Bidspirit auction | CRUZ (Fr. Gaspar da). TRACTADO

CRUZ (Fr. Gaspar da). TRACTADO em que se contam muito por extenso as cousas da China, com suas particularidades, e assi do Reyno de Ormuz. Barcelos. 1937. - CRUZ (Fr. Gaspar da) TRACTADO em que se contam muito por extenso as cousas da China, com suas particularidades, e assi do Reyno de Ormuz . Com uma Nótula Bio-Biblográfica. Barcelos: Portucalense Editora, 1937. 196 pp.; 155 mm. This esteemed edition of this classic work, whose original edition was printed in Évora, in the workshop of André de Burgos, in 1570, is now generally considered the first European book entirely dedicated to China and one of the first firsthand European accounts of the country since Marco Polo. Friar Gaspar da Cruz (c. 1520-1570), a Dominican friar born in Évora, departed for the East in 1548, serving as a missionary for about six years on the coast of Hindustan before settling in Macau in 1554. From there he went to Cambodia and, in December 1556, finally reached Canton, where he remained for about a month, collecting direct observations and testimonies from Portuguese residents with experience in China, supplemented by the account of Galiote Pereira. He returned to Portugal via Malacca, the Indonesian archipelago, the coast of Hindustan, and Hormuz. Infected by the plague, he died in Setúbal in 1570, a few weeks after his Treatise was published. The work, which also includes news about Cambodia and the Kingdom of Hormuz, would become a fundamental source for the dissemination of European knowledge about China, directly influencing the famous Historia... del Gran Reyno de la China by Juan González de Mendoza (1585). Rare even in its original edition, this 1937 reissue, accompanied by a bio-bibliographical note, made the text widely accessible in Portugal for the first time in the 20th century. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate ¶ Inocêncio, III, p.128.