The jesuit library in Beijing: a free gift or an entrusted property?

The present paper is an investigation into the question of whether the Jesuit Library, which has existed in Beijing since the seventeenth century, was donated or, alternatively, passed to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the 1830s as an entrusted property. When Roman Catholic missionaries were allowed to return to China in 1860 this library was returned to them. This evidence is regarded by some as a confirmation that the library was only entrusted temporarily to the Russian Mission for safekeeping. However, the renowned Russian orientalists, J.Kowalewski and V.Vasilyev, who witnessed these events, left testimonies that the library was presented to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission as a gift by the Roman Catholics. As a logical outcome of the ownership of the contents of the library some books in Chinese and in European languages were sent to Russia even during the lifetime of Archbishop Pereira – the last bishop of Beijing. Now these books which bear the seal stamps of the Society of Jesus are kept in the libraries of Kazan and Saint Petersburg Universities.

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