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Jesuit Libraries in Beijing and China in the Perspective of the Communication Between Europe and China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

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Jesuit Libraries in Beijing and China in the Perspective of the Communication Between Europe and China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Chapter 10 Jesuit Libraries in Beijing and China in the Perspective of the Communication between Europe and China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Noël Golvers Amongst the strongest drivers in intercultural and inter-linguistic contacts are obviously books and libraries. Books, especially when illustrated, can be of- fered as an introductory present, can raise the curiosity for other topics or fields of knowledge, if not cultures, and become the basis of translations. Li- braries, then, often become the site of entangled cultural histories: meeting centers and locations for exhibitions, lectures, and other public and promo- tional manifestations to introduce another culture, language, etc. in its receiv- ing milieu. This is exactly what happened—according to our sources—with Jesuit libraries in late Ming, early Qing China, from the first settlement of the Jesuits in Macao (1555) and Beijing (ca. 1600) until the holdings of the last sur- viving library—the Nantang collection—were transferred to the Russian ar- chimandrite in 1826. To be a meeting center and point of contact with the Chinese was, from the outset, also the intention, and the sources on the Beijing residences indeed report about Chinese visitors, guided tours through the Jesuit compound, exhi- bitions of prestigious books, and typographical oddities within the Jesuit com- pounds.1 The involvement of books and libraries in evangelization had its more remote model or inspiration in the Bibliothekenstrategie,2 which the Society of Jesus had developed during its campaigns to “reconquer” the Euro- pean countries the Catholic world had lost to Lutheranism and Protestant- ism, mainly in Central Europe: the so-called “Counter-Reformation.” After the 1 For this “demonstrative” aspect of Jesuit libraries in China, see, for example, Noël Golvers, “The Pre-1773 Jesuit Libraries in Peking as a Medium for Western Learning in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century China,” The Library, 7th series 16, no. 4 (2015): 429–445. 2 Term coined by Heinrich Kramm, Deutsche Bibliotheken unter dem Einfluß von Humanismus und Reformation (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1938), 93–98. It is probably useful to note that this intention not only answered a “strategic” purpose but also translated a fundamental option of the society’s Constitutiones (see especially Part iv, 372 and 373). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/97890044189�9_011 <UN> Jesuit Libraries in Beijing and China 239 earliest generations,3 Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) had been among the first to also realize the importance of books in the remote Chinese mission, a consequence of the book-and learning-oriented Chinese culture. His personal experience brought him to emphasize, in his letters to Italy, the impact of (especially) books on sciences, in meetings with Chinese literati.4 Shortly after his death in 1610, this perception had been upgraded to a real project or program by Nicolò Longobardo (1565–1655) in a Memorandum (1613) destined for Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628), the mission’s procurator, who was elected in 1613 to trav- el to Europe for searching for funds, new missionaries, books, and scientific instruments. The story of how Trigault has implemented this part of his mission in Eu- rope, in close collaboration with Johann Schreck Terrentius (1576–1630), his socius in the period 1615–1618, is partly described in Trigault’s report from Brus- sels (January 2, 1617)5 and partially in two new documents recently found: the latter is a list of 331 books, bought by the same in one day in Antwerp on De- cember 6, 1617.6 After the books arrived at their destination in 1625—the basis of the Jesuit library of the Portuguese college Xitang in Beijing—they became the basis of the intense scholarly activities of the Longobardo generation: Adam Schall mainly concentrated on the restoration of the Chinese calendar. This technical operation was paralleled by the gradual publication of a 110-volume (Western) astronomical encyclopedia (Qongzhen li shu, 1635),7 which was itself part of an all-encompassing translation and composition pro- gram.8 The program was conceived as a step-by-step introduction to Christian 3 Rui Manuel Loureiro, Na Companhia dos livros. Manuscritos e impressos nas missões jesuitas da Asia Oriental (1540–1620) (Macao: University of Macao, 2007). 4 For analysis of of Ricci’s library, see Roui Manuel Loureiro, “Como seria a biblioteca de Mat- teo Ricci?,” in Metahistory. History Questioning History. Metahistória. História questionando História. Festschrift in Honour of Professor Teotonio R. de Souza, ed. Charles J. Borges, S.J. & Michael N. Pearson (Lisbon: Nova Vega, 2007), 521–535. 5 Published by E. Lamalle, “La propagande du P. Nicolas Trigault en faveur des missions de Chine (1616),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 9 (1940): 49–120. 6 See my book on The European Intellectual Network of Johann Schreck Terrentius (1600–1618), in preparation. 7 Of which several editions existed: see especially Henri Bernard, “L’encyclopédie astronomique du Père Schall (…). La réforme du calendrier chinois sous l’influence de Clavius, de Galilée et de Kepler,” Monumenta Serica iii (1938): 441–527. 8 For an overview of the Chinese compositions of the Jesuits’ ca. 1,500 titles, see the online C(hinese) C(hristian) D(ata) B(ase) (A. Dudink-N. Standaert, KULeuven). For the position of “translations” in this program, see: Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, “Western Impact on China through Translation,” Far Eastern Quarterly 133 (1954): 305 ff.; Erin M. Oder, “Undoing the Binaries. Rethinking ‘Encounter’: Translation works of Seventeenth-Century Jesuit Missionaries in China” (PhD diss. Ohio University, 2006); Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, “The Catholic Mission and <UN>.
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