Letter from Beijing to Luis de Guzmán (9 March 1602)
A long letter by the Spanish Jesuit who travelled to Beijing with Matteo Ricci, written in the city a little over a year after they arrived. It is an eyewitness account of the journey, the gifts, the emperor’s response and the first year in the capital.
Diego de Pantoja entered China from Macau at the end of 1599 and was chosen as Ricci’s companion for the journey from Nanjing to Beijing. He wrote this letter to the Jesuit provincial of Toledo on 9 March 1602. Purchas, who gives it in English, notes that he had it in a Spanish printing of 1606 from Valencia.
Pantoja saw most of what he reports, and where he did not, he says so: what the emperor said and did inside the palace he has from the eunuchs. The letter is written to a superior in Europe by a missionary who wanted the mission supported, and its judgments on Chinese religion are those of a Jesuit of his time. It is cited in Matteo Ricci at the Court of Beijing for the course of events.
Cited in
- 24 January 1601, firm date