edited m g costa introduction notes (2 risultati)

Hardcover. Condizione: Very Good. Condizione sovraccoperta: Very Good. 1st Edition. Sky blue cloth hardback book, with lovely gilt ship design on front board, and gilt title impressions on the spine. Comes with nice, clean dust jacket. The book is in really good condition, normal wear, marks and tear apply consistent with use and age. A few speckles of foxing to top of endpapers. 417 pages all intact, all pages, text, maps and illustrations are in really good, clean, readable order. Pen signature on first blank page. Printed in Great Britain, by The University Press, Cambridge. Jeronimo Lobo was the last survivor of the small band of Jesuit Fathers who tried, with a measure of success, to reconcile Ethiopia to the Church of Rome. His life was long and adventurous. Chosen to serve in India when still a novice, he was ordained with extreme haste and embarked on a ship which was forced to turn back in the Gulf of Guinea. He reached India in the next year after being involved in a naval fight against the Dutch and English off Mozambique. He was selected from for the Ethiopian mission and made a remarkable attempt to reach the country from the Somali Coast. After his unsurprising failure in this he returned to India and eventually made his way to Bailul in the Red Sea and across the Danakil desert. He spent nine years in Ethiopia, part of the time in the neighbourhood of the source of the Blue Nile. Exiled when the Emperor restored the authority of the Ethiopian Church, he was among these handed over to the Turks at Massawa. after suffering much hardship and danger he regained India. Sent to Europe on a confidential mission to advocate military intervention on behalf of the Ethiopian Catholics, his ship was wrecked on the South African Coast. The castaways built two boats, one which improbably succeeded in rounding the Cape and arriving at Luanda in Angola. Here he embarked on a ship carrying slaves to the Spanish main. It was captured by the Dutch and Lobo was marooned on an island but contrived to make his way to Cartagena and Havana and so to Europe. His diplomatic business took him to Madrid and Rome, but his plea for armed assistance did not succeed. In 1640 he again went to India where he was at times in serious conflict with the secular authorities; he was accused of Spanish sympathies and was confined in a Franciscan convent for a time. He returned to Portugal in 1657. In his last years he was in touch with Robert Southwell and corresponded with the Royal Society of London, which published an English translation of some tractates which he wrote, probably in response to specific questions submitted to him on the Society's behalf. lobo's account of his travels was not printed during his lifetime. A French translation appeared in 1728 and this was translated into English by Dr. Johnson and published in 1735. A fascinating insight into a man with a mission and the period of which many changes were taking place.

8vo (22x14cm), hardback, xxxvi + 417pp. Good condition in goodish dustwrapper (general wear, chipped edges and spine extremities and corners, creased, sunned at front cover). Bumped, a tad age-toned, foxed, owner's bookplate at front pastedown. Pictures available on request.