Joseph Henri Marie de Premare (1666 - 1736) was a French jesuit.

Career

In 1724, after the

Yongzheng Emperor The Yongzheng Emperor (13 December 1678 – 8 October 1735), also known by his temple name Emperor Shizong of Qing, personal name Yinzhen, was the fourth List of emperors of the Qing dynasty, emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the third Qing em ...

virtually banned Christianity over the Chinese Rites controversy, he was confined with his colleagues in

Guangzhou Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...

and later banished to

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

, where he died. His ''Notitia linguae sinicae'', written in 1736 and first published in 1831, was the first important

Chinese language Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39& ...

grammar in a European language. His letters can be found in the ''Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine'' series. Father de Prémare is among the missionaries who furnished Jean-Baptiste Du Halde with the material for his "Description de la Chine" (Paris, 1735). Among his contributions were translations from the ''

Book of Documents The ''Book of Documents'' ( zh, p=Shūjīng, c=書經, w=Shu King) or the ''Classic of History'', is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, a ...

'' (Du Halde, II, 298); eight odes of the ''

Classic of Poetry The ''Classic of Poetry'', also ''Shijing'' or ''Shih-ching'', translated variously as the ''Book of Songs'', ''Book of Odes'', or simply known as the ''Odes'' or ''Poetry'' (; ''Shī''), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, co ...

'' (II, 308); and the first translation into a European language of a Chinese drama, " The Orphan of Zhao" (III, 341), titled ''L'Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao''. Premaré sent the translation to

Étienne Fourmont Étienne Fourmont (23 June 1683 – 8 December 1745) was a French scholar and Orientalist who served as professor of Arabic at the Collège de France and published grammars on the Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese languages. Although Fourmont is ...

, a member of the

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

... However, the play came into the possession of Father Du Halde instead, who published it in his ''Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique et Physique de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinois'' in 1735, although he had no permission from Prémare or Fourmont to do so. Prémare's translation inspired

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...

's 1753 tragedy '' L'Orphelin de la Chine''. De Prémare's writings also include a defense of figurism proposed by Joachim Bouves of Christianity were mystically embodied in the

Chinese classics The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian traditi ...

.Brucker, "Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare."

Works

Notes

References

* Knud Lundbæk. ''Joseph De Prémare, 1666-1736, S.J. : Chinese Philology and Figurism.'' (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, Acta Jutlandica, 1991). . * * * D. E. Mungello. ''Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology.'' (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, 1985). Reprinted: Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1989

External links

* French missionaries in China 17th-century French Jesuits Jesuit missionaries in China 1666 births 1736 deaths 18th-century French Jesuits French sinologists French Roman Catholic missionaries {{RC-clergy-stub