Christian Wolfgang Herdtrich

Christian Wolfgang Herdtrich[1] (born at Graz, Styria, 25 June 1625; d. 18 July 1684) was an Austrian Jesuit missionary in China.

Life

He entered the Austrian province of the Society of Jesus on 27 October 1641, and in 1656 was chosen for the Chinese mission. For two years he laboured on the island of Celebes, and after 1660 was in the Chinese provinces of Shan-si and Ho-nan. In 1671 he was called to the court of Peking as mathematician, and was one of that group of scholarly Jesuits with whom the Emperor Kangxi surrounded himself. The last nine years of his life were spent as superior of the mission of Kiang-tcheon, province of Shan-si. Emperor Kang-hi himself composed his epitaph (cf. "Welt-Bott", Augsburg, 1726, Nos. 16, 49).

Works

He professed a profound knowledge of the Chinese language and literature, and was a collaborator in the major work: "Confucius, Sinarium Philosophus, sive Scientia Sinensis latina exposito studio et operâ Properi Intorcetta, Christiani Herdtrich, Francisci Rougemont, Philippi Couplet, PP. Soc. Jesu" (Paris, 1778). This earliest translation and elucidation gave European scholars their first insight into the teachings of Confucius. Herdtrich was also the author of a large Chinese-Latin dictionary (Wentse-Ko), probably one of the first of its kind.

Edition of Confucius (1687) by Herdtrich and others.

Notes

  1. ↑ According to Franco, Christianus Henriques; Chinese, Ngen.

References

Letters of Herdritch may be found in:

External links

References