Biography
Jacques de Bourges (c. 1630-1714) was a priest of the Missions étrangères de Paris, then vicar apostolic of Western Tonkin. Born in Paris, he belonged to the very first group of French missionaries sent to Asia under the direct authority of Rome, and he was its first chronicler: his Relation du voyage de Monseigneur l'évêque de Béryte, published in 1666, recounts the overland crossing that took the small party from Paris to the kingdom of Siam. His life was then divided between Siam and Tonkin, where he spent more than forty years.
Little is known of his early years, and the very year of his birth remains uncertain: the missionary records place it around 1630, some episcopal directories in 1634. He enters history in 1660, when he attached himself to Pierre Lambert de la Motte, bishop of Berytus and vicar apostolic of Cochinchina, one of the prelates appointed by Pope Alexander VII to found in Asia Churches provided with a local clergy. As the sea routes were held by the Portuguese and the Dutch, the bishop chose the land route. Two priests set out with him, Jacques de Bourges and François Deydier.
The travellers left Paris in July 1660 and embarked at Marseille on 27 November. Landing in Syria, they followed the caravan from Aleppo to Baghdad, went down to Basra, crossed Persia by way of Shiraz and Isfahan, reached Surat by sea, cut across India to Masulipatam, then crossed the Bay of Bengal towards Mergui and Tenasserim. They reached Ayutthaya, the capital of Siam, in August 1662, after more than two years on the road. The king there tolerated foreign religions, and the mission settled there lastingly.
Lambert de la Motte soon charged his companion with returning to Europe to report on the undertaking in Paris and in Rome. Bourges left Siam, probably in 1663, and came home by sea, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, Saint Helena and England. It was during this stay in France that he had his account printed, by Denys Bechet, in Paris, in 1666. The book describes the stages, the customs of the countries crossed and the kingdom of Siam, and it gives practical advice to those who might wish to follow the same route. The first French work devoted to Siam, it was reprinted in 1668 and in 1683.
Back in Asia, Bourges accompanied Lambert de la Motte to Tonkin in 1669, then settled there alongside Deydier, who had been working there in secret since 1666. In November 1679, Rome divided the country into two vicariates: Deydier received Eastern Tonkin, Bourges Western Tonkin, with the title of bishop of Auren. He was consecrated on 17 May 1682 at Ayutthaya by Louis Laneau, vicar apostolic of Siam. He then directed his mission for some thirty years, in a country where Christianity was at times tolerated, at times proscribed.
In 1713, an edict of persecution led to his expulsion. Very old, he withdrew to Siam and died at Ayutthaya on 9 August 1714. His narrative remains one of the founding testimonies of the Missions étrangères de Paris, and one of the rare French descriptions of the overland route to Asia in the seventeenth century.
