PALLU François Relation abrégée des missions et des voyages des évesques françois envoyez aux royaumes de la Chine, Cochinchine, Tonkin & Siam.

Cordier, Bibl. Sinica, 826 ; Löwendahl, 138 ; not in Chadenat.

First edition, very rare, of this important account written by Mgr François Pallu (1626-1684), one of the founders of the Société des Missions Étrangères. It bears witness to the renewed influence of Jesuit missionaries in Asia during the second half of the 17th century.

“First edition of the account of the voyages made to East Asia in the early 16660s by Pallu, Pierre Lambert de la Motte and Ignace Cotolendi, sent there by Pope Alexander VII as vicars apostolic. A second edition appeared in 1682 and an Italian translation in 1669.

François Pallu belonged to the so-called ‘Les bons amis’, a group of French Jesuit priests whose activities were ultimately responsible for the formation of the Société des Missions Étrangères. Disenchanted with the achievements of the Propaganda in the mission to Asia, Pallu and his colleagues in ‘Les bons amis’ had travelled to Rome in 1657 to present Pope Alexander VII with their case for increased missionary activity in the Far East, while also seeking to dispel the Propaganda’s suspicions of French involvement in the field. Their petition was evidently successful and the Pope divided the Far East in three vicariates apostolic – Tongking, Cochin-China and China – while also giving the new bishops th right to found a seminary in Paris, which, after one or two set-backs, became the Société des Mission Étrangères in 1660. The function of the Société, as regulated by the Propaganda, was to promote missionary activity and specifically to work for the formation of indigenous clergy and churches. In the first forty years of its history, the Société sent one hundred missionaries to Asia” (Löwendahl).

Small worming in the white inner margin to first third of the book, occasional foxing.