Matteo Ricci (30 page)

Rumors filtered through from the court that Wanli had been furious to learn of Li Madou being locked up in the foreigners’ castle. While it was of course impossible to establish whether the words attributed to the emperor—“Are these men perhaps robbers to have been treated in this way?”
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—were actually spoken or instead simply circulated in order to favor the missionaries, the monarch clearly had no intention of expelling them and had decided to adopt the tried and tested tactic of passive resistance to the pressure of the bureaucracy. The eunuchs responsible for the clocks also clearly wanted Ricci to stay, as they were terrified at the idea of the precious devices breaking down with no possibility of asking the missionaries for advice about how to repair them.

A month after the delivery of the document to the court, the bureaucrats began to feel alarmed at the emperor’s prolonged silence and the possibility of a vendetta on the part of the eunuchs in Li Madou’s favor. For fear of reprisals, the director of the foreigners’ castle allowed Ricci to leave the building during the day for the customary courtesy visits but ordered four guards to keep constant watch over him and prevent any attempt to escape.

In the meantime, now realizing that he had made a mistake by asking for the missionaries to be expelled, the vice minister drew up a second and far more positive memorial and sent Ricci a copy to show his goodwill. Here too, however, there was no request for a residence permit for the Jesuits. The omission was intentional because the emperor was empowered by procedure to grant such authorization only in response to an explicit request on the part of the relevant authorities.

Time passed and it became known that the ministry of rites had sent another three memorials on the case of Li Madou to the court without once asking for the missionaries to be granted permission to reside in Beijing and without once receiving a reply from Wanli. Exasperated by the continuing deadlock and his restricted liberty, Ricci turned to Cao Yubian, an official of the ministry of personnel and the only bureaucrat to have displayed any friendliness toward him during the early days of his stay in Beijing, for help in obtaining permission to leave the foreigners’ castle. The mandarin exerted pressure, and the director, who was of lower rank, was forced to come up with some expedient in order to free the Jesuits. It was decided that Ricci should write a letter indicating serious problems of health. For once in his life, the Jesuit agreed to resort to a stratagem for his own benefit. The falsehood was confirmed, and he was freed together with his companions in the month of May. The missionaries moved into rented accommodations but retained the right to be supplied with provisions and firewood free of charge by the state.

As Ricci wrote, “We were very glad and gave thanks to God at now being able to regain some of the good reputation lost during our semi-imprisonment in that castle.”
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Ricci Settles in Beijing by Order of the Emperor

Now as free as a foreigner could be in imperial China, Ricci set about getting his own memorial delivered to the court while avoiding any involvement of officials of the ministry of rites, and he was astonished to succeed without encountering any obstacles at all. While his petition also remained unanswered, the significance of the emperor’s silence was very different in this case from his failure to reply to the ministry of rites, as those in the know were quick to explain. It was in fact now clearly established that Wanli wanted the missionaries to remain in Beijing, but also that he could not grant them residence permits without the ministry’s prior approval. Wanli therefore preferred to make no specific pronouncement on the assumption that his prolonged silence already spoke volumes. So it was, without any official document having been drawn up or any order given, that Ricci learned from the palace eunuchs that his request had been granted. The missionaries would be allowed to reside in Beijing indefinitely and to receive a handsome stipend from the state with the emperor’s consent and no possibility of any objection being raised. The ministry of rites was obliged to accept the situation, and the director of the foreigners’ castle even summoned Ricci for the express purpose of congratulating him on his success, observing with uncommon deference that Beijing was big enough to accommodate one more foreigner.

When the news spread, all the missionaries’ friends and acquaintances, starting with Cao Yubian, came to express their delight, and there was very soon a whole procession of dignitaries eager to meet Li Madou, Xitai, the scholar from the West who had obtained the emperor’s protection. The influx was such that the street where the Jesuits lived was constantly blocked with litters and horses guarded by a host of servants.

A young literatus called one day with a gift and a request for lessons in Western mathematics. He declared himself a disciple of the illustrious scholar Feng Yingjing, a convinced anti-Buddhist and orthodox Confucianist who knew and admired the works of Li Madou. Feng Yingjing was one of the few mandarins who had had the courage to oppose a powerful eunuch, thus bringing about his own downfall. His story was well known in the city. Having become a
jinshi
in 1592, he was serving as provincial judge in Huguang (now divided between the provinces of Hunan and Hubei) and was greatly respected for his integrity. When the eunuch Chen Feng arrived in his district to organize the collection of taxes and began to employ the brutal methods for which the
taijian
were known, the
guan
took action by reporting his crimes in three memorials sent to the emperor. Wanli’s only response was to have the mandarin recalled to Beijing, stripped of his position, and imprisoned.

On hearing this story, Ricci visited the
guan
in prison, and the two men soon came to know and respect one another. Having ascertained Feng Yingjing’s readiness to learn about the Christian religion and feeling sure that he would be able to secure his conversion one day, Ricci asked him to read the manuscript of his catechism, which was still in progress. Feng Yingjing was so convinced of the value of Ricci’s works and the importance of their circulation that he gave orders from prison that the treatises on friendship
and the four elements and some of the maps were to be reprinted at his expense. He also penned an introduction for each work and referred to Ricci in all of his writings as a
jinshi
, the title used for scholars who successfully completed the third level of the imperial examinations. This decision influenced the other literati, and Ricci was customarily attributed this qualification henceforth. The Jesuit was flattered to have become an honorary metropolitan graduate and regarded this prestigious title as conferring added luster on the Society of Jesus, even though it had not been earned by sitting the examinations.

Ricci’s friend, who did so much from prison to foster the circulation of the Jesuit’s works, was never to convert. On being released three years later, when a general amnesty was granted for the appearance of a comet in the sky (October 10, 1604), he moved to Nanjing and died there without meeting the missionaries again. This provided further evidence that many Chinese intellectuals were as sincerely interested in Ricci’s works on ethics and science as they were suspicious of his religious teachings, and that most of them preferred to take the prudent course of avoiding or delaying such a great commitment as the decision to convert to Catholicism.

The stream of visitors increased steadily, and not a day went by without a minister, vice minister, or military commander calling on the Jesuits. Ricci made them all gifts of globes, sundials, and small clocks, and engaged in lengthy discussions on philosophical and moral subjects with figures like the minister of personnel Li Dai and the scholar Feng Qi, who was soon to be appointed minister of rites.

The missionaries’ social position was definitively established by a meeting with the grand secretary Shen Jiaomen, who called on Li Madou at home as a sign of respect and graciously accepted the gift of a precious ebony sundial. The
guan
then held a banquet in Ricci’s honor and asked him a great many questions about the European way of life. According to the Jesuit’s account, he was impressed above all by the fact that Westerners had only one wife. Being well aware that polygamy was one of the main obstacles to the conversion of mandarins, Ricci always laid great stress on this aspect of life in the West.

Many dignitaries followed the grand secretary’s example and organized banquets in honor of Xitai, who seemed to have received more invitations during the first few months of his stay in Beijing than in all his previous years on Chinese soil, sometimes as many as two or three in the same day. The missionaries tired themselves out rushing from house to house in an effort to keep everyone happy and avoid giving offence, but they were obliged even so to decline some invitations due to the absolute lack of time. Now that they were treated as equals by the ruling class, Ricci was sorry to see that they received no visits from the poor in Beijing, who were unquestionably intimidated by their popularity with the rich and privileged.

One day they received a visit from the
taijian
responsible for the emperor’s clocks, who had not called in a long time. Being very worried because the large clock had stopped working despite regular winding, they had brought it with them to make sure that Ricci would examine it immediately and left it with the Jesuits for repair.

The stream of visitors increased enormously as soon as it was known that an object belonging to the emperor was to be found in Li Madou’s house. The opportunity to admire a unique work of art temporarily removed from the heart of the palace was something that happened only once in a lifetime.

Wanli was annoyed when he heard about this and ordered the eunuchs to take the clock back to the court immediately. It was never again to be taken out of the Forbidden City on pain of dire punishment. In the event of a breakdown, the Jesuits would be allowed to enter the imperial palace to repair it. Moreover, to ensure that these orders were always obeyed, Ricci decided to authorize the Jesuits in advance to enter the Forbidden City four times a year to service the clocks. Combined with the freedom already acquired to go in and out of the Imperial City at will, this right of access to areas kept strictly off limits to other subjects increased Ricci’s prestige to the point that the wholly groundless rumor began to spread that the Jesuit had enjoyed the privilege of meeting the emperor.

Li Zhizao and Geography:
The Third Edition of the Map of the World

Friendship with the prisoner Feng Yingjing preceded a meeting that was to prove still more significant for the future of the mission. This came about in the customary way, when a young
guan
from Hangzhou in the southeastern province of Zhejiang called one day and asked to see Li Madou. Having worked in Nanjing as assistant to the minister of public works there, Li Zhizao had recently been called to Beijing to take up an analogous position.
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Now aged thirty-six, thirteen years younger than Ricci, he had graduated as a
jinshi
three years before the Jesuits’ arrival in Beijing, ranked eighth out of three hundred candidates. In the course of their long conversation, Li Zhizao examined the Jesuit’s books and above all his map of the world. Geography was one of his own particular areas of interest, and he had in fact drawn a map of China with a description of the provinces of the empire some years earlier.

From geography, the two men went on to discuss other subjects in an exchange of ideas that continued over the next few days. Ricci realized that the
guan
was open to every new form of knowledge, and Li Zhizao that Li Madou was not only a sage who would tell him about faraway countries but also a man of great spiritual conviction willing to introduce him to an interwoven universe of mathematics, geometry, and moral values.

This new friend thus called assiduously at the missionaries’ house in his free time to learn the secrets of Western knowledge. Ricci tells us that Li Zhizao studied with him for a year, making every effort to understand the Ptolemaic model of the universe and performing calculations for hours on end. On observing his determination to grasp the new concepts and verify the consistency of the geocentric system, Ricci realized that he had found an enthusiastic collaborator, and a fruitful intellectual relationship soon developed. It was now evident that many
shidafu
were aware of the importance of science and technology and were eager to explore new worldviews and philosophies other than the narrowly specialized and dogmatic knowledge required for success in the imperial examinations.

Li Zhizao was interested above all in geography and had little difficulty persuading Ricci to prepare a new edition of his map of the world. The Jesuit set to work at the beginning of the summer of 1601 and produced the
Kunyu wanguo quantu
(“Complete Map of the Countless Countries of the Earth”) in the space of a year. It was printed between August and September 1602 on six panels of Chinese paper that could be mounted side by side on a screen measuring approximately four meters by two. As in the previous maps, the countries of the world were shown inside an oval to indicate the spherical nature of the earth, and China was placed in the middle, but there were also many new details. In addition to the equator, this new version showed the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, which appeared here for the first time on a map in Chinese, and divided the globe into five climatic zones in relation to variations in latitude: the torrid zone cut by the equator, the two subtropical zones, and the two polar regions. Following the atlas of Ortelius, Ricci placed the zero meridian in the Fortunate Isles, the present-day Canaries, and drew the lines of latitude and longitude every ten degrees.

While employing the techniques introduced by European cartography, Ricci followed the Chinese tradition of combining the map with a large section of written text, as in the two previous editions. This version provided geographic, astronomical, naturalistic, and historical information in still greater detail, as well as descriptions of the ways of life and customs of the different peoples. The maps of Petrus Plancius, Mercator, and Ortelius were used as a basis for the characteristics of the Western countries, and the content of Chinese maps, probably with the help of Li Zhizao, were used for the description of China and other regions of Asia. Ricci is thought, for example, to have drawn on local cartography for the use of a series of dots to represent the desert, a convention unknown in the West at the time but commonly used in Chinese maps.
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