Lettera annua del Giappone del M. DCXIV. Al molto Rever. Padre Generale della Compagnia di GIESU.

Scritta dal Padre Gabriel de Mattos della medesima Compagnia di Giesù. Rome : Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1617. Octavo, later papered boards with gilt-lettered leather title-piece to spine; title with woodcut Jesuit device, and with an early nineteenth-century ownership inscription to bottom margin; pp. 205; occasional browning, a fine copy.

‘The first Italian edition (the original was Portuguese) of the annual letter on the state of the Jesuit mission in Japan for 1614, dated from Nagasaki 長崎, Oct. 13, 1614, compiled by Gabriel de Matos.’ (Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database).

Gabriel de Matos was born at Vidigueira, Portugal, in 1572, and entered the Jesuit order at the age of sixteen. After spending twenty years in the Japan missions, he was appointed provincial of Malabar. He died in January, 1633, either at Cochin or at Macao (according to differing authorities).

Cordier, Japonica, 275; Streit, v. V, pp. 419-27; Sommervogel, v. V, col. 72; Rivière, 248