Very little is known about the origins of Animadversiones, Notae ac Disputationes in Pestilentem Alcoranum, a manuscript of 323 two-sided folios composed by the Jesuit Ignazio Lomellini and housed in the library of the University of Genoa (Ms A-IV-4) and bearing the date 1622.* 
This document is a unique surviving exemplar of the oldest translation of the Qur’an into a Western European language to include the complete Arabic text. It includes a detailed commentary consisting generally of attempts by the author to refute or discredit the Qur’an and the Prophet Mohammed as well as numerous marginalia. The significance of this work derives both from its very early place among translations of the entire Qur’an undertaken by Western Christians and because of the high quality of the translation itself.   Animadversiones is also a unique window into the training and attitudes of Jesuit missionaries and writers engaging with Islam during the early modern period, and thus sheds light on subsequent representations of Muslims and Islam in Jesuit homiletics, drama, and visual art.

*The only scholarly work on this manuscript, the author’s “An Early Jesuit Encounter with the Qur’an: Ignazio Lomellini’s Animadversiones, Notae ac Disputationes in Pestilentem Alcoranum” is forthcoming in AJISS.