Jesuit Missionary Cartography of the Upper Amazon, 1689 to 1789 by Irina Saladin (review)

Nicholas P. Cushner is one of a long line of Jesuits who have produced histories of the Order and in particular of the Jesuit missions in America. He is best known for his economic histories of the Jesuit missions in Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. In these empirical studies Cushner investigates the links between Jesuit missions and larger economic developments and patterns. The studies are notable for their unbiased approach in which the author does not attempt to explain away contradictions (between the Jesuits’ vow of poverty and their enormous collective wealth, or their use of slaves, to give two examples). In the book under review, Cushner abandons economic history for ethnohistory and cultural analysis. His subject is the “clash of cultures” between the Jesuits and the American Indians they wished to convert. Instead of a tightly focused view, his approach in this work is broad and comparative. The goal is to determine the success or failure of the Jesuit missions to the American natives and to “explain how one belief system replaces another” (p. 1). These are broad questions indeed, but Cushner assures the success of at least part of his argument by defining success as “the development of sustained ecclesiastical institutions.” There is no doubt that the Jesuits were successful in establishing lasting church institutions in most of the locations he includes in his study.After an introduction in which the author lays out his argument, and a chapter providing background on the origin of the Jesuit Order and the religious conflict that characterized seventeenth-century Europe, the book begins with the Jesuit missions in Florida. These were established in 1566 at the request of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Florida’s first governor. Menendez vigorously lobbied the Order’s general, Francisco Borgia, to send Jesuits to the new colony. Later Borgia would learn that Menendez had also approached the Dominicans. They turned him down, and the Jesuits soon found out why. Florida was, in the words of one missionary “one long pile of sand” (p. 47). The Florida mission was not a success, but the Jesuits were successful in northern Mexico, where they went after abandoning Florida. According to Cushner’s definition, their missions in the Andes, Paraguay, Canada, and Maryland were also successful. Cushner gives a fine overview of the missions in each of these areas. In addition, chapter 7 is devoted to art, architecture, and theater as instruments of conversion. The author’s careful attempt to present both the native and the Jesuit views reveals a wide reading of the contemporary debates in the area of missions and cultural studies.The book is not without its problems. A clearer explanation of Reformation-era Protestantism would be helpful in chapter 1. There were profound doctrinal differences between Luther and Calvin that should have been noted. The book is uneven in its treatment of the missions. The treatment of the Latin American missions is the most comprehensive, while the story of the Canadian missions is brief, focusing mostly on the remarkable experience of Paul LeJeune’s winter trek with a band of Montagnais. There are some errors: Mt. Desert Island is off the coast of Maine, not Nova Scotia. By misplacing its location, Cushner misses an opportunity to include mention of the first Jesuit mission in New England. The question of whether the Indians’ belief system was really replaced by that of the Jesuits is not answered. Another goal, stated at the end of the introduction, to explain how “Christianity became the dominant religion in the Americas” (p. 12) is not addressed and is probably outside the scope of the book. Finally, it is surprising not to see any reference to the 1571 – 72 Jesuit mission to Virginia, although the published documentary collection on that mission edited by Clifford Lewis and Albert Loomie is cited in the bibliography. The massacre of the Jesuits at this mission on the York River was instrumental in the Jesuit’s decision to pull out of Florida, and Cushner’s explanation for that decision seems weak without its inclusion.In a book of this scope some such errors are bound to occur. Overall this is a well-written overview of the Jesuit missions in America, based on recent work on cultural contact and missions. It is largely a reprint of a previous book by the author, Soldiers of God: The Jesuits in Colonial America, 1567 – 1767 (2002), which was first published in Spanish in 2001 under the title Los Jesuitas en America Colonial. It is highly recommended for undergraduate classrooms and for the general public looking for an accessible overview of the early Jesuit missions in America.

Despite the drastic curtailment of missionary activity in Japan that resulted from Toyotomi Hideyoshi's ban on Christianity in 1587, letters of the Jesuit missionaries reveal that the ban did not prevent the conversion of one lady, Go, a woman of the Maeda house and Hideyoshi's own adopted daughter. This study explores the circumstances of Go's exposure to Christianity in Osaka both before and after the enforcement of the anti-Christian decree. It also traces her life story in Bizen and Kyoto, where she was converted to Christianity by a woman catechist. Go's story is important not only for her association with Hideyoshi, but also as a case study for the religious communities and practices that formed among upper-class women in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Japan. KEYWORDS: Christianity - conversion - Toyotomi Hideyoshi - Kyogoku Maria - Christian century - Sengoku period (ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Toyotomi Hideyoshi ... (1536/7-1598)1 and Kitanomandokoro ... (1549-1624)2 adopted a daughter, Go ... (1574-1634), and raised her as their biological in Osaka castle. Hideyoshi himself referred to Go as his beloved child (hizo no ko ...),3 and she kept in contact with her parents even after she left home for marriage. Among the other adopted children of Hideyoshi, Go's life story contains one event of significant historical importance: in her early thirties, Go converted to Christianity. The fact that a daughter of Hideyoshi, the man who issued the first anti-Christian policy in Japan, became a Christian is remarkable, and in this essay, I examine when and how Go became interested in the newly arrived religion that was banned by her father. The historical sources that directly recorded Go's life story are not abundant. However, Jesuit missionaries wrote about her conversion, and the descriptions of her relatives and acquaintances are rich and detailed enough to trace the path of Go's life. To begin with, we have glimpses of her early experiences in Osaka both before and after the enforcement of the anti-Christian decree. When the Jesuits arrived in Osaka in 1583, Christianity became something of a vogue in the castle with the presence of Christian lady attendants and catechists, including Kyogoku Maria ... (d. 1618). In response to the anti-Christian edict, Jesuit missionaries consulted Go's mother, who tried to persuade Hideyoshi to reverse his decision. Then, in the following year, Go married Ukita Hideie ... (1572-1655) of Bizen ..., and left the Toyotomi house. Her husband and mother-in-law in Bizen were supporters of Christianity, and the area began to have many Christian converts thanks to the understanding and support of Go's new family. Finally, while she stayed at her mother Kitanomandokoro's residence in Kyoto after the battle of Sekigahara ..., she converted to Christianity under the influence of a woman catechist, and was given the Christian name, Maria. Being a Christian, she eventually moved to her biological family's house in Kaga ... where the Kanazawa church ... was flourishing as one of the most vibrant Christian churches in Japan (MATOS 1996, 96). As a national policy, Hideyoshi's anti-Christian edict of 1587 has received adequate scholarly attention among historians.4 In order to take this discussion one step further, the lives of the women who associated with Christians or engaged in missionary activities should be examined since it was not only Christian daimyo or male Christians who were affected by the anti-Christian policy. Both Jesuit missionaries' records and their letters sent to Europe, there were many Christian and non-Christian women involved in the issue.5 In particular, the Jesuits' connection with women in Hideyoshi's castle, communication with Go's mother, Kitanomandokoro, and acknowledgement of the woman catechist for Go's conversion widen the scope of studies of the sixteenthcentury Jesuits and the lives of women. …

In 1549 the first group of Jesuit missionaries, led by Francisco de Xavier, landed in Japan and started the first Christian mission in early modern Japan. Previously, after meeting some Japanese in Malacca, an impressed Xavier decided to set sail for Japan, a country the Jesuits had yet to explore and proselytize. Therefore the Jesuit mission to Japan was a mission into the uncertain. This thesis examines the following questions: How did the first Jesuit missionaries in Japan manage to carry out their mission? What were the reactions and problems they encountered? And how did they deal with them? To answer these questions, a systematic analysis of Jesuit sources is employed. As the main focus is on the actions of the Jesuits and their perceptions of Japan, their letters and reports as well as Luis Frois’s historical work on the Jesuit mission in Japan will be thoroughly examined. Also, as the analysis deals with the first years of the Jesuit mission in Japan, it will focus on the period from their arrival in 1549 to 1556 when the destruction of Yamaguchi ended Japan’s first Christian community. Thereby this study aims to provide a comprehensive view on the early Jesuit mission in Japan. This study is divided into three parts. Chapter one explores the Jesuit missionaries’ approach to dealing with the Japanese language and communication problems. This chapter discusses their language study, the translations of their Christian catechism and their use of interpreters. The second chapter examines the relationship between the Jesuit missionaries and the Buddhist monks, focusing on the Jesuits’ perception of Buddhism in Japan, the religious disputations between missionaries and monks, and the persecutions of Jesuits by Buddhist monks. The third chapter explores the relationship between the Jesuit missionaries and the Japanese rulers. It discusses the missionaries’ adaption to Japan’s political situation and explores, by examining case studies, the Jesuits’ approach to establishing and keeping fruitful relationships with the daimyō.

Education Activities of Jesuit Missionaries in Kayseri During the Reign of the Abdulhamid IIAbstractIn the late sixteenth century, Catholic Jesuit Missionaries who were active in the Ottoman Empire lands gained momentum after capitulation regulation concerning religious freedom and protection. They opened new schools and educational institutions in the suitable places as a results of the agreement.Missionary activities and schools run by Jesuit Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire considerably increased during the Sultan Abdulhamit II. Jesuit Missionaries, who took responsibility to protect the French people, continued their educational activities in Kayseri, one of the old and historic cities of Anatolia. They bought or rent lands and then erected buildings in Kayseri to continue their educational activities. They obtained permission and certificate from the goverment to legalize their presence. Then these constructions bought by the missionaries were turned into schools in oder to operate their activities in Kayseri.The purpose of this study is to uncover missionary activities which has long been the missing topic in the Ottoman studies. This paper mainly concerns reactions of Ottoman goverment towards Jesuit Missionaries, their activities and developments in the Kayseri by uncovering new and different archival and monographical sources.OzXVI. yuzyil sonlarinda Osmanli topraklarinda faaliyet gosteren Katolik Cizvit Misyonerleri kapitulasyonlarin kendilerine tanidigi “din ve inanc ozgurlugu” ifadesini tek tarafli olarak esnetmek suretiyle hizla okullasmaya baslamislar ve kendileri icin uygun olan yerlerde merkezler olusturmuslardir.II. Abdulhamit doneminde misyonerlerin actiklari okullarda gozle gorulur bir artis olmustur. Anadolu’nun en eski yerlesim yerlerinden olan Kayseri’de de Fransa’nin koruyuculugunu ustlendigi Cizvit Misyonerlerinin egitim faaliyetlerine hiz verdikleri gorulmektedir. Kayseri’de faaliyet gosteren Cizvit Misyonerleri egitim alanindaki calismalarini, arsa ve arazi kiralamak ya da satin almak suretiyle elde edilen mekanlarda surdurmekteydiler. Bu baglamda mesken yapmak icin izin ve ruhsat aldiklari ve daha sonra ise bu meskenleri birlestirme yoluna giderek okula donusturdukleri gorulmektedir.Bu calismada Cizvit Misyoner okullarina karsi devletin aldigi tedbirler ve misyonerlerin cabalari arsiv ve monografik kaynaklari isiginda irdelenmektedir.

Reviewed by: Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam Liam Matthew Brockey Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam. Edited by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia. [Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Series Nova, Volume 2.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu. 2006. Pp. 365.) The history of the overseas missions conducted by the Catholic religious orders in the early modern period has been fertile terrain for scholars during the past two decades. New analyses of evangelization efforts in the Americas, Africa, and Asia have enriched a field which had long been the province of chroniclers from the orders involved, or other participants in missionary efforts. As the study of the mission churches has expanded, however, the history of the European networks which supported the enterprises has largely been eclipsed. Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions, a volume that combines an introductory essay with transcriptions of correspondence between Europe and China in German, French, and Latin, is a highly useful contribution toward helping to balance out this burgeoning field of study. In addition to examining the global flow of information in the 1700s, this book gives valuable insights into the little-studied (albeit crucially important) subject of mission finance. Moreover, R. Po-Chia Hsia has skillfully edited and annotated the correspondence between one patroness and a set of Jesuits in Asia for the benefit of other scholars to examine. The documents found in this volume come from the Fugger-Archiv in Dillingen and were primarily written by Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg, Florian Bahr, and Johann Siebert. Hsia's introductory essay places [End Page 188] these three individuals in the context of Catholic Germany in the mid-eighteenth century, showing how the Countess von Fugger-Wellenburg encountered the two Jesuits during the early stage of their voyage to Asia (Bahr eventually arrived in China and Siebert worked in Cochinchina). He examines the patterns of female devotional life of Southern German Catholics and explains why Maria Theresia sustained her correspondence with these distant friends over the course of more than two decades. Hsia also explains the mechanics of global finance in the eighteenth century, showing how it was possible—though never easy—for a patron to offer material support to clients on the other side of the globe. After tracing the history of the relationship between Maria Theresia and her correspondents, especially Bahr, he presents transcriptions of her letters and their responses (with intervals of months or years), as well as related documents such as Annual Letters and other reports from the Asian missions. The figure that emerges most clearly from this volume is Maria Theresia, whose letters reveal a great deal about her character and personal piety. We learn that she was especially moved by reports from China about the plight of abandoned infants at the imperial capital, perhaps as a result of her personal misfortune of losing a child. With the help of Bahr in Beijing and other Jesuit agents in Paris, Maria Theresia sent funds to China to help support of a corps of lay assistants organized by the missionaries who visited the city's gates in search of children to deliver to orphanages (or at least to baptize). Yet the countess also showed concern for the well-being of the missionaries and the dignity of the divine cult and Jesuit enterprise in far-off China. She inquires after boxes of European objects that she sent to Asia and seeks to defend the good name of the Society of Jesus among her peers at the courts of Munich and Paris. Maria Theresia also reveals herself as an avid reader of devotional books, as well as reports of the global missionary efforts printed in works such as the Welt-Bott and the Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses. In sum, Hsia paints a portrait of her that is far more complex and textured than one would have imagined. How many other such scenes of patronage lie hidden in the archives, waiting to be discovered? Liam Matthew Brockey Princeton University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Letters from Eighteenth-Century Sonora: Father Segesser Writes to His Family in Switzerland A Research Note Raymond Harris Thompson At the very end of the seventeenth century a ten-year-old boy in Lucerne, Switzerland, decided to become a Jesuit missionary saving souls in faraway lands. He was inspired by the missionary success of St. Francis Xavier in India and Japan in the sixteenth century. During his training for the priesthood, he vigorously campaigned for such an assignment. He was selected in 1726 to go to Paraguay, but that was not to be (Hausberger 1995:298). Unbeknownst to him, his future was being decided by events unfolding in northwestern Mexico, where Benito Crespo y Munroy was appointed Bishop of Durango in 1723. The bishop conducted an inspection of the huge territory under his jurisdiction and discovered a severe shortage of missionaries in the Pimería Alta on the northern fringe of his diocese. On 22 August 1727 he wrote to King Philip V of Spain, urging that three new missionaries be dispatched to northwest Mexico. The king agreed, and on 20 October 1728 ordered Viceroy Juan de Acuña y Manrique to take appropriate action. On 27 April 1730 the Viceroy instructed Bishop Crespo to establish three missions in the Pimería Alta and to assign Jesuit priests to them. As a result of this ponderous long-distance bureaucratic activity that boy, now Father Philipp Segesser, S.J., was one of the three new Jesuit missionaries Bishop Crespo welcomed to Durango on 19 July 1731 (Hammond 1929). Thus began the thirty-one-year missionary career [End Page 225] of Father Segesser in the Sonoran missions of San Xavier, Guevavi, San Ignacio, Tecoripa, and Ures. Although he was extremely busy assembling material for his mission, less than two weeks after being welcomed by Bishop Crespo, he wrote on 1 August to his younger brother, Ulrich Franz Joseph, city councilman and Ratsrichter (council notary) of Lucerne, Switzerland. After more than six years of disappointments and delays, months of waiting, and difficult travels, he was finally totally involved in missionary activities. The ten-year-old boy in him could not resist the desire to take time out and share with his family the excitement and promise of this development. That letter (Letter 46, reproduced here), and others like it, enabled Father Segesser to stay in contact with the old, patrician, close-knit, wealthy, and devoutly Catholic family into which he was had been born on 1 September 1689. Such contact became very important to him after he left his homeland forever to serve as one of three new Jesuit missionaries on the northern frontier of New Spain. From the time when he was in Bavaria preparing to become a member of the Society of Jesus until his death in 1762 at the Mission of San Miguel de los Ures, he carried on a lively correspondence with his family in Lucerne. The Segesser family was justly proud of its Jesuit missionary son and intensely interested in his life in faraway and exotic New Spain. They often copied his letters for distribution to friends and relatives outside Lucerne. More importantly, they saved seventy-six of them in a family archive (now in the Lucerne State Archive). Unfortunately, none of the letters they wrote to him have survived. Theodore Edward Treutlein (1945) translated the longest of Segesser’s letters and considered, but never found the time, to translate more. This trove of letters constitutes the kind of archival resource that needs to be made available to scholars and the reading public. An effort to do just that began almost fifty years ago with that indefatigable chronicler of northwestern New Spain, Bernard Lee Fontana, then ethnologist on the staff of the Arizona State Museum. He learned of the existence of the letters in the Segesser family archive during his correspondence in the mid-sixties with Swiss scholar Gottfried Hotz, who was writing a book on the Indian hide paintings Father Segesser had sent home to his family (Hotz 1960). I had just become head of the Department of Anthropology and director of the Arizona State Museum, and I supported an effort to obtain copies of the letters...

Book Review| December 01 1967 Review: The Natural & Human History of Baja California. From Manuscripts by Jesuit Missionaries, by Homer Aschmann The Natural & Human History of Baja California. From Manuscripts by Jesuit MissionariesHomer Aschmann Harwood P. Hinton Harwood P. Hinton Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1967) 49 (4): 462. https://doi.org/10.2307/41170138 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Harwood P. Hinton; Review: The Natural & Human History of Baja California. From Manuscripts by Jesuit Missionaries, by Homer Aschmann. Southern California Quarterly 1 December 1967; 49 (4): 462. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41170138 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright, 1967 The Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The interest in astronomy that we have seen in the Jesuit colleges of Europe was carried into the mission countries. In 1552, at the end of his second journey to Japan, Francis Xavier (1506–1552), the first Jesuit missionary to the East, wrote to Rome asking that Jesuits sent to Japan should have some knowledge of astronomy since the Japanese were a very curious people interested in the motion of the heavens, solar and lunar eclipses, lunar phases, the origin of rain, snow, thunder and lighting and other natural phenomena. However, it was not in Japan, but in China that Jesuit missionaries found astronomy a great help in their work of spreading the Christian faith. As Ferdinand Verbiest, one of the Jesuit Directors of the Beijing Observatory, expressed it in his book Astronomia Europaea: “Holy Religion makes her official entry (in China) as a very beautiful queen, leaning on the arms of Astronomy and she easily attract the looks of all the heathens. What is more, often dressed in a starry robe, she easily obtains access to the rulers and prefects of the provinces.” At the end of the book he repeats the same idea in a more explicit form, “Christian Religion in China is justly represented as a most august queen who appears publicly with her arm leaning on Astronomy ... because she was first introduced in China through Astronomy, because she was left untouched thanks to Astronomy and because after having been banished several times, she was each time called back and successfully restored to her former dignity by Astronomy.” Truly, it was through their interest in astronomical knowledge that the first Jesuit missionaries were able to enter China and influence Chinese society, which was closed in the sixteenth century to all foreigners. Even at times when other missionaries were expelled from China, Jesuit astronomers remained in their posts. Another country to which Jesuit missionaries carried their astronomical observations was India. Some Indian princes were interested in astronomy and the Jesuits collaborated with them, but this collaboration was not as extensive as in China Finally, in a completely different scenario, Jesuits also founded the first astronomical observatory of the western hemisphere in the mission of Paraguay.KeywordsSolar EclipseAstronomical ObservationLunar EclipseAstronomical InstrumentJesuit MissionaryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Reviewed by: Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603 Lisa McClain Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580–1603. By Robert E. Scully, S.J. [No. 23 in Series 3: Scholarly Studies Originally Composed in English.] (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2011. Pp. xvi, 468. $32.95. ISBN 978-1-880810-78-1.) Robert E. Scully’s Into the Lion’s Den is the first in-depth inquiry into the early years of the Jesuit Mission in both England and Wales, placing it in context of the development of the Society of Jesus and its worldwide missionary efforts in the sixteenth century. What was, Scully asks, the impact of this relatively small, underfinanced, and understaffed mission to the history of the English Reformation and the history of the Catholic Church more broadly? To address this question, Scully draws heavily from traditional sources such as Henry Foley’s Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, the writings and correspondence of organizational leaders such as William Allen and Robert Persons, and autobiographies penned by Jesuit missionaries such as William Weston and John Gerard. He describes and contextualizes the origins of the mission; the creation of the English colleges; English Jesuit writings; the clandestine nature of the mission based in the manor houses of the gentry; women’s recusancy and support of the mission; the dangers to Catholic laypersons and clergy; and the conflicts arising among Jesuits, the Elizabethan government, and Catholic secular clergy. Of particular interest are [End Page 811] plates from the Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (1584), a series of thirty-five engravings detailing English Catholic history and martyrology. When discussing these familiar sources, Scully uses a broader interpretive framework than did earlier scholars such as Philip Caraman and William Bangert who published on the English Jesuits. In particular, he focuses special attention on Wales and the Marches. Such attention is justified, Scully argues, since Allen and Persons identified Wales early on as key mission territory. Scully contrasts English recusancy patterns with those in Welsh and Marcher lands and highlights divisions among the English and Welsh students at the English colleges based on perceptions of cultural and perhaps racial difference. Scully’s analysis differentiates between the religious worldviews of Catholics residing in different regions of England and Wales and also addresses issues such as sacred space and material culture. With a lesser degree of success, Scully attempts to weave the contributions of women and lower ranking Catholics into his narrative of the Jesuit missionary endeavors. Scully includes much that is valuable about women and the poor but little that is new. When evaluating the success or failure of the Jesuit Mission, Scully enters existing debates begun by historians such as John Bossy and Christopher Haigh by asking scholars to assess the mission not as one monolithic effort but in terms of the different groups involved. Jesuit missionary efforts, Scully argues, succeeded better than those of other groups because of the Society of Jesus’s more developed organizational and financial structures and the unique spiritual mission of the society. Moreover, adding to recent scholarship that distinguishes English Catholicism from continental post-Tridentine Catholicism, Scully highlights how innovative and flexible Jesuit missionary strategies in the officially hostile regions of England and Wales look different from Jesuit evangelization approaches in more welcoming environs worldwide. Scully ultimately credits Jesuit efforts as instrumental in making a modest success of the Elizabethan Mission, encouraging the “unexpected tenacity and even resilience” of a minority Catholic community that had staying power in an increasingly Protestant Northern Europe (p. 435). Overall, Scully uses a generally balanced approach that does not shy away from addressing the challenges and conflicts as well as the accomplishments of the Jesuits. Although not groundbreaking, Into the Lion’s Den is a solid text that draws together a wealth of information useful to scholars of English Catholicism or who want to compare and contrast the Elizabethan mission with other Jesuit efforts worldwide. [End Page 812] Lisa McClain Boise State University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Reviewed by: Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization Min-sun Chen (bio) Lionel M. Jensen. Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997. xix, 444 pp. Hardcover $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-2034-7. Paperback $19.95, ISBN0-8223-2047-9. In this well-researched book, Lionel M. Jensen offers as his main thesis that it was the pioneer Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) who invented the name "Confucius" and the term "Confucianism." Other Jesuit missionaries during the subsequent European Enlightenment period and, later, prominent Chinese scholars of the twentieth century then continued this process of "manufacturing" Confucianism by reinventing it to suit the needs of their times—a process that commands both attention and admiration because it involved the virtual creation of a universal civilization that incorporates healthy elements from both Chinese and Western civilzations. So far, the result has been rather insubstantial, but this does not mean that the effort should be abandoned. Indeed, Jensen himself is carrying forward the noble task of manufacturing and reinventing Confucianism. It is hoped that in the next millennium we may succeed in creating a truly ecumenical world and a truly universal civilization. Through the skillful use of concepts and terminology taken from twentieth-century philology and linguistics, Jensen has made an elaborate attempt to prove his thesis. In addition to a long introduction, a detailed epilogue, a comprehensive bilingual glossary, and a complete index, his book contains two parts: part 1 (pp. 31-147) on "The Manufacture of Confucius and Confucianism" and part 2 (pp. 149-264) on "Making Sense of Ru and Making Up Kongzi." Part 1 deals with the sincere efforts of Ricci and other Jesuit missionaries as well as their contemporaries in the European scholarly community to gain a deep insight into Chinese traditions and bridge the gulf that existed between China and the West. Part 2 details the progress made by the Chinese literary giant Zhang Binglin (1868-1916) and the great twentieth-century scholar and educator Hu Shi (1891-1962) in reinventing [End Page 459] ru and further universalizing a struggling Chinese civilization that had been dealt repeated heavy blows by the nations of the West since the Opium War of 1839-1842. All of these main points receive ample coverage in Jensen's book. On the whole, it is an impressive scholarly work. The back cover of the paperback edition offers these comments by two American scholars: Hoyt Cleveland Tillman calls Jensen's book "a milestone in the field," while Haun Saussy claims that Jensen has offered "a thesis that will scandalize cultural purists." In a recent popular publication, The Life Millennium: The 100 Most Important Events and Peoples of the Past 1,000 Years (New York: Time Inc., 1998), Matteo Ricci is listed on page 181 as number 68. Jensen's book certainly is one of the more important biographical studies on Ricci, and it offers sufficient grounds to justify Ricci's receiving this kind of recognition. Ricci's achievement in understanding the teachings of Confucius and the essence of Chinese tradition, with all its virtues and shortcomings, and his ability to transmit this knowledge to other Jesuit missionaries and to the European intellectual community are certainly worthy of wide recognition. (Indeed, the current rumor has it that the conferring of sainthood on Ricci by the Catholic Church is probably just a matter of time.) One of the merits of Jensen's volume is that it views the missionary enterprise of Ricci and other Jesuits from the wider perspective of Sino-Western cultural contacts. Jensen sees the attempts by Ricci and others to interpret, reinterpret, and theorize on Confucius and Confucianism in terms of a meaningful cross-cultural dialogue—an invention, reinvention, and manufacturing of Confucianism all in the context of Sino-Western contacts. Jensen is fully aware of the implications of this dialogue, attempted under conditions that the Jesuits could not control. According to the late Earl H. Pritchard (1907-1996), an authority on the history of Sino-Western relations, from the time the Portuguese first appeared in the South China Sea in 1514 up until 1839, China, by maintaining her tribute system and...

The Catholic Missionaries in Ethiopia was encouraged since the beginning of the Portuguese assistance against the Muslims in the war of Ahmed Grañ. The successive Ethiopian monarchal authority was engaged to defend a full-scale war between the Muslim Sultanates of Adal, led by Ibin Ibrāhīm al-Ġāzī usually known by many writers as Ahmed Grañ. The Portuguese expansion with the succeeding Jesuit mission in Ethiopia was a turning point in the history of Ethiopia. Moreover, the Portuguese and Spanish Jesuit missionaries were more attracted by the strategic location of the country. This, in fact, enabled them to monitor the expansion of Islamic power in the Red Sea and the long experienced Christian faith in the country that had further consolidated the Ethiopian and Portuguese alliance. Initially, a Jesuit undertaking led by Father Andrés D. Oviedo first entered the country in 1557 to have started the top-down conversion process. This research aims to assess the opportunities and challenges of the Jesuits missionary strategy for the Catholicization of Ethiopia from top to down Approach. To achieve the objectives of this study, the researcher used qualitative research approach to investigate the issue and used historical research design for this study as well. Historical research requires access to the original events or records that took place in the past as distinct procedure for the investigation. Thus, the primary sources that were produced at the time under study as well as secondary sources were used. Primary data sources such as Royal chronicles, Tarike Nagast, Diaries of eye witness, Jesuit texts and European travel accounts by travelers who visited the northern part of the country by the time have been used. Published and unpublished secondary sources such as books, articles, journals and internet sources were utilized. More significantly, the researcher verified the authenticity and credibility of the acquired historical source through accuracy, occurrence, relevance and authority. The findings of the research revealed that the Jesuits missionary ambition to implant Catholicism remained in vain with bloody wars that claim thousands of human lives. Ultimately, the Jesuit missionaries expelled from the country. However, they left behind a theological controversy that gave it to local theme to Catholicism in Ethiopia that finally resulted in the doctrinal debate particularly centered on the teaching of the two natures of Christ. The intense doctrinal debate which was held during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ethiopia hastens to the absence of strong centralized monarchial authority that eventually led to the era of the princes.

Reviewed by: Jesuits & Matriarchs: Domestic Worship in Early Modern China by Nadine Amsler Anthony E. Clark (bio) Nadine Amsler. Jesuits & Matriarchs: Domestic Worship in Early Modern China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018. xii, 272 pp. Hardcover $90.00, ISBN 978-0-295-74379-0. Nadine Amsler has accomplished something quite remarkable for an emerging scholar; she has written a first monograph that equals in style and quality a work produced by an already established and well-published senior in her field. Amsler's new study, Jesuits & Matriarchs, is a welcome contribution to the study of Sino-Western/Sino-Missionary history, not only because she offers important information about the role and influences of women within China's late-imperial Catholic community, but also because she has exhumed long buried archival materials that few, if any, have thought to access, namely, the accounts of women under the Jesuit mission during the early Qing (1644–1911). As she puts it, her book asks how women organized "their religious piety, and how did they perceive the 'teachings of the Lord of Heaven' (Tianzhujiao) propagated by the Jesuits," a question which is "illuminated by analysis of the significance of gendered special relations in the Jesuits' mission to seventeenth- century China" (p. 4). Amsler is not the first to analyze the lives of women under the sway of the Western Christian mission to China; her study follows [End Page 282] in the footstep of other significant monographs such as Ji Li's God's Little Daughters, published in 2015, and Jane Hunter's earlier The Gospel of Gentility, published in 1989.1 What sets Amsler's work apart is that it sets the lives of Chinese Christian women more precisely within the larger context of Jesuit notions of masculinity, namely, Confucian learning vis-à-vis female virtue. That is, Amsler confronts how European Jesuits of China's seventeenth-century "adapted their masculinity to Chinese Confucian gender norms and how Chinese women connected with the Catholic religion spread by the missionaries" (p. 12). In Chapter 1, Amsler rehearses much that has already been written about, such as the 1595 decision of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640) to stop wearing Buddhist robes and begin donning the regalia of the Confucian literati. Despite such redundancies, this chapter offers several novel areas of analysis; most notably, she frames the sartorial and cultural decision to adopt the persona of China's literati within a framework of Jesuit masculinity. Here I would have recommended that the uniquely Jesuit practice of only admitting males to their order be better explored. Other Roman Catholic missionary orders and congregations, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Lazarists, freely admit women into their ranks, while the Jesuit fraternity of priests and brothers is entirely male, a reality that influenced the atmosphere of Jesuit areas in China. Along the lines of sartorial strategies, Amsler makes the important point that the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), had refused to create a specific Jesuit habit, but had instead requested that Jesuit attire should "conform to the usage of the region" (p. 16). This important decision allowed missionary Jesuits to dress not only according to their region, but also according to their social status; Jesuits in the service of the emperor dressed quite differently from those who served small remote Chinese parishes. This chapter effectively underscores that the Jesuit decision to conform to China's Confucian aesthetic and intellectual propensities filtered down to inform how they envisioned and directed the lives of Chinese Catholic women. Chapters 2 and 3 confront traditional Chinese expectations of morality and gender distinction, especially how those expectations were interpreted by and re-presented by Jesuit missionaries. As Amsler suggests, Confucian literati were convinced that "disorder began to reign whenever sexes mixed," and the Catholic mission was obliged to highlight its own moral consensus with this view both in the public and private spheres (p. 34). One way in which the Jesuit "literati" distinguished themselves as paragons of Confucian morality was to set themselves against Buddhist clergy, who they characterized as lewd and promiscuous. The Jesuit mission thus stressed its agreement with the traditional Chinese sense that "Female...

THE JESUIT MISSIONS in Sonora, as everywhere else, were primarily occupied in bringing the Roman Catholic faith to the heathen.' Proselytizing was expensive, however, and the mission had to be an elaborate economic institution to gain the income and command the resources necessary for its survival. Consequently, much of the padre's time was spent in performing the worldly task of supervising the Indians in their work of crop planting, harvesting, stockraising, and in handicraft.2 The padre enforced Indian participation in the communal agricultural enterprises of the mission, for compulsory native labor was the basis upon which in large part rested the temporal existence of the mission. In Sonora, the Jesuit mission was the dominant agricultural institution as was generally the case in frontier regions wherever the mission system existed.' The Jesuit missions harvested the great

By introducing the 18th century Korean literatus Chong Yag-yong into the complex game of religious, political and cultural interaction that took place with the Jesuit mission, Professor Lee has indeed added a new dimension, quite in the vein of the tertium comparationis Professor Krech and his International Research consortium are looking for. Christian Wolff and Chong Yag-yong represent a kind of meeting of minds far away from the scene of the actual encounter. Professor Lee's approach is inspired by the idea that the Jesuits were precursors of the Enlightenment. Notwithstanding the fact that they count among the first victims of Enlightenment once it came to political power, the Jesuits no doubt had laid the foundations for the perception of Reason (with a capital R) as the guiding principle of the Chinese Empire and thus, a possible alternative to contemporaneous Western ways of governance. Keywords:Chinese Empire; Eun-jeung Lee; intercultural transfer; Jesuit mission; Korean studies; political power

When the European colonization of North America began, Christian missionaries were among the first groups to travel to the New World with the intention of converting the indigenous populations. Christianity is often viewed as an aggressive affront to indigenous customs and religions during the colonization period. However, the Jesuit mission among the Huron became one of the most successful missions of the time, and their success was due, in large part, to their method of presenting the Gospel within the framework of Huron customs. Based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources, I suggest that there are reasons on both the Jesuit and the Huron sides that explain this apparent spiritual success. The Jesuits’ skill in communicating with the Huron, their willingness to live among them and learn their customs, as well as their compassion for them all contributed to the success of the Jesuit mission. The Hurons, for their part, were particularly open to the teachings the Jesuits imparted. This relationship suggests that, although Christianity was certainly a large part of colonization, not all Christian missionary groups condemned local cultures and customs, but sometimes presented Christianity within the local cultural framework.