Matteo Ricci

His fellow Jesuit Nicolas Trigault, who published his papers, says that Ricci was born at Macerata in Italy on 6 October 1552, entered the Society of Jesus in Rome, studied at the Roman College until 1577, reached Goa in September 1578 and after four years in India was assigned to the China mission, in which he worked for nearly thirty years (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione note to the reader (unnumbered leaves before book 1)). He reached Beijing on 24 January 1601 (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione 4.12 (pp. 405–407)). See Matteo Ricci at the Court of Beijing.

His catechism in Chinese argued from natural reason and from the ancient Chinese books, and spared the school of Confucius while refuting the other sects (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione 5.2 (pp. 488–489)). With Xu Guangqi he translated the first six books of Euclid, and in his preface of 1607 he describes how the two of them worked (Jihe yuanben, Ricci’s preface). He died in Beijing on 11 May 1610 (Ricci and Trigault, De Christiana expeditione 5.20 (pp. 612–614)).