Teodorico Pedrini

Teodorico Pedrini, C.M. (June 30, 1671 – December 10, 1746), also known by his Chinese name De Lige (), was an Italian Vincentian priest, musician and composer, but he was mainly a missionary at the imperial court of China for 36 years. Pedrini was born in Fermo, in the Marche, then part of the Papal States. He was the founder of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Beijing. He was the music teacher to three sons of the Qing dynasty’s Kangxi Emperor, and he was co-author of the first treatise on Western Music theory ever written in Chinese: the LǜlǚZhèngyì-Xùbiān, later included in the Siku Quanshu. Biography He was baptized Paolo Filippo Teodorico Pedrini on July 6, 1671, in the parish church of St. Michael the Archangel, in Fermo in the Marche. His father, Giovanni Francesco Pedrini, who had been born in Servigliano on February 5, 1630, had worked as a notary in his native town for two years from 1654 to 1656, before going to Rome for ten years, as Chancellor for the Auditor Camerae. He then became the most important notary in Fermo, from 1669 to his death in 1707. Teodorico’s mother was Nicolosa Piccioni, born in Fermo on March 14, 1650, daughter of another notary, Giovanni F