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The Jesuits in China-- Matteo Ricci, Journals The Jesuits in China-- Matteo Ricci, Journals The most celebrated of the Jesuit scholar-missionaries to work in China was the Italian Matteo Ricci (1552—1610), who arrived in 1583. Father Ricci dazzled the Chinese literarchy with clocks, maps, and various types of scientific equipment, much of which he constructed himself. A gifted linguist, he composed over twenty-five works in Chinese on mathematics, literature, ethics, geography, astronomy, and, above all else, religion. He so impressed Confucian scholars that they accorded him the title Doctor from the Great West Ocean. In 1601 Emperor Wanli summoned Ricci to his court at Beijing and provided him with a subsidy to carry on his study of mathematics and astronomy. When Ricci died, the emperor donated a burial site outside the gates of the imperial city as a special token of honor. During his twenty-seven years in China, Ricci kept a journal, with no thought of publishing it. Shortly after his death, however, a Jesuit colleague edited and published the journal, into which he incorporated a number of other, more official sources, and it became one of Europe’s primary stores of information about China until the late eighteenth century, when accounts by European travelers to the Middle Kingdom became more common. In the following selection from that diary, Ricci tells of charges brought against certain Jesuits working at Nanchang. Here we can see some of the cultural barriers and attitudes that frustrated the Jesuits efforts to accommodate Christianity to Chinese civilization. QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 1. What most offended the Confucians who brought charges against the Jesuits and their religion? 2. The Jesuits‟ association with Father Ricci seems to have favored them in the course of events. Why? What was there about Ricci that gave his Jesuit colleagues an aura of legitimacy? 3. Why did Ricci view the outcome as a Christian victory? 4. How do you think the Jesuits‟ Confucian opponents saw this confrontation and its resolution? 5. Imagine you are the Chief Justice, and you are preparing a report to the imperial court concerning your decision, the reasoning behind it, and what you believe will be its consequences. Compose that report. During 1606 and the year following, the progress of Christianity in Nancian1 was people in their house.” Having said this, he referred them to their local in no wise retarded… The number of neophytes2 increased by more than two Magistrate… and he in turn ordered the plaintiffs to present their case in writing, hundred, all of whom manifested an extraordinary piety in their religious assuring them that he would support it with all his authority, in an effort to have devotions. As a result, the reputation of the Christian religion became known the foreign priests expelled. The complaint was written out that same day and throughout the length and breadth of this metropolitan City…. signed with twenty-seven signatures…. The content of the document was somewhat as follows. Through the efforts of Father Emanuele Dias another and a larger house was purchased, in August of 1607, at a price of a thousand gold pieces. This change Matthew Ricci, Giovanni Soerio, Emanuele Dias, and certain other was necessary, because the house he had was too small for his needs and was foreigners from western kingdoms, men who are guilty of high situated in a flood area. Just as the community was about to change from one treason against the throne, are scattered amongst us, in five house to the other, a sudden uprising broke out against them…. different provinces. They are continually communicating with each At the beginning of each month, the Magistrates hold a public assembly... in the other and are here and there practicing brigandage on the rivers, temple of their great Philosopher.3 When the rites of the new-moon were collecting money, and then distributing it to the people, in order to completed in the temple, and these are civil rather than religious rites,4 one of curry favor with the multitudes. They are frequently visited by the those present rook advantage of the occasion to speak on behalf of the others, Magistrates, by the high nobility and by the Military Prefects, with and to address the highest Magistrate present… “We wish to warn you,” he said, whom they have entered into a secret pact, binding onto death. “that there are certain foreign priests in this royal city, who are preacl1ng a law, hitherto unheard of in this kingdom, and who are holding large gatherings of These men teach that we should pay no respect to the images of Father Emauele is summoned before the Chief Justice. our ancestors, a doctrine which is destined to extinguish the love of future generations for their forebears. Some of them break up Father Emanuele, in his own defense,… gave a brief outline of the Christian the idols, leaving the temples empty and the gods to be pitied, doctrine. Then he showed that according to the divine law, the first be honored, without any patronage. In the beginning they lived in small after God, were a man‟s parents. But the judge had no mind to hear or to accept houses, but by this time they have bought op large and any of this and he made it known that he thought it was all false. After that magnificent residences. The doctrine they teach is something repulse, with things going from bad to worse, it looked as if there were on the infernal. It attracts the ignorant into its fraudulent meshes, and verge of desperation, so much so indeed, that they increased their prayers, their great crowds of this class are continually assembled at their sacrifices, and their bodily penances, in petition for a favorable solution of their houses. Their doctrine gets beyond the city walls and spreads difficulty. Their adversaries appeared to be triumphantly victorious. They were itself through the neighboring towns and villages and into the already wrangling about the division of the furniture of the Mission residences, open country, and the people become so wrapt [sic] up in its and to make results doubly certain, they stirred up the flames anew with added falsity, that students are not following their course, laborers are accusations and indictments. neglecting their work, farmers arc nor cultivating their acres, and The Mayor, who was somewhat friendly with the Fathers, realizing that there was even the women have no interest in their housework. The whole much in the accusation that was patently false, asked the Magistrate Director of city has become disturbed, and, whereas in the beginning there the Schools8 if he knew whether or not this man Emanuele was a companion of were only a hundred or so professing their faith, now there are Matthew Ricci, who was so highly respected at the royal court, and who was more than twenty thousand. These priests distribute pictures of granted a subsidy from the royal treasury, because of the gifts he had presented some Tartar or Saracen6, who they say is God, who came down to the King. Did he realize that the Fathers had lived in Nankin9 for twelve years, from heaven to redeem and to instruct all of humanity, and who and that no true complaint had ever been entered against them for having violated alone, according to their doctrine, can give wealth and happiness; the laws. Then he asked him if he had really given full consideration as to what a doctrine by which the simple people are very easily deceived. was to he proven in the present indictment. To this the Director of the Schools These inert are an abomination on the face of the earth, and there replied that he wished the Mayor to make a detailed investigation of the case and is just ground for fear that once they have erected their own then to confer with him. The Chief Justice then ordered the same thing to be temples, they will start a rebellion Wherefore, moved by their done. Fortunately, it was this same Justice who was in charge of city affairs when interest in the maintenance of the public good, in the conservation Father Ricci first arrived in Nancian. It was he who first gave the Fathers of the realm, and in the preservation, whole and entire, of their permission, with the authority of the Viceroy, to open a house there…. ancient laws, the petitioners are presenting this complaint and demanding, in the name of the entire province, that a rescript After the Mayor had examined the charges of the plaintiffs and the reply of the 10 [transcript] of it he forwarded to the King, asking that these defendants, he subjected the quasi—literati to an examination in open court and foreigners he sentenced to death, or banished from the realm, to taking the Fathers under his patronage he took it upon himself to refute the some deserted island in the sea…. calumnies of their accusers. He said he was fully convinced that these strangers were honest men, and that he knew that there were only two of them in their local Each of the Magistrates to whom the indictment was presented asserted that the residence and not twenty, as had been asserted. To this they replied that the spread of Christianity should be prohibited, and that the foreign priests should be Chinese were becoming their disciples. To which the Justice in turn replied: expelled from the city, if the Mayor saw fit, after hearing the case, and notifying “What of it? Why should we be afraid of‟ our own people? Perhaps you are the foreigners… . But the Fathers7, themselves, were not too greatly disturbed, unaware of the fact that Matthew Ricci‟s company is cultivated by everyone in placing their confidence in Divine Providence, which had always been present to Pekin11, and that he is being subsidized by the royal treasury.
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