Jean-Baptiste Regis

Regis, JEAN-BAPTISTE, b. at Istres, Provence, June 11, 1663, or January 29, 1664; d. at Peking, November 24, 1738. He was received into the Society of Jesus, September 14, 1683, or September 13, 1679, and in 1698 went on the Chinese mission, where he served science and religion for forty years, and took the chief share in the making of the general map of the Chinese Empire. The early Jesuit missionaries had already endeavored to make known to Europe the true geography of China, of which at the end of the sixteenth century even the best cartographers were utterly ignorant. Their achievements up to the middle of the seventeenth century are summed up in the “Novus Atlas Sinensis” published by Father Martin Martini (Amsterdam, 1655). He was greatly assisted in this work by Chinese books of geography, where he found a mass of descriptive information, the distances between important places and even maps, which, however, were very crude, the distances having been measured with little exactitude. These imperfect data he supplemented and completed by astronomical observations made in the chief towns by himself and his associates; hence the positions of his Atlas are remarkably accurate. The favor enjoyed by the missionaries with Emperor K’ang-hi (1662-1722) made it possible for them to improve on this. Fr. ‘Ferdinand Verbiest collected the earliest definite ideas of Tatary during two journeys made to that country with the emperor (1682-3). The arrival in China (1687) of French Jesuits sent by Louis XIV gave new impetus to scholarly labors in the mission, especially to geography. Provided with perfected instruments and trained in the methods of the astronomers of the Observatory of Paris the new missionaries were enabled to determine more correctly positions already calculated. The “Memoires” and the “Histoire de l’Academie des Sciences” record their observations. Fr. Jean-Francois Gerbillon made eight journeys through Tatary and Mongolia (1688-98), acquiring more geographical information concerning them. In 1701 the great work of the general map of the empire, begun by the topographical drawing of the city of Peking and its environs, including the ancient summer residence of the emperors and 1700 towns or villages, was assigned to Fr. Antoine Thomas, a Belgian of Namur, and Joachim Bouvet, Jean Baptiste Regis, Dominique Parrenin, all three French. K’ang-hi, who wished to take measures against the periodical overflow of the rivers of Chi-li, was satisfied. Fr. D. Parrenin then induced him to consent to a map of the Great Wall of China. Frs. Bouvet, Regis, and Pierre Jartoux measured their route to the eastern extremity of the famous rampart by means of regularly divided cords, keeping track of directions with the assistance of a compass, and frequently observing the meridians of the sun in order to calculate latitudes. In four days they reached the Gulf of Chi-li (June 8, 1708) and began operations on the Great Wall. On October 16 they had estimated its extent to be 21° long, or almost half the widest breadth of the United States from east to west, and had determined the positions of the fortified towns “by which it was flanked”, according to Fr. Regis. At the end of two months Bouvet, being ill, retired to Peking. Regis and Jartoux reached the western end of the Great Wall at Kia-yu-Koan and completed their work by the mensuration of an interior lateral wall which brought them to Si-ning, on the frontier of Tibet, near the great Lake Kukunor. They returned to Peking, January 10, 1709. Their map pleased the emperor and he requested the continuation of the work for the provinces outside the Great Wall and for China proper.

Regis, Jartoux, and Fr. Ernbert Fridelli, from the Austrian Tyrol, set out for the northeast. In two expeditions (May 8-December 17, 1709; July 22-December 14, 1710) they made the map of Liao-tung and Manchuria and during the interval drew the Province of Chi-li in which Peking is situated. In 1711 Fr. Francis Cardoso, Portuguese, and the Augustinian, Fr. Guillaume Bonjour, the only non-Jesuit, joined the geographers. Regis and Cardoso drew the map of Shan-tung; Tartoux, Fridelli, and Bonjour traversed Mongolia as far as Lake Baikal in the north and the entrance of eastern Turkestan to the west. The year 1712 brought a new reinforcement: Frs. Vincent de Tartre and Cardoso made the maps of Shan-si and Shen-si (1712-14), Kiang-si and Kwang-tung, and Kwang-si; Frs. Anne-Marie de Mailla, Roman Hinderer, an Alsatian, and Regis labored (1712-15) on the maps of Hu-nan, Kiang-nan, Che-kiang, Fu-kien, and the Island of Formosa. Meanwhile Fridelli and Bonjour were at Sze-chwan and Yun-nan, where Fr. Bonjour died, December 23, 1714, and was replaced by Regis, March 24, 1715. He assisted Fridelli with the maps of Yun-nan, Kwei-chow, and Hu-kwang. After ten years’ labor the new map of China was completed, January 1, 1717. The fundamental method employed was the exact measurement of distances from which was obtained the longitude and latitude of places; this, supplemented and controlled by the observation of the meridians of the sun and the polar stars, directly gave the latitude. The missionaries were sometimes assisted by the observation of eclipses of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter, of which more perfect process they desired to make use to obtain longitudes, but conditions did not permit.

In reply to a criticism of Freret, the learned secretary of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Pere Gaubil wrote (November 5, 1736): “When thinking of a map of China and Tatary you had in mind such men as MM. Cassini, Maraldi, Chazelles, and others who worked at the meridian assisted by all the necessary instruments and having plenty of time at their disposal. Our Fathers made use of the avocation of map-makers to do missionary work, to procure assistance and protection for the missionaries of the provinces, and to establish new missions. The Chinese and Tatar mandarins who accompanied them hindered them exceedingly; they had orders not to let the Fathers go where they would,… and would never allow them sufficient time for the observation of meridians, the measurement of roads, the variation of the needle (magnetic needle), the rhomb, and the estimation of positions from these elements. The work being finished the completed map had to be sent in haste to the emperor…. Compared with what was done elsewhere for general maps of countries smaller than China and Tatary this work can but do honor to the Tatar prince who commanded such a worthy undertaking and assuredly it did not discredit our Fathers.” This appreciation has been fully justified by the votes of the best judges, among them Ferdinand de Richthofer, the famous geologist and explorer of China, who writes: “If we consider the time at which it was made, the map of the Jesuits, as a whole, may be called a masterpiece” (China, I, 686).

Fr. Jartoux, who with Frs. Regis and Fridelli had the largest share in it, sent a copy to France, where it was published by Fr. Du Halde with the assistance of the celebrated geographer d’Anville in the “Description de la Chine” (1735). Fr. Regis composed a short commentary on it under the name of “Nouvelle geographie de la Chine et de la Tartarie orientale”, which is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, fr. MS. 17, 242; Fr. Du Halde availed himself of the writing to a great extent but would have done better to publish it entire. Fr. Regis also turned his attention to the ancient Chinese books (king). Father Gaubil praises his “sane criticism” on the subject, and the English sinologist James Legge writes: “Regis is known as the interpreter of the Yih-king. His work was edited at Stuttgart, in 1834, by Julius Mohl. One part of the first volume is occupied with Prolegomena which contain the most valuable introduction to the Chinese higher classics that has yet been published” (“Notions of the Chinese concerning God and the spirits”, 1852, 69). Father Gaubil describes his great virtues as humility and modesty, and says: “he was universally esteemed and loved by the missionaries of various bodies, Christians, and the people of the court who associated with him”.

JOSEPH BRUCKER