Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions

The last three decades of the Jesuit Mission in China and Vietnam were recorded in the published letters of the French and German Jesuits, the Lettres edifiantes and Wolt-Bote. Several of the letters in the latter series were addressed by Florian Bahr and other German-speaking Jesuit missionaries to Countess Maria-Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg, chief lady-in-waiting for Empress Amalia in Munich. A cache of more than 140 letters in the Fugger-Archiv in Dillingen, Germany, hitherto unexplored, forms the core from which the few published letters are drawn. All are unique documents that are not extant in the Roman Archive of the Society of Jesus or in other depositories. They are presented in full transcription or in precis, with extensive commentaries, in this volume. These letters represent the correspondence of the Countess Maria-Theresia with Jesuit correspondents in China, Vietnam, France, and Bohemia; they contain detailed information not only on the conditions of the missions in East and Southeast Asia, but also document the network of support in Catholic Europe for the Jesuit overseas missions. Supplementary research into the history of the Fugger-Wellenburg family has enabled the author to reconstruct the life of the countess and the history of her patronage of the Jesuit mission.