N. 1574; A. 1593; O.S. ?; U.V. 1616; M. 1659

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Manuel Dias, was the son of Domingos and Maria Fernandes, and was later known as Junior or the Younger (o moço), to differentiate him from a slightly older namesake, and his contemporary in China. He was born in Castelo Branco in 1574, and had around 19 years old when he entered into the Society of Jesus' novitiate in Coimbra on February 2 1593 (ARSI, Lus. 44, fl. 78v). There, as he later tells us, had Fr. Manuel de Lima (1554-1620) as master of novices (ARSI, Jap.Sin. 17, fl. 10).

We have no information for the dates and places where Dias finished his academic training, nor where he was ordained priest, though Goa remains a strong possibility. It is known, however, that he embarked in Lisbon bound for India in April 1601, arriving at Goa that same year and living there for the next three years. Dias left Goa for Macau in 1604, and lived there until 1610, in whose Jesuit College he taught theology. He finally entered mainland China at the end of 1610, to fulfil the mission he had been assigned to and adopted the name Yang Manuo 陽 瑪諾 / 阳 玛诺. Excepted for some forced sojourns in Macau, Dias lived in mainland China for the following 40 plus years. Initially settled in Shaozhou (Guangdong), he began studying Chinese there, of which he would become a “skilful” expert, according to Fr. Matias da Maia (1616-1667) (ARSI, Jap.Sin. 124, fl. 52v), an assessment that his textual production in Chinese seems to corroborate. With the expulsion of Jesuit missionaries from Shaozhou in 1612, he moved to Nanxiong (Guangdong), and to Beijing in 1613, where he joined Diego de Pantoja (1571-1618) and Sabatino de Ursis ( 1575-1620). Dias lived in Beijing until 1615, when, following orders of Vice-Provincial Fr. Valentim Carvalho (1559-1630/31), he started a visit to the China mission. Dias was trusted with the task to restrict the missionaries only to religious activity, putting an end to any scientific endeavors, namely in the domain of mathematics and astronomy. However, this was a position that Dias himself, author of an astronomy manual completed in 1614, which will be discussed later, openly contested years later. This can be seen in letter he addressed to General Fr. Muzio Vitelleschi (in office between 1615 and 1645) in April 1630, asking him to send annually “some good mathematician” to participate in the project to reform the imperial calendar (ARSI, Jap.Sin. 18 I, 93). This task, coordinated by Xu Guangqi 徐光啓 (1562-1633), contemplated the translation of European texts on mathematics and astronomy. Meanwhile, after completing his visit to the mission begun in 1615, Dias was already in Macau in the middle of 1616, to present his report to the Vice-Provincial. It was in Macau that Dias professed his four vows in September 1616.

Fr. Manuel Dias was preparing his return to mainland China in September 1616, when news broke in Macau of incidents taking place in Nanjing with the memorials of Shen Que and the arrest of Fathers Alfonso Vagnone (1568/9-1640) and Álvaro Semedo (1585-1658); and the subsequent imperial edict expelling all missionaries from that city and Beijing (February 1617). Therefore, he was forced to remain in Macao for four years. In 1621, Dias returned clandestinely to Beijing, where he stayed until February 1623, having appeared before the Ministry of War with Beijing's former superior, Niccolò Longobardo (1565-1655), in the context of the military aid provided by Macau to the Ming. With Longobardo, Dias built a terrestrial globe presented to the Tianqi 天啓Emperor (r. 1620-1627), on which the signatures of both missionaries can be seen. This lacquerware piece, whose currently part of the British Library collection (there is replica of it in Lisbon, at the Scientific and Cultural Center of Macau), contained relatively up-to-date and more advanced information than the one incorporated in Matteo Ricci's (1552-1610) earlier world map dated of 1602.

Dias became the first Vice-Provincial of China in 1623, a position he kept until 1635, living in Shanghai, Nanjing, Jiading and Zhenjiang during those years. In 1644, the date of Qing accession to the Chinese throne, Dias was seriously ill at his residence in Nanchang, when the approaching Manchu army forced him to move to Fujian (to Jianning and later to Yenping ). He was named Vice-Provincial again in 1648, returning to Hangzhou and holding this office until 1655 (BA 49-IV-66, fl. 61v). He died at Hangzhou at the beginning of March 1659, having 84 years old according to his obituary (ARSI, Jap.Sin. 124, fl. 52v), and was buried at the local Dafangjing Cemetery 大方井.

Dias has been considered as one of the most reputed Portuguese Jesuits in the China mission according to modern historiography, as a result of the works he wrote in Chinese, namely the aforementioned astronomy manual or Tianwen lue 天問略. Completed in 1614 and published the following year, the treatise constitutes an introduction to Western cosmography and astronomy based on the influential "Treaty of the Sphere" of Sacrobosco (ca. 1195-ca. 1256), along with other more recent European texts, all in a work duly adapted to a Chinese audience. To a large extent, the Tianwen lue owes its fame to a small appendix of just two pages, which alludes to some observations made by Galileo Galilei (1554-1642) in his telescope, described a little earlier either in the Siderius Nuncius (1610) or in letters published between 1610 and 1612. It should be noted that Dias, although not exactly an expert, was familiar with some advanced topics in mathematics and astronomy. He may have acquired this knowledge informally, namely in the years in which he lived with Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) in Beijing.

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The Tianwen lue 天問略 by Manuel Dias Júnior (Beijing 1615), a copy of the first edition.

Source: Library of Congress: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/7089/

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Dias wrote other works in Chinese, but these are of a religious nature. Among his many works there is a biography of Saint Joseph, the Sheng Ruose sheng shi 聖若瑟行實 (written between c. 1640 and 1659); the Shengjin zhijie 聖經直解 (Hangzhou, 1642), apparently based on the work by Fr. Sebastião Barradas (1543-1615) Commentaria in Concordia et Historiam Evangelicam (published in Portugal between 1599 and 1612); his explanation of the Ten Commandments intitled Tianzhu shengjiao shijie zhi quan 天主 聖教 十誡 直 詮 (1642); or his treatise on the Nestorian stele found near Xi'an called Jingjiao bei song zheng quan 景教碑頌正詮 (Hangzhou, 1644). Reference should also be made to the Qing shi jinshu 輕世金書, published posthumously ca. 1680, and based in the Contemptus mundi, the "Menosprecio del mundo" (printed in Seville in 1609, and in Lisbon in 1610), a romanced translation made by Fr. Luís de Granada, O.P. (1504-1588), of the De Imitatione Christi by Tomás à Kempis (ca. 1380-1471). There is still an extant documentary handwritten corpus in Portuguese by Dias, which includes more than fifteen letters, including Annual Letters from the College of the Madre de Deus in Macau (1616) and five from China (1615, 1618, 1625, 1627 and 1635).

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The Annual Letter for China of 1625 by Manuel Dias. Translated from Portuguese to Italian and published in the treatise entitled Lettere dell'Ethiopia Dell'Anno 1626. fino al Marzo del 1627. E della Cina Dell'Anno 1625. fino al Febraro del 1626., Rome: Appresso l'Erede di Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1629. Its original manuscript is kept in the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid).

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

 

GOODRICH e FANG (1976), pp. 414-416; LEITÃO (2008), pp. 99-121; MAGONE (2008), 123-138; MAGONE (2017), 227-245; PINA (2008), 152-155; WALLIS e GRINSTEAD (1962), pp. 83-91; Chinese Christian Texts Database – KU Leuven.

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The entry, with scientific review should be cited as follows: Isabel Murta Pina and Paulo de Assunção, "Manuel Dias Júnior (1574-1659)", in Res Sinicae, Enciclopédia de Autores, Arnaldo do Espírito Santo, Cristina Costa Gomes and Isabel Murta Pina (Coord.).

ISBN: 978-972-9376-56-6. URL: "https://www.ressinicae.letras.ulisboa.pt/manuel-dias-junior-1574-1659". Última revisão: 15.01.2021.

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