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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2022
Except for explicitly missiological studies there has been little perceptible inclination on the part of Africanists to exploit a voluminous and important genre of source - the published writings of missionaries who served in Africa. For better or worse, the desire to devote as much time, energy, and expense to collecting oral materials in the field has come to dominate research programmes to the inevitable exclusion of analyzing as wide a range as possible of other materials. As far as the missionary materials are concerned, this failure is prompted to some degree by a tendency to devalue these materials because of the smug and patronizing attitudes so often manifested in them.
This conscious or unconscious eschewing of a major body of source material is unfortunate in itself.
For a fuller discussion of Bibliotheca Missionum see my “Bibliotheca Missionum: a Case of Benign Neglect”, History in Africa, 5 (1978). The same observation holds true for missionary archival materials.
2 The same observation holds true for missionary archival materials.
3 Volumes 15 to 18 are arranged in roughly chronological fashion while volumes 19 and 20 are arranged by missionary order.
4 This number was in turn only a small part of total of Catholic journals devoted to missionary activities. See the (admittedly incomplete) list of 1872 journals in BM, 23: 596-668.
5 Not all are in Rome, however; somewhat more accessible are the archives of the Mill Hill Fathers, St. Joseph's College, Lawrence St., Mill Hill, London NW7 4JX (01-959 8254).
6 More details on Bibliotheca Missionum and on the Pontificia Biblioteca Missionaria can be found in: Johannes Pietsch, P. Robert Streit, O.M.I. Ein Pionier der katholischen Missionswissenschaft (Schriftenreihe der Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, XI) (Schöneck-Beckenried, 1952); Metzler, J., “The Pontifical Missionary-Library ‘De Propaganda Fide’”, in De Archivis et Bibliothecis Missionibus atque Scientiae Missionum Inservientibus (Euntes Docete, 21),(Rome, 1968), pp.347-60; Johannes Beckmann, “Werden, Wachsen und Bedeutung der Bibliotheca Missionum” in ibid., pp.33-57.Google Scholar