HISTORIARUM INDICARUM LIBRI XVI. SELECTARUM ITEM EX INDIA EPISTOLARUM EODEM INTERPRETE LIBRI IIII. ACCESSIT IGNATII LOIOLAE VITA POSTREMO RECOGNITA. ET IN OPERA SINGULA COPIOSUS INDEX.
Maffei, Giovanni Pietro:
Price: 1850.00 USD
Venice: Damiano Zenari, 1589/1588., Two parts bound in one volume. [28],281; [2],211 leaves. Each with a separate titlepage. Ornate titlepage vignettes. Thick octavo. Contemporary paneled, blind- tooled pigskin, raised bands, manuscript title on spine, clasp remnants. Covers bowed. Old library stamps on front pastedown, front free endpaper, and titlepage. Contemporary manuscript ownership statement on titlepage. Internally clean. Near fine, in an attractive contemporary binding. Second edition, after the first of the previous year. Maffei's text is a classic work on the Jesuit missions in America, India, and Japan, with a biography of the Order's founder, Ignatius Loyola. The author spent twelve years in Lisbon composing his work from original sources, was one of the first Western historians to write about Asia, and is likely the first to mention the Japanese warlord, Oda Nobunaga, in a European work. According to Borba de Moraes, his extensive treatment of Brazil describes the region "very accurately," though the majority of the book is concerned with the Portuguese mission and Jesuit stations elsewhere in India, the East Indies, and parts of the Arabian Sea to about 1557. The fourth chapter discusses China, while the twelfth considers Japan. For his information on Japan, Maffei relied on the letters that had been written and sent to Europe by one of the prime chroniclers of the early Jesuit mission in Asia, Luis Frois. In 1569, Frois had been the first European to meet Nobunaga, having done so in Kyoto, which the warlord had recently captured. "Maffei's work is written with probity as well as elegance, for the Jesuit humanist was writing at a time when the 'Indian Letters' were being attacked for their falsities and exaggerations by leading figures in the Society both in Europe and Asia. It was prepared in the midst of a flurry of Jesuit activity which revolved about the related efforts of the young Society to prepare a history of its activities and to prepare biographies of its great founders: Loyola and Xavier" - Lach. A cornerstone Jesuit history by one of the Order's most celebrated scholars, uniting in one text a description of its mission across the globe. Scarce. Lach, ASIA IN THE MAKING OF EUROPE, pp.325-27. BORBA DE MORAES, p.508 (another ed). EUROPEAN AMERICANA 589/41. SABIN 43770n. STREIT IV:1045. BACKER V:298..
