Jesuits In China Research Articles

The Christian interpretations on the nature of heaven’s mandate in late Ming and early Qing dynasties

This paper aims to examine in detail the Christian interpretations on the Confucian concept of the nature of the heaven’s mandate [天命之性] during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties from historical and textual perspective. Neo-Confucians of the Song Dynasty interpret the nature of the heaven’s mandate as human nature, believing that heaven endowed humans with reason, known as the heavenly principle [天理]. In the late Ming period, Christian missionaries such as Jesuits in China used Confucian classics to convey Christian thoughts, interpreting the heaven’s mandate as God’s mandate and the nature of the heaven’s mandate as the spirituality bestowed by God, which is equated with the soul. They also used the nature of the heaven’s mandate as a criterion for determining the authenticity of a teaching (religion[教]), asserting that Christianity is the true teaching (religion). Thus, Christianity in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties provides a new interpretation on the nature of the heaven’s mandate and promotes the integration of Christian and Confucian thoughts through this interpretation.Contribution: The paper provides a detailed review of the history of Christian interpretations on the nature of the heaven’s mandate during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Currently, there is limited scholarly research on the theological thoughts of Christianity during this period. This study not only enhances the understanding of the new interpretations by Christianity but also aids in comprehending the theological ideas of Christianity during the late Ming and early Qing periods. By reinterpreting Confucian classics, Christianity endowed them with new meanings, offering valuable references for the localisation of Christian theology and the study of cross-cultural exchange.

Transwriting in Aleni’s Xingxue cushu: communicating the philosophy of human nature between the West and late Ming China

ABSTRACT Giulio Aleni’s Xingxue cushu 性學觕述 (A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature, 1623–1646) was a product of an ambitious project by the Jesuits in China to introduce Aristotle's natural philosophy to Chinese literati. The book, originally from the Cursus Conimbricensis (1592-1606), shows a good example of the interactions between transmitter and receptor in the encounter of Western culture with Chinese culture. This paper explores Aleni's linguistic strategy for placing Western concepts of human nature in dialogue with traditional Chinese thought. It argues that the work's favourable reception among Chinese scholars was due to Aleni's use of translation principles that anticipate transwriting. Namely, instead of direct translation Aleni adapted the text for his Chinese readers by rewriting partly, adding his own responses, borrowing Chinese classical terms and creatively interpreting these terms, quoting many Chinese classical allusions, and employing Chinesestyle arguments. These linguistic tools Aleni used facilitate the reader's understanding and acceptance of the Western philosophy of human nature. His linguistic success on communication between the two thoughts on human nature helps us redefine the concept of transwriting and find an in-between space for a rational philosophic and religious dialogue between China and the West.

Developing Encounters between Chinese and Western Art: The Contribution of Two Jesuits in China in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

This article explores the introduction and influence of Western art in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, focusing on the role of the Jesuits—especially Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), one of the founders of Catholic missionary work in China—and the most famous and influential Western figure in China’s art history, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766). The Jesuits recognized art’s potential in their missionary efforts. The article examines the varied responses of Chinese literati to Western art theories in the 17th and 18th centuries, and how Jesuit-introduced artistic concepts were assimilated within different Chinese contexts. It also investigates how Western art merged into Chinese culture, noting the linguistic integration of concepts like chiaroscuro. In Ricci’s time, Western art intrigued the Chinese, but deep acceptance and conceptual transformation were limited. The assimilation of Western techniques was not as widespread as expected. In the 18th century, due to restrictions on Christianity, the religious role of painting diminished. Castiglione’s hybrid style, though influential in the Qing court, faced challenges in gaining cultural acceptance from the Han literati, leading to more criticism than in Ricci’s era. Despite these challenges and varying receptions, the contributions of Ricci and Castiglione to the Sino–Western art exchange are significant, reflecting the complex interplay of art, religion, and cultural dynamics across these periods.

A Dialogue between Confucius and Christ: The Development and Influence of Chinese Jesuits in Kiang-nan (Jiangnan) during the Late Qing Period (1842–1912)

Abstract When the Jesuits returned to China during and soon after the Opium War (1839–42), one of their first tasks was to establish a novitiate in Shanghai and begin preparing Chinese novices for formation in the Society. This essay focuses on the role of these Chinese Jesuits and their associates, in particular Huang Bolu (黃伯祿, also known as Pierre, Petrus, or Peter Hoang), who wrote several influential texts on scientific, legal, economic, and political topics in both Chinese and French. Although deeply committed to the church, Huang also tried in subtle ways to reform or redirect certain practices of the Jesuits in China, in particular, the reliance on the French Religious Protectorate. In doing so, he drew together the worlds of global Catholicism and late imperial Chinese literati. The works and experiences of Huang, Chinese Jesuits, and other Chinese Catholics within the orbit of the Jesuits allow us to hear the voice of indigenous Catholicism while also demonstrating the complicated interaction between spirituality, identity, empire, nationality, and the supranational church. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.

The Bureau of Sinology and Its Early Development, 1927–1934

Abstract In 1927, the Jesuit-run Bureau of Sinology was founded in Shanghai to assist missionaries in their apostolic work via education and publications. The bureau’s establishment was part of a longstanding effort to resume the Jesuit tradition of developing intellectual apostolate and pursuing Sinological studies. However, the bureau was soon beset by internal crises that limited its functionality. The bureau also competed with the Synodal Commission, which Celso Costantini (1876–1958), the first apostolic delegate to China, had established in the same year and with a similar objective. The ecclesiastical hierarchy and overlapping purposes of the two institutes disadvantaged the bureau in its early development and escalated tensions between the Jesuits in China and the delegate. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.

Craftsmen Working for Kangxi: the “Invention of Curious Things” by the Jesuits Gabriel de Magalhães (1609–1677) and Tomás Pereira (1646–1708)

Abstract This essay focuses on the strategy followed by two Jesuits from the Portuguese Padroado, Gabriel de Magalhães and Tomás Pereira, to remain at the court in Beijing at a time when the effects of ethnic and cultural clashes between Han and Manchus were felt, as were those of the natural disasters that devastated China and battered its economy. While the first excelled as a locksmith, the second, who called himself a craftsman, had the ability to draw and could build musical instruments, write music and teach to play instruments. Both managed to create works reconciling art and mechanics, which greatly impressed the Kangxi Emperor. These objects were visually appealing, but they also showed the knowledge these Jesuits active in Beijing had about some European treatises on art and mechanics, namely in the area of hydraulics. By adapting European forms and techniques to Chinese materials both men met Kangxi’s plan of a dynasty open to other cultures, while assuring the “peaceful coexistence” of Jesuits in China, in an age marked by climate change and ethnic clashes.

“The Song of the Holy Dream” and Its Bilingual Manuscript from the Book Collection of Archimandrite Peter (Kamensky)

The article examines a previously unknown manuscript “The Song of the Holy Dream” from the collection of the Academic Library of St. Petersburg State University. It belonged to the head of the Tenth Orthodox Mission in Beijing (1821–1830), Archimandrite Peter (P. I. Kamensky, 1765–1845). The manuscript contains parallel Chinese and Russian texts of the Catholic work “The Vision of St. Bernard” by Bernard of Clairvaux (10 0–1153). It was revealed that the author of the Chinese translation of the ‘Song’ was a Catholic missionary in China, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649). The author of the Russian translation was the Chinese man Peter Zhou Bourgeois, who was a student of Orthodox missionaries in Beijing. The meaning of the ‘Song’ in European Catholic literature and the place of this composition in the missionary activity of the Jesuits in China are explained. It is suggested that the ‘Song’ could serve as a model of didactic Jesuit literature, the purpose of which was to convey to the Chinese inhabitants the moral pillars of Christianity. Previously unknown information about Peter Bourgeois and his Russian translation is introduced. The text of the translation is analyzed and its features are identified. In a comparative analysis of the Chinese original text, the translation by Peter Bourgeois and the translation made by the author of the article, it was concluded that Peter Bourgeois made a word-by-word translation. This translation is mostly accurate, but there are often stylistic and spelling errors, unusual word combinations and specific phrases, which together reveal the translator to be a foreigner who does not speak Russian with sufficient confidence. It turns out that the purpose of the translation was merely exercises for the purpose of Russian language study by Peter Zhou Bourgeois.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FRENCH JESUIT LONGITUDE DETERMINATIONS IN ASIA: ON THE ART OF RECTIFYING THE CLOCKS

Two methods of setting clocks to show correct time during the 17th century by French Jesuits in China are investigated and their computations and accuracy are analysed. These methods were used to rectify the clocks used for timings of eclipses of the Galilean moons or for lunar eclipses that in turn were used to determine geographical longitudes by Jesuit missionaries in Siam and China. It is found that the calculations needed, in spite of being quite complicated, were well done and very accurate.

Chinese astronomy in the time of the Jesuits: Studies following Science and Civilisation in China

Viewing traditional Chinese science as one of the tributaries to be merged into the grand ocean of modern/universal science, Joseph Needham placed great importance on the period of the Jesuits in the ‘Sciences of the Heavens’ section in volume 3 of Science and Civilisation in China. He considered that period a turning point when Chinese astronomy – a representative field of Chinese science – changed from its traditional form into universal/modern astronomy. Among the work of other historians of Chinese science, Joseph Needham’s work helped foster a growing interest in the astronomical work of the Jesuits in China. After more than 50 years, as many of the details in Needham’s original work have been gradually clarified and enhanced, a new picture of the Jesuits’ contribution to Chinese astronomy has taken shape. In some important respects, that picture is quite contrary to Needham’s overall claim about the role and result of Jesuit works in the development of astronomy in China, which has led to new questions that invite further investigation.

Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds, by Dominic Sachsenmaier

<i>Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds</i>, by Dominic Sachsenmaier

The Jesuit Contribution to the Geographical Knowledge of India in the Eighteenth Century

While the mapping activities of French Jesuits in China and New France have been extensively studied, those in India have received less attention. While benefiting from the French crown’s interest in using the Jesuits as a tool for empire, they did not help develop an overarching imperial structure like that of Spain and Portugal or that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The work of Jean-Venant Bouchet (1655–1732), Louis-Noël de Bourzes (1673–1735), Claude Moriset (1667–1742), Claude-Stanislas Boudier (1686–1757), Gaston-Laurent Cœurdoux (1691–1779), and many others was instead important in building linkages between institutions and individuals in Europe and India. It further allowed commercial cartographers in Paris and London like Guillaume Delisle (1675–1726), Jean-Baptiste d’Anville (1697–1782), and James Rennell (1742–1830) to develop a more sophisticated picture of the interior of India.

A Call to Mission—A History of the Jesuits in China 1842–1954. Volume 1: The French Romance. Volume 2: The Wider European and American Adventure. By David Strong SJ. Adelaide: ATF, 2018. pp. xxxi + 501, xvii + 388. $33.95, $34.95 paper.

A Call to Mission—A History of the Jesuits in China 1842–1954. Volume 1: The French Romance. Volume 2: The Wider European and American Adventure. By David Strong SJ. Adelaide: ATF, 2018. pp. xxxi + 501, xvii + 388. $33.95, $34.95 paper.

Notes on the Jesuits in China, written by Hieromonk Feodosii Smorzhevskii

Notes on the Jesuits in China, written by Hieromonk Feodosii Smorzhevskii

A Call to Mission: A History of the Jesuits in China, 1842–1954, written by David Strong, S.J.

A Call to Mission: A History of the Jesuits in China, 1842–1954, written by David Strong, S.J.

François Noël’s Contribution to the Western Understanding of Chinese Thought: Taiji sive natura in the Philosophia sinica (1711)

Jesuits in China adopted key Confucian terms to express Christian notions; for example, Tian 天 or Shangdi 上帝 was considered an equivalent for God, and guishen 鬼神 for angels. A Terms controversy started among the Jesuits and other missionaries and developed into the famous Rites Controversy. However, all the missionaries agreed in rejecting the Neo-Confucian concept of Taiji 太極, which was believed to be materialistic, pantheistic, or atheistic. The Flemish Jesuit Francois Noel (1651–1729), after a careful study of Neo-Confucian texts, interpreted Taiji with the Western concept of nature, and even claimed that it held theistic meaning. We shall analyze and evaluate here this early Western attempt in giving a positive meaning to Taiji.

Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World: From Mexico to the Philippines, 1765–1811 by Eva Maria Mehl

Reviewed by: Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World: From Mexico to the Philippines, 1765–1811 by Eva Maria Mehl Eberhard Crailsheim EVA MARIA MEHL Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World: From Mexico to the Philippines, 1765–1811 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 310 pages. The Spanish Jesuit Vicente Alemany, a keen observer of the república of Manila in his 1760s sequel to Francisco de Quevedo's picaresque novel El Buscón, portrayed all Europeans in Manila in a sarcastic but faithful way as "deserters, cabin boys, spanked [convicts], marcados, barbers, minions of the law, and more of this kind," while the americanos were all "vulgar people from the flea market [thieves] and from prison," the worst of whom were selected to serve in the militia and the marina (Andanzas del Buscón don Pablos por México y Filipinas, ed. Celsa Carmen García Valdés [Eunsa, 1998], 92–93). Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World sheds light on the lives of these people who had to cross the Pacific Ocean, mostly against their will. It follows their trajectories from rural villages in New Spain to the remotest presidios of Mindanao. The author, Eva Maria Mehl, is associate professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and has specialized on colonial Mexico and the Spanish Philippines. Under her maiden name, St. Clair Segurado, she [End Page 261] has published on the history of the Jesuits in China and their expulsion from Mexico in 1767. Forced Migration in the Spanish Pacific World is based on her dissertation, which she defended in 2011 at the University of California Davis. The Manila galleon and the transpacific connection it enabled are fascinating phenomena that have led a large number of scholars to focus on the interchange between Acapulco and Manila. Many historians of the early modern period emphasize the importance of reading the Pacific as a bridge rather than a barrier and understanding both sides of the ocean as a space of common agency. Traditionally, their main attention was set on the material exchange, yet in recent years the cultural and human exchanges have become attractive objects of study too. Especially, the subject of forced migration—in both directions—has aroused much interest on the part of scholars such as Tatjana Seijas and Stephanie Mawson. Eva Maria Mehl also makes a strong case for the idea of an interconnected and intertwined transpacific world. Two decades after María Fernanda García de los Arcos's remarkable study, Forzados y reclutas: Los criollos novohispanos en Asia (1756–1808) (Potrerillos, 1996), Mehl tackles the subject of forced migration to the Philippines with an innovative view on human dynamics at the fringes of the Spanish empire. Transcending former studies, her book discusses the "larger significance that the deportation of recruits and vagrants had in the implementation of imperial policy in New Spain and the Philippines" (13). Mehl identified 3,999 individuals who were sent to the Philippines via Acapulco as part of the defensive scheme of the Spanish empire. Facing a number of military challenges, the Philippine colonial government was in urgent need of these reinforcements and employed them as workers or soldiers. Yet, the governors in Manila continually complained about these individuals as they appeared to be worthless for any employment, being either unfit for service, sick, uncontrollable, or not up to the standard of "whiteness" of the time. By analyzing the reasons behind this predicament, Mehl offers a look not only at the lives of these individuals, their families, and their social context, but also at the institutional history of the Spanish empire at the height of Bourbon reforms. She thereby connects late–eighteenth-century ideas of Enlightenment in the Spanish empire neatly with Michel Foucault's analysis of discipline and punishment in early-modern Europe. Mehl provides a picture of the socioeconomic insecurities and dynamics [End Page 262] of New Spain and displays the complex machinery behind the recruiting parties, the levies, and the transportation process to Manila. To develop the argument, the book starts with an overview of the intertwined transpacific history since 1571, focusing on the connection via the Manila galleon and the flow of people across the...

Antoine Thomas, SJ, and his Synopsis Mathematica: biography of a Jesuit mathematical textbook for the China mission

This article is an examination of a nearly forgotten massive two-volume octavo textbook of introductory (theoretical and practical) mathematics published in Douai in 1685, with a second issuing of it in 1729. The theme of mathematical training has been central to the understanding of the Jesuits in China in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and this discussion gives a detailed survey of the mathematical ‘baggage’ of the author, Antoine Thomas, SJ, (1644-1709). Here we consider his teaching at the Colégio das Artes in Coimbra, Portugal, in the late 1670s, when he synthesized basic mathematical knowledge. Most importantly, Thomas’s Synopsis was explicitly written for the use of Jesuit candidates for the China mission, and describes in detail the minimum level of mathematical, and especially astronomical, knowledge and skills that were expected from them. Despite its two issues and its well-targeted didactic program, the book’s reception—which spans a period from 1685 until at least 1756, when there is evidence that it was still being recommended—was actually quite limited; this reception can mainly be gauged from the twenty-six extant copies, and some references in auction catalogues. These data reveal a restricted geographic spread, with some notable exceptions, including some copies which made it to South America. Soon after its appearance, the Synopsis found a secondary use outside the context of the Jesuit mission to China as a textbook of mathematics. It later enjoyed a reception as a ‘collector’s item’, although it had no further scholarly impact.

Aristotelian Works in Seventeenth-century China

Between 1623 and 1640, Jesuits in China published nine Aristotelian works in the domains of logics, natural philosophy and ethics. Some forty years later, under the Qing dynasty, Ferdinand Verbiest integrated those previous works into a unified and comprehensive philosophical handbook, which he presented to the Kangxi emperor. We shall present here the philosophical background of this translation project, analyze the main features of those Aristotelian works and reflect on their degree of compatibility with Chinese culture.

Letters of a Peking Jesuit: The Correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623-1688) ed. by Noël Golvers

Reviewed by: Letters of a Peking Jesuit: The Correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623-1688) ed. by Noël Golvers Liam Matthew Brockey Letters of a Peking Jesuit: The Correspondence of Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ (1623-1688). Edited by Noël Golvers. Revised and Expanded. [Leuven Chinese Studies, Volume XXXV.] (Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, University of Leuven. 2017. Pp. 962. €82,00. ISBN 978-908-2090-987.) With the exception of Matteo Ricci, few figures loom larger over the history of the Jesuit mission to China than that of Ferdinand Verbiest. He stands as the exotic counterpart to the European court Jesuits of the early modern era, employing his skills as an astronomer and engineer in the service of the Kangxi Emperor at Beijing. Indeed, it is primarily due to the prestige of Verbiest, as well as of his immediate predecessor in the role of court astronomer Johann Adam Schall von Bell, that the Jesuit mission to China was for centuries considered a metropolitan affair; that is, one centered upon the Chinese imperial capital in the hopes of bringing about the conversion of the emperor himself. Scholarship in recent decades has revised this rather limited view of the Jesuit enterprise, thanks in no small part to the reconsideration of the missionaries at court whose role was understood by contemporaries to provide protection and, indirectly, patronage to missionaries in the far-flung provinces of the Qing Empire. This new volume of Verbiest's correspondence, painstakingly compiled by Noël Golvers over the course of two decades, is an essential contribution to that on-going project of reimagining the Jesuits in the court of the Chinese emperors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Letters of a Peking Jesuit. wholly supersedes an earlier edition of Verbiest's correspondence published by H. Josson and Léopold Willaert in 1938, a work that built on the research of H. Bosmans in the early twentieth century. The identification of a substantial number of other documents, as well as a number of errors in the previous edition, gave ample justification for Golvers' new volume. The result of his efforts—including his many other publications on the court Jesuits—is the most complete testament of Verbiest's work that will likely be possible. This volume of correspondence includes not only letters written by Verbiest, but also those sent to him by other missionaries and prelates around the globe. The volume therefore includes documents in several languages including Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch; a variety of tongues that demanded of Golvers a polyglottism on par with his subject. Letters of a Peking Jesuit. is also a triumph of bibliographic sleuthing: Golvers tracked down autograph and copied versions of Verbiest's correspondence in libraries and archives throughout the world, cataloging the extant copies in the edition's apparatus. And finally, the editor's depth of knowledge of late Renaissance culture, as well as his many years of studying neo-Latin literature and missionary writings on China, enabled him to provide invaluable annotations to the letters, replete with references to modern and early modern scholarship. The letters included in Golvers's edition describe several of the iconic moments associated with the Jesuits at the Kangxi court. Verbiest's scientific endeavors are described in considerable detail, as well as his personal relationships with imperial officials and the emperor. Verbiest's work on behalf of the interests of the Society of Jesus, as well as his repeated interventions in favor of the Catholic [End Page 590] missions in China more broadly, are also documented throughout. The variety of topics discussed in the letters themselves are contextualized by a succinct biography of Verbiest, as well as by the numerous explanatory notes that accompany the texts and the comprehensive indices. This large volume will therefore be of great interest to specialists, primarily as a reference work and a source for future scholars working on the Jesuits in China, the early Kangxi period, and early modern missions. Liam Matthew Brockey Michigan State University Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

Doing God’s Work: The Missonary’s Task of Translation or Who Makes the Best Jesuits: Comparatists, World Literature Scholars, or Real Jesuits?

This paper takes as its point of departure the sixteenth-century Jesuit construction of Confucianism and the manufacture of the figure of Confucius in the form of translations of the Chinese classics. In examining the Jesuit policy of accommodation in Asia, I ask whether we might not view these efforts as precursors for the tasks we seek to perform as Comparatists and World Literature scholars. Like the Jesuits in China who sought to package Confucius, we seek to package the world by contextualizing form and argument, canonizing a body of work, producing creative readings sand projecting a vision onto the foreign Other. I focus in particular on the work of Matteo Ricci and his catechism, the Tianzhu shiyi, as a work of cultural mistranslation. I ask to what degree are our current critical readings of the Other not also failures. I question the purposes for which one “misreads”.