Teodorico Pedrini (June 30, 1671 – December 10, 1746) was an Italian priest, missionary, musician and composer.
Pedrini was born in Fermo, Italy. He was the founder of the Xizhimen Church (西堂) in Beijing. He was a teacher of music to some of the sons of the Qing Dynasty's Kangxi Emperor and co-author of the first treatise on Western music theory ever written in Chinese: the LülüZhengyi-Xubian, later included in the Siku Quanshu.
His Chinese name was 德理格 - De Lige (Te Li-ko).
His journey to China
His journey was very long, first along the Via Francigena to Livorno, then by ship to Toulon, and Paris, where the Nuncio was Filippo Antonio Gualterio, also born in Fermo.
Although selected as a member of the first Papal Legation of Patriarch Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon, who had already left Spain for the Canary Islands, Pedrini never managed to join him, and after one and a half years on December 26, 1703, he left from Saint Malo with other missionaries on a French ship towards South America. The ship landed in Peru in July 1704, and stayed there for more than a year. In 1705 he arrived in Mexico and no earlier than 1707 did he manage to leave from Acapulco, on a Manila galleon. After reaching the Mariana Islands, he arrived in the Philippines, where he stayed for almost two years. There in Mariveles he met five western missionaries of Propaganda Fide, among whom Matteo Ripa (who later founded the Chinese College in Naples, now Università degli studi di Napoli L'Orientale), and they reached Macau on January 10. Here they met Cardinal Tournon, who recommended Pedrini as a musician at court, in answer to a request from Kangxi himself. After assisting him on his death-bed on June 8, 1710, they set off for Beijing, where they finally arrived on February 6, 1711.
His life in Beijing
Being, with Matteo Ripa, the first non-Jesuit missionary to settle at the Chinese court, one hundred years after Matteo Ricci's death, Teodorico Pedrini was the first missionary to speak with the Kangxi Emperor about the Pope's decision over the Chinese Rites, sending back to Rome the emperor's peaceful reactions on the matter. His relations with Rome found negative reactions of the Jesuits, who were contraries to the Decrees. This difference of attitude was a long-lasting characteristic of his missionary life, which brought him to the dramatic events of 1721 when, at the end of the second Legation of the Patriarch Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba, he refused to sign the final document called Mandarin’s Diary. He was thereafter imprisoned in the residence of the French Jesuits in Beijing until 1723. The Yongzheng Emperor freed him in February 1723, but the situation caused polemics in Rome in the following years until 1730, anticipating the final condemnation of the Chinese Rites, with the papal Bull Ex Quo Singulari in 1742.
