was appointed as the main língua of the city in the Regiment of 1627, charged with negotiating with the Chinese authorities. Yet, his transformation was not as significant as that of Zheng Zhilong, from outlaw to Ming official.5 5 Hang 2016, 51. The section continues with the contribution of Noèl Golvers, in which he analyses the position of Macau (specifically, the Jesuit College of Madre de Deus)y regarding scientific and academic exchange between Asia and Europe. Using the extant documental corpus of the Belgian Jesuit Antoine Thomas (Chinese name: Anduo 安多，1644—1709) from the three years he lived in Macau between 1682 and 1685, Golvers shows that the Macau College was already at the centre of a communication and exchange network. This network extended from China (notably Peking), via Siam and Batavia, to Goa and Europe (specifically, Paris, Rome or Antwerp). During these years, it is possible to observe, through Thomas' correspondence, the arrival at the College of the most recent works on astronomy and mathematics published in Europe, and also of up-to-date scientific journals and more accurate telescope lenses which Thomas had commissioned from their agents and contacts in Europe. In the opposite direction, the resuks of astronomi- cal observations made by Thomas himself in Macau, or by his confreres in Peking, were being dispatched, and discussed in Paris in the sessions of the Académie des Sciences, During these three years, based on the materiais Thomas had access to in Macau, information also circulated in other areas in which he was active. Such was the case of nautical cartography, naturalia，or pharmacopoeia, and apologetic treatises that he penned, and sent to Goa, and thence to Europe. The study by Helene leong introduces us to the efforts being made in Macau in modem times to promote its religious documental heritage. In a territory marked, as the author States, by “marine civilization”，where multiple religious cultures coex- isted, namely Catholic and Buddhist, a unique documental corpus has survived, and is kept at different Macanese archives. This collection has been registered in UNESCO programmes, namely Memory o f the World, with the aim of preserving and disseminating Macaus rich documental heritage. The volume closes with a second contribution by Pascale Girard, in French, in which she analyses a document attributed to an author with whom she is very well acquainted, the Jesuit Adriano de las Cortes, who penned a vibrant account on his return to Manila after his visit to China in 1625. Having already produced a criticai (and translated) edition of Cortes' original manuscript, which is preserved in the British Library (Ms. Sloan 1005), here Girard thoroughly examines another manuscript found in the Hispanic Society of New York collection to verify the authenticity of this document, which has only recently become known. Somewhat 16
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