Edifying and Curious Letters

The Edifying and Curious Letters (French: Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses) is a collection of 34 volumes of letters sent to Europe by Jesuit missionaries in China, the Levant, India, America, and elsewhere. Published between 1702 and 1776, this collection did much to open Europe, and especially France, to non-European cultures.

Origin

In order to ensure that the government of the Society of Jesus was well informed, Ignatius of Loyola established a system of correspondence in which every Jesuit with authority was asked to write to him regularly (Constitutions, No. 674, 790). Thus, there are the Relations annuelles from the various missions, and other letters, addressed more personally to Ignatius, with a warmer tone. During the saint's lifetime, a few letters sent from India by Francis Xavier (January 1544, April 1552, etc.) were the source of many missionary vocations.

Development

The edifying aspect

Since all apostolic work, in Europe as well as in the missions, depended on the generosity of benefactors, it was important to inform them regularly about what was being done with their donations. There are two types of letters, the Lettres d’affaires, which dealt with people and problems to be solved, and the other, which spoke about the apostolic work, its development and its successes. The first were for internal use and were intended strictly for the internal government of the Society; the others (the "edifying" ones) were copied and spread among friends, prelates, and various benefactors. They were very successful.

The curious aspect

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as overseas travel (for commercial purposes) multiplied between Europe and other continents, especially America and Asia, a great curiosity developed that merchants, who had only episodic contacts with these new countries, were not able to satisfy. The missionaries, who lived there and had learned the language, were good observers (because of their intellectual training) and were able to meet this demand. To the "edifying" aspect of their letters they add the "curious".

In addition to recounting the sufferings of the missionaries, the joys of numerous baptisms, and the martyrdoms, they also wrote in the same correspondence true reports on China, its mode of government, the peculiarities of its language, and its customs and habits. All this gave birth to the first European sinology and aroused a real craze for "chinoiseries" and everything that came from the Middle Kingdom. Other letters circulated from America, the Levant or India, but it was the letters from China that had the greatest impact. This enthusiasm even led Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde — who never left Paris in his life — to write a Description de la Chine based entirely on the correspondence received. It became an authority.

Publication history

Partial publications of the letters took place during the 16th century (the very first printed letter was that of François Xavier to the students of Paris, in 1545). Then Father Charles Le Gobien, procurator in Paris of the Jesuit missions in China, undertook to collect the correspondence and publish them together. As the first volume, published in 1702, was very well received, he published others at the rate of one per year (vols. I-VIII). He gave the collection the title Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des Missions Etrangères par quelques Missionnaires de la Compagnie de Jésus. Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde took over and published (from 1709 to 1743) volumes IX to XXVI, then volumes XXVII, XXVIII, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXIV were published by Father Patouillet (from 1749 to 1776) and the missing volumes (XXIX-XXX-XXXII) by Father Ambrose Maréchal.

The work was translated in whole or in part into Spanish (16 vols., 1753-1757), Italian (18 vols., 1825-1829), German (7 vols., 1726-1761). For the English edition (2 vols., 1743), John Lockman considered it advisable to remove the accounts of conversions and miracles, because "rather insipid and ridiculous in the eyes of English readers, and in fact to any intelligent person of good taste". New editions appeared during the nineteenth century, with the letters arranged by region of origin. The last major complete edition was that of Louis Aimé-Martin, published in 1838 and 1843.

The magazine Nouvelles des missions, founded in 1822, and which took the name of Annales de la propagation de la foi in 1826, presented itself on the title page as a collection following all the editions of the Edifying and Curious Letters. The latter suspended its publication in 1974.

Influence

These publications played an important role in the evolution of ideas in the Age of Enlightenment. The great minds of the time such as Voltaire and Montesquieu were full of praise for what the letters brought them. Leibniz spoke of the Jesuit mission in China as "the greatest affair of our time". Because of their precise objectivity, the diversity and breadth of the subjects treated, and the depth of the reflection, they deserve to be placed among the great encyclopedic works of the Enlightenment. They allowed a first relativization of many European customs and mores.

See also

• China Illustrata
• De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas
• Jean Denis Attiret
• Jean François Pons
• Jesuit China missions

Translated into English

• Travels of the Jesuits in to various parts of the part of the world particularly China and East Indies compiled from theirs letters: intermix'd with an account of the manners, government, religion, &c. of the several nations visited by those fathers: with extracts from other travellers and miscellaneous notes (1743; translation by John Lockman)

External links

• Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses at Gallica
• Defending Christianity in China: the Jesuit defense of Christianity in the lettres edifiantes et Curieuses & Ruijianlu in relation to the Yongzheng proscription of 1724