Atlante della Cina di Michele Ruggieri 羅明堅, S.J. (1543-1607)

"Born in Spinazzola in Puglia (Italy), Ruggieri entered the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty-nine after holding official posts under Philip II, King of Naples. He was assigned to the Eastern missions and arrived in Goa on September 13, 1578. (Matteo Ricci was a fellow passenger). In July 1579 he arrived in Macau to implement the revolutionary missiological policy inaugurated by Alessandro Valignano 範禮安, S.J. (1538-1606). In 1583, after establishing friendly contacts with Chinese officials in Guangdong Province he was granted permission to build a church and residence at Zhaoqing 肇慶. In September of 1583 Ruggieri and Ricci took up residence there, establishing the first post-medieval Christian mission in China.
Like Ricci and other pioneers of the Jesuit China mission, Ruggieri was accomplished in many areas, and cartographic and linguistic skills were deemed particularly important. On Ruggieri's map (c. 1609) can be seen detailed information on terrain, cities, and waterways. Learning the Chinese language was not restricted to local dialects but also to learning guanhua 官話, the official language known in Western countries as Mandarin. Dictionaries and lexicons were created and the first semi-standard romanizations for Chinese characters were created (based on Portuguese letter values: see the Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary in this display). Published letters describing Chinese civilization sent by Ricci, Ruggieri, and others to Europe were highly popular and avidly studied by historians and philosophers."--Display placard text.