ABSTRACT

The Italian Jesuit priest Lodovico Buglio 利類思 arrived in China in 1637. In 1640 he became the first European to enter Chengdu in Sichuan Province, where he established a thriving mission. In the political turmoil immediately after the fall of the Ming, Buglio and another Jesuit priest Gabriel de Magalhães 安文思 (1610-1677) were held by Zhang Xianzhong 張獻忠 (1606-1647), the warlord who controlled Sichuan, and they reluctantly became astronomers at his court when he declared himself prince of the area in late 1644. After Zhang was defeated by the Manchus in 1647, Buglio and Magalhães were taken to Beijing and imprisoned. Both were freed four years later and continued to work in Beijing.