Matteo Ricci (39 page)

Notes

1. FR, book V, ch. VIII, p. 356.

2. FR, book V, ch. IX, p. 364.

3. Letter dated August 15, 1606; OS II, p. 299.

4. FR, book V, ch. X, p. 372.

5. Born into a Christian Chinese family in the Guangdong province in 1581 and the younger brother of Zhong Mingren, baptized Sebastião Fernandes.

6. FR, book V, ch. XIV, p. 444, no. 3.

7. Cf. P. M. Engelfriet,
Euclid in China
, cit., pp. 78 ff and 289 ff.

8. P. M. Engelfriet, appendix 1, pp. 459–60. An Italian translation of Ricci’s preface can be found in Pasquale D’Elia, “Presentazione della prima traduzione cinese di Euclide,”
Monumenta Serica
15 (1956): pp. 161–202.

9. Devoted to number theory, incommensurables, and solid geometry.

10. P. M. Engelfriet,
Euclid in China
, cit.

11. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, August 22, 1608; OS II, p. 359.

12. For an English translation of the prefaces by Ricci and Xu Guangqi, see P. M. Engelfriet,
Euclid in China
, cit., pp. 454 ff, pp. 291 ff. An Italian version can be found in P. D’Elia, “Presentazione della prima traduzione cinese di Euclide,” cit.

13. Shi Huangdi is remembered for having commenced the building of the Great Wall and for the huge army of terracotta soldiers found in his tomb at Xi’an during the last century, one of the most important archeological discoveries of all time.

14. FR, book V, ch. VIII, p. 360.

15. J. Needham, op. cit., p. 138.

16. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, August 22, 1608; OS II, p. 363.

17. See
Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi
, ed. Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue (Leiden: Brill, 2001), esp. p. 279.

v

Beijing, 1608–1611

The extraordinary man is extraordinary for other men but compatible with Heaven.

—Zhuangzi
1

The Master said, “From fifteen, my heart-and-mind was set upon learning; from thirty, I took my stance; from forty, I was no longer doubtful; from fifty, I realized the propensities of
tian
; from sixty, my ear was attuned; from seventy, I could give my heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries.”

—Confucius,
Analects
(2, 4)

The Paradoxes of an Extraordinary Man

Sabatino de Ursis arrived in Beijing in the first half of 1607 and proved a great comfort to Ricci, who was able to start speaking to him in Italian, a language he now found “as strange to me as to anyone who has not spoken it for thirty years”
2
and spoke less fluently than Portuguese. Moreover, even though his new companion from Lecce was not the expert astronomer awaited by Li Madou for years now, he did have a good grasp of mathematics and was able to make a valid contribution to their scientific work. Ricci also had a good relationship with Gaspar Ferreira, who had made remarkable progress in the study of the Chinese language and philosophy in the space of just four years and was now master of the novices.

Relations were not so smooth with Pantoja, the Spaniard who had been at his side during the difficult early days in Beijing. Ricci referred explicitly to problems with this companion two years earlier in a letter to Superior General Acquaviva in connection with a difficulty regarding Ferreira. The latter had not had time to finish the course of theological studies before being sent to China and was therefore barred by the regulations from taking the special vow of obedience to the pope and holding positions of responsibility in the order. Ricci told Superior General that an exception should be made for Ferreira because moral qualities and virtues should count for more than years of study, especially in the case of missionaries working in such a difficult country as China. He went on to say that Ferreira had a far better knowledge of theology than other priests who had completed their studies and taken the four vows, like Diego de Pantoja, “who has given us little edification, is regarded by the brethren and other people in the house as lacking in virtue and prudence, and has created problems for everyone, and for me in particular, in the five or six years that he has been here.”
3
Hardly a flattering portrait.

Apart from the problem of relations with Pantoja, the true extent of which is not known, the mission continued its normal life as a hive of activity. It was now three years since the publication of the
Twenty-five Discourses
, and the work’s favorable reception prompted Ricci at the beginning of 1608 to bring out another short treatise, written over the previous two years, in which he addressed the moral questions cherished by Chinese literati from a new viewpoint.

Ricci called his new work the
Ten Paradoxes
to highlight the fact that while the moral truths asserted were considered self-evident by Christians, they would prove contrary to current opinion and hence paradoxical for most of the Chinese public. The purpose of this friendly challenge to the common sense of his host country was to persuade readers to free themselves from some beliefs deeply rooted in their culture and to accept his spiritual message. Drawing on his own exchanges of views with scholarly friends, he presented ten short conversations in accordance with a customary rhetorical device of the Western philosophical tradition. The participants included his faithful allies Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao as well as some of the best-known bureaucrats in the capital, such as Li Dai, the minister of personnel, and Feng Qi, the minister of rites. As in his previous ethical works, Ricci reworked the writings of Greek philosophers and Christian thinkers in a Confucian style.

The subjects addressed by drawing upon the words of great figures from the past included death, which the Chinese feared to the point of avoiding all mention of it as something most inauspicious. Ricci knew that many mandarins spent huge sums on potions promising immortality. In contrast to the Chinese dread of the “nothingness” that awaited them at the end of life, according to their culture, Ricci put forward the paradoxical view that death was not to be feared and even urged his readers to keep it serenely and constantly in their thoughts, to await in hope the eternal life that all believers would receive when, according to Catholic doctrine, earthly sorrows came to an end and those who had suffered and acted correctly would be rewarded in paradise.

Recourse to fortune-tellers, the purveyors of vain prophecies offering their services on every street in the capital, was another Chinese custom connected with the fear of death that Ricci attacked as incompatible with Christian morality. By his calculations, there were at least five thousand fortune-tellers in Beijing, and he endeavored to warn the “poor” Chinese of every social class who paid them for the privilege of being hoodwinked. Proceeding from one paradox to another, the Jesuit invited the Chinese to meditate on the preciousness of time and to prefer correct actions to vain discourse, he explained the meaning of fasting and penance, he urged them to examine their consciences every day, he illustrated the harm done by avarice, and he criticized the accumulation of riches.

In actual fact, not all of the forms of austerity cherished by Christian morality and proposed in the treatise would have appeared unreasonable or outlandish to Chinese readers. Many literati practiced asceticism and delighted in meditation. Some remained immobile and controlled their breathing, a form of yoga of Buddhist origin known as “crouching in calm”; others carried out the equivalent of soul-searching every day in silent reflection on their bad actions called “solitary self-surveillance,” motionless in front of a bowl of water and a stick of incense.
4
None of them, however, saw these practices as atonement for sins committed against God’s laws. The Jesuit therefore endeavored to direct their actions toward deeper moral awareness with religious aims.

Before publication, Ricci circulated the manuscript among his friends in order to gauge their reactions, and many agreed to write laudatory prefaces in accordance with normal practice. The academician Wang Yazi prepared a version of the book in poetic form with an introduction referring to Ricci as “the long-bearded man of few words from the Great West” and acknowledging the good results of cultural accommodation in flattering terms:

Despite having the heavens and the earth [in common with us], the kingdoms of the West at a distance of ten thousand
li
[a Chinese unit of measurement corresponding to about three hundred meters] from China could not communicate with it. If they are in communication with China today, this began with the scholar Ricci. . . . Having entered China, he learned its language . . .
the classics no longer hold any secrets for him. He has changed his ways and adopted the clothing of China. Knowing his plans in depth, I sigh deeply in saying that the scholar Ricci is an extraordinary man.
5

In calling Ricci “an extraordinary man,” Wang Yazi cited a celebrated work of the Taoist tradition known as the
Zhuangzi
after the name of its author, in which Confucius is attributed with these words: “The extraordinary man is extraordinary for other men but compatible with Heaven.” It is from this aphorism that the work derived its definitive title
Jiren shipian
, “Ten Chapters of an Extraordinary Man.”

The book proved as successful as Ricci’s other moral works, and two more editions soon appeared in Nanjing and Nanchang. As Ricci wrote in the history of the mission with his customary emphasis and perhaps a little exaggeration, “They were all so pleased with this book that there was nobody who did not confess that it was something of great benefit to human life and that they learned more in ten chapters of this book than in many other books put together.”
6

Li Zhizao also wrote a preface, published in a later edition, in which he expressed his admiration for Li Madou, describing him as a free and independent spirit capable of bringing out the truth and combating false knowledge, a man of vast culture and an extraordinary memory devoted to study, and deeply versed in disciplines neglected by Confucian culture, such as astronomy, geography, geometry, and arithmetic. He ended by asserting that it was right to consider Li Madou an “extraordinary” man because he had no fear of death, he believed in the existence of Heaven, and he imparted teachings of sublime significance to the Chinese. Above all, he practiced what he preached.

The History of the Mission

Well aware that in China, the land of literati, the written word was much more effective than the spoken, Ricci emphasized its importance in the short introduction to some religious prints that he delivered to the ink merchant and publisher Cheng Dayue for publication in a collection of works of graphic art entitled
The Ink Garden of the Cheng Family
:

Those who will live one hundred generations after us are not yet born, and I cannot tell what sort of people they will be. Yet thanks to the existence of written culture even those living ten thousand generations hence will be able to enter into my mind as if we were contemporaries. As for those worthy figures who lived a hundred generations ago, although they too are gone, yet thanks to the books they left behind we who come after can hear their modes of discourse, observe their grand demeanor, and understand both the good order and the chaos of their times, exactly as if we were living among them.
7

Prompted by the desire to leave some trace of his work for posterity and sensing that he did not have much time left, Ricci decided to make haste in writing another work to which he attached great importance, namely the history of the Jesuit mission in China aimed at European readers. He chose to write this in his now somewhat shaky Italian and began filling sheets of Chinese paper, each of which was stamped with the Jesuit symbol “IHS Maria,” in his closely spaced handwriting during his free moments at the end of 1608. Now in the Jesuit archives in Rome, the manuscript of
Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina
(“The Entrance of the Society of Jesus and Christianity into China”) is a small volume of 131 pages with a soft cover of thick brown leather.

The first of the five parts provides a description of China and Chinese life, giving information about the country’s geography and telling the European public for the first time how the system of imperial examinations worked, how the bureaucracy was organized, and how life was lived every day in the urban and rural areas. Widely circulated and drawn upon by scholars of the Eastern world, these precious and largely unprecedented observations make Ricci the first Western sinologist. The other four parts are a detailed account of the Jesuits’ adventures in China told in the third person, where Ricci reconstructs the stages of his missionary work from the first foothold in Zhaoqing, through the move to Shaozhou and the creation of the other residences in Nanchang and Nanjing, up to the final arrival in Beijing and the founding of the mission there.

The missionary states in the introduction that his aim is to present the “simple truth” to readers as recorded in his memory so as to preserve the history of the Jesuits’ work on Chinese soil from oblivion and hand the great efforts of the pioneers on to their successors. He stresses that it is important for posterity to know how much the Society of Jesus suffered in order to enter the “wild forest” of China and how much “sweat and diligence” accompanied the missionaries’ efforts in the Middle Kingdom.

While Ricci was busy reconstructing the history of the mission from the very beginning, the brethren kept him constantly informed about the progress and difficulties of the other residences. Niccolò Longobardo wrote from Shaozhou to say that there was no increase in the number of conversions and that the hostility of the local population was palpable, which worried Ricci so much that he started planning to move the mission to a safer locality. João Soerio, the head of the Nanchang mission, had died of pulmonary tuberculosis two years earlier and had been replaced by new brothers. There were now two hundred converts, including some relatives of the emperor, but this comparative success did not prevent a group of mandarins from circulating a pamphlet accusing the missionaries of belonging to a heretical sect and of undermining the stability of the empire. This was a clear sign that the Chinese authorities were beginning to fear that the spread of Catholicism among the lower classes might endanger social peace. The Christians in Nanjing—where Xu Guangqi had been baptized by João da Rocha five years earlier and where he often returned on visits from Shanghai—had also been forced to defend themselves against accusations of plotting against China and had succeeded in proving their innocence.

In the meantime, Li Zhizao had been persuaded by Ricci and his
shidafu
friends to end his voluntary exile and return to Beijing. Now fully rehabilitated, he soon obtained a new appointment as district magistrate in the central province of Hubei. While awaiting the preparation of the documents required for his investiture, he persuaded the servants in his building to convert, but once again, to the missionaries’ renewed regret, he refused to do so himself. The reluctance of Li Zhizao and other intellectuals to convert showed that it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Ricci’s friends and admirers would allow themselves to be persuaded to make such a drastic choice as the one urged by the missionaries, even though many of them were genuinely interested in Western knowledge.

Li Zhizao strenuously resumed the translation of scientific works in the conviction that their circulation was indispensable in order to persuade the Chinese authorities to reform the calendar with the aid of the Jesuits, a project to which he attached as much importance as Ricci did. They worked together on
Yuanrong jiaoyi
(“The Meaning of [Compared] Figures Inscribed in a Circle”), a work illustrating the peculiar properties of the circle and the sphere, figures that the ancients regarded as perfect by virtue of their total symmetry and regularity. Published at the end of 1609, this short volume was based on Clavius’s comment on the
De Sphaera mundi
of Johannes de Sacrobosco.
8
The purpose of these geometric dissertations was in reality astronomical, as the demonstration of the perfection of the sphere served to confirm the validity of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic model of the universe, the elegant system of concentric spheres studded with the celestial bodies and with the earth in the geometric center. Following Clavius, Li Zhizao wrote as follows: “The Lord of Creation has wrapped the small earth and the countless forms living on it in the great round heavens. . . . On the large scale, we have the trajectories of the sun and the moon; on the small scale, raindrops.”