Histoire de L'Expedition Chrestienne au Royaume de la Chine.

Lyon, Horace Cardon, 1616, Translated into French by D. F. de Riquebourg-Trigault.Thick 8vo,(170 x 110mm). Engraved title, frontispiece portrait, folding woodcut and engraved plate of letterpress. Contemporary limp vellum, title inscribed in manuscript on spine.

First French edition of one of the most important works on China. First published in Augsburg by Christopher Mangius (1615), ‘this chronicle about the Western mission in China from 1583-1611… provided a systematic portrait of contemporary Chinese society as perceived by Ricci, who was fluent in Chinese and exhibited both a sympathetic interest in Chinese culture and an erudite perspective on the Jesuits’ accomplishments.

Matteo Ricci, Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters.

Ricci arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China. He became the first European to enter the Forbidden City of Beijing in 1601 when invited by the Wanli Emperor, who sought his services in matters such as court astronomy and calendrical science. He converted several prominent Chinese officials to Catholicism. He also worked with several Chinese elites, such as Xu Guangqi, in translating Euclid’s Elements into Chinese as well as the Confucian classics into Latin for the first time in history.

‘[This work] was among the most important and widely read books on China published during the seventeenth century’ (Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè, China on Paper, 2011).

Cordier Sinica I, 809; De Backer & Sommervogel VIII, 240; Streit V: 2096.