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Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit China Mission

| Glimpses | Matteo Ricci | Johann Schreck | Adam Schall | Ruminations |

Under the leadership of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), the Jesuits established a remarkable missionary effort in China that would last nearly two hundred years. Ricci and his fellow Jesuits studied Chinese history, religion, and literature; became fluent in Chinese so that they did not need interpreters; and adopted Chinese customs of diet and conduct, such as wearing the robes and hairstyle of Confucian sages. Their missionary effort was based upon three pioneering principles of cross-cultural respect and international relations:

1. the Jesuits in China sought to minimize interference from European powers and to operate independently of European financial interests in Chinese trade;
2. the Jesuits prohibited themselves from participating in the Inquisition or adopting its procedures; and
3. the Jesuits articulated a principle of accommodation, or adaptation, which shaped their attitudes toward every aspect of Chinese culture, whether involving ancestor rites, Confucianism, preference for the Chinese language, service of the emperor, acceptance of Chinese lay brothers, etc. Jesuits sought to make no secret of their faith but to de-emphasize overt evangelism, focusing instead upon winning the attention and respect of Chinese literati through their knowledge, virtue and scholarship.

Initially, with the first generation of the Jesuit mission under Ricci, European knowledge of geography (particularly Ricci’s world map) provided a bridge to interaction with Chinese upper classes. But astronomy soon displaced geography as the handmaiden to the Jesuit mission. The Jesuit mission in China occurred at a time when the emperor and his court were dealing with a problem that was difficult to solve: the reform of the calendar and the exact calculation of eclipses. For the enormous Chinese empire, this was preeminently a political and religious problem. The calendar was for the Chinese a political instrument; the countries that accepted it were considered vassals and tributaries of China; the ones that didn’t accept it, on the other hand, were considered rebels. The scientific principles on which the calendar was based, and which were the product of the work of Islamic mathematicians, had long been lost. The mandarins of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau could no longer precisely calculate the divisions of the year, nor could they accurately predict the eclipses that were bound to precise ritual ceremonies.

For this reason, Matteo Ricci recruited missionaries with scientific training. Because of their training in mathematics, the Jesuits were largely at the forefront of the new mathematical sciences in Europe. Ricci himself had been trained in astronomy by Christoph Clavius, and translated the first six books of Euclid into Chinese in 1607. Jesuit scientists who arrived in response to his summons included, in addition to Schall, Emmanuel Diaz (1574-1659), Johann Schreck (1576-1630, also “Terrentius”), Giacomo Rho (1590-1638), Giulio Aleni (1582-1649), and later on Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688).

The two most eminent figures among them were Schreck, known also as Terrentius, member of the Academia dei Lincei, friend of Galileo and Kepler; and Adam Schall, from Ingolstadt, an accomplished mathematician.

Optional video:

A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Interview with Ronnie Hsia

| Glimpses | Matteo Ricci | Johann Schreck | Adam Schall | Ruminations |

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, Instructor, 2004-14 Brent Purkaple, TA Report typos or broken links	Go to this course at Janux spellcheck.net | wordcounter.net Many thanks to the pedagogical model developed in Mythology and Folklore and other online courses by Laura Gibbs, which have been an inspiration for this course.	Academic Calendar
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