Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth Century Europe: A Dialogue Concerning the Mission of the Japanese Ambassadors to the Roman Curia (1590): Some New Source Material

The Journal of the Hakluyt Society The Journal of the Hakluyt Society April 2020 Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth Century Europe: A Dialogue Concerning the Mission of the Japanese Ambassadors to the Roman Curia (1590): Some New Source Material Derek Massarella Since the publication of Japanese Travellers in Sixteenth Century Europe: A Dialogue Concerning the Mission of the Japanese Ambassadors to. [...] 363–69) quotes a letter written to the Duke of Mantua from Gabriele Calzoni, the Mantuan resident in Venice, now in the Archivio di Stato di Mantua, describing the boys likes and dislikes in food and drink to help the duke and his staff prepare suitable dishes for them. [...] The event was held in the Cappella Palatina in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.7 Marco Musillo provides some minor detail about the boys’ reception in Imola (18 June 1585, not mentioned in Japanese Travellers, but touched upon in Fróis’s account of the embassy)8 from the Archivio Storico Comunale di Imola, and of their reception in Rimini (16 June 1585, Japanese Travellers, p. [...] The only merit of her enterprise is the inclusion of facsimiles of some of the documents.12 The most interesting publication concerning the embassy is a modern edition of two letters in the Archivio di Stato di Massa. [...] These figures include individuals baptised by the mendicants who had arrived in Japan after the 1580s, much to the chagrin of the Jesuits, especially the architect of the embassy, Alessandro Valignano, who had hoped that the boys’ presence in Europe would make the case that the Japan mission should remain under the exclusive control of the Jesuits cast iron.