Monumenta Sinica, Volume I (1546-1562) (review)

It is very good news for all historians of China as well as for specialists in mission history that the first volume in the long awaited Monumenta Sinica series has at last appeared. We have had several volumes of the Monumenta Historica Japoniae and even more Documenta Indica, but for a variety of reasons partly explained in the prefaces by the late Joseph Sebes and his colleague and successor, John Witek, the China project was long delayed.

The delay has had some benefits. This first volume, covering 1546 to 1562, has been able to take advantage of both the Indian and the Japanese series. Also the Latin apparatus of the earlier volumes has now yielded to English, making the documents more accessible. At the same time the meticulous standards of editing and scholarship of the Monumenta Historica series has been maintained.

It may then appear churlish to criticize some of the editorial decisions, but I think it has to be done. Firstly, the decision not to publish English translations makes the work inaccessible to the majority of China specialists. The English-language summaries at the beginning of documents in Latin, old Portuguese, and so forth are accurate, but just summaries and no substitute for the full text in English. One can understand the "exigencies of publication" that led to this decision, but that leads to a second puzzle.

Almost all the documents in this volume have already been published either in other volumes in the Monumenta series or in other standard works. Here the paragraphs relevant to China have been excerpted. Might they not have been simply listed in a table, allowing space for texts and translations of previously unpublished documents? Francis Xavier's letters have been translated in Costelloe's excellent edition. Let us hope that these too, and those of Matteo Ricci long available in the originals in good critical editions, will attract translators.

The period covered is the beginning of what has been a dark age in China mission history, that between Xavier and Ricci. Some twenty-five attempts were made to enter China by what Joseph Sebes calls "the precursors of Ricci," yet one still finds claims that the Jesuits gave up on China for forty years or so. These documents show that the vision was never lost, and plans continued to be made and frustrated during this time.

It is good to see a Chinese glossary and references to Chinese sources which one hopes will continue through the series. The notes are very well done and more than adequate for the general reader. But I see no reason to doubt that Documents 44 and 46 (both November 1555) were written from Macao as their authors claim. "Amaquão" most certainly existed as a fishing port before the Portuguese formally occupied it in 1557 and the Portuguese used any available anchorage. Similarly Nunes Barreto's letter of November 27, 1555 (Doc. 47) uses the same formula "from the port of China," as in Doc. 46, four days earlier. In 1558 (doc. 58) Barreto says he wrote in December 1555 from Lampachão, but that is the next month and not far away. One can only hope that Monumenta Sinica 2 is not far off, and will bring us to the successful entry to China of Ruggieri and Ricci.