Research Notes
The First Jesuits in Yunnan

When Martino Martini, a Jesuit who had joined the mission to China in 1643, first returned to Europe in 1650 he brought with him a wealth of Chinese geographic material that he used to compose his Novus Atlas Sinensis, the seminal atlas published in 1655. The atlas contained Yunnan as the fifteenth province with a map that remained unsurpassed for at least two hundred years and, in its text part, contained a wealth of correct information on the province that had previously never been published in a European language.

Earlier accurate geographic information on Asia was highly inaccurate and on Yunnan almost no information was available. For example, on the 15th century map by the monk Fra Mauro,¹ Yunnan is not discernable at all. Merely a single note on one of the rivers stated

Qui le marchavantie se translata da fiume a fiumue per ander in Chataio – (Here goods are transferred from river to river to go on to Chatay – translation by Henry Yule)

Henry Yule identified the place as Bhamo, the important trading hub on the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy River, from where caravans started into Yunnan.

Martino Martini’s atlas was not only published in Latin, the then lingua franca, but in various other European languages, such as German.²

Researchers have shown that most of the information was copied from Chinese sources, such as the 《广舆记》, and in the Vatican archives even found the very copy of this work that Martino had used with in the 17th century.³ the descriptions accompanying his atlas also contained notes that seem unlikely to have come from a Chinese source, such as his remark on the temples dedicated to local heros in the Dali region:

[Dali] is populuos with many buildings and has many splendid buildings both for the citizens and the city itself, together with two very magnificent shrines dedicated to heros, not to mention the countless idol-temples. (My translation)

Where did this information come from?

It is clear that Martini himself never travelled to Yunnan. But could this information be based on the research of other Jesuits?

While in general the history of the Jesuits in China has been well researched, their travels to Yunnan, then a barely accessible hinterland province, has not found much attention.

None of the classic reference works, such as or Pfister: Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jesuites de l'ancienne Mission de Chine, 1552-1773, on the Jesuit mission to China contains any concrete evidence for a Jesuit actually travelling to Yunnan before the publication of Martini’s atlas. The Cambridge History of China states, that no Christian communities existed in the province, see Witek: Catholic Missionaries, 1644–1800.

The Polish Jesuit Jan Mikołaj Smogulecki, Chinese name 穆尼阁, who was personally known to Martini, tried to reach Yunnan in or shortly after 1653, but apparently failed, only reaching its borders from Guizhou province (see Pfister 1932, p. 263–264 and Dehergne 1973, 255).

While the lack of information is puzzling, it is quite possible that no Jesuit set foot in the region before the 18th century. During during the Ming–Qing transition Yunnan was a contested territory. The deposed Ming court continued as the Southern Ming, and their last ruler, the Yongli Emperor, fled into Yunnan in 1658 and then into Burma in 1661, where he was captured and executed in 1662.

It was only when the Qing dynasty was well established and any remnant of the Ming had been routed that under Emperor Kangxi 康熙 a new mapping project was established. For this Jesuits needed to travel to Yunnan as the province was lacking accurate maps.

The task fell to two Jesuits, Ehrenbert Xaver Fridelli and Guillaume Bonjour, an Augustine monk. They were assigned to first map Sichuan and then Yunnan. The two divided their task, with Bonjour mapping the western part, Fridelli the eastern. At the end of 1714 however, Bonjour fell gravely ill and died in the Burmese-Chinese borderland, possibly Menglian 孟连. Fridelli also fell ill and their task was given to Régis. Regis left a hand-writen manuscript called Nouvelle Géographie de la Chine et de la Tartarie Orientale, which was never published but is still extant.⁴

In 1724, Emperor Yongzheng banned Christianity and expelled missionaries from the provinces, followed by extensive persecutions during the reign of Emperor Qianlong.

Maybe, Fridelli, Bonjour and Regis were the only missionaries who reached Yunnan during this time.