Il natural lume de Cinesi: Teoria e prassi dell'evangelizzazione in Cina nella Breve relatione di Philippe Couplet S.J. (1623-1693). In Appendice: Catalogus Librorum Sinicorum (review)

The Breve Relatione offers the documentary quintessence of the arguments with which Philippe Couplet, during his stay in Europe, especially in Rome (1685), tried to convince the ecclesiastical authorities of the substantial desiderata of the "Chinese" church; in this book Secondino Gatta publishes this important document for the very first time, together with some comments and (brief) annotations.

The text of the Breve Relatione exists in several manuscripts, as the author explains, namely three Italian (called A, B, and C) and two Latin copies (Madrid: Arch. Hist. Nac., and Ajuda, JA 49-V-16, ff. 333-374—this call number not in the text; D [my siglum]). The editor should have pointed out that none of these copies are autographs, and that all were copied from a lost model in Couplet's hand. After having carefully compared the different versions, Gatta takes manuscript A as the basis of his transcription, arguing from external (and also later) testimonia that the Italian version it represents was the original (p. 30). However, he does not go into detail concerning the major differences between ABC and its Latin counterpart D, although according to his own statement (p. 26) he did consult the latter. Indeed, some long paragraphs in D are not found in ABC, especially those titled in the Latin text "Qui cum literatis agendum" ("How to deal with the literati") and "Nationis Sinicae adiumenta ad fidem" ("Means to aid the Chinese nation in teaching") (pp. 6 ff.). On the other hand, at least one substantial part of ABC is lacking in D (§ 9, dealing with "la morte della Ill.ma S.ra Candida," on pp. 55-60 of Gatta's edited version), while other paragraphs are found in both A and D, but in a different order. Moreover, there are many smaller but remarkable and revealing variant readings in manuscripts ABC and D.

Most of these are currently due to the copyists, namely a series of mutually differing dates mentioned in the text, and a series of Chinese transcriptions. In this last category, by far the most deviations vis-à-vis the current seventeenth-century transcriptions are to be found in ABC, which is therefore clearly the work of a copyist who was not acquainted with Chinese. Most of his "variant transcriptions" are less spectacular—for example, "-n-" for -nn-; "N-" for H-; and a confusion between "n/m" and "n/u"—or can at least be rather easily explained from a misunderstanding of Couplet's handwriting, well known from, for example, his autograph letters: all concern the spelling of gutturals, giving "ch-" for k (pp. 48, 71, 72, 74 [twice], 83 [three times], 87, 90) or the reverse ("k" for ch- on p. 83); "Ch-" for X- (p. 87); "c" for ch (pp. 46, 72); and "-g-" for -q- (pp. 47, 48, 49).

Anomalies in the very sense of the word are limited to some rare cases: "kiem tiem" (p. 62) for kim tien; "Yam Quam" (p. 64) for Yam Quam sien; "Xansi" (p. 79) for Xensi; "Sin chien" (p. 74) for Sim kie, "persona di natura e genio precipitoso, " which is recognizable in the reading "Sini kie" of D (with "-ni" from -m) and the rendering hsing-chi "hasty, impetuous" from Mathews 2771.8; and, finally, the confused pericope on page 90, where the names of Zhejiang (Chekiang) Province and its capital Hangzhou (Hangcheu) are mutually replaced: "in Kekiam metropoli della Provincia Nam cheu" (p. 90) instead of "in Nam [i.e. Ham] cheu metropoli della Provincia Kekiam [i.e. Chekiam]." It is, after all, quite remarkable that in all these cases, the copy of D—which is also not completely free of errors—has the correct form. Except...