Johann Adam Schall von Bell

Timeline

1. 1611–1623Macau–Beijing · BeijingBorn in the Cologne region, he received mathematical and astronomical training at the Roman College of the Society of Jesus and traveled east with the mission recruited by Nicolas Trigault. He reached Macau around 1619, entered the Chinese interior around 1622, and moved to Beijing in 1623, continuing the scientific missionary approach of Matteo Ricci through calendrical astronomy, instruments and accommodation.
2. 1629–1637Calendar Bureau, Beijing · BeijingAfter the solar eclipse prediction failed in the second year of Chongzhen, Xu Guangqi established the Calendar Bureau. After Johann Schreck's death, Schall and Giacomo Rho became the main translators of Western learning, working with Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao and Li Tianjing to compile the Tychonic system into the Chongzhen Calendar, dozens of titles in more than a hundred volumes. Xu died in 1633, and Schall presided over his funeral and helped return his body for burial in Shanghai. Ming court factionalism and war prevented the new calendar from being fully promulgated. In the same period he also took part in casting artillery for the Ming court.
3. 1644–1664Imperial Astronomical Bureau, Beijing · BeijingAfter the 1644 fall of the Ming, Schall revised the calendar manuscripts into the Xiyang Xinfa Lishu and presented them to the Qing court, which promulgated the Shixian Calendar on their basis and appointed him to the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. The Shunzhi emperor trusted him, called him Mafa, and permitted him to build a church in the capital. He became the highest-ranking Western missionary of the early Qing, his scientific authority and missionary privileges reinforcing each other and laying the political groundwork for the later Calendar Case.
4. 1664–1666Beijing · BeijingDuring the regency of Oboi, Yang Guangxian attacked the Western calendar and Catholicism, and Schall, Ferdinand Verbiest and others were imprisoned and sentenced to death. After earthquakes and other portents in the capital they were pardoned; many Western scholars were deported, but he remained in Beijing because of his age and died of illness the following year. After the Kangxi emperor took personal rule, the Western method was gradually restored, and Verbiest continued his work at the Astronomical Bureau.