Your search

Gregorio López was a Chinese Christian who, after becoming a Dominican friar and priest, was appointed bishop and apostolic vicar of Nanjing. Previous biographies did not touch on the difficulties of admitting a Chinese Christian as a friar, and explanations of his late and problematic consecration remain insufficient. The documentary sources presented in this article contribute to a better understanding of these issues. Obstacles in his consecration are explained in the context of institutional and national conflicts. It is shown how Gregorio was proposed as bishop by French vicars seeking more effective control of the mission in China. A Dominican friar was supposed to become his theological adviser to settle the Chinese Rites Controversy. However, this plan failed. New documents reveal in detail how the Chinese bishop was engaged by Jesuits and Augustinians to support their position against the French vicars and to defend their opinions on Chinese rites.

The article presents the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus. After the parts devoted to recollecting its history, discussing its structure and resources, a great deal of information was given on the realities of the institution’s daily work in recent years. Elements of statistics and bibliographic indications referring to the literature on the subject are accompanied by general considerations relating to the archives.

The French Religious Protectorate enabled France to act as the guardian of Catholics in China. After the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin, it protected Catholic missions and missionaries and was accepted as a diplomatic arrangement by the main international actors. While not being a signatory to the Protectorate, the Catholic Church complied with its terms and accepted French diplomatic representation in matters of Chinese affairs. The agreement involved all missionaries from different countries in China, including those of Italian origin. Inevitably, over time, the Protectorate became a controversial question because it exposed the Church’s pastoral mission to interferences from foreign powers. In November 1928, Italy signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with China, enhancing political relations under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership. It was the beginning of a new age of cooperation and reciprocities based on strong political affinities. A few months later, on 11 February 1929, Italy and the Holy See signed the Lateran Pacts, reestablishing diplomatic relations after Rome’s annexation to the Kingdom in 1870. Benito Mussolini saw the importance of aligning with the Church to gain the support of Catholics and strengthen his leadership. These agreements bolstered cooperation between the regime and the Church in domestic and international affairs. In China, the cooperation allowed the Church to gradually shift away from French diplomatic interference and finally attempt to connect, free of constraints, with the Chinese Nationalist government.

This article examines the acclamation of King João IV at Macau in 1642, with special attention to an account of the pageantry that followed the arrival of the news from Portugal. The discussion has three parts. One considers the colony’s social and religious climate in the years leading up to the event. The next looks into the dramatic change of mood that followed in its wake. The third part investigates the well-known source describing the ceremonies. The contrast between a colony rent by division and one united by common purpose is so striking that it raises important questions about the historical source that describes the acclamation.

We analyse the importance of the generation of Jesuit pioneer missionaries at the service of the Portuguese Patronage for the implementation of quốc ngữ [national language] in present-day Vietnam and the linguistic description of the tonology of Annamese or Tonkinese (former names of Vietnamese). We analyse, in particular, the manuscript Manuductio ad Linguam Tunckinensem (ca. 1745 [ante 1623]) by Francisco de Pina, S.J. (1585/1586–1625), and the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum and the grammatical treatise Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis Brevis Declaratio (Rome 1651) by Alexandre de Rhodes, S.J. (1593–1660). We corroborate that Pina was indeed the first to use the Romanization system of Tonkinese, and we establish that he was also the first to describe its six tones in detail. Rhodes expanded Pina’s knowledge, which is particularly explicit in the description of Tonkinese tonology. We also explain that Rhodes used lost manuscript dictionaries written by Gaspar do Amaral, S.J. (1594–1646) and António Barbosa, S.J. (1594–1647), which is evident mainly in the use of the “Portuguese” digraph <nh> to represent the phoneme /ɲ/.

RESUMO: A celebração de rituais públicos era um momento privilegiado de representação das hierarquias sociais de cada território. Um dos maiores desafios que a historiografia tem enfrentado resulta da dificuldade em avaliar a forma como as populações locais entendiam a celebração ritual a partir dos seus próprios quadros culturais, especialmente quando se trata de grupos extraeuropeus e não convertidos. Partindo deste problema, este texto pretende analisar o modo como as autoridades chinesas olhavampara alguns dos rituais públicos, especialmente os de natureza religiosa, que tiveram lugar em Macau, tendo por base a obra Aomen ji lüe, da autoria de Yin Guangren e Zhang Rulin, preparada entre 1751 e 1757.1 PALAVRAS-CHAVE: China; Macau; Ásia; Rituais religiosos; Mandarins. ABSTRACT: The celebration of public rituals was a privileged moment of social hierarchy representation in each territory. One of the biggest challenges historiography faces is the result of the difficulty in evaluating how local populations understood the ritual celebration taking their own cultural framing as a starting point, especially when referring to non-converted and non-European groups. Given this problem, this article analyses the way in which Chinese authorities regarded some of the public rituals, especially the religious ones, which occurred in Macau, using Yin Guangren e Zhang Rulin’s Aomen ji lüe (1751-1757) as a reference. KEYWORDS: China; Macau; Asia; Religious rituals; Mandarins.

In the 16th century, the first Spanish and Portuguese Dominican missionaries arrived in Southeast Asia, included Vietnam, but only after the first decades of the seventeenth century, Christianity began to take hold and lived through different episodes of the Proclamation of the Christian faith: first it was tolerated and then abandoned by the dynasties, supported by the colonialists, declined in the north by the communists, it expanded in the south under the Republic of Vietnam and stabilized until now after the reunification of the country followed by a long breakage due to political change. Along with this story, sacred architecture was interpreted in various ways to define identities in religious life and faith. However, the most difficult period of religious architecture is not only in the political conflict of the past, but also until now, the time of the economic boom. The change of values as well as the aesthetic system make sacred art and architecture remain a giant wheel stuck in mud.

From the end of the 16 th century to the beginning of the 17 th century, under the direction of the archdiocese in Macao (China), Jesuit missionaries set foot in China and Vietnam in turn to preach the Gospel and convert believers in these two countries. The main reason for the success of the Jesuits was the use of appropriate missionary methods and advocating proper cultural integration in each country. However, due to the different paradigm of historical development in China and Vietnam, and especially due to disagreement about the perception and behavior of indigenous culture among the Jesuits themselves, the process of evangelization in the two countries occurred differently. Based on historical and logical methods, especially the comparative method, this study analyzes and compares the similarities and differences in missionary methods and the advocacy of cultural integration in the two countries mentioned above. Primary sources were the foundation of the work, such as archival records and recently published research results of Chinese and Vietnamese scholars as well as other researchers. The results of this work contribute to assessing the similarities and differences in the process of applying missionary methods and cultural integration. The work further contributes to the study of Christian history in China and Vietnam in the16 th and 17 th centuries.

This article assesses how Lutheran and other Reformation doctrines spread and were countered in the Portuguese seaborne empire. Portugal's inquisitorial and episcopal repression of ‘Lutherans’ was extended to Brazil and Asia, where it was supported by the Society of Jesus. The Portuguese empire's transcontinental connections favoured the emergence of interconnected histories, facilitating the circulation of books, engravings and beliefs and thus provided non-Portuguese people with links to the reformed world that spread amongst and disturbed the Portuguese living in India and Portuguese America. By opening up routes the Portuguese, paradoxically, functioned as vectors for other ways of interpreting Christianity.

The paper offers a historical perspective on the division within the Roman Catholic Church in mainland China, focusing on the appointment of bishops, ...

Over the last two decades, the historiography that focused on the solutions for representation of the inquisitorial tribunals in their diverse peripheries paid special attention to the role played by the commissioners of the Holy Office. The commissioners nominated to operate in non-peninsular settings (particularly Brazil and the Estado da Índia) were the object of particular analysis. In these cases, historiography highlighted a wide array of faculties and capacities when compared to their homologues in the kingdom of Portugal, specially the ones operating in the district of the Inquisition of Goa. Here, commissioners even benefited from faculties to absolve some offences in foro conscientiæ and sometimes even judicially. This proposal undertakes to reflect what might have motivated such departure from the profile of the Portuguese commissioner; whether it was, according to some texts, the dimension of the Goa Inquisition’s district; whether, according to other sources, the qualities of the newly-converted population that was subjected to the jurisdiction of this tribunal. Finally, we will seek to determine the consequences of the attribution of a specific judicial space to the episcopate in dioceses with more dynamic missions for the diversity of the models of inquisitorial vigilance in the Estado da Índia.

As an essential member of the tangible cultural heritage, historic architectural heritage contains unique historical and social values. This paper describes the current state of conservation of historic buildings and the ways of conservation, revitalization and renewal by the Macao authorities, and draws on the Cathedral of the Merciful Jesus in Goa, India, and Coventry Cathedral in England, to provide suggestions for the conservation and restoration of the site of St. Paul’s College in Macao. St. Paul’s College is divided into three main parts: St. Paul’s Church, the Seminary, and the Fortress, for conservation, revitalization, and renewal. The current conservation and renewal measures of the site are still inadequate. By analyzing the conservation strategies and the current situation, St. Paul’s College needs the cooperation of the government and the public to value and improve the reuse value of the site and increase its visibility. At the same time, the use of rich restoration and renewal methods, combined with the current situation of society in the restoration and renewal of the site, can present valuable ideas.

Based on the original materials recorded by the missionaries of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris operating in Vietnam from the second half of the 17th century to the late 18th century and the achievements of French and Vietnamese scholars, this article addresses the building of indigenous force of missionaries of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in Tonkin and Cochinchina (Vietnam) during this period. In particular, the author of this article focuses on comparing the results of training Vietnamese priest resources and building seminaries in the two above areas, and at the same time points out the reason for such difference. To complete the content of this article, the author combines two main research methods of historical science (historical method and logical method) with other research methods (systematic, statistical, differential analysis, synthetic, etc.), especially the comparative method. The research result presented in the article makes specific contributions to studying the history of Christianity in Vietnam and the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in this country in the 17th and 18th centuries.