The Church in the Far East

Thanks to the generosity of the Library Associates, the library was able to acquire recently a collection of duplicate letter books and related manuscripts which shed important light on Catholic missionary activities in China, the Philippines, and South Asia in the first half of the 18th century.

Of primary importance are the 13 volumes of copies of letters despatched by the Far East section of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith from 1723 to 1745/6. More than 1,800 pages of entries give details on every aspect of management of the missions, from raising money from the Vatican and in various European capitals to supplying religious for missionary duties to entering into various disputes arising from the activities of priests belonging to a number of orders, including the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Society of Jesus.

The principal Jesuit interest in the collection resides in the record of the ongoing dispute over the Chinese Rites and repeated attempts to obtain unconditional obedience from the Jesuits. Letters to the head of the Society repeatedly forbid use of the Chinese Rites and give examples of willful disobedience to a papal bull on the subject, and are especially critical of Jesuit practice in accommodating Chinese traditions in funeral rites. While much, if not all, of this material is--theoretically--available in the Vatican Archives, these duplicate letter books of the Far East section provide a remarkable resource for focussed research.

The pair of volumes containing miscellaneous manuscript materials offer a number of items that will repay further study, including an apparently unpublished biography and critical study of Confucius; an account of the martyrdom of three Jesuit fathers in Vietnam in 1737; several brief items (some of Dominican origin) relating to the Chinese Rites controversy; and, though there seems no particular reason for its inclusion in these volumes, a fairly lengthy text headed "Dissertazione prima sopra l'arte della Pittura." Both of these volumes bear ownership marks from the libraries of the Earl of Guilford and Sir Thomas Phillipps (his MSS. 6451 and 7591).