ABSTRACT
The sixteenth century brought new worlds to the old world that was Europe, which now also struggled with internal political and religious changes. The Society of Jesus was one of the tools that Catholic Europe used to combat the advance of Protestantism and to deal with the new geographical and cultural realities, and in 16th-century Japan, this religious congregation resorted to intelligence and creativity to advance Catholic evangelisation in a new space.
Intelligence to understand the complexity of Japanese society, creativity to overcome this obstacle through unconventional methods; intelligence to adapt to change, creativity to create a very own form of adaptation – accommodatio; intelligence to learn new cultures, creativity to face them without clashing with the directives of the Catholic Church; intelligence in the use of feelings and emotion, creativity in the balance between duty and action.
Father Luís Fróis is one of the best examples of these abilities, revealed both in his vast literary work and in his life of almost 35 years in Japan, using intelligence and creativity to advance with evangelisation and ensure the survival of a small number of European missionaries in a space with many obstacles. We highlight the Historia de Japam, the Tratado, and the various letters in a corpus of documents – Cartas de Évora-, epistolography which we will analyse in greater detail here.
