Schall, JOHANN ADAM VON, a Jesuit missionary to China, was born at Cologne in 1591, entered the Jesuit order in Rome in 1611, and was sent out partly in consequence of his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to China in 1622. His fame as a scholar led to his being invited to the imperial court at Pekin, where he was entrusted with the reformation of the calendar and the direction of the public mathematical school. The Emperor Shun-che, the founder of the Manchu dynasty (1644), showed him great honour and respect. Through this favour Schall obtained an edict for the building of Catholic churches and for the liberty of Christian preaching throughout the empire; and in the space of fourteen years the Jesuit missionaries are said to have made 100,000 converts. On the death of this emperor, however, a change took place; the edict was revoked, and Schall was thrown into prison and sentenced to death. He was afterwards liberated; but he was again imprisoned, and, at the end of a long incarceration, died August 15, 1669. He had acquired a perfect mastery of the Chinese language, in which he compiled numerous treatises upon scientific and religious subjects. A large MS. collection of his Chinese writings, amounting to 14 volumes in 4to, is preserved in the Vatican Library. In Latin he wrote a work On the History of the Jesuit Missions in China (Vienna, 1655).
See Mailly's Histoire Générale de la Chine, and Huc's Le Christianisme en Chine.