COUPLET, PHILIPPE. – Missionary in China, born at Malines (Belgium) on 31 May 1622; he entered the Society of Jesus there on 11 October 1640 and departed for China in 1656 in the company of Fr. Boym (v.). He worked in various provinces, chiefly in Kiangnan, aided by the devout Christian Candida Hiu, whose life he later wrote. Sent to Rome in 1680 as procurator of the Chinese vice-province, he remained in Europe for 10 years. Among other things, in Rome he renewed the request for a liturgy in the Chinese language, already submitted 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). Finally setting out again for China, he died accidentally at sea near Goa on 15 May 1692.
In addition to several works in the Chinese language, intended for religious instruction and still reprinted in the 19th century, and to many letters, some of them published (cf. Streit), he left several important writings: Histoire d'une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris 1688: this is the translation made by Fr. d'Orléans of the history 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 to Astronomia Europaea by 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 Confucius Sinarum philosophus sive scientia Sinica latine exposita, on which he had collaborated in China with Frs. P. Intoretta, C. Hendrich, and F. De Rougemont, and which he published in Paris in 1687. These last two works, and especially Confucius, played a major role in the controversies over the interpretation that the Jesuits gave of the histories and thought of the ancient Chinese (v. also BOYM MIKAL).