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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2018
This article argues that Flowers (flores sanctorum), collections of saints’ lives arranged by the liturgical calendar, were the first genre of devotional literature to have a global reach during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article begins with the medieval origins of Flowers before analysing their dispersion in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by the Franciscans and Jesuits. By taking a temporal long view and a transoceanic perspective, the article contributes to the scholarship on early modern evangelization, translation, global networks, and the historiographies of the Franciscans and Jesuits.
I would like to thank the audience at the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in Vancouver, Canada (October 2015), where I first presented a portion of this work. Their helpful questions aided me in developing this article as did those by the participants at the workshop ‘Translation in transit: interpreting culture in the modern world’, held at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy (May 2017). I am also grateful to Richard L. Kagan, Jorge Flores, Alyson Price, Paul Nelles, Audrey Millet, Justin Rivest and José Juan Pérez Meléndez, as well as to the Journal’s editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their vital interventions in earlier drafts.
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20 The court painter Francisco de Holanda (1517–85), writing in 1571, made this claim about the saint’s efficacy against the plague: de Holanda, Francisco, Da fabrica que fallece á cidade de Lisboa (Of the works that are lacking in the city of Lisbon), ed. Joaquim de Vasconcellos, Porto: Imprensa Portugueza, 1879, p. 19 Google Scholar. For a sixteenth-century life of Sebastian in Portuguese, see Ho flos sanctõ[rum] em lingoaje[m] p[or]tugue[s] (The flower of the saints in the Portuguese language), Lisbon: Hermão de Campos and Roberte Rabelo, 1513, fols. XXX[r]–XXXI[r].
21 Flos sanctorum em portugues, fols. CCXLRIII[r]–CCXLVII[r]. In addition to Sebastian and Anthony, Holanda listed Vincent and the martyrs Verissimus and his sisters as the patrons of Lisbon: Holanda, Da fabrica de Lisboa, p. 19. On the broader Lusophone context of the cult of Anthony, see Vainfas, Ronaldo, ‘St. Anthony in Portuguese America: saint of the restoration’, in Allan Greer and Jodi Bilinkoff, eds., Colonial saints: discovering the holy in the Americas, 1500–1800, New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 101 Google Scholar.
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29 Ibid., p. 550: ‘Fr. Juan de Ribas compuso un catecismo cristiano y sermones dominicales de todo el año: un Flos Sanctorum breve, y unas preguntas y respuestas de la vida cristiana.’
30 In addition to Anthony of Padua, Franciscans penned lives for the order’s founder, Francis of Assisi, and the noted missionary Bernardino of Siena. Another work, on the Mexican child-martyrs of Tlaxcala, focused on indigenous children converted by the friars. Apart from their confrères, Franciscans also produced a narrative on the life of the Augustinian Nicholas of Tolentino.
31 von Habsburg, Maximilian, Catholic and Protestant translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425–1650, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011 Google Scholar.
32 Maturino Gilberti to Juan de Medina Rincón y de la Vega, Tzintzuntzán, c.1575, in Maturino Gilberti, Thesoro spiritual de pobres en le[n]gua de Michuaca[n], rev. edn, Mexico: Antonio de Spinosa, 1575, fol. 10r–v: ‘me ha[n] importunado aq[uel] yo ordenassi [sic] en la le[n]gua de Michuaca[n] el Flos sanctorum de los sanctos y sanctas, que se celebran en esta nueva España’.
33 Ibid., fol. 10v.
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36 Before 1650, the Flower was printed in 1567, 1577, 1585, 1613, 1622, and 1647. All of the editions originated from Lisbon, except those of 1567 (Braga) and 1577 (Coimbra). On the publication of the Flower during Rosário’s lifetime, see de Almeida, António-José, ‘A mobilidade do impressor quinhentista português António de Mariz (The mobility of the sixteenth-century Portuguese printer António de Mariz)’, in Natália Marinho Ferreira-Alves, ed., Artistas e artifices e a sua mobilidade no mundo de expressão portuguesa (Artists and artifices and their mobility in the Portuguese-speaking world), Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2005, pp. 60–61 Google Scholar.
37 Alessandro Valignano, Primero catálogo de las imformaciones communes de los padres y hermanos de la Compañía de Jesús de la dicha Provincia de Japón, 1 January 1593, in Schütte, Josef Franz, ed., Monumenta historica Japoniae, Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1975, vol. 1, p. 321 Google Scholar: ‘Hermano Yofo Paulo, natural del reino de Vacasa, de 85 años de edad, muy debilitado, de 13 años de la Compañia, en la qual fue recebido tan viejo por hombre insigne en las Letras de Japón y aver gastado más de otros 15 años biviemdo como dojuqu en nuestras casas y aver [h]echo mucho servicio a la Compañía con sus Letras.’
38 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Japonica-Sinica 6, fol. 125v: Melchior de Figueiredo to the Society of Jesus, Kuchinotsu(?), 13 September 1566.
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40 Luís Fróis to the Jesuits in China and India, Macau, 20 February 1565, in Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Jesus que andão nos Reynos de Iapão (Letters of the fathers and brothers of the Society of Jesus that walk in the kingdoms of Japan), Evora: Manuel de Lyra, 1598, vol. 1, fol. 177r: ‘tresladado algu[n]s liuros deuotos, & de boa doutrina na mesma lingoa. Agora vai faze[n]do o frolsactorum [sic] pera consolaçãodos Christa[n]os.’
41 Luís Fróis to the Society of Jesus, Sakai, 30 June 1566, in ibid., vol. 1, fol. 206v: ‘tresladou este anno [1566] na lingoa o Flos sanctoru[m], & liuros deuotos pera proueitodas almas’.
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