Copy of the rare second enlarged edition, revised by the author. The first edition which had appeared only a year earlier in 1728, only contains the plate with the signs on the foreheads of the Indians and is no less rare. The author, a Dominican wishes to defend the papal policy to forbid any adaptations of the Christian faith to local usage and practice advocated by many missionaries, especially the Jesuits. He takes under his protection the Cardinal Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon (1668-1710), who was the papal legate to India and China during the years 1703-1710. The pupose of his legation was to establish harmony among the missionaries, to report to the Hopy See on the general state of the missions and the labours of the missionaries, and, finally, to enforce the decision of the Holy Office against the further toleration of the so-called Chinese rites among the native Christians. These rites consisted chiefly in offering sacrifices to Confucius and the ancestors and in using Chinese names for heaven and God.
Tournon arrived in India in 1703 where in 1704 he issued a decree forbidding the missionaries to permit the practice of the Malabar tites. In the same year he sailed for China. In 1707 he issued his famous decree in Nanking obliging the missionaries to abolish the local rites. Hereupon the emperor ordered Tournon to be imprisoned at Macao, where he died in prison in 1710, shortly after being informed that he had been created cardinal. Although published 18 years after the death of the Cardinal Tournon, the work was very actual. Just a year before, in 1727, Pope Benedict XIII had confirmed the decrees of 1704 and 1707, proving the the debate on these issues had not come to an end. This work is also very important for the history of the relations between Christianity and the Western world on one side and India and China on the other. Under the mask of a theological polemic a great amount of interesting and invaluable information is given on Indian and Chinese religions.
With an owner's inscription on the verso of the front board ("Di me Luigi Vaggi ...") and a small oval black stamp on the title-page. The title-page is somewhat soiled, some very slight foxing throughout. Otherwise in very good condition.