Paving the way to a moral reform of the Jiangzhou community compact: the literary legacy of Alfonso Vagnone S.J.'s Tongyou Jiaoyu

This paper investigates the impact of Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s (1568-1640) pedagogical treatise, Tongyou Jiaoyu (On the Education of Children, c.1632) on the moral education of the Jiangzhou community compact. The introduction will provide an overview on the literary work Vagnone undertook at the Jiangzhou residence, focusing in particular on his educational project aimed at the moral reform of the local community. In the main section of the paper, I will discuss the ‘direct fortune’ of Tongyou Jiaoyu, i.e. the immediate reception the book had in the local area over the years following its publication. The final part of this paper will introduce some considerations about the ‘indirect fortune’ of Tongyou Jiaoyu, which is instead connected to the circulation of terms and concepts it introduced, in the form of quotations in other coeval publications.