Forgive Us Our Sins

Confession in Late Ming and Early Qing China

Ad Dudink, Nicolas Standaert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000940657
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Confession in early modern Europe has been the subject of several studies. But what happened to the confessional practice when it moved to other cultures? This is the major research question of the present book as applied to late Ming and early Qing China. The origin of this research can be traced back to the Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One (635-1800) (Leiden 2000) compiled by researchers of the K.U. Leuven, in collaboration with an international team of circa twenty scholars. As a reference work, the Handbook comprehensively presents many different aspects of Christianity in China, including sciences, arts and crafts. But there was one major absentee: ritual, which is often considered essential for understanding China. A first step in filling this gap was the organisation of an international workshop on "Chinese and Christian Rituality in Late Imperial China" (Leuven, June 2004). The present volume includes the revised contributions by Eugenio Menegon and Erik Zürcher and a reworked version of an article by Liam Brockey as well as the edition of the primary source he used for his article, a confessional manual composed by Jose Monteiro S.J. (1646-1720). These articles portray from different angles one of the sacramental rituals, viz. that of confession.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Deliver Us from Evil: Confession and Salvation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Chinese Catholicism
• Buddhist Chanhui and Christian Confession in Seventeenth-Century China
• Illuminating the Shades of Sin: The Society of Jesus and Confession in Seventeenth-Century China
• A Missionary Confessional Manual: José Monteiro’s Vera Et Unica Praxis Breviter Ediscendi, Ac Expeditissime Loquendi Sinicum Idioma
• Bibliography
• Index