Barely twenty years after the death of St. Francis of Assisi, Innocent IV sent (April 16, 1245) the minority fra Giovanni da Pian del Carpine to the Great Khan of the Tartars to invite that monarch to live in peace with Christians, indeed to embrace their faith, and prevent the repetition of the massacres committed by his hordes in Hungary, Moravia and Poland. This first embassy was followed by the other sent to the Great Khan himself by St. Louis IX, king of France in 1252 in which, next to his head, the Flemish Minorite William of Ruysbroek is found among Fra Bartolomeo da Cremona. At the same time, the preaching friars with the congregation of the Pilgrims for Christ established by themthey formed missionaries for the conversion of the East, under which name the whole immense and ill-known territory to the east of Europe was then vaguely understood. In July 1253 these “Dominican pilgrims for Christ”, among whom we find Fra Nicolò da Pistoia, companion in India of the minority Fra Giovanni da Montecorvino, had already penetrated “into the lands of the Saracens, the Greeks, the Bulgarians, the Cumans, the Ethiopians, Syrians, Goths, Jacobites, Armenians, Indians, Tartars, Hungarians and other unfaithful nations of the East ”. Already before 1280 the learned preacher friar Ricoldo da Monte di Croce (died in 1320) traveling through Palestine, Syria, Asiatic Turkey, went as far as Tartaria, arguing with the Muslims, and returned to Italy,
The journeys begun in the thirteenth century by the two great mendicant orders continued with greater frequency in the first half of the fourteenth century, when John XXII with the bull Redemptor on April 1, 1318, he assigned the Persian Empire, including Armenia, Turkestan, with the two Bucarias and the western part of India to the jurisdiction of the preaching friars; and to the Friars Minor Kipciak (Black Sea and Caucasus), Asia Minor, China. Three heroic Franciscans then came into play: Giovanni da Montecorvino (1247-1328), who established the Catholic hierarchy in China and was its first archbishop; the B. Oderico da Pordenone (1286-1331) who leaves us a precious report of his travels through China, Tibet and Persia; Giovanni de ‘Marignolli (died around 1358) who, having entered Cambalu (Beijing) in 1342 with the embassy of friars minor sent by Benedict XII to the Great Khan Scium-ti, stayed in China for about four years, and included in the Chronicon Bohemiae a notable Itinerarium of his travels. Nor should the hermit of S. Agostino, friar Giacomo da Verona, author of a valuable itinerary of his journey to the Holy Land (1335) be kept silent.
The work of the Dominicans and Franciscans in favor of the Latin faith and culture in the East slowed down in the fifteenth century due to the increased power of the Ottomans and the unhappy conditions of the Church troubled by the schism. Even then, however, there was no lack of distinguished missionaries; first the Franciscans of the Holy Land, mostly Italian, who, while in the lands subject to the crescent spread the Gospel and its civilization, spread the knowledge of the Eastern world throughout Europe; suffice it to recall the Treaty of the Holy Land and the East , by the minority Francesco Suriano (1450-1530).
In the century XVI, despite the political conditions of Italy, admirable was the enthusiasm with which the minors, the preachers, the Carmelites, the Augustinians, the recent Society of Jesus crossed the seas to preach the Gospel. The Jesuits, who had Antonio Criminale as their first martyr in Parmesan just nine years after their foundation (1549), considered the preaching of Christian law to every generation of gentiles as the most important duty of their vocation. In the old world, Alessandro Valignani (1537-1606) from Chieti, Alessandro Valignani (1537-1606) who sent his young fellow countryman Rodolfo Acquaviva d’Atri (1579) to the Grand Mogul to direct the missionaries of various nationalities, was in charge of being a general visitor to the East. ; consolidates and increases the missionary stations scattered throughout India, but in a particular way the Christianity of Japan planted by St. Francis Xavier is the object of his care and providence. And in all this work, he uses quite a few Italian collaborators, such as for example. the Brescian Organtino Soldi (1530-1609) recognized as the second father of Japanese Christianity. A whole group of Italian Jesuits, missionaries and illustrious martyrs was also formed at the school of Valignani: Carlo Spinola di Tassarolo, i! Girolamo De Angelis from Sicily, Paolo Navarro and Camillo Costanzo from Calabria, GB Zola from Brescia, Antonio Capece from Naples, Antonio Rubino from Piedmont, Marcello Mastrilli from Nola. the Brescian Organtino Soldi (1530-1609) recognized as the second father of Japanese Christianity. A whole group of Italian Jesuits, missionaries and illustrious martyrs was also formed at the school of Valignani: Carlo Spinola di Tassarolo, i! Girolamo De Angelis from Sicily, Paolo Navarro and Camillo Costanzo from Calabria, GB Zola from Brescia, Antonio Capece from Naples, Antonio Rubino from Piedmont, Marcello Mastrilli from Nola. the Brescian Organtino Soldi (1530-1609) recognized as the second father of Japanese Christianity. A whole group of Italian Jesuits, missionaries and illustrious martyrs was also formed at the school of Valignani: Carlo Spinola di Tassarolo, i! Girolamo De Angelis from Sicily, Paolo Navarro and Camillo Costanzo from Calabria, GB Zola from Brescia, Antonio Capece from Naples, Antonio Rubino from Piedmont, Marcello Mastrilli from Nola.
Nor did Valignani acquire less merit by wanting and starting the “enterprise” of China, which began with the application in Macao to the study of Chinese by the young Michele Ruggeri and Matteo Ricci, so that they could introduce themselves to the impenetrable continent to resume evangelical preaching. , entirely missing from the second half of the fourteenth century. In this way, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an excellent popularizer of mathematics and cosmography among the mandarins, opened the ranks of Italian sinologists, who for the whole of the seventeenth century, kept together with their Flemish and German brothers, to the mandarins our sciences and arts, while with us they came to illustrate the Chinese civilization. Throughout the century. XVII the main part of this enterprise is in the hands of Italian Jesuit missionaries. Sicily gave Nicolò Longobardi (1566-1655), Girolamo Gravina (1603-1637), Francesco Brancati (1607-1671), Prospero Intorcetta (1628-1696); Lombardy the Milanese Giacomo Rho (1590-1638) and the Brescia Giulio Aleni (1582-1649) author of 25 works in Chinese, called the Confucius of Europe by the mandarins; Piedmont, Alfonso Vagnoni (1566-1640) author of seven volumes of the lives of saints; Liguria, the Sarzanese Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560-1640) founder of the Christianity of Nanking. The historian and geographer Martino Martini (1614-1661) belonged to Venice in Tridentine who, in addition to several philosophical and theological books, dictated in Chinese, published in 1654 the called by the mandarins the Confucius of Europe; Piedmont, Alfonso Vagnoni (1566-1640) author of seven volumes of the lives of saints; Liguria, the Sarzanese Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560-1640) founder of the Christianity of Nanking. The historian and geographer Martino Martini (1614-1661) belonged to Venice in Tridentine who, in addition to several philosophical and theological books, dictated in Chinese, published in 1654 the called by the mandarins the Confucius of Europe; Piedmont, Alfonso Vagnoni (1566-1640) author of seven volumes of the lives of saints; Liguria, the Sarzanese Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560-1640) founder of the Christianity of Nanking. The historian and geographer Martino Martini (1614-1661) belonged to Venice in Tridentine who, in addition to several philosophical and theological books, dictated in Chinese, published in 1654 the De bello Tartarico historia , then (1655) the Novus Atlas Sinensis, work also consulted today. Southern Italy gave the Lecce Sabatino de Ursis (1575-1620), Gian Andrea Lobelli (1611-1683) and the Cosentino Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) to the missions and sinology. To these, all Jesuits, must be added among the Dominicans and Franciscans – almost all Spaniards – who in the third decade of the seventeenth century the three Florentine Dominicans Angelo Antonino Cocchi OP (1597-1633), founder of the mission of Fu- kien, Vittorio Ricci (died 1676) and Timoteo Bottigli (1621-1662). Among the Franciscans we remember the apostolic vicars between Basilio Brollo of Gemona, who died in Si-an-fu in 1704 and the ancestor of Benedict XV, Mons. Of the church. In the century XVIII the persecutions that troubled the Catholic Church in China did not favor the increase of European missionaries; after all, the increased French influence in the East meant that missionaries were drawn from France rather than Italy: the Jesuits Filippo Grimaldi and Giuseppe Antonio Provana are remembered; the bishop Luigi Landi da Signa, a minor, and the secular priest Matteo Ripa da Eboli (1682-1746) founder of the College of the Chinese in Naples and author of precious Memories published posthumously (1832). In more recent times, in addition to the bishop of Dionisia, fra Tommaso M. Gentili OP, author of the Memoirs of a Dominican missionary in China (Rome 1887), we remember the Neapolitan Jesuits Luigi Sica (1814-1895), Renato Massa (1819-1853) with his brothers, and his father Angelo Andrea Zottoli (1826-1902), who lived in China for 54 years, with his Cursus Litteraturae Sinicae (Shanghai 1879) made himself equally deserving of Europeans and Chinese.
In the missions of Tonkin and Cochinchina, founded by the Genoese Jesuit Francesco Buzomi, the Jesuits Giuliano Baldinotti of Pistoia (1591-1631), Cristoforo Borri of Milan and the Genoese Gian Filippo de Marini, authors, the latter two, of Relationi , were noted(1631-1663) illustrating the kingdoms of Cochinchina and Tonkin. In this first half of the seventeenth century the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili flourished in Madura, raising great fame, if not surpassed, certainly equaled in the knowledge of the Tamil, Badaga and Malayālam language, by his Venetian brother and successor, his father Giuseppe Costantino Beschi ( 1680-1742), considered the greatest poet of the century. XVIII for one of his poems in Tamil. With De Nobili and Beschi, Ippolito Desideri (1684-1733) from Pistoia, who in a short time came to possess the language of the Tibetans, author of the fundamental Historical News of Tibet , goes to conserve.. Emuli of Desideri were the Capuchins of the Marches from whom the mission in the land of the Lamas was founded and in whose hands for eight decades (1705-1745): Francesco Orazio da Pennabilli (Pesaro-Urbino) who studied it in 22 years of stay in Tibet deeply the language; Cassiano Beligatti from Macerata, Giuseppe from Ascoli, Giuseppe M. Bernini from Gargnano, Domenico from Fano and many others: they were responsible for the introduction of Tibetan types in Europe.
In Burma and India up until the 16th-18th centuries, there was no lack of Italians among the Portuguese missionaries. In the first of these regions the Barnabites, having founded the mission of the Ava and Pegù kingdoms through their father Sigismondo Calchi, promoted in a unique way the linguistic and geographic studies of Burma; remember the first dictionary compiled by fathers Calchi, Gallizia senior , Nerini and Del Conte; the notes to the Burmese codices that enrich the Borgiano Museum in Velletri, the Report of the Barman kingdom, written by his father Vincenzo Sangermano and reprinted to date 14 times in various languages. As for India in the second half of the century. XIX, the mission of Mangalore on the western coast of Hindostan was entrusted by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide to the Italian Jesuits of the Veneto. A Neapolitan of rare talents, his father Nicola Pagani (1835-1895), then bishop in 1886, was placed at the head of the first group of missionaries who settled in Mangalore on 31 December 1878. The new mission soon flourished with schools of all grades and qualities, with works of a social nature, with hospitals and a leper colony. The college of St. Louis, the most renowned institution, in the seventh year of its foundation obtained to be elevated by the English government to a college of 1st degree with four university faculties. Father Angelo Maffei, from Pinzolo in Trentino, there as a professor (1844-1899) he acquired a high reputation as a talented Indian scholar. Faustino Corti (1856-1926) from the chair of history in the College of San Luigi passed in entirely pagan regions, to consecrate himself to the redemption of the pariahs, multiplied the 120 Christians found scattered here and there, in 6500, how many were numbered at his death, and he was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind medal by the British government. In the field of fine arts the missionaries Augusto Diamanti (1848-1919) and the living Enrico Buzzoni (born in Verona in 1852) architects stood out; and the lay brother Antonio Moscheni (1854-1905) painter and founder of a plastic school for Hindus. to consecrate himself to the redemption of the pariahs, he multiplied the 120 Christians found scattered here and there, in 6500, as many as there were at his death, and was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind medal by the English government. In the field of fine arts the missionaries Augusto Diamanti (1848-1919) and the living Enrico Buzzoni (born in Verona in 1852) architects stood out; and the lay brother Antonio Moscheni (1854-1905) painter and founder of a plastic school for Hindus. to consecrate himself to the redemption of the pariahs, he multiplied the 120 Christians found scattered here and there, in 6500, as many as there were at his death, and was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind medal by the English government. In the field of fine arts the missionaries Augusto Diamanti (1848-1919) and the living Enrico Buzzoni (born in Verona in 1852) architects stood out; and the lay brother Antonio Moscheni (1854-1905) painter and founder of a plastic school for Hindus.
In the century XVII the missions of the Italian Discalced Carmelites, most of them Romans and Lombards, begin to flourish in Persia, Mesopotamia and India. Several of these missionaries, together with the strictly apostolic works, embraced the study of local languages and literatures: thus the Piedmontese Angelo Francesco di S. Teresa (1650-1712) bishop of Malabar and Fra Clemente di Gesù (1731-1782) also Piedmontese; the Roman Giuseppe di S. Maria (Sebastiani) (1620-1689) wrote three travel reports to the East Indies and the Indian Archipelago (Rome 1665, 1672, 1687); Fra Ignatius of Jesus was very learned in Arabic and Persian. In Mesopotamia also spent their labors from the century. XVII up to our times the Dominicans Eusebio Franzosini, Gaetano Codaleoni from Milan, Corradino Ferriani, Agostino Bausa, later archbishop of Florence and cardinal. In the Asian continent the friars minor of the Custody of the Holy Land in the midst of gigantic difficulties continued throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to support the faith of Christ and the Italian spirit in Palestine; and their only merit and study are most of the monuments which illustrate the history of this part of the East; remember the Chronicles or Annals of the Holy Land by Fra Pietro Verniero da Montepeloso (today’s Irsinia) who died in 1660. In Georgia the Capuchin minors cultivated his letters with a success not different from that reported in Tibet: his father Bernardo from Naples deserves to be remembered, of the Cioffi family (died 1707) and the Piedmontese Paolo M. Riccadonna, Jesuit (1799-1863) learned illustrator of Western Asia.
The number of Italian missionaries in the Americas was scarce. In Canada, however, the Roman Jesuit Francesco Giuseppe Bressani (1612-1672), mathematician and astronomer, author of that Relation of some missions of pp . of the Society of Jesus in New France, which remains also to the present a valuable source for the knowledge of the customs of the indigenous tribes of the North American. Not long after Bressani came to fame in California and Arizona Eusebio Chino or Chini (1645-1711) born in Segno in Trentino, as heroic as a missionary as intrepid explorer, and Giovanni Salvaterra (1648-1717) his emulator in explorations in California. Contemporary of Chino was the Sicilian Francesco M. Piccolo (1650-1729) who for 46 years evangelized the savages of Taraumara in Mexico and those of the barbarian Californian tribes. In South America, the Reductions of Paraguay, founded and directed by the Spanish Jesuits, received valid collaborators in the Italian confreres; and Italian collaborators were also the Spanish Franciscans, evangelizers of South America; remember the flock of friars minor from Italy sent to Bolivia, Peru and Chile during the pontificate of Gregory XVI and above all the fathers Giuseppe Giannelli, civilizer of the Chiriguane tribes west of the Chaco; Doroteo Giannecchini explorer and writer of history, linguistics and geography; Gesualdo Machetti good descriptor of the Amazon basin.
The Lombard priest Eugenio Biffi (1829-1896), one of the first students of the Institute of the Foreign Missions of Milan, who had already sent other famous students of his to the missions of China and India such as the martyr Giovanni Mazzucconi, and Paolo Reina ( died in 1861), made the first very happy tests among the pagans of eastern Burma, passed in 1882 in Colombia to rule the diocese of Cartagena as bishop. The priests of the Pious Salesian Society have the merit of having undertaken the evangelization of northern and southern Patagonia and of Tierra del Fuego. The first ten Salesian missionaries led by Fr Giov. Battista Cagliero (1838-1926), later bishop, apostolic delegate and cardinal, were sent to Patagonia – a territory then unknown to the Argentines themselves – in 1875. In 1880 the first Salesian colony set foot in the center of northern Patagonia. In 1884, the Salesians had already explored northern Patagonia for an extension of 35,000 sq. Km., Founded stations, administered baptism to several thousand indigenous people, and given religious instruction to more than 2000 children; what induced Leo XIII to divide that immense vicariate by entrusting a part of it (southern Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands and the archipelago of the Strait of Magellano) to a worthy companion of Cagliero, Don Giuseppe Fagnano. and given religious instruction to more than 2000 children; what induced Leo XIII to divide that immense vicariate by entrusting a part of it (southern Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands and the archipelago of the Strait of Magellano) to a worthy companion of Cagliero, Don Giuseppe Fagnano. and given religious instruction to more than 2000 children; what induced Leo XIII to divide that immense vicariate by entrusting a part of it (southern Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands and the archipelago of the Strait of Magellano) to a worthy companion of Cagliero, Don Giuseppe Fagnano.
In the meantime, the Brazil Mission was increasing, initiated by the Italian Jesuits of the province of Rome. Although the Portuguese were the first missionaries in Brazil, even Italy since the century. XVII had sent there his, including in the century. XVIII the Como Gabriele Malagrida (1689-1761) executed under the Marquis of Pombal. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from the lands of the crown of Portugal, and the suppression of the Company, the Jesuits resumed their apostolic work in Brazil, not before 1865, when the Romans were assigned there. Among the main works of social interest that they attracted deep gratitude from the Brazilian nation, the colleges of Itù and Nova Friburgo hold the very first place. Fathers Vincenzo Coccumelli, Giuseppe Mantero, Giustino Lombardi, Giuseppe Giomini, Bartolomeo Taddei, and the living Apulian Giuseppe Natuzzi were mentioned.
During the sec. XIX not a few Italian religious emigrated to the Americas where they dedicated themselves to the sacred ministry, to the teaching of letters and sciences, and to works of social utility. The Piedmontese Jesuits of the province of Turin in 1850 passed to California where they began a vast work of apostolate and culture. Worthy of note are Fathers Michele Accolti and Giovanni Nobili who founded the College of S. Clara, the first to hoist the American flag in California; Giuseppe Bixio (1819-1889) brother of General Nino; Giuseppe Bayma (1816-1892) professor of mathematics at the University of San Francisco; Luigi Brunengo and Giuseppe Neri, talented physicists and chemists, and above all Antonio Cichi, creator of the mineralogical cabinets of S. Clara and S. Francisco. At the same time, further north, other Piedmontese, Sicilians and Romans, also of the Society of Jesus, consecrated their lives to the heroic enterprise of making civil and Christian the savage tribes of the Rocky Mountains and Alaska. Among these we remember the father Giuseppe Giolda, who wrote various works in the languages of the North-West Indians; the Romagna Pasquale Tosi (1835-1898), who directed the missions of Alaska for twelve years, was the first apostolic prefect of that region and illustrated him with the work Alaska and its early explorers; the Sicilian Giuseppe Cataldo (1837-1928) who gave his name to a city. In Maryland, in Woodstock, the Neapolitan Jesuits, and for them their father Angelo Paresce, founded in 1869 a college that in more than fifty years from its flourishing life greatly benefited the progress of Catholicism in the United States and had its intellectual founder in the Father Camillo Mazzella (1833) honored by Leo XIII of the sacred purple. Neapolitan Jesuits were also professors at the Georgetown University of St Louis, in the colleges of Boston, Washington and Holy Cross. Other of their confreres, having received the mission of New Mexico and Colorado in 1869, gave work to the spread of religion and culture in those regions: they established primary and secondary schools, printed periodicals and pamphlets,
Two figures, both belonging to the century. XlX towering in the field of African missions: the Capuchin Guglielmo Massaia and the Brescian Daniele Comboni who dedicated his whole life to the evangelization of the Negroes by means of an indigenous clergy educated from childhood to Christian customs and piety, and to implement this idea he founded the Institute of Missions for Africa in Verona.
