The work provides an unusually detailed contemporary census and geographical record of Catholic life in 18th century Shandong, where Spanish Franciscans belonging to the Province of San Gregorio Magno in the Philippines had maintained a missionary presence since the seventeenth century. Its date is particularly significant: Christianity had been officially proscribed by the Yongzheng Emperor in 1723, yet the present report documents the persistence of numerous communities several decades later.

Mathias departed Chi nân Fù (Jinan) on 29 November 1756. His itinerary proceeds settlement by settlement, effectively mapping the Franciscan Christian presence through the province. At Xan Kia Lao Choang, reached on 2 December, he found Christians who had been without a priest for three years and consequently unable to receive the sacraments. His arrival, he records, therefore caused considerable joy. During his stay he heard 140 confessions, administered 137 communions, and baptized twenty-eight children and one adult.

The same information is recorded throughout the journey, alongside occasional observations which give considerable immediacy to the account. At Ming Xuy Chay, Mathias notes that there were many baptized Christians, but those who “guardan la Santa Ley y conservan la Fé solo son doce.” Elsewhere his progress was delayed “por causa de las muchas nieves, y rigidisimos frios,” more severe, he writes, than any he had previously experienced.

One particularly vivid episode records the fall of Mathias's young servant down a steep precipice. Fearing that the boy had been killed, Mathias descended and found him alive; remarkably, the glass bottle he was carrying containing the wine necessary for the celebration of Mass had also survived the fall intact, an escape which the missionary interpreted as providential.

On p. X Mathias summarizes the results of his visitation by district, arriving at a “Suma General de todo” of 1,188 confessions, 1,087 communions and 165 baptisms. His concluding observations add that the Christians encountered were both good and bad “como en todas partes”; that almost all those baptized were children, with only eight adults; and that the Mission Seraphica Española de Xan Tûng extended approximately 130 leguas. The journey concluded at Sung Vuan Choang, reached on 1 July 1757, and the report is dated at Jinan on 5 September.

The Mission Seraphica is thus considerably more than a conventional missionary relation. Its succession of Chinese place-names, distances, dates and sacramental statistics preserves a rare snapshot of the social geography of Christianity in Qing China, documenting small and frequently isolated communities and the practical difficulties of maintaining them through itinerant missionary activity. It is equally significant as evidence of the religious networks connecting China, the Philippines and Spain, the mission being administered by the Franciscan Province of San Gregorio in the Philippines.

Extremely rare. We locate only two copies in the United States, at Peabody and the University of Minnesota; a further copy is preserved at the Universitat de València.

Vindel, Catálogo sistemático é ilustrado de la Biblioteca Filipina, 2322. Cf. David E. Mungello, The Spirit and the Flesh in Shandong, 1650–1785 (2001); Marina Torres Trimállez, Con un Catequismo Salvaré un Reino: La Empresa Franciscana en China en la Edad Moderna (2022).