Letter 1271

Fontaney asks Sloane to update him on the status of his request for help sending missionaries to China. He will advise them in advance of what curiosities Sloane is interested in procuring. Two or three more workers are needed for the mission in China. Jean de Fontaney (1643-1710) was a Jesuit priest who led Louis XIV’s mission to China in 1685. He and his team were admitted to the Academie des Sciences and equipped with astronomical and geological instruments to collect information on their trip. Fontaney was also a distinguished teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the College de Louis le Grand. His work was published in the Journal des Scavans and Memoires de l’Academie des Sciences (David E. Mungello, Curious land: Jesuit accommodation and the origins of Sinology, University of Hawaii Press, 1989: pp. 329-330).