A TREATISE INSIDE A TREATISE: CHINESE MATTERS IN THE HISTORIA DA IGREJA DO JAPÃO BY JOÃO RODRIGUES TÇUZU SJ

Résumé 0

"In the first chapters of the unfinished manuscript of the Historia da Igreja do Japão (c. 1627) the Portuguese Jesuit João Rodrigues Tçuzu articulates the general description of Japan and of its religions with a vast series of geographical and anthropological data on China. Within the context of the Jesuit prose of that time it is a unique methodological option, resulting from the author’s correct perception as pertains to the decisive influence that Chinese culture had in East Asia. Despite the numerous problems related with the textual systemization of those Chinese matters, it results in a brief descriptive treaty about China. It is also the first relevant synthesis on the subject written in China itself after the work left by Matteo Ricci in 1610. Starting from Rodrigues’ biography and from the context that allowed the writing of the Historia da Igreja do Japão, in this informal treaty about China we will try to distinguish the segments that resulted from Rodrigues’ personal experience throughout his years of exile in Macao and his journeys through the Middle Empire (1610‐1633), from those in which he used complementary sources: eastern or European, classical or modern. Since the author worked on this text until the end of his life, we will follow the same traces of construction and textual transmission of the sections about China of the Historia do Japão through the complementary reading of Rodrigues’s Breve aparato pera a Historia de Japam melhor se entender, an autograph and unpub- lished manuscript kept at the Academia de la Historia, in Madrid."