Michal Boym

Michał Piotr Boym (Chinese: 卜彌格; pinyin: Bǔ Mígé; c. 1612–1659) was a Polish Jesuit missionary to China, scientist and explorer.

He is notable as one of the first westerners to travel within the Chinese mainland, and the author of numerous works on Asian fauna, flora and geography.

Boym authored the first ever published Chinese dictionaries for European languages, both of which were published posthumously: the first, a Chinese–Latin dictionary, was published in 1667, and the second, a Chinese–French dictionary, was published in 1670.

Michał Boym was born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), around 1614, to a well-off family of Hungarian ancestry. His grandfather Jerzy Boim came to Poland from Hungary with the king Stefan Batory, and married Jadwiga Niżniowska. Michał's father, Paweł Jerzy Boim (1581–1641), was a physician to King Sigismund III of Poland. Out of Pawel Jerzy's six sons, the eldest, the ne'er-do-well Jerzy was disinherited; Mikołaj and Jan became merchants; Paweł, a doctor; while Michał and Benedykt Paweł joined the Society of Jesus. The family had their own family chapel in Lviv's central square, which was constructed around the time of Michał's birth.

In 1631, Boym joined the Jesuits in Kraków, and was ordained a priest. In 1643, after almost a decade of intensive studies in the monasteries of Kraków, Kalisz, Jarosław and Sandomierz, Boym embarked on a voyage to Eastern Asia. He first traveled to Rome, where he obtained a blessing for his mission from Pope Urban VIII, and then proceeded to Lisbon. Later that year he embarked with a group of nine other priests and clerics on a voyage to Portuguese Goa, and then Macau. Initially he taught at St. Paul Jesuit College (Macau). He then moved to the island of Hainan, where he opened a small Catholic mission. After the island had been conquered by the Manchus, Boym had to flee to Tonkin in 1647.

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