Alessandro Valignano

Alessandro Valignano (February 7th 1539, Chieti, the Abruzzi, Italy - January 20th 1606, Macao, China) was a Jésuite Italian priest, envoy in the Far East by Everard Mercurian, Supérieur General of the Society of Jesus. He initiated an approach there inculturée Christian faith which transformed work Missionnaire into Asia.

Youth and Formation

Valignano was born in a famous family from Chieti. He studied the right to the university of Padoue where he acquired the double doctorate (civil and canonical). He spent one year in prison, shown to have taken share with one of these brawls which had made famous the students of Padoue. Left with Rome in 1565 to seek a good position there he there met the Jesuits and entered the Society of Jesus (1566). Studies of Philosophy and Théologie were made with the Collège Romain and it is ordered priest in 1570 (it was already 31 years old). After a short stay with Macerata as vice-chancellor of the college Jesuit, it is named by Everard Mercurian, General Supérieur of the Jesuits, Visiteur of the missions in India and the Far East (1573).

Voyages in India and the Far East

It left Lisbon and Europe in 1574 with a group of 40 missionaries. At the end of the year it arrived at Goa and immediately began a systematic visit of all the stations of mission in the country. Then it was Malacca (1577), Macao (1578) where a commercial station Portuguese had been open recently, and it arrived at the Japan in 1579. It organized there the first Japanese embassy in Europe (1582-90): 4 young Christians were sent to return visit to the Pape and various the courses European. It was a question of making known the missions of Far East in Europe like making it possible to young people to better know the Christian Culture. It intended to accompany them in Rome, but arrived at Goa it learned that it had been named Provincial there: it remained there (1583-1587). When the group was of return (1590) he travelled with them again to Japan. As ambassador of the Viceroy of India it had an interview with the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1591, but without success: Christianity remained prohibited and the Christians had to face severe persecutions. Valignano made a last stay in Japan of 1598 with 1603.

Cultural new approach

As of its first passage in India (1575), Valignano recommended that a Séminaire was open for the formation of a Clergé indigenous. It freed from any task Henrique Henriques, a veteran of the mission and good expert of the Tamoul, so that it can compose a Grammaire, a Dictionnaire and books of devotions. These first books in language tamoule were printed on the lately imported printing works of Europe with Goa.
the same conviction that the Christianisme would not survive the presence of foreign missionaries in Asia if the culture were not taken with serious it guided in Japan. They could not be satisfied with some surface adaptations. During 25 years Valignano was the administrator meticulous person who formulated the elements of a Christian policy of Inculturation in old Civilizations of which he admired coherence and the richness.
Some of these elements are:

Etudes of the language and local culture

Respect and appreciation of this culture

Classic authors Western and Eastern taught in the colleges (opening, in 1593, of the famous college Saint Paul de Macao which became the center of support of all the mission of the Far East)

Formation of a local Clergé (the first sacerdotal ordination with Nagasaki in 1601)

Développement of a Christian literature in Chinese, Japanese and Indian languages

Adoption of the regional habits in all that is not contrary with the faith

Its vast correspondence, whose many letters are preserved, reveals a man who thinks of the manner of speaking about Christ to completely foreign people in the graeco-latin world: “How to avoid a harmful eurocentrism with the mission, and besides without true bond with the faith”?

Conflicts and controversies

Valignano had to face strong oppositions, on the one hand of those which estimated that it paganized Christianity, other share of Portuguese missionaries related to the capacity Colonial who judged that it acted with a too great freedom with respect to the royal capacity, 'Protective' the missions. And, for the anecdotic one, it also had problems with its fellow-members Jesuits when it tried to introduce into the communities Jesuits of the structures of life and a discipline borrowed from the temples Zen Japanese…

Evaluation

It is paradoxical that it is a not very gifted man for the languages (because Valignano never spoke with facility Japanese) which launched a movement which allowed the emergence of Orientalistes of first order, such as Matteo Ricci, Roberto de Nobili, Alexandre of Rhodos and others. And more important: it completely changed the prospects missionaries for the Church: there is no evangelization without the catch in consideration of the history, the culture and the traditions of the people. What is now an obviousness (the Vatican II in AD Gentes ) was largely inspired by Valignano and those which followed it.

Principal works

Historia LED principio there progreso of the Eastern C.J in mow India (1542-1564) , (ED. J. Wicki, Rome, 1944.
Sumario of mow cosas LED Japan (1583), COM adiciones Al Sumario (1592) (ED. J.L. Alvarez), Tokyo, 1954.
It ceremoniale per I missionari del Giappone , (ED. Schutte), Rome, 1946.

References

MORAN, J.F., The Japanese and the Jesuits; Valignano in XVIth century Japan , London, 1993.

SCHUTTE, Valignanos grundsätze für Japan , (2 vol.), Rome, 1951,1958.

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