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RICCI, MATTEO and NICOLAS TRIGAULT. De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu. Ex P. Matthaei Riccii eiusdem Societatis Commentariis, Libri V... auctore Nicolai Trigautio. Lyon: (Jean Jullieron) for Horace Cardon, 1616. 4to, 204 x 144 mm. (8 x 5¾ in.), 18th-century vellum over pasteboard, backstrip lettered in gilt, engraved title with lower margin extended, faint dampstaining to preliminary leaves, fol. ã4 remargined at gutter (probably supplied), folding plan with small tear at guard and edges a bit dust-soiled, rust-hole to Vv2 affecting 4 letters, short marginal tear to fol. Zz1, light foxing, a few leaves browned. Engraved title by J. de Fornazeris incorporating Ricci's map of China flanked by figures of St. Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci, folding woodcut plan of the villa in Peking with church converted into Ricci's tomb, errata and colophon leaf at end, with 4L4 blank. Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, 2095; De Backer-Sommervogel VIII, 239.
Second Latin edition of the earliest authoritative European source of information on China. At his death, the pioneer Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci left an unfinished description of the missions in China among his journals in Italian. Trigault, procurator of the Jesuit mission in China, translated, completed and substantially reworked the manuscript, "to complete the story and to depict China and the Jesuit mission in a more favourable light. The resulting volume contains a history of the Jesuit mission in China from its inception in 1583 until Ricci's death in 1610, the same year in which Trigault arrived in China. It includes a wealth of information about China... describing Chinese geography, poeple, laws, government, religion, learning, commerce and the like" (D. F. Lach, Asia in the making of Europe, Chicago 1965-93). The De Christiana expeditione "reopened the door to China... [It] probably had more effect on the literary and scientific, the philosophical and the religious, phases of life in Europe than any other historical volume of the seventeenth century" (Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: the journals of Matthew Ricci, New York, 1953, p.xvii-xix). The book was widely read on the continent: a French translation appeared during the same year as the present edition, followed by translations into German, Spanish and Italian. Extracts were included in Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), but the first full English translation did not appear until 1953.
Second Latin edition of the earliest authoritative European source of information on China. At his death, the pioneer Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci left an unfinished description of the missions in China among his journals in Italian. Trigault, procurator of the Jesuit mission in China, translated, completed and substantially reworked the manuscript, "to complete the story and to depict China and the Jesuit mission in a more favourable light. The resulting volume contains a history of the Jesuit mission in China from its inception in 1583 until Ricci's death in 1610, the same year in which Trigault arrived in China. It includes a wealth of information about China... describing Chinese geography, poeple, laws, government, religion, learning, commerce and the like" (D. F. Lach, Asia in the making of Europe, Chicago 1965-93). The De Christiana expeditione "reopened the door to China... [It] probably had more effect on the literary and scientific, the philosophical and the religious, phases of life in Europe than any other historical volume of the seventeenth century" (Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century: the journals of Matthew Ricci, New York, 1953, p.xvii-xix). The book was widely read on the continent: a French translation appeared during the same year as the present edition, followed by translations into German, Spanish and Italian. Extracts were included in Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), but the first full English translation did not appear until 1953.