"The Jesuits in China": Views of an Eighteenth-Century Russian Observer

Abstract

THE EXTENSIVE LITERATURE produced by the Jesuit missionaries and their contemporaries in China concerning the life and work of the mission in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been investigated by many scholars, but a unique Russian contribution to this literature has been slighted by researchers. Their neglect of the document is unfortunate for this reason: among the better known contemporary descriptions of the Jesuits' activities, such as their own voluminous Lettres edifiantes, or the accounts by members of rival groups, such as that by Father Ripa, there are few if any that present a candid and detached view of their subject. Russian work, however, attempts to do just this. narrative, written by a Russian Orthodox priest who was a colleague of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Peking from 1745 to 1755, discusses the methods used by the Jesuits, the difficulties under which they worked, and their successes and failures with a considerable degree of impartiality. Russian account, which is entitled The Jesuits in China, was composed by the priest Feodosii Smorzhevskii during his time of service in Peking, but remained in manuscript form until extracts were published in 1822 in the Russian journal Sibirskii vestnik [Siberian Herald].' work has not to my knowledge been republished since