REGIS
720
REGIS
with the seven regions — especially the care of the poor,
provision for the maintenance of the churches, and
whatever else pertained primarily to the office of the
deacons, one of whom was appointed over each of the
seven regions {diaconus regionarius) . As the deacons
were assisted by seven subdeacons, we also find the
term subdiaconus regionarius. The notaries and
defensores employed in the administration of the
regions were also known as notarii regionarii and
defensores regionarii. There is also occasional men-
tion of aeolyli regionarii. Little is known about the
functions exercised by these regionarii, as in general
concerning the ecclesiastical administration in ancient
Rome, in as far as it affected the regions.
De Rossi, Roma solleranea crisliana. III (Rome, 1877), 514 sqq.; Philipps, A'irc/i<!nr«-W, VI, 316 sqq.; Hinschius, A'ircAen- recht, I, 375 sqq.
J. P. KiRSCH.
Regis, Je.A-N-Baptiste, b. at Istres, Provence, 11 June, 1663, or 29 Jan., 1664; d. at Peking, 24 Nov., 1738. He was received into the Society of Jesus, 14 Sept., 1683, or 13 Sept., 1679, and in 1698 went on the Chinese mission, where he served science and reli- gion for forty years, and took the chief share in the making of the general map of the Chinese Empire. The early Jesuit missionaries had already endeav- oured to make known to Europe the true geography of China, of which at the end of the sixteenth cen- tury even the best cartographers were utterly ignorant. Their achievements up to the middle of the seventeenth century are summed up in the "Nevus Atlas Sinen- sis" published by Father Martin Martini (Amster- dam, 1655). He was greatly assisted in this work by Chinese books of geography, where he found a mass of descriptive information, the distances between important places and even maps, which, however, were very crude, the distances ha\ang been measured with little exactitude. These imperfect data he sup- plemented and completed by astronomical obser- vations made in the chief towns by himself and his associates; hence the positions of his Atlas are re- markably accurate. The favour enjoyed by the mis- sionarifts with Emperor K'ang-hi (1662-1722) made it possible for them to improve on this. Fr. Ferdinand Verbiest collected the earliest definite ideas of Tatary during two journeys made to that country with the emperor (16S2-3)." The arrival in China (1687) of French Jesuits sent by Louis XIV gave new impetus to scholarly labours in the mission, especially to geography. Provided with perfected instruments and trained in the methods of the astronomers of the Observatory of Paris the new missionaries were enabled to determine more correctly positions already calculated. The "M^moires" and the "Histoirede I'Academie des Sciences" record their observations. Fr. Jean-Frangois Gerbillon made eight journeys through Tatary and Mongolia (1688-98), acquiring more geographical information concerning them. In 1701 the great work of the general map of the empire, begun by the topographical drawing of the city of Peking and its environs, including the ancient summer residence of the emperors and 1700 towns or villages, was assigned to Fr. Antoine Thomas, a Belgian of Namur, and Joachim Bouvet, Jean Baptiste R^gis, Dominique Parrenin, all three French. K'ang-hi, who wished to take measures against the periodical overflow of the rivers of Chi-li, was satisfied. Fr. D. Parrenin then induced him to consent to a map of the Great Wall of China. Frs. Bouvet, R6gis, and Pierre Jartoux measured their route to the eastern extrernity of the famous rampart by means of regulariy divided cords, keeping track of directions with the assistance of a compa.ss, and frequently obser\'ing the meridians of the sun in order to calculate latitudes. In four days they reached the Gulf of Chi-li (8 June, 170S) ani began operations on the Great Wall. On 16 October they had estimated its extent to be 21° long.,
or almost half the widest breadth of the United States
from east to west, and had determined the positions
of the fortified towns "by which it was flanked",
according to Fr. Regis. At the end of two months
Bouvet, being Ul, retired to Peking. Regis and
Jartoux reached the western end of the Great Wall
at Kia-yu-Koan and completed their work by the
mensuration of an interior lateral wall which brought
them to Si-ning, on the frontier of Tibet, near the
great Lake Kukunor. They returned to Peking, 10
Jan., 1709. Their map pleased the emperor and he
requested the continuation of the work for the prov-
inces outside the Great Wall and for China proper.
Regis, Jartoux, and Fr. Ernbert Fridelli, from the
Austrian TjtoI, set out for the northeast. In two
expeditions (8 May-17 Dec, 1709; 22 July-14 Dec,
1710) they made the map of Liao-tung and Man-
churia, and during the interval drew the Province of
Chi-li in which Peking is situated. In 1711 Fr.
Francis Cardoso, Portuguese, and the Augustinian,
Fr. Guillaume Bonjour, the only non-Jesuit, joined
the geographers. Regis and Cardoso drew the map
of Shan-tung; Tartoux, Fridelli, and Bonjour trav-
ersed Mongolia as far as Lake Baikal in the north and
the entrance of eastern Turkestan to the west. The
year 1712 brought a new reinforcement: Frs. Vincent
de Tartre and Cardoso made the maps of Shan-si and
Shen-si (1712-14), Kiang-si and Kwang-tung, and
Kwang-si; Frs. Anne-Marie de Mailla, Roman Hin-
derer, an .\lsatian, and Regis laboured (1712-15) on
the maps of Hu-nan, Kiang-nan, Che-kiang. Fu-kien,
and the Island of Formosa. Meanwhile Fridelli and
Bonjour were at Sze-chwan and Yun-nan, where Fr.
Bonjour died, 23 December, 1714, and was replaced
by Regis, 24 March, 1715. He a.ssisted Fridelli with-
the maps of Yun-nan, Kwei-chow, and Hu-kwang.
After ten years' labour the new map of China was
completed, 1 Jan., 1717. The fundamental method
employed was the exact measurement of distances
from which was obtained the longitude and latitude
of places; this, supplemented and controlled by the
observation of the meridians of the sun and the polar
stars, directly gave the latitude. The missionaries
were sometimes assisted by the observation of eclipses
of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter, of which
more perfect process they desired to make use to ob-
tain longitudes, but conditions did not permit.
In reply to a criticism of Freret, the learned secretary of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Pere Gaubil wrote (5 November, 1736) : " When think- ing of a map of China and Tatary you had in mind such men as MM. Cassini, Maraldi, Chazelles, and others who worked at the meridian assisted by all the necessary instruments and having plenty of time at their disposal. Our Fathers made use of the avoca- tion of map-makers to do missionary work, to procure assistance and protection for the missionaries of the provinces, and to establish new missions. The Chinese and Tatar mandarins who accompanied them hindered them exceedingly; they had orders not to let the Fathers go where they would, . . . and would never allow them sufficient time for the observation of meridians, the measurement of roads, the variation of the needle (magnetic needle), the rhomb, and the gtimation of positions from these elements. The work being finished the completed map had to be sent in haste to the emperor. . . . Compared with what was done elsewhere for general maps of countries smaller than China and Tatary this work can but do honour to the Tatar prince who commanded such a worthy undertaking and assuredly it did not discredit our Fathers." This appreciation has been fully justi- fied by the votes of the best judges, among them Fer- dinand de Richthof er, the famous geologist and explorer of China, who writes : " If we consider the time at which it was made, the map of the Jesuits, as a whole, may be called a masterpiece" (China, I, 686).
