A large collection of about thirty 18th-century transcriptions of letters and other documents from Catholic missionaries writing from or concerning the missions in Africa (including Madagascar, Algiers and the Barbary Coast), Greece, Italy (including the Mekhitarist Armenian Catholic monastery on the island San Lazzaro degli Armeni in the Venetian lagoon) and Japan. The exact number depends how one defines "one" document. Most of the letters transcribed here were originally written at the time of the Portuguese, French and Spanish efforts to suppress the Jesuits in their territories, both at home and in their colonies, beginning around 1750 and leading to the banning of Jesuits from the Portuguese empire (1759), France (1764) and Spain (1767). The Pope finally dissolved the Jesuit order in 1773, but it was re-established in 1814. The documents from this period, some explicitly about attempts to suppress the Jesuits, were clearly transcribed when they were still new, but the collection also includes transcriptions of older letters and documents.
Nearly all concern the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, "the department of the pontifical administration charged with the spread of Catholicism and with the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs in non-Catholic countries" (Catholic encyclopedia). While the Jesuits, prior to their suppression, were a highly evangelical branch of the Catholic Church, the Propaganda Fide was the papal office that coordinated the missionary activities of all the orders. The letters provide good evidence both of the relations between the Catholic Church as a whole and the Jesuit Order, and of the Church's efforts to continue their evangelical missionary activities at a time when the Jesuits were no longer able to lead them.
The manuscript belonged to Frederick North (1766-1827), 5th Earl of Guilford, and was bought for Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) at the 1830 Guilford sale. It was sold in the 1919 Phillipps sale. In very good condition, with a few documents showing minor foxing or small stains, but most leaves fine. The binding is somewhat rubbed, most of the sewing supports have broken at the joints and the cover has come loose from the bookblock at the inside of the front hinge, but the sewing and case remain structurally sound. Many of the 30 documents no doubt transcribe originals that have since been lost, so the present collection forms an important source for the history of Catholic missionary work in the period, for information about the regions where they operated and for the relations of the Church as a whole with the Jesuits. Evans, Catalogue ... manuscripts ... Guilford, 8 December 1830, lot 361; Phillipps manuscripts 5580; Sotheby, Bibl. Phillippica, 1919?, lot 1473.