The Jesuit Mission in China

By Bishop Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

Introduction

As explained in the first article, Christianity has an ancient and important history in China, but unlike in the West, where it became a dominant ideology early on, in China it has maintained a decentralized and disempowered position for centuries, a barely remembered footnote to a history that the Chinese themselves would often like to expunge from their cultural memory. As a religion, it has done far less to capture the common imagination than Buddhism, and as a governmental and political ideology, it failed to supplant the benign agnosticism of Confucianism. Both of the incompatible eastern worldviews, one Indian and the other native Chinese, were sown together into a synthesis by the Neo-Confucians (Zhu Xi and Zhang Zai) of the Song Dynasty, and although often logically at odds, they have been emulsified by the dualism of Taoism, which insists that eternally warring “black and white principles” are the natural state of the physical world. This mixed religious philosophy, called “San Jiao” (三教) in the Neo-Confucian Synthesis was the dominant political ideology of China and the Imperial Examination System from the early 1110’s until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. In the West, the Church Fathers were able to balance Christian Truth with the philosophical resources of the Greek and Roman cultures through the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, but Christianity has still not been able to work out the same process in an East Asian context. 

Confucian Classics, Translated by Jesuit Scholars in China, Published by Athanasius Kircher in the 1660's

Thus, Christianity, as it has developed in the West, with both its scholastic clarity and its Trinitarian/Incarnational understanding of cosmology, failed to find a “market” for the order that it developed when held in tandem with an imperial system throughout the West, the “Economia” of the Constantinian Synthesis. The Byzantine theology of “Symphonia” and the Roman vision of the “Civitas Dei” all point to this seamless Divine/Human economy of grace that is manifested in Christian Civilization under the rule of a servant emperor (this was the ideal behind the Byzantine Emperor and the Holy Roman Emperor, pictured in the persons of such mighty righteous rulers as Constantine, Theodorus, Haraclius, and Justinian). While the Chinese Confucians also had a concept of a priestly intercessor of an Emperor, who mediates by the mechanism of the ancient “Western Gate Sacrifices”, they failed to grasp the way in which the emperor serves as the physical servant to the spiritual source of Grace; seeing instead, the emperor as a spiritual role who mediates for the continued bestowal of physical benefits and blessings. In many ways, the early Christian Mission in China was characterized as a search for a second Constantine, with this common vision of finding imperial sponsorship as the thread of continuity between the Syriac Mission of the 7^th-9^th centuries and the Jesuit Mission of the 17^th-18^th centuries. They both desired to bless the Empire and to be accepted and sponsored by the Emperor. 

With the Fall of the Qing Dynasty and Manchuria, the imperial system was discontinued, while its focus on merit and studiousness, and the general understanding of political authority being for the procurement of physical benefits, has remained the constant and now underlies the extreme education focus and desire for success within mainstream Chinese culture. Unlike during dynastic times where state religion and worship were considered key components of a well-regulated social order, under the current Communist government, there is no consideration for a theological reality or the real religious needs of the people. Instead, the State acts as the ultimate Law Giver and the ultimate purpose for human life, all existing for the safety and enrichment of the individual. This new social contract sees religion, not as the source of values and the bringer of peace, but as a cultural relic of feudal oppression and a source of social unrest. Many of these views were already apparent in the Qing Dynasty’s multiple bans upon Catholic Christianity, seeing it, as the current administration openly declares, as a mechanism for foreign influence, a troubler of the common people’s minds, and a way in which an undesirable element in society acquire power over the weak-minded and the uneducated. 

Ming Dynasty Christianity 

In the West, as the Reformation set the world on fire and religious schisms became an ever-present reality, many Roman Catholic thinkers and mystics began the painful process of examining the faults within the Roman Church that caused such a dramatic break with the established modes of history and ravaged the culture of Christendom. As the Council of Trent labored on over many years, what was immediately apparent that the moral corruption of the Church was largely to blame, and that prompted a move to purify the Church and make the training of priests much less of a laze faire process, and a strict, if not puritanical, ascetical discipline. This was not the “Counter Reformation”, but the “Catholic Reformation” in which many elements of the superstitious Christianity of the uneducated masses began to be challenged with the light of Aristotelian “Non-Contradiction” through the popularization of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. In the midst of this great conflict in France, Ignatius of Layola and Francis Xavier began to internalize these lessons, and attempted to counter the Protestant heresy at the same time. They established a loose confraternity, and then, based upon the papal dispensation that they received, started a full-scale Counter Reformation operation, which was meant to bolster the flagging powers of the Pope through scholarship and politically strategic involvement. The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits as they would come to be called, were a unique socio-political organization of highly elite and disciplined intellectual churchmen who would be the Counter-Reformation Pretorian Guard of the papal claims. It became clear that the Roman Catholic had halved its number of faithful, and so, to increase its chances of survival and influence, it would have to look outside of Europe to establish a New Christendom. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuit Order

Nothing can be said about this movement without mentioning the person and practice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the son of an impoverished Basque nobleman, soldier and commander, monk and ascetic. He invented a method of contemplation when recovering from a war wound, dedicated himself to the cause of propagating true Catholicism in the face of Protestant militarism, and went back to school in France to submit himself to remedial education, so as to qualify for priestly ordination. In the process of learning theology, as a man twenty years older than his classmates, he attracted seven disciples, compadres, who swore with him to make pilgrimage to and serve in the Holy City of Jerusalem, and if this were not possible, to present themselves to the Pope to be used in any way he saw fit. Their route was blocked to the Holy City, and so they made good on their promise, being admitted by the Pope as an order of teachers and preachers, primarily focused on educating the clergy in theology, philosophy, and missions, all centered around the Pope’s approval of Ignatius’ method, “The Spiritual Exercises,” which, unlike any monastic practice before or since, turns ascetics into a highly competent, highly confident, methodically proficient, militarized team of missionaries, set from the outset for infiltration, inculcation and influence. St. Ignatius was hugely influential as an educator in his own lifetime, and his influence only increased through the many colleges and universities that his order established.

Jesuit Missionaries Arriving in Feudal Japan in the Mid 16th Century

Almost from its very outset, it became clear that the empires of China and India would have to be brought into the fold, and thus, with Ignatius as European head, his good friend and fellow Jesuit founder, Francis Xavier, undertook the journey to the East and the conversion of the pagan civilizations into confederates of Catholic Christendom. To do this, it was clear, was not so much of a folk-mission as a political embassy, for the heads of state would have to convert in order to provide military and financial assistance to take back the northern lands from Protestants and the Christian east from the Turks. Thus, Jesuits were not sent to the poor, the downtrodden, the rich in faith, but to the elite victors of every culture, highly trained in arts secular and sacred, equipped with a new way of “telling the truth” when compelled (outwardly lying and stating the truth in their minds), to become the political emissaries of every culture and an elite class of linguistic and logistical experts who would sew together the loose string of Catholic-friendly pearls into an impenetrable wall of support for the Pope and his theological claims. 

The Road to Nagasaki, Lined with Crucified Christians, which Marked the Beginning of a 100-Year-Period of Persecution

Even as they were successful in Japan, the Jesuits never forgot the greater mission, which was the eventual conversion of the greatest empire in history, China, the “Middle Kingdom.” St. Francis died while waiting to be admitted to the Mainland from the “foreign holding island” of Shuangchuan near current day Guangdong. Forty years after his death from malaria, Mateo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri, two highly skilled Jesuit priests, also waited on the same island for permission to arrive on the Mainland as court scientists. The brilliant Italian scholar, Alessandro Valignano, had trained them in Rome and they waited for three years before being allowed to meet with the local Mandarin authority. The local official was so impressed by their knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and language, that the government in the import assayers office employed the monks. They wore the orange robes of Buddhist monks and tried to hide their foreign doctrine through local pieties, setting up a temple in which they displayed an icon of the Virgin and Child, which was taken to be the Buddhist Bodhisattva Guanyin (Kanon). It was only after the Grand Censor, the highest Mandarin scholar official in the land, called them to Beijing to serve as imperial astronomers that they laid aside their Buddhist habit to don the blue silk robes of the Confucian Scholar. This not only provided them with much greater status, but gave them access to a truly international Confucian imperial governance system that linked Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet, Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, the jungles of Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to the central courts of the “Son of Heaven” who gave trade and military protection to those states who recognized him as ultimate sovereign.   It was slow going in China due to Ming Zhu Di’s protectionist and nationalistic policies, which had been set during the Zenith of China’s influence worldwide. In 1421, Admiral Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch from Yunnan Province, led a fleet to Africa for rare animals, slaves, spices, and hardwoods, and seven years later, in 1428, Ming Zhu Di, the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, closed all overseas trade and restricted access to the Silk Road because of a series of Buddhist dreams that he had were confirmed when his newly constructed capital in Beijing burnt down in a lightening storm. He then moved to Nanjing in the South and never returned to the Northern Capital, so beloved by the Mongols. When the Jesuits reached China in the 1560’s, the country had already been sealed off for a hundred and forty years!

The Prince-Martyr of Korea, St. Andrew Taegon, Co-Covert and Spiritual Older Brother of the Christian Philosopher, Tasan Chong Yagyong

After mastering Literary Chinese, Ricci undertook his magnum opus, “The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven” (天主實義), in which, in a friendly and unassuming voice, he explained Thomism and a Christian cosmology within the confines of Confucian philosophical categories in a clear and even Chinese prose. It was so stylistically affective that even the Confucian enemies of Christianity would compile as one of the “One Hundred Confucian Classics” during the reign of the Qian Long Emperor. Many converted to Christianity after reading this treatise, convinced that Ricci had rediscovered “Original Confucianism” and a “Better Path.” Even in places like Korea and Vietnam, where Confucianism had taken hold as the official governing ideology, little brotherhoods of confessing Christians sprang up after reading this work. Korea’s first Christians were martyred after reading “The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven” and receiving baptism from a “hidden” Chinese Franciscan monk. They were later betrayed by envious courtesans who coveted their influence with the Crown Prince, and they were unwilling to reject Christ in the presence of the Korean King, bringing down the full wrath of the conservative Neo-Confucian monarch, and martyrdom by being skinned alive, drawn and quartered. 

Mateo Ricci, as a Confucian Scholar

In many ways, Ricci’s simplicity completely bypassed the difficulties of post-Reformation Catholicism, brought biblical stories and language back to the fore, and allowed for the accommodation of local language, culture and practice, honoring the Chinese ancestors for their material and spiritual contributions, and allowing for the Chinese identity to continue unabated through this memory. This approach directly resulted in the “Chinese Rite” with prayers taken from the ancient “Book of Songs” that was collated by Confucius, vestments taken from the Chinese imperial tradition, Scripture translated into the high scholarly language, and church buildings based on Ming “Temple of Heaven” architecture. It was truly a meeting of the best of both worlds, and many, highly talented and strategically placed intellectuals and geniuses converted to this new faith, believing that the proper worship of heaven, so central to the Confucian ethic, had been restored. Ricci oversaw, in his lifetime, a flowering of cultural, literary and ascetical disciplines in a completely new context, one in which he navigated with the philosophical clarity and spiritual insight of a patristic father. It looked as if a New Christendom would, indeed, form in his lifetime and that the purpose for which St. Francis Xavier had offered up his life would be realized. 

The "Tian Tan" or "Temple of Heaven" was the Place where the Chinese Emperors Sacrificed a Pure, White Bull Once a Year to the Creator God and Emperor of Heaven, "Shang Di", Who Could not be Represented by Images and Demanded All Things be Done in Threes to Worship His Eternal Nature

Tao Fung Shan, a Church Built by Fr. Richard Reichelt in the 1930's in the Hong Kong New Territories, Designed to Imitate the "Temple of Heaven" in Ancient Confucian Monotheism

After Ricci’s unfortunate and early death from exhaustion on May 11^th, 1624,  another important Jesuit figure, this time of German stock, was to stand in the gap and perform Ricci’s duties as foreign astronomer and calendarist – Fr. Johan Adam Schall von Bell. In many ways, saintly Mateo’s passing away was also providential, since China fell to the Manchurians during this interim, and Schall von Bell was able to attach himself securely to the northern faction, which destroyed the Ming Dynasty and ruled China from 1636 until 1911. If anything, the Jesuits strove to continue what Ricci had started, and the locals quickly revered Mateo as a Saint, whom they called the “Faith Root Father.” 

Mateo Ricci and Paul Guanqi Xu, the Chinese Genius who Translated all of Western Mathematics into Chinese and established an Indigenous Chinese Catholic Church in the Ming Court

The China Mission was marked by extreme highs and extreme lows between 1627 and 1635, in which there was a near conversion of the Chongzhen Emperor, Zhu Youjian, who allowed his entire household to be baptized before the invading Manchu’s killed them all. Then there was the conversion of his younger brother, the last Emperor of China, Zhu Youlang (The Yongli Emperor) under the watch of Polish Jesuit, Fr. Michal Boym, and then the hasty christening of “Constantine I”, the infant crown prince of China’s Ming Dynasty. Fr. Boym was sent on behalf of the Emperor, pleading with European powers, Spain, Portugal and finally, the Pope, for military aid, but the cries of the Christian emperor were unheard by all western powers, who were troubled by the recent successes of the English and Dutch. A broken and fretting Fr. Boym returned to China, only to find that his beloved converts were all dead, and that the child emperor, China’s Constantine, had disappeared into history with his nurse, never to be heard from again, bearing the hopes of a Christian Chinese Empire into obscurity. Fr. Michal Boym died three days later of a broken heart.

Fr. Johan Adam Schall von Bell, Imperial Doctor of the First Rank

The Manchurians set up a new dynasty and called in “Da Qing” (Great Brilliance) and ruled amicably from the beginning. They employed the Confucian Scholars as officials as their predecessors had done, rebuilt public works destroyed in the years of war, and imposed a lighter taxation than the Ming, encouraging business and trade with countries far and wide. This new “outward thinking” and the new role of Buddhism as the official faith of the Manchurians, challenged the Neo-Confucianism of the Han Chinese, and in many ways, made them more conservative and reactionary towards outside thought. The ruler was, after all, a “foreigner” to the Han way of thinking. The Jesuits, however, were immediately seen as assets and allies to this new regime, and were given positions in court equal to the Han. Schall von Bell became a Mandarin of the 1^st Order 1^st Rank, meaning that he was, technically, one of the highest rulers in the land. Fr. Ferdinand Verbiest, who followed him, was also of extremely high rank, but, because of his slightly less-than-perfect Chinese, was demoted a whole rank.

The Kang Xi Emperor

The Kang Xi Emperor, who was the grandson of Nuracai, the great Manchurian strategist and conqueror, was raised in intimate familiarity with the Jesuit Mission and was reported by the mission’s Han adversaries to spend most of his leisure hours studying mathematics and astronomy with the missionaries. It was even reported that Schall was the one who persuaded his father, the Shunzhi Emperor, to make Kang the crown prince (he had two elder brothers). Kang Xi always hovered near conversion, but because of family and governmental considerations, was never baptized. After a rash of reaction and persecution in Hangzhou broke out, due to Christians offending the sensibilities of local Buddhists, Kang Xi wrote an “Edict of Toleration” that can be favorably compared to Constantine’s “Edict of Milan.” 

When passing through Southern China, De Tournon, the Papal Visitor for the China Mission, published an official papal decree in Nanjing, “Ex Illa Die”, which he had secretly carried with him the whole time, banning the practice of the Chinese Rite. All those who did not immediately comply were excommunicated and ordered to leave China. For Kang Xi, as an Emperor with openly Christian connections and commitments, this was a politically disastrous situation. Confucian and Buddhist elements had long waited for such a situation to crop up at court, so that they could challenge his authority. He accurately surmised that this action was meant to cut the legs out from under the Jesuit mission, and that it was a direct challenge to his authority within his own empire, and so he proactively declared in a formal “shengzhi” that only those who signed an oath to preserve the “Way of Ricci” could remain in China.  He said, “Now that I have seen the Legate’s proclamation, and it is just the same as Buddhist and Taoist heresies and superstitions. I have never seen such nonsense as this. Henceforth no Westerner may propagate his religion in China. It should be prohibited to avoid more trouble.” Kang Xi then requested that the Portuguese authorities imprison De Tournon in Macau for instigating insurrection, and he died there in prison after nine months of being kept under house arrest, just having received a letter from the Pope confirming his status as Cardinal. 

De Tournon put the Jesuits in a terrible situation, and they would either swear to uphold what they had already established and be excommunicated, or they could uphold the Pope’s decision and be banished. Many decided to swear to Ricci and hope that a later Pope would reconsider the matter, but this never happened and the Roman Catholic presence in China slowly died as the missionaries passed away. A few notable court Jesuits became famous after this episode, such as the genius painter, Fr. Giuseppe Castiglione, who maintained a Jesuit foothold in the court until the 1770’s, helped designed the famous Chinese garden “Yuan Ming Yuan,” and was the official portrait painter for three emperors, including the magnificent Qian Long Emperor. Roman Catholicism remained inert under the Qing Dynasty until China’s defeat in the first Opium War in 1840, in which the foreign powers extracted unfair concession from the Chinese emperor and demanded free access to the inland for both traders and missionaries. Without its own bishops and clergy, the faithful in China existed only on one sacrament – Holy Baptism in the Name of the Trinity.

The Jesuit "Policy of Accommodation" arose during the Catholic Reformation as a way to "Restore Christendom" in contrast to the reactionary tendencies of the Spanish "Reconquista" and the following Inquisition. This "Conquista" mentality, born of a long, but ultimately, successful struggle against the Caliphate (unlike the experience of Constantinople), brought about a hardening of Christian culture, a "Christian Warrior" mentality that glorified blood and conquest at the expense of holiness, which preferred subjugation and slavery to missionary mercy and equality. Valignano, as an Italian in Hellenic southern Italy, under Spanish occupation, would have been called "Indio Occidento" (Western Indian) in his youth and treated with disdain by resident Spaniards. This may have been why Valignano did everything in his power to leverage Portuguese discomfort with Spain and the Padroado system of imperial/ecclesial representation to exclude Spanish missionaries from the Far East and to set up a veritable blockade upon Spanish-held Philippines from entering Japan and China. 

Due to the Italian introspection on the nature of Civilizational Christianity in contrast to Crusading Christianity, the loss of Constantinople, and the fragmentation of the Northern Catholic Church to Protestant factionalism, the policy undertaken by Valignano and Ricci was one of soft persuasion, reason, advantage, and positive reinforcement. It was a war or attrition and never a direct conflict. When, however, Franciscans and Dominicans from New Spain in the Philippine's illegally broke both papal and imperial regulations and secretly took up residence in China, at the behest of the Spanish Crown and Spanish Missionary Bishops, they immediately went about to undo this peaceful enterprise, endeavored to create shows of fantastic piety by parading through the streets with icons, and competed with one another to enrage the secular authority and receive "the crown of martyrdom." Knowing that this was the inevitable result of the different styles of Christianity that had developed, Ricci and his followers worked to keep other Europeans out of China, until China had been Christianized sufficiently to negate the imperialistic claims of arrogant and greedy foreigners. It was, probably, the most enlightened, fair, and compassionate Christian mission that ever occurred on a large scale in all of Christian history. Ricci knew that, if China were to join the Christian Commonwealth and stay within it, rather than fragmenting as Germanic Europe had done, that it would have to repeat the process that the Greco-Hellenic world had gone through, meshing and maintaining the underlying civilizational and philosophical structures, without collapsing or rejecting them outright. Instead, these structures would have to be transformed by the message of the Gospel. With all of China's profound philosophical, scientific, historical and literary contributions, the West would have to initiate contact based on respect, equality, fairness, and dialogue, rather than subjection and force. 

The enemies of this policy, however, were no small or marginalized group. They were the heads of State behind the European Colonial expansion, many of them, like the Portuguese Padroado, were financing much of the missions around the world. They wanted Christianity to function as the "raison d'etre" for international subjugation, the conquest of peoples and the capturing of resources. Pious Christians were to pray for their success and support the work that they did to "establish the kingdom of God", which they, unfortunately, identified with their own kingdoms. As it became clear that the China Mission was working to counter these ends, very strong opposition began to mount in Spain and across Europe. Great smear campaigns and conspiracies were formed to undermine the mission and insist that the only way to convert the East was to conquer it militarily and establish colonies, like what was being done in India, Indonesia and various islands. This resistance continued to grow over many years, and over the course of many generations, throughout the 16 and early 1700's, many missionaries had to make the long trek back to Rome to give an account of their actions in China. Some of the best missionaries, including Fr. Michal Boym, the priest who converted and baptized the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty and illustrated an abundance of selfless love for the Chinese, perished from such wasteful trips. 

Ricci and Schall von Bell

It all came to a head when, fueled by the Jesuits request to translate the Bible and the Mass into Chinese, and insisting on allowing the Chinese converts to continue honoring their ancestors and Confucius, their enemies accused them of allowing atheism, idolatry, and corrupting the sanctity of the Latin Mass. The nail in the coffin lid seems to be the Pope’s own sense of scandal that Christians would swear allegiance to and allow prayers for an “unbaptized head.” These were disastrous accusations, and even though Schall, Verbiest and Martinni could answer them all, biblically and historically, their enemies used this as an excuse to have an anti-Jesuit ideologue, Archbishop De Tournon, appointed papal legate and sent to China. With this unfortunate event, the vision of China as a New Christendom died, and the Kang Xi Emperor, who had tried so hard to keep the Christians protected, had sponsored their churches, and had written deeply moving Christian poetry would turn his back on Christ. He was the true Chinese Constantine that could have been. And it was all due to Papal extremes and Western pride, not the rejection of the Chinese people.

The scientific and historical implications of the mission are truly astonishing, changing the courses of both civilizations and laying a technical foundation that is fundamentally important to the modern world. Xu Guanqi’s singlehanded translation of the totality of Western mathematics into Chinese, and teaching the use of the scientific method has revolutionized, and he is now almost completely forgotten. Gottfried Leibniz and Jesuit Astronomer, Fr. Joachim Bouvet, discovered and confirmed binary numbers as the basis of the pre-Confucian “Book of Changes” during the course of their long and interesting correspondence – a base 2 system in which no number greater than 1, which we now use as the foundational principle for digital functions. The first steam engine developed by Westerners was from a Chinese prototype by Johan Adam Schall von Bell, and with further refinement in the West, it would begin the Industrial Revolution when applied to cotton mills and railroad locomotives. 

Fr. Johan Adam Schall von Bell's Original Steam-Engine, Designed to be a Self-Driving Toy for the Royal Family

This Jesuit mission in Japan experienced unparalleled success, unlike any other in history before China, as the illiterate peasants blindly followed their Shogun overlords. Oda Nobunaga was positively influenced by the Jesuits and the secular war-making knowledge, and gave access to the hearts and minds of his people, who were quickly swept up into a theological embrace that explained the overarching ideas behind Christianity in ways that a native Japanese could both accept and also propagate easily. This method of communicating beat the Protestants at their own game, for inconvenient concepts of papal supremacy and the problems of Christian history were not even brought up, and popular, pious practices, stories and miracles were taught from the beginning, all in a form as close to the native religion as possible. This meant that names and images were appropriated, and comfortable Pagans, with a little extra biblical explanation, could be made practicing Catholics in very little time, provided that they allowed for the continued work of Jesuit priests in their midst, who were taught to “catechize after baptism.” All went well as long as the Shogun was aligned with the Christians politically, but as Christianity became stronger and ideologically became more apparently different than the Zen Buddhism that had long ruled the Japanese islands, the stakes were higher for the local clerical class, who used the change of leadership at the Oda Shogun’s death and the naturally xenophobic and racist tendencies of people to argue for the outlawing of Christianity with the ascent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Iesu Tokugawa. What followed was one of the most harrowing chapters in Christian history, with thousands crucified on the roads to Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of Christians tortured in unimaginable ways, and iron icons of the Blessed Virgin and Child, Fumie, be ritually trampled for over two hundred years afterwards. Those Christians who did survive carved crucifixes on the backs of Buddha statutes and “bowed through them” when checked by the local authorities, so as to appear as pious Buddhist laity and avoid decapitation or worse.

Mateo Ricci’s life work defines the parameters of the Jesuit Mission in China, not only because his life encapsulates the span of roles, scholarship, conversions, catechesis, and the initial establishment of a state-recognized and sponsored church presence, but also on a deeper level, Mateo Ricci discovered the essential boundaries of the Chinese Soul. Drawing on the training he received in Rome and again in Goa, Portuguese India, from his master, Alessandro Valignano, Ricci drew up a “rule” which was mutually comprehensible and agreeable between the Christian and Chinese leaders, which then formed the basis of an entire liturgical expression of Christianity that was ancient in its pattern, local in its expression, respectful (even loving) to the receiving culture, and able to balance the necessities of an orderly Chinese State with the doctrinal foundation of Christian Faith. This would be called “The Way of Ricci” by the Kang Xi Emperor over a hundred and forty years later, and would be the standard that the empire would hold for all Christian missionaries. 

A Western Sketch of a French Jesuit Missionary in Confucian Garb, Probably a Young Fr. Alvero Semedo

Into this understanding came the earthshattering discovery of the Nestorian Stele in Xi’An, which happened right as the Emperor institutionalized the Catholic Faith. This finding shocked the Chinese authorities to the core and riveted the Jesuit Missionaries and the rest of the western world by extension.  Fr. Alvero Semedo, another bright Italian who spoke and read impeccable Mandarin, went to the site and confirmed its authenticity with the local authorities, taking the first rubbings, which made their way back to Europe eventually, providing a symbol around which the Catholic West could rally a missionary labor force for the cause of the Jesuit mission. Athanasius Kirscher published the Chinese text and its Latin translation and the book caused a sensation in Catholic countries, where it was seen as proof of Catholicism universality and its previous success in ancient China. Its roots in Syriac Christianity were not yet clearly understood, and even with the Syriac inscriptions being studied by such luminaries as Leibniz and Descartes, its lack of any objectionable heretical content was clear to all examining parties. Thus, the Jesuit Mission could claim, not only to be reestablishing the worship that Confucius himself had preserved and promulgated, but that they were also reestablishing the Ancient Church of China, which had been given legal status in China’s most cosmopolitan and influential age, by the very founder of the Tang Dynasty – Tang Taizong! The significance of this was not lost on either China or the West. 

The Nestorian Stele in its Original Location

Qing Dynasty Christianity 

"The Europeans are very quiet; they do not excite any disturbances in the provinces, they do no harm to anyone, they commit no crimes, and their doctrine has nothing in common with that of the false sects in the empire, nor has it any tendency to excite sedition ... We decide therefore that all temples dedicated to the Lord of heaven, in whatever place they may be found, ought to be preserved, and that it may be permitted to all who wish to worship this God to enter these temples, offer him incense, and perform the ceremonies practiced according to ancient custom by the Christians. Therefore let no one henceforth offer them any opposition." - Imperial Edict of the Kang Xi Emperor 

Kang Xi consistently elevated Christians to positions of power within his administration, but he was always sure to allow Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist clerics and scholars a place at the table. The Jesuit Mission, secure in its positions of official power, was able to get the mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans approved for the first time, and churches sprouted up all over China. It is estimated that during Kang Xi’s reign, as many as ten thousand western missionaries were able to work in China, all pledged to uphold Qing authority and propagate “The Way of Ricci.” His heart can be clearly seen in the stirring Christian poems that he wrote.

When the work of the cross is done, blood flowed like a river,

Grace from the west flowed a thousand yards deep,

On the midnight road he was subjected to four trials,

Before the rooster crowed twice, three times betrayed by disciple.

Five hundred lashes tore every inch of skin,

Two thieves hung on either side, six feet high,

Sadness greater than any had ever known, 

Seven words, one completed task, ten thousand spirits weep.

- Kang Xi

This favorable situation changed first in Rome, and then affected the conditions in China, for many other Catholic Orders and significant individual theologians took offence at the patronage of an unbaptized king, rejected the ability of Catholic Missionaries to pledge loyalty to a non-Christian, non-Western ruler, and rejected the use of native elements in the liturgy, respect for Confucius and China’s familial and governmental ancestors, as well as the sacred use of the vernacular Chinese. These problems had always been on the minds of Catholic theologians, who had elicited two previous rulings from the Pope, one in favor (1615) and another against (1656), the use of the indigenous within the context of Catholic worship. In 1690, when the Jesuits had asked for clarity from Pope Alexander VIII, they were told that the ruling “in favor” was if the situation on the ground was found to be without superstition or idolatry, and the “against” decision was if the missionaries found people actually worshiping Confucius, their ancestors or the Emperor. The situation was left entirely to the local missionaries to interpret. 

Fr. Semedo

Fr. Verbiest

When the illustrious Martin Martinni returned to Europe in 1655 to build support for the mission, he held conversations with Leibniz and other European luminaries, writing a highly celebrated “Novus Atlas Sinensis,” “Sinicae Historiae Decas Prima” (1659), and “Decas Secunda” (1665), all causing a literary phenomenon to sweep Europe and create a tremendous amount of controversy as to the spiritual status of the Chinese people. Martinni insisted that the Chinese historical record was more extensive and accurate than the West, and could be used to correct the Vulgate’s chronologies, pointing back to the Septuagint as the most accurate translation of the Bible. Such a claim deeply offended the Roman assumption of superiority and laid the foundation for a sense of alienation between the two cultures. This was followed, in 1669 by the publication of Louis-Daniel Le Comte’s well written, but poorly thought-out “Nouveaux Memoires Sur L’Etat Present De La Chine.” In this two-volume set of beautifully illustrated folios, Le Comte offered his own (barely literate) translations of the Confucian Rites. The problem occurred with his translation of “commemoration tablet” (used for the names of ancestors) as “idol”, as well as employing the Latin  “genuflectio” for the Chinese social convention of a respectful “bow” or “curtsy.” These translations, especially as they circulated widely with Kircher’s new world encyclopedias and the “China Illustrata,” which linked Chinese characters to Hermeticism and the Occult, proved to the enemies of the Jesuit Mission, and especially to Monsignor Charles Maigrot, who headed the anti-Chinese Mission campaign, that the social practices of China were basically religious, idolatrous and could not used by Christians in society or be employed in Christian homes.

In 1700 the Roman Inquisition, a group of Sorbonne theologians and the Propaganda Fide found that there should not be a policy of “accommodation” to the Chinese culture, and that the Spanish practice of missions as used in the Philippines, “Tabula Rasa” (blank slate), would the only appropriate approach for the conversion of heathen peoples. Without further consultation with the Jesuits and at the behest of multiple ecclesial authorities, Pope Clement XI summarily decided to declare that Jesuit practices and the “Way of Ricci” must end on November 20^th, 1704. In the words of Archbishop Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon, the Pope’s representative to China and the bearer of the bad news, “the Jesuit Mission must be destroyed before it can be replanted in a correct, Catholic form.”

De Tournon arrived in China via French transport ships in April of 1705, completely bypassing the Spanish and Portuguese authorities, landing as a foreign dignitary and sending letters of introduction to the Emperor from the Pope and European heads of State. Upon his first audience with the Emperor in June, 1706, it was clear that he had not come to negotiate, and flat out rejected Kang Xi’s own views of the political nature of Confucianism. His translator, the Papal Visitor and Bishop, Charles Maigrot, who had just been appointed from France two years before, did not speak Chinese well enough to hold a conversation with the Emperor and had not read the Confucian Classics or any of the Jesuit books that had established the mission. For the court, it was obvious that the foreigners not only knew nothing of their tradition, but that they were also unwilling to learn. After one meeting, De Tournon declined Kang Xi’s invitations for further questions or debates, and set out to return to Canton without customary formalities or requests for safe passage. 

Jesuit Accommodation 

The Jesuit “policy of accommodation” arose in quick succession through an evolution of approaches defined by three men ～St. Francis Xavier, who understood the highly developed situation of East Asian culture; Allesandro Valignano, Papal Visitor, who outlined the difference between the "Bianca Gentes" of East Asia contrasted to the “Black Heathen” of India and Africa; and, Mateo Ricci, who saw the value, depth and beauty of Chinese Confucian Culture as equal to Greco-Roman Culture and a fit receiver for a new work of God to establish a new Christendom. 

Summary

The Western Catholic missionaries to China had astounding scholastic success, from 1583 until 1724, when the Jesuits (and by extension, the Dominicans, Franciscans and Augustinians) were effectively banned from all Chinese territories. While they succeeded in writing, translating, catechizing, receiving permission for the propagation of the Faith, and in building church buildings, they failed to turn their efforts into a popular religion with the support of the village peasant class. In the very few places that this occurred, normally under Franciscan Friars, rather than under Jesuit literati, these common people displayed the strength of character and the long-term endurance that the courtesans lacked. 

Much like in Japan, where underground Catholics remained hidden up into the Meiji Reformation, as “Krishitan” cult associated with the practice of Esoteric Buddhism, the Chinese elites who converted had been pushed to the fringes of society and their contributions have been intentionally obscured. Some villages stayed loyal to Catholic Christianity throughout all of the persecution, and they sheltered the occasional secret priest, who would sometimes come to do a rare Eucharist service. The punishment for this kind of illegal activity was death by strangling and the execution of all family members, so the level of active sacrifice for the underground Catholics in China was as great or greater than that experienced by the Early Church under Roman Persecution. There are many, many stories of simple laypeople that remained faithful until death, and received the crown of life, laying down their lives for their Lord and their Faith.

The next time China opened up, in the 1840’s, English Protestants, aligned as they were with the Opium-selling East India Trade Company, and as powerful as the British Empire had become, would enter China on the same political footing as the Roman Catholic Mission, thus creating a unique and confusing environment for China’s few underground Christians. While the Anglicans did much to try to rectify the damage done by their countrymen, building the majority of hospitals, schools and universities throughout China, they would never be able to help the Chinese forget the shame that the Opium Wars heaped upon them by sneering, contemptuous Westerners. They would not be able to capture the hearts of the Chinese, who, either as faithful Chinese Catholic stock kept the faith of their Fathers, or, as semi-literate and superstitious villagers who discovered “Sola Scriptura” and the socially leveling power of claiming direct spiritual inspiration, would chose Charismatic and radical Protestant ideology as the basis for their newfound Christian Faith. This unlikely religious alliance directly contributed to the overthrow of the stable, sustainable and family-sheltering Chinese Confucian Order and brought about the cultural chaos from which arose the modern realities of China.  

The Jesuit Map of the World, Started by Fr. Ricci, which Opened China to the Rest of the World and Permanently Changed the Chinese Worldview