Giuseppe Gaetano Pietro Massimo Maria Calleri (Callery)
Torino 1810 - St. Martin les Boulangis (Seine-et-Marne) 1862
Sinologist, he was ordained a priest in 1834. He became a missionary in China, and then he left the clergy to enter the service of the French consul in Macao. He went back to Paris in 1846 and was appointed secrétaire-interprète pour les langues de la Chine at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He kept this position for his entire life, aside from the years between 1849 and 1852, when he temporarily left it for financial reasons. During his travels Calleri collected a rich library, but he was twice forced, in 1849 and 1857, to sell a part of his collection. The second buyer was Guillaume Pauthier, who sued Calleri over the poor condition of many of the texts, opening a long and complex judicial controversy. The extant part of Calleri’s collection was sold in an auction in 1876.
Main works: Systema phoneticum scripturae sinicae (Macao 1841); Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la langue chinoise (Paris 1842); The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language (London 1842); Variétés scientifiques et littéraires (Macao 1845); Recueil des documents diplomatiques relatifs à la légation française en Chine (Macao 1846); Li Kiou Mémorial des rites traduit pour la première fois du Chinois et accompagné de notes, de commentaires et du texte original (Turin-Paris 1853); G. Calleri, M. Yvan, L'insurrection en Chine depuis son origine jusqu'à la prise de Nankin (Paris 1853); La Galerie royale de peinture de Turin (Havre 1854).
Bibliography: G. Bertuccioli, Calleri (Callery), Giuseppe Gaetano Pietro Massimo Maria, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 16 (1973).