Ch 14 - Western Contacts

A Holy Doctor from the West

Francis Xavier's work among the Japanese laid the groundwork for Jesuit missionaries to establish a foothold in China. Starting in Macao, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci established a significant presence in China that opened the way for Christianity and western knowledge to take root in East Asia.

Shortly after his arrival in 1549, the Portuguese Jesuit Francis Xavier began spreading Christianity in Japan. Within two-and-a-half years he established a promising Christian community of about one thousand new converts. Father Xavier never lost his initial love for the Japanese, but stories about the Celestial Empire convinced him that China, not Japan, was the key to converting the Far East to Christianity. Despite some reservations about the Chinese people and with help from a few influential friends, Father Xavier obtained an ambassadorial appointment from the Portuguese Viceroy of India and arranged an embassy to Beijing to visit the Ming emperor. Sadly, his dreams to convert China ended in December 1552, when the forty-six-year-old Roman Catholic priest died from a sudden illness at Shangchuan Island, about 105 miles southwest of Macao.

Ever since their first visit to the port of Canton (modern Guangzhou) in 1514, the Portuguese considered trade relations with China to be a matter of great importance. Early mistakes by men like Captain Simon de Andrade prompted the Chinese to expel the Portuguese from Canton in 1521 and led to the destruction of a Portuguese fleet the following year. The Chinese also destroyed Portuguese settlements and massacred the inhabitants at Liambo (1545) and Changzhou (1549). After struggling to gain a foothold in China, the Portuguese bribed local government officials in 1553 for permission to engage in trade at an anchorage 65 nautical miles south of Canton off the rocky, hilly headland located west of the Pearl River estuary in Guangdong Province. Four years later, the Portuguese formally established a trading settlement on this parched and desolate peninsula. The 17.5 sq km of land connected to China by a 700-ft wide isthmus and including the two small islands of Taipa and Coloane was called "Macao," a name derived from the peninsula's 14th century Ma Kwok temple . The commercial stronghold in Macao became a Portuguese forward base from which they developed other trade connections in Asia.

Portugal's principal goal was commercial trade with Japan, but virtually every Portuguese trade mission included a group of eager Jesuit priests. By the time they set foot on Chinese soil, virtually nothing remained of the small Christian communities founded in China by seventh century Nestorian missionaries and Catholic monks in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, there was little evidence these early missionary efforts had ever seriously affected the Chinese. Those wishing continue the missionary work of Father Francis Xavier faced the daunting task of starting from the beginning and the obstacles were greater than ever before.

The first Jesuit missionary admitted to China, Father Melchior Nuñez Barreto, arrived in Macao in 1555, and twice traveled as far as Canton, where he spent a month each time discussing science and moral theology with Chinese mandarins. The Dominican Friar Gaspar da Cruz was also admitted to Canton for a month, but with the admonition not to form a Christian community. Numerous other missionaries - Jesuits, Augustinians and Fransciscans - set foot on Chinese soil in the years between 1568 and 1582, only to be forced, sometimes roughly, to withdraw. Father Alessandro Valignano , who was placed in charge of all the Jesuit missions in the East Indies in August 1573, recognized the cause of these early failures:  each was a haphazard attempt undertaken by men insufficiently prepared for the mission and who were incapable of profiting from the favorable circumstances they encountered. To avoid such failures, Father Valignano carefully selected missionaries who could implant Christianity in China once the door was opened to them.

Father Valignano's first candidate was the Jesuit Michele de Ruggieri, who had traveled to India from Italy in 1578. Father de Ruggieri arrived in Maco in July 1579, and immersed himself in the study of Mandarin, the language spoken throughout the Ming Empire by government officials and the well-educated. His painfully slow progress actually proved advantageous. The unaccustomed complacency of local mandarins allowed him to continue his work with more success than his predecessors in two trips to Canton (1580-81), where he received permission to establish a small chapel. Soon afterward, a newly-ordained Jesuit priest arrived in Macao who would firmly establish the Catholic mission in China.

Born in the village of Macerata in the Papal States (Italy) on October 6, 1552, Matteo Ricci was educated at home by his parents until he entered the Macerata Jesuit School in 1561. Seven years later, after studying law in Rome for two years, he became interested in the Jesuit religious order. The eighteen-year-old Matteo Ricci entered the Society of Jesus at the Roman College on August 15, 1571, where he made his novitiate and studied philosophy and theology under Father Alessandro Valignano.

While a student of mathematics, cosmology and astronomy under Father Christopher Clavius, he became interested in the newly developing missionary work in Japan and China and requested to be sent to the missions in East Asia. He departed Lisbon on March 24, 1578, and reached Goa on India's west coast on September 13th. For the next two years he worked in Goa and at Cochin teaching and working in the ministry. Ordained a Jesuit in 1580, the young priest was summoned to Macao by Father Alessandro Valignano in the early spring of 1582 to prepare to enter China.

Father Matteo Ricci arrived at Macao on August 7, 1582, and settled in the administrative capital of Canton in Kwangtung Province. Father de Ruggieri joined him the following month. Although he never hid his Faith or denied the fact he was a Catholic priest, Father Ricci adopted the dress and manner of Buddhist monks to lessen suspicions while he studied the Chinese language and culture. The Jesuits carefully avoided any discussion of their intention to preach a new religion when questioned by curious mandarins about their presence in China. Had they immediately declared their intention, the Chinese would never have allowed them to enter the country. Such behavior would have clashed with Chinese pride, which would never admit China had anything to learn from foreigners. Worse, it would have alarmed their political sense, which saw threats to the empire in every innovation. Instead, the prudent Jesuits responded by saying "that they were religious men who had left their country in the distant West because of the renown of the good government of China, where they desired to remain till their death serving god, the Lord of Heaven."

Soon after the Jesuits established their residence in China, they displayed a beautiful painting of the Blessed Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms in a very conspicuous part of their house. The image intrigued Chinese visitors, who thoroughly believed that only barbarism existed beyond their borders. The astonished Chinese seldom failed to inquire about the meaning of the many objects on display in the Jesuit's "miniature museum" filled with European curiosities:  sundials, large and small clocks, mathematical and astronomical instruments, Venetian prisms, rare editions of European books, musical instruments, prints and oil paintings, cosmographical diagrams, architectural drawings, and geographical maps with views of towns and buildings, each magnificently printed and splendidly bound.

Rumors about the many wonders on display at the Jesuit residence spread quickly and the house was always packed with curious Chinese, particularly mandarins and the well-educated. The Jesuits cleverly intensified Chinese interest by crafting answers to their questions so as to give the Chinese their first ideas of Christianity. As soon as the Jesuits sufficiently overcame Chinese antipathy and distrust, or at least felt certain they could make themselves understood without shocking their listeners, they took the initiative in speaking of their own religion. By appealing to Chinese curiosity, the Jesuits created the impression that the "foreigners" had something new and interesting to teach. They educated without offending Chinese sensibilities and informed without being critical. Little by little, the Jesuits gave the Chinese reason to believe that Europe, its people and its educated men were far different than anything the Chinese had previously imagined.

The one object that aroused the greatest curiosity among the Chinese was a European map of the world. Chinese maps, called "descriptions of the world" by their geographers, were filled almost entirely by China's fifteen provinces, surrounded by a small amount of sea and a few islands given the names of countries they had heard about. When Father Ricci pointed out various parts of the world on the European map, Zhaoqing's mandarins naturally protested the small area China occupied. Once the missionaries carefully explained the map's construction and the care taken by western geographers to accurately assign each country its actual position and boundaries, the wisest among the Chinese, beginning with the Governor of Zhaoqing, accepted the evidence. At their urging, Father Ricci produced his first edition of the Yudi shanhai quantu, "Complete Map of the Earth's Mountains and Seas," in 1584. This large map of the world showed China's geographical position and contained detailed inscriptions better suited to Chinese needs. The governor had Ricci's map printed and distributed as gifts to his friends . Father Ricci described his remarkable achievement as,

". . .the most useful work that could be done at that time to dispose China to give credence to the things of our holy Faith. . . . Their conception of the greatness of their country and of the insignificance of all other lands made them so proud that the whole world seemed to them savage and barbarous compared with themselves;  it was scarcely to be expected that they, while entertaining this idea, would heed foreign masters."

Using the Jesuit experience in Japan, Father Matteo Ricci, a tall, vigorous man with blue eyes, a curly beard and a resonant voice, joined Confucian society on its own level at the top, appealing to the upper-class elite. He and his Jesuit colleagues spoke fluent Mandarin, learned Chinese customs, adopted Chinese manners as best they could, and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Portuguese traders at Macao. They also abandoned their clerical robes for the trappings of the Confucian scholar and became literate in the Chinese Classics. Father Ricci developed a bold, farsighted plan to tear down centuries of isolationism by sharing the culture of those on whom the Chinese government most depended:  the intellectual aristocracy. He knew that if the aristocracy accepted Catholicism, the lower classes would willingly follow. This "intellectual" ministry, he later wrote, was worth far more to him than thousands of piecemeal converts. In his vision, it was the means that would eventually lead to "the universal conversion of the whole kingdom." The Jesuits successfully put the Chinese missions on a firm footing by tailoring their message to local conditions.

It was apparent that western religion proved no less interesting to many Chinese than the scientific knowledge and many Western curiosities on exhibit at the Jesuit residence in Canton. Father Ricci drew on his Chinese studies to speak favorably of his religion to an increasing number of Chinese eager to learn of European affairs. Beautiful Bibles, religious paintings and prints gave the Jesuits an opportunity to engage in conversations of "the good customs in the countries of the Christians, of the falseness of idolatry, of the conformity of the law of God with natural reason, and similar teachings found in the writings of the ancient sages of China."

To satisfy those who wished to learn more, the Jesuits printed and distributed an abbreviated translation of the Ten Commandments, a moral code much appreciated by the Chinese. In 1584, Father Ricci produced a small catechism entitled, Tian zhu she i, "The True Doctrine of God," which explained the chief points of Christian doctrine through a dialogue between a pagan and a European priest. Distributed by the hundreds of thousands, this small book used the best arguments of reason to successfully refute the widespread errors of belief in China. Ricci bolstered his testimony of Christian philosophy and theology with numerous proofs from the ancient Chinese classics and portrayed Christianity as a system of wisdom and ethics compatible with Confucianism. The little catechism quickly became a prized possession among the Chinese. The highest mandarins of the province considered it an honor to receive it as a present .

In 1588, Father Michele de Ruggieri was sent to Rome to expand interest in the East Asian missions. The following year, a viceroy in Canton found the Jesuit residence more suited to his own needs and expelled Father Ricci from Zhaoqing. Despite the disruption, the Catholic mission in China was too deeply rooted to be destroyed by the expropriation of its first home. Undeterred, Father Ricci soon discovered his reputation had preceded him, for wherever he went he found powerful friends to protect him. He moved to the provincial capital at Shin-hing in 1589, and afterwards to Shin-chou, where he dropped the use of interpreters, took the Chinese name Li Matou (Ricci Mat-te-o), and adopted the dress of mandarin Chinese. After settling in Shinzhou, he began teaching Chinese scholars the mathematical ideas he learned in Rome, perhaps the first interaction between European and Chinese mathematics.

Father Ricci traveled to Nanjing in 1595 in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Catholic mission in the famed capital of South China. Instead, he settled in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Poyang, Nanchang was the education, commerce and transportation center of southeast China and home to a great many educated men. During his stay, Matteo Ricci established a Christian church and continued his work on mathematics, astronomy and geography. Despite having already established a number of successful Catholic settlements, he felt his mission would never be secure unless he could establish an authorized Christian community in the very heart of the Chinese Empire, the imperial capital of Beijing.

Father Ricci made a bold attempt to enter Beijing in 1598, but was forced to withdraw when he learned the city was closed to foreigners. Returning to Nanjing, he was surprised to learn that the highest mandarins in the capital anxiously desired the "holy doctor from the West" to take up residence in their city. Still, Father Ricci constantly longed to erase his rejection at Beijing. Encouraged by the Chinese to try again, Father Ricci left the Nanjing mission in the capable hands of the Jesuits Lazzaro Cattaneo and Joïo da Rocha and set out for the imperial capital on May 18, 1600. This time his intellectual fame and that of his scientific instruments and works of art reached the Ming imperial court ahead of him. Just when all hope of success was lost, on January 24, 1601, the Jesuit priest from Maserata, Italy, and his Spanish companion Diego Pantoja entered the "heart of the dragon" at the summons of Emperor Wan Li.

In early February 1601, at five o'clock on a dark, bone-chilling morning, Matteo Ricci and Diego Pantoja arrived at the Imperial Palace for an audience granted to pay homage to Emperor Wan Li. Dressed in their bright red damask robes and wearing gilt silver helmets, the two men slowly walked the length of the great palace courtyard, each carrying a three-by-eight inch ivory tablet. In the flickering light of lanterns, the men looked in wonder at the spectacle before them. The walls, roofs, even the parchment windows of the palace were yellow and dragons were emblazoned everywhere. At the north end of the courtyard, the men approached three flights of marble stairs. At the top of the stairs, in an open-sided arcade flanked by large painted screens, sat the raised platform of the Dragon Throne - empty. In a high-pitched voice, a Chinese official commanded, "Kneel Down!" The two men knelt. After another high-pitched command, the men rose, moved forward and bowed to the empty throne. Shielding their mouths with the ivory tablets - no mortal breath should ever fall upon the Son of Heaven - they exclaimed, "Ten thousand years," a salutation of long life reserved solely for the Emperor. For Matteo Ricci, the entire scene and his gesture of homage marked the high point of his extraordinary life.

Granted permission to live in the imperial city, Matteo Ricci spent the last nine years of his life in Beijing, strengthening his work with the same wisdom and remarkable tenacity which had carried him so far. His gifts of European curiosities soon earned Father Ricci the goodwill and patronage of the Ming government. After seeing Ricci's European map of the world, which presented the true geographic picture of the Ming Empire and the existence of numerous other nations and peoples, Emperor Wan Li commanded the priest to make a copy of the map for the imperial palace. Under Emperor Wan Li's benign patronage, Father Ricci became a trusted, highly respected and valued advisor to the Ming imperial government. He was permitted to enter the most respected class of the mandarinate and to wear the plum-colored silk robes and tall black hat of the Chinese scholar.

Matteo Ricci used science as a tool that laid the foundation to open the door to missionary work in China. Mathematics and astronomy had been closely interwoven with China's government institutions for centuries, but after listening to Father Ricci's lectures, even the most knowledgeable Chinese scholars who considered themselves most proficient in the scientific domain had to acknowledge the limits and errors of their knowledge. His teachings aroused interest and left a deep impression among the majority of China's highly educated men, especially those in public office. His reputation as a mathematician was exceeded only by his extraordinary memory and his knowledge of astronomy. The Chinese emperor had the grave responsibility to maintain a calendar that accurately foretold the coming of the seasons and the positions of the heavenly bodies. The old-school Chinese and Muslim astronomers were behind the times in predicting major astronomical events and their errors gave the Jesuits just the opening they needed to revise the Chinese calendar.

As the first Father Superior of the Catholic Mission in China, Matteo Ricci used his growing language skills to write a variety of small moral treatises adapted to Chinese tastes. To do so effectively, he had clearly and unequivocally express Catholic dogma and rites in a language which had never before been put to such use. In 1605, he published a book the Chinese called, "The Twenty-five Words," twenty-five short chapters that dealt with "the mortification of the passions and the nobility of virtue." In 1607, with the able assistance of Xu Guangqi (Paul Xu, baptized by Father Joïo da Rocha in Nanjing in 1603), Father Ricci completed the Kiho Yuanbun, a translation of the "Original Text of Geometry" based on Father Christopher Clavius' Latin version of "Euclid's Elements." Euclid's style was so different from that of Chinese mathematics that the mixing of mathematical cultures must have been a cultural shock to both sides. Father Ricci earned still more admiration through his publication of "The Ten Paradoxes" in 1608, a collection of practical advice for a moral life developed from examples, comparisons and extracts from the Scriptures and from Christian philosophers and doctors.

Matteo Ricci's little catechism from Zhaoqing, Tian zhu she i, "The True Doctrine of God," had the greatest impact on China. Reprinted at least four times before 1610 (twice by the Chinese), this masterpiece became the "missionary's manual" and was eventually translated into Manchu, Korean, Japanese, and French. It even found an honored place in the emperor's library among the most notable examples of the Chinese language. Justifiably proud of their own rich literature on morality, the Chinese were greatly surprised to see a stranger succeed so well. Their praise for his exalted doctrine and the respect they developed for Christian writings did much to cast the Christian religion in a favorable light and dissipate the Chinese distrust of strangers. As a man of letters, Father Ricci published, on average, a book a year and became one of the most respected figures in Chinese literature.

During his gradual advance on Beijing, Father Ricci never abandoned territory he had already covered. He always trained co-workers in his methods and commissioned them to continue his work in the cities he left. In 1601, the Catholic Mission included, besides Beijing, the three Jesuit residences at Nanjing, Nanchang, Shin-chou. In 1608, a fourth mission was established in Shanghai. At each location there were two or three Jesuit missionaries assisted by Chinese Christian "brothers" from Macao, members of the Society of Jesus who served the mission as religious instructors. Although only about two-thousand Chinese had been baptized by 1608, Father Ricci wrote in his memoirs that, considering the obstacles to the entrance of Christianity into China, the result was "a very great miracle of Divine Omnipotence." To preserve and increase that success, the missionaries always employed the sound policy approved by Father Alessandro Valignano in Macao. They adopted their methods to China's special conditions and avoided unnecessary attacks on traditional customs and habits.

The Jesuits so ingratiated themselves with the imperial court they were permitted to build churches in the Chinese capital:  Beitang, the Northern Church (French), Nantang, the Southern Church (Portuguese), Xitang, the Western Church, and Dongtang, the Eastern Church. They also maintained a Western library of some seven thousand volumes, which they helped translate into Chinese. With the assistance of devoted Chinese scholars, the Jesuits produced some 380 literary works which included treatises on Christianity, astronomy, anatomy, geography, logic, mathematics, medicine, meteorology, mechanics, pharmacology, zoology, and European-style government and education.

When Matteo Ricci died on May 11, 1610, China's 2,500 Catholics included many from the educated classes. Nine of the eighteen Jesuits working in China at that time were Chinese. A zealous and intrepid individual, Matteo Ricci applied intelligence and an unwavering tenacity to every project he undertook. He not only succeeded in breaching the distrust of foreigners which had excluded westerners from China, but he gave Europe its first exact scientific knowledge concerning the great Asian empire;  its true geographical situation, its ancient civilization, its vast and curious literature, and its vastly different social structure. The establishment of the Catholic mission in the heart of China laid a foundation for better understanding between East Asia and the West. The impact of this remarkable and brilliant man on the people of China was so great that no European name of past centuries is so well known in China as that of Li Matou;  scientist, artist, philosopher, teacher, and founder of the Chinese Catholic Church. At the end of his fruitful life, Matteo Ricci could rightly tell his colleagues, "I leave before you an open door ...."