China Mission Research Articles

Jesuit Scientists and Mongolian Fossils: The French Paleontological Missions in China, 1923–1928

This essay examines the Mission paléontologique française of the 1920s, a series of scientific expeditions into the Ordos Desert in Inner Mongolia in which a team of Jesuit scholar-scientists worked with local collaborators to provide material for the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The case study shows that the global and colonial expansion of Western science in the early twentieth century provided space for traditional scientific institutions, such as universalizing metropolitan collections and clerical scholarly networks, to extend their research projects. The linking of approaches, agendas, and geographic regions was facilitated by the concepts and practices of the deep-time sciences of geology, paleontology, and human prehistory. These were based on the interchange of expertise, common projects of unveiling the development of life, and the alignment of different regions and specimens. Moreover, the expeditions did not just conduct research based around global movement and transmission. They also conceptualized the ancient development of life in terms of movement, migration, and exchange. The act of forming research networks that linked Asia and Europe also led scientists to conceive of these regions as bound by deep natural processes. Circulation and transfer became important actors’ categories used to understand the origins and history of life.

ИСТОКИ УСТАНОВЛЕНИЯ РЕЛИГИОЗНОГО ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ РОССИИ С КИТАЕМ

Статья посвящена актуальной в условиях современной политико-экономической реальности теме обращения к истории и истокам установления взаимосвязи между Россией и Китаем в религиозном аспекте. Статья рассматривает установление религиозного взаимодействия между Россией и Китаем в конце XVII – начале XVIII века посредством распространения православия на территории Китая и деятельности русской православной миссии, в частности первой и второй миссий. В статье подробно рассматривается закрепление православия на территории Китая, его официальное узаконение, жизнь и деятельность албазинцев, как первых православных, а также сама деятельность членов первой и второй православной миссий, их содержание и условия пребывания в Китае.Цель – проанализировать процесс установления религиозного взаимодействия между Россией и Китаем в конце XVII – начале XVIII века посредством распространения православия на территории Китая.Метод и методология проведения работы. Автор использует сравнительно-исторический и проблемно-хронологический методы.Результаты. В ходе проведенного исследования установлено, что деятельность первой и второй православных миссий имело целью установление взаимоотношений между Россией и Китаем, в том числе для расширения торговли и установления выгодных дипломатических отношений, что было видно изначально из указа Петра I. При чем условия для деятельности первых членов миссии были поставлены благоприятные. Развитие образования, изучение языков, обмен культурными и религиозными ценностями явились немаловажной составляющей, реализованной членами русской православной миссии.Область применения результатов. Материалы данного исследования могут быть использованы в образовательном процессе и в дальнейшей научно-исследовательской работе, связанной с изучением деятельности русской православной миссии в Китае.

Words for images and images for words: an iconological and scriptural study of the Christian prints in the Chengshi moyuan 程氏墨苑

The early seventeenth century is noted for the fruitful cultural, religious, and artistic exchange between Europe and the Chinese imperial court. The missionaries of the Society of Jesus (Societas Iesu) became a prominent bridge connecting the two distinct cultures, where the main differences were, at the same time, the reason for their mutual allure. At that time, Jesuit priests, such as Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), João da Rocha (1587–1639), and Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), contributed significantly not only to the dissemination of Christianity in Beijing, Nanjing, and other important cities beyond the Portuguese administration of Macau, but also to the transmission of Western knowledge and technology. Along with the flow of goods and rare commodities brought from Europe which overwhelmed the Chinese emperors of the late Ming and High Qing courts, Western art was introduced into China as a synthesis of visual science, artistic sophistication, and eloquence, explaining why it became so valuable, particularly during the time of the three Qing emperors, Kangxi (1654–1722), Yongzheng (1678–1735), and Qianlong (1711–99). The modus operandi in the apostolic ministry of the Society of Jesus around the world is well known for the use of images as a visual explanation of Christian doctrine, particularly in China, India, and Japan. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (Exercitia Spiritualia), composed between 1522 and 1524, suggests that the images should be referred to as a reflection on the word, demonstrating the complementary function between text and images in the explanation of Christian teachings. This article discusses the agency of one of the earliest sets of European prints used in the context of the Jesuit mission in China as a visual explanation of biblical teachings. By means of iconographic examination and iconological approach, it examines how Christian prints included in the Chengshi moyuan 程氏墨苑 (The Ink Garden of Mr. Cheng) were used as a visual reasoning of the scriptures, demonstrating that the three biblical prints were linked to each other and purposely put together as a result of a doctrinal program.

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

Archival Stewardship: Memory and Reconciliation

Archival Stewardship: Memory and Reconciliation Robert E. Carbonneau26 CP Accepting the request of Dr. Mazzenga to be a participant on “Scholarship, Digitization, Collaboration: Future Directions in Catholic Archives and Research” at the January 2017 American Catholic Historical Association in Denver, Colorado prompted me to move beyond my historical comfort zone. I have opted to reflect on archival stewardship as it applies to memory and reconciliation. I believe this topic is an important perspective faced by numerous archives of male and female religious congregations in the United States. Membership, structural and economic resources are so much different than they were one hundred years ago. Increasingly, this has had a direct impact on religious archival education and research. Thus, I would suggest that without implementing a plan of proper archival stewardship, religious congregations face death of memory, an inability to reconcile and heal the historical past and [even less prospect] to imagine a future. This aspect is all the more pronounced when the issue is framed from an international perspective. Effective response requires naming immediate challenges while risking open-ended opportunities. Allow me to reflect on my own experience to illustrate this. Passionist vowed membership has continued to decline in the United States. In January 2017, the eastern province numbered 104 vowed members. Even so, ongoing organizational concerns of stewardship resulted in practical questions being asked on all ministerial fronts. I was challenged: How could I as the historian and archivist help develop a strategy to effectively balance, understand, and preserve the heritage, culture, and diverse memory of these Passionist priests, brothers, and laity affiliated with our mission? Surprise: Creativity, Opportunity, and Cooperation Amidst Archival Restructuring Unquestionable has been the longstanding and continuing support being given me as Passionist historian by my own province leadership [End Page 11] of St. Paul of the Cross Province. In this spirit, I hope the opportunity to chronicle the following events offers all of us archivists and historians a chance to stand on common ground as we seek to be responsible archival stewards. First, the closing of the St. Michael’s Residence and Passionist development offices in Union City, New Jersey in 2012 prompted a reconfiguration the Passionist Historical Archives. A positive step in proper stewardship was taken when an agreement was reached to move the majority of the collection and establish a contractual relationship with Special Collections at the Weinberg Memorial Library of the University of Scranton. Legal and personnel records were sent on to the new Province Pastoral Center in Rye Brook, New York.27 But surprises can emerge: at this same time of archival restructuring, our province leadership and Special Collections at University of Scranton agreed in 2012 to partner with the Ricci Institute of Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco. Suddenly I was re-assigned to San Francisco in order to digitize the entire Passionist China Collection of some 60,000 documents and 10,000 photos, as well as Sign magazine (1921 to 1982). Completed in 2015, these materials encourage scholarly inquiry.28 Digitization of the Passionist China Collection has led me into new and unexpected stewardship opportunities and challenges that that might parallel archival situations faced by other religious congregations. Most important is that digitization can bring dead memory to life. Having concentrated on the study of manuscript archives rather than photographs, the chance to identify the metadata of the 10,000 photos reinvented my sense of historical inquiry and narrative. During this digitization process, China ceased to be a failed or dead missionary endeavor from the 1950s. Since that era, imprisonment and expulsion of American missionaries had become the dominant symbol and narrative. While historically true in one sense, my daily visual interaction to identify photos and documents led me to confidently conclude how their missionary zeal is a foundation crucial to the expression of twenty-first century Chinese Catholicism. 29 [End Page 12] Passionist missionaries, Sisters of Charity of Convent Station, New Jersey, and the Sisters of St. Joseph from Baden, Pennsylvania who had ministered in West Hunan, and China, with Chinese Catholics came to life. Simply put, rather than a dead memory, digitization of China mission archives represented a living memory. Undertaking Risks...

Историческая традиция использования православных миссий за рубежом в дипломатической деятельности России

Миссионерство является одним из важнейших направлений разнообразной деятельности Русской Православной Церкви. На примере исторического развития духовных миссий в Китае, Японии, Корее и Иерусалиме показана не только духовная составляющая этих миссий, но и политическая роль для российского государства. Сегодня идет возрождение русского миссионерства, что актуализирует данную тематику для исследований.

The Poetics of Otherness: War, Trauma, and Literature

The Poetics of Otherness: War, Trauma, and Literature

STRATEGI MISI DI CHINA ABAD 16 DALAM TULISAN MATTEO RICCI

De Christina Expeditione apud Sinas, which was translated into China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci 1583-1610, is one of Riccis most important manuscripts since it reveals how Matthew Ricci accomplished his mission in China. Matthew Ricci was a man from the West, which at the time was entering the age of Renaissancea modern era marked by significant cultural, scientific and economic growths. He then utilized the components of Renaissance Humanism culture to break through Chinese people. From there, Ricci was able to move beyond the administrative and geographic boundaries, either physically or culturally, from one country to another country. Learning from Riccis manuscript, it is clear that today a conquest model of mission can only do disservice, especially if the Church wants to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is full of love, peace, and communion. It may cause suspicion or denouncement of the Church service. It is therefore of paramount importance for the Church to remember her basic duty, which is to proclaim the Good News of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Consequently, the Church must become a community which manifests the sacrament of the Divine wherever she may be.

Medical missionaries in Guangzhou: The initiators of the modern women’s rights movement in China

Some work has been done on the medical missionaries in China, but medical education for women in Guangzhou (Canton) by missionaries has not received very much scholarly attention. This article seeks to assess their impact on Chinese women, focusing on how western male doctors broke the prohibition on Chinese women from entering public places. Thereafter, women could go to college, and the medical missionaries created a new class of women medical professionals in Canton. I argue that by making a deliberate move for social change, medical missionaries in Guangzhou initiated a significant transformation in the social status of Chinese women. They were not only agents of changes but also the initiators of the modern women’s rights movement in China.

John Kerr and the early China Medical Missionary Association

In 1886, the Euro-American medical missionaries in China founded the first modern Chinese medical association-the China Medical Missionary Association, and John Kerr was elected as the first chairman and the first editor-in-chief of the China Medical Missionary Journal. John Kerr, who had done missionary medical work in China for thirty years, was then the director of Canton Hospital, and was one of the most influential medical missionaries in China and even all over the world. His great prestige and foresight and sagacity played an important role in the early development of the China Medical Missionary Association.

Medical missionaries in China: John Glasgow Kerr (1824-1901) and cutting for the stone.

With the introduction of Western medicine into China by Anglo-American medical missionaries in the early 19th century, Reverend Dr Peter Parker at the Canton Ophthalmic Hospital pioneered surgical operations in Chinese patients. The subsequent development of surgery for bladder stones at this institute by Parker's successor Dr John Kerr and colleagues is described.

A Society Apart: Rural Chinese Catholics and the Historiography of ‘Otherness’

This article examines the theme of ‘otherness’ in historical scholarship on rural Chinese Catholic communities. Whereas studies of the Jesuit Mission in China tend to emphasise the potential harmony between Christianity and elite Confucian culture, a methodological turn towards local history during the 1980s and 90s has revealed that ‘otherness’ or ‘separation’ may be a more helpful heuristic lens for understanding the situation of the vast majority of Catholics in rural China. This article surveys English-language and Chinese-language micro-histories of rural villages. It maps three general historiographical views by which historians explain Catholic villagers’ ‘otherness’ as the result of cultural dissonance, socio-economic inequality or relative political power. By periodising these centuries of history according to the feasibility of opting out of mainstream society, this article seeks to show how Chinese Catholic identity continues to be forged at the ever-moving borderline between Catholic and non-Catholic society.

Research on the design method of China’s traditional urban planning based on large-scale landscape environment

The system of China’s traditional urban planning is different from western modern urban planning. The scientification of Chinese planning experience is the academic mission in contemporary China. Based on this perspective, this paper puts forward the concept of planning and design with large-scale landscape environment. Furthermore, this paper researches on the evolutionary process of the traditional planning, and summarizes the main ideas of its planning and design. This paper also deeply analyzes the essentials such as the overall view methods and specific vista to large-scale landscape environment, as well as the overall layout design, reveals the inherent inside and outside concepts of overall planning, the traditional wisdom on landscape environment, including “looking around”, “large-scale circumstance” and so on, the spatial pattern design method to make a natural and artificial integration, by placing important building scorresponding with the ingeniousness of large-scale natural landscape environment, and also discussed the schema expression of “scale-nonscale combinational drawing”. Finally, based on the consideration of the problems and demands of modern urban space planning and construction, this paper discusses the modern significance of the traditional urban planning and design combined with the large-scale landscape environment, from three aspects, including the inheritance in urban historical and cultural heritage protection, the development of modern urban planning and design practice, and the innovation of schema expression in China’s traditional urban planning. And explores the ways of inheritance and application in modern planning and design, in order to provide reference for the contemporary Chinese urban planning and construction.

Guns and gospel: a critical examination of Christian missions in China

This article focuses on the British attempt to enter China, the role of the East India Company, the opium trade and the ensuing war (1839–1842). It examines the missionaries’ ambivalent attitudes towards the opium trade and wars, which vacillated between silence, conniving and condemnation. From the missionaries’ point of view, everything was calculated towards furthering the Great Commission (Matt. 28.18–20), and so most Christians at that time did not think it was odd that opium trading and gospel preaching could be endorsed in the same treaty. Opium traffickers and Christian preachers may make strange bedfellows but, in this case, they supported the unequal treaties that Britain imposed on China for different reasons.

Give, give; be always giving’: Children, Charity and China, 1890-1939

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph is included here:
 Before he reveals the answer to the riddle, nine-year-old Matty Bryan asks his father for a penny and his mother and grandmother for a halfpenny each. He then takes out his new missionary-box, explaining that the money is for ‘black people, to buy them Bibles, and to send them preachers to tell them about God, and how they’re to get to heaven; and Mr. Graham [his teacher] said that it was the same as giving them the Bread of life’ ( Elliott 1872, p. 17). This scene from Emily Elliott’s novella Matty’s Hungry Missionary-Box and the Message It Brought (1872) is an example of the creative ways children in nineteenth-century Britain were depicted as engaging in charity. Although not everyone agreed with the value of foreign missions, by the mid-nineteenth century, missionary societies such as the London Missionary Society (LMS, established 1795) and the Church Missionary Society (CMS, established 1799) had placed missionary boxes like Matty’s in many homes, and children were taught to donate regularly (Cox 2008, p. 97). According to historian Frank Prochaska ‘[n]owhere in the charitable world did the young play a more important part than in the evangelical missionary movement’ (1978, p. 103). While it is impossible to provide exact figures for the amount of money Victorian children raised for missionary societies, it was a significant amount . The funds raised supported missionary ships, paid for specific cots in hospitals, and sponsored ‘native teacher[s]’ (Prochaska 1978, p. 107; Thorne 1999, p. 126; Elleray 2011, pp. 229-230). In the early twentieth century, children were told that for one penny a week, they could help support the LMS’s eighty-three missionaries in China who were involved in the work of ‘leper asylums, training homes, orphanages and schools for both boys and girls’ (J.M.B. [c 1900], p. 15).

Tribute to Sun Kwok

Sun Kwok was bom in Hong Kong in 1949. He did all his early schooling in Hong Kong and went to the same high school, Pui Ching Middle School, as I did but he was more than a decade later. There are two Education Systems in Hong Kong; the Chinese Language Schools and English Language School. Pui Ching was started by Christian missionaries in China and has a long history of providing quality education. Pui Ching is a Chinese Language School, and during colonial times, school entrance was difficult for students as we were not eligible to apply for admission to the University of Hong Kong, nor were we able to join the civil service. In spite of these handicaps, the school still managed to produce many excellent academics, including one Nobel Prize winner in physics and one Field's medalist in mathematics. Most of its graduates who sought further education went to the U.S. Or Canada as Sun Kwok did. Sun graduated from McMaster University and then went to the University of Minnesota for graduate studies.

From Holy Striving to Wholly Abiding: Mystical Transformation in James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905)

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), founder of the China Inland Mission in June 1865, was one of the most influential 19th century British Protestant missionaries in China. His writings, sermons and personal letters are suffused with spiritual insights and mystical nuances, notably Union and Communion,1 his short devotional work on the Song of Songs which was published in 1894. This article focuses on his mystical or transformative experience of 1869 which effected a profound experiential union with Christ and a new consciousness of soul rest. Captured here as a transformation ‘from holy striving to wholly abiding’, the significance of this pivotal moment is elucidated in terms of its immediate personal effect and its lasting impact on Taylor’s mission vocation. The relevance of Taylor’s mysticism for contemporary missionary spirituality is briefly delineated.

On medical risk control in Chinese missionary hospitals in China during 1820-1860

In the missionary hospitals founded in the nineteenth century by the missionaries in China, the sprout of consciousness of medical risk control emerged. They did their best to avoid medical accidents which might lead to anti-missionary struggle by the Chinese people, and were especially cautious to control the happening of medical accidents. First of all, the hospitals made careful screening on patients by giving priority to those patients pursuing treatment of eye diseases, and barely forced to accept patients with intractable and critical diseases. Second, before the operation, the missionary doctors usually let the patient sign an agreement of consent for surgical operation, with the patient him/herself responsible for all the consequences of operation. Generally, the patient(s) won't be hospitalized, even though the work of their nursing was generally done by the patient's relatives. All these three initiatives promoted the spread of western medicine in China and expanded a positive influence of western medicine, though it seemed to be contradictory to the principles of equality and universal love of Christianity.

The Bible at the Local Level

In spite of the papal permission to translate the Bible into Chinese that the Jesuit China mission received in 1615, there was no complete Catholic translation of the whole Bible in China until the 20th century (1954). The task of translation was considered too difficult and tedious and, in addition, somewhat dangerous and superfluous. A prerequisite for the translation of the Bible was the arduous linguistic work of various missionaries, who faced difficult work indeed with dictionaries, questions of grammar, and the challenges of establishing a Christian terminology. It was only by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that Catholic missionaries in China again focused on the idea to combine the Bible with catechism. The translations from and works on the Bible published by the Divine Word Missionaries in Shandong (1882–1950) were without any doubt a partial, but important contribution to the complete Chinese translation of the Bible. This project can be understood as a distinctive achievement in the Bible apostolate at the local level. This article focuses on a wide variety of aspects and levels of this apostolate. Readers find here that the translation of the Bible accomplished much in the dissemination of Biblical knowledge, certainly not only in South Shandong.

El fin de la infidelidad o epílogo razonado sobre la conquista espiritual en las Provincias Internas de la Nueva España

En 1802, el franciscano descalzo Mariano López y Pimentel, misionero de la provincia de San Diego de México, presentó al rey de España un plan profusamente elaborado con el que aseguraba se podría convertir a los millones de infieles nativos de América y Asia que aún esperaban ser salvados. El “Colegio de Misioneros Nacionales” albergaría a miles de niños nativos de ambos continentes, para ser formados como misioneros en su propia lengua. El proyecto parte de las dificultades que el fraile observó y cuestionó, en relación a los esfuerzos franciscanos practicados en las entonces llamadas Provincias Internas de la Nueva España y, para Asia, en la inspiración del padre Claudio Francisco Letondal, procurador de las misiones en China. El interés por el proyecto de López y Pimentel en este trabajo, radica en la percepción del fraile sobre la conquista espiritual en el norte novohispano, como expresión particular del contexto político de reproche a los efectos alcanzados en la conversión de los nativos.