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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
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The Jesuits of the last generation of the sixteenth
century had directed their efforts toward the develop-
ment of a policy and program that would help them
to penetrate the Chinese mainland and establish rela-
tions with the highest levels of cultivated society. On
the basis of their experiences at Macao, the Jesuits
under Valignano's leadership decided to pursue a policy
of “accommodation,” or cultural compromise. It was
in this conciliatory spirit that the Jesuits began to study
seriously Chinese language, customs, and learning.
Matteo Ricci, an Italian priest, appeared on the
Chinese mainland in 1583, established cordial relations
with Chinese officials and scholars, and ultimately
made his way to the imperial court in Peking.

Ricci resided at Peking from 1601 to his death in
1610. During that decade he won the confidence of
the Ming Emperor and the Confucian literati through
his gracious and dignified bearing, his polite and intel-
ligent absorption in Chinese learning, and his sincere
and sophisticated efforts to explain Western science and
Christian teachings in terms that could be appreciated
and understood by the learned and tolerant. While
writing of Western thought and religion in Chinese,
Ricci composed a manuscript history of the introduc-
tion of Christianity to China. His Italian text, and
references from his Journals, were translated into Latin
by Father Nicolas Trigault while on a sea voyage from
China to Europe. Trigault published Ricci's work in
five books under the title De Christiana expeditione
apud Sinas
... (Rome, 1615). This account was quickly
accepted throughout Europe as the official, best in-
formed, and most recent exposition on China and the
progress of Christianity there. Within a few years after
its appearance, translations were issued in French,
German, Spanish, and Italian. The first and the last
of Ricci's books deal with China; the others are mainly
concerned with the history of the mission.

Ricci, unlike Mendoza, was a close student of China's
thought and religions. Since he lived in China at a time
when Buddhism and Taoism were degenerating, his
works exhibit forthright scorn for them. Especially
repellent are Buddhist practices which appear to be
devilish parodies of Christian rites. The “delirium” and
“ravings” of the Taoists about Lao-Tze he attributes
to the inspiration of the devil. Confucianism, the offi-
cial thought of the literati, is much more to Ricci's
taste. Confucius he sees as the equal of the best pagan
philosophers of antiquity and superior to many of them.
The emphasis in Confucianism upon morality, ration-
alism, public order, and teaching by precept and ex-


356

ample appeal to Ricci as being in accord with Christian
principles. He points out further that the Confucianists
have no idols, believe in one God, and revere the
principle of reward for good and punishment for evil.

The Chinese literati convinced Ricci that Confu-
cianism was not a competing faith but rather a set of
moral precepts which was used for the proper govern-
ment and general welfare of the state. Ricci was also
led to believe that Confucianism “could derive great
benefit from Christianity and might be developed and
perfected by it” (Gallagher, p. 98). It was Ricci's sim-
plistic presentations of early Confucianism, uncompli-
cated by the subtleties of later exegesis, that led several
generations of Jesuits to believe that China could best
be won by close study of the Confucian Classics, by
alliance with a native literati devoted to its moral
precepts, and by conversion of the leading lights of
the realm and the emperor himself to Christianity. To
the Jesuits at home such a program seemed congenial
and likely, for it paralleled closely the educational,
social, and conversion policies that they were then
following in Europe.

The Jesuit successors of Ricci in China included a
number of mathematicians and scientists who contin-
ued to advance the cultural mission. Reports on their
progress began to appear in Europe at mid-century.
Alvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, published at
Madrid in 1642 a work on the empire of China in
which he pays far greater attention to secular affairs
than Ricci had. He also gives the text of and explana-
tory notes for the Nestorian monument found at Sianfu
in 1625. He informs Europe about the wars being
fought between the Ming and the Manchus. More
material on the calamitous events taking place in north
China was provided with the publication of Father
Martin Martini's De bello Tartarico historia (Rome,
1654). In the following year Martini published his
Novus Atlas Sinensis (Amsterdam), the first scientific
atlas and geography of China and one that remains
a standard reference work. In 1658 Martini published
at Munich his Sinicae historiae, the first history of
China written by a European from Chinese annals. In
the meantime Father Michel Boym had returned to
Europe to announce in 1654 the conversion to Chris-
tianity of members of the expiring Ming family and
court. Far more important for European science and
thought was the publication of Boym's Flora Sinensis
(Vienna, 1656), a work comparable in intellectual
merit to Martini's Atlas.

The Jesuits also published Latin translations of
selected Confucian Classics. Prospero Intorcetta issued
the translation by Ignatius da Costa of the Ta Hsüeh
(“Great Learning”) in his Sapientia sinica (Goa, 1662).
At Paris in 1673, Intorcetta published his own transla
tion of the Chung yung (Doctrine of the Mean). Four-
teen years later a group of French Jesuits headed by
Philippe Couplet published the Confucius Sinarum
Philosophus
(Paris) and dedicated it to King Louis XIV.
It contains translations of the Classics previously pub-
lished as well as the Lun Yü (“Analects”). Francisco
Noël in his Sinensis imperii libri classici sex (Prague,
1711) republished the earlier translations and added
to them his own version of the Meng-tzu (“Mencius”),
the Hsiao ching (“Filial Piety”), and the Hsiao hsüeh
(“Moral Philosophy for Youths”), a small work of inter-
pretation by Chu Hsi (1130-1200) that was then used
in China for elementary instruction in the Classics. The
Classics selected by the Jesuits for translation were
those which had been given new prominence by Chu
Hsi and the Neo-Confucianists of the orthodox school
then dominant in China.

While the Jesuits provided scholarly treatises and
translations of the Confucian Classics, the merchants
and diplomatic emissaries of Europe supplied by their
accounts a less sophisticated and a more impressionistic
documentation on China and its people. The Dutch,
who had been sailing directly to the East since 1595,
became particularly aggressive in the 1620's as they
sought to secure a monopoly of the trade with China.
In connection with these efforts they established a fort
and settlement in southern Taiwan in 1624. But with
the dynastic troubles that swept China, Dutch hopes
for an expanded trade were quickly disappointed. Once
the Ch'ing dynasty took over at Peking, the Dutch tried
to negotiate directly at the capital. But the embassies
sent to Peking in 1656, 1667, and 1685 produced few
concrete results, and so no further efforts were made
to establish legitimate trading relations with China.

The Dutch produced a number of independent ac-
counts of China that were published in Europe be-
tween 1644 and 1670. Isaac Commelin issued a collec-
tion of early Dutch travel accounts in 1644 that was
followed two years later by the publication of William
Bontekoe's Journal. These reminiscences paint a pic-
ture of the Chinese that is far different from the glow-
ing and adulatory image of an ancient, rational society
created by the Jesuits. To the Dutch observers the
Chinese were sinister, devoid of all virtue, and experts
in treachery. The Dutch emissary, Johann Nieuhof, in
his account of the embassy of 1665, presents a more
balanced view of China based both on the Jesuit writers
and his own experiences. Olfert Dapper, a Dutch phy-
sician, compiled in Holland the reports of the second
Dutch embassy to Peking, and in 1670 issued an ency-
clopedic compendium on China gleaned from the em-
bassy descriptions and a wide range of other sources.
His book, entitled Atlas Chinensis in its English trans-
lation, is often erroneously attributed to Arnoldus


357

Montanus. The Dutch accounts share a distrust of the
Chinese and a skeptical view of China's vaunted civili-
zation. The Dutch also provided Europe with its first
comprehensive descriptions of the Chinese island of
Taiwan, and of the widespread ruin produced on the
mainland by the dynastic wars.