Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy: The Intriguing Contrast of Chinese and European Theism

The Chinese rites controversy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been often studied, but hitherto mostly as a quasi-linguistic-and-technical dispute between the followers of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the Jesuit China mission, and his many different enemies in the Catholic Church. In reality the involved debate was much more complex than that at every turn. To show this and more, this article takes a close look again at how and why Chinese terms and customs came to figure in Ricci's proselytising work in China, how they were challenged both inside and outside the Jesuit China mission, how the Chinese reacted and why, and what the debate revealed about the intriguing contrast of Chinese and European theism.     

Natural theology and ancient theology in the Jesuit China mission

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the proselytical use of ancient theology that developed in the environment of the Jesuit China Mission in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This period is roughly coeval with the European diffusion of deistic doctrines based on a secularized interpretation of natural theology. I argue that the threat posed by the spread of such doctrines produced a significant effect on the philosophy that Jesuits developed in order to relate to Confucianism. In particular, in the late seventeenth century, Jesuits belonging to the China Mission gradually abandoned Matteo Ricci’s natural theology and espoused an approach grounded in ancient theology. The situation changed, however, after the turn of the eighteenth century. Deism continued to spread, and even ancient theology came to be perceived as dangerously close the libertinism. The increasing suspicion towards ancient theology was reflected, in the China Mission, by the reception of the doctrines advanced by the so-called “Figurists”, a group of French Jesuits who proposed an interpretation of certain characters of the Chinese Five Classics as figurae of the Bible.     

Ruy Cinatti,the French–Portuguese mission and the construct of East Timor as an ethnographic site*

The French–Portuguese Ethnological Mission to Portuguese Timor (1966/1969) financed by French and Portuguese research bodies and initially directed by Louis Berthe was the first mission that conducted lengthy and thorough ethnographic research in East Timor vernaculars and with East Timorese communities. Using personal and scientific archives, printed and oral sources, this article analyses the mission’s background, the role of Ruy Cinatti (a Portuguese poet, former colonial official in Timor and anthropologist trained in Oxford) in its launch, and its political and scientific context. The mission, undertaken during the Portuguese late colonial period and subject to the Portuguese authorities’ approval and surveillance, marked East Timor as a site of anthropological inquiry into the Anthropology of European tradition produced in Southeast Asia, affiliated to post-war structuralism. This case study throws light on individual agency, Portugal’s shortcomings in modern anthropology training, the international competition for Portuguese Timor as part of the Indonesian “field of ethnological study” and the transnational connections in its construction in the era of decolonization.     

Histoire de quelques miroirs déformants orient-occident

The paper brings to light a literary fabrication cast as a “chinoiserie» published in Paris in 1788 and tentatively explores its implicit message. The fabrication implies the title—allusion to the pamphlet written by the radical Morelly then commonly credited to Diderot—, the author—the Chinese philosopher contemporary of Socrates—, the alleged translation—which could never have occurred—, and the commentary attributed to a Jesuit of the French mission in China. The genuine author of the fabrication, a plea for the abolishion of the death penalty and a satire on the legal institution and the Clergy, is Louis Lavicomterie who later will be a member of the Montagne and will vote the death of Louis XVI. He fathered the book during the French Revolution. The reconstitution of the historical context helps to decipher the cryptic purpose of this chinese message. Behind Confucius, Lavicomterie has introduced Voltaire. The text reflects the moral and intellectual expectations at the eve of the turmoil: the increasing search for secularization and the rejection of the fundamental divine rights of the Ancien Régime.     

The Complexities of a New Faith: Xu Guangqi's Acceptance of Christianity

Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) was one of the most important early Chinese Catholics closely associated with Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the legendary founder of the Jesuit China mission. In spite of his widespread fame since the seventeenth century, the precise nature of his religious experience has not so far been adequately investigated. To understand his complex relationship with Christianity and thereby gain insight into the fateful East–West intellectual interaction in the early modern period, this article closely probes various aspects of Xu's spiritual journey including his family history, his reception of baptism, and his association with Jesuit missionaries both before and after his conversion, and the particular character of his Catholic faith.     

Restituting Church Buildings and Negotiating Church Factions： Missionary Mapmakers and the Making of Local Networks （1712-1716）

At the turn of the 18th century, the Kangxi emperor initiated a large project to map the vast territories of the Qing. The land surveys that ensued were executed by teams of Qing officials and European missionaries, most of them French Jesuits first sent to China in 1685 and actively supported by the French crown. Early 18th century Jesuit publications foster a much-heralded claim that these missionary-mapmakers drew on their status of imperial envoys during the surveys to locally advance the position of the Catholic church. This article strives to explore the format/on of such local networks by these missionaries as they passed through the cities and towns of the Chinese provinces. On the basis of archival material, details emerge of contacts with local Qing administrators and Chinese Christians, and of attempts to purchase and recover local churches. This is then discussed against the background of the Rites Controversy, in an attempt to evaluate how such local networks relate to the rivalry between missionaries of different orders. The article emphasizes that there was （and perhaps is） no such thing as ＂pure science＂ by underscoring that important technical achievements such as the Qing mapping project are often shaped by complex networks and historical contingencies.     

The semiotics of Russian culture

The seventeenth century was one of scientific fervour and of fundamental change in how the natural world was to be approached. With increased voyages abroad, the world was being drawn into Europe and each country wanted to be the first to capture the ‘Codex Naturae’. French physician/naturalists were examining and dissecting nature and Jesuit missionaries were documenting day-to-day life of First Peoples in the New World. The interplay between an ethnogeography and a scientific knowledge including an environmentally orientated medical geography illustrate the contrast of approaches to health, humanity, and place.     

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.     

«Une mission glorieuse et profitable» réforme missionnaire et économie sucrière dans la province jésuite du Brésil au début du XVIIe siècle

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Jesuit province of Brazil is affected by tensions which reveal the complexity of its relation both with the colonial society and with the Roman center of the order. The paper is focused on an exceptional and original document about which nothing is clearly identified (author, date), theAdvertências para a província do Brasil. It allows a precise analysis of the missionary enterprise, as an economico-political experience (the Jesuits become one of the most important sugar producers of the country), and as a spiritual experience (through the salvation of the missionaries and the conversion of the Indians). This document is centered on thealdeia which is described as the main structure for the action of the Jesuits in Brazil. In that way, it reveals a global vision of the mission, geopolitical, economical and religious, which has systematically been overshadowed by the traditional historiography, whose approach of the missionary phenomenon was exclusively spiritual.     

Lights and Shadows: The Inquisitorial Process Against the Jesuit Congregation of Nuestra Señora de la Luz on the Mariana Islands (1758–1776)

This article focuses on the controversy over the charges of sexual impropriety made against Father Franz Reittemberger within the context of worship of Nuestra Señora de la Luz (Our Lady of Light) in the mid‐eighteenth century Mariana Islands. As is well known, this cult began to spread around the Americas and the Philippines (via New Spain) starting in 1740, and it became a cohesive force in a multiethnic society perched on the outskirts of Spain's overseas empire. The Society of Jesus arrived in the Marianas' archipelago in 1668 to found a mission with the economic support of Queen Mariana de Austria, Philip IV's widow and regent of Spain. In 1758 Father Reittemberger founded the Marian devotion to Our Lady of Light. After the expulsion of the Jesuit order from the Spanish islands of the Pacific (1769), the Augustinian commissaries of the Holy Office accused the congregation's founder of the crime of sollicitatio ad turpia. In examining this Inquisition trial Jesuit and Augustinian rivalries come to the fore, revealing the larger anti‐Jesuit sentiments that drove public censure of the colonial church in the Spanish overseas possessions.     

For the Benefit of All Men: Oceanography and Franco-American Scientific Diplomacy in the Cold War, 1958–1970**

In the 1960s, the growing strategic importance of ocean exploration led the French government to develop greater capacity in marine scientific research, aiming to promote cooperative and diplomatic relations with the leading states in ocean exploration. Devised during Charles de Gaulle's government (1958–1969), the restructuring of French oceanography culminated, in 1967, in the establishment of the state-led Centre National pour l'Exploitation des Océans (CNEXO). Beyond being intended to control the orientation of marine research at a national level, the CNEXO's mission was to use scientific diplomacy to balance a desire for enhancing international cooperative relations in oceanography with French ambitions to equal the USA's leading capacity to explore the oceans. Its director, the naval officer Yves la Prairie, played a crucial role in articulating scientific, national, and diplomatic interests for France in the oceans.     

明清传教士对《山海经》的解读

晚明前清时期在华耶稣会士作品中有关《山海经》的零星内容反映出这些欧洲传教士与时代变局相关的心态变化。从16世纪到18世纪,欧洲的地理类作品随着其世界观念的更新而从传说与实证并存向实证性内容居主导转变,礼仪之争使在华传教士对中国文化的态度从针对中国人的迎合向针对欧洲人的特别宣传转变。受这两种变化驱使,传教士看待《山海经》时从认可和吸收变为轻蔑与排斥。     

Using the concept of genre de vie: French geographers and colonial Algeria, c.1880-1949

By the mid-twentieth century, French geographers had produced substantial works of research aiming to classify genres de vie. They had broken with the idea that nomadic and sedentary genres de vie were the successive stages of a universal history of human societies, and argued instead that they were the result of human adaptations to specific natural environments. Within this new conceptual framework, nomadism was thus understood as a form of highly evolved genre de vie responding to the particular characteristics of the steppe. But if pastoral nomadism was the best possible adaptation to the dry steppe zone, on what natural basis could the extension of European sedentary agriculture be justified? Scientific answers to this question were of strategic importance in Algeria which was the most important colony of settlement in the French empire and in fact often considered as a part of France. Through the analysis of a corpus of works published by institutionally recognized geographers concerning Algeria and Algeria’s indigenous genres de vie (including doctoral theses, articles in the Annales de Géographie and literary reviews), the paper attempts to show how the concept of the ‘adaptation of mankind’ to the natural environment, when applied to Algeria, generated a series of intractable divides and deep contradictions. This in turn requires us to reconsider the idea that in French geography, the neo-Lamarckian concept of natural determinism systematically supported a distinction between so-called ‘European’ and ‘Native’ populations. By examining precisely the scientific usages of the concept of genre de vie in the colonial and imperial situation, the paper will attempt to reveal how the academic debates of the time were shaped by competing views of the civilizing mission of French colonialism in Algeria.     

Jesuit thalassology reconsidered: the Mediterranean and the geopolitics of Jesuit missionary aims in seventeenth-century Ethiopia

During the second half of the sixteenth century, the Society of Jesus relied heavily on Portuguese trade routes in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in order to reach Ethiopia. However, geopolitical shifts, particularly the rise of Ottoman sea power in the Indian Ocean and the Spanish conquest of Portugal in 1580, ended this route’s viability for the Jesuits. In order to sustain Jesuit connections with Ethiopia, Father General Mutio Vitelleschi decided in 1627 to abandon the Portuguese and send four Jesuits with French passports through Ottoman territory and up the Nile, whence they would travel overland into Ethiopia. After arriving in Egypt, however, the Jesuits were arrested, interrogated and expelled by the Ottoman governor, who suspected that they were Habsburg spies. The course of this failed Jesuit effort to reach Ethiopia has three important implications for our understanding of the Mediterranean and its relationship with other sea spaces in terms of early modern empire building and Catholic evangelization. First, the decision to abandon the Portuguese in favour of the French illuminates how the Mediterranean remained at the fore of the Society of Jesus’s missionary efforts. Second, French willingness to protect the Jesuits demonstrates that Louis XIII of France saw the Mediterranean as an important theatre for achieving his political, religious and economic goals. Third, the Ottoman decision to arrest and expel the Jesuits due to fears that they were in Egypt to assist in a Coptic rebellion and concomitant Hapsburg invasion demonstrates both Ottoman anxiety concerning the rise of European religio-imperial ambitions and the Ottomans’ ability to control foreigners travelling through their lands. In sum, these developments illuminate a larger thalassological picture of the Mediterranean, which, like other sea spaces, obtained as an important contact zone where early modern powers competed to build empires and save souls.     

The Laurentian world map with special reference to its portrayal of Africa

When the Jesuit missionaries began to work in China, they attracted the attention of the Chinese by introducing European knowledge. This is the context in which Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni, Francesco Sambiasi and Ferdinand Verbiest made their Chinese‐language world maps. Sambiasi was a man of many talents. He was a tactful diplomat and a learned scientist. His world map shows him to be a skilful adapter of earlier knowledge, which he passed on to future generations. The six known copies of his map are in two versions, printed from two sets of wood blocks (c. 1639). A text at the top of one version explains why the world must be seen as a sphere, which demonstrates how these maps were meant to convince the Chinese public of European scientific findings.     

Adapting Catholicism to Confucianism: Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu Shiyi

Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven) is the single most important proselytizing work of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the legendary founder of the early modern Jesuit China mission. Controversial since the early seventeenth century, it has been both praised and condemned for Ricci’s claim of a monotheistic affinity between Catholicism and Confucianism. Ricci’s gesture of friendship to Confucianism won him many Chinese friends and posthumously made him famous or notorious in Europe, but as this essay contends, it was never more than a tactical cover for him during his lifetime. Since the real purpose of his cultural adaptation was his unobtrusive engagement with the ancient Chinese philosophical idea of tianren heyi (humanity’s unity with heaven), what is ultimately so instructive about Tianzhu Shiyi is the light cast on Ricci’s intricate relationship with his Chinese friends and on the ironic twists and turns of his complex legacy.     

‘In carcere; ad dupplicium’: Jesuit encounters in prison and in places of execution. Reflections on the early-modern period

Jesuits of the early-modern period had, as a major aspect of their missions and ministry, encounters with prisoners and with those condemned to execution. The Jesuit experience of these encounters was profoundly influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, undertaken by every Jesuit. In these exercises the retreatant is required to visualise the physical sufferings of Christ. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Jesuits were closely connected, from several perspectives, with the imprisonment and execution of scores of individuals. While many of the leading Jesuit theoreticians of the time, such as Roberto Bellarmino, supported the right of the secular state to exercise capital punishment, a tension persisted between the idea of common humanity expounded in the Spiritual Exercises and the role of the Jesuits as supporters of the Habsburg dynasty that conducted these public executions. This essay explores the Jesuit encounter along the eastern and northern Habsburg peripheries and on the ‘frontiers of faith’ with prisoners and the condemned, utilising archival materials, as a contribution to the intellectual history of the Jesuits and to the cultural history of the region.     

Putting the drum in conundrum: Guadeloupean gwoka,intangible cultural heritage and postnationalism

Since 2004, Felix Cotellon, the president of the centre for traditional music and dance on the island of Guadeloupe, has spearheaded a grass roots campaign to see gwoka inscribed on the UNESCO’s list of Representative Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanities. The move has been surprising, even controversial. Gwoka, a drum-based music and dance, has been used as a symbol of Guadeloupean cultural identity and resistance against French colonialism since the late 1960s. Moreover, Cotellon has had a long association with separatist activism. However, because Guadeloupe remains a French overseas department without a seat at the UN, the petition to add gwoka to the ICH list had to be sponsored by the French state. Following a successful bid, gwoka is now listed as representative of the culture of a French region. In this article, I draw from my ethnographic work as well as my own involvement in the committee that drafted Guadeloupe’s application to trace the complex network of individuals, who are shaping gwoka’s transformation from weapon of national resistance to symbol of humanity’s cultural diversity. I argue that these individuals shape and operate within a ‘zone of awkward engagement’ that allows for the emergence and expression of a postnationalist political subjectivity.