Philippe Couplet

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Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (" Confucius , Philosopher of the Chinese"), edited by a working group under Philippe Couplet.

Philippe Couplet (also: Philip or Philippus Couplet ; Chinese  柏 應 理 , Pinyin bó yìng lǐ ; born May 31, 1623 , Mechelen , Spanish Netherlands ; † May 16, 1693 , Goa , India ) was a Belgian Jesuit who lived in the 17th century. Was a missionary in China in the 19th century . He came from Mechelen, then part of the Spanish Netherlands .

Life

China (1656–1681)

Philippe Couplet joined the Society of Jesus in 1640 and soon afterwards his interest in China was aroused by a lecture by Martino Martini (1614–1661). Through these lectures Albert D'Orville , François de Rougemont , and Ignatius Hartogvelt (1629–1658) as well as Ferdinand Verbiest were won over for the mission in China. Couplet set out for China in 1656 with a group of newly recruited Jesuits led by Michał Boym . Boym returned to Emperor Yongli with the Pope's reply . Couplet took on several responsible positions in China, but had to flee to Canton during the persecutions from 1665 to 1670 . He worked closely with Candida Xu ( Chinese  徐 甘 第 大 , Pinyin Xu Gandida , 1607–1680), a granddaughter of Minister Xu Guangqi . Under her patronage, he was able to establish several new churches in Jiangnan .

Legation to Europe (1681–1693)

Couplet was sent to Rome in 1681 as procurator for the Chinese Jesuits . He was supposed to obtain papal permission that the liturgy could be sung in Chinese . During his visit to the Vatican he gave the Pope a library of Chinese translations of Christian books. An audience with Louis XIV gave rise to the plan to send five Jesuit "mathematicians" to the Chinese court.

In his entourage, Philippe Couplet brought Michael Shen Fu-Tsung to Europe, one of the first Chinese people known by name in Europe.

On this trip he was accompanied by two Chinese converts. One of them was Michael Shen Fu-Tsung (Miguel Shen Fuzong), one of the first Chinese people known by name to visit Italy , France and England . Among other things, they conducted scientific discussions with linguists about the nature of the Chinese language. They visited Oxford , Berlin and Vienna .

Works

In 1686 Couplet published the Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae , a "chronological table of the Chinese kings" in Paris . He wanted to prove that there were similarities between the Septuagint and the Chinese chronicles. To prove this theory, he had to insert 1400 years into the period between the creation and the birth of Abraham . However, this put off both the European scholars and the missionaries in China. However, his work had an immense influence on other European branches of science. Leibniz , for example, discovered through his correspondence with the Jesuits that the dual system he had developed also exists in the Chinese classic I Ching .

In 1687 he published together with others ( Prospero Intorcetta , Christian Wolfgang Herdtrich , François de Rougemont) the work Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (" Confucius , Philosopher of the Chinese"), a translation with annotations of three of the four classics that form the basis of the Confucian canon . The work was the summary of the work of several generations of Jesuits. and was dedicated to King Louis XIV. The foreword of the translation extolled the classics:

"One could say that the moral system of this philosopher is infinitely sublime, but at the same time simple, sensitive and drawn from the purest sources of natural reason ... Reason, stripped of Divine Revelation, has never appeared so well developed or with so much force. "

Before returning to China, he made sure that a conflict between the Paris mission , to which he was bound by an oath of obedience, and the Portuguese padroado , his original protector, was resolved. After negotiations that dragged on for eight years, the two sides came to an agreement and Couplet was able to leave for China again. On the voyage, a heavy box fell on his head during a storm over the Arabian Sea and seriously injured him. The almost seventy-year-old died the following day, May 16, 1693, just as his ship arrived in Goa .

Trivia

At a political meeting between Macron , Merkel and Xi Jinping in March 2019, a book by Couplet played a role as a gift. On his arrival on the Côte d'Azur, Macron gave Xi an illustrated translation of Confucius from 1687. With this translation, a sinology of the French language begins .

Opus
  • Philippe Couplet & Prospero Intorcetta: Confucius Sinarum philosophus, sive Scientia sinensis latine exposita . Parisiis: Apud Danielem Horthemels ... 1687 Getty Internet Archive Free Online Digital Version .
  • Tabula Chronologica Monarchiae Sinicae 1686
  • Breve raguaglio delle cose piu notabili spettanti al grand'imperio della Cina . 1687
  • Histoire d'une dame chrétienne de la Chine où par occasion les usages de ces peuples, l'établissement de la religion, les manieres des missionaires, & les exercices de pieté des nouveaux chrétiens sont expliquez . Paris, 1688. Biography of Candida Xu Free Online Digital Version at the Berlin State Library

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Gerald H. Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions , p. 155
  2. ↑ a b David E. Mungello: Curious Country: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology . University of Hawaii Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8248-1219-0 , pp. 253-254.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Donald F Lach: China In Western Thought And Culture . In: Philip P Wiener (Ed.): Dictionary of the History of Ideas 1973, ISBN 0-684-13293-1 (accessed December 2, 2009).
  4. ↑ Ballaster, p. 262
  5. ↑ See Nicholas Dew. Orientalism in Louis XIV's France . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 ( ISBN 978-0199234844 ), pp. 205-208.
  6. ↑ a b University of Barcelona website ( Memento from June 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Nicholas Dew: Orientalism in Louis XIV's France . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-923484-4 Dew describes in an entire chapter the publication process in which the royal librarian Thévenot also played an important role.
  8. ↑ Mungello, 1989 pp. 17, 253-258.
  9. ^ [1] : Alfred Owen Aldridge : The Dragon and the Eagle: The Presence of China in the American Enlightenment - p. 17. 1993.
  10. ↑ Urs App : The Birth of Orientalism , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8122-4261-4 , pp. 146–159. This foreword also played an important role in the discovery of Buddhism in the West.
  11. ↑ "One might say that the moral system of this philosopher is infinitely sublime, but that it is at the same time simple, sensitive and drawn from the purest sources of natural reason ... Never has Reason, deprived of Divine Revelation, appeared so well developed nor with so much power. " Preface by Confucius Sinarum Philosophus . In: Hobson, p. 194
  12. ↑ Mungello, p 257
  13. ↑ China and Europe. The end of naivety: too late? , Die Welt , March 26, 2019, by Martina Meister
personal data
SURNAME Couplet, Philippe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Couplet, Philip; Couplet, Felipe; Couplet, Phelipe; Couplet, Filippo; Couplet, P .; PC; 柏 應 理 (Chinese); bó yìng lǐ
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian Jesuit, missionary and scholar in China
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1623
PLACE OF BIRTH Mechelen
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1693
Place of death Goa , India