# Compendium doctrinae Christianae idiomate Barmano sive Bomano **Autore:** Percoto Giovanni Maria **Dati editoriali:** Rome, [Typis Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide], 1776 **Codice archivio:** 186 **Prezzo:** 1680.00 USD **Stato commerciale:** Disponibile **Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/percoto-compendium-doctrinae-christianae-1776 --- ## Descrizione accademica e analisi 8vo (197x136 mm). 42, [2 blank] pp. Title-page in Burmese and Latin, the text printed entirely in Burmese characters, enclosed within decorative typographical borders, with ornamental vignettes and woodcut decorations. Nineteenth-century half vellum over boards, gilt-decorated spine with morocco lettering-piece (front free endpaper wanting, occasional minor rubbing). A very good copy. Extremely rare first edition, produced in Rome by the polyglot press of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, and among the earliest surviving examples of extended Burmese-language printing with European movable metal type. The work is associated with Giovanni Maria Percoto, an Italian Barnabite missionary whose pioneering linguistic activity in eighteenth-century Burma played an important role in the development of European knowledge of the Burmese language. The title-page does not explicitly name Percoto, but modern historical scholarship identifies him with the translation, and his authorship is accepted in recent academic studies of Burmese biblical translation. The earliest sustained Catholic missionary efforts in Burma were closely connected with the Barnabites, or Clerics Regular of St Paul, who established missions within the Burmese kingdoms during the eighteenth century. Their religious activities demanded intensive engagement with local languages and the existing intellectual and religious culture. Missionaries were obliged to develop a vocabulary capable of expressing Christian concepts in Burmese, a language whose established literary and philosophical terminology was profoundly influenced by Theravāda Buddhism and the Pāli tradition. Percoto became an especially important figure in this undertaking. In addition to pastoral work, he devoted considerable attention to Burmese grammar, lexicography and translation. The linguistic material compiled by the Barnabite missionaries ultimately reached Rome, where the Congregation de Propaganda Fide possessed the resources necessary to manufacture specialised printing types and issue texts in unfamiliar writing systems. The Compendium doctrinae Christianae was published in 1776, the same year as Giovanni Cristoforo Amaduzzi’s Alphabetum Barmanum seu Bomanum regni Avae finitimarumque regionum, likewise issued by the Roman press. These two publications represent complementary manifestations of the same intellectual and technological programme. Whereas the Alphabetum introduced the Burmese writing system to European readers, the Compendium employed Burmese characters to transmit an extended body of Christian teaching directly in the vernacular. The Compendium is remarkable for its typographical presentation. Apart from the Latin component of the title-page, the book is entirely printed in Burmese script. Each page is framed by an ornamental border, creating an unusually elaborate visual setting for a relatively modest missionary text. The decorative programme combines the technical achievement of Burmese character printing with the established aesthetic conventions of the Roman ecclesiastical press. Printing Burmese by European letterpress presented substantial practical difficulties. The script comprises rounded letterforms, dependent vowel signs, medial consonantal elements and other graphic combinations which could not be reproduced through straightforward substitution of Latin characters. The production of such a book therefore required specially designed type and a compositorial system capable of expressing the characteristic structures of written Burmese. The significance of the text is not confined to typography. As an early Burmese-language catechism, it documents the process by which European missionaries sought equivalents for Christian theological concepts within an existing Asian literary tradition. The translation of fundamental prayers and doctrines required decisions about terminology, semantic range and the relationship between inherited Burmese religious vocabulary and specifically Christian meanings. This dimension has acquired particular importance in recent scholarship. John de Jong’s study, “Adoniram Judson's Burmese Bible: Dependency and Development,” published in Church History in 2023, examines the relationship between eighteenth-century Catholic Burmese translations and the later work of Protestant missionaries. By comparing the Lord’s Prayer in Percoto’s 1776 Compendium with subsequent translations by James Chater and Adoniram Judson, de Jong demonstrates that the history of Burmese biblical translation did not begin with the celebrated American Baptist missionary. Judson, who arrived in Burma in 1813 and completed his Burmese translation of the Bible in 1840, worked within a developing vernacular Christian tradition to which earlier Catholic translators had already contributed. His achievement remains historically exceptional, but the existence of Percoto’s text provides an important earlier witness to the formation and transmission of Christian terminology in Burmese. The Compendium also occupies a distinctive place in the history of printed religious literature in Southeast Asia. Its production in Rome illustrates the geographical separation that could exist between the linguistic origins of a missionary text and its material manufacture. Burmese-language knowledge was acquired in Asia, transmitted through missionary networks, and converted into movable-type printing in a European institution whose output was intended for circulation beyond Europe. The edition therefore embodies several interconnected historical processes: the expansion of Catholic missionary scholarship, the development of comparative linguistic knowledge, the adaptation of European typographical technology to non-Latin scripts, and the emergence of Christian literature in Burmese. It is important, however, to distinguish its place in the history of printing from that of indigenous Burmese book production. Burma already possessed a substantial manuscript culture, including palm-leaf manuscripts and other traditional forms of textual transmission. The innovation represented by the Compendium concerns European-style metal-type printing in Burmese, not the introduction of writing or books to Burmese society. --- ## Bibliografia di riferimento Barnett, Lionel David. A Catalogue of the Burmese Books in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1913, col. 50; Cordier, Henri. Bibliotheca Indosinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à la péninsule indochinoise. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1912–1915, vol. I, col. 287; De Jong, John. “Adoniram Judson's Burmese Bible: Dependency and Development.” Church History, vol. 92, no. 4 (December 2023), pp. 822-844; De Jong, John Hans. “‘Scripture Extracts’: An Early Catholic Burmese Translation.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 75, no. 4 (October 2024), pp. 747-757; Amaduzzi, Giovanni Cristoforo, ed. Alphabetum Barmanum seu Bomanum regni Avae finitimarumque regionum. Rome: Typis Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1776; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Compendium doctrinae Christianae idiomate Barmano sive Bomano, 1776, digital copy, identifier bsb10397806; Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\NAPE\065846. --- *Documento generato automaticamente dall'Archivio Govi Rare Books per finalità di ricerca e catalogazione.*