CHINESE MISSIONARY BUYS CHRISTIAN TEXTS
[MISSIONARIES.]
Shopping list of Christian texts, signed ‘Joseph Ly’. [with:] Receipt issued by a financial office (Shou Shan Tang) of the Congregation of the Mission for money paid.
[China, c. 1850.]
Manuscripts in Chinese on paper (c. 235 x 105 mm and c. 230 x 80 mm), written in black ink to the rectos only, the receipt with an official red stamp; creases from folding, very good.
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Shopping list of Christian texts, signed ‘Joseph Ly’. [with:] Receipt issued by a financial office (Shou Shan Tang) of the Congregation of the Mission for money paid.
A shopping list of Chinese Christian texts ordered by the Catholic vicar general of Canton. The works include two sets of the Shengjing zhijie 聖經直解, a translation of Gospel readings from the Mass by Manuel Dias the Younger (1574–1659); thirty sets of the Rike cuoyao 日課撮要, a prayer book (various missionaries edited their own versions under the same Chinese title e.g. Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688) and Luigi Buglio (1606–1682)); as many copies as possible of the larger version of the Qingshi jinshu 輕世金書, i.e. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, translated by Manuel Dias and edited by Buglio; and a four-volume set of another work.
The works appear to have been purchased by the missionary Joseph Ly 李約瑟 (1803–1854). Born to a peasant family in Hubei, Ly converted after a chance visit to a church in Henan, entering the Lazarist seminary in Macao before being sent to study in France. There he was presented, along with his fellow Chinese seminarians, to Charles X, whose warm welcome astonished Ly. After ordination in Manila Ly returned to China, performing missionary work in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Canton, where he was vicar general. In this last post he faced great hostility from locals: ‘In a letter dated 1848, he asked his superior to replace him, or at least to send him a colleague to support him in his work, preferably Chinese, because the Europeans and especially the English stirred up, according to him “a[n] utterly relentless and inextinguishable hatred”’ (d’Abrigeon, trans.).
The receipt here presumably relates to the purchase of these texts. The Congregation of the Mission established financial offices (Shou Shan Tang) in major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Tianjing and Wuhan.
See Pauline d’Abrigeon, ‘Joseph Ly’, in Collectionneurs, collecteurs et marchands d’art asiatique en France 1700–1939 (online).
