The Jesuits in Jiangnan (1842-1949): A Networked Endeavor

The arrival of the two jesuits, Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci in China at the end of the XVI century and their different ideas of the chinese empire

Itinerario, 2006

2023

In 1900, as the Boxer Uprising raged in China, two Chinese translations of the work Histoire de l’Eglise de Corée (Gaoli zhiming shilüe and Gaoli zhuzheng) were published to encourage Chinese Catholics, given the difficult history of persecutions faced by Korean Catholics. A close examination of these translations, along with the translator of Gaoli zhiming shilüe’s earlier work on the history of Korean martyrs, reveals that they relied on different Korean source texts and even embellished the original narrative in places. These modifications, in turn, demonstrate the complex chain of translation and information within East Asian missions, working between several languages and incorporating a variety of sources for information. In particular, a study of these texts highlights connections between the Catholic mission in Shanghai and Korea throughout a period when both faced intense opposition and the latter outright suppression.

Journal of Early Modern History, 2016

Culture & History Digital Journal, 2012

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many reports and travel narratives helped to create a more positive image of China around the world. The remarkable efforts of the Society of Jesus were essential to this new view, thanks to a unique policy of evangelization and the personal and ethnographic contributions of some of its members. However, through a comparative analysis of narratives from Diego de Pantoja and Adriano de las Cortes (both Jesuits), we can see how the texts are not just standard doctrinal narratives but also contain personal experiences, selections, interpretations and creative evaluations capable of transforming the reality.

"How we chose the “Giants” Luisa M. Paternicò – “Sapienza” University of Rome “This is the story of a small group of men who, breaking with the dominant spirit of their times and recalling a distant past, restored the concept of cultural adaptation to a central position in the world mission of Christianity. […] Their story is worth telling not simply as an important segment of world history, but because it has much to say […] to a world which has not yet learned to break down the barriers of cultural, racial and national pride.” Gorge H. Dunne’s words at the end of the prologue of Generation of Giants (1962) have been the driving force for this monographical issue. The authors of this volume offer to the reader a vivid, though concise, portrait of the main characters of the Jesuit China mission, from the end of the 16th until the beginning of the 18th century. The choice of the missionaries presented in this volume has been inspired by different factors. First of all, the wish to familiarize the reader about some Jesuits who are probably less known than the pioneer of the China mission, Matteo Ricci, but certainly not less influent in the history of the relations between China and the West. At the same time we tried to choose a bouquet of talents as multicolored as possible, including some missionaries who, for chronological reasons, had been excluded from Dunne’s work, which concentrated on the last decades of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Finally, we followed the leading definition of “giants” offered by Giuliano Bertuccioli in Italia e Cina (1996) concerning the China Jesuits: […] “those missionaries proved incredibly endowed both physically and mentally. This is witnessed by their resistance to endless hardships, including those of the long and dangerous journey from Europe to China; by their accommodation abilities and, above all, by the way they were able to support themselves and the mission […]; by their remarkable, sometimes phenomenal, cultural production. Astronomers, mathematicians, geographers, theologicians, painters, musicians, experts in hydraulics and ballistics: the China Jesuits of that time were definitely ad omnia parati”. After an introduction on the beginning of the Jesuit mission in the Celestial Empire, we will present those missionaries who, as we believe, were key figures in the China mission – being aware that others could have been included. For their strength in facing and overcoming indescribable difficulties and unease – including plagues and persecutions – as well as for their ability in making themselves known as scholars and intellectuals in China - fighting off the distrust and the hostility of the Chinese as well as that of the missionaries of other orders – they deserve to be called “giants”: Johann Schreck (1576-1630), who wanted to move to a country that, as witnesses used to say, was ruled by learned men and where scholars were not persecuted” (Iannaccone); Giulio Aleni (1582-1649), the humble “Fujian’s apostle” who first “described the world as it was known and imagined in the West in the 17th century to the Chinese” (De Troia); Adam Schall (1591-1666) “the first Christian missionary to be in charge of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, opening the way for later missionaries to stay at the Imperial Court in Peking” (C. von Collani); Michael Boym (1612-1659) “partly a missionary, partly a scientist, a diplomat, a traveller and a dreamer” (Miazek); Martino Martini (1614-1661), who “was the first to introduce China to the European readers” (Masini); Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), “the transmitter of Western science and technology to the Far East” (Golvers); Prospero Intorcetta (1625-1696), who “had an outstanding knowledge of Chinese language and culture” (Paternicò); Tomas Pereira (1646-1708) who “was appreciated for his musical talent as well as for his ability to fix clocks, make musical instruments and automations” (Antonucci); Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730) who “was somehow forced by the circumstances to propose an alternative accommodation strategy” (Paternicò); Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), who made “masterfully crafted paintings” and “also worked as an architect and as a designer of objects produced in the imperial palace workshops” (Salviati)."

Based on the analysis of two little-studied Portuguese Jesuits, who in the 18th century served as general procurators for the East Asia missions, this text draws on the theme of the circulation of material culture, such as tangible objects, between the two extremes of Eurasia. Through Francisco de Cordes (1689-1768) and José Rosado (1714-1797), we endeavor to contribute to a better understanding of the role of the General Procurator of the missions in ordering, acquiring and distributing ar- tistic objects for consumption, both inside and outside of the Society of Jesus. The main objectives of this article are to outline their biographies and to analyze the sumptuary goods they transacted, namely through their correspondence and other related sources.

Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange, 2024

This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Metascience, 2011

The content of this book is more limited than the title suggests. Firstly, it deals with Jesuit scientific activity in China from ca. 1688 (F. Verbiest's death) to A. Gaubil's early work in Beijing (since 1723) and assumes that it ceased with the Society's suppression in 1773 (p. 4). However, the Jesuits were scientifically active in China soon after Matteo Ricci's arrival in 1582 and continued to be so until after that suppression (J. B. de Almeida was in the staff of Beijing's observatory until 1805). Although vague, the expression ''Late Imperial China'' denotes more than a half century. Secondly, until 1687 Jesuit missionaries in China belonged to the Society's Portuguese Assistance, although nearly all those engaged in scientific work came from other European countries. Hsia, however, focuses on the French missionaryscientists, who arrived in Beijing in 1688, considering the Portuguese mission's work only for the pre-1688 years, and solely as background to some distinctive traits of the French missionaries, whose scientific work is also dealt with partially, since some of them remained after the Society's expulsion from France (1762-1764). Another basic aspect of Hsia's book, not reflected in the title, concerns her methodology. She does not describe events, but ''the historical emergence and fortune of [the] puzzling figure'' of the Jesuit missionary-scientist (p. 2). That figure, she says, was a ''personation'' produced by the Society's strategy to infiltrate all levels of human society (p. 4). So the book tries to determine how the scientific ''persona'' came into being and was progressively shaped in the Jesuits' Asian missions (Chapters 1-3). Then, it considers the French mission in China as representing the most advanced stage of this process, due to the circumstances surrounding the mission's origins and its institutionalized link with French academic science. Finally, Hsia investigates why the French Jesuits' scientific results did not match expectations, in quantity and in quality. Hence, the book is ''less concerned with evaluating