De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas

De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu ... (Latin for "On the Christian Mission among the Chinese by the Society of Jesus ...") is a book based on an Italian manuscript written by the most important founding figure of the Jesuit China mission, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), expanded and translated into Latin by his colleague Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628). The book was first published in 1615 in Augsburg.^[1]

The book's full title is De Christiana expeditione apud sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu. Ex P. Matthaei Riccii eiusdem Societatis commentariis Libri V: Ad S.D.N. Paulum V. In Quibus Sinensis Regni mores, leges, atque instituta, & novae illius Ecclesiae difficillima primordia accurate & summa fide describuntur ("The Christian Expedition among the Chinese undertaken by the Society of Jesus from the commentaries of Fr. Matteo Ricci of the same Society... in which the customs, laws, and principles of the Chinese kingdom and the most difficult first beginnings of the new Church there are accurately and with great fidelity described / authored by Fr. Nicolas Trigault, Belgian, of the same Society,"^[2] dedicated to Pope Paul V). As it indicates, the work contained an overview of the late Ming China's geography, politics, and culture, its philosophy and religions, and described the history of Christianity's inroads into China (primarily, the work of Ricci himself and his fellow Jesuits). The book articulated Ricci's approach for planting Christianity on the Chinese soil: an "accommodationist" policy, as later scholars called it, based on the premise of the essential compatibility between Christianity and Confucianism.^[1] With some evolutionary changes, this policy continued to guide Jesuit missionaries in China for the next century.^[1]

The first major book published in Europe by an author who was not only fluent in Chinese and conversant in Chinese culture but also had traveled over much of the country, Ricci-Trigault's work was highly popular, and went through at least 16 editions in a number of European languages in the several decades after its first publication.^[3] The existence of a Persian translation, created sometime in the second half of the 17th century in Delhi, suggests that the book also circulated in Mughal India.^[4]