COUPLET, PHILIPPE. - Missionary in China, b. at Mechelen (Belgium) on 31 May 1622, entered the Society of Jesus there on 11 Oct. 1640, departed for China in 1656 in the company of Fr. Michele Boym (v.). He worked in various provinces, principally in Kiangnan, aided by the pious Christian Candida Hiu, whose life he later wrote. Sent in 1680 to Rome as procurator of the Chinese vice-province, he remained 10 years in Europe. Among other things, he took up again at Rome the request for a liturgy in the Chinese language, already presented 65 years earlier (cf. his Dissertatio quibus de causis Paulus V indulserit lingua sinensibus eruditis communi per indigenos sacerdotes celebrari sacra, published in the Acta SS. Maii, VIII, Paris 1868, pp. 126-31). Having finally set out again for China, he died accidentally at sea near Goa, on 15 May 1692.
Besides certain works in the Chinese language, intended for religious instruction and still reprinted in the 19th century, and many letters, in part published (cf. Streit), he left some important writings: Histoire d'une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris 1688: it is the translation made by Fr. d'Orléans of the story of Candida Hiu; Spanish translation Madrid 1691, Flemish Antwerp 1694, etc.); Catalogus Patrum S. I. qui post obitum S. Francisci Xaverii ab anno 1581 ad annum 1681 in Imperio Sinarum Iesu Christi fidem propagorum (Paris 1686, and in the appendix of the Astronomia Europaea of Fr. F. Verbiest, Dillingen 1687); Tabula chronologica monarchiae sinicae iuxta cyclos annorum LX ab anno a. C. 2952 ad annum p. C. 1683 (Paris 1686); but the most important is the Confucius Sinarum philosophus sive scientia Sinica latine exposita, to which he had collaborated in China with Frs. P. Intoretta, C. Hendrich and F. De Rougemont and which he published at Paris in 1687. These last two works, and especially the Confucius, played a great part in the controversies over the interpretation that the Jesuits gave to the histories and thought of the ancient Chinese (v. also BOYM MIKAL).
Bibliography3 works
Edmondo Lamalle