François de Rougemont, S.J., missionary in Ch'ang-shu (Chiang-nan)

"This book reconstructs the life of a Jesuit missionary in a small inland residence in China (Ch'ang-shu, Suchou Prefecture), primarily but not exclusively on the basis of the evidence of a newly (re)discovered private Account Book covering the period from October 1674 to April/May 1676. This "pocket" notebook (more than 140 pp.in-12[degree] of annotations), kept for strictly private use and a preparatory document for a major ledger which is now lost, mainly represents the missionary's private expenses, and, to much lesser extent, in a separate section, the revenues he received; as such it is an exceptional document in the missionary documentation. Absolutely unique is the part concerning his personal "spiritual" exercises, his successes as well as failings in that field. All the available evidence is combined with other contemporary information, mainly from unpublished sources, including a large number of quotations from the lost Couplet-Rougemont correspondence that has survived in Estrix's Elogium F. de Rougemont (1690), the text of which is also published here for the first time. Thus the Account Book assumes its place as an exceptional private document with a major relevance for the reconstruction of missionary life in China, comparable to such items as the diary of Andreas Ly."--BOOK JACKET.