Description:
The first Western edition of ConfuciusConfucius Sinarum Philosophus sive Scientia Sinensis Latine Exposita
Philippe Couplet, Prospero Intorcetta, Chrétien Herdtrich, François de Rougemont
Paris, 1687
First Edition. Folio(34 x 21.5 cm.) i-viii, 1-108, 1-21, blank leaf, 1-159, 1-8, ix-cxxiv, i-xx, 1-106, map leaf, 105-108, colophon leaf. With two full-page engraved plates: a portrait of Confucius and Couplet's map of China.
Textblock with some mild browning and light sporadic stains, repaired contemporary vellum. An attractive, Near Fine copy of a really important book.
"The first widely accessible Latin translation of three of the four Confucian classics, The Daxue(The Great Learning), Lunyu(The Analects), and The Zhongyong(The Doctrine of the Mean), as well as a biographical sketch of Confucius…This seminal work was the culmination of a century of Jesuit attempts to translate and interpret the Confucian classics. The bulk of this collective work was composed in China under the leadership of the… Read More