Orient versus China: Eusèbe Renaudot’s vision of world history (ca. 1700)

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Zwierlein, Cornel, “Orient versus China: Eusèbe Renaudot’s vision of world history (ca. 1700)”

Journal of the history of ideas 81:1 (January 2020), pp. 23-44

(Abstract:) The article focuses on French theologian and orientalist Eusèbe Renaudot on experts on the traditions of Eastern Christian churches. It mentions Renaudot's work contributed uniquely to the hundred-year clash between the Jesuits and their enemies during the controversy over Chinese rites and enduring and expansive debate fought within Catholicism. It also mentions intellectuals were armed with theoretical frameworks of historico-political comparatism.

(pp. 26-27): Eusèbe Renaudot (1648-1720).

(pp. 28-30): Renaudot and the Nestorians.

(pp. 30-32): Synchronizing two unknown historical world regions: matching medieval Nestorian, Arab, and Chinese chronologies in 1685. [Chinese, that is, a passage from Chinese chronicles paraphrased and translated into Latin by Philippe Couplet SJ and sent to Renaudot in July 1685]

(pp. 32-37): The Syriac-Chinese stele and Renaudot’s research on the Nestorians.

(pp. 37-40): Competing visions of history and the Chinese Rites Controversy.

(pp. 40-43): Globalizing the Querelle: Turning “ancient vs. modern” into inter-civilizational comparisons.