Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East, by Mary Laven

Abstract

In the past year, no fewer than six books have been published in English, Italian, French, Chinese, and German on Matteo Ricci, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the death of this famous Jesuit missionary and pioneer in the cultural encounter between sixteenth-century China and the West (in the interests of full disclosure, one of these is authored by this reviewer). Laven’s work is the latest addition to this growing scholarship. Eschewing a standard biography, she offers the reader only the barest chronological scheme of Ricci’s life, choosing to focus instead on the cultural encounter between the Jesuit mission and Late Ming society. Accordingly, the six chapters are organised around themes. In Chapter One, Laven narrates the earliest history of the China Mission in Zhaoqing, and rightly concentrates on explaining the important role played by Ricci’s senior colleague, Michele Ruggieri, whose contributions were forgotten by previous generations of historians, and on the patronage of mandarins. She uses Ruggieri’s manuscript memoirs to good effect, while ignoring the pioneering studies on Ruggieri by Joseph Shih and Albert Chan. Gift-giving is the central theme of Chapter Two, as Laven ponders the significance of a Jesuit list of proposed gifts for the emperor. Her insights into material culture (glass, silk, brocade, clocks, books) East and West represent some of the best parts of the book. Equally engaging is Chapter Three, in which Laven follows Ricci’s career in the late 1590s, as the Jesuit was then established in Nanchang, and enjoyed greater social success. Using Ricci’s treatise On Friendship as a fulcrum, Laven deftly analyses Ricci’s attachments to family and friends, Italy and China. Chapter Four, ‘Heavenly knowledge’, traces Ricci’s further ascent on the ladder of success in élite society, and introduces to the reader, in succinct and delightful prose, a diversity of subjects: the imperial civil service examination, western astronomy, printing and book culture in Ming China, etc. Especially original is her comment on the alchemical and possibly magical uses of the glass prism, a not extraordinary object in Italy, but a prized exotic item in Ming China, which helped to open many doors in Ricci’s advancement. Here, Laven’s training as a scholar of early modern Italy pays off handsomely. Launching his journey on the Grand Canal northward to Beijing in 1600, Ricci fell into the clutches of Ma Tang, an avaricious and powerful eunuch. The opposite twins ‘Jesuits and Eunuchs’ form the main theme of Chapter Five, in which Laven has given in to the Orientalist temptation to discourse at length on castration, eunuchs, and on the latter’s nefarious impact on Ricci and Late Ming society. In Chapter Six, the best known work by Ricci (not necessarily his most significant), the Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven) is analysed in detail. In conclusion, Laven quite rightly points out the self-aggrandising stance of Ricci’s writings, the bias toward male élites in the story of cultural encounter, and the reality of the attractions of Christianity to the common folk, which consisted of healing (physical and spiritual), and of rituals, symbols, and senses.