Lo deseable y lo posible. La visión y representación de China en la obra de José de Acosta

HOSNE, ANA CAROLINA

Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu

Roma : Institutum Scriptorum de Historia S. I.

Lugar: Roma ; Año: 2012 vol. XXXI p. 481 - 514

0037-8887

This article examines the particular role played by China in Jesuit José de Acosta?s works. The starting point is its mention in the Proemio of Acosta?s first work, De Procuranda Indorum Salute (1588), in which he classifies the ?barbaric nations? (naciones de barbaros). Here, Acosta highlights the Jesuit experience in the Indias Orientales ? the East Indies ? where evangelization was envisaged without coercive methods. Some years later, following a controversial event that took place within the Society, Acosta brought China to the forefront in two memos written in 1587 repudiating the Jesuit Alonso Sánchez?s call to war against China. In the first section of this article, Acosta?s vision of China as it emerges from these memos is analyzed in line with many of the arguments developed in his De Procuranda. Significantly, it was Sánchez who had provided Acosta with information about the Jesuit mission in China, at that time in the hands of Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. This aspect brings into focus the circulation of information as an essential aspect of Jesuit ?geopolitics? closely related to the missionary expansion of the Society. The second section of this paper examines the relationship between Sánchez and Ruggieri, tracing the information that could have reached Acosta through Sánchez, as well Sánchez through Ruggieri and Ricci ? the latter indirectly, through letters. More specifically, this article demonstrates that Ricci?s view of the Confucian literati as ?non-idolatrous gentiles?, as he defined them, is present in Acosta?s Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (1590), as a culminating point in his vision and representation of China. Indeed, the interpretations of China in Acosta?s Historia were based on and enriched by the experience of the Society of Jesus in their missions and the production and circulation of knowledge in these spaces. Finally, as this article aims to prove, the distinctive and prominent role played by China among the varied, expansive, and scattered Jesuit missions was a recurring trope in Acosta?s works.