Second (or third?) edition of the funeral oration for the sinologist and mathematician Claude de Visdelou (1656-1737), by Father Norbert of Bar-le-Duc (1703-1769), dedicated to Pope Benedict XIV. The oration prooved highly important in the so-called "Struggle of the rites" in China between the Jesuit missionaries and the Chinese emperor and the Pope.
The author of the oration, (Norbert de Bar-le-Duc, a Capuchin monk (1716) and priest (1729) also known as Norbert de Lorraine, Curé Pierre Parisot or Abbé Platel, was sent to Malabar and later to Pondicherry in December 1736 after being appointed procurator of the French mission. He stayed for three years in Pondicherry, where he soon came into conflict with the Jesuits on the same issue - "the struggle of the (now Malabaric) rites" -which had lead to Visdelous exile in the same Capuchin monastery in the same town. So the anti-Jesuit Father Norbert de Bar-le-Duc understandably delivered Visdelous funeral oration .
An undated 4to edition that names no printer or place of printing appears to be the first edition of the funeral oration. Sommervogel and Cordier mention an 8vo edition nominally printed by Antoine Pereira in Cadiz (though other sources suggest it was printed in Avignon), with the same collation as our edition and published in the same year, making the present edition the second or third.
Fine copy, with bookplate on inside front cover: ''Devie, Prêtre''. Binding skilfully repaired; head of second fly-leaf damaged. De Backer & Sommervogel VIII, col. 843; Cordier, Sinica 1100-1; Librairie Polak, Coll. de M.M.: Extreme oriênt du 16e siècle au 20e siècle 305; Adelhelm Jann, Die katholischen Missionen in Indien, China und Japan (1915), passim; Claudia von Collani & Claudio Filippo Grimaldi S.J., "Zur Ankunft des päpstlichen Legatien Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon in China", in: Monumenta Scrica, 42 (1944), pp. 329-359; Robert Streit & Joh. Dindinger, eds., Bibliotheca Missionum, 7 (1932), pp. 105-107; Biogr. univ. XLIII, cols. 638-640; not in Lust.