Michał Piotr Boym i Jan Mikołaj Smogulecki – dwie jezuickie drogi do Państwa Środka
Michał Piotr Boym and Jan Mikołaj Smogulecki – Two Jesuit Ways to the Middle Kingdom

Summary/Abstract: Michał Piotr Boym and Jan Mikołaj Smogulecki, two seventeenth-century Polish Jesuits, differed in almost every aspect: the origin, property, education, interests, personalities. Their fates became intertwined, however, when, inspired by the desire to carry the Gospel of Christ to the peoples of the Far East, they both joined the Society of Jesus. During the two-year theology studies in Cracow, they prepared together for a future missionary work in China. Their paths diverged, however, when Smogulecki went to Rome, where even before graduation he was promised a trip to the East. Boym, on the other hand, remained in Cracow, from where he persuaded in letters to the Society’s General of his missionary vocation, accusing even Smogulecki of disloyalty. The testimony of the both Jesuits’ efforts to receive the referral to a mission, as well as of the animosity that arose between them, is comprehended in the letters, currently in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Pol. 79), which they both headed to the then General of the Order, Mutio Vitelleschi. While, eventually, both Boym and Smogulecki exercised missionary service in the Middle Kingdom or even lived there at the same time – it seems their paths never met anymore.

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