View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen) EASTM 45 (2017): 119-183 Antoine Thomas, SJ, and his Synopsis Mathematica: biography of a Jesuit mathematical textbook for the China mission* Noël Golvers To the memory of Björn Löwendahl (1941-2013), true friend and great connoisseur of Western books on China [Noël Golvers, PhD Classical Philology (1984), is Senior Researcher at the F. Verbiest Institute of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and formerly lecturer in Latin at the Katholieke Hogeschool Leuven. His research area is Latin (Portuguese, etc.) texts on the Jesuit mission in China, especially in the early Qing period, starting from Ferdinand Verbiest’s astronomical work. His books include F. Verbiest and the Astronomia Europea (1993), Ferdinand Verbiest and the Chinese Heaven (2003), which received the 2004 award of the Royal Academy of Belgium, and The Mathematical Manuscripts of F. Verbiest from Constantinople (2009; with Efthymios Nicolaidis). Another book (2001) concerns François de Rougemont’s Account Book (1674-1676) on daily life in Jiangnan, which has been translated into Chinese. He has also made many shorter contributions on other, mainly cultural aspects of the Jesuit mission in the same period, with regard to history of science and book culture, and communication networks between Europe and China. Contact:
[email protected]] * * * Abstract: This article is an examination of a nearly forgotten massive two- volume octavo textbook of introductory (theoretical and practical) mathematics published in Douai in 1685, with a second issuing of it in 1729.