Resumen de La cristianità degli antipodi: Giappone e Cina in missione a Venezia (1585-1652)
New global trade routes, connecting for the first time very distant territories, wereborn and grew in the Early Modern Age.The lands of the Far East, which were of a special economical and religiousinterest, were integrated in those European trade routes. They were also a centre ofspecial interest for the Jesuits, who were engaged in their evangelizing work all overthe world. The Company’s members themselves, in their role of conjunction betweenthe Eastern world and the European one, and in their continuous relationship withthe local authorities of the East, planned the departure of two delegations from Japanand China to Europe. The two missions, which started sixty years away from eachother –one at the end of the 16thCentury, the second at the half of the 17thCentury–were characterized by profound differences but both had in the city of Venicetheir pivotal point.Last European city to be visited by the first delegation and the first one for thesecond, the city of the Serenissima can be seen, by the abundant handwritten documentationthat is preserved in the State Archives and in the Marciana NationalLibrary, like the most important crossroads to understand the meaning of those twomissions, from time to time at the centre of the interests of the Company, which supportedthem, and of the Italian Courts which welcomed them. The complementarityor the antagonism of those interests represent the real reason of the great appeal theseevents still cause nowadays.
