Jean-Baptiste Régis

Jean -Baptiste Régis (* June 11, 1663 or January 29, 1664 in Istres, Bouches -du -Rhône, France, † November 24, 1738 in Beijing) was a French Jesuit missionary and operating in China. He was instrumental in the initial mapping of China.

Life and work

Jean -Baptiste Régis was inducted into the Society of Jesus on September 13, 1679 or September 14 in 1683. In 1698 he traveled to the Chinese mission in which he was forty years in the service of science and the Catholic faith.

Since there was virtually no geographical knowledge about China in Europe until the end of the 16th century, the early Jesuit missionaries had already tried to remedy. The information available to them from Chinese geographical descriptions, distances and even simple maps were supplemented by Father Martino Martini with own astronomical observations and summarized in the Novus Atlas Sinensis, which was published in 1655 in Amsterdam as part of the Atlas Maior.

The good relations of the Jesuits to the Chinese Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) enabling them further additions. Father Ferdinand Verbiest gained his first impressions of Tartary as a companion of the emperor in two trips to Mongolia ( 1682-83 ). By king Louis XIV in 1687 sent the French Jesuits gave new impetus to the geographical work. The new missionaries had been equipped with improved instruments and trained by the Paris Observatory in astronomical position determination so that they enrich the present location information and were able to transmit their observations of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. Father Jean -François Gerbillon could gather more geographical information in eight trips to Mongolia ( 1688-98 ).

In 1701, the Fathers Jean -Baptiste Régis, Antoine Thomas began Joachim Bouvet ( 1656-1730 ) and Dominique Parennin with the works for the mapping of the Chinese empire, first with a plan of Beijing and surrounding areas, including the imperial summer residences, as well as plans of around 1700 towns and villages. Emperor Kangxi was satisfied with the work and subsequently agreed that the preparation of a map of the Great Wall to. The Fathers Régis, Bouvet and Pierre Jartoux began on June 8, 1708 at the Gulf of Bohai work with, when they certain lengths and directions by means of lines and a compass and regularly quoted the state of the midday sun. After two months, the diseased Bouvet moved back to Beijing, Régis and Jartoux translated the works but they continued to the end of the wall at today reached Jiayuguan and had measured an inner portion to the present Xining. They returned on January 10, 1709 in Beijing.

The emperor then asked to extend the work to China. Régis, Jartoux and Ernbert Fridelli and Francis Cardoso, Guillaume Bonjour, Vincent du Tartre, Joseph -Anne -Marie de Moyriac de Mailla and Roman Hinderer visited in alternating composite groups from the end of 1709 the country to Lake Baikal at one and Formosa at the other end. The Jesuits should, with the consent of the emperor two lamas have formed which could record the journey from Xining to Lhasa and continue towards the source of the Ganges and take appropriate observations in the inaccessible country for the mapping of Tibet. After ten years of work on January 1, 1717 were completed and all of China presented in a series of cards.

Copies of these maps were taken to Paris, where they were processed by Bourguignon d' Anville, Jean -Baptiste under the date 1734 on a large map of China, by Jean -Baptiste You dump in his monumental work Description de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise were published in 1735.

Importance

The jobs created by Jean -Baptiste Régis and cooperating with him Fathers maps of China were the first coherent and largely reliable maps of China. They were long regarded as a basic card plant in China at all. For Tibet, they were until the end of the 19th century the only map series.

Swell

• Frenchman
• Jesuit
• Missionary ( China)
• Geograph (18th century)
• Born in the 17th century
• Died in 1738
• Man