Letters of a Peking Jesuit: The Correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623-1688)

Letters of a Peking Jesuit: The Correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623-1688). Edited by Noěl Golvers. Revised and Expanded. [Leuven Chinese Studies, Volume XXXV.] (Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, University of Leuven. 2017. Pp. 962. €82,00. ISBN 978-908-2090-987.)

With the exception of Matteo Ricci, few figures loom larger over the history of the Jesuit mission to China than that of Ferdinand Verbiest. He stands as the exotic counterpart to the European court Jesuits of the early modern era, employing his skills as an astronomer and engineer in the service of the Kangxi Emperor at Beijing. Indeed, it is primarily due to the prestige of Verbiest, as weü as of his immediate predecessor in the role of court astronomer Johann Adam Schall von Bell, that the Jesuit mission to China was for centuries considered a metropolitan affair; that is, one centered upon the Chinese imperial capital in the hopes of bringing about the conversion of the...