Martino Martini

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Martino Martini (20 September 1614 - 6 June 1661) was a distinguished Italian Jesuit missionary, cartographer and historian, mainly working on imperial China.

[edit] Biography

Martini was born in Trento. In 1631 he entered the Austrian province of his order, where he studied mathematics under Athanasius Kircher in the Roman College, probably with the intention of being sent to China.

He set out for China in 1640, and arrived in 1643. While there he made great use of his talents as missionary, scholar, writer and superior. In 1650 he was sent to Rome as procurator for the Chinese Mission, and took advantage of the long, adventurous voyage (going first to the Philippines, from thence on a Dutch privateer to Batavia, he reached Bergen in Norway on 31 August 1653), to sift his valuable historical and cartographical data on China. During his sojourn in Europe the works were printed that made his name so famous.

In 1658 he returned with provisionally favourable instructions on the question of ritual to China, where he laboured until his death in Hangzhou in 1661. According to the attestation of P, Prosper Intorcetta (Litt. Annuae, 1861) his body was found undecayed twenty years after; it became a long-standing object of cult not only for Christians, until in 1877, suspecting idolatry, the hierarchy had it buried again. Ferdinand von Richthofen calls Martini "the leading geographer of the Chinese mission, one who was unexcelled and hardly equaled, during the eighteenth century ... There was no other missionary, either before or after, who made such diligent use of his time in acquiring information about the country." (China, I, 674 sq.)

[edit] Works

Martini's most important work is Novus Atlas Sinensis (Amsterdam 1655), with 17 maps and 171 pages of text, a work which is, according to Richthofen, "the most complete geographical description of China that we possess, and through which Martini has become the father of geographical learning on China".

Of the great chronological work which Martini had planned, and which was to comprise the whole Chinese history from the earliest age, only the first part appeared: Sinicæ Historiæ Decas Prima (Munich 1658), which reached until the birth of Jesus.

His De Bello Tartarico Historia (Anvers 1654) is also important as Chinese history, for Martini himself had lived through the frightful occurrences which brought about the overthrow of the ancient Ming dynasty. The works have been repeatedly published and translated into different languages.

Interesting as missionary history is his Brevis Relatio de Numero et Qualitate Christianorum apud Sinas (Brussels 1654).

Besides these, Martini wrote a series of theological and apologetical works in Chinese, including a De Amicitia (Hangzhou 1661) that could have been the first anthology of Western authors available in China (Martini's selection fished mainly into Roman and Greek writings). Several works, among them a Chinese translation of the works of Suarez, still exist in his handwriting. Of these is notable his Grammatica Sinica, which he brought along and donated to Jacobus Golius, and that couldn't be printed because of the impossibility to reproduce Chinese characters. This very copy is still preserved in the Anvers Royal Library; over time many others were made.

[edit] Source

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. [1]