History
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary who played a significant role in the spread of Christianity in China during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He is known for his efforts to integrate Christian teachings with Chinese culture and for his contributions to the understanding of Chinese language, culture, and science in the West.
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eBook - ePubStrange Tales of an Oriental Idol
An Anthology of Early European Portrayals of the Buddha
- Donald S. Lopez Jr.(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
CHAPTER THREEFrom 1601 to 1700
◆ Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)
The most famous of the many Jesuit missionaries to China was Matteo Ricci, who arrived in Macao in 1582. At the suggestion of a Chinese official, Ricci and his fellow priests adopted the appearance of Buddhist monks in order to be more immediately accepted. The Jesuits cropped their hair and shaved their beards and donned monks’ robes. They also described themselves as monks from the West; in China, the West often denoted India. However, in 1595, at the urging of his Chinese scholar friends and with the permission of his superior, Ricci and the Jesuits abandoned the dress of Buddhist monks—who, he reports, the Chinese held as “vile and lowly”—for the long beard and silk robes of the Chinese literatus. From that point onward, Ricci’s slogan would become qin ru pai fo, “Draw close to Confucianism and repudiate Buddhism.”Ricci criticized the Buddha and Buddhism in two works. The first was his catechism of 1603 written in Chinese, The True Doctrine of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shiyi). The second was his history of Christianity in China, published posthumously (considered in a subsequent selection).The first passage below is Ricci’s ingenious reading of the famous Chinese story of how Buddhism first came to China. The emperor Ming (28–75 CE) of the Eastern Han dynasty is said to have had a dream of a golden flying man. One of his advisors explained that this was the sage of the West, called Buddha. The emperor sent a delegation to retrieve the teachings of this man (and, according to a later version of the story, a statue of him). Matteo Ricci argues that it was a case of mistaken identity.The second passage is drawn from Ricci’s attempt to refute the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth, which, as other Christian missionaries would do, he traces back to Pythagoras. Ricci devotes a long section to the refutation. He begins here by dismissing the doctrine—which he said the Buddha had taken from Pythagoras—because it comes from the insignificant and uncivilized land of India.
eBook - ePub- Gábor Gelléri, Rachel Willie, Gábor Gelléri, Rachel Willie(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Accused amongst other things of attaining power through bribes and “fearing critics would use his patronage of foreigners as one more accusation once he left office”, Chen Rui chose to cut his ties to the Jesuits who were forced to return to Macau. See R. Po-Chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552 –1610 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 77. 10 See among others: Paul Dreyfus, Mattèo Ricci: l’homme qui voulait convertir la Chine (Cahors: Éditions du Jubilé, 2004); Michel Masson, ed., Matteo Ricci, un jésuite en Chine: les savoirs en partage au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Édition Facultés jésuites de Paris, 2009). 11 Lia Xia, “Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Translation in China,” in Translating China, ed. Luo Xuanmin and He Yuanjian (Bristol, Buffalo and Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 2009), 13–38 (25). 12 C. Shelke and M. Demichele, eds., Matteo Ricci in China: Inculturation through Friendship and Faith. (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2010); Yiu Liu, Harmonious Disagreement: Matteo Ricci and his Closest Chinese Friends (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2015). 13 See also note 9. 14 George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy: From Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985), 1. 15 Ana Carolina Hosne, The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru, 1570–1610: Expectations and Appraisals of Expansionism (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 83. 16 Minamiki, 1–2. 17 Ricci’s competence allowed him to speak for himself, but the text indicates that his knowledge of the language was still imperfect: “[a]t first, the Viceroy did not fully understand what Ricci had said, but a Captain standing at his side, bent his knee and made clear to him just what the Father did say” (220). The statement in the Journals seems to have amplified Ricci’s ability at the time
eBook - ePub- Daniel H. Bays(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
The second ring road in today's Beijing is where the old city wall was, until the mid 1950s when Mao Zedong had the wall demolished. Just west of the former wall, only a short walk along Chegong E. Road, is a large compound which contains the Chinese Communist Party's Administrative College. Here officials on the fast career track receive training for high positions in the Party. In the middle of the courtyard is a walled-in graveyard, which many visitors are surprised to learn has the remains of over 60 Catholic missionaries of the Ming and Qing periods. The most prominent is the grave of Matteo Ricci, given pride of place in the arrangement of the tombstones. It was not always thus. Ricci (1552–1610), an Italian Jesuit who was the first Westerner to reside permanently in Beijing, after his death was honored by the Ming emperor with a gravesite outside Fuchengmen (the Fucheng gate). Ricci was joined by other Jesuits and missionaries of other Catholic orders over the next two or three centuries, including Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), among other luminaries. In the violence of the Boxer Uprising in 1900 xenophobic mobs toppled the tombstones and desecrated the grounds. Then during the violent Red Guard phase of the Cultural Revolution in late 1966, youthful iconoclasts spurred to action by Mao's call to “destroy the ‘four olds,’” inflicted another round of mindless violence upon the site. In the “reform and opening” period since 1979, at first the cadres running the party school would occasionally arbitrarily permit well-known or well-connected visitors, including foreigners, to view the site, which was still in a disordered state. But then they realized their courtyard could be a source of income, even a cash cow. With the assistance of some foreign organizations and governments, many of them Italian, extensive repairs and restoration were done. And of course admission began to be charged. Today visitors and groups are systematically shown a 40-minute English DVD (also for sale) called simply “Matteo Ricci in China,” which praises Ricci for his commitment to “East-West cross-cultural exchange” without ever mentioning Christianity. Then the visitors are given a tour of the site and encouraged to take pictures. A foreign visitor who actually knows something about the historical events and personages represented in this fashion today can only shake her head and think, “the irony of it all.”Background and ContextFigure 2.1 Graves of Ricci, Schall von Bell, and Verbiest. Credit: Lou-Foto/Alamy.The third advent of Christianity in China, in which Christianity in China became a permanent part of the Chinese religious landscape, took place in the sixteenth century. It constituted a key transition in the worldwide serial movement of the Christian faith to parts of the non-West. It also was an important part of the first cross-cultural learning experience of the West.1 All this occurred as an extension to East Asia of historical forces sweeping Europe, most importantly the repercussions of the Protestant Reformation and the creation of the Portuguese and Spanish seaborne empires. These two factors combined to facilitate an unprecedented number of Christian missionaries coming to China in the late Ming and early Qing, and even more importantly the creation within China circa 1600–1900 of a surprising number of Christian communities, many of which proved quite resilient when the young Chinese church was outlawed and persecuted in the eighteenth century. This is the first period in which Chinese Christians start to become part of the historical record, visible in both Western and Chinese sources from about 1600 onward.2
- Simon Estok, Jonathan White, I-Chun Wang, Simon C. Estok(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
As in this chapter I am focusing on one text by Ricci, it is important briefly to give a sense of some of his other work. The Library of Congress Vatican Exhibit includes a commentary of an item (Barb. or. 142, fasc. 3, chuan 2 fols. 32b – 33a china09 HG.06) under Matteo Ricci, Hun-kai t`ung-hsien t`u-shuo, that states: “Matteo Ricci’s technical explanation in Chinese of European astronomy was no doubt written with the help of his friend Li Chih-tsao, who contributed a preface. Notice the main circle’s division into the 12 houses and their polar projection. The work contains a preface by Ricci, as well as one by Li Chih-tsao, with a postscript by another Chinese friend. The prefaces give only the rough date ‘the end of the Wan-li reign’ (i.e., ca. 1610–1620).” There was, then, collaboration between Ricci and his Chinese colleagues. But there was not unity of approach even within the Jesuit missions to China, as Ricci seems to have preferred scholars with the Confucian tradition while Michele Ruggieri favored those in the Buddhist and Daoist traditions. Ricci was more adept at the Chinese language than Ruggieri (see Dunne; Saraiva and Jami). The holdings in the Vatican Library, as an exhibition at the Library of Congress, suggests the intricacy of the relation between the Jesuits and China: “But the Vatican’s holdings wonderfully exemplify the fragile, fascinating bridge of texts and images which the Jesuits built in order to reach, understand—and convert—the most foreign of cultures” (“Rome Reborn”)
No longer available |Learn moreEmerging Faith
Lessons from Mission History in Asia
- Paul H. De Neui(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- William Carey Publishing(Publisher)
A Bridge Across Two Culture: Ippolito Desideri S.J. (1684–1733) A Brief Biography. Presented at the XVth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Atlanta: Firenze.Criveller, G. 1997. Preaching Christ in Late Ming China, Jesuits’ Presentation of Christ from Matteo Ricci to Giulio Aleni. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute.Criveller, G. and C. Guillen-Nuñez. 2010. Portrait of a Jesuit: Matteo Ricci. Macau: Ricci Institute.Cronin, V. 2011. The Wise Man of the West: Matteo Ricci and His Mission to China. London: Random House.Desideri, I. 2010. Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri S. J. (L. Zwilling, Ed., M. J. Sweet, trans.). Boston, MA: Wisdom.Dudink, A. 2002. “Tianzhu Jiaoyao, The Catechism (1605) Published by Matteo Ricci.” Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal. 24 (1) 38–47.Fontana, M. 2011. Matteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Ming Court. London: Rowman & Littlefield.Hsia, R. P. C. 2005. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770. New York: Cambridge University.________. 2010. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610. Oxford: Oxford University.Lin, Y. 1959. From Pagan to Christian. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company.Lopez, D. S. L., and T. Jinpa. 2017. Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.Mong, A. I. R. 2015. “The Legacy of Matteo Ricci and his Companions.” Missiology: An International Review. 43 (4) 385–397.Mungello, D. E. 1989. Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii.________. 1994. The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning. Nettetal: Steyler Verlag.O’Malley, J. W. 1993. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.Pomplun, T. 2010. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri’s Mission to Tibet. OUP USA.Ricci, M. 1953. China in the 16th century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583–1610
- Yoav Meyrav(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
This gives a basis for asking European supporters to give money for a further a Jesuit mission to China. The Jesuit missionary show must go on. Bibliography d ’ Elia, Pasquale M., ed. Fonti Ricciane: documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia delle prime relazioni tra l ’ Europa e la Cina (1579 – 1615). 3 vols. Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1942 – 1949. Deutsch, Yaacov. Judaism in Christian Eyes: Ethnographic Descriptions of Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Duigman, Peter. “ Early Jesuit Missionaries: A Suggestion for Further Study. ” American Anthropologist 60 (1958): 725 – 32. Escroignard, Victor. “ Les Sarrasins des trois normes ou San Jiao Huihui. ” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 45 (1991): 253 – 70. Friedrich, Markus. Die Jesuiten. Aufstieg, Niedergang, Neubeginn. Munich: Piper, 2016. Kublin, Hyman, ed. Studies of the Chinese Jews: Selected Articles from Journals East and West. New York: Paragon, 1971. Lamalle, Edmond. “ La propagande du P. Nicolas Trigault en faveur des missions de Chine (1616). ” Archivium Historicum Societatis Iesu 9 (1940): 49 – 120. Laytner, Anson H., and Jordan Paper, eds. The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng: A Millennium of Adaptation and Endurance. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Li, Hui. “ Jesuit Missionaries and the Transmission of Christianity and European Knowledge in China. ” Emory Endeavors in World History 4 (2012): 48 – 63. Neubauer, Adolf. “ Jews in China. ” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (1895): 123 – 39. Pelliot, Paul. “ Le juif Ngai, informateur du P. Mathieu Ricci. ” T ’ oung Pao 20, no. 1 (1920 – 1921): 32 – 39. Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus in fiue books [ … ] London, 1625. Ricci, Matteo [Matthew]. China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583 – 1610. Translated by Louis J. Gallagher. New York: Random House, 1953. Ricci, Matteo. Opere storiche del padre Matteo Ricci.
eBook - PDF- Kenneth Scott Latourette(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Gorgias Press(Publisher)
CHAPTER VII THE PROGRESS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS PROM THE DEATH OF RICO TO THE REVERSES CAUSED BY THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE RITES (1610-1706) T H E JESUITS IN CHARGE OF THE CALENDAR THE death of Ricci had but little effect upon the progress of the enterprise he had helped to inaugurate. His Society had become so well established in China and possessed so many men of ability that even the loss of the leader worked no serious injury. Nicolo Longobardi, a Sicilian of noble family, quietly succeeded to the headship of the mission. He had been in China since 1597 and so had had extensive experience there. He had differed from Ricci on some fundamental missionary policies, but had been the latter's choice for the position. 1 The mission continued to pros-per. Six new recruits joined the staff in 1610 and four in 1613.° In 1615 Nicholas Trigault journeyed through Europe, seeking to arouse the interest of princes in the China mission. He was so far successful that in 1616 the Duke of Bavaria promised an annual gift of five hundred florins and for at least a century the subvention was paid with a fair degree of regularity. Soon after the death of Ricci and because of his foresight, fur-ther official recognition was obtained. The calendar occupied an important place in China. Its acceptance by a conquered nation was recognition of the suzerainty of Peking and in other ways it was of political significance. It was used, too, throughout the Empire to determine lucky and unlucky days for weddings, funer-als, and various events and transactions of social and business life. Ricci had noted its importance and the interest taken by the con-1 Hue, Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet, Vol. 2, pp. 226-229. 'Including Xavier, thirty-six missionaries had served in the China mission between 1552 and the dose of 1613.— CatalogUi Pairum ac Fratrum e Socieiate Jesu qui . . . in Sinis adlaboraverunt, pp. 2-11. * Schneller in Zeitschrift fiir Missionswissenschajt, Vol.
eBook - PDF- Luis M R Saraiva, Catherine Jami(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- World Scientific(Publisher)
So information on notable things and events could spread along the itinerary. 69 As for missionaries heading for China, cases such as Ricci and Schreck, who only remained in Macao for one year (which points at their being exceptionally gifted in languages) are very rare. They were slightly less so for Japan, not because its language was easier for Europeans but because the Jesuit communities and schools there could provide further teaching of it. The Jesuit College in Macao as a meeting point of mathematical traditions 55 Table 2. Jesuit mathematics experts in Macao up to 1650. 1578/9 Michele Ruggieri 70 1579/8 M. Ruggieri 1580/1 M. Ruggieri 1581/2 M. Ruggieri; Pedro Gomez 1582/3 M. Ruggieri; P. Gomez; Matteo Ricci 71 1597/8 Nicola Longobardi; Diego Pantoja 1598/9 D. Pantoja 1601/2 Carlo Spinola; Muzio Rocchi; Francisco Lopes 72 1602/3 M. Rocchi; F. Lopes 1603/4 M. Rocchi; Sabatino De Ursis; F. Lopes 73 1604/5 M. Rocchi; S. De Ursis; F. Lopes 1605/6 S. De Ursis; Manuel Dias Jr.; F. Lopes 1606/7 M. Dias Jr.; F. Lopes 1607/8 M. Dias Jr.; F. Lopes 1608/9 M. Dias Jr. 1609/10 M. Dias Jr. 1610/11 Giulio Aleni (teacher of mathematics); 74 M. Dias Jr.; Francesco Sambiasi 1611/2 G. Aleni, F. Sambiasi (one of them taught mathematics) 75 1612/3 G. Aleni, F. Sambiasi (one of them taught mathematics) 1616/7 Jan Wremann (Uremann); 76 Cristoforo Borri 1617/8 J. Wremann (teacher of mathematics); C. Borri; M. Dias Jr; S. De Ursis. 77 1618/9 S. De Ursis; J. Wremann; 78 M. Dias Jr. 1619/20 S. De Ursis; J. Wremann; Johann Schreck (Terrentius); Johann Adam Schall; Wenceslas Pantaleon Kirwitzer; 79 Francisco Furtado; 80 M. Dias Jr. 1620/1 J. Schreck; J.A. Schall; W.P. Kirwitzer; M. Dias Jr. 1621/2 J.A. Schall; W.P. Kirwitzer 1622/3 Giacomo Rho 1623/4 G. Rho; C. Borri 81 1625/6 W.P. Kirwitzer 82 1638/9 Giovanni Antonio Rubino 1639/40 G.A. Rubino; G. Aleni 1640/1 G. Aleni 1641/2 [G. Aleni?] 83 1642–3 Martino Martini 1645–6 F.
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