The moon of the East Asian missionaries four centuries after Diego de Pantoja

The goal of embracing China in the early modern era could be compared to the spatial goal of travelling to the moon: it was described thus by a Franciscan missionary in the 1570s. This was a long, expensive, and dangerous mission. Once the first permanent contact was established, a slow and difficult journey began in which Dominican, Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries tried different strategies to find points of contact between them and mutual support. In this text, a result of participation in the workshop, we present these strategies, with specific reference to Jesuit Father Diego de Pantoja, as we commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death in 2018