New publication: Edited volume on Legal Change, chapter on Japan and missionaries
Rômulo Ehalt
Dear all,
I would like to draw your attention to a recent chapter of mine ("Ignorance Lost: The Arrival of Franciscan Missionaries and the Jesuit Normative Discourse in Japan (16th-17th Centuries") that explores legal change in the context of Catholic missions in early modern Japan. The chapter explores central issues related to legal discourse among Jesuits and mendicants, as well as relevant topics such as the doctrine of ignorance, Christian thought, positive law of the Church, and the legal situation of Japanese Catholics during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Here is the chapter’s abstract:
"This chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of the implementation of positive law in Japan during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, focusing on three distinct phases that shaped the legal and normative landscape of Japanese Christianity. Initially, Jesuits maintained stability through strategic dissimulation, preserving religious norms despite the absence of effective legal enforcement. However, the arrival of mendicant orders in the 1580s precipitated a shift, prompting Jesuits to defend their established practices through invincible ignorance and to resist the publication of new Church precepts. The culmination of this process occurred with the arrival of Luís Cerqueira (1552–1614) as Bishop in 1598, marking a decisive moment in the development of a comprehensive programme for the dissemination of positive law in Japan. Against the backdrop of conflicts between Jesuits and Franciscans, the chapter elucidates how invincible ignorance served as a crucial mechanism for delineating areas and communities deemed suitable for receiving Church precepts. By intertwining the narratives of the Council of Trent’s influence and missionary disputes, the chapter underscores the complex interplay of global legal change and local political dynamics, shedding new light on the normative history of early modern Japanese Christianity."
The chapter, as well as the whole volume, are in Open Access: https://brill.com/display/book/9789004764422/BP000012.xml
Kind regards,
Rômulo Ehalt, Ph.D.
Researcher
Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory
Frankfurt am Main, Germany