Confucius Sinarum Philosophus sive Scientia Sinensis Latine Exposita

The first Western edition of Confucius

Confucius Sinarum Philosophus sive Scientia Sinensis Latine Exposita

Philippe Couplet, Prospero Intorcetta, Chrétien Herdtrich, François de Rougemont

Paris, 1687

First Edition. Folio(34 x 21.5 cm.) i-viii, 1-108, 1-21, blank leaf, 1-159, 1-8, ix-cxxiv, i-xx, 1-106, map leaf, 105-108, colophon leaf. With two full-page engraved plates: a portrait of Confucius and Couplet's map of China.

Textblock with some mild browning and light sporadic stains, repaired contemporary vellum. An attractive, Near Fine copy of a really important book.

"The first widely accessible Latin translation of three of the four Confucian classics, The Daxue(The Great Learning), Lunyu(The Analects), and The Zhongyong(The Doctrine of the Mean), as well as a biographical sketch of Confucius…This seminal work was the culmination of a century of Jesuit attempts to translate and interpret the Confucian classics. The bulk of this collective work was composed in China under the leadership of the Sicilian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta(1626–1696) in Guangzhou, where twenty-four Jesuit missionaries, along with four Dominicans and a Franciscan, had been exiled in 1666 after the bitter confrontation between the Muslim astronomer Yang Guangxian(1597–1669) and Adam Schall von Bell(1591–1666). The final product was completed and heavily edited by Philippe Couplet(1623–1693), who presented it to Melchisédech Thévenot(1620–1692), librarian of Louis XIV, for publication with

the Bibliothèque Royale."(Canaris)

A landmark civilizational introduction to Confucius, the most famous Chinese person in history and one of the world's most renowned philosophers.

Ref: Peace and Reason of State in the Confucius Sinarum philosophus, Daniel Canaris