Name Joseph Marie | ||
Joseph Henri Marie de Premare (17 July 1666 – 17 September 1736) was a Jesuit missionary to China. Born in Cherbourg, he departed for China in 1698, and worked as a missionary in Guangxi.
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In 1724, after the Yongzheng Emperor virtually banned Christianity over the Chinese Rites controversy, he was confined with his colleagues in Guangzhou and later banished to Macau, where he died. His Notitia linguae sinicae was the first important Chinese language grammar in a European language. His letters can be found in the Lettres edifiantes et curieuses de Chine series.
Father de Premare is among the missionaries who furnished Jean-Baptiste Du Halde with the material for his "Description de la Chine" (Paris, 1735). Among his contributions were translations from the Book of Documents (Du Halde, II, 298); eight odes of the Classic of Poetry (II, 308); and the first translation into a European language of a Chinese drama, "The Orphan of Zhao" (III, 341), titled L'Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao. Premare sent the translation to Etienne Fourmont, a member of the Academie francaise. However, the play came into the possession of Father Du Halde instead, who published it in his Description Geographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique et Physique de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinois in 1735, although he had no permission from Premare or Fourmont to do so. Premare's translation inspired Voltaire's 1753 tragedy L'Orphelin de la Chine.
De Premare's writings also include a defense of figurism proposed by Joachim Bouvet, which held that the doctrines of Christianity were mystically embodied in the Chinese classics.