Matteo Ricci (28 page)

Wanli lacked determination and had been exposed to the influence of court life since childhood. His youthful enthusiasms, desires, and manifestations of cultural interest, including a passion for calligraphy, had all been frustrated and repressed by the officials at his side ever since he came to the throne. Having become emperor when still a child, he was entrusted for nine years to the guardianship of his powerful tutor and grand secretary Zhang Juzheng, to whom he formed a strong attachment in the belief that he was an irreproachable servant of the state. When the mandarin was discredited after his death by a group of hostile bureaucrats, who accused him of having amassed an enormous fortune through corruption, and all his family fell into disgrace, Wanli was deeply disillusioned. Confused, upset, and wholly unable to establish who was telling the truth, the emperor began to feel increasing distrust for the
guan
, who were always ready for betrayal and intrigue and were far too busy writing memorials accusing one another to think about the good of the country. A weak emperor like him had few weapons against the bureaucracy, which could instead subject the decisions and conduct of the Son of Heaven to criticism, albeit indirectly, through memorials circulated among the most important mandarins or through calculated allusions during government meetings. The greater the emperor’s fragility and passivity, the more ruthless the struggle for predominance between groups of officials. Added to this was the growing ambition of the eunuchs, a class even more corrupt than the bureaucrats, to which the monarch ended up delegating his power.

Wanli had never been free to decide if and when to leave the capital. His last journeys, which never lasted more than a week, had been allowed so that he might inspect the construction work on his mausoleum, situated a short distance from the capital and completed thirteen years before. Any ideas of further short trips had since been nipped in the bud on various pretexts, and the now resigned emperor no longer even moved outside the Forbidden City, where he was to live in segregation until his death. Wanli had eight wives, who gave him eight sons and ten daughters, and numerous concubines. In 1586, he made his favorite, the concubine Zheng, who enjoyed a reputation for intelligence, learning, and determination, the imperial consort, second in rank only to Empress Wang, and decided to designate his third son Zhu Changxun, Prince Fu, whose mother she was, as heir to the throne. This event, which was the talk of the whole country, gave rise to strenuous opposition on the part of the officials at the court. Wanli was finally forced to yield after a power struggle of fifteen years with the
guan
, but his already difficult relations with the bureaucracy had deteriorated still further. As a last, stubborn act of defiance against the mandarins, he waited for many years before deciding to exile his favorite son Prince Fu to the provinces in accordance with the dictates of dynastic law.

The Dialogue at a Distance with the Son of Heaven

The first indications of the emperor’s reaction to the missionaries’ gifts began to filter through from the Imperial City a few days after their delivery. According to rumor, the Son of Heaven had admired the religious images and said that the divinities looked like living beings. These words fired the popular imagination, and the Jesuits began to be pointed out as the people who had presented a “living god” at the court.
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The overly intense expressions of the figures portrayed soon began to have a disquieting effect on Wanli, however, and he decided to get rid of them by presenting them in turn to the empress dowager on the assumption that being greatly devoted to the Buddhist and Taoist divinities, she would accept the presence of sacred images in her rooms more readily. Once the initial curiosity wore off, however, she also tired of those sternly staring faces, and the paintings were definitively consigned to the imperial treasury.

Wanli was instead captivated by the mechanical clocks. None of the ambassadors of the tributary countries had ever brought him anything that amazed him as much as those timepieces capable of making sounds like a musical instrument. To his great dismay, however, they ran down and stopped working. Not long after their last chime, a group of eunuchs arrived on horseback to take the missionaries back with them to the Imperial City immediately by order of the emperor. Ricci and Pantoja rode with them for the first time through the massive wall into a world forbidden to common mortals and found themselves in a huge courtyard. At the far end, by the second great gate of the Imperial City to the south of the Forbidden City, which Ricci describes as a “second wall,” they saw the large clock on the ground surrounded by a group of eunuchs dressed in black.

Their leader, an authoritative member of the office of protocol, asked the reason for their presence in Beijing. Ricci put his mind at rest by answering that he was a priest who wished to live in peace in Beijing, honoring the Lord of Heaven, and that he had no intention of asking anything of Wanli in exchange for his gifts. The eunuch explained that it was his task to find out why the clock that so enchanted the Son of Heaven no longer chimed and asked for an explanation of the mechanisms that made the hands move and rang the hours. Ricci told him that they stopped working if the spring was not wound every two or three days. Summarily instructed on how to do this, the eunuchs disappeared into the Forbidden City to report. A
taijian
messenger called on the Jesuits a few days later with the news that the emperor had appointed four eunuch members of the court board of mathematicians to take charge of the clocks and wished the missionaries to teach them everything they needed to know in order to take care of the instruments and wind them whenever necessary.

Ricci and Pantoja were lodged in the Imperial City for three days to give the eunuch mathematicians a crash course on the working principles of mechanical clocks. Since there were no Chinese words for mechanisms and techniques devised in such a different culture, Ricci coined a specific vocabulary in Mandarin for the occasion. Terrified lest they might let some essential detail slip, the eunuchs paid the utmost attention and took meticulous notes on everything he said.

Once the lessons were over, the clocks were taken back to the imperial apartments. Wanli rewarded the eunuchs who had learned how to wind them with promotion to a higher rank and allowed them access to his private rooms every day to check on the smaller clock, from which he could never bear to be parted. The Jesuits’ visit proved a godsend to these four
taijian
, who thus acquired greater influence at court and began to receive gifts and manifestations of deference from their colleagues. No object was as dear to Wanli as his clock, as demonstrated by an episode that someone related to the missionaries in violation of the rules of discretion. Intrigued by talk of the “bells that rang by themselves,” the Empress Mother asked for the small clock to be brought to her rooms one day. Fearing that she might seek to appropriate it, the Emperor ordered the eunuchs to take it only after it had run down. Hearing no bells chime and being given no explanation as to how the device worked, the Empress found it most disappointing and sent it back to her son, as Wanli had hoped.

The large clock was instead placed in a garden close to the imperial apartments, as it was too cumbersome to be kept in the emperor’s rooms. Before this, however, it was further embellished by the court craftsmen with a new and richly decorated wooden base and fitted with a new bell to ring the hours.

The positive response to the clocks enabled the Jesuits to establish a privileged channel of communication with the Son of Heaven, albeit with the
taijian
as intermediaries. The emperor was curious, and few days went by without a eunuch being sent from the court with some new question for the Jesuits. Wanli wanted to know how people lived, ate, dressed, and married in Europe, and what form a royal funeral took. The last question was probably motivated by a desire to compare his now completed mausoleum, to which he attached great importance, with similar edifices in the West. It was not difficult to satisfy his curiosity by describing the burial of Philip II of Spain, who had died just three years earlier. The Jesuits explained that the monarch’s remains had been placed in a case of lead inside a wooden coffin in a stone sepulcher in a church.

It is probable that the eunuchs told the Jesuits in turn about the structure of Wanli’s huge mausoleum, located about fifty kilometers outside the capital in the area accommodating the tombs of all the Ming emperors from Yongle on. The necropolis was surrounded by a red wall and was reached by means of a road called the Sacred Way lined with a series of imposing stone statues of real and mythological animals, including lions, elephants, unicorns, and camels, whose task it was to guard the burial places. Alongside these were statues of ministers and dignitaries of high rank who had acquired particular merit during their lives. Similar in structure to those of his predecessors, Wanli’s tomb consisted of an edifice in which sacrifices were performed and the Soul or Stela Tower, beneath which were the chambers built to hold the remains of the emperor and empress, dressed in the costliest of garments and surrounded by votive objects and symbols of power.

This indirect dialogue with the Jesuits interested Wanli, who expressed a desire to know more about the two sages from the West. The reports of the
taijian
and their minute descriptions of the missionaries’ physical appearance and habits were no longer enough. The emperor would have liked to see them for himself, but he was now so used to isolation that he preferred to order the eunuchs to paint life-size portraits and take them to his apartments.

Ricci and Pantoja were summoned to the court once more to pose for the painters. On the agreed day, they were admitted to an area deeper within the Imperial City and even through the second gate, but again without being allowed to meet the Son of Heaven, as they may have hoped. Wanli’s curiosity was such that he had the portraits brought to him as soon as they were ready. On seeing the missionaries’ long beards, he appears to have remarked that they looked like Muslims, which the
taijian
said was impossible as they had seen them eat pork. Still not satisfied with the information received on the world from which the Jesuits came, Wanli asked how the monarchs of the West dressed and how their palaces were constructed. Having nothing else at his disposal, Ricci sent him a small engraving of Christ surrounded by the kneeling figures of the angels from Heaven, the damned from Hell, and all men on earth, including the pope, the emperor, and the king and queen. Wanli appreciated the sacred image but was unable to distinguish the different figures, and he ordered his painters to produce a much larger copy. Once again, Ricci and Pantoja were summoned to the court to help the artists in their work.

In order to satisfy the emperor’s curiosity about European palaces and houses, Ricci provided him with some reproductions of views of the Escorial, built by order of Philip II of Spain, and Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. The eunuchs reported that Wanli was amused to see that the buildings in Europe developed vertically. Living like all the Chinese in a horizontal world of buildings and houses constructed at ground level, he saw those of the West as dangerous and inconvenient. Despite his misgivings, however, he appears to have remarked that this was obviously what the Europeans wanted. As Ricci put it in his history of the mission, “We are all happy with what we have been brought up to.”
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After an interval of a few days, the now customary scene was repeated, and four
taijian
of authoritative appearance turned up at the Jesuits’ door. This time they were members of the imperial office of music with orders to learn how to play the harpsichord presented as a gift by the Jesuits, an instrument completely unknown to them. Ricci had been taught musical theory at the Roman College but appears to have been unable to play any instrument. The expert was Pantoja, who had been taught by Lazzaro Cattaneo when the missionaries were still in Nanjing.

When the missionaries went to the court for the first lesson, the four eunuch musicians bowed not only to them, addressing them solemnly as their masters, but also to the harpsichord as a propitiatory gesture, “as though it was alive.” The lessons went on for a number of days, interrupted only by pauses for the abundant meals served in honor of the Western masters. Now well into the month of February, the Jesuits were beginning to feel at home in the Imperial City, where their visits never failed to attract inquisitive groups of high-ranking
taijian
.

Ricci soon left the lessons to Pantoja, who went on teaching the eunuchs with great commitment every day for a month. It was very difficult for his pupils, especially the two oldest ones, to master an instrument and musical technique based on criteria so very different from theirs, and progress was accordingly limited. It was decided that thirty days had to suffice. Before ending the course, they insisted on Pantoja teaching them some songs to perform to the accompaniment of Western music, feeling certain that the emperor would ask them to do so and not wishing to be caught unprepared. Ricci saw this as an excellent opportunity to convey a spiritual and religious message to the Son of Heaven and decided to write the words.

The Jesuit found some compositions on moral subjects in his books, transformed them into songs in Mandarin Chinese, and presented them in a slender volume entitled
Xiqin quyi bazhang
(“Eight Songs for the Western Harpsichord”) dedicated to the Son of Heaven. The Jesuit also prepared a version with Chinese characters whose pronunciation reproduced the sounds of the Italian words so that the eunuchs could sing them in the original version.
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In line with Ricci’s style as an expert in proffering ethical teachings with the light and graceful touch of a humanist, the verses of the songs were composed with the intention of “teaching the right way to live” and not just “delighting the ear.”
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