Philippe Couplet

Philippe Couplet, SJ (1623–1693), known in China as Bai Yingli, was a Flemish Jesuit missionary to the Qing Empire. He worked with his fellow missionaries to compile the influential Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese, published in Paris in 1687. As his works were in Latin, he is also sometimes known as .

Life Early life Philippe Couplet was born in Mechelen in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) in 1623. He entered the Jesuit Order in 1640.

In China (1656–1681) The map of China in the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, with Couplet's notes about Chinese demographics. Couplet's interest in China was aroused by a lecture by Martino Martini, a former Jesuit missionary there. Couplet took various responsibilities throughout China, but had to take refuge in Canton during the 1665–1670 persecutions. Soon after, Couplet and Shen answered questions about the nature of the Chinese language posed by linguists in Oxford, Berlin, and Vienna. To prove his point he had to add 1400 years to the time period that existed between Creation and the birth of Abraham. Leibniz, for example, was able to establish, after communicating with the Jesuits, that the binary system he had invented also existed in the Yijing. The work—parts of which had appeared earlier in separate, little known, editions—built upon the efforts of several generations of Jesuit missionaries and was dedicated to Louis XIV. The preface to the translation highly praised the works of Confucius:

Although wanting to return to China, he had to wait until a dispute between the vicars apostolic of the Asian missions (to which he had taken an oath of obedience) and the Portuguese padroado system (his initial tutelary organization) was resolved.

Works . 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 Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin