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Félix Biet

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His Excellency, The Most Reverend
Félix-Marie Biet
MEP
File:Félix Biet.jpg
Church Catholic Church
Diocese Apostolic Vicariate of Tibet
Installed 27 August 1878
Term ended 9 September 1901
Predecessor Joseph-Marie Chauveau
Successor Pierre-Philippe Giraudeau
Other post Titular Bishop of Diana
Orders
Consecration by Annet-Théophile Pinchon
Personal details
Born 21 October 1838
Langres, Haute-Marne, France
Died 9 September 1901 (aged 62)
Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or, Lyon Metropolis, France
Occupation Priest, missionary, entomologist, ornithologist
Motto Suaviter et fortiter

Félix Biet, MEP (1838 in Langres, Haute-Marne – 1901 in Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or) was a French Catholic prelate who served as the Apostolic Vicar of Tibet from 1878 to 1901. He was a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and also a naturalist.

Life

Biet was born in 1838. He was ordained as a priest in 1864. He was next sent to Tatsienlu in Tibet (called Dartsedo by Tibetans) as a missionary and he became the Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of Thibet, now Diocese of Kangding, in 1898. Félix Biet collected butterflies for Charles Oberthür who dedicated three new species (Thecla bieti, Pantoporia bieti and Anthocharis bieti) to him. Alphonse Milne-Edwards described the Chinese mountain cat (Felis bieti) and the black snub-nosed monkey, (Rhinopithecus bieti), the latter collected and sent by Jean-André Soulié. The Biet's laughingthrush a Chinese endemic species was another discovery, named by Émile Oustalet in 1897. Those natural history collections from Tibet and China are in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

He was succeeded by Pierre-Philippe Giraudeau.

See also

Bibliography

  • Adrien Launay (1916), Mémorial de la Société des missions étrangères
  • Françoise Fauconnet-Buzelin (2012), Les Martyrs oubliés du Tibet. Chronique d'une rencontre manquée (1855-1940), éd. du Cerf, coll. Petit Cerf, Paris, 2012, 656 pages