Girolamo Maiorica

Girolamo Maiorica (b.1591 –4656, Nghe An) was a Jesuit missionary to Asia in Vietnam.^[1]

Maiorica, often given the Portuguese name Jerônimo Majorica, arrived in Cochinchina in 1624 on the same boat as Alexandre de Rhodes. Unlike Rhodes he was not a student of Francisco de Pina (1585–1625); he studied the Vietnamese language at the Jesuit residence at Quy Nhon (known as Pulo Cambi in Portuguese) in Binh Dinh.^[2] He was the first Roman Catholic in Vietnam to produce texts using the vernacular Vietnamese language written in demotic chu nom script, rather than chu Han Chinese.^[3][4] He left a significant body of writings^[5] preserved at the French Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.^[6]

References

1. Roland Jacques Portuguese pioneers of Vietnamese linguistics prior to 1650 2002 - p. 53 "Girolamo Maiorica, in Portuguese Jerônimo Majorica (1591-1656) was missionary first in Cochinchina from 1624 to 1629, then in Tonkin, especially in the Nghç An province, from 1631 till his death in 1656."
2. Donald F. Lach, Edwin J. Van Kley Asia in the Making of Europe Volume III (1998), p. 240 "In 1645 Joao Cabral (1598-1669), vice-provincial of the Japan province, and four other Jesuits joined Girolamo Majorica (1591 – 1656)"
3. Otto Zwartjes Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550-1800 (2011), p. 292 "It has been documented that one of the first missionaries, the Italian Girolamo Majorica S.J. (1591–1656), wrote in the chu nom script (Phan 1998: 30). Francisco de Pina wrote a catechism in chu nom, but as happened in Japan and China"
4. Marc Spindler, Annie Lenoble-Bart Chrétiens d'Outre-mer en Europe: un autre visage de l'immigration (2000), p. 152 "... texte en vietnamien romanisé, son catéchisme latino-vietnamien ; et ensuite Girolamo Maiorica (1605-1656) avec la rédaction en vietnamien démotique, le nom (écriture basée sur les idéogrammes chinois), des premiers livres chrétiens."
5. Gregorianum - Pontificia università gregoriana (Rome). p. 813 "Space does not allow treatment of other authors between the seventeenth and twentieth century, especially Girolamo Majorica, S.J. (1591-1656), who has left a significant body of writings.
6. Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France), Centre national du livre (France) Volume 85, Numéros 318 à 321 (1998), p. 50 "Girolamo Maiorica est un Jésuite italien missionnaire au Tonkin. Voir HoÀNG Xuân HJn, « Girolamo Majorica. Ses oeuvres en langue vietnamienne conservées à la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris », in Archivum Hisloricum Societatis lesu, 22,"