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What Were “The Directives of Matteo Ricci” Regarding the Chinese Rites?1

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What Were “The Directives of Matteo Ricci” Regarding the Chinese Rites?1 Educating Minds and Hearts to Change the World Report NUMBER 54 MAY 3 2010 CENTER for the PACIFIC RIM THE CENTER FOR THE PACIFIC RIM PROMOTES understanding, communica- What Were “The Directives of Matteo Ricci” tion, and cooperation among 1 the peoples and nations of the Regarding the Chinese Rites? Pacific Rim and provides leader- ship in strengthening the posi- by Paul A. Rule, Ph.D. tion of the San Francisco Bay Area as a pre-eminent American Paul A. Rule is an Honor- gateway to the Pacific. ary Associate at the History THE CENTER FULFILLS Program, La Trobe Univer- its mission through graduate sity, Melbourne, Australia, and undergraduate academic and a Distinguished Fellow programs in Asia Pacific Stud- ies; research, publications; a of the EDS-Stewart Chair visiting fellows program; and for Chinese-Western Cultur- public education about the al History at the USF Ricci Pacific Rim through confer- Institute. Rule has produced over one hundred and fifty ences, public lectures, and other outreach activities. publications covering the history of the early Jesuit mis- sionaries in China and Sino-Western cultural relations THE CENTER INCLUDES: of the 16th-18th centuries. He has taught courses on 3 The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural modern China, Catholicism, religion and society, peace History, an interdisciplinary studies and Aboriginal religion. research center, explores, in the spirit of Matteo Ricci, 3 3 3 3 3 S.J., cross-cultural encounters This Pacific Rim Report is offered by the USF between China and the West from the 17th c. onwards. Ricci Institute as part of its contributions to the worldwide celebrations marking 2010 as the 400th 3 The Japan Policy Research Institute, founded by anniversary of the death of the great Jesuit pioneer of Chalmers Johnson, publishes the China Mission, Matteo Ricci, who died in Beijing research and commentary on on May 11, 1610. all aspects of Japan’s place in the world, its view of itself, its The paper was originally presented by Rule at an past, and its future prospects. international symposium at Taiwan’s Fu Jen University The Decree of 19 April 1707 from the Kangxi Emperor (excerpt) 3 The U.S. offices of the in April 2010. The content is based on Rule’s work for regarding Ricci’s so-called ‘Directives’. The marked section reads: Nautilus Institute for Security the Institute’s Chinese Rites Controversy Project. (See “Instruction to all Westerners: Henceforth whoever does not and Sustainability, focused on Pacific Rim ReportNo. 32, February 2004, for more follow the customs of Li Madou [Matteo Ricci] shall positively not Northeast Asian affairs, and of be permitted to live in China, but must be expelled.” [Per A.S. information on this important topic). Rosso’s translation.] See Endnote 2. China Dialogue, a web based conversation on the environ- ment between “China and the world,” are also housed at the Center. ed ‘resolutions’ by Valignano; and a summary theology’. He taught his Chinese visitors, he of these directives produced by Valignano “the tells us, that “the law of God was in conformity same year” (presumably 1603). Gabiani sums with the natural light [of reason] and with these up as follows: what their first sages taught in their books.”6 All these early directives for this Church He was a Christian humanist in the line of deal directly with inducing Christian morals Desiderius Erasmus, seeing civility, as the and virtues in the Chinese neophytes, eradi- Chinese saw li 禮, as covering all forms of be- cating depraved and superstitious abuses; with tolerating prudently social rituals havior, from what we would call religious ritual and civil cults according to the practice of to social intercourse and political correctness.7 the nation,4 and especially with rites for dead parents; grateful veneration of Master What he was rejecting was that ritu- Confucius within the limits of common als for dead parents and Confucius were idolatry (idolatria), or were in the Christian Matteo Ricci, S.J., 1552-1610 Detail of a Ziccawei Orphanage portrait, early 20th c., “Ricci was a Christian humanist sense ‘worship’ (latria) of the deceased.8 He in the collection of the USF Ricci Institute. in the line of Desiderius Erasmus, admitted, as we shall see, that there might be elements of superstition in such rituals as con- n December 1706 the Kangxi Emperor, seeing civility, as the Chinese 禮 ducted by non-Christians, but these were not annoyed by the activities of the papal leg- saw li , as covering all forms of essential and could be eliminated. Ricci be- ate, Charles Maillard de Tournon, made behavior.” lieved that Chinese Catholics could be trusted Ias a condition for missionaries remaining in to have correct intentions in performing such China the observance of “The Directives of 5 courtesy; with the licit use of Chinese rituals—intentions of veneration, reverence Matteo Ricci” (利瑪竇的規矩.)2 Surpris- sacred names as well as European; with covering the head as a sign of reverence and emulation, not worship, as of exemplary ingly, the specific directives Ricci issued as with the Chinese; and finally with purifying human beings, not gods—and intentions Superior of the Jesuit China Mission have not the intention in fasting according to the were what determined the morality of an act. come down to us. However, they can be re- Chinese custom…. Father Ricci before he made any decisions spent almost 18 years Furthermore, the non-Christian educated elite constructed with considerable accuracy from closely studying the customs, rituals and were regarded by Ricci as holding materialistic Ricci’s own writings and the attacks of his crit- books, and consulted in various provinces and places all sorts of scholars and manda- and even atheistic views which made them ics as well as the writings of those many Jesuits rins of all ranks especially the highest. less, not more, suspect of idolatry and supersti- who claimed his authority for their practices. Gabiani and later Jesuit apologists, like tion. As many later Jesuit polemicists were to And we have a good summary of the original, their anti-Jesuit counterparts, seem to have point out, one of the strangest arguments of then in the archives of the Japan Province in assumed that Ricci was denying the ‘religious’ their opponents was that the Chinese were Macao, written in 1680 by the Vice-Provincial nature of rituals for ancestors and Confucius, simultaneously atheists and idolaters, both of China at the time, Giandomenico Gabiani. but Gabiani was writing seventy years after materialists and believers in ghosts and spirits. Gabiani, in his “Apologetic Dissertation on Ricci’s death and as part of a rebuttal of the Either they were using these terms very loosely the Rites Permitted in the Chinese Church,” 9 views of the Dominican friar, Domingo or simply as empty pejoratives. produced a list of extant documents on the Navarrete. By then, the new distinction of Many later subjects of contention are hinted subject going back to the time of Ricci.3 They ‘religious’ from ‘secular’ (with the former at in Gabiani’s summary. There is, for example, comprise Ricci’s directives or instructions being condemned if not Christian) had the question of ‘fasters’. Should converts who (ordinationes) issued in 1600 after consulta- come to dominate the controversy over the came, as many did, from the ranks of sectarian tion with his colleagues of the China Mission; Chinese Rites. Ricci himself, as we shall see, Buddhism, be allowed to continue to practice further directives issued by Ricci in 1603 and was coming from a different tradition, the late vegetarian fasts? Ricci appears to have believed confirmed by the Visitor Alessandro Valignano Christian humanism of the Renaissance with that, if fully instructed, they might be allowed to after consulting the whole Mission; some add- its emphasis on ‘natural religion’ and ‘natural do so, now with Christian motives.10 2 3 May 2010 Also mentioned are liturgical practices gieri is even more explicit: “He was nailed to was the mandarins, not Buddhists, who were which followed Chinese rather than European the cross.”12 Ricci wrote of the crucifixion and most respected and that these “follow the sensibilities, such as covering rather than soon afterward illustrated lives of Christ in- schools and doctrine of one of their ancient uncovering the head during mass. I would cluding the crucifixion were published by the philosophers who dealt with moral virtues and note in passing that the fierce supporters of China Jesuits.13 Ricci certainly recommended good government,” that is, of Confucius.18 He uncovering the head, who included some caution in public display of the crucifix after reported to the Bishop of Evora in 1588 on the Jesuits, do not seem to have reflected on the his experience with the eunuch Ma Tang initial success of his scheme for China: 14 fact that women—and bishops for part of the who interpreted it as a fetish, but it was an When I was in Japan, I determined that two time—covered their heads during the liturgy integral part of the presentation of Christian of the fathers [Ruggieri and Ricci] who were in Amacao, the Portuguese port of China, in Europe. They had converted culturally and doctrine by Ricci and his companions.15 The should devote themselves to nothing else historically contingent European customs into Tianzhu Shiyi 天主實義, from which it is but learning the language and literature of Christian absolutes. China, and be given masters and everything else necessary. And it happened that they t is a pity that the other general directives “The Chinese Rites Controversy made great progress in the language, so when issued by Ricci and Valignano perished was from the beginning as much I returned from Japan I appointed them to this great enterprise of entering China.
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