LE GOBIEN Charles Histoire des isles Marianes, nouvellement converties à la religion Chrestienne ; & la mort glorieuse des premiers missionnaires qui y ont prêché la foy.

Hill, 1000 ; Brunet, 28230.

First edition.

It contains the history of the Christian missions in the Mariana Islands or Ladrones in the north-west Pacific, the main island of which is Guam. Several letters from the first missionaries (Medina, Clain, Sanvitores, etc.) are reproduced in the text. The Jesuit mission there was established by Diego Luis de Sanvitores. Father Le Gobien never visited the Mariana Islands, but based his account mainly on missionaries’ reports and letters sent to him from Rome, Spain, the Netherlands, etc. A letter from P. Clain (pp. 395 ff.) on the discovery of the Caroline Islands is reproduced.

Charles Le Gobien (1652-1708) was a French Jesuit writer and the founder of Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, a collection of reports by Jesuit missionaries in China. It is a major source of information for the history of the Catholic missions and life in China at the time. Le Gobien, born in Saint-Malo in Brittany, entered the Society of Jesus on 25 November 1671. As a professor of philosophy and above all as procurator of the Franco-Chinese mission, he sought in a series of articles to arouse interest in the work of Christianising East Asia. In 1697, his Lettres sur les progrès de la religion à la Chine was published in Paris.

In connection with the controversy over Chinese rites, he published, among other works, Histoire de l’édit de l’empereur de la Chine en faveur de la religion chrétienne avec un éclaircissement sur les honneurs que les Chinois rendent à Confucius et aux morts (Paris, 1698); and in 1700, Lettre à un Docteur de la Faculté de Paris sur les propositions déférées en Sorbonne par M. Prioux. The same year saw the publication in Paris of Histoire des Isles Mariannes nouvellement converties à la religion chrétienne. The second part, translated into Spanish by J. Delgado, can be found in the latter’s Historia General de Filipinas (Manila, 1892). In 1702, Father Le Gobien published Lettres de quelques missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus, écrites de la Chine et des Indes Orientales (Letters from some missionaries of the Society of Jesus, written from China and the East Indies); this was the beginning of the collection that was soon to become famous under the title Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangères par quelques missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus.

“The present book contains numerous accounts of Jesuit attempts to convert the natives of the Marianas to Catholicism and is one of the first detailed works on these islands” (Hill).

Copy complete with its 2 engraved folding maps depicting the Mariana Islands and Guam.

Provenance : M. L. de Becdelièvre (signature sur le feuillet de dédicace).