Boym, Michal

Origin and Early Career

Born in Galicia in Lviv (now Ukraine ) ^[2] in a well-known merchant and medical family. His great-grandfather, Boym, Jerzy (1537-1617) arrived in Poland from Hungary with King Stefan Batorius and married a Polish woman, Jadwiga Nizhnowskaya ( Jadwiga Niżniowska ). ^[3] Michal's father, Paul-Jerzy Boim ( Paweł Jerzy Boim , 1581–1641 ^[3] ) was the physician of the Polish king Sigismund III . ^[4] Since the time of the founder of the clan, the Hungarian György (Jerzy), most members of the Bojm clan were buried in their clan chapel , which still exists in Lviv.

Pavel-Jerzy had six sons: the eldest brother, Jerzy, was deprived of his inheritance for sloppiness, Mikolai and Jan went along the merchant line, Paul became a doctor, and Benedict-Pavel and Michal joined the Jesuit Order. ^[3]

In 1631, Michal Boim joined the Jesuit Order and was ordained priest. In 1643, after more than a decade of studies at the monasteries of Krakow and Kalisz , and at the medical faculty of the University of Padua (Italy), ^[5] Michal set off on his first trip to Asia, led by a group of nine more Jesuits. He first visited Rome, where he received a blessing on an expedition and the status of an official Catholic mission from Pope Urban VIII in Rome, and then, like most Jesuits who went to the Far East in those years, departed by sea from Lisbon to Goa , and then to Macau .

Boim taught for some time at a Jesuit college in Macau , and then missioned in Tonkin (northern Vietnam ) and in Dingang on the Chinese island of Hainan . The mission to Hainan lasted until 1647 or 1648, when the island was captured by the Manchus, and Boym returned to Macau. ^[four]

At the Court of the Runaway Emperor

By the end of the 1640s, the majority of the Jesuits who lived and worked in China went over to the side of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which had conquered almost the entire country in a few years. However, the Guangzhou -based vice provincial of the Jesuit Order in China, Alvaro Semedo, continued to maintain contact with the court of Zhu Yulan . Zhu Yulan, grandson of Emperor Wanli , was crowned by his supporters at the end of 1646 as the Minsk Emperor Yongli, and his loyal forces still controlled some parts of southern and southwestern China. The chief eunuch and secretary of Zhu Yulan has long been a Christian (known to Europeans as Achilles Pan), and the Austrian Jesuit Andreas Wolfgang Koffler, who worked at the court of Zhu Yulan, Andreas Wolfgang Koffler, 1603-1651) managed to achieve considerable success: in 1648 he christened the Dowager Empress ^[6] which became known as Elena Wang; Emperor’s mother ^[7] Mary Ma; Empress Anna Wang; and the heir to the throne, Zhu Qusuan , who became baptized by Constantine (Dangding, Danding) ^{[2] [8]} - presumably, not without thought about St. Elena and Konstantin . ^[9] Numerous courtiers were also baptized.

In 1649, Alvaro Semedo sent Boim to the court of Zhu Yulan, who was based at that time in Zhaoqing , in the west of Guangdong . Now Zhaoqing is not too famous outside of Guangdong, but in the Minsk era, this city was the traditional location of the governor general of the two southern provinces, Guangdong and Guangxi . It was there that almost 70 years before Boim, Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggeri began their missionary activities in China. Soon, however, the position of the Minsk emperor worsened - he had to retreat from the Qing troops up the river to Wuzhou , then to Nanning ( Guangxi province). In November 1650, the Dowager Empress Helena Wang and Chief Eunuch Achilles Pan wrote letters to the Pope and the General of the Jesuit Order with a tearful request for help against the Qing conquerors. Boim undertook to deliver the messages for his intended purpose, and put in a word for the fugitive emperor before the Holy See. ^{[4] [10]}

Two young baptized Chinese - Andrei Zheng ( Chinese ex. 郑 安德勒 , pinyin : Zhèng Āndélè , pall .: Zheng Andele ) and Joseph Guo ( Chinese ex. 郭 若 习 , pinyin : Guō Ruòxí , pall .: Guo Josi ) - were sent Achilles Pan to Rome with Boim, but Joseph soon became ill and returned home. Andrew, however, traveled all the way to Rome and back to China with the Polish Jesuit. ^[four]

In Rome

Despite the hostility of the Portuguese authorities in Macau, who would not like the new Qing rulers of China (the Qing already took Guangzhou on November 25, 1650) to learn about their help to the Minsk "partisans", Boym and Zheng were able to sail from Macao to Goa around January 1 1651 ^[4]

In Goa, where Boim and Zheng arrived in March 1651, both the Portuguese governor and the Jesuit leadership were also opposed to any help to the runaway Minsk court. Boim was put under house arrest, but was able to escape and continue on his way to Rome through the Mughal , Persian and Ottoman empires. Via Surat , Hyderabad , Bandar Abbas , Shiraz , Isfahan , Erzurum and Trabzon , Boim and Zheng reached the Turkish Mediterranean port of Izmir in August 1652 , from where they reached Venice by December .

Dressed in a suit of Chinese mandarin , Boym called on the powers that be in Europe to help the cause of the liberation of China from the Manchu invaders, but could not achieve practical results. While Boim was traveling from China to Rome, 3 generals were replaced in the Jesuit order ( Francesco Piccolomini died in 1651, Alessandro Gottifredi in 1652); Goswin Nickel, who replaced them, was not at all a supporter of helping the hopeless cause of the Minsk resistance. While Boyme was waiting for a papal audience, Pope Innocent X also died. Finally, in December 1655 , the newly elected Pope Alexander VII received Boim, and gave him a friendly, but useless reply letter to the Minsk court. ^[four]

Although the stay of Boim and Zheng in Italy did not bring any benefit to the Minsk imperial court that sent them, it proved to be extremely fruitful for expanding European knowledge of China, thanks to the records on the geography, flora and fauna of Asia, which Boym kept during his missionary activities in Asia, and which he now got the opportunity to process. Boim's richly illustrated book Flora sinensis (Flora of China), published in Vienna in 1656 , contained detailed information on the flora and fauna of southern China and Southeast Asia. According to her, she became the first representative of the “Flor” genre - monographs on the plant world of any region. ^[eleven]

Boim also published important books on Chinese medicine - Specimen medicinae Sinicae ("Healing Plants of China") and Clavis medica ad Chinarum doctrinam de pulsibus ("The Medical Key to the Chinese Teachings on Pulse "). ^{[12] [13] [14]}

Boim and Zheng also participated in the transcription and Latin translation of the text of the famous Nestorian stela - a monument of early Christianity in China. Later (after the death of Boim), another Chinese man who signed in Latin “Matthaeus Sina” (apparently arriving in Rome via Tibet and India with Johann Gruber , also worked on the text. The fruit of their collective work was later published (1667) by Athanasius Kircher in the China Illustrata Encyclopedic Volume, which contained many other Boim materials, became the first Chinese-language document published in Europe. ^{[1] [15]}

Return to China

In March 1656, Boym, with a papal letter, went to China at the head of a group of eight priests, half of whom died from illness, before reaching the goal of the path. The authorities in Goa and Macau, adhering to the Portuguese policy of cooperation with the Qing regime, do not let him into China. After a long delay, at the beginning of 1658, Boym and Zheng were able to reach Ayutthaya , the capital of Siam , and from there they sailed to northern Vietnam on a Chinese junky. There they began to look for guides who could lead them to the territory still occupied by the Minsk partisans. In 1659, they crossed the Chinese border into Guangxi , but found that all the roads there were already under Qing control. They were not allowed to return to Vietnam either. Boim became seriously ill and died on June 22, 1659 somewhere in the jungle near the Sino-Vietnamese border. His faithful companion, Andrei Zheng, buried the Polish Jesuit, putting an end to his grave, and hid in the mountains ^[4] . Currently, the burial place is unknown.

• 卜 弥 格 (Article on Boyme) (Chinese)
• “Mikhail Boim - EX VOTO” A documentary film about the life of a remarkable explorer of China of the 17th century, a Lviv citizen, Jesuit Mikhail Boim. (inaccessible link)