Letters

Francis Xavier wrote long letters to the Society at Rome and at Goa, to Ignatius of Loyola and to the king of Portugal. Coleridge prints well over a hundred, the first from Paris in 1535 and the last from the island of San Chan off China in November 1552.

They are primary for what Xavier did, saw and thought, and they are reports written to encourage his brethren, with an eye to recruits. What he says of the religions of India and Japan is a missionary’s judgment after a short acquaintance and through interpreters. Coleridge’s translation is a Victorian one, and his dates for several letters differ by some days from those of the edition made from the manuscript copies (Monumenta Xaveriana, 1899–1900): his letter 14, which he dates 31 December 1543, closes there on 15 January 1544. The letters are cited here by his numbers and with the dates he prints. His connecting narrative is a nineteenth-century biography and is not cited as a source.