Abstract
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In the very first colleges of the Society of Jesus the teaching of rhetoric acquired an important position: only through an eloquence informed by the precepts and practice of the ancients would study progress and communication be achieved in any circumstance or place. As is well known, this pedagogical experience resulted
in the establishment of a complete programme of instruction in rhetoric in the final
version of the Ratio Studiorum. The desire, which at the beginning of the century encouraged Diogo de Gouveia to create 50 study stipends at the Parisian Saint Barbara
College (in order to educate theologians for the evangelization of the discovered and
conquered territories), was finally satisfied when, in 1555, D. João III gave the Jesuits
the Colégio das Artes in Coimbra. If the apologetic purpose was not absent from the literary education on offer there, the advantages of preparation in rhetoric were
already noted in the letters sent from Brazil and from Asia by the first Jesuit missionaries.
Four Japanese princes, accompanied by two Jesuits, left Nagasaki for Rome
in February 1582, in order to swear their allegiance to the Pope. The oratio oboedientialis, directed at Pope Gregory XIII, was presented by the experienced Latin orator
Father Gaspar Gonçalves. Another Jesuit, Duarte de Sande, wrote an extraordinary
travel book on the eight-year long journey of the Japanese aristocrats which appeared
in Macao in 1590 (cf. Américo da Costa Ramalho, Duarte de Sande: Diálogo sobre
a Missão dos Embaixadores japoneses à Cúria Romana, Macau, Fundação Oriente,
1997). It is from the perspective of the usefulness of the study of rhetoric for evangelization and for the intercultural dialogue that the Oratio habita a Gaspare Consaluo Lusitano in Legatorum Iaponiorum introitu (Rome, apud Franciscum Zanettum,
1585) will be analysed.
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