Raphael du Mans

Raphaël du Mans (also: Jacques Dutertre ) (* August 1613 in Le Mans ; † April 1, 1696 in Isfahan ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, Capuchin , missionary and orientalist .

Life

From Le Mans to Isfahan

Jacques Dutertre's family belonged to the Le Mans official nobility. He entered the Capuchin monastery of Le Mans (Bretagne Order Province), made his profession in 1636 and took the religious name Raphaël du Mans . He moved to the province of Touraine, which was responsible for the Orient, and was ordered to Cairo in 1645 . From there he traveled in 1647 in the company of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier via Aleppo to Isfahan to the court of the Safavids . There he became superior of the Capuchin monastery and remained so until his death (almost 50 years).

50 years of Persia

Thanks to his excellent mathematical and astronomical knowledge, he won the recognition of the local elite and from 1654 served at court as a translator and interpreter in dealing with the European delegations. In 1665 he was received for the first time by Shah Abbas II , who held him in high esteem, as did his successor Shah Safi II. He worked as a liaison to Colbert , the French ambassador and the French East India Company, and was on friendly terms with the orientalists Ange de Saint -Joseph , François Pétis de la Croix , Jean Chardin , Jean de Thévenot , Ludvig Fabritius (1648–1729), John Fryer (1650–1733) and Engelbert Kaempfer , as well as with the Armenian Petrus Bedik.

The missionary

As far as missionary work is concerned, Raphaël du Mans saw his role in the Roman Catholic presence rather than in efforts to attract converts, which he considered hopeless with the Mohammedans and difficult with the Armenians . He supported the Armenians and was valued by them.

The orientalist

Raphaël du Mans wrote important texts about Persia during his lifetime, but did not publish them. The French text on the state of Persia in 1660 was incorrectly published in 1890 by Charles Schefer (1820–1898) and reprinted in Farnborough in 1969 and in Frankfurt am Main in 1995. A more correct edition of the Estat de la Perse , together with the correspondence and other texts, namely the Latin text De Persia from 1684, was organized in 1995 by Francis Richard (* 1948) as part of his two volumes on Raphaël du Mans. Raphaël du Mans is methodologically clear in his presentation, which is committed to Western thinking and writes in a colorful style. The British Library holds his manuscript of a Turkish grammar, the Uppsala University Library that of his Turkish dictionary.

Works

• Estat de la Perse en 1660 . Ed. Charles Schefer. Leroux, Paris 1890. 2 vol. Frankfurt am Main 1995.
• Francis Richard: Raphaël du Mans . 2 vols. Éd. l'Harmattan, Paris 1995. (Review by Françoise Aubin in: Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 90, 1995, pp. 116–117 [1] )
  • 1: biography. Correspondance
    • (Life and Work), pp. 7–134
    • Correspondence, pp. 135-318
  • 2: Estats et mémoire
    • Estat de la Perse (1660), pp. 4-199
    • Mémoire sur les Jésuites (1662), pp. 201-237
    • Estat de la Perse (1665), pp. 259-277
    • De Persia (1684), pp. 279-381

literature

• François Pouillon (* 1943): Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française . Paris 2008, pp. 326–327 (author of the article: Bernard Heyberger ).
• Francis Richard: "YOU MANS, RAPHAEL". In: Encyclopaedia Iranica VII / 6, pp. 571-572. [2]

Web links

• Information on Raphaël du Mans in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Raphaël du Mans in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)