Abstract
The Quanzhen School, which has endured up to the present day, is certainly the best known of the schools born of the renewal of Daoism characteristic of the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115– 1234). The oldest documents produced by this school give a simple list of the patriarchs who, succeeding the founder Wang Zhe, directed the movement during its first decades. However, a closer examination of the texts, particularly of the biographies found in the epigraphical record, reveals uncertainties caused not by a lack of historical sources but by a posteriori reconstructions or, as in the case discussed here, by the concealment of intrigues that were decisive for the historical evolution of the Quanzhen school. This article examines the strange abdication of Yin Zhiping, and demonstrates that his renunciation was that of a patriarch who should not have attained the position, and could well have been part of a plan conceived and put into practice with skill and patience by his very active successor Li Zhichang.
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