The Prussian antiquarian Theophilus Siegfried Bayer (1694–1738) is best known for his 1730 work, Museum sinicum, which offered early modern European book-buyers their first grammar of the Chinese language. Bayer’s own journey into reading Chinese began with a far more improbable introduction: a passage from the Chinese annals concerning an ancient solar eclipse, which some European savants thought pagan confirmation of the synoptic gospels’ accounts of the darkness that shadowed Christ’s crucifixion. In this talk, Florence Hsia will use Bayer’s early efforts to make sense of this passage to illustrate the methodological options available to early modern European scholars in trying to read Chinese.

Florence Hsia will also lead a workshop for graduate students in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. For more information and to register, contact Austen Walker (aew5784@psu.edu).