BONJOUR, GUILLAUME. — Orientalist and exegete, born at Tolosa in 1670, died in China on 23 December 1714. He belonged to the Order of the Hermits of S. Agostino.
The first years of his scientific career were largely devoted to research in chronology and archaeology. Summoned to Rome in 1695 by Cardinal de Noris, a member of the same Order and a scholar of the same subjects, he devoted himself especially to the study of Egyptian antiquities and the Coptic language, of which he was one of the principal restorers. From this period date his book In monumenta coptica seu aegyptiaca Bibliothecae Vaticanae brevis exercitatio (Rome 1699) and his Coptic grammar (manuscript in the Bibl. Angelica, no. 475). In 1701 he was appointed a member of the Congregation for the reform of the calendar; then, in 1705, Cardinal Barbarigo entrusted him with the regency of his new seminary at Montefiascone, where he taught biblical sciences until 1707.
Having returned to Rome, he felt called to the missionary life. Clement XI commissioned him to deliver the cardinal’s hat to Th. de Tournon, exiled to Macao. After a painful journey toward China, he arrived in Macao in 1710 and then continued onward. In Pechino he was well received by the emperor. Together with the Jesuit missionaries, he composed part of the map of the Chinese Empire, printed in Pechino in 1718, namely sheets 11–13, covering the provinces of Yun-nan and Se-Ciuan and the territory of Hani. He was honorably buried in Pechino.
Other works in print: Dissertatio de nomine Patriarchae Joseph (Rome 1696); Triduum de canone librorum ss. concertatio (Montefiascone 1704); Selectae in Sacram Scriptorum dissertationes (there 1705). Other works of his remained unpublished (cf. E. Narducci, Catalogus Cod. Mts. in Bibl. Angelica, I, Rome 1893).