Matteo Ricci (44 page)

The Chinese rites were definitively condemned eight years later in the papal bull
Ex Illa Die
of 1715, and the patriarch of Alexandria, Ambrogio Mezzabarba, was sent as a new legate to ask the emperor to allow his subjects to practice Christianity in the form approved by Rome and to recognize the pope’s jurisdiction over Chinese Christians in matters of religion.

Indignant that a “barbarian” should presume to teach the Chinese how to interpret the “Great Doctrine” of Confucianism, Kangxi threatened to prohibit the Christian religion. The papal legate made some concessions to moderate the condemnation of the rites, but these were annulled by the new pope, Innocent XIII.

China continued to fascinate European intellectuals in that period, not least because of the
Lettres édifiantes et curieuses
, a collection of letters sent by missionaries from China and published on a regular basis as from 1702 by the French procurator of the missions in China and Japan, Charles Le Gobien. Leading figures in the French Enlightenment admired the ethical and political wisdom of Confucian philosophy, grounded on reason and natural morality, and saw the third Qing emperor as an enlightened sovereign.

Kangxi died in 1722, and two years later the ministry of rites endorsed accusations put forward by the general governor of the Fujian province and declared the Catholic Church the most pernicious of all the false sects. The new emperor, Yongzheng, banned Catholicism and ordered the confiscation of the churches. With the sole exception of those serving as court astronomers in Beijing, all the missionaries were originally to be expelled to Macao but then were confined to Canton. Any priests attempting to continue their activities clandestinely were henceforth to be expelled or arrested. The religious authorities gave orders in 1742 that missionaries leaving for China were to swear they would treat those practicing the Chinese rites as idolaters.
40
In 1736, only a few years earlier during the reign of Qianlong, various works by Ricci, including his treatise on friendship and his translation of Euclid’s
Elements
, had been included in the “Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries,” the official edition of the most important books published in China.

As regards developments in Europe, the
Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise
by the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde—one of the most celebrated eighteenth-century works on the Middle Kingdom and based entirely, like Kircher’s, on the reports of missionaries—was published in 1735, and the Sinophily of the French Enlightenment reached its peak in 1740 with Voltaire, who judged the Chinese empire the best organized in the world and appreciated Confucianism. The Middle Kingdom was also the subject of his
Orphelin de la Chine
, based on a Chinese theatrical work of the thirteenth century and performed in Paris on August 20, 1755.

The main source of information on the empire so idealized by the Enlightenment dried up, however, when Jesuit missionaries stopped sending reports back from China. In 1773, after nearly two centuries during which some five hundred Jesuits had worked in China along the path indicated by Matteo Ricci, the Society of Jesus was suppressed by Clement XIV, and the missions in the Middle Kingdom were handed over to the Lazarists. The members of the abolished order occupied important positions in the calendrical office until the death in 1774 of the last director, Augustin de Hallerstein, who had held the position since 1746.
41

Even after the suppression of the Society of Jesus,
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missionaries formerly belonging to it remained at the imperial court as astronomers or experts in other disciplines and continued the work of cultural dissemination in which they so excelled. During the reign of Qianlong, a group of Jesuits designed the “Complete Map of the Empire,” and the Milanese lay brother Giuseppe Castiglione,
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known in Chinese as Lang Shining, the court painter since the reign of Kangxi, designed the Yuan Ming Yuan, the imperial summer residence just outside Beijing, together with other former Jesuits as a fusion of Chinese and European architectural styles.

Remembrance of Matteo Ricci: Writings and Monuments

After three centuries of total oblivion, Ricci’s manuscript was rediscovered in 1909 by the Jesuit historian of religion Pietro Tacchi Venturi, who brought out the first edition in 1911 under the title
I Commentarj della Cina
as well as part of Ricci’s correspondence. After Tacchi Venturi, the Jesuit sinologist Pasquale D’Elia brought out the three-volume edition
Fonti Ricciane, Storia dell’Introduzione del Cristianesimo in Cina
between 1941 and 1949. This was to have been followed by an edition of the letters, which D’Elia was unable to complete before his death.

Ricci’s tomb in Beijing continued to attract visitors during the seventeenth century. Around 1650, when Johann Adam Schall von Bell was still alive, it was embellished with a large stone adorned with the symbols of the dragon and the cross as well as eight Chinese characters meaning “Tomb of Mr. Ricci of the Society of Jesus” and two inscriptions in Latin and Chinese recalling the most significant events in the missionary’s life.
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Under the Jesuits until the suppression of the order, and then the Lazarists, the cemetery became part of a great complex of Catholic buildings. In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the burial ground was destroyed, and the bones of the missionaries were scattered.
45
Ricci’s tombstone was later salvaged and set in a new structure on a new base between the graves of Schall von Bell, on the right, and Verbiest, on the left.

In 1954, when plans were made for the construction of a Chinese Communist Party training school on the property at Zhala, Zhou Enlai decided that the graves of Ricci, Schall, and Verbiest were to be left in their place and the remains of the other missionaries moved to another cemetery. The Red Guards destroyed the cemetery in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, damaging all the gravestones and defacing the inscriptions. These were successfully restored in the early 1980s, and the graves of Ricci, Schall, Verbiest, and sixty other missionaries were returned to their original location in the grounds of the former school, now an administrative college.

Surrounded by cypresses and a stone wall with a gate, the cemetery is today a small, timeless oasis of peace, totally isolated from the frenetic life of the Chinese capital encircling it with its fifteen million inhabitants. This secluded spot evocative of a past of heroism and hardship is still visited by many figures passing through Beijing and wishing to pay homage to the memory of Matteo Ricci, the pioneer of dialogue between China and the West. It is also possible to visit the church of the Immaculate Conception south of Tiananmen Square, built on the place where Li Madou once lived.
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Notes

1. J. Needham, op. cit., p. 556.

2.
As recalled by the Jesuit Giulio Aleni in
Daxi Xitai Li xiansheng xingji
(“The Life of Matteo Ricci from the Great West”), a biography of Ricci published in Chinese in 1630 and now in the Vatican Library.

3.
P. D’Elia, “Echi delle scoperte galileiane in Cina,” cit., pp. 154–55.

4.
Letter dated November 23; P. D’Elia, “Echi delle scoperte galileiane in Cina,” p. 155.

5.
See H. Bernard, op. cit., p. 69.

6.
See H. Bernard, op. cit.

7.
P. D’Elia, “Echi delle scoperte galileiane in Cina,” cit., pp. 155–56.

8.
The painting was hung in the Jesuit headquarters in Rome together with the portraits of Ignatius Loyola Francis Xavier in 1617.

9.
Book IV, chapters XVII and XVIII in Portuguese; book V, chapters XVIII, XIX, and XX in Portuguese and XXI and XXII in Latin.

10.
The Latin title is De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Iesu. Ex P. Matthaei Ricij eiusdem Societatis Comentarijs Libri V.

11.
Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault,
Entrata nella Cina de’ Padri della Compagnia del Gesù (1582–1610)
(Naples: printed by Lazzaro Scoriggio, 1622).

12.
There is no agreement as to the number of volumes. Some scholars say six hundred, others seven hundred, and the seventeenth-century Chinese sources say seven thousand.

13.
Considered one of the “three pillars of Christianity in China” together with Li Zhizao and Xu Guangqi.

14.
The vice minister Shen Que was appointed grand secretary in Beijing in 1621. The rebellion of the White Lotus sect unleashed further persecution of foreigners, and hence Christians, in 1622. The situation began to return to normal in 1622, when Shen Que left his post.

15.
P. M. Engelfriet,
Euclid in China
, cit., pp. 335 ff.

16.
Schall mentioned the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, a phenomenon first predicted by Copernicus and observed by Galileo. He also described two stars apparently flanking Saturn, which were actually effects of optical distortion caused by the planet’s rings, and spoke about sunspots, observed by Galileo thirteen years earlier and described by the same in his
Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari
.

17.
Cf. Isaia Iannaccone, “Scienziati gesuiti nella Cina del XVII secolo,” in
Scienze tradizionali in Asia. Principi ed applicazioni, Atti del convegno, Perugia 26–28 ottobre 1995
(Perugia: Fornari Editore, 1996).

18.
The work illustrated the trigonometric functions of sine, cosine, and tangent.

19.
Cf. Isaia Iannaccone, “Le fasi della divulgazione della scienza europea nella Cina del XVII secolo,” in
La missione cattolica in Cina tra i secoli XVII–XVIII, Emiliano Palladini . . . , Atti del convegno, Lauria 8–9 ottobre 1993
, ed. Francesco D’Arelli and Adolfo Tamburello (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1995).

20.
Dennis Twitchett and Frederich W. Mote, eds.,
The Cambridge History of China
, vol. 8, part 2: The Ming Dynasty 1368–1644 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 833.

21.
D. Twitchett and F. W. Mote, op. cit., p. 789.

22.
D. Twitchett and F. W. Mote, op. cit., p. 833.

23.
The Jesuit Manuel Dias the Younger published a commentary on the discovery a few years later in 1644.

24.
Named in honor of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, the Rudolphine Tables were published by Kepler in 1622 on the basis of data drawn from Tycho Brahe’s observations.

25.
D. Twitchett and F. W. Mote, op. cit., p. 834.

26.
D. Twitchett and F. W. Mote, op. cit., p. 836.

27.
J. Needham, op. cit., pp. 542–43.

28.
Some imperial princes fled to the south and sought to maintain their power but were defeated. Zhou Yulang, who adopted the era name of Yonglu, held out the longest, and some Jesuit missionaries moved with his court to Guilin and then into the Yunan province. One of these was the German Andreas Wolfgang (later Xavier) Koffler, who was able to convert a number of women including the empress mother. Baptized with the name of Helena, she sent a letter to Pope Innocent X, now in the Vatican archives, seeking aid and support for the Ming dynasty.

29.
George H. Dunne,
Generation of Giants
(London: Burns & Oates, 1962), p. 325.

30.
George H. Dunne,
Generation of Giants
, p. 174.

31.
J. Gernet,
Chine et christianisme
, cit., p. 84.

32.
Adrian Dudink, “Sympathising Literati and Officials,” in
The Handbook of Christianity in China
, ed., N. Standaert, cit., pp. 479–80.

33.
For information about Schall, see G. H. Dunne, op. cit., or Roman Malek, ed.,
Western Learning and Christianity in China: The Contribution and Impact of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, 1592–1666
, 2 vols. (Sankt Augustin, China-Zentrum, Monumenta Serica Institute, 1998).

34.
See
Ferdinand Verbiest, Jesuit, Missionary Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat 1623–1688
, ed. John Witek (Steyler Verlag, Nettatal, 1994). See also N. Cameron, op. cit., ch. XI.

35.
Verbiest used the system of coordinates based on the ecliptic whereas the Chinese used the equatorial coordinates.

36.
Guo Shoujing’s instruments reflected the Chinese conception of the universe better than the Jesuit’s and used the system of equatorial coordinates, which was soon to be adopted also in the West. See chapter 10 (“The Forgotten Astronomical Observatory”).

37.
N. Standaert, ed.,
The Handbook of Christianity
, cit., p. 516.

38.
See chapter 7 (“Confucius, ‘Another Seneca’: The Translation of the Confucian Classics”). See also L. M. Jensen, op. cit., pp. 122, 325.

39.
The literature of the “Chinese rites controversy” or the “Chinese rites question” is endless, and the dispute is also discussed in nonspecialized works such as P. Rule, op. cit.; Giorgio Borsa,
La nascita del moderno in Asia Orientale
(Milan: Rizzoli, 1977); G. H. Dunne, op. cit.; Davide Mungello,
Curious Land
(Honolulu: University of Haway Press, 1985); J. Waley-Cohen, op. cit.

40.
The ban on Chinese rites was lifted by Pope Pius XII in 1939.

41.
G. H. Dunne, op. cit., p. 211.

42.
The reconstitution of the Society of Jesus was officially sanctioned by Pius VII in 1814 with the bull
Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum
. The order, which had about twenty-three thousand members in 1773, was reborn as a group of six hundred brethren.