Public Presentation and Book Launch: "The Samurai & the Cross: Jesuit Missionaries & Education in Early Modern Japan"
2 September 2022
6.15-7.30 pm, admittance begins at 6 pm
GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, Main Lecture Hall. Entrance via Täubchenweg
Dr. Murat Antoni John Ucerler, S.J., Director of the Ricci Institute at
Boston College will give a lecture and present his new book.
After the arrival of Francis Xavier in 1549, a new era of European
Christian encounters with Japanese culture began. Xavier's successors
found themselves, however, in the midst of "Warring States Japan", where
samurai warlords were vying with each other for dominance. The Jesuits
soon established a college to train both European and Japanese
missionaries in the liberal arts and theology. This presentation will
highlight how a unique textbook preserved in three manuscripts in the
Vatican, Oxford, and Wolfenbüttel played a key role in communicating
Christianity to the Japanese in the early seventeenth century.
There will be a festive reception after the lecture.
Free admission. To register for the event, please email juan.castillo@uni-leipzig.de.
