Cosmology Lectures at the Jesuit College in Early Modern Japan (1)

Despite the severe persecution of the Christians by the Japanese government, the Jesuit missionary, Pedro Gomez(1535-1600) compiled the astronomy lectures entitled De sphaera (1593) to instruct the students at the Jesuit college in Japan. Back in Europe. Jesuit scholars were very productive in astronomical publications. One example was the commentary of Sacrobosco's De sphaera by Christopher Clavius (1537-1612) and another was the commentary of Aristotle's De coelo, by a group of Jesuit scholars at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Coimbra was exactly the place where Gomez served as a lecturer for eight years before he left the country for his overseas missions. In this paper, I will compare the cosmologies of Gomez and of his contemporary Jesuits in terms of the following points. l) What is the shape of the Empyrean heaven, supposedly the outermost surface of the universe? 2) What causes the celestial motions? Gomez's De sphaera and the Coimbra commentary of De coelo shared some distinct characteristics in common, such as the cubic shape of the outer surface of the Empyrean heaven and the angelic intellect as the motive force of the celestial spheres. The rest of the comparisons are to follow in Part II of this essay