Gabriel de Magalhães

Early life

Magalhães was born in Pedrogao, Coimbra, Portugal, a member of the same family as Ferdinand Magellan.

Mission to China

After first spending six years in the Portuguese colony of Goa, Magalhães arrived in Hangzhou in 1640.

Magalhães was captured by the rebel "King of the West", Zhang Xianzhong (Wade–Giles: Chang Hsien-chung), in 1644, yet wrote sympathetically of his attempts at empire-building in Chengdu.

Four years later, having been rescued by the Manchus, he was taken to Peking where he lived in the Forbidden City and was given the duty of maintaining various Western machinery, including the clocks at the court of the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors.

He and another Jesuit, Lodovico Buglio, who had joined him in Goa in 1637 and who would be his biographer 40 years later, undertook the construction of the original St. Joseph’s Church in Peking.

From 1650 to 1668, Magalhães worked on writing "the most comprehensive and perceptive description of China" in the second half of the 17th century, a work posthumously translated and entitled Nouvelle Relation de la Chine, contenant la description des particularitez les plus considerables de ce grand empire by French Jesuit Philippe Couplet.

He was imprisoned during the reign of the Kangxi emperor though it was the emperor himself who wrote Magalhães' eulogy upon his death in Peking on 6 May 1677 and granted his estate 200 taels of silver and ten large bolts of silk.

Legacy

Magalhães and his fellow missionaries left an indelible and positive mark on the Kangxi emperor who described them as "devoted to the public good." He went on,

"They have done nothing wrong, yet many Chinese have mistrusted them. However, We have always known that they are sincere and trustworthy. We have for many years carefully observed their behaviour and found that they have done absolutely nothing improper."

It was the achievement of this recognition by the emperor that laid the foundation for the Edict of Tolerance of 1692.