Abstract
This essay is concerned with the possibility of cultural change in the writings of Matteo Ricci. In order to elucidate this question, this essay discusses aspects of Matteo Ricci’s perception of Islam and Muslims in China and identifies the moments when they changed. I show that over time Ricci developed a much more nuanced perception of Islam in China, but argue still that his views remained quite limited because of lack of dialogue with Muslims he saw in China. These limitations, I also argue, reflect the limitations of European views of Islam in the early modern Euro-Mediterranean world. Recognizing these limitations, I suggest, might help us to develop new approaches to questions of religion in early modern China.
Highlights
Este trabajo trata de las posibilidades del cambio cultural en los escritos de Matteo Ricci
I show that over time Ricci developed a much more nuanced perception of Islam in China, but argue still that his views remained quite limited because of lack of dialogue with Muslims he saw in China
In the Fundamental Christian Teachings, written by Ricci’s colleague, the Italian Jesuit Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607), the early Jesuits in China used yao to mean “fundamental.”[5] It is sensible to think of the woman from Xixia as not just a woman from Xixia, and as a woman identified by a religious marker— in this context, Islam
Summary
Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) liked playing with words, and Chinese characters provided him with many opportunities to do just that. Ricci’s odd choice for the above-mentioned mnemonic trick certainly shows that Muslims—and not a notion of Islam, as Spence seems to suggest— were very much on Ricci’s mind when he interacted with his Confucian interlocutors In this regard, the image of the Muslim woman from the West serves as an invitation to think about how the early Jesuits, chief among them Ricci himself, viewed Muslims in China. The Jesuit encounter with Muslims in China is worth looking at precisely because it is far removed—geographically, politically, militarily, economically, and culturally—from the place where the parameters through which we examine the relationship between Islam and the West have been under construction or centuries Put, it is an encounter between Europeans and Muslims both before and outside notions of Islam and the West as we know them today and as we project them back into the past came to be.[15] Bearing this crucial point in mind, 14 Here is the full passage “II giudeo, che veniva con quella imaginatione di aver ritrovato gente della sua legge, non dubito niente esser quella la Imagine di Rebeca con suoi ngliuoli Iacob e Esaú.”. 18 A bit more on Semedo and Ricci see Brockey, “The First China Hands: The Forgotten Iberian Origins of Sinology,” pp. 79-80
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