The Catholic Church in Korea: Its Origins, 1566-1784

by Juan Ruiz de Medina, John Bridges (Translator)

A concise work rich in new information collected from unedited documents found in five European libraries, about the history of the Korean Catholic Church before the time of its officially recognized foundation in 1784

Genres: Religion

380 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Malachi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely provides English translations for a lot of interesting letters between (mostly) Jesuit priests in the late 1500s-mid- 1600s but fails to convincingly make its central claim.

The bulk of the material is about Korean Catholics who were killed in Japan in the 1600s, and letters between priests in Southeast Asia and China and Japan about how much they want to evangelize in Korea. Unfortunately using these texts as the entire primary source basis for the argument means that the central claim fails to be proven. All discussion of Koreans in Korea is assumptions about what they “must have thought” or “must have known” but there isn’t a document from Koreans in Korea to validate any of these claims.

It’s unclear to me if the author looked. It says in the translators note that the original author doesn’t know Korean, which is a pretty major downside to writing a useful history of the country. The lack of a single document from a Korean outside of converts living in Japan renders the central claim unproven to me.

Two stars because outside of the failure of that main claim I do really think that the letters from prison and about the killing of Catholics in Japan in the 1600s are very interesting, and the letters between jesuits about their many many failed efforts to evangelize in Korea are also fascinating.

[Ocean G · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather fascinating look into the origins of the Korean Catholic Church. Of course, pretty much zero percent of the book actually deals with Korea. It discusses how the first Korean converts were Koreans in exile in Japan (several thousand of them apparently), and how they brought the religion back to Korea. And then, several monks in China were trying to go to Korea to convert people, but apparently never made it. From then on, any information re: actual Catholic converts in Korea is pure conjecture. It seems like they existed, and even now several Catholic families date themselves back to the early 1600's apparently. But still, unfortunately we don't really have any concete information about the start of the Catholic church within Korea.

Also, the fact that the author doesn't seem to speak/read Chinese or Korean seems like a weakness. I can't help wondering if he's missing anything.

Having said all that, I did find the book to be a very interesting look, and I was rather amazed at how much documentation we have about these monks and priests around East Asia in the 1500s and 1600s.