A sign of great penitence : food, fasting and the dilemmas of evangelization in Early Modern Chinese and Japanese missions

Kód výsledku v 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>

Výsledek na webu

<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>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

A sign of great penitence : food, fasting and the dilemmas of evangelization in Early Modern Chinese and Japanese missions

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

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 &quot;things Chinese&quot; but also interpreted this unknown country for their European readers in a process our current scholarship has deemed as &quot;transcultural translation&quot;, 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&apos;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.

Název v anglickém jazyce

A sign of great penitence : food, fasting and the dilemmas of evangelization in Early Modern Chinese and Japanese missions

Popis výsledku anglicky

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 &quot;things Chinese&quot; but also interpreted this unknown country for their European readers in a process our current scholarship has deemed as &quot;transcultural translation&quot;, 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&apos;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.

Druh

J_SC - Článek v periodiku v databázi SCOPUS

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

60101 - History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

Projekt

—

Návaznosti

R - Projekt Ramcoveho programu EK

Rok uplatnění

2023

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název periodika

Religio

ISSN

1210-3640

e-ISSN

2336-4475

Svazek periodika

31

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

2

Stát vydavatele periodika

CZ - Česká republika

Počet stran výsledku

24

Strana od-do

307-330

Kód UT WoS článku

—

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85184916175