It is a major source of information for the history of Catholic missions and life in China in those times.
As professor of philosophy and especially while procurator of the Franco-Chinese mission, he sought in a series of papers to awaken interest in the work of Christianizing Eastern Asia.
Under the same date there appeared in Paris the Histoire des Isles Mariannes nouvellement converties à la religion chrétienne.
The second part, translated into Spanish by J. Delgado, is found in the latter's Historia General de Filipinas (Manila, 1892).
The publication incited the Austrian Jesuit Stöcklein to undertake his Neuer Welt Bott (about 1720), at first considered merely a translation, but soon an independent collection (five vols., folio in forty parts) substantially completing the Lettres Edifiantes (see Kath.