André Soulié

The Reverend

Jean-André Soulié

MEP
Priest
ChurchRoman Catholic
DioceseApostolic Vicariate of Thibet
Installed1886
Term ended1905
Orders
OrdinationJuly 5, 1885
Personal details
Born(1858-10-06)October 6, 1858
Saint-Juéry, Aveyron, France
DiedDecember 11, 1905(1905-12-11) (aged 47)
Ngarongchy valley, near Yaregong, Batang, Sichuan, China
DenominationCatholic
OccupationMissionary

Jean-André Soulié, MEP (October 6, 1858 – December 11, 1905, known in Chinese sources as 蘇烈 [Su Lie]) was a French Catholic missionary sent to East Tibet of Qing China. He was killed in a 1905 anti-Catholic revolt. He was a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society.

Biography

Soulié was born in Saint-Juéry, Aveyron, on October 6, 1858. He was ordained July 5, 1885, for the Paris Foreign Missions Society and sent in October 1885 to the Apostolic Vicariate of Thibet (now Diocese of Kangding), administered by Mgr Félix Biet. His first mission was to Batang,[1] then at Cha-pa (now Shaba, close to Kanding). He met with his colleagues the French expedition of Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orléans in June 1890 at Ta-tsien lu (now Kangding).[2] In 1896, he was sent to the mission station of Tse-ku (close to now Yanmen) with Father Jules Dubernard. This village is situated on the right bank of the Lancang (upper Mekong) river. Afterwards, he moved to Yaregong (now Yarigong Town) where he gained some popularity by practicing medicine among local people.

Death

Soulié was captured, tortured and shot in the Ngarongchy valley, not far from Yaregong, Sichuan, by lamas during the 1905 Tibetan Revolt.[3][4]

Legacy

Buddleja davidii bush

As a botanist, Father Soulié collected more than 7,000 species, among them Rosa soulieana, a species of endemic Rosa, which was introduced in Europe by Auguste Louis Maurice de Vilmorin, and studied by Museum d'histoire naturelle in Paris, and then by François Crépin in 1896. Most of Father Soulié's specimens were notably studied and defined by Adrien Franchet.

Father Soulié also sent in 1895 the first seeds of Buddleja davidii to Paris. This decorative shrub was then introduced by Vilmorin and widely distributed in Europe after 1916.[5]

Around Tsekou and Atentsé (now Yunling), he captured and sent to the French Natural History Museum the first specimens known to science of the Black snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus bieti, described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1897.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Archives of the Paris Foreign Missions Society". Archived from the original on 2014-02-25. Retrieved 2012-12-11.
  2. ^ Gabriel Bonvalot, L'Asie inconnue: à travers le Tibet, Paris, Flammarion, 1896, p. 375
  3. ^ "Jean-André SOULIÉ". irfa.paris (in French). Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  4. ^ Annales des Missions étrangères Archived November 22, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Serge Muller (coord.), Plantes invasives en France, Publications scientifiques du MNHN, 2004 (réimpr. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle), 168 p

References

  • Françoise Fauconnet-Buzelin, Les Martyrs oubliés du Tibet. Chronique d'une rencontre manquée (1855-1940), éd. du Cerf, coll. Petit Cerf, Paris, 2012, 656 pages