DE ANIMA – Digital Edition & Analysis of a Newly Discovered Jesuit Manuscript: The Herzog August Bibliothek manuscript of the Jesuit Compendia of Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology in Japanese Translation (ca. 1595)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Peter Burschel; Professor Dr. Sven Osterkamp
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 525286644

The research project outlined herein has its origin in the identification of an extensive manuscript at Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB), Wolfenbüttel, which comprises the so-called Compendia of philosophy, theology and cosmology in Japanese translation (ca. 1595), forming for more than two decades since the late 16th century the basis of education in the Jesuit colleges in Japan and later Macau. Although the tripartite Compendia, generally attributed to Spanish Jesuit Pedro Gómez (1533/35–1600), have long been known in their original Latin form (1593), up until today only the first part (De Anima) and most of the second part (De Theologia) of their Japanese translation (ca. 1595) have been accessible in a single manuscript. With its close to 800 pp. of text, the HAB manuscript now comprises for the first time, in addition to the complete second part, the entire third part (De Sphaera), which introduces the geocentric model and the four-element theory in the tradition of Aristotle and Ptolemy. The aim of the project is to present the newly discovered text witness of the Compendia in a user-centered, easily accessible, historical-critical digital edition in order to make it readily available to scholarship in a variety of different fields. To this end, a close cooperation has been arranged between the Section of Japanese Language and Literature at Ruhr University Bochum and the HAB as the owner of the manuscript — and at the same time as a renowned institution in the field of Digital Humanities, well-known through their Digital Library and their series of digital editions for their experience in encoding in XML/TEI-P5, text-mining tools and search algorithms, among others. The digital edition is complemented by a dissertation project which seeks to illustrate the potential only a digital edition is in a position to provide us with. By applying methods from the fields of linguistics and translation studies as well as of digital stylometry, several interrelated but hitherto unresolved issues concerning author- and translatorship, the genesis and transmission of the text, as well as its European models and the translation strategies reflected in it will be addressed herein. First promising results have already been achieved in the preparatory work towards the present grant proposal, yet it is only on the basis of the digital edition of the entire Compendia that the aforementioned approach will reach its full potential.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Christian Heitzmann