Paris, Charles Angot, 1680.
8vo of (8) ll., 242 pp., (1) l. of privilege. Full granite-like calf, spine ribbed and decorated. Contemporary binding.
187 x 116 mm.
Precious first edition of this account of the “missions to Cochin-china, Tonkin, Siam, Cambodia. Very rare”. (Chadenat, II, 4391).
Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, 827 ; Brunet, Supp., 448.
This publication follows the one published the same year concerning the travels made between 1673 and 1675.
“It is the fourth volume by the same author. These bishops were: François Pallu, bishop of Heliopolis, de la Motte-Lambert, bishop of Beryte, and Ignace Cotolondy, bishop of Metellopolis. The latter died in 1662”.
The accounts of the missionaries contained in this book concern Cochin-china, Tonkin, China, Cambodia, india, Siam and Chiampa.
“On the 18th of October 1675, the king of Siam granted a hearing to the three Apostolic Vicars then in Juthia: F. Pallu, P. Lambert de La Motte, and the bishop of Metellopolis. The bishops presented some letters from Louis XIV and Pope Clement IX to the king. This hearing, soon followed by several others, was the beginning of the relations that led to the sending of Siamese embassies to France, of French embassies to Siam, and to the treatises that arose from it.
In 1676, Lambert de La Motte left again for Cochin-china. His stay was, according to the missionaries, the happiest time for the history of Catholicism in this country. We never saw so many people baptized in so little time, so many sinners converted, so many devotees sanctified. Back to Siam, he fell sick. He died on the 15th of June 1679 and was buried inside the church.
Rome, that was unaware of his death, named him on the 1st of April 1680 general administrator of the missions to Siam, Cochin-china and Tonkin”.
« The French bishops in the East meanwhile kept the public informed about their activities in China, Indochina, and Siam through a series of published relations. From these works it became clear that the French mission was becoming increasingly dominant in East and Southeast Asia” (Lach-Van Kley, 3, 416).
Very fresh and wide-margined copy preserved in its contemporary binding, of this interesting travel account very important for the knowledge of the Far East in the 17th century.
