Synchronismes Chinois

Chang-hai: Imprint of Mission Catholique, 1905. First Edition (presumed; no prior editions or printings cited). Octavo in wraps; 530 pp; 25 cm Good+. Wraps are protected in laminate; mild discoloration to front endpaper, else pages clean; textblock shows mild scuffing; hinges firm. Paperback.

In Chinese and French. Mathias Tchang (張瑪竇, sometimes Latinized as Zhang Madou) was a twentieth-century Jesuit scholar whose work belongs to the tradition of Catholic Sinology shaped by philology, classical learning, and intercultural mediation. Educated within the Jesuit intellectual system and trained in both Western humanities and the Chinese classical canon, he devoted his scholarship to the interpretation, translation, and contextual explanation of Chinese philosophical and literary texts for European audiences. Tchang’s writings are marked by a scrupulous attention to linguistic nuance and historical context, seeking neither facile accommodation nor polemic but a disciplined comparison between Confucian moral thought and Christian intellectual traditions. Though less widely known than earlier figures such as Ricci or Legge, his work reflects the quieter, scholarly phase of Jesuit engagement with China in the twentieth century, oriented toward academic transmission rather than missionary spectacle. Jesuits in China