Michael Shen Fu-Tsung
Chinese Jesuit
Michael Alphonsus Shen Fu-Tsung, SJ, also known as Michel Sin, Michel Chin-fo-tsoung, Shen Fo-tsung, or Shen Fuzong (Chinese: 沈福宗; pinyin: Shěn Fúzōng; Wade–Giles: Shen Fu-tsung, c. 1658 – 1691), was a Chinese administrator and Jesuit and convert to Christianity.
He was a convert to Catholicism who was brought to Europe by the Flemish Jesuit priest Philippe Couplet, Procurator of the China Jesuit Missions in Rome. They left Macau in 1681 and visited together Flanders, Italy, France, and England. He later became a Jesuit in Portugal and died near Mozambique while returning home.
Visit to Europe
Flanders and Rome
Michael Shen Fu-Tsung arrived with Philippe Couplet by boat from Portuguese Macau in October 1682. They visited the city where Couplet was born, Mechelen. They then left for Rome, where Couplet tried to obtain a Papal authorization to celebrate mass in Chinese.
France
Shen was presented to King Louis XIV on 15 September 1684, and he demonstrated how to use chopsticks and how to write Chinese characters. He is described as participating in a royal dinner with Couplet, wearing green silk with deep blue brocade, decorated with Chinese dragons. They also visited the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, where they set up a display of Chinese silk portraits.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Shen Fu-Tsung” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.