239 Piotr Adamek, SVD, Sonja Huang Mei

Recensioni 239 Piotr Adamek, SVD, Sonja Huang Mei Tin (eds.), The Contribution of Chinese Women to the Church. Proceedings of the Conference “I Have Called You by Name”, September 25–26, 2014, Sankt Augustin (Germany). Siegburg: Franz Schmitt Verlag, 2019. 278 pp. ISBN 9783877105535. The volume, jointly published by Steyler Missionswissenschaftliches Institut, Monumenta Serica (Sankt Augustin, Germany), and Monumenta Serica Sinological Research Center (Taipei), together with China-Zentrum (Sankt Augustin, Germany), is the number 115 of the series Studia Instituti Missiologici Societatis Verbi Divini. The proceedings of the conference were published also in Chinese language by the Taipei Monumenta Serica Sinological Research Center in the Monumenta Serica Series Vol. 15. Being the purpose of the 2014 international workshop that of giving a name to the numerous nameless women who had played or play a relevant role in the life of Christianity in China, also the volume collecting the conference contributions aims at high- lighting that “both in the past as in the present Chinese female Christians had and have an important or even crucial impact on the life of the Church, even if their role was commonly undervalued in reports and neglected in research” (p. 7). The book consists of twelve chapters, each addressing an aspect of the general issue of women and Christianity in China, and each underlining the lack of sources and research on the topic. The contributions have all the same structure, presenting, after the main body of the text, an independent section with bibliographical references at the end of each article, and an ab- stract in English and one in Chinese. The opening chapter is by Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt who gives a general background to the topic of the whole book, namely the position of women in the Catholic Church today. She explores the documents on women issued by the popes throughout the twentieth century, focusing on the 1988 apostolic letter by John Paul II Mulieris Dignitatem and the 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. In particular, six main themes are analyzed in the first doc- ument, including the role of Mary, the episode of the creation, the role of sin and the relationship between Jesus and women. After the outline of this general background, the other chapters are presented. Among these chapters, only one addresses the situation of women in the Orthodox Church, and two articles regard the Protestant Churches, thus including eight chapters on different Catholic issues. The first one, by Gail King, presents the life of Candida Xu, a “Chinese Christian woman of faith” of the seventeenth century. Candida was the granddaughter of the friend of Matteo Ricci, Xu Guangqi, and grew up in a Catholic environment, being baptized when she was one-year-old. The biography of Candida is presented relying © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/24685631-12340108 240 Recensioni mostly on the account left by the Jesuit father Philippe Couplet who was her confessor and wrote a book on her. The author underlines how Candida, de- spite being married to a non-Christian man, was a model of Christian believer both in her years as a wife, and also after the death of her husband, when being a widow allowed her to fully serve God. The initiatives with the orphans or in the field of Christian books printing and distribution are presented to show her “strong lay involvement and leadership role” (p. 39). The chapter by Claudia von Collani explores the presence of Christian women in China during the eighteenth century using as main source a collec- tion of letters published from 1726 by the Austrian Jesuit Joseph Stöcklein. She claims that in the letters women are depicted through a “male description of a female ideal, both in Chinese and in Western cultures from the 17th to the 19th centuries” (pp. 51–52) and that the heroism of Chinese Christian women has two faces: “sometimes passive suffering inside the houses but sometimes also courageous heroism in public” (p. 52). Subsequently, the author addresses the problem of the conversion of Chinese women, as they could not have direct contact with men outside the household, and the issue of virginity which could represent a betrayal to the patriarchal system in China. The reason why Jesuits wrote and sent to Europe information about Chinese Catholic women in China included also the aim of making the situation known, and encourage European representatives of the richest courts to support China mission both through money and prayers. Considering the impossibility of direct contact of court women with men, the chapter by Sonja Huang Mei Tin, one of the editors, presents the important role of the eunuchs who brought Christian faith to women at court. The author compares the baptized women at court to the nuns in a monastery: “they prayed, they followed God’s command, they helped each other for not departing from faith, they read the Gospel and tried to convert each other, but without direct connection with the missionaries, the public Church life, not to mention the Catholic Church in Rome” (p. 96). The case of the empress Helena is presented as a very peculiar one, since she had converted to Christianity and was baptized in 1648 directly by a Jesuit missionary. She wrote some letters to the Pope and to the Jesuit General where she presented the Chinese situation, expressed her gratitude, and asked for help, prayers, and more missionaries to China. The case of empress Helena shows that the situation of Christian women at court had a significant change in the mid-17th century. Li Ji considers the situation of Christian women in Manchuria after the es- tablishment of the apostolic vicariate in 1840, addressing, in particular, the group of Chinese Christian Virgins. These women were expected to be well prepared both to teach the Christian doctrine and to be a model in Christian Annali, Sezione orientale 80 (2020) 213–243.

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