The subtle discursive strategie behind the Innocentia Victrix (1671)

Abstract

The strong presence of Society of Jesus in China suffered a hard blow, between 1664 and 1671, which culminated in a long judicial process: persecutions, arrests, exile and even the death of some priests. From both the side of Chinese powers as well as accused, applications, libels, edicts, verdicts were produced, sometimes with strange content and, above all, contradictory. Such procedural pieces were gathered in a book, under the title Innocentia victrix  -  "Winner Innocence"  or "Triumph of Innocence" - attributed to António de  Gouveia, Vince-provincial of the Society of Jesus, and published in Guangzhou in 1671, both in Chinese and Latin. The book, however, is more than the simple combination of procedural documents: the person responsible for the organization (and for the suggestive title, nothing innocent) often interferes in the text, even within the judicial pieces, with opinions, comments, interpretations, value judgments.

The objective of this paper is to make a detailed reading of this text, what it says and what it just looks to suggest, to identify the possible strategy of its responsible and integrate it into the strategy of the Society of Jesus.