| Summary | “Immutabile Medium ex sinico in latinum idioma traductum a P. Francisco Noël Societatis Jesu, Missionario Sinensi, Nancham in China, 1700. Manuscript, sixty-two unnumbered folios (21.2 x 15.3 cm), with the just quoted title on the rst page (f. 1r). It contains the Chinese text, with Latin translation by Francois Noël (1651-179), of the Zhongyong (中庸), Doctrine of the Mean (or Immutabile Medium), one of the Four Books. The edition reproduced (f. 13v-60r) is that of the mandatory Zhongyong zhangju by Zhu Xi, the father of Neo-Confucianism, whose preface (1189, third month) has been reproduced and translated too (f. 2v - f. 13r). The Chinese text has twelve horizontal lines per page, and eight characters per line (from right to left). This Chinese text is found on the verso pages and reproduced horizontally instead of vertically [...] in order to pair it with the Latin text found on the recto of the next page. Together with the Chinese text, the Latin text starts at the back of the manuscript [...]. The Latin translation of the main text is divided into 165 successively numbered sentences" (notice that starting with the second line [on a new page] of sentence 81 [=Zhongyong 20.9] the Western handwriting changes and corrections are absent [...]. The value of the two original manuscripts in the KBR (MS 19.930-31) is that one can observe how several spots Francois Noel emendated his initial Latin translation of certain sentences or words.)" Ad Dudnik, Chinese Books and Documents (pre-1900) in the Royal Library of Belgium at Brussels, Brussels: Archives et Biblioteques de Belgique, 2006, p. 40 (19.300). |
