REGO, Sebastião do. Vida do veneravel padre Joseph Vaz, da congregaçaõ do oratorio de S. Filippe Neri da Cidade de Goa, na India Oriental; Fundador da laboriosa Missaõ, que os Congregados desta Casa tem à sua conta na Ilha de Ceylaõ. Composta pelo padre Sebastiaõ do Rego, da mesma Congregaçaõ. Lisboa, na Regia Officina Sylviana, e da Academia Real, 1745.
Small 4to. Contemporary Portuguese speckled calf, spine decorated with gilt and with red morocco gilt label, edges speckled red; pp. [28], 354, [2] with half-title, and final blank; binding slightly rubbed, a small area of loss to surface of lower cover, front hinge weakened (and now strengthened with matching paper), internally very good.
First edition. The first biography in book form of Zuze Vaz (Joseph Vaz) (1651-1711), a Catholic Christian of Indian parentage from Goa who became an Oratorian priest and the leading missionary of Sri Lanka. Known as the Apostle of Ceylon, he was canonised in 2015. The work is an important source for Vaz’s life, and for Catholic missionary activity in the Kandyan Kingdom (modern Sri Lanka). The text is written by a member of the Oratorian Congregation of Goa, who was also of Indian origin, born in Neura in Goa (Inocencio). Vaz’s parents, Christopher and Maria, were “Brahmins by descent, who had conformed to our customs”. They had “sufficient means of fortune and grace”. They came from Sancoale in Goa (pp. 2-3, tr.). After a successful education, and taking orders, Vaz’s early missionary career took him to Coastal Karnataka. There he faced Thomas de Castro, bishop of Fulsivelem (c.1621-1684). Castro was “a Brahmin, natural of the island of Divar in Goa” (p. 17, tr.). There was a major jurisdictional dispute between Castro, who represented the Propaganda Fide, the missionary office of the church of Rome, and the Catholic church of Portugal, which had special privileges, and which employed Vaz. In a sign of Vaz’s peace-making skills, he arbitrated a truce. He appealed to his and Castro’s common nationality - and besides plenty else, this book contains evidence for the study of racial identity, and networks of identity, in the Catholic church of southern Asia. Vaz was also celebrated for the charity and care with which he dealt with a serious outbreak of smallpox in Kandy - taking charge of the treatment of sick people and preventing a considerably greater loss of life. The epidemic, which happened in 1697, and Vaz’s measures against it, are described at pages 81-87.
Inocencio VII 222 no. 138. OCLC locates copies at UCLA, Indiana, Yale, Harvard, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in the British Library.
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