Letters of a Peking Jesuit : the correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest SJ (1623-1688) /  [edited by] Noël Golvers.

Introduction and commentary in English; letters in various languages, chiefly Latin and Portuguese.

Revised and expanded version of the edition entitled Correspondance de Ferdinand Verbiest, edited by Henri Josson and Léon Willaert; published Brussels : Palais des Académies, 1938.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 949-962) and indexes.

Together with Verbiest’s printed works, this correspondence is the most direct witness of his rich life and activities (1623-1688). It covers the 43 years between his first application for the Indies (1645) and his farewell to the Kangxi Emperor (28.01.1688). Side by side with the copies of his astronomical drawings and eclipse maps, inventoried in F. Verbiest and the Chinese Heaven (2003), these letters reveal a wide-ranging network of contacts, within China and with Europe. The topics are as many and various as the 55 correspondents are different, spanning the whole spectrum from the Jesuits in Moscow to Pedro II in Lisbon, from the Franciscans in Shandong to Pope Innocentius XI and the Cardinals of CPF in Rome.  The topics are related to his successive positions in the Jesuit hierarchy in China, his work as an engineer and ‘astronomer’ for the Court and his international diplomatic interventions, with the Jesuit mission in China as the central argument. Verbiest appears in his letters as a very engaged personality, with strong (but carefully outed) convictions and a wide outlook, which comprises the Peking and European Courts, together with Manila, Goa and Siam in one vision. This edition of 134 letters from and to Verbiest replaces that of Henri Bosmans (ed. by H. Josson and L. Willaert), publ. in Brussels in 1938. It is a critical revision of the formerly known 80 items, with a restitution of the original Chinese transcriptions (due to A. Dudink), all extended with 54 new items, mostly from the Ajuda archives (Lisbon), the latter putting especially the Chinese scene in the focus. Two major documents are added (dated 1661 and 1681), which reflect his talents as a polemic writer; also in various other letters he unfolds scriptorial talents, combined to a sharp sense of observation. All this makes this pluri-linguistic corpus (mainly in Latin and Portuguese) to a first hand testimony of the Jesuit mission in China during the restoration from its crisis (1665-1669) to its apogee, of which many dramatic moments and aspects are revealed by the author, who was the main agent in this process.

Nicolas Standaert 鍾鳴旦: Dutch, Flemish and German engravings presented to the Kangxi Emperor.
Matteo Nicolini-Zani 馬明哲: Was Xu Guangqi the author of the Tie shizi zhu 鐵十字著 (1627) which promotes the Iron Cross as a Christian relic?
Noël Golvers 高華士: Jesuit correspondence from China: the two ‘Tartary-Letters’ of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ, (1682 & 1683) and their oldest printed edition (Paris, 1684) as a case study.
Hartmut Walravens 魏漢茂: Der vergessene Castiglione-Experte George Robert Loehr und seine Briefe an Walter Fuchs.
Review article: [D.E. Mungello], Turning the wheel in Sino-Western history.

Matteo Nicolini-Zani’s article includes English translation: A Clarification about an Iron Cross [Instruction on the “Song of the Iron Cross”] by Xu Guangqi, posthumously called Wending 文定.

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EUCHINA notice:

1) pp. 1-27: Nicolas Standaert, “Dutch, Flemish and German engravings presented to the Kangxi emperor”. concerns BAV Borgia Cinese 318 (2) [1708] and 316 (17) [1720], describing engravings (which themselves are missing) identified as coming from resp. 'Theatrum Biblicum' (1639/1643, Claes Visscher ed.) and 'Biblisches Engel- u. Kunst Werck' (1694, Johann Kraus comp.).
2) pp. 28-42: Matteo Nicolini-Zani, “Was Xu Guangqi the author of the 'Tie shizi zhu' 鐵十字著 (1627) which promotes the iron cross as a Christian relic?” [with Chinese text and English translation; the attribution to Xu is supported]

3) pp. 43-58, Noël Golvers, “Jesuit correspondence from China: The two ‘Tartary letters’ of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1682 & 1683) and their oldest printed edition (Paris, 1684) as a case study”. [pp. 43-55; p. 56/57: references; p. 57/58: two additional notes]

4) pp. 59-73, Hartmut Walravens, “Der vergessene Castiglione-Experte George Robert Loehr and seine Briefe an Walter Fuchs”. [pp. 59-61; pp. 62-71: the text of seven letters; pp. 71-73: list of Loehr’s publications]

5) pp. 74-91, reviews:
a) pp. 74-81, David Mungello, “Turning the wheel in Sino-Western history” on four recent books about Johann Schreck: 2016 (von Collani /Zettl eds.), 2014 (Deiwiks /Geulen eds.), 2006 (Iannacone, 'L’amico di Galileo'), 2007 (Langner, 'Kopernikus in der Verbotenen Stadt');
b) pp. 81-84, Jocelyn Marinescu, on volume 3 of Golvers, Libraries of Western learning for China (2015);
c) pp. 84-87, David Mungello, on Paul Katz, 'Religion in China and its modern fate' (2014);
d) pp. 88-91, Wu Huiyi on Thierry Meynard, 'The Jesuit reading of Confucius' (2015).