KIRCHER (Athanase). La Chine, illustrée de plusieurs monuments tant sacrés que profanes et de quantités de recherches de la nature et de l'art. Amsterdam, Jansson van Waesberge et héritiers Weyerstraet, 1670. in-folio, brown calf, spine decorated, spotted edges (period binding). First French edition of this remarkable synthesis of seventeenth-century European scholarship on China. François-Savinien Dalquié's translation is augmented by Father Johann Grüber's answers and a Chinese-French dictionary. The work was first published in Latin in 1667 by the same Dutch bookseller, who dedicated this French edition to François-Michel Le Tellier, then superintendent general of the posts and relays of France. Superb engraved intaglio illustration, including a title-frontispiece, two fold-out maps and a large epigraphic table, 22 plates out of text and 55 figures in the text, covering the entire field studied by Kircher: ideograms and writing, costumes, natural history, religion, monuments, etc. The Jesuit Athanase Kircher (1602-1680), a universally curious mind who was particularly interested in oriental languages, cryptography, occultism and the Kabbalah, deals in this very important work with the geography, natural history, customs, religious practices, writing and architecture of the Middle Kingdom. Keen to shed light on the role of Christian missionaries in the East, the Jesuit polygrapher sets out to demonstrate the rather surprising presence of the Christian faith in China as early as the seventh century by interpreting a Nestorian inscription found in China in 1625. Stamped with the title of a Jesuit institution and the library of Paul Chapuy, a mining engineer. The portrait of the author is missing. Freckles, tear without missing p. 1, corners worn, missing headpieces and one nerve. Sommervogel, IV, 1064 - Cordier, Bibl. Sinica, 26.