The First Edition of Maffei’s Cornerstone 16th Century Work on Japan and Asia

“Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI”

With "Selectarum, item, ex india Epistolarum. eodem interprete Libri IV” and  "Ignatii Loiolae vita postremo recognita”

-Giovanni Pietro Maffei (1533 – 1603)

-1st edition 

-1588

-Published by Giunta in Firenze

-Quarto

-30x20cm approx.

19th century Half calf binding with marbled paper

Very good condition overall. Paper mainly clean and white throughout. Some mild browning to some pages

Complete (Dedication leaf present misbound between pages 10 and 11) TP, dedication, 1-570, 28 including colophon on final leaf

This is the first edition of this cornerstone work on Asia based on Jesuit sources. It was assembled by Giovanni Pietro Maffei, a Jesuit priest who was commissioned to write this work on the history of Portuguese voyages of discovery. Born in Bergamo in 1533, Maffei joined the Jesuit Church in 1565 and was brought to Lisbon to teach and write. He composed this account from letters and accounts returning to Europe from the Jesuit church in the East. The account was widely published with 14 editions appearing over the next 30 years.

Chapters 12 and 14 are important early European sources on Japan. The “epistola” include letters from Luis de Almeida , who is credited with introducing western “medicine” into Japan and establishing the first hospital there, and Juan Fernandez -  a Spaniard who was the first European to write the grammar and alphabet of the Japanese language. Accounts by Baltasar Gago, Melchior Nunes Barreto and Gaspar Vilela are important primary Jesuit mission sources from 16th Century Japan.

USTC (839503) - No copies in the USA.