Jean-Louis Taberd was a French missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society

Paris Foreign Missions Society

The Society of Foreign Missions of Paris is a Roman Catholic missionary organization. It is not a religious order, but an organization of secular priests and lay persons dedicated to missionary work in foreign lands....

, and Bishop of Isauropolis, in partibus infidelium.

Career

Born in Saint-Étienne

Saint-Étienne

Saint-Étienne is a city in eastern central France. It is located in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon in the Rhône-Alpes region, along the trunk road that connects Toulouse with Lyon...

, Jean-Louis Taberd was ordained priest in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 in 1817. He joined the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1820, and was appointed to become a missionary in Cochinchina

Cochinchina

Cochinchina is a region encompassing the southern third of Vietnam whose principal city is Saigon. It was a French colony from 1862 to 1954. The later state of South Vietnam was created in 1954 by combining Cochinchina with southern Annam. In Vietnamese, the region is called Nam Bộ...

, modern Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

. In 1827 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Cochinchina, and Bishop of Isauropolis in 1830. With the persecutions of the Emperor of Vietnam Minh Mạng

Minh Mang

Minh Mạng was the second emperor of the Nguyễn Dynasty of Vietnam, reigning from 14 February 1820 until 20 January 1841. He was a younger son of Emperor Gia Long, whose eldest son, Crown Prince Canh, had died in 1801...

, Mgr Taberd was forced to escape the country.

Jean-Louis Taberd first went to Penang

Penang

Penang is a state in Malaysia and the name of its constituent island, located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia by the Strait of Malacca. It is bordered by Kedah in the north and east, and Perak in the south. Penang is the second smallest Malaysian state in area after Perlis, and the...

 and then Calcutta, where, with the help of Lord Auckland

George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland

George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, GCB, PC was a British Whig politician and colonial administrator. He was thrice First Lord of the Admiralty and also served as Governor-General of India between 1836 and 1842....

 and the Asiatic Society

Asiatic Society

The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...

 he was able to publish his own Latin-Vietnamese dictionary in 1838. He improved upon the previous works of Alexandre de Rhodes and Pigneau de Béhaine

Pigneau de Behaine

Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau , commonly known as Pigneau de Béhaine, also Pierre Pigneaux and Bá Đa Lộc , was a French Catholic priest best known for his role in assisting Nguyễn Ánh to establish the Nguyễn Dynasty in Vietnam after the Tây Sơn...

, whose 1783 Vietnamese-Latin dictionary he had been handed in manuscript form. He also published Pigneau's dictionary in 1838 under the name Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum.

In his work The Geography of Cochin China, Taberd reports the Paracel Islands

Paracel Islands

The Paracel Islands, also called Xisha Islands in Chinese and Hoàng Sa Islands in Vietnamese, is a group of islands under the administration of Hainan Province, The People's Republic of China. Vietnam and the Republic of China also claim sovereignty of these islands...

 (today a hotly disputed island territory in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

) as having been conquered and claimed by Emperor Gia Long

Gia Long

Emperor Gia Long , born Nguyễn Phúc Ánh , was an emperor of Vietnam...

 in 1816.

Legacy

In the late 19th century, the renowned Catholic Half-breed orphans College "Institut Taberd" was founded in Saigon by the Brothers of the Christian Schools and, since 1943, to educate a Vietnamese elite.

Works

• Dictionarium Latino-Annamiticum completum et novo ordine dispositum (Latin-Vietnamese dictionnary), 1838
• Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum, primitus inceptum ab illustrissimo P.J. Pigneaux
  Pigneau de Behaine
  Pierre Joseph Georges Pigneau , commonly known as Pigneau de Béhaine, also Pierre Pigneaux and Bá Đa Lộc , was a French Catholic priest best known for his role in assisting Nguyễn Ánh to establish the Nguyễn Dynasty in Vietnam after the Tây Sơn...
  
  , dein absolutum et ed. a J. L. Taberd, Serampore
  Serampore
  Serampore is a city and a municipality in Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority. It is a pre-colonial town on the right bank of the Hoogli River...
  
  , 1838
• The Geography of Cochin China
• Notes on the Geography of Cochin China, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 6/7 (1837/39)