Nicolas Trigault: Missionary and Linguist

In the history of the Sino-European cultural encounter, the French-speaking Flemish Jesuit Nicolas Trigault (Jīn Nígé 金尼閣 1577–1628)¹ played an important role in the early seventeenth century. Arriving at Macau in 1610, Trigault, a former teacher of humanities from Flanders, had already preached for three years in India. He traveled between Nanjing and Beijing for the business of the Society of Jesus and learned the Chinese language from Alfonso Vagnoni (Gāo Yīzhì or Wáng Fēngsù 高一 志/王豐肅 1566–1640) and Lazzaro Cattaneo (Guō Jūjìng 郭居靜 1560–1640). The latter became Trigault’s confessor.² In 1612, Trigault returned to Europe under Nicholas Longobardi’s (Lóng Huámín 龍華民 1559–1654) order to request the establishment of a new province in China and the Pope’s permission of the accommodation policies for Chinese converts.³ During his voyage to Rome, he translated and edited Matteo Ricci’s (Lì Mǎdòu 利瑪竇 1552–1610) journal and letters from Italian to Latin, and the product titled De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas was later published in Augsburg in 1615. It became the firsthand account of China in early seventeenth century Europe.

1 Trigault’s nationality and native language are discussed in Appendix 1.

2 Anne-Marie S. Logan and Liam M. Brockey, “Nicolas Trigault, SJ: A Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 38(2003): 157–167.

3 Trigault, as an agent sent by the Jesuit China Mission, requested granting permission to wearing hats in Mass and using Chinese in liturgy. The dressing code accommodated the Chinese custom that bare head is disrespectful and was eventually permitted by the Holy See, whereas the petition of using Chinese in liturgy has never been approved. The history of Jesuit’s accommodation policy and its implication in the Jesuit Mission in China has been discussed in George Harold Dunne, Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty (Notre Dame, Indiana:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), 162–182.

Trigault’s procurer journey was a round trip. Between 1615 and 1618, he recruited new members, collected books, and raised funds for the Jesuit Mission in China. When Trigault reached Macau again in 1620, he brought not only 7,000 titles (the actual number is in doubt), but also several learned missionaries who later played significant roles in the Sino-European cultural encounter. Among these new missionaries, Johann Terrenz Schreck (Dèng Yùhán 鄧玉函; 1576–1630) specialized in physics and medicine, Johann Adam Schall von Bell (Tāng Ruòwàng 湯若望; 1592–1666) in astronomy, and Giacomo Rho (Luó Yǎgǔ 羅雅谷; 1592–1638) in mathematics.⁴ In contrast, Trigault was not an expert in any scientific discipline, but he had excellent achievement in literature and language studies. During Trigault’s second term in China, he compiled a dictionary which attracted modern linguists’ and historians’ attention, the

Siju Ulmoçu 西儒耳目資.

The Siju Ulmoçu is a significant milestone in the histories of Chinese lexicography, missionary linguistics, and Sino-European cultural encounters. It is a product under the convergence of European and Chinese intellectual traditions. The chief compiler,

4 For Trigault’s general biography, see Louis Pfister 費賴之, Zàihuá Yēsūhuìshì Lièzhuàn Jí Shūmù 在華耶穌會士列傳及書目, trans. Chéngjū Féng 馮承鈞 (Beijing: Zhōnghuá Shūjú 中華書局, 1995), 115–125. For his mission and journey in Europe, see Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Standaert discussed the Renaissance culture brought by Trigault and his fellow Jesuit. See Nicolas Standaert, “The Transmission of Renaissance Culture in Seventeenth-Century China,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 3(2003). The number of the books that Trigault brought to China is in doubt. Fang Hao defends the number of seven thousand titles. Hao Fang 方豪, “Běitáng Túshūguǎn Cángshū Zhì 北堂圖書館藏書志,” in Fāng Háo Liùshí Zìdìnggǎo 方豪六十自定稿 [The Collected Works of Maurus Fang Hao Revised and Edited by the Author on His Sixtieth Birthday] (Taipei City: Xuéshēng Shūjú, 1969).

5 The title romanized in Pinyin is “Xirú Ěrmùzī,” usually abbreviated in XREMZ in the

literature. However, since this book has its own romanization system, I would adopt Trigault’s system for the title as Siju Ulmoçu, but diacritics are removed for typographic clearness. The abbreviation is Ulmoçu, which was used in its time. This thesis refers to the three-volume facsimile reprint in Taipei in 1977, which is based on an older facsimile copy made by Peking University and the National Peiping Library (today’s National Library of China) in 1933. Nicolas Trigault, Xirú Ěrmùzī 西儒耳目資 (Taipei: Tiānyī Chūbǎnshè 天一出版社, 1977[1626]).For the table of contents of the Ulmoçu, see Appendix 2.

Trigault and the cooperators, Wáng Zhēng 王徵 (1571–1644) and Hán Yún 韓雲 (?-?), were fully aware of this significant status and hoped for a good response from the Chinese audience. However, following its publication in 1626, the Ulmoçu did not achieve the popularity that its compliers and sponsors expected, and its reviews in the following decades were mixed. After the seventeenth century, no traditional Chinese phonologist mentioned the Ulmoçu again. The importance of the Ulmoçu was not discovered until Luó Chángpéi’s 羅常培 in-depth introduction to modern linguists in 1930. Luó compared Ricci’s and Trigault’s romanization systems in order to trace the historical development of missionary romanization systems. With respect to the terminology of the Ulmoçu, Luó found the European origins of some linguistic terms and the romanization system itself, which served his phonetic reconstruction of the Chinese transcribed in the Ulmoçu. Finally, Luó discovered Chinese intellectuals’

negative and positive responses to the Ulmoçu to examine its influence in the field of traditional Chinese phonology.⁶

This thesis intends not to re-examine the romanization system or the historical phonology of the Ulmoçu, which had been well studied since Luó’s thesis. Rather, I would consider the Ulmoçu within its socio-cultural context, that direct cultural encounters between Europe and Asia were enabled and intensified by European

navigators’ trade-driven expeditions and missionaries’ religion-driven enthusiasms. This alternative scope focuses on some less-addressed issues about the Ulmoçu, such as Trigault’s intellectual heritages. Considering this context of cultural encounter, the influence from European intellectual tradition naturally becomes a major topic for further investigation. In fact, the lexicography of the Ulmoçu is a less addressed field in

6 Chángpéi Luó 羅常培, “Yēsūhuìshì Zài Yīnyǜnxüé Shàng De Gòngxiàn 耶穌會士在音韻學 上的貢獻 [The Jesuit contributions to Chinese Phonology],” 1, no. 3(1930).

previous literature. As an attempt to integrate the Chinese and the European elements to create a unique lexicography, the Ulmoçu is not a translated version of any European original or model. Rather, it looks like its contemporary Chinese rime books, consisting of a theoretical section, several tables, lists of homophonous Chinese characters, and an index organized according to radicals of Chinese characters. However, some European elements, such as the phonetic wheels placed at the very beginning, the alphabetized list of characters, and the syllabary tabulation without “grade děng 等” divisions, are obviously non-Chinese. Thus, the Ulmoçu represents a mixed intellectual background, and this background must be understood through the analysis of the Renaissance culture and that contemporary knowledge to the Chinese language and script.