From the Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum (1595) to the Lexicon Latino-Iaponicum (1870):: An overview of the revisions in Bernard Petitjeans’ Lexicon

Abstract

The Lexicon Latino-Iaponicum is a Latin-Japanese dictionary edited by Bernard Thadée Petitjean M.E.P. and printed by the Propaganda Fide in Rome. Petitjean, who was a Vicar Apostolic of Japan at that time, found in Manila one a copy of the Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum in Manila. which This dictionary was printed by the Jesuits in Japan in 1595 in Japan and was based on Ambrogio Calepino’s Latin dictionary. Petitjean revised this dictionary to be used for missionary work in Japan. No in-depth research exploring these revisions has been conducted. Thus, this study is aimed to provide an overview of the revisions applied to the Lexicon, with particular emphasis on the Japanese translations. This paper reveals that Petitjean not only translated the Portuguese parts of the original text into Latin or omitted them, but also made significant changes to the Japanese translations, such as rearranging the order of the entries and using new Christian terms that had not been used in early Christian documents. While it is well known that Petitjean continued to use early Christian terms of Latin or Portuguese origin, he had also begun to use new terms along with the old ones in the dictionary for priests, as well as in the three editions of catechism Seikyō shogaku yōri (1868, 1869 and 1872) for Japanese laymen. The research findings have implications with regards to the role of language in missionary works.

Keywords: Lexicon Latino-Iaponicum; Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum; Bernard Thadée Petitjean; Latin lexicography; Christian terminology; Japan