Lodovico Buglio was an Italian Jesuit mathematician and theologian, a missionary in China.

Life

He was born at Mineo

Mineo

Mineo is a town and comune in the Province of Catania, part of the Sicily region in southern Italy. It lies 64 km southwest of Catania, 56 km from Ragusa, 54 km from Gela, and 22 km from Caltagirone. There are approximately 5600 citizens living there.It serves as the center...

, Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, 26 January 1606; He entered the Society of Jesus, 29 January 1622, and, after a career as a professor of the humanities and rhetoric in the Roman College, asked to be sent to the Chinese mission. Buglio preached the Gospel in the provinces of Sichuan

Sichuan

' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...

, Fujian

Fujian

' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...

, and Jiangxi

Jiangxi

' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...

. He suffered in the persecution which was carried on during the minority of the Kangxi Emperor

Kangxi Emperor

The Kangxi Emperor ; Manchu: elhe taifin hūwangdi ; Mongolian: Энх-Амгалан хаан, 4 May 1654 –20 December 1722) was the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the first to be born on Chinese soil south of the Pass and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722.Kangxi's...

. Taken prisoner by Zhang Xianzhong

Zhang Xianzhong

Zhang Xianzhong or Chang Hsien-chung , nicknamed Yellow Tiger, was a Chinese rebel leader who conquered Sichuan Province in the middle of the 17th century. Upon capturing it, he declared himself emperor of the Daxi Dynasty .According to Chinese chronicles, many scholars rejected that claim, so he...

, he was brought to Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

 in 1648 by Haoge. Here, after a short captivity, he was left free to exercise his ministry.

Buglio collaborated with Fathers Johann Adam Schall von Bell

Johann Adam Schall von Bell

Johann Adam Schall von Bell was a German Jesuit and astronomer. He spent most of his life as a missionary in China and became an adviser to the Chinese emperor.- Life :...

, Ferdinand Verbiest

Ferdinand Verbiest

Father Ferdinand Verbiest was a Flemish Jesuit missionary in China during the Qing dynasty. He was born in Pittem near Tielt in Flanders, later part of the modern state of Belgium. He is known as Nan Huairen in Chinese...

 and Gabriel de Magalhaens in reforming the Chinese calendar, and shared with them the confidence of the emperor. He died at Beijing, 7 October 1682, and was given a state funeral.

Works

Buglio both spoke and wrote Chinese. A list of his works in Chinese, more than eighty volumes, written for the most part to explain and defend the Christian religion, is given in Carlos Sommervogel

Carlos Sommervogel

Carlos Sommervogel was a French Jesuit scholar. He was author of the monumental Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, which served as one of the major references for the editors of the Catholic Encyclopedia....

. Besides Parts I and III of the Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica

The Summa Theologiæ is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas , and although unfinished, "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It is intended as a manual for beginners in theology and a compendium of all of the main...

of Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

, he translated into Chinese the Roman Missal

Roman Missal

The Roman Missal is the liturgical book that contains the texts and rubrics for the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.-Situation before the Council of Trent:...

 (Peking, 1670) the Breviary and the Ritual (ibid, 1674 and 1675). These translations were part of the Jesuit project to introduce a liturgy in Chinese tongue. This plan was approved by Pope Paul V

Pope Paul V

-Theology:Paul met with Galileo Galilei in 1616 after Cardinal Bellarmine had, on his orders, warned Galileo not to hold or defend the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus. Whether there was also an order not to teach those ideas in any way has been a matter for controversy...

, who, 26 March 1615, granted to regularly ordained Chinese priests the faculty of using their own language in the liturgy and administrations of the sacraments; this faculty was never used. Father Philippe Couplet

Philippe Couplet

Philippe Couplet, also Philip Couplet or Philippus Couplet , was a Belgian Jesuit Father who was active in China in the 17th century. He was born in Mechelen, Spanish Netherlands ....

in 1681 tried to obtain a renewal of it from Rome, but was not successful.