Prospero Intorcetta
Prospero Intorcetta, known to the Chinese as Yin Duoze, was an Italian Jesuit missionary to the Qing Empire.Life
Prospero Intorcetta was born in Piazza Armerina in 1626.
Traveling with the French Jesuit Philippe Couplet, he reached China in 1659. There, he mostly worked in the Jiangnan region around the lower Yangtze River.
He died in 1696.Works
Intorcetta studied Chinese philosophy. In 1662, he published Ignacio da Costa's notes on the study of the Four Books of Confucianism in a Latin work entitled The Meaning of Chinese Wisdom. In 1667, he published the Politico-Moral Knowledge of the Chinese. In 1687, under Philippe Couplet's guidance, he worked with Christian Wolfgang Herdtrich and François de Rougemont to compile an influential Latin overview of Chinese history and translation of some of the Confucian classics under the title Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese.Citations
