Michał Boym

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Christianity in China Portal

Michał Piotr Boym[1] (Chinese: 卜弥格[2]; c. 1612–1659) was a Polish scientist, explorer and a Jesuit missionary to China. He is notable as one of the first westerners to travel within the Chinese mainland, and the author of numerous works on Asian fauna, flora and geography.

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[edit] Biography

Little is known of his early life. He was born in Lesser Poland around 1612 or 1614, to a reputable family of distant Hungarian ancestry.[3]. His father was a physician. In 1631, Boym joined the Jesuits, and was ordained a priest. In 1643, after almost a decade of intensive studies in the monasteries of Kraków, Kalisz, Jarosław and Sandomierz, Boym embarked on a voyage to Eastern Asia. He first travelled to Rome, where he obtained a blessing for his mission from Pope Urban VIII, and then proceeded to Lisbon. Later that year he embarked with a group of nine other priests and clerics on a voyage to Portuguese Goa, and then Macau. Initially he taught at the local Jesuit college. He then moved to the island of Hainan, where he opened a small Catholic mission. After the island had been conquered by the Manchurians, Boym had to flee to Tonkin in 1647.

In 1649, Boym was sent on a diplomatic mission to the court of Emperor Yongli, the last Chinese ruler of the Ming dynasty. The Chinese Emperor, endangered by the encroaching Manchus (later Qing dynasty), had converted to Christianity believing this would attract help from Western monarchs for his struggle to continue to rule China. Boym was chosen as the person to present the situation of the Chinese Emperor to the Pope. He received letters from the Emperor's secretary, known by his Christian name of Pang Achilles, to give to Pope Innocent X, the General of the Jesuit Order Francisco Piccolomini, and Cardinal John de Lugo. Additional letters were dispatched to the Doge of Venice and to the King of Portugal. Together with a court official named Chen,[4] Boym embarked on his return voyage to Europe. They arrived at Goa in May of 1651, where they learned that the King of Portugal had already abandoned the cause of the Chinese Emperor, and that Boym's mission was seen as a possible threat to future relations with the victorious Manchu. This view was also supported by the new local superior of the Jesuits, who believed the Jesuit Order should not interfere in the internal power struggles of China.

Boym was placed under house arrest. However, he managed to escape and continue his voyage on foot. By way of Hyderabad, Surat, Bander Abbas and Shiraz, he arrived at Isfahan, in Persia. From there he continued his journey to Erzerum, Trabzon and İzmir, where he arrived near the end of August 1652. As the Venetian court was having conflicts with the Jesuits, Boym discarded his habit and dressed up as a Chinese Mandarin, before he arrived in Venice in December of that year. Although he had managed to cross uncharted waters and unknown lands, his mission there would not be easy, as the political intrigues at the European courts proved to be extremely complicated.

Initially the Doge of Venice refused to grant Boym an audience, as Venice wanted to maintain a neutral stance in regards to China. Boym managed to convince the French ambassador to support his cause, and the Doge finally saw Boym and accepted the letter. However, the French involvement caused a negative reaction from the Pope, as Innocent X was actively opposed to France and its ambitions. Also the newly-elected General of the Jesuits, Gosvinus Nickiel, believed Boym's mission might endanger other Jesuit missions in China and other parts of the world. A new Pope was elected in 1655, and after three years, Alexander VII finally saw Boym on December 18, 1658. However, although Alexander was sympathetic to the Ming dynasty and its dilemma, he could not offer any practical help and his letter to the Chinese emperor contained little but words of empathy and offers of prayers. However, the letter from the new Pope opened many doors for Boym and his mission. In Lisbon, he was granted an audience by King John IV, who promised to help the Chinese struggle with military force.

In March 1656, Boym started his return trip to China. Out of eight priests accompanying him, only four survived the journey. Upon reaching Goa it turned out that Yong Li's situation was dire and that the local Portuguese administration, despite direct orders from the monarch, did not want to let Boym travel to Macau. This was in order not to compromise their commercial enterprises with the victorious Manchu. Boym again ignored the Portuguese monopoly by travelling on foot, this time by an uncharted route to Ayutthaya, the capital of Siam. He arrived there in early 1658, and hired a ship from pirates, with which he sailed to what is now northern Vietnam. In Hanoi, Boym tried to procure a guide to lead him and the priests travelling with him to Yunnan. However, he was unsuccessful and he had to continue the journey alone, with the assistance only of Chang, who had travelled with him all the way to Europe and back. They reached the Chinese province of Guangxi, but on June 22, 1659 Boym died, before reaching the emperor's court. The location of where he was buried is not known today.

[edit] Works

Boym is best remembered for his works describing the flora, fauna, history, traditions and customs of the countries he travelled through. During his first trip to China he wrote a short work on the plants and animals dwelling in Mozambique. The work was later sent to Rome, but was never printed. During his return trip he prepared a large collection of maps of mainland China and South-East Asia. He planned to expand it to nine chapters describing China, its customs and political system, as well as Chinese science and inventions. The merit of Boym's maps was that they were the first European maps to properly represent Korea as a peninsula rather than an island. They also took notice of the correct positions of many Chinese cities previously unknown to the westerners or known only by the semi-fabulous descriptions of Marco Polo. Boym also marked the Great Wall and the Gobi Desert. Although the collection was not published during Boym's lifetime,[5] it extended the knowledge of China in the west.

The best known of Boym's works is the Flora Sinensis ("Chinese Flora"), published in Vienna in 1656. The book was the first description of an ecosystem of the Far East published in Europe. Boym underlined the medicinal properties of the Chinese plants. Interestingly, the book also included pleas for support of the Catholic Chinese emperor and each page contained a chronogram pointing to the date of 1655, the date of coronation of Emperor Leopold I as the King of Hungary, as Boym wanted to gain support of that monarch for his mission.

Another work on botany was his Specimen medicinae Sinicae ("Chinese medicinal plants"), in which he described the Chinese traditional healthcare and introduced several methods of healing and diagnostics previously unknown in Europe, particularly acupuncture and the measurement of the pulse.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

In-line:
  1. ^ His first name is also often rendered as Michele, Michel, Miguel, Michael Peter
  2. ^ Transliterated as Pu Che-yuen Mi-ko
  3. ^ Boym's great grandfather arrived at Lwów during the reign of Stefan Batory
  4. ^ Known also by his Christian name of Andrew Sin
  5. ^ It was published in 1661 under the title of Mappa Imperii Sinarum... ("Map of the Chinese Empire")
General:

[edit] External links

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Persondata
NAME Boym, Michał
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boym, Michele;Boym, Michel;Boym, Miguel;Boym, Michael Peter; Boym, Michał Piotr
SHORT DESCRIPTION Jesuit missionary into China
DATE OF BIRTH c. 1612
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1659
PLACE OF DEATH Guangxi, China