A sign of great penitence : food, fasting and the dilemmas of evangelization in Early Modern Chinese and Japanese missions
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F23%3A73623448" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/23:73623448 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://journals.phil.muni.cz/religio/article/view/37725" target="_blank" >https://journals.phil.muni.cz/religio/article/view/37725</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/Rel2023-2-6" target="_blank" >10.5817/Rel2023-2-6</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
A sign of great penitence : food, fasting and the dilemmas of evangelization in Early Modern Chinese and Japanese missions
Original language description
Since their very first entry into the Ming empire (Jesuits 1580s, Franciscans 1630s), Christian missionaries produced an extensive body of testimonies on this exotic and unknown territory, in which they described Chinese history, philosophy, nature, culture, religions, society, and people, including Chinese food, culinary practices, and habits. This extensive corpus of missionary documents not only discussed "things Chinese" but also interpreted this unknown country for their European readers in a process our current scholarship has deemed as "transcultural translation", during which the foreign culture is explained using familiar European terms. In my article, I focus on one particular aspect of food intake, or rather its voluntary absence: the practices of ecclesiastical fasting. I analyse how the first Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries understood fasting in the particular context of Chinese and Japanese culture and, more importantly, what obstacles and dilemmas they had to face in establishing it in their missionary work. I then relate these doubts and questions to contemporary missionary casuistry and moral theology. Finally, I explore ecclesiastical fasting as a compelling symbol of Christianity's encounter with the alien spiritual and cultural idioms of China (and Japan). I argue that it exemplifies the nature of the inter-cultural and inter-religious confrontation, displaying the inevitable difficulties inherent in rendering the Christian message. As far as the methodology is concerned, I explore some central assumptions of transculturality, transcultural translation, and Otherness, though I also point out the potential flaws and deficiencies of these perspectives when applied to this textual material. However, I do not aim at establishing an unambiguous methodology for dealing with these sources; my intention is rather to emphasize the absence of a reliable methodological approach for Early Modern missionary documents.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60101 - History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
R - Projekt Ramcoveho programu EK
Others
Publication year
2023
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Religio
ISSN
1210-3640
e-ISSN
2336-4475
Volume of the periodical
31
Issue of the periodical within the volume
2
Country of publishing house
CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC
Number of pages
24
Pages from-to
307-330
UT code for WoS article
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EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85184916175