Published in Italian in 1604, the second edition of Breve Relatione (Brief Relations) describes the region of Peru from the perspective of the Spanish Jesuit missionary Diego de Torres Bollo. Originally published in Rome in 1603, Breve Relatione represents one of the first printed sources of Jesuit missionary endeavors in early modern (ca. 1400-1750) South America.
Diego de Torres Bollo was born in Villapando, Spain in 1550, and joined the Jesuit Order in 1571. In 1581, Torres Bollo was sent to Peru by the Jesuit Order, despite initially requesting to be sent to China. Torres Bollo quickly climbed the hierarchical ladder in Peru, and was named the Procurator by the Jesuit Congress of the Lima Province in 1600, which put him in charge of all missionary activities in Peru. Torres Bollo also later established the first Jesuit missions in Paraguay and Chile in 1609.
Within this short treatise, only spanning 67 pages, Torres Bollo includes descriptions of the natural Peruvian landscape, culture, religion, and diseases. More specifically, Torres Bollo is recounting his own experiences during his time in the cities of Cuzco, Quito, and Potosì. Along with his own accounts of Peru, Torres Bollo also includes multiple letters written by various Jesuit missionaries from the borders of the Peruvian province. The letters contained within Breve Relatione can be viewed as a collection of accounts of missionary life in South America in the early 1600s.
In relation to the native Peruvians, Torres Bollo and the other Jesuit missionaries placed a large emphasis on their willingness to convert to Catholicism. This book, and the letters it contains, have one clear purpose: to promote Jesuit missionary and conversion practices to the Indigenous population. We can wonder whether the Indigenous population actually had the same attitude toward conversion to Catholicism that these missionaries describe. Aside from the motivations and intentions of publishing this book, we still gain an interesting insight into the culture and landscape of seventeenth-century Peru.
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Torres Bollo hoped that by publishing this book, he would gain additional monetary support from the Catholic Church in Rome for South American Jesuit missions. Torres Bollo, as well as the other Jesuit missionaries, wrote this largely romanticized description of the Peruvian landscape, and the successes of the Jesuit missionaries in converting Indigenous peoples to Catholicism with the intention of garnering support in Europe. Interestingly, this edition of Breve Relatione is also bound with published letters from Jesuit missionaries serving in the Philippines, which similarly describe the landscape, culture, and religion in 1601.
Torres Bollo’s account of Peru is one of many sources held within Burns Library that describes Jesuit missionary activities across the globe in the early modern period. Burns’ Jesuitica Collection contains a variety of travel narratives from early modern Jesuit missionaries located in places such as Japan, China, New France, and various other countries.
If you have questions or wish to use any of these resources at Burns Library, please Contact us!
- Alaurea Holder, 2nd Year PhD Student in History, Burns Library Reading Room Assistant
Works Consulted:
- Bollo, Diego de Torres. Breve Relatione. Venetia: Gio. Battista Ciotti Sanese. 1604
- Pierno, Franco. “À la lisière de l’« autre monde » Le Pérou dans la Relatione breve de Diego de Torres Bollo (1603).” Renaissance and Reformation 34, v. 1-2 (2011): 61-96.
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