André Soulié


Jean André Soulié was a French Roman Catholic missionary and botanist, murdered in Tibet.

Biography

Soulié was born in Saint-Juéry, Aveyron, on October 6, 1858. He was ordained July 5, 1885, for the Paris Foreign Missions Society and sent in October 1885 to the Apostolic Vicariate of Thibet, administered by Mgr Félix Biet. His first mission was to Batang, then at Cha-pa. He met with his colleagues the French expedition of Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orléans in June 1890 at Ta-tsien lu. In 1896, he was sent to the mission station of Tse-ku with Father Jules Dubernard. This village is situated on the right bank of the Lancang river. Afterwards, he moved to Yaregong where he gained some popularity by practicing medicine among local people.

Death

Soulié was captured, tortured and shot close to Yaregong, Sichuan, by lamas during the 1905 Tibetan Revolt.

Legacy

As a botanist, Father Soulié collected more than 7,000 species, among them Rosa soulieana, a species of endemic Rosa, which was introduced in Europe by Auguste Louis Maurice de Vilmorin, and studied by Museum d'histoire naturelle in Paris, and then by François Crépin in 1896. Most of Father Soulié's specimens were notably studied and defined by Adrien Franchet.
Father Soulié also sent in 1895 the first seeds of Buddleja davidii to Paris. This decorative tree was then introduced by Vilmorin and widely distributed in Europe after 1916.
Around and Atentsé, he captured and sent to the French Natural History Museum the first specimens known to science of the Black snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus bieti, described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1897.