Jesuits, Korean Catholics, and the State: Narratives of Accommodation and Conflict to 1784
- Format:
- Dissertation
- Year:
- 2015
- University:
- St. John's University
- Thesis type:
- Doctoral Dissertation
- Place published:
- New York
- Language:
- Abstract:
Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus had a dedication to missionary work. In Europe, the Jesuits' sensitivity to local cultures spread a Catholic Christianity intuitively satisfying to other people. Despite what some contemporaries viewed as a controversial willingness to eschew seemingly peripheral elements of Catholicism for a desire to win the approval of missionary audiences, Jesuits sought every chance to spread the faith.
With disciplines as varied as theology, missiology, ethnohistory, epistolary history, and the history of emotions, this dissertation explores connections between Jesuit missionary attitudes, Korean Catholics, and the state. The author contends that while Jesuits put the need for spreading the faith above the idea of dignifying the humanity of another culture, they sincerely tried to reconcile Christianity with East Asian cultures. Discussions of Jesuit efforts in German principalities, notions of an imagined Korea, missionary work with Koreans exiled in Japan, and Confucian debates on Christianity offer insight into a religious and cultural encounter between Jesuits and Koreans. With varying degrees of success, a compatibility sought by Jesuits and open-minded Koreans emerged in letters illustrative of a forgotten history of Korean Catholicism that arguably anticipates the so-called official beginning of the native Korean Catholic Church in 1784.
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- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Worldcat URL:
- Other link:
- Number of Pages:
- 259