Giulio Aleni (; 1582– 10 June 1649), in Chinese , was an Italian

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

and

scholar A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a termina ...

. He was born in Leno near

Brescia Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...

in Italy, at the time part of the Republic of Venice, and died at Yanping in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. He became a member of the

Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...

in 1600 and distinguished himself in his knowledge of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

. He is known for helping publish the

Zhifang Waiji The ''Zhifang Waiji'' () was an atlas written by various Italian Jesuits in Ming China in the early seventeenth century. The name literally refers to lands beyond the purview of the ''Zhifang Si'', the Imperial cartography office. It was the firs ...

, an atlas in Chinese. Giulio Aleni also wrote a treatise criticizing the Ming dynasty, the Ming emperors and their elites, and their mistakes and errors. Near the end of his life, the Ming dynasty eventually got destroyed and replaced by the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

founded by the

House of Aisin-Gioro The House of Aisin-Gioro is a Manchu clan that ruled the Later Jin dynasty (1616–1636), the Qing dynasty (1636–1912), and Manchukuo (1932–1945) in the history of China. Under the Ming dynasty, members of the Aisin Gioro clan served as chie ...

.John Witek, S.J. "Aleni, Giulio, in Gerald Anderson, ed., ''Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions'' (Eerdmans, ) pp. 9-10

Life

In 1610, he was sent as a missionary to

. While waiting at

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 ...

for a favorable opportunity to enter the country, he taught mathematics to local scholars and published his "Observation sur l'éclipse de lune du 8 Novembre 1612, faite a Macao" (''Mémoires de l'Acad. des Sciences'', VII, 706). He adopted the dress and manners of the country, was the first Christian missionary in

Jiangxi ; Gan: ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = , translit_lang1_type3 = , translit_lang1_info3 = , image_map = Jiangxi in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_caption = Location ...

, and built several churches in

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

. One of his converts, Li Jiubiao, recorded the responses of Aleni and

Andrius Rudamina Andrius Rudamina or Lu Ngan tö Pan Sze, S.J. (; ; 1596 – 5 September 1631) was the first Lithuanian Jesuit missionary in China. Early life Andrius Rudamina was born into an old and distinguished Lithuanian noble family in the village of Ruda ...

, one of his fellow Jesuits, to the questions and speculations of his parishioners and compiled them into a journal.

Works

He published works in Chinese on a variety of topics. His cosmography,
Wanwu Zhenyuan
' (萬物真原; The True Origin of the Ten-thousand Things), was translated into

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...

during the reign of the

Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 165420 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, personal name Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign of 61 ...

(Wanwu Zhenyuan translated in

Manchu script The Manchu alphabet ( mnc, m= , v=manju hergen, a=manju hergen) is the alphabet used to write the now critically endangered Manchu language. A similar script called Xibe script is used today by the Xibe people, whose language is considered ...

: Wylie: Tumen chakai unengki sekiyen, Möllendorff: Tumen jakai unengki sekiyen). A copy was sent from

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

to Paris in 1789. He completed the work of earlier Jesuit scholars to produce the ''

Zhifang waiji The ''Zhifang Waiji'' () was an atlas written by various Italian Jesuits in Ming China in the early seventeenth century. The name literally refers to lands beyond the purview of the ''Zhifang Si'', the Imperial cartography office. It was the firs ...

'', a global atlas written in Chinese and one of the first to include the Americas. Among his most important religious works are a controversial treatise on the Catholic Faith, in which are refuted what he saw as the principal errors of the Ming dynasty; and ''The Life of God, the Saviour, from the Four Gospels'' (Peking, 1635–1637, 8 vols.; often reprinted, e.g. in 1887 in 3 vols) and used even by Protestant missionaries.

Legacy

The life and works of Giulio Aleni are the subject of several conferences in 1994 and 2010. Two of his books, ''Life of

Matteo Ricci Matteo Ricci (; ; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the , a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See decl ...

, Xitai of the West'' and ''Holy images of the Heavenly Lord'' have been presented to the public by ''Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana'' in two separate occasions, on 13 and 25 October 2010.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* Menegon, Eugenio. "Un solo Cielo. Giulio Aleni S.J. (1582-1649). Geografia, arte, scienza, religione dall’Europa alla Cina". Brescia: Grafo, 1994. * John Witek, S.J.
Aleni, Giulio
in Gerald Anderson, ed., ''Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions'' (Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 9–10 * Lippiello, Tiziana, and Roman Malek. ''Scholar from the West: Giulio Aleni S.J. (1582-1649) and the Dialogue between Christianity and China''. Brescia: Sankt Augustin: Fondazione civiltà bresciana; Monumenta Serica Institute, 1997. *Sommervogel, Carlos, ''Bibliothèque de la Campagnie de Jesus'', I, 157 sq. *Pfister, S.J., ''Bibliogr. des Jesuites Chinois miss.'' *Cordier, ''Essai d'une bibliogr. des ouvr. publ. en Chine par les Europeéns'' (Paris 1883). *ALENI, Giulio, Geografia dei paesi stranieri alla Cina. Zhifang waiji, with translation (Italian), Introduction and commentary by Paolo De Troia, Brescia, Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana/Centro Giulio Aleni, 2009, with a full Map of ten thousand countries (Wangguo quantu) *Ahn Jaewon, A comparative research on Cicero's orator perfectus and Confucius' rex perfectus( Papers on Rhetoric 10) * Song, Gang. ''Giulio Aleni, Kouduo richao, and Christian-Confucian Dialogism in Late Ming Fujian'' (艾儒略、「口鐸日抄」及晚明福建的耶儒對話主義), Monumenta Serica Monograph Series LXIX. Abingdon, Oxon – New York: Routledge, 2018. Attribution: *

External links

Life and passion of Christ
Digital facsimile of Aleni's ca. 1640 printing from

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, Lamont Library, and Loeb House, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library s ...

, Harvard University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Aleni, Giulio 1582 births 1649 deaths Religious leaders from Brescia 17th-century Italian historians Italian male non-fiction writers 17th-century Italian male writers 17th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians Jesuit missionaries in China 17th-century Italian astronomers 17th-century Italian Jesuits Jesuit scientists Scientists from Brescia