REGO, Sebastião do. Vida do veneravel padre Joseph Vaz, da congregaçaõ do oratorio de S. Filippe Neri da Cidade de Goa, na India Oriental; Fundador da laboriosa Missaõ, que os Congregados desta Casa tem à sua conta na Ilha de Ceylaõ. Composta pelo padre…

REGO, Sebastião do. Vida do veneravel padre Joseph Vaz, da congregaçaõ do oratorio de S. Filippe Neri da Cidade de Goa, na India Oriental; Fundador da laboriosa Missaõ, que os Congregados desta Casa tem à sua conta na Ilha de Ceylaõ. Composta pelo padre…Spying, Secret Missionary Work, and Smallpox in Sri Lanka REGO, Sebastio do. Vida do veneravel padre Joseph Vaz, da congregaa do oratorio de S. Filippe Neri da Cidade de Goa, na India Oriental; Fundador da laboriosa Missa, que os Congregados desta Casa tem sua conta na Ilha de Ceyla. Composta pelo padre Sebastia do Rego, da mesma Congregaa. Lisboa: na Regia Officina Sylviana, e da Academia Real. 1745. 4to. Contemporary Portuguese speckled calf, spine

Spying, Secret Missionary Work, and Smallpox in Sri Lanka

REGO, Sebastião do. Vida do veneravel padre Joseph Vaz, da congregaçaõ do oratorio de S. Filippe Neri da Cidade de Goa, na India Oriental; Fundador da laboriosa Missaõ, que os Congregados desta Casa tem à sua conta na Ilha de Ceylaõ. Composta pelo padre Sebastiaõ do Rego, da mesma Congregaçaõ. Lisboa: na Regia Officina Sylviana, e da Academia Real. 1745.

4to. Contemporary Portuguese speckled calf, spine decorated in gilt, gilt red morocco lettering-piece, edges speckled red; pp. [xxviii], 354, [2 (blank)] with half-title and final blank; final blank watermarked ‘B. P.’ with fleur-de-lys device; abrasion to rear board, split to upper joint neatly repaired, small areas of restoration to spine upper hinge reinforced, corners worn; top-edge dusty with slight dust-soiling to quire 2N at head, else a very good, clean copy.

Scarce first edition of the first biography in book form of Zuze (Joseph) Vaz (1651–1711), a Catholic of Indian parentage from Goa, who became an Oratorian priest and the leading missionary of Sri Lanka, authored by a fellow Goa-born Oratorian and published thirty-four years after Vaz’s death.

The work is an important source for Vaz’s life, as well as for Catholic missionary activity in the Kandyan Kingdom (present-day Sri Lanka). Joseph Vaz (1651–1711), known as the ‘Apostle of Ceylon’ and canonised in 2015, was born in Goa into the Brahmin caste. He was educated by the Jesuits in Goa, ordained priest in 1676, and became confessor to D. Rodrigo da Costa, the Governor of Portuguese India. His early missionary career took him to Coastal Karnataka, where he came into conflict with the Propaganda Fide led by Thomas de Castro, bishop of Fulsivelem (c.1621–1684). Vaz negotiated a truce between the Roman authority and the Portuguese Church, appealing to both Castro’s and his own Brahmin background. In 1686 he joined the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip of Neri, and the following year became a clandestine Catholic missionary in Sri Lanka, at the time under the control of the Protestant Dutch East India Company who had expelled the Portuguese in 1658. The Dutch authorities imprisoned him as a Portuguese spy, and only through the intervention of the Buddhist King of Candia, Vimaladharmasuriya II, who became his friend, was he released. Vaz learned the languages of the two rival ethnic groups of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamil, and became a symbol of tolerance.

Vaz was also celebrated for the charity and care with which he dealt with a serious outbreak of smallpox in Kandy in 1697, taking charge of the treatment of sick people and preventing a considerably greater loss of life. The epidemic, and Vaz’s measures against it, are described on pp. 81–87.

OCLC finds five copies in the US (Harvard, Indiana, UCLA, Yale, Wisconsin-Madison) and only one in the UK, at the British Library.

Inocencio VII 222, no. 138; Scholberg DD10.

SKU: 2116507