T’OUNG PAO 448 T’oung Pao Kajdański103-4-5 (2017) 448-472 www.brill.com/tpao International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus: New Facts, Reflections, Conclusions Edward Kajdański (Gdansk, Poland) Abstract Following the author’s previous work on reconstituting the transmission to Europe, disappearance, and eventual publication under other names of the Polish Jesuit Michael Boym’s manuscript work on Chinese medicine, this article recounts the recent discovery of some of these manuscripts. They are kept at the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, and were originally part of the Chinese Library of the Elector of Brandenburg, where they were acquired from Dutch officials who had earlier bought them from the Jesuit Philippe Couplet (who had obtained them from Boym’s last companion). The complex story of these manuscripts’ travels documents the keen interest in Chinese medicine among the many competing European powers and institutions in the seventeenth century; it also shows that we should be careful in assessing whether the publication of Boym’s seminal work under other names was willful plagiarism, or a result of contemporary tensions and confusion. Résumé Cet article fait suite aux travaux antérieurs de l’auteur sur la transmission en Europe, la disparition puis la publication sous d’autres noms des travaux manuscrits sur la médecine chinoise du jésuite polonais Michael Boym. Il relate la découverte récente d’une partie de ces manuscrits dans la bibliothèque Jagiellonienne à Cracovie, et montre qu’ils viennent de l’ancienne bibliothèque chinoise du Grand Electeur de Brandebourg, où ils ont été originellement acquis auprès d’officiers hollandais qui les avaient achetés auprès du jésuite Philippe Couplet, qui lui-même les avait obtenus du dernier compagnon de Boym à la mort de celui-ci. L’histoire complexe des voyages de ces manuscrits met en lumière le fort intérêt pour la médecine chinoise de la part des diverses puissances et institutions européennes du 17e siècle, alors en vive concurrence ; elle nous engage aussi à la prudence quant aux jugements que l’on peut porter sur la publication des travaux pionniers de Boym sous d’autres noms, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 T’oungDOI: Pao 10.1163/15685322-10345P05 103-4-5 (2017) 448-472 ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) ISSN 1568-5322 (online version)Downloaded TPAO from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:23AM via free access Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus 449 qui doit autant aux tensions et confusions politiques du temps qu’à un plagiat intentionnel. Keywords Michael Boym, Chinese medicine, Jesuits Thirty years ago, my article “Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus” was pub- lished in T’oung Pao.1 There I referred to an earlier polemic opposing Paul Pelliot and Robert Chabrié2 regarding the authorship of two books on Chinese medicine which were published in Europe in the 1680s. Michael Boym (1612-1659), we may recall, was a Polish Jesuit mission- ary, who arrived in China in 1644—the very year of the Manchu invasion resulting in the capture of Peking and the establishment of the Qing dynasty, which then ruled China for nearly 270 years. Some supporters of the overthrown Ming dynasty withdrew to South China, where they organized resistance against the invaders. The last offspring of the Ming dynastic family, Zhu Youlang 朱由榔 (1623-1662), prince of Gui 桂王, es- tablished his seat in Zhaoqing (an old city not far from Canton), where he was crowned in 1646 as the last emperor of the dynasty – Yongli 永曆. Michael Boym found himself at the court of Yongli, which at that time adopted Christianity, and was sent to Europe in the rank of envoy to ask the Holy See for moral support and the European powers for military assistance. After the failure of his mission in Europe and after four years of confinement in the Loreto monastery, he was sent back to China, but was prevented from sailing to Macau as an entry-point to China, and was forced to reach Yongli’s court in Yunnan through Tonkin. He died from exhaustion and illness in the neighboring province of Guangxi. Boym was a prominent scholar, one of the pioneers of European sinol- ogy. During his stays in China and Europe, as well as on his long trav- els between the two continents, he translated (together with his travel companion, Andreas Zheng) and wrote himself many works concern- ing Chinese history, geography, botany, zoology, medicine, pharmacy, 1) Edward Kajdański, “Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus,” T’oung Pao 83 (1987): 161-89. 2) Paul Pelliot, “Michel Boym,” T’oung Pao 30 (1934): 95-151; Robert Chabrié, Michel Boym jésuite polonais et la fin des Ming en Chine (1646-1662) : Contribution à l’histoire des missions d’Extrême-Orient (Paris: Edit. Pierre Bossuet, 1933). T’oung Pao 103-4-5 (2017) 448-472 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:23AM via free access 450 Kajdański philosophy, and language. Only a small part of these were published un- der his own name, but most of his works were put to use by his numer- ous plagiarists and compilers. In my 1987 article I presented the view that the books on Chinese medicine and pharmacy under discussion—the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae (1682) and the Clavis Medica ad Sinarum Doctrinam de Pulsibus (1686), both published by Andreas Cleyer—had been written by Boym and were parts of his opus magnum sent to Europe from the Kingdom of Siam in 1658 under the title Medicus Sinicus. I also showed that both books contained texts either translated from the Chinese by Boym or written by himself, and based on Chinese medical works. This article also attempted to correct and broaden certain conclusions concerning the dispersion and disappearance of some of Boym’s manuscripts and their attribution to others. The original title of Boym’s medical work was Medicus Sinicus, and it was announced under that title in 1654 in the expanded version of his Briefve Relation,3 in which seven works prepared for printing in Europe were mentioned. Item VI of his Aduertissement au Lecteur had the fol- lowing title: Medicus Sinicus seu singularis Ars explorandi pulsuum & praedicendi & futura Symptomata, et affectiones ægrotatium à multis ante Christum Sæcula tradita, et apud Sinas conseruata; quae quidem ars omnino est admirabilis & ab Europæâ diuersa. This title was confirmed by a letter written by Boym and found several years ago by Professor Noel Golvers in the Jesuit archives in Rome. The letter is addressed to the General of the Order, F. Goswin Nickel, and is dated 26 May 1658. In it Boym informs the General that the work on his text is completed and that he is sending it to Belgium (“Mitto in Belgium [placidum]librum qui titulus Medicus Sinicus”).4 3) Briefve Relation de la Notable Conversion des Personnes Royales, & de l’estat de la Religion Chrestienne en la Chine, faicte par le tres R. P. Michel Boym de la Compagnie de Iesus, enuoyé par la Cour de ce Royaume là en qualité d’Ambassadeur au S. Siege Apostolique, & recitée par luy-mesme dans l’Eglise de Smyrne, le 29. Septembre de l’an 1652 (Paris: Sebastien et Gabriel Cramoisy, 1654), “Aduertissement au Lecteur,” 72. 4) ARSI Jap. Sin. 162, no. 206, according to Golvers who notes that the manuscript survives in a poorly legible state (like part of Boym’s manuscripts in the ARSI archives). See Golvers, “Michael Boym and Martino Martini: A Contrastive Portrait of two China Missionaries-Map- makers,” paper delivered in Krakow in 2009 and made available to me by the author; later published in Monumenta Serica 59 (2011): 259-71. T’oung Pao 103-4-5 (2017) 448-472 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 02:41:23AM via free access Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus 451 The present essay is divided into four parts: the first recounts my search for Michael Boym’s long forgotten or unknown manuscripts; the second describes their contents; the third traces the disappearance and dispersion of Boym’s medical writings; and the last mainly discusses their appropriation by other authors. Finding and Identifying Long-Forgotten Boym Manuscripts When I started to work on Michael Boym’s Medicus Sinicus in 1985, I only knew that the collections of the former Preussische Staatsbiblio- thek in Berlin had been partly lost during WWII, and that the same fate met the Chinese books and manuscripts that had been described by Julius Klaproth in the early nineteenth century.5 According to Klaproth, one of these manuscripts was “ein handschriftliges Verzeichnis Chi- nesischer Arzenmittel, auf rothem Papiere geschrieben, mit Andreas Cleyers kurzer Lateinischen Beschreibung, die auch seiner Medicina Si- nica abgedrückt est.”6 I was convinced that it was a manuscript copy of Boym’s Medicamenta Simplicia, a part of his Receptarum Sinensium Liber that was published by Andreas Cleyer in the latter’s Specimen Medicinae Sinicae. I attempted to confirm the existence of this handwritten text, but the reply was that the Berlin Library had been destroyed during the war and that the Chinese manuscripts and books it owned were proba- bly lost. In the meantime, however, rumors were confirmed that a part of the Berlin collections had found its way to Poland and was preserved at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. After the Berlin Library was bombed in 1941, these holdings were carried away from Berlin to Grussau (today’s Krzeszów) in Lower Silesia, and in 1945 were found and secured by the delegate of the Polish Education Ministry, to be eventually transported to Krakow. Until 1981, the fact that these books were stored at the Jagiel- lonian Library was in fact a secret.