
57 Capoccia, Le destin des indipetae, pp. 89-110.
58 Petition of Angelo Rossi, Parma, 29 February 1608: «Il sogno
fu hier mattina […] a me è stato dichiarato che sono quelle povere
anime, quali con la gratia divina ho da convertir a N.S. nell’Indie», in
ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 98v.
59 Petition of Donato Antonio Sementi, Naples, 28 February 1607:
«la fiamma conceputa non si può più tenere tra suoi confini […]
guardando la moltitudine dell’Indie, che per mancamento di operarij
sono, per dir così, quasi rubuttate dal Cielo nelle Tenebre dell’Inferno, non posso fare che grandemente non mi commova: per la qual
cosa bisogna poi, che mi risolva tutto in lagrime, et sospiri», in ARSI,
F.G. 734, fol. 14.
60 Petition of Giuseppe di Maio [no place], 29 May 1605: «un dì
vedendo due ritratti, l’uno del Beato Nostro Padre Ignazio et l’altro
del Beato Francesco Xaverio, della qual vista mi penetrò dentro al
cuore et mi accese un desiderio di patire e morire per Christo», in
ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 301; quoted in Roscioni, Il desiderio delle Indie,
p. 77.
61 For the profound significance of art (and architecture) in
all aspects of Jesuit life in this period, see, G. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610, Toronto 2003.
For the Jesuit cultural project more broadly, see J. O’Malley et al.
(edd.), The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, 2
vols., Toronto 1999-2006.
62 Petition of Francesco Buzomo, fol. 46.
63 F. Gisondi, Michele Ruggieri: Missionario in Cina e primo sinologo europeo, Milano 1999, pp. 135-6. Contrary to J. Selwyn, A
Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early
Modern Naples, Aldershot 2004, p. 101, Ruggieri was in Naples in
1590, having left China for Europe in 1588.
64 «il P. Michele Roggerio in queste parti d’Italia, accui io mi sono
raccomandato e scoperto il mio desiderio», petition of Alonso di
Cordova, fol. 11.
65 Petition of Francesco Pavone, Naples, 24 June 1590: «à tutti
pare, che lo facci, principalmente al P. Michele [Ruggieri], alquale
havendo manifestato il tutto, e vedendo la mia età, ch’è di 20 in questo anno, li parve che lo dovessi in ogni modo fare, havendo io in
questa età tempo d’imparar la lingua […]. Quello che desidero è, che
[…] havendo da ritornare il P. Michele alla Cina, mi conduchi sua
Reverendissima seco; ò io vada ancora prima; perche mi sento molto
mosso alla Cina; e mi saria molto utile imparar la lingua per la strada», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 12.
Petition of Marcellino Bastantio, Parma, 25 January 1608: «venendo a Roma il P. Rettore, l’ho pregato, che non solo voglia presenter questa mia alla P.V. ma anco farle à bocca quella presentatione di
me stesso», in ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 82.
67 Petition of Giovanni Giorgio Reviglione, Rome, 16 January
1698: «Questo desiderio ho più volte et à bocca, et con memoriali
con lei communicato […] il presente memoriale, qual spero che […]
à lei servirà come viva voce», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 66.
68 «Mi pongo con le ginocchia in terra», petition of Angelo Rossi,
fol. 98v.
69 Petition of Ignatio Angelucci, Naples, 6 June 1608: «mi butto io
di nuovo à V. Paternità suoi piedi», in ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 143.
70 Brockey, Journey to the East, p. 232.
71 Petition of Giulio Aleni, Collegio Romano, 2 December 1607:
«et altre cose che non si possono spiegar in carta», in ARSI, F.G. 734,
fol. 51.
72 A. Prosperi, Prefazione, in Id., Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari, Torino 20092, pp. ix-xxxv. The control
of opinion on the part of the Church that Prosperi observes in the
censorship of the publishing world in early-modern Italy might also
be extended to the realm of self-censorship, a theme that can be explored profitably in the Jesuit petitions (p. xxx).
73 For relevant studies on these points see: J.H. Elliott, The
Old World and the New, 1492-1650, Cambridge 1970, for the limited initial impact of the New World on the old; M. Foucault,
The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith, New
York 1972 (ed. or. Paris 1969), for an analysis of the various hierarchies of information that shape knowledge; L. Roper, Stealing
Manhood: Capitalism and Magic in Early Modern Germany, in
Id., Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in
Early Modern Europe, London 1994, pp. 126-45, for the challenge of gathering reliable information (and the fascinating magical
remedies) in newly globalized mercantile Europe; A. Grafton,
New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock
of Discovery, Cambridge (MA) 1992, for the role of humanism
in the history of knowledge and discovery; Id., Worlds Made by
Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West, Cambridge (MA) 2009, for the relationship between communication
and knowledge.
74 For the education and recruitment process for China, see Brockey, Journey to the East, pp. 207-42.
75 Petition of Stefano Salandi, Parma, 29 November 1602: «giorno
e notte mi sento chiamare in quelle parti, ò siano orientali, ò occidentali, ò al Giappone, ò al Messico, overo alla China, opure al Perù», in
ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 170.
76 Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 1st ed., pp. 557-8.
77 Id., Europa cristiana e il mondo, p. 337, in which he observes of
missionaries destined for the Americas: «il “Nuovo Mondo” è però
per loro più vicino al “nuovo cielo e nuova terra” dell’Apocalisse
citata da Colombo che al “Mondo nuovo” annunciato nella celebre
lettera di Amerigo Vespucci».
66 189 Imagining the ‘Indies’: Italian Jesuit petitions for the overseas missions at the turn of the seventeenth century
Petition of Giulio Cesare Calligari, Naples, 11 January 1608:
«nella Cina, Giappone, India, Ethiopia», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 75.
79 Petition of Giovanni Battista Maremonti, no place, 7 March
1599: «ò siano di barbari, heretici, ò altri: che io sono pronto», ibid.,
fol. 84.
80 Petition of Antonio Capece, Naples, 6 October 1605 (address
page notation): «la sua vocatione e desiderio di difender l’honor di
Dio particolarmente tra heretici», ibid., fol. 323/2v.
81 «l’ajuto di quella cieca gente», petition of Cesare Spario, fol. 395.
82 C. Burnett, Humanism and the Jesuit Mission to China:
The Case of Duarte de Sande (1547-1599), «Evphrosyne: Revista
de filologia Classica», 24, 1996, pp. 425-71, in which the role of
Humanism in providing conceptual continuities for thinking about
the East is discussed, as a vehicle to engage with it, and not just as a
tool of Imperialism.
83 «quelle povere, et abbandonate gente dell’India» (fol. 51); petition of Angelo Rossi (see above, fn. 58): «quelle povere animelle»;
petition of Giulio Aleni, 2 December 1607, fol. 98.
84 Indeed, Fabre argues that the petitions themselves are more spiritual documents than actual statements of intention to travel to the
overseas missions (Fabre, Un désir antérieur, pp. 71-88).
85 Petition of Bartolomeo Bianchi, Collegio Romano, 2 January
1608: «salvando le anime con la Sua divina gratia, salvi ancora me
stesso, e con una moltitudine di quelle salisca in cielo», in ARSI, F.G.
734, fol. 69.
86 «da tre anni in qua, ho sentito intorno a ciò molto maggiori,
e molto più frequenti movimenti nell’anima mia», petition of
Francesco Corsi, fol. 68 (my emphasis).
78 Petition of Giulio Orsino, Collegio Romano, 23 May 1600: «questo santo viaggio», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 93.
88 Petition of Giovan Battista Mazzullo, Palermo, 2 February 1607:
«che muore al mondo in quel giorno che si imbarca per l’Oceano», in
ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 9.
89 «ottenere gratia sì grande», petition of Giovanni Giorgio Reviglione, fol. 66.
90 «scommodità di questi lochi»; «vastissima casa»; «la commodità
di guadagnar a N.S. anime innumerabili», petition of Angelo Rossi,
fol. 98.
91 Petition of Scipione Monforte, Naples, 7 March 1608: «al frutto
maggiore mi sento promettere dalla divina gratia più in quelle parti,
che in queste», in ARSI, F.G. 733, fol. 100.
92 Petition of Girolamo Degano, Parma, 6 May 1608: «se non sono
degno d’essere […] tra le prime frontiere, bastami essere tra simplici
soldati», in ARSI, F.G. 734, fol. 129.
93 Prosperi, L’Europa cristiana e il mondo, pp. 329, 337-8, in
which the link between Christian mission and Christian pilgrimage
is explored. This contrasts with another common view of mission as
crusade (p. 329), which is discernible in the rhetoric surrounding the
American missions, but is little evident concerning the Asian missions.
94 O’Malley, The First Jesuits, p. 62.
95 Fosi, Rituali della parola, pp. 329-49: the limited impact of the
written word outlined here is despite the Jesuits’ best efforts to construct an effective institutional identity (in the absence of a long history) through its record-keeping.
87 Finito di stampare nel mese di settembre 2011
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