CONFUCIUS

Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, sive scientia latine exposita.

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Andrea Cramoisy for Daniel Horthemels, 1686- Paris, 1687. Small folio, folding engraved portrait ofConfucius and folding engraved map of China, several engraved headpieces and initials, some small stamps and early manuscript annotation on front free endpaper; a fine copy in 18th-century tree calf, fine gilt border on boards, spine richly gilt with crimson label. The first European printing of the works of Confucius.

This important compendium was 'the first systematic and comprehensive presentation of Confucianism' (Knud Lundbaek), and includes the first ever translation into Latin of The Analects, the fundamental Confucian text and the very basis of Chinese scholarship.

The work is also known for its significant map representing the provinces of China, and indicating the centres of missionary activity. There is besides an attractive image of Confucius in a stylised library, the walls lined with books bearing the titles of some of his classic works. The large characters at the top read 'National Academy of Learning' and those bracketing the arch 'Confucius, the First Teacher under Heaven'.

In many ways the modern era of European contact with China began in 1601, when the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived in the Chinese capital to establish a Catholic mission. The reports of Ricci and his colleagues were widely published, with many, like this, produced in Paris, a centre for the Jesuits. Although European scholarship on China continued unabated, this present work can be taken to mark the beginning of the great eighteenth-century enthusiasm for China, a development that had a dramatic influence on European culture, most obviously in the decorative arts and architecture, but also in the currents of scholarly and intellectual writing. Leibniz and Voltaire were among the more important writers to adapt Chinese ideas, quite apart from ambitious projects such as Du Halde's Description... de l'Empire de Chine of 1735 (see catalogue no. XXXX).

Translations of the works of Confucius into Latin were central to this renaissance of Chinese thought in the West. The project had begun with two individual titles, both of which were published in the East: Father da Costa's Sapientia Sinica (in English known as The Great Learning) of 1662 and Father Prospero Intorcetta's Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis (The Doctrine of the Mean) of 1667. The current work, produced under the editorship of Philippe Couplet, reprised these two earlier translations of Da Costa and Intorcetta, and was improved through the addition of the first translation of The Analects as well as a fourth part, Couplet's own chronological table of the Chinese dynasties, with separate title. As a result, it was both the first great compendium of the thought of Confucius, and the first of his works to be produced in Europe.

The work was well received, with a French edition in 1688 and an English in 1691. Numerous further editions appeared over the following decades.

With the bookplate of renowned nineteenth-century Orientalist, bibliophile and Czech intellectual Voita Naprstek.
Brunet, II, 221; de Backer/Sommervogel , II, 1564,12; Ebert , 5118; Graesse, II, 249; Lust, 724; Streit, V, p.802.

• AUD 21,000.00 > autres monnaies
• Commande nro.: 706_031

• libraire: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)